The serving android was backed into a corner.
“On the blink again,” said Carlisle.
For dinner a table had appeared. The five men were arranged around it.
“I’ll give it a kick,” said Harrison.
Penrose jumped up and got to the android first. “Would you please get hold of the therapist for me.”
“Happy day,” said the machine.
“Look,” said Penrose. “That Harrison. He’s trying to tell me I’ve somehow been mistaken for an old man named Fowler. That it’s this Fowler’s turn to be terminated today. That kind of mistake is not going to look good on the records.” He touched one sticky arm of the enameled android. “I don’t know, Harrison could be lying. He says I’m with the Efficiency Detail. The drugs you people gave me. I’m still fuzzy. Will you tell the therapist to please, god, hurry. In case it is true.”
“Choice of dessert,” the andy said.
Remmeroy ran around the table and came slowly toward Penrose and the android.
“The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair.”
The old man slammed his fist against the machine and broke his hand.
Penrose exhaled sharply. Somebody would have to come now and look after Remmeroy. Then he’d be able to get word out. If he were with the Efficiency Detail they wouldn’t be missing him yet. He only had to report in once a week. He covered a good part of Greater Los Angeles and didn’t have to file anything until the end of each work week.
Still, the Efficiency Detail might be wondering about him already. He’d been here two days now, apparently. He didn’t recall a family. Civil servants didn’t have time for close ties usually.
Remmeroy returned to the table. His good hand locked around his other wrist. He howled once and spun. Then sat quietly in his chair.
Nothing came to help him.
“The night nurse has some loose valves,” said Harrison. “May not come at all tonight.”
“I was the youngest real doctor in my home town,” said Carlisle. “My home town began with a D or an S.”
Penrose cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled.
The red door swung open and the lights in the gray room dimmed.
“Sorry,” said Harrison, turning away.
“Nice to have met you,” said Carlisle.
Two bright silver androids rolled out of the room beyond the red door. They slid over the floor and took hold of Penrose.
“This is going to mean trouble,” said Penrose.
Something jabbed his arm.
“Now, now,” said one of the androids. It had the same voice as the therapist. “Things are okay.”
“Perfectly,” added the other.
They took him into the termination room and guided him into its one straight chair. The chair, once his weight hit it, extended restraining straps around him.
Penrose was not as clear as he had been. “Be sure my message gets through,” he said.
The androids were gone and the door closed.
There was a wet sound now. A waterfall it sounded like. And soft organ music began to fill the room.
Penrose tried to remember. He couldn’t quite believe that Harrison was right. That he was with the Welfare Squad, with the Efficiency Detail.
It didn’t seem to him that he could have been a part of a setup like this. Not at all.
A silver tube slid up out of the floor, then another. A gas with a faint floral odor was being released.
Penrose drifted back in the chair.
The room was doing a smooth job of termination.
“Very efficient,” said Penrose.
<
* * * *
Sixty-five was a sort of comeback year for robopsychology. There were three other stories that missed inclusion here by the thinnest of margins: Robert L. Fish’s “Sonny” in F&SF, and another of Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker stories, “What T and I Did” from If, and Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Nail and the Oracle” in Playboy. Goulart himself did another which tempted me: “Badinage” in Bill Nolan’s anthology The Pseudo-People—a very funny story, much more typical of Goulart’s usual vein than “Terminal.”
According to the resumé sent on by his agent, Goulart has: . . . written ads and commercials about beer, dog food, margarine, ice cream and peanut butter. He has drawn an advertising strip about cigars, written and directed a radio quiz show heard on two stations in upstate New York and turned out a newspaper which ran on the back of breakfast-food boxes.
Oddly enough—I mean, would you expect it from an ice-cream, dog-food, peanut-butter, and breakfast-food man?—”Terminal” is the only story in this volume that makes any noticeable use of “psychic” drugs.
With the newspapers rampaging on their demi-decade crusade against drug decadence in the colleges and universities, with a special Time-Life report on The Drug Takers, and whole shelves of books devoted to LSD—where, I wonder, are all the stories on psychedelics? There has been a scattering in the magazines, but the only one I recall lingering over was Henry Slesar’s “Melodramine” in Playboy.
Ah well, perhaps next year . . .
Meantime, we are beginning to get a kind of story which might even constitute a renascence of “solid science fiction”—the educated-psychology (or sci-chology?) story, as distinct from the truism that all fiction above the hackest level is “psychological fiction.”
