Kornbluth, Mary (Ed)

by [Anth] Science Fiction Showcase [v1. 0] [epub]

  He didn’t even look at it. Time was when he had liked that sort of thing too, but he wasn’t a four-year-old like Doris any more. All the same, there was one thing a four-year-old had -

  He stopped at the door of her room. ‘Doris?’ he whispered.

  Mammy scolded: ‘Now, chile, you knows that lil baby is asleep! How come you tryin’ to wake her up ?’

  ‘I won’t wake her up.’ The farthest thing from Sonny’s mind was to wake his sister up. He tiptoed into the room and stood beside the little girl’s bed. Lucky kid! he thought enviously. Being four, she was allowed to have a tiny little room and a tiny bed - where Sonny had to wallow around in a forty-foot bedchamber and a bed eight feet long.

  He looked down at his sister. Behind him Mammy clucked approvingly. That’s nice when chilluns loves each other lak you an’ that lil baby,’ it whispered.

  Doris was sound asleep, clutching her teddy-bear. It wriggled slightly and opened an eye to look at Sonny, but it didn’t say anything.

  Sonny took a deep breath, leaned forwards and gently slipped the teddy-bear out of the bed.

  It scrambled pathetically, trying to get free. Behind him Mammy whispered urgently: ‘Sonny! Now you let dat ole teddy-bear alone, you heah me?’

  Sonny whispered, ‘I’m not hurting anything. Leave me alone, will you?’

  ‘Sonny!’

  He clutched the little furry robot desperately around its middle. The stubby arms pawed at him, the furred feet scratched against his arms. It growled a tiny doll-bear growl, and whined, and suddenly his hands were wet with its real salt tears.

  ‘Sonny! Come on now, honey, you knows that’s Doris’s teddy. Aw, chile!’

  He said, ‘It’s mine!’ It wasn’t his. He knew it wasn’t his. His was long gone, taken away from him when he was six because it was old, and because he had been six and six-year-olds had to have bigger, more elaborate companion-robots. It wasn’t even the same colour as his - it was brown, where his had been black and white. But it was cuddly and gently warm; and he had heard it whispering little make-believe stories to Doris. And he wanted it, very much.

  Footsteps in the hall outside. A low-pitched pleading voice from the door: ‘Sonny, you must not interfere with your sister’s toys. One has obligations.’

  He stood forlornly, holding the teddy-bear. ‘Go away, Mr. Chips!’

  ‘Really, Sonny! This isn’t proper behaviour. Please return the toy.’

  He cried: ‘I won’t!’

  Mammy, dark face pleading in the shadowed room, leaned towards him and tried to take it away from him. ‘Aw, honey, now you knows dat’s not -’

  ‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted. There was a gasp and a little cry from the bed, and Doris sat up and began to weep.

  Well, they had their way. The little girl’s bedroom was suddenly filled with robots - and not only robots, for in a moment the butler robot appeared, its face stern and sorrowful, leading Sonny’s actual flesh-and-blood mother and father. Sonny made a terrible scene. He cried, and he swore at them childishly for being the unsuccessful clods they were; and they nearly wept too, because they were aware that their lack of standing was bad for the children.

  But he couldn’t keep the teddy.

  They got it away from him and marched him back to his room, where his father lectured him while his mother stayed behind to watch Mammy comfort the little girl. His father said: ‘Sonny, you’re a big boy now. We aren’t as well off as other people, but you have to help us. Don’t you know that, Sonny? We all have to do our part. Your mother and I’ll be up till midnight now, consuming, because you’ve interrupted us with this scene. Can’t you at least try to consume something bigger than a teddy-bear? It’s all right for Doris because she’s so little, but a big boy like you-’

  ‘I hate you!’ cried Sonny, and he turned his face to the wall.

  They punished him, naturally. The first punishment was that they gave him an extra birthday party the week following.

  The second punishment was even worse.

