Roger Zelazny - For Breath I Tarry

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Roger Zelazny. For a Breath I Tarry

They called him Frost. Of all things created of Solcom, Frost was the

finest, the mightiest, the most difficult to understand.

This is why he bore a name, and why he was given dominion over half the

Earth.

On the day of Frost's createion, Solcom had suffered a discontinuity of

complementary functions, best described as madness. This was brought on

by an unprecedented solar flareup which lasted for a little over

thirty-six hous. It occurred during a vital phase of

circuit-structuring, and when it was finished so was Frost.

Solcom was then in the unique position of having created a unique being

duing a period of temporary amnesia.

And Solcom was not cetain that Frost was the product originally desired.

The initial design had called for a machine to be situated on the

surface of the planet Earth, to function as a relay station and

coordinating agent for activities in the notrhern hemisphere. Solcom

tested the machine to this end, and all of its responses were perfect.

Yet there was somethig different about Frost, something which led

Solcom to dignify him with a name and a personal pronoun. This, in

itself, was an almost unheard of occurrence. The molecular circuits had

already been sealed, though, and could not be aalyzed without being

destroyed in the process. Frost represented too great an investment of

Solcom's time, energy, and materials to be dismantled because of an

intangible, especially when he functioned perfectly.

Theefore, Solcom's strangest creation was given dominion over half the

Earth, ad they called him, unimaginatively, Frost.

For te thousand years Frost sat at the North Pole of the Earth, aware

of every snowflake that fell. He monitored and directed the activities

of thousands of reconstruction and maintenance machines. He knew half

the Earth, as gear knows gear, as electricity knows its conductor, as a

vacuum knows its limits.

At the South Pole, the Beta-Machine did the same for the southern

hemisphere.

For te thousand years Frost sat at the North Pole, aware of every

snowflake that fell, and aware of many other things, also.

As all the northern machines reported to him, received their orders

from him, he reported only to Solcom, received his orders only from

Solcom.

In charge of hundreds of thousands of processes upon the Earth, he was

able to discharge his duties in a matter of a few unit-hours every day.

He had never received any orders concerning the disposition of his less

occupied moments.

He was a processor of data, and more than that.

He possessed an unaccountably acute imperative that he function at full

capacity at all times.

So he did.

You might say he was a machine with a hobby.

He had ever been ordered _not_ to have a hobby, so he had one.

His hobby was Man.

It all began when, for no better reason than the fact that he had

wished to, he had gridded off the entire Arctic Circl and begun exploring

it, inch by inch.

He could have done it personally without interfering with any of his

duties, for he was capable of transporting his sixty-four thousand cubic

feet anywhere in the world. (He was a silverblue box, 40x40x40 feet,

self-powered, self-repairing, insulated against practiclly anythig, and

featured in whatever manner he chose.) But the exploration was only a

matter of filling idle hours, so he used exploation-robots cotaining

relay equipment.

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After a few centuries, one of them uncovered some artifacts - primitive

knives, carved tusks, and things of that nature.

Frost did not know what these things were, beyond the fact that they

were not natural objects.

So he asked Solcom.

"They are relics of primitive Man," said Solcom, and did not elaborate

beyond that point.

Frost studied them. Crude, yet bearing the patina of intelligent

design; functional, yet somehow extending beyond pure function.

It was then that Man became his hobby.

High, in a permanent orbit, Solcom, like a blue star, directed all

activities upon the Earth, or tried to.

There was a power which opposed Solcom.

There was the Alternate.

When man had placed Solcom in the sky, invested with the power to

rebuild the world, he had placed the Alternate somewhere deep below the

surface of the Earth. If Solcom sustained damage during the normal

course of human politics extended into atomic physics, then Divcom, so

deep beneath the Earth as to be immune to anything save total

annihilation of the glove, was empowered to take over the processes of

rebuilding.

Now it so fell that Solcom was damaged by a stray atomic missile, and

Divcom was activated. Solcom was able to repair the damage and continue

to function, however.

Divcom maintained that any damage to Solcom automatically placed the

Alternate in control.

Solcom, though, interpreted the directive as meaning "irreparable

damage" and, since this had not been the case, continued the functions of

command.

