The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 1

by Gordon Van Gelder

  “Four days,” Danceman said. “Everything here at the plant is going splunkishly. In fact we’ve splunked orders from three separate police systems, all here on Terra. Two in Ohio, one in Wyoming. Good solid orders, with one-third in advance and the usual three-year lease-option.”

  “Come get me out of here,” Poole said.

  “I can’t get you out until the new hand—”

  “I’ll have it done later.” He wanted desperately to get back to familiar surroundings; memory of the mercantile squib looming grotesquely on the pilot screen careened at the back of his mind; if he shut his eyes he felt himself back in his damaged craft as it plunged from one vehicle to another, piling up enormous damage as it went. The kinetic sensations... he winced, recalling them. I guess I’m lucky, he said to himself.

  “Is Sarah Benton there with you?” Danceman asked.

  “No.” Of course; his personal secretary—if only for job considerations— would be hovering close by, mothering him in her jejune, infantile way. All heavyset women like to mother people, he thought. And they’re dangerous; if they fall on you they can kill you. “Maybe that’s what happened to me,” he said aloud. “Maybe Sarah fell on my squib.”

  “No, no; a tie rod in the steering fin of your squib split apart during the heavy rush-hour traffic and you—”

  “I remember.” He turned in his bed as the door of the ward opened; a white-clad doctor and two blue-clad nurses appeared, making their way toward his bed. “I’ll talk to you later,” Poole said, and hung up the fone. He took a deep, expectant breath.

  “You shouldn’t be foning quite so soon,” the doctor said as he studied his chart. “Mr. Garson Poole, owner of Tri-Plan Electronics. Maker of random ident charts that track their prey for a circle-radius of a thousand miles, responding to unique enceph wave patterns. You’re a successful man, Mr. Poole. But, Mr. Poole, you’re not a man. You’re an electric ant.”

  “Christ,” Poole said, stunned.

  “So we can’t really treat you here, now that we’ve found out. We knew, of course, as soon as we examined your injured right hand; we saw the electronic components and then we made torso X-rays and of course they bore out our hypothesis.”

  “What,” Poole said, “is an ‘electric ant’?” But he knew; he could decipher the term.

  A nurse said, “An organic robot.”

  “I see,” Poole said. Frigid perspiration rose to the surface of his skin, across all his body.

  “You didn’t know,” the doctor said.

  “No.” Poole shook his head.

  The doctor said, “We get an electric ant every week or so. Either brought in here from a squib accident—like yourself—or one seeking voluntary admission... one who, like yourself, has never been told, who has functioned alongside humans, believing himself—itself—human. As to your hand—” He paused.

  “Forget my hand,” Poole said savagely.

  “Be calm.” The doctor leaned over him, peered acutely down into Poole’s face. “We’ll have a hospital boat convey you over to a service facility where repairs, or replacement, on your hand can be made at a reasonable expense, either to yourself, if you’re self-owned, or to your owners, if such there are. In any case you’ll be back at your desk at Tri-Plan functioning just as before.”

  “Except,” Poole said, “now I know.” He wondered if Danceman or Sarah or any of the others at the office knew. Had they—or one of them— purchased him? Designed him? A figurehead, he said to himself; that’s all I’ve been. I must never really have run the company; it was a delusion implanted in me when I was made... along with the delusion that I am human and alive.

  “Before you leave for the repair facility,” the doctor said, “could you kindly settle your bill at the front desk?”

  Poole said acidly, “How can there be a bill if you don’t treat ants here?”

  “For our services,” the nurse said. “Up until the point we knew.”

  “Bill me,” Poole said, with furious, impotent anger. “Bill my firm.” With massive effort he managed to sit up; his head swimming, he stepped haltingly from the bed and onto the floor. “I’ll be glad to leave here,” he said as he rose to a standing position. “And thank you for your humane attention.”

  “Thank you, too, Mr. Poole,” the doctor said. “Or rather I should say just Poole.”

  At the repair facility he had his missing hand replaced.

