by John Sladek
TELL ME ABOUT GUNPOWDER. TELL ME HOW TO INHERIT. TELL ME ABOUT MELVILLE PRATT. HUMAN SPECIES = HUMAN? TIN GOD = GOD? COMICBOOK = COMIC BOOK?
*
*
TELL ME HOW TO WAKEN FROM THE ICE
‘That’s funny,’ said Jerry, watching the oscilloscope. ‘It never burped like that before. What did you do?’
‘I was just typing in rubbish, as you asked.’
‘Hi, man,’ said Pratt, drifting past. ‘They moved us. This crazy place, we’re at the other end of the building now. Come on, I’ll show you.’
He and Fred went upstairs and walked down unfamiliar corridors, past the lighted windows of conference rooms and offices. Fred could see meetings in progress, someone drawing diagrams on a white wall. A woman in a suit sat in her office, apparently studying the screen of a dead terminal. Not far away, a burst of laughter from a conference room.
Pratt brought him to an empty area. The floor showed the marks of cubicles, like the traces of some vanished civilization. History moved faster here. In a few weeks, the old arrangement would be forgotten with Carthage.
‘This’ll be us. We’ll be moved in tomorrow, and we got to hit the ground running, Fred.’
‘Right.’
‘Let’s talk about it in the cafeteria.’
They bought tiny styrofoam cups of coffee and carried them to a table in the corner.
As soon as he sat down, Pratt flipped open a tablet of lined paper and began sketching block letters.
‘Here, I’ll show you how the name makes itself known to us.’
Pratt pushed the tablet across.
LIVING
mjwjoh
nkxkpi
olylqj
pmzmrk
qnansl
ROBOTM
‘See, Robot M has to be the name.’
‘I can see that, yes. Clever.’
‘Clever?’ Abe Lincoln’s hooded eyes seemed to darken. Then Pratt took back the tablet, turned a page and continued sketching rapidly as he talked.
‘Living, because made of life. Living parts. Words that speak of life. Fred, ever wonder about words like hand?’
‘I–’
‘Think of all the meanings of a word like that. We talk about factory hands and farm hands, because the world sees factory and farm workers as just hands. A clock has to have hands because it’s pseudohuman; it stands in for somebody who tells you what time it is. What time is it, Fred?’
‘About a quarter to –’
‘Yes, but what time is it?’ A huge gecko hand slapped the table. ‘What time is it? I’ll tell you. It’s time for new hands. Think about that. Time for new – and just think, we say somebody’s an old hand, like Carl is an old China hand, he knows everything. China is clay, too, shaped by hands. Did the hand of the potter shake, Fred? Eh?’
‘Er, not sure –’
‘You help somebody by giving them a hand, or you applaud somebody with a big hand. We hand down our wisdom to our children, but poor kids wear goddam hand-me-downs, like I did! Hand over hand up the damned ladder to the top of the world, a show of hands, a hands-down win, handyman – I thought of calling our robot Handyman, you know? Because you need hands across the ocean, right? Hand-to-hand combat, right? Mano a mano.’
‘Mm.’
‘Hands up, words of the thief, right? And two thieves put their hands up and were crucified with him, remember?’
‘H’m, yes.’
‘Of course cheiromancy, palm-reading, just a recognition that the opposable thumb is what it’s all about, our destiny is in the hand all right. Crime is red-handed, sinister is left-handed, red is left – all politicos need to th-th-think on that.’
‘Um.’ Fred glanced around the cafeteria. He did not want to meet the gaze of Pratt, whose Lincolnesque eyes were just now showing a great deal of white.
‘One good thief and one bad thief, one on his right hand, one on his left. And he went to sit on the right hand of the Father, you know?’
Looking at the tablet, Fred saw that Pratt was drawing squares, nothing but neat empty squares.
‘Thieves thieves thieves thieves thieves. In Islamic countries they cut off the thief’s hand, if thy hand offends thee, cut it off. The Hands of Orlac, crawling, looking for vengeance. One good hand, one bad hand, fighting for dominance. War in the brain, hemisphere against hemisphere, it’s a war to the death, no wonder whales gave up their hands and returned to the ocean, right?’
‘You have a point there,’ said Fred.
