by John Sladek
‘We are being held prisoner in Las Vegas,’ Cal wrote on the teletype unit, then switched it over from SEND to RECV. It paused a long moment, considering, chattering. Then it replied, ‘We are being held # (%$H) (?e)U¼½p@ wE a77 bEin@ @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@s’
* * *
X-ray plates were being projected on the big screen. Brian Gallopini waited, yawning, for the main feature.
At the bakery, Jack found fresh bread piled up on the loading dock. The bakery was automatically baking, but there were no trucks to take it away.
Jack had been hungry without knowing it. That, he told himself, was mob psychology. Sub-conscious stuff. What’s really inside you—in this case, nothing at yet—all the time, only you don’t know it. A secret panel flies open and the murderer is revealed. Or like an X-ray.
* * *
Yelling, waving his arms, Cal ran towards the shadowy figures. They did not turn to look at him, and his pace slowed.
They passed under a dim blue street light, an army of marching mannikins. Most wore elaborate braces and trusses, gleaming and flexing in the dimness.
He saw a telephone booth across the street. Dancing, dodging through the column gingerly, he slipped into it and lifted the receiver. Dead phone. Aphonia. Not a sound except—
Gleaming and squeaking, the army limped on into the darkness.
* * *
Zodiacal, the clock on the screen recorded TIME REMAINING UNTIL MAIN FEATURE. As each minutes passed, one-twelfth of the clock face disappeared. The Professor, who had never seen a film, regarded it intently, but he could not detect what happened to all the vanished sectors.
* * *
As the car swerved, slowed, bumped down steel rollers into a carwash, the Reproductive System was discovering an ice-making machine in the kitchen of the Silver Horseshoe Casino. As the car was torn in chunks and ejected in several directions, the Reproductive System was discovering in dusty cans at the television studio a number of old horror films. As Brian squinted at artificial suns in the pet department, the Reproductive System discovered a glass demonstration ‘engine’ in an auto showroom, and set about making it work.
The dummy’s smashed face and nosehole received the rain as cats crawled along upper shelves. Harry looked at a man painted to an iron wall like a bug. The Reproductive System looked at the printed characters in library books and deciphered their meaning. Then it burned them, stoking a boiler. The boiler fire was smouldering, choked as it was with the ashes of The Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Encyclopaedia Americana, and Mrs. Thrumbold, librarian.
Grocery carts, propelled by spray cans of insecticide, roamed the aisles of the Faresafe supermarket, where Harry plunged his knife into a can and laughed. Cal was watching the shopping carts, but Harry, weak from fumes, fell unconscious. Cal dragged him outside, while Jack yawned at toy helicopters. Inside the freezer of the Silver Horseshoe Casino, cells with ice-picks laboured carefully, shaping gears of ice.
Jack watched the behemoth move down inclined grooves towards an enormous loop-the-loop, awaiting its fall. Daisy watched a washer burst into streaky-green flames. A child, having crawled inside a slanting, crumbled house to sleep, awoke to a strange noise.
Cal and Harry watched zombie-like creatures push coins into slot machines. Daisy watched the ascent of bowling balls, hardly able to focus her uncomprehending gaze. The late mayor of Las Vegas ascended, as his body filled with gas, to the surface of his swimming pool. A giant propellor whipped up a froth of lace.
Hitching up its trailing cord and striding stiffly, a messenger pinball machine greeted another pinball machine messenger as they passed, by exhibiting 450 and a Super Special light.
‘6,000,000,’ replied the second.
The Professor watched the ascent and descent of the Venus probe rocket. The late mayor of Las Vegas descended once again to the bottom of his pool. The ice gears did not work.
Cal saved Harry from a decor-designed X-ray machine which was spraying the street with radiation. Jack was lost. A bank had been looted. A dead guard with an empty holster lay in the soft grey ash of money. Something was trying to get into the room where the child waited.
‘O Levitation!’ exclaimed Brian. Harry knocked Cal out, dragged him up five flights of stairs to a roof, and flung him off. Cal did not levitate. ‘The image of the murderer will appear upon the dead man’s retina!’ The roof reminded Harry of another roof, where he had skipped rope long ago. On descending, he read the advertisements of a gymnasium by flashlight.
