The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  Harnahan coughed rackingly and mumbled something. Somewhat to his surprise, he was still alive. He got up in time to see Van Damm staggering forward, holding the torch, and playing a blazing flame toward the gadget, which made no attempt to escape. It glowed crimson—and then began to melt. Globules of copper and other metals dripped down on the floor. With a dull thump the gadget—what was left of it—dropped, harmless and insensate.

  Van Damm turned off the torch. The low buzzing had stopped.

  "Dangerous," he said, looking wildly toward Harnahan. "Got it just in time. You hurt?"

  "Just in time!" Harnahan said, pointing. "Look at that!"

  Van Damm looked. Thor II had suffered the fate of Thor I. A broken machine, he lay half melted near the door.

  Harnahan drew his arm across his cheek and looked at the blackened stain. He leaned on the desk and a slow grin grew on his face. Van Damm watched in amazement.

  "What the devil—"

  Harnahan was laughing almost hysterically. "It ... it worked!" he managed to get out. "What a ... what a shock for the Company! The gadget—worked!"

  -

  Van Damm gripped the engineer's shoulders and shook him. Harnahan sobered, though a wry smile still quirked his lips. "O.K.," he said at last. "I ... I couldn't help it. It's so funny!"

  "What is?" the other demanded. "If you can see something funny about this—"

  Harnahan gulped. "It—well, it's a deadlock. Haven't you guessed yet what the gadget was for?"

  "Death ray of some sort?"

  "You missed the point of what Thor II said—that there was only one way to tell whether the gadget could do what it was intended to do."

  "Well? What was that?"

  Harnahan giggled feebly. "Logic—use logic. Remember the first robots we made? They were all sabotaged, so we built supposedly indestructible ones of duraloy. And the robots were made to solve problems—that was their reason for existence. Everything went along swell until those robots went crazy."

  "I know that," Van Damm said impatiently. "What's it got to do with the gadget?"

  "They went crazy," Harnahan said, "because they were faced with an insurmountable problem. That's elementary psychology. Thor I faced the same problem, but he solved it."

  Slow realization was dawning on Van Damm's face. "Indestructible—no!"

  "Sure! Sooner or later, all the duraloy robots thought of a perfectly obvious problem for them—how they themselves could be destroyed. We made 'em that way, so they'd more or less think for themselves. That was the only way to make them satisfactory thinking machines. The robots buried out in the cement faced the problem of their own destruction, couldn't solve it, and went crazy. Thor I was cleverer. He found the answer. But there was only one possible way to test it—on himself!"

  "But ... Thor II—"

  "The same thing. He knew the gadget had worked on Thor I, but he didn't know whether it would work on him. Robots are coldly logical. They have no instinct of self-preservation. Thor II simply tried out the gadget to see if it would solve his problem." Harnahan swallowed. "It did."

  "What are we going to tell Twill?" Van Damm asked blankly.

  "What can we tell him? The truth—that we've run into a blind alley. The only usable robots we can make are duraloy thinking machines, and they'll destroy themselves as soon as they begin to wonder if they're really indestructible. Each one we make will need the ultimate proof—self-destruction. If we cut down their intelligence, they're useless. If we don't use duraloy, Luxingham or some other company will sabotage 'em. Robots are wonderful, sure; but they're born with suicidal tendencies. Van Damm, I very much fear we must tell Twill that the Company's run up a blind alley.

  The troubleshooter groaned. "So that was the real purpose of the gadget, eh? And all those other manifestations were just by-products of an uncontrolled machine."

  "Yeah—" Harnahan moved toward the door, skirting the half-melted remains of the robot. He looked down sadly on the ruined creature and sighed.

  "Some day, maybe, we can do better." But right now it seems to be a deadlock. We shouldn't have called him Thor," Harnahan added, as he went out into the hall. "Somehow, I think Achilles would have been more appropriate."

  The End

  THE TWONKY

  Astounding Science-Fiction - September 1942

  with Henry Kuttner

  (as by Lewis Padgett)

  The skilled—but very!—workman was a bit confused, and, in his daze, made something a little out of—time. Quite a little something, too. It looked like a standard radio, but unlike most of those complex gadgets, this one would wash the dishes!