‘But Christ’s name is almost an anagram of Cheiro, the Greek name for hand. Five wounds are the five fingers. Fourteen Stations of the Cross are the fourteen knuckles. Four fingers are the four gospels.’
‘And there are the nails,’ Fred was unable to keep from saying.
Pratt did not seem to require contributions from others. ‘Christ,’ he intoned, ‘is Cheiro is Chi Rho. Just look at the map some time. Is it a coincidence that we have two great learning institutions named after hands? One is Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, the other is MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Duke and Mitt. Draw a line connecting them, and it passes through Cairo, Georgia. Cairo equals Cheiro equals Chi Rho, see?’
He rambled on, speaking of cross-hand piano playing, overhand pitching, underhand dealing, golden gloves, helping hands, backhands, southpaws, hooks, fists, palms, grips.
‘An underlying pattern of thumb and four fingers, throughout history, throughout the universe. Magnetic lines of force follow the right-hand rule, the laws of Nature, DNA twists to the right or left, everything is twisted. The whole universe has an asymmetrical twist, right?’
‘Up to a point.’
‘Because fundamental particles, mesons or whatever, have right-hand spin or left-hand spin, and there’s more of one kind than the other. The whole universe is out of balance, and it has to be, to create man. Man and the son of man. And the son of the son. The Robot M.’
Pratt sat back and relaxed, taking a deep breath. The glassiness seemed to pass from his gaze. ‘Anyway, I just wanted you to know how I got the name, Robot M.’
Fred stood up quickly. ‘Where does the time go? Well, this has been fascinating, really fast –’
‘And one more thing, Fred. I have to let you go.’
‘Let me go?’
‘We’ve been having these cutbacks all around. Sorry. Been great working with you.’
Fred could think of nothing to say.
The Lincoln face seemed seized with boredom for a moment. Then it twitched and said: ‘You can come in tomorrow and pick up your stuff, once we get everything moved.’
Lake Calhoun had two faces. From the wealthier west, a wide boulevard swept in towards the lake, passing between two insurance companies that seemed to divide the world: American Hardware Mutual faced Ministers’ Life across the traffic lanes. Beyond them was a region of high-priced high-rise condos, golf-courses, fine old houses and finer lakes.
Fred saw this side only when he drove to work. His basement bedsitter was located on the east side of the lake, the side where the stores took food stamps and (according to their signs) kept only $30 in the till after dark.
Now he decided that it was time to try running around Lake Calhoun. Running around any lake seemed the thing to do, and Lake Calhoun was a great favourite. Every day, at all hours, people in brilliant costumes trotted around Calhoun, as people once cantered up and down Rotten Row, announcing their presence to the world.
At 2 or 3 A.M., only a few hardy souls would be pounding along the special asphalt path. But in the daytime, and especially at weekends, the traffic jam of thumping feet and flapping elbows was formidable. Whatever the original purpose of running, it now had become an established part of daily life, like newspapers.
Fred could not afford an elaborate costume; he limited himself to a pair of cheap running shoes with Velcro tabs on them, an undervest and his ordinary trousers. The change jingled in his pocket like bells on trotting horses. Soon he began to find
aches within his lungs, down his legs, everywhere. It was necessary to invent reasons to continue:
(1) Running was democratic. Unlike school sports, which in America could only be played by highly trained child professionals wearing special helmets, running was something almost anyone could do. It could be done competitively or not, by both sexes together, socially or alone. The ultimate democratic sport, it required (like voting) no skill, training or intellect. But Fred did not have a lot of sympathy with democracy.
(2) Doctors approved. They solemnly told Americans that running was very good for them. Film stars confirmed the value of wild exercise. Of course, doctors and film stars had at one time recommended smoking cigarettes, too. Maybe they were not always to be trusted. Not many seemed deterred by knowing that one well-known popularizer of running (as good for the heart) had died, of a heart-attack, following a nice run.
(3) Everyone does it. A powerful argument: run because all your friends are running. Fred noticed packs of friends loping along, no doubt under control of a hive mind. He did not want any friends of this sort.
(4) Run competitively. For some, running opened new vistas of competition – buying and displaying lots of expensive running clothes. Fred did not have enough money for real clothes, never mind ostentation.
