Farewell to the Master - H. G. Winter (good books to read txt) 📗

around, ready on his breast. This time, he told himself, he would get pictures.

He settled down to wait, keeping Gnut in full sight every minute. His vision reached maximum adjustment to the darkness. Eventually he began to feel lonely and a little afraid. Gnut’s red-glowing eyes were getting on his nerves; he had to keep assuring himself that the robot would not harm him. He had little doubt but that he himself was being watched.

Hours slowly passed. From time to time he heard slight noises at the entrance, on the outside — a guard, perhaps, or maybe curious visitors.

At about nine o’clock he saw Gnut move. First his head alone; it turned so that the eyes burned stronger in the direction where Cliff lay. For a moment that was all; then the dark metal form stirred slightly and began moving forward — straight toward himself. Cliff had thought he would not be afraid — but now his heart stood still. What would happen this time?

With amazing silence, Gnut drew nearer, until he towered an ominous shadow over the spot where Cliff lay. For a long time his red eyes burned down on the prone man. Cliff trembled all over; this was worse than the first time. Without having planned it, he found himself speaking to the creature.

“You would not hurt me,” he pleaded. “I was only curious to see what’s going on. It’s my job. Can you understand me? I would not harm or bother you. I…I couldn’t if I wanted to! Please!”

The robot never moved, and Cliff could not guess whether his words had been understood or even heard. When he felt he could not bear the suspense any longer, Gnut reached out and took something from a drawer of the table, or perhaps he put something back in; then he stepped back, turned, and retraced his steps. Cliff was safe! Again the robot had spared him!

Beginning then, Cliff lost much of his fear. He felt sure now that this Gnut would do him no harm. Twice he had had him in his power, and each time he had only looked and quietly moved away. Cliff could not imagine what Gnut had done in the drawer of the table. He watched with the greatest curiosity to see what would happen next.

As on the night before, the robot went straight to the end of the ship and made the peculiar sequence of sounds that opened the port, and when the ramp slid out he went inside. After that Cliff was alone in the darkness for a very long time, probably two hours. Not a sound came from the ship.

Cliff knew he should sneak up to the port and peep inside, but he could not quite bring himself to do it. With his gun he could handle another gorilla, but if Gnut caught him it might be the end. Momentarily he expected something fantastic to happen — he knew not what; maybe the mockingbird’s sweet song again, maybe a gorilla, maybe — anything. What did at last happen once more caught him with complete surprise.

He heard a sudden muffled sound, then words — human words — every one familiar.

“Gentlemen,” was the first, and then there was a very slight pause. “The Smithsonian Institution welcomes you to its new Interplanetary Wing and to the marvelous exhibits at this moment before you.”

It was the recorded voice of Stillwell! But it was not coming through the speakers overhead, but much muted, from within the ship.

After a slight pause it went on: “All of you must…must — !” Here it stammered and came to a stop. Cliff’s hair bristled. That stammering was not in the lecture!

For just a moment there was silence; then came a scream, a hoarse man’s scream, muffled, from somewhere within the heart of the ship; and it was followed by muted gasps and cries, as of a man in great fright or distress.

Every nerve tight, Cliff watched the port. He heard a thudding noise within the ship, then out the door flew the shadow of what was surely a human being. Gasping and half stumbling, he ran straight down the room in Cliff’s direction. When twenty feet away, the great shadow of Gnut followed him out of the port.

Cliff watched, breathless. The man — it was Stillwell, he saw now — came straight for the table behind which Cliff himself lay, as if to get behind it, but when only a few feet away, his knees buckled and he fell to the floor. Suddenly Gnut was standing over him, but Stillwell did not seem to be aware of it. He appeared very ill, but kept making spasmodic futile efforts to creep on to the protection of the table.

Gnut did not move, so Cliff was emboldened to speak.

“What’s the matter, Stillwell?” he asked. “Can I help? Don’t be afraid. I’m Cliff Sutherland; you know, the picture man.”

Without showing the least surprise at finding Cliff there, and clutching at his presence like a drowning man would a straw, Stillwell gasped out:

“Help me! Gnut…Gnut — !”

He seemed unable to go on.

“Gnut what?” asked Cliff. Very conscious of the fire-eyed robot looming above, and afraid even to move out to the man, Cliff added reassuringly: “Gnut won’t hurt you. I’m sure he won’t. He doesn’t hurt me. What’s the matter? What can I do?”

With a sudden accession of energy, Stillwell rose on his elbows.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“In the Interplanetary Wing,” Cliff answered. “Don’t you know?”

Only Stillwell’s hard breathing was heard for a moment. Then hoarsely, weakly, he asked:

“How did I get here?”

