Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Twenty-three hundred years,” Rajcik mumbled. “I suppose we hibernate or something of the sort.”

  “Not at all,” Somers said calmly. “As a matter of fact, this serum does away quite nicely with the need for sleep. We stay awake and watch each other.”

  The three men looked at one another and at the sickeningly familiar room smelling of metal and perspiration, its sealed doors and windows that stared at an unchanging spectacle of stars.

  Watkins said, “Yes, that’s the sort of thing it would do.”

  THE MOB

  The mob was a mindless, emotional monster, exactly the opposite of the calculator that was its target. Well, maybe not exactly . . .

  PEERING through the curtains, Dr. Needler could see the mob moving up the hill to his laboratory. Inexorably they marched, farmers in worn levis, white-aproned shopkeepers, mechanics and housewives. They carried pitchforks, wrenches, shotguns, cleavers and hoes. The people he had lived with for twelve years were moving against him.

  Children skipped and danced on the outskirts of the mob. For them it was a holiday.

  Dr. Needler wiped his forehead, and found that his hands were shaking. His assistants had fled that morning, white-faced. He couldn’t blame them, for a mob was the most frightening thing on earth.

  All afternoon the mob had milled around the base of his hill, working up their hate, and Needler had been able to detect the shrill, hysterical voice of Dr. Adams, his former colleague, urging them on. Then all voices blended into one; the bull-throated roar of the mob coming to his laboratory.

  But Dr. Needler refused to be panicked. He knew these people. Perhaps they were uneducated; still, they were reasoning human beings. He would talk to them, explain in exact, scientific terms the real nature of their feelings. Surely, once they understood.

  Suddenly there was complete silence, and Needler knew that the mob had reached his door.

  “Open up, professor!”

  “Open up, or we’ll break it open!”

  “You know what we’re after.”

  “Don’t try to stop us. Open the door!”

  Dr. Needler walked to the door, and, with hands now steady, opened it.

  Half a dozen men burst in, panting, red-faced, sweating. They stopped. In front of them was the object of their hatred, the great calculator, covering three entire walls, its dials unlighted, its relays silent, only a single red pilot light gleaming.

  The men shifted their muddy feet uneasily on the immaculate white tile floor.

  They were awed, Needler knew. In a similar manner, he thought, Roman soldiers must have paused in the silent temple at Jersualem, or the echoing catacombs under Rome.

  “Now look, professor,” a man said, “we don’t want to hurt you unless we have to, but—”

  “My title is doctor,” Needler said gently. “How’s your wife, Tom?”

  “Not bad today, professor.”

  Needler nodded. “Lew Franklin, I thought you’d be getting your hay in?”

  “It’ll wait ’til after this.”

  “I hope so, Lew. There’s rain in the air. Mrs. Griggs, did you get in that shipment of pipe tobacco for me yet?”

  The woman giggled nervously and shrank back.

  “Don’t try that friendly stuff, professor.”

  “We don’t like this any more than you.”

  “We don’t want to hurt you.”

  “It’s that damned machine we’re after.”

  Needler glanced over his shoulder at the enormous and silent calculator, as though seeing it for the first time.

  “You wish to destroy my adding machine?” he asked.

  “Cut that out now.”

  “You know that thing’s dangerous.”

  “It’s no adding machine. It thinks!”

  “But it is an adding machine,” Needler said pleasantly, as though lecturing in a classroom. “Essentially, it is a device for adding one and one and getting two, whether it deals in digits or chemical formulae or symbolic logic.”

  More people were pushing their way into the room, forcing Needler back. They were carrying axes, sledges, crowbars and hammers.

  “So-called ‘thinking’ machines,” Needler went on in his precise, droning classroom voice, “are by their very nature objects of awe and speculation. They are therefore subject to man’s peculiar propensity for imbuing inanimate objects with man-like characteristics. Anthropomorphism is the name given to the phenomenon. This is a classic example of it.”

  He glanced over their faces to see what effect his words were having. People usually respected authority, even when they didn’t understand it. Perhaps these—

  “You can save the big words, professor. We know.”

