“I would,” Simon said. “This love was special, unique——”
“They all are,” Mr. Tate said. “But as you know, they are all produced in the same way.”
“What?”
“Surely you know something about the mechanics of love production?”
“No,” Simon said. “I thought it was—natural.”
Mr. Tate shook his head. “We gave up natural selection centuries ago, shortly after the Mechanical Revolution. It was too slow, and commercially unfeasible. Why bother with it, when we can produce any feeling at will by conditioning and proper stimulation of certain brain centers? The result? Penny, completely in love with you! Your own bias, which we calculated, in favor of her particular somatotype, made it complete. We always throw in the dark sea-beach, the lunatic moon, the pallid dawn——”
“Then she could have been made to love anyone,” Simon said slowly.
“Could have been brought to love anyone,” Mr. Tate corrected.
“Oh, lord, how did she get into this horrible work?” Simon asked.
“She came in and signed a contract in the usual way,” Tate said. “It pays very well. And at the termination of the lease, we return her original personality—untouched! But why do you call the work horrible? There’s nothing reprehensible about love.”
“It wasn’t love!” Simon cried.
“But it was! The genuine article! Unbiased scientific firms have made qualitative tests of it, in comparison with the natural thing. In every case, our love tested out to more depth, passion, fervor, and scope.”
Simon shut his eyes tightly, opened them, and said, “Listen to me. I don’t care about your scientific tests. I love her, she loves me, that’s all that counts. Let me speak to her! I want to marry her!”
Mr. Tate wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Come, come, man! You wouldn’t want to marry a girl like that! But if it’s marriage you’re after, we deal in that, too. I can arrange an idyllic and nearly spontaneous love-match for you with a guaranteed government-inspected virgin——”
“No! I love Penny! At least let me speak to her!”
“That will be quite impossible,” Mr. Tate said.
“Why?”
Mr. Tate pushed a button on his desk. “Why do you think? We’ve wiped out the previous indoctrination. Penny is now in love with someone else.”
And then Simon understood. He had realized that even now Penny was looking at another man with that passion he had known, feeling for another man that complete and bottomless love that unbiased scientific firms had shown to be so much greater than the old-fashioned, commercially unfeasible natural selection, and that upon that same dark sea-beach mentioned in the advertising brochure—
He lunged for Tate’s throat. Two attendants, who had entered the office a few moments earlier, caught him and led him to the door.
“Remember!” Tate called. “This in no way invalidates your own experience.”
Hellishly enough, Simon knew that what Tate said was true.
And then he found himself on the street.
At first, all he desired was to escape from Earth, where the commercial impracticalities were more than a normal man could afford. He walked very quickly, and his Penny walked beside him, her face glorified with love for him, and him, and him, and you, and you.
And of course he came to the shooting gallery.
“Try your luck?” the manager asked.
“Set ’em up,” said Alfred Simon.
HUMAN MAN’S BURDEN
Massa Flaswell was lonely on his cold, cold planetoid . . . till it got hot and crowded!
EDWARD FLASWELL bought his planetoid, sight unseen, at the Interstellar Land Office on Earth. He selected it on the basis of a photograph, which showed little more than a range of picturesque mountains. But Flaswell loved mountains and as he remarked to the Claims Clerk, “Might be gold in them thar hills, mightn’t thar, pardner?”
“Sure, pal, sure,” the clerk responded, wondering what man in his right mind would put himself several light-years from the nearest woman of any description whatsoever. No man in his right mind would, the clerk decided, and gave Flaswell a searching look.
But Flaswell was perfectly sane. He just hadn’t stopped to consider the problem.
Accordingly, Flaswell put down a small sum in credits and made a large promise to improve his land every year. As soon as the ink was dry upon his deed, he purchased passage aboard a second-class drone freighter, loaded it with an assortment of secondhand equipment and set out for his holdings.
