Gallegher gulped.
Smeith nodded at him encouragingly. “You did my job for me, you know. I can begin construction - and excavation - tomorrow. Without bothering to get a trucking permit, either.”
Hopper’s teeth showed. “The devil with the money! I’m going to teach this man a lesson! My time is worth plenty, and he’s completely upset my schedule. Options, scouts - I’ve gone ahead on the assumption that he could do what I paid him for, and now he blandly thinks he can wiggle out. Well, Mr. Gallegher, you can’t. You failed to observe that summons you were handed today, which makes you legally liable to certain penalties - and you’re going to suffer them, Dammit!”
Smeith looked around. “But - I’ll stand good for Mr. Gallegher. I’ll reimburse -”
“No!” Hopper snapped.
“The man says no,” Gallegher murmured. “It’s just my heart’s blood he wants. Malevolent little devil, isn’t he?”
“You drunken idiot!” Hopper snarled. “Take him to the jail, officers. Now!”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Gallegher,” Smeith encouraged. “I’ll have you out in no time. I can pull a few wires myself.”
Gallegher’s jaw dropped. He breathed hoarsely, in an asthmatic fashion, as he stared at Smeith, who drew back.
“Wires,” Gallegher whispered. “And a … a stereoscopic screen that can be viewed from any angle. You said - wires!”
“Take him away,” Hopper ordered brusquely.
Gallegher tried to wrench away from the officers holding him. “Wait a minute! One minute! I’ve got the answer now. It must be the answer. Hopper, I’ve done what you wanted - and you, too, commander. Let me go.”
Hopper sneered and jerked his thumb toward the door. Narcissus walked forward, cat-footed. “Shall I break their heads, chief?” he inquired gently. “I like blood. It’s a primary color.”
Commander Wall put down his coffee cup and rose, his voice sounding crisp and metallic. “All right, officers. Let Mr. Gallegher go.”
“Don’t do it,” Hopper insisted. “Who are you, anyway? A space captain!”
Wall’s weathered cheeks darkened. He brought out a badge in a small leather case. “Commander Wall,” he said. “Administrative Space Commission. You” - he pointed to Narcissus - “I’m deputizing you as a government agent, pro tern. If these officers don’t release Mr. Gallegher ha five seconds, go on and break their heads.”
But that was unnecessary. The Space Commission was big. It had the government behind it, and local officials were, by comparison, small potatoes. The officers hastily released Gallegher and tried to look as though they’d never touched him.
Hopper seemed ready to explode. “By what right do you interfere with justice, Commander?” he demanded.
“Right of priority. The government needs a device Mr. Gallegher has made for us. He deserves a hearing, at least.”
“He does not!”
Wall eyed Hopper coldly. “I think he said, a few moments ago, that he had fulfilled your commission also.”
“With that?” The big shot pointed to the machine. “Does that look like a stereoscopic screen?”
Gallegher said, “Get me an ultraviolet, Narcissus. Fluorescent.” He went to the device, praying that his guess was right. But it had to be. There was no other possible answer. Extract nitrogen from dirt or rock, extract all gaseous content, and you have inert matter.
Gallegher touched the switch. The machine started to sing “St. James Infirmary.” Commander Wall looked startled and slightly less sympathetic. Hopper snorted. Smeith ran to the window and ecstatically watched the long tentacles eat dirt, swirling madly in the moonlit pit below.
“The lamp, Narcissus.”
It was already hooked up on an extension cord. Gallegher moved it slowly about the machine. Presently he had reached the grooved wheel at the extreme end, farthest from the window.
Something fluoresced.
It fluoresced blue - emerging from the little valve in the metal cylinder, winding about the grooved wheel, and piling in coils on the laboratory floor. Gallegher touched the switch; as the machine stopped, the valve snapped shut, cutting off the blue, cryptic thing that emerged from the cylinder. Gallegher picked up the coil. As he moved the light away, it vanished. He brought the lamp closer - it reappeared.
“Here you are, commander,” he said. “Try it.”
Wall squinted at the fluorescence. “Tensile strength?”
