They'd Rather Be Right

by Mark Clifton

  And Joe was at that period of growth when a young man walks down the streets of a strange city in the darkness, looking at the absorbing activities of all the little people about him from a mile-high vantage. Escaped, at last, from encircling arms, from the protections of childhood, a youth grows tall, taller than the buildings, broader than the city, swifter than the wind in his face.

  He is filled with an all encompassing love for mankind, with pity and compassion. Out of his sudden enormous strength he would do great things of purpose and import. He knows his debt for all the things civilization has given him, and he feels an overwhelming obligation to repay that debt. He must strive to lift man from his despair and purposelessness into realms of great achievement, enlightenment. Nothing less would be good enough for mankind.

  And for Joe the purpose of Bossy was to give, at last, psionic sight to man. How else could man take the evolutionary step necessary to lift him from the blind circling rut which, time after time through ensuing civilizations, returned man to his starting point?

  He had been sure that his own psionic ability could be put to such use. Along with a few others, he felt his obligation to use his total capacity for helping mankind.

  He crossed Market Street, conscious of being confined by the traffic cop’s angry whistle to their painted white lines, seeing in that the symbolism of cane tapping, and began to climb the hills of Powell Street.

  He had held the theory that since psionic rudiments were more apparent in lower animals and in children than in human adults, if all the debris of false training could be cleared away the esperance might develop. He did not know. He had never been able to discuss it with anyone—feel it with anyone, share comprehensive speculation.

  For communication implies shared comprehension. It was not only that they lacked vocabulary—they did not even know they lacked it. To a race of totally deaf would the musical instrument and the complex art of music develop? Even if they gained an abstract comprehension that there could be communication through tone modulation, what ridiculous developments would derive from their attempts to realize it! Logical and rational to them, perhaps, but ridiculous to one who could hear music.

  Strangely enough, they had the beginning tools. Einstein had given them the coordinate system, where truth was relative to its own framework but need not apply outside. But instead of being able to use that tool intimately and familiarly in daily life, they relegated it to some theoretical abstraction of light speed and universe size. Instead of seeing meaning, they saw only measurement.

  Their mathematics contained many valued calculi of symbolic logic, and, incredibly, they did not see how it could possibly apply to an understanding of one another, but rationalized it out of existence, useful only to some totally alien form of thought.

  They were like two-dimensional creatures who had achieved the mathematical symbolism of height, but who, by the very nature of their limitations, could see no way it might apply to their own world reality, and, therefore, denied it except as a plaything of abstraction.

  To one whose horizon was bounded by what he could touch with his outstretched cane, where was the vocabulary to give the picture of tumbling mountains piled back and back of one another, farther and farther away, blue and bluer to deep purple in the distance? If there were no organ to respond to light of any nature, how could one build up the concepts of modulation in color? Was it possible to communicate a symphony to a science which could only measure vibrations per second?

  Yet, in Bossy, the cane tapping proved valuable. He could not have built Bossy himself. He did not have the training. He might have accomplished other things through his psionic sight, but he could not have communicated them, and they would, therefore, have been valueless.

  To deal with the blind, Bossy had to be of the essence of the blind. To move a two-dimensional creature into a third dimension, there must be at least a two-dimensional entry. It is insufficient to scorn or rant at a two-dimensional creature because he cannot understand the concept of “pinnacle.” If his entire world—and all he values—is two-dimensional, what would be the value of a pinnacle to him, even if he could conceive it?

  In a nonpsi world he may speculate on the abstraction of the psi, but would he be willing to throw aside his cane tapping to gain it? Wouldn’t he regard all talk about it from the two-dimensional point of view, his scorn for the nonsense of height being his greatest handicap in reaching it?

  Bossy contained the two-dimensional entry. Bossy contained the most enticing of all baits—immortality!

  Was the exit three-dimensional? He did not know.

  What would a mind be like, governed solely by rational relationships of facts, free from all the debris of precedent, undeformed by pain, punishment, grief, repression—

  Suddenly Joe stopped in his tracks, appalled!

  What a terrible oversight!

  Man does not live by logic. He does not live according to the patterns of fact applied to fact. He does not live according to rationality, not even according to reason.

  He turned and started running swiftly down the hill. Frantically, he sent his probe ahead of him into the basement room, but he could sense nothing of its contents. Billings had fallen asleep in his chair, and in his mind there was only the residue of random impression that everything was all right. Naturally, or he wouldn’t have fallen asleep!

  What a terrible oversight! Bossy had been filled only with proved fact. Any conclusions drawn were carefully labeled as suspect, to be considered only as possibilities. All prejudice, assumption, fallacy had been carefully screened out by checking and double checking of the finest minds in the country over the past two years of her building back at Hoxworth.

  And everything had been fitted into the framework of material for a machine’s thinking. In submitting Mabel to the machine, they had overlooked the fact that a machine’s approach might not necessarily be the wisest for a human. A previous sentence flashed on Bossy’s screen returned to Joe’s memory.

  “My instruction, regarding therapy, were to find all tensions of any nature, and remove them.”

  That was what Bossy had done.