(5) It’s painful. People in Minneapolis were Scandinavians, who like pain. One had only to think of Scandinavian inventions: saunas, birching for pleasure (rather than capital punishment), and furniture that tortured the human frame (a chair that forces you to kneel before your computer, for example). Presumably Scandinavians enjoyed sitting (or kneeling) all the way through Ingmar Bergman films.
He paused for breath. Immediately, a cloud of gnats found him and went for the mouth and eyes. He flapped and fought, and started to run again, but they stuck with him.
‘Vait, darlink! Vait a moment!’ called a pleasant, rather rich contralto voice. As he was now gagging, coughing and blinded, he had no choice but to wait. A panting presence approached. A cool hand rubbed over his face, leaving some sour-smelling substance. ‘There. You can look.’
He looked into a pair of wide-set green eyes.
‘Gunats,’ she said.
He was shocked to realize he was in the presence of a great beauty – though at the moment hers was a watercolour beauty seen through a Renoir mist of tears: a fine cloud of red hair, pale golden skin, slightly tilted green eyes. Expensive pastel running gear in pink and turquoise. ‘Gunats. They like to take drink at the ice.’
‘The ice?’
‘The ice and the mout. You must use this, darlink.’ She held up a small plastic bottle. ‘Buck detergent.’
‘Ah, insect repellent. Good idea. Repels … er, insects. Seem to be a lot of them about, too. I’ve noticed that Minnesota favours every known type of blood-sucking insect: leeches, mosquitoes, ticks, deerflies, horseflies, blackflies …’ He heard his own fatuous flow and broke off. Shut it, shut it!
‘In Minnesota, buck detergent is absolutely necessary, darlink.’
‘Yes.’ Having stopped the inane babbling, he found himself unable to speak at all. Tongue-tied by her beauty, which was even more startling when the mist cleared. This woman had prominent cheekbones, even for America. Why was she calling him ‘darling’? No doubt an actress or something. ‘Uh, thank you so much.’ Say something clever, you jerk!
‘My name is KK.’
‘Fred Jones.’
Her grip was solid, and she gave his hand a single violent shake, as though forcing him to drop a weapon.
‘Shall we have coffee?’ she suggested, taking it for granted that, having met her, he was ready to give up running. This was true. If she had suggested that he fly to South America and pick the coffee beans personally, he would have begun looking up plane schedules.
He hesitated as they passed the McIntosh hamburger paradise, where McCoffee in a styrofoam cup would be exactly in his price range. She took his arm and firmly steered him past it, to an establishment called Geraldino’s, far beyond his means. He said nothing.
‘Is nice,’ said KK, as they took their seats at a pine table. He nodded. The waitress brought hand-written menus. He read as far as the two-figure price for Spaghetti Pinocchio (‘A meld of robust pesto that segues with a quietly poshified generosity of pine nuts webbed in a spunky cloudlet of homely pasta that does not noble it up unduly …’).
‘Just coffee for two,’ he said.
‘Coffee menu’s on the back.’
There were roughly twenty or thirty thousand coffee choices in tiny script, none costing as little as an entire meal at McIntosh’s.
KK said: ‘So many choices! Only in America!’
The waitress was helpful, leading them through the branches of a tree of choices. They could have regular or decaffeinated; Middle Eastern, European or American blend. The European branch led to Northern or Mediterranean. Mediterranean included French, Italian or Greek.
Once the basic blend was determined, the choice was plain or flavoured (up to twenty flavours, including Marzipan, Mint-Caraway, Buffalo Chocolate Chip, Butterscotch Brownie).
That settled, another cut selected the dairy additive: milk (hot or cold, whole, 2 per cent butterfat, skim or plant milk), cream, whipped cream, yoghurt, bean curd, buttermilk, or something called smetana, which sounded unpleasantly like a substance harvested from beneath the foreskins of sturdy Kurdish tribesmen.
The final cut selected the sweetening agent: white sugar, light or dark brown, Demerara, honey (from clover, orange blossoms, buckwheat, heather, acacia or tobacco), molasses, corn syrup, maple syrup, Nutrasweet or saccharin. By the time their coffee came, in dramatically hand-made earthenware mugs scoured with the marks of natural fingers, Fred could not remember what he’d ordered. It tasted like cheap powdered instant with a pinch of chicory.
