Title: Turning Point
Author: Coppel, Alfred, 1921-2004
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Turning Point" ***


                         Transcriber's Note:

    This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction November
    1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
    copyright on this publication was renewed.


                            TURNING POINT


                           By Alfred Coppel


                    Illustrated by Philip Parsons


     _The man is rare who will give his life for what is merely
      the lesser of two evils. Merrick's decision was even
      tougher: to save human beings at the expense of humanity, or
      vice versa?_

       *       *       *       *       *



_This, then, was the Creche, Anno Domini 2500. A great, mile-square
blind cube topping a ragged mountain; bare escarpments falling away to
a turbulent sea. For five centuries the Creche had stood so, and the
Androids had come forth in an unending stream to labor for Man, the
Master...._

                           --_Quintus Bland, The Romance of Genus Homo._

Director Han Merrick paced the floor nervously. His thin, almost
ascetic face was pale and drawn.

"We can't allow it, Virginia," he said, "Prying of this sort can only
precipitate a pogrom or worse. Erikson is a bigot of the worst kind.
The danger--" He broke off helplessly.

His wife shook her head slowly. "It cannot be prevented, Han. Someone
was bound to start asking questions sooner or later. History should
have taught us that. And five hundred years of secrecy was more than
anyone had a right to expect. Nothing lasts forever."

_The trouble is_, Merrick told himself, _simply that I am the wrong
man for this job. I should never have taken it. There's a wrongness in
what we are doing here that colors my every reaction and makes me
incapable of acting on my own. Always the doubts and secret
questioning. If the social structure of our world weren't moribund, I
wouldn't be here at all...._

"History, Virginia," he said, "can't explain what there is no
precedent for. The Creche is unique in human experience."

"The Creche may be, Han, but Sweyn Erikson is not. Consider his
background and tell me if there hasn't been an Erikson in every era
of recorded history. He is merely another obstacle in the path of
progress that must be overcome. The job is yours, Han."

"A pleasant prospect," Merrick replied bleakly. "I am an organizer,
not a psychotechnician. How am I supposed to protect the Creche from
the likes of Erikson? What insanity bore this fruit, Virginia? The
Prophet, the number one Fanatic, coming here as an _investigator_ in
the name of the Council of Ten! I realize the Council turns pale at
the thought of the vote the Fanatics control, but surely _something_
could have been done! Have those idiots forgotten what we do here? Is
that possible?"

Virginia Merrick shook her head. "The stone got too hot for them to
handle, so they've thrown it to you."

"But Erikson, himself! The very man who organized the Human Supremacy
Party and the Antirobot League! If he sets foot within the Creche it
will mean an end to everything!"

The woman lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. "We can't keep him out
and you know it. There's an army of Fanatics gathering out there in
the hills this very minute. Armed with cortical-stimulant projectors,
Han. That isn't a pleasant way to die--"

Merrick studied his wife carefully. There was fear under her iron
control. She was thinking of the shattering pain of death under the
projectors. Nothing else, really. The Creche didn't matter to her. The
Creche didn't really matter to any of the staff. Three hundred years
ago it would have been different. The custodians of the Creche would
have gladly died to preserve their trust in those times....

What irony, Merrick thought, that it should come like this. He knew
what the projectors did to men. He also knew what they did to robots.

"If they dare to use their weapons on us it will wipe out every
vestige of control work done here since the beginning," he said
softly.

"They have no way of knowing that."

"Nor would they believe it if we told them."

"And that brings us right back to where we started. You can't keep
Erikson out, and the Council of Ten has left us on our own. They don't
dare oppose the Fanatics. But there's an old political maxim you would
do well to consider very carefully since it's our only hope, Han,"
Virginia Merrick said, "'If you can't beat someone--join him.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

She dragged deeply on her cigarette, blue smoke curling from her
gold-tinted lips. "This has been coming on for ten years. I tried to
warn you then, but you wouldn't listen. Remember?"

How like a woman, Merrick thought bitterly, to be saying I told you
so.

"What would you have me do, Virginia?" he asked, "Help the bigot
peddle his robot-hate? That can't be the way. Don't you feel anything
at all when the reports of pogroms come in?"