  -

  The turnover at Mideastern Radio was so great that Mickey Lloyd couldn't keep track of his men. It wasn't only the draft; employees kept quitting and going elsewhere, at a higher salary. So when the big-headed little man in overalls wandered vaguely out of a storeroom, Lloyd took one look at the brown dungaree suit—company provided—and said mildly, "The whistle blew half an hour ago. Hop to work."

  "Work-k-k?" The man seemed to have trouble with the word.

  Drunk? Lloyd, in his capacity as foreman, couldn't permit that. He flipped away his cigarette, walked forward, and sniffed. No, it wasn't liquor. He peered at the badge on the man's overalls.

  "Two-oh-four, m-mm. Are you new here?"

  "New. Huh?" The man rubbed a rising bump on his forehead. He was an odd-looking little chap, bald as a vacuum tube, with a pinched, pallid face and tiny eyes that held dazed wonder.

  "Come on, Joe. Wake up!" Lloyd was beginning to sound impatient. "You work here, don't you?"

  "Joe," said the man thoughtfully. "Work. Yes, I work. I make them." His words ran together oddly, as though he had a cleft palate.

  With another glance at the badge, Lloyd gripped Joe's arm and ran him through the assembly room. "Here's your place. Hop to it. Know what to do?"

  The other drew his scrawny body erect. "I am—expert," he remarked. "Make them better than Ponthwank."

  "O.K.," Lloyd said. "Make 'em, then." And he went away.

  The man called Joe hesitated, nursing the bruise on his head. The overalls caught his attention, and he examined them wonderingly. Where—oh, yes. They had been hanging in the room from which he had first emerged. His own garments had, naturally, dissipated during the trip—what trip?

  Amnesia, he thought. He had fallen from the ... the something ... when it slowed down and stopped. How odd this huge, machine-filled barn looked. It struck no chord of remembrance.

  Amnesia, that was it. He was a worker. He made things. As for the unfamiliarity of his surroundings, that meant nothing. He was still dazed. The clouds would lift from his mind presently. They were beginning to do that already.

  Work. Joe scuttled around the room, trying to goad his faulty memory. Men in overalls were doing things. Simple, obvious things. But how childish—how elemental! Perhaps this was a kindergarten.

  After a while Joe went out into a stock room and examined some finished models of combination radio-phonographs. So that was it. Awkward and clumsy, but it wasn't his place to say so. No. His job was to make Twonkies.

  Twonkies? The name jolted his memory again. Of course he knew how to make Twonkies. He'd made them all his life—had been specially trained for the job. Now they were using a different model of Twonky, but what the hell! Child's play for a clever workman.

  Joe went back into the shop and found a vacant bench. He began to build a Twonky. Occasionally he slipped off and stole the material he needed. Once, when he couldn't locate any tungsten, he hastily built a small gadget and made it.

  His bench was in a distant corner, badly lighted, though it seemed quite bright to Joe's eyes. Nobody noticed the console that was swiftly growing to completion there. Joe worked very, very fast. He ignored the noon whistle, and, at quitting time, his task was finished. It could, perhaps, stand another coat of paint—it lacked the Shimmertone of a standard Twonky. But none of the others had Shimmertone. Joe sighed,
crawled under the bench, looked in vain for a relaxopad, and went to sleep on the floor.

  A few hours later he woke up. The factory was empty. Odd! Maybe the working hours had changed. Maybe—Joe's mind felt funny. Sleep had cleared away the mists of amnesia, if such it had been, but he still felt dazed.

  Muttering under his breath, he sent the Twonky into the stock room and compared it with the others. Superficially it was identical with a console radio-phonograph combination of the latest model. Following the pattern of the others, Joe had camouflaged and disguised the various organs and reactors.

  He went back into the shop. Then the last of the mists cleared from his mind. Joe's shoulders jerked convulsively.

  "Great Snell!" he gasped. "So that was it! I ran into a temporal snag!"

  With a startled glance around, he fled to the storeroom from which he had first emerged. The overalls he took off and returned to their hook. After that, Joe went over to a corner, felt around in the air, nodded with satisfaction, and seated himself on nothing, three feet above the floor. Then Joe vanished.

  -

  "Time," said Kerry Westerfield, "is curved. Eventually it gets back to the same place where it started. That's duplication." He put his feet up on a conveniently outjutting rock of the chimney and stretched luxuriously. From the kitchen Martha made clinking noises with bottles and glasses.

