* * * * The Anarchistic Colossus A. E. van Vogt Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU * * * * introduction In this novel I took it for granted that the basic nature of, particularly, the human male, as it has been observed from ancient times, is not about to alter for the better. And so, my question was not: how much perfection may we anticipate from human beings in the future? It was: what kind of technology would be required to maintain a system of anarchism among all those misbehaving human beings around us? No government. No police. Nobody minding the store. The entire operation would, of course, have to be automatic. Surely - you say - science fiction, which all too often tends to create its own facts to bolster the reality of a story premise, has finally gone too far. Meaning, even to pose such a question is ridiculous. Human beings are incorrigible in their endless dangerous madness. I agree. That’s exactly what I said. Now, how can we have an anarchistic society in spite of that madness? Well! As I write this, I have before me a copy of a patent issued several years ago to a major west coast aircraft corporation. In it the Kirlian photography technology is combined with a relay system, whereby the following occurs: The camera focuses. The person photographed - an actor - pretends anger. His realistic evocation of the emotion alters the Kirlian pattern. Which triggers a relay. Across the building, in another room, a second relay shuts off (or turns on) a large machine. Two thoughts here as an aside. First: all too often when science fiction writers of 1977 predict the future, they come up with something that was invented in 1967. We have a little bit of that here. The second aside: recently, I read that a group of American scientists have belatedly proved that the Kirlian Effect cannot be achieved without the aid of moisture - and therefore it is not what was claimed. I can only look at my copy of the foregoing-described patent - and shake my head over their disproof. The patent establishes that a machine can be controlled by a photographed human emotion. I believe that, for story purposes, I am entitled to deduce that if one emotion - anger - can be used for one purpose, then a spectrum of other emotions could, by way of microprocessors - tiny computers - perform a large number of co-ordinated actions. We may therefore visualize a unit, complete with its own tiny computer and its Kirlian sensors, plus a laser penalty system (which last also constitutes the unit’s own defence system). Visualize this additionally multiplied by one or more billion duplicates of each other, all self-sustaining but interconnected, and, of course, scattered all over the planet. At which point you have the condition on earth when my story opens. … The alien invaders looked over this ideal society. And deduced that anarchistic man could not defend his planet. A. E. van Vogt * * * * one It is not easy for some one or some thing in a distant (multi-light-years away) part of the universe to watch a single episode of human existence on earth. But the problems of such a spy operation are within the frame of physics. And so that somebody -who possessed that high a level of scientific achievement, and was sufficiently motivated to spend the time and the energy - had his awareness focused just above human head level. Meaning just over six feet above the ground. What was visible seemed scarcely worth the effort. A tree-lined residential street of a large city. Night. The only mobile life form in sight was a man strolling along on the sidewalk. He was coming towards the point of focus. So it would almost seem as if he were the object of the remote being’s interest. The man coming along the street could have been an earth scientist, or some other professional type. He seemed about forty earth years old, and had a middle-class appearance - that is, he was dressed in a suit, and was clean-shaven. He looked intelligent. Nothing more was visible. But additional developments were not long in coming. As the night stroller came full under the street light, there was an unexpected movement in the hedge beside the sidewalk. It was a tiny rustling sound of leaves and boughs scraping against each other. The next instant a young man burst forth from the darkness of the hedge. Without a word, he launched himself at the older man. The victim had half-turned at the sound. But he was obviously not prepared for violence. Obviously, because the first rush of the assailant caught him and nearly knocked him over. And then he was being struck with fists that did not hold back, and shoved even harder. He fell. And that was the purpose. Down on top of him, with knees into the victim’s groin, plunged the assailant. The attacker’s hand reached inside his own jacket. A syringe flashed, as the hand came into the open. The young man - for that was what he was - thrust it downwards. He was clearly and without pause intending to inject something into the body of the man whom he had struck down so forcefully. He was not successful. There was an interruption. At that precise instant of time, the two - the attacker and the attacked - had a synchronized reaction to… something. Whatever the perception was, it caused the attacker to hesitate. The victim, though he was down and on his back - and though he gave the appearance of being helpless - now, belatedly, showed that he was at least partially capable of defending himself. A tiny beam of light reached up from his right lapel and touched the syringe. The brightness of it sparkled and coruscated, almost like a hair-thin stream of water splashing. As this stream of light splashed, it broke up into the colours of the rainbow. The youth uttered a moan. The syringe fell from his suddenly nerveless fingers. For a moment he crouched there, knelt there, blanked out by pain. For that moment, he looked like an overgrown teenager, blond and blue-eyed, with the only disparate factor being his size. He had the build of a football player. He was an inch taller than his intended victim. He looked as if he weighed 190 pounds. As he cringed, held by uncontrollable physical agony, he had the helpless appearance of someone who could be picked off by a sharpshooter, and in fact he was a perfect target for the sedation method of the Kirlian computer system that protected the city. And, of course, his victim could have reacted with more of that numbing light. For whatever reason, apparently none of these things happened during the split-instants that he could not move. Moments after that, the youth showed his power. He straightened. He said aloud, ‘Hank!’ A voice spoke out of his coat collar. ‘Yeah?’ ‘It’s a robot. This is a trap.’ ‘You’re loaded for anything, boy,’ said the same bodiless voice, ‘so don’t leave yet. How do you know it’s a robot?’ ‘When I kneed him, his abdomen felt - you know - not human.’ ‘Okay! Talk to him! What’s the trap for?’ No one had moved… much. The erstwhile victim continued to lie on his back, and continued to have the appearance of a middle-aged, middle-class professional man. And the attacker remained in a kneeling position on top of him. He seemed a little grimmer, as he said, ‘Okay, talk!’ ‘The trap,’ replied the robot, calmly, ‘is designed to identify you and to find out why you haven’t triggered the Kirlian scanners of this city.’ ‘What are you authorized to do to get that information?’ asked the blond youth. ‘To hold you. I have already notified a Tech volunteer.’ ‘The message to the volunteer didn’t get through,’ said the powerful young man, ‘so my question is still, how much force are you authorized to use?’ ‘Only what I need to defend myself, hold you, and call a volunteer.’ ‘Since you can do none of those things, I’ll just get up and we’ll separate.’ ‘I’m supposed to hold you,’ said the robot, ‘so we can’t separate.’ The youth stood up. ‘That’s no problem,’ he said. ‘We understand those kinds of forces. Where’s your human look-a-like, Frank Corman?’ ‘Home - watching and listening.’ The human being laughed curtly. ‘He may be home, but he’s getting no picture and no sound. Goodbye!’ He stepped towards the hedge. There was the same crackling and rustling of leaves and branches. The next instant he was through, and gone into the darkness beyond. With his reference point - the youth - retreating, the alien watcher had progressive difficulty maintaining his viewpoint on the street. The scene flickered and grew darker. But he was able to observe that the robot rolled over, picked up the syringe, climbed to his feet, and said, ‘Mr Corman.’ ‘What happened?’ came a voice that seemed to be an exact duplicate of the robot’s. It spoke from the region of the robot’s stomach. ‘We lost contact.’ ‘I have the syringe,’ was the reply. ‘Oh, good. Now, we’ll be able to find out what he intended to do to me. Get over here, quick!’ The scene and the voice were faint and far away. The alien abruptly gave up on it - and rejoined the fleeing blond youth. Contact was swift. The young human being (for those who understood complex life structures - and the alien did) was the mobile relay unit on earth for his communication system. All the neural wiring and the organic control switching centres in the spine and braincase constituted existent equipment of a quality that could not be duplicated by machinery. The attacker was visibly a young man in a hurry. He raced across one darkened yard and on to a bright street, then over another yard and past a large house, and so to a second street. There, a car with a man at the wheel waited at a kerb. As the youth came up, breathless, the driver leaned over and opened the door. For a few moments as he poised there in that bent-over position, his face was brightened by a street light. It showed him to be a man in his middle thirties. The face, thus revealed, was not an intellectual type. But it had a certain openness and the kind of maturity that comes from an intensive education in the university of experience and from many, many decisions. His face (and head and shoulders) withdrew into the unlighted shadows, as his young companion scrambled into the car and shut the door. The vehicle was in motion even before he could settle down. It glided forward and away from the kerb making only a faint tyre sound and soft hissing noise. For the alien, the movement of the car was another opportunity to evaluate human technology in everyday life, although it was not easy to immediately determine the motive power of the car at this colossal distance. He deduced it was a turbine engine. The smooth, silent, flowing power had that feel to it. Was hydrogen gas the heating element? It was difficult to be sure. He would have to wait for a chance word, or other clue. The information was important because after the game player had played his game to its grim conclusion, he was expected to make a report that would show thorough knowledge of the doomed race. Inside the moving vehicle an urgent dialogue began swiftly. The youth said, ‘How do you figure what happened? A trap?’ The man - Hank - was cool. ‘The Techs know something is wrong. You’ve beaten up top-rated Techs, in spite of the Kirlians.’ ‘But Corman knew I was after him long enough in advance to substitute a humanoid for his evening walk. How sharp can you get? He must know who I am.’ ‘That doesn’t follow - think about it.’ ‘Think how?’ ‘He’s one of a handful of top Techs - the kind you’ve gone after. And so he sent a humanoid to walk his usual exercise route. He expected, perhaps, that somebody would jump the robot. But he wouldn’t necessarily know who that somebody was.’ The reasoning seemed to make instant sense. The young man -Chip - lost his scowl. He nodded. ‘But,’ he argued, ‘it still could be that the group - if it’s more than one - that is suspicious enough to do such a thing, may also have these attacks I’ve been making connected with the return of the fleet to the solar system.’ ‘Look, Hal put you up to this. And he wasn’t even along. Besides, let’s not worry about one, or even a dozen suspicious Tech As like Corman. If we have to, we’ll take care of him, and them, later.’ ‘Maybe,’ said Chip, darkly, ‘we should drive to his house, and catch him there. In the rush I left my syringe.’ ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. The alien listener noted that the words about the space fleet were spoken casually. And he was relieved again, as he already had been many times by other conversations of the past few days. There seemed to be no doubt. Not even these dissidents suspected the truth. The fleet had returned with a report of having defeated the aliens. So we did the right thing, thought the alien, in programming every single human being aboard to believe that there had been a victory, and then sending the fleet home. It was not always possible to know how to deal with a different intelligent species. Further study would be needed before the grim game of planet extermination began in earnest. * * * *