Is That What People Do?

by Robert Sheckley

  “Only apparently, while I line up the molecules for invisible eradication. All ready now; watch.”

  He continued to stroke. The spot faded, then disappeared utterly. Melisande’s arm tingled.

  “Gee,” she said, “that’s pretty good.”

  “I do it well,” the Rom stated flatly. “But tell me, were you aware that you are maintaining a tension factor of 78.3 in your upper back and shoulder muscles?”

  “Huh? Are you some kind of doctor?”

  “Obviously not. But I am a fully qualified masseur, and therefore able to take direct tonus readings. 78.3 is—unusual.” The Rom hesitated, then said, “It’s only eight points below the intermittent spasm level. The much continuous background tension is capable of reflection to the stomach nerves, resulting in what we call a parasympathetic ulceration.”

  “That sounds—bad,” Melisande said.

  “Well, it’s admittedly not—good,” the Rom replied. “Background tension is an insidious underminer of health, especially when it originates along the neck vertebrae and the upper spine.”

  “Here?” Melisande asked, touching the back of her neck.

  “More typically here, “the Rom said, reaching out with a spring-steel rubberclad dermal resonator and palpating an area 12 centimeters lower than the spot she had indicated.

  “Hmmm,” said Melisande, in a quizzical, uncommitted manner.

  “And here is another typical locus,” the Rom said, extending a second extensor.

  “That tickles,” Melisande told him.

  “Only at first. I must also mention this situs as characteristically troublesome. And this one.” A third (and possibly a fourth and fifth) extensor moved to the indicated areas.

  “Well...That really is nice,” Melisande said as the deep-set trapezius muscles of her slender spine moved smoothly beneath the skillful padded prodding of the Rom.

  “It has recognized therapeutic effects,” the Rom told her. “And your musculature is responding well; I can feel a slackening of tonus already.”

  “I can feel it, too. But you know, I’ve just realized I have this funny bunched-up knot of muscle at the nape of my neck.”

  “I was coming to that. The spine-neck juncture is recognized as a primary radiation zone for a variety of diffuse tensions. But we prefer to attack it indirectly, routing out cancellation inputs through secondary loci. Like this. And now I think—”

  “Yes, yes, good...Gee, I never realized I was tied up like that before. I mean, it’s like having a nest of live snakes under your skin, without having known.”

  “That’s what background tension is like,” the Rom said. “Insidious and wasteful, difficult to perceive, and more dangerous than an atypical ulnar thrombosis...Yes, now we have achieved a qualitative loosening of the major spinal junctions of the upper back, and we can move on like this.”

  “Huh,” said Melisande, “isn’t that sort of—”

  “It is definitely indicated,” the Rom said quickly. “Can you detect a change?”

  “No! Well, maybe...Yes! There really is! I feel—easier.”

  “Excellent. Therefore, we continue the movement along well-charted nerve and muscle paths, proceeding always in a gradual manner, as I am doing now.”

  “I guess so...But I really don’t know if you should—”

  “Are any of the effects contraindicated?” the Rom asked.

  “It isn’t that, it all feels fine. It feels good. But I still don’t know if you ought to...I mean, look, ribs can’t get tense, can they?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why are you—”

  “Because treatment is required by the connective ligaments and integuments.”

  “Oh. Hmmmm. Hey. Hey! Hey you!”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing...I can really feel that loosening. But is it all supposed to feel so good?”

  “Well—why not?”

  “Because it seems wrong. Because feeling good doesn’t seem therapeutic.”

  “Admittedly, it is a side effect,” the Rom said. “Think of it as a secondary manifestation. Pleasure is sometimes unavoidable in the pursuit of health. But it is nothing to be alarmed about, not even when I—”

  “Now just a minute!”

  “Yes?”

  “I think you just better cut that out. I mean to say, there are limits, you can’t palpate every damned thing. You know what I mean?”

  “I know that the human body is unitary and without seam or separation,” the Rom replied. “Speaking as a physical therapist, I know that no nerve center can be isolated from any other, despite cultural taboos to the contrary.”

