DARKNESS OF DAY

JENNA moved through the forest soundlessly, leaning forward from the waist, traveling swiftly—avoiding the twigs that might snap under her feet and betray her presence. The morning air was cool and moist on her face.

When she reached the top of the small hill, she paused. She had seen a metallic glitter among the trees below. If she were not alone, she would have doubled back and attacked the creature by now. But it was wiser to avoid being seen.

The ground under her feet was still hard, but would soon be muddy from the spring rains. She was glad winter was over. Jenna spent winters with her tribe, exchanging maps of trails scrawled on pieces of bark for food and shelter. This winter had been better than most. She had shown her people a field of wild wheat, and had led scouts to a small river where deer often drank. Food had been plentiful and only two children had died. But she had left as soon as the air had grown warmer, not liking to stay in the village longer than necessary.

Jenna was a source of shame to her mother. When she had reached thirteen summers, she had been married to Woka, the best hunter among her people. But after five summers of marriage, Jenna remained childless. So she had left him, and Woka took a new wife.

After that there had been no reason to stay in the village through the year. Jenna’s presence only reminded people of her shame and made it difficult for her sisters to find husbands. Her past friends, now busy raising their own children, were uneasy in her presence, as if fearful that her sterility would somehow pass to them. There were so few humans. Every life was precious, and her people were wary of even the most distant dangers.

So Jenna had left, preferring her solitary life in the woods and the company of her own thoughts, which sometimes seemed unfamiliar and strange even to her. She returned only in winter to trade her knowledge for food and temporary shelter. Once she had felt shame before her people, but now she was happy with her life. She was free to roam and discover new things.

She still sensed the presence of the other in the forest. It was no longer behind her, but somewhere to her right and moving ahead of her. Her heart began to beat quickly. She took a deep breath and started to move back down the hill. Then she began to run. The sense of danger hammered at her mind and pushed her past the trees.

But even as she ran, she was curious about the being who was trailing her. She always thought of them as beings like herself, and this thought still surprised her. Her father once told her that the metal beings were the guardians of men, and that they would strike down those who repeated the errors of the Old Ones. Those who loved machines and tried to escape the ways of men would be punished. Most of the village believed this. But Jenna had been told many things that were not true, and she knew other tribes thought differently.

She ran down the hillside and splashed across the thawing stream! The water was cold and fresh. Chunks of ice floated downstream. She stumbled up the other side and ran for the trees. By now, she thought, her stalker should be confused. By doubling back and crossing the stream, she could follow her previous direction, but parallel to and behind her pursuer.

She went forward slowly, listening to all the sounds of the forest awakening from winter. Feeling a little more secure now, she wondered about the metal ones again. She knew that men had been killed by them. Yet once she had seen one shoot an animal, which soon after had awakened and walked around as if nothing had happened. She had heard stories of brave men who mocked the old stories and attacked the metal people in order to obtain their many parts for use in fashioning hunting tools and other implements. These would very often be exchanged for food and clothing with other tribes. Her husband Woka once possessed such a part, which he had used as a knife. He had been very proud of it until he lost it in the snow. She had not been permitted to mention it until the day she left him, or as he put it, the day he put her aside.

Yet the metal people only fought in self-defense, and otherwise did not seem to pay attention to the few tribes living in the forests. She had never heard of a metal one hunting one of her people. Not ever.

But if that was all true, then why was a metal one tracking her now? She stopped and listened. She could not sense him, but her heart started to beat faster again. A shiver went up her spine.

She spun around suddenly and saw him staring at her with his wide inhuman eyes. He had tricked her! He had done the same thing that she had. The weapon in his hand was raised, but he seemed to hesitate.

She darted to her right. She heard the weapon fire at the same time, and something entered her side through her deerskin shirt. She fell to the ground. As she lost consciousness, she saw the metal one coming closer. . . .

* * * *

She had a dim memory of being carried. A vague image of the inhuman face seemed to swim in her mind. A series of short clicking sounds brought her to consciousness. Gradually she opened her eyes.

He was standing over her. His sturdy metal torso was perched on two slender silvery legs. His eyes were glassy surfaces, covering almost the entire top half of his head. And he was directing them at her. She started to scream, but he took a few steps backward and gestured at her. Then his long arms fell to his sides and he stood perfectly still.

