Walter M. Miller - Dumb Waiter

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2024-12-20 0 0 148.63KB 23 页 5.9玖币

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Walter M Miller

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."

The voices faded as he left them behind. Some of the wanderers who had been walking toward

the city now turned around and walked the other way. Urbanophiles looked at the city and became

urbanophobes. Occasionally a wanderer who had gone all the way to the outskirts came trudging

back. Occasionally a phobe stopped a phile and they talked. Usually the phile became a phobe

and they both walked away together. As the young man moved on, the traffic became almost

nonexistent. Several travelers warned him back, but he continued stubbornly. He had come a long

way. He meant toreturn to the city. Permanently.

He met an old lady on top of a hill. She sat in an antique chair in the center of the highway,

staring north. The chair was light and fragile, of hand-carved cherry wood. A knitting bag lay in

the road beside her. She was muttering softly to herself: "Crazy machines! War's over. Crazy

machines! Can't quit fightin'. Somebody oughta—"

He cleared his throat softly as he pushed his bicycle up beside her. She looked at him sharply

with haggard eyes set in a seamy mask.

"Hi!" he called, grinning at her.

She studied him irritably for a moment. "Who're you, boy?" "Name's Mitch Laskell,

Grandmaw. Hop on behind. 1'11 give you a ride."

"Hm-m-m! I'm going t'other way. You will, too, if y'got any sense."

Mitch shook his head firmly. "I've been going the other way too long. I'm going back, to stay."

"To the city? Haw! You're crazier than them machines." His face fell thoughtful. He kicked at

the bike pedal and stared at the ground. "You're right, Grandmaw."

"Right?"

"Machines—they aren't crazy. It's just people."

"Go on!" she snorted. She popped her false teeth back in her mouth and chomped them in

place. She hooked withered hands on her knees and pulled herself wearily erect. She hoisted the

antique chair lightly to her shoulder and shuffled slowly away toward the south.

Mitch watched her and marveled at the tenacity of life. Then he resumed his northward journey

along the trash-littered road where motor vehicles no longer moved. But the gusts of wind brought

faint traffic noises from the direction of the city, and he smiled. The sound was like music, a

deep-throated whisper of the city's song.

There was a man watching his approach from the next hill. He sat on an apple crate by the side

of the road, and a shotgun lay casually across his knees. He was a big, red-faced man, wearing a

sweat-soaked undershirt, and in the sun his eyes were narrowed to slits. He peered fixedly at the

approaching cyclist, then came slowly to his feet and stood as if blocking the way.

"Hi, fellow," he grunted.

Mitch stopped and gave him a ,friendly nod while he mopped his face with a kerchief. But he

eyed the shotgun suspiciously. "If this is a stickup—"

The big man laughed. "Naw, no heist. Just want to talk to you a minute. I'm Frank Ferris." He

offered a burly paw. "Mitch Laskell."

They shook hands gingerly and studied each other. "Why you heading north, Laskell?"

"Going to the city."

"The planes are still fighting. You know that?"

"Yeah. I know they've run out of bombs, too."

"You know the city's still making the Geigers click?"

Mitch frowned irritably. "What is this? There can't be much radioactivity left. It's been three

years since they scattered the dust. I'm not corn-fed, Ferris. The half-life of that dust is five

months. It should be less than one per cent—"

The big man chuckled. "Okay, you win. But the city's not safe anyhow. The Central

Computer's still at work."

"So what?"

"Ever think what would happen to a city if every ordinance was kept in force after the people

cleared out?"

Mitch hesitated, then nodded. "I see. Thanks for the warning." He started away.

Frank Ferris caught the handlebars in a big hand. "Hold on!" he snapped. "I ain't finished

talking."

The smaller man glanced at the shotgun and swallowed his anger.

"Maybe your audience isn't interested, Buster," he said with quiet contempt.

"You will be. Just simmer down and listen!"

"I don't hear anything."

Ferris glowered at him. "I'm recruitin' for the Sugarton crowd, Laskell. We need good men."

"Count me out. I'm a wreck."

"Cut the cute stuff, boy! This is serious. We've got two dozen men now. We need twice that

many. When we get them we'll go into the city and dynamite the Computer installations. Then we

can start cleaning it up."

"Dynamite? Why?" Mitch Laskell's face slowly gathered angry color.

"So people can live in it, of course. So we can search for foodwithout having a dozen

mechanical cops jump us when we break into a store."

"How much did Central cost?" Mitch asked stiffly. It was a rhetorical question.

Ferris shook his head irritably. "What does that matter now? Money's no good anyway. You

can't sell Central for junk. Heh, heh! Wake up, boy!"

The cyclist swallowed hard. A jaw muscle tightened in his cheek, but his voice came calmly.

"You help build Central, Ferris? You help design her?" "Wh-why, no! What kind of a question

is that?"

"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 capi-tal 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 wav of destrovine those regions. Dirt farmersusually 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. Com-puters operated the city buses and eventually drove most of the routine traffic.

That was the way the city's Central Service grew. As more computers were assigned to various

tasks, engineers were hired to coordinate them, to link them with special circuits and to set up

central "data tanks," so that a traffic regulator in the north end would be aware of traffic

conditions in the main thorough-fares to the south. Then, when the micro-learner relay was

invented, the engineers built a central unit to be used in conjunction with the central data tanks.

