The Builders
Date: 2021-04-18T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Short stories; Apocalyptic fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Builders

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Title: The Builders

Author: Fox B. Holden

Release date: April 18, 2021 [eBook #65100]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65100

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BUILDERS ***

The BUILDERS

By FOX B. HOLDEN

They rummaged in the ruins of Earth's cities,
looking for plans to restore vital machinery. But
what they finally constructed got up and ran away!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
February 1951
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Markten flew low over the sun-lit ruins, and wondered idly if he would find any more in them than he had found elsewhere on the planet.

"Looks as completely dead as all the rest," he said to his companion. "New City has a big enough population anyhow, as far as I'm concerned. Not that it's important, I suppose. There's always plenty of space in which to expand, but you know what I mean."

The younger occupant of the low-circling aircraft nodded his understanding. "There'd be enough room on either side of the Big Mountains to take care of millions more of us, I guess. But I think you're right. Anyway, there isn't another nomad or ruin-dweller on the planet. New City is as complete as it's going to be—and as you say, twelve million is enough. But do you think we'll find any more plans down there?"

"Hard to say," Markten answered, levelling off the aircraft for a landing. "But if there are traces of anything, I hope you'll keep your attention on what's of technical value and not waste time again on all that other stuff. None of us have ever bothered reading it—you can't build anything from it—no diagrams. To build is the only purpose of New City's civilization—how could anything else be of importance?"

"I've wondered off and on about that. But then, there is so little of anything left that it doesn't make much difference. Important thing is to find more diagrams."

"Glad you realize it. I've been a citizen of New City ever since the first few of us on this continent started building it forty years ago, and I can tell you, building things is all that's important. You'd realize that soon enough if you'd wandered around, alone and useless, as I and a lot of other Elders did for years." Markten brought the fast, twin-engined aircraft in to a perfect landing, cut the power, and set the brakes. The two left their seats and started getting field equipment together.

"They told us at the academy that you Elders wandered so far and for so long that you had permanently lost all memory of the past. Is that really true, Markten?"

"It is, not that it ever mattered. We all had forgotten from where we'd come, or how we got where we were. I guess all we remembered was how to build. But then—"

"As you said, building is all there is that's important."

They left the plane and started in the direction of what once had obviously been a city. To Markten and his young aide the sight was nothing new; they had seen, as had all the other members of the Research Builders division, thousands of others just like the one toward which they were now walking. Sometimes Markten thought it would have been a lot easier to have signed up with the Production Builders division—but that would have been dull. Always searching for new plans: building something new—that was more to his taste.

The only trouble was, there seemed to be fewer and fewer new plans as the years went by. And now, even when you found some, you had to check its potentialities exhaustively before you started building it. Markten shuddered a little when he thought of some of the first things that had been built without preconstruction study for analysis as to its probable use. One of them would have blown New City off the face of the earth had it been put into operation in a metropolitan proving lab. Fortunately, the thing had been too big, and had been taken for trial to a lab located in a southern desert. Today, there was still a ten-mile wide crater in the sand where the thing had gone off.

Production never got that model from Research. There were some others of similar nature that they hadn't got, too....

That was why, these days, even if you dug something up, you were damn careful before you built it.

"Say, Markten!"

"Yes?"

"I was wondering about something. Eventually, we're bound to find all the plans there are. What happens when there aren't anymore?"

"Maybe then there'll be time for that other stuff I caught you wasting time on in the ruin we were in last week!" There was a grin on Markten's thin face. "But not until!"

"No, seriously, Markten. The division academy instructors said there wasn't much left, and that was why we had to be especially well trained, to find what little more there is. But what about after we do, and there just isn't anymore?"

"Just—build more of what we've got, of course. What else would there be to do?"

"Well—well, you must be right. But Production sure will be dull."

There was only a thin edge of the sun still separating daylight from darkness as they forced entry into their tenth ruin, and Markten's tone was dejected.

"This," he said, "has been a day wasted, and there's little possibility that we'll come up with anything here. Better get out your night-lamp."

