New Writings in SF 18 - [Anthology]

by Edited By John Carnell

  ‘It was their strikingly human characteristics that caused the reaction, Helen,’ Robert said. ‘They disrupted the city. Laws were passed—no more experimenting with robots in the city limits. Theoretical experiments, yes, but no more free-will automatons were permitted here.’ Robert paused and looked at her expectantly.

  ‘Why of course!’ Helen said. She was suddenly excited and she grasped Robert’s right hand in her own. ‘You’ve been here all along. What a horrible thought I had—what a fright you’ve given me.’

  Robert’s eyes were hot and glittering. He said firmly, ‘I am your father’s secret exception.’

  VanGeorge felt muscles all over his body jerking under the flood of emotion which swept like a hot wave through him. He avoided looking directly at the couple because he knew he would betray his embarrassment for them. He noticed that Helen had involuntarily dropped Robert’s hand.

  ‘That’s why such effort was taken to make me look like—like a human being,’ Robert said without bitterness.

  There was silence. VanGeorge could imagine that the girl’s heart had frozen and shattered within her and that the pieces would be falling like snow into the pit of her stomach. As the substitute father he had become to her, as the chance replacement for her own hardworking and dedicated father, he now felt more sorry for her than he had ever felt.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  When VanGeorge looked up, Robert was devoting his entire attention to her. Helen tried to nod. Tears had begun to creep down her reddened cheeks. She tried to speak. Deep, wracking sobs came instead. Then she managed to say in a tiny voice, pretending a sudden objective indifference, ‘So that’s why you’re called Robert. Not much imagination there. You could have been named Phil, after phylo-genetics. That would have been cleverer.’

  She started to laugh hysterically and stopped it quickly in order to cry out, ‘I don’t believe you!’

  ‘Nevertheless, I am.’ His hands began to move aimlessly again.

  ‘You have a human mind. You have a human brain. You wouldn’t lie about that!’

  ‘No,’ he said. He shut his eyelids. VanGeorge, in his daze, could only think: does she realise that he rarely blinks? Wasn’t that one of the flaws—one of the inconspicuous flaws in his masquerade ?

  ‘I do not have a human mind, Helen,’ he continued softly. ‘Somewhat organic, but not human. But I do have human behaviour. I am very nearly a pure, psychological product of environment.’

  ‘One of my father’s mechanical children,’ she whispered. She closed her eyes too. ‘Once I squandered a week’s salary on perfume to please you.’

  ‘Not his child,’ Robert said, ‘his alter-ego.’

  ‘No!’ Helen was crushing VanGeorge’s right arm in her fingers. ‘I don’t believe it! You’re saying this because of the star trip. You can’t be’—and she flung out a pointing hand at the row of robots—’one of those!’

  Robert smiled a stiff smile. ‘They’re my grandparents, not my brothers. Do you want proof?’ He picked up a stool and in an instant had driven his fist through the thin metal seat. They saw the deep scratches on his hand but the blood did not come.

  ‘I know you’re strong, Robert,’ she said. ‘You’ve hurt your hand.’

  Robert’s visage was strangely contorted. ‘More proof? Shall I give you a Brockton type of demonstration?’ he asked and reached his hand up towards his face.

  ‘No!’ Helen screamed and collapsed into VanGeorge’s arms.

  For a moment the doctor and the astronaut stood there, unmoving, looking at the unconscious girl.

  ‘Do you think you should have told her?’ VanGeorge said helplessly.

  ‘Yes,’ Robert said. ‘She can’t love me. It would be terribly wrong.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said VanGeorge. He started to stretch her out on the couch. ‘You go tell her father what happened. I’ll take care of her.’

  Robert turned on his squeaking heels and stalked from the room.

  For a long time VanGeorge sat on a chair by Helen’s side, letting her sleep, his own head held in his hands, thinking inconsequential, repetitious thoughts.

  They both were in the same positions when Dr. Haines came into the room.

  ‘Thank you, Don,’ the professor said. ‘Don’t worry about Helen. She’s all right. I know she is. We’ve only minutes ahead of us and we can’t discuss this calamity now. Robert is all right, too, I’m positive. I’ve continually stressed the need that he must be clear-headed during the entire five hundred and twenty days of acceleration, that’s for nearly two years, each and every twenty-four hours. He’ll surmount this crisis. In fact, he may be better for it. Don’t worry about Helen. Many human beings have affection for inhuman beings.’

  Robert had entered the room suddenly and the men knew that he heard the doctor’s final remark.

  Dr. Haines said briskly, ‘She’s all right, Robert. There’s no need to be distraught or distracted—remember, the photon-drive is radically different, hazardous, and untested. There can be no mistakes.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Doctor,’ Robert said. ‘Goodbye, Doctor VanGeorge.’ They shook hands formally and firmly. ‘And thank you—sincerely.’ He broke away with a sudden touch of shyness. He looked at Dr. Haines. ‘Am I a being. Doctor? Am I living? Where does a living being begin and mere machinery leave off ?’

  Dr. Haines’ eyes were momentarily sad. ‘I don’t know, Robert. Most people describe it simply as a soul.’