  It proved fascinating, the hand; he examined it for a long time before he let the technicians install it. On the surface it appeared organic—in fact on the surface, it was. Natural skin covered natural flesh, and true blood filled the veins and capillaries. But, beneath that, wires and circuits, miniaturized components, gleamed... looking deep into the wrist he saw surge gates, motors, multi-stage valves, all very small. Intricate. And—the hand cost forty frogs. A week’s salary, insofar as he drew it from the company payroll.

  “Is this guaranteed?” he asked the technicians as they fused the “bone” section of the hand to the balance of his body.

  “Ninety days, parts and labor,” one of the technicians said. “Unless subjected to unusual or intentional abuse.”

  “That sounds vaguely suggestive,” Poole said.

  The technician, a man—all of them were men—said, regarding him keenly, “You’ve been posing?”

  “Unintentionally,” Poole said.

  “And now it’s intentional?”

  Poole said, “Exactly.”

  “Do you know why you never guessed? There must have been signs... clickings and whirrings from inside you, now and then. You never guessed because you were programmed not to notice. You’ll now have the same difficulty finding out why you were built and for whom you’ve been operating.”

  “A slave,” Poole said. “A mechanical slave.”

  “You’ve had fun.”

  “I’ve lived a good life,” Poole said. “I’ve worked hard.”

  He paid the facility its forty frogs, flexed his new fingers, tested them out by picking up various objects such as coins, then departed. Ten minutes later he was aboard a public carrier, on his way home. It had been quite a day.

  At home, in his one-room apartment, he poured himself a shot of Jack Daniel’s Purple Label—sixty years old—and sat sipping it, meanwhile gazing through his sole window at the building on the opposite side of the street. Shall I go to the office? he asked himself. If so, why? If not, why? Choose one. Christ, he thought, it undermines you, knowing this. I’m a freak, he realized. An inanimate object mimicking an animate one. But—he felt alive. Yet... he felt differently, now. About himself. Hence about everyone, especially Danceman and Sarah, everyone at Tri-Plan.

  I think I’ll kill myself, he said to himself. But I’m probably programmed not to do that; it would be a costly waste which my owner would have to absorb. And he wouldn’t want to.

  Programmed. In me somewhere, he thought, there is a matrix fitted in place, a grid screen that cuts me off from certain thoughts, certain actions. And forces me into others. I am not free. I never was, but now I know it; that makes it different.

  Turning his window to opaque, he snapped on the overhead light, carefully set about removing his clothing, piece by piece. He had watched carefully as the technicians at the repair facility had attached his new hand: he had a rather clear idea, now, of how his body had been assembled. Two major panels, one in each thigh; the technicians had removed the panels to check the circuit complexes beneath. If I’m programmed, he decided, the matrix probably can be found there.

  The maze of circuitry baffled him. I need help, he said to himself. Let’s see... what’s the fone code for the class BBB computer we hire at the office?

  He picked up the fone, dialed the computer at its permanent location in Boise, Idaho.

  “Use of this computer is prorated at a five-frogs-per-minute basis,” a mechanical voice from the fone said. “Please hold your mastercredit-chargeplate before the screen.”

  He did so.

  “
At the sound of the buzzer you will be connected with the computer,” the voice continued. “Please query it as rapidly as possible, taking into account the fact that its answer will be given in terms of a microsecond, while your query will—” He turned the sound down, then. But quickly turned it up as the blank audio input of the computer appeared on the screen. At this moment the computer had become a giant ear, listening to him—as well as fifty thousand other queriers throughout Terra.

  “Scan me visually,” he instructed the computer. “And tell me where I will find the programming mechanism which controls my thoughts and behavior.” He waited. On the fone’s screen a great active eye, multi-lensed, peered at him; he displayed himself for it, there in his one-room apartment.

  The computer said, “Remove your chest panel. Apply pressure at your breastbone and then ease outward.”

  He did so. A section of his chest came off; dizzily, he set it down on the floor.

