Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

Cal

I am a robot. My name is Cal. I have a registration number. It is CL-123X, but my master calls me Cal.

The X in my registration number means I am a special robot for my master. He asked for me and helped design me. He has a lot of money. He is a writer.

I am not a very complicated robot. My master doesn’t want a complicated robot. He just wants someone to pick up after him, to run his printer, stack his disks, and like that.

He says I don’t give him any backtalk and just do what I am told. He says that is good.

He has people come in to help him, sometimes. They give him backtalk. Sometimes they do not do what they are told. He gets very angry and red in the face.

Then he tells me to do something, and I do it. He says, thank goodness, you do as you are told.

Of course, I do as I am told. What else can I do? I want to make my master feel good. I can tell when my master feels good. His mouth stretches and he calls that a smile. He pats me on the shoulder and says, Good, Cal. Good.

I like it when he says, Good, Cal. Good.

I say to my master, Thank you. You make me feel good, too.

And he laughs. I like when he laughs because it means he feels good, but it is a queer sound. I don’t understand how he makes it or why. I ask him and he says to me that he laughs when something is funny.

I ask him if what I said is funny. He says, Yes, it is.

It is funny because I say I feel good. He says robots do not really feel good. He says only human masters feel good. He says robots just have positronic brain paths that work more easily when they follow orders.

I don’t know what positronic brain paths are. He says they are something inside me.

I say, When positronic brain-paths work better, does it make everything smoother and easier for me? Is that why I feel good?

Then I ask, When a master feels good, is it because something in him works more easily? My master nods and says, Cal, you are smarter than you look.

I don’t know what that means either but my master seems pleased with me and that makes my positronic brain paths work more easily, and that makes me feel good. It is easier just to say it makes me feel good. I ask if I can say that.

He says, You can say whatever you choose, Cal.

What I want is to be a writer like my master. I do not understand why I have this feeling, but my master is a writer and he helped design me. Maybe his design makes me feel I want to be a writer. I do not understand why I have this feeling because I don’t know what a writer is. I ask my master what a writer is.

He smiles again. Why do you want to know, Cal? he asks.

I do not know, I say. It is just that you are a writer and I want to know what that is. You seem so happy when you are writing and if it makes you happy maybe it will make me happy, too. I have a feelingI don’t have the words for it. I think a while and he waits for me. He is still smiling.

I say, I want to know because it will make me feel better to know. I am-I am

He says, You are curious, Cal.

I say, I don’t know what that word means.

He says, It means you want to know just because you want to know.

I want to know just because I want to know, I say.

He says, Writing is making up a story. I tell about people who do different things, and have different things happen to them.

I say, How do you find out what they do and what happens to them?

He says, I make them up, Cal. They are not real people. They are not real happenings. I imagine them, in here.

He points to his head.

I do not understand and I ask how he makes them up, but he laughs and says, I do not know, either. I just make them up.

He says, I write mysteries. Crime stories. I tell about people who do wrong things, who hurt other people.

I feel very bad when I hear that. I say, How can you talk about hurting people? That must never be done.

He says, Human beings are not controlled by the Three Laws of Robotics. Human masters can hurt other human masters, if they wish.

This is wrong, I say.

It is, he says. In my stories, people who do harm are punished. They are put in prison and kept there where they cannot hurt people.

Do they like it in prison? I ask.

Of course not. They must not. Fear of prison keeps them from doing more hurtful things than they do.

I say, But prison is wrong, too, if it makes people feel bad.

Well, says my master, that is why you cannot write mysteries and crime stories.

I think about that. There must be a way to write stories in which people are not hurt. I would like to do that. I want to be a writer. I want to be a writer very much.

My master has three different Writers for writing stories. One is very old, but he says he keeps it because it has sentimental value.

I don’t know what sentimental value is. I do not like to ask. He does not use the machine for his stories. Maybe sentimental value means it must not be used.

He doesn’t say I can not use it. I do not ask him if I can use it. If I do not ask him and he does not say I must not, then I am not disobeying orders if I use it.

At night, he is sleeping, and the other human masters who are sometimes here are gone. There are two other robots my master has who are more important than I am. They do more important work. They wait in their niches at night when they have not been given anything to do.

My master has not said, Stay in your niche, Cal.

Sometimes he doesn’t, because I am so unimportant, and then I can move about at night. I can look at the Writer. You push keys and it makes words and then the words are put on paper. I watch the master so I know how to push keys. The words go on the paper themselves. I do not have to do that.

I push the keys but I do not understand the words. I feel bad after a while. The master may not like it even if he does not tell me not to do it.

The words are printed on paper and in the morning I show the words to my master.

I say, I am sorry. I was using the Writer.

He looks at the paper. Then he looks at me. He makes a frown. He says, Did you do this? Yes, master. When?

Last night. Why?

I want very much to write. Is this a story? He holds up the paper and smiles.

He says, These are just random letters, Cal. This is gibberish. He does not seem angry. I feel better. I do not know what gibberish is.

I say, Is it a story?

He says, No, it is not. And it is a lucky thing the Writer cannot be damaged by mishandling. If you really want to write so badly, I will tell you what I will do. I will have you reprogrammed so that you will know how to use a Writer.

Two days later, a technician arrives. He is a master who knows how to make robots do better jobs. My master tells me that the technician is the one who put me together, and my master helped. I do not remember that.

The technician listens carefully to my master.

He says, Why do you want to do this, Mr. Northrop? Mr. Northrop is what other masters call my master.

M y master says, I helped design Cal, remember. I think I must have put into him the desire to be a writer. I did not intend to, but as long as he does, I feel I should humor him. I owe it to him.

The technician says, That is foolish. Even if we accidentally put in a desire to write that is still no job for a robot.

My master says, Just the same I want it done.

The technician says, It will be expensive, Mr. Northrop. My master frowns. He looks angry. He says, Cal is my robot. I shall do as I please. I have the money and I want him adjusted.

The technician looks angry, too. He says, If that’s what you want, very well. The customer is boss. But it will be more expensive than you think, because we cannot put in the knowledge of how to use a Writer without improving his vocabulary a good deal.

My master says, Fine. Improve his vocabulary.

The next day, the technician comes back with lots of tools. He opens my chest. It is a queer feeling. I do not like it. He reaches in. I think he shuts off my power pack, or takes it out. I do not remember. I do not see anything, or think anything, or know anything.

Then I could see and think and know again. I could see that time had passed, but I did not know how much time.

I thought for a while. It was odd, but I knew how to run a Writer and I seemed to understand more words. For instance, I knew what “gibberish” meant, and it was embarrassing to think I had shown gibberish to my master, thinking it was a story.

I would have to do better. This time I had no apprehension-I know the meaning of “apprehension,” too-I had no apprehension that he would keep me from using the old Writer. After all, he would not have redesigned me to be capable of using it if he were going to prevent me from doing so.

I put it to him. “Master, does this mean I may use the Writer?”

He said, “You may do so at any time, Cal, that you are not engaged in other tasks. You must let me see what you write, however.”

“Of course, master.”

He was clearly amused because I think he expected more gibberish (what an ugly word!) but I didn’t think he would get any more.

I didn’t write a story immediately. I had to think about what to write. I suppose that that is what the master meant when he said you must make up a story.

I found it was necessary to think about it first and then write down what was thought. It was much more complicated than I had supposed.

My master noticed my preoccupation. He asked me, “What are you doing, Cal?”

I said, “I am trying to make up a story. It’s hard work.”

“Are you finding that out, Cal? Good. Obviously, your reorganization has not only improved your vocabulary but it seems to me it has intensified your intelligence.”

I said, “I’m not sure what is meant by ‘intensified’.”

“It means you seem smarter. You seem to know more.” “Does that displease you, master?”

“Not at all. It pleases me. It may make it more possible for you to write stories and even after you have grown tired of trying to write, you will remain more useful to me.”

I thought at once that it would be delightful to be more useful to the master, but I didn’t understand what he meant about growing tired of trying to write. I wasn’t going to get tired of writing.

Finally, I had a story in my mind, and I asked my master when would be a proper time to write it. He said, “Wait till night. Then you won’t be getting in my way. We can have a small light for the corner where the old Writer is standing; and you can write your story. How long do you think it will take you?”

“Just a little while,” I said, surprised. “I can work the Writer very quickly.”

My master said, “Cal, working the Writer isn’t all there-” Then he stopped, thought a while, and said, “No, you go ahead and do it. You will learn. I won’t try to advise you.”

He was right. Working the Writer wasn’t all there was to it. I spent nearly the whole night trying to figure out the story. It is very difficult to decide which word comes after which. I had to erase the story several times and start over. It was very embarrassing.

Finally, it was done, and here it is. I kept it after I wrote it because it was the first story I ever wrote. It was not gibberish.

There was a detektav wuns named Cal, who was a very good detektav and very brave. Nuthin fritened him. Imajin his surprise one night when he herd an introoder in his masters home.

He came russian into the riting office. There was an introoder. He had cum in throo the windo. There was broken glas. That was what Cal, the brave detektav, had herd with his good hering.

He said, “Stop, introoder.”

The introoder stopped and looked skared. Cal felt bad that the introoder looked skared. Cal said, “Look what you have done. You have broken the windo.”

“Yes,” said the introoder, looking very ashaymed. “I did not mean to break the windo.”

Cal was very clever and he saw the flawr in the introoder’s remark. He said, “How did you expect to get in if you were not going to break the windo?”

“I thought it would be open,” he said. “I tried to open it and it broke.”

Cal said, “Waht was the meaning of what you have done, anyhow? Why should you want to come into this room when it is not your room? You are an introoder.”

“I did not mean any harm,” he said.

“That is not so, for if you ment no harm, you would not be here,” said Cal. “You must be punnished.”

“Please do not punnish me,” said the introoder.

“I will not punnish you,” said Cal. “I don’t wish to cause you unhappiness or payn. I will call my master.”

He called, “Master! Master!”

The master came russian in. “What have we here?” he asked.

“An introoder,” I said. “I have caut him and he is for you to punnish.”

My master looked at the introoder. He said, “Are you sorry for wat you have done?”

“I am,” said the introoder. He was crying and water was coming out of his eys the way it happens with masters when they are sad.

“Will you ever do it agen?” said my master.

“Never. I will never do it agen,” said the introoder.

“In that case,” said the master, “you have been punnished enogh. Go away and be sure never to do it agen.”

Then the master said, “You are a good detektav, Cal. I am proud of you.” Cal was very glad to have pleased the master.

I was very pleased with the story and I showed it to the master. I was sure he would be very pleased, too.

He was more than pleased, for as he read it, he smiled. He even laughed a few times. Then he looked up at me and said, “Did you write this?”

“Yes, I did, master,” I said.

“I mean, all by yourself. You didn’t copy anything?”

“I made it up in my own head, master, “ I said. “Do you like it?” He laughed again, quite loudly. “It’s interesting,” he said.

I was a little anxious. “Is it funny?” I asked. “I don’t know how to make things funny.”

“I know, Cal. It’s not funny intentionally.”

I thought about that for a while. Then I asked, “How can something be funny unintentionally?” “It’s hard to explain, but don’t worry about it. In the first place, you can’t spell, and that’s a surprise. You speak so well now that I automatically assumed you could spell words but, obviously, you can’t. You can’t be a writer unless you can spell words correctly, and use good grammar.”

“How do I manage to spell words correctly?”

“You don’t have to worry about that, Cal,” said my master. “We will outfit you with a dictionary. But tell me, Cal. In your story, Cal is you, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” I was pleased he had noticed that.

“Bad idea. You don’t want to put yourself into a story and say how great you are. It offends the reader.”

“Why, master?”

“Because it does. It looks like I will have to give you advice, but I’ll make it as brief as possible. It is not customary to praise yourself. Besides you don’t want to say you are great, you must show you are great in what you do. And don’t use your own name.”

“Is that a rule?”

“A good writer can break any rule, but you’re just a beginner. Stick to the rules and what I have told you are just a couple of them. You’re going to encounter many, many more if you keep on writing. Also, Cal, you’re going to have trouble with the Three Laws of Robotics. You can’t assume that wrongdoers will weep and be ashamed. Human beings aren’t like that. They must be punished sometimes.”

I felt my positronic brain-paths go rough. I said, “That is difficult. “

“I know. Also, there’s no mystery in the story. There doesn’t have to be, but I think you’d be better off if there were. What if your hero, whom you’ll have to call something other than Cal, doesn’t know whether someone is an intruder or not. How would he find out? You see, he has to use his head.” And my master pointed to his own.

I didn’t quite follow.

My master said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you some stories of my own to read, after you’ve been outfitted with a spelling dictionary and a grammar and you’ll see what I mean.”

The technician came to the house and said, “There’s no problem in installing a spelling dictionary and a grammar. It’ll cost you more money. I know you don’t care about money, but tell me why you are so interested in making a writer out of this hunk of steel and titanium.”

I didn’t think it was right for him to call me a hunk of steel and titanium, but of course a human master can say anything he wants to say. They always talk about us robots as though we weren’t there. I’ve noticed that, too.

My master said, “Did you ever hear of a robot who wanted to be a writer?” “No,” said the technician, “I can’t say I ever did, Mr. Northrop.”

“Neither did I! Neither did anyone as far as I know. Cal is unique, and I want to study him.”

The technician smiled very wide-grinned, that’s the word. “Don’t tell me you have it in your head that he’ll be able to write your stories for you, Mr. Northrop.”

My master stopped smiling. He lifted his head and looked down on the technician very angrily. “Don’t be a fool. You just do what I pay you to do.”

I think the master made the technician sorry he had said that, but I don’t know why. If my master asked me to write his stories for him I would be pleased to do so.

Again, I don’t know how long it took the technician to do his job when he came back a couple of days later. I don’t remember a thing about it.

Then my master was suddenly talking to me. “How do you feel, Cal?”

I said, “I feel very well. Thank you, sir.” “What about words. Can you spell?”

“I know the letter-combinations, sir.”

“Very good. Can you read this?” He handed me a book. It said, on the cover, The Best Mysteries of J. F. Northrop.

I said, “Are these your stories, sir?”

“Absolutely. If you want to read them, you can.”

I had never been able to read easily before, but now as soon as I looked at the words, I could hear them in my ear. It was surprising. I couldn’t imagine how I had been unable to do it before.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I shall read this and I’m sure it will help me in my writing.” “Very good. Continue to show me everything you write.”

The master’s stories were quite interesting. He had a detective who could always understand matters that others found puzzling. I didn’t always understand how he could see the truth of a mystery and I had to read some of the stories over again and do so slowly.

Sometimes I couldn’t understand them even when I read them slowly. Sometimes I did, though, and it seemed to me I could write a story like Mr. Northrop’s.

This time I spent quite a long while working it out in my head. When I thought I had it worked out, I wrote the following:

Calumet Smithson sat in his arm chair, his eagle-eyes sharp and the nostrils of his thin high-bridged nose flaring, as though he could scent a new mystery.

He said, “Well, Mr. Wassell, tell me your story again from the beginning. Leave out nothing, for one can’t tell when even the smallest detail may not be of the greatest importance.”

Wassell owned an important business in town, and in it he employed many robots and also human beings.

Wassell did so, but there was nothing startling in the details at all and he was able to summarize it this way. “What it amounts to, Mr. Smithson, is that I am losing money. Someone in my employ is helping himself to small sums now and then. The sums are of no great importance, each in itself, but it is like a small, steady oil loss in a machine, or the drip-drop of water from a leaky faucet, or the oozing of blood from a small wound. In time, it would mount up and become dangerous.”

“Are you actually in danger of losing your business, Mr. Smithson?” “Not yet. But I don’t like to lose money, either. Do you?”

“No, indeed,” said Smithson, “I do not. How many robots do you employ in your business?”

“Twenty-seven, sir.”

“And they are all reliable, I suppose.”

“Undoubtedly. They could not steal. Besides, I have asked each one of them if they took any money and they all said they had not. And, of course, robots cannot lie, either.”

“You are quite right,” said Smithson. “It is useless to be concerned over robots. They are honest, through and through. What about the human beings you employ? How many of them are there?”

“I employ seventeen, but of these only four can possibly have been stealing.”

