Collected Fiction

by Kris Neville

  As unobtrusively as possible, Mr. Harrison sneaked a glance at the big clock on the wall. Everything, so far, had gone just as he’d planned it, and Mr. Olson had been adequately provoked—

  Very deliberately, he allowed an expression of uncertainty to come over his features. “Wh-what do you m-mean, subprofessional?” he stuttered.

  Mr. Olson was encouraged. He rose threateningly. “You know damn’ well what I mean, Mr. Harrison. If you don’t watch yourself, I’ll report you to the Association—and likely as not they’ll have you degraded. See?”

  And at that point, as Mr. Harrison had known it would, the red light above the encephaloscreen flashed on to warn them that their first patient would arrive in just 30 seconds.

  Automatically, they slipped their masks up over their faces. Mr. Olson took up his position near the hindfoot and tail clamps. Mr. Kerfoid moved to the clamps at the frontfoot and head end. Mr. Harrison, grinning under the gauze, clicked the trephining saw and the encephaloscreen pickup into place.

  Right on the dot, the overhead conveyor trap opened, and down came a fine young male lion, snoring away under profound anesthesia, and displaying a small tonsured area just over his forehead. Mr. Olson and Mr. Kerfoid snapped the clamps. Mr. Harrison pressed the button that lowered the foot of the table. Mr. Olson made his incisions, hinging back a few square inches of scalp. Mr. Kerfoid let the saw buzz for a moment, and lifted a section of skull with his forceps. Then Mr. Harrison adjusted the pickups until the encephaloscreen diagrammed the precise path for his instruments. He reached for the delicate electronic scalpel with which Stage One was performed, moved it along the division between the two lobes, noted its indicated position on the screen, and—

  “Ta-da-dum, ta-da-dum,

  Tada-tada-ta-da-dum—”

  sang Mr. Olson cheerfully.

  Mr. Harrison’s hand stopped.

  “Ta-da-ta-da-ta-da-dum,

  Tum-tum-tum-tum-tum-tum-tum.”

  Mr. Harrison rested hand and scalpel on the lion’s nose, frowned, and said, “Please!” with great self-restraint.

  “Can’t I even hum?” protested Mr. Olson. “I was just humming. I didn’t even say the words.”

  Mr. Harrison went back to his labors. He completed Stage One and Stage Two, took the Schroeder Bypass which Mr. Kerfoid had broken out of its sterile plastic capsule, waited while its number was recorded together with his own and the lion’s, and installed it. By the time Dr. Schroeder and Dr. Dappleby entered the room on their routine morning inspection, he had completed Stages Three, Four, and Five, and was ready to put in the Dappleby Block. Mr. Olson had hummed the Cuddlypets tune twice more, and had whistled it once.

  As always, Dr. Schroeder and Dr. Dappleby walked round the table and stopped beside Mr. Harrison. Dr. Schroeder patted the lion’s cheek with a long, hairy hand. “Soon,” he chirped, “you will be a good little lion. Soon you will lie down with the lamp. It is the Schroeder Bypass that does all this, gentlemen—yes, indeed. It conditions the animal to feel permanent gratitude—gratitude, gentlemen. Ah, yes, and we mustn’t forget the Dappleby Block, must we? It was so clever of Dr. Dappleby to invent it, so that our nice little friends can’t get too grateful and hurt people.”

  Dr. Dappleby’s ears turned red, and he mumbled that it really wasn’t anything much. Mr. Kerfoid said loyally that it was too. Dr. Schroeder made his usual remark about the good work they were doing, and how it made him feel all warm inside and not at all sorry that he and Dr. Dappleby had abandoned the most lucrative veterinary practice west of the Mississippi to start the Cuddlypets Corporation.

  “I know just how you feel, Dr. Schroeder,” declared Mr. Olson sentimentally. “It’s inspiring, that’s what it is. Every time I see one of our TV shows, well, I’m grateful to you for the chance of working here.” He glanced at Mr. Harrison. “And our commercials—say, they’re really sharp. They really stay with you. Did you hear that swell one last night?”

  Dr. Schroeder said that maybe he hadn’t. Mr. Harrison tensed slightly.

  Mr. Olson threw back his head and sang:

  “Cuddlypets are clean and tidy,

  Cuddlypets don’t need a didy.

  Junior’s ooky? Junior’s wet?

  Trade him for a CUDD-LEE-PET!

