Riordan tried to break Kreega’s neck—the Martian twisted away, bored in again.
With a shock of horror, the man heard the hiss of escaping air as Kreega’s beak and fingers finally worried the airhose loose. An automatic valve clamped shut, but there was no connection with the pump now—
Riordan cursed, and got his hands about the Martian’s throat again. Then he simply lay there, squeezing, and not all Kreega’s writhing and twistings could break that grip.
Riordan smiled sleepily and held his hands in place. After five minutes or so Kreega was still. Riordan kept right on throttling him for another five minutes, just to make sure. Then he let go and fumbled at his back, trying to reach the pump.
The air in his suit was hot and foul. He couldn’t quite reach around to connect the hose to the pump—
Poor design, he thought vaguely. But then, these airsuits weren’t meant for battle armor.
He looked at the slight, silent form of the Martian. A faint breeze ruffled the gray feathers. What a fighter the little guy had been! He’d be the pride of the trophy room, back on Earth.
Let’s see now—He unrolled his sleeping bag and spread it carefully out. He’d never make it to the rocket with what air he had, so it was necessary to let the suspensine into his suit. But he’d have to get inside the bag, lest the nights freeze his blood solid.
He crawled in, fastening the flaps carefully, and opened the valve on the suspensine tank. Lucky he had it—but then, a good hunter thinks of everything. He’d get awfully bored, lying here till Wisby caught the signal in ten days or so and came to find him, but he’d last. It would be an experience to remember. In this dry air, the Martian’s skin would keep perfectly well.
He felt the paralysis creep up on him, the waning of heartbeat and lung action. His senses and mind were still alive, and he grew aware that complete relaxation has its unpleasant aspects. Oh, well—he’d won. He’d killed the wiliest game with his own hands.
Presently Kreega sat up. He felt himself gingerly. There seemed to be a rib broken—well, that could be fixed. He was still alive. He’d been choked for a good ten minutes, but a Martian can last fifteen without air.
He opened the sleeping bag and got Riordan’s keys. Then he limped slowly back to the rocket. A day or two of experimentation taught him how to fly it. He’d go to his kinsmen near Syrtis. Now that they had an Earthly machine, and Earthly weapons to copy—
But there was other business first. He didn’t hate Riordan, but Mars is a hard world. He went back and dragged the Earthling into a cave and hid him beyond all possibility of human search parties finding him.
For a while he looked into the man’s eyes. Horror stared dumbly back at him. He spoke slowly, in halting English: “For those you killed, and for being a stranger on a world that does not want you, and against the day when Mars is free, I leave you.”
Before departing, he got several oxygen tanks from the boat and hooked them into the man’s air supply. That was quite a bit of air for one in suspended animation. Enough to keep him alive for a thousand years.
* * * *
Copyright © 1951 by Love Romances Publishing Company, Inc.
ALFRED BESTER
(1913–1987)
Even though Alfred Bester won one of the first Hugo Awards (for The Demolished Man in 1953) I didn’t much appreciate his writing when I was young. He was the opposite of writers like Heinlein and Poul Anderson where individuals could change the universe; Bester’s characters were more often cogs in vast bureaucracies, or in complex and ironic situations beyond their control. No matter how thought-provoking the stories were, they made frustrating reading for a teenager. It wasn’t until I accepted my first editorial job and the senior editorial staff were palpably excited about developing a graphic novel version of Bester’s The Stars My Destination that I reread his work. As an adult I could appreciate how funny and cynical and on target Bester’s stories were, even if the characters weren’t likely to end up as galactic overlords (and might not even live through the story). The characters were funny and (when he wanted them to be) sympathetic, and the situations they found themselves in were more resonant to an adult who has to deal with bureacracies on a daily basis than to a teenager who naively thinks his life will be less bureaucratic once he’s out of high school.
Bester was a New Yorker for nearly all of his life. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Europe (his mother eventually became a Christian Scientist) though Bester was as cynical about religion as everything else. He was an Ivy League graduate—studying the humanities and psychology and becoming captain of the fencing team at Penn—but later dropped out of law school.
Bester’s wife, Rolly, was an actress (on Broadway, radio, and then television) who became an advertising executive in the 1960s, and Bester’s writing career was similarly varied. He made his first SF sale in 1939, when he won a contest sponsored by Thrilling Wonder Stories, then continued to write science fiction in varying amounts while working in the comics industry in the early 1940s. He switched to writing radio scripts, and then to writing for television series such as Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, which left little time for other fiction, then returned to SF in the 1950s, writing most of his best-known works. (His cynicism about religion caused him to switch from Astounding to Galaxy magazine when John W. Campbell became preoccupied with Dianetics.) In the late 1950s Bester began working for Holiday magazine (where he eventually became senior editor) and writing more for television again. He wrote SF intermittently until failing eyesight and worsening health caused him to stop writing entirely 1981.
He was named a SFWA Grand Master shortly before his death in 1987. His wife had died in 1984 and the Besters had no children; Bester left everything to his bartender, Joe Suder.
Like many Bester stories, “Fondly Fahrenheit” asks many uncomfortable questions. Perhaps the most compelling of them is “Is insanity contagious?”
