by Gene Wolfe
The Senator in the center asked, “Aren’t you going to reply, Mr. Smithe?”
“I wasn’t aware that your statement required answer. No, I did not originate the concept. You were also correct in stating that I have so declared in the past.”
“Would you explain to this committee just how your service operates, please?”
“From the viewpoint of the customer? A person wishes to make an ideal matrimonial liaison with another. Computers have been used for this in the past, usually on college campuses or by semi-serious entrepreneurs with inadequate machines and facilities.”
“Your program is different?”
“Our company has evolved a computer capable of absorbing a truly vast number of facts and a program which permits us to enter almost anything as datum with the assurance that irrelevancies will be canceled out and that we will be notified of any discrepancies. We put this at our client’s disposal.”
“And from this hodgepodge the machine can select a suitable wife for a man or a husband for a woman? Unerringly? I find that incredible.”
“So did I at one time. As for our percentage of error—we seem to have attracted attention by not erring.”
He had read his morning paper, as he always did, in the coffee shop of the residential hotel in which he lived. The story was on the front page, unmissable. Being a thorough man he read it from beginning to end before he finished breakfast and also the editorial it had inspired. Then he had taken a taxi to the plant and, without stopping to hang up his hat in his own suite had gone to Tom’s office.
Tom had said, “You’ve seen it. Wild, isn’t it?”
“It’s absurd and fantastic. According to this you told some young man that he would find his beloved—that’s what it says—in an obscure village in Ethiopia. He sold everything he had, bought a ticket on a jet and he and the girl are now married and ecstatically happy.”
“The story was wrong. He didn’t sell anything. If we could give him all that free computer time under the tryout program I saw no reason not to give him a plane ride, too—it was far less expensive. Round trip for him to Ethiopia, one way for the girl back. It increased his confidence.”
“Mr. Smithe,” the Senator on the right said, “don’t you feel that you are treating your computer as an oracle?”
“No, I don’t. Laymen often do so, I admit. We’ve done everything in our power to counter that impression. Do you remember the man who went to Ethiopia? It was the first case that was played up by the news media and it did a lot to confuse things.”
The Senator in the center said, “I remember the case well. It seemed almost miraculous.”
“The man in question was an intelligent young Negro. He had volunteered for the service while we were still trying to get it out of the egg, so to speak. We gave him extensive psychological tests, fed the results to the computer and then gave the new tests it recommended. A fantastic number of hours of machine time were required then, but Tom Larkin, who is our vice president for research and the real instigator of the service, had faith in it.”
“And what, in the opinion of the computer, did the tests show?”
“Well, for one thing, the young man was intensely interested in Coptic Christianity. The Mark XX felt someone of his own faith would make the best partner for him. It also found that since he had spent his early childhood in a rural area and reacted unfavorably to urban life when his family moved to the city, a girl from a semi-rural, rather isolated locale would suit him best. In this country there are very few Coptic Christians in isolated areas. In Ethiopia Coptic Christianity is the state religion and there are a great many. This is simplified, naturally—but you see the approach. Thousands of other correlations like this were made before the specific girl was selected.”
“The newspapers make your Mark XX sound like a pythoness but now you’re making it sound as if it’s only someone’s wise old tin grandmother, Mr. Smithe.”
“It’s neither. It is a machine for manipulating data. Senator, may I say something that’s been on my mind for a long time?”
“Please do. That’s what we’re here for.”
“As I’ve said, all of us in the computer industry have fought the public desire to make something supernatural of our machines. But there is one way in which the public’s misconception is useful. It often makes people do the logical thing when the logical thing is something that would be called silly if it were suggested from another source. If a town stood on the slope of a dormant volcano and the volcano started to rumble and smoke, a lot of the people might not want to leave. Because, after all, the volcano had never erupted before—at least as far as their knowledge went. But if a computer told them it was prudent to move they probably would. It may be that the man in the street is right to be a bit awed. If awe impels a man to follow a logical course of action, then awe has its uses. I’ve noticed that the common man is often most right when he seems most wrong.”
“That was quite a speech, Mr. Smithe,” the Senator said dryly. “My impression is today that the man in the street believes his country’s going to the dogs, and I understand from some of the testimony we heard yesterday that the company you represent has offered your marriage-broking service—I think I can call it that—to more than a hundred thousand Americans without fee. Do you have any comment on the last?”
From the first word he had known a sick and sinking feeling. There had been a ring in the Senator’s voice that suggested he stood tried and condemned—of what? Something sneaky and perhaps un-American? “You see, Senator,” he began, “when Mr. Larkin persuaded our president to put the service on the market—”
The service hadn’t been much of a success. Oh, it succeeded in satisfying customers—it became better and better and processing required less time with every new client. But there hadn’t been enough clients. Not nearly enough.
They had all been called into the Old Man’s conference room that day and there wasn’t a one of them—himself from Operations, Larkin from Research, representatives from Sales, Advertising, and Manufacturing—who hadn’t known what was coming.
