The Steel Eye

By Chet Gottfried

Swill a little grease and enter a world run by robots: corporate robots spanning multiple bodies; cop robots armed and dangerous; robot entertainers, drinkers, workers, villains, and the odd innocent victim. Into that hard-boiled world rolls the steel eye, a robot detective who faces treachery from friends and allies but keeps on tracking his elusive quarry.

"Chet Gottfried's work is vivid, lucid and distinct."

--James A. Cox, The Midwest Book Review

"THE STEEL EYE is a beautifully crafted book which seeks to amuse and edify with its explorations of machine psychology and imperial competition in the industrial world. Sentence by sentence, the writing is beautiful, with its own singular quiet music."

--Matthew Paris, Home Planet News, December 1989

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReAnimus Press
• Release date: Nov 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005853655

Chet Gottfried

A freelancer in book production for forty years, Chet Gottfried lives with his wife Sue, and their three ex-feral cats, in State College, Pennsylvania. He is an active member of SFWA, with stories in Jim Baen's Universe, Aboriginal SF, and Asimov's SF, along with numerous fantasy, science fiction, and horror stories in small press and online publications. In 1984, Space & Time published his SF novel The Steel Eye to introduce its book line.For 2014, in addition to ReAnimus Press producing The Gilded Basilisk, Zetabella Publishing is producing Chet's young adult fantasy novel, Einar and the Cursed City.Chet's website www.lookoutnow.com features over a thousand pages covering his nature photography, cartoons, and games, as well as travelogues from his trips to the UK Lake District, Iceland, and the U.S. Southwest.

Book preview

THE STEEL EYE

by

CHET GOTTFRIED

Produced by ReAnimus Press

Other books by Chet Gottfried:

The Gilded Basilisk

Einar and the Cursed City

Einar and the Myrtledale Conspiracy

Into the Horsebutt Nebula

© 2020, 1984 by Chet Gottfried. All rights reserved.

https://ReAnimus.com/store?author=Chet+Gottfried

Cover by Clay Hagebusch

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

~~~

To Pumpkin, purr-motor of the western world

~~~

Table of Contents

1. Eine Kleine Head Bashing

2. Crossed Wires

3. An Industrial Complex

4. For a Few Gallons More

5. A Relaxer-Plus

6. Fireworks

7. The Price of a Free Drink

8. The Expendables

9. The Lavaslide Entertaino

10. Ein Totentanz

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

1. Eine Kleine Head Bashing

1

Several Dreadnoughts wheeled out of the gloom that some machines call night and went past me. They had finished their shift and were ready for a little fun—that is, if a laborer at a spaceport ever had any fun. They didn’t notice me; they weren’t supposed to. I was on stakeout, blending into the wall... and the gloom.

Roads crisscrossed in front of me. One led to KIS, otherwise known as the Kroyton Interplanetary Spaceport, whose powerful flashlights tried to penetrate the smog layers. The other led to my office and home, just as cold, just as lonely. For company, I had rows and rows of boxes and crates: shipments of technical items, luxuries, and other pieces of scrap. It seemed that there was a question of ownership: too many machines had been too free and easy with the goods. I was there to help decide who owned what. Yes, I was a steel eye—a detective—paid to spend night after night in the dump. Everyone knew that. Or so it appeared, everything being so nice and quiet. I would have preferred it otherwise or to be elsewhere, but when you got an assignment from an industrial machine, it paid to keep straight.

The Dreadnoughts didn’t get very far; my photocells still registered them. Maybe they’d help me watch—but no. They were too busy rearranging their circuits, preparing to short themselves. It was the latest. You could get a good high from it, visions of Nirvana, that spaceport in the sky—everything unloading by itself and Dreadnoughts getting all the grease they could swill. And one vision more: watching machines like me getting their gears scattered about.

I turned up my thermostat a couple of degrees and scanned the crates. A solitary robot had appeared, wheeling kind of weird, like it wasn’t a machine. Flipping through several lenses convinced me. It was passing. It was a human. Well... maybe Kronin, my favorite industrial machine, had a point in hiring me aside from my good looks.

But scrap! What was a human doing stealing from that heap? Obviously, it couldn’t haul a single crate by itself. I glanced over at the happy Dreadnoughts. They weren’t going to tell me, so I continued watching my stooge. No way he could travel faster than me. Especially with him carrying more nuts and bolts than he could use.

He’d make a pretty good inspector. Didn’t go for the obvious; he kept exploring corners and cracks; and maybe he found something. Time to withdraw from the wall and bid for a friendship. And why not? No one has enough friends.

I wheeled over to him.