FONDLY FAHRENHEIT, by Alfred Bester
First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1954
He doesn’t know which of us I am these days, but they know one truth. You must own nothing but yourself. You must make your own life, live your own life and die your own death…or else you will die another’s.
The rice fields on Paragon III stretch for hundreds of miles like checkerboard tundras, a blue and brown mosaic under a burning sky of orange. In the evening, clouds whip like smoke, and the paddies rustle and murmur.
A long line of men marched across the paddies the evening we escaped from Paragon III. They were silent, armed, intent; a long rank of silhouetted statues looming against the smoking sky. Each man carried a gun. Each man wore a walkie-talkie belt pack, the speaker button in his ear, the microphone bug clipped to his throat, the glowing view-screen strapped to his wrist like a green-eyed watch. The multitude of screens showed nothing but a multitude of individual paths through the paddies. The annunciators uttered no sound but the rustle and splash of steps. The men spoke infrequently, in heavy grunts, all speaking to all.
“Nothing here.”
“Where’s here?”
“Jenson’s fields.”
“You’re drifting too far west.”
“Close in the line there.”
“Anybody covered the Grimson paddy?”
“Yeah. Nothing.”
“She couldn’t have walked this far.”
“Could have been carried.”
“Think she’s alive?”
“Why should she be dead?”
The slow refrain swept up and down the long line of beaters advancing toward the smoky sunset. The line of beaters wavered like a writhing snake, but never ceased its remorseless advance. One hundred men spaced fifty feet apart. Five thousand feet of ominous search. One mile of angry determination stretching from east to west across a compass of heat. Evening fell. Each man lit his search lamp. The writhing snake was transformed into a necklace of wavering diamonds.
“Clear here. Nothing.”
“Nothing.”
“What about the Allen paddies?”
“Covering them now.”
“Think we missed her?”
“Maybe.”
“We’ll beat back and check.”
“This’ll be an all-night job.”
“Allen paddies clear.”
“God damn! We’ve got to find her!”
“We’ll find her.”
“Here she is. Sector seven. Tune in.”
The line stopped. The diamonds froze in the heat. There was silence. Each man gazed into the glowing green screen on his wrist, tuning to sector seven. All tuned to one. All showed a small nude figure awash in the muddy water of a paddy. Alongside the figure an owner’s stake of bronze read: VANDALEUR. The ends of the line converged toward the Vandaleur field. The necklace turned into a cluster of stars. One hundred men gathered around a small nude body, a child dead in a rice paddy. There was no water in her mouth. There were no fingermarks on her throat. Her innocent face was battered. Her body was torn. Clotted blood on her skin was crusted and hard.
“Dead three-four hours at least.”
“Her mouth is dry.”
“She wasn’t drowned. Beaten to death.”
In the dark evening heat the men swore softly. They picked up the body. One stopped the others and pointed to the child’s fingernails. She had fought her murderer. Under the nails were particles of flesh and bright drops of scarlet blood, still liquid, still uncoagulated.
“That blood ought to be clotted, too.”
“Funny.”
“Not so funny. What kind of blood don’t clot?”
“Android.”
“Looks like she was killed by one.”
“Vandaleur owns an android.”
“She couldn’t be killed by an android.”
“That’s android blood under her nails.”
“The police better check.”
“The police’ll prove I’m right.”
“But andys can’t kill.”
“That’s android blood, ain’t it?”
“Androids can’t kill. They’re made that way.”
“Looks like one android was made wrong.”
“Jesus!”
And the thermometer that day registered 92.9° gloriously Fahrenheit.
* * * *
So there we were aboard the Paragon Queen en route for Megaster V, James Vandaleur and his android. James Vandaleur counted his money and wept. In the second-class cabin with him was his android, a magnificent synthetic creature with classic features and wide blue eyes. Raised on its forehead in a cameo of flesh were the letters MA, indicating that this was one of the rare multiple-aptitude androids, worth $57,000 on the current exchange. There we were, weeping and counting and calmly watching.
“Twelve, fourteen, sixteen. Sixteen hundred dollars,” Vandaleur wept. “That’s all. Sixteen hundred dollars. My house was worth ten thousand. The land was worth five. There was furniture, cars, my paintings, etchings, my plane, my—And nothing to show for everything but sixteen hundred dollars. Christ!”
I leaped up from the table and turned on the android. I pulled a strap from one of the leather bags and beat the android. It didn’t move.
“I must remind you,” the android said, “that I am worth fifty-seven thousand dollars on the current exchange. I must warn you that you are endangering valuable property.”
“You damned crazy machine,” Vandaleur shouted.
“I am not a machine,” the android answered. “The robot is a machine. The android is a chemical creation of synthetic tissue.”
“What got into you?” Vandaleur cried. “Why did you do it? Damn you!” He beat the android savagely.
“I must remind you that I cannot be punished,” I said. “The pleasure-pain syndrome is not incorporated in the android synthesis.”
“Then why did you kill her?” Vandaleur shouted. “If it wasn’t for kicks, why did you—”
“I must remind you,” the android said, “that the second-class cabins in these ships are not soundproofed.”