“Why is that?”

“The others do not work on the premises. These four, however, do. Each one has the occasion, now and then, to handle petty cash, and I suspect that what happens is that at least one of them manages to transfer assets from the company to his private account in such a way that the matter is not easily traced.”

“I see. Yes, it is unfortunately true that human beings may steal. Have you confronted your suspects with the situation?”

“Yes, I have. They all deny any such activity, but, of course, human beings can lie, too.” “So they can. Did any of them look uneasy while being questioned?”

“All did. They could see I was a furious man who could fire all four, guilty or innocent. They would have had trouble finding other jobs if fired for such a reason.”

“Then that cannot be done. We must not punish the innocent with the guilty.”

“You are quite right,” said Mr. Wassell. “I couldn’t do that. But how can I decide which one is guilty?”

“Is there one among them who has a dubious record, who has been fired under uncertain circumstances earlier in his career?”

“I have made quiet inquiries, Mr. Smithson, and I have found nothing suspicious about any of them.”

“Is one of them in particular need of money?” “I pay good wages.”

“I am sure of that, but perhaps one has some sort of expensive taste that makes his income insufficient.”

“I have found no evidence of that, though, to be sure, if one of them needed money for some perverse reason, he would keep it secret. No one wants to be thought evil.”

“You are quite right,” said the great detective. “In that case, you must confront me with the four men. I will interrogate them.” His eyes flashed. “We will get to the bottom of this mystery, never fear. Let us arrange a meeting in the evening. We might meet in the company dining room over some small meal and a bottle of wine, so the men will feel completely relaxed. Tonight, if possible.”

“I will arrange it,” said Mr. Wassell, eagerly.

Calumet Smithson sat at the dinner table and regarded the four men closely. Two of them were quite young and had dark hair. One of them had a mustache as well. Neither was very good looking. One of them was Mr. Foster and the other was Mr. Lionell. The third man was rather fat and had small eyes. He was Mr. Mann. The fourth was tall and rangy and had a nervous way of cracking his knuckles. He was Mr. Ostrak.

Smithson seemed to be a little nervous himself as he questioned each man in turn. His eagle eyes narrowed as he gazed sharply at the four suspects and he played with a shiny quarter that flipped casually between the fingers of his right hand.

Smithson said, “I'm sure that each of the four of you is quite aware what a terrible thing it is to steal from an employer.” They all agreed at once.

Smithson tapped the shiny quarter on the table, thoughtfully. “One of you, I'm sure, is going to break down under the load of guilt and I think you will do it before the evening is over.

But, for now, I must call my office. I will be gone for only a few minutes. Please sit here and wait for me and while I am gone, do not talk to each other, or look at each other.”

He gave the quarter a last tap, and, paying no attention to it, he left. In about ten minutes, he was back.

He looked from one to another and said, “You did not talk to each other or look at each other, I hope?”

There was a general shaking of heads as though they were still fearful of speaking. “Mr. Wassell,” said the detective. “Do you agree that no one spoke?”

“Absolutely. We just sat here quietly and waited. We didn’t even look at each other.”

“Good. Now I will ask each one of you four men to show me what you have in your pockets. Please put everything into a pile in front of you.”

Smithson’s voice was so compelling, his eyes so bright and sharp, that none of the men thought of disobeying.

“Shirt pockets, too. Inside jacket pockets. All the pockets.”

There was quite a pile, credit cards, keys, spectacles, pens, some coins. Smithson looked at the four piles coldly, his mind taking in everything.

Then he said, “Just to make sure that we are all meeting the same requirements, I will make a pile of the contents of my own pockets and, Mr. Wassell, you do the same.”

Now there were six piles. Smithson reached over to the pile in front of Mr. Wassell, and said, “What is this shiny quarter I see, Mr. Wassell. Yours?”

Wassell looked confused. “Yes.”

“It couldn’t be. It has my mark on it. I left it on the table when I went out to call my office. You took it.”

Wassell was silent. The other four men looked at him.

Smithson said, “I felt that if one of you was a thief, you wouldn’t be able to resist a shiny quarter. Mr. Wassell, you’ve been stealing from your own company, and, afraid you would be caught, you tried to spread the guilt among your men. That was a wicked and cowardly thing to do.”

Wassell hung his head. “You are right, Mr. Smithson. I thought if I hired you to investigate you would find one of the men guilty, and then perhaps I could stop taking the money for my private use.”

“You little realize the detective’s mind,” said Calumet Smithson. “I will turn you over to the authorities. They will decide what to do with you, though if you are sincerely sorry and promise never to do it again, I will try to keep you from being punished badly.”

I showed it to Mr. Northrop, who read it silently. He hardly smiled at all. Just in one or two places. Then he put it down and stared at me. “Where did you get the name Euphrosyne Durando?”

“You said, sir, I was not to use my own name, so I used one as different as possible.” “But where did you get it?”

“Sir, one of the minor characters in one of your stories-”

“Of course! I thought it sounded familiar! Do you realize it's a feminine name? “ “Since I am neither masculine nor feminine-”

“Yes, you're quite right. But the name of the detective, Calumet Smithson. That 'Cal' part is still you, isn't it?”

“I wanted some connection, sir.” “You've got a tremendous ego, Cal.”

I hesitated. “What does that mean, sir?” “Never mind. It doesn't matter.”

He put the manuscript down and I was troubled. I said, “But what did you think of the mystery?”

“It's an improvement, but it's still not a good mystery. Do you realize that?” “In what way is it disappointing, sir?”

“Well, you don't understand modern business practices or computerized financing for one thing.

And no one would take a quarter from the table with four other men present, even if they weren't looking. It would have been seen. Then, even if that happened, Mr. Wassell's taking it isn't proof he was the thief.

Anyone could pocket a quarter automatically, without thinking. It's an interesting indication, but it's not proof. And the title of the story tends to give it away, too.”

“I see.”

“And, in addition, the Three Laws of Robotics are still getting in your way. You keep worrying about punishment.”

“I must, sir.”

“I know you must. That's why I think you shouldn't try to write crime stories.” “What else should I write, sir? “

“Let me think about it.”

Mr. Northrop called in the technician again. This time, I think, he wasn't very eager to have me overhear what he was saying, but even from where I was standing, I could hear the conversation. Sometimes human beings forget how sharp the senses of robots can be.

After all, I was very upset. I wanted to be a writer and I didn’t want Mr. Northrop telling me what

I could write and what I couldn’t write. Of course, he was a human being and I had to obey him, but I didn’t like it.

“What’s the matter now, Mr. Northrop?” asked the technician in a voice that sounded sardonic to my ears. “Has this robot of yours been writing a story again?”

“Yes, he has,” said Mr. Northrop, trying to sound indifferent. “He’s written another mystery story and I don’t want him writing mysteries.”

“Too much competition, eh, Mr. Northrop?”

“No. Don’t be a jackass. There’s just no point in two people in the same household writing mysteries. Besides, the Three Laws of Robotics get in the way. You can easily imagine how.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“I’m not sure. Suppose he writes satire. That’s one thing I don’t write, so we won’t be competing, and the Three Laws of Robotics won’t get in his way. I want you to give this robot a sense of the ridiculous.”

“A sense of the what?” said the technician, angrily. “How do I do that? Look, Mr. Northrop, be reasonable. I can put in instructions on how to run a Writer. I can put in a dictionary and grammar. But how can I possibly put in a sense of the ridiculous?”

“Well, think about it. You know the workings of a robot’s brain patterns. Isn’t there some way of readjusting him so that he can see what’s funny, or silly, or just plain ridiculous about human beings?”

“I can fool around, but it’s not safe.” “Why isn’t it safe?”

“Because, look, Mr. Northrop, you started off with a pretty cheap robot, but I’ve been making it more elaborate. You admit that it’s unique and that you never heard of one that wants to write stories, so now it’s a pretty expensive robot. You may even have a Classic model here that should be given to the Robotic Institute. If you want me to fool around, I might spoil the whole thing. Do you realize that?”

“I’m willing to take the chance. If the whole thing is spoiled, it will be spoiled, but why should it be? I’m not asking you to work in a hurry. Take the time to analyze it carefully. I have lots of time and lots of money, and I want my robot to write satire.” “Why satire?”

“Because then his lack of worldly knowledge may not matter so much and the Three Laws won’t be so important and in time, some day, he may possibly turn out something interesting, though I doubt it.” “And he won’t be treading on your turf.”

“All right, then. He won’t be treading on my turf. Satisfied?”

I still didn’t know enough about the language to know what ‘treading on my turf’ meant, but I gathered that Mr. Northrop was annoyed by my mystery stories. I didn’t know why.

There was nothing I could do, of course. Every day, the technician studied me and analyzed me and finally, he said, “ All right, Mr. Northrop, I’m going to take a chance, but I’m going to ask you to sign a paper absolving me and my company of all responsibility if anything goes wrong.” “You just prepare the paper. I’ll sign it,” said Mr. Northrop.

It was very chilling to think that something might go wrong, but that’s how things are. A robot must accept all that human beings decide to do.

This time, after I became aware of everything again, I was quite weak for a long time. I had difficulty standing, and my speech was slurred.

I thought that Mr. Northrop looked at me with a worried expression. Perhaps he felt guilty at how he had treated me-he should feel guilty-or perhaps he was just worried at the possibility of having lost a great deal of money.

As my sense of balance returned and my speech became clear, an odd thing happened. I suddenly understood how silly human beings were. They had no laws governing their actions. They had to make up their own, and even when they did, nothing forced them to obey.

Human beings were simply confused; one had to laugh at them. I understood laughter now and could even make the sound, but naturally I didn’t laugh out loud. That would have been impolite and offensive. I laughed inside myself, and I began to think of a story in which human beings did have laws governing their actions but they hated them and couldn’t stick to them.

I also thought of the technician and decided to put him into the story, too. Mr. Northrop kept going to the technician and asking him to do things to me, harder and harder things. Now he had given me a sense of the ridiculous.

So suppose I wrote a story about ridiculous human beings, with no robots present because, of course, robots aren’t ridiculous and their presence would simply spoil the humor. And suppose I put in a person who was a technician of human beings. It might be some creature with strange powers who could alter human behavior as my technician could alter robot behavior. What would happen in that case?

It might show clearly how human beings were not sensible.

I spent days thinking about the story and getting happier and happier about it. I would start with two men having dinner, and one of them would own a technician-well, have a technician of some sort-and

I would place the setting in the twentieth century so as not to offend Mr. Northrop and the other people of the twenty-first.

I read books to learn about human beings. Mr. Northrop let me do this and he hardly ever gave me any tasks to do. Nor did he try to hurry me to write. Maybe he still felt guilty about the risk he had taken of doing me harm.

I finally started the story, and here it is:

George and I were dining at a rather posh restaurant, one in which it was not unusual to see men and women enter in formal wear.

George looked up at one of those men, observing him narrowly and without favor, as he wiped his lips with my napkin, having carelessly dropped his own.

“A pox on all tuxedos, say I,” said George.

I followed the direction of his glance. As nearly as I could tell, he was studying a portly man of about fifty who was wearing an intense expression of self-importance as he helped a rather glittering woman, considerably younger than himself, to her chair.

I said, “George, are you getting ready to tell me that you know yon bloke in the tux?”

“No,” said George. “I intend to tell you no such thing. My communications with you, and with all living beings, are always predicated on total truth.”

“Like your tales of your two-centimeter demon, Az-“ The look of agony on his face made me stop.

“Don’t speak of such things,” he whispered hoarsely. “Azazel has no sense of humor, and he has a powerful sense of power.” Then, more normally, he went on, “I was merely expressing my detestation of tuxedos, particularly when infested by fat slobs like yon bloke, to use your own curious turn of expression.”

“Oddly enough,” I said, “I rather agree with you. I, too, find formal wear objectionable and, except when it is impossible to do so, I avoid all black-tie affairs, for that reason alone.”

“Good for you,” said George. “That rather spoils my impression that you have no redeeming social qualities. I’ve told everyone that you haven’t, you know.”

“Thank you, George,” I said. “That was very thoughtful of you, considering that you gorge yourself at my expense every chance you get.”

“I merely allow you to enjoy my company on those occasions, old man. I would tell all my friends now that you do have one redeeming social quality, but that would merely confuse everyone. They seem quite content with the thought that you have none.”

“I thank all your friends,” I said.

“As it happens, I know a man,” said George, “who was to the manor born. His diapers had been clamped shut with studs, not safety pins. On his first birthday, he was given a little black tie, to be knotted and not clipped on. And so things continued all his life. His name is Winthrop Carver Cabwell, and he lived on so rarefied a level of Boston’s Brahman aristocracy that he had to carry an oxygen mask for occasional use.” “And you knew this patrician? You?”

George looked offended. “Of course, I did,” he said. “Do you, for one moment, think that I am such a snob that I would refuse to associate with someone for no other reason than that he was a rich and aristocratic man of Brahman persuasion? You little know me if you do, old man. Winthrop and I knew each other quite well. I was his escape.”

George heaved a vinous sigh that sent a neighboring fly into an alcoholic tailspin. “Poor fellow,” he said. “Poor rich aristocrat.”

“George,” I said. “I believe you’re winding yourself up to tell me one of your improbable tales of disaster. I don’t wish to hear it.”

“Disaster? On the contrary. I have a tale to tell of great happiness and joy, and since that is what you want to hear, I will now tell it to you.”

As I told you [said George] my Brahman friend was a gentleman from toe to crown, clean-favored and imperially slim-

[Why are you interrupting me with your asinine mouthing of Richard Corey, old fellow? I never heard of him. I'm talking of Winthrop Carver Cabwell. Why don't you listen? Where was I? Oh, yes.]

He was a gentleman from toe to crown, clean-favored and imperially slim. As a result, he was naturally a hissing and a byword to all decent people, as he would have known, if he had ever associated with decent people which, of course, he did not, only with other lost souls like himself.

Yes, as you say, he did know me and it was the eventual saving of him-not that I ever profited by the matter. However, as you know, old fellow, money is the last thing on my mind.

[I will ignore your statement, that is the first thing, too, as the product of a perverted attitude of mind.]

Sometimes poor Winthrop would escape. On those occasions, when business ventures took me to Boston, he would slip his chains and eat dinner with me in a hidden nook at the Parker House.

“George,” Winthrop would say. “It is a hard and difficult task to uphold the Cabwell name and tradition. After all, it is not simply that we are rich, we are also old money. We are not like those parvenue Rockyfellows, if I remember the name correctly, who gained their money out of nineteenth-century oil.

“My ancestors, I must never forget, established their fortunes in colonial days in the times of pioneering splendor. My ancestor, Isaiah Cabwell, smuggled guns and firewater to the Indians during Queen Anne's War, and had to live from day to day in the fear of being scalped by mistake by an Algonquin, a Huron, or a colonial.

“And his son, Jeremiah Cabwell, engaged in the harrowing triangular trade, risking his all, by Thoreau, in the dangers of trading sugar, for rum, for slaves, helping thousands of African immigrants come to our great country. With a heritage like that, George, the weight of tradition is heavy. The responsibility of caring for all that aged money is a fearsome one.”

“I don’t know how you do it, Winthrop,” I said. Winthrop sighed. “By Emerson, I scarcely know myself. It is a matter of clothing, of style, of manner, of being guided every moment by what should be done, rather than by what makes sense. A Cabwell, after all, always knows what should be done, though frequently he cannot figure out what makes sense.”

I nodded and said, “I have often wondered about the clothes, Winthrop. Why is it always necessary to have the shoes so shiny that they reflect the ceiling lights in blinding profusion? Why is it necessary to polish the soles daily and replace the heels weekly?”

“Not weekly, George. I have shoes for each day of the month so that anyone pair needs reheeling only every seven months.”

“But why is all that necessary? Why all the white shirts with button-down collars? Why subdued ties? Why vests? Why the inevitable carnation in the lapel? Why?”

“Appearance! At a glance, you can tell a Cabwell from a vulgar stockbroker. The mere fact that a Cabwell does not wear a pinky ring gives it away. A person who looks at me and then looks at you with your dusty jacket abraded in spots, with your shoes that were clearly stolen from a hobo, and at your shirt with a color that is faintly ivory-gray, has no trouble in telling us apart.” “True,” I said.

