They'd Rather Be Right, or The Forever Machine

by Mark Clifton, Frank Riley

  Something was going to crack, give way, and soon.

  Kennedy was astute enough to realize that he, too, could go under in the deluge of resentment. First he telephoned, then risked coming over in person to the Margaret Kennedy Clinic to see the professors and Joe.

  Rumor must give way to fact. It must become known that Mabel was real. The public must be reassured. The government must be reassured. Science must be convinced.

  There must be another rejuvenation, and this time with full publicity at every step of the process.

  He was a little surprised that there was no objection. Both Hoskins and Billings seemed to leave the decision up to Joe. He had managed all right, so far, and now that they had regained the ivory tower they had no intention of looking outside its walls again.

  It fitted in with Joe's plans that there would be a public demonstration. He had been wondering how he could gracefully bring it about.

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  CHAPTER XVIII

  It needed only a word that Bossy would soon be publicly demonstrated to restore the exhilaration of the world. The rumors ceased suddenly. The people were reassured that for once their source of hope was not to be monopolized by some special group, destroyed because it did not fit in with the ambitions of some power. The demonstrations tapered off, but the expectancy did not. The public settled into a mood of watchful waiting.

  The background, the buildup and the setting for Bossy's second experiment gave Steve Flynn the material for what he began to call his masterpiece.

  The first announcement after the promise of demonstration was that Howard Kennedy Enterprises held Bossy in trust. This reassured the public further. His fairness, his philanthropy, his scorn of graft and corruption were well known. The public was far more reassured than if Bossy had been in the hands of the government. He did not claim to own Bossy, he held it in trust until its ownership could be determined.

  The second announcement was that Jonathan Billings, the world renowned scientist who had been the key figure in Bossy's development, would undergo the second experiment. It was fitting that the machine's creator should undergo its test. He was old, very old; and he was great, very great. If anyone deserved restoration, renewal, perpetuation, immortality-he did. The public, which had been ready to flay him, burn him at the stake for witchcraft, now wept with joy.

  "I've done a lot of things,” Steve Flynn confided to Joe. “I've taken no-talent girls from Corncob, Kansas, and made them into sultry-eyed stars of TV. I've turned income tax chiselers into great hearted philanthropists. My campaign of making a public enemy into a governor, and a governor into a public enemy was a thing of sheer beauty. But this is my best, Joe. This is my masterpiece. This will always stand as the best of Steve Flynn."

  "What if it's too good?” Joe asked.

  "Huh?"

  "What if you sell the people more than Bossy can deliver?"

  "Are you kidding? Bossy has already delivered. She's turned an old hag into a lovely doll. The public wants to see that happen again, and when they do-oh, brother! Kennedy could turn every production line he owns into a stream of Bossies and there still wouldn't be enough!"

  "It may not work this time.” Joe said slowly. “Bossy may not be able to help Dr. Billings."

  Steve Flynn stopped astride the television cables which were being strung across the floor to the Clinic's huge amphitheater. He squinted thoughtfully at Joe.

  "What are you getting at, kid?” he asked.

  "Kennedy has been good to me,” Joe answered. “I don't want you to build this thing up to the point where he will get hurt."

  Flynn, standing in wide-legged stance across the cables, threw back his head and shouted his laughter.

  "Kid,” he said, in between gasps of laughter, “you Brains kill me. Now you're smart, I'll give you that. I've been watching you. It didn't take me long to see you ran this little show around here. But you're kind of looking through the wrong end of the telescope. You've been handling a couple of misty minded professors ... oh they're great men, I'll give you that ... but, honestly, they haven't got enough sense to come in out of the rain. Don't let it give you big britches. Howard Kennedy is something else again."

  "Just so you're both prepared for anything that could happen,” Joe murmured.

  Steve Flynn stepped across the cables and gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

  "You let us worry about that. We've been in and out of more scrapes than you've got days in your life. You just stick to your little show, and we'll stick to ours."

  Flynn was right. They were the experts in molding public opinion. Joe was limited to individuals about him. He knew that the public, like an individual, once triggered into a given response, followed out the pattern of sequent responses with clocklike fidelity. But Steve Flynn was the expert on how to pull the trigger to get a given mass reaction. To carry out the plan which had now begun to crystallize in his mind, Joe needed this expert service, just as he had needed the physical scientists in creating Bossy. The science of one was as intricate as the science of the other.

  And both of them led to the two-dimensional entry of Bossy.

  Flynn left him with the admonition, and became engrossed with his assistants in the center of the amphitheater. Joe watched as he pointed up to the encircling tiers of seats which would soon be filled with the world's leading medical men and scientists.

  It was now four o'clock in the afternoon. At eight the next morning, the experiment was to begin. Joe stretched out on his bed and tried to compose himself for dinner with Billings and Hoskins. Their relationships with him were a little strained, since it had become obvious to them that Joe and Mabel were deeply in love. They were a couple possessed with one another to the exclusion of everyone around them, not knowing or caring who saw.

  Billings was wavering between amused tolerance and bewilderment. The younger generation did seem to give way to its impulses these days without restraint. In his day there had been suitable lapses of time, some attention to common advantage, testing for assurances-and just general respectability.