Most novice pioneers find they have purchased a sizable chunk of naked rock. Flaswell was lucky. His planetoid, which he named Chance, had a minimal manufactured atmosphere that he could boost to breathable status. There was water, which his well-digging equipment tapped on the twenty-third attempt. He found no gold in them thar hills, but there was some exportable thorium. And best of all, much of the soil was suitable for the cultivation of dir, olge, smis and other luxury fruits.
As Flaswell kept telling his robot foreman, “This place is going to make me rich!”
“Sure, Boss, sure,” the robot always responded.
THE planetoid had undeniable promise. Its development was an enormous task for one man, but Flaswell was only twenty-seven years old, strongly built and of a determined frame of mind. Beneath his hand, the planetoid flourished. Months passed and Flaswell planted his fields, mined his picturesque mountains and shipped his goods out by the infrequent drone freighter that passed his way.
One day, his robot foreman said to him, “Boss Man, sir, you don’t look too good, Mr. Flaswell, sir.”
Flaswell frowned at this speech. The man he had bought his robots from had been a Human Supremacist of the most rabid sort, who had coded the robots’ responses according to his own ideas of the respect due Human People. Flaswell found this annoying, but he couldn’t afford new response tapes. And where else could he have picked up robots for so little money?
“Nothing wrong with me, Gunga-Sam,” Flaswell replied.
“Ah! I beg pardon! But this is not so, Mr. Flaswell, Boss. You have been talking to yourself in the fields, you should excuse my saying it.”
“Aw, it’s nothing.”
“And you have the beginning of a tic in your left eye, sahib. And your fingers are trembling. And you are drinking too much. And—”
“That’s enough, Gunga-Sam. A robot should know his place,” Flaswell said. He saw the hurt expression that the robot’s metal face somehow managed to convey. He sighed and said, “You’re right, of course. You’re always right, old friend. What’s the matter with me?”
“You are bearing too much of the Human Man’s Burden.”
“Don’t I know it!” Flaswell ran a hand through his unruly black hair. “Sometimes I envy you robots. Always laughing, carefree, happy—”
“It is because we have no souls.”
“Unfortunately I do. What do you suggest?”
“Take a vacation, Mr. Flaswell, Boss,” Gunga-Sam suggested, and wisely withdrew to let his master think.
Flaswell appreciated his servitor’s kindly suggestion, but a vacation was difficult. His planetoid, Chance, was in the Throcian System, which was about as isolated as one could get in this day and age. True, he was only a fifteen-day flight from the tawdry amusements of Cythera III and not much farther from Nagondicon, where considerable fun could be obtained for the strong in stomach. But distance is money, and money was the very thing Flaswell was trying to make on Chance.
HE planted more crops, dug more thorium and began to grow a beard. He continued to mumble to himself in the fields and to drink heavily in the evenings. Some of the simple farm robots grew alarmed when Flaswell lurched past and they began praying to the outlawed Combustion God. But loyal Gunga-Sam soon put a stop to this ominous turn of events.
“Ignorant mechanicals!” he told them. “The Boss Human, he all right. Him strong, him good! Believe me, brothers, it is even as I say!”
But
the murmurings did not cease, for robots look to Humans to set an example. The situation might have gotten out of hand if Flaswell had not received, along with his next shipment of food, a shiny new Roebuck-Ward catalogue.
Lovingly he spread it open upon his crude plastic table and, by the glow of a simple cold-light bulb, began to pore over its contents. What wonders there were for the isolated pioneer! Home distilling plants, and moon makers, and portable solidovision, and—
Flaswell turned a page, read it, gulped and read it again. It said:
MAIL ORDER BRIDES!
Pioneers, why suffer the curse of loneliness alone? Why bear the Human’s Burden singly? Roebuck-Ward is now offering, for the first time, a limited selection of Brides for the Frontiersman!
The Roebuck-Ward Frontier Model Bride is carefully selected for strength, adaptability, agility, perseverance, pioneer skills and, of course, a measure of comeliness. These girls are conditioned to any planet, since they possess a relatively low center of gravity, a skin properly pigmented for all climates, and short, strong toe and fingernails. Shapewise, they are well proportioned and yet not distractingly contoured, a quality which the hard-working pioneer should appreciate.