  * * * *

  2

  Later - much, much later, nearly a score of years - a man named Roger Garrick in a place named Fisherman’s Island walked into his hotel room.

  The light didn’t go on.

  The bellhop apologized. ‘We’re sorry, sir. We’ll have it attended to, if possible.’

  ‘If possible?’ Garrick’s eyebrows went up. The bellhop made putting in a new light tube sound like a major industrial operation. ‘All right.’ He waved the bellhop out of the room. It bowed and closed the door.

  Garrick looked around him, frowning. One light tube more or less didn’t make an awful lot of difference; there was still the light from the sconces at the walls, from the reading lamps at the chairs and chaise longue and from the photomural on the long side of the room - to say nothing of the fact that it was broad, hot daylight outside and light poured through the windows. All the same, it was a new sensation to be in a room where the central lighting wasn’t on. He didn’t like it. It was - creepy.

  A rap on the door. A girl was standing there, young, attractive, rather small. But a woman grown, it was apparent. ‘Mr. Garrick? Mr. Roosenburg is expecting you on the sun deck.’

  ‘All right.’ He rummaged around in the pile of luggage, looking for his briefcase. It wasn’t even sorted out! The bellhop had merely dumped the lot and left.

  The girl said, ‘Is that what you’re looking for?’ He looked where she was pointing; it was his briefcase, behind another bag. ‘You’ll get used to that around here. Nothing in the right place, nothing working right. We’ve all got used to it.’

  We. He looked at her sharply, but she was no robot; there was life, not the glow of electronic tubes, in her eyes. ‘Pretty bad, is it?’

  She shrugged. ‘Let’s go see Mr. Roosenburg. I’m Kathryn Pender, by the way. I’m his statistician.’

  He followed her out into the hall. ‘Statistician?’

  She turned and smiled - a tight, grim smile of annoyance. ‘That’s right. Surprised?’

  Garrick said slowly, ‘Well, it’s more a robot job. Of course, I’m not familiar with the practice in this sector…’

  “You will be,’ she said shortly. ‘No, we aren’t taking the elevator. Mr. Roosenburg’s in a hurry to see you.’

  ‘But-’

  She turned and glared at him. ‘Don’t you understand? Day before yesterday I took the elevator, and I was hung up between floors for an hour and a half. Something was going on at North Guardian, and it took all the power in the lines. Would it happen again today? I don’t know. But, believe me, an hour and a half is a long time to be hanging in an elevator.’ She turned and led him to the fire stairs. Over her shoulder she said: ‘Get it straight once and for all, Mr. Garrick. You’re in a disaster area here…Anyway, it’s only ten more flights.’

  * * * *

  Ten flights.

  Nobody climbed ten flights of stairs any more! Garrick was huffing and puffing before they were halfway, but the girl kept on ahead, light as a gazelle. Her skirt cut midway between hip and knees, and Garrick had plenty of opportunity to observe that her legs were attractively tanned. Even so, he couldn’t help looking around him. It was a robot’s-eye view of the hotel that he was getting; this was the bare wire armature that held up the confectionery suites and halls where the humans went. Garrick knew, as everyone absent-mindedly knew, that there were places like this behind the scenes everywhere. Belowstairs the robots worked; behind scenes, they moved about their errands and did their jobs. But nobody went there. It was funny about the backs of this girl’s knees; they were paler than the rest of the leg -

  Garrick wrenched his mind back to his surroundings. Take the guard rail along the steps, for instance. It was wire-thin, frail-looking. No doubt it could bear any weight it was required to, but why couldn’t it look that way? The answer, obviously, was that robots did not have humanity’s built-in concepts of how strong a rail should look before they could believe it really was strong. If
a robot should be in any doubt - and how improbable, that a robot should be in doubt! - it would perhaps reach out a sculptured hand and test it. Once. And then it would remember, and never doubt again; and it wouldn’t be continually edging towards the wall, away from the spider-strand between him and the vertical drop -

  He conscientiously took the middle of the steps all the rest of the way up.