“Plenty,” Gallegher said. “It has to be. Nonorganic, mineral content of solid earth, compacted and compressed into wire. Sure, it’s got tensile strength. Only you couldn’t support a ton weight with it.”
Wall nodded. “Of course not. It would cut through steel like a thread through butter. Fine, Mr. Gallegher. We’ll have to make tests -”
“Go ahead. It’ll stand up. You can run this wire around comets all you want, from one end of a spaceship to another, and it’ll never snap under stress. It’s too thin. It won’t - it can’t - be strained unevenly, because it’s too thin. A wire cable couldn’t do it. You needed flexibility that wouldn’t cancel tensile strength. The only possible answer was a thin, tough wire.”
The commander grinned. That was enough.
“We’ll have the routine tests,” he said. “Need any money now, though? We’ll advance anything you need, within reason - say up to ten thousand.”
Hopper pushed forward. “I never ordered wire, Gallegher. So you haven’t fulfilled my commission.”
Gallegher didn’t answer. He was adjusting his lamp. The wire changed from blue to yellow fluorescence, and then to red.
“This is your screen, wise guy,” Gallegher said. “See the pretty colors?”
“Naturally I see them! I’m not blind. But -”
“Different colors, depending on how many angstroms I use. Thus. Red. Blue. Red again. Yellow. And when I turn off the lamp -”
The wire Wall still held became invisible.
Hopper closed his mouth with a snap. He leaned forward, cocking his head to one side.
Gallegher said, “The wire’s got the same refractive index as air. I made it that way, on purpose.” He had the grace to blush slightly. Oh, well - he could buy Gallegher Plus a drink later.
“On purpose?”
“You wanted a stereoscopic screen which could be viewed from any angle without optical distortion. And in color - that goes without saying, these days. Well, here it is.”
Hopper breathed hard.
Gallegher beamed at him, “Take a box frame and string each square with this wire. Make a mesh screen. Do that on all four sides. String enough wires inside of the box. You have, in effect, an invisible cube, made of wire. All right. Use ultraviolet to project your film or your television, and you have patterns of fluorescence, depending on the angstrom strength patterns. In other words - a picture. A colored picture. A three-dimensional picture, because it’s projected onto an invisible cube. And, finally, one that can be viewed from any angle without distortion, because it does more than give an optical illusion of stereoscopic vision - it’s actually a three-dimensional picture. Catch?”
Hopper said feebly, “Yes. I understand. You … why didn’t you tell me this before?”
Gallegher changed the subject in haste. “I’d like some police protection, Commander Wall. A crook named Max Cuff has beef trying to get his hooks on this machine. His thugs kidnaped me this afternoon, and -”
“Interfering with government business, eh?” Wall said grimly. “I know these jackpot politicians. Max Cuff won’t trouble you any more - if I may use the visor?”
Smeith beamed at the prospect of Cuff getting it in the neck. Gallegher caught his eye. There was a pleasant, jovial gleam in it, and somehow, it reminded Gallegher to offer his guests drinks. Even the commander accepted this time, turning from his finished visor call to take the glass Narcissus handed him.
“Your laboratory will be under guard,” he told Gallegher. “So you’ll have no further trouble.”
He drank, stoo
d up, and shook Gallegher’s hand. “I must make my report. Good luck, and many thanks. We’ll call you tomorrow.”
He went out, after the two officers. Hopper, gulping his cocktail, said, “I ought to apologize. But it’s all water under the bridge, eh, old man?”
“Yeah,” Gallegher said. “You owe me some money.”
“Trench will mail you the check. And … uh … and -” His voice died away.
“Something?”
“N-nothing,” Hopper said, putting down his glass and turning green. “A little fresh air … urp!”
The door slammed behind him. Gallegher and Smeith eyed each other curiously.
“Odd,” Smeith said.
“A visitation from heaven, maybe,” Gallegher surmised. “The mills of the gods -”
“I see Hopper’s gone,” Narcissus said, appearing with fresh drinks.
“Yeah. Why?”
“I thought he would. I gave him a Mickey Finn,” the robot explained. “He never looked at me once. I’m not exactly vain, but a man so insensitive to beauty deserves a lesson. Now don’t disturb me. I’m going into the kitchen and practice dancing, and you can get your own liquor out of the organ. You may come and watch if you like.”
