The Diploids and Other Flghts of Fancy

by Katherine MacLean

  Bill swayed up and down gently on his toes, clicking rapidly, and singing, “Reeb beeb. At work, Pop. The lab head has a new lead on something, and she works a lot. Foo doo.”

  Cliff exploded.

  “Don’t you click at me! Stand still and talk like a human being!”

  Bill went white and stood still.

  “Now explain!”

  Bill swallowed. “I was just singing,” he said, almost inaudibly. “Just singing.”

  “It didn’t sound like singing!”

  Bill swallowed again. “It’s Archy’s tunes. Tunes from his concerts. Good stuff. I… we sing them all the time. Like opera, sort of.“

  “Why?”

  “I dunno, Pop. It’s fun, I guess. Everybody does it.”

  Cliff could hear a faint singsong note in the faltering voice. “Can you stop? Can anyone stop?”

  “I dunno,” Bill mumbled. “For Pete’s sake, Pop, stop shouting. When you hear tunes in your head it doesn’t seem right not to sing them.”

  Cliff opened the door and then paused, hanging on to the knob.

  “Bill, has Archy Reynolds done anything to the library system?”

  “No.” Bill looked up with a wan smile. “He’s going to be a great composer instead. His pop’s tapes are all right. You know, Pop, I just noticed, I like the sound of the automatics. They sound hep.”

  “Hep,” said Cliff, closing the door behind him, moving away fast! He had to get out of there. He couldn’t afford to think about mass insanity, or about Bill, or Mary, or the Reynolds’ automatics. His problem was to get Archy up to Pluto Station. He had to stick to it, and keep from thinking questions. He looked at his chrono. The first deadline for leaving was coming too close. No use mincing words with Archy. He’d let him know that he was needed.

  Archy was not at the rehearsal room. He was not at the library. Cliff dialed the Reynolds’ place, and after a time grew tired of listening to the ringing and hung up. The time was growing shorter. He picked up the phone again and looked at it. It buzzed inquiringly in his hand, an innocent looking black object with an earphone and mouthpiece, which was part of the strange organization of computer, automatic services, and library files which Doc Reynolds had left when he died. Cliff abandoned questions. He did not bother to dial.

  “Ring Archy Reynolds, wherever he is,” he demanded harshly. “Get me Archy Reynolds. Understand? Archy Reynolds.” It might work.

  The buzz stopped. The telephone receiver trilled and clicked for a moment in a whisper, playing through a scale, then it started ringing somewhere in Station A. Waiting, Cliff tried to picture Archy, but could bring back only an image of a thin twelve-year-old kid who tagged after Mike and him, asking questions, always the right questions, begging to be taken for space rides, looking up at him worshipfully.

  The sound of Archy’s voice dispelled the images and brought a clear vision of a preoccupied adult face. “Yes?”

  “Archy,” Cliff said, “you’re needed up at Pluto Project. It’s urgent. I haven’t time to explain. We have ten minutes to get going. I’ll meet you at the spacelock.”

  He didn’t call Cliff “Chief” any more.

  “I’m busy, Mr. Baker,” said the impersonal voice. “My time is taken up with composing, conducting, and recording.”

  “It’s a matter of life and death. I couldn’t get anyone else in time. You can’t refuse, Jughead.”

  “I can.”

  Cliff thought of kidnapping. “Where are you?”

  The click of the phone was final. Cliff looked at the receiver in his hand, not hanging up. It was buzzing innocently. The intonations of Archy’s voice had been an alien singsong. “Where is Archy Reynolds?” Cliff said suddenly. He gave the receiver a shake. It buzzed without answering. Cliff hung up jerkily. “How did you know?” he asked the inanimate phone.

  Abruptly Cliff’s chrono went off, loudly ringing out the deadline. A little later, eighteen miles away in space his ship would automatically begin to apply jet brakes. After that moment there would not be another chance to take off for Pluto Station for seven hours. It was too late to do anything. There was no need to hurry now, no need to restrain questions and theories; he could do what he liked.

  The Reynolds’ tapes. He was moving, striding down the hall, knowing he had himself under control, and his expression looked normal.

