War with the Robots

The man had only gone to the side of the field to get the rest of his clothes. He struggled into a jacket and in place of his steel helmet pulled on a peaked cap of hauntingly familiar design. Only when he had buttoned it and knocked the dust from his trousers did he turn and come towards Pere.

"The Enemy!" Pere shouted and scratched for his gun. This was the uniform he had seen so many times in orientation films. He hauled the gun out but someone knocked it from his fingers. Then he could only stand paralyzed as the man stamped up to him, clicked his heels together and saluted.

"General Boruk," he said. "On a mission of peace. May I ask whom I have the pleasure of addressing?" He dropped the salute and pulled a white flag from one pocket with a collapsible rod attached to it. After snapping open the rod he held the flag up proudly. His face was as sunburned as the others, with a black moustache and pointed beard.

"I am General Pere," Pere forced himself to say. "‘Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"At your service, general," Boruk said, and stabbed the pole into the ground. He groped in another pocket and fished out a large wallet. "I bring you greetings from my proud country, and the joyous news that we wish to me for peace. All of the papers are here — including my credentials — and you have only to forward them to the proper authorities. You will notice that there is mention of a peace commission, but I am forced to admit that they are all dead or have returned. In fact, to be truthful, you will see my name entered on the rolls of the commission as Captain Boruk, but this was only in the beginning. Through determination and the fact I am young and strong as a bull, I was promoted to dizzying heights. In fact General Graniaz, who himself conferred my commission upon me, even gave me his own coat with his general’s Insignia. In that, his was a wise choice, for I ask you only to notice that I am here and the others are not. We want peace, any terms you care to name. Do you agree?"

"Sit down," Pere said, feeling the need to do so himself. "Why are you asking for peace now — allowing for the moment that your credentials are not forged? you are not losing the war?"

"To be truthful again, general, we are not even fighting the war." Boruk sprawled on the ground and chewed a stem of grass. "You will discover the reasons for our request sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner. In fact sooner the better since the situation is so far out of hand. It seems we have been forced to abandon our battle headquarters and turn it over to robot operation. Are you all right?" he asked, seeing Pere jump.

"Yes," Pere told him. "Yes, go on." This was too familiar to permit him to listen easily.

"I must say your scientists are tricky ones, I believe they managed to invest our HQ with a mutated virus that was impossible to eradicate. The base had to be evacuated, radiated and sterilized. To do this the robots had to be left in complete control of the war operations. When we tried to get back in, it was most difficult. All entrances had been sealed and we couldn’t get the robots to understand what we wanted. They were doing very well without us, very well indeed." He spat the grass out and scowled.

"But there are ways. You could have countermanded —"

"It is not that easy, general. I assure you we tried. To be brief, the more we tried the better the robot defenses against our interferences became. In the end they fought us off — having identified us with the Enemy — and we had to retire."

"We’ll get back in," Pere said, then mapped his mouth shut guiltily.

"I had assumed something of the sort," Boruk smiled. His seemingly lazy attention had missed nothing. "When a general and his staff climb out of the ground above the area of their HQ, I am afraid I leaped to a conclusion due to my own previous knowledge. Is it true? You have been forced to leave as well?"

"I’ll tell you nothing."

"You don’t have to. It is a cosmic jest indeed." Boruk laughed humorlessly and tore the surrender papers across and threw them into the dirt. Something keened through the air and exploded in an immense cloud of dust on the horizon. "You have been pushed out the way our officers were pushed out, and you shall not get back. It was due to come, since every other part of the battle in this war is done by robots. Since we have both been concentrating our weapons upon the opposite headquarters, it was fated that some of the weapons should have at least a partial success. Robots are much stronger than humans, much more able to stand lethal climates. I have had plenty of time to think about this, since I have waited here many months."

"Why — why didn’t you surrender? Why didn’t you come to us?"