Narcissus spun out of the lab, his innards racing. Gallegher sighed.
“That’s the way it goes,” he said.
“What?”
“Oh, I dunno. Everything. I get, for example, orders for three entirely different things, and I get drunk and make a gadget that answers all three problems. My subconscious does things the easy way. Unfortunately, it’s the hard way for me - after I sober up.”
“Then why sober up?” Smeith asked cogently. “How does that liquor organ work?”
Gallegher demonstrated. “I feel lousy,” he confided. “What I need is either a week’s sleep, or else -”
“What?”
“A drink. Here’s how. You know - one item still worries me.”
“What, again?”
“The question of why that machine sings ‘St. James Infirmary’ when it’s operating.”
“It’s a good song,” Smeith said.
“Sure, but my subconscious works logically. Crazy logic, I’ll admit. Nevertheless -”
“Here’s how,” Smeith said.
Gallegher relaxed. He was beginning to feel like himself again. A warm, rosy glow. There was money in the bank. The police had been called off. Max Cuff was, no doubt, suffering for his sins. And a heavy thumping announced that Narcissus was dancing in the kitchen.
It was past midnight when Gallegher choked on a drink and said, “Now I remember!”
“Swmpmf,” Smeith said, startled. “What?”
“I feel like singing.”
“So what?”
“Well, I feel like singing ‘St. James Infirmary.’”
“Go right ahead,” Smeith invited.
“But not alone,” Gallegher amplified. “I always like to sing that when I get tight, but I figure it sounds best as a duet. Only I was alone when I was working on that machine.”
“Ah?”
“I must have built in a recording play-back,” Gallegher said, lost in a vast wonder at the mad resources and curious deviations of Gallegher Plus. “My goodness. A machine that performs four operations at once. It eats dirt, turns out a spaceship manual control, makes a stereoscopic nondistorting projection screen, and sings a duet with me. How strange it all seems.”
Smeith considered. “You’re a genius.”
“That, of course. Hm-m-m.” Gallegher got up, turned on the machine, and returned to perch atop Bubbles. Smeith, fascinated by the spectacle, went to hang on the window sill and watch the flashing tentacles eat dirt. Invisible wire spun out along the grooved wheel. The calm of the night was shattered by the more or less melodious tones of the “St. James Infirmary.”
Above the lugubrious voice of the machine rose a deeper bass, passionately exhorting someone unnamed to search the wild world over.
“But you’ll never find
Another sweet ma-a-ahn like me.”
Gallegher Plus was singing, too.
THE EGO MACHINE
Nicholas Martin looked up at the robot across the desk.
“I’m not going to ask what you want,” he said, in a low, restrained voice. “I already know. Just go away and tell St. Cyr I approve. Tell him I think it’s wonderful, putting a robot in the picture. We’ve had everything else by now, except the Rockettes. But clearly a quiet little play about Christmas among the Portuguese fishermen on the Florida coast must have a robot. Only, why not six robots? Tell him I suggest a baker’s dozen. Go away.”
“Was your mothers’ name Helena Glinska?” the robot asked, paying no heed to Martin’s remarks.
“It was not,” Martin said.
“Ah, then she must have been the Great Hairy One,” the robot murmured.
Martin took his feet off the desk and sat up slowly.
“It’s quite all right,” the robot said hastily. “You’ve been chosen for an ecological experiment, that’s all. But it won’t hurt. Robots are perfectly normal life forms where I come from, so you needn’t -”
“Shut up,” Martin said. “Robot indeed, you - you bit-player! This time St. Cyr has gone too far.” He began to shake slightly all over, with some repressed but strong emotion. The intercom box on the desk caught his eye, and he stabbed a finger at one of the switches. “Get me Miss Ashby! Right away!”
“I’m so sorry,” the robot said apologetically. “Have I made a mistake? The threshold fluctuations in the neurons always upset my mnemonic norm when I temporalize. Isn’t this a crisis-point in your life?”
Martin breathed hard, which seemed to confirm the robot’s assumption.
