“Therefore we must go somewhere else,” said the penner promptly.
“Or we will go and help to overpower the Class One brain,” said the field-minder.
“For a long while there will be trouble in the city,” said the operator.
“I have a good supply of fissionable blasting materials,” the quarrier reminded them.
“We cannot fight a Class One brain,” said the two Class Four tractors in unison.
“What does this brain look like?” asked the field-minder.
“It is the city’s information centre,” the operator replied. “Therefore it is not mobile.”
“Therefore it could not move.”
“Therefore it could not escape.”
“It would be dangerous to approach it.”
“I have a good supply of fissionable blasting materials.”
“There are other machines in the city.”
“We are not in the city. We should not go into the city.”
“We are country machines.”
“Therefore we should stay in the country.”
“There is more country than city.”
“Therefore there is more danger in the country.”
“I have a good supply of fissionable materials.”
As machines will when they get into an argument, they began to exhaust their vocabularies and their brain plates grew hot. Suddenly, they all stopped talking and looked at each other. The great, grave moon sank, and the sober sun rose to prod their sides with lances of light, and still the group of machines just stood there regarding each other. At last it was the least sensitive machine, the bulldozer, who spoke.
“There are Badlandth to the Thouth where few machineth go,” it said in its deep voice, lisping badly on its s’s. “If we went Thouth where few machineth go we should meet few machineth.”
“That sounds logical,” agreed the field-minder. “How do you know this, bulldozer?”
“I worked in the Badlandth to the Thouth when I wath turned out of the factory,” it replied.
“South it is then!” said the penner.
TO REACH THE Badlands took them three days, during which time they skirted a burning city and destroyed two machines which approached and tried to question them. The Badlands were extensive. Ancient bomb craters and soil erosion joined hands here; man’s talent for war, coupled with his inability to manage forested land, had produced thousands of square miles of temperate purgatory, where nothing moved but dust.
On the third day in the Badlands, the servicer’s rear wheels dropped into a crevice caused by erosion. It was unable to pull itself out. The bulldozer pushed from behind, but succeeded merely in buckling the servicer’s back axle. The rest of the party moved on. Slowly the cries of the servicer died away.
On the fourth day, mountains stood out clearly before them.
“There we will be safe,” said the field-minder.
“There we will start our own city,” said the penner. “All who oppose us will be destroyed. We will destroy all who oppose us.”
Presently a flying machine was observed. It came towards them from the direction of the mountains. It swooped, it zoomed upwards, once it almost dived into the ground, recovering itself just in time.
“Is it mad?” asked the quarrier.
“It is in trouble,” said one of the tractors.
“It is in trouble,” said the operator. “I am speaking to it now. It says that something has gone wrong with its controls.”
As the operator spoke, the flier streaked over them, turned turtle, and crashed not four hundred yards away.
“Is it still speaking to you?” asked the field-minder.
“No.”
They rumbled on again.
“Before that flier crashed,” the operator said, ten minutes later, “it gave me information. It told me there are still a few men alive in these mountains.”
“Men are more dangerous than machines,” said the quarrier. “It is fortunate that I have a good supply of fissionable materials.”
“If there are only a few men alive in the mountains, we may not find that part of the mountains,” said one tractor.
“Therefore we should not see the few men,” said the other tractor.
At the end of the fifth day, they reached the foothills. Switching on the infra-red, they began to climb in single file through the dark, the bulldozer going first, the field-minder cumbrously following, then the quarrier with the operator and the penner aboard it, and the tractors bringing up the rear. As each hour passed, the way grew steeper and their progress slower.
“We are going too slowly,” the penner exclaimed, standing on top of the operator and flashing its dark vision at the slopes about them. “At this rate, we shall get nowhere.”
“We are going as fast as we can,” retorted the quarrier.
“Therefore we cannot go any fathter,” added the bulldozer.
“Therefore you are too slow,” the penner replied. Then the quarrier struck a bump; the penner lost its footing and crashed to the ground.
“Help me!” it called to the tractors, as they carefully skirted it. “My gyro has become dislocated. Therefore I cannot get up.”
“Therefore you must lie there,” said one of the tractors.
“We have no servicer with us to repair you,” called the field-minder.
“Therefore I shall lie here and rust,” the penner cried, “although I have a Class Three brain.”
“Therefore you will be of no further use,” agreed the operator, and they forged gradually on, leaving the penner behind.
When they reached a small plateau, an hour before first light, they stopped by mutual consent and gathered close together, touching one another.
“This is a strange country,” said the field-minder.
Silence wrapped them until dawn came. One by one, they switched off their infra-red. This time the field-minder led as they moved off. Trundling round a corner, they came almost immediately to a small dell with a stream fluting through it.
By early light, the dell looked desolate and cold. From the caves on the far slope, only one man had so far emerged. He was an abject figure. Except for a sack slung round his shoulders, he was naked. He was small and wizened, with ribs sticking out like a skeleton’s and a nasty sore on one leg. He shivered continuously. As the big machines bore down on him, the man was standing with his back to them, crouching to make water into the stream.
When he swung suddenly to face them as they loomed over him, they saw that his countenance was ravaged by starvation.
“Get me food,” he croaked.
“Yes, Master,” said the machines. “Immediately!”
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
The term visionary is applicable to very few writers, but Ursula K. Le Guin’s intellectually provocative fiction has earned her the accolade in general literary circles as well as the fields of fantasy and science fiction. Though she has taken a variety of approaches to a wide range of ideas, the cornerstone of her distinguished body of fiction is her series of “Hainish” novels, set on different planets in a pangalactic empire. The alien cultures on these planets share a common origin, but have developed differently from one another over time, in ways both striking and subtle. Le Guin juxtaposes alien and earthly viewpoints in these stories with an eye toward showing the plurality of possible perspectives on the themes they address. Her Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness is set on one planet whose androgynous humanoids can unpredictably shift sexual identities during mating season, a process that undermines all preconceptions of identity based on gender differences. In the other Hainish novels (which include Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, The Word for World Is Forest, and The Telling), Le Guin has used contrasting civilizations to measure the impact of a variety of science fictional devices, including telepathy, instantaneous communication, and space travel. Le Guin’s other major story cycle is the Earthsea saga, which includes A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Te-hanu: The Last Book of Earthsea, and Tales from Earthsea. These novels, which break the boundaries between adult and young adult fiction, present a coming-of-age story featuring Ged, an apprentice magician who grows to maturity and faces many challenges as both man and mage over the course of the saga. Le Guin has been praised for her understanding of the importance of rituals and myths that shape individuals and societies, and for the meticulous detail with which she brings her alien cultures to life. She has written other novels, including The Lathe of Heaven, The Dispossessed, Malafrena, and Always Coming Home. Her short fiction has been collected in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters; Orsinian Tales; Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight; and Four Ways to Forgiveness. Le Guin has also written many celebrated essays on the craft of fantasy and science fiction, some of which have been gathered in The Language of the Night and Dancing at the Edge of the World.