  Joe groaned aloud at their stupidity in giving such an order. He was passing St. Francis Hotel now, and had to slow his speed to keep from attracting attention. There were taxis, of course, but a taxi pulling into skid row at this time of night would surely attract too much attention. One does not take taxis to get to a two-bit flophouse.

  And it was only a few more blocks. As usual, the slum and the palace were closely adjacent, the one seeming to require the other.

  Again and again he sent his thoughts ahead, trying to wake the sleeping Billings through the urgency of his thought. But the old man’s weariness and two days of sleeplessness defeated him. He tried again to contact Mabel’s mind and found it no more responsive than Bossy.

  That was it, of course! Mabel’s mind, at this stage, was reacting in the valence of a machine.

  At Mission and New Montgomery, he turned south toward skid row. Ahead of him there was the stir of unusual activity. Although it was near two in the morning, there was a crowd of people gathered in a spot of light which streamed out from the open doors of a saloon. A squad car was parked nearby, but the two policemen standing beside it made no move to interfere in the excitement. This, in itself, was strange, for only the toughest were assigned to the skid row beats, and they did enjoy using their clubs whether called for or not.

  Cautiously, Joe stepped into the shadow of an alleyway, and sent an exploratory wave field ahead. At first there seemed to be little pattern in the jumble of impressions and stirred emotions. Then bit by bit, principally from the thoughts of a pair of young sailors, supplemented by the knowledge of the officers, Joe put the elements of the story together.

  The wagon had just carted off a woman to the City Jail. That, in itself, would have caused no more than passing interest on the shortline. But the woman had been very young. She had been beautiful. Even allowing for normal ex
aggeration in the sailors’ minds, she was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen.

  And she had been stark naked.

  She had come strolling off Howard Street. The sailors had just been coming out of the door, and the streaming light had caught her like a spotlight on a dark stage. They had been too stunned even to whistle. A cruising squad car, coming by at that moment, had almost crashed into a fire hydrant before it skidded to an astonished stop.

  One of the officers had thrown his own coat about her while they stood waiting for the wagon. She hadn’t spoken a word. She just stood there, looking from face to face, and smiling her strange, sweet smile.

  The wagon appeared shortly, and whisked her away. It was all routine. Yet the two officers did not climb back into their car. They stood there, watching the crowd, apparently waiting for it to disperse or grow unruly. But their expressions were far away. It was not the nudeness, as such, which remained in their minds. It was as if they, too, were still stunned at having seen, all at once, too much beauty.

  Even as Joe ran down the alley toward their basement quarters, he knew, with near certainty, it had been Mabel.

  At the foot of the stairwell, leading down from the street level, the outer door was open and swinging. He snapped its lock behind him, and ran through their living quarters into the workroom. Mabel’s couch was empty. Billings still sat in his chair beside the bed, his head slumped forward in sound sleep.

  Bossy was lighted, but silent. Her screen showed two words.

  “Problem solved.”

  CHAPTER X

  Dr. Eustace Fairfax, Consulting Psychiatrist to the San Francisco Police Department, gazed down his thin nose and transfixed the lieutenant with a glare, heightened by polished glasses, in which anger and incredulity were fiercely blended.

  “Do you mean to say,” he demanded, “that I have been called at this fantastic hour of the night to examine a…a…a routine case for the psycho ward?”

  “But this isn’t a routine case,” the harried lieutenant insisted. His own disbelief made him weak in his protestations.

  “Bah!” Dr. Fairfax tossed the police blotter across the desk. “I have never seen a more routine report: ‘…Nude young woman arrested, corner of Howard and New Montgomery—’ And you wake me up at three o’clock in the morning! The commissioner will hear of this!”

  “Wait, sir,” pleaded the lieutenant. “You don’t understand—” It was an unfortunate choice of words, for one does not tell a consulting psychiatrist that he does not understand.

  Dr. Fairfax, who had turned away and was starting out the door, whirled around.

  “And what is it I am incapable of understanding?” he asked, his words as brittle as flake ice.

  “This young woman isn’t really young,” the lieutenant began hesitantly. Then, overcoming his own doubts, he rushed on. “You see, according to the fingerprint records, this woman, Mabel Monohan, is actually sixty-eight years old!”

  “Then why in heaven’s name do you book her as a young woman?” the psychiatrist asked in extreme exasperation.

  “Well, the fact is…the Booking Officer thought…we all swear she wasn’t a day over twenty-one!”

  “Then you’ve made a mistake, that’s all.”

  “No sir, we didn’t make a mistake. The fingerprints checked in every particular, not just one print but all of them. We wired the prints to the FBI in Washington. They check there, too.”

  “Then the mistake was made when the prints were taken before.”

  The lieutenant began to get a little heated now. The efficiency of his department was being questioned.

  “Mabel Monohan,” he said firmly, “has been in and out of this jail for the last fifty years. She has been printed countless times. We called in some of the old-timers. They swear this girl looks like the Mabel they knew forty years ago, ah…from seeing her in jail, of course.”

  “That does it! I’ll call the commissioner the first thing in the morning. You may need the professional services of a psychiatrist around here, but not to examine the prisoners!”

