The Robert Sheckley Megapack

by Robert Sheckley

  “Haskins,” the manager said, “I thought I asked you to rid yourself of that filthy habit.”

  “Yes, Mr. Follansby, sorry, sir,” Haskins apologized, snubbing out the cigarette. “I’ll use the display Denicotinizer at once. Made rather a good sale, Mr. Follansby. One of the big Rex Regenerators.”

  “Really?” said the manager, impressed. “It isn’t often we—wait a minute! You didn’t sell the floor model, did you?”

  “Why—why, I’m afraid I did, Mr. Follansby. The customer was in such a terrible hurry. Was there any reason—”

  Mr. Follansby gripped his prominent white forehead in both hands, as though he wished to rip it off. “Haskins, I told you. I must have told you! That display Regenerator was a Martian model. For giving mechanotherapy to Martians.”

  “Oh,” Haskins said. He thought for a moment. “Oh.”

  Mr. Follansby stared at his clerk in grim silence.

  “But does it really matter?” Haskins asked quickly. “Surely the machine won’t discriminate. I should think it would treat a homicidal tendency even if the patient were not a Martian.”

  “The Martian race has never had the slightest tendency toward homicide. A Martian Regenerator doesn’t even process the concept. Of course the Regenerator will treat him. It has to. But what will it treat?”

  “Oh,” said Haskins.

  “That poor devil must be stopped before—you say he was homicidal? I don’t know what will happen! Quick, what is his address?”

  “Well, Mr. Follansby, he was in such a terrible hurry—”

  The manager gave him a long, unbelieving look. “Get the police! Call the General Motors Security Division! Find him!”

  Haskins raced for the door.

  “Wait!” yelled the manager, struggling into a raincoat. “I’m coming, too.”

  * * * *

  Elwood Caswell returned to his apartment by taxicopter. He lugged the Regenerator into his living room, put it down near the couch and studied it thoughtfully.

  “That clerk was right,” he said after a while. “It does go with the room.”

  Esthetically, the Regenerator was a success.

  Caswell admired it for a few more moments, then went into the kitchen and fixed himself a chicken sandwich. He ate slowly, staring fixedly at a point just above and to the left of his kitchen clock.

  Damn you, Magnessen! Dirty no-good lying shifty-eyed enemy of all that’s decent and clean in the world.…

  Taking the revolver from his pocket, he laid it on the table. With a stiffened forefinger, he poked it into different positions.

  It was time to begin therapy.

  Except that.…

  Caswell realized worriedly that he didn’t want to lose the desire to kill Magnessen. What would become of him if he lost that urge? His life would lose all purpose, all coherence, all flavor and zest. It would be quite dull, really.

  Moreover, he had a great and genuine grievance against Magnessen, one he didn’t like to think about.

  Irene!

  His poor sister, debauched by the subtle and insidious Magnessen, ruined by him and cast aside. What better reason could a man have to take his revolver and.…

  Caswell finally remembered that he did not have a sister.

  Now was really the time to begin therapy.

  He went into the living room and found the operating instructions tucked into a ventilation louver of the machine. He opened them and read:

  To Operate All Rex Model Regenerators:

  1. Place the Regenerator near a comfortable couch. (A comfortable couch can be purchased as an additional accessory from any General Motors dealer.)

  2. Plug in the machine.

  3. Affix the adjustable contact-band to the forehead.

  And that’s all! Your Regenerator will do the rest! There will be no language bar or dialect problem, since the Regenerator communicates by Direct Sense Contact (Patent Pending). All you must do is cooperate.

  Try not to feel any embarrassment or shame. Everyone has problems and many are worse than yours! Your Regenerator has no interest in your morals or ethical standards, so don’t feel it is ‘judging’ you. It desires only to aid you in becoming well and happy.

  As soon as it has collected and processed enough data, your Regenerator will begin treatment. You make the sessions as short or as long as you like. You are the boss! And of course you can end a session at any time.

  That’s all there is to it! Simple, isn’t it? Now plug in your General Motors Regenerator and GET SANE!