The Roebuck-Ward Frontier Model comes in three general sizes (see specifications below) to suit any man’s taste. Upon receipt of your request, Roebuck-Ward will quick-freeze one and ship her to you by third-class Drone Freight. In this way, your express charges are kept to an absolute minimum.
Why not order a Frontier Model Bride TODAY?
Flaswell called for Gunga-Sam and showed him the advertisement. Silently the mechanical read, then looked his master full in the face.
“This is surely it, effendi,” the foreman said.
“You think so, huh?” Flaswell stood up and began to pace nervously around the room. “But I wasn’t planning on getting married just yet. I mean what kind of a way is this to get married? How do I know I’ll like her?”
“It is proper for Human Man to have Human Woman.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Besides, do they quick-freeze a preacher and ship him out, too?”
A slow smile broke over Flaswell’s face as he digested his servant’s shrewd question. “Gunga-Sam,” he said, “as usual, you have gone directly to the heart of the matter. I guess there’s a sort of moratorium on the ceremony while a man makes up his mind. Too expensive to quick-freeze a preacher. And it would be nice to have a gal around who could work her share.”
Gunga-Sam managed to convey an inscrutable smile.
Flaswell sat down and ordered a Frontier Model Bride, specifying the small size, which he felt was plenty big enough. He gave Gunga-Sam the order to radio.
THE next few weeks were filled with excitement for Flaswell and he began to scan the skies anxiously. The robots picked up the mood of anticipation. In the evenings, their carefree songs and dances were interspersed with whispering and secret merriment. The mechanicals said to Gunga-Sam over and over again, “Hey, Foreman! The new Human Woman Boss, what will she be like?”
“It’s none of your concern,” Gunga-Sam told them. “That’s Human Man business and you robots leave it alone.” But at the end, he was watching the skies as anxiously as anyone.
During those weeks, Flaswell meditated on the virtues of Frontier Woman. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. No pretty, useless, helpless painted woman for him! How pleasant it would be to have a cheerful, common-sense, down-to-gravity gal who could cook, wash, pretty up the place, boss the house robots, make clothes, put up jellies . . .
So he dreamed away the time and bit his nails to the quick.
At last the drone freighter flashed across the horizon, landed, jettisoned a large packing case, and fled in the direction of Amyra IV.
The robots brought the case to Flaswell.
“Your new bride, sir!” they shouted triumphantly, and flung their oilcans in the air.
Flaswell immediately proclaimed a half-day holiday and soon he was alone in his living room with the great frigid box marked “Handle with Care. Woman Inside.”
He pressed the defrosting controls, waited the requisite hour, and opened the box. Within was another box, which required two hours to defrost. Impatiently he waited, pacing up and down the room and gnawing on the remnants of his fingernails.
And then the time was up, and with shaking hands, Flaswell opened the lid and saw—
“Hey, what is this?” he cried.
THE girl within the box blinked, yawned like a kitten, opened her eyes, sat up. They stared at each other and Flaswell knew that something was terribly wrong.
She was clothed in a beautiful, impractical white dress and her name, Sheila, was worked upon it in gold thread. The next thing Flaswell noticed was her slenderness, which was scarcely suitable for hard work on outplanet conditions. Her skin was a creamy white, obviously the kind that would blister under his planetoid’s fierce summer sun. Her hands were long-fingered, red-nailed, elegant—completely unlike anything the Roebuck-Ward Company had promised. As for her legs and other parts, Flaswell decided they would be very well on Earth, but not here, where a man must pay attention to his work.
She couldn’t even be said to have a low center of gravity. Quite the contrary.
Flaswell felt, not unreasonably, that he had been swindled, duped, made a fool of.
Sheila stepped out of the crate, walked to a window and looked out over Flaswell’s flowering green fields and his picturesque mountains beyond them.
“But where are the palm trees?” she asked.
“Palm trees?”
“Of course. They told me that Srinigar V had palm trees.”