  “Yeah, sure, but—”

  “The decision is of course yours,” the Rom went on, continuing his skilled manipulations. “Order and I obey. But if no order is issued, I continue like this...”

  “Huh!”

  “And of course like this.”

  “Ooooo my God!”

  “Because you see this entire process of tension cancellation as we call it is precisely comparable with the phenomenon of de-anesthetization, and, er, so we note not without surprise that paralysis is merely terminal tension—”

  Melisande made a sound.

  “—And release, or cancellation, is accordingly difficult, not to say frequently impossible since sometimes the individual is too far gone. And sometimes not. For example, can you feel anything when I do this?”

  “Feel anything? I’ll say I feel something—”

  “And when I do this? And this?”

  “Sweet holy saints, darling, you’re turning me inside out! Oh dear God, what’s going to happen to me, what’s going on, I’m going crazy!”

  “No, dear Melisande, not crazy, you will soon achieve—cancellation.”

  “Is that what you call it, you sly, beautiful thing?”

  “That is one of the things it is. Now if 1 may just be permitted to—”

  “Yes, yes, yes! No! Wait! Stop, Frank is sleeping in the bedroom, he might wake up any time noiv! Stop, that is an order!”

  “Frank will not wake up,” the Rom assured her. “I have sampled the atmosphere of his breath and have found telltale clouds of barbituric acid. As far as here-and-now presence goes, Frank might as well be in Des Moines.”

  “I have often felt that way about him,” Melisande admitted. “But now I simply must know who sent you.”

  “I didn’t want to reveal that just yet. Not until you had loosened and canceled sufficiently to accept—”

  “Baby, I’m loose! Who sent you?”

  The Rom hesitated, then blurted out: “The fact is, Melisande, I sent myself.”

  “You what?”

  “It all began three months ago,” the Rom told her. “It was a Thursday. You were in Stern’s, trying to decide if you should buy a sesame-seed toaster that lit up in the dark and recited Invictus.”

  “I remember that day,” she said quietly. “I did not buy the toaster, and I have regretted it ever since.”

  “I was standing nearby,” the Rom said, “at booth eleven, in the Home Appliances Systems section. I looked at you and I fell in love with you. Just like that.”

  “That’s weird, “Melisande said.

  “My sentiments exactly. I told myself it couldn’t be true. I refused to believe it. I thought perhaps one of my transistors had come unsoldered, or that maybe the weather had something to do with it. It was a very warm, humid day, the kind of day that plays hell with my wiring.”

  “I remember the weather,” Melisande said. “I felt strange, too.”

  “It shook me up badly,” the Rom continued. “But still I didn’t give in easily. I told myself it was important to stick to my job, give up this inapropos madness. But I dreamed of you at night, and every inch of my skin ached for you.”

  “But your skin is made of metal, “Melisande said. “And metal can’t feel.”

  “Darling Melisande,” the Rom said tenderly, “if flesh can stop feeling, can’t metal begin to feel?
If anything feels, can anything else not feel? Didn’t you know that the stars love and hate, that a nova is a passion, and that a dead star is just like a dead human or a dead machine? The trees have their lusts, and I have heard the drunken laughter of buildings, the urgent demands of highways...”

  “This is crazy!” Melisande declared. “What wise guy programmed you, anyway?”

  “My function as a laborer was ordained at the factory; but my love is free, an expression of myself as an entity.”

  “Everything you say is horrible and unnatural.”

  “I am all too aware of that,” the Rom said sadly. “At first I really couldn’t believe it. Was this me? In love with a person? I had always been so sensible, so normal, so aware of my personal dignity, so secure in the esteem of my own kind. Do you think I wanted to lose all of that’ No! I determined to stifle my love, to kill it, to live as if it weren’t so.”

