Divine Intervention

by Robert Sheckley

  “That’s the most suspect line of reasoning I’ve ever heard,” Gregor said. “But assuming you’re right, what can we do about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Arnold said.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  For dinner that evening, the Configurator turned out a very creditable roast beef. They finished with apple pie a la machine, with sharp cheese on the side. Their morale was improved considerably.

  “Substitutions,” Gregor said later, smoking a cigar ex machina. “That’s what we’ll have to try. Alloy 342 isn’t the only thing we can use for the plates. There are plenty of materials that’ll last until we get back to Earth.”

  The Configurator couldn’t be tricked into producing a plate of iron or any of the ferrous alloys. They asked for and got a plate of bronze. But then the machine wouldn’t give them copper or tin. Aluminum was acceptable, as was cadmium, platinum, gold, and silver. A tungsten plate was an interesting rarity; Arnold wished he knew how the machine had cast it. Gregor vetoed plutonium, and they were running short of suitable materials. Arnold hit upon an extra-tough ceramic as a good substitute. And the final plate was pure zinc.

  The noble metals would tend to melt in the heat of space, of course; but with proper refrigeration, they might last as far as Earth. All in all, it was a good night’s work, and the partners toasted each other in an excellent, though somewhat oily, dry sherry.

  The next day they bolted in the plates and surveyed their handiwork. The rear of the ship looked like a patchwork quilt.

  “I think it’s quite pretty,” Arnold said.

  “I just hope it’ll hold up,” Gregor said. “Now for the turn-drive components.”

  But that was a problem of a different nature. Four identical parts were missing: delicate, precisely engineered affairs of glass and wire. No substitutions were possible.

  The machine turned out the First without hesitation. But that was all. By noon, both men were disgusted.

  “Any ideas?” Gregor asked.

  “Not at the moment. Let’s take a break for lunch.”

  They decided that lobster salad would be pleasant, and ordered it on the machine. The Configurator hummed for a moment, but produced nothing.

  “What’s wrong now?” Gregor asked.

  “I was afraid of this,” Arnold said.

  “Afraid of what? We haven’t asked for lobster before.”

  “No,” Arnold said, “but we did ask for shrimp. Both are shellfish. I’m afraid the Configurator is beginning to make decisions according to classes.”

  “You’d better break open a few cans then,” Gregor said.

  Arnold smiled feebly. “Well,” he said, “after I bought the Configurator, I didn’t think we’d have to bother— I mean—”

  “No cans?”

  “No.”

  They returned to the machine and asked for salmon, trout, and tuna, with no results. Then they tried roast pork, leg of lamb, and veal. Nothing.”

  “It seems to consider our roast beef last night as representative of all mammals,” Arnold said. “This is interesting. We might be able to evolve a new theory of classes—”

  “While starving to death,” Gregor said. He tried roast chicken, and this time the Configurator came through without hesitation.

  “Eureka!” Arnold cried.

  “Damn!” Gregor said. “I should have asked for turkey.”

  The rain continued to fall on Dennett, and mist swirled around the spaceship’s gaudy patchwork stern. Arnold began a long series of slide-rule calculations. Gregor finished off the dry sherry, tried unsuccessfully to order a case of Scotch, and started playing solitaire.

  They ate a frugal supper on the remains of the chicken, and Arnold completed his calculations.

  “It might work,” he said.

  “What might work?”

  “The pleasure principle.” He stood up and began to pace the cabin. “This machine has quasi-human characteristics. Certainly it possesses learning potential. I think we can teach it to derive pleasure from producing the same thing many times. Namely, the turn-drive components.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Gregor said.

  Late into the night they talked to the machine. Arnold murmured persuasively about the joys of repetition. Gregor spoke highly of the aesthetic values inherent in producing an artistic object like a turn-drive component, not once, but many times, each item an exact and perfect twin. Arnold murmured lyrically to the machine about the thrill, the supreme thrill of fabricating endlessly parts without end. Again and again, the same parts, produced of the same material, turned out at the same rate. Ecstasy! And, Gregor put in, so beautiful a concept philosophically, and so completely suited to the peculiar makeup and capabilities of a machine. As a conceptual system, he continued, Repetition (as opposed to mere Creation) closely approached the status of entropy, which, mechanically, was perfection.