  Of course that merely meant a different distraction, when he really wanted to do some thinking. But it was a pleasurable distraction. And by the time they reached the top he had solved the problem; the pale spots at the back of Miss Pender’s knees meant she had got her suntan the hard way - walking in the sun, perhaps working in the sun, so that the bending knees kept the sun from the patches at the back; not, as anyone else would acquire a tan, by lying beneath a normal, healthful sunlamp held by a robot masseur.

  He wheezed: ‘You don’t mean we’re all the way up?’

  ‘All the way up,’ she agreed, and looked at him closely. ‘Here, lean on me if you want to.’

  ‘No, thanks!’ He staggered over to the door, which opened naturally enough as he approached it, and stepped out into the flood of sunlight on the roof, to meet Mr. Roosenburg.

  * * * *

  Garrick wasn’t a medical doctor, but he remembered enough of his basic pre-specialization to know there was something in that fizzy golden drink. It tasted perfectly splendid - just cold enough, just fizzy enough, not quite too sweet. And after two sips of it he was buoyant with strength and well being.

  He put the glass down and said: ‘Thank you for whatever it was. Now let’s talk.’

  ‘Gladly, gladly!’ boomed Mr. Roosenburg. ‘Kathryn, the files!’

  Garrick looked after her, shaking his head. Not only was she a statistician, which was robot work, she was also a file clerk - and that was barely even robot work, it was the kind of thing handled by a semisentient punchcard sorter in a decently run sector.

  Roosenburg said sharply: ‘Shocks you, doesn’t it? But that’s why you’re here.’ He was a slim, fair little man, and he wore a golden beard cropped square.

  Garrick took another sip of the fizzy drink. It was good stuff; it didn’t intoxicate, but it cheered. He said, ‘I’m glad to know why I’m here.’

  The golden beard quivered. ‘Area Control sent you down and didn’t tell you this was a disaster area?’

  Garrick put down the glass. ‘I’m a psychist. Area Control said you needed a psychist. From what I’ve seen, it’s a supply problem, but -’

  ‘Here are the files,’ said Kathryn Pender, and stood watching him.

  Roosenburg took the spools of tape from her and dropped them in his lap. He said tangentially, ‘How old are you, Roger?’

  Garrick was annoyed. ‘I’m a qualified psychist! I happen to be assigned to Area Control and -’

  ‘How old are you ?’

  Garrick scowled. ‘Twenty-four.’

  Roosenburg nodded. ‘Um. Rather young,’ he observed. ‘Maybe you don’t remember how things used to be.’

  Garrick said dangerously, ‘All the information I need is on that tape. I don’t need any lectures from you.’

  Roosenburg pursed his lips and got up. ‘Come here a minute, will you?’

  He moved over to the rail of the sun deck and pointed. ‘See those things down there?’

  Garrick looked. Twenty storeys down the village straggled off towards the sea in a tangle of pastel oblongs and towers. Over the bay the hills of the mainland were faintly visible through mist; and riding the bay, the flat white floats of the solar receptors.

  ‘It’s a power plant. That what you mean?’

  Roosenburg boomed, ‘A power plant. All the power the world can ever use, out of this one and all the others, all over the world.’ He peered out at the bobbing floats, soaking up energy from the sun. ‘And people used to try to wreck them,’ he said.

  Garrick said stiffly: ‘I may only be twenty-four years old, Mr. Roosenburg, but I have completed school.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Oh, of course you have, Roger. But maybe schooling isn’t the same thing as living through a time like that. I grew up in the Era of Plenty, when the law was: Consume. My parents were poor, and I still remember the misery of my childhood. Eat and consume, wear and use. I never had a moment’s peace, Roger! For the very poor it was a treadmill; we had to consume so much that we could never catch up, and the farther we fell behind, the more the Ration Board forced on us -’

  Roger Garrick said: ‘That’s ancient history, Mr. Roosenburg. Morey Fry liberated us from all that.’

