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

Back through the water, straight back to the building, across lawns and paths as before, he made his irresistible way. Before him the chaotic ring of people melted away, behind they followed as close as they dared, trampling each other in their efforts to keep him in sight. There are no television records of his return. Every pickup was damaged on the way to the tomb.

As they drew near the building, Cliff saw that the tank’s projectile had made a hole twenty feet wide extending from the roof to the ground. The door still stood open, and Gnut, hardly varying his almost jerkless rhythm, made his way over the debris and went straight for the port end of the ship. Cliff wondered if he would be set free.

He was. The robot set him down and pointed toward the door; then, turning, he made the sounds that opened the ship. The ramp slid down and he entered.

Then Cliff did the mad, courageous thing which made him famous for a generation. Just as the ramp started sliding back in he skipped over it and himself entered the ship. The port closed.

It was pitch dark, and the silence was absolute. Cliff did not move. He felt that Gnut was close, just ahead, and it was so.

His hard metal hand took him by the waist, pulled him against his cold side, and carried him somewhere ahead. Hidden lamps suddenly bathed the surroundings with bluish light.

He set Cliff down and stood looking at him. The young man already regretted his rash action, but the robot, except for his always unfathomable eyes, did not seem angry. He pointed to a stool in one corner of the room. Cliff quickly obeyed this time and sat meekly, for a while not even venturing to look around.

He saw he was in a small laboratory of some kind. Complicated metal and plastic apparatus lined the walls and filled several small tables; he could not recognize or guess the function of a single piece. Dominating the center of the room was a long metal table on whose top lay a large box, much like a coffin on the outside, connected by many wires to a complicated apparatus at the far end. From close above spread a cone of bright light from a many-tubed lamp.

One thing, half covered on a nearby table, did look familiar — and very much out of place. From where he sat it seemed to be a briefcase — an ordinary Earthman’s briefcase. He wondered.

Gnut paid him no attention, but at once, with the narrow edge of a thick tool, sliced the lid off the little box of records. He lifted out the strip of sight-and-sound film and spent fully half an hour adjusting it within the apparatus at the end of the big table. Cliff watched, fascinated, wondering at the skill with which the robot used his tough metal fingers. This done, Gnut worked for a long time over some accessory apparatus on an adjoining table. Then he paused thoughtfully a moment and pushed inward a long rod.

A voice came out of the coffinlike box — the voice of the slain ambassador.

“I am Klaatu,” it said, “and this is Gnut.”

From the recording! — flashed through Cliff’s mind. The first and only words the ambassador had spoken. But, then, in the very next second he saw that it was not so. There was a man in the box! The man stirred and sat up, and Cliff saw the living face of Klaatu!

Klaatu appeared somewhat surprised and spoke quickly in an unknown tongue to Gnut — and Gnut, for the first time in Cliff’s experience, spoke himself in answer. The robot’s syllables tumbled out as if born of human emotion, and the expression on Klaatu’s face changed from surprise to wonder. They talked for several minutes. Klaatu, apparently fatigued, then began to lie down, but stopped midway, for he saw Cliff. Gnut spoke again, at length. Klaatu beckoned Cliff with his hand, and he went to him.

“Gnut has told me everything,” he said in a low, gentle voice, then looked at Cliff for a moment in silence, on his face a faint, tired smile.

Cliff had a hundred questions to ask, but for a moment hardly dared open his mouth.

“But you,” he began at last — very respectfully, but with an escaping excitement — “you are not the Klaatu that was in the tomb?”

The man’s smile faded and he shook his head.

“No.”

He turned to the towering Gnut and said something in his own tongue, and at his words the metal features of the robot twisted as if with pain. Then he turned back to Cliff.

“I am dying,” he announced simply, as if repeating his words for the Earthman. Again to his face came the faint, tired smile.

Cliff’s tongue was locked. He just stared, hoping for light. Klaatu seemed to read his mind.

“I see you don’t understand,” he said. “Although unlike us, Gnut has great powers. When the wing was built and the lectures began, there came to him a striking inspiration. Acting on it at once, in the night, he assembled this apparatus … and now he has made me again, from my voice, as recorded by your people. As you must know, a given body makes a characteristic sound. He constructed an apparatus which reversed the recording process, and from the given sound made the characteristic body.”

Cliff gasped. So that was it!