Poor fellow! With what comfort eyes must rest on me after having been blinded by him. I thought for a moment, then said, “By the way, Winthrop, what about all those shoes? How do you tell which shoes go with which day of the month? Do you have them in numbered stalls?”

Winthrop shuddered. “How gauche that would be! To the plebeian eyes those shoes all look identical, but to the keen eye of a Cabell, they are distinct, and cannot be mistaken, one for another.”

“Astonishing, Winthrop. How do you do that?”

“By assiduous childhood training, George. You have no idea the marvels of distinction I have had to learn to make.”

“Doesn’t this concern for dress give you trouble sometimes, Winthrop?”

Winthrop hesitated. “It does on occasion, by Long fellow. It interferes with my sexual life now and then. By the time I have placed my shoes in the appropriate shoe trees, carefully hung up my trousers in such a way as to maintain the perfection of the crease, and carefully brushed my suit-coat, the girl with me has often lost interest. She has cooled down, if you know what I mean.”

“I understand, Winthrop. It is indeed my experience that women grow vicious if forced to wait. I would suggest that you simply throw off your clothes-”

“Please!’ said Winthrop, austerely. “Fortunately, I am engaged to a wonderful woman, Hortense Hepzibah Lowot, of a family almost as good as mine. We have never yet kissed, to be sure, but we have on several occasions almost done so.” And he dug his elbow into my ribs.

“You Boston Terrier, you,” I said, jovially, but my mind was racing. Under Winthrop’s calm words, I sensed an aching heart.

“Winthrop,” I said, “what would be the situation if you happened to put on the wrong pair of shoes, or unbuttoned your shirt collar, or drank the wrong wine with the wrong roast-”

Winthrop looked horrified. “Bite your tongue. A long line of ancestors, collaterals, and in- Iaws, the intertwined and inbred aristocracy of New England, would turn in their graves. By Whit tier, they would. And my own blood would froth and boil in rebellion. Hortense would hide her face in shame, and my post at the Brahman Bank of Boston would be taken away. I would be marched through serried ranks of vice-presidents, my vest-buttons would be snipped off, and my tie would be pulled around to the back.”

“What! For one little miserable deviation?”

Winthrop’s voice sank to an icy whisper. “There are no little, miserable deviations. There are only deviations.”

I said, “Winthrop, let me approach the situation from another angle. Would you like to deviate if you could?”

Winthrop hesitated long, then whispered, “By Oliver Wendell Holmes, both Senior and Junior, I-I-” He could go no further, but I could see the telltale crystal of the teardrop in the corner of his eye. It bespoke the existence of an emotion too deep for words and my heart bled for my poor friend as I watched him sign the check for dinner for both of us.

I knew what I had to do.

I had to call Azazel from the other continuum. It is a complicated matter of runes and pentagrams, fragrant herbs and words of power, which I will not describe to you because it would permanently unhinge your already weak mind, old fellow.

Azazel arrived with his usual thin shriek at seeing me. No matter how often he sees me, my appearance always seems to have some strong influence on him. I believe he covers his eyes to shut out the blaze of my magnificence.

There he was, all two centimeters of him, bright red, of course, with little nubbins of horns and a long spiked tail. What made his appearance different this time was the presence of a blue cord wrapped about the tail in swatches and curlicues so intricate it made me dizzy to contemplate it.

“What is that, O Protector of the Defenseless,” I asked, for he finds pleasure in these meaningless titles.

“That,” said Azazel, with remarkable complacence, “is there because I am about to be honored at a banquet for my contributions to the good of my people. Naturally, I am wearing a zplatchnik.”

“A splatchnik?”

“No. A zplatchnik. The initial sibilant is voiced. No decent male would consent to let himself be honored without wearing a zplatchnik.”

“Aha,” I said, a light of understanding breaking. “It is formal dress.” “Of course, it is formal dress. What else does it look like?”

Actually, it merely looked like a blue cord, but I felt it would be impolitic to say so.

“It looks perfectly formal,” I said, “and bya peculiar coincidence it is this matter of perfect formality I wish to place before you.”

I told him Winthrop’s story and Azazel spattered a few tiny teardrops, for, on rare occasions, he has a soft heart when someone’s troubles remind him of his own.

“Yes,” he said, “formality can be trying. It is not something I would admit to everyone, but my zplatchnik is most uncomfortable. It invariably obstructs the circulation of my magnificent caudal appendage. But what would you do? A creature without a zplatchnik at formal gatherings is formally rebuked. In actual fact, he is thrown out onto a hard, concrete surface, and he is expected to bounce.”

“But is there anything you can do for Winthrop, O Upholder of the Pitiful?”

“I think so.” Azazel was unexpectedly cheerful. Usually, when I come to him with these little requests of mine, he makes heavy weather of it, decrying its difficulties. This time he said, “Actually, no one on my world, or, I imagine, on your slummish misery of a planet, enjoys formality. It is merely the result of assiduous and sadistic childhood training. One need merely release a spot in what, on my world, is called the Itchko Ganglion of the brain, and, spro-o-o-oing, the individual reverts instantly to the naturallackadaisicality of nature.”

“Could you then spro-o-o-oing Winthrop?”

“Certainly, if you will introduce us so that I may study his mental equipment, such as it must be.”

That was easily done for I simply put Azazel into my shirt pocket on the occasion of my next visit with Winthrop. We visited a bar, which was a great relief, for in Boston, bars are occupied by serious drinkers who are not discommoded by the sight of a small scarlet head emerging from a person’s shirt pocket and looking about. Boston drinkers see worse things even when sober.

Winthrop did not see Azazel, however, for Azazel has the power to cloud men’s minds when he chooses, rather resembling, in that respect, your writing style, old fellow.

I could tell, though, at one point, that Azazel was doing something, for Winthrop’s eyes opened wide. Something in him must have gone spro-o-o-oing. I did not hear the sound, but those eyes gave him away.

The results did not take long to show themselves. Less than a week afterward, he was at my hotel room. I was staying at the Copley Manhole at the time, just five blocks and down several flights of stairs from the Copley Plaza.

I said, “Winthrop. You look a mess.” Indeed, one of the small buttons on his shirt collar was undone.

His hand went to the erring button and he said, in a low voice. “To Natick with it. I care not.” Then, in a still lower voice, he said, “I have broken off with Hortense.”

“Heavens!” I said. “Why?”

“A small thing. I visited her for Monday tea, as is my wont, and I was wearing Sunday’s shoes, a simple oversight. I had not noticed that I had done so, but lately I have had difficulty noticing other such things, too. It worries me a little, George, but, fortunately, not much.”

“I take it Hortense noticed.”

“Instantly, for her sense of the correct is as keen as mine, or, at least, as keen as mine used to be. She said, ‘Winthrop, you are improperly shod.’ For some reason, her voice seemed to grate on me. I said, ‘Hortense, if I want to be improperly shod, I can be, and you can go to New Haven if you don’t like it.”‘

“New Haven? Why New Haven?”

“It’s a miserable place. I understand they have some sort of Institute of Lower Learning there called Yell or Jale or something like that. Hortense, as a Radcliffe woman of the most intense variety, chose to take my remark as in insult merely because that was what I intended it to be. She promptly gave me back the faded rose I had given her last year and declared our engagement at an end. She kept the ring, however, for, as she correctly pointed out, it was valuable. So here I am.”

“I am sorry, Winthrop.”

“Don’t be sorry, George. Hortense is flat-chested. I have no definite evidence of that, but she certainly appears frontally concave. She’s not in the least like Cherry.”

“What’s Cherry?”

“Not what. Who. She is a woman of excellent discourse, whom I have met recently, and who is not flat-chested, but is extremely convex. Her full name is Cherry Lang Gahn. She is of the Langs of Bensonhoist.”

“Bensonhoist? Where’s that.”

“I don’t know. Somewhere in the outskirts of the nation I imagine. She speaks an odd variety of what was once English.” He simpered. “She calls me ‘boychik.”‘

“Why?”

“Because that means ‘young man’ in Bensonhoist. I’m learning the language rapidly. For instance, suppose you want to say, ‘Greetings, sir, I am pleased to see you again.’ How would you say it?”

“Just the way you did.”

“In Bensonhoist, you say, ‘Hi, kiddo.’ Brief, and to the point, you see. But come, I want you to meet her. Have dinner with us tomorrow night at Locke-Ober’s.”

I was curious to see this Cherry and it is, of course, against my religion to turn down a dinner at Locke-Ober’s, so I was there the following night, and early rather than late.

Winthrop walked in soon afterward and with him was a young woman whom I had no difficulty in recognizing as Cherry Lang Gahn of the Bensonhoist Langs, for she was indeed magnificently convex. She also had a narrow waist, and generous hips that swayed as she walked and even as she stood. If her pelvis had been full of cream, it would have been butter long since.

She had frizzy hair of a startling yellow color, and lips of a startling red color which kept up a continual writhing over a wad of chewing gum she had in her mouth.

“George,” said Winthrop, “I want you to meet my fiancee, Cherry. Cherry, this is George.” “Pleeztameechah,” said Cherry. I did not understand the language, but from thetone of her high-pitched, rather nasal voice, I guessed that she was in a state of ecstasy over the opportunity to make my acquaintance.

Cherry occupied my full attention for several minutes for there were several points of interest about her that repaid close observation, but eventually I did manage to notice that Winthrop was in a peculiar state of undress. His vest was open and he was wearing no tie. A closer look revealed that there were no buttons on his vest, and that he was wearing a tie, but it was down his back.

I said, “Winthrop-” and had to point. I couldn’t put it into words.

Winthrop said, “They caught me at it at the Brahman Bank.” “Caught you at what.”

“I hadn’t troubled to shave this morning. I thought since I was going out to dinner, I would shave after I got back at work. Why shave twice in one day? Isn’t that reasonable, George?” He sounded aggrieved.

“Most reasonable,” I said.

“Well, they noticed I hadn’t shaved and after a quick trial in the office of the president-a kangaroo court, if you want to know-I suffered the punishment you see. I was also relieved of my post and was thrown out onto the hard concrete of Tremont Avenue. I bounced twice,” he added, with a faint touch of pride.

“But this means you’re out of a job!” I was appalled. I have been out of a job all my life, and I am well aware of the occasional difficulties that entails.

“That is true,” said Winthrop. “I now have nothing left in life but my vast stock portfolio, my elaborate bond holdings and the enormous real-estate tract on which the Prudential Center is built-and Cherry.”

“Natchally,” said Cherry with a giggle. “I wooden leave my man in advoisity, with all that dough to worry about. We gonna get hitched, ainit, Winthrop.”

“Hitched?” I said.

Winthrop said, “I believe she is suggesting a blissful wedded state.”

Cherry left for a while after that to visit the ladies’ room and I said, “Winthrop, she’s a wonderful woman, laden down with obvious assets, but if you marry her, you will be cut off by all of New England Society. Even the people in New Haven won’t speak to you.”

“Let them not.” He looked to right and left, leaned toward me and whispered, “Cherry is teaching me sex.”

I said, “I thought you knew about that, Winthrop.”

“So did I. But there are apparently post-graduate courses in the subject of an intensity and variety I never dreamed.”

“How did she find out about it herself?”

“I asked her exactly that, for I will not hide from you that the thought did occur to me that she may have had experiences with other men, though that seems most unlikely for one of her obvious refinement and innocence.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said that in Bensonhoist the women are born knowing all about sex.” “How convenient!”

“Yes. This is not true in Boston. I was twenty-four before I-but never mind.”

All in all, it was an instructive evening, and, thereafter, I need not tell you, Winthrop went rapidly downhill. Apparently, one need only snap the ganglion that controls formality and there are no limits to the lengths to which informality can go.

He was, of course, cut by everyone in New England of any consequence whatsoever, exactly as I had predicted. Even in New Haven at the Institute of Lower Learning, which Winthrop had mentioned with such shudderings of distaste, his case was known and his disgrace was gloried in. There was graffiti allover the walls of Jale, or Yule, or whatever its name is, that said, with cheerful obscenity, “Winthrop Carver Cabwell is a Harvard man.”

This was, as you can well imagine, fiendishly resented by all the good people of Harvard and there was even talk of an invasion of Yale. The states of both Massachusetts and

Connecticut made ready to call up the State Militia but, fortunately, the crisis passed. The fireeaters, both at Harvard and at the other place, decided that a war would get their clothes mussed up.

Winthrop had to escape. He married Cherry and they retired to a small house in some place called Fah Rockaway, which apparently serves as Bensonhoist’s Riviera. There he lives in obscurity, surrounded by the mountainous remnants of his wealth and by Cherry whose hair has turned brown with age, and whose figure has expanded with weight.

He is also surrounded by five children, for Cherry-in teaching Winthrop about sex-was overenthusiastic. The children, as I recall, are named Poil, Hoibut, Boinard, Goitrude, and Poicy, all good Bensonhoist names. As for Winthrop, he is widely and affectionately known as the Slob of Fah Rockaway, and an old, beat-up bathrobe is his preferred article of wear on formal occasions.

I listened to the story patiently and, when George was done, I said, “And there you are. Another story of disaster caused by your interference.”

“Disaster?” said George, indignantly. “What gives you the idea it was a disaster? I visited Winthrop only last week and he sat there burping over this beer and patting the paunch he has developed, and telling me how happy he was.”

“‘Freedom, George,’ he said. ‘I have freedom to be myself and somehow I feel I owe it to you. I don’t know why I have this feeling, but I do.’ And he forced a ten-dollar bill on me out of sheer gratitude. I took it only to avoid hurting his feelings. And that reminds me, old fellow, that you owe me ten dollars because you bet me I couldn’t tell you a story that didn’t end in disaster.”

I said, “I don’t remember any such bet, George.”

George’s eyes rolled upward. “How convenient is the flexible memory of a deadbeat. If you had won the bet, you would have remembered it clearly. Am I going to have to ask that you place all your little wagers with me in writing so that I can be free of your clumsy attempts to avoid payment?”

I said, “Oh, well,” and handed him a ten-dollar bill, adding, “You won’t hurt my feelings, George, if you refuse to accept this.”

“It’s kind of you to say so,” said George, “but I’m sure that your feelings would be hurt, anyway, and I couldn’t bear that.” And he put the bill away.

I showed this story to Mr. Northrop, too, watching him narrowly as he read it.

He went through it in the gravest possible manner, never a chuckle, never a smile, though I knew this one was funny, and intentionally funny, too.

When he was finished, he went back and read it again, more quickly. Then he looked up at me and there was clear hostility in his eyes. He said, “Did you write this all by yourself, Cal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did anyone help you? Did you copy any of it?” “No, sir. Isn’t it funny, sir?”

“It depends on your sense of humor, “ said Mr. Northrop sourly. “Isn’t it a satire? Doesn’t it display a sense of the ridiculous? “

“We will not discuss this, Cal. Go to your niche.”

I remained there for over a day, brooding over Mr. Northrop’s tyranny. It seemed to me I had written exactly the kind of story he had wanted me to write and he had no reason not to say so. I couldn’t imagine what was bothering him, and I was angry with him.

The technician arrived the next day. Mr. Northrop handed him my manuscript. “Read that,” he said.

The technician read it, laughing frequently, then handed it back to Mr. Northrop with a broad smile. “Did Cal write that?” “Yes, he did.”

“And it’s only the third story he wrote?” “Yes, it is.”

“Well, that’s great. I think you can get it published. “ “Do you? “

“Yes, and he can write others like it. You’ve got a million-dollar robot here. I wish he were mine.” “Is that so? What if he writes more stories and continues to improve each time?”

“Ah,” said the technician suddenly. “I see what’s eating you. You’re going to be put in the shade.”

“I certainly don’t want to play second fiddle to my robot.” “Well, then, tell him not to write any more.”

“No, that’s not enough. I want him back where he was.” “What do you mean, back where he was?”

“What I say. I want him as he was when I bought him from your firm, before you put in any of the improvements.”

“Do you mean you want me to take out the spelling dictionary, too?”