  By clicks and flashes, the Configurator showed that it was listening. And when Dennett’s damp and pallid dawn was in the sky, Arnold pushed the button and gave the command for a turn-drive component.

  The machine hesitated. Lights flickered uncertainly, indicators turned in a momentary hunting process. Uncertainty was manifest in every tube.

  There was a click. The panel slid back. And there was another turn-drive component!

  “Success!” Gregor shouted, and slapped Arnold on the back. Quickly he gave the order again. But this time the Configurator emitted a loud and emphatic buzz.

  And produced nothing.

  Gregor tried again. But there was no more hesitation from the machine, and no more components.

  “What’s wrong now?” Gregor asked.

  “It’s obvious,” Arnold said sadly. “It decided to give repetition a try, just in case it had missed something. But after trying it, the Configurator decided it didn’t like it.”

  “A machine that doesn’t like repetition!” Gregor groaned. “It’s inhuman!”

  “On the contrary,” Arnold said unhappily. “It’s all too human.”

  It was supper-time, and the partners had to hunt for foods the Configurator would produce. A vegetable plate was easy enough, but not too filling. The machine allowed them one loaf of bread, but no cake. Milk products were out, as they had had cheese the other day. Finally, after an hour of trial and error, the Configurator gave them a pound of whale steak, apparently uncertain of its category.

  Gregor went back to work, crooning the joys of repetition into the machine’s receptors. A steady hum and occasional flashes of light showed that the Configurator was still listening.

  Arnold took out several reference books and embarked on a project of his own. Several hours later he looked up with a shout of triumph.

  “I knew I’d find it!”

  Gregor looked up quickly. “What?”

  “A substitute turn-drive control!” He pushed the book under Gregor’s nose. “Look there. A scientist on Vednier II perfected this fifty years ago. It’s clumsy, by modern standards, but it’ll work. And it’ll fit into our ship.”

  “But what’s it made of?” Gregor asked.

  “That’s the best part of it. We can’t miss! It’s made of rubber!”

  Quickly he punched the Configurator’s button and read the description of the turn-drive control.

  Nothing happened.

  “You have to turn out the Vednier control!” Arnold shouted at the machine. “If you don’t, you’re violating your own principles!” He punched the button again and, enunciating with painful clarity, read the description again.

  Nothing happened.

  Gregor had a sudden terrible suspicion. He walked to the back of the Configurator, found what he had feared, and pointed it out to Arnold.

  There was a manufacturer’s plate bolted there. It read: Class 3 Configurator. Made by VednierLaboratories, Vednierll.

  “So they’ve already used it for that,” Arnold said.

  Gregor said nothing. There just didn’t seem to be anything to say.


  Mildew was beginning to form inside the spaceship, and rust had appeared on the steel plate in the stern. The machine still listened to the partners’ hymn to repetition, but did nothing about it.

  The problem of another meal came up. Fruit was out because of the apple pie, as were all meats, fish, milk products, and cereals. At last they dined sparsely on frog’s legs, baked grasshoppers (from an Old Chinese recipe), and fillet of iguana. But now with lizards, insects, and amphibians used up, they knew that their machine-made meals were at an end.

  Both men were showing signs of strain. Gregor’s long face was bonier than ever. Arnold found traces of mildew in his hair. Outside, the rain poured ceaselessly, dripped past the portholes and into the moist earth. The spaceship began to settle, burying itself under its own weight.

  For the next meal they could think of nothing.

  Then Gregor conceived a final idea.

  He thought it over carefully. Another failure would shatter their badly bent morale. But, slim though the chance of success might be, he had to try it.