Markten's young assistant obeyed, and started working his way into one of the few still-standing corridors. He moved cautiously, remembering his training. When exploration of ruins of shattered masonry is indicated, guard against unnecessary vibrations.... The ruins yielded nothing but broken stone and twisted steel. There could, of course, be an obscured entrance to some lower level—many amazing documents had been discovered in the almost untouched lower levels of what had seemed totally destroyed buildings when viewed only from the gutted streets. That was why it took so long to search a city, even though there often seemed nothing left to search. There could always be some spot undetectable but intact....

When he found the opening that led downward, it was necessary to go through it and descend without contacting Markten. To shout would mean dangerous vibrations—and to go back could well mean hours of delay in rediscovering his find.

The night-lamp pushed relentlessly against the blackness that hung stagnant in the lower level, and picked out the stumbling blocks of debris which had to be moved as smoothly as their weights would permit. Some were larger than the young researcher himself, and he realized that the going would have been a lot better had he not rationalized about contacting Markten to make whatever finds there might be on his own.

There were many brick and girder-cluttered places that once had been rooms, but, like so many other shattered interiors he had examined, all but stone and steel had been disintegrated by the unthinkable shock-waves that must have accompanied what awful force it had been that had wreaked such havoc over the face of an entire globe. Objects made of less sturdy stuff had been literally torn molecule from molecule, atom from atom.

The chance of discovery of a complete book had been computed as a near impossibility. The finding of a complete blueprint or set of diagrams was considered almost as hopeless. To find all the pieces of a plan which had merely been shattered was about the best that could be expected. And, for forty years, now, as Markten had said, it had been done by four million painstaking Research Builders. It was, in a way, amazing how so many thousands of different things had been built....

The lamp's roving beam fingered something quickly, fell back into blackness, then was suddenly groping with the desperation of an almost uncontrolled excitement for what it touched and lost. It touched again....

Should he find Markten now? No, not yet! Perhaps what he saw would be nothing. Pinned beneath one of the most massive steel girders he had yet seen, they were—

Books! Four books!

Quickly, yet with his nervous system under a willed rigidity, he assembled the portable cutting torch and began freeing his one-in-a-million find from the great length of twisted steel which held it in a vice-like hold against an embedded section of stone flooring.

Minutes ticked away. More than sixty of them were gone before the books were in his hands at last. Did they hold any plans? Diagrams never seen before by Research? The titles—

Carefully he deciphered them from the crushed covers.

"A History of the World: 1800-1962."

"The P-s-y-c-h-o-l-o-g-y of H-u-m-a-n Relations."

"The P-h-i-l-o-s-o-p-h-i-e-s of P-l-a-t-o, S-o-c-r-a-t-e-s, and A-r-i-s-t-o-t-l-e."

The fourth title he did not understand at all because he could not read it. He knew only one of its three words, and it made even less sense than the other titles. Quickly, he flipped through the volume for a possible hint of explanation, and there were—

Diagrams!—

Hundreds of them, and one especially beautiful one, larger than the rest—it was necessary to unfold it from the book—in color! It was obviously the only important one of the four books; the others, from what he could gather from their rather vague titles, had nothing to do with building anything—but this one, with diagrams, obviously did!

In a haste accompanied with what he knew to be too little caution, Markten's young aide hastened back the way he had come, sometimes stumbling in his anxiety to present his invaluable find to the Elder, once almost falling.

But it took only minutes until he found Markten, who was still examining the ruin on its ground level, near the large opening through which they had entered.

"Markten! Look—"

There was an ominous rumbling sound, then a terrifying feeling of the vibration of disintegration.

They bolted for the opening even as the still-standing masonry which formed it began to topple. The rumbling increased to thunder-volume, and the earth outside the collapsing ruin quaked beneath their running feet. When they finally stopped at a safe distance, their night-lamps showed only a slowly rising cloud of pumice and dust.

"How often," Markten said, when it at last was over, "do you forget the fundamentals of your basic training?"

"I—"

"It's done now. But the contents of whatever lower levels there may have been are lost to us for good. Nothing could have survived that. And we have never built a digging machine. There probably was nothing, anyway, but next time—"

Then Markten saw the book in his aide's hand. The look of disappointment on his features changed suddenly to one of disbelief, then to amazement.