  God-given, VanGeorge thought to himself. There’s the incomprehensibility.

  ‘Does a dog have a soul?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Dr. Haines let his breath out in an audible sigh. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps you do, too, Robert. There is no clear-cut truth.’

  ‘Truth is elusive,’ Robert said, ‘yet people die for it. Perhaps some day mankind will know complete truth.’

  ‘Perhaps, Robert.’

  ‘If you’ll permit me, both of you—let me express myself with a quotation. “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come.” ‘

  Dr. Haines’ lined, tired face was faintly curious. ‘That’s the Bible, I suppose, Robert?’

  Robert nodded. ‘St. John, sixteenth chapter, thirteenth verse.’ He smiled. ‘When I get back in a hundred years I’ll quote Shakespeare. I’ve a lot of reading to do—and I’ll have the time. You know, humans spend all that time sleeping when they could be reading.’

  Robert shook Dr. Haines’ hand quickly and stepped back. ‘Goodbye, Doctor,’ he said simply.

  The older man moved forward and put his hand on Robert’s shoulder. ‘You must succeed, Robert—you’re a dear, dear friend.’

  Robert put his hand on top of the other’s. Without any emotion he said, ‘I will succeed, Doctor—you’re my father.’

  Robert quickly strode to the couch and bent and kissed Helen on the forehead. ‘Tell her what I did, please. You see, the truth is that I do love Helen.’

  Then Robert was disappearing out the door.

  Helen was struggling to lift herself off the couch, crying out, ‘Godspeed, Robert!’ But he didn’t hear because he was already gone.

  ‘You should have told him, Father,’ she said, as VanGeorge helped her to sit erect. ‘You should have told him who I really am.’

  VanGeorge looked in bewilderment at his chief, sensing the deep mystery behind her words, and saw the man’s face melting into agony.

  ‘It’s not too late. Father,’ she said. ‘Let me go with him.’

  ‘Impossible—the ship’s not equipped.’

  ‘It could be, easily. There’s still time for the contingency plan, to put in Brock’s equipment.’

  ‘You forget, my dear, you’d die out of contact with your brain.’

  ‘Not all of me. Father.’ Helen’s voice sounded heavily ironic. ‘Just this me would die. Maybe not even then. Maybe this one of me would
live for a long time. And I could help Robert for the crucial first phase. After that, why worry? I’ll die and still exist to live again.’

  ‘Don’t torture us both, Helen. The idea’s impractical and foolhardy. You know it is. It simply can’t be done.’

  ‘I know,’ Helen said. ‘You’re right.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘I’m disconnecting, Father.’ Her voice was flat now. ‘Maybe for ever.’ Then she crumpled into VanGeorge’s arms as if dead.

  Incredibly, her father ignored her, the professor spinning on his heel and rushing from the room.

  VanGeorge, in a daze, snatched the girl’s wrist in his fingers and bent his ear to her chest. When he was certain she was alive he made her body comfortable on the couch. As he started to summon help, Dr. Haines’ voice issued out of VanGeorge’s personal communicator under his left shirt-cuff.

  ‘Don? Helen’s all right.’ The words were without emotion. ‘Come into my private lab.’

  During the few minutes it took VanGeorge to get there, his mind was muddled into stupefaction by innumerable unanswered questions. Then he was standing in front of Dr. Haines, staring vapidly into his face. The horror that had recently crawled across the doctor’s face had given way to intense anguish.

  ‘For God’s sake, Don,’ Dr. Haines said, ‘give me your advice! I’ve only a few minutes before Robert’s gone— should I admit to him that he’s partly human ? He’s part of me, because he’s part of my daughter. His bits of organic matter came from her brain.’

  ‘What?’ VanGeorge was incredulous, his skull exploding with the thought: no wonder Robert and Helen felt so deeply towards each other! The relationship was staggering —and grotesque! The thought showed in his face because Dr. Haines said quickly, ‘It’s a misleading truth, you know,’ and gently pulled him through the red security door. Only twice before, in all the ten years of their professional relationship, had VanGeorge been through that private doorway into the secluded inner room. There, in a console of closed circuit television, a monitor pictured a complex glass and metal case. Inside was a human figure. The unfamiliar object to VanGeorge’s eye took on the appearance of an electronic coffin with a corpse.

  Then VanGeorge almost cried out at the recognition of the form inside the cubicle. He had to grasp Dr. Haines’ arm to keep his balance from the sudden dizziness. The human figure was, unbelievably, a bizarre representation of Helen Haines, half-mummified, lying in a bed of gadgets, veiled by a network of a thousand glittering wire strands. Peaceful, though, somehow like a nearly naked, pink and skinny child in a magic bed.

  ‘Helen?’

  ‘Yes, Helen.’ The professor’s words hung within Van-George’s head like the stifling pall of smoke from a burst bomb.

  Dr. Haines punched a button and another monitor flickered into colour to show Helen back on the couch just as VanGeorge had left her. ‘And there, also, on the couch,’ Dr. Haines said. That’s also Helen.’

  ‘Two? Two Helens?’

  ‘Yes, although actually that young girl’s body is Helen’s telefactor—a living telefactor—her personal marionette.’

