Odd that she isn’t consistent about her own name, he pondered. She may need help. Can I give her any help? he asked himself. A special, a chickenhead; what do I know? I can’t marry and I can’t emigrate and the dust will eventually kill me. I have nothing to offer.
Dressed and ready to go, he left his apartment and ascended to the roof where his battered used hovercar lay parked.
An hour later, in the company truck, he had picked up the first malfunctioning animal for the day. An electric cat: it lay in the plastic dust-proof carrying cage in the rear of the truck and panted erratically. You’d almost think it was real, Isidore observed as he headed back to the Van Ness Pet Hospital—that carefully misnamed little enterprise which barely existed in the tough, competitive field of false-animal repair.
The cat, in its travail, groaned.
Wow, Isidore said to himself. It really sounds as if it’s dying. Maybe its ten-year battery has shorted, and all its circuits are systematically burning out. A major job; Milt Borogrove, Van Ness Pet Hospital’s repairman, would have his hands full. And I didn’t give the owner an estimate, Isidore realized gloomily. The guy simply thrust the cat at me, said it had begun failing during the night, and then I guess he took off for work. Anyhow, all of a sudden the momentary verbal exchange had ceased; the cat’s owner had gone roaring up into the sky in his custom new-model handsome hovercar. And the man constituted a new customer.
To the cat, Isidore said, “Can you hang on until we reach the shop?” The cat continued to wheeze. “I’ll recharge you while we’re en route,” Isidore decided; he dropped the truck toward the nearest available roof and there, temporarily parked with the motor running, crawled into the back of the truck and opened the plastic dust-proof carrying cage, which, in conjunction with his own white suit and the name on the truck, created a total impression of a true animal vet picking up a true animal.
The electric mechanism, within its compellingly authentic-style gray pelt, gurgled and blew bubbles, its vidlenses glassy, its metal jaws locked together. This had always amazed him, these “disease” circuits built into false animals; the construct which he now held on his lap had been put together in such a fashion that when a primary component misfired, the whole thing appeared—not broken—but organically ill. It would have fooled me, Isidore said to himself as he groped within the ersatz stomach fur for the concealed control panel (quite small on this variety of false animal) plus the quick-charge battery terminals. He could find neither. Nor could he search very long; the mechanism had almost failed. If it does consist of a short, he reflected, which is busy burning out circuits, then maybe I should try to detach one of the battery cables; the mechanism will shut down, but no more harm will be done. And then, in the shop, Milt can charge it back up.
Deftly, he ran his fingers along the pseudo bony spine. The cables should be about here. Damn expert workmanship; so absolutely perfect an imitation. Cables not apparent even under close scrutiny. Must be a Wheelright & Carpenter product—they cost more, but look what good work they do.
He gave up; the false cat had ceased functioning, so evidently the short—if that was what ailed the thing—had finished off the power supply and basic drive-train. That’ll run into money, he thought pessimistically. Well, the guy evidently hadn’t been getting the three-times-yearly preventive cleaning and lubricating, which made all the difference. Maybe this would teach the owner—the hard way.
Crawling back in the driver’s seat, he put the wheel into climb position, buzzed up into the air once more, and resumed his flight back to the repair shop.
Anyhow he no longer had to listen to the nerve-wracking wheezing of the construct; he could relax. Funny, he thought; even though I know rationally it’s faked the sound of a false animal, burning out its drive-train and power supply ties my stomach in knots. I wish, he thought painfully, that I could get another job. If I hadn’t failed that IQ test I wouldn’t be reduced to this ignominious task with its attendant emotional by-products. On the other hand, the synthetic sufferings of false animals didn’t bother Milt Borogrove or their boss Hannibal Sloat. So maybe it’s I, John Isidore said to himself. Maybe when you deteriorate back down the ladder of evolution as I have, when you sink into the tomb world slough of being a special—well, best to abandon that line of inquiry. Nothing depressed him more than the moments in which he contrasted his current mental powers with what he had formerly possessed. Every day he declined in sagacity and vigor. He and the thousands of other specials throughout Terra, all of them moving toward the ash heap. Turning into living kipple.
