There was noise behind him. He whirled in cramped quarters, peered from the Robot's second set of eyes. A dozen Robots climbed the ramp behind him, gaining. He let his mind drift blankly, let their thoughts reach him.
He is not wandering aimlessly. Somehow he learned. He learned. Capture him.
He ran now, awkwardly, his own Robot not smooth and graceful, a flawless piece of machinery like the others. He clomped and clattered up the ramp and prayed for time.
The ramp soared upward, curved to the left. Once he looked down at the floor of the rotunda so far below and became giddy with the distance and the thought of falling. He leaned over the railing and looked. His head whirled....
At the last moment, he drew his Robot back from the edge, stabbing half-blindly at the controls which propelled it. They had almost driven him to suicide. He must keep his mind a perfect blank—or, better still, think of something which would keep them at bay. Diane, his love for her—Diane....
A Robot waited for him at the top of the ramp. Those behind him were gaining rapidly, driving death-wishes deep within his brain.
The Robot above him abruptly swung into motion, but Johnny desperately sidestepped the lunge which would have sent him hurtling to the floor of the rotunda. The other Robot checked its own inertia and came for Johnny again, huge arms swinging, trying to crush him within the metal chamber as Amos Westler had been crushed. Johnny parried the blows with his own metal arms, then reached out and heard machinery groan within his metal frame as he lifted the other Robot and hurled it in the path of his pursuers.
There was a grinding, clattering crash of metal. Johnny saw three forms detach themselves from the arcing ramp and tumble, swinging and twisting in air grotesquely, to the floor, where they struck resoundingly and broke apart, the metal arms and legs flying.
Then he was climbing again, the remaining Robots far below him and disorganized now. But soon, he knew, they would be capable of following.
It was as Amos Westler had predicted. After a time, the ramp grew smaller. It no longer climbed now—it had soared high and now was just below the girdered ceiling. It was hardly wide enough for Johnny's Robot, it shook dangerously with the tread of metal feet. Here, Johnny knew, was the sanctuary. This was the Achilles Heel. This was the entrance, this ramp which no Robot could traverse. Here the way led to self-functioning, self-repairing machinery, to Central Intelligence. Here was man's final hope in the eyes of the original inventor. Here was the guarantee that the Robots, if they became some Frankenstein monster, could be met and conquered.
For no Robot could guard the final portal to Central Intelligence. No Robot could even draw close enough to alter the thin ramp. Johnny smiled grimly as comprehension grew. If Robots could become neurotic, this was the place for it. They could have employed their human servants, the Shining Ones, to alter the place, but would have divulged their secret in the process.
Still smiling, Johnny halted his Robot, opened the face plate clumsily from the inside, and climbed out. He sat on the ramp and flexed stiff arms and legs, then stood up and heard the Robots below him. He could see them now, no longer advancing, milling about in confusion. Their weight would destroy the ramp, and they knew it. They could never hope to reach him.
It was all so incredibly simple.
Was it?
One Robot had been above him.
Then they knew he was coming. What had they prepared for him beyond the point where the Robots could not climb? Shrugging, he advanced warily.
Soon he could see where the ramp reached a small doorway, much too low and narrow to admit a Robot, even if one of the machines could have climbed the ramp this far.
"Hold it,—Johnny Hope. Don't come any closer."
Startled, he looked up. Harry Starbuck stood in the doorway, holding Diane in front of him.
"I'm not fooling, Hope. If you come any closer I'll throw her off. It's a long way down."
"You're crazy, Starbuck. You'll never leave this place alive." But even as he spoke, he knew he could never reason with the man. "The Robots can't let you carry their secret from here. Your only hope is to cooperate with me."
"Is that so? They're sending some more men up to get you. All I have to do is hold the fort until ... cut it out, Hope! Stay right there." Starbuck edged out of the doorway, dragging Diane along with him to the railing at one side of the ramp. "I'll do it if you make me."
"Don't listen to him, Johnny! I'm not afraid." Hair disheveled, clothing torn, face bruised, she still looked beautiful to him. All at once she stood for everything Westler had mentioned; for the future of man, for the dreams of tomorrow, for a free world with no Plague and no Robots. But for Westler the choice would have been easy. The girl—or humanity.
Westler had not been in love.
Now Starbuck had forced Diane, back arched, breasts thrust forward, out over the railing. She struggled in his grip, but futilely. He could hurl her out over the edge and into space or not, as he wished.
"Back up, Hope. I want you to go back down the ramp and surrender to the Robots. You're only delaying things. More men will be here soon. You're licked and you know it."
Wearily, Johnny retreated. "Don't hurt her," he said. "Promise me that."
"You crazy? I want her for myself."