Tour Paris! a poster urged Cal as he recovered consciousness. The fall to the bed of shoes had knocked the wind out of him. At sunset the glass engine started up, ran briefly, and exploded into sparkling shards. ‘Hullo, Earthman,’ said ROBO. ‘We are being kept prisoner,’ Cal typed earnestly. Jack recalled his hunger. An inching foldaway sofa carried him to the drive-in theatre. Brian and the jukeboxes noisily greeted Cal, Harry, Daisy and Jack. Cal heartily greeted Brian, Harry, Daisy and Jack. Jack, glad to be found after being lost, greeted everyone with some relief. Daisy exhibited surprise at seeing Cal, but greeted him, Brian and Jack. Harry greeted Brian and Jack. The last sector of the clock on the screen disappeared. It was time for the ‘Main Feature’, a composite of audio-visual aids from the school (now a factory), homemade transparencies, and old horror films:
‘Machines can do so many things,’ says the delighted, delightful voice. ‘Yes, machines can do so many things. Mother sews your clothes on a machine—and washes them in another!’
Woman sewing changes abruptly to saurian threshing his tail, lashing out angrily at skyscrapers. Under his foot is a car. Dungeon scene, girl being tied to giant wheel. ‘We know you won’t talk under torture, Goodfelloe, but surely you won’t stand by and see her twisted and broken on my wheel?’
To his unspeakable horror, the beams of the full moon make his hands hairy. He becomes more than a wolf—less than human. A dark shape moves among the mists of the Rue Morgue, following a slender girl. Dr. Frankenstein throws back the cloth covering his experiment—and the table is empty! Father mows lawn with a machine.
‘No,’ said the child, backing away into a corner of the dirty mattress. The room was tilted at a crazy angle. There were
places where the plaster was missing, and the laths showed like white bones.
The black hearse bearing the armourial crest of Count Alucard rattles through the Transylvanian night. No driver, Strange plant creatures have surrounded the little farmhouse. ‘So you think I am mad, do you? You think it is madness to wish to create Life?’ Happy child uses electric toothbrush.
A panel flies back revealing—‘But tell me, doctor, what is your theory of these baffling murders?’ ‘Theory? What do you mean? Why should I have any theory? What are you driving at?’ Cows are milked by machines.
The medical examiner rises, removing glasses. ‘Odd. If we only knew what made those two little marks on her throat.’ ‘Machines make life easier and more fun.’
‘No,’ said the child. The grey box knew its part well. It advanced silently, axeblade arm upraised.
‘The army is helpless, sir. The mumbledypegs have taken the city.’ Laughing girl uses roller skates; boy delivers papers from elegant chrome bike. ‘Here in the jungle, my pretty one, there are many mysteries into which those of the outer world have found it wiser not to inquire.’ ‘Here, in the great Mesabi Range, is one of the largest open-pit mines in the world! Machines need iron.’ An Egyptologist holds up object. ‘Hmm. Looks like the Death Scarab of Ra. But how the devil did it get into poor Emerson’s room?’ ‘Father uses machines in his work—’ Lathe, adding machine, milk truck and dental drill quarter the screen.
The X-ray of a fractured arm appears. ‘It must be the Lost City itself!’ exclaims the older explorer, parting the ferns to peer, ‘—and when he relaxes, too.’ Golf cart, camera, fishing reel, shotgun. ‘No one can hear you if you scream, my dear. We have the castle quite to ourselves. Hahahaha!’
Cal thought of the two ma
chines fighting. Kenogenesis. They altered their own genes as they went along. Bound to get a maverick like that once in awhile. Kind of insanity. Turns on its own kind. Ordinarily, he supposed, they were incapable of taking life deliberately. It was inconceivable that they could always recognize one another, in all mutations. No, more likely they respected all life-forms. But …
‘Machines are friendly to us, as long as we are friendly to them.’ Father oils lawnmower. ‘Look deep into my eyes, my dear.’ Turbaned mesmerist leans over pale girl. ‘Deeper.
Deeper.’
‘There are machines to make women beautiful—’ Four women under hair driers read Popular Mechanics. ‘Surely no human being could have done this!’ ‘Machines—’ ‘Good Lord!’ It’s a—a human head!’
The box advanced silently, matching the child’s every move, backing it into the corner. The shadow of the axeblade grew longer. But at the last possible second it stopped, mysteriously seized with rust.
