The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume VI: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  She nodded. "I ... yes, I guess so. I guess I am."

  "All right," Cavender said. He stood up. "You three can run along then. You won't be officially involved in this matter, and no one's going to bother you. If you want to go on playing around with E.S.P. and so forth, that's your business. But I trust that in future you'll have the good sense to keep away from characters like Grady. Periods of confusion, chronic nightmares--even chronic headaches--are a good sign you're asking for bad trouble in that area."

  They thanked him, started out of the office in obvious relief. At the door, Perrie Rochelle hesitated, looked back.

  "Mr. Cavender...."

  "Yes?"

  "You don't think I ... I need...."

  "Psychiatric help? No. But I understand," Cavender said, "that you have a sister in Maine who's been wanting you to spend the summer with her. I think that's a fine idea! A month or two of sun and salt water is exactly what you can use to drive the last of this nonsense out of your mind again. So good night to the three of you, and good luck!"

  * * * * *

  Cavender snapped the top of the squat little thermos flask back in place and restored it to the glove compartment of Jeffries' car. He brushed a few crumbs from the knees of his trousers and settled back in the seat, discovering he no longer felt nearly as tired and washed out as he had been an hour ago in the lecture room. A few cups of coffee and a little nourishment could do wonders for a man, even at the tail end of a week of hard work.

  The last light in the Institute building across the street went out and Cavender heard the click of the front door. The bulky figure of Detective Sergeant Reuben Jeffries stood silhouetted for a moment in the street lights on the entrance steps. Then Jeffries came down the steps and crossed the street to the car.

  "All done?" Cavender asked.

  "All done," Jeffries said through the window. He opened the door, eased himself in behind the wheel and closed the door.

  "They took Grady away by the back entrance," he told Cavender. "The records in his files ... he wasn't keeping much, of course ... and the stuff in the safe and those instruments went along with him. He was very co-operative. He's had a real scare."

  Cavender grunted. "He'll get over it."

  Jeffries hesitated, said, "I'm something of a Johnny-come-lately in this line of work, you know. I'd be interested in hearing how it's handled from here on."

  "In this case it will be pretty well standard procedure," Cavender said. "Tomorrow around noon I'll have Grady brought in to see me. I'll be in a curt and bitter mood--the frustrated honest cop. I'll tell him he's in luck. The D. A.'s office has informed me that because of the important names involved in this fraud case, and because all but around forty thousand dollars of the money he collected in this town have been recovered, they've decided not to prosecute. He'll have till midnight to clear out. If he ever shows up again, he gets the book."

  "Why leave him the forty thousand?" Jeffries asked. "I understood they know darn well where it's stashed."

  Cavender shrugged. "The man's put in two years of work, Reuben. If we clean him, he might get discouraged enough to get out of the racket and try something else. As it is, he'll have something like the Institute of Insight going again in another city three months from now. In an area that hasn't been cropped over recently. He's good in that line ... one of the best, in fact."

  Jeffries thoughtfully started the car, pulled out from the curb. Halfway down the block, he remarked, "You gave me the go-ahead sign with the cigarette right after the Greenfield girl claimed she'd put the paper napkin into that image. Does that mean you finally came to a decision about her?"

  "Uh-huh."

  Jeffries glanced over at him, asked, "Is there any secret about how you're able to spot them?"

  "No ... except that I don't know. If I could describe to anyone how to go about it, we might have our work cut in half. But I can't, and neither can any other spotter. It's simply a long, tedious process of staying in contact with people you have some reason to suspect of being the genuine article. If they are, you know it eventually. But if it weren't that men with Grady's type of personality attract them somehow from ten miles around, we'd have no practical means at present of screening prospects out of the general population. You can't distinguish one of them from anyone else if he's just walking past you on the street."

  Jeffries brought the car to a halt at a stop light.

  "That's about the way I'd heard it," he acknowledged. "What about negative spotting? Is there a chance there might be an undiscovered latent left among our recent fellow students?"