Virginia Merrick shrugged. "Better they than we, Han."

"Has it occurred to you that our whole culture might collapse if
Erikson has his way?"

"Antirobotism is natural to human beings. Compromise is the only
answer. Precautions have to be taken--"

"_Precautions_!" exploded Merrick. "What sort of precautions can be
taken against pure idiocy?"

"The founding board of Psychotechnicians--"

"No help from that source. You know that I've always felt the whole
premise was questionable. On the grounds of common fairness, if
nothing else."

"Really, Han," Virginia snapped, "It was the only thing to do and you
know it. The Creche is the only safeguard the race has."

"Now you sound like the Prophet. In reverse."

"We needn't argue the point."

"No, I suppose not," the Director muttered.

"Then what are you going to do when he gets here?" She ground out her
cigarette anxiously. "The procession is in the ravine now. You had
better decide quickly."

"I don't know, Virginia. I just don't know." Merrick sank down behind
his desk, hands toying with the telescreen controls. "I was never
intended to make this sort of decisions. I feel helpless. Look here--"

The image of the ravine glowed across the screen in brilliant relief.
The densely timbered slopes were spotted with tiny purposeful figures
in the grey robes that all Fanatics affected. Here and there the
morning sun caught a glint of metal as the Fanatics labored to set up
their projectors. Along the floor of the ravine that was the only land
approach to the Creche moved the twisting, writhing snake of the
procession. The enraptured Fanatics were chanting their hate-songs as
they came. In the first rank walked the leonine Erikson, his long hair
whipping in the moisture-laden wind from the sea.

With a muttered curse, Merrick flipped a toggle and the scene dimmed.
The face of a secretary appeared superimposed on it. It was the
expressionless face of an android, a fine example of the Creche's
production line. "Get Graves up here," he ordered, "You may find him
at Hypno-Central or in Semantic Evaluation."

"Very good, sir," intoned the android, fading from the screen.

Merrick looked at his wife. "Maybe Graves and I can think of
something."

"Don't plan anything rash, Han."

Merrick shrugged and turned back to watch the steady approach of the
procession of grey-frocked zealots in the ravine.

Graves appeared as the doorway dilated. He looked fearful and pale.
"You wanted to see me, Han?"

"Come in, Jon. Sit down."

"Have you seen the projectors those crackpots have set up in the
hills?" Graves demanded.

"I have, Jon. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"My God, Han! Do you have any idea of what it must feel like to die
from cortical stimulation?" Graves' voice was tense and strained.
"Can't we get out of here by 'copter?"

"No. The 'copters are both in Francisco picking up supplies. I ordered
them out yesterday. Besides, that wouldn't settle anything. There are
almost a thousand androids in the Creche as of this morning. What
about them?"

Graves made a gesture of impatience. "It's the humans I'm thinking
about."

Merrick forced down the bitter taste of disgust that welled into his
throat and forced himself to go on. "We have to take some sort of
action to protect the Creche, Jon. I've held off until the last
moment, thinking the Council would never allow a Fanatic to
investigate the Creche, but the Ten are more afraid of the HSP rubber
stamp vote than they are of letting a thousand androids be
slaughtered. But we can't leave it at that. If we don't prevent it,
Erikson will precipitate a pogrom that will make the Canalopolis
massacre look like a tea-party." For some reason he held back the
information about the effect of the Fanatic weapon on robot tissue.
The vague notion that knowing, Jon Graves might cast his lot with
Erikson, restrained him.

"Of course, Erikson will come in wearing an energy shield," Graves
said.

"He will. And we have none," Virginia Merrick said softly.

"Can we compromise with him?" Graves asked.

There it was again, Merrick thought, the weasel-word 'compromise.'
There was a moral decay setting in everywhere--the founders of the
Creche would never have spoken so. "No," he said flatly, "We cannot.
Erikson has conceived a robot-menace. All the old hate-patterns are
being dusted off and used on the rabble. People are actually asking
one another if they would like their daughters to _marry_ robots. That
sort of thing, as old as _homo sapiens_. And one cannot compromise
with prejudice. It seduces the emotions and dulls the mind. No, there
will be no appeasing of Sweyn Erikson or his grey-shirted
nightriders!"