  * * * *

  “Nothing hard about that,” Caswell said to himself. He pushed the Regenerator closer to the couch and plugged it in. He lifted the headband, started to slip it on, stopped.

  “I feel so silly!” he giggled.

  Abruptly he closed his mouth and stared pugnaciously at the black-and-chrome machine.

  “So you think you can make me sane, huh?”

  The Regenerator didn’t answer.

  “Oh, well, go ahead and try.” He slipped the headband over his forehead, crossed his arms on his chest and leaned back.

  Nothing happened. Caswell settled himself more comfortably on the couch. He scratched his shoulder and put the headband at a more comfortable angle. Still nothing. His thoughts began to wander.

  Magnessen! You noisy, overbearing oaf, you disgusting—

  “Good afternoon,” a voice murmured in his head. “I am your mechanotherapist.”

  Caswell twitched guiltily. “Hello. I was just—you know, just sort of—”

  “Of course,” the machine said soothingly. “Don’t we all? I am now scanning the material in your preconscious with the intent of synthesis, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. I find.…”

  “Yes?”

  “Just one moment.” The Regenerator was silent for several minutes. Then, hesitantly, it said, “This is beyond doubt a most unusual case.”

  “Really?” Caswell asked, pleased.

  “Yes. The coefficients seem—I’m not sure.…” The machine’s robotic voice grew feeble. The pilot light began to flicker and fade.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?”

  “Confusion,” said the machine. “Of course,” it went on in a stronger voice, “the unusual nature of the symptoms need not prove entirely baffling to a competent therapeutic machine. A symptom, no matter how bizarre, is no more than a signpost, an indication of inner difficulty. And all symptoms can be related to the broad mainstream of proven theory. Since the theory is effective, the symptoms must relate. We will proceed on that assumption.”

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” asked Caswell, feeling lightheaded.

  The machine snapped back, its pilot light blazing. “Mechanotherapy today is an exact science and admits no significant errors. We will proceed with a word-association test.”

  “Fire away,” said Caswell.

  “House?”

  “Home.”

  “Dog?”

  “Cat.”

  “Fleefl?”

  Caswell hesitated, trying to figure out the word. It sounded vaguely Martian, but it might be Venusian or even—

  “Fleefl?” the Regenerator repeated.

  “Marfoosh,” Caswell replied, making up the word on the spur of the moment.

  “Loud?”

  “Sweet.”

  “Green?”

  “Mother.”

  “Thanagoyes?”

  “Patamathonga.”

  “Arrides?”

  “Nexothesmodrastica.”

  “Chtheesnohelgnopteces?”

  “Rigamaroo latasentricpropatria!” Caswell shot back. It was a collection of sounds he was particularly proud of. The average man would not have been able to pronounce them.

  “Hmm,” said the Regenerator. “The pattern fits. It always does.”

  “What pattern?”

  “You have,” the machine informed him, “a classic case of feem desire, complicated by strong dwarkish intentions.”

  �
��I do? I thought I was homicidal.”

  “That term has no referent,” the machine said severely. “Therefore I must reject it as nonsense syllabification. Now consider these points: The feem desire is perfectly normal. Never forget that. But it is usually replaced at an early age by the hovendish revulsion. Individuals lacking in this basic environmental response—”

  “I’m not absolutely sure I know what you’re talking about,” Caswell confessed.

  “Please, sir! We must establish one thing at once. You are the patient. I am the mechanotherapist. You have brought your troubles to me for treatment. But you cannot expect help unless you cooperate.”

  “All right,” Caswell said. “I’ll try.”

  Up to now, he had been bathed in a warm glow of superiority. Everything the machine said had seemed mildly humorous. As a matter of fact, he had felt capable of pointing out a few things wrong with the mechanotherapist.

  Now that sense of well-being evaporated, as it always did, and Caswell was alone, terribly alone and lost, a creature of his compulsions, in search of a little peace and contentment.