For company he clicked on the truck’s radio and tuned for Buster Friendly’s aud show, which, like the TV version, continued twenty-three unbroken warm hours a day…the additional one hour being a religious sign-off, ten minutes of silence, and then a religious sign-on.
“—glad to have you on the show again,” Buster Friendly was saying. “Let’s see, Amanda; it’s been two whole days since we’ve visited with you. Starting on any new pics, dear?”
“Vell, I vuz goink to do a pic yestooday baht vell, dey vanted me to staht ad seven—”
“Seven A.M.?” Buster Friendly broke in.
“Yess, dot’s right, Booster; it vuz seven hey hem!” Amanda Werner laughed her famous laugh, nearly as imitated as Buster’s. Amanda Werner and several other beautiful, elegant, conically breasted foreign ladies, from unspecified vaguely defined countries, plus a few bucolic so-called humorists, comprised Buster’s perpetual core of repeats. Women like Amanda Werner never made movies, never appeared in plays; they lived out their queer, beautiful lives as guests on Buster’s unending show, appearing, Isidore had once calculated, as much as seventy hours a week.
How did Buster Friendly find the time to tape both his aud and vid shows? Isidore wondered. And how did Amanda Werner find time to be a guest every other day, month after month, year after year? How did they keep talking? They never repeated themselves—not so far as he could determine. Their remarks, always witty, always new, weren’t rehearsed. Amanda’s hair glowed, her eyes glinted, her teeth shone; she never ran down, never became tired, never found herself at a loss as to a clever retort to Buster’s bang-bang string of quips, jokes, and sharp observations. The Buster Friendly Show, telecast and broadcast over all Earth via satellite, also poured down on the emigrants of the colony planets. Practice transmissions beamed to Proxima had been attempted, in case human colonization extended that far. Had the Salander 3 reached its destination, the travelers aboard would have found the Buster Friendly Show awaiting them. And they would have been glad.
But something about Buster Friendly irritated John Isidore, one specific thing. In subtle, almost inconspicuous ways, Buster ridiculed the empathy boxes. Not once but many times. He was, in fact, doing it right now.
“—no rock nicks on me,” Buster prattled away to Amanda Werner. “And if I’m going up the side of a mountain I want a couple of bottles of Budweiser beer along!” The studio audience laughed, and Isidore heard a sprinkling of handclaps. “And I’ll reveal my carefully documented exposé from up there—that exposé coming exactly ten hours from now!”
“Ent me, too, dahlink!” Amanda gushed. “Tek me wit you! I go alonk en ven dey trow a rock et us I protek you!” Again the audience howled, and John Isidore felt baffled and impotent rage seep up into the back of his neck. Why did Buster Friendly always chip away at Mercerism? No one else seemed bothered by it; even the U.N. approved. And the American and Soviet police had publicly stated that Mercerism reduced crime by making citizens more concerned about the plight of their neighbors. Mankind needs more empathy, Titus Corning, the U.N. Secretary General, had declared several times. Maybe Buster is jealous, Isidore conjectured. Sure, that would explain it; he and Wilbur Mercer are in competition. But for what?
Our minds, Isidore decided. They’re fighting for control of our psychic selves; the empathy box on one hand, Buster’s guffaws and off-the-cuff jibes on the other. I’ll have to tell Hannibal Sloat that, he deci
ded. Ask him if it’s true; he’ll know.
When he had parked his truck on the roof of the Van Ness Pet Hospital, he quickly carried the plastic cage containing the inert false cat downstairs to Hannibal Sloat’s office. As he entered, Mr. Sloat glanced up from a parts-inventory page, his gray, seamed face rippling like troubled water. Too old to emigrate, Hannibal Sloat, although not a special, was doomed to creep out his remaining life on Earth. The dust, over the years, had eroded him; it had left his features gray, his thoughts gray; it had shrunk him and made his legs spindly and his gait unsteady. He saw the world through glasses literally dense with dust. For some reason, Sloat never cleaned his glasses. It was as if he had given up; he had accepted the radioactive dirt and it had begun its job, long ago, of burying him. Already it obscured his sight. In the few years he had remaining it would corrupt his other senses until at last only his bird-screech voice would remain, and then that would expire, too.