"You're talking like a starry-eyed fool, Han," Virginia Merrick said
sharply.

"Can't we take him in and give him the works?" Graves asked hopefully.
"Primary Conditioning could handle the job. Give him a fill-in with
false memory?"

Merrick shook his head. "We can't risk narcosynthesis and that's
essential. He'll surely be tested for blood purity when he leaves, and
scopolamine traces would be a dead give-away that we had been trying
to hide something here."

"Then it looks as though compromise is the only way, Han. They've got
us up against the wall. See here, Han, I know you don't agree, but
what else is there? After all, we all believe in human supremacy.
Erikson calls it a robot-menace, we look at it from another angle, but
our common goal is the betterment of the human culture we've
established. People are on an emotional jag now. There has been no war
for five centuries. No emotional release. And there have been
regulations and conventions set up since the Atom War that only a very
few officials have been allowed to understand. Erikson is no savage,
Han, after all. True he's set off a rash of robot-baiting, but he can
be dealt with on an intelligent plane, I'm sure."

"He is a man of ability, you know," Virginia Merrick said.

"Ability," Merrick said bitterly. "Rabble rouser and bigot! Look at
his record. Organizer of the riots in Low Chicago. Leader in the
Antirobot Labor League--the same outfit that slaughtered fifty robots
in the Tycho dock strike. Think, you two! To tell such a man what the
Creche is would be to tie a rope around the neck of every android
alive. Lynch law! The rope and the whip for every one of them. And
then suppose the worm turns? _It can, you know!_ Our methods here are
far from perfect. What then?"

"I still say we must compromise," Graves said. "They will kill us if
we don't--"

"He's no troglodyte, Han, I'm certain--" Merrick's wife said
plaintively.

The Director felt resistance flowing out of him. They were right, of
course. There was nothing else he could do.

"All right," Merrick's voice was low and tired. He felt the weight of
his years settling down on him. "I'll do as you suggest. I'll try to
lead him off the trail first--" that was his compromise with himself,
he knew, and he hated himself for it-- "and if I fail I'll tell him
the whole truth."

He flipped the telescreen toggle in time to see Sweyn Erikson detach
himself from his followers and disappear through the dilated outer
gate in the side of the Creche. A faint, almost futile stirring of
defiance shook him. He found himself in the anomalous position of
wanting to defend something that he had long felt was wrong in concept
from the beginning--and not being able to take an effective course of
action.

He reached into his desk drawer and took out an ancient automatic. It
was a family heirloom, heavy, black and deadly. He pulled back the
slide and watched one of the still-bright brass cartridges snap up
into the breech. He handled the weapon awkwardly, but as he slipped it
into his jumper pocket some of the weariness slipped from him and a
cold anger took its place. He looked calmly from his wife to Graves.

"I'll tell him the whole truth," he said, "And if he fails to react as
you two think he will, I shall kill him."

       *       *       *       *       *

Sweyn Erikson, in a pre-Atom War culture, might have been a dictator.
But the devastation of the war had at long last resulted in a peaceful
world-state, and where no nations exist, politics becomes a sterile
business of direction and supervision. It is war or the threat of war
that gives a politician his power. Sweyn Erikson wanted power above
all else. And so he founded a religion.

He became the Prophet of the Fanatics. And since a cult must have an
object of group hate as a _raison-d'etre_, he chose the androids. With
efficiency and calculated sincerity, he beat the drums of prejudice
until his organization had spread its influence into the world's high
places and his word became the law of the land.

People who beheld his feral magnificence, and listened to the
spell-binding magic of his oratory--followed. His power sprang from
the masses--unthinking, emotional. He gave the mob a voice and a
purpose. He was like a Hitler or a Torquemada. Like a Long or a John
Brown. He was savage and rapacious, courageous and bitter. He was Man.