“But you needn’t die!” Cliff exclaimed suddenly, eagerly. “Your voice recording was taken when you stepped out of the ship, while you were well! You must let me take you to a hospital! Our doctors are very skillful!”

Hardly perceptibly, Klaatu shook his head.

“You still don’t understand,” he said slowly and more faintly. “Your recording had imperfections. Perhaps very slight ones, but they doom the product. All of Gnut’s experiments died in a few minutes, he tells me … and so must I.”

Suddenly, then, Cliff understood the origin of the “experiments.” He remembered that on the day the wing was opened a Smithsonian official had lost a briefcase containing filmstrips recording the speech of various world fauna. There, on the table, was a briefcase! And the Stillwells must have been made from strips kept in the table drawer!

But his heart was heavy. He did not want this stranger to die. Slowly there dawned on him an important idea. He explained it with growing excitement.

“You say the recording was imperfect, and of course it was. But the cause of that lay in the use of an imperfect recording apparatus. So if Gnut, in his reversal of the process, had used exactly the same pieces of apparatus that your voice was recorded with, the imperfections could be studied, canceled out, and you’d live, and not die!”

As the last words left his lips, Gnut whipped around like a cat and gripped him tight. A truly human excitement was shining in the metal muscles of his face.

“Get me that apparatus!” he ordered — in clear and perfect English! He started pushing Cliff toward the door, but Klaatu raised his hand.

“There is no hurry,” Klaatu said gently; “it is too late for me. What is your name, young man?”

Cliff told him.

“Stay with me to the end,” he asked. Klaatu closed his eyes and rested; then, smiling just a little, but not opening his eyes, he added: “And don’t be sad, for I shall now perhaps live again … and it will be due to you. There is no pain — ” His voice was rapidly growing weaker. Cliff, for all the questions he had, could only look on, dumb. Again Klaatu seemed to be aware of his thoughts.

“I know,” he said feebly, “I know. We have so much to ask each other. About your civilization … and Gnut’s — “

“And yours,” said Cliff.

“And Gnut’s,” said the gentle voice again. “Perhaps … someday … perhaps I will be back — “

He lay without moving. He lay so for a long time, and at last Cliff knew that he was dead. Tears came to his eyes; in only these few minutes he had come to love this man. He looked at Gnut. The robot knew, too, that he was dead, but no tears filled his red-lighted eyes; they were fixed on Cliff, and for once the young man knew what was in his mind.

“Gnut,” he announced earnestly, as if taking a sacred oath, “I’ll get the original apparatus. I’ll get it. Every piece of it, the exact same things.”

Without a word, Gnut conducted him to the port. He made the sounds that unlocked it. As it opened, a noisy crowd of Earthmen outside trampled each other in a sudden scramble to get out of the building. The wing was lighted. Cliff stepped down the ramp.

The next two hours always in Cliff’s memory had a dreamlike quality. It was as if that mysterious laboratory with the peacefully sleeping dead man was the real and central part of his life, and his scene with the noisy men with whom he talked a gross and barbaric interlude. He stood not far from the ramp. He told only part of his story. He was believed. He waited quietly while all the pressure which the highest officials in the land could exert was directed toward obtaining for him the apparatus the robot had demanded.

When it arrived, he carried it to the floor of the little vestibule behind the port. Gnut was there, as if waiting. In his arms he held the slender body of the second Klaatu. Tenderly he passed him out to Cliff, who took him without a word, as if all this had been arranged. It seemed to be the parting.

Of all the things Cliff had wanted to say to Klaatu, one remained imperatively present in his mind. Now, as the green metal robot stood framed in the great green ship, he seized his chance.

“Gnut,” he said earnestly, holding carefully the limp body in his arms, “you must do one thing for me. Listen carefully. I want you to tell your master — the master yet to come — that what happened to the first Klaatu was an accident, for which all Earth is immeasurably sorry. Will you do that?”

“I have known it,” the robot answered gently.

“But will you promise to tell your master — just those words — as soon as he is arrived?”

“You misunderstand,” said Gnut, still gently, and quietly spoke four more words. As Cliff heard them a mist passed over his eyes and his body went numb.

As he recovered and his eyes came back to focus he saw the great ship disappear. It just suddenly was not there anymore. He fell back a step or two. In his ears, like great bells, rang Gnut’s last words. Never, never was he to disclose them til the day he came to die.

“You misunderstand,” the mighty robot had said. “I am the master.”