The president, the Old Man, never tore into anyone; that was part of his charm and his effectiveness. He always spoke logically and fairly and when he could give the man on the carpet the benefit of the doubt he gave it. But he always had the facts.
“Mr. Larkin,” he had said slowly, “I know you remember the meeting at which it was decided to put this experiment of yours on a commercial basis. I had almost said, ‘it was voted,’ but you will also recall, I think, that only you and I voted in favor. So we did it anyway.”
Tom had said he would never forget that.
“But we are losing money on it. The sales curve for—what do you call it?”
“Program Roses.”
“For Program Roses has been nearly flat and recently, in fact, has started slanting downward. Roses is in the red and I’ll tell you frankly that if the rest of our business were not experiencing a goodish upturn we wouldn’t have been able to carry it this long. Can you give me any reason why Program Roses should not be terminated?”
The Senator interrupted. “From all you’ve said, Mr. Smithe, it seems to me your company should have sent Mr. Larkin to testify before this committee instead of yourself.”
“We wanted to,” Ed said, “but he couldn’t be reached.”
“Couldn’t be reached?”
“You see, he himself eventually subscribed. He and his bride are taking a six-month honeymoon in a sloop. Tom’s always been quite a sailor in his spare time, and as it turned out the girl Roses picked for him is, too.”
“Did you say six months?” The Senator sounded incredulous.
“With pay. Our president didn’t want to let him have more than three but Tom threatened to quit.”
“It would seem”—the Senator was smiling coldly—“that you have been victimized by your own cleverness.”
“We don’t think so. You see—”
Tom had waited until t
he Old Man was finished before he exploded his bombshell. Until he was finished and there had been a long, pregnant pause. Then he hadn’t addressed the president directly; he appeared to speak to Sales: “I don’t want Roses discontinued—it’s the best thing we’ve got. I want to give it away.”
No one had spoken. Ed remembered that he himself had known a sick realization that Tom had cracked up at last.
“Roses,” Tom had announced, “has already brought us three million in new contracts and accounts. You don’t charge people to read your advertising, do you? They might be willing to pay—some who are interested enough—but you make more money when it’s free.”
Sales had said slowly, “He’s right. He and I have combed through the new accounts one by one, and in ninety per cent of the cases we’ve found that the decision to swing the business to us was either made or strongly influenced by someone who’d been a client for Roses.”
The Senator in the center cleared his throat. “You mean to sit there and tell us that Roses is just a sales gimmick for the rest of your business?”
“A gimmick,” Ed Smithe said, “is when you give away a plastic bathtub toy with a box of breakfast cereal. And that brings us to something else Tom made us realize. Roses not only made these key people familiar with our machines and impressed with them, it also made the Mark XX a permanent part of their lives. The competition has found that it can talk a long time and not erase that.”
“And so you have actually offered the service free.”
“To people who we feel will be in a position to specify computers or computer services as part of their careers—yes.”
There was a stir in the chamber. The Senator said heavily, “You seem to be destroying the fabric of society as a sort of side effect.”
“Not really.” Ed drew a deep breath. “Senator, who’s the better farmer, the man who hitches up his tractor and runs it until it breaks or the man who oils and services it and lets it cool off if the engine overheats? And who gets more plowing done in the long run? These men and women who have lived half their lives in loneliness are often thrown off balance temporarily when they finally find someone with whom they can relate, I admit. Sometimes they just want to quit—to be with their new partner every hour. But eventually they come back—and when they do they’re working for something, not just to get away from something. Right now we’re in the trough—the service has been building rapidly and a majority of our clients are still in the honeymoon stage. But the earlier ones are coming back stronger than ever and I can prove it.”
He did. The charts and slides helped but the facts really spoke for themselves. Numbers of theses written, numbers of patents granted, earnings of firms whose executive ranks were heavy with early clients. He was no salesman but he could feel the whole chamber swinging over; it thrilled him.
When he finished he was wrung out. His shirt was sticking to his chest and his legs felt weak. But at least he had convinced them.
The Senator on the left said, “You give the service to—”
“People in private industry, government, or nonprofit institutions who in our judgment may eventually be in a position to give us business. Others are charged a minimal fee. I’m happy to say we’ve gotten that down quite a bit.”
The Senator in the center smiled suddenly. It was the charming, slightly lopsided smile he had used on a thousand campaign posters.
“If I’m not being impertinent, Mr. Smithe,” he asked, “could you tell us your own marital status?”
“I have been a widower for almost twenty years.”
“You haven’t used the Roses service yourself?”
In a voice that was barely audible he said, “To tell the truth, Senator, I’ve had to postpone my trip to England because of these hearings. You see, our president wanted to make certain I’d be here to testify. Marcia—that’s her name; she’s a librarian in Liverpool—Marcia and I have written and talked by long-distance telephone but we’ve not yet been able to meet.”
“I hope you will be able to soon,” the Senator in the center said. “You may step down, Mr. Smithe.”
