Dark Benediction

“See!” she screamed. “You’re twelve years old, Clicker. Just a normal, healthy little boy! A little deformed perhaps, but just a prankish little boy. Frankie maybe.” She made a choking sound. She fell down on her knees before the thing. She sobbed wildly.

“I do not understand. I am a machine. Secon Samesh made me.”

She said nothing. She only sobbed.

“I am sad.”

After a long time she was through sobbing. She turned around. “What are you going to do now, Clicker?”

“Teacher told me to go down. Perhaps I should go down now.”

“They’ll kill you—for killing him! And maybe they’ll kill me too.”

“I would not like that.”

She shrugged helplessly. She wandered to and fro in the cabin for a time.

“Do you have fuel for your high C drive?” she asked.

“No, Secon Janna.”

She went to a port and looked out at the stars. She shook her head slowly. “It’s no use. We’ve no place else to go. Secon Samesh rules the Epsilon Eridani system and we can’t get out of it. It’s no use. We’ll have to go down or stay in space until they come for us.”

I thought. My thoughts were confused and my eyes kept focusing on the thing in the bottle. I think it was a part of a TwoLegs. But it is only part of me and so I am not a TwoLegs. It is hard to understand.

“Secon Janna?”

“Yes, Clicker?”

“I—I wish I had hands.”

“Why?”

“I would touch you. Would you be avoidant to me?”

She whirled and her arms were open. But there was nothing to hold with them. She dropped them to her sides, then covered her face with her hands.

“My baby! It’s been so long!”

“You were adient to your—your baby?”

She nodded. “Don’t you know the word love?”

I thought I did. “Secon Samesh took your baby?”

“Yes.”

“I would like to be disobedient and illogical to Secon Samesh. I wish he would put his hands in my reactor. I would—”

“Clicker! Are your weapons activated? Are they ready to be used?”

“I have none yet.”

“The reactors. Can they explode?”

“If I make them. But—then I would he dead.”

She laughed. “What do you know about death?”

“Teacher says it is exactly like Pain.”

“It is like sleep.”

“I like sleep. Then I dream. I dream I am a TwoLegs. If I were a TwoLegs, Secon Janna—I would hold you.”

“Clicker—would you like to be a TwoLegs in a dream forever?”

“Yes, Secon Janna.”

“Would you like to kill Secon Samesh?”

“I think that I would like it. I think—”

Her eyes went wild. “Go down! Go down fast, Clicker! I’ll show you his palace. Go down like a meteor and into it! Explode the reactors at the last instant! Then he will die.”

“And he will take no more of your babies?”

“No more, Clicker!”

“And I will sleep forever?”

“Forever!”

“And dream!”

“I’ll dream with you, Clicker.” She went back to fire the reactor.

I took a last look at the loveliness of space and the stars. It is hard to give this up. But I would rather be a TwoLegs, even if only in a dream.

“Now, Clicker!”

My rockets spoke, and there was thunder through the ship. And we went down, while Janna sang the song she taught me. I feel joy; soon I shall dream.

Dumb Waiter

He came riding a battered bicycle down the bullet-scarred highway that wound among the hills, and he whistled a tortuous flight of the blues. Hot August sunlight glistened on his forehead and sparkled in droplets that collected in his week’s growth of blond beard. He wore faded khaki trousers and a ragged shirt, but his clothing was no shabbier than that of the other occasional travelers on the road. His eyes were half closed against the glare of the road, and his head swayed listlessly to the rhythm of the melancholy song. Distant artillery was rumbling gloomily, and there were black flecks of smoke in the northern sky. The young cyclist watched with only casual interest.

The bombers came out of the east. The ram jet fighters thundered upward from the outskirts of the city. They charged, spitting steel teeth and coughing rockets at the bombers. The sky snarled and slashed at itself. The bombers came on in waves, occasionally loosing an earthward trail of black smoke. The bombers leveled and opened their bays. The bays yawned down at the city. The bombers aimed. Releases clicked. No bombs fell. The bombers closed their bays and turned away to go home. The fighters followed them for a time, then returned to land. The big guns fell silent. And the sky began cleaning away the dusky smoke.

The young cyclist rode on toward the city, still whistling the blues. An occasional pedestrian had stopped to watch the battle.

“You’d think they’d learn someday,” growled a chubby man at the side of the road. “You’d think they’d know they didn’t drop anything. Don’t they realize they’re out of bombs?”

“They’re only machines, Edward,” said a plump lady who stood beside him. “How can they know?”

“Well, they’re supposed to think. They’re supposed to be able to learn.”