Hey, hot suit, I said, Care to share some radium? I brought all the local flavor of the wall with me—scars, stains, and smell. No one would have thought I was anything but an old heap that was kicked aside, no one giving a microgram about terminating me. Easier to let my cells run down. KIS was a natural hangout for this type. Someone always had a little grease or radium to spare.

Rust off.

Pretty tinny. Didn’t sound like a human. Whoever gave him his sheet suit was plenty concerned.

Listen, mate, I whined, letting my needle slip off the groove, I need some if I’m going to make it through the night!

Rust off!

That’s a human for you, I thought. Doesn’t give a scrap about robots. But even an old heap can act tough: Those Dreadnoughts there take care of me. And take care of my friends.

You’d better go to them.

I’ve a better idea—let them come here! As if those Dreadnoughts were capable of hearing anything or moving anywhere. At the moment, they were in a far better world. The human, however, thought that the threat was real. He had a lead pipe and worked my head plates over. Taken by surprise, I bid the spaceport goodnight.

2

The human was too effective. By the time I repaired my photocells, he was gone. Also gone was a fair amount of imported goods. It wasn’t necessarily taken by the human, as the stolen trade items were from a different section; nor was the human looking for bulk.

A van began to roar somewhere behind me. It had a nondescript collection of freight and hulks piled on top and probably had twice as much inside. I moved out of its way as it attempted to run me over. One of the hulks waved in a friendly fashion. I tried a shot at him but missed; the wagon was moving too fast. They returned fire but I ducked behind some crates. They didn’t stay to talk it out. They had what they wanted.

The one who waved belonged to Red Bearing. Red controlled the slums of our town as well as everything else that the industrial machines couldn’t be bothered about. He normally left the spaceport alone. Kronin would have to remind him, which meant I’d have to visit Red myself.

I didn’t bother pursuing the van, which had more hardware than I did. Thirty nonstop hours on the job were enough for one day. The merchandise might disappear, but Red Bearing would wait till tomorrow for me.

Before leaving, I again went over the area that the human had been exploring. The offworlders had a habit of leaving messages in crates. It was a method of communicating that appealed to machines on the down-and-out; it could be used either for spreading radium or planning a revolution. The human had dropped a slip of paper next to its pipe. The note consisted of a single word: No.

3

There were two hulks waiting for me in my office. I didn’t feel like talking to either of them, but I was trapped. On the outside of my door was painted a steel eye. And on the street level, there was another sign—also of a steel eye. Most machines preferred to ignore the come-on. There were always a few, however, that were attracted by it. Yeah... when they finally made up their computers to come to see me, a bomb couldn’t dissuade them. Such were the two waiting for me. One was a piece of tin, the other a human passing as a robot. Don’t get too many of the latter. Perhaps he was still disappointed about the message. I was glad that I’d have a chance to console the human. I might give Kronin a good report yet.

My human didn’t recognize me. He was too busy worrying about the tin sitting next to him. He looked like he’d prefer if I got rid of the tin and then we’d be all alone together. Sweet. Maybe he wanted to check out my photocell system again. But no. I burnished myself on the way back. Yes sir, I was a new machine. Only twenty years out of date. Scrap! Fifty percent of all machines were a hundred years behind the latest advances.

I nodded the tin into my office and along it wheeled. The door was shut, the room was soundproof, and I was ready.

I lost m’ partner. In the distant past, the tin was known as a Spartan Class Four. They called them Spartans because they were just a set of wheels, a body, and a computer. Good for the primitives. In six months, they were out of date. Most were sent to the scrap pile; others found the types of jobs that were always available. Rust! They had the strength. Just needed a little direction. The Spartan had a deep voice, its vocals should have been replaced in the last century—they were stretched beyond their maximum.

It was a good ‘un. The like which you don’t often come across.

For your class? I said in a lazy fashion. I was more interested in the human; a Spartan with a problem generally meant that it didn’t know where its left wheel was. The machine had obviously been shorting its circuits and at the moment didn’t know that it had wheels. In all probability, the Spartan and its partner finished their assignment, the Spartan got high, and the partner would be counting its radium in some other city.

You’re more lost than your partner ever was. Better hope that if it’s gone, some machine tossed it on its computer. Count yourself lucky and look for a new partner. I was ready to end the interview; the Spartan had received as much sensible advice as it could hope to handle.

The tin didn’t care for my opinion and whirled its gears.

Cool your circuits, I said. I’m probing your feelings.

My feelings are radium. I’ve a ton of it. That was news. The only other time that I’ve heard of a Spartan having as much radium was in a mine disaster; the Spartan was buried under it.

So you and your partner were that good, eh? And you’re willing to let your radium half-life for finding him?