He began the long walk back to his seat, glad he hadn’t been forced to tell them that it was Marcia who had requested Roses from the company’s British subsidiary. That she had found him. It would have sounded too silly.
ARBOR DAY
Paul’s Treehouse
It was the day after the governor called out the National Guard, but Morris did not think of it that way; it was the morning after the second night Paul had spent in the tree, and Morris brushed his teeth with Scotch after he looked into Paul’s bedroom and saw the unrumpled bed. And it was hot; though not in the house, which was airconditioned.
Sheila was still asleep, lying straight out like a man on the single bed across from his own. He left her undisturbed, filling his glass with Scotch again and carrying it out to the patio at the side of the house. The sun was barely up, yet the metal furniture there was already slightly warm. It would be a hot day, a scorcher. He heard the snip-snack of Russell’s shears on the other side of the hedge and braced himself for the inevitable remark.
“It’s going to be a hot one, isn’t it?” Sticking his head over the top of the hedge, Morris nodded, hoping that if he did not speak Russell would stay where he was. The hope was fruitless. He could hear Russell unlatching the gate, although he purposely did not look.
“Hotter than the hinges of hell,” Russell said, sitting down. “Do the gardening early, that’s what I told myself, do it early while it’s cool, and look at me. I’m sweating already. Did you hear what they did last night? Beat a cop to death with golf clubs and polo mallets out of a store window.”
Morris said nothing, looking up at Paul’s treehouse. It was on the other side of the yard, but so high up it could be seen above the roofline of the house.
“Beat him to death right out on the street.”
“I suppose some of them deserve it,” Morris said moodily.
“Sure they do, but it’s them doing it. That’s what gets to me.
… Drinking pretty early, aren’t you?” Russell was tall and gangling, with a long neck and a prominent Adam’s apple; Morris, short and fat-bellied, envied him his straight lines.
“I guess I am,” he said. “Like one?”
“Since it’s Saturday …”
It was cool in the house, much cooler than the patio, but the air was stale. He splashed the cheaper “guest” whisky into a glass and added a squirt of charged water.
“Is that your boy Paul’s?” When he came out again Russell was staring up at the treehouse just as he himself had been doing a moment before. Morris nodded.
“He built it on his own, didn’t he? I remember watching him climb up there with boards or something, with his little radio playing to keep him company.” He took the drink. “You don’t mind if I walk around and have a look at it, do you?”
Reluctantly Morris followed him, stepping over the beds of flame-toned, scentless florabundas Sheila loved.
The tree at the other side of the house gave too much shade for roses. There was nothing under it except a little sparse grass and a few stones Paul had dropped.
Russell whistled. “That’s way up there, isn’t it? Fifty feet if it’s an inch. Why’d you let him build it so high?”
“Sheila doesn’t believe in thwarting the boy’s natural inclinations.” It sounded silly when Morris said it, and he covered by taking another sip of the whisky.
Russell shook his head. “If he ever falls out of there he’ll kill himself.”
“Paul’s a good climber,” Morris said.
“He’d have to be to build that thing.” Russell continued to stare, craning his body backward. Morris wished that he would return to the patio.
“It took him almost two weeks,” Morris said.
“He swiped the lumber off the housing project, didn’t he?”
“I bought him some of it.” For an instant Morris had seen Paul’s small, brown head in o
ne of the windows. He wondered if Russell had noticed it.
“But he swiped most of it. Two-by-fours and four-by-fours; it looks solid.”
“I suppose it is.” Before he could catch himself he added, “He’s got buckets of rocks up there.”
“Rocks?” Russell looked down, startled.
“Rocks about the size of tennis balls. Paul built a sort of elevator and hauled them up. He must have eight or ten buckets full.”
“What’s he want those for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, ask him.” Russell looked angry at having his curiosity balked. “He’s your kid.” Morris swallowed the last of his second drink, saying nothing.
“How does he get up there?” Russell was looking at the tree again. “It doesn’t look as if you could climb it.”
“He cut off some of the branches after he got the place built. He has a rope with knots in it he lets down.”
“Where is it?” Russell looked around, expecting to see the rope tangled in the tree’s branches somewhere.
It was bound to come out now. “He pulls it up after him when he goes in there,” Morris said. The Scotch was lying like a pool of mercury in his empty stomach.
“You mean he’s up there now?”
Neither of them had heard Sheila come out. “He’s been up there since Thursday.” She sounded unconcerned.
Morris turned to face her and saw that she was wearing a quilted pink housecoat. Her hair was still in curlers. He said, “You didn’t have to get up so early.”
“I wanted to.” She yawned. “I set the clock-radio for six. It’s going to be hot in town and I want to be right there when the stores open.”
“I wouldn’t go today,” Russell said.
“I’m not going down there—I’m going to the good stores.” Sheila yawned again. Without makeup, Morris thought, she looked too old to have a son as young as Paul. He did himself, he knew, but Sheila usually looked younger to him; especially when he had had something to drink. “Did you hear about the National Guard, though,” she added when she had finished the yawn.