  Hoskins wavered among more elemental thoughts. It seemed quite obvious to him that in one respect at least old Mabel had not changed. She still showed no signs of being inhibited in her reactions to a man-or, he amended, to Joe. And, on the other hand, he burned with a resentment against Joe for having taken such quick and irresponsible advantage of an innocent young girl. Since these two concepts were diametrically opposed and self-contradictory, Hoskins succeeded in maintaining the state of mind usual to most people most of the time.

  But, in common with the usual attitude of the male sex, that portion which has kept a reasonably healthy pattern, both men kept telling themselves it was none of their business. In this latter concept, Joe agreed with them.

  But he was concerned for Mabel's reactions. He had been born, apparently, with this mutated insight into the thoughts and reactions of others. From the first, he had accepted it as a normal attribute of his life. He had never been accustomed to anything except that thin tissue of semi-rationality stretched over a tangled, seething, maggoty mass of putrefaction.

  But Mabel's awareness was sudden. Psi sight alternately dazzled her with delight and horrified her. Joe kept a portion of himself in her mind all the time soothing her, comforting her, buffeting away the shocks. The photography had been an ordeal which had sickened her. She was unable to comprehend why man had done these things to himself. She was totally unable to adapt to a society which permitted the frustrated and psychotic to set up the laws and mores of behavior which resulted in the mass crippling of the whole human race.

  After the session with the photographers, she kept to her room where the contacts were less shocking, and where under the influence of Joe she began to accustom herself to the world in which she now lived. She began to see the things Joe pointed out to her-the wonderful things man had accomplished, the tremendous courage he had, the beauty of the dawning intellect working to overcome
the almost insuperable hazard of the submind.

  Billings did not oppress her; and surprisingly, neither did Carney. She sensed that both of them, each in his own way, were trying, as she did, to find an equilibrium in a new status of things. She filled in her days with sleeping a great deal, a reaction to the exhaustion of psi shock. Her waking hours were spent in pondering the many things she had learned and was still learning, with short visits by Billings and Carney, for even these men who intended greatest gentleness exhausted her quickly.

  Waking or sleeping, she was with Joe all the time.

  She was sleeping now, completely enraptured with Joe down in the deep, clear pool of her mind.

  He withdrew a portion of himself and switched on the radio.

  The strident syllables of the newscaster hammered on his ears in sudden shock.

  "...Four hundred million people to be watching and listening while the venerable Dr. Billings regains his youth ... the great tragedy of life that a man barely begins to grasp his subject before death overtakes him now averted at last..."

  Joe switched off the set in sudden disgust. The thought was too shallow to waste time on, and no doubt the newscaster thought it was profound! But this was probably all a part of Steve Flynn's pulling the trigger. It was strictly single-valued logic.

  At dinner, Joe was appalled to learn that Billings shared the newscaster's view.

  "Among the three of us,” Billings said, “I know that Joe is more responsible for Bossy than anyone else."

  "It was our knowledge that Joe adapted,” Hoskins countered. “Not discounting what you've done, Joe, but regardless of side effects of telepathy, you can't abstract something from a mind if it isn't there."

  "That's right,” Joe said instantly. “I'm perfectly content that public credit should be given to Dr. Billings and to you. Actually, I don't think any one of us can claim more credit than any other person who contributed directly or indirectly to Bossy. Without every bit of the technique and skill, Bossy wouldn't have worked, or wouldn't have been superior to any other cybernetic machine."

  "To me,” Billings said slowly, “the issue of real importance is that now a man need never again be oppressed by the knowledge that his lifetime of work will be canceled out. Think of the great benefit to mankind through perpetuating a trained and skilled mind indefinitely."

  Joe closed his eyes to conceal his sudden grief. Now he knew that Billings was not yet ready for Bossy. And yet, could he be entirely sure of that? Did Billings really believe this? Or did he merely think he believed it? Under the genuine test of Bossy, herself, would he see the fallacy? He tried to probe the future, but failed. The flashes of prescience came seldom, and never when really needed.

  Or was his own concept wrong? He could not be sure. Who was he, Joe Carter, to set up arbitrary conditions for renewal? He thought he had grasped a point which all of them apparently overlooked, but could he be sure?

  And Bossy? She had shown no signs of it, but was she, too, afflicted with the all too human taint of piling fallacy upon fallacy until a whole logical and seemingly unassailable structure was developed? What if she, too, carried the skill to reconcile anything-the apparent ideal of current logical thought? What if she failed? What if she accepted Billings instead of rejecting him?

  They finished their dinner in silence. Billings left the table early. He appeared both anxious to get away, and to linger. He had the impulse to make a little farewell speech and cast about for some little remark both casual and significant.

  Hoskins resolutely maintained a clinical attitude. Joe flashed Billings a smile and a warm wave of somatic encouragement. It suddenly occurred to Billings that he was being slightly theatrical about it. He left the room hurriedly, to prevent making a fool of himself.

