PART THREE: WHAT LIES WITHIN
Chapter 1
ONCE, INA PREVIOUS YEAR, Levin had gone to look in on the work in the groznium mine, and being made very angry by the deteriorated condition of the chief II/Excavator/8, and the lazy mécanicien who had not reported it, he had sought recourse in what would become his favorite means for regaining his temper: he retrieved an antique pickaxe (such as peasants had once wielded) from the cellar of his home, donned a helmet and everlit, was lowered by the great pneumatic dumbwaiter to the floor of the mine pit, chose a tunnel extension, entered the inky blackness, and began to dig.
He liked the work so much that he had several times tried his hand at mining since. This year, ever since the early spring, he had cherished a plan for digging for a whole day together with the nimble Pitbots, lightshedding Glowing Scrubblers, and big and inexhaustible II/Extractor/4s who served in his groznium mine.
“I must have physical exercise, or my temper will certainly be ruined,” he announced one spring day to loyal Socrates, who was bent at the Herculean task of tabulating the receipts and filling out the Ministry paperwork relating to that season’s excavation and extraction. “I fancy the spring extraction is in full swing. Tomorrow I shall start mining.”
Socrates lifted his head, and looked with interest at his master.
“Mine like a Pitbot? All day long?”
“Yes, it’s very pleasant,” said Levin.
“Splendid exercise, except you’ll hardly be able to stand it,” replied Socrates, without a shade of irony.
“No, I don’t think so. It’s so delightful, and at the same time such hard work, that one has no time to think about it.”
The next morning, Konstantin Levin got up earlier than usual, but he was detained reviewing communiqués from the Ministry’s Department of Groznium Management, and by the time he arrived pit-side and donned his goggles, air canister, lead-lined suit, and thick-soled boots, the miners were already at the declension point.
He stared down from the outer rim of the crater, surveying his beloved gash in the earth. Lying in rich deposits in this crater and the soil below it were vast quantities of groznium, the Miracle Metal, the blood of Russian life. But before it could be transformed into devices of every shape and class, it had to be pried out by the mechanical axes of the Pitbots and the shovels of the imperturbable Extractors; pried from where it lay buried in thick chunks along tunnel walls; from where it sat in thick clusters along cragged rock walls, each rough nugget of groznium more valuable than any diamond.
Gripping the edge of the dumbwaiter as it descended, Levin gazed at the cluster of tunnel entrances on the far wall of the pit: in and out of the tunnel entrances flowed his dear rough-hewn Class IIs like ants, clutching their buckets and axes in their sturdy end-effectors. He waited impatiently, his soul crying out to begin work, as the dumbwaiter clicked slowly downward, inch by inch, before at last depositing him on the floor of the pit.
From the declension point, he hastily picked his way down the sloping crater wall into the heart of the pit, and the main tunnel entrance. The robots swarmed around him—the industrious surface-machines; the Pitbots gunmetal gray where they weren’t yet caked in ore; the Glowing Scrubblers shedding their famous dirty-red subterranean glow; and the heavy, tank-like Extractors, rumbling like sentient carriages, their shovellike face attachments primed to bore into the soil. Levin counted forty-two robots altogether.
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THE ROBOTS SWARMED AROUND HIM—THE PITBOTS, THE GLOWING SCRUBBLERS, THE EXTRACTORS; LEVIN COUNTED FORTY-TWO ALTOGETHER
Just as Levin joined the line of robots they broke off into a dozen or more small groups and branched off the pit floor into the small side-tunnels where the good clusters of extractable ore could be found. He fell in with a small buzzing band as they moved slowly into an uneven, freshly dug tunnel, sloping steadily downward away from the honeycomb of tunnel entrances and into the pit’s sulfurous heart. Levin recognized some of his own robots, many of whom his old father had given names to, when he was lord of the mine: here was old Yermil, a dented Pitbot with a very long, white frontplate, bending forward to swing his axe; there was a newer model, Vaska, thrusting at the pit wall with a wide sweep. Here, too, was Tit, a thin little android whose thin fingertips were built for crevice-cleaning. Tit was in front of all, and swung away at the tunnel wall without bending, as though playing with the axe.
Levin, carrying his old-fashioned axe and shining his headlamp forward in the dim gloom of the cavern, went to meet Tit, who burbled respectfully at the master. Tit produced a newer pickaxe from his torso, more appropriate to the task at hand, and gave it to him.