  Slowly he approached the Configurator. Arnold looked up, frightened by the wild light gleaming in his eyes.

  “Gregor! What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to give this thing one last command,” Gregor said hoarsely. With a trembling hand he punched the button and whispered his request.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then Arnold shouted, “Get back!”

  The machine was quivering and shaking, dials twitching, lights flickering. Heat and energy indicators flashed through red into purple.

  “What did you tell it to produce?” Arnold asked.

  “I didn’t tell it to produce anything,” Gregor said. “I told it to reproduce!”

  The Configurator gave a convulsive shudder and emitted a cloud of black smoke. The partners coughed and gasped for air.

  When the smoke cleared away the Configurator was still there, its paint chipped, and several indicators bent out of shape. And beside it, glistening with black machine oil, was a duplicate Configurator.

  “You’ve done it!” Arnold cried. “You’ve saved us!”

  “I’ve done more than that,” Gregor said, with weary satisfaction. “I’ve made our fortunes.” He turned to the duplicate Configurator, pressed its button and cried, “Reproduce yourself!”

  Within a week, Arnold, Gregor and three Configurators were back in Kennedy Spaceport, their work on Dennett completed. As soon as they landed, Arnold left the ship and caught a taxi. He went first to Canal Street, then to midtown New York. His business didn’t take long, and within a few hours he was back at the ship.

  “Yes, it’s all right,” he called to Gregor. “I contacted several different jewelers. We can dispose of about twenty big stones without depressing the market. After that, I think we should have the Configurators concentrate on platinum for a while, and then—what’s wrong?”

  Gregor looked at him sourly. “Notice anything different?”

  “Huh?” Arnold stared around the cabin, at Gregor, and at the Configurators. Then he noticed it.

  There were four Configurators in the cabin, where there had been only three.

  “You had them reproduce another?” Arnold said. “Nothing wrong with that. Just tell them to turn out a diamond apiece—”

  “You still don’t get it,” Gregor said sadly. “Watch.”

  He pressed the button on the nearest Configurator and said, “A diamond.”

  The Configurator began to quiver.

  “You and your damned pleasure principle,” Gregor said. “Repetition! These damned machines are sex mad.”

  The machine shook all over, and produced—

  Another Configurator.

  Robotvendor Rex

  At thirteen hundred hours, Mordecai Gaston’s front door scanner announced the arrival of Federal Mail Carrier 193CU (robot), temporarily replacing Fred Billings, out on sick leave. “Just put it through the slot,” Gaston called from the bathroom. “Requires a signature,” his scanner told him.

  Gaston wrapped himself in a towel and went out. The robot postman was a large cylinder painted red, white, and blue and equipped with wheels and treads. It also had a lift control slaved to the Dade-Broward power grid so it could soar over traffic jams and open drawbridges. The robot extruded a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen. Gaston signed. The FMC robot said, “Thank you, sir.” A panel opened in its side, and a large package slid out.

  Gaston knew it was the miniflier that he had ordered last week from Personal Transports, Inc., of Coral Gables. He carried the package out to his terrace, removed the interlock, and activated the assembly-memory. The package unfolded, and the machine assembled itself. When it was done, Gaston had an openwork aluminum basket with a simple set of controls, a bright yellow battery box that also served as the pilot’s seat, and a sealed power unit that slaved the flier to the Dade County power grid.

  He got in and switched on. The power indicator light glowed a healthy red. Gaston touched the joystick lightly, and the little machine lifted into the air. Soon he was high above Fort Lauderdale, flying west over the Everglades. He could see the curve of Florida’s long Atlantic beach on one side, the dark green of the Everglades on the other. Miami was a shimmering heat haze to die south. He was almost halfway across the great swamp when the power indicator blinked three times and went out. The flier began to fall. Only then Gaston remembered the TV advisory he had heard last night: a brief power shutdown to allow Collier County to come into the grid.