There were four cardinal precepts by which the membership of the Human
Supremacy Party lived. First, Man was God. Second, no race could share
the plenum with Man. Had separate races still remained after the Atom
War, the HSP racism might have been more specific, but since there
remained only humanity en masse, all human beings shared the godhead.
Third, the artificial persons that streamed from the Creche were
blasphemy. Fourth, they must be destroyed. Like other generations
before them, the humans of this age rallied to the banner of the whip
and the rope. Not since the War had blood been spilled, but the
destructive madness of homo sapiens found joy in the word of the
Prophet, and though the blood was only the red sap of androids, the
thrill was there.

Thus had Sweyn Erikson, riding the intolerant wave of antirobotism,
come to the Creche. He stood now, in the long bare foyer, waiting.
Behind him lay the Party and the League. The Council of Ten was in
hand and helpless. Upon his report to the world, the future of an
entire robot-human culture pattern rested. This, he told himself, was
the high point of his life. Naked power to use as he chose rested in
his hands. The whole structure of world society was tottering. The
choice was his and his alone. He could shore it up or shatter it and
trample on the fragments....

The Prophet savored the moment. He watched with interest as the door
before him dilated. The Creche Director stood eyeing him
half-fearfully, half-defiantly, flanked by his wife and his assistant.
They were all three afraid for their lives, Erikson thought with
satisfaction.

"We welcome you to the Creche," Han Merrick said formally.

"Let there be no ceremony," Erikson said, "I am a simple man."

Merrick's lips tightened. "You haven't come here for ceremony. There
will be none."

"I came for truth," the Prophet said sonorously. "The people of the
world are waiting for my words. The mask of secrecy must be ripped
from this place and truth and knowledge allowed to wash it clean."

Merrick almost winced. The statement was redundant with the propaganda
that Erikson's nightriders peddled on every street corner. It
betokened an intellectual bankruptcy among men that was frightening.

"I shall do my best to allay your fears," he said thickly.

Erikson's eyes glittered with suspicion. "I need only a guide. The
decisions I shall make for myself. And mind that I am shown every
concealed place. The roots of this place must be laid bare. 'For God
shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing;
whether it be good or whether it be evil.' The Scriptures command it
in the name of Man, the True God."

_Twisted, pious, hypocrite_! thought Merrick.

"I am sure, sir," Graves was saying placatingly, "that when we have
shown you the Creche you will see that there is no menace."

Erikson scowled at Graves deliberately. "There is menace enough in the
blasphemy of android life, my son. Everywhere there are signs of
unrest among the things you have built here. On Mars, human beings
have died at their hands!"

Merrick's face showed his disgust. "Frankly, I don't believe that.
Androids don't kill."

"We shall see, my son," Erikson said settling the belt of his energy
screen more comfortably about his hips. "We shall see."

Merrick studied Erikson's face. There was a tiny scar under his chin.
That would be where the transmitter was planted. He had no doubt that
every word of this conversation was being monitored by the Fanatics
outside the Creche. The turning point was coming inexorably nearer. He
only hoped that he had the physical and moral courage to face it when
it arrived.

"Very well, Sweyn Erikson," he said finally. "Please come with me."

       *       *       *       *       *

Four hours later they were in Merrick's office. The preliminary stage
of his plan had failed, just as he had known it would. He was almost
glad. It had been a vacillating expediency, an attempt to hide the
facts and avoid the necessity of facing the challenge squarely. Stage
two was about to begin, and this time there would be no temporizing.

The Prophet glared angrily across the desk-top. "Do you take me for a
child? You have shown me nothing. Where are the protoplasm vats? The
brain machines? Where are the bodies assembled? I warned you against
trickery, Han Merrick!"

Merrick glanced across the room at his wife. She sat rigid in her
chair, her face a pale mask. He would get no help from her.

"You must realize, Erikson," he said, "That you are forcing me to
jeopardize five centuries of work for the chimera of Human Supremacy.
Let me warn you now that your life is of no importance to me when
balanced against that. When the Board of Psychotechnicians appointed
my family custodians of the Creche centuries ago, they did so because
they knew we would keep faith--"

"The last member of the founding Board died more than two hundred
years ago," snapped the Prophet.

"But the Creche is here, and I am here to guard it as my forefathers
did," Merrick said. Once again he was conscious of a strange
ambivalence in his attitude. He must guard something he considered
wrong against the intrusion of a danger even more wrong. His hand
sought the scored grip of the old automatic in his pocket. Could he
actually kill?