"At least I saved this! It has diagrams, Markten! The cave-in I caused destroyed three other books, but they had no drawings in them at all. Here. See if you can understand the title."

"Let's get to the laboratory compartment of the plane, where we can see something! Great electrons, boy, what made you hold this back?"

Under the powerful lamps in the lab compartment of their aircraft, Markten and the finder of the book puzzled over the three words on its cover and fly-leaf.

"Perhaps, in one of the dictionaries at Research headquarters—"

"No, I don't think so," Markten mused. "We'll look when we get back, but I don't think so.... Hmm. Doesn't make much difference—it's the diagrams that are important. And the entire book isn't incomprehensible. Lot of chemical terms, some electrical. I'm convinced already that these diagrams constitute a structure of a purely electrochemical nature. Although something seems to be missing, and yet—"

"At the headquarters lab, we can do a lot better than we can here, Markten. Or we can hand it over right away to the Research Pre-Construction Study division—"

"Nothing doing! I hold a competence rating on that study business, young fellow! I'll study it for possible inherent dangers, exactly according to regulations. Myself! And then whatever it is, we'll build it!"

"But Markten, suppose—"

Markten had already seated himself at the controls of the craft, switched on the take-off lights and started the powerful engines. Above the roar of the engines as they warmed for take-off, Markten's assistant could still detect the undertones of excitement in the Elder's voice.

"It's something different—completely different that you've found! Not just an improved design or a variation such as we've had to be content with for the past five years.... This is new! I'm positive of it!"

There was, of course, little sense in doubting the word of an Elder. That was a part of training. Another part which Markten's aide had not forgotten had also said, however, that there could always be danger in a too-cursory preconstruction study of any new discovery.

And then, of course, there were those other things he had read which Markten had said were such a complete waste of time.

They began construction work from the large colored diagram less than a month after the book containing it had been discovered. The diagram itself, of course, had been enlarged to its full scale, as had other sectional diagrams that Markten said definitely were parts of the same thing, but drawn separately in the book to render greater detail.

Two things had almost stumped the Elder completely, however, before he announced his preconstruction studies finished, and that he was prepared to begin actual construction. There were odors in the laboratory which his aide's nostrils had never experienced before. He wondered if they were as new to Markten.

"I admit," Markten said the day he began work in the two specially constructed, oblong vats filled with a fluid Markten called formaldehyde, "I am puzzled about the power source. Obviously a chain of electrochemical reactions, but stemming from where—that's what I've got to find out. Also, I've had to have another full-scale diagram drawn up. There was another colored one we missed—it was on a regular page. Have a look."

His aide's less-experienced eyes examined the second full-scale drawing Markten had made.

"It's—smaller. And—different, sort of. But yet it's the same. Maybe—"

"Maybe one is just an improved model over the other? One a later development, you think?"

"Why not?"

"That's what I've been wondering. But—no. My studies show that neither has any greater power potential, to any marked degree, that is, than the other. Both structures seem to have almost exactly the same electrochemical potentialities. But for some reason, just the same, they are different."

"The original designers leave no clue in the book?"

"No. Just formulae, and the usual stuff we find with diagrams."

"You know, Markten, I've often wondered about whoever it was—"

"There you go, forgetting one of the basics of training again! 'Of sole importance is the discovery itself; its origination is a thing of the past, and the past being dead, is therefore of no importance.'"

"I remember. But you have confused me, Markten. With these two problems unresolved, can you at the same time pronounce construction a safe venture?"

"I can, because neither of the unknowns is relative to the power potential, which I have ascertained to the required tolerances. Neither of them are based on a framework of nuclear physics, anyway. And I have discovered no possibility of chemical reaction which would render anything than a slow oxidation process.

"Therefore, youngster, to solve for the two unknown quantities—power source and construction-variation—we must build!"

Markten was an Elder, so the trace of excitement in his voice was excusable. His decision was not to be questioned. Yet—

"Markten, I have a peculiar feeling about this."

"A peculiar what?"

"Well, I—"

"Are you questioning my preconstruction study?" Markten's tone was suddenly flat, yet charged with authority.

"Of course not, sir."

"Here are untried, absolutely new diagrams. We must build. That is our purpose. Now, we will begin. The—larger one first, I think."

