Return to Otherness (1962) SSC

by Henry Kuttner

  “Nick, are you mad?” Erika demanded, revolted.

  “- and six jiggers of honey,” Martin went on placidly. “Stir, don’t shake. Never shake a Helena Glinska. Keep it well chilled, and -”

  “Miss Ashby, we are very busy,” St. Cyr broke in importantly, making shooing motions toward the door. “Not now. Sorry. You interrupt. Go at once.”

  “- better add six more jiggers of honey,” Martin was heard to add contemplatively into the mike. “And then send it over immediately. Drop everything else, and get it here within sixty seconds. There’s a bonus for you if you do. Okay? Good. See to it.”

  He tossed the microphone casually at St. Cyr.

  Meanwhile, Erika had closed in on Tolliver Watt.

  “I’ve just come from talking to Gloria Eden,” she said, “and she’s willing to do a one-picture deal with Summit if I okay it. But I’m not going to okay it unless you release Nick Martin from his contract, and that’s flat.”

  Watt showed pleased surprise.

  “Well, we might get together on that,” he said instantly, for he was a fan of Miss Eden’s and for a long tune had yearned to star her in a remake of Vanity Fair. “Why didn’t you bring her along? We could have -”

  “Nonsense!” St. Cyr shouted. “Do not discuss this matter yet, Tolliver.”

  “She’s down at Laguna,” Erika explained. “Be quiet, St. Cyr! I won’t -”

  A knock at the door interrupted her. Martin hurried to open it and as he had expected encountered a waiter with a tray.

  “Quick work,” he said urbanely, accepting the huge, coldly sweating Napoleon in a bank of ice. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  St. Cyr’s booming shouts from behind him drowned out whatever remark the waiter may have made as he received a bill from Martin and withdrew, looking nauseated.

  “No, no, no, no,” St. Cyr was roaring. “Tolliver, we can get Gloria and keep this writer too, not that he is any good, but I have spent already thirteen weeks training him in the St. Cyr approach. Leave it to me. In Mixo-Lydia we handle -”

  Erika’s attractive mouth was opening and shutting, her voice unheard in the uproar. St. Cyr could keep it up indefinitely, as was well known in Hollywood. Martin sighed, lifted the brimming Napoleon and sniffed delicately as he stepped backward toward his chair. When his heel touched it, he tripped with the utmost grace and savoir-faire, and very deftly emptied the Helena Glinska, ale, honey, creme de menthe, ice and all, over St. Cyr’s capacious front.

  St. Cyr’s bellow broke the microphone.

  Martin had composed his invention carefully. The nauseous brew combined the maximum elements of wetness, coldness, stickiness and pungency.

  The drenched St. Cyr, shuddering violently as the icy beverage deluged his legs, snatched out his handkerchief and mopped in vain. The handkerchief merely stuck to his trousers, glued there by twelve jiggers of honey. He reeked of peppermint.

  “I suggest we adjourn to the commissary,” Martin said fastidiously. “In some private booth we can go on with this discussion away from the - the rather overpowering smell of peppermint.”

  “In Mixo-Lydia,” St. Cyr gasped, sloshing in his shoes as he turned toward Martin, “in Mixo-Lydia we throw to the dogs - we boil in oil - we -”

  “And next time,” Martin said, “please don’t joggle my elbow when I’m holding a Helena Glinska. It’s most annoying.”

  St. Cyr drew a mighty breath, rose to his full height - and then subsided. St. Cyr at the moment looked like a Keystone Kop after the chase sequence, and knew it.

  Even if he killed Martin now, the element of classic tragedy would be lacking. He would appear in the untenable position of Hamlet murdering his uncle with custard pies.

  “Do nothing until I return!” he commanded, and with a final glare at Martin plunged moistly out of the theater.

  The door crashed shut behind him. There was silence for a moment except for the soft music from the overhead screen which DeeDee had caused to be turned on again, so that she might watch her own lovely form flicker in dimmed images through pastel waves, while she sang a duet with Dan Dailey about sailors, mermaids and her home in far Atlantis.

  “And now,” said Martin, turning with quiet authority to Watt, who was regarding him with a baffled expression, “I want a word with you.”

  “I can’t discuss your contract till Raoul gets back,” Watt said quickly.