  “Cudd-lee-pets, Cudd-lee-pets,

  Snug—”

  “SHUT UP!” Mr. Harrison bawled. He took two long steps toward Mr. Olson. Then, with a roar like an unprocessed Cuddlypet, he leaped for his throat. Together, they fell against the little glass cabinet, sending it crashing down, sending a shower of Schroeder Bypasses and Dappleby Blocks into the funnel-shaped sink at the bottom of which the jaws of the disposal unit whirred hungrily.

  It took a minute or two to separate them, to restrain Mr. Harrison, and to restore some sort of equilibrium. Dr. Schroeder was the first to regain his poise. “Well!” he said. “You have attacked Mr. Olson. You have destroyed our valuable bypasses, our valuable blocks. You have spoiled our system of records completely! I’m really afraid that we can’t keep you.”

  “Cow-mechanic!” spat Mr. Harrison.

  Dr. Schroeder scarcely blinked at the insult. “The fact that you are qualified to operate on human beings,” he explained, “cannot change my decision. Since the new psychiatric techniques made you unnecessary, you B.S.’s in Cyber-Surgery are a dime a dozen—a dime a dozen, Mr. Harrison. Besides, you are emotionally unstable, are you not? Maybe you need a Schroeder Bypass yourself. Now Dr. Dappleby will finish this lion, and then I will send another man to your place. Go away.”

  Mr. Harrison stamped to the door. He threw his mask down, and kicked it into a corner. “Nuts to you, monkey-plumber!” he shouted. “I quit!”

  Fifteen minutes later, he left the Cuddlypets building by the front entrance, his last check in his wallet. His professional status was doomed; his career was ruined—but there was a new spring in his walk. What was that crack of the doctor’s about needing a Schroeder Bypass himself? He chuckled. He felt in his pocket. There it was, safe in its small plastic capsule—unrecorded—just as he’d planned from the start.

  “Cudd-lee-pets, Cudd-lee-pets,

  Snuggle up to Cudd-lee-pets—”

  sang Mr. Harrison happily as he went away.

  Mr. Harrison disliked cats much more than he did singing commercials, and he disliked cats actually present more than cats at a distance. Now that professional pride was no longer involved, he scarcely objected when his wife watched her favorite Cuddlypets program each evening, and often he came in and watched it himself—at least until it reminded her of their problems, and of his own plans, about which she was doubtful.

  It was just three weeks later, on the day after Christmas, that these plans finally came to fruition. The program ended, and Mr. Harrison switched off the set. Nodding critically, he remarked, “Well, I don’t like cats—but that was pretty good. That was rich—the part where the door was going to open, and he didn’t know who would come out.”

  “In the story,” replied Mrs. Harrison, pursing her over-ripe lips, “it ended right there. You never did learn who it was, the lady or the tiger. Of course, it’s a very old story, maybe pre-Twentieth Century, when the tigers were fierce and ate people up. So he couldn’t have turned out to be just an old Cuddly tiger, not really, and both of them couldn’t have come out. Anyway, I think it’s better the way it was written. I think they ought to be left the way Nature made them, in the jungle and all—though at least you were a professional when you were doing the work, and I must say no one in my family has ever been professional before. That was why they all said I ought to have married Elmer Maginnis, because he was a real Ph.D.”

  Mr. Harrison sighed. “Look, Chickadee,” he said patiently, “I’ve explained till I’m blue in the face. It’s just for a while. The world owes me something—me, a Cyber-Surgery B.S., working seven years in a goddam cat factory, making ’em grateful!” He snorted. “Well, a Schroeder Bypass’ll work just as well in an electronic brain as i
t will in a cat’s. Those cheap poodle-fixers don’t know it, but I do. That’s why I’m working for Jonson, Williamson, Selznick, and Jones. One of these days, they’ll send me on just the right job. Then we’ll live off the fat of the land.”

  “Well, I suppose you know best,” his wife said, “but I can’t for the life of me see how a mechanical brain can be grateful even if you do something for it. And this morning I met that frowzy Eppinger woman—she tries to make out she’s thirty-three, but she’s forty at least—and she said, ‘I hear your husband’s a mechanic now, Mrs. Harrison, on mechanical brains? Now, isn’t that nice.’ And I said—”

  Before she could finish, the phone rang in the hall; and Mr. Harrison, grumbling, pushed into his slippers and went off to answer it.