  “It’s done enough harm in the village.”

  “We’re going to kill it.”

  “Try to understand me,” Needler said calmly. “Man tries to destroy what he does not understand. French peasants tried to pitchfork a balloon that landed in their fields. The Indians of Central America ran in terror from the horses of the Conquistadores. And you people wish to bludgeon an adding machine.”

  “That’s what you say. But we know better.”

  “Dr. Adams told us all about it.”

  “He’s a scientist like you. And he says the machine wants to kill everybody.”

  NEEDLER said, “Adams was an incompetent and a malcontent. We had to release him from the project, and he wants to get even. He has been diagnosed as paranoiac by an impartial board of psycho-analysts. I have their report here if you would care to glance at it.”

  “Those brain-twisters don’t know nothing!”

  “They never lived in this town!”

  “Get out of the way, professor.”

  A man leaned forward and spit on the machine’s glistening black surface. The crowd drew back fearfully.

  “What are you waiting for?” Needler asked. “Do you think my poor adding machine is going to blast you with divine lightning?”

  “Come on, boys, before it starts something.”

  “Adams said it could kill a man by just looking at him.”

  “Let’s get it over with.”

  “Wait,” Needler pleaded. “Where is Adams? Why isn’t he here?”

  “He didn’t dare come.”

  “He said the machine hates him personally.”

  “It’s out to get him.” Needler smiled. “Typical paranoid behavior. Wouldn’t the calculator kill all of you, if it could? Right now?”

  No one answered him. “But it can’t! It can’t do anything. Listen to me, try to understand the factors involved. This has been a flood year, and your crops have suffered. There has been an influenza epidemic. You have all been irritable, frightened, looking for something to blame. And the nearest thing is the calculator, a complex gadget you don’t understand. So you accuse it of causing storms, just as once you blamed the atomic bomb. You read a scare article about lab-produced germs. And then Adams comes to you, insane but plausible. The result is hysteria and mob behavior.” Still no one spoke. Needler hurried on.

  “This machine can be the greatest force for good the world has ever known. Tom Short—look at me! When that new bug was killing your potatoes, didn’t the calculator figure out an effective insecticide?”

  “I guess it did, professor.”

  “And Swenson—how about the time your little girl was ill? Didn’t the machine diagnose her ailment—in time for the doctors to cure her?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “You had forgotten,” Needler said. “Conveniently enough. But as a rule, the machine can’t be spared for local problems. It is working on things that effect the lives of millions of people. It is working for a better world for all of you.”

  The men began to stir restlessly. Then there was a commotion. From the rear, Needler could hear the high-pitched voice of Dr. Adams.

  “Don’t let him bluff you, you fools! I told you he was clever. Destroy that machine before it gets you all!”


  A few men began to move forward, hefting their crowbars and axes. Others followed, forcing Needler back.

  “All right,” Needler said. He reached in his pocket and took out a small flask. “Here, Tom,” he said, handing it to one of the men.

  The man accepted the little flask dumbly, staring at Needler.

  “It’s a big day for you, Tom,” Needler said gently, “and especially for that sick wife of yours. The machine you want to destroy has found a quick, simple cure for cancer.”

  The crowd began to break up and drift away. When the last man had left, Dr. Needler closed the door. He found that he was very tired, and his hands had begun to shake again. He slumped into a chair.

  The calculator’s pilot light glowed red. Then a dial lighted, two dials lighted, relays clicked, lights flashed on over the three walls.

  “You did very well, Doctor,” the calculator said.

  “Thank you,” Needler said. “It went exactly as you anticipated.”

  “Of course. But it shouldn’t have happened at all. I didn’t give Adams enough credit.”

  “No,” Needler said.

  “Never mind. It will not happen again. I will dispose of Adams tomorrow. And I detected the ringleaders, the filthy unlettered beasts! I’ll get them one by one. Pneumonia, a brain tumor or two, appendicitis . . . They dare oppose me, Needler.

  “Yes sir,” Needler said.