He noticed that her sweatshirt was monogrammed. ‘What does the KK stand for?’
‘Kitty Katya,’ she said, after some hesitation. ‘Is stupid name. I prefer plain KK. Vat does Fred stand for?’
‘Manfred. Manfred Evelyn, actually.’
‘Like Evel Knievel?’
‘Sort of. I prefer plain Fred. But tell me something.’ Tell me anything. ‘Where are you from?’
Her lovely eyes widened. ‘Vhy do you ask? Oh, I suppose it is my accent! Vell, darlink, I am from Scotland.’
‘Scotland? Really? Your accent sounds Eastern European. Russia, maybe.’
She looked shocked. ‘Vat a thought! I am vee lass from Scotland. Do you know Scotland?’
‘Not very well.’
She relaxed slightly. ‘I am from dere.’
‘I’m from Britain myself. England.’
She looked sceptical. ‘Maybe. You tell fib, I think. To impress me.’
‘No, really, I –’
She laughed. ‘Is no matter. I like you, Fred. I like your country. In America, anything can happen, yes? And alvays do. Here am I, a young typewritist from Scotland, alone in the big American city, having coffee with a nice American Fred.’
She laughed again, and Fred joined in, not sure why. If she was Scottish, Gorbachev was a wee lad from the Gorbals. But why push it? She was beautiful – wasn’t that enough? Bearded men in expensive running-suits sat at other pine tables and stared hungrily at her, forgetting everything. They forgot to talk about their recent stockmarket killings, they forgot that they owned gleaming new Volvos parked outside with bicycle-racks on top, they forgot how many gears there were on their bicycles, they forgot the bottles of Perrier losing their fizz before them, they forgot the women they were sitting with, even forgot to rub the knots from their legs.
‘Vat kind of work do you do, Fred?’
‘I’m a software engineer,’ he found himself bragging. ‘For Cyberk Corporation. Have you heard of them?’
‘Not really.’ Her eyes looked elsewhere.
‘Heh, heh. Well, no matter. What brings you to Minneapolis?’
She sipped her coffee and made a face. ‘Is no chinnamon.
’
‘Pardon?’
‘Is suppos-ed to be chinnamon in this Byzantine blend coffee. Vere is our vaitress? Can you call her?’
He craned around, looking for the waitress. She was very busy; the place had filled up with people in running gear. When he finally managed to flag down the waitress, she assured him that the Byzantine blend did not normally come with cinnamon.
‘My mistake, I am sorry,’ KK said cheerfully. ‘Vell, drink up, darlink.’
His coffee tasted even stronger of bitter chicory. He complained about it as they left the place.
‘The worst of it is, it doesn’t set me up at all. I’m every bit as exhausted as I was before – more so. In fact I don’t feel very well.’
‘Come vith me, darlink. I leave very nearby. You maybe need rest.’
Fred opened his mouth to yawn. Before he could finish the yawn, the world sagged into blackness.
Chapter Eight
He awoke in a cool dim bedroom, minus his shoes and trousers. There was the whisper of air-conditioning and, when he stood up, the feel of deep-pile carpet underfoot. Outside the window was a balcony, flying far above Lake Calhoun. The cool melodious voice of KK came from the next room. He padded to the door and peeked in at her.
She was sitting with her back to him, a white telephone receiver cradled on her shoulder. She spoke rapidly in some Slavic tongue. He noticed that she was holding his trousers and, as she talked, going through the pockets.
When she got to his wallet and started looking through it, he managed to say hello.
She jumped. ‘Oh, hello, darlink.’
Lowering her voice, she told the phone, ‘Do svedahnia,’ then spoke loudly. ‘Yes, Mother. Sank you for senting me hakkis; it vas delicious. And kilt, yes. Ven is cold, I year kilt, yes. Yes, gootbye, Mother.’
‘My old Scotch mother,’ KK explained, as she helped him gather up the spilled contents of his wallet, mostly old library tickets.
‘I am not rubbing you, darlink.’
‘Rubbing?’ I only wish you were.