  Hoskins went to look at Bossy once more, to make sure that her metal shone, to view her from various places in the amphitheater. This was the real debut of his pride and joy. He regarded her as a sort of child prodigy. He hoped she would perform well at her first public concert. It never occurred to him that what Joe would consider Bossy's failure would be interpreted by everyone else as a huge success.

  Joe tried to conceal his uncertainty from Mabel, but it was no use. This time it was he who was the comforted and she the comforter. In the feedback flight of their ecstasy she drew further comfort from giving it.

  Perhaps Steve Flynn was the only one of the central group who slept well during that night. The public mind was like a giant console organ. By touching the proper stops, he could play any quality of tune on it he wished. As always, he slept easily in the certainty of his skill.

  Breakfast, with Billings, Carney, Hoskins, Joe and Mabel, was no more than half over when Steve Flynn burst in upon them, as full of stage management as a scout mother. Mabel was trying to harden herself to withstand the somatic torture of mental tensions about her, but she was able to bear only a few minutes of Flynn. She did promise him that she would make an appearance in front of the scientists; but then she had to leave the room to rest in preparation for the ordeal.

  She was beginning to learn the reality of what Joe had told her-that an esper has to develop a level of strength and courage completely unknown to the normal; that, at times, simply to be in the same room with certain normals was a drain on endurance almost beyond bearing; that no outward sign of this might show lest it rouse the uncomprehending contempt of the normals and add to the burden; that apparently one had to harden into it the way a long-distance runner or swimmer would train.

  Flynn's eyes followed her as she went out of the room, but Joe knew the look was professional. He was mentally posing her, photographing her, composing catchy paragraphs about her, displaying her to the public like a piece of exotic merchandise. She was a doll, all right, but he had seen so many dolls in his time, he would rather look at a horse.

  Carney's eyes followed her, too. His mind was filled with bewilderment, puzzlement. He did not know her now, and he felt a sense of irreparable loss; more than if she had died. He could have understood and reconciled to that; but this had thrown him completely. He was glad that Joe had agreed to let him watch the renewal of Billings, perhaps that would help him to understand Mabel once more. He felt as if he should be doing something to find Mabel, as if she were lost, and he didn't know any way of going about it.

  Only Hoskins, proud of the strict moral upbringing he had had, saw evil in the lingering glances of the other men. Hoskins could not know, might never know, that his delight and skill in mathematics and mechanics was due to his having been taught that to be a human being was a nasty, shameful thing. He was not psychotic enough to set himself up as a chosen arbiter of mores and laws, nor sane enough to deal with human beings as they were. He escaped into the clean impersonality of physics, and from that vantage point felt secure to snipe where he willed.

  The men remaining at the table finished their breakfasts, and then there was no more time.

  Billings, as if in a daze, accompanied Hoskins and Flynn to the amphitheater, where, already, a few great names had begun to occupy the seats in the tiers.

  Joe and Carney followed Mabel out of the breakfast room, to be with her when it came time for her to appear before the live audience, and before the television cameras.

  During the night, Bossy had been moved to the center of the amphitheater, to the side of an operating table. Around the space arose the tiers of seats, often occupied by students from Kennedy's medical school and clinics; sometimes occupied by the same doctors of medicine when a great name was to perform for their further knowledge; today occupied by the greatest names from all over the world.

  Over the operating table, suspended on a track which allowed several feet of lateral movement, was the lens and head of a television camera. The camera could be focused by remote control so as to keep every inch of the table under observation.

  Other cameras were situated to pick up the celebrities as they appeared, to catch world-shaking remarks of wisdom. But, as if they had rehearsed
their parts, the pearls of unsupportable wisdom were not forthcoming. As the celebrities came through the door, and were identified for the delectation of the watching world, they maintained a uniform attitude of thin-lipped “wait and see.” At a signal from Steve Flynn, the glib ad lib boys gave up asking the scientists what they thought about it all, and simply identified them in voices which grew less and less wildly enthusiastic. The tempos reduced from the mood of a gala sporting event to one of almost decorum.

  Three consulting physicians were already on duty. They didn't know quite what they were to be consulted about, but they were all properly attired in white masks, gowns and hoods. They lacked only shining scalpels in their hands, and seemed to feel a little undressed without them. Their credo of “When in doubt, cut and find out,” seemed inappropriate here. They would try to make up for it by being extra skeptical of the experiment.

  One side of the room was given over to glass-walled booths for the planned relays of commentators, press reporters and photographers.

  When Joe entered with Mabel and Carney, the entire battery of television lenses turned upon them, and for a moment the commentators seemed to feel they were announcing the Kentucky Derby with the two favorites running neck and neck at the finish line. The eyes of the assemblage did not share the enthusiasm. They remained fixed upon Mabel, coldly scrutinizing; and the minds behind the eyes were of a pattern with that of the jail psychiatrist.

  Steeled as she was against the shock, Joe felt her reel, almost lose control, under the battering of the blows upon her. With all his power he reassured her, warded off the sharpest of the thrusts. It was not so much the cynicism and unbelief; that was bearable. It was the preset conviction that this could not be, which hit hardest.

  "I can't stand it, Joe,” she put the thought in his mind.