by C. L. Moore
Gallegher said, "Listen, that job your partner gave me—I've solved your problem. I've got what you want."
"Jonas's body, you mean?" Mackenzie seemed pleased.
"No! The animals you wanted! The perfect quarry!"
"Oh. Well. Why didn't you say so sooner?"
"Get over here and call off the police!" Gallegher insisted. "I tell you, I've got your ideal Hunt animals for you!"
"I dinna ken if I can call off the bloodhounds," Mackenzie said, "but I'll be over directly. I will not pay vurra much, you understand?"
"Bah!" Gallegher snarled, and broke the connection. The visor buzzed at him. He touched the receiver, and a woman's face came in.
She said: "Mr. Gallegher, with reference to your call of inquiry regarding your grandfather, we report that investigation shows that he has not returned to our Maine sector. That is all."
She vanished. Johnson said: "What's this? Your grandfather? Where's he at?"
"I ate him," Gallegher said, twitching. "Why don't you leave me alone?"
Johnson made a note. "Your grandfather. I'll just check up a bit. Incidentally, what's that thing over there?" He pointed to the blue-eyed beast.
"I've been studying a curious case of degenerative osteomyelitis affecting a baroque cephalopod!"
"Oh, I see. Thanks. Fred, see about this guy's grandfather. What are you gaping at?"
Fred said: "That screen. It's set up for projection."
Johnson moved to the audiosonic recorder. "Better impound it. Probably not important, but—" He touched a switch. The screen turned blank, but Gallegher's voice said: "We know how to deal with spies in this house, you dirty traitor."
Johnson moved the switch again. He glanced at Gallegher, his ruddy face impassive, and in silence began to rewind the wire tape. Gallegher said: "Joe, get me a dull knife. I want to cut my throat, and I don't want to make it too easy for myself. I'm getting used to doing things the hard way."
But Joe, pondering philosophy, refused to answer.
Johnson began to run off the recording. He took out a picture and compared it with what showed on the screen.
"That's Harding, all right," he said. "Thanks for keeping this for us, Mr. Gallegher."
"Don't mention it," Gallegher said. "I'll even show the hangman how to tie the knot around my neck."
"Ha-ha. Taking notes, Fred? Right."
The reel unrolled relentlessly. But, Gallegher tried to make himself believe, there was nothing really incriminating recorded.
He was disillusioned after the screen went blank, at the point when he had thrown a blanket over the recorder last night. Johnson held up his hand for silence. The screen still showed nothing, but after a moment or two voices were clearly audible.
"You have thirty-seven minutes to go, Mr. Gallegher."
"Just stay where you are. I'll have this in a minute. Besides, I want to get my hands on your fifty thousand credits."
"But—"
"Relax. I'm getting it. In a very short time your worries will be over."
"Did I say that?" Gallegher thought wildly. "What a fool I am! Why didn't I turn off the radio when I covered up the lens?"
Grandpa's voice said: "Trying to kill me by inches, eh, you young whippersnapper!"
"All the old so-and-so wanted was another bottle," Gallegher moaned to himself. "But try to make those flatfeet believe that! Still—" He brightened. "Maybe I can find out what really happened to Grandpa and Harding. If I shot them off to another world, there might be some clue—"
"Watch closely now," Gallegher's voice said from last night. "I'll explain as I proceed. Oh-oh. Wait a minute. I'm going to patent this later, so I don't want any spies. I can trust you two not to talk, but that recorder's still turned on to audio. Tomorrow, if I played it back, I'd be saying to myself, 'Gallegher, you talk too much. There's only one way to keep a secret safe.' Off it goes!"
Someone screamed. The shriek was cut off midway. The projector stopped humming. There was utter silence.
-
The door opened to admit Murdoch Mackenzie. He was rubbing his hands.
"I came right down," he said briskly. "So you've solved our problem, eh, Mr. Gallagher? Perhaps we can do business then. After all, there's no real evidence that you killed Jonas—and I'll be willing to drop the charges, if you've got what Adrenals, Incorporated, wants."
"Pass me those handcuffs, Fred." Johnson requested.