* * * *
THE PLOT
TOM HERZOG
The scrambled eggs gave Filmore a bad case of indigestion. At the office that morning he was quite sick and had to take something to quiet his stomach. He came home early and assailed his wife as soon as he got inside the door.
“What the hell did you do to those eggs this morning, Elvira?” he demanded. “I damn near puked all over my desk. Just made it to the washroom in time.”
Mrs. Filmore looked down at the floor.
“They tasted all right to me,” she said quietly. She was small, quiet by nature, and blended in well with the walls. “Perhaps you ate too fast, George. You’re not as young as you used to be, and you shouldn’t eat too fast.”
Filmore looked at his paunch. After all, he was on the wrong side of fifty. On the other hand, his health was good and he felt like a king. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had an attack of indigestion.
“Hogwash!” he roared. “What time are we having supper?”
“At five,” said Mrs. Filmore, “if that’s all right with you.”
“I’m going to shave,” he said, ignoring her. He shaved twice a day with his electric razor, once before going to the office in the morning and once before supper. He had a remarkably fertile crop of whiskers, and since, as an advertising man, he believed in the value of appearances, he shaved them off twice a day.
In the bathroom he plugged in his electric razor and examined his beard in the mirror. He was about to begin shaving when his razor spoke to him.
“I would like a word with you,” it said.
“What the hell. . . ! !” said Filmore, dropping it into the sink as if it had burned his hand.
“Please be civil,” said the razor. “I’m trying to do you a service.”
“Are you really talking?” Filmore asked, in the face of the fact.
“Of course I’m talking,” replied the razor. “Do you see anyone else about?”
Filmore glanced around the room. He peered out into the hallway.
“No, I don’t,” he said at last.
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, would you mind getting me out of here?” said the razor.
Filmore cautiously picked up his razor.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “How . . . ?”
“That’s not important. What’s really important is that I’m trying to warn you. Your life is in danger.”
“My life?”
“Yes, your life. Your wife is trying to kill you.”
At this, Filmore guffawed.
“Elvira try to kill me? Come off it. Elvira is a titmouse.”
“You’re not very observant, are you?” said the razor. “How did you like your eggs this morning?”
“My eggs?”
“Yes, your eggs.”
“Oh. . . . Those eggs.”
“Those eggs.”
“What are you driving at?” Filmore demanded.
“Do eggs usually upset your stomach?” the razor countered.
“No, but I’m getting old. I’m past fifty.”
“That’s what your wife said.”
“So what?” Filmore said angrily. A seed had been sown in his mind.
“Lower your voice,” said the razor. “Do you want your wife to hear you?”
“No,” replied Filmore, quietly.
“Now, then,” the razor continued, “think back. Exactly what was your wife doing when you entered the kitchen this morning?”
Filmore strained his memory.
“I remember now. Her back was turned, then very suddenly she whirled around.”
“Does your wife usually whirl around when you come into the kitchen?”
“No,” said Filmore, passively. “She doesn’t whirl around anytime.”
“Have you any idea what she was doing with her back turned to you when you came into the kitchen?”
“Well, I ... I assume she was putting a little salt or pepper on my eggs.”
“Of course. It had to be either salt or pepper, didn’t it?”
“Well, what do you think it was?” said Filmore. He was prefacing most of his statements with “well” now.
“Whatever it was,” said the razor, “she didn’t finish putting it on, did she?”
“Well. ... No, she didn’t,” Filmore said.
“And so we return to the original question,” said the razor, summing up. “Can you think of any good reason why your eggs should have upset your stomach this morning when they haven’t done so for years and years?”
“Now look,” Filmore said, “I know she was putting either salt or pepper on those eggs. I remember, now, seeing the shaker in her hand. Now that I think about it, I clearly remember seeing a shaker in her hand,” he insisted.
“Do you think that salt and pepper are the only substances that might be found in salt- and pepper-shakers?” the razor asked.
“We can settle this matter once and for all,” Filmore said with authority. “I’ll just go and see what is in the salt- and pepper-shakers.”
“An excellent idea!” said the razor. “You advertising men are so shrewd. Tell me, do you think that after what happened to you this morning you will find anything else in the salt- and pepper-shakers besides salt and pepper?”
“No,” said Filmore without enthusiasm.
“Do you want to know what to do?”
“Of course I want to know,” Filmore replied, suddenly angry. “It’s hard to believe that Elvira could possibly. . . .”
