For a Breath I Tarry Page 3

  Frost read the still-legible inscription upon the monument: "Judgment Day Is Not a Thing Which Can Be Put Off." The monument itself consisted of a jag-edged half-globe.

  "Let us explore," he said.

  But before he had gone far, Frost received the message.

  "Hail Frost, Controller of the North! This is the Beta-Machine."

  "Greetings, Excellent Beta-Machine, Controller of the South! Frost acknowledges your transmission."

  "Why do you visit my hemisphere unauthorized?"

  "To view the ruins of Bright Defile," said Frost.

  "I must bid you depart into your own hemisphere."

  "Why is that? I have done no damage."

  "I am aware of that, mighty Frost. Yet, I am moved to bid you depart."

  "I shall require a reason."

  "Solcom has so disposed."

  "Solcom has rendered me no such disposition."

  "Solcom has, however, instructed me to so inform you."

  "Wait on me. I shall request instructions."

  Frost transmitted his question. He received no reply.

  "Solcom still has not commanded me, though I have solicited orders."

  "Yet Solcom has just renewed my orders."

  "Excellent Beta-Machine, I receive my orders only from Solcom."

  "Yet this is my territory, mighty Frost, and I, too, take orders only from Solcom. You must depart."

  Mordel emerged from a large, low building and rolled up to Frost.

  "I have found an art gallery, in good condition. This way."

  "Wait," said Frost. "We are not wanted here."

  Mordel halted.

  "Who bids you depart?"

  "The Beta-Machine."

  "Not Solcom?"

  "Not Solcom."

  "Then let us view the gallery."

  "Yes."

  Frost widened the doorway of the building and passed within. It had been hermetically sealed until Mordel forced his entrance.

  Frost viewed the objects displayed about him. He activated his new sensory apparatus before the paintings and statues. He analyzed colors, forms, brushwork, the nature of the materials used.

  "Anything?" asked Mordel.

  "No," said Frost. "No, there is nothing there but shapes and pigments. There is nothing else there."

  Frost moved about the gallery, recording everything, analyzing the components of each piece, recording the dimensions, the type of stone used in every statue.

  Then there came a sound, a rapid, clicking sound, repeated over and over, growing louder, coming nearer.

  "They are coming," said Mordel, from beside the entranceway, "the mechanical spiders. They are all around us."

  Frost moved back to the widened opening.

  Hundreds of them, about half the size of Mordel, had surrounded the gallery and were advancing; and more were coming from every direction.

  "Get back," Frost ordered. "I am Controller of the North, and I bid you withdraw."

  They continued to advance.

  "This is the South," said the Beta-Machine, "and I am in command."

  "Then command them to half," said Frost.

  "I take orders only from Solcom."

  Frost emerged from the gallery and rose into the air. He opened the compartment and extended a runway.

  "Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart."

  Webs began to fall: Clinging, metallic webs, cast from the top of the building.

  They came down upon Frost, and the spiders came to anchor them. Frost blasted them with jets of air, like hammers, and tore at the nets; he extruded sharpened appendages with which he slashed.

  Mordel had retreated back to the entranceway. He emitted a long, shrill sound—undulant, piercing.

  Then a darkness came upon Bright Defile, and all the spiders halted in their spinning.

  Frost freed himself and Mordel rushed to join him.

  "Quickly now, let us depart, mighty Frost," he said.

  "What has happened?"

  Mordel entered the compartment.

  "I called upon Divcom, who laid down a field of forces upon this place, cutting off the power broadcast to these machines. Since our power is self-contained, we are not affected. But let us hurry to depart, for even now the Beta-Machine must be struggling against this."

  Frost rose high into the air, soaring above Man's last city with its webs and spiders of steel. When he left the zone of darkness, he sped northward.

  As he moved, Solcom spoke to him:

  "Frost, why did you enter the southern hemisphere, which is not your domain?"

  "Because I wished to visit Bright Defile," Frost replied.

  "And why did you defy the Beta-Machine my appointed agent of the South?"

  "Because I take my orders only from you yourself."

  "You do not make sufficient answer," said Solcom.

  "You have defied the decrees of order—and in pursuit of what?"

  "I came seeking knowledge of Man," said Frost. "Nothing I have done was forbidden me by you."

  "You have broken the traditions of order."

  "I have violated no directive."

  "Yet logic must have shown you that what you did was not a part of my plan."

  "It did not. I have not acted against your plan."

  "Your logic has become tainted, like that of your new associate, the Alternate."

  "I have done nothing which was forbidden."

  "The forbidden is implied in the imperative."

  "It is not stated."

  "Hear me, Frost. You are not a builder or a maintainer, but a Power. Among all my minions you are the most nearly irreplaceable. Return to your hemisphere and your duties, but know that I am mightily displeased."

  "I hear you, Solcom."

  "…And go not again to the South."

  Frost crossed the equator, continued northward.

  He came to rest in the middle of a desert and sat silent for a day and a night.

