A Science Fiction Omnibus

by Brian Aldiss

  Whistler shrugged. He wore his white lab coat with his fists pressing down within its pockets and creasing it into tense vertical lines. ‘I knocked. You didn’t answer. The operations signal wasn’t on.’

  Meyerhof grunted. It wasn’t at that. He’d been thinking about this new project too intensively and he was forgetting little details.

  And yet he could scarcely blame himself for that. This thing was important.

  He didn’t know why it was, of course. Grand Masters rarely did. That’s what made them Grand Masters; the fact that they were beyond reason. How else could the human mind keep up with that ten-mile-long lump of solidified reason that men called Multivac, the most complex computer ever built?

  Meyerhof said, ‘I am working. Is there something important on your mind?’

  ‘Nothing that can’t be postponed. There are a few holes in the answer on the hyperspatial –’ Whistler did a double take and his face took on a rueful look of uncertainty. ‘Working?’

  ‘Yes. What about it?’

  ‘But –’ He looked about, staring into the crannies of the shallow room that faced the banks upon banks of relays that formed a small portion of Multivac. ‘There isn’t anyone here at that.’

  ‘Who said there was, or should be?’

  ‘You were telling one of your jokes, weren’t you?’

  ‘And?’

  Whistler forced a smile. ‘Don’t tell me you were telling a joke to Multivac?’

  Meyerhof stiffened. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Meyerhof stared the other down. ‘I don’t have to account to you. Or to anyone.’

  ‘Good Lord, of course not. I was curious, that’s all… But then, if you’re working, I’ll leave.’ He looked about once more, frowning.

  ‘Do so,’ said Meyerhof. His eyes followed the other out and then he activated the operations signal with a savage punch of his finger.

  He strode the length of the room and back, getting himself in hand. Damn Whistler! Damn them all! Because he didn’t bother to hold those technicians, analysts, and mechanics at the proper social distance, because he treated them as though they, too, were creative artists, they took these liberties.

  He thought grimly: They can’t even tell jokes decently.

  And instantly that brought him back to the task in hand. He sat down again. Devil take them all.

  He threw the proper Multivac circuit back into operation and said, ‘The ship’s steward stopped at the rail of the ship during a particularly rough ocean crossing and gazed compassionately at the man whose slumped position over the rail and intensity of gaze towards the depths betokened all too well the ravages of seasickness.

  ‘Gently, the steward patted the man’s shoulder. “Cheer up, sir,” he murmured. “I know it seems bad, but really, you know, nobody ever dies of seasickness.’

  ‘The afflicted gentleman lifted his greenish, tortured face to his comforter and gasped in hoarse accents, “Don’t say that, man. For Heaven’s sake, don’t say that. It’s only the hope of dying that’s keeping me alive.”’

  Timothy Whistler, a bit preoccupied, nevertheless smiled and nodded as he passed the secretary’s desk. She smiled back at him.

  Here, he thought, was an archaic item in this computer-ridden world of the twenty-first century, a human secretary. But then perhaps it was natural that such an institution should survive here in the very citadel of computerdom; in the gigantic world corporation that handled Multivac. With Multivac filling the horizons, lesser computers for trivial tasks would have been in poor taste.

  Whistler stepped into Abram Trask’s office. That government official paused in his careful task of lighting a pipe; his dark eyes flicked in Whistler’s direction and his beaked nose stood out sharply and prominently against the rectangle of window behind him.

  ‘Ah, there, Whistler. Sit down. Sit down.’

  Whistler did so. ‘I think we’ve got a problem, Trask.’

  Trask half-smiled. ‘Not a technical one, I hope. I’m just an innocent politician.’ (It was one of his favourite phrases.)

  ‘It involves Meyerhof.’

  Trask sat down instantly and looked acutely miserable. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Reasonably sure.’