With the learning units in operation, Central was able to perform most of the city's routine tasks

without attention from human supervisors.

The system had worked well. Apparently it was still working well three years after the

inhabitants had fled before the chatter of the Geiger counters. In one sense Ferris had been right:

A city whose machines carried on as if nothing had happened—that city might be a dangerous

place for a lone wanderer.

But dynamite certainly wasn't the answer, Mitch thought. Most of man's machinery was already

wrecked or lying idle. Humanity had waited a hundred thousand years before deciding to build a

technological civilization. If it wrecked this one completely, it might never build another.

Some men thought that a return to the soil was desirable. Some men tried to pin their guilt on

the machines, to lay their own stupidity on the head of a mechanical scapegoat and absolve

themselves with dynamite. But Mitch Laskell was a man who liked the feel of a wrench and a

soldering iron—liked it better than the feel of even the most well-balanced stone ax or wooden

plow. And he liked the purr of a pint-sized nuclear

engine much better than the braying of a harnessed jackass.

He was willing to kill Frank Ferris or any other man who sought to wreck what little remained.

But gloom settled over him as he thought, "If everybody decides to tear it down, what can I do to

stop it?" For that matter, would he then be right in trying to stop it?

At sundown he came to the limits of the city, and he stopped just short of the outskirts. Three

blocks away a robot cop rolled about in the center of the intersection, rolled on tricycle wheels

while he directed the thin trickle of traffic with candy-striped arms and with "eyes" that changed

color like a stoplight. His body was like an oil drum, painted fire-engine red. The head, however,

had been cast in a human mold, with a remarkably Irish face and a perpetual predatory smile. A

short radar antenna grew from the center of his head, and the radar was his link with Central.

Mitch sat watching him with a nostalgic smile, even though he knew such cops might give him

considerable trouble once he entered the city. The "skaters" were incapable of winking at petty

violations of ordinance.

As the daylight faded, photronic cells notified Central, and the streetlights winked on promptly.

A moment later, a car without a taillight whisked by the policeman's corner. A siren wailed in the

policeman's belly. He skated away in hot pursuit, charging like a mechanical bull. The car

screeched to a stop. "O'Reilly" wrote out a ticket and offered it to any empty back seat. When no

one took it, the cop fed it into a slot in his belly, memorized the car's license number, and came

clattering back to his intersection, where the traffic had automatically begun obeying the

ordinances governing nonpoliced intersections.

The cars were empty, computer-piloted. Their destinations were the same as when they had

driven regular daily routes for human passengers: salesmen calling on regular customers,

inspectors making their rounds, taxis prowling their assigned service areas.

Mitch Laskell stood shivering. The city sounded sleepy but alive. The city moved and

grumbled. But as far as he could see down the wide boulevard, no human figure was visible. The

city was depopulated: There was a Geiger on a nearby lamppost. It clucked idly through a

loudspeaker. But it indicated no danger. The city should be radiologically safe.

But after staring for a long time at the weirdly active streets, Mitch muttered, "It'll wait for

tomorrow."

He turned onto a side road that led through a residential district just outside the city limits.

Central's jurisdiction did not extend here, except for providing water and lights. He meant to

spend the night in a deserted house, then enter the city at dawn.

Here and there a light burned in one of the houses, indicating that he was not alone in his desire

to return. But the pavement was scattered with rusty shrapnel, with fragments fallen from the sky

battles that still continued. Even by streetlight he could see that some of the roofs were damaged.

Even though the bombers came without bombs, there was still danger from falling debris and from

fire. Most former city dwellers who were still alive preferred to remain in the country.

Once he passed a house from which music floated softly into the street, and he paused to

listen. The music was scratchy—a worn record. When the piece was finished there was a moment

of silence, and the player played it again—the last record on the stack, repeating itself. Otherwise

the house was still.

Mitch frowned, sensing some kind of trouble. He wheeled the bicycle toward the curb, meaning

to investigate.

"I live there," said a woman's voice from the shadows.

She had been standing under a tree that overhung the side-walk, and she came slowly out into

the streetlight. She was a dark, slender girl with haunted eyes, and she was holding a baby in her

arms.

"Why don't you turn off your record player?" he asked. "Or change to the other side?"

"My husband's in there," she told him. "He's listening to it. He's been listening to it for a long

time. His name is George. Why don't you go say hello to him?"

Mitch felt vaguely disturbed. There was a peculiar note in the girl's quiet Spanish accent. Still,

he wanted to talk to someone who had ventured into the city. He nodded and smiled at the girl.

"I'd like to."

"You just go on in. I'll stay out here. The baby needs fresh air."

He thanked her and strolled up on the porch. The record player stopped, tried to change, and

played the same piece again. Mitch knocked once. Hearing no answer, he entered and moved

along the hallway toward the light in the kitchen. But suddenly

he stopped.

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WalterMMillerDumbWaiterHecameridingabatteredbicycledownthebullet-scarredhighwaythatwoundamongthehills,andhewhistledatortuousflightoftheblues.HotAugustsunlightglistenedonhisforeheadandsparkledindropletsthatcollectedinhisweek'sgrowthofblondbeard.Heworefadedkhakitrousersandaraggedshirt,buthisclothingwa...

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