  “Nonsense,” Martin said in a firm voice. “Why should St. Cyr dictate your decisions? Without you, he couldn’t turn out a box-office success if he had to. No, be quiet, Erika. I’m handling this, my pretty creature.”

  Watt rose to his feet. “Sorry, I can’t discuss it,” he said. “St. Cyr pictures make money, and you’re an inexperien -”

  “That’s why I see the true situation so clearly,” Martin said. “The trouble with you is you draw a line between artistic genius and financial genius. To you, it’s merely routine when you work with the plastic medium of human minds, shaping them into an Ideal Audience. You are an ecological genius, Tolliver Watt! The true artist controls his environment, and gradually you, with a master’s consummate skill, shape that great mass of living, breathing humanity into a perfect audience …”

  “Sorry,” Watt said, but not brusquely. “I really have no time - ah -”

  “Your genius has gone long enough unrecognized,” Martin said hastily, letting admiration ring in his golden voice. “You assume that St. Cyr is your equal. You give him your own credit titles. Yet in your own mind you must have known that half the credit for his pictures is yours. Was Phidias non-commercial? Was Michaelangelo? Commercialism is simply a label for functionalism, and all great artists produce functional art. The trivial details of Rubens’ masterpieces were filled in by assistants, were they not? But Rubens got the credit, not his hirelings. The proof of the pudding’s obvious. Why?” Cunningly gauging his listener, Martin here broke off.

  “Why?” Watt asked.

  “Sit down,” Martin urged. “I’ll tell you why. St. Cyr’s pictures make money, but you’re responsible for their molding into the ideal form, impressing your character-matrix upon everything and everyone at Summit Studios …”

  Slowly Watt sank into his chair. About his ears the hypnotic bursts of Disraelian rodomontade thundered compellingly. For Martin had the man hooked. With unerring aim he had at the first try discovered Watt’s weakness - the uncomfortable feeling in a professionally arty town that money-making is a basically contemptible business. Disraeli had handled tougher problems in his day. He had swayed parliaments.

  Watt swayed, tottered - and fell. It took about ten minutes, all in all. By the end of that time, dizzy with eloquent praise of his economic ability Watt had realized that while St. Cyr might be an artistic genius, he had no business interfering in the plans of an economic genius. Nobody told Watt what to do when economics were concerned.

  “You have the broad vision that can balance all possibilities and show the right path with perfect clarity,” Martin said glibly. “Very well. You wish Eden. You feel - do you not? - that I am unsuitable material. Only geniuses can change their plans with instantaneous speed … When will my contract release be ready?”

  “What?” said Watt, in a swimming, glorious daze. “Oh. Of course. Hm-m. Your contract release. Well, now -”

  “St. Cyr would stubbornly cling to past errors until Summit goes broke,” Martin pointed out. “Only a genius like Tolliver Watt strikes when the iron is hot, when he sees a chance to exchange failure for success, a Martin for an Eden.”

  “Hm-m,” Watt said. “Yes. Very well, then.” His long face grew shrewd. “Very well, you get your release - after I’ve signed Eden.”

  “There you put your finger on the heart of the matter,” Martin approved, after a very brief moment of somewhat dashed thought. “Miss Eden is still undecided. If you left the transaction to somebody like St. Cyr, say, it would be botched. Erika, you have your car here? How quickly could you drive Tolliver Watt to Laguna? He’s the only
person with the skill to handle this situation.”

  “What situa - oh, yes. Of course, Nick. We could start right away.”

  “But -” Watt said.

  The Disraeli-matrix swept on into oratorical periods that made the walls ring. The golden tongue played arpeggios with logic.

  “I see,” the dazed Watt murmured, allowing himself to be shepherded toward the door. “Yes, yes, of course. Then - suppose you drop over to my place tonight, Martin. After I get the Eden signature, I’ll have your release prepared. Hm-m. Functional genius …” His voice fell to a low, crooning mutter, and he moved quietly out of the door.

  Martin laid a hand on Erika’s arm as she followed him.

  “Wait a second,” he said. “Keep him away from the studio until we get the release. St. Cyr can still outshout me any time. But he’s hooked. We -”

  “Nick,” Erika said, looking searchingly into his face. “What’s happened?”

  “Tell you tonight,” Martin said hastily, hearing a distant bellow that might be the voice of St. Cyr approaching. “When I have time I’m going to sweep you off your feet. Did you know that I’ve worshipped you from afar all my life? But right now, get Watt out of the way. Hurry!”

