Walter M. Miller

“ Mara gasped and covered her eyes.
"Big Joe!" she whispered in awe.
He stared through the stairwell door and down the corridor through another door into a large room. Big Joe sat in the center of the room, sleeping his sleep of ages amid a heap of broken and whitening bones. A creature of metal, twice the height of Asir, he had obviously been designed to kill. Tri-fingered hands with gleaming talons, and a monstrous head shaped like a Marswolf, with long silver fangs. Why should a metal-creature have fangs, unless he had been built to kill? ”

“ Welkir snorted again. He picked up the lamp. "He who listens to a thief's wisdom is cursed. He who acts upon it is doubly cursed and a party to the crime."
"The vaults," Asir insisted. "The key to the Blaze of the Winds is in the vaults. The god Roggins tells us in the words—"
"Stop! I will not hear!"
"Very well, but the blaze can be rekindled, and the air renewed. The vaults—" He stammered and shook his head. "The council must hear me."
"The council will hear nothing, and you shall be gone before dawn. And the vaults are guarded by the sleeper called Big Joe. To enter is to die. Now go away." ”

“ As a thief, I acquired much wisdom. I know that the world is dying, and the air is boiling out of it into the sky. I wish to be heard by the council. We must study the words of the ancients and perform their magic, lest our children's children be born to strangle in a dead world. ”

“ And they would take him within easy reach of the long taloned arms of the murderous sentinel. He glanced around in fright at the crushed bones scattered across the floor. Some were human. Others were animal-sacrifices tossed in by the priests.
He had tested only one two—back near the door. If he made a mistake, he would never escape; no need bothering with the pike.
He stepped to the next tile and closed his eyes.
"If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill."
He opened his eyes again and heaved a breath of relief.
"Asir! They're getting closer! I can hear them!" ”

“ In theory, a thief could escape by hanging four days, after which the executioner would pull out the nails. Sometimes a culprit managed it, but when the nails were pulled, the thing that toppled was already a corpse.
The sun was sinking in the west, and it blinded him. Asir knew about the sun—knew things the stupid council failed to know. A thief, if successful, frequently became endowed with wisdom, for he memorized more wealth than a score of honest men. ”

“ He took the blade from her throat but kept the point touching her back.
"Please, Asir, no!" she pleaded. "Let me go on to the hills. Why do you want to go to the vaults? Because of Tokra?"
He gouged her with the point until she yelped. "Tokra be damned, and you with him!" he snarled. "Turn back."
"Why?"
"I'm going down to kindle the Blaze of the Winds."
"You're mad! The spirits of the ancients live in the vaults." ”

“ He envisioned the pandemonium that would reign when girl, man, and robot marched through the village to the council house, and he chuckled. "I think that I shall be the next Chief Commoner," he said. "And my councilmen will all be thieves."
"Thieves!" she gasped. "Why?"
"Thieves who are not afraid to steal the knowledge of the gods—and become technologists, to kindle the Blaze of the Winds."
"What is a 'technologist', Asir?" she asked worshipfully. ”

“ Asir glowered at himself for blundering with words he did not understand, but could not admit ignorance to Mara who clung tightly to his arm. "I think," he said, "that a technologist is a thief who tells the gods what to do."
"Kiss me, Technologist," she told him in a small voice.
Big Joe clanked to a stop to wait for them to move on. He waited a long time. ”

“ Coming into the world, they found no air for the breath of their souls. "How shall we breathe?" they asked of the Sun. And Sun gave them of His fire and beneath the earth they kindled the Blaze of the Great Wind. Good air roared from the womb of Mars our Mother, the ice burned with a great thunder, and there was air for the breath of Man."
—FROM AN OLD MARTIAN LEGEND
A thief, he was about to die like a thief. ”

“ Perhaps the ancients had been unnecessarily brutal in building such a guard—but at least they had built him to look like a destroyer, and to give ample warning to the intruder. Glancing around at the machinery, he vaguely understood the reason for Big Joe. Such metals as these would mean riches for swordmakers and smiths and plunderers of all kinds.
Asir straightened his shoulders and addressed the machine.
"Teach us how to kindle the Blaze of the Great Wind."
"Teaching is not within the designed functions of Big Joe. ”

“ Asir looked around for a place to flee, but the monster stopped in the doorway. He spoke again, a mechanical drone like memorised ritual.
"Big Joe is charged with announcing his function for the intelligence of the technologists. His primary function is to prevent the entrance of possibly destructive organisms into the vaults containing the control equipment for the fusion reaction which must periodically renew atmospheric oxygen. His secondary function is to direct the technologists to records containing such information as they may need. ”

“ The tribes had fallen into ignorance, even as the holy books had warned:
It is realized that the colonists will be unable to maintain a technology without basic tools, and that a rebuilding will require several generations of intelligently directed effort. ”

“ For this they hung him by his wrists and waited for him to beg for the bleeding-blade.
Woman thirsts for husband,
Man thirsts for wife,
Baby thirsts for breast-milk
Thief thirsts for knife....
A rhyme from his childhood, a childish chant, an eenie-meenie-miney for determining who should drink first from a nectar-cactus. He groaned and tried to shift his weight more comfortably. Where was Mara?
"Ready for me yet, Asir?" the squat man asked.
Asir hated him with narrowed eyes. The executioner was bound by law to wait until his victim requested his fate. ”

“ Hereafter they may pass with impunity. Big Joe is charged to ask the following: why do the technologists come, when it is not yet time?"
Staring back, Asir saw that the robot's head had turned so that he was looking directly back at the thief and the girl. Asir also saw that someone had approached the door again. Not priests, but townspeople.
He stared, recognizing the Chief Commoner, and the girl's father Welkir, three other Senior Kinsmen, and—Slubil, the executioner who had nailed him to the post. ”