“O.K.,” said Morrissey. He set up “desire for achievement” on the generator, and snapped it on. “No use making a simple thing complicated. After we let them want to achieve for a while, then we’ll hit them with ‘desire to work hard,’ and then ‘desire to learn.’ We’ll have them snapped into line in short order.”
Hammell grinned. “Do you suppose we’ll notice much difference if we take the skimmer up late this afternoon, and look them over through the glasses?”
Morrissey nodded. “Should.”
“I don’t see why not,” said Roberts. “They’ll doubtless be out cleaning those streets. We might even see them carrying off parts of the dumps to get that out of town.”
Morrissey said, “We might be able to see without even going up in the skimmer. Some of the components the technicians left look to me like they’ll work the 3-V on the comset here. All I have to do is put them in, set up for one-way viewing so we don’t get snooped by mistake, and—Voila!—we can pick up the City’s own 3-V news broadcast.”
Roberts nodded. “O.K. Set it up.”
“Good as done,” Morrissey said.
* * *
Roberts and Hammell spent the rest of the morning hunting from the skimmer, and came back with an animal like an antelope, and two smaller animals, like large wood-chucks. The afternoon, they spent strengthening the cargo section, and refitting its hatch. By now, the big cats had learned to be wary of the tender, and the rest of the daytime carnivores were in awe of the strange three-legged beast. But the nighttime animals appeared to be in awe of nothing.
While Roberts and Hammell worked on the tender, Morrissey, in the general-purpose room, could be heard whistling cheerfully.
“O.K.,” said Roberts, when they had the big cargo hatch tight, and the sun was dropping toward the horizon, “want to take a look at the city?”
“Sure.”
Roberts called cheerfully to Morrissey. “Want to come along? We’re going to take a look from the skimmer.”
“Go ahead. I’ve almost got the screen done.”
Roberts and Hammell got their guns, climbed into the skimmer, and watched the clearing drop away below. The ground flashed past, forest giving way suddenly to neat rows of crops. Far off to the south, a dust cloud crawled across the ground, and they realized it was the cultivator coming north again.
“Good to be up here,” said Hammell.
Roberts glanced around, to see no flying predators nearby. “It sure is.” He pointed up, toward Orion, orbiting unseen far overhead. “And let’s hope we’re up there again pretty soon.”
Just then, far ahead, the City rose up over the horizon, and seemed to flow swiftly toward them.
Eagerly, Roberts raised the high-powered glasses.
The City sprang closer, clouds of smoke pouring up near its center. Frowning, Roberts adjusted the magnification.
The scene visibly enlarged, and grew clearer as they rushed toward it.
In the streets, rioting mobs battled lines of roboid police.
Hammell said eagerly, “Have they accomplished much? Does the City look improved?”
Roberts swallowed.
Hammell said, “Let’s see.”
Speechless, Roberts handed over the glasses.
Hammell stared through them at the city. His mouth opened and shut.
Roberts swung the skimmer further north, toward the center of the upheaval.
Hammell handed back the glasses.
A second and closer look corrected Roberts’ impressions. It wasn’t a riot. It was a war. The police robots were being overturned, and smashed with sledge-hammers and lengths of pipe. The humans were steadily forcing their way into the center of the city.
If the roboid police were destroyed, there would be nothing to protect the computer. If the computer were destroyed, the ship would never be repaired.
“Hang on,” said Roberts. He whipped the skimmer around and streaked for the forest.
Hammell said, “Did Morrissey set it up wrong?”
“I don’t know. But God help us if that mob wrecks the computer.”
The sun was sinking toward the horizon. To their left, a flying cloud of roughly hand-sized gangbats appeared, and turned with a flash of white teeth to intercept the skim-mer. The skimmer pulled ahead, streaked along over the wide cleared lane through the forest, then Roberts located the clearing and dropped down beside the tender’s cargo hatch. A few moments later, they were inside, pulled the skimmer in and locked the hatch.
In the personnel section of the tender, the communicator was turned up high.