“What do you have there?” Mr. Sloat asked.
“A cat with a short in its power supply.” Isidore set the cage down on the document-littered desk of his boss.
“Why show it to me?” Sloat demanded. “Take it down in the shop to Milt.” However, reflexively, he opened the cage and tugged the false animal out. Once, he had been a repairman. A very good one.
Isidore said, “I think Buster Friendly and Mercerism are fighting for control of our psychic souls.”
“If so,” Sloat said, examining the cat, “Buster is winning.”
“He’s winning now,” Isidore said, “but ultimately he’ll lose.”
Sloat lifted his head, peered at him. “Why?”
“Because Wilbur Mercer is always renewed. He’s eternal. At the top of the hill he’s struck down; he sinks into the tomb world but then he rises inevitably. And us with him. So we’re eternal, too.” He felt good, speaking so well; usually around Mr. Sloat he stammered.
Sloat said, “Buster is immortal, like Mercer. There’s no difference.”
“How can he be? He’s a man.”
“I don’t know,” Sloat said. “But it’s true. They’ve never admitted it, of course.”
“Is that how come Buster Friendly can do forty-six hours of show a day?”
“That’s right,” Sloat said.
“What about Amanda Werner and those other women?”
“They’re immortal, too.”
“Are they a superior life-form from another system?”
“I’ve never been able to determine that for sure,” Mr. Sloat said, still examining the cat. He now removed his dust-filmed glasses, peered without them at the half-open mouth. “As I have conclusively in the case of Wilbur Mercer,” he finished almost inaudibly. He cursed then, a string of abuse lasting what seemed to Isidore a full minute. “This cat,” Sloat said finally, “isn’t false. I knew sometime this would happen. And it’s dead.” He stared down at the corpse of the cat. And cursed again.
Wearing his grimy blue sailcloth apron, burly pebble-skinned Milt Borogrove appeared at the office door. “What’s the matter?” he said. Seeing the cat, he entered the office and picked up the animal.
“The chickenhead,” Sloat said, “brought it in.” Never before had he used that term in front of Isidore.
“If it was still alive,” Milt said, “we could take it to a real animal vet. I wonder what it’s worth. Anybody got a copy of Sidney’s?”
“D-Doesn’t y-y-your insurance c-c-cover this?” Isidore asked Mr. Sloat. Under him his legs wavered and he felt the room begin to turn dark maroon cast over with specks of green.
“Yes,” Sloat said finally, half snarling. “But it’s the waste that gets me. The loss of one more living creature. Couldn’t you tell, Isidore? Didn’t you notice the difference?”
“I thought,” Isidore managed to say, “it was a really good job. So good it fooled me; I mean, it seemed alive, and a job that good—”
“I don’t think Isidore can tell the difference,” Milt said mildly. “To him they’re all alive, false animals included. He probably tried to save it.” To Isidore he said, “What did you do, try to recharge its battery? Or locate a short in it?”
“Y-Yes,” Isidore admitted.
“It probably was so far gone it wouldn’t have made it anyhow,” Milt said. “Let the chickenhead off the hook, Han. He’s got a point; the fakes are beginning to be darn near real, what with those disease circuits they’re building into the new ones. And living animals do die; that’s one of the risks in owning them. We’re just not used to it because all we see are fakes.”
“The goddamn waste,” Sloat said.
“According to M-Mercer,” Isidore pointed out, “a-all life returns. The cycle is c-c-complete for a-a-animals, too. I mean, we all ascend with him, die—”
“Tell that to the guy that owned this cat,” Mr. Sloat said.
Not sure if his boss was serious, Isidore said, “You mean I have to? But you always handle vidcalls.” He had a phobia about the vidphone and found making a call, especially to a stranger, virtually impossible. Mr. Sloat, of course, knew this.
“Don’t make him,” Milt said. “I’ll do it.” He reached for the receiver. “What’s his number?”
“I’ve got it here somewhere.” Isidore fumbled in his work smock pockets.
Sloat said, “I want the chickenhead to do it.”
“I c-c-can’t use the vidphone,” Isidore protested, his heart laboring. “Because I’m hairy, ugly, dirty, stooped, snaggle-toothed, and gray. And also I feel sick from the radiation; I think I’m going to die.”