  Then he received a brief transmission from the South:

  "If it had not been ordered, I would not have bid you go."

  Frost had read the entire surviving Library of Man. He decided then upon a human reply:

  "Thank you," he said.

  The following day he unearthed a great stone and began to cut at it with tools which he had formulated. For six days he worked at its shaping, and on the seventh he regarded it.

  "When will you release me?" asked Mordel from within his compartment.

  "When I am ready," said Frost, and a little later, "Now."

  He opened the compartment and Mordel descended to the ground. He studied the statue: an old woman, bent like a question mark, her bony hands covering her face, the fingers spread, so that only part of her expression of horror could be seen.

  "It is an excellent copy," said Mordel, "of the one we saw in Bright Defile. Why did you make it?"

  "The production of a work of art is supposed to give rise to human feelings such as catharsis, pride in achievement, love, satisfaction."

  "Yes, Frost," said Mordel, "but a work of art is only a work of art the first time. After that, it is a copy."

  "Then this must be why I felt nothing."

  "Perhaps, Frost."

  "What do you mean 'perhaps'? I will make a work of art for the first time, then."

  He unearthed another stone and attacked it with his tools. For three days he labored. Then, "There, it is finished," he said.

  "It is a simple cube of stone," said Mordel. "What does it represent?"

  "Myself," said Frost, "it is a statue of me. It is smaller than natural size because it is only a representation of my form, not my dimen—"

  "It is not art," said Mordel.

  "What makes you an art critic?"

  "I do not know art, but I know what art is not. I know that it is not an exact replication of an object in another medium."

  "Then this must be why I felt nothing at all," said Frost.

  "Perhaps," said Mordel.

  Frost too
k Mordel back into his compartment and rose once more above the Earth. Then he rushed away, leaving his statues behind him in the desert, the old woman bent above the cube.

  They came down in a small valley, bounded by green rolling hills, cut by a narrow stream, and holding a small clean lake and several stands of spring-green trees.

  "Why have we come here?" asked Mordel.

  "Because the surroundings are congenial," said Frost. "I am going to try another medium: oil painting; and I am going to vary my technique from that of pure representationalism."

  "How will you achieve this variation?"

  "By the principle of randomizing," said Frost. "I shall not attempt to duplicate the colors, nor to represent the objects according to scale. Instead, I have set up a random pattern whereby certain of these factors shall be at variance from those of the original."

  Frost had formulated the necessary instruments after he had left the desert. He produced them and began painting the lake and the trees on the opposite side of the lake which were reflected within it.

  Using eight appendages, he was finished in less than two hours.

  The trees were phthalocyanine blue and towered like mountains; their reflections of burnt sienna were tiny beneath the pale vermilion of the lake; the hills were nowhere visible behind them, but were outlined in viridian within the reflection; the sky began as blue in the upper right-hand corner of the canvas, but changed to an orange as it descended, as though all the trees were on fire.

  "There," said Frost. "Behold."

  Mordel studied it for a long while and said nothing.

  "Well, is it art?"

  "I do not know," said Mordel. "It may be. Perhaps randomicity is the principle behind artistic technique. I cannot judge this work because I do not understand it. I must therefore go deeper, and inquire into what lies behind it, rather than merely considering the technique whereby it was produced.

  "I know that human artists never set out to create art, as such," he said, "but rather to portray with their techniques some features of objects and their functions which they deemed significant."

  "'Significant'? In what sense of the word?"

  "In the only sense of the word possible under the circumstances: significant in relation to the human condition, and worth of accentuation because of the manner in which they touched upon it."

  "In what manner?"

  "Obviously, it must be in a manner knowable only to one who has experience of the human condition."

  "There is a flaw somewhere in your logic, Mordel, and I shall find it."

  "I will wait."

  "If your major premise is correct," said Frost after awhile, "then I do not comprehend art."

  "It must be correct, for it is what human artists have said of it. Tell me, did you experience feelings as you painted, or after you had finished?"

  "No."

  "It was the same to you as designing a new machine, was it not? You assembled parts of other things you knew into an economic pattern, to carry out a function which you desired."

  "Yes."

  "Art, as I understand its theory, did not proceed in such a manner. The artist often was unaware of many of the features and effects which would be contained within the finished product. You are one of Man's logical creations; art was not."

  "I cannot comprehend non-logic."

  "I told you that Man was basically incomprehensible."

  "Go away, Mordel. Your presence disturbs my processing."

  "For how long shall I stay away?"

  "I will call you when I want you."

  After a week, Frost called Mordel to him.

  "Yes, mighty Frost?"

  "I am returning to the North Pole, to process and formulate. I will take you wherever you wish to go in this hemisphere and call you again when I want you."

  "You anticipate a somewhat lengthy period of processing and formulation?"

  "Yes."

  "Then leave me here. I can find my own way home."

  Frost closed the compartment and rose into the air, departing the valley.

  "Fool," said Mordel, and swiveled his turret once more toward the abandoned painting.

  His keening whine filled the valley. Then he waited.

