Short Stories Vol.1

by Isaac Asimov

  I tightened my hold on his elbow. He strained to hear.

  I said, "Don't you hear car doors slamming?"

  It was faint and distant, but unmistakable.

  I said, "They're laughing. They're enjoying themselves."

  His face crumpled with rage. He lifted his hand. He was still holding his fist gun.

  I said, "I wouldn't. One automatocar is still with us."

  I don't think he had noticed Sally till then. She had moved up so quietly. Though her right front fender nearly touched me, I couldn't hear her motor. She might have been holding her breath.

  Gellhorn yelled.

  I said, "She won't touch you, as long as I'm with you. But if you kill me. . . . You know, Sally doesn't like you."

  Gellhorn turned the gun in Sally's direction.

  "Her motor is shielded," I said, "and before you could ever squeeze the gun a second time she would be on top of you."

  "All right, then," he yelled, and suddenly my arm was bent behind my back and twisted so I could hardly stand. He held me between Sally and himself, and his pressure didn't let up. "Back out with me and don't try to break loose, old-timer, or I'll tear your arm out of its socket."

  I had to move. Sally nudged along with us, worried, uncertain what to do. I tried to say something to her and couldn't. I could only clench my teeth and moan.

  Gellhorn's automatobus was still standing outside the garage. I was forced in. Gellhorn jumped in after me, locking the doors.

  He said, "All right, now. We'll talk sense."

  I was rubbing my arm, trying to get life back into it, and even as I did I was automatically and without any conscious effort studying the control board of the bus.

  I said, "This is a rebuilt job."

  "So?" he said caustically. "It's a sample of my work. I picked up a dis-

  Ifcfrded chassis, found a brain I could use and spliced me a private bus. What

  "fit?"

  >• I tore at the repair panel, forcing it aside.

  He said, "What the hell. Get away from that." The side of his palm came down numbingly on my left shoulder.

  I struggled with him. "I don't want to do this bus any harm. What kind of a person do you think I am? I just want to take a look at some of the motor connections."

  It didn't take much of a look. I was boiling when I turned to him. I said, "You're a hound and a bastard. You had no right installing this motor yourself. Why didn't you get a robotics man?"

  He said, "Do I look crazy?"

  "Even if it was a stolen motor, you had no right to treat it so. I wouldn't treat a man the way you treated that motor. Solder, tape, and pinch ckmps! It's brutal!"

  "It works, doesn't it?"

  "Sure it works, but it must be hell for the bus. You could live with migraine headaches and acute arthritis, but it wouldn't be much of a life. This car is suffering."

  "Shut up!" For a moment he glanced out the window at Sally, who had rolled up as close to the bus as she could. He made sure the doors and windows were locked.

  He said, "We're getting out of here now, before the other cars come back. We'll stay away."

  "How will that help you?"

  "Your cars will run out of gas someday, won't they? You haven't got them fixed up so they can tank up on their own, have you? We'll come back and finish the job."

  "They'll be looking for me," I said. "Mrs. Hester will call the police."

  He was past reasoning with. He just punched the bus in gear. It lurched forward. Sally followed.

  He giggled. "What can she do if you're here with me?"

  Sally seemed to realize that, too. She picked up speed, passed us and was gone. Gellhorn opened the window next to him and spat through the opening.

  The bus lumbered on over the dark road, its motor rattling unevenly. Gellhorn dimmed the periphery light until the phosphorescent green stripe down the middle of the highway, sparkling in the moonlight, was all that kept us out of the trees. There was virtually no traffic. Two cars passed ours, going the other way, and there was none at all on our side of the highway, either before or behind.

  I heard the door-slamming first. Quick and sharp in the silence, first on the right and then on the left Gellhorn's hands quivered as he punched savagely for increased speed. A beam of light shot out from among a scrub

  of trees, blinding us; Another beam plunged at us from behind the guard rails on the other side. At a crossover, four hundred yards ahead, there was sque-e-e-e-e as a car darted across our path.

  "Sally went for the rest," I said. "I think you're surrounded."