” . . . Now being driven back along the main avenues leading from Planetary Control. Again we urge all citizens to remain indoors and avoid joining in this disturbance. Unnecessary loss of life can be avoided only if all law-abiding citizens remain in their assigned quarters . . .”
Roberts and Hammell climbed the ladder to the air lock, stepped in, pushed open the inner door, and found Morrissey in a glare of light, staring at something out of view from the door. Roberts stepped forward. By the communicator screen, a pair of whirling hypnotic spirals seemed to briefly catch his gaze, drawing one eye slightly to the right and the other to the left, till a scrambled chaos of light and shadow on the screen suddenly took on depth and sprang out into the room, and now Roberts was looking at a fleeing mob, their discarded weapons rolled over by police robots sweeping in rigid lines down the long straight avenues from the center of the city.
Morrissey said shakily, “That was close. If I’d been an hour later getting that 3-V fixed, I wouldn’t have known what was going on till too late.”
“What happened?” said Roberts. “They acted like they were set up to ‘want to revolt.'”
“I checked that,” said Morrissey. “What I had set up was ‘desire for achievement,’ all right. What we overlooked was, what kind of achievement? Suppose they think the greatest achievement would be to overthrow the computer and the robots?”
Hammell turned to Roberts, “Remember what they yelled when they threw the bottles at the maintenance robots? ‘Kill the mechs!'”
“Ye gods.” Roberts glanced at Morrissey. “What did you do to stop them?”
“Set the want-generator for ‘desire to give up,’ and beamed it at them, full power. Naturally, the computer and the roboid police weren’t affected, so in almost no time, they had things under control. I’ve been cutting down the power since then.”
Hammell swore. “There goes that setting. We won’t get much help from ‘desire for achievement.'”
Roberts was frowning. “It’s worse than that. It means we don’t know how they’ll react to any desire.”
Morrissey nodded. “Look at this.” He hit the “Replay” button, and a recorded view appeared, showing an apartment house door coming slowly open. A crafty individual with a knife eased out, carrying a cord, on which was strung about a dozen odd objects. As he peered around, something flicked into his neck from the side, he clawed at this throat, staggered to the sidewalk, and a moment later a second figure greedily took possession of the string, bent over the fallen figure to take it by one ear, pulled out a knife, briefly tested its edge with a thumb—”
Morrissey hit the “Replay” button.
Black smoke poured out of a building. A set of scurrying figures ran past carrying a torch, sprinted down the block, hurled the torch through a window, threw half-a-dozen bottles in after it, and dove into the gutter. A yellow flash and flame roared out the window, to climb high up the side of the building.
“Accomplishment,” said Morrissey dryly. “Collect ears, burn buildings, smash the town to bits.”
Roberts snapped the switch, to see what was happening now.
At once, a mob appeared, racing in full flight down a street where no roboid police were anywhere in sight. Screams of terror mingled with the blare of loudspeakers:
“Be calm! You are in no danger! No punishment is intended for those who took part in this disturbance!”
Someone screamed. “They’re after us!”
The loudspeaker boomed. “Be calm!”
Someone screamed.
“HERE THEY COME!”
Roberts glanced at Morrissey. “Better turn that thing down.”
“I’ve already got it turned down almost all the way.”
On the screen, the mob was running so fast that anyone who hesitated was immediately trampled underfoot.
“The trouble,” said Morrissey, “is that once they get going, they go faster and faster all by themselves. They build up a kind of inertia all on their own.”
The communicator was saying, “This view is typical of the streets in a twenty-mile ring around the Planetary Control Center. All citizens are urged to remain indoors. Repeat, all citizens are urged—”
Roberts said, “We’ve got to stop it.”
“What would you suggest?” asked Morrissey.
“How about ‘desire to fight’? That ought to nullify the panic.”
Hammell nodded. “They can’t be scared and mad at the same time.”
Morrissey didn’t say anything, but glanced at a list of settings tacked on the want-generator frame, then bent over it carefully. He straightened and glanced at the screen.