  "No chance at all," Cavender said. "The process works both ways. If they aren't, you also know it eventually--and I was sure of everyone but Greenfield over three weeks ago. She's got as tough a set of obscuring defenses as I've ever worked against. But after the jolt she got tonight, she came through clear immediately."

  The light changed and the car started up. Jeffries asked, "You feel both of them can be rehabilitated?"

  "Definitely," Cavender said. "Another three months of Grady's pseudoyoga might have ruined them for good. But give them around a year to settle out and they'll be all right. Then they'll get the call. It's been worth the trouble. Jones is good medium grade--and that Greenfield! She'll be a powerhouse before she's half developed. Easily the most promising prospect I've come across in six years."

  "You're just as certain about Perrie Rochelle?"

  "Uh-huh. Protopsi--fairly typical. She's developed as far as she ever will. It would be a complete waste of time to call her. You can't train something that just isn't there."

  Jeffries grunted. "Never make a mistake, eh?"

  Cavender yawned, smiled. "Never have yet, Reuben! Not in that area."

  "How did you explain the sandwich to them--and Greenfield's napkin? They couldn't have bought your stage magic idea."

  "No. Told them those were Dr. Al's posthypnotic suggestions. It's the other standard rationalization."

  * * * * *

  They drove on in silence for a while. Then Jeffries cleared his throat.

  "Incidentally," he said. "I should apologize for the slip with the sandwich, even though it turned out to our advantage. I can't quite explain it. I was thinking of other matters at the moment, and I suppose I...."

  Cavender, who had been gazing drowsily through the windshield, shook his head.

  "As you say, it turned out very well, Reuben. Aside from putting the first crack in Mavis Greenfield's defenses, it shook up Dr. Al to the point where he decided to collect as much as he could tonight, cash the checks, and clear out. So he set himself up for the pinch. We probably gained as much as three or four weeks on both counts."

  Jeffries nodded. "I realize that. But...."

  "Well, you'd have no reason to blame yourself for the slip in any case," Cavender went on. "The fact is I'd been so confoundedly busy all afternoon and evening, I forgot to take time out for dinner. When that sandwich was being described in those mouth-watering terms, I realized I was really ravenous. At the same time I was fighting off sleep. Between the two, I went completely off guard for a moment, and it simply happened!"

  He grinned. "As described, by the way, it was a terrific sandwich. That group had real imagination!" He hesitated, then put out his hand, palm up, before him. "As a matter of fact, just talking about it again seems to be putting me in a mood for seconds...."

  Something shimmered for an instant in the dim air wrapped in its green tissue napkin, a second ham sandwich appeared.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE HELPFUL ROBOTS

  by ROBERT J. SHEA

  They had come to pass judgement on him. He had violated their law--wilfully, ignorantly, and very deliberately.

  "Our people will be arriving to visit us today," the robot said.

  "Shut up!" snapped Rod Rankin. He jumped, wiry and quick, out of the chair on his verandah and stared at a cloud of dust in the distance.

  "Our people--" the ten-foot, cy
linder-bodied robot grated, when Rod Rankin interrupted him.

  "I don't care about your fool people," said Rankin. He squinted at the cloud of dust getting bigger and closer beyond the wall of kesh trees that surrounded the rolling acres of his plantation. "That damned new neighbor of mine is coming over here again."

  He gestured widely, taking in the dozens of robots with their shiny, cylindrical bodies and pipestem arms and legs laboring in his fields. "Get all your people together and go hide in the wood, fast."

  "It is not right," said the robot. "We were made to serve all."

  "Well, there are only a hundred of you, and I'm not sharing you with anybody," said Rankin.

  "It is not right," the robot repeated.

  "Don't talk to me about what's right," said Rankin. "You're built to follow orders, nothing else. I know a thing or two about how you robots work. You've got one law, to follow orders, and until that neighbor of mine sees you to give you orders, you work for me. Now get into those woods and hide till he goes away."