  "Yesterday at this time I had a Martini," Kerry said. "The time curve indicates that I should have another one now. Are you listening, angel?"

  "I'm pouring," said the angel distantly.

  "You get my point, then. Here's another. Time describes a spiral instead of a circle. If you call the first cycle 'a,' the second one's 'a plus 1'—see? Which means a double Martini tonight."

  "I know where that would end," Martha remarked, coming into the spacious, oak-raftered living room. She was a small, dark-haired woman with a singularly pretty face and a figure to match. Her tiny gingham apron looked slightly absurd in combination with slacks and silk blouse. "And they don't make infinity-proof gin. Here's your Martini." She did things with the shaker and manipulated glasses.

  "Stir slowly," Kerry cautioned. "Never shake. Ah—that's it." He accepted the drink and eyed it appreciatively. Black hair, sprinkled with gray, gleamed in the lamplight as he sipped the Martini. "Good. Very good."

  Martha drank slowly and eyed her husband. A nice guy, Kerry Westerfield. He was forty-odd, pleasantly ugly, with a wide mouth and an occasional sardonic gleam in his gray eyes as he contemplated life. They had been married for twelve years, and liked it.

  From outside, the late faint glow of sunset came through the windows, picking out the console cabinet that stood against the wall by the door. Kerry peered at it with appreciation.

  "A pretty penny," he remarked. "Still—"

  "What? Oh. The men had a tough time getting it up the stairs. Why don't you try it, Kerry?"

  "Didn't you?"

  "The old one was complicated enough," Martha said, in a baffled manner. "Gadgets. They confuse me. I was brought up on an Edison. You wound it up with a crank, and strange noises came out of a horn. That I could understand. But now—you push a button, and extraordinary things happen. Electric eyes, tone selections, records that get played on both sides, to the accompaniment of weird groanings and clickings from inside the console—probably you understand those things. I don't even want to. Whenever I play a Crosby record in a superdooper like that, Bing seems embarrassed."

  Kerry ate his olive. "I'm going to play some Sibelius." He nodded toward a table. "There's a new Crosby record for you. The latest."

  Martha wriggled happily. "Can I, maybe, huh?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "But you'll have to show me how."

  "Simple enough," said Kerry, beaming at the console. "Those babies are pretty good, you know. They do everything but think."

  "I wish it'd wash dishes," Martha remarked. She set down her glass, got up, and vanished into the kitchen.

  -

  Kerry snapped on a lamp near by and went over to examine the new radio, Mideastern's latest model, with all the new improvements. It had been expensive—but what the hell? He could afford it. And the old one had been pretty well shot.

  It was not, he saw, plugged in. Nor were there any wires in evidence—not even a ground. Something new, perhaps. Built-in antenna and ground. Kerry crouched down, looked for a socket, and plugged the cord into it.

  That done, he opened the doors and eyed the dials with every appearance of satisfaction. A beam of bluish light shot out and hit him in the eyes. From the depths of the console a faint, thoughtful clicking proceeded. Abruptly it stopped. Kerry blinked, fiddled with dials and switches, and bit at a fingernail.

  The radio said, in a distant voice, "Psychology pattern checked and recorded."

  "Eh?" Kerry twirled a dial. "Wonder what that was? Amateur station—no, they're off the air. Hm-m-m." He shrugged and went over to a chair beside the shelves of albums. His gaze ran swiftly over the titles and composers' names. Where was the "Swan of Tuolema"? There it was, next to "Finlandia." Kerry took down the album and opened it in his lap. With his free hand he extracted a cigarette from his pocket, put it between his lips, and fumbled for the matches on the table beside him. The first match he lit went out.

  He tossed it into the fireplace and was about to reach for another when a faint noise caught his attention. The radio was walking across the room toward him. A whiplike tendril flicked out from somewhere, picked up a match, scratched it beneath the table top—as Kerry had done—and held the flame to the man's cigarette.

  Automatic reflexes took over. Kerry sucked in his breath, and exploded in smoky, racking coughs. He bent double, gasping and momentarily blind.

  When he could see again, the radio was back in its accustomed place.

  Kerry caught his lower lip between his teeth. "Martha," he called.

  "Soup's on," her voice said.