Milt smiled and said to Sloat, “I guess if I felt that way I wouldn’t use the vidphone either. Come on, Isidore; if you don’t give me the owner’s number I can’t make the call and you’ll have to.” He held out his hand amiably.
“The chickenhead makes it,” Sloat said, “or he’s fired.” He did not look either at Isidore or at Milt; he glared fixedly forward.
“Aw come on,” Milt protested.
Isidore said, “I d-d-don’t like to be c-c-called a chickenhead. I mean, the d-d-dust has d-d-done a lot to you, too, physically. Although maybe n-n-not your brain, as in m-my case.” I’m fired, he realized. I can’t make the call. And then all at once he remembered that the owner of the cat had zipped off to work. There would be no one home. “I g-guess I can call him,” he said, as he fished out the tag with the information on it.
“See?” Mr. Sloat said to Milt. “He can do it if he has to.”
Seated at the vidphone, receiver in hand, Isidore dialed.
“Yeah,” Milt said, “but he shouldn’t have to. And he’s right; the dust has affected you; you’re damn near blind and in a couple of years you won’t be able to hear.”
Sloat said, “It’s got to you, too, Borogrove. Your skin is the color of dog manure.”
On the vidscreen a face appeared, a mitteleuropäische somewhat careful-looking woman who wore her hair in a tight bun. “Yes?” she said.
“M-M-Mrs. Pilsen?” Isidore said, terror spewing through him; he had not thought of it naturally but the owner had a wife, who of course was home. “I want to t-t-talk to you about your c-c-c-c-c-c—” He broke off, rubbed his chin tic-wise. “Your cat.”
“Oh yes, you picked up Horace,” Mrs. Pilsen said. “Did it turn out to be pneumonitis? That’s what Mr. Pilsen thought.”
Isidore said, “Your cat died.”
“Oh no god in heaven.”
“We’ll replace it,” he said. “We have insurance.” He glanced toward Mr. Sloat; he seemed to concur. “The owner of our firm, Mr. Hannibal Sloat—” He floundered. “Will personally—”
“No,” Sloat said, “we’ll give them a check. Sidney’s list price.”
“—will personally pick the replacement cat out for you,” Isidore found himself saying. Having started a conversation which he could not endure, he discovered himself unable to get back out. What he was saying possessed an intrinsic logic which he had no means of halting; it had to grind to its own conclusio
n. Both Mr. Sloat and Milt Borogrove stared at him as he rattled on, “Give us the specifications of the cat you desire. Color, sex, subtype, such as Manx, Persian, Abyssinian—”
“Horace is dead,” Mrs. Pilsen said.
“He had pneumonitis,” Isidore said. “He died on the trip to the hospital. Our senior staff physician, Dr. Hannibal Sloat, expressed the belief that nothing at this point could have saved him. But isn’t it fortunate, Mrs. Pilsen, that we’re going to replace him. Am I correct?”
Mrs. Pilsen, tears appearing in her eyes, said, “There is only one cat like Horace. He used to—when he was just a kitten—stand and stare up at us as if asking a question. We never understood what the question was. Maybe now he knows the answer.” Fresh tears appeared. “I guess we all will eventually.”
An inspiration came to Isidore. “What about an exact electric duplicate of your cat? We can have a superb handcrafted job by Wheelright & Carpenter in which every detail of the old animal is faithfully repeated in permanent—”
“Oh that’s dreadful!” Mrs. Pilsen protested. “What are you saying? Don’t tell my husband that; don’t suggest that to Ed or he’ll go mad. He loved Horace more than any cat he ever had, and he’s had a cat since he was a child.”
Taking the vidphone receiver from Isidore, Milt said to the woman, “We can give you a check in the amount of Sidney’s list, or as Mr. Isidore suggested we can pick out a new cat for you. We’re very sorry that your cat died, but as Mr. Isidore pointed out, the cat had pneumonitis, which is almost always fatal.” His tone rolled out professionally; of the three of them at the Van Ness Pet Hospital, Milt performed the best in the matter of business phone calls.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Page 7