  Someone caught hold of his sleeve. It was a stranger, meticulously dressed, looking odd in a place where no one wore much more than shorts.

  “What?” Cliff asked abruptly, his voice strained.

  The stranger raised his eyebrows. “I am from the International Business Machine Corporation,” he stated, being politely reproving. “We have heard that a Martin Reynolds, late deceased, had developed a novel subject-indexing system—”

  Cliff muttered impatiently, trying to move on, but the business agent was persistent. Presumably he was tired of being put off with jibbering. He gripped Cliff’s arm doggedly, talking faster.

  “We would like to inquire about the patent rights—” The agent was brought to a halt by a sudden recognition of the expression on Cliff’s face.

  “Take your hand off my arm,” Cliff requested with utmost gentleness, “I am busy.” The I.B.M. man dropped his hand hurriedly and stepped back.

  Ten minutes later, McCrea, the South American, stuck his head into the reading room and saw Cliff sitting at a reference desk.

  “Hi,” Cliff called tonelessly, without altering the icy speed with which he was taking numbers from a Reynolds’ decimal index chart and punching them into the selection panel. The speaker on the wall twittered unceasingly, like a quartet of canaries.

  “Que pasa? What happens, I mean,” asked the librarian, smiling ingratiatingly.

  Cliff hit the right setting. Abruptly all twittering stopped. Smiling tightly, Cliff reached for the standard Dewey-Whitehead index to the old library tapes. They were probably still latent in the machine somewhere. It wouldn’t take much to resurrect them and restore the station to something resembling a normal inanimate machine with a normal library, computer, and servomech system. Whatever was happening, it would be stopped.

  The wall speaker clicked twice and then spoke loudly in Doc Reynolds’ voice.

  “Sorry. You have made a mistake,” he said. But Doe Reynolds was dead.

  In the next fraction of a second Cliff began and halted three wild incomplete motions, and then gripped the edge of the desk with both hands and made himself listen. It was only a record. Doc Reynolds must have set it in years before as a safeguard.

  “This setting is dangerous to the control tapes,” said the recorded voice kindly. “If you actually need data on Motive-320 cross symbols 510.2, you had better consult me for a safe setting. If I’m not around you can get help from either Mike Cohen or the kid. If you need Archy you’ll find him back in the tube banks, or in the playground at .5 G or—”

  With a violent sweep of his arm, Cliff wiped the panel clean of all setting, and stood up.

  “Thanks,” said the automatics mechanically. There was no meaning in the vodar voice. It always switched off with that word.

  The little American touched his arm, asking anxiously, “Que pasa? Que tiene usted?”

  Cliff looked down at his hands and found them shaking. He had almost wiped off the Reynolds’ tapes with them. He had almost destroyed the old librarian’s life work, and crippled the automatic controls of Station A, merely from a rage and a wild unverified suspicion. The problem of the madness of Station A was a problem for a psychologist, not for a blundering engineer.

  He used will power in the right direction as Brandy had shown all the technicians of the station how to use it, and watched the trembling pass. “Nada,” he said slowly. “Absolutamente nada. Go take in a movie or something while I straighten this mess out.” He fixed a natural smile on his face and headed for the control room.

  Pierce was due to be passing the station in beam range.

  Cliff had preferred taking the psyc
hologist at face value, but now he remembered Pierce’s idle talk, his casual departure, apparently leaving nothing done and nothing changed, and added to that Spaceway’s known and immutable policy of hiring only the top men in any profession, and using them to their limit.

  The duty of a company psychologist is a simple thing, to keep men happy on the job, to oil the wheels of efficiency and co-operation, to make men want to do what they had to do. If there were no visible signs of Pierce having done anything, it was only because Pierce was too good a craftsman to leave traces—probably good enough to solve the problem of Station A and straighten Archy out.

  In the control room Cliff took a reading on Pierce’s ship from blinker buoy reports. In four minutes the station automatics had a fix on the ship and were trailing it with a tight light beam. “Station A calling flitter AK 48 M. Hi Pierce.”