  He would undergo anything to find them. Sternly he reminded himself that he had no right to comment on the mechanotherapist. These machines knew what they were doing and had been doing it for a long time. He would cooperate, no matter how outlandish the treatment seemed from his layman’s viewpoint.

  But it was obvious, Caswell thought, settling himself grimly on the couch, that mechanotherapy was going to be far more difficult than he had imagined.

  * * * *

  The search for the missing customer had been brief and useless. He was nowhere to be found on the teeming New York streets and no one could remember seeing a red-haired, red-eyed little man lugging a black therapeutic machine.

  It was all too common a sight.

  In answer to an urgent telephone call, the police came immediately, four of them, led by a harassed young lieutenant of detectives named Smith.

  Smith just had time to ask, “Say, why don’t you people put tags on things?” when there was an interruption.

  A man pushed his way past the policeman at the door. He was tall and gnarled and ugly, and his eyes were deep-set and bleakly blue. His clothes, unpressed and uncaring, hung on him like corrugated iron.

  “What do you want?” Lieutenant Smith asked.

  The ugly man flipped back his lapel, showing a small silver badge beneath. “I’m John Rath, General Motors Security Division.”

  “Oh… Sorry, sir,” Lieutenant Smith said, saluting. “I didn’t think you people would move in so fast.”

  Rath made a noncommittal noise. “Have you checked for prints, Lieutenant? The customer might have touched some other therapy machine.”

  “I’ll get right on it, sir,” Smith said. It wasn’t often that one of the operatives from GM, GE, or IBM came down to take a personal hand. If a local cop showed he was really clicking, there just might be the possibility of an Industrial Transfer.…

  Rath turned to Follansby and Haskins, and transfixed them with a gaze as piercing and as impersonal as a radar beam. “Let’s have the full story,” he said, taking a notebook and pencil from a shapeless pocket.

  He listened to the tale in ominous silence. Finally he closed his notebook, thrust it back into his pocket and said, “The therapeutic machines are a sacred trust. To give a customer the wrong machine is a betrayal of that trust, a violation of the Public Interest, and a defamation of the Company’s good reputation.”

  The manager nodded in agreement, glaring at his unhappy clerk.

  “A Martian model,” Rath continued, “should never have been on the floor in the first place.”

  “I can explain that,” Follansby said hastily. “We needed a demonstrator model and I wrote to the Company, telling them—”

  “This might,” Rath broke in inexorably, “be considered a case of gross criminal negligence.”

  Both the manager and the clerk exchanged horrified looks. They were thinking of the General Motors Reformatory outside of Detroit, where Company offenders passed their days in sullen silence, monotonously drawing microcircuits for pocket television sets.

  “However, that is out of my jurisdiction,” Rath said. He turned his baleful gaze full upon Haskins. “You are certain that the customer never mentioned his name?”

  “No, sir. I mean yes, I’m sure,” Haskins replied rattledly.

  “Did he mention any names at all?”

  Haskins plunged his face into his hands. He looked up and said eagerly, “Yes! He wanted to kill someone! A friend of his!”

  “Who?” Rath asked, with terrible patience.

  “The friend’s name was—let me think—Magneton! That was it! Magneton! Or was it Morrison? Oh, dear.…”

  Mr. Rath’s iron face registered a rather corrugated disgust. People were useless as witnesses. Worse than useless, since they were frequently misleading. For reliability, give him a robot every time.

  “Didn’t he mention anything significant?”

  “Let me think!” Haskins said, his face twisting into a fit of concentration.

  Rath waited.

  Mr. Follansby cleared his throat. “I was just thinking, Mr. Rath. About that Martian machine. It won’t treat a Terran homicidal case as homicidal, will it?”

  “Of course not. Homicide is unknown on Mars.”

  “Yes. But what will it do? Might it not reject the entire case as unsuitable? Then the customer would merely return the Regenerator with a complaint and we would—”

  Mr. Rath shook his head. “The Rex Regenerator must treat if it finds evidence of psychosis. By Martian standards, the customer is a very sick man, a psychotic—no matter what is wrong with him.”