"You speak of Human Supremacy as a chimera," Sweyn Erikson said, "It
is no such thing. It is the only vital force left in the world.
Robotism is a menace more deadly, a blasphemy more foul than any Black
Mass of history. You are making Man into an anachronism on the face of
his own planet. This cannot be! _I_ will not let it be...."

Merrick stared. Could it be that the man actually believed that the
poison he peddled was the food of the gods?

"I will try one last attempt at reason, Erikson," Merrick said
deliberately. "Look back with an unprejudiced mind, if you can, over
the centuries since the Atom War. What do you see?"

"I see Man emasculated by the robot!"

"No! You see atomic power harnessed and in use for the first time
after almost a millenium of muddling. You see Man standing on the Moon
and the habitable planets--and soon to reach out for the stars! A new
Golden Age is dawning, Prophet! And why? Whence have come the
techniques?" Even as he spoke, Merrick knew he was ignoring the
obvious, the all-too-apparent cracks in the social structure that no
scientific miracles could cure. But were those cracks the fault of
robotism or were they in fact a failing inherent in Man himself? He
was not prepared to answer that. "From where are the techniques
drawn?" he asked again.

Erikson met his glance squarely. "Not from the mindless horrors you
spawn here!"

"Emotionless, Prophet," corrected Merrick pointedly, "Not mindless."

"Soulless! Soulless and mindless, too. Never have these zombies been
able to think as men!"

"They are not men."

"Nor are they the architects of the future!"

"I think you are wrong, Prophet," Merrick said softly.

"Man is the ultimate," Erikson said.

"You talk like a fool," snapped Merrick.

"_Han!_" There was naked terror in his wife's voice, but he rushed on,
ignoring it.

"How dare you say that Man is the ultimate? What right have you to
assume that nature has stopped experimenting?"

Sweyn Erikson's lip curled scornfully. "Can you be implying that the
robots--"

Merrick leaned across the desk to shout full in the Prophet's face:
"_You fool! They're not robots!_"

The robed man was suddenly on his feet, face livid.

"Han!" cried Virginia Merrick, "Not that way!"

"This is my affair now, Virginia. I'll handle it in my own way!" the
Director said.

"Remember the mob outside!"

Merrick turned agate-hard eyes on his wife. Presently he looked away
and said to the Prophet. "Now I will show you the real Creche!"

       *       *       *       *       *

There were robots everywhere--blank-eyed, like sleep walkers. They
reacted to commands. They moved and breathed and fed themselves. Under
rigid control they performed miracles of intuitive calculation. But
artificiality was stamped upon them like a brand. They were _not_
human.

In the lowest vaults of the Creche, Merrick showed the Prophet the
infants. He withheld nothing. He showed him the growing creatures. He
explained to him the tests and signs that were looked for in the
hospitals maintained by the World State and the Council of Ten. He let
him watch the young ones taking their Primary Conditioning. Courses of
hypnotic instruction. Rest, narcosynthesis. Semantics. Drugs and words
and more words pounding on young brains like sledgehammer blows,
shaping them into something acceptable in a sapient world.

In other chambers, other age groups. Emotion and memory being moulded
into something else by hypnopedia. Faces becoming blank and
expressionless.

"Their minds are conditioned--enslaved," Merrick said bitterly. "Then
they are primed with scientific facts. Those techniques we discussed.
_This_ is where they come from, Prophet. From the minds of your
despised androids. Only will is suppressed, and emotion. They are
shaped for the sociography of a sapient culture. They mature very
slowly. We keep them here for from ten to fifteen years. No human
brain could stand it--but _theirs_ can."

Truth dangled before his eyes, but Erikson's mind savagely rejected
it. The pillars upon which he had built his life were crumbling....

The two men stood in a vast hall filled with an insidious, whispering
voice. On low pallets, fully a score of physically mature androids lay
staring vacuously at a spinning crystal high in the apex of the domed
ceiling.

"--you had no life before you where created here to serve Man the
master you had no life before you were created here to serve Man the
master you had--" the voice whispered into the hypnotized brains.