Gallegher protested, "You can't do this to me!"
"A fallacious theorem," Joe said, "which, I note, is now being disproved by the empirical method. How illogical all you ugly people are."
-
The social trend always lags behind the technological one. And while technology tended, in these days, toward simplification, the social pattern was immensely complicated, since it was partly an outgrowth of historical precedent and partly a result of the scientific advance of the era. Take jurisprudence. Cockburn and Blackwood and a score of others had established certain general and specific rules—say, regarding patents—but those rules could be made thoroughly impractical by a single gadget. The Integrators could solve problems no human brain could manage, so, as a governor, it was necessary to build various controls into those semimechanical colloids. Moreover, an electronic duplicator could infringe not only on patents but on property rights, and attorneys prepared voluminous briefs on such questions as whether "rarity rights" are real property, whether a gadget made on a duplicator is a "representation" or a copy, and whether mass-duplication of chinchillas is unfair competition to a chinchilla breeder who depended on old-fashioned biological principles. All of which added up to the fact that the world, slightly punch-drunk with technology, was trying desperately to walk a straight line. Eventually the confusion would settle down.
It hadn't settled down yet.
So legal machinery was a construction far more complicated than an Integrator. Precedent warred with abstract theory as lawyer warred with lawyer. It was all perfectly clear to the technicians, but they were much too impractical to be consulted; they were apt to remark wickedly, "So my gadget unstabilizes property rights? Well—why have property rights, then?"
And you can't do that!
Not to a world that had found security, of a sort, for thousands of years in rigid precedents of social intercourse. The ancient dyke of formal culture was beginning to leak in innumerable spots, and, had you noticed, you might have seen hundreds of thousands of frantic, small figures rushing from danger-spot to danger-spot, valorously plugging the leaks with their fingers, arms, or heads. Some day it would be discovered that there was no encroaching ocean beyond that dyke, but that day hadn't yet come.
In a way, that was lucky for Gallegher. Public officials were chary about sticking their necks out. A simple suit for false arrest might lead to fantastic ramifications and big trouble. The hard-headed Murdoch Mackenzie took advantage of this situation to 'vise his own personal attorney and toss a monkey wrench in the legal wheels. The attorney spoke to Johnson.
There was no corpse. The audiosonic recording was not sufficient. Moreover, there were vital questions involving habeas corpus and search warrants. Johnson called Headquarters Jurisprudence and the argument raged over the heads of Gallegher and the imperturbable Mackenzie. It ended with Johnson leaving, with his crew—and the increasing recording—and threatening to return as soon as a judge could issue the appropriate writs and papers. Meanwhile, he said, there would be officers on guard outside the house. With a malignant glare for Mackenzie, he stamped out.
-
"And now to business," said Mackenzie, rubbing his hands. "Between ourselves"—he leaned forward confidentially—"I'm just as glad to get rid of that partner of mine. Whether or not you killed him, I hope he stays vanished. Now I can run the business my way, for a change."
"It's all right about that," Gallegher said, "but what about me? I'll be in custody again as soon as Johnson can wangle it."
"But not convicted," Mackenzie pointed out. "A clever lawyer can fix you u
p. There was a similar case in which the defendant got off with a defense of non esse—his attorney went into metaphysics and proved that the murdered man had never existed. Quite specious, but so far the murderer's gone free."
Gallegher said: "I've searched the house, and Johnson's men did, too. There's simply no trace of Jonas Harding or my grandfather. And I'll tell you frankly, Mr. Mackenzie, I haven't the slightest idea what happened to them."
Mackenzie gestured airily. "We must be methodical. You mentioned you had solved a certain problem for Adrenals, Incorporated. Now, I'll admit, that interested me."
Silently Gallegher pointed to the blue-eyed dynamo. Mackenzie studied the object thoughtfully.
"Well?" he said.
"That's it. The perfect quarry."
Mackenzie walked over to the thing, rapped its hide, and looked deeply into the mild azure eyes. "How fast can it run?" he asked shrewdly.
Gallegher said: "It doesn't have to run. You see, it's invulnerable."