  Erika cast a glance of amazed bewilderment at him as he thrust her out of the door. Martin thought there was a certain element of pleasure in the surprise.

  “Where is Tolliver?” The loud, annoyed roar of St. Cyr made Martin wince. The director was displeased, it appeared, because only in Costumes could a pair of trousers be found large enough to fit him. He took it as a personal affront. “What have you done with Tolliver?” he bellowed.

  “Louder, please,” Martin said insolently. “I can’t hear you.”

  “DeeDee,” St. Cyr shouted, whirling toward the lovely star, who hadn’t stirred from her rapturous admiration of DeeDee in technicolor overhead. “Where is Tolliver?” Martin started. He had quite forgotten DeeDee.

  “You don’t know, do you DeeDee?” he prompted quickly.

  “Shut up,” St. Cyr snapped. “Answer me, you -” He added a brisk polysyllable in Mixo-Lydian, with the desired effect. DeeDee wrinkled her flawless brow.

  “Tolliver went away, I think. I’ve got it mixed up with the picture. He went home to meet Nick Martin, didn’t he?”

  “See?” Martin interrupted, relieved. “No use expecting DeeDee to -”

  “But Martin is here!” St. Cyr shouted. “Think, think!”

  “Was the contract release in the rushes?” DeeDee asked vaguely.

  “A contract release?” St. Cyr roared. “What is this? Never will I permit it, never, never, never! DeeDee, answer me - where has Watt gone?”

  “He went somewhere with that agent,” DeeDee said. “Or was that in the rushes too?”

  “But where, where, where?”

  “They went to Atlantis,” DeeDee announced with an air of faint triumph.

  “No!” shouted St. Cyr. “That was the picture! The mermaid came from Atlantis, not Watt!”

  “Tolliver didn’t say he was coming from Atlantis,” DeeDee murmured, unruffled. “He said he was going to Atlantis. Then he was going to meet Nick Martin at his house tonight and give him his contract release.”

  “When?” St. Cyr demanded furiously. “Think, DeeDee? What time did -”

  “DeeDee,” Martin said, stepping forward with suave confidence, “you can’t remember a thing, can you?” But DeeDee was too subnormal to react even to a Disraeli-matrix. She merely smiled placidly at him.

  “Out of my way, you writer!” roared St. Cyr, advancing upon Martin. “You will get no contract release! You do not waste St. Cyr’s time and get away with it! This I will not endure. I fix you as I fixed Ed Cassidy!”

  Martin drew himself up and froze St. Cyr with an insolent smile. His hand toyed with an imaginary monocle. Golden periods were hanging at the end of his tongue. There only remained to hypnotize St. Cyr as he had hypnotized Watt. He drew a deep breath to unleash the floods of his eloquence -

  And St. Cyr, also too subhuman to be impressed by urbanity, hit Martin a clout on the jaw.

  It could never have happened in the British Parliament -

  When the robot walked into Martin’s office that evening, he, or it went directly to the desk, unscrewed the bulb from the lamp, pressed the switch, and stuck his finger into the socket. There was a crackling flash. ENIAC withdrew his finger and shook his metallic head violently.

  “I needed that,” he sighed. “I’ve been on the go all day, by the Kaldekooz time-scale. Paleolithic, Neolithic, Technological - I don’t even know what time it is. Well, how’s your ecological adjustment getting on?”

  Martin rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

  “Badly,” he said. “Tell me, did Disraeli, as Prime Minister, ever have any dealings with a country called Mixo-Lydia?”

  “I have no idea,” said the robot. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because my environment hauled back and took a poke at my jaw,” Martin said shortly.

  “Then you provoked it,” ENIAC countered. “A crisis - a situation of stress - always brings a man’s dominant trait to the fore, and Disraeli was dominantly courageous. Under stress, his courage became insolence. But he was intelligent enough to arrange his environment so insolence would be countered on the semantic level. Mixo-Lydia, eh? I place it vaguely, some billions of years ago, when it was inhabited by giant white apes. Or - oh, now I remember. It’s an encysted medieval survival, isn’t it?”

  Martin nodded.