  "So what? What can they do?"

  He hunched over the controls, peering through the windshield.

  "And don't you try anything, old-timer," he muttered.

  I couldn't. I was bone-weary; my left arm was on fire. The motor sounds gathered and grew closer. I could hear the motors missing in odd patterns; suddenly it seemed to me that my cars were speaking to one another.

  A medley of horns came from behind. I turned and Gellhom looked quickly into the rear-view mirror. A dozen cars were following in both lanes.

  Gellhorn yelled and laughed madly.

  I cried, "Stop! Stop the car!"

  Because not a quarter of a mile ahead, plainly visible in the light beams of two sedans on the roadside was Sally, her trim body plunked square across the road. Two cars shot into the opposite lane to our left, keeping perfect time with us and preventing Gellhom from turning out.

  But he had no intention of turning out. He put his finger on the full-speed-ahead button and kept it there.

  He said, "There'll be no bluffing here. This bus outweighs her five to one, old-timer, and we'll just push her off the road like a dead kitten."

  I knew he could. The bus was on manual and his finger was on the button. I knew he would.

  I lowered the window, and stuck my head out. "Sally," I screamed. "Get out of the way. Sally!"

  It was drowned out in the agonized squeal of maltreated brakebands. I felt myself thrown forward and heard Gellhorn's breath puff out of his body.

  I said, "What happened?" It was a foolish question. We had stopped. That was what had happened. Sally and the bus were five feet apart. With five times her weight tearing down on her, she had not budged. The guts of her.

  Gellhorn yanked at the Manual toggle switch. "It's got to," he kept muttering. "It's got to."

  I said, "Not the way you hooked up the motor, expert. Any of the circuits could cross over."

  He looked at me with a tearing anger and growled deep in his throat. His hair was matted over his forehead. He lifted his fist.

  "That's all the advice out of you there'll ever be, old-timer."

  And I knew the needle gun was about to fire.

  I pressed back against the bus door, watching the fist come up, and when the door opened I went over backward and out, hitting the ground with a thud. I heard the door slam closed again.

  I got to my knees and looked up in time to see Gellhorn struggle uselessly

  with the closing window, then aim his fist-gun quickly through the glass. He never fired. The bus got under way with a tremendous roar, and Gellhorn lurched backward.

  Sally wasn't in the way any longer, and I watched the bus's rear lights flicker away down the highway.

  I was exhausted. I sat down right there, right on the highway, and put my head down in my crossed arms, trying to catch my breath.

  I heard a car stop gently at my side. When I looked up, it was Sally. Slowly-lovingly, you might say-her front door opened.

  No one had driven Sally for five years-except Gellhorn, of course-and I know how valuable such freedom was to a car. I appreciated the gesture, but I said, "Thanks, Sally, but I'll take one of the newer cars."

  I got up and turned away, but skillfully and neatly as a pirouette, she wheeled before me again. I couldn't hurt her feelings. I got in. Her front seat had the fine, fresh scent of an automatobile that kept itself spotlessly clean. I lay down across it, thankfull
y, and with even, silent, and rapid efficiency, my boys and girls brought me home.

  Mrs. Hester brought me the copy of the radio transcript the next evening with great excitement.

  "It's Mr. Gellhorn," she said. "The man who came to see you."

  "What about him?"

  I dreaded her answer.

  "They found him dead," she said. "Imagine that. Just lying dead in a ditch." , "It might be a stranger altogether," I mumbled.

  "Raymond J. Gellhorn," she said, sharply. "There can't be two, can there? The description fits, too. Lord, what a way to die! They found tire marks on his arms and body. Imagine! I'm glad it turned out to be a bus; otherwise they might have come poking around here."

  "Did it happen near here?" I asked, anxiously.

  "No . . . Near Cooksville. But, goodness, read about it yourself if you- What happened to Giuseppe?"

  I welcomed the diversion. Giuseppe was waiting patiently for me to complete the repaint job. His windshield had been replaced.