  Dr. Fairfax’s ordinarily nasal voice had risen to a high whine under the stress of extreme anger. He was often angry at people because they contrarily refused to fit in nicely with his theories. And, of course, it was the people who were wrong. The theories had been advanced by the most Eminent Authorities, and proved by carefully selected case histories. His one satisfaction in life was that so many of the laws he had advocated to make people conform to these theories had been passed—despite strong opposition.

  Apparently more laws were needed. He jammed his hat on his head and stalked toward the door. The lieutenant hurried around the desk and caught him by the arm. And was shaken off.

  “Please, doctor,” the lieutenant begged, desperation bringing sudden firmness to his voice. “I think it is necessary you examine this woman tonight. I couldn’t reach the commissioner, he’s been on a three-day…he’s unavailable, but when he learns the facts I’m sure he’ll agree.”

  Apparently it broke through the psychiatrist’s indignation.

  “All right,” he agreed, as if he were following rule three and humoring a psychotic patient. “Inasmuch as I’m here, I might as well examine her. But it’s a clear case of fraud, or incompetence. I don’t need to see the prisoner to determine that!”

  He began to get a certain glow of anticipation. Apparently the girl was cleverly pulling some new stunt, and it would be his pleasure to expose her. Laymen simply didn’t understand these things; but it was always possible to rationalize symbolisms until one found them fitting into theory. He grew almost pleasant in satisfaction at being a master of intricate reasoning which none but a trained psychiatrist could grasp.

  He followed the lieutenant back to the desk. He pursed his lips and hm-m-m’d many times, implying that all of this was no mystery to him. He studied the photographs taken forty to fifty years ago, clucked over the poor photography, triumphantly pointed out the differences among the photographs, asked how they could be used to compare with the girl when they were not even identical among themselves, expressed his doubts of the whole science of fingerprinting, and thoroughly enjoyed setting the whole stage to prove his theory of fraud. Faithfully he followed the pattern of the scientist determined to interpret the facts to suit the theory.

  “Bring her in, lieutenant,” he said, when he was quite satisfied that he had encompassed everything in the thick dossier of Mabel Monohan. He settled himself into the lieutenant’s swivel chair.

  “In here, doctor?” the lieutenant wavered. “Wouldn’t you prefer to use the office of the regular psychiatrist, where they’ve got all the hocus-pocus—” He stopped, aghast at his slip.

  “I shall not need the usual equipment for testing, which you term…ah…hocus-pocus,” Dr. Fairfax said with asperity, and chalked it up in his memory for delayed retaliation. “This is a simple case of fraud, and I can handle it right here. Bring her in, and then you leave her alone with me. I am sure she will soon recognize my ability to see through her little game.”

  His first sight of Mabel confirmed his belief in fraud. There was simply no art of make-up which could turn an old woman into a young girl, whatever the female gender may wish to believe. This girl had no make-up on at all. And the bright glare of the overhead light showed that she was barely twenty-one. The rough prisoner clothes she wore did not fully conceal her youthful form.

  Dr. Fairfax dismissed the lieutenant and the matron with a curt nod.

  “Sit down,” he said coldly to Mabel, and nodded toward a chair. He smiled with faint scorn as he watched her touch the chair on its arm and back, and then seat herself.

  “I am sure you know what a chair is,” he said coldly.

  She looked at him with a little puzzlement in her fathomless blue eyes.

  “Chair:” she said, “Noun. English language. Movable seat with four legs and back, for one person, used by humans.”

  “So that’s the way it is to be,” he say cry
ptically. “What is your name?”

  “Mabel,” she answered.

  “Address?”

  She gave the address of her apartment off Howard Street. It checked with the dossier.

  “How many times have you been arrested, Mabel?”

  “Thirty-two,” she answered instantly.

  He blinked. This was a little out of pattern. She could easily get detailed information about the life of the old woman from other sources, but even the old woman would not remember so precisely how many times she had been arrested; not when there had been so many over such a long period of time.

  “How do you know that?” he shot the question at her abruptly, expecting to see the first signs of confusion when she realized she had gone too far; that she shouldn’t have known it so accurately or instantly.

  “It is a fact,” she said, without any confusion whatever.

  Well, whatever her little game, she was a cool one. This might prove interesting.

  “And I suppose you know all the facts,” he said, emphasizing his sarcasm.

  “About myself, yes,” she answered. “But I know only facts which have a relationship to me. I do not know all facts. Bossy says all facts are not yet known.”

  He blinked again. Somehow the name Bossy seemed familiar, but he could not place it. He seldom read the news, or followed any of the activities of run-of-the-mill people. Since they contrarily refused to fit theory, it was less bothersome simply to ignore them. Then the concept of Bossy clarified.

  Of course! It was a childish name for a cow! He marveled at his acumen, and stored it away. It would come in handy to trip her; revealed a farm background, which she couldn’t suspect him of knowing. Oh these silly people who thought they could fool a psychiatrist!

  He would get her to talking. She would make further slips, and then when he pointed them out to her, she would realize she was no match for him. The confession would be easy.