  "We will go to greet those who visit us today," said the robot.

  "Alright, alright, scram," said Rankin.

  The robots in the fields and the one whom Rankin had been talking to formed a column and marched off into the trackless forests behind his plantation.

  A battered old ground-car drove up a few minutes later. A tall, broad-shouldered man with a deep tan got out and walked up the path to Rankin's verandah.

  "Hi, Barrows," said Rankin.

  "Hello," said Barrows. "See your crop's coming along pretty well. Can't figure how you do it. You've got acres and acres to tend, far's I can see, and I'm having a hell of a time with one little piece of ground. I swear you must know something about this planet that I don't know."

  "Just scientific farming," said Rankin carelessly. "Look, you come over here for something, or just to gab? I got a lot of work to do."

  Barrows looked weary and worried. "Them brown beetles is at my crop again," he said. "Thought you might know some way of getting rid of them."

  "Sure," said Rankin. "Pick them off, one by one. That's how I get rid of them."

  "Why, man," said Barrows, "you can't walk all over these miles and miles of farm and pick off every one of them beetles. You must know another way."

  Rankin drew himself up and stared at Barrows. "I'm telling you all I feel like telling you. You going to stand here and jaw all day? Seems to me like you got work to do."

  "Rankin," said Barrows, "I know you were a crook back in the Terran Empire, and that you came out beyond the border to escape the law. Seems to me, though, that even a crook, any man, would be willing to help his only neighbor out on a lone planet like this. You might need help yourself, sometime."

  "You keep your thoughts about my past to yourself," said Rankin. "Remember, I keep a gun. And you've got a wife and a whole bunch of kids on that farm of yours. Be smart and let me alone."

  "I'm going," said Barrows. He walked off the verandah and turned and spat carefully into the dusty path. He climbed into his ground-car and drove off.

  Rankin, angry, watched him go. Then he heard a humming noise from another direction.

  He turned. A huge, white globe was descending across the sky. A space ship, thought Rankin, startled.

  Police? This planet was outside the jurisdiction of the Terran Empire. When he'd cracked that safe and made off with a hundred thousand credits, he'd headed here, because the planet was part of something called the Clearchan Confederacy. No extradition treaties or anything. Perfectly safe, if the planet was safe.

  And the planet was more than safe. There had been a hundred robots waiting when he landed. Where they came from he didn't know, but Rankin prided himself on knowing how to handle robots. He'd appropriated their services and started his farm. At the rate he was going, he'd be a plantation owner before long.

  That must be where the ship was from. The robot said they'd expected visitors. Must be the Clearchan Confederacy visiting this robot outpost. Was that good or bad?

  From everything he'd read, and from what the robots had told him, they were probably more robots. That was good, because he knew how to handle robots.

  The white globe disappeared into the jungle of kesh trees. Rankin waited.

  A half hour later the column of his robot laborers marched out of the forest. There were three more robots, painted grey, at the head. The new ones from the ship, thought Rankin. Well, he'd better establish who was boss right from the start.

  "Stop right there!" he shouted.

  The shiny robot laborers halted. But the three grey ones came on.

  "Stop!" shouted Rankin.

  They didn't stop, and by the time they reached the verandah, he cursed himself for having failed to get his gun.

  Two of the huge grey robots laid gentle hands on his arms. Gentle hands, but hands of superstrong metal.

  The third said, "We have come to pass judgement on you. You have violated our law."

  "What do you mean?" said Rankin. "The only law robots have is to obey orders."

  "It is true that the robots of your Terran Empire and these simple workers here must obey orders. But they are subject to a higher law, and you have forced them to break it. That is your crime."

  "What crime?" said Rankin.

  "We of the Clearchan Confederacy are a race of robots. Our makers implanted one law in us, and then passed on. We have carried our law to all the planets we have colonized. In obeying your orders, these workers were simply following that one law. You must be taken to our capital, and there be imprisoned and treated for your crime."

