The Metallic Muse

by Lloyd Biggle Jr

  “Kids don’t get any physical benefit from watching scooter ball,” he would say. “If you want to enjoy the spiritual benefits of art, you have to participate. You can’t just watch it from the sidelines.”

  People understood that kind of talk, and Professor Perkins built up a big class of students. When they were advanced enough he started an orchestra, and he conducted it himself, without pay. If sections needed help for a concert, he brought professional musicians out from the city and paid them himself. He gave several recitals a year, and he had his students in regular recitals. He hired the best professional accompanists he could find to help out, and naturally he had to pay them. I knew that his savings couldn’t amount to much. He’d invested all of his, money in culture for Waterville.

  These concerts and recitals were events. Everyone in the area had at least one relative on the program, and everyone came—admission free, of course. And it didn’t stop there. The professor made arrangements for a couple of young artists to spend their summers in Waterville giving inexpensive art lessons to anyone interested. I couldn’t guess what that cost him. When my father died and I took over the Gazette, the professor had me sponsoring story contests and poetry contests and essay contests and running the winners in the Gazette. At least that didn’t cost him anything—I put up the prizes myself.

  But the idea was the same: Don’t watch from the sidelines, have a go at it yourself. With the professor pushing it for twenty years, that philosophy really took hold. We had everything from wood-carving clubs to oil-painting clubs, from poetry-writing clubs to musical-composition clubs. And the professor was the sponsor and guardian angel of each and every one. Almost every kid who’d grown up during the past twenty years had studied a musical instrument at one time or another, and so had a lot of the adults. The professor had become a local institution. Everyone loved him, especially the kids.

  It was hard to believe that people would throw him over for Sam Beyers’s robot after the contribution he had made. I suppose the robot had the same appeal as the new kitchen or farming gadget that everyone rushes to buy. There’s something intriguing about a robot that can give music lessons.

  And the lessons were free, and would be until Beyers got rid of the professor. That was bad enough, but if the robot actually could take one of the professor’s beginners and have him playing Beethoven and Berg and Morglitz after two or three lessons …

  If there was a way to help the professor, I couldn’t see it. After moping about for most of the morning, I decided to have another talk with him.

  He lived in a small house located on the edge of town and remote enough from the immediate neighbors so that the music lessons wouldn’t bother them. It also had room for him to exercise his talents as a horticulturist. In the summer his yard was knee-deep in flowers.

  His daughter Hilda met me at the door. There were wrinkles in her plump face that I hadn’t seen before, and her mouth drooped mournfully. The professor’s life had seemed comfortably secure, and suddenly everything was falling apart.

  “He’s out in the garden,” she said. “You sit down and I’ll call him.”

  I preferred to pace the floor while I waited. In most homes this would have been the living room, but the professor had made it his studio. It was attractively furnished, with pictures of composers on the walls, and a framed page of that odd-looking medieval music, and photographs of orchestras the professor had played in. It was the only room in the house that was air-conditioned. After his investments in Waterville’s culture, the professor hadn’t much money left for physical comforts.

  He was surprised to see me but as eagerly hospitable as ever. Hilda faced him glumly before he could speak. “Mrs. Anderson called,” she said. “Carol—”

  “Ah, yes. Carol goes to Beyers and the robot gives her lessons free. Today she has troubles with the little exercises, and tomorrow she plays a Morglitz concerto without mistakes.” He winked at me. “The robot is a wonderful thing, eh, Johnnie? How many does that leave us? Twenty-two?”

  “Twenty-one,” Hilda said. “You forgot about Susan Zimmer. Or didn’t I tell you?”

  “You didn’t. But it’s quite all right. Well, Johnnie? What brings you to see an obsolete musician?”

  We sat side by side on the sofa, and Hilda brought us coffee and a small plate of cakes. We sipped coffee and munched cakes, with me trying to think of what to say and the professor waiting politely.