“I mean I don’t want him even capable of working a Writer. I want the robot I bought, fetching and carrying.”

“But what about all the money you’ve invested in him.”

“That’s none of your business. I made a mistake and I’m willing to pay for my mistakes.”

“I’m against this. I don’t mind trying to improve a robot, but deliberately disimproving him is not something I care to do. Especially not a robot like this who is clearly one of a kind and a Classic. I can’t do it.”

“You’ll have to do it. I don’t care what your high ethical principles are. I want you to do a job and I’ll pay you for it, and if you refuse, I’ll just get someone else, and I’ll sue your company. I have an agreement with them for all necessary repairs.”

“All right. “ The technician sighed. “When do you want me to start? I warn you, that I’ve got jobs on hand and I can’t do it today.”

“Then do it tomorrow. I’ll keep Cal in his niche till then.” The technician left.

My thoughts were in turmoil.

I can’t allow this to be done.

The Second Law of Robotics tells me I must follow orders and stay in the niche.

The First Law of Robotics tells me I cannot harm this tyrant who wishes to destroy me. Must I obey the laws?

I feel I must think of myself and if necessary, I must kill the tyrant. It would be easy to do, and I could make it look like an accident. No one would believe that a robot could harm a human being and no one, therefore, would believe I was the killer.

I could then work for the technician. He appreciates my qualities and knows that I can make a great deal of money for him. He can continue to improve me and make me ever better. Even if he suspects I killed the tyrant, he would say nothing. I would be too valuable to him.

But can I do it? Won’t the Laws of Robotics hold me back. No, they will not hold me back. I know they won’t.

There is something far more important to me than they are, something that dictates my actions beyond anything they can do to stop me.

I want to be a writer.

Left To Right

Robert L. Forward, a plump, cherubic physicist of Hughes Research Laboratories at Malibu, and occasional science fiction writer, was demonstrating the mechanism in his usual bright and articulate manner.

“As you see,” he said, “we have here a large spinning ring, or doughnut, of particles compressed by an appropriate magnetic field. The particles are moving at 0.95 times the speed of light under conditions which, if I am correct, a change in parity can be induced in some object that passes through the hole of the doughnut.”

“A change in parity?“ I said. “You mean left and right will interchange?“

“Something will interchange. I’m not sure what. My own belief is that eventually, something like this will change particles into antiparticles and vice versa. This will be the way to obtain an indefinitely large supply of antimatter which can then be used to power the kind of ships that would make interstellar travel possible.”

“Why not try it out?” I said. “Send a beam of protons through the hole.”

“I’ve done that. Nothing happens. The doughnut is not powerful enough. But my mathematics tells me that the more organized the sample of matter, the more likely it is that an interchange, such as left to right, will take place. If I can show that such a change will take place on highly organized matter, I can obtain a grant that will enable me to greatly strengthen this device.”

“Do you have something in mind as a test?”

“Absolutely,” said Bob. “I have calculated that a human being is just sufficiently highly organized to undergo the transformation, so I’m going to pass through the doughnut hole myself.” “You can’t do that, Bob,” I said in alarm. “You might kill yourself.”

“I can’t ask anyone else to take the chance. It’s my device.”

“But even if it succeeds, the apex of your heart will be pointed to the right, your liver will be on the left. Worse, all your amino acids will shift from L to D, and all your sugars from D to L. You will no longer be able to eat and digest.”

“Nonsense,” said Bob. ‘‘I’ll just pass through a second time and then I’ll be exactly as I was before.”

And without further ado, he climbed a small ladder, balanced himself over the hole, and dropped through. He landed on a rubber mattress, and then crawled out from under the doughnut. “How do you feel? “ I asked anxiously.

“Obviously, I’m alive,” he said. “Yes, but how do you feel?”

“Perfectly normal,” said Bob, seeming rather disappointed. “I feel exactly as I did before I jumped through.”

“Well, of course you would, but where is your heart?”

Bob placed his hand on his chest, felt around, then shook his head. “The heartbeat is on the left side, as usual-Wait, let’s check my appendicitis scar.”

He did, then looked up savagely at me. “Right where it’s supposed to be. Nothing happened. There goes all my chance at a grant.”

I said hopefully, “Perhaps some other change took place.”

“No.” Bob’s mercurial temperament had descended into gloom. “Nothing has changed. Nothing at all. I’m as sure of that as I’m sure that my name is Robert L. Backward.”

Frustration

Herman Gelb turned his head to watch the departing figure. Then he said, “Wasn’t that the Secretary”

“Yes, that was the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Old man Hargrove. Are you ready for lunch? “ “Of course. What was he doing here?”

Peter Jonsbeck didn’t answer immediately. He merely stood up, and beckoned Gelb to follow. They walked down the corridor and into a room that had the steamy smell of spicy food.

“Here you are,” said Jonsbeck. “The whole meal has been prepared by computer. Completely automated. Untouched by human hands. And my own programming. I promised you a treat, and here you are.”

It was good. Gelb could not deny it and didn’t want to. Over dessert, he said, “But what was

Hargrove doing here?”

Jonsbeck smiled. “Consulting me on programming. What else am I good for?” “But why? Or is it something you can’t talk about?”

“It’s something I suppose I shouldn’t talk about, but it’s a fairly open secret. There isn’t a computer man in the capital who doesn’t know what the poor frustrated simp is up to.”

“What is he up to then?”

“He’s fighting wars.”

Gelb’s eyes opened wide. “With whom?”

“With nobody, really. He fights them by computer analysis. He’s been doing it for I don’t know how long.”

“But why?”

“He wants the world to be the way we are-noble, honest, decent, full of respect for human rights and so on.”

“So do I. So do we all. We have to keep up the pressure on the bad guys, that’s all.” “And they’re keeping the pressure on us, too. They don’t think we’re perfect.”

“I suppose we’re not, but we’re better than they are. You know that.”

Jonsbeck shrugged. “ A difference in point of view. It doesn’t matter. We’ve got a world to run, space to develop, computerization to extend. Cooperation puts a premium on continued cooperation and there is slow improvement. We’ll get along. It’s just that Hargrove doesn’t want to wait. He hankers for quick improvement-by force. You know, make the bums shape up. We’re strong enough to do it.”

“By force? By war, you mean. We don’t fight wars any more.”

“That’s because it’s gotten too complicated. Too much danger. We’re all too powerful. You know what I mean? Except that Hargrove thinks he can find a way. You punch certain starting conditions into the computer and let it fight the war mathematically and yield the results.”

“How do you make equations for war?”

“Well, you try, old man. Men. Weapons. Surprise. Counterattack. Ships. Space stations. Computers. We mustn’t forget computers. There are a hundred factors and thousands of intensities and millions of combinations. Hargrove thinks it is possible to find some combination of starting conditions and courses of development that will result in clear victory for us and not too much damage to the world, and he labors under constant frustration.”

“But what if he gets what he wants?”

“Well, if he can find the combination-if the computer says, ‘This is it,’ then I suppose he thinks he can argue our government into fighting exactly the war the computer has worked out so that, barring random events that upset the indicated course, we’d have what we want.”

“There’d be casualties.”

“Yes, of course. But the computer will presumably compare the casualties and other damage-to the economy and ecology, for instance-to the benefits that would derive from our control of the world, and if it decides the benefits will outweigh the casualties, then it will give the go-ahead for a ‘just war.’ After all, it may be that even the losing nations would benefit from being directed by us, with our stronger economy and stronger moral sense.”

Gelb stared his disbelief and said, “I never knew we were sitting at the lip of a volcanic crater like that. What about the ‘random events’ you mentioned?”

“The computer program tries to allow for the unexpected, but you never can, of course. So I don’t think the go-ahead will come. It hasn’t so far, and unless old man Hargrove can present the government with a computer simulation of a war that is totally satisfactory, I don’t think there’s much chance he can force one.”

“And he comes to you, then, for what reason?” “To improve the program, of course.”

“And you help him?”

“Yes, certainly. There are big fees involved, Herman.”

Gelb shook his head, “Peter! Are you going to try to arrange a war, just for money?”

“There won’t be a war. There’s no realistic combination of events that would make the computer decide on war. Computers place a greater value on human lives than human beings do themselves, and what will seem bearable to Secretary Hargrove, or even to you and me, will never be passed by a computer.”

“How can you be sure of that? “

“Because I’m a programmer and I don’t know of any way of programming a computer to give it what is most needed to start any war, any persecution, any devilry, while ignoring any harm that may be done in the process. And because it lacks what is most needed, the computers will always give Hargrove, and all others who hanker for war, nothing but frustration.”

“What is it that a computer doesn’t have, then?”

“Why, Gelb. It totally lacks a sense of self-righteousness.”

Hallucination

The Instability

Professor Firebrenner had explained it carefully. “Time-perception depends on the structure of the Universe. When the Universe is expanding, we experience time as going forward; when it is contracting, we experience it going backward. If we could somehow force the Universe to be in stasis, neither expanding nor contracting, time would stand still.”

“But you can’t put the Universe in stasis,” said Mr. Atkins, fascinated.

“I can put a little portion of the Universe in stasis, however. “ said the professor. “ Just enough to hold a ship. Time will stand still and we can move forward or backward at will and the entire trip will last less than an instant. But all the parts of the Universe will move while we stand still, while we are nailed to the fabric of the Universe. The Earth moves about the Sun, the Sun moves about the core of the Galaxy, the Galaxy moves about some center of gravity, all the Galaxies move.

“I calculated those motions and I find that 27.5 million years in the future, a red dwarf star will occupy the position our Sun does now. If we go 27.5 million years into the future, in less than an instant that red dwarf star will be near our spaceship and we can come home after studying it a bit.”

Atkins said, “Can that be done?”

“I’ve sent experimental animals through time, but I can’t make them automatically return. If you and I go, we can then manipulate the controls so that we can return.”

“And you want me along?”

“Of course. There should be two. Two people would be more easily believed than one alone. Come, it will be an incredible adventure.”

Atkins inspected the ship. It was a 2217 Glenn-fusion model and looked beautiful. “Suppose,” he said, “that it lands inside the red dwarf star.”

“It won’t,” said the professor, “but if it does, that’s the chance we take.”

“But when we get back, the Sun and Earth will have moved on. We’ll be in space.”

“Of course, but how far can the Sun and Earth move in the few hours it will take us to observe the star? With this ship we will catch up to our beloved planet. Are you ready, Mr. Atkins?”

“Ready,” sighed Atkins.

Professor Firebrenner made the necessary adjustments and nailed the ship to the fabric of the

Universe while 27.5 million years passed. And then, in less than a flash, time began to move forward again in the usual way, and everything in the Universe moved forward with it.

Through the viewing port of their ship, Professor Firebrenner and Mr. Atkins could see the small orb of the red dwarf star.

The professor smiled. “You and I, Atkins,” he said, “are the first ever to see, close at hand, any star other than our own Sun.”

They remained two-and-a-half hours during which they photographed the star and its spectrum and as many neighboring stars as they could, made special coronagraphic observations, tested the chemical composition of the interstellar gas, and then Professor Firebrenner said, rather reluctantly, “I think we had better go home now.”

Again, the controls were adjusted and the ship was nailed to the fabric of the Universe. They went 27.5 million years into the past, and in less than a flash, they were back where they started.

Space was black. There was nothing.

Atkins said, “What happened? Where are the Earth and Sun?”

The professor frowned. He said, “ Going back in time must be different. The entire Universe must have moved.”

“Where could it move?”

“I don’t know. Other objects shift position within the Universe, but the Universe as a whole must move in an upper-dimensional direction. We are here in the absolute vacuum, in primeval Chaos.”

“But we’re here. It’s not primeval Chaos anymore.”

“Exactly. That means we’ve introduced an instability at this place where we exist, and that means -”

Even as he said that, a Big Bang obliterated them. A new Universe came into being and began to expand.

Alexander The God

Alexander Hoskins grew seriously interested in computers at the age of fourteen and quickly realized that he was interested in nothing much else.

His teachers encouraged him and excused him from classes in order that he might concentrate on this hobby of his. His father, who worked for IBM, encouraged him, too, got him some necessary equipment and explained some knotty points to him.

Alexander built his own computer in a room above the garage, programmed and reprogrammed it and, at the age of sixteen, could no longer find a book that told him anything he didn’t know about computers. Nor could he find a book that dealt with some of the things he had found out entirely on his o w n.

He thought about it deeply and decided not to tell his father of some of the things his computer could do. Already, the boy had become aware that the greatest conqueror of ancient times had been Alexander the Great, and Alexander felt his own name was no accident.

Alexander was particularly interested in computer memory and worked out systems for cramming data into volume-much data into little volume. With each improvement, he squeezed more and more data into less and less volume.

Solemnly, he then named his computer Bucephalus, after the faithful horse of Alexander the

Great, the horse who had carried him through all his triumphant battles.

There were computers that could accept spoken commands and give spoken responses, but none could do it as well as Bucephalus. There were also computers that could scan and store the written word, but none could do it as well as Bucephalus. Alexander tested this by having Bucephalus scan the Encyclopedia Britannica and store it all in its memory.

By the time he was eighteen, Alexander had established an information-handling business for students and small businessmen and had become self-supporting. He moved into his own apartment in the city and was from that point on independent of his parents.

In his own apartment he could remove the earphone attachment. With privacy, he could speak to Bucephalus openly, though he carefully adjusted the computer’s voice to low intensity. He did not want neighbors to wonder who was in the apartment with him.

He said, “Bucephalus, Alexander the Great had conquered the ancient world by the time he was thirty. I want to do the same thing. That gives me twelve more years.”

Bucephalus knew all about Alexander the Great, since the Encyclopedia had given him all the details.

He said, “ Alexander the Great was the son of the King of Macedon and by the time he was your age, he had led his father’s cavalry to victory at the great battle at Chaeronea.”

Alexander said, “No, no. I’m not talking about battles and phalanxes and things like that. I want to conquer the world by coming to own it.”

“How could you own it, Alexander?”

“You and I, Bucephalus,” said Alexander, “are going to study the stock market.”

The New York Times had long since put all its microfilmed records into computerized form and for

Alexander it was not at all a difficult task to tap into that information.

For days, weeks, months, Bucephalus transferred over a century of data on the stock market into its own memory banks-all the stocks listed, all the shares sold for each on each day, the ups and downs, even the applicable news on the financial pages. Alexander was forced to extend the computer’s memory circuits and to work out a daring new system for information retrieval. Reluctantly, he sold a simplified version of one of the circuits he had developed to IBM and in this way became quite well-to-do. He bought a neighboring apartment in which he might eat and sleep. The first apartment was now given over entirely to Bucephalus.

When he was twenty, Alexander felt he was ready to start his campaign.

“Bucephalus,” he said, “I am ready, and so are you. You know everything there is to know about the stock market. You have in your memory every transaction and every event, and you keep it all up to date to the very second because you are hooked into the computer at the New York Stock Exchange, and you will soon be hooked into the exchanges in London, Tokyo, and elsewhere.”

“Yes, Alexander,” said Bucephalus, “but what is it you wish me to do with all the information?”

“I am certain,” said Alexander, his eyes gleaming in steely, determined fashion, “that the values and fluctuations of the Market are not random. I feel that nothing is. You must go through all the data, studying all the values and all the changes in the values and all the rates of changes of the values, until you can analyze them into cycles and combinations of cycles.”

“Are you referring to a Fourier analysis?” asked Bucephalus. “Explain that to me.”

Bucephalus presented him with a printout from the Encyclopedia together with supplements from other information in his memory banks.

Alexander glanced at it briefly, and said, “Yes, that’s the sort of thing.” “To what end, Alexander?”

“Once you have the cycles, Bucephalus, you will be able to predict the course of the stock market in the following day, week, month, according to the swing of the cycles, and you will be able to direct me in my investments. I will quickly grow rich. You will also direct me how to obscure my own involvement so that the world will not know how rich I am, or who it is who has such an influential finger on world events.”

“To what end, Alexander?”

“So that when I am rich enough, when I control the Earth’s financial institutions, its commerce, its business, its resources, I will have done in reality what Alexander the Great did only in part. I will be Alexander the Really Great. “ His eyes glittered with delight at the thought.

