“They’d better get out some way pretty quick,” said Morrissey, “or they aren’t going to. Look there.”
A low blocky object, like a huge metal brick, heavily mounted the sidewalk, and moved massively forward on concealed wheels or rollers. The door of the building snapped back before it like a matchstick, there was a bright flash from underneath, with no visible effect, then the device was inside. It backed up, taking half the doorframe and part of the adjoining wall with it, and rolled forward again. In the silence now that the shooting had died away, there was a dull heavy crunch. The massive device then reappeared, and rumbled down the sidewalk toward the next door. Behind it, there now moved forward a host of spidery devices, varying from about one to four feet tall, that moved methodically into the building, followed by low long broad things with many short legs, like metal centipedes. They crawled off of a steady procession of low broad-roofed carriers with open sides, that rolled up the street, discharged their cargo, and moved on to vanish around the corner.
Time passed, and spidery many-legged metal forms appeared on successively higher floors of the building, and finally on the roof. But only two humans were carried out, and both of them were plainly dead.
Meanwhile, a small crowd of people had gathered, apparently from neighboring buildings, to watch raptly from the far side of the double line of roboid police. As the metal devices appeared on successively higher floors, the people pointed and shouted in pleasure. As the dead bodies were carried out, they cheered.
Roberts sat back and looked blankly at Hammell. Hammell shook his head. Roberts glanced at Morrissey. Morrissey ran his hand over his face.
“Well,” said Roberts finally, “before we can decide what to do this time, it looks like we’re going to have to figure out what’s developed out of what we did the last time.”
Morrissey nodded. Hammell looked moodily out at the clearing.
From behind them came the bland voice of Holcombe, the life-like roboid butler that had come with the space yacht, and added a special touch of luxury that had enabled the manufacturers to charge what they had for this deluxe version of the ship when it was new.
Holcombe was saying deferentially: “A little light refreshment, my lords?”
Morrissey said wearily, “Just a pitcher of water, Holcombe. Plus three glasses and a large bottle of aspirin.”
“Yes, my lord.” Holcombe bowed and retired.
The three men stared moodily at the screen.
* * *
It took them most of the day, methodically working with the spy screen, to get a rough idea what was going on in the city. Once they had it, they sat back in exasperated bafflement.
From one end of the city to the other, barring only the region around the Planetary Control Center itself, a highly-organized gang of fanatics seemed to be at work, operating from a network of their own tunnels. These tunnels were independent of the city’s network of steam lines, cables, pipes, and underground maintenance tunnels, though the two connected at a number of points. Except at these points, the city’s surveillance devices showed nothing of what went on inside the newly-dug tunnels. Hence the spy screen, which operated from taps on the city’s surveillance system, also showed nothing, except at these points. But from watching the movement of maintenance and combat devices inside the city’s tunnels, it became obvious that a continuous skirmishing and probing was going on, with the computer trying to isolate and clean out sections of the fanatics’ tunnels, while the fanatics calculatedly sabotaged water pipes, steam lines, and power cables, to keep the computer distracted with maintenance problems, and its tunnels clogged with maintenance devices. Meanwhile, above ground, gangs of fanatics, wearing triple lightning-bolt insignia, burst out to seize able-bodied protesting citizens for work in the shovel gangs. The general bulk of the populace, if anything, looked more run-down and put upon than before. Now they had two sets of rulers instead of one, and the rulers were at war with each other.
“This network of tunnels,” said Hammell finally, “makes it a mess. How do we know what effect we’re having on them if we can’t see them?”
“We can try,” said Morrissey, “to figure it out from what happens afterward.”
“That’s nice. We can figure out whether a bottle had nitroglycerine in it by ‘what happened afterward’ when we jarred the bottle.”
Roberts studied the screen. “Suppose we bring them all to the surface, then?”
“How?”
“Have we got anything on that list that will serve the purpose of claustrophobia?”
Morrissey blinked. “That’s a thought.” He ran his finger down a paper tacked by the locator screen, flipped the paper up, and ran down a second list underneath.
“Here we are. ‘Desire for light and air.’ ‘Desire to escape confinement.’ ” He flipped up the next page. ” ‘Desire for room, space.’ ”
“Just what we need. How would you like to be down in a tunnel and suddenly start to feel one of those desires?”
“I wouldn’t. But if I were a fanatic, maybe I’d be able to resist it.”
“Could we work it so that a blend of all those desires would be generated? After all, with this synchronous rotor setup you worked out, we can hit different sections with different settings at the same time. Why not the same section with several settings at once?”
Morrissey blinked, and looked wary. “But not throughout the whole city?”
“No, of course not,” said Roberts. “Who knows what would happen? No, just try one place at a time. A good spot to start might be near that building where all the fighting was earlier. There should still be some people in tunnels under there. Then we can see how this works.”
Morrissey nodded. “Good idea. We’ll try it.”
* * *
They switched the spy screen back to a view of the building, and of the garbage-filled park beside the building. Morrissey set up the want-generator to hit just that section of the city with “desire for light and air,” “desire to escape confinement,” and “desire for room, space.”
Then they watched the screen.
Somewhere underground, there should be some fanatical humans, lurking in tunnels, and suddenly stricken with an urgent desire for light, air, and unconfined space.
Very soon, these humans should come to the surface somewhere.
For a long time, they waited.
But for a long time, nothing happened.
Roberts, frowning, studied first the building, then the park, to make out finally, in the center of the park amidst the enormous heaps of garbage, the remains of what appeared to be a bandstand. He was frowning at this structure, when a wild-looking individual with improvised gun in one hand suddenly burst out a trapdoor in the center, and plunged out into the heaped-up garbage. Right behind him came two more, their faces frantic and chests pumping desperately for air. After the first three came a flood of humanity, each carrying a club, a length of pipe, a gun apparently taken from a wrecked roboid policeman, and fitted with a stock, or some other weapon. There was no room for them all on the bandstand, and in any case they didn’t try to stay there, but immediately sprang off into the heaped garbage, to plunge and heave desperately, as if trying to climb up into the open air itself.
Last out of the hole came a man about five feet ten inches tall, strongly built, neatly-dressed in coveralls with triple lightning-bolt armband, carrying a rifle in his right hand, and plainly boiling mad. He gestured angrily toward the trapdoor, shook his fist, and threatened the others with his gun. His voice came out in a flow of words so rapid that all Roberts could make out was the sense of urgency, and the tone of command. Meanwhile, the scores of armed men ceased their struggles and lay flat, face-down in the garbage, or stared up dazedly at the open sky overhead, and tried to act as if they didn’t hear.
At the same time, around the edges of the park, roboid police began to pour in from eight different directions, coming both ways along the four wide streets that intersected to form the boundaries of the park.
It dawned on Roberts that this scene must have appeared on some panel in the Planetary Control Center, or otherwise have come to the attention of the planetary computer. And the computer was losing no time in taking advantage of the windfall.
A new urgency came into the voice of the man on the bandstand.
Around the sides of the park, the rapidly accumulating roboid police milled, searching for some route through the heaps of garbage. Here and there, one or two eased in, went forward a little distance, lost headway, came to a stop, backed up, and slammed forward again, to bog down once more in towering piles of decaying trash and garbage.