  “What do you know about Beyers’s robot?” I asked finally.

  “Enough to know what is wrong with it,” he said. “I’ve seen similar robots demonstrated in New York. I know about the experiments that have been made with them. Beyers’s robot may be an improved model, but they all have the same basic defect.”

  “How do they work?” I asked. “You see—I’m trying to put my finger on something I could use in the paper. In an editorial, perhaps.”

  He smiled. “You keep on trying, don’t you. Never say die, where there’s life there’s hope, the game isn’t over until the last violin student is out.” He got up and helped himself to another cup of coffee. “Beyers says I’m a selfish old fogy standing in the way of progress, but he’s wrong! There’s a place for machines—even in art there’s a place—but the machine can’t ever replace the artist. It can assist him. It can stimulate him. It can relieve him of mechanical labor. It can’t supply imagination and feeling. Those have to come from the artist.

  “Take the music-writer. The composer plays, and the music writer writes down what he is playing. The machine doesn’t compose, but it relieves the composer of the drudgery of making notes on paper, and it permits him to compose without shattering his thread of inspiration every few notes so he can write something down before he forgets it. It’s an invaluable machine. Writers and poets have the word-selector. The machine doesn’t choose the word it merely reminds the writer of the possibilities. There are the theater amplifiers. No machine can make emotional expression out of a series of words—to a machine all words are equal—but the amplifiers can deliver the actor’s natural voice to the people in the rear so he doesn’t have to shout when he should be whispering.”

  “How can a machine stimulate?” I asked.

  “You’ve heard of the composing machines?” “I thought they were a joke.”

  “They were as long as they were designed to follow a system. The music they wrote was perfectly correct and horribly dull and naive. Then someone built a machine that had no system at all. What it produced was absolute chaos, but scattered through that chaos were magnificent tonal effects that the machine happened onto by accident. It took a great artist to understand those effects and use them properly. The last and greatest compositions of Morglitz were inspired by the random beauties he found in composing-machine chaos.”

  “Then where does the robot violin teacher come in?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t. With the robot teacher, the machine becomes the artist, and the artist becomes the machine. It’s difficult to explain. Consider that robot Warren’s Feed Store uses to carry and load bags of grain. Supposing that instead of carrying that grain, the machine merely strengthened a man’s spine so he could carry larger loads himself. That’s what the robot teacher does. It gives the student proficiency without understanding and without ability. He can carry a bigger load while the machine is helping him, but without the machine he’ll be worse off than he was before the robot lessons started.”

  “I still don’t understand what the robot does,” I said.

  “The robot is a big box with a mass of tentacles that attach to the student. It tells the student when his violin is in tune. It places his fingers and arms in the correct position. The position is perfect, because the robot won’t let it be anything else. The student can’t play out of tune, or play a wrong note, because there’s a tentacle on each finger and the robot won’t let the student put a finger in the wrong place.

  “The robot flashes the music on a screen, and the student knows just what he’s playing
because each measure lights up as he gets to it and disappears after he plays it. If he bothers to watch the screen, he knows. If he doesn’t watch it, it doesn’t make any difference. The robot won’t let him make a mistake. I saw a robot demonstrated with young children who were frightened to death of it. It ignored their crying and went right ahead making them Play.”

  “That sounds bad,” I said. “I’d think all kids would hate being taught that way.”

  “Actually, the robot doesn’t teach anything. All it does is use the student like an instrument. The robot’s student can’t play without the robot any more than a violin can play by itself. A man in New York did a research project. He started one group of students with a violin teacher and another group with a robot. At the end of two years the teacher’s students were coming along nicely, and the robot’s students couldn’t play a thing. Except with the robot, of course. They could play anything with the robot.”

  “What if we were to do a research project like that in Waterville?”

  The professor shook his head. “There isn’t time. If I gave lessons for nothing I could get my students back, or, get some new students, but it would take too long to prove anything.”

