Norton, Andre - Anthology Read Online Free PDF Page B

Yet, I have killed many men-things. And sometimes, even as I killed, I
would be thinking of other things. I would not even know what had happened
until after the deed was done."
    G-3a had not been listening.
Instead, he had been looking dolefully at the metal ruin upon the floor.
"There was one in the jade tower." he said abruptly, "who
thought he had nearly learned how to make a brain. He was to work all winter on
it. Perhaps he has succeeded."
    "We will go there."
shrilled L-1716 laconically.
    But even as they left the time-worn
hall G-3a looked back ruefully at the smoking wreckage upon the floor.
    X-120 slowed his steps to match the
feeble gait of G-3a. Within sight of the tower he saw that they need go no farther.
At some time during the winter the old walls had buckled. The nine were buried
beneath tons and tons of masonry.
    Slowly the three came back to their
broken hall. "I will not stay out any longer," grumbled G-3a. "I
am very old. I am very tired." He crept back into the shadows.
    L-1716 stood looking after him.
"I am afraid that he is nearly done," he spoke sorrowfully. "The
rust must be within him now. He saved me once, long ago, when we destroyed this
city."
    "Do you still think of
that?" asked X-120. "Sometimes it troubles me. Men were our
masters."
    "And they made us as we
are," growled L-1716. "It was not our doing. We have talked of it
before, you know. We were machines, made to kill—"
    "But we were made to kill the
little men in the yellow uniforms."
    "Yes, I know. They made us on
a psychological principle: stimulus, response. We had only to see a man in a
yellow uniform and our next act was to kill. Then, after the Great War was
over, or even before it was over, the stimulus and response had overpowered us
all. It was only a short step from killing men in yellow uniforms to killing
all men."
    "I know," said X-120
wearily. "When there were more of us I heard it explained often. But
sometimes it troubles me."
    "It is all done now. Ages ago
it was done. You are different, X-120. I have felt for long that there is something
different about you. You were one of the last that they made. Still, you were
here when we took this city. You fought well, killing many."
    X-120 sighed. "There were
small men-things then. They seemed so soft and harmless. Did we do right?"
    "Nonsense. We could not help it. We were made so. Men learned to make more than they could
control. Why, if I saw a man today, crippled as I am, I would kill him without
thinking."
    "L-1716," whispered
X-120, "do you think there are any men left in the world?"
    "I don't think so. Remember,
the Great War was general, not local. We were carried to all parts of the
earth, even to the smallest islands. The robots' rebellion came everywhere at
almost the same time. There were some of us who were equipped with radios. Those
died first, long ago, but they talked with nearly every part of the
world." Suddenly he wearied of speech. "But why worry now. It is
spring. Men made us for killing men. That was their crime. Can we help it if
they made us too well?"
    "Yes," agreed X-120,
"it is spring. We will forget. Let us go toward the river. It was always
peaceful and beautiful there."
    L-1716 was puzzled. "What
peace and beauty?" he asked."They are but words that men
taught us. I have never known them. But perhaps you have. You were always
different. "
    "I do not know what peace and
beauty are, but when I think of them I am reminded of the river and of—"
X-120 stopped suddenly, careful that he might not give away a secret he had
kept so long.
    "Very well," agreed
L-1716, "we will go to the river. I know a meadow there where the sun
always seemed warmer."
     
    The two machines, each over twelve
feet high, lumbered down the almost obliterated street. As they pushed their
way over the debris and undergrowth that had settled about the ruins, they came
upon many rusted skeletons of things that had once been like themselves. And
toward the outskirts of the city they