“This is not Srinigar V,” Flaswell said.
“But aren’t you the Pasha of Srae?” Sheila gasped.
“Certainly not. I am a Frontiersman. Aren’t you a Frontier Model Bride?”
“Do I look like a Frontier Model Bride?” Sheila snapped, her eyes flashing. “I am the Ultra Deluxe Luxury Model Bride and I was supposed to go to the subtropical paradise planet of Srinigar V.”
“We’ve both been cheated. The shipping department must have made an error,” Flaswell said gloomily.
The girl looked around Flaswell’s crude living room and a wince twinged her pretty features. “Oh, well. I suppose you can arrange transportation for me to Srinigar V.”
“I can’t even afford to go to Nagondicon,” Flaswell said. “I will inform Roebuck-Ward of their error. They will undoubtedly arrange transportation for you, when they send me my Frontier Model Bride.”
Sheila shrugged her shoulders. “Travel broadens one,” she said.
Flaswell nodded. He was thinking hard. This girl had, it was obvious, no pioneering qualities. But she was amazingly pretty. He saw no reason why her stay shouldn’t be a pleasant one for both.
“Under the circumstances,” Flaswell said, with an ingratiating smile, “we might as well be friends.”
“Under what circumstances?”
“We are the only two Human People on the planet.” Flaswell rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. “Let’s have a drink. Tell me all about yourself. Do you—”
AT that moment, he heard a loud sound behind. He turned and saw a small, squat robot climbing from a compartment in the packing case.
“What do you want?” Flaswell demanded.
“I,” said the robot, “am a Marrying Robot, empowered by the government to provide legal marriages in space. I am further directed by the Roebuck-Ward Company to act as guardian, duenna and protector for the young lady in my charge, until such time as my primary function, to perform a ceremony of marriage, has been accomplished.”
“Uppity damned robot,” Flaswell grumbled.
“What did you expect?” Sheila asked. “A quick-frozen Human preacher?”
“Of course not. But a robot duenna—”
“The very best kind,” she assured him. “You’d be surprised at how some men act when they get a few light-years from Earth.�
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“I would?” Flaswell said disconsolately.
“So I’m told,” Sheila replied, demurely looking away from him. “And after all, the promised bride of the Pasha of Srae should have a guardian of some sort.”
“Dearly beloved,” the robot intoned, “we are here gathered to join—”
“Not now,” Sheila said loftily. “Not this one.”
“I’ll have the robots fix a room for you,” Flaswell growled, and walked away, mumbling to himself about Human Man’s Burden.
He radioed Roebuck-Ward and was told that the proper model Bride would be sent at once and the interloper shipped elsewhere. Then he returned to his farming and mining, determined to ignore the presence of Sheila and her duenna.
Work continued on Chance. There was thorium to be mined out of the soil and new wells to dig. Harvest time was soon at hand, and the robots toiled for long hours in the green-blossomed fields, and lubricating oil glistened on their honest metal faces, and the air was fragrant with the perfume of the dir flowers.
Sheila made her presence felt with subtle yet surprising force. Soon there were plastic lampshades over the naked cold-light bulbs and drapes over the stark windows and scatter rugs on the floors. And there were many other changes around the house that Flaswell felt rather than saw.
His diet underwent a change, too. The robot chefs memory tape had worn thin in many spots, so all the poor mechanical could remember how to make was beef Stroganoff, cucumber salad, rice pudding and cocoa. Flaswell had, with considerable stoicism, been eating these dishes ever since he came to Chance, varying them occasionally with shipwreck rations.
THEN Sheila took the robot chef in hand. Patiently she impressed upon his memory tape the recipes for beef stew, pot roast, tossed green salad, apple pie, and many others. The eating situation upon Chance began to improve markedly.
But when Sheila put up smis jelly in vacuum jars, Flaswell began to have doubts.
Here, after all, was a remarkably practical young lady, in spite of her expensive appearance. She could do all the things a Frontier Wife could do. And she had other attributes. What did he need a regular Roebuck-Ward Frontier Model for?
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