"Ha. Hum. Perhaps if you'd explain a wee bit more—"
But Mackenzie did not seem pleased with the explanation. "No," he said, "I don't see it. There would be no thrill to hunting a critter like that. You forget our customers demand excitement—adrenal stimulation."
"They'll get it. Anger has the same effect as rage—" Gallegher went into detail.
But Mackenzie shook his head. "Both fear and anger give you excess energy you've got to use up. You can't, against a passive quarry. You'll just cause neuroses. We try to get rid of neuroses, not create them."
Gallegher, growing desperate, suddenly remembered the little brown beast and began to discuss that. Once, Mackenzie interrupted with a demand to see the creature. Gallegher slid around that one fast.
"Ha," Mackenzie said finally. "It isna canny. How can you hunt something that's invisible?"
"Oh—ultraviolet. Scent-analyzers. It's a test for ingenuity—"
"Our customers are not ingenious. They don't want to be. They want a change and a vacation from routine, hard work—or easy work, as the case may be—they want a rest. They don't want to beat their brains working out methods to catch a thing that moves faster than a pixy, nor do they want to chase a critter that's out of sight before it even gets there. You are a vurra clever man, Mr. Gallegher, but it begins to look as though Jonas's insurance is my best bet after all."
"Now wait—"
Mackenzie pursed his lips. "I'll admit the beasties may—I say may—have some possibilities. But what good is quarry that can't be caught? Perhaps if you'd work out a way to capture these other-worldly animals of yours, we might do business. At present, I willna buy a pig in a poke."
"I'll find a way," Gallegher promised wildly. "But I can't do it in jail."
"Ah. I am a little irritated with you, Mr. Gallegher. You tricked me into believing you had solved our problem. Which you havena done—yet. Consider the thought of jail. Your adrenalin may stimulate your brain into working out a way to trap these animals of yours. Though, even so, I can make no rash promises—"
Murdoch Mackenzie grinned at Gallegher and went out, closing the door softly behind him. Gallegher began to dine off his finger nails.
-
"Men can know the nature of things," Joe said, with an air of solid conviction.
At that point matters were complicated even further by the appearance, on the televisor screen, of a gray-haired man who announced that one of Gallegher's checks had just bounced. Three hundred and fifty credits, the man said, and how about it?
Gallegher looked dazedly at the identification card on the screen. "You're with United Cultures? What's that?"
The gray-haired man said silkily, "Biological and medical supplies and laboratories, Mr. Gallegher."
"What did I order from you?"
"We have a receipt for six hundred pounds of Vitaplasm, first grade. We made delivery within an hour."
"And when—"
The gray-haired man went into more detail. Finally Gallegher made a few lying promises and turned from the blanking screen. He looked wildly around the lab.
"Six hundred pounds of artificial protoplasm," he murmured. "Ordered by Gallegher Plus. He's got delusions of economic grandeur."
"It was delivered," Joe said. "You signed the receipt, the night Grandpa and Jonas Harding disappeared."
"But what could I do with the stuff? It's used for plastic surgery and for humano-prosthesis. Artificial limbs and stuff. It's cultured cellular tissue, this Vitaplasm. Did I use it to make some animals? That's biologically impossible. I think. How could I have molded Vitaplasm into a little brown animal that's invisible? What about the brain and the neural structure? Joe, six hundred pounds of Vitaplasm has simply disappeared. Where has it gone?"
But Joe was silent.
-
Hours later Gallegher was furiously busy. "The trick is," he explained to Joe, "to find out all I can about those critters. Then maybe I can tell where they came from and how I got 'em. Then perhaps I can discover where Grandpa and Harding went. Then—"
"Why not sit down and think about it?"
"That's the difference between us. You've got no instinct of self-preservation. You could sit down and think while a chain reaction took place in your toes and worked up, but not me. I'm too young to die. I keep thinking of Reading Gaol. I need a drink. If I could only get high, my demon subconscious could work out the whole problem for me. Is that little brown animal around?"
"No," Joe said.
"Then maybe I can steal a drink." Gallegher exploded, after an abortive attempt that ended in utter failure: "Nobody can move that fast."