  Whistler understood the other’s sudden unhappiness well. Trask was the government official in charge of the Division of Computers and Automation of the Department of the Interior. He was expected to deal with matters of policy involving the human satellites of Multivac, just as those technically trained satellites were expected to deal with Multivac itself.

  But a Grand Master was more than just a satellite. More, even, than just a human.

  Early in the history of Multivac, it had become apparent that the bottleneck was the questioning procedure. Multivac could answer the problems of humanity, all the problems, if – if it were asked meaningful questions. But as knowledge accumulated at an ever-faster rate, it became ever more difficult to locate those meaningful questions.

  Reason alone wouldn’t do. What was needed was a rare type of intuition; the same faculty of mind (only much more intensified) that made a Grand Master at chess. A mind was needed of the sort that could see through the quadrillions of chess patterns to find the one best move, and do it in a matter of minutes.

  Trask moved restlessly. ‘What’s Meyerhof been doing?’

  ‘He’s introduced a line of questioning that I find disturbing.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Whistler. Is that all? You can’t stop a Grand Master from going through any line of questioning he chooses. Neither you nor I are equipped to judge the worth of his questions. You know that. I know you know that.’

  ‘I do. Of course. But I also know Meyerhof. Have you ever met him socially?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. Does anyone meet any Grand Master socially?’

  ‘Don’t take that attitude, Trask. They’re human and they’re to be pitied. Have you ever thought what it must be like to be a Grand Master; to know there are only some twelve like you in the world; to know that only one or two come up per generation; that the world depends on you; that a thousand mathematicians, logicians, psychologists, and physical scientists wait on you?’

  Trask shrugged and muttered, ‘Good Lord, I’d feel king of the world.’

  ‘I don’t think you would,’ said the senior analyst. ‘They feel kings of nothing. They have no equal to talk to, no sensation of belonging. Listen. Meyerhof never misses a chance to get together with the boys. He isn’t married, naturally; he doesn’t drink; he has no natural social touch – yet he forces himself into company because he must. And do you know what he does when he gets together with us, and that’s at least once a week?’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea,’ said the government man. ‘This is all new to me.’

  ‘He’s a jokester.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He tells jokes. Good ones. He’s terrific. He can take any story, however old and dull, and make it sound good. It’s the way he tells it. He has a flair.’

  ‘I see. Well, good.’

  ‘Or bad. These jokes are important to him.’ Whistler put both elbows on Trask’s desk, bit at a thumbnail and stared into the air. ‘He’s different, he knows he’s different, and these jokes are the one way he feels he can get the rest of us ordinary schmoes to accept him. We laugh, we howl, we clap him on the back and even forget he’s a Grand Master. It’s the only hold he has on the rest of us.’

  ‘This is all interesting. I didn’t know you were such a psychologist. Still, where does this lead?’

  ‘Just this. What do you suppose happens if Meyerhof runs out of jokes?’

  ‘What?’ The government man stared blankly.

  ‘If he starts repeating himself? If his audience starts laughing less heartily, or stops laughing altogether? It’s his only hold on our approval. Without it, he’ll be alone and then what would happen to him? After all, Trask, he’s one of the dozen men manki
nd can’t do without. We can’t let anything happen to him. I don’t mean just physical things. We can’t even let him get too unhappy. Who knows how that might affect his intuition?’

  ‘Well, has he started repeating himself?’

  ‘Not as far as I know, but I think he thinks he has.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because I’ve heard him telling jokes to Multivac.’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Accidentally. I walked in on him and he threw me out. He was savage. He’s usually good-natured enough, and I consider it a bad sign that he was so upset at the intrusion. But the fact remains that he was telling a joke to Multivac, and I’m convinced it was one of a series.’

  ‘But why?’

  Whistler shrugged and rubbed a hand fiercely across his chin. ‘I have thought about that. I think he’s trying to build up a store of jokes in Multivac’s memory banks in order to get back new variations. You see what I mean? He’s planning a mechanical jokester, so that he can have an infinite number of jokes at hand and never fear running out.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘Objectively, there may be nothing wrong with that, but I consider it a bad sign when a Grand Master starts using Multivac for his personal problems. Any Grand Master has a certain inherent mental instability and he should be watched. Meyerhof may be approaching a borderline beyond which we lose a Grand Master.’