  “I can distinguish control modules,” the computer said, “but I can’t tell which—” It paused as its eye roved about on the fone screen. “I distinguish a roll of punched tape mounted above your heart mechanism. Do you see it?” Poole craned his neck, peered. He saw it, too. “I will have to sign off,” the computer said.

  “After I have examined the data available to me I will contact you and give you an answer. Good day.” The screen died out.

  I’ll yank the tape out of me, Poole said to himself. Tiny... no larger two spools of thread, with a scanner mounted between the delivery drum and the take-up drum. He could not see any sign of motion; the spools seemed inert. They must cut in as override, he reflected, when specific situations occur. Override to my encephalic processes. And they’ve been doing it all my life.

  He reached down, touched the delivery drum. All I have to do is tear it out, he thought, and—

  The fone screen relit. “Mastercredit-chargeplate number 3-BNX-882-HQR446-T,” the computer’s voice came. “This is BBB-307/DR recontacting you in response to your query of sixteen seconds lapse, November 4, 1992. The punched tape roll above your heart mechanism is not a programming turret but is in fact a reality-supply construct. All sense stimuli received by your central neurological system emanate from that unit and tampering with it would be risky if not terminal.” It added, “You appear to have no programming circuit. Query answered. Good day.” It flicked off.

  Poole, standing naked before the fone screen, touched the tape drum once again, with calculated, enormous caution. I see, he thought wildly. Or do I see? This unit—

  If I cut the tape, he realized, my world will disappear. Reality will continue for others, but not for me. Because my reality, my universe, is coming to me from this minuscule unit. Fed into the scanner and then into my central nervous system as it snailishly unwinds.

  It has been unwinding for years, he decided.

  Getting his clothes, he redressed, seated himself in his big armchair—a luxury imported into his apartment from Tri-Plan’s main offices—and lit a tobacco cigarette. His hands shook as he laid down his initialed lighter; leaning back, he blew smoke before himself, creating a nimbus of gray.

  I have to go slowly, he said to himself. What am I trying to do? Bypass my programming? But the computer found no programming circuit. Do I want to interfere with the reality tape? And if so, why?

  Because, he thought, if I control that, I control reality. At least so far as I’m concerned. My subjective reality... but that’s all there is. Objective reality is a synthetic construct, dealing with a hypothetical universalization of a multitude of subjective realities.

  My universe is lying within my fingers, he realized. If l can just figure out how the damn thing works. All I set out to do originally was to search for and locate my programming circuits so I could gain true homeostatic functioning: control of myself. But with this—

  With this he did not merely gain control of himself; he gained control over everything.

  And this sets me apart from every human who ever lived and died, he thought somberly.

  Going over to the fone, he dialed his office. When he had Danceman on the screen he said briskly, “I want you to send a complete set of microtools and enlarging screen over to my apartment. I have some micro-circuitry to work on.” Then he broke the connection, not wanting to discuss it.

  A half hour later a knock sounded on his door. When he opened up he found himself facing one of the shop foremen, loaded down with microtools of every sort. “You didn’t say exactly what you wanted,” the foreman said, entering the apartment. “So Mr. Danceman had me bring everything.”

  “And the enlarging-lens system?”

  “In the truck, up on the roof.”

  Maybe what I want to do, Poole thought, is die. He lit a cigarette, stood smoking and waiting as the shop foreman lugged the heavy enlarging screen, with its power-supply and control panel, into the apartment. This is suicide, what I’m doing here. He shuddered.

  “Anything wrong, Mr. Poole?” the shop foreman said as he rose to his feet, relieved of the burden of the enlarging-lens system. “You must still be rickety on your pins from your accident.”

  “Yes,” Poole said quietly. He stood tautly waiting until the foreman left.

  Under the enlarging-lens system the plastic tape assumed a new shape, a wide track along which hundreds of thousands of punch-holes worked their way. I thought so, Poole thought. Not recorded as charges on a ferrous oxide layer but actually punched-free slots.

  Under the lens the strip of tape visibly oozed forward. Very slowly, but it did, at uniform velocity, move in the direction of the scanner.