She raised herself on one elbow and saw that she was lying on the floor of a room. On one wall there were five strange-looking nooks with open hatches. Otherwise the room was gray-walled and featureless. There was a shelf that ran the length of one wall, but there was nothing on it except the weapon which only a short time ago had been fired at her.

The room had one large window and a few smaller ones on each wall. Outside, the world was still the same, a countryside emerging from winter. The sun was climbing higher in the sky. Soon it would be midday, and the heat would help the snow melt to fill the rivers and streams running south to the sea. In the hillside shadows some of the snow would remain almost till summer, holding out to the last.

Jenna sat up, and still the metallic figure did not move. Slowly she stood up and felt her side. There was no pain where the thing had entered her body. It had only made her sleep.

She faced the metal creature. Suddenly he started clicking again and gesturing at her with his arms. There was something pathetic about the gestures. Jenna thought of the creature as a “he,” but now the metal being seemed like a mother trying to explain something to a wayward child. She shook her head and opened her hands, wondering if the thing would understand.

The clicking grew more rapid. The metallic figure moved toward her. She stepped back, looking around frantically for a door.

Suddenly she ran past him toward the other wall. A portion of it slid back and she felt the air from outside rush in. She was outside in a moment, running across soft melting snow, the sun in her face.

She turned her head briefly and saw the gleam of the metal one as he raised his weapon and fired. Again something entered her body and she was drawn down into darkness. . . .

* * * *

Ropes bound her when she regained consciousness. Her captor was kneeling over her, clicking insistently.

“What do you want?” she cried at the creature in frustration.

The clicking stopped. The creature stood up and regarded her with empty glassy eyes.

“I’m not an animal. I can speak,” she said. “All you seem able to do is click like a fool. Our children make better sounds.” She spat on the floor near his feet. “Let me go!”

There was no clicking this time.

Somehow she felt that he was embarrassed by her words, just as she was puzzled by him. Obviously he had tied her up only to keep her from getting away. If he had wanted, he could have killed her by now or taken her as a captive to his people. He was alone, just as she was. Perhaps he was like her, tolerated by his people but forever unaccepted.

He had been trying to speak to her, but his words and way of speech were different. It was strange to think of him in the way she would about another human being. But there was something manlike and intelligent inside that metal body. For a moment she wondered if it might not be a man wearing a strange outer garment for protection, but she rejected the thought. A man would have spoken as she did.

He left her bound all afternoon. He stood and watched her, listened to her speak and never once replied with anything more than a series of clicks. He clicked slowly, he clicked rapidly, but nothing made any sense to Jenna.

Outside, the progress of spring was halted by the coming night. The pine trees cast solid shadows across the refrozen snow. Stars began to appear in the darkening day; cold incandescent points burning in a realm beyond all understanding; lanterns hung by giant beings in some place beyond the world. She imagined dark human shapes coming up to the windows and breaking in to rescue her.

The man-without-flesh suddenly walked up to one of the nooks in the wall, slid inside and shut the hatch after himself.

She was alone, helpless in the ropes that bound her. She tried to imagine what the nooks could be for. Were they for sleep, or some kind of rest? A wolf howled outside, and she feared that it would come close to the door which opened by itself, and it would let the animal in.

But in a moment the hatch in the nook opened and the metal one slid out, slowly, almost as if he had been changed somehow. He came up to her and started to loosen the ropes. He was silent as he worked.

“Once ... did .. . you ... rule... the world?” he asked. She recognized the words, but they were spoken in a way that reminded her of the clicking. They seemed to whir and clatter as the metal one uttered them. “I . . . learned . . . from . . . your sounds . . . and my memory vault.. . and from certain remains ... of information in the mother computer of Central Agency.” He was getting better even as he spoke, she noted. “But . . . you must tell me words when I need. . . .”

When the ropes were off, she stood up. “My name is Jenna,” she said, pointing to herself.

“. . . Suranov,” he replied, “. . . robot. . . .”

The twinges of liking she had felt for the robot grew stronger in her mind. “There are stories,” she went on, “that metal men were made by men of flesh, and men of flesh were made by the god of nature, against whom we sinned. And we were humbled.”