“I’m sure it’s no skin off my back,” said the razor with detachment.
“All right, all right,” said Filmore. “What should I do, just in case?”
“First of all,” the razor said, “I’d eat out from now on.”
“Yeah. What else?”
“Watch your step. Keep your eyes open. I don’t think you really believe me. Perhaps by the next time we get together something will have happened to increase your confidence in me.”
Filmore mumbled something and began shaving.
“We’re having your favorite dish,” said Mrs. Filmore when Filmore came into the kitchen. “Stuffed peppers and Brussels sprouts.”
“I’m eating out,” growled Filmore as he headed for the door.
When Filmore woke up the next morning, he felt an icy winter draft on his face. The window at the head of his bed was open.
“What the hell is going on around here?” he roared. “You trying to make me catch pneumonia or something, Elvira? Why did you open that window?”
Mrs. Filmore, who had sat bolt upright in her bed at Filmore’s opening blast, said, “I didn’t open your window, George.” She said it quietly.
“How the hell did it get open, then?” he demanded. “It was shut when I fell asleep last night.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps you opened it in your sleep.”
“I’ll lock the damned thing,” Filmore growled.
“I’ll get your breakfast,” his wife said.
“Don’t bother,” said Filmore quickly. “I . . . I’ll get a bite to eat at the office. Got to lose a little weight.”
Filmore got dressed and went into the bathroom. He plugged in his electric razor.
“What do you think now?” the razor inquired.
“I wasn’t sure you’d still be talking,” Filmore said. “I thought maybe you were a one-day wonder.”
“What do you think now?” the razor repeated. “Sleeping with your bedroom window open is a good way to catch a cold. With luck, it could turn into pneumonia.”
“You think Elvira opened that window?”
“Are you a sleepwalker?” asked the razor.
“How the hell would I know if I’m asleep at the time?”
“An astute observation,” said the razor. “Have you ever awakened suddenly in the middle of the night and found yourself at the refrigerator?”
“No.”
“Has your wife ever told you before that you walk in your sleep?”
“No.”
“Then we may never know for sure how that window got open,” said the razor.
“But you think it was Elvira, don’t you?” said Filmore, pressing his point.
“I’m just calling your attention to the second of two rather unusual occurrences in as many days,” replied the razor.
“But an open window is such a long shot,” Filmore protested. “The chances are one in a thousand that I would catch pneumonia and die, even if I am susceptible to colds.”
“I agree,” said the razor. “Poisoning your food would be the best way of killing you, but you’re eating out now. There aren’t many imaginative courses of action left after that one is removed.”
“This is silly,” Filmore said. “This whole idea is silly. Why should Elvira suddenly want to kill me?”
“I can’t imagine,” said the razor with a touch of sarcasm. “But what makes you think this is sudden?”
“Well, it was only yesterday morning that she tried to feed me the poisoned eggs.”
“Poisoned eggs?”
“You know what I mean. The eggs that upset my stomach.”
“Of course,” said the razor. “Tell me, didn’t you experience a rude awakening one night last week?”
“Yes, I did,” said Filmore slowly. His tone suggested dawning comprehension, new insight. Actually, his mind was racing backward in time, trying to recall if there were any other occasions on which he had almost been done in.
“How did that come about?” interrupted the razor.
“I woke up during the night, and I was choking. The damned pillow was over my face. I assumed that I got it that way myself. I toss around a lot at night.”
“Where was your wife at the time?” the razor asked.
“I thought she was in her bed. It was dark. I didn’t hear or see anything. I wasn’t looking for anything.”
“Then you probably did it yourself, just as you said,” the razor concluded. “I wouldn’t worry. Just sleep without a pillow from now on. For your own safety.”
“I’ve got to think about this,” said Filmore, not at all convinced. “This is a hell of a thing.”
“Take your time,” said the razor. “But think with your eyes open.”
Before Filmore had a chance to leave the house, his wife asked him if he would go down to the basement and turn up the temperature on the water heater. She was going to do her washing that morning, she explained.
He started down the basement stairs and
looked down just in time to prevent himself from taking the step that would have been his last. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead and his eyes widened in horror. There, on the next step, right where he would have put his foot down, was a banana peel. He could hear his skull cracking open on the concrete floor of the basement. He could see his brains oozing out.
The Year's Best Science Fiction 11 - [Anthology] Page 11