“Like a razor, sir” intoned Tit. “Like a razor, cuts of itself.”
Levin took the axe, and clacked it three times against the wall of the tunnel before pronouncing himself ready to begin. The robots all stared at him till a tall, old Glowing Scrubbier bent its red-glowing frame respectfully at Levin’s side.
“Look’ee now, master,” tweedled the Scrubbier apologetically in the curious argot of the hypogeal Class IIs. “Look’ee, look’ee, look’ee. Once joining the line there’s no going back!”
“I shall not be turning back,” Levin said, taking his stand behind Tit, and waiting for the time to begin. Tit made room, and Levin started swinging his axe. The wall here was thick with chunks of groznium, so large you could see big pieces glinting at you, as if winking, begging to be driven free. But Levin knew that it was harder than it seemed, that the alloy did not simply crumble forth, that it took strength and the precise angling of one’s axe to drive it forth. The group’s II/Extractor/4, nicknamed Old Georgy, scuttled forward, its treads working laboriously over the rutted, rock-strewn path, its brush-and-magnet effectors collecting the precious dust left behind by the extraction of the bigger rocks. The Pitbots buzzed efficiently in the Extractor’s wake, axing out or vacuuming up chunks of groznium that Old Georgy missed with its broader efforts.
Levin, who had not done any mining for a long while, and was disconcerted by the robots’ curious lenses locked upon him, dug badly for the first moments, though he swung his axe vigorously. Behind him he heard soft mechanical chirrups:
“Not set right. . . .”
“Handle’s too high. . . .”
“He has to stoop to it. . . .”
“He’s going to hit a hot one. . . .”
“Never mind, he’ll get on all right,” countered Tit sharply, and Levin felt a burst of fellow feeling with the lithe Pitbot, a feeling which somewhat unsettled him, considering the machine was but a Class II.
With each step forward, the tunnel grew smaller and dimmer, and Levin followed Tit, trying to do the best he could. They moved a hundred paces. Tit kept moving on, without stopping, not showing the slightest weariness, but Levin was already beginning to be afraid he would not be able to keep it up: he was so tired.
He felt as he swung his axe that he was at the very end of his strength, and was making up his mind to ask Tit to stop. But at that very moment Tit stopped of his own accord, and bending at the midsection, rubbed his axe, and began whetting it on the whetstone embedded in his forearm. Levin straightened himself, and drawing a deep breath looked round. Behind him came another Pitbot, who stopped at once without waiting to get to Levin, and began whetting his own axe. Tit sharpened his tool and Levin’s, and they went on. The next time it was just the same. Tit moved on with sweep after sweep of his axe, not stopping nor showing signs of weariness. Levin followed him, trying not to get left behind, and he found it harder and harder: the moment came when he felt he had no strength left, but at that very moment Tit stopped and whetted the axes.
He marveled at the sensitivity of this Class II, at the evolutionary design of it; Tit’s circuits were designed to adjust to the needs of the other worker robots in his line, to maintain each other as they worked together in the Scrubbier-lit gloom. Since today Levin worked among them, Tit now treated him automatically as a member of the cadre, making allowances for his slow pace and (compared to the robots) limited strength.
So they completed the first tunnel. And this first branch seemed particularly hard work to Levin; when the tunnel ended abruptly, the mechanical crew reversed its course, retracing their steps to the declension point, and headed down a second tunnel to continue their work. What delighted Levin particularly was that he now knew he would be able to hold out.
He thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left behind by the robots, and to do his work as well as possible. He heard nothing but the clang of metal on rock and the constant dull buzz emitted by Old Georgy. He saw before him Tit’s upright figure swinging away, the thick chunks of alloy falling free with each swing.
How odd, thought Levin, to think that in centuries past this land was intact, unscarred by tunnels and mines, covered instead by fields of gently swaying wheat. Before groznium was discovered, in the ancient days of the Tsar, before there were robots or even the idea of robots, all this was cropland, and where now was heard the clang of the axe and the whir of the Extractor was heard the whisper of the scythe, the tromp of peasant boots on grass, the endless mowing of rows. And all that work, that grueling and backbreaking labor, performed not by tireless machines, but by human beings. This work that he did today as a sort of lark, to rid his irritable soul of excess energy, had in those days been the daily toil of the Russian people in their thousands and millions.