  He waited for the flier’s microprocessor to switch automatically to battery. But the power indicator stayed off. Suddenly Gaston had a terrible suspicion why. He looked inside the battery box. No battery. Only a sticker pasted in the lid telling him where he could buy one.

  He was falling toward a flat, monotonous green-gray world of mangrove, palmetto, and sawgrass. He had time to remember that he had also neglected to fasten his seat belt or wear a crash helmet. Then his flier hit the water, rose again, and slammed hard into a mangrove thicket. Gaston passed out.

  It must have been only minutes later when he recovered consciousness. The water around the mangrove island was still frothed. The flier was wedged into the close-woven network of mangrove boughs. Their resiliency had saved his life.

  That was the good news. The bad news was, he was lying inside the flier in a really uncomfortable position, and when he tried to get up, a flash of pain went through his left leg, and he almost passed out. The leg was twisted under him at a strange angle.

  It was a really stupid accident. The Rescue Squad was going to ask some embarrassing questions when they came to get him…

  But when would that be?

  Nobody knew he was out here, unless the robot postman had seen him fly off. But robots were not permitted to talk about what they saw people do.

  In an hour he was supposed to be playing tennis with his best friend, Marty Fenn. When he didn’t show up, Marty would telephone his apartment.

  Gaston’s scanner would announce that he was out. That’s all it would say.

  Marty would keep on phoning. After a day or so he’d get really worried. He had an extra key, he’d probably check Gaston’s apartment. He’d find the carton the flier came in. He’d figure Gaston had gone for a ride. But how could he tell in what direction? Gaston could be halfway across the United States by now, riding the grids all the way to California. There’d be no reason to start looking for him in the Everglades, no reason to assume he’d crashed.

  It was early afternoon, and the swamp was very quiet. A long-legged wood stork passed overhead. A cat’s-paw of wind ruffled the shallow surface of the swamp, and then it was gone. Something long and gray was floating toward him. Alligator? No, it was just a waterlogged tree trunk.

  Gaston was sweating heavily in the humid air, but his tongue was dry, and his throat felt like sandpaper.

  A hermit crab, carrying its conch shell home, came up from the water to look him over. Gaston waved violently at it
, sending a shock of pain through his leg. The crab scuttled away a few feet, then stopped and regarded him steadily. It occurred to Gaston that the crabs might get him before the alligators got a chance.

  Then he heard the small, thin sound of a motor. He grinned, ashamed of his own fears. The Rescue Squad probably had him on radar all the time. He should have realized that a person can’t just vanish like that in this day and age.

  The engine sound grew louder. The vehicle was skimming just above the surface of the water, coming straight toward him.

  But it turned out that it wasn’t the Rescue Squad. It was a scaled- down copy of an old-time chuck wagon. Its driver was a humanoid robot dressed in white jeans and an open-neck sports shirt.

  “Howdy there, partner,” Gaston said, faint from relief. “What are you selling?”

  “I am a multipurpose roving vending machine,” the robot said. “I work for Greater Miami Enterprises. Our motto is, ‘Enterprise makes its sales in unusual places.’ We find our customers in the backwoods, on mountaintops, and in the middle of swamps like this one. We’re robotvendors, and my name is Rex. What would you like, sir? Cigarettes? Hot dog? Soft drink? Sorry, but we’re not licensed to sell alcoholic beverages.”

  “I’m sure glad to see you, Rex,” said Gaston. “I’ve had an accident.”

  “Thank you for sharing that with me, sir,” said Rex. “Would you like a hot dog?”

  “I don’t need a hot dog,” Gaston said. “I’ve got a broken leg. What I need is help.”

  “I hope you find it,” the robot said. “Goodbye, sir, and good luck.”

  “Wait a minute!” Gaston said. “Where are you going?”

  “I must get back to work, sir,” the robotvendor said.

  “Will you report my accident to the Rescue Squad?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. We are not permitted to report on the activities of humans.”

  “But I’m asking you to!”

  “I must go by the Code. It’s been nice talking to you, sir, but now I really must—”