  She heard him snap, “Hello, Harrison speaking.” Then, after a moment, in a much sweeter voice: “We’re fine, Mr. Selznick. A fine Christmas, too. Yes, sir, yes indeed . . . Who? . . . Sure I know where they are! . . . Yes . . . Yes, sir, right now, right away . . . Thank you, Mr. Selznick. Goodbye.”

  He strode back. “Guess who that was!” he crowed. “It was Mr. Selznick, that’s who it was. Babe, our troubles are over. This is it.”

  “This is what?” Mrs. Harrison asked.

  “The big chance. We won’t have to wait. Say, isn’t it lucky he called me instead of one of the others? I’ll bet you can’t guess where it is.”

  “Eberhard,” Mrs. Harrison said, “stop beating around the bush and come to the point.”

  “Ha!” Mr. Harrison strutted. “Well, I’ll tell you. It’s Moss-Eagleberg, Chickadee. Moss-Eagleberg, the biggest store in the West. Forty-six floors. They sell tailor-made suits and new cars, turbocopters, crown jewels and ermines and things, the best Scotch you can get, Oriental rugs, real antiques, pheasants already cooked by French chefs, swimming pools, readymade barbecue pits—They sell everything.”

  “Their prices are always too high,” Mrs. Harrison said. “I like Monkey Ward’s best.”

  “And they’re fully automatic—order, accounting, and shipping departments all run by one brain. One—just like a lion or tiger or something. And now it’s gone dead—and I’m the guy who’s going to fix it.” Mr. Harrison danced three steps of a jig. “Get it, honeybunch? After tomorrow, that great big Moss-Eagleberg brain will be grateful to me. We’ll pick up the phone and order whatever we want—all for free.”

  “Well, you make it sound very nice, but I still don’t see how a lot of condensers and things—”

  “It’s a cinch,” Mr. Harrison said, reaching for his troubleshooter’s kit and his hat. “I won’t even have to put in a Dappleby Block.”

  Deep inside Moss-Eagleberg’s broken-down brain, Mr. Harrison spent most of the night doing what Jonson, Williamson, Selznick, and Jones paid him to do. In the whole vast, silent warehouse, there was no one to bother him; and, as he worked, he made mental notes. Order Record, Delivery Record, Charge Debit, Collection Routine—all these could be by-passed just as if they’d been labelled Aggression (against Human), Aggression (against Animal), Hunger (for Human), Hunger (for Animal except Syntho-horse). That was simple. Of course, the Semiannual Inventory circuits would take a little finagling—

  At 6 in the morning, Mr. Harrison climbed the ladder to the control room. He locked the door just to be on the safe side, plugged a mike and a typer in on the Charge Accounts bank, tapped out his name and address, gave himself a Triple-A credit rating, and activated the unit. He repeated name and address into the mike so that the brain could record his individual voice pattern for future identification over the phone. He went down the ladder again and traced out the new circuit. Then, expertly, he installed the Schroeder Bypass where it would do the most good, running 56 fine little tantalum wires to the grafting points on its gelatinous skin, and attaching all the appropriate shunts.

  “Love and gra-ti-tude’s BUILT-IN!” sang Mr. Harrison triumphantly as he went back to his work.

  By 8 o’clock, when the two subprofessionals who kept tab on the brain showed up, lie had it all finished and was seated in the control room writing his bill.

  They came in, a plump, pink little man and a long, lean, leathery one. “Hi,” said the long one. “I’m Winkler, and this here’s Swartz. You get everything fixed?”

  Mr. Harrison looked up coldly. “I am Mr. Harrison,” he informed them. “Repairs have been made, and I’ll have the bill ready in a minute or two if I’m not interrupted.”

  “Sure, sure,” Swartz said. He inspected the room, nodding and rubbing his hands. He patted the panels. He stroked the master switch gently. “Boy, oh boy. It sure will be good to have old Bessie perking again.”

  “Eleven hours at $12.20 an hour,” Mr. Harrison muttered, “makes $134.20.”

  “Worth every cent of it, too,” Winkler asserted. “Mr. Harrison, you done wonders. I tell you, Swartz and me were real worried when we found out about it. We thought she was just dead and gone, like a person. We felt like we’d killed her.”