Vandaleur dropped the strap and stood panting, staring at the creature he owned.
“Why did you do it? Why did you kill her?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“First it was malicious mischief. Small things. Petty destruction. I should have known there was something wrong with you then. Androids can’t destroy. They can’t harm. They—”
“There is no pleasure-pain syndrome incorporated in the android synthesis.”
“Then it got to arson. Then serious destruction. Then assault…that engineer on Rigel. Each time worse. Each time we had to get out faster. Now it’s murder. Christ! What’s the matter with you? What’s happened?”
“There are no self-check relays incorporated in the android brain.”
“Each time we had to get out it was a step downhill. Look at me. In a second-class cabin. Me. James Paleologue Vandaleur. There was a time when my father was the wealthiest—Now, sixteen hundred dollars in the world. That’s all I’ve got. And you. Christ damn you!”
Vandaleur raised the strap to beat the android again, then dropped it and collapsed on a berth, sobbing. At last he pulled himself together.
“Instructions,” he said.
The multiple android responded at once. It arose and awaited orders.
“My name is now Valentine. James Valentine. I stopped off on Paragon III for only one day to transfer to this ship for Megaster V. My occupation: Agent for one privately owned MA android which is for hire. Purpose of visit: To settle on Megaster V. Fix the papers.”
The android removed Vandaleur’s passport and papers from a bag, got pen and ink and sat down at the table. With an accurate, flawless hand—an accomplished hand that could draw, write, paint, carve, engrave, etch, photograph, design, create, and build—it meticulously forged new credentials for Vandaleur. Its owner watched me miserably.
“Create and build,” I muttered, “And now destroy. Oh God! What am I going to do? Christ! If I could only get rid of you. If I didn’t have to live off you. God! If only I’d inherited some guts instead of you.”
* * * *
Dallas Brady was Megaster’s leading jewelry designer. She was short, stocky, amoral, and a nymphomaniac. She hired Vandaleur’s multiple-aptitude android and put me to work in her shop. She seduced Vandaleur. In her bed one night, she asked abruptly, “Your name’s Vandaleur, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I murmured. Then: “No! It’s Valentine. James Valentine.”
“What happened on Paragon?” Dallas Brady asked. “I thought androids couldn’t kill or destroy property. Prime Directives and Inhibitions set up for them when they’re synthesized. Every company guarantees they can’t.”
“Valentine!” Vandaleur insisted.
“Oh come off it,” Dallas Brady said. “I’ve known for a week. I haven’t hollered copper, have I?”
“The name is Valentine.”
“You want to prove it? You want I should call the cops?” Dallas reached out and picked up the phone.
“For God’s sake, Dallas!” Vandaleur leaped up and struggled to take the phone from her. She fended him off, laughing at him, until he collapsed and wept in shame and helplessness. “How did you find out?” he asked at last.
“The papers are full of it. And Valentine was a little too close to Vandaleur. That wasn’t smart, was it?”
“I guess not. I’m not very smart.”
“Your android’s got quite a record, hasn’t it? Assault. Arson. Destruction. What happened on Paragon?”
“It kidnapped a child. Took her out into the rice fields and murdered her.”
“Raped her?”
“I don’t know.”
“They’re going to catch up with you.”
“Don’t I know it? Christ! We’ve been running for two years now. Seven planets in two years. I must have abandoned fifty thousand dollars’ worth of property in
two years.”
“You better find out what’s wrong with it.”
“How can I? Can I walk into a repair clinic and ask for an overhaul? What am I going to say? ‘My android’s just turned killer. Fix it.’ They’d call the police right off.” I began to shake. “They’d have that android dismantled inside one day. I’d probably be booked as accessory to murder.”
“Why didn’t you have it repaired before it got to murder?”
“If they started fooling around with lobotomies and body chemistry and endocrine surgery, they might have destroyed its aptitudes. What would I have left to hire out? How would I live?”
“You could work yourself. People do.”
“Work at what? You know I’m good for nothing. How could I compete with specialist androids and robots? Who can, unless he’s got a terrific talent for a particular job?”
“Yeah. That’s true.”
“I lived off my old man all my life. Damn him! He had to go bust just before he died. Left me the android and that’s all. The only way I can get along is living off what it earns.”
“You better sell it before the cops catch up with you. You can live off fifty grand. Invest it.”
“At three percent? Fifteen hundred a year? When the android returns fifteen percent on its value? Eight thousand a year. That’s what it earns. No, Dallas. I’ve got to go along with it.”
“What are you going to do about its violence kick?”
“I can’t do anything… except watch it and pray. What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing. It’s none of my business. Only one thing…I ought to get something for keeping my mouth shut.”
“What?”
“The android works for me for free. Let somebody else pay you, but I get it for free.”
* * * *
The multiple-aptitude android worked. Vandaleur collected its fees. His expenses were taken care of. His savings began to mount. As the warm spring of Megaster V turned to hot summer, I began investigating farms and properties. It would be possible, within a year or two, for us to settle down permanently, provided Dallas Brady’s demands did not become rapacious.
Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Page 173