They labored on the project for three months. They finished the structure in the large vat first, and Markten left the job of completing the smaller one to his assistant while he drained the larger vat of its original fluid, dried the completed structure, and placed a series of L-type electrodes at various spots on its exterior.

"The smaller one came out to look quite a lot different, Markten. I'll have it ready for the first series of charges by the time you have that one going. I don't understand, however, what good the charges will do when there isn't any power source to activate."

"Making either of them work might be a problem, but somehow I don't think so," Markten replied. "The whole set-up, devoid of any central power unit as it seems to be, is designed in such a way that electrochemical reactions of some sort should take place with the first series of charges. A few rearrangements of electrodes might be necessary...."

During the next four hours, Markten's assistant worked with extra speed, so that he was able to have the smaller vat drained and the electrode placement diagramed for his own use.

"Through what process of logic," he asked Markten as he neared his last set of adjustments, "did you make your decision concerning a primary charge for the inducement of the electrochemical reactions of which you spoke?"

"You may inscribe in your apprentice journal," the Elder said, as he prepared a dynamo for use, "that insofar as the logic of the situation was concerned, I simply applied the physical truth that an object at rest tends to remain at rest until acted upon by some outside force. Since the objects in this case are ingredients of a chemical nature specifically constructed for electrical conduction, the only possible solution is to activate them through application of an electromotive force. If the logic has been faulty, of course," Markten paused a moment, "then we will know that there has simply been an error in construction. However, we have been precise in every step. They will work."

"What they will do, naturally, rests in theory. Something of an electrical nature, in accordance with your logic. Correct?"

"Precisely. And if I'm wrong, and they prove of no use at all—we'll dismantle them and inform Research Library that any further such diagrams discovered are worthless."

The assistant straightened from his work.

"Finished?" Markten asked.

"I am. You know, though, even though they aren't exactly the same, they have a peculiar similarity to—"

"We built according to specifications. Ready?"

"Go ahead, Markten."

Markten first reduced the penetrating power of the laboratory operation-lamps to a subdued softness. The smooth metal walls of the rectangularly shaped laboratory seemed to melt away to nothingness, and most of the bluish light was focused on the contents of the two vats.

Markten pressed a control.

There was no sound as the electrical impulses surged through the structures they had made, and the silence itself seemed a part of their stillness. There was a faint odor now of ozone.

Markten glanced at dials.

"Try a temperature test; see if the materials are withstanding the amperage. I will cut the current at your signal."

Markten's assistant obeyed.

"I don't understand," he said. "At completion, they were room-temperature—68.7 calibrations. Now, exactly 98.6 calibrations, yet the resistance of their chemical constituents would not warrant—"

"Any damage? Tissue-breakdown?"

"None I can see. Markten! The big one moved!"

Then the smaller one moved, too.

Both of them sat up.

For the moment Markten and his aide looked only at each other, the younger of the two speechless, incredulity on his features. Markten smiled.

"I was not sure," he said. "But, as you said, they do appear similar to us. They are chemical automatons; I suspected, but of course could not be sure. Now, we must discover the exact power source and, more importantly, the control-centers of the things. Then—"

But on these counts, Markten was doomed to disappointment. Aside from his discovery that the things he had created would not function properly without ingesting large amounts of different types of vegetable and organic materials, and that they operated independently of any outside stimulus, he was able to discover nothing more. Except, when at length he had concluded that neither of the things could be of any use to the populace of New City because they could be neither electrically or mechanically directed by any type of control yet built, he discovered that they actually resisted any attempts to dismantle them. They ran.

"Peculiar," he said.

"Shall I pursue them?" his apprentice asked. "They appear to be heading in the direction of the grasslands to the north."

"Never mind." Markten sounded dejected. "They have a very low unit power potential. They could never do any harm to anything."

"I wish we knew what those three words on the book meant. 'Advanced H-u-m-a-n A-n-a-t-o-m-y.'"

"Nothing too important, really. Or we'd've known their meaning. Well, there will be other things to build, and we need energy. Let's go to Maintenance and recharge our plates."

"Good thought. I guess those things wouldn't have been strong enough to build anything anyway. At any rate, they can't be dangerous...."

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