  Trask said blankly, ‘What are you suggesting I do?’

  ‘You can check me. I’m too close to him to judge well, maybe, and judging humans isn’t my particular talent, anyway. You’re a politician; it’s more your talent.’

  ‘Judging humans, perhaps, not Grand Masters.’

  ‘They’re human, too. Besides, who else is to do it?’

  The fingers of Trask’s hand struck his desk in rapid succession over and over like a slow and muted roll of drums.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to,’ he said.

  Meyerhof said to Multivac, ‘The ardent swain, picking a bouquet of wildflowers for his loved one, was disconcerted to find himself, suddenly, in the same field with a large bull of unfriendly appearance which, gazing at him steadily, pawed the ground in a threatening manner. The young man, spying a farmer on the other side of a fairly distant fence, shouted, “Hey mister, is that bull safe?’ The farmer surveyed the situation with a critical eye, spat to one side and called back, “He’s safe as anything.” He spat again, and added, “Can’t say the same about you, though.”’

  Meyerhof was about to pass on to the next when the summons came.

  It wasn’t really a summons. No one could summon a Grand Master. It was only a message that Division Head Trask would like very much to see Grand Master Meyerhof if Grand Master Meyerhof could spare him the time.

  Meyerhof might, with impunity, have tossed the message to one side and continued with whatever he was doing. He was not subject to discipline.

  On the other hand, were he to do that, they would continue to bother him – oh, very respectfully, but they would continue to bother him.

  So he neutralized the pertinent circuits of Multivac and locked them into place. He put the freeze signal on his office so that no one would dare enter in his absence and left for Trask’s office.

  Trask coughed and felt a bit intimidated by the sullen fierceness of the other’s look. He said, ‘We have not had occasion to know one another, Grand Master, to my great regret.’

  ‘I have reported to you,’ said Meyerhof stiffly.

  Trask wondered what lay behind these keen, wild eyes. It was difficult for him to imagine Meyerhof, with his thin face, his dark, straight hair, intense air, ever unbending long enough to tell funny stories.

  He said, ‘Reports are not a social acquaintance. I – I have been given to understand you have a marvellous fund of anecdotes.’

  ‘I am a jokester, sir. That’s the phrase people use. A jokester.’

  ‘They haven’t used the phrase to me, Grand Master. They have said –’

  ‘The hell with them! I don’t care what they’ve said. See here, Trask, do you want to hear a joke?’ He leaned forward across the desk, his eyes narrowed.

  ‘By all means. Certainly,’ said Trask, with an effort at heartiness.

  ‘All right. Here’s the joke: Mrs Jones stared at the fortune card that had emerged from the weighing machine in response to her husband’s penny. She said, “It says here, George, that you’re suave, intelligent, farseeing, industrious, and attractive to women.” With that, she turned the card over and added, “And they have your weight wrong, too.”’

  Trask laughed. It was almost impossible not to. Although the punch line was predictable, the surprising facility with which Meyerhof had produced just the tone of contemptuous disdain in the woman’s voice, and the cleverness with which he had contorted the lines of his face to suit that tone carried the politician helplessly into laughter.

  Meyerhof said sharply, ‘Why is that funny?’

  Trask sobered. ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘I said why is that funny? Why do you laugh?’

  ‘Well,’ said Trask, trying to be reasonable, ‘the last line put everything that preceded in a new light. The unexpectedness –’

  ‘The point is,’ said Meyerhof, ‘that I have pictured a husband being humiliated by his wife; a marriage that is such a failure that the wife is convinced that her husband lacks any virtue. Yet you laugh at that. If you were the husband, would you find it funny?’