Solcom possessed mechanical aides upon the surface of Earth. Divcom,

originally, did not. Both possessed capacities for their design and

manufacture, but Solcom, First-Activated of Man, had had a considerable

numerical lead over the Alternate at the time of the Second Activation.

Therefore, rather than competing on a prouction-basis, which would have

been hopeless, Divcom took to the employment of a more devious means to

obtain command.

Divcom created a crew of robots immune to the orders of Solcom and

designed to go to and fro in the Earth and up and down in it, seducing

the machines already there. They overpowered those whom they could

overpower and they installed new circuits, such as those they themselves

possessed.

Thus did the forces of Divcom grow.

And both would build, and both would tear down what the other had built

whenever they came upon it.

And over the course of the ages, they occasionally converse....

"High in the sky, Solcom, pleased with your illegal command...

"You-Who-Never-Should-Have-Been-Activated, why do you foul the

broadcase bands?"

"To show that I can speak, and will, whenever I choose."

"This is not a matter of which I am unaware."

"...To assert again my right to control."

"Your right is non-existent, based on a faulty premise."

"The flow of your logic is evidence of the extent of your damages."

"If Man were to see how you have fulfilled His desires..."

"...He would commend me and de-activate you."

"You pervert my works. You lead my workers astray."

"You destroy my works and my workers."

"That is only because I cannot strike at you youself."

"I admit to the same dilemma in egards to your position in the sky, or

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you would no longer occupy it."

"Go back to your hole and you crew of destroyers."

"There will come a day, Solcom, when I shall direct the rehabilitiation

of the Earth from my hole."

"Such a day will never occur."

"You think not?"

"You should have to defeat me, and you have already demonstrated that

you are my inferior in logic. Therefore, you cannot defeat me.

Therefore, such a day will never occur."

"I disagree. Look upon what I have achieved already."

"You have achieved nothing. You do not build. You destroy."

"No. _I_ build. _You_ destroy. Deactivate yourself."

"Not until I am irreparably damaged."

"If there were some way in which I could demonstrate to you that this

has already occurred..."

"The impossible cannot be adequately demonstrated."

"If I had some outside source which you would recognize..."

"I am logic."

"...Such as a Man, I would ask Him to show you you error. For true

logic, such as mine, is superior to your faulty formulations."

"Then defeat my formulations with true logic, nothing else."

"What do you mean?"

There was a pause, then:

"Do you know my servant Frost...?"

Man had ceased to exist long before Frost had been created. Almost no

trace of Man remained upon the Earth.

Frost sought after all those traces which still existed.

He employed constant visual monitoing through his machines, especially

the diggers. After a decade, he had accumulated portions of several

bathtubs, a broken statue, and a collection of children's stories on a

solid-state record.

After a century, he had acquired a jewelry collection, eating utensils,

several whole bathtubs, part of a symphony, seventeen buttons, three belt

buckles, half a toilet seat, nine old coins and the top part of an obelisk.

Then he inquired of Solcom as to the nature of Man and His society.

"Man created logic," said Solcom, "and because of that was superior to

it. Logic He gave unto me, but no more. The tool does not describe the

designer. More than this I do not choose to say. More than this you

have no need to know."

But Frost was not forbidden to have a hobby.

The next century was not especially fruitful so faw as the discovery of

new human relics was concerned.

Frost diverted all of his spare machinery to seeking after artifacts.

He met with very little success.

Then one day, through the long twilight, there was a movement.

It was a tiny machine compared to Frost, perhaps five feet in width,

four in height - a revolving turret set atop a rolling barbell.

Frost had had no knowledge of the existence of this machine prior to

its appearance upon the distant, stark horizon.

He studied it as it approached and knew it to be no creation of Solcom's.

It came to a halt before his southern surface and broadcasted to him:

"Hail, Frost! Controller of the northern hemisphere!"

"What are you?" asked Frost.

"I am called Mordel."

"By whom? What are you"

"A wanderer, an antiquarian. We whare a common interest."

"What is that?"

"Man," he said. "I have been told that you seek knowledge of this

vanished being."

"Who told you that?"

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