‘No! That sunlight—I can’t stand it! Arrghiiiaaaa!’ The Lost City is buried under a quick lava flow; the broken house of Usher slides into the slimy syrup of the swamp; the castle is in flames; the mysterious island sinks forever; the aliens are dissolved by rain. As the monster’s head sinks, smoking, into the cauldron of seething acid, there is an almost pleading look in its eye. ‘There are some mysteries,’ intones the white-haired scientist, ‘better left in the hands of the Deity.’ ‘Thank God it’s all over!’ sobs his daughter, throwing herself in the arms of the young scientist and looking away from the corpse of the alien invader. The young scientist shakes his crewcut, looking at the thing. ‘I wonder if it really is all over?’ he murmurs.
The head of the dummy with the smashed nose appears, red-lighted, forty axe-handles breadth between the eyes. ‘Yes, machines can do so many things,’ he gurgles. ‘Aren’t you glad that you’re a machine?’ The screen goes black.
Professor Gallopini’s one remaining jukebox comes alive, glowing with bubbling coloured lights. ‘I’ll see you in my dreams,’ it promises the five fleeing figures. Behind them, the great screen buckles and collapses.
CHAPTER XIV
GOOD TO THE LAST DROP
‘Here, Grandfather, you eat the last of the porridge … I—I’ve had a great plenty already’
SHELLEY BELLE, portraying Little Nell,
in The Old Curiosity Shop
From ten miles up, the city of Millford looked like a shiny dime. From a mile up, it looked like a pancake griddle. From the ground outside, it looked like an oil storage tank of more than usual diameter. No reconnaissance teams had yet been persuaded to find out what it looked like on the inside. It was presumed that the inhabitants were dead or had long since fled the scene.
In the elegant, all-stainless-steel cafeteria of the Wompler Research Laboratory there was nothing at all to eat. The Womplers, father and son, lay stretched out on two parallel tables, too weak to move. Grandison turned his gaunt face to regard his son, who was reading a magazine.
They had eaten all the ketchup and mustard the first day—and Louie had eaten the most. Thereafter there had been nothing but crumbs of Sooper Proteen from the linings of Louie’s coat pockets—and of them, too, the fat young man had taken the lion’s share. Now he was even hogging the magazine, looking at the pretty pictures of food.
It wasn’t fair! Granny thought, observing how fat his son was. Surely Louie wouldn’t mind parting with a little slice of that fat? Or, if so, Grandison could wait until he was asleep. There were sharp knives in the kitchen. …
‘Hey, Pop! Did the chicken give some eggs yet?’ asked Louie, sitting up and yawning. He moved his big meaty shoulders in a stretch of feigned weariness.
The chicken—the chicken—was a scrawny bird perched on a chandelier well out of reach. From this perch it had taunted and tempted them for two weeks. It showed no sign of flying down within reach, of falling dead of starvation itself, or of laying an egg—‘giving eggs’ as Louie would have it. It’s only plumage was a torn bunch of multicoloured wires depending from its neck; it was featherless. It clucked softly to itself, day and night, in a regular rhythm. Over a period of time, this began to have the
effect, on Grandison, of a cricket jammed in his ear. There were times when he’d rather have seen the chicken go away, than eat it, and times when he convinced himself it was an hallucination. But, with a kind of contentment, the bird kept its bright eye fixed on him all the time. And clucked.
‘It did not lay an egg, son, and I doubt if it will. I think that bird there is a rooster.’
‘You sure know a lot of nature lore, Pop. What’s being a rooster got to do with its giving eggs?’
Granny sighed. He squinted up at the bird, trying to guess its, sex. Usually his conclusion depended on his mood. The bird shook its comb defiantly at him. It seemed a very rooster-like gesture.
Louie stretched his ribs-and-bacon and yawned, displaying a half-pound of tongue. After searching his pockets diligently for crumbs, he took out his dynamometer and squeezed it.
‘My grip is increasing as my weight drops,’ he said. After reading the dynamometer, he laid his arm on a meat scale and weighed it. ‘By the time I weigh fifty pounds, my grip’ll be a thousand pounds. Wow!’
Grandison imagined the arm being lifted tenderly from the scale, wrapped up in pink paper and marked with a crayon. He saw fat white fingers sizzling in a pan.
The chicken let out a squawk, then another.