  He waited a moment in thought, then said, ‘Try this one, Trask: Abner was seated at his wife’s sickbed, weeping uncontrollably, when his wife, mustering the dregs of her strength, drew herself up to one elbow.

  ‘“Abner,” she whispered, “Abner, I cannot go to my Maker without confessing my misdeed.”

  ‘“Not now,” muttered the stricken husband. “Not now, my dear. Lie back and rest.”

  ‘“I cannot,” she cried. “I must tell, or my soul will never know peace. I have been unfaithful to you, Abner. In this very house, not one month ago –”

  ‘“Hush, dear,” soothed Abner. “I know all about it. Why else have I poisoned you?”’

  Trask tried to maintain equanimity but did not succeed. He suppressed a chuckle imperfectly.

  Meyerhof said, ‘So that’s funny, too. Adultery. Murder. All funny.’

  ‘Well, now,’ said Trask, ‘books have been written analysing humour.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Meyerhof, ‘and I’ve read a number of them. What’s more, I’ve read most of them to Multivac. Still, the people who write the books are just guessing. Some of them say we laugh because we feel superior to the people in the joke. Some say it is because of a suddenly realized incongruity or a sudden relief from tension, or a sudden reinterpretation of events. Is there any simple reason? Different people laugh at different jokes. No joke is universal. Some people don’t laugh at any joke. Yet what may be most important is that man is the only animal with a true sense of humour: the only animal that laughs.’

  Trask said suddenly, ‘I understand. You’re trying to analyse humour. That’s why you’re transmitting a series of jokes to Multivac.’

  ‘Who told you I was doing that?… Never mind, it was Whistler. I remember, now. He surprised me at it. Well, what about it?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘You don’t dispute my right to add anything I wish to Multivac’s general fund of knowledge, or to ask any question I wish?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ said Trask hastily. ‘As a matter of fact, I have no doubt that this will open the way to new analyses of great interest to psychologists.’

  ‘Hmp. Maybe. Just the same, there’s something plaguing me that’s more important than just the general analysis of humour. There’s a specific question I have to ask. Two of them, really.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’ Trask wondered if the other would answer. There would be no way of compelling him if he chose not to.

  But Meyerhof said, ‘The first question is this: Where
do all these jokes come from?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who makes them up? Listen! About a month ago, I spent an evening swapping jokes. As usual, I told most of them and, as usual, the fools laughed. Maybe they really thought the jokes were funny and maybe they were just humouring me. In any case, one creature took the liberty of slapping me on the back and saying, “Meyerhof, you know more jokes than any ten people I know.”

  ‘I’m sure he was right, but it gave rise to a thought. I don’t know how many hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of jokes I’ve told at one time or another in my life, yet the fact is I never made up one. Not one. I’d only repeated them. My only contribution was to tell them. To begin with, I’d either heard them or read them. And the source of my hearing or reading didn’t make up the jokes, either. I never met anyone who ever claimed to have constructed a joke. It’s always “I heard a good one the other day,” and “Heard any good ones lately?”

  ‘All the jokes are old! That’s why jokes exhibit such a social lag. They still deal with seasickness, for instance, when that’s easily prevented these days and never experienced. Or they’ll deal with fortune-giving weighing machines, like the joke I told you, when such machines are found only in antique shops. Well, then, who makes up the jokes?’

  Trask said, ‘Is that what you’re trying to find out?’ It was on the tip of Trask’s tongue to add: Good Lord, who cares? He forced that impulse down. A Grand Master’s questions were always meaningful.

  ‘Of course that’s what I’m trying to find out. Think of it this way. It’s not just that jokes happen to be old. They must be old to be enjoyed. It’s essential that a joke not be original. There’s one variety of humour that is, or can be, original and that’s the pun. I’ve heard puns that were obviously made up on the spur of the moment. I have made some up myself. But no one laughs at such puns. You’re not supposed to. You groan. The better the pun, the louder the groan. Original humour is not laugh-provoking. Why?’