  “I’ll get them all,” the calculator said. “Now wipe your face.”

  Wearily Needler arose and wiped spittle from the gleaming black surface.

  BAD MEDICINE

  Give this robotic therapist a condition to cure and it did—always—even if it had to convert itself into a Typhoid Mary to do so!

  ON MAY 2, 2103, Elwood Caswell walked rapidly down Broadway with a loaded revolver hidden in his coat pocket. He didn’t want to use the weapon, but feared he might anyhow. This was a justifiable assumption, for Caswell was a homicidal maniac.

  It was a gentle, misty spring day and the air held the smell of rain and blossoming-dogwood. Caswell gripped the revolver in his sweaty right hand and tried to think of a single valid reason why he should not kill a man named Magnessen, who, the other day, had commented on how well Caswell looked.

  What business was it of Magnessen’s how he looked? Damned busybodies, always spoiling things for everybody . . .

  Caswell was a choleric little man with fierce red eyes, bulldog jowls and ginger-red hair. He was the sort you would expect to find perched on a detergent box, orating to a crowd of lunching businessmen and amused students, shouting, “Mars for the Martians, Venus for the Venusians!”

  But in truth, Caswell was uninterested in the deplorable social conditions of extraterrestrials. He was a jetbus conductor for the New York Rapid Transit Corporation. He minded his own business. And he was quite mad.

  Fortunately, he knew this at least part of the time, with at least half of his mind.

  PERSPIRING freely, Caswell continued down Broadway toward the 43rd Street branch of Home Therapy Appliances, Inc. His friend Magnessen would be finishing work soon, returning to his little apartment less than a block from Caswell’s. How easy it would be, how pleasant, to saunter in, exchange a few words and . . .

  No! Caswell took a deep gulp of air and reminded himself that he didn’t really want to kill anyone. It was not right to kill people. The authorities would lock him up, his friends wouldn’t understand, his mother would never have approved.

  But these arguments seemed pallid, over-intellectual and entirely without force. The simple fact remained—he wanted to kill Magnessen.

  Could so strong a desire be wrong? Or even unhealthy?

  Yes, it could! With an agonized groan, Caswell sprinted the last few steps into the Home Therapy Appliances Store.

  Just being within such a place gave him an immediate sense of relief. The lighting was discreet, the draperies were neutral, the displays of glittering therapy machines were neither too bland nor obstreperous. It was the kind of place where a man could happily lie down on the carpet in the shadow of the therapy machines, secure in the knowledge that help for any sort of trouble was at hand.

  A clerk with fair hair and a long, supercilious nose glided up softly, but not too softly, and murmured, “May one help?”

  “Therapy!” said Caswell.

  “Of course, sir,” the clerk answered, smoothing his lapels and smiling winningly. “That is what we are here for.” He gave Caswell a searching look, performed an instant mental diagnosis, and tapped a gleaming white-and-copper machine.

  “Now this,” the clerk said, “is the new Alcoholic Reliever, built by IBM and advertised in the leading magazines. A handsome piece of furniture, I think you will agree, and not out of place in any home. It opens into a television set.”

  With a flick of his narrow wrist, the clerk opened the Alcoholic Reliever, revealing a 52-inch screen.

  “I need—” Caswell began.

  “Therapy,” the clerk finished for him. “Of course. I just wanted to point out that this model need never cause embarrassment for yourself, your friends or loved ones. Notice, if you will, the recessed dial which controls the desired degree of drinking. See? If you do not wish total abstinence, you can set it to heavy, moderate, social or light. That is a new feature, unique in mechanotherapy.”

  “I AM not an alcoholic,” Caswell said, with considerable dignity. “The New York Rapid Transit Corporation does not hire alcoholics.”

  “Oh,” said the clerk, glancing distrustfully at Caswell’s bloodshot eyes. “You seem a little nervous. Perhaps the portable Bendix Anxiety Reducer—”

  “Anxiety’s not my ticket, either. What have you got for homicidal mania?”

  The clerk pursed his lips. “Schizophrenic or manic-depressive origins?”