  ‘A telefactor?’ VanGeorge said, stunned almost into incoherence. ‘An image of your daughter. Another robot?’

  ‘Not a robot. Alive. Grown in the lab from her own cells. Her own blueprint faithfully self-copied. Not just a regenerated organ or two, but an entire organism. Just as she was and would’ve been.’

  ‘But the other? The—the sleeping Helen ...?’

  ‘Tucked away safely in a room down in the lower levels. She’s lain there for over fifteen years.’ The professor’s goatee exaggerated the sudden emotional trembling of his chin and his eyelashes wetly darkened with tears. ‘Her useless body has wasted away, but not her brain. She can exist there like that for ever:’

  ‘You didn’t—you didn’t—’ VanGeorge tried to say. ‘You—your own daughter—you didn’t experiment—?’

  ‘Another secret experiment? Another secret exception? Not deliberately, but in desperation. Twenty years ago Helen should have died. I froze her body alive, although only her head was essential. For another body I preferred flesh and blood, so I cultured another container. I didn’t want my daughter to be a cyborg—more machine than human being. At first I thought of taping her mind for re-recording in the baby’s brain. But I had to wait for the baby’s physical development. Then I thought of a brain transfer. Finally I took the safest way, and the simplest—I linked the old brain With the new by electrodynamics. The mature mind easily dominated the fresh brain. So much so that the refabricated Helen is virtually independent and the original Helen is mentally quiescent. She’s forty-two, but her fifteen-year-old body has matured at twice its normal rate.’

  ‘Fifteen?’ VanGeorge said, astonished. ‘The beautiful young lady I met years ago was only eight or nine?’

  ‘You thought she was a precocious teen-ager?’ Dr. Haines permitted himself a sad smile. ‘She’s a mature young woman with her mind and soul full of life. Her exceptional life must not be wasted.’

  ‘You think Helen would be wasted on Robert?’ VanGeorge decided to answer his own question. ‘I think she’s mature enough to make her own decisions.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s entirely human. I don’t know what Robert is. She is a very successful, if radical, medical technique for individual preservation. She’s even more than that. Robert is humanoid, not human—the origin of his organic matter is of no importance. The miniscule few thousand cells from Helen was simply easier than synthesis.’ The professor paused, tightening the muscles around his mouth. ‘But you’re right,’ he said at last. ‘Helen should know all the facts and make the decisions. Somehow, and she too has discovered this, Robert is not less than human, but more than human.’

  ‘Then tell your daughter before it’s too late.’

  The two men looked at the monitors. In one was the young girl, by now surrounded by anxious medical technicians. In the other was the woman into whom was woven the artificial life-sustainers, the machines serving her and responding to her and responding for her, an apparatus with a real human soul. It was to that woman that the father spoke:

  ‘I will play back a conversation which Dr. Don and I have just had, Helen. Then we will do what you ask.’

  While Dr. Haines adjusted the equipment, VanGeorge said, ‘Have you considered, Professor, the consequences of all this experimentation ? You’re altering Mankind’s billion-year-old evolutionary pattern. You’re forcing us across the threshold of tomorrow. Our world, our galaxy, even the universe, will be irrevocably changed.’

  For the first time, Dr. Haines sat down on a stool and gestured his friend towards another.

  ‘Yes, I’ve thought a great deal about that, Don,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that’s my actual purpose in the great scheme of things. Perhaps that’s why Man has evolved in his unique way. To be the father and mother and midwife to the creation, evolution and eventual ascendancy of the thinking, feeling machine.’

  From the first monitor there came an emergency warning buzz. Dr. Haines switched on the two-way soundpicture. A technician’s ghastly face filled the camera and blurted out, ‘My God, Doctor, Helen’s heart has stopped. There are all the symptoms of permanent death!’

  Suddenly from the second monitor came a spoken message reconstituted from the library of sounds of young Helen’s voice. Almost natural, almost human. ‘There is only me now, Dad! Only the true identity which is Helen! Tell Robert I will wait for him. Tell him I’ll be here, the Helen whom he loves, a hundred years from now!’

  VanGeorge looked at the Helen-thing.

  Some day, if he were lucky and could live that long, he would help raise another young Helen to greet Robert, in the flesh, on his return home.

  <>

  * * * *

  DJANGO MAVERICK: 2051

  Grahame Leman

  New writer to our pages, Grahame Leman states that philosophically he is a profoundly sceptical humanist (wary of scientism and bigness in any form), quite sure
that it is an offence to be ideologically drunk in charge of spaceship Earth or any module thereof. His story herewith needs no further introduction.

  * * * *

  Murray Jenkins, Chairman and President of the Board of Tellus Publishing, sat ceremoniously down in his own seat in the executive viewing room, and the other members of the board then allowed themselves to sit down in order of seniority. Jenkins was comforted, as he usually was, by the acrid smell of fear in the darkened air. But on this occasion, he found, he was not comforted enough: slipping off his silver wig of office and parking it on his knee, he felt for the implanted socket above his right ear and plugged in the connector of his feeling aid, skilled fingers on the familiar wheels of the case in his breast pocket cutting his Drive and boosting his Aplomb.