  Mr. Harrison tore off the original bill and two carbons. “That’s all nonsense,” he stated. “Giving this brain a name doesn’t make it at all like a person. It’s an electronic device, and it’s very much simpler even than a Cud—even than an animal’s brain, let alone a human’s.”

  “You don’t know Bessie.” Swartz shook his head. “She’s got 10,000,000 units, and she thinks a thousand times faster than we do. She’s a real personality, Bessie is.”

  Mr. Harrison reached for his wrenches and printed circuits and blob-like germanium transistors. He put his graphite pencils in the tray and his two pocket meters in their receptacles and snapped shut his kit. “You’re wrong,” he said flatly. “But I won’t waste time arguing with you. Machines can’t think. They don’t live. They can’t die. And that’s final.”

  “I don’t see how you can say that,” Winkler protested. “Look here. When Swartz cut all the current off Bessie Christmas Eve, wasn’t she exactly like a dead human, except for decaying, I mean? Just now it took you nearly twelve hours to bring her back to life, didn’t it? Seems to me that was the same as artificial respiration, or heart massage maybe.”

  “It was just unit by unit shock. There’s no connection.”

  “There!” Swartz exclaimed. “Didn’t I tell you? It was shock therapy. Bessie does too think. I’ve worked with her from the start, I ought to know.”

  “Then you ought to know never to cut the current all the way off,” Mr. Harrison snapped.

  Winkler and Swartz looked at each other. “She needed the rest,” Swartz explained patiently. “That new unit they put in to send individual Christmas cards to the customers worked her to death on top of the holiday rush and all. Besides, it was Christmas Eve.”

  “When you get through the day, set the dial on ‘Stand-by’; never exit the current all the way off,” Mr. Harrison said through his teeth.

  “Since we carry cards for every occasion,” observed Winkler, “she ought to be grateful we only make her send them out once a year. Don’t you think so?”

  Most of the circuits in Mr. Harrison’s mind were busy with thoughts of the Schroeder Bypass, and the very extensive Moss-Eagleberg stock, and how to get home in a hurry. Now, however, he came up with a jerk.

  “She—she ought to be what?”

  “Grateful,” Winkler repeated obligingly. “She sometimes is. You can feel it.”

  “God damn it, machines can’t be grateful!” shouted Mr. Harrison, waving his arms.

  “Bessie can,” Swartz told him. “She’ll be grateful to you too, Mr. Harrison, for bringing her back from the dead like you did. She’ll love you for that.” He reached for the master switch; pulled it all the way down. “You just wait and see.”

  Conveyor belts came to life from one end of the giant warehouse to the other. Under Bessie’s direction, mechanical arms sorted packages, loaded them on the right belts and unloaded them at their destinations. In the delivery and mailing room, address stencils dropped in flawless order from the
rotating customer drums, and steel arms slammed the stencils against oncoming crates and cartons, and machine-guided brushes applied smears of stencil ink, and the moving belts carried the crates and cartons away to waiting driverless trucks.

  At this evidence of Bessie’s revivification, Winkler blew his nose sentimentally; Swartz dabbed at his eyes. Neither of them even noticed Mr. Harrison hurrying out.

  Mr. Harrison drove through a red light and two stop signs before he completely convinced himself that neither Winkler nor Swartz suspected the presence of the Schroeder Bypass; that their talk about gratitude was purely coincidental. He remembered that subprofessionals were all stupid bastards, with compulsions to personalize their machines, to—he fished for the word—to anthropomorphize them. Yes, that was it. Stupid bastards. The very idea of a machine that was grateful, all by itself, was absurd. It was laughable.

  Mr. Harrison was still chuckling when he reached his apartment. His wife had their breakfast unpackaged and ready; and, over their coffee, they thumbed eagerly through the latest edition of the four-inch-thick Moss-Eagleberg catalog. There were things for every conceivable purpose and purse, from every conceivable part of the world. There were even a few souvenir ashtrays and lampbases made out of pumice brought back at terrific expense from the Moon.

  “Number 62-A-547-01,” Mrs. Harrison read aloud. “Rope of pearls, triple strand, fine Oriental. N-ninety-nine thousand, five hundred. Now, that would be nice.”

  “Don’t bother reading the price, ha-ha.” Mr. Harrison laughed. “We can afford it.”

  “62-O202-49, Ring, emerald, 32 carats.” She held up her hand, crooked the ring finger, and sighed. “Well, I’ll note them both down for later—when we’ve made sure, that is.”