‘Cross your fingers, son,’ breathed the old man sitting up quietly. ‘We may have us an omelette tonight.’
The loud sound became a regular cluck-clawk, and the bird swayed dizzily on its perch. A shiny ovoid surface peeped from under its tail propellor. ‘Get ready to catch it, son!’
‘I got it, Pop, I got it, I got it, I—’
Louie made a dive as the ovoid dropped, but hunger had slowed his reflexes. It slipped through his fingers and hit the floor.
And bounced.
In the lab above, Kurt and Karl Mackintosh moved smoothly and speedily about their work, never colliding, seldom speaking, always smiling, two clockwork figures. With their cooperation, the System had fitted them out with hydraulic power-assists on their arms and legs that multiplied both speed and strength. The power-assists were shaped like close-fitting pieces of armour: gauntlets, brassards, cuisses, jambeaux and sollerets.
They were run by electric pumps and hydraulic pistons. Strain gauges embedded in Kurt’s and Karl’s muscles switched on the pumps. Though they never said so, Kurt and Karl felt like two supermen in their new armour. They clicked and clanked about the lab, quite pleased with life. They liked to work so well that the System also fitted them out: with automatic intravenous nourishment.
In return, they worked out new experiments with animal-machine symbioses. Following Dr. Smilax’s orders, they fed all results directly into the System, via a handy typewriter in the corner. In addition, they taught it the rudiments of behavioural psychology, of Keynesian economics, of information theory, and they showed it how to simplify programmes.
They would identify themselves by applying their right ears to a metal plate. That keyed in the System, putting it in a receptive mood for their information.
When they worked harder, there were rewards.
When they worked poorly, there were punishments.
A reward was the lighting of a sign saying ‘WELL DONE!’
A punishment was a mild but unpleasant electric shock.
Sometimes Kurt received more punishments than Karl.
Sometimes Kurt received more rewards than Karl.
Sometimes they were even.
As time went on, there were fewer rewards and no punishments for either of them. As time went on, they adjusted. They adjusted to the System like a synchronizing clock. Like a clock, like a clock, like a synchronizing clock.
Clicking as they walked,
Ticking as they worked,
Talking as they went
About their clickw
ork clockwork work.
Louie sat on the floor, weeping over the cast-iron egg.
‘Stop that blubbering,’ Grandison ordered. ‘No use crying over spilt milk. No use stewing about it. Outa the frying pan into the fire. Jack Spratt could eat no fat …’ He stopped himself on the verge of babbling, and fell silent, watching his son’s great fat shoulders—of mutton—shake.
‘If you had a quarter,’ Louie complained, ‘you could get a cup of coffee even.’
‘The coffee machine I Christ, why didn’t I think of it? It’s
probably loaded with sugar and powdered cream. Hell, son, we’ll just bust it open—’
‘But Pop, it ain’t even paid for yet!’
Too weak to answer, the old man levered himself off the table and made his way along the wall to the gleaming coffee machine. He began to bang and kick at it feebly, cursing the prudence that had ever made him buy a burglarproof model.
‘No use, Pop. You gotta have a quarter. Honesty is—’
He broke off, seeing his father’s expression. The older man did fish a quarter from his pocket, fumble it into the slot and bang furiously at the double cream and double sugar buttons. A cup descended and the machine filled it half-way with grey, greasy liquid. Grandison seized it and drained it, and his blood came alive with sugar.
Almost at once the machine dropped another cup and, humming, half-filled it with grey, tepid liquid. Grandison snatched it out and offered it to his son, as another cup dropped.
‘Oh, no thanks, Pop. I hafta stay away from coffee. Bad for the circulation, when you’re in training.’
Grandison snatched another cup from the machine; it dropped another and began filling it. ‘What in hell are you training for?’ he asked.
‘Oh, nothing special. You know, just keeping in shape. A guy never knows when he might run into some wise guys in a bar or something you know.’
Grandison was too busy, by now, to care whether Louie were really mad or not. The torrent of greasy grey liquid from the coffee machine was constant now, though the supply of paper cups had finally run out. A jumble of them were caught under the spout, and the liquid was spraying out into the room. He grew alarmed as it snowed no sign of lessening. Wasn’t this supposed to be a ten-gallon or twenty-gallon supply? Surely it had flooded that much on the great stainless steel floor by now?