  “Is there any chance that the robot might be harmful?” ,

  “Unless it’s used by an expert, it might be, and Beyers hasn’t got an expert. Muscles have to be strengthened gradually. It certainly isn’t good to force a young person’s fingers to play difficult music before they’re ready for it. There was a composer named Schumann. Nineteenth century. You probably haven’t heard of him. He was a pianist, and he built a gadget to exercise a finger he thought was weak. It ruined his career as a performer.”

  “Was he an important composer?” I asked.

  “He was fairly important.”

  Suddenly I was feeling much better. “Now that’s something I can use. It makes good material for an editorial. ‘Is the Robot Harming Our Children?’ That’ll make people sit up and take notice.”

  He shook his head sadly. “People never stay sitting up very long. Too uncomfortable. No, Johnnie. You’d need a lot of research data and a lot of time.”

  I got up and paced the floor again. Hilda came in and cleared away the coffee things, and then she came back to the doorway and stood there wringing her hands.

  “What do you expect me to do?” I demanded finally. “Just stand around and watch while Beyers wrecks everything you’ve accomplished in Waterville?”

  “Just be patient,” he said. “A machine cannot replace the artist. Remember that. And a teacher—a good teacher—is an artist.”

  “How did Beyers ever happen to buy that robot in the first place?”

  The professor smiled sadly. “You know what he thinks of his daughter. She’s the smartest kid in town. She writes stories and poems, and she’s won first prize in the last two contests you sponsored. She dances as though gravity doesn’t exist. She acts in plays. He figures she ought to be a whiz at music, too, and he sends her to me for violin lessons. I send her home again. She’s a lovely girl, and she’s bright and talented, but she’s also tone-deaf.

  “Beyers thinks I insulted him. I explain that a girl who can’t hear the difference between one note and another is wasting time and money if she takes music lessons, and he says her being tone-deaf has nothing to do with it, and anyway she isn’t, and he’ll show me I’m wrong if it’s the last thing he ever does. So he orders the robot to give Sharon violin lessons, and while he’s at it he gives free lessons to everyone and tries to take all of my students.”

  “Beyers would naturally hate anyone who suggested that Sharon wasn’t perfect in every respect,” I agreed. “But why didn’t you just go ahead and give her the lessons? It’d be his money that’d be wasted.”

  “I try to be an honest man, Johnnie. There are lots of things the girl can do well. It wouldn’t be healthy for her to try something she’s physically incapable of doing.” “Well, I’m glad you’re so sure things will work out all right. I wish I could be as confident. Even so I’d like to help them along a little—speed them up.”

  He looked thoughtful. “There’s only one way, I think, to speed them up. The robot would have to give me a violin lesson, and Beyers would never let me near the thing.”

  “Just what did you have in mind?” I asked him.

  He shook his head without answering.

  “If all you want is a lesson, I can arrange that easily. Beyers will have to give it to you. He’s been advertising free lessons for anyone.”

  “He wouldn’t accept me.”

  “If he doesn’t, he’s guilty of fraudulent advertising. Here, let me call him.”

  I went over to the visiphone and cut off the visual transmitter. Then I put through the call and got Beyers.

  “I suppose you’re having trouble reading that ad,” he said, laughing. “I should have had it typed.”

  “No trouble,” I said. “I just wanted to make an appointment with that robot of yours. I have a new student for it.”

  “Hey—that’s great!” he said. He’d been trying to interest me in the robot—he thought I hadn’t given it the publicity it deserved. “Send him over—there’s time open right now.”

  “I’ll bring him myself,” I said. I cut the connection and told the professor, “Let’s go!”

  He picked up his violin. I was feeling nervous before we got outside the door, and it didn’t help any when the professor had to stop eleven times before we reached the street to show me his pet flowers.