  Follansby removed his pince-nez and polished them rapidly. “What will the machine do, then?”

  “It will treat him for the Martian illness most analogous to his case. Feem desire, I should imagine, with various complications. As for what will happen once treatment begins, I don’t know. I doubt whether anyone knows, since it has never happened before. Offhand, I would say there are two major alternatives: the patient may reject the therapy out of hand, in which case he is left with his homicidal mania unabated. Or he may accept the Martian therapy and reach a cure.”

  Mr. Follansby’s face brightened. “Ah! A cure is possible!”

  “You don’t understand,” Rath said. “He may effect a cure of his nonexistent Martian psychosis. But to cure something that is not there is, in effect, to erect a gratuitous delusional system. You might say that the machine would work in reverse, producing psychosis instead of removing it.”

  Mr. Follansby groaned and leaned against a Bell Psychosomatica.

  “The result,” Rath summed up, “would be to convince the customer that he was a Martian. A sane Martian, naturally.”

  Haskins suddenly shouted, “I remember! I remember now! He said he worked for the New York Rapid Transit Corporation! I remember distinctly!”

  “That’s a break,” Rath said, reaching for the telephone.

  Haskins wiped his perspiring face in relief. “And I just remembered something else that should make it easier still.”

  “What?”

  “The customer said he had been an alcoholic at one time. I’m sure of it, because he was interested at first in the IBM Alcoholic Reliever, until I talked him out of it. He had red hair, you know, and I’ve had a theory for some time about red-headedness and alcoholism. It seems—”

  “Excellent,” Rath said. “Alcoholism will be on his records. It narrows the search considerably.”

  As he dialed the NYRT Corporation, the expression on his craglike face was almost pleasant.

  It was good, for a change, to find that a human could retain some significant facts.

  * * * *

  “But surely you remember your goricae?” the Regenerator was saying.

  “No,” Caswell answered wearily.

  “Tell me, then, about your juvenile experiences with the thorastr
ian fleep.”

  “Never had any.”

  “Hmm. Blockage,” muttered the machine. “Resentment. Repression. Are you sure you don’t remember your goricae and what it meant to you? The experience is universal.”

  “Not for me,” Caswell said, swallowing a yawn.

  He had been undergoing mechanotherapy for close to four hours and it struck him as futile. For a while, he had talked voluntarily about his childhood, his mother and father, his older brother. But the Regenerator had asked him to put aside those fantasies. The patient’s relationships to an imaginary parent or sibling, it explained, were unworkable and of minor importance psychologically. The important thing was the patient’s feelings—both revealed and repressed—toward his goricae.

  “Aw, look,” Caswell complained, “I don’t even know what a goricae is.”

  “Of course you do. You just won’t let yourself know.”

  “I don’t know. Tell me.”

  “It would be better if you told me.”

  “How can I?” Caswell raged. “I don’t know!”

  “What do you imagine a goricae would be?”

  “A forest fire,” Caswell said. “A salt tablet. A jar of denatured alcohol. A small screwdriver. Am I getting warm? A notebook. A revolver—”

  “These associations are meaningful,” the Regenerator assured him. “Your attempt at randomness shows a clearly underlying pattern. Do you begin to recognize it?”

  “What in hell is a goricae?” Caswell roared.

  “The tree that nourished you during infancy, and well into puberty, if my theory about you is correct. Inadvertently, the goricae stifled your necessary rejection of the feem desire. This in turn gave rise to your present urge to dwark someone in a vlendish manner.”

  “No tree nourished me.”

  “You cannot recall the experience?”

  “Of course not. It never happened.”

  “You are sure of that?”

  “Positive.”

  “Not even the tiniest bit of doubt?”

  “No! No goricae ever nourished me. Look, I can break off these sessions at any time, right?”

  “Of course,” the Regenerator said. “But it would not be advisable at this moment. You are expressing anger, resentment, fear. By your rigidly summary rejection—”