  After she left, I snatched up the transcript. There was no doubt about it. The doctor reported he had been running and was in a state of totally spent exhaustion. I wondered for how many miles the bus had played with him before the final lunge. The transcript had no notion of anything like that, of course.

  They had located the bus and identified it by the tire tracks. The police had it and were trying to trace its ownership.

  There was an editorial in the transcript about it. It had been the first

  traffic fatality in the state for that year and the paper warned strenuously against manual driving after night.

  There was no mention of Gellhorn's three thugs and for that, at least, I was grateful. None of our cars had been seduced by the pleasure of the chase into killing.

  That was all. I let the paper drop. Gellhorn had been a criminal. His treatment of the bus had been brutal. There was no question in my mind he deserved death. But still I felt a bit queasy over the manner of it.

  A month has passed now and I can't get it out of my mind.

  My cars talk to one another. I have no doubt about it anymore. It's as though they've gained confidence; as though they're not bothering to keep it secret anymore. Their engines rattle and knock continuously.

  And they don't talk among themselves only. They talk to the cars and buses that come into the Farm on business. How long have they been doing that?

  They must be understood, too. Gellhorn's bus understood them, for all it hadn't been on the grounds more than an hour. I can close my eyes and bring back that dash along the highway, with our cars flanking the bus on either side, clacking their motors at it till it understood, stopped, let me out, and ran off with Gellhorn.

  Did my cars tell him to kill Gellhorn? Or was that his idea?

  Can cars have such ideas? The motor designers say no. But they mean under ordinary conditions. Have they foreseen everything!'

  Cars get ill-used, you know.

  Some of them enter the Farm and observe. They get told things. They find out that cars exist whose motors are never stopped, whom no one ever drives, whose every need is supplied.

  Then maybe they go out and tell others. Maybe the word is spreading quickly. Maybe they're going to think that the Farm way should be the way all over the world. They don't understand. You couldn't expect them to understand about legacies and the whims of rich men.

  There are millions of automatobiles on Earth, tens of millions. If the thought gets rooted in them that they're slaves; that they should do something about it ... If they begin to think the way Gellhorn's bus did. . . .

  Maybe it won't be till after my time. And then they'll have to keep a few of us to take care of them, won't they? They wouldn't kill us all.

  And maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn't understand about how someone would have to care for them. Maybe they won't wait.

  Every morning I wake up and think, Maybe today. . . .

  I don't get as much pleasure out of my cars as I used to. Lately, I notice that I'm even beginning to avoid Sally.

  Flies

  "Flies!" said Kendell Casey, wearily. He swung his arm. The fly circled, returned and nestled on Casey's shirt-collar.

  From somewhere there sounded the buzzing of a second fly.

  Dr. John Polen covered the slight uneasiness of his chin by moving his cigarette quickly to his lips.

  He said, "I didn't expect to meet you, Casey. Or you, Winthrop. Or ought I call you Reverend Winthrop?"

  "Ought I call you Professor Polen?" said Winthrop, carefully striking the proper vein of rich-toned friendship.

  They were trying to snuggle into the cast-off shell of twenty years back, each of them. Squirming and cramming and not fitting.

  Damn, thought Polen fretfully, why do people attend college reunions?

  Casey's hot blue eyes were still filled with the aimless anger of the college sophomore who has discovered intellect, frustration, and the tag-ends of cynical philosophy all at once.

  Casey! Bitter man of the campus!

  He hadn't outgrown that. Twenty years later and it was Casey, bitter ex-man of the campus! Polen could see that in the way his finger tips moved aimlessly and in the manner of his spare body.

  As for Winthrop? Well, twenty years older, softer, rounder. Skin pinker, eyes milder. Yet no nearer the quiet certainty he would never find. It was all there in the quick smile he never entirely abandoned, as though he feared

  Copyright (c) 1953 by Fantasy House, Inc.

  there would be nothing to take its place, that its absence would turn his face into a smooth and featureless flesh.

  Polen was tired of reading the aimless flickering of a muscle's end; tired of usurping the place of his machines; tired of the too much they told him.