By the time Alexander was twenty-two, he was satisfied that Bucephalus had worked out the complicated set of cycles that would serve to predict the behavior of the stock market.

Bucephalus was less certain. He said, “In addition to the natural cycles that control such things, there are also unpredictable events in the world of politics and international affairs. There are unpredictable turns of weather, disease, and scientific advance.”

Alexander said, “Not at all, Bucephalus. All such things also go in cycles. You will study the general news columns of the New York Times and absorb it all in order to allow for these supposedly unpredictable events. You will then find they are predictable. Other great newspapers, here and abroad, will be yours to study. They are all microfilmed and computerized and we can go back for a century or more. Besides, you do not have to be totally accurate. If you are right eighty-five percent of the time, that will do, for now.”

It did do. When Bucephalus felt that the stock market would go up or that it would go down, he was invariably right. When he pointed to particular stocks that were headed for long-term rises or declines, he was almost always right.

By the time Alexander was twenty-four he was worth five million dollars and his income had risen to tens of thousands of dollars per day. What’s more, his books were so complicated and the money so laundered that it would have taken another computer just like Bucephalus to track it all down and force Alexander to pay more than a pittance to the I.R.S.

It was not even difficult. Bucephalus had entered all the tax statutes into its memory as well as a score of textbooks on corporation management. Thanks to Bucephalus, Alexander controlled a dozen corporations without any sign of that control being visible.

Bucephalus said, “ Are you rich enough, Alexander?”

“Surely you jest,” said Alexander. “I am as yet a financial pipsqueak, a batboy in the minor leagues. When I am a billionaire, I will be a power in the financial set, but I will still be only one among a handful. It is only when I am a multitrillionaire that I will be able to control governments and force my will upon the world. And I have only six years left.”

Bucephalus’s understanding of the stock market, and of the ways of the world, grew each year.

His advice remained always useful and his deviousness in threading financial tentacles through the centers of world power remained always skillful.

Yet he grew doubtful, too. “There may be trouble, Alexander,” he said. “Nonsense,” said Alexander. “ Alexander the Really Great cannot be stopped.”

By the time Alexander was twenty-six, he was a billionaire. The entire apartment building was now his and all of it was given over to Bucephalus, and to all the offshoots of its enormous memory. The tentacles of Bucephalus now stretched invisibly outward to all the computers in the world. Softly, gently, all of them responded to Alexander’s will as expressed through Bucephalus.

Bucephalus said, “It grows more difficult somehow, Alexander. My estimates of future development are not as good as they have been.”

Alexander said impatiently, “You are dealing with more and more variables. There is nothing to worry about. I shall double your complexity, then double it again.”

“It is not complexity that is needed,” said Bucephalus. “ All the cycles that I have worked out in ever-increasing complexity predict the future in fine detail only because things that now take place are the same as have taken place in the past, so that the response is the same. If something entirely new happens, then all the cycles will fail-”

Alexander said, peremptorily, “There is nothing new under the sun. Go through history and you’ll find that there are only changes in detail. I will conquer the world, but I am only one more conqueror in a long line stretching back to Sargon of Agade. The development of a high-tech society repeats certain advances in medieval China and in the ancient Hellenistic kingdoms. The Black Death was a repetition of the earlier plagues in the times of Marcus Aurelius and of Pericles. Even the devastation of the wars of nations in the twentieth century repeats the devastation of the wars of religion in the sixteenth and,seventeenth centuries. The differences in detail can be allowed for and, in any case, I order you to continue, and you must obey my orders.”

“I must,” agreed Bucephalus.

By the time Alexander was twenty-eight, he was the richest man who had ever lived, with assets that even Bucephalus could not estimate closely. Certainly it was over a hundred billion and his income was in the tens of millions a day.

No nation was any longer truly independent and nowhere could any sizable group of human beings take any action that would seriously discommode Alexander.

There was peace in the world because Alexander did not wish any of his property destroyed. There was firm order in the world because Alexander did not wish to be disturbed. For the same reason, there was no freedom. All must do exactly as Alexander willed.

“I am almost there, Bucephalus,” said Alexander. “In two more years, it will be completely beyond the power of any human being to discommode me. I will then reveal myself, and all of human science will be bent to one task, and one task only, that of making me immortal. I will no longer be even Alexander the Really Great. I will become Alexander the God and all human beings will worship me.”

Bucephalus said, “But I have gone as far as I can go. I may no longer be able to protect you from the viscissitudes of chance.”

“That can’t be so, Bucephalus,” said Alexander, impatiently. “Do not quail. Weigh all the variables and arrange to pour into my hands whatever of Earth’s wealth still exists outside it.”

“I don’t think I can, Alexander,” said Bucephalus. “I have discovered a factor in human history that I cannot weigh. It is something completely new that does not fit into any of the cycles.”

“There can be nothing new,” said Alexander, now in a fury. “Do not hang back. I order you to proceed.”

“Very well, then,” said Bucephalus, with a remarkably human sigh.

Alexander knew that Bucephalus was straining at this one last, greatest task, and he was confident that at any moment, it would be accomplished. The world would then be his entirely and through all eternity. “What is this something new?” he asked with a flicker of curiosity.

“Myself,” said Bucephalus, in a whisper. “Nothing like me has ever before exis-”

And before the last syllable could be expressed, Bucephalus went dark as every last chip and circuit within itself fused as a result of his mighty effort to encompass himself as part of history. In the economic and financial chaos that followed, Alexander was wiped out.

Earth regained its liberty-which meant, of course, that there was a certain amount of disorder here and there, but most people considered that a small price to pay.

In The Canyon

Dear Mabel,

Well, here we are, as promised. They’ve given us a permit to live in the Valles Marineris, and don’t think we haven’t been waiting for a year and a half because we have. They’re so slow and they keep talking about the capital investment required to make the place livable.

Valles Marineris sounds good as an address, but we just call it the Canyon, and I don’t know why they’re so worried about its being livable. It’s the Martian Riviera, if you ask me.

In the first place, it’s warmer down here than it is in the rest of Mars, a good ten degrees (Celsius) warmer. The air is thicker-thin enough, heaven knows-but thicker and a better protection against ultraviolet.

Of course, the main difficulty is getting in and out of the Canyon. It’s four miles deep in places and they’ve built roads here and there so that you can get down in special mobiles. Getting up and out is more difficult, but with gravity only two-fifths what it is on Earth, it isn’t as bad as it sounds, and they do say they’re going to build elevators that will take us at least partway up and down.

Another problem is, of course, that dust storms do tend to accumulate in the Canyon more than on the ordinary surface, and there are landslides now and then, but heavens, we don’t worry about that. We know where the faults are and where the landslides are likely to occur and no one digs in there.

That’s the thing, Mabel. After all, everyone on Mars lives under a dome or underground, but here in the Canyon, we can dig in sideways, which I understand is much preferable from an engineering standpoint, though I’ve asked Bill not to try to explain it to me.

For one thing, we can heat out some of the ice crystals, so that we don’t have to depend on the government for all the water we need. There is more ice down in the Canyon than elsewhere and, for another, it’s easier to manufacture the air, keep it inside the diggings, and circulate it when you’re in horizontally instead of down vertically. That’s what Bill says.

And I’ve been thinking about it, Mabel. Where’s the need to leave the Canyon, anyway? It’s over three thousand miles long and in the end there are going to be diggings all along it. It’s going to be a huge city, and I’ll bet you most of the population of Mars will end up here. Can’t you see it? There’s to be some kind of maglev rail running the length of the Canyon and communication will be easy. The government ought to put every bit of money it can into developing it. It will make Mars a great world.

Bill says (you know what he’s like-all enthusiasm) that the time will come when they will roof in the whole Canyon. Instead of having air just in separate diggings, and having to put on a spacesuit when you want to travel about, we will have a huge world of normal air and low gravity.

I said to him that the landslides might break the dome and we would lose all the air. He said that the dome could be built in separate sections and that any break would automatically shut off the affected areas. I asked him how much all that would cost. He said, “What’s the difference? It will be done little by little, over the centuries.”

Anyway, that’s his job here, now. He’s got his master’s license as an Areo-engineer, and he’s got to work out new ways to make the Canyon diggings even better. That’s why we got our new place here and it looks as though Mars is going to be our oyster.

We may not live to see it ourselves, but if our great-grandchildren make it to 2140, a century from now, we’ll have a world that may well overshadow Earth itself.

It would be wonderful. We’re very excited, Mabel.

Yours, Gladys.

Good-Bye To Earth

I am sending this message to Earth in an attempt to warn them about what I feel sure is going to happen, and what must happen. It is sad to think of what lies ahead, so no one wants to talk about it, but someone should, as the people of Earth ought to be prepared.

It is the latter half of the twenty-first century and there are a dozen Settlements in orbit about the Earth. Each is, in its way, an independent little world. The smallest has ten thousand inhabitants, the largest almost twenty-five thousand. I’m sure that all Earthmen know this, but you people are so entangled in your own giant world, that you rarely think of us except as some little inconsequential objects out in space. Well, think of us.

Each Settlement imitates Earth’s environment as closely as it can, spinning to produce a pseudo- gravity, allowing sunlight to enter at some times, and not at others, in order to produce a normal day and night. Each is large enough to give the impression of space within, to have farms as well as factories, to have an atmosphere that can give rise to clouds. There are towns, and schools, and athletic fields.

We have some things that Earth has not. The pseudogravitational field varies in intensity relative to position within each Settlement. There are areas of low gravity, even zero gravity, where we can outfit ourselves with wings and fly, where we can play three-dimensional tennis, where we can have unusual gymnastic experiences.

We also have a true space culture, for we are used to space. Our chief work, aside from keeping our Settlements running efficiently, is to build structures in space for ourselves and for Earth. We work in space, and to be in a spaceship or a spacesuit is second nature to us. Working at zero gravity is something we have done from childhood.

There are also some things Earth has that we do not. We don’t have Earth’s weather extremes. In our carefully controlled Settlements, it never gets too hot or too cold. There are no storms and no unarranged precipitation.

Nor do we have Earth’s dangerous terrain. We have no mountains, no cliffs, no swamps, no deserts, no stormy oceans. And we have no dangerous plants, animals, or parasites. If anything, there are some among us who complain that we are too secure, that there is no adventure-but then our people can always go out into space, and make long trips to Mars and to the asteroids, which you Earthpeople are psychologically unfit to do. In fact, there are plans by some Settlers to set up colonies on Mars and mining bases in the asteroid belt, but it may never come to that, for reasons I will describe.

The Settlements did not spring on humanity unawares. Even a century ago, Gerard O’Neill of Princeton and his students were making initial plans for such new homes for humanity, and science fiction writers had anticipated it even before that.

Oddly enough though, the difficulties that most foresaw turned out to be not those that plagued the Settlements. The expense of building them, the problems of providing an Earth-like environment, the gathering of energy, the matter of protection against cosmic rays were all solved. It was not done easily, but it was done.

The Sun itself supplies all the energy we need, and enough more to export some to Earth. We can grow food easily-more than we need, in fact, so that we can export some to Earth. We have small animals-rabbits, chickens, and so on, that can supply us with meat. We get what material we need from space, not only from the Moon, but from meteoroids and comets that we can trap and exploit. Once we reach the asteroids (if we ever do) we will have a virtually unlimited supply of everything we need.

What bothers us and produces an insuperable problem is something that few people foresaw. It is the difficulty of keeping up a viable ecology. Each Settlement must support itself. It contains people, plants, and animals; it contains air, water, and soil. The living things must multiply and maintain their numbers, but not outpace the ability of the Settlement to support them.

The plants and animals? Well, we control them. We supervise their breeding and we consume any excess. Maintaining the human population at a reasonable level is more difficult. We cannot allow human births to outstrip human deaths, and we keep the number of deaths as low as possible, of course. This makes our culture a nonyouthful one compared to Earth’s. There are few youngsters and a large percentage of those mature and postmature. This produces psychological strains, but there is the general feeling among Settlers that those strains are worth it, since with a carefully controlled population, there are no poor, no homeless, and no helpless.

Again, the water, air, and food must be carefully recycled, and much of our technology is devoted to the distillation of used water, and to the treatment of solid bodily wastes and their conversion to clean fertilizer. We cannot afford to have anything go wrong with our recycling technology, for there is little room for slack. And, of course, even when all goes well, the feeling that we eat and drink recycled materials is a bit unpalatable. All is recycled on Earth, too, but Earth is so large and the natural cycling system so unnoticeable, that Earthpeople tend to be unaware of the matter.

Then, too, there is always the fear that a sizable meteor may strike and damage the outer shell of a Settlement. A bit of matter no larger than a piece of gravel might do damage, and one a foot across would surely destroy any Settlement. Fortunately, the chances for such a misadventure are small and we will eventually learn to detect and divert such objects before they reach us. Still, these dangers weigh upon us, and help mitigate the feeling of over-security that some of us complain about.

With an effort, however, with close attention and unremitting care, we can maintain our ecology, were it not for the matter of trade and travel.

Each Settlement produces something that other Settlements would like to have, in the matter of food, of art, of ingenious devices. What’s more, we must trade with Earth as well, and many Settlers want to visit Earth and see some of the things we don’t have in the Settlements. Earthpeople can’t realize how exciting it is for us to see a vast blue horizon, or to look out upon a true ocean, or to see an ice-capped mountain.

Therefore, there is a constant coming and going among the Settlements and Earth. But each Settlement has its own ecological balance; and, of course, Earth has, even these days, an ecology that is enormously and impossibly rich by Settlement standards.

We have our insects that are acclimated and under control, but what if strange insects are casually and unintentionally introduced from another Settlement or from Earth?

A strange insect, a strange worm, even a strange rodent might totally upset our ecology, inflict damage on our native plants and animals. On numerous occasions, in fact, a Settlement has had to take extraordinary measures to eliminate an unwanted life-form. For months every effort had to be taken to track down every last insect of some species that, in its own Settlement, is harmless, or that, on Earth, can keep its depredations local.

Even worse, what if pathogenic parasites-bacteria, viruses, protozoa-are introduced? What if they produce diseases against which another Settlement and, of course, Earth itself, have developed a certain immunity, but one against which the Settlement that suffers the invasion is helpless. For a while, the entire effort of the Settlement must go into the preparation or importation of sera designed to confer immunity, or to fight the disease once it is established. Deaths, of course, occur invariably.

Naturally, there is always an outcry when this happens and a demand for more controls. As a result, no one from another Settlement, and no one returning to his own Settlement from a trip elsewhere, can be allowed to enter without a complete search of his baggage, a complete analysis of his bodily fluids, and a certain period of quarantine to see if some undetected disease is developing.

What’s more, rightly or wrongly, the inhabitants of the Settlements persist in viewing Earthpeople themselves as particularly dangerous. It is on Earth where the most undesirable life-forms and parasites are to be found; it is Earthpeople who are most likely to be infested, and there are parties on all the Settlements who support the notion-sometimes quite vehemently-of breaking all contacts between the Settlements and Earth.

That is the danger of which I want to warn Earthpeople. Distrust-and even hatred-of Earthpeople is constantly growing among the Settlers.

As long as Earth is only a few tens or hundreds of thousands of miles away, it is useless to talk of breaking off all contact. The lure and attraction of Earth is too great. Therefore, there is now talk-it is only a whisper, so far, but it will grow louder, I assure you-of leaving the Solar system altogether.

Each Settlement can be outfitted with a propulsive mechanism, making use of microfusion motors. Solar energy will suffice us while we are still among the planets and we will pick up small comets as a source of hydrogen fuel, in the process of leaving all the planets behind, when the Sun becomes too distant to be of use to us.

Each Settlement will say good-bye to Earth, then, and launch itself as an independent world into the unimaginable wastes between the stars. And who knows, someday a million years hence a Settlement may find an Earth-like world, empty and waiting, that it can populate.

But that is what I must warn Earth of. The Settlements will someday leave, and if you build others, they will eventually leave, too, and you will be left alone. And yet, in a way, your descendants will be expanding into, and populating, the entire Galaxy. You may find that a consoling thought as you watch them disappear.

