Dark Benediction

“You know anything about her? What makes her work? How she’s rigged to control all the subunits? You know that?”

“No, I—”

“You got any idea about how much sweat dripped on the drafting boards before they got her plans drawn? How many engineers slaved over her, and cussed her, and got drunk when their piece of the job was done?”

Ferris was sneering faintly. “You know, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well that’s all too bad, boy. But she’s no good to anybody now. She’s a hazard to life and limb. Why, you can’t go inside the city without—”

“She’s a machine, Ferris. An intricate machine. You don’t destroy a tool just because you’re finished with it for a while.” They glared at each other in the hot sunlight.

“Listen, boy—people built Central. People got the right to wreck her, too.”

“I don’t care about rights,” Mitch snapped. “I’m talking about what’s sensible, sane. But nobody’s got the right to be stupid.”

Ferris stiffened. “Watch your tongue, smart boy.”

“I didn’t ask for this conversation.”

Ferris released the handlebars. “Get off the bicycle,” he grunted ominously.

“Why? You want to settle it the hard way?”

“No. We’re requisitioning your bicycle. You can walk from here on. The Sugarton crowd needs transportation. We need good men, but I guess you ain’t one. Start walking.”

Mitch hesitated briefly. Then he shrugged and dismounted on the side away from Ferris. The big man held the shotgun cradled lazily across one forearm. He watched Mitch with a mocking grin.

Mitch grasped the handlebars tightly and suddenly rammed the front wheel between Ferris’s legs. The fender made a tearing sound. The shotgun exploded skyward as the big man fell back. He sat down screaming and doubling over. The gun clattered into the road. He groped for it with a frenzied hand. Mitch kicked him in the face and a tooth slashed at his toe through the boot leather. Ferris fell aside, his mouth spitting blood and white fragments.

Mitch retrieved the shotgun and helped himself to a dozen shells from the other’s pockets, then mounted the bicycle and pedaled away. When he had gone half a mile, a rifle slug spanged off the pavement beside him. Looking back, he saw three tiny figures standing beside Ferris in the distance. The “Sugarton crowd” had come to take care of their own, no doubt. He pedaled hard to get out of range, but they wasted no more ammunition.

He realized uneasily that he might meet them again if they came to the city intending to sabotage Central. And Ferris wouldn’t miss a chance to kill him, if the chance came. Mitch didn’t believe he was really hurt, but he was badly humiliated. And for some time to come he would dream of pleasant ways to murder Mitch Laskell.

Mitch no longer whistled as he rode along the deserted highway toward the sun-drenched skyline in the distance. To a man born and bred to the tune of mechanical thunder, amid vistas of concrete and steel, the skyline looked good—looked good even with several of the buildings twisted into ugly wreckage. It had been dusted in the radiological attack, but not badly bombed. Its defenses had been more than adequately provided for—which was understandable, since it was the capital and the legislators appropriated freely.

It seemed unreasonable to him that Central was still working. Why hadn’t some group of engineers made their way into the main power vaults to kill the circuits temporarily? Then he remembered that the vaults were self-defending and that there were probably very few technicians left who knew how to handle the job. Technicians had a way of inhabiting industrial regions, and wars had a way of destroying those regions. Dirt farmers usually had the best survival value.

Mitch had been working with aircraft computers before he became displaced, but a city’s Central Service Coordinator was a far cry from a robot pilot. Centrals weren’t built all at once; they grew over a period of years. At first, small units were set up in power plants and waterworks to regulate voltages and flows and circuit conditions automatically. Small units replaced switchboards in telephone exchanges. Small computers measured traffic flow and regulated lights and speed limits accordingly. Small computers handled bookkeeping where large amounts of money were exchanged. A computer checked books in and out at the library, also assessing the fines. Computers operated the city buses and eventually drove most of the routine traffic.