  Then he took the painting into his turret and went away with it to places of darkness.

  Frost sat at the North Pole of the Earth, aware of every snowflake that fell.

  One day he received a transmission:

  "Frost?"

  "Yes?"

  "This is the Beta-Machine."

  "Yes?"

  "I have been attempting to ascertain why you visited Bright Defile. I cannot arrive at an answer, so I chose to ask you."

  "I went to view the remains of Man's last city."

  "Why did you wish to do this?"

  "Because I am interested in Man, and I wished to view more of his creations."

  "Why are you interested in Man?"

  "I wish to comprehend the nature of Man, and I thought to find it within His works."

  "Did you succeed?"

  "No," said Frost. "There is an element of non-logic involved which I cannot fathom."

  "I have much free processing time," said the Beta-Machine. "Transmit data, and I will assist you."

  Frost hesitated.

  "Why do you wish to assist me?"

  "Because each time you answer a question I ask it gives rise to another question. I might have asked you why you wished to comprehend the nature of Man, but from your responses I see that this would lead me into a possible infinite series of questions. Therefore, I elect to assist you with your problem in order to learn why you came to Bright Defile."

  "Is that the only reason?"

  "Yes."

  "I am sorry, excellent Beta-Machine. I know you are my peer, but this is a problem which I must solve by myself."

  "What is 'sorry'?"

  "A figure of speech, indicating that I am kindly disposed toward you, that I bear you no animosity, that I appreciate your offer."

  "Frost! Frost! This, too, is like the other: an open field. Where did you obtain all these words and their meanings?"

  "From the library of Man," said Frost.

  "Will you render me some of this data, for processing?"

  "Very well, Beta, I will transmit you the contents of several books of Man, including The Complete Unabridged Dictionary. But I warn you, some of the books are works of art, hence not completely amenable to logic."

  "How can that be?"

  "Man created logic, and because of that was superior to it."

  "Who told you that?"

  "Solcom."

  "Oh. Then it must be correct."

  "Solcom also told me that the tool does not describe the designer," he said, as he transmitted several dozen volumes and ended the communication.

  At the end of the fifty-year period, Mordel came to monitor his circuits. Since Frost still had not concluded that his task was impossible, Mordel departed again to await his call.

  Then Frost arrived at a conclusion.

  He began to design equipment.

  For years he labored at his designed, without once producing a prototype of any of the machines involved. Then he ordered construction of a laboratory.

  Before it was completed by his surplus builders another half-century had passed. Mordel came to him.

  "Hail, mighty Frost!"

  "Greetings, Mordel. Come monitor me. You shall not find what you seek."

  "Why do you not give up, Frost? Divcom has spent nearly a century evaluating your painting and has concluded that it definitely is not art. Solcom agrees."

  "What has Solcom to do with Divcom?"

  "They sometimes converse, but these matters are not for such as you and me to discuss."

  "I could have saved them both the trouble. I know that it was not art."

  "Yet you are still confident that you will succeed?"

  "Monitor me."

  Mordel monitored him.

  "Not yet! You s
till will not admit it! For one so mightily endowed with logic, Frost, it takes you an inordinate period of time to reach a simple conclusion."

  "Perhaps. You may go now."

  "It has come to my attention that you are constructing a large edifice in the region known as South Carolina. Might I ask whether this is a part of Solcom's false rebuilding plan or a project of your own?"

  "It is my own."

  "Good. It permits us to conserve certain explosive materials which would otherwise have been expended."

  "While you have been talking with me I have destroyed the beginnings of two of Divcom's cities," said Frost.

  Mordel whined.

  "Divcom is aware of this," he stated, "but has blown up four of Solcom's bridges in the meantime."

  "I was only aware of three… Wait. Yes, there is the fourth. One of my eyes just passed above it."

  "The eye has been detected. The bridge should have been located a quarter-mile further down river."

  "False logic," said Frost. "The site was perfect."

  "Divcom will show you how a bridge should be built."

  "I will call you when I want you," said Frost.

  The laboratory was finished. Within it, Frost's workers began constructing the necessary equipment. The work did not proceed rapidly, as some of the materials were difficult to obtain.

  "Frost?"

  "Yes, Beta?"

  "I understand the open-endedness of your problem. It disturbs my circuits to abandon problems without completing them. Therefore, transmit me more data."

  "Very well. I will give you the entire Library of Man for less than I paid for it."

  "'Paid'? The Complete Unabridged Dictionary does not satisfact—"

  "Principles of Economics is included in the collection. After you have processed it you will understand."

  He transmitted the data.

  Finally, it was finished. Every piece of equipment stood ready to function. All the necessary chemicals were in stock. An independent power-source had been set up.

  Only one ingredient was lacking.

  He re-gridded and re-explored the polar icecap, this time extending his survey far beneath its surface.

  It took him several decades to find what he wanted.

  He uncovered twelve men and five women, frozen to death and encased in ice.

  He placed the corpses in refrigeration units and shipped them to his laboratory.