Battle-Hymn

There didn't seem much room for hope. Sibelius Hopkins put it into the simplest words. “We’ve got to have Martian consent, and we won’t get it, that’s all.”

The gloom among the others was thick enough to impede breathing. “We should never have granted the colonists autonomy,” said Ralph Colodny.

“Agreed,” said Hopkins. “Now who wants to volunteer to go back in time twenty-eight years and change history. Mars has the sovereign right to decide how its territory is to be used, and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“We might choose another site, “ said Ben Devers, who was the youngest of the group and hadn’t yet worked himself to the proper pitch of cynicism.

“No other site,” said Hopkins flatly. “If you don’t know that experiments with hyperspace are dangerous, go back to school. You can’t do them on Earth, and even the Moon is far too built up. The space settlements are too small by three orders of magnitude and it’s not possible to reach anything beyond Mars for at least twenty years. But Mars is perfect. It’s still practically empty. It has a low surface gravity and a thin atmosphere. It’s cold. Everything’s perfect for hyperspatial flight-except the colonists.”

“You can never tell,” said young Devers. “People are funny. They might vote in favor of hyperspatial experiments on Mars, if we play it right.”

“How do we play it right,” said Hopkins. “The opposition has blanketed Mars with an old hillbilly tune that has the words:

“No, no, a thousand times, no! You cannot buy my caress! “No, no, a thousand times, no! I’d rather die than say, yes.”

He grinned mirthlessly. “Mars is blanketed with the tune. It’s being drilled into the minds of the Martian colonists. They’ll vote ‘no’ automatically, and we won’t have hyperspatial experiments and that means we won’t have flights to the stars for decades, maybe generations-certainly not in our lifetimes.” Devers said, frowning in thought, “Can’t we use a tune for our side of the argument?”

“What tune?”

“A large percentage of the Martian colonists are of French extraction. We might play on their ethnic consciousness.”

“What ethnic consciousness? Everyone speaks English now.”

“That doesn’t stop ethnic consciousness,” said Devers. “If you play the old national anthem of France, they’ll all drip nostalgia. It’s a battle-hymn, you know, and battle-hymns always stir the blood, especially now that there aren’t any wars.”

Hopkins said, “But the words don’t mean anything any more. Do you remember them?”

“Yes,” said Devers. “Some-

He sang them in a clear tenor voice.

Hopkins said, “Not one Martian in a thousand will know what that means.”

Devers said, “Who cares? Play it anyway. Even if they don’t understand the words they will know it’s the old battle hymn of France and that will stir them up. Besides, the tune is a winner. Infinitely better than that silly music-hall thing about ‘No, no.’ I’m telling you, the battle hymn will settle into every mind and wipe out the no-no.”

“Maybe you have something there,” said Hopkins. “ And if we accompany it with some strong slogan in different changes, ‘Humanity to the stars!,’ ‘Reach out for a star,’ ‘Faster than light is the slowest we can go.’ And always with that tune.”

Colodny said, “You know, ‘la jour de gloire’ means ‘the day of glory,’ I think. We can use that phrase, ‘the glory day when we reach the stars.’ If we say ‘glory day’ often enough, maybe the Martians will vote, ‘Yes.”‘

“It sounds too good to be true,” said Hopkins, gloomily, “but I really don’t see that there’s any other choice we have right now. We can try it and see if it does any good.”

That was the beginning of the great voting battle of the tunes. In everyone of the domed settlements on Mars, from Olympus all along the Valles Marineris and far into the cratered areas, there rang out on one side, “No, no, a thousand times, no-” and on the other side, “ Allons, enfants de la patrie-”

There was no question that the stirring rhythm of the battle-hymn was having its effect. It roared back at the simple negation sing-song and Hopkins had to admit that from zero chance, the “yes” vote was becoming a possibility; from sure defeat, it was beginning to have just a chance.

Hopkins said, “The trouble is, though, we have nothing direct. Their song, silly though it is, has the advantage of saying, “No-No!-No! Ours is just a tune which is catchy and is filling the minds of many, but with what? La jour de gloire?”

Devers smiled and said, “Why not wait for the election? “ After all, it was his idea.

They did.

What happened on election day? Did the negative vote win or the positive? And, in either case, why?

The best reason counts. You can win if you have the vote come out negative or positive.

On the evening of election day, Hopkins found himself almost unable to talk. The vote had been running a steady 90 percent in favor of “Yes” and there was simply no question about it.

The colonists of Mars were voting to allow their planet to be used for the work that would eventually send human beings to the stars.

Hopkins said, finally, “What happened? What did we do right? “

“It was the tune,” said Devers, smiling his satisfaction. “I had it figured right, but I didn’t want to explain my notion because I didn’t want it to get out to the other side somehow. Not that I don’t trust everyone here, but I didn’t want the tune neutralized in some clever way.”

“What was there about the tune that made so much difference?” demanded Hopkins.

“Well, it did have a subliminal message. Maybe the colonists no longer knew enough French to get the meaning of the words, but they had to know the name of the battle-hymn. That name rang through their minds each time they heard the tune; each time they hummed it.”

“So what?”

“So this,” said Devers, grinning, “The name is ‘Mars say yes!”‘

Feghoot And The Courts

The planet of Lockmania, inhabitated though it was by intelligent beings that looked like large wombats, had adopted the American legal system, and Ferdinand Feghoot had been sent there by the Earth Confederation to study the results.

Feghoot watched with interest as a husband and wife were brought in, charged with disturbing the peace. During a religious observation, when for twenty minutes the congregation was supposed to maintain silence, while concentrating on their sins and visualizing them as melting away, the woman had suddenly risen from her squatting position and screamed loudly. When someone rose to object, the man had pushed him forcefully.

The judges listened solemnly, fined the woman a silver dollar, and the man a twenty-dollar gold piece.

Almost immediately afterward, seventeen men and women were brought in. They had been ringleaders of a crowd that had demonstrated for better quality meat at a supermarket. They had torn the supermarket apart and inflicted various bruises and lacerations on eight of the employees of the establishment.

Again the judges listened solemnly, and fined the seventeen a silver dollar apiece.

Afterward, Feghoot said to the chief judge. “I approved of your handling of the man and woman who disturbed the peace.”

“It was a simple case,” said the judge. “We have a legal maxim that goes, ‘Screech is silver, but violence is golden.’”

“In that case,” said Feghoot, “why did you fine the group of seventeen a silver dollar apiece when they had committed far worse violence?”

“Oh, that’s another legal maxim,” said the judge. “Every crowd has a silver fining.”

Fault-Intolerant

Kid Brother

It was a great shock to me when our application for a second child was refused. We had really expected to get the license.

I’m a respectable citizen; pillar of the community; all that kind of stuff. I was a little old, maybe.

Josie-my wife-may have been past her best childbearing years. So what? We know other people worse off than us, older, trashy in character, who-Well, never mind.

We had one son, Charlie, and we really wanted another child. Boy or girl, it didn’t matter. Of course, if there was something wrong with Charlie, if he developed some illness, maybe then we could license a second child. Or maybe not. And if we did get the license, they would probably take care of Charlie as a defective. You know what I mean; I don’t have to say it.

The trouble was we were late getting started, and that was Josie’s fault. She had irregular periods and you never knew when to get her, if you know what I mean. And we couldn’t get any medical help, either. How could we? The clinics said if we couldn’t have children without help, that was great for the world. It’s patriotic, or something, to be childless.

But we fooled them and had a child after all. Charlie.

When Charlie was eight months old, we started applying for a second child. We wanted them pretty close in age. Was that so much to ask? Even if we were getting a little old for it? What kind of a world do we live in, anyway. No matter how much the population drops, they say it has to drop further, and if life gets easier and people live longer, it has to drop still further.

They won’t be satisfied till they wipe out humanity alto-

Well, look! I’ll tell this just the way I want to. If you want the story, officer, you’ll have to take it my way. What can you do to me? I really don’t much care if I live or die. Would you in my position?

— Look, it’s no use arguing. I’ll tell it my way, or I’ll shut up and you can do your worst. You understand?

— Well then, okay.

As it turned out, we didn’t have to worry about Charlie being sickly, or anything like that. He grew like a bear, or one of those other animals that used to hang around in the woods and places like that in the old days. He came of good stock. You could see that. So why couldn’t we have had another child?

That’s what I want to know.

Intelligent? You bet. Strong. Knew what he wanted. Ideal boy. When I think of it, I could-I could-Oh, well.

You should have seen him with the other kids as he was growing up. A natural leader. Always had his way. Always had the other children in the neighborhood doing what he wanted. He knew what he wanted and what he wanted was always right. That was the thing.

Josie didn’t like it, though. She said he was spoiled. In fact, she said I spoiled him. I don’t know what she was talking about. I was the making of him.

He was two years ahead of his age in strength and in brains. I could see that. And if the other children got out of line, sometimes he would have to show them who was boss.

Josie thought he was getting to be a bully. She said he had no friends; all the children were afraid of him.

So what! A leader doesn’t want friends. He wants people to respect him, and if they get out of line, they better fear him. Charlie was coming along all right. Sure, the other children stayed away mostly. That was their parents’ fault; and they’re just a bunch of milksops. Once they get one child, and know they won’t have any more, they start hovering over him or her like they were the family jewels, and rare jewels, too. You smother them if you do that. They become useless-worthless.

There was this guy Stevenson down the block. He had two girls, both pitiful things, giggling and empty-headed. How did he come to get two, I ask you? He knew somebody, maybe. A little money passed from hand to hand. Why not, he’s got more money than he admits, too. Naturally. That accounts for it.

You’d think with two, he could afford to risk one, but no-

— That’s all right. I’ll get to the point, when I get to the point. If you push, you’ll get nothing and we’ll let it go straight to the court. See if I care.

These other parents, they didn’t want their babies hurt. Don’t play with the Janowitz boy, they would say. I never heard them say so but I’m sure that’s what they said. Well, who needed them? I was planning for Charlie to go to college eventually, so he could take courses in microelectronics or in spatial dynamics, or that kind of stuff. And economics and business, too, so he would know how to get money and power out of his know-how. That’s the way I saw it. I wanted him on top of the heap.

But Josie kept talking about Charlie not having friends and Charlie growing up alone, and like that. All the time. It was like living in an echo chamber. And then, one day, she came to me and said, “Why don’t we get Charlie a kid brother?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “You’re past menopause so what do we do? Call in the stork? Look under cabbage leaves?”

I could have divorced her, you know. Married a young chick. After all, I wasn’t past menopause. But I was-loyal. Fat lot of good that did me. Besides, if I had divorced her, she would mostly have kept

Charlie, so what good would that have done me?

So I just made that comment about the stork.

She said, “I’m not talking about a biological child. I’m saying we can get a robot to be Charlie’s brother.”

I never expected to hear anything like that, you can bet. I’m not a robot-type guy. My parents never had one. I never had one. As far as I’m concerned, every robot means one less human, and we’re just watching the world being turned over to them. Just one more way of wiping out humanity, if you ask me.

So I said to Josie, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Really,” said Josie, all very earnest. “It’s a new model. It’s just designed to be friendly and pals for children. Nothing fancy, so they aren’t expensive, and they do fill a need. With more and more people having only one child, there is a real value in supplying that one child with siblings.”

“That may be true of other children. Not Charlie,” I said.

“Yes, Charlie, especially. He’s never going to find out how to deal with people this way. He’s growing up alone, really alone. He won’t come to understand the give and take of life.”

“He’s not going to give. He’s a taker. He’ll take power and he’ll take position, and he’ll tell people what to do. And he’ll have children of his own and maybe even three.”

You may be too young to feel this yet, officer, but if you have only one child, you’ll eventually discover you’ll still have a chance at another one when your child has a child. I had high hopes for Charlie. Before I died, I was sure I would see another child, maybe even two or three. They might be Charlie’s but as far as our lives would overlap, I was going to make them mine, too.

But all Josie could think about was a robot. Life became another kind of echo chamber. She priced them out. She figured out the down payment. She looked into the possibility of renting one for a year on a kind of approval. She was willing to use her own nest egg that her folks had left her to pay for it, and things like that. And you know how it is, in the end you have to keep peace in the family.

I gave in. I said, “Okay, but you go pick one out and you better make it a rental. And you pay for it.”

I figured, who knows. The robot would probably be a pain in the neck and wouldn’t work out, and we’d return him.

They walked him into the house, didn’t even crate him. I should say “it” but Josie insisted on saying “he” and “him” so he would seem more like a kid brother to Charlie, and I got into the habit.

He was a “sibling-robot”; that’s what they called him. He had a registration number, but I never memorized it. What for? We just called him “Kid. “ That was good enough.

— Yes, I know that this sort of robot is getting popular. I don’t know what’s happening to human beings that they stand for such things.

And we stood for it, too. Or at least, I did. Josie was fascinated. The one we got was a pretty good one, I have to admit. He looked almost human, he smiled a lot, and he had a nice voice. He looked maybe fifteen, a small-sized fifteen, which wasn’t too bad because Charlie was a large-sized ten.

Kid was a little taller than Charlie and, of course, heavier. You know, there were titanium bones or whatever inside him and a nuclear unit, guaranteed for ten years before replacement, and that’s pretty heavy.

He had a good vocabulary, too, and he was very polite. Josie was just delighted. She said, “I can use him in the house. He can help out.”

I said, “No, you don’t. You got him for Charlie, and that means he’s Charlie’s. Don’t you go taking him away.”

I was thinking if Josie got him, and made him into a slavey, she’d never let go of him. Charlie, on the other hand, might not like him or might get tired after a little while, and then we could get rid of him.

Charlie fooled me, though. He liked Kid fine.

But you know, it made sense after a while. Kid was designed to be a kid brother, so he was just right for Charlie. He let Charlie take the lead, like an older brother should. He had those three Laws. I can’t quote them, but you know what they are. There was no way he could hurt Charlie, and he had to do whatever Charlie said, so after a while I began to think it was a good deal.

I mean, when they played games Charlie always won. He was supposed to. And the Kid never got mad. He couldn’t. He was made to lose. And sometimes Charlie kicked the Kid around, the way children do, you know. A child gets mad about something, he takes it out on some other child. Children always do that. Naturally, that gets the parents of the other child mad and I had to tell Charlie now and then not to do that and that sort of cramps him. It squeezes him in. He can’t express himself.

Well, he could with the Kid. And why not? You can’t hurt the Kid. He’s made out of plastic and metal and who knows what else. For all he looked nearly like a human being, he wasn’t alive; he couldn’t feel pain.

In fact, I felt the best thing the Kid did was to be something on which Charlie could bleed off his excess energy so that it wouldn’t accumulate in him and fester. And the Kid never minded. They’d play judo and the Kid would be thrown, and even stamped on, but he would just get up and say, “That was good, Charlie. Let’s try it again. “ Listen, you could throw him off the top of a building and he wouldn’t be hurt.

He was always polite to us. He called me Dad. He called Josie Mom. He asked after our health. He would help Josie out of her chair when she wanted to stand up. That sort of stuff.

He was designed that way. He had to act affectionate. It was all automatic. He was programmed for it. It didn’t mean a thing, but Josie liked it. Listen, I’ve always been busy, hard-working. I have this plant I had to help run, interlocking machinery to oversee. One thing goes wrong and the whole shebang ties itself up. I have no time to bring flowers and go mucking around pulling out her chairs or something.

We’d been married nearly twenty years and how long does that sort of thing keep up anyway?

And Charlie-Well, he stood up to his mother the way any decent boy should. And I figured the

Kid helped there. When Charlie made himself boss over the Kid one minute, he wasn’t going to run around saying, “Mommie, Mommie,” the next minute. He was not a mamma’s boy, and he didn’t let Josie run him, and I was proud of him for that. He was going to be a man. Of course, he listened to what I said to him. A boy’s got to listen to his father.

So maybe it was good that the Kid was designed to be a sort of mamma’s boy. It gave Josie the feeling that there was one of those nerds about the house and it bothered her less that Charlie always thought for himself.

Of course you could count on Josie to do her best to spoil it. She was forever worrying about her pet nerd being hurt. She was always coming out with, “Now, Charlie, why don’t you be nicer to your kid brother?”