  The way I figure it, he thought, is that the punched holes are on gates. It functions like a player piano; solid is no, punch-hole is yes. How can I test this?

  Obviously by filling in a number of holes.

  He measured the amount of tape left on the delivery spool, calculated—at great effort—the velocity of the tape’s movement, and then came up with a figure. If he altered the tape visible at the in-going edge of the scanner, five to seven hours would pass before that particular time period arrived. He would in effect be painting out stimuli due a few hours from now.

  With a microbrush he swabbed a large—relatively large—section of tape with opaque varnish... obtained from the supply kit accompanying the microtools. I have smeared out stimuli for about half an hour, he pondered. Have covered at least a thousand punches.

  It would be interesting to see what change, if any, overcame his environment, six hours from now.

  Five and a half hours later he sat at Krackter’s, a superb bar in Manhattan, having a drink with Danceman.

  “You look bad,” Danceman said.

  “I am bad,” Poole said. He finished his drink, a Scotch sour, and ordered another.

  “From the accident?”

  “In a sense, yes.”

  Danceman said, “Is it—something you found out about yourself?”

  Raising his head, Poole eyed him in the murky light of the bar. “Then you know.”

  “I know,” Danceman said, “that I should call you ‘Poole’ instead of ‘Mr. Poole.’ But I prefer the latter, and will continue to do so.”

  “How long have you known?” Poole said.

  “Since you took over the firm. I was told that the actual owners of Tri-Plan, who are located in the Prox System, wanted Tri-Plan run by an electric ant whom they could control. They wanted a brilliant and forceful—”

  “The real owners?” This was the first he had heard about that. “We have two thousand stockholders. Scattered everywhere.”

  “Marvis Bey and her husband, Ernan, on Prox 4, control fifty-one percent of the voting stock. This has been true from the start.”

  “Why didn’t I know?”

  “I was told not to tell you. You were to think that you yourself made all company policy. With my help. But actually I was feeding you what the Beys fed to me.”

  “I’m a figurehead,” Poole said.

  “In a sense, ye
s.” Danceman nodded. “But you’ll always be ‘Mr. Poole’ to me.

  A section of the far wall vanished. And with it, several people at tables nearby. And—

  Through the big glass side of the bar, the skyline of New York City flickered out of existence.

  Seeing his face, Danceman said, “What is it?”

  Poole said hoarsely, “Look around. Do you see any changes?”

  After looking around the room, Danceman said, “No. What like?”

  “You still see the skyline?”

  “Sure. Smoggy as it is. The lights wink—”

  “Now I know,” Poole said. He had been right; every punch-hole covered up meant the disappearance of some object in his reality world. Standing, he said, “I’ll see you later, Danceman. I have to get back to my apartment; there’s some work I’m doing. Goodnight.” He strode from the bar and out onto the street, searching for a cab.

  No cabs.

  Those, too, he thought. I wonder what else I painted over. Prostitutes? Flowers? Prisons?

  There, in the bar’s parking lot, Danceman’s squib. I’ll take that, he decided. There are still cabs in Danceman’s world; he can get one later. Anyhow it’s a company car, and I hold a copy of the key.

  Presently he was in the air, turning toward his apartment.

  New York City had not returned. To the left and right vehicles and buildings, streets, ped-runners, signs... and in the center nothing. How can I fly into that? he asked himself. I’d disappear.

  Or would I? He flew toward the nothingness.

  Smoking one cigarette after another he flew in a circle for fifteen minutes... and then, soundlessly, New York reappeared. He could finish his trip. He stubbed out his cigarette (a waste of something so valuable) and shot off in the direction of his apartment.

  If I insert a narrow opaque strip, he pondered as he unlocked his apartment door, I can—

  His thoughts ceased. Someone sat in his living room chair, watching a captain kirk on the TV. “Sarah,” he said, nettled.

  She rose, well-padded but graceful. “You weren’t at the hospital, so I came here. I still have that key you gave me back in March after we had that argument. Oh... you look so depressed.” She came up to him, peeped into his face anxiously. “Does your injury hurt that badly?”