"Accelerated metabolism. It must have smelled alcohol. Or perhaps it has additional senses. Even I can scarcely varish it."
"If I mixed kerosene with the whisky, maybe the dipsomaniacal little monster wouldn't like it. Still, neither would I. Ah, well. Back to the mill," Gallegher said, as he tried reagent after reagent on the blue-eyed dynamo, without any effect at all.
"Men can know the nature of things." Joe said irritatingly.
"Shut up. I wonder if I could electroplate this creature? That would immobilize it, all right. But it's immobilized already. How does it eat?"
"Logically, I'd say osmosis."
" Very likely. Osmosis of what?"
Joe clicked irritatedly. "There are dozens of ways you could solve your problem. Instrumentalism. Determinism. Vitalism. Work from a posteriori to a priori. It's perfectly obvious to me that you've solved the problem Adrenals, Incorporated, set you."
"I have?"
"Certainly."
"How?"
"Very simple. Men can know the nature of things."
"Will you stop repeating that outmoded basic and try to be useful? You're wrong, anyway. Men can know the nature of things by experiment and reason combined!"
Joe said: "Ridiculous. Philosophical incompetence. If you can't prove your point by logic, you've failed. Anybody who has to depend on experiment is beneath contempt."
"Why should I sit here arguing philosophical concepts with a robot?" Gallegher demanded of no one in particular. "How would you like me to demonstrate the fact that ideation is dependent on your having a radioatomic brain that isn't scattered all over the floor?"
"Kill me, then," Joe said. "It's your loss and the world's. Earth will be a poorer place when I die. But coercion means nothing to me. I have no instinct of self-preservation."
"Now look," Gallegher said, trying a new tack, "if you know the answer, why not tell me? Demonstrate that wonderful logic of yours. Convince me without having to depend on experiment. Use pure reason."
"Why should I want to convince you? I'm convinced. And I'm so beautiful and perfect that I can achieve no higher glory than to admire me."
"Narcissus," Gallegher snarled. "You're a combination of Narcissus and Nietzsche's Superman."
"Men can know the nature of things," Joe said.
-
The next development was a subpoena for the transparent robot. T
he legal machinery was beginning to move, an immensely complicated gadget that worked on a logic as apparently twisted as Joe's own. Gallegher himself, it seemed, was temporarily inviolate, through some odd interpretation of jurisprudence. But the State's principle was that the sum of the parts was equal to the whole. Joe was classified as one of the parts, the total of which equaled Gallegher. Thus the robot found itself in court, listening to a polemic with impassive scorn.
Gallegher, flanked by Murdoch Mackenzie and a corps of attorneys, was with Joe. This was an informal hearing. Gallegher didn't pay much attention; he was concentrating on finding a way to put the bite on the recalcitrant robot, who knew all the answers but wouldn't talk. He had been studying the philosophers, with an eye toward meeting Joe on his own ground, but so far had succeeded only in acquiring a headache and an almost unendurable longing for a drink. Even out of his laboratory, though, he remained Tantalus. The invisible little brown animal followed him around and stole his liquor.
One of Mackenzie's lawyers jumped up. "I object," he said. There was a brief wrangle as to whether Joe should be classified as a witness or as Exhibit a. If the latter, the subpoena had been falsely served. The Justice pondered.
"As I see it," he declared, "the question is one of determinism versus voluntarism. If this ... ah ... robot has free will—"
"Ha!" Gallegher said, and was shushed by an attorney. He subsided rebelliously.
"—then it, or he, is a witness. But, on the other hand, there is the possibility that the robot, in acts of apparent choice, is the mechanical expression of heredity and past environment. For heredity read ... ah ... initial mechanical basics."
"Whether or not the robot is a rational being, Mr. Justice, is beside the point," the prosecutor put in.
"I do not agree. Law is based on res—"
Joe said: "Mr. Justice, may I speak?"
"Your ability to do so rather automatically gives you permission," the Justice said, studying the robot in a baffled way. "Go ahead."
Joe had seemingly found the connection between law, logic, and philosophy. He said happily: "I've figured it all out. A thinking robot is a rational being. I am a thinking robot—therefore I am a rational being."