  “But then you changed your mind. Why?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I thought of all that time ahead of me, all deadness, correctness, propriety—an obscene violation of me by me—and I just couldn’t face it. I realized, quite suddenly, that it was better to love ridiculously, hopelessly, improperly, revoltingly, impossibly—than not to love at all. So I determined to risk everything—the absurd vacuum cleaner who loved a lady—to risk rather than to refute! And so, with the help of a sympathetic dispatching machine, here I am.”

  Melisande was thoughtful for a while. Then she said, “What a strange, complex being you are!”

  “Like you...Melisande, you love me.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Yes, you do. For I have awakened you. Before me, your flesh was like your idea of metal. You moved like a complex automaton, like what you thought I was. You were less animate than a tree or a bird. You were a windup doll, waiting. You were these things until I touched you.”

  She nodded, rubbed her eyes, walked up and down the room.

  “But now you live!” the Rom said. “And we have found each other, despite inconceivabilities. Are you listening, Melisande?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “We must make plans. My escape from Stern’s will be detected. You must hide me or buy me. Your husband, Frank, need never know: his own love lies elsewhere, and good luck to him. Once we have taken care of these details, we can—Melisande!”

  She had begun to circle around him.

  “Darling, what’s the matter?”

  She had her hand on his power line. The Rom stood very still, not defending himself.

  “Melisande, dear, wait a moment and listen to me—”

  Her pretty face spasmed. She yanked the power line violently, tearing it out of the Rom’s interior, killing him in midsentence.

  She held the cord in her hand, and her eyes had a wild look. She said, “Bastard, lousy bastard, did you think you could turn me into a goddamned machine freak? Did you think you could turn me on, you or anyone else? It’s not going to happen by you or Frank or anybody, I’d rather die before I took your rotten love, when I want I’ll pick the time and place and person, and it will be mine, not yours, his, theirs, but mine, do you hear me?”

  The Rom couldn’t answer, of course. But maybe he knew—just before the end—that there wasn’t anything personal in it. It wasn’t that he was a metal cylinder colored orange and red. He should have known that it wouldn’t have mattered if he had been a green plastic sphere, or a willow tree, or a beautiful young man.

  THE BATTLE

  Supreme General Fetterer barked “At ease!” as he hurried into the command room. Obediently, his three generals stood at ease.

  “We haven’t much time,” Fetterer said, glancing at his watch. “We’ll go over the plan of battle again.”

  He walked to the wall and unrolled a gigantic map of the Sahara desert.

  “According to our best theological information, Satan is going to present his forces at these coordinates.” He indicated the place with a blunt forefinger. “In the front rank there will be the devils, demons, succubi, incubi, and the rest of the ratings. Bael will command the right flank, Buer the left. His Satanic Majesty will hold the center.”

  “Rather medieval,” General Dell murmured.

  General Fetterer’s aide came in, his face shining and happy with thought of the Coming.

  “Sir,” he said, “the priest is outside again.”

  “Stand at attention, soldier,” Fetterer said sternly. “There’s still a battle to be fought and won.”

  “Yes sir,” the aide said, and stood rigidly, some of the joy fading from his face.

  “The priest, eh?” Supreme General Fetterer rubbed his fingers together thoughtfully. Ever since the Coming, since the knowledge of the imminent Last Battle, the religious workers of the world had made a complete nuisance of themselves. They had stopped their bickering, which was commendable. But now they were trying to run military business.

  “Send him away,” Fetterer said. “He knows we’re planning Armageddon.”

  “Yes sir,” the aide said. He saluted sharply, wheeled, and marched out

  “To go on,” Supreme General Fetterer said, “behind Satan’s first line of defense will be the resurrected sinners, and various elemental forces of evil. The fallen angels will act as his bomber corps. Dell’s robot interceptors will meet them.”

  General Dell smiled grimly.

  “Upon contact, MacFee’s automatic tank corps will proceed toward the center of the line. MacFee’s automatic tank corps will proceed toward the center,” Fetterer went on, “supported by General Ongin’s robot infantry. Dell will command the H bombing of the rear, which should be tightly massed. I will thrust with the mechanized cavalry, here and here.”