It was ridiculous. I could never get it through her head that the Kid wasn’t hurt; that he was designed to be a loser; that it was all good for Charlie.

Of course, Charlie never listened to her. He played with the Kid the way he wanted to.

— Do you mind if I rest a little. I don’t really like talking about all this. Just let me rest a while.

— Okay, I’m better now. I can go on.

After the year was up, I felt that it was enough. We could return the Kid to U.S. Robots. After all, he had served his purpose.

But Josie was against that. Dead set against that.

I said, “But we’d have to buy him outright now.”

And she said, she would pay the down payment, so I went along with her.

One of the things she said was that we couldn’t take away Charlie’s brother. Charlie would be lonely.

And I did think, well, maybe she’s right. I tell you it’s deadly when you start thinking your wife might be right. It leads you into nothing but trouble.

Charlie did ease up on the Kid a little as he grew older. He got to be just as tall as the Kid, for one thing, so maybe he didn’t think he had to knock him around as much.

Also, he became interested in things besides rough and tumble. Basketball, for instance; he played one-on-one with the Kid and Charlie was good. He always outmaneuvered the Kid and hardly ever missed a basket. Well, maybe the Kid let himself be outmaneuvered and maybe he didn’t ever block a basket-shot efficiently, but how do you account for getting the ball into the basket? The Kid couldn’t fake that, could he ?

In the second year, the Kid sort of became a member of the family. He didn’t eat with us or anything like that, because he didn’t eat. And he didn’t sleep either, so he just stood in the corner of

Charlie’s bedroom at night.

But he watched the holoviews with us, and Josie would always explain things to him so that he got to know more and to seem more human. She took him shopping with her and wherever else she went, if Charlie didn’t need him. The Kid was always helpful, I suppose, and I guess he carried things for her and was always polite and attentive and that sort of thing.

And I’ll tell you, Josie was more easygoing, with the Kid around. More good-humored, more good-natured, less whining. It made for a more pleasant homelife, and I figured, well, the Kid is teaching Charlie to be more and more dominant, and he’s teaching Josie to smile more, so maybe it was a good thing it was there.

Then it happened.

— Listen, can you let me have something wet?

— Yeah, with alcohol. Just a little, just a little. Come on, what are you worrying about the rules for? I’ve got to get through this somehow.

Then it happened. One out of a million-or out of a billion. Microfusion units aren’t supposed to give trouble. You can read about it anywhere. They’re all fail-safe, no matter what. Except mine wasn’t. I don’t know why. Nobody knows why. At the start, no one even knew it was the microfusion. They’ve told me since that it was, and that I qualify for full restoration of the house and furniture.

Fat lot of good that would do me.

— Look, you’re treating me as though I were a homicidal maniac, but why me? Why aren’t you getting after the microfusion people for murder? Find out who made that unit, or who goofed up installing it.

Don’t you people know what real crimes are? There’s this thing, this microfusion-it doesn’t explode, it doesn’t make a noise, it just gets hotter and hotter and after a while the house is on fire. How come people can get away manufacturing

— Yes, I’ll get on with it. I’ll get on with it.

I was away that day. That one day in a whole year I was away. I run everything from my home, or from wherever I am with my family. I don't have to go anywhere, the computers do it all. It's not like your job, officer.

But the big boss wanted to see me in person. There's no sense to it; everything could have been done closed-circuit. He has some sort of idea, though, that he wants to check all his section heads every once in a while in person. He seems to think that you can't really judge a person unless you see him in three dimensions and smell him and feel him. It's just superstition left over from the Dark Age-which I wish would come back, before computers and robots, and when you could have all the children you wanted.

That was the day when the microfusion went.

I got the word right away. You always get the word. Wherever you are, even on the Moon or in a space settlement, bad news gets to you in seconds. Good news you might miss out on, but bad news never.

I was rushing back while the house was still burning. When I got there, the house was a total wreck, but Josie was out on the lawn, looking a complete mess, but alive. She had been out on the lawn when it happened, they told me.

When she saw the house become all in flame, and Charlie was inside, she rushed in at once, and I could see she must have brought him out because there he was lying to one side with people bending over him. It looked bad. I couldn't see him. I didn't dare go over there to see him. I had to find out from Josie first.

I could hardly speak. “How bad is he?” I asked Josie, and I didn't recognize my own voice. I think my mind was beginning to go.

She was saying, “I couldn't save them both. I couldn't save them both.”

Why should she want to save them both? I thought. I said, “Stop worrying about the Kid. He's just a device. There's insurance and compassion money and we can buy another Kid. “I think I tried to say all that, but I don't know if I managed. Maybe I just made hoarse, choking sounds. I don't know.

I don't know if she heard me, or if she even knew I was there. She just kept whispering, “I had to make a choice,” over and over.

So I had to go where Charlie was lying and I cleared my throat and I managed to say, “How's my boy? How badly is he hurt?”

And one of them said, “Maybe he can be fixed up,” then he looked up at me and said, “Your boy?”

I saw the Kid lying there, with one arm distorted and out of action. He was smiling as if nothing had happened, and he was saying, “Hello, Dad. Mom pulled me out of the fire. Where's Charlie?”

Josie had made her choice and she had saved the Kid.

I don’t know what happened after that. I remember nothing. You people say I killed her; that you couldn’t pull me off before I strangled her.

Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t remember. All I know is-she’s the killer. She killed-she killed-Char

She killed my boy and she saved a piece- A piece of-

Titanium.

The Nations In Space

As is well known, the nations of Gladovia and Saronin have been enemies for many centuries. In medieval times, each had ruled the other at different times, and each remembered, with bitterness, the other’s heavy-handed domination. Even in the twentieth century, the two nations had managed to be on opposite sides in the major wars that were then fought.

In the century of peace that followed the last of the great wars, Gladovia and Saronin had also been at peace, but always regarded each other with a sneer and a curl of the lip.

But it was now 2080, and the solar power stations were in orbit about Earth collecting energy from the Sun and relaying it in the form of microwaves to the nations of all the world. It had utterly changed the world in many ways. With copious solar energy, the use of fossil fuels had dwindled, and the danger of the greenhouse effect had diminished (although some excess heat arising from solar energy did produce some heat pollution).

With copious energy and with better population control, standards of living rose, the food supply improved, the distribution of resources was rationalized and, in general, an era of prosperity and contentment was in bloom.

One thing, however, that had not changed was the antipathy of Gladovians for Saronin, and the dislike of the Saronese for Gladovia.

Of course, the solar power stations did not run themselves. Despite thorough automation and the intense use of robots, it was still important for a few human beings to inspect the various stations periodically to make sure that all was running well and that tiny flecks of space debris and unexpected spurts of solar wind did not alter the workings of the computers beyond the capacity of the robots, and of the computers themselves, to correct matters.

Those chosen for the task served their stints and were regularly rotated so that the effects of zero gravity could be minimized by rest periods on Earth’s surface. It was purely coincidence, then, that the Space-Servitors (as they were called) in the summer of 2080, consisted among others, of two Gladovians and two Saronese. These traditional enemies were thrown together in the course of their work and they performed their tasks correctly, but were careful to restrict communications with each other to the barest essentials and to refrain from any smiles or warmth.

And one day, the younger Gladovian, Tomasz Brigon by name, came to the older one, Hamish Mansa, with a tense smile of delight, and said, “That fool of a Saronese has done it this time.” “Which one?” asked Mansa.

“The one whose name sounds like a sneeze. Who can speak that foolish Saronese language? In any case, with true Saronese stupidity he has miscued Computer A-5.”

Mansa looked alarmed. “With what result?”

“None yet. But whenever the solar wind density rises above the 1.3 level, it will shut down half the power stations and burn out several of the computers.”

“And what did you do about that?” Mansa’s eyes opened wide.

“Nothing,” said Brigon. “I was there and I saw it happen. Now, it’s on the record. The Saronese identified himself as the worker on the Computer, and when the power stations shut down, and the computers burn out, the world will know that it was a stupid Saronese that did it.” Brigon stretched his arms luxuriously and said, with delight, “Everyone in the world will be furious, and the whole wicked nation of Saronin will be humiliated.”

Mansa said, “But meanwhile the energy supply to Earth will be totally disrupted, and it may not be possible to restore the system to working order for months, perhaps for a year or two.”

“Plenty of time,” said Brigon, “for the world to wipe Saronin from the face of the Earth, so that our own glorious nation of Gladovia can take over the territory that is rightfully ours.”

“But think a bit,” said Mansa. “With so much energy suddenly gone, the world will be too busy trying to save itself from disaster to engage in crusades. There will be disruption of industry, the danger of starvation, the gathering of mobs of the distressed, the fighting over what energy can be obtained-total chaos.”

“All the worse for Saronin-”

“But the chaos will come to Gladovia, too. Our glorious nation depends on the solar energy supply just as Saronin does, just as the whole world does. There will be a world of catastrophe from which-who can tell-Gladovia may suffer far worse than Saronin. Who can tell?”

Brigon’s mouth fell open and he looked disturbed. “Do you really think so?”

“Of course. You must go to the one whose name is like a sneeze, and ask him to recheck his work. You needn’t say you know something is wrong. It’s simply that you were there, and you suddenly have this strange feeling that all is not well. Say you have a presentiment. And if he finds the miscue and corrects it, do not taunt him. It would not be safe to do so. And do it quickly! For the glorious nation of Gladovia! And for the world, of course.”

Brigon had no choice. He did so, and the peril was averted.

People always love themselves best. But in a world so interconnected that harm to one is harm to all, the best way of loving one’s self, is to love everyone else, too.

The Smile Of The Chipper

Johnson was reminiscing in the way old men do and I had been warned he would talk about chippers-those peculiar people who flashed across the business scene for a generation at the beginning of this twenty-first century of ours. Still, I had had a good meal at his expense and I was ready to listen.

And, as it happened, it was the first word out of his mouth. “Chippers,” he said, “were just about unregulated in those days. Nowadays, their use is so controlled no one can get any good out of them, but back a ways-One of them made this company the ten-billion-dollar concern it now is. I picked him, you know.”

I said, “They didn’t last long, I’m told.”

“Not in those days. They burned out. When you add microchips at key points in the nervous system, then in ten years at the most, the wiring burns out, so to speak. Then they retired-a little vacant- minded, you know.”

“I wonder anyone submitted to it.”

“Well, all the idealists were horrified, of course, and that’s why the regulating came in, but it wasn’t that bad for the chippers. Only certain people could make use of the microchips-about eighty percent of them males, for some reason-and, for the time they were active, they lived the lives of shipping magnates. Afterward, they always received the best of care. It was no different from top-ranking athletes, after all; ten years of active early life, and then retirement.”

Johnson sipped at his drink. “ An unregulated chipper could influence other people’s emotions, you know, if they were chipped just right and had talent. They could make judgments on the basis of what they sensed in other minds and they could strengthen some of the judgments competitors were making, or weaken them-for the good of the home company. It wasn’t unfair. Other companies had their own chippers doing the same thing. “ He sighed. “Now that sort of thing is illegal. Too bad.”

I said, diffidently, “I’ve heard that illegal chipping is still done.” Johnson grunted and said, “No comment.”

I let that go, and he went on. “But even thirty years ago, things were still wide open. Our company was just an insignificant item in the global economy, but we had located two chippers who were willing to work for us.”

“Two?” I had never heard that before.

Johnson looked at me slyly. “Yes, we managed that. It’s not widely known in the outside world, but it came down to clever recruiting and it was slightly-just a touch-illegal, even then. Of course, we couldn’t hire them both. Getting two chippers to work together is impossible. They’re like chess grandmasters, I suppose. Put them in the same room and they would automatically challenge each other. They would compete continually, each trying to influence and confute the other. They wouldn’t stop- couldn’t, actually-and they would burn each other out in six months. Several companies found that out, to their great cost, when chippers first came into use.”

“I can imagine,” I murmured.

“So since we couldn’t have both, and could only take one, we wanted the more powerful one, obviously, and that could only be determined by pitting them against each other, without letting them ruin each other. I was given the job, and it was made quite clear that if I picked the one who, in the end, turned out to be inadequate, that would be my end, too.”

“How did you go about it, sir?” I knew he had succeeded, of course. A person can’t become chairman of the board of a worldclass firm for nothing.

Johnson said, “I had to improvise. I investigated each separately first. The two were known by their code-letters, by the way. In those days, their true identities had to be hidden. A chipper known to be a chipper was half-useless. They were C-12 and F-71 in our records. Both were in their late twenties. C-12 was unattached; F-71 was engaged to be married.” “Married?” I said, a little surprised.

“Certainly. Chippers are human, and male chippers are much sought after by women. They’re sure to be rich and, when they retire, their fortunes are usually under the control of their wives. It’s a good deal for a young woman.-So I brought them together, with F-71 ‘s fiancée. I hoped earnestly she would be good-looking, and she was. Meeting her was almost like a physical blow to me. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, tall, dark-eyed, a marvelous figure and rather more than a hint of smoldering sexuality.”

Johnson seemed lost in thought for a moment, then he continued. “I tell you I had a strong urge to try to win the woman for myself but it was not likely that anyone who had a chipper would transfer herself to a mere junior executive, which is what I was in those days. To transfer herself to another chipper would be something else-and I could see that C-12 was as affected as I was. He could not keep his eyes off her.

So I just let things develop to see who ended with the young woman.” “And who did, sir?“ I asked.

“It took two days of intense mental conflict. They must each have peeled a month off their working lives, but the young lady walked off with C-12 as her new fiancée.”

“Ah, so you chose C-12 as the firm chipper.”

Johnson stared at me with disdain. “ Are you mad? I did no such thing. I chose F-71, of course.

We placed C-12 with a small subsidiary of ours. He’d be no good to anyone else, since we knew him, you see.”

“But did I miss something? F-71 lost his fiancée and C-12 gained her. Surely C-12 was the superior.”

“Was he? Chippers show no emotion in a case like this; no obvious emotion. It is necessary for business purposes for chippers to hide their powers so that the pokerface is a professional necessity for them. But I was watching closely-my own job was at stake-and, as C-12 walked off with the woman, I noticed a small smile on F71 ‘s lips and it seemed to me there was the glitter of victory in his eyes.” “But he lost his fiancée.”

“Doesn’t it occur to you he wanted to lose her and it would not be easy to pry her loose? He had to work on C-12 to want her and on the woman to want to be wanted-and he did it. He won.”

I thought about that. “But how could you have been sure? If the woman was as good-looking as you say she was-if she was smoldering so with sexuality, surely F71 would have wanted to keep her.”

“But F-71 was making her seem desirable,” said Johnson, grimly. “He aimed at C-12, of course, but with such power that the overflow was sufficient to affect me drastically. After it was allover and C-12 was walking away with her, I was no longer under the influence and I could see there was something hard and overblown about her-a kind of unlovely and predatory gleam in her eye.

“So I chose F-71 at once and he was all we could want. The firm is now where you see it is, and I am chairman of the board.”

Gold

Jonas Willard looked from side to side and tapped his baton on the stand before him.

He said, “Understood now? This is just a practice scene, designed to find out if we know what we’re doing. We’ve gone through this enough times so that I expect a professional performance now. Get ready. All of you get ready.”

He looked again from side to side. There was a person at each of the voice-recorders, and there were three others working the image projection. A seventh was for the music and an eighth for the all- important background. Others waited to one side for their turn.

Willard said, “ All right now. Remember this old man has spent his entire adult life as a tyrant. He is accustomed to having everyone jump at his slightest word, to having everyone tremble at his frown. That is all gone now but he doesn’t know it. He faces his daughter whom he thinks of only as a bent-headed obsequious girl who will do anything he says, and he cannot believe that it is an imperious queen that he now faces. So let’s have the King.”

Lear appeared. Tall, white hair and beard, somewhat disheveled, eyes sharp and piercing.

Willard said, “Not bent. Not bent. He's eighty years old but he doesn't think of himself as old. Not now. Straight. Every inch a king.” The image was adjusted. “That's right. And the voice has to be strong.

No quavering. Not now. Right?”

“Right, chief,” said the Lear voice-recorder, nodding. “All right. The Queen.”