  Kerry didn't answer. He stood up, went over to the radio, and looked at it hesitantly. The electric cord had been pulled out of its socket. Kerry gingerly replaced it.

  He crouched to examine the console's legs. They looked like finely finished wood. His exploratory hand told him nothing. Wood—hard and brittle.

  How in hell—

  "Dinner!" Martha called.

  Kerry threw his cigarette into the fireplace and slowly walked out of the room. His wife, setting a gravy boat in place, stared at him.

  "How many Martinis did you have?"

  "Just one," Kerry said in a vague way. "I must have dozed off for a minute. Yeah. I must have."

  "Well, fall to," Martha commanded. "This is the last chance you'll have to make a pig of yourself on my dumplings, for a week, anyway."

  Kerry absently felt for his wallet, took out an envelope, and tossed it toward his wife. "Here's your ticket, angel. Don't lose it."

  "Oh? I rate a compartment!" Martha thrust the pasteboard back into its envelope and gurgled happily. "You're a pal. Sure you can get along without me?"

  "Huh? Hm-m-m—I think so." Kerry salted his avocado. He shook himself and seemed to come out of a slight daze. "Sure, I'll be all right. You trot off to Denver and help Carol have her baby. It's all in the family."

  "We-ell, my only sister—" Martha grinned. "You know how she and Bill are. Quite nuts. They'll need a steadying hand just now."

  There was no reply. Kerry was brooding over a forkful of avocado. He muttered something about the Venerable Bede.

  "What about him?"

  "Lecture tomorrow. Every term we bog down on the Bede, for some strange reason. Ah, well."

  "Got your lecture ready?"

  Kerry nodded. "Sure." For eight years he had taught at the University, and he certainly should know the schedule by this time!

  -

  Later, over coffee and cigarettes, Martha glanced at her wrist watch. "Nearly train time. I'd better finish packing. The dishes—"

  "I'll do 'em." Kerry wandered after his wife into the b
edroom and made motions of futile helpfulness. After a while, he carried the bags down to the car. Martha joined him, and they headed for the depot.

  -

  The train was on time. Half an hour after it had pulled out, Kerry drove the car back into the garage, let himself into the house and yawned mightily. He was tired. Well, the dishes, and then beer and a book in bed.

  With a puzzled look at the radio, he entered the kitchen and did things with water and soap chips. The hall phone rang. Kerry wiped his hands on a dish towel and answered it.

  It was Mike Fitzgerald, who taught psychology at the University.

  "Hiya, Fitz."

  "Hiya. Martha gone?"

  "Yeah. I just drove her to the train."

  "Feel like talking, then? I've got some pretty good Scotch. Why not run over and gab a while?"

  "Like to," Kerry said, yawning again, "but I'm dead. Tomorrow's a big day. Rain check?"

  "Sure. I just finished correcting papers, and felt the need of sharpening my mind. What's the matter?"

  "Nothing. Wait a minute." Kerry put down the phone and looked over his shoulder, scowling. Noises were coming from the kitchen. What the hell!

  He went along the hall and stopped in the doorway, motionless and staring. The radio was washing the dishes.

  After a while he returned to the phone. Fitzgerald said, "Something?"

  "My new radio," Kerry told him carefully. "It's washing the dishes."

  Fitz didn't answer for a moment. His laugh was a bit hesitant. "Oh?"

  "I'll call you back," Kerry said, and hung up. He stood motionless for a while, chewing his lip. Then he walked back to the kitchen and paused to watch.

  The radio's back was toward him. Several limber tentacles were manipulating the dishes, expertly sousing them in hot, soapy water, scrubbing them with the little mop, dipping them into the rinse water, and then stacking them neatly in the metal rack. Those whiplashes were the only sign of unusual activity. The legs were apparently solid.

  "Hey!" Kerry said.

  There was no response.

  He sidled around till he could examine the radio more closely. The tentacles emerged from a slot under one of the dials. The electric cord was dangling. No juice, then. But what—Kerry stepped back and fumbled out a cigarette. Instantly the radio turned, took a match from its container on the stove, and walked forward. Kerry blinked, studying the legs. They couldn't be wood. They were bending as the ... the thing moved, elastic as rubber. The radio had a peculiar sidling motion unlike anything else on earth.