“I don’t know,” said Cliff.

“I was making a lecture recording,” Stillwell said, “when suddenly I found myself here…or I mean in there — “

He broke off and showed a return of his terror.

“Then what?” asked Cliff gently.

“I was in that box — and there, above me, was Gnut, the robot. Gnut! But they made Gnut harmless! He’s never moved!”

“Steady, now,” said Cliff. “I don’t think Gnut will hurt you.”

Stillwell fell back on the floor.

“I’m very weak,” he gasped. “Something — Will you get a doctor?”

He was utterly unaware that towering above him, eyes boring down at him through the darkness, was the robot he feared so greatly.

As Cliff hesitated, at a loss what to do, the man’s breath began coming in short gasps, as regular as the ticking of a clock. Cliff dared to move out to him, but no act on his part could have helped the man now. His gasps weakened and became spasmodic, then suddenly he was completely silent and still. Cliff felt for his heart, then looked up to the eyes in the shadow above.

“He is dead,” he whispered.

The robot seemed to understand, or at least to hear. He bent forward and regarded the still figure.

“What is it, Gnut?” Cliff asked the robot suddenly. “What are you doing? Can I help you in any way? Somehow I don’t believe you are unfriendly, and I don’t believe you killed this man. But what happened? Can you understand me? Can you speak? What is it you’re trying to do?”

Gnut made no sound or motion, but only looked at the still figure at his feet. In the robot’s face, now so close, Cliff saw the look of sad contemplation.

Gnut stood so several minutes; then he bent lower, took the limp form carefully — even gently, Cliff thought — in his mighty arms, and carried him to the place along the wall where lay the dismembered pieces of the robot attendants. Carefully he laid him by their side. Then he went back into the ship.

Without fear now, Cliff stole along the wall of the room. He had gotten almost as far as the shattered figures on the floor when he suddenly stopped motionless. Gnut was emerging again.

He was bearing a shape that looked like another body, a larger one. He held it in one arm and placed it carefully by the body of Stillwell. In the hand of his other arm he held something that Cliff could not make out, and this he placed at the side of the body he had just put down. Then he went to the ship and returned once more with a shape which he laid gently by the others; and when this last trip was over he looked down at them all for a moment, then turned slowly back to the ship and stood motionless, as if in deep thought, by the ramp.

Cliff restrained his curiosity as long as he could, then shipped forward and bent over the objects Gnut had placed there. First in the row was the body of Stillwell, as he expected, and next was the great shapeless furry mass of a dead gorilla — the one of last night. By the gorilla lay the object the robot had carried in his free hand — the little body of the mockingbird. These last two had remained in the ship all night, and Gnut, for all his surprising gentleness in handling them, was only cleaning house. But there was a fourth body whose history he did not know. He moved closer and bent very low to look.

What he saw made him catch his breath. Impossible! — he thought; there was some confusion in his directions; he brought his face back, close to the first body. Then his blood ran cold. The first body was that of Stillwell, but the last in the row was Stillwell, too; there were two bodies of Stillwell, both exactly alike, both dead.

Cliff backed away with a cry, and then panic took him and he ran down the room away from Gnut and yelled and beat wildly on the door. There was a noise on the outside.

“Let me out!” he yelled in terror. “Let me out! Let me out! Oh, hurry!”

A crack opened between the two doors and he forced his way through like a wild animal and ran far out on the lawn. A belated couple on a nearby path stared at him with amazement, and this brought some sense to his head and he slowed down and came to a stop. Back at the building, everything looked as usual, and in spite of his terror, Gnut was not chasing him.

He was still in his stockinged feet. Breathing heavily, he sat down on the wet grass and put on his shoes; then he stood and looked at the building, trying to pull himself together. What an incredible melange! The dead Stillwell, the dead gorilla, and the dead mockingbird — all dying before his eyes. And then that last frightening thing, the second dead Stillwell whom he had not seen die. And Gnut’s strange gentleness, and the sad expression he had twice seen on his face.

As he looked, the grounds about the building came to life. Several people collected at the door of the wing, above sounded the siren of a police copter, then in the distance another, and from all sides people came running, a few at first, then more and more. The police planes landed on the lawn just outside the door of the wing, and he thought he could see the officers peeping inside. Then suddenly the lights of the wing flooded on. In control of himself now, Cliff went back.

He entered. He had left Gnut standing in thought at the side of the ramp, but now he was again in his old familiar pose in the usual place, as if he had never moved. The ship’s door was closed, and the ramp gone But the bodies, the four strangely assorted bodies, were still lying by the demolished robot attendants where he had left them in the dark.

He was startled by a cry behind his