Van Vogt, A. E.

Van Vogt, A. E. "Vault of the Beast." Astounding Science Fiction Aug. 1940. John W. Campbell, Jr., ed. The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1952. Frederik Pohl, ed. The SFWA Grand Masters Vol. 3. New York: Tor, 2001: 326-51 ("Advance uncorrected proofs").

Note the following passages: "There was movement at the far end of the corridor. A door opened. Footsteps sounded. A man whistling to himself. With a metalic hiss, almost a sigh, the creature dissolved, looking momentarily like diluted mercury. Then it turned brown like the floor. It became the floor, a slightly thicker stretch of dark-brown rubber spread out for yards" (SFWA 327). The creature later identifies itself as a robot, "a machine, without a brain of my own. I use the brains of other people, but somehow my creators made it possible for me to be more than just an echo. I use people's brains to carry out my purpose" (332). The creature is a shape-shifter, who, with difficulty, can take on human shape and voice (342). There is a climactic confrontation between the robot and the great mathematician J. P. "Jim" Brender, where "in one caricature hand" of the robot/creature "a caricature of Brender's revolver was growing." The caricature revolver explodes when the robot tries to use it: "The revolver fell, a shapeless tattered blob, to the floor. The little gray mass of it scrambled frantically toward the parent body, and attached itself like some monstrous canker to the right foot." The "Controller" of the robot forces it to stand "in the shape of Brender, but instead of a revolver, there grew from one browned, powerful hand a pencil of shining metal." I [= R. E. Erlich] am unsure what happens next, but we're told some metal associated with the robot "glowed ever so faintly, an unearthly radiance. And where the radio had been, and the screen with Hughes' face on it" — i.e., the face of the man the robot was impersonating — "there was a gaping hole. Desperately, Brender pumped bullets into the body before him, but though the shape trembled, it stared at him now, unaffected. The shining weapon swung toward him" — and the masters of the robot/creature tell Brender through their creature that "This which you hear and see is a robot, designed by us to cope with your space and number world" (344). Just when it looks like the Controller and its villainous species have won and are on their way to be "absolute rulers of the entire Universe," there is a quick reversal, including "a scream from the creature as it was forcibly dissolved. The scream choked to a sob, then silence. An intricate machine of shining metal lay there on that great gray-brown expanse of sand and ultimate metal" (350). After his victory over the "Beast" in the Vault, Brender returns "to where the robot had fallen into the sand" and finds there not "glistening metal" but "a time-dulled piece of junkj." The robot is now a "thing" that tries "to stand up on wrinkled, horrible legs, but finally lay still. Its lips moved, mumbled" — and Brender learns that the robot could have betrayed him to its nefarious masters but did not. Brender demands to know why, and is told by the robot, "Because they were hurting me. They were going to destroy me. Because … I liked … being human. I was … somebody!" (351). And then, at the penultimate moment of the story, "The flesh [sic] dissolved. It flowed slowly into a pool of lavalike ghray. The lava crinkled, split into dry, brittle pieces. Brender touched one of the pieces. It crumbled into a fine powder of gray dust" (351). In "Vault of the Beast," the robot is not the center of the story; still cf. and contrast T-1000 in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, the shape-shifting, magic-metal robot. Note also what has been called the "Pinochio" theme, or what the robot Bender of Futurama — an advocate of robot superiority — would call Spam: a robot "metal on the outside, meat on the inside," who's internalized the oppressors' views of robots.

3. FICTION, RDE, 12/XII/10