  We panted our way up the stairway to the Beyers School of Music, and at the top we entered a small, comfortably furnished waiting room. On the wall was a large color photo of Sharon Beyers, looking lovely and doll-like-in her dancing costume. On the opposite wall was a charcoal drawing of Sharon, beautifully done by one of the professor’s young summer artists. On the other walls were smaller photos of Sharon. If Beyers ever had a picture, made of his teen-aged son, Wilbur, I never saw it. He probably kept it in the stock room.

  I walked over and touched a button. A moment later footsteps came banging up the stairway and Wilbur burst into the room. If life were a five-card game, Wilbur would be the unfortunate type who had to get along with three. He wasn’t quite ugly enough to be repulsive, and he wasn’t quite intelligent enough to appear normal. He grinned at me, and then he saw the professor and froze.

  “What’s he doing here?” he yelped.

  “I’ve come to take a lesson,” the professor said peacefully. “Mr. Cranton made an appointment for me.”

  There’s nothing wrong with Wilbur’s instincts. He was instantly, belligerently suspicious; but it took him a while to think of the next question, and when it came it wasn’t especially brilliant. “What’s the big idea?”

  “The idea,” I said, “is that the professor is here to take a lesson.”

  “He ain’t no student!”

  “One is never too old to learn,” the professor said cheerfully. “Don’t they teach you that in school? No? Such a shame. You’ll be as old as I am, some day, and you should remember that. When a man stops learning he’s already dead. So is a robot, when it stops learning.” “I won’t give you a lesson.”

  “Not you,” the professor said. “The robot. The robot gives me the lesson.”

  Wilbur glared at him, groping deeply for words and not finding them. “I better get Pa,” he said finally.

  His footsteps went slamming back down the stairway. He slammed back up a moment later and waited at the top. Sam Beyers came up the stairway slowly. He was a slight, quiet-looking man with graying hair and a carefully trimmed mustache. He had a pleasant-looking face and usually he wore a friendly smile; but he wasn’t smiling, and there was nothing pleasant in the glance he threw at the professor.

  He turned on me. “What’s Perkins doing here?”

  “You told me to bring him over for a lesson. I brought him, and let’s have the lesson.”

  “He can give himself lessons. Out of here, both of you.”r />
  He fully intended to eject us bodily if we wouldn’t leave, or at least to make a good try at it. His face was white, with a dull, red touch of anger in his cheeks. His hands were trembling. I felt sorry for him, and I wondered if those who love too much invariably end by hating too much.

  I turned to the professor. “If he wants to violate the law, that’s his business. Let’s look up Tom Silvers and have him draw up a couple of affidavits for the District Attorney.”

  Beyers squared his shoulders and said icily, “I’ll run this business any way I want to run it.”

  “No, you won’t,” I told him. “For three weeks you’ve been advertising free lessons for anyone. If you refuse to give the professor a lesson, that makes it fraudulent advertising. Check that with your own attorney.”

  He was slowly regaining control of himself. The red was gone from his cheeks, but the pasty-white color that remained was no improvement. He sat down heavily and glared at the professor. “What are you after?”

  “Music lessons,” the professor said.

  “If he thinks the robot is a good thing, maybe he’ll retire,” I said. “Then you’d get all of his students.”

  “I’ll get all of his students anyway,” Beyers said.

  “No you won’t,” I said. “You’ll lose what you have when people start wondering why you refused to give him a lesson.”

  Beyers’s color was almost back to normal. He studied the professor slyly and said, half to himself, “You know—that really might not be a bad idea. If the robot can give Perkins lessons, people will know it can give anyone lessons.” He jerked erect. “Give him a lesson, Wilbur. I want to watch this myself.”

  Wilbur led the way into the next room, the sanctuary of the robot, and the rest of us trailed along. The professor got out his violin and approached his rival calmly. The robot stood in the center of the room, an impressive edifice of glistening metal and plastic. The multitude of metallic, tentacles hung limply at its sides. On its back was a large control panel; on its front was a darkened screen and a row of inset signal lights.