The Spartan paused, inspecting the leather tentacle tips of his prime attachment. The leather was faded where it wasn’t soiled. What was he doing with a ton of radium? The Spartan was more important than he knew. Rather than find his missing mate, I should be paid to protect the Spartan. Too bad that wasn’t my decision.

If you find him, the Spartan said, I’ll have a lot more radium. If you don’t... He shrugged—or at least as much as any machine can shrug. I’m lost. I’ll need all the radium I’ve left.

I don’t work on percentages, I said. Pay me half a kilo a day plus expenses. In two weeks you’ll know. And don’t bother to multiply; I don’t want you to burn out.

Bring him back and I’ll give you the whole ton.

If he wasn’t high, that might’ve worried me. No one gave away that much radium for friendship. When a machine mentions a ton, a machine wants a termination, being either too lazy or too weak to do it himself. I scanned his mottled brown tin. Nothing of an assassin about that one. I’ve told you my rate—here’s a tape with my standard charges in case you erase the data again. Also, I won’t return your partner. I’ll find him. What happens after that is up to the two of you.

He burned a little mad. No one likes implications such as his partner may not want to come back.

I asked for some identification.

He said: You mean for Enoch.

No. You.

He didn’t care for that either, but he showed me.

What do you have on Enoch?

You mean the Wizard?

Or whatever else you call him.

The Spartan began a rambling speech which, summed up, said nothing. No papers, no IDs—just a miserable description: smaller than you’d think and very bright. A new model. Then the machine had an inspiration: I’ve a picture. It was of a human female.

Not bad looking—if you like humans.

He took the picture back in surprise. That’s not Enoch.

I expressed disappointment.

It’s a friend of his. Her label’s Vega. Find her and you’ll find Enoch.

It was something to go on. I had to visit Red Bearing anyway; he generally kept track of humans—that was one of his problems.

Leave five kilos for an advance. Where can I reach you?

Try the Delta. It was a better-class hotel than any machine had a right to afford. Ask for Spartan 5021.

Why did you nickname Enoch ‘the Wizard’?

"Everyone calls him that. Enoch is as good as any industrial machine—He is a Wizard."

He left the advance and left the office.

4

Why would any machine that had potential either pal or partner with a Spartan? That the Spartan was dropped made some sense. But why even begin? It would be a harder case than I cared to consider—best to solve rather than to worry. Although if it involved industrial machines, it would also involve Rangers and Destroyers that carried too much hardware. If the Wizard was a miniature industrial machine, Kronin and Malacide would want to terminate it. Kronin and Malacide were the two industrial machines that split the city between them. They tolerated Red Bearing but otherwise didn’t welcome the spirit of free enterprise. In other words, Kronin and Malacide were sanctioned by the government—which consisted of larger industrial monsters.

An industrial machine was an ingenious combination of a hundred or more robots fused to achieve an overwhelming whole: they were efficient and all-inclusive. No one could set up a trade, business, or industry as ruthlessly as an industrial machine—the ultimate in think tanks. Everyone else was subservient, terminated, or somewhere between the two.

Kronin was a small one: he had fused only a hundred twenty-seven robots. Malacide, with over two hundred units, controlled the larger half of Kroyton. They had the power and made the decisions, but they lost their mobility. A miniature industrial machine—a single robot—would have certain advantages. It couldn’t take over but it could cut into the profits. A loss of one percent would make either Kronin or Malacide scream for their Destroyers. Industrial machines were limited by law: our city was allowed two. No other competition was permitted. The Wizard wouldn’t have a long life, which must have been why it was trying to drop into obscurity. But I’d dig it up and show it off. Good-bye, friend Wizard.

5

The machine-clad homo sapien wheeled into my office.

I’m a human.

I let off some static electricity in polite surprise. Really? It can pay to humor customers. You don’t want them to believe that you’re too smart. On the other hand, you don’t want them to believe that you’re dumb. I suppose that’s why your infra reading is above normal. Tactful. The human was pleased. Didn’t look at all the type that would bash in a defenseless robot. Of course I only saw his clean metallic exterior. Metal always looked cleaner than flesh.

I need protection.

You look pretty handy.

He liked the compliment. I’m armed, of course.

That interested me. Why beat up a machine with a piece of pipe when you have a xazer? The bad news at the spaceport must have distracted him into using the first weapon in reach.

He said: I’ve no defense against numbers. Besides, I’m being followed.

A human in a robot zone? What do you expect? It’s bound to happen that some machine would have noticed you and scented radium in the game.

I don’t think so—or I’d prefer not to think so. In any case, the party following me would have been watching my apartment and following anyone who left. I thought I threw him off.

So—you’re important and your friends are important, I said. He mistook me at the spaceport for being a tag.

I think so.

"What do you