  “So is this movie studio,” the robot said. “Your trouble is that you’ve run up against somebody who’s got a better optimum ecological adjustment than you have. That’s it. This studio environment is just emerging from medievalism, so it can easily slip back into that plenum when an optimum medievalist exerts pressure. Such types caused the Dark Ages. Well, you’d better change your environment to a neo-technological one, where the Disraeli-matrix can be successfully pro-survival. In your era, only a few archaic social-encystments like this studio are feudalistic, so go somewhere else. It takes a feudalist to match a feudalist.”

  “But I can’t go somewhere else,” Martin complained. “Not without my contract release. I was supposed to pick it up tonight, but St. Cyr found out what was happening, and he’ll throw a monkey-wrench in the works if he has to knock me out again to do it. I’m due at Watt’s place now, but St. Cyr’s already there -”

  “Spare me the trivia,” the robot said, raising his hand. “As for this St. Cyr, if he’s a medieval character-type, obviously he’ll knuckle under only to a stronger man of his own kind.”

  “How would Disraeli have handled this?” Martin demanded.

  “Disraeli would never have got into such a situation in the first place,” the robot said unhelpfully. “The ecologizer can give you the ideal ecological differential, but only for your own type, because otherwise it wouldn’t be your optimum. Disraeli would have been a failure in Russia in Ivan’s time.”

  “Would you mind clarifying that?” Martin asked thoughtfully.

  “Certainly,” the robot said with great rapidity. “It all depends on the threshold-response-time of the memory-circuits hi the brain, if you assume the identity of the basic chromosome-pattern. The strength of neuronic activation varies in inverse proportion to the quantitative memory factor. Only actual experience could give you Disraeli’s memories, but your reactivity-thresholds have been altered until perception and emotional-indices approximate the Disraeli ratio.”

  “Oh,” Martin said. “But how would you, say, assert yourself against a medieval steam-shovel?”

  “By plugging my demountable brain into a larger steam-shovel,” ENIAC told him.

  Martin seemed pensive. His hand rose, adjusting an invisible monocle, while a look of perceptive imagination suddenly crossed his face.

  “You mentioned Russia in Ivan’s time,” he said. “Which Ivan would that be? Not, by any chance -?”

  “Ivan the Fourth. Very well adjusted to his en
vironment he was, too. However, enough of this chit-chat. Obviously you’ll be one of the failures in our experiment, but our aim is to strike an average, so if you’ll put the ecologizer on your -”

  “That was Ivan the Terrible, wasn’t it?” Martin interrupted. “Look here, could you impress the character-matrix of Ivan the Terrible on my brain?”

  “That wouldn’t help you a bit,” the robot said. “Besides, it’s not the purpose of the experiment. Now -”

  “One moment. Disraeli can’t cope with a medievalist like St. Cyr on his own level, but if I had Ivan the Terrible’s reactive thresholds, I’ll bet I could throw a bluff that might do the trick. Even though St. Cyr’s bigger than I am, he’s got a veneer of civilization … now wait. He trades on that. He’s always dealt with people who are too civilized to use his own methods. The trick would be to call his bluff. And Ivan’s the man who could do it.”

  “But you don’t understand.”

  “Didn’t everybody in Russia tremble with fear at Ivan’s name?”

  “Yes, in -”

  “Very well, then,” Martin said triumphantly. “You’re going to impress the character-matrix of Ivan the Terrible on my mind, and then I’m going to put the bite on St. Cyr the way Ivan would have done it. Disraeli’s simply too civilized. Size is a factor, but character’s more important. I don’t look like Disraeli, but people have been reacting to me as though I were George Arliss down to the spit-curl. A good big man can always lick a good little man. But St. Cyr’s never been up against the really uncivilized little man - one who’d gladly rip out an enemy’s heart with his bare hands.” Martin nodded briskly. “St. Cyr will back down - I’ve found that out. But it would take somebody like Ivan to make him stay all the way down.”

  “If you think I’m going to impress Ivan’s matrix on you, you’re wrong,” the robot said.

  “You couldn’t be talked into it?”

  “I,” said ENIAC, “am a robot, semantically adjusted. Of course you couldn’t talk me into it.”

  Perhaps not, Martin reflected, but Disraeli - hm-m. “Man is a machine.” Why, Disraeli was the one person in the world ideally fitted for robot-coercion. To him, men were machines - and what was ENIAC?