“Exactly,” it said. “The ecological imbalance approaches a peak that may destroy the life-form, unless … mm-m. Now either you’re about to be stepped on by a mammoth, locked in an iron mask, assassinated by helots, or - is this Sanskrit I’m speaking?” He shook his gleaming head. “Perhaps I should have got off fifty years ago, but I thought - sorry. Goodbye,” he added hastily as Martin raised an angry glare.
Then the robot lifted a finger to each corner of his naturally rigid mouth, and moved his fingers horizontally in opposite directions, as though sketching an apologetic smile.
“No, don’t go away,” Martin said. “I want you right here, where the sight of you can refuel my rage in case it’s needed. I wish to God I could get mad and stay mad,” he added plaintively, gazing at the telephone.
“Are you sure your mother’s name wasn’t Helena Glinska?” the robot asked. It pinched thumb and forefinger together between its nominal brows, somehow giving the impression of a worried frown.
“Naturally, I’m sure,” Martin snapped.
“You aren’t married yet, then? To Anastasia Zakharina-Koshkina?”
“Not yet or ever,” Martin replied succinctly. The telephone rang. He snatched it up.
“Hello, Nick,” said Erika Ashby’s calm voice. “Something wrong?”
Instantly the fires of rage went out of Martin’s eyes, to be replaced by a tender, rose-pink glow. For some years now he had given Erika, his very competent agent, ten per cent of his take. He had also longed hopelessly to give her approximately a pound of flesh - the cardiac muscle, to put it in cold, unromantic terms. Martin did not; he put it in no terms at all, since whenever he tried to propose marriage to Erika he was taken with such fits of modesty that he could only babble o’ green fields.
“Well,” Erika repeated. “Something wrong?”
“Yes,” Martin said, drawing a long breath. “Can St. Cyr make me marry somebody named Anastasia Zakharina-Koshkina?”
“What a wonderful memory you have,” the robot put in mournfully. “Mine used to be, before I started temporalizing. But even radioactive neurons won’t stand -”
“Nominally you’re still entitled to life, liberty, et cetera,” Erika said. “But I’m busy right now, Nick. Can’t it wait till I see yo
u?”
“When?”
“Didn’t you get my message?” Erika demanded.
“Of course not,” Martin said, angrily. “I’ve suspected for some time that all my incoming calls have to be cleared by St. Cyr. Somebody might try to smuggle in a word of hope, or possibly a file.” His voice brightened. “Planning a jailbreak?”
“Oh, this is outrageous,” Erika said. “Some day St. Cyr’s going to go too far -”
“Not while he’s got DeeDee behind him,” Martin said gloomily. Summit Studios would sooner have made a film promoting atheism than offend their top box-office star, DeeDee Fleming. Even Tolliver Watt, who owned Summit lock, stock and barrel, spent wakeful nights because St. Cyr refused to let the lovely DeeDee sign a long-term contract.
“Nevertheless, Watt’s no fool,” Erika said. “I still think we could get him to give you a contract release if we could make him realize what a rotten investment you are. There isn’t much time, though.”
“Why not?”
“I told you - off. Of course you don’t know. He’s leaving for Paris tomorrow morning.”
Martin moaned. “Then I’m doomed,” he said. “They’ll pick up my option automatically next week and I’ll never draw a free breath again. Erika, do something!”
“I’m going to,” Erika said. “That’s exactly what I want to see you about. Ah,” she added suddenly, “now I understand why St. Cyr stopped my message. He was afraid. Nick, do you know what we’ve got to do?”
“See Watt?” Nick hazarded unhappily. “But Erika -”
“See Watt alone,” Erika amplified.
“Not if St. Cyr can help it,” Nick reminded her.
“Exactly. Naturally St. Cyr doesn’t want us to talk to Watt privately. We might make him see reason. But this time, Nick, we’ve simply got to manage it somehow. One of us is going to talk to Watt while the other keeps St. Cyr at bay. Which do you choose?”
“Neither,” Martin said promptly.
“Oh, Nick! I can’t do the whole thing alone. Anybody’d think you were afraid of St. Cyr.”
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