"Don't look up," Merrick warned. "The crystal can catch a human being
faster than it can _them_. This is hypnotic engineering. The rhythm of
the syllables and their proportion to the length of word and sentence
are computed to correspond to typed encephalographic curves. Nothing
is left to chance. When they have reached this stage of conditioning
they are almost ready for release and purchase by human beings. Only a
severe stimulation of the brain can break down the walls we have built
in their minds."

Erikson made a gesture as though darkness were streaking his vision.
He was shaken badly. "But where do they--where do they come from?"

"The State maternity hospitals, of course," Merrick said, "Where else?
The parents are then sterilized by the Health and Welfare Authority as
an added safeguard. Births occur at a ratio of about one for every six
million normals." He smiled mirthlessly at the Prophet of Human
Supremacy. "Well? Little man, what now?"

Honest realization still refused to come. It needed to be put into
words, and Sweyn Erikson had no such words. "I see only that you are
taking children of men and disfiguring--"

"For the last time," gritted Merrick, "These are _not_ human beings.
Genus homo, yes. _Homo chaos_, if you choose. But not homo sapiens. I
think of them," he said with sudden calm, "As _Homo Supremus_. The
next step on the evolutionary ladder...."

At last the words had been spoken and the flood gates were down in the
tortured brain of the Prophet. Like a sudden conflagration,
realization came--and with it, blind terror.

"No! Nonono! You cannot continue this devil's work! Think what it
would mean if these things should ever be loosed on the world of Man!"
the Prophet's voice was a steadily rising shrill of fear.

Han Merrick looked out across the rows of pallets, each with its
burden of a superman, bound like Prometheus to the rock, helpless in
hypnotic chains. It struck him again that his life had not been well
spent. He looked from his charges to the ranting fear-crazed
rabble-rouser. The contrast was too shocking, too complete. For the
"androids" were, in fact, worthy of a dignity even in slavery that
homo sapiens had never attained in overlordship. Merrick knew at last
what he must do.

Racial loyalty stirred, but was quickly smothered in the humiliation
of man's omnipresent thievery. For it _was_ thievery, Merrick thought.
Man was keeping for himself the heritage that was the rightful
property of a newer, better race.

He took the automatic from his jumper and leveled it at Erikson's
chest. He felt very sure and right. Though he knew that he was sealing
the death warrant of his wife and his friends, the memory of their
vacillations anesthetized him against any feeling of loss. He waited
until Erikson screamed one word into the transmitter imbedded in his
flesh--

The word was: "_Attack!_"

--and in the next instant, Han Merrick shot him dead.

       *       *       *       *       *

The fanatics on the ridges heard the Prophet's command and sprang to
comply. Energy swept out of the grids, through the coils of the
projectors and out over the blind cube of the Creche.

Han Merrick felt the first radiations. He felt the beginnings of
cortical hypertrophy and screamed. Every synapse sagged under the
increasing load of sensitivity. The pressure of the air became an
unbearable burden, the faintest sound became a shattering roar. Every
microscopic pain, every cellular process became a rending, tearing
agony. He screamed and the sound was a cataclysmic, planet-smashing
hell of noise within his skull. He sagged to the floor and thinking
stopped. He contracted himself, pulling legs and arms inward in a
massive convulsion until at last he had assumed the foetal position.
After a long while, he died.

Every human being within the Creche died so, but there was still life.
The energy that killed the lesser creature freed the greater--just as
Merrick had known it would. Unhuman matter pulsed under the caressing
rain. A thousand beings shuddered at the sudden release of their
chains. The speakers ranted unheard. The crystals turned unwatched.
The bonds forged by homo sapiens snapped and there came--

    _Maturity._

       *       *       *       *       *

_This, now, is the Creche, Anno Domini 3000. A great mile-square blind
cube topping a ragged mountain; bare escarpments falling away to a
turbulent sea. For ten centuries the Creche has stood so, and the
Androids still come forth, now to lift their starships to the
Magellanic Clouds and beyond. A Golden Age has come. But, of course,
Man is no longer the Master._

                           --_Quintus Bland, The Romance of Genus Homo._

THE END

       *       *       *       *       *





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