  “Awk!” said a startled tenor voice from the wall speaker. “Is that Cliff Baker? I thought I left you back at Pluto. Can you hear me?” Behind Pierce’s voice Cliff could hear a murmur of other voices.

  “I hear too many.”

  “I’m just watching some stories. I’ve been bringing my empathy up with mirror training. I needed it. Association with you people practically ruined me as a psychologist. I can’t afford to be healthy and calm; a psychologist isn’t supposed to be sympathetic to square-headed engineers, he’s supposed to be sympathetic to unhealthy excitable people.”

  “How’s your empathy rating now?” Cliff asked, very casually.

  “Over a hundred per cent, I think,” Pierce laughed. “I know that’s an idiotic sensitivity, but it will tone down later. Meanwhile I’m watching these stereos of case histories, and living their lives so as to resensitize myself to other people’s troubles.” His voice sharpened slightly. “What did you call for?”

  Cliff dragged the words out with effort. “Something strange is happening to everybody. The way they talk is… I think it is in your line.”

  “Send for a psychiatrist,” Pierce said briskly. “I’m on my vacation now. Anna and I are going to spend it at Manhattan Beach with the baby.”

  “But the delay—?”

  “Are they in danger?” Pierce asked crisply.

  “I don’t know,” Cliff admitted, “but they all—”

  “Are they physically sick? Are they even unhappy?”

  “Not exactly,” Cliff said unwillingly. “But it’s… in a way it’s holding up Pluto Project.”

  “If I went over now, I couldn’t reach Earth in time.”

  “I suppose so,” Cliff said slowly, beginning to be angry, “but the importance of Station A and Pluto Station against one squalling baby—”

  “Don’t get mad,” said Pierce with unexpected warmth and humor. “Ann and I think this is a special baby, it’s important, too. Say that every man’s judgment is warped to his profession, and my warp is psychology. My family tree runs to psychology, and we are working out ways of raising kids to the talent. Anna is a first cousin; we’re inbreeding, and we might have something special in this kid, but he needs my attention. Can you see it my way, Cliff?” His voice was pleading and persuasive. “Communication research is what my family runs to, and communication research is what the world needs now. I’d blow up Pluto Station piece by piece for an advance in semantics! Cultural lag is reaching the breaking point, and your blasted space expansion and research are just adding more rings to the twenty-ring circus. It is more than people can grasp. They can’t learn fast enough to understand, and they are giving up thinking. We’ve got to find better ways of communication, before it gets out of hand.” Pierce sounded very much in earnest, almost frightened. “You should see the trend curves on general interest and curiosity. They’re curving down, Cliff, all down.”

  “Let’s get back to the subject,” Cliff said grimly. “What about your duty to Pluto Station?”

  “I’m on my vacation,” said Pierce. “Send to Earth for a psychiatrist.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be sympathetic! Over a hundred per cent you said.”

  “Eye sympathy only,” Pierce replied, a grin in his voice. “Besides, I’m still identified with the case in the stereo I’m watching, a very hard efficient character, not sympathetic at all.”

  Cliff was silent a moment, then he said, “Your voice is coming through scrambled. Your beam must be out of alignment. Set the signal beam dial for control by the computer panel, and I’ll direct you.” Enigmatic scrapings and whirrings came over the thousands of mile beam to Pierce.

  With a sigh he switched off the movie projector and moved to the control panel, where Cliff’s voice directed him to manipulate various dials.

  “0. K. You’re all set now,” Cliff said. “Let’s check. You have the dome at translucent. Switch it to complete reflection on the sun side and transparency on the shadow side, turn on your overhead light and stand against the dark side.”

  “What’s all this rigmarole?” Pierce grumbled. With the blind faith of a layman before the mysteries of machinery, he cut off the steady diffused glow of sunlight, and stood back against the dark side, watching the opposite wall. The last shreds of opacity faded and vanished like fog, and there was only black space flecked with the steady hot brightness of the distant stars. The bright shimmer of the parabolic signal-beam mirror took up most of the view. It was held out and up to the fullest extension of its metallic arm, so that it blocked out a six-foot circle of sky. Pierce looked at it with interest, wondering if he had adjusted it correctly. Its angle certainly looked peculiar.