The thought numbed Johnny. He hadn't considered it that way. A live Diane or a dead one was one thing. But a Diane forced to submit to Starbuck....
He reached his own immobile Robot, saw the others, not twenty yards below him, waiting, thought he heard shouts somewhere behind them. He must do what he had come to do as if Diane did not exist. It was Starbuck who had made the choice for him.
But there was a wild possibility....
Quickly, he climbed within his Robot, activated it, lumbered forward. He could feel the ramp shaking with each step he took. At any moment, its struts might collapse and send him hurtling to his death, trapped in his man-shaped metal coffin, far below.
Soon he could see Starbuck again, on the ramp outside the doorway, holding Diane. Starbuck's eyes went wide. Starbuck frowned, then began to lick his lips anxiously.
"You can't come up here!" he cried. "It won't hold you. I sent the man down to surrender, anyway. Do you have him? Is he dead? What do you want, anyway? I can come down myself. Don't come any closer, not unless you want the ramp to collapse. Keep away, you hear me?"
Johnny advanced slowly, the ramp shaking with each stride no longer, but dipping and rocking constantly now, almost ready to go. Starbuck retreated, taking Diane with him. Through the doorway they went—
Out fell the faceplate of Johnny's Robot. He tumbled after it as the ramp shook, metal grinding against metal, then snapped. He leaped forward as the ramp caved in. He felt his feet shoot out from under him, saw metal dropping away, twisting, to his left. He clawed out with his hands, gripped a jagged edge, pulled himself up slowly as blood made his hands slip.
He stood in what was left of the doorway, trembling as reaction set in, his heels on the brink of nothing, his bloodied hands aching.
Starbuck roared and charged at him, attempting to drive him back a few inches to his death. But Johnny caught him, met him halfway with no room to evade the charge, and they grappled there, teetering on the edge.
"You tricked me," Starbuck moaned. "That Robot ... was you."
A knee blurred up at Johnny, exploding in violent pain. He felt himself falling and managed to twist away from the edge of the sundered ramp. He hit the floor with waves of nausea boiling up from his stomach. He lay there, blinking his eyes.
Starbuck came for him.
He drew his legs up instinctively, the knees bent, then straightened as Starbuck leaned over him. His feet caught the big man squarely on the chest, lifted him, pushed—
Starbuck went over the edge of the ramp, screaming all the way down.
Inside, Johnny found Diane, dazed, on the floor. He ignored her. She could wait, for now he was a man possessed. The machinery which he could never hope to understand was all about him, bank on bank of it lining the walls, humming with its strange, sentient energy, glowing and flickering with a million lights.
Kill yourself.
Two words, clamoring, insistent, inside his skull. Their final hope.... He felt himself edging back toward the doorway, and the death which awaited him just outside. He looked at Diane, huddled on the floor, her lips parted—"Johnny...."
I love you, he thought. The words of death and those of life and hope fought inside his skull, twisting his brain, battling there for mastery....
He found something, a length of metal rod. He ripped it loose and began to attack the machinery he would never understand. He was a wild man. The strength flowed in from elsewhere, raising his arm, swinging it high over his head and down. Sparks flew as his metal club battered the crystaline tubes, the delicate wiring, the metal cases. Glass shattered, sprinkled him, brought blood from a dozen cuts on his face. Electricity hummed, then shrieked, then wailed off distantly on a register too high for his ears.
Raise his arm and plunge ... lift it and bring it down, battering, the metal club part of him....
It was Diane who eased the twisted rod from his fingers, soothed him with her words. "It's finished. Easy, Johnny. You've done it."
The place was a shambles. Bank on bank of gutted machinery lay silent there, on a floor strewn with glass, with wire, with filaments, with nameless things which were the brains for a million Robots.
"There's another way out, Johnny. Starbuck took me here. Behind that wall, you—"
She took his hand and they went. The passage was dark and cool and smelled musty, as if air did not circulate very well within it. It was a place for thinking and dreaming of tomorrow. It was a place for realizing you could go back to the hills and find Keleher and his Shining Ones and convince them they should at least look at the City, the City which belonged to them now, to them and DeReggio and his villagers—and all the others. And there must be a coming together of Keleher and DeReggio, with Johnny as mediator, and a realization that the last Plague victim had been smitten and humanity had a long path to travel but could set foot upon it right now, at once.
Outside, it was growing dark, but Johnny could make out the still forms of the Robots, gleaming red with final sunlight, sprawled upon the broken streets. The Shining Ones within the City stalked about furtively in small groups, not yet knowing what it meant to live without their masters. Perhaps in time Keleher and all the others could teach them.
"Hungry?" said Johnny. "We could stop and eat."
"No. You?"
"In a different way."
They followed the last slanting rays of the sun to the western river and the mainland beyond it.