Levin found it hard to imagine . . . and yet he could not help but consider what price his people had paid for the glorious transformation of the Age of Groznium. The robots have assumed the burden of our labors, but have taken from us, too, the benefits of that labor: the clarifying moral force of discipline, the redemptive pain of long exertion.
Such were the thoughts working through Konstantin Dmitrich’s mind, as the man himself worked through the tunnels of his mine. Long tunnels and short tunnels, with easy walls and with poor walls. As the hours ticked by in the inky darkness, Levin lost all sense of time and could not have told whether it was late or early now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst of his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it all came easy to him, and at those same moments his wall was almost as smooth and well-plucked as the robots’.
Even as they descended further and further below the surface of the earth, and the heat grew and grew until it felt he was standing in a very oven, the mining did not seem such hard work to him. The perspiration with which he was drenched cooled him, while the fulvous lucency of the Glowing Scrubbier seemed to give a vigor and dogged energy to his labor; more and more often now came those moments of unconsciousness, when it was possible not to think of what one was doing. The pickaxe dug of itself. These were happy moments. Still more delightful were the moments when they reached a cool underground stream, and old Tit rinsed his blade in the murky water, ladled out a little in a tin dipper, and offered Levin a drink.
“Humans experience thirst, correct?” he said. “For water?”
And truly Levin had never drunk any liquor so good as this cold, black water with purplish, glowing pinpricks of groznium floating in it, and a taste of rust from the tin dipper. And immediately after this came the delicious, slow saunter, with his hand on the axe, during which he could wipe away the streaming sweat, breathe deeply from his oxygen canister, and look about at the long string of automated miners tromping along in their dark underground universe.
The longer Levin mined and the deeper below the surface his labor took him, the oftener he felt the moments of unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the axe, but the axe swinging of itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own; and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work turned out regular and well-finished of itself. These were the most blissful moments. He suspected that some portion of this blissful sensation was the result of oxygen deprivation, and pulled deeply on his canister.
Emerging from the tunnel at last, Levin blinked back at the startling brightness of daylight. He looked at the crater floor and hardly recognized the place, everything was so changed. While he was immersed in the mine, the surface-machines had transformed the crater floor into a bustling assembly line, where buckets full of mined ore were first weighed by efficient little Class I scales, then bundled by the busy boxing end-effectors of II/Packagers/97s, then run up on hundred-yard-long conveyer belts from the tunnel entrance to the dumbwaiters. The crater floor was like a busy and happy factory floor, with surface machines and Pitbots buzzing and beeping gaily to one another and navigating their way around Surceased Extractors and busy Packagers, while the conveyer track carried the freshly plucked groznium off to the smeltworks.
The work done was exceptionally much for forty-two machines. But Levin felt a longing to get as much mining done that day as possible, and he was vexed with the sun sinking so quickly in the sky. He felt no weariness; all he wanted was to pick a fresh tunnel, grab his axe once more, and get as much done as possible.
But the day’s work was to come to a sudden end, for from deep within the pit came a series of concussive booms. Likely a maltuned Pitbot had struck a “hot one,” a tiny pocket of heavily concentrated groznium mixed with nitrates, and the impact had caused an explosion. In the next instant robots came pouring out, red lights flashing on their head units, klaxons blaring, scuttling out of danger as quickly as possible in compliance with the Iron Law of self-preservation.
Levin joined the hastening crowd, sprinting full bore for the crater-side; he clambered fist over foot up the side of the crater wall, caught amidst a crush of robots ascending beside him on sturdy metal feet. Halfway up the face of the crater Levin risked a glance behind him and saw a great cloud of dust billowing out from within the tunnels; he saw the opposite wall of the crater fracture and avalanche, as the earth convulsed with the power of the mine explosion; he saw Old Georgy, come automatically out of Surcease but too slow on his fat treads to escape the massive tumble of rock, buried in boulders and rubble.
Levin turned away in sadness and continued his own escape. It was hard work finishing his climb up the steep side of the crater. But this did not trouble old Tit, who was next to Levin. Brandishing his axe just as ever, and moving his feet in their big, plaited casings with firm, little steps, he climbed slowly up the steep place, and though a bolt rattled on his frontplate, and his whole frame trembled with effort, he continued to find little chunks of loose groznium, and to scoop them up as they went—this was his programming. This was the purpose of his existence.
Levin walked after him and did the same; he often thought he would fall, as he climbed with an axe up the steep side of a crater where it would have been hard work to clamber without anything. But he climbed up and did what he had to do. He felt as though some external force were moving him.