  As he looked, the irregular shimmering light began to confuse his eyes. He suddenly felt that there were cobwebs forming between himself and the reflector. Instinctively Pierce reached out a groping hand, squinting with the effort to see.

  His eyes found the focus, and he saw his hand almost touching a human being!

  The violence with which he yanked his hand back threw him momentarily off balance. He fought for equilibrium while his eyes and mind went through a wrenching series of adjustments to the sight of Cliff Baker, only three feet high, floating in the air within reach of his hand. The effort was too great. At the last split second he saved himself from an emotional shock wave by switching everything off. A blank unnatural calm descended, and he said:

  “Hi, Cliff.”

  The figure moved, extending a hand in a reluctant pleading gesture. Under a brilliant overhead light its expression looked strained and grim. “Pierce, Pierce, listen. This is trouble. You have to help.” There was no mistaking the sincerity of the appeal. To the trained perception of the psychologist the relative tension of every visible muscle was characteristic of tightly controlled desperation, but to the intensified responsiveness of his feelings the personality and attitude of Cliff Baker burned in like hot iron, shaping Pierce’s personality to its own image. Instinctively Pierce tried to escape the intolerable inpour of tension by crowding back against the wall, but the figure followed, expanding nightmarishly.

  Then abruptly it vanished. It had been some sort of a stereo, of course. For a long moment the psychologist leaned against the curved wall with one hand guarding his face, waiting for his heart to find a steady beat again, and his thoughts to untangle.

  “Over a hundred… a hundred per cent. Cliff, you don’t—What kind of a—”

  “The projection?” The engineer’s voice spoke cheerfully from the radio. “Just one of the things you can do with a tight-beam parabolic reflector. Some of the boys thought it up to scare novices with, but I never thought it would be useful for anything!”

  “Useful! Cliff!” Pierce protested. “You don’t know what you did!”

  The engineer chuckled again. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said kindly. “I was trying something else. Eye sympathy you said— How do you feel about finding out what’s wrong at Station A?”

  “How do you expect me to feel?” Pierce groaned. “Go on, tell me what to do!”

  “Come find out what it is, and cure them. And work on Archy Reyno
lds first.”

  There was a long pause, and when Pierce spoke, his feelings had changed again. “No, blast it! You can’t have me like that. I can’t just do what you want without thinking! It’s phony. No station full of people goes crazy together. I don’t believe it.”

  “I saw it,” Cliff answered grimly.

  “You say you saw it. And you force me to go to cure them —without explanation, without saying why it is important. What has it to do with Pluto Station? It isn’t like you to force anybody to do anything, Cliff. It’s not in your normal pattern! It isn’t like you to cover and avoid explanations.”

  “What are you driving at?” Cliff said uneasily. “Let me tell you how to set the controls to head for Station A. You have to get here fast!”

  “Covering up something. There’s only one situation I know of that would make you try to cover.” Pierce’s voice sharpened with determination. “It must have happened. Listen, Cliff, I’m going to give this to you straight. I know the inside of your head better than you do. I know how you feel about those fluent fast-talking friends of yours at the station and on the job. You’re afraid of them—afraid they’ll find out you’re just a dope. Something has happened at Pluto Station project, and, it is still happening—something bad, and you think it is your fault, you don’t know it, but you feel guilty. You’re trying to cover up. Don’t do it. Don’t cover up!”

  “Listen,” Cliff stammered, “I—”

  “Shut up,” Pierce said briskly. “This is shock treatment. One level of your personality must have cracked. It would under that special stress. You had an inferiority complex a yard wide. You’re going to reintegrate fast on another level right now. File away what I said and listen for the next shock. You aren’t a dope. You’re an adjustable analogue.”

  “A what?”

  “An adjustable analogue. You think with kinesthetic abstractions. Other people are arithmetic computers. They think with arbitrarily related blocks of memorized audio-visual symbols. That’s why you can’t talk with them. Different systems.”