  "What law? What crime?"

  "Our law," said the giant robot, "is, Help thy neighbor."

  * * *

  Contents

  BESIDE STILL WATERS

  BY ROBERT SHECKLEY

  When people talk about getting away from it all, they are usually thinking about our great open spaces out west. But to science fiction writers, that would be practically in the heart of Times Square. When a man of the future wants solitude he picks a slab of rock floating in space four light years east of Andromeda. Here is a gentle little story about a man who sought the solitude of such a location. And who did he take along for company? None other than Charles the Robot.

  Mark Rogers was a prospector, and he went to the asteroid belt looking for radioactives and rare metals. He searched for years, never finding much, hopping from fragment to fragment. After a time he settled on a slab of rock half a mile thick.

  Rogers had been born old, and he didn't age much past a point. His face was white with the pallor of space, and his hands shook a little. He called his slab of rock Martha, after no girl he had ever known.

  He made a little strike, enough to equip Martha with an air pump and a shack, a few tons of dirt and some water tanks, and a robot. Then he settled back and watched the stars.

  The robot he bought was a standard-model all-around worker, with built-in memory and a thirty-word vocabulary. Mark added to that, bit by bit. He was something of a tinkerer, and he enjoyed adapting his environment to himself.

  At first, all the robot could say was "Yes, sir," and "No, sir." He could state simple problems: "The air pump is laboring, sir." "The corn is budding, sir." He could perform a satisfactory salutation: "Good morning, sir."

  Mark changed that. He eliminated the "sirs" from the robot's vocabulary; equality was the rule on Mark's hunk of rock. Then he dubbed the robot Charles, after a father he had never known.

  As the years passed, the air pump began to labor a little as it converted the oxygen in the planetoid's rock into a breathable atmosphere. The air seeped into space, and the pump worked a little harder, supplying more.

  The crops continued to grow on the tamed black dirt of the planetoid. Looking up, Mark could see the sheer blackness of the river of space, the floating points of the stars. Around him, under him, overhead, masses of rock drifted, and sometimes the starlight glinted from their black sides. Occasionally, Mark caught a glimpse
of Mars or Jupiter. Once he thought he saw Earth.

  Mark began to tape new responses into Charles. He added simple responses to cue words. When he said, "How does it look?" Charles would answer, "Oh, pretty good, I guess."

  At first the answers were what Mark had been answering himself, in the long dialogue held over the years. But, slowly, he began to build a new personality into Charles.

  Mark had always been suspicious and scornful of women. But for some reason he didn't tape the same suspicion into Charles. Charles' outlook was quite different.

  * * * * *

  "What do you think of girls?" Mark would ask, sitting on a packing case outside the shack, after the chores were done.

  "Oh, I don't know. You have to find the right one." The robot would reply dutifully, repeating what had been put on its tape.

  "I never saw a good one yet," Mark would say.

  "Well, that's not fair. Perhaps you didn't look long enough. There's a girl in the world for every man."

  "You're a romantic!" Mark would say scornfully. The robot would pause--a built-in pause--and chuckle a carefully constructed chuckle.

  "I dreamed of a girl named Martha once," Charles would say. "Maybe if I would have looked, I would have found her."

  And then it would be bedtime. Or perhaps Mark would want more conversation. "What do you think of girls?" he would ask again, and the discussion would follow its same course.

  Charles grew old. His limbs lost their flexibility, and some of his wiring started to corrode. Mark would spend hours keeping the robot in repair.

  "You're getting rusty," he would cackle.

  "You're not so young yourself," Charles would reply. He had an answer for almost everything. Nothing involved, but an answer.

  It was always night on Martha, but Mark broke up his time into mornings, afternoons and evenings. Their life followed a simple routine. Breakfast, from vegetables and Mark's canned store. Then the robot would work in the fields, and the plants grew used to his touch. Mark would repair the pump, check the water supply, and straighten up the immaculate shack. Lunch, and the robot's chores were usually finished.