“Then ... we are brothers . . . sisters,” Suranov said, “and we should help you. The old superstitions are false. Men and robot . . . are minds ... in different shapes.”

“What did you do in the hole?”

“Studying . . . how to make your sounds. It has taken much research and study. My years have been troubled by thought... of man.” He paused. “It is the challenge of within . . . knowledge of the past which mother-computers evade, and Central Agency is fragments on____”

She did not understand what he was saying, but it seemed to make some kind of sense. He was referring to his kind, to his home and such matters. It was like what her tribe sometimes said when metal creatures were spoken about around the night fires.

She sat down on the floor and Suranov came near. His legs folded under his broad torso and he squatted next to her. The metal face seemed almost to hold a look of curiosity.

“I suffer for this,” Suranov said without pausing. “Others of the robots no longer see me. I have lost . . . promotion. I am alone with my people.”

“Alone?”

“I... travel alone. I am outside other robots. I seek ... truths of human beings. I found only pieces. The others are . . . erased.”

Jenna stared at him. Then he was one like her, apart from his tribe. He was closer to her than the others of her kind, who banded together in fear.

“We must talk . . . discover,” said the robot. “You . . . spring up elsewhere when killed ... in new bodies?”

“No,” Jenna said, puzzled. It was a curious question.

“I thought not. It is not a rational idea. If men were such as our superstitions say, then the universe would not be rational... in any way. And you die . . . not only from wooden weapons, but in many ways?”

She nodded. Her eyes strayed from him for a moment to the largest window, which was behind the squatting Suranov.

There was a face there. A human face, toothless, grinning at her.

She screamed.

The door slid open and a band of warriors rushed into the lodge. Before Suranov could stand up they were upon him. As she watched, one man raised an axe. It struck Suranov’s back, toppling him across the floor.

There were six warriors. She did not recognize any of them. They were not from her tribe, but of the roving bands who went out in the spring in search of women and spoils. Her village had killed a few from a band such as this many summers ago.

She watched them spreadeagle the metal one on the floor. One of the men came up to her. It was the one who had leered at her through the window.

“You were with the metal demon—what is he to you?”

And then she realized that Suranov had been distracted by her, that otherwise he might have noticed the danger and could have closed the door for the night.

“Suranov!” she cried, “Suranov, I’m sorry.”

The man hit her across the face, knocking her to the ground. She grabbed at his legs, bringing him to the floor next to her. She smashed his nose with her hand, driving bone splinters into his brain. The brute was dead.

She got up and moved toward Suranov. But before she could get near, two men grabbed her and started to tie her up with the ropes on the floor.

Jenna watched as they clubbed the helpless robot into immobility. After the two men tied her securely, they rejoined their companions.

First they took off Suranov’s legs, then his arms. And yet he still seemed to turn his head. She could hear a few clicking sounds. Then they broke his eyes, tore open his torso, and opened his head, breaking the ringlike cables near what had been his upper torso. By the time they finished, only the torn torso was left.

She started to cry. There had been light inside those eyes, someone had lived in that ruined container on the floor, a person, a being of a kind she had never known before. If the legends were true, and men had created these creatures, then they were the guardians of the world, the custodians of all that man had lost. It would have been good for her to know them better. They might have gone back together, to her people and to his. Perhaps something new might have come into the world as a result.

Now Suranov would become . . . scrap to be used for tools.

She mourned him now, the metal man who, like her, had roamed alone.

Suddenly the warriors were laughing at her, making fun of her tears. They spoke of what a fine catch she was and what they would do to her later. And for the first time in her life she began to despise her own kind, for the beasts they were. Later, she was sure, she would escape. She would have to. The men would grow careless in guarding her.

But she knew that she would never be able to regard the world in the same way again, not after speaking with Suranov ... gentle, curious, childlike Suranov. His kind did not kill. Suranov had wanted to know, and he had died at the moment of his success.

She knew what she would have to do. She would search, until another meeting like this one became possible. Suranov’s work must not be lost. Then perhaps one day men would rise to something better in the world, helped by their brothers the robots.

But as she looked at the killers arguing over the pieces of the dead robot on the floor, all the horror and sadness of what she had seen this spring overwhelmed her. She closed her tear-filled eyes, hoping, even though she knew better, that she might die, if only for a short time.