  Could they read him as he read them? Could the small restlessness of his own eyes broadcast the fact that he was damp with the disgust that had bred mustily within him?

  Damn, thought Polen, why didn't I stay away?

  They stood there, all three, waiting for one another to say something, to flick something from across the gap and bring it, quivering, into the present.

  Polen tried it. He said, "Are you still working in chemistry, Casey?"

  "In my own way, yes," said Casey, gruffly. "I'm not the scientist you're considered to be. I do research on insecticides for E. J. Link at Chatham."

  Winthrop said, "Are you really? You said you would work on insecticides. Remember, Polen? And with all that, the flies dare still be after you, Casey?"

  Casey said, "Can't get rid of them. I'm the best proving ground in the labs. No compound we've made keeps them away when I'm around. Someone once said it was my odor. I attract them."

  Polen remembered the someone who had said that.

  Winthrop said, "Or else-"

  Polen felt it coming. He tensed.

  "Or else," said Winthrop, "it's the curse, you know." His smile intensified to show that he was joking, that he forgave past grudges.

  Damn, thought Polen, they haven't even changed the words. And the past came back.

  "Flies," said Casey, swinging his arm, and slapping. "Ever see such a thing? Why don't they light on you two?"

  Johnny Polen laughed at him. He laughed often then. "It's something in your body odor, Casey. You could be a boon to science. Find out the nature of the odorous chemical, concentrate it, mix it with DDT, and you've got the best fly-killer in the world."

  "A fine situation. What do I smell like? A lady fly in heat? It's a shame they have to pick on me when the whole damned world's a dung heap."

  Winthrop frowned and said with a faint flavor of rhetoric, "Beauty is not the only thing, Casey, in the eye of the beholder."

  Casey did not deign a direct response. He said to Polen, "You know what Winthrop told me yesterday? He said those damned flies were the curse of Beelzebub."

  "I was joking," said Winthrop.

  "Why Beelzebub?" asked Polen.

  "It amounts to a pun," said Winthrop. "The anci
ent Hebrews used it as

  one of their many terms of derision for alien gods. It comes from Ba'al, meaning lord and zevuv, meaning fly. The lord of flies."

  Casey said, "Come on, Winthrop, don't say you don't believe in Beelzebub." •:,t "I believe in the existence of evil," said Winthrop, stiffly.

  "I mean Beelzebub. Alive. Horns. Hooves. A sort of competition deity." 1 "Not at all." Winthrop grew stiffer. "Evil is a short-term affair. In the end it must lose-"

  Polen changed the subject with a jar. He said, "I'll be doing graduate work for Venner, by the way. I talked with him day before yesterday, and he'll take me on."

  "No! That's wonderful." Winthrop glowed and leaped to the subject-change instantly. He held out a hand with which to pump Polen's. He was always conscientiously eager to rejoice in another's good fortune. Casey often pointed that out.

  Casey said, "Cybernetics Venner? Well, if you can stand him, I suppose he can stand you."

  Winthrop went on. "What did he think of your idea? Did you tell him your idea?"

  "What idea?" demanded Casey.

  Polen had avoided telling Casey so far. But now Venner had considered it and had passed it with a cool, "Interesting!" How could Casey's dry laughter hurt it now?

  Polen said, "It's nothing much. Essentially, it's just a notion that emotion is the common bond of life, rather than reason or intellect. It's practically a truism, I suppose. You can't tell what a baby thinks or even // it thinks, but it's perfectly obvious that it can be angry, frightened or contented even when a week old. See?

  "Same with animals. You can tell in a second if a dog is happy or if a cat is afraid. The point is that their emotions are the same as those we would have under the same circumstances."

  "So?" said Casey. "Where does it get you?"

  "I don't know yet. Right now, all I can say is that emotions are universals. Now suppose we could properly analyze all the actions of men and certain familiar animals and equate them with the visible emotion. We might find a tight relationship. Emotion A might always involve Motion B. Then we could apply it to animals whose emotions we couldn't guess at by common sense alone. Like snakes, or lobsters."