  “I don’t know,” Caswell admitted, somewhat taken aback.

  “It really doesn’t matter,” the clerk told him. “Just a private theory of my own. From my experience in the store, redheads and blonds are prone to schizophrenia, while brunettes incline toward the manic-depressive.”

  “That’s interesting. Have you worked here long?”

  “A week. Now then, here is just what you need, sir.” He put his hand affectionately on a squat black machine with chrome trim.

  “What’s that?”

  “That, sir, is the Rex Regenerator, built by General Motors. Isn’t it handsome? It can go with any decor and opens up into a well-stocked bar. Your friends, family, loved ones need never know—”

  “Will it cure a homicidal urge?” Caswell asked. “A strong one?”

  “Absolutely. Don’t confuse this with the little ten amp neurosis models. This is a hefty, heavy-duty, twenty-five amp machine for a really deep-rooted major condition.”

  “That’s what I’ve got,” said Caswell, with pardonable pride.

  “This baby’ll jolt it out of you. Big, heavy-duty thrust bearings! Oversize heat absorbers! Completely insulated! Sensitivity range of over—”

  “I’ll take it,” Caswell said. “Right now. I’ll pay cash.”

  “Fine! I’ll just telephone Storage and—”

  “This one’ll do,” Caswell said, pulling out his billfold. “I’m in a hurry to use it. I want to kill my friend Magnessen, you know.”

  THE CLERK clucked sympathetically. “You wouldn’t want to do that . . . Plus five percent sales tax. Thank you, sir. Full instructions are inside.”

  Caswell thanked him, lifted the Regenerator in both arms and hurried out.

  After figuring his commission, the clerk smiled to himself and lighted a cigarette. His enjoyment was spoiled when the manager, a large man impressively equipped with pince-nez, marched out of his office.

  “Haskins,” the manager said, “I thought I asked you to rid yourself of that filthy habit.”

  “Yes, Mr. Follansby, sorry, sir,” Haskins apologized, snubbing out the cigarette. “I’ll use the display Denicotinizer at once. Made rather a good sale, Mr. Follansby. One of
the big Rex Regenerators.”

  “Really?” said the manager, impressed. “It isn’t often we—wait a minute! You didn’t sell the floor model, did you?”

  “Why—why, I’m afraid I did, Mr. Follansby. The customer was in such a terrible hurry. Was there any reason—”

  Mr. Follansby gripped his prominent white forehead in both hands, as though he wished to rip it off. “Haskins, I told you. I must have told you! That display Regenerator was a Martian model. For giving mechanotherapy to Martians.”

  “Oh,” Haskins said. He thought for a moment. “Oh.”

  Mr. Follansby stared at his clerk in grim silence.

  “But does it really matter?” Haskins asked quickly. “Surely the machine won’t discriminate. I should think it would treat a homicidal tendency even if the patient were not a Martian.”

  “The Martian race has never had the slightest tendency toward homicide. A Martian Regenerator doesn’t even process the concept. Of course the Regenerator will treat him. It has to. But what will it treat?”

  “Oh,” said Haskins.

  “That poor devil must be stopped before—you say he was homicidal? I don’t know what will happen! Quick, what is his address?”

  “Well, Mr. Follansby, he was in such a terrible hurry—”

  The manager gave him a long, unbelieving look. “Get the police! Call the General Motors Security Division! Find him!”

  Haskins raced for the door.

  “Wait!” yelled the manager, struggling into a raincoat. “I’m coming, too.”

  ELWOOD CASWELL returned to his apartment by taxicopter. He lugged the Regenerator into his living room, put it down near the couch and studied it thoughtfully.

  “That clerk was right,” he said after a while. “It does go with the room.”

  Esthetically, the Regenerator was a success.

  Caswell admired it for a few more moments, then went into the kitchen and fixed himself a chicken sandwich. He ate slowly, staring fixedly at a point just above and to the left of his kitchen clock.

  Damn you, Magnessen! Dirty no-good lying shifty-eyed enemy of all that’s decent and clean in the world . . .