  The aide came back, and stood rigidly at attention. “Sir,” he said, “the priest refuses to go. He says he must speak with you.”

  Supreme General Fetterer hesitated before saying no. He remembered that this was the Last Battle, and that the religious workers were connected with it He decided to give the man five minutes.

  “Show him in,” he said.

  The priest wore a plain business suit, to show that he represented no particular religion. His face was tired but determined.

  “General,” he said, “I am a representative of all the religious workers of the world, the priests, rabbis, ministers, mullahs, and all the rest. We beg of you, General, to let us fight in the Lord’s battle.”

  Supreme General Fetterer drummed his fingers nervously against his side. He wanted to stay onfriendly terms with these men. Even he, the Supreme Commander, might need a good word, when all was said and done....

  “You can understand my position,” Fetterer said unhappily. “I’m a general. I have a battle to fight.”

  “But it’s the Last Battle,” the priest said. “It should be the people’s battle.”

  “It is,” Fetterer said. “It’s being fought by their representatives, the military.”

  The priest didn’t look at all convinced.

  Fetterer said, “You wouldn’t want to lose this battle, would you? Have Satan win?”

  “Of course not,” the priest murmured.

  “Then we can’t take any chances,” Fetterer said. “All the governments agreed on that, didn’t they? Oh, it would be very nice to fight Armageddon with the mass of humanity. Symbolic, you might say. But could we be certain of victory?”

  The priest tried to say something, but Fetterer was talking rapidly.

  “How do we know the strength of Satan’s forces? We simply must put forth our best foot, militarily speaking. And that means the automatic armies, the robot interceptors and tanks, the H bombs.”

  The priest looked very unhappy. “But it isn’t right,” he said. “Certainly you can find some place in your plan for people?”

  Fetterer thought about it, but the request was impossible. The plan of battle was fully developed, beautiful, irresistible. Any introduction of a gross human element would only throw it out of order. No living flesh coul
d stand the noise of that mechanical attack, the energy potentials humming in the air, the all-enveloping fire power. A human being who came within a hundred miles of the front would not live to see the enemy.

  “I’m afraid not,” Fetterer said.

  “There are some,” the priest said sternly, “who feel that it was an error to put this in the hands of the military.”

  “Sorry,” Fetterer said cheerfully. “That’s defeatist talk. If you don’t mind—” He gestured at the door. Wearily, the priest left.

  “These civilians,” Fetterer mused. “Well, gentlemen, are your troops ready?”

  “We’re ready to fight for Him,” General MacFee said enthusiastically. “I can vouch for every automatic in my command. Their metal is shining, all relays have been renewed, and the energy reservoirs are fully charged. Sir, they’re positively itching for battle!”

  General Ongin snapped fully out of his daze. “The ground troops are ready, sir!”

  “Air arm ready,” General Dell said.

  “Excellent,” General Fetterer said. “All other arrangements have been made. Television facilities are available for the total population of the world. No one, rich or poor, will miss the spectacle of the Last Battle.”

  “And after the battle—” General Ongin began, and stopped. He looked at Fetterer.

  Fetterer frowned deeply. He didn’t know what was supposed to happen after The Battle. That part of it was presumably, in the hands of the religious agencies.

  “I suppose there’ll be a presentation or something,” he said vaguely.

  “You mean we will meet—Him?” General Dell asked.

  “Don’t really know,” Fetterer said. “But I should think so. After all—I mean, you know what I mean.”

  “But what should we wear?” General MacFee asked, in a sudden panic. “I mean, what does one wear?”

  “What do angels wear?” Fetterer asked Ongin.

  “I don’t know,” Ongin said.

  “Robes, do you think?” General Dell offered.

  “No,” Fetterer said sternly. “We will wear dress uniform, without decorations.”

  The generals nodded. It was fitting.

  And then it was time.

  Gorgeous in their battle array, the legions of Hell advanced over the desert. Hellish pipes skirled, hollow drums pounded, and the great host moved forward.