  The girl said softly: ‘Not all of us.’

  The man with the golden beard nodded. ‘Not all of us. As you should know, Roger, being a psychist.’

  Garrick sat up straight, and Roosenburg went on: ‘Fry showed us that the robots could help at both ends - by making, by consuming. But it came a little late for some of us. The patterns of childhood - they linger on.’

  Kathryn Pender leaned towards Garrick. ‘What he’s trying to say, Mr. Garrick - we’ve got a compulsive consumer on our hands.’

  * * * *

  3

  North Guardian Island - nine miles away. It wasn’t as much as a mile wide, and not much more than that in length. But it had its city and its bathing beaches, its parks and theatres. It was possibly the most densely populated island in the world ... for the number of its inhabitants.

  The President of the Council convened their afternoon meeting in a large and lavish room. There were nineteen councilmen around a lustrous mahogany table. Over the President’s shoulder the others could see the situation map of North Guardian and the areas surrounding. North Guardian glowed blue, cool, impregnable. The sea was misty green; the mainland, Fisherman’s Island, South Guardian and the rest of the little archipelago were a hot and hostile red.

  Little flickering fingers of red attacked the blue. Flick, and a ruddy flame wiped out a corner of a beach; flick, and a red spark appeared in the middle of the city, to grow and blossom, and then to die. Each little red whip-flick was a point where, momentarily, the defenses of the island were down; but always and always, the cool blue brightened around the red, and drowned it.

  The President was tall, stooped, old. It wore glasses, though robot eyes saw well enough without. It said, in a voice that throbbed with power and pride: ‘The first item of the order of business will be a report of the Defence Secretary.’

  The Defence Secretary rose to its feet, hooked a thumb in its vest and cleared its throat. ‘Mr. President -’

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’ A whisper from the sweet-faced young blonde taking down the minutes of the meeting. ‘Mr. Trumie has just left Bowling Green, heading north,’

  The President nodded stiffly, like the crown of an old redwood nodding. ‘You may proceed, Mr. Secretary,’ it said after a moment.

  ‘Our invasion fleet,’ began the Secretary, in its high, clear voice, ‘is ready for sailing on the first suitable tide. Certain units have been, ah, inactivated, at the, ah, instigation of Mr. Trumie, but on the whole repairs have been completed and the units will be serviceable within the next few hours.’ Its lean, attractive face turned solemn. ‘I am afraid, however, that the Air Command has sustained certain, ah, increments of attrition - due, I should emphasize, to chances involved in certain calculated risks-’

  ‘Question, question!’ It was the Commissioner of Public Safety, small, dark, fire-eyed, angry.

  ‘Mr. Commissioner?’ the President began, but it was interrupted again by the soft whisper of the recording stenographer, listening intently to the earphones that brought news from outside.

  ‘Mr. President,’ it whispered, ‘Mr. Trumie has passed the Navy Yard.’ The robots turned to look at the situation map. Bowling Green, though it smouldered in spots, had mostly gone back to blue. But the jagged oblong of the Yard flared red and bright. There was a faint electronic hum in the air, almost a sigh.

  The robots turned back to face each other. ‘Mr. President! I demand the def
ence Secretary explain the loss of the Graf Zeppelin and the 456th Bomb Group!’

  The Defence Secretary nodded to the Commissioner of Public Safety. ‘Mr. Trumie threw them away,’ it said sorrowfully.

  Once again, that sighing electronic drone from the assembled robots.

  The Council fussed and fiddled with its papers, while the situation map on the wall flared and dwindled, flared and dwindled. The Defence Secretary cleared its throat again. ‘Mr. President, there is no question that the, ah, absence of an effective air component will seriously hamper, not to say endanger, our prospects of a suitable landing. Nevertheless - and I say this, Mr. President, in full knowledge of the conclusions that I may - indeed, should! - be drawn from such a statement - nevertheless, Mr. President, I say that our forward elements will successfully complete an assault landing -’