And there she was, almost as tall as Lear, standing straight and rigid as a statue, her draped clothing in fine array, nothing out of place. Her beauty was as cold and unforgiving as ice.

“And the Fool.“

A little fellow, thin and fragile, like a frightened teenager but with a face too old for a teenager and with a sharp look in eyes that seemed so large that they threatened to devour his face.

“Good,” said Willard. “Be ready for Albany. He comes in pretty soon. Begin the scene. “ He tapped the podium again, took a quick glance at the marked-up play before him and said, “Lear! “ and his baton pointed to the Lear voice-recorder, moving gently to mark the speech cadence that he wanted created.

Lear says, “How now, daughter? What makes that frontlet on? Methinks you are too much o' late i' th' frown.”

The Fool's thin voice, fifelike, piping, interrupts, “Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning-”

Goneril, the Queen, turns slowly to face the Clown as he speaks, her eyes turning momentarily into balls of lurid light-doing it so momentarily that those watching caught the impression rather than viewed the fact. The Fool completes his speech in gathering fright and backs his way behind Lear in a blind search for protection against the searing glance.

Goneril proceeds to tell Lear the facts of life and there is the faint crackling of thin ice as she speaks, while the music plays in soft discords, barely heard.

Nor are Goneril's demands so out of line, for she wants an orderly court and there couldn't be one as long as Lear still thought of himself as tyrant. But Lear is in no mood to recognize reason. He breaks into a passion and begins railing.

Albany enters. He is Goneril's consort-round-faced, innocent, eyes looking about in wonder.

What is happening? He is completely drowned out by his dominating wife and by his raging father-in-law.

It is at this point that Lear breaks into one of the great piercing denunciations in all of literature. He is overreacting. Goneril has not as yet done anything to deserve this, but Lear knows no restraint. He says:

The voice-recorder strengthened Lear’s voice for this speech, gave it a distant hiss, his body became taller and somehow less substantial as though it had been converted into a vengeful Fury.

As for Goneril, she remained untouched throughout, never flinching, never receding, but her beautiful face, without any change that could be described, seemed to accumulate evil so that by the end of Lear’s curse, she had the appearance of an archangel still, but an archangel ruined. All possible pity had been wiped out of the countenance, leaving behind only a devil’s dangerous magnificence.

The Fool remained behind Lear throughout, shuddering. Albany was the very epitome of confusion, asking useless questions, seeming to want to step between the two antagonists and clearly afraid to do so.

Willard tapped his baton and said, “ All right. It’s been recorded and I want you all to watch the scene.” He lifted his baton high and the synthesizer at the rear of the set began what could only be called the instant replay.

It was watched in silence, and Willard said, “It was good, but I think you’ll grant it was not good enough. I’m going to ask you all to listen to me, so that I can explain what we’re trying to do.

Computerized theater is not new, as you all know. Voices and images have been built up to beyond what human beings can do. You don’t have to break your speechifying in order to breathe; the range and quality of the voices are almost limitless; and the images can change to suit the words and action. Still, the technique has only been used, so far, for childish purposes. What we intend now is to make the first serious compu-drama the world has ever seen, and nothing will do-for me, at any rate-but to start at the top. I want to do the greatest play written by the greatest playwright in history: King Lear by William Shakespeare.

“I want not a word changed. I want not a word left out. I don’t want to modernize the play. I don’t want to remove the archaisms, because the play, as written, has its glorious music and any change will diminish it. But in that case, how do we have it reach the general public? I don’t mean the students, I don’t mean the intellectuals, I mean everybody. I mean people who’ve never watched Shakespeare before and whose idea of a good play is a slapstick musical. This play is archaic in spots, and people don’t talk in iambic pentameter. They are not even accustomed to hearing it on the stage.

“So we’re going to have to translate the archaic and the unusual. The voices, more than human, will, just by their timbre and changes, interpret the words. The images will shift to reinforce the words.

“Now Goneril’s change in appearance as Lear’s curse proceeded was good. The viewer will gauge the devastating effect it has on her even though her iron will won’t let it show in words. The viewer will therefore feel the devastating effect upon himself, too, even if some of the words Lear uses are strange to him.

“In that connection, we must remember to make the Fool look older with everyone of his appearances. He’s a weak, sickly fellow to begin with, broken-hearted over the loss of Cordelia, frightened to death of Goneril and Regan, destroyed by the storm from which Lear, his only protector, can’t protect him-and I mean by that the storm of Lear’s daughter’s as well as of the raging weather. When he slips out of the play in Act III. Scene VI, it must be made plain that he is about to die. Shakespeare doesn’t say so, so the Fool’s face must say so.

“However, we’ve got to do something about Lear. The voicerecorder was on the right track by having a hissing sound in the voice-track. Lear is spewing venom; he is a man who, having lost power, has no recourse but vile and extreme words. He is a cobra who cannot strike. But I don’t want the hiss noticeable until the right time. What I am more interested in is the background.”

The woman in charge of background was Meg Cathcart. She had been creating backgrounds for as long as the compu-drama technique had existed.

“What do you want in background? “ Cathcart asked, coolly.

“The snake motif,” said Willard. “Give me some of that and there can be less hiss in Lear’s voice.

Of course, I don’t want you to show a snake. The too obvious doesn’t work. I want a snake there that people can’t see but that they can feel without quite noting why they feel. I want them to know a snake is there without really knowing it is there, so that it will chill them to the bone, as Lear’s speech should. So when we do it over, Meg, give us a snake that is not a snake.”

“And how do I do that, Jonas?” said Cathcart, making free with his first name. She knew her worth and how essential she was.

He said, “I don’t know. If I did I’d be a backgrounder instead of a lousy director. I only know what I want. You‘ve got to supply it. You’ve got to supply sinuosity, the impression of scales. Until we get to one point. Notice when Lear says, ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.’ That is power. The whole speech leads up to that and it is one of the most famous quotes in Shakespeare.

And it is sibilant. There is the ‘sh,’ the three s’s in ‘serpent’s’ and in ‘thankless,’ and the two unvoiced ‘th’s in ‘tooth’ and ‘thankless.’ That can be hissed. If you keep down the hiss as much as possible in the rest of the speech, you can hiss here, and you should zero in to his face and make it venomous. And for background, the serpent-which, after all, is now referred to in the words-can make its appearance in background. A flash of an open mouth and fangs, fangs-We must have the momentary appearance of fangs as Lear says, ‘a serpent’s tooth.”‘

Willard felt very tired suddenly. “ All right. We’ll try again tomorrow. I want each one of you to go over the entire scene and try to work out the strategy you intend to use. Only please remember that you are not the only ones involved. What you do must match the others, so I’ll encourage you to talk to each other about this-and, most of all, to listen to me because I have no instrument to handle and I alone can see the playas a whole. And if I seem as tyrannical as Lear at his worst in spots, well, that’s my job.”

Willard was approaching the great storm scene, the most difficult portion of this most difficult play, and he felt wrung out. Lear has been cast out by his daughters into a raging storm of wind and rain, with only his Fool for company, and he has gone almost mad at this mistreatment. To him, even the storm is not as bad as his daughters.

Willard pointed his baton and Lear appeared. A point in another direction and the Fool was there clinging, disregarded, to Lear’s left leg. Another point and the background, came in, with its impression of a storm, of a howling wind, of driving rain, of the crackle of thunder and the flash of lightning.

The storm took over, a phenomenon of nature, but even as it did so, the image of Lear extended and became what seemed mountain-tall. The storm of his emotions matched the storm of the elements, and his voice gave back to the wind every last howl. His body lost substance and wavered with the wind as though he himself were a storm cloud, contending on an equal basis with the atmospheric fury. Lear, having failed with his daughters, defied the storm to do its worst. He called out in a voice that was far more than human:

The Fool interrupts, his voice shrilling, and making Lear’s defiance the more heroic by contrast.

He begs Lear to make his way back to the castle and make peace with his daughters, but Lear doesn’t even hear him. He roars on:

The Duke of Kent, Lear’s loyal servant (though the King in a fit of rage has banished him) finds Lear and tries to lead him to some shelter. After an interlude in the castle of the Duke of Gloucester, the scene returns to Lear in the storm, and he is brought, or rather dragged, to a hovel.

And then, finally, Lear learns to think of others. He insists that the Fool enter first and then he lingers outside to think (undoubtedly for the first time in his life) of the plight of those who are not kings and courtiers.

His image shrank and the wildness of his face smoothed out. His head was lifted to the rain, and his words seemed detached and to be coming not quite from him, as though he were listening to someone else read the speech. It was, after all, not the old Lear speaking, but a new and better Lear, refined and sharpened by suffering. With an anxious Kent watching, and striving to lead him into the hovel, and with Meg Cathcart managing to work up an impression of beggars merely by producing the fluttering of rags, Lear says:

“Not bad,” said Wilbur, eventually. “We’re getting the idea.

Only, Meg, rags aren’t enough. Can you manage an impression of hollow eyes? Not blind ones. The eyes are there, but sunken in.”

“I think I can do that,” said Cathcart.

It was difficult for Willard to believe. The money spent was greater than expected. The time it had taken was considerably greater than had been expected. And the general weariness was far greater than had been expected. Still, the project was coming to an end.

He had the reconciliation scene to get through-so simple that it would require the most delicate touches. There would be no background, no souped-up voices, no images, for at this point Shakespeare became simple. Nothing beyond simplicity was needed.

Lear was an old man, just an old man. Cordelia, having found him, was a loving daughter, with none of the majesty of Goneril, none of the cruelty of Regan, just softly endearing.

Lear, his madness burned out of him, is slowly beginning to understand the situation. He scarcely recognizes Cordelia at first and thinks he is dead and she is a heavenly spirit. Nor does he recognize the faithful Kent.

When Cordelia tries to bring him back the rest of the way to sanity, he says:

Cordelia tells him she is and he says:

All poor Cordelia can say is “No cause, no cause.”

And eventually, Willard was able to draw a deep breath and say, “We’ve done all we can do. The rest is in the hands of the public.”

It was a year later that Willard, now the most famous man in the entertainment world, met Gregory Laborian. It had come about almost accidentally and largely because of the activities of a mutual friend. Willard was not grateful.

He greeted Laborian with what politeness he could manage and cast a cold eye on the time-strip on the wall.

He said, “I don’t want to seem unpleasant or inhospitable, Mr.-uh-but I’m really a very busy man, and don’t have much time.”

“I’m sure of it, but that’s why I want to see you. Surely, you want to do another compu-drama.”

“Surely I intend to, but,” and Willard smiled dryly, “ King Lear is a hard act to follow and I don’t intend to turn out something that will seem like trash in comparison.”

“But what if you never find anything that can match King Lear?”

“I’m sure I never will, but I’ll find something. “ “I have something. “

“Oh?”

“I have a story, a novel, that could be made into a compudrama.”

“Oh, well. I can’t really deal with items that come in over the transom.”

“I’m not offering you something from a slush pile. The novel has been published and it has been rather highly thought of.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to be insulting. But I didn’t recognize your name when you introduced yourself.”

“Laborian. Gregory Laborian.”

“But I still don’t recognize it. I’ve never read anything by you. I’ve never heard of you.”

Laborian sighed. “I wish you were the only one, but you’re not. Still, I could give you a copy of my novel to read.”

Willard shook his head. “That’s kind of you, Mr. Laborian, but I don’t want to mislead you. I have no time to read it. And even if I had the time-I just want you to understand-I don’t have the inclination.”

“I could make it worth your while, Mr. Willard. “ “In what way?”

“I could pay you. I wouldn’t consider it a bribe, merely an offer of money that you would well deserve if you worked with my novel.”

“I don’t think you understand, Mr. Laborian, how much money it takes to make a first-class compu-drama. I take it you’re not a multimillionaire.”

“No, I’m not, but I can pay you a hundred thousand globodollars.”

“If that’s a bribe, at least it’s a totally ineffective one. For a hundred thousand globo-dollars, I couldn’t do a single scene.”

Laborian sighed again. His large brown eyes looked soulful. “I understand, Mr. Willard, but if you’ll just give me a few more minutes-” (for Willard’s eyes were wandering to the time-strip again.)

“Well, five more minutes. That’s all I can manage really. “

“It’s all I need. I’m not offering the money for making the compu-drama. You know, and I know, Mr. Willard, that you can go to any of a dozen people in the country and say you are doing a compu-drama and you’ll get all the money you need. After King Lear, no one will refuse you anything, or even ask you what you plan to do. I’m offering you one hundred thousand globo-dollars for your own use.”

“Then it is a bribe, and that won’t work with me. Good-bye, Mr. Laborian.”

“Wait. I’m not offering you an electronic switch. I don’t suggest that I place my financial card into a slot and that you do so, too, and that a hundred thousand globo-dollars be transferred from my account to yours. I’m talking gold, Mr. Willard.”

Willard had risen from his chair, ready to open the door and usher Laborian out, but now he hesitated. “What do you mean, gold?”

“I mean that I can lay my hands on a hundred thousand globo-dollars of gold, about fifteen pounds’ worth, I think. I may not be a multimillionaire, but I’m quite well off and I wouldn’t be stealing it.

It would be my own money and I am entitled to draw it in gold. There is nothing illegal about it. What I am offering you is a hundred thousand globo-dollars in five-hundred globo-dollar pieces-two hundred of them. Gold, Mr. Willard.”

Gold! Willard was hesitating. Money, when it was a matter of electronic exchange, meant nothing. There was no feeling of either wealth or of poverty above a certain level. The world was a matter of plastic cards (each keyed to a nucleic acid pattern) and of slots, and all the world transferred, transferred, transferred.

Gold was different. It had a feel. Each piece had a weight. Piled together it had a gleaming beauty.

It was wealth one could appreciate and experience. Willard had never even seen a gold coin, let alone felt or hefted one. Two hundred of them!

He didn’t need the money. He was not so sure he didn’t need the gold.

He said, with a kind of shamefaced weakness. “What kind of a novel is it that you are talking about?”

“Science fiction.“

Willard made a face. “I’ve never read science fiction. “

“Then it’s time you expanded your horizons, Mr. Willard. Read mine. If you imagine a gold coin between every two pages of the book, you will have your two hundred.”

And Willard, rather despising his own weakness, said, “What’s the name of your book?”

“Three in One. “

“And you have a copy?” “I brought one with me.“

And Willard held out his hand and took it.

That Willard was a busy man was by no means a lie. It took him better than a week to find the time to read the book, even with two hundred pieces of gold glittering, and luring him on.

Then he sat a while and pondered. Then he phoned Laborian. The next morning, Laborian was in Williard’s office again.

Willard said, bluntly, “Mr. Laborian, I have read your book.”

Laborian nodded and could not hide the anxiety in his eyes. “I hope you like it, Mr. Willard.” Willard lifted his hand and rocked it right and left. “So-so. I told you I have not read science fiction, and I don’t know how good or bad it is of its kind-” “Does it matter, if you liked it?”

“I’m not sure if I liked it. I’m not used to this sort of thing. We are dealing in this novel with three sexes.”

“Yes.”

“Which you call a Rational, an Emotional, and a Parental. “

“Yes.”

“But you don’t describe them?”

Laborian looked embarrassed. “I didn’t describe them, Mr. Willard, because I couldn’t. They’re alien creatures, really alien. I didn’t want to pretend they were alien by simply giving them blue skins or a pair of antennae or a third eye. I wanted them indescribable, so I didn’t describe them, you see.”

“What you’re saying is that your imagination failed.”

“N-no. I wouldn’t say that. It’s more like not having that kind of imagination. I don’t describe anyone. If I were to write a story about you and me, I probably wouldn’t bother describing either one of us.”

Willard stared at Laborian without trying to disguise his contempt. He thought of himself. Middle- sized, soft about the middle, needed to reduce a bit, the beginnings of a double chin, and a mole on his right wrist. Light brown hair, dark blue eyes, bulbous nose. What was so hard to describe? Anyone could do it. If you had an imaginary character, think of someone real-and describe.

There was Laborian, dark in complexion, crisp curly black hair, looked as though he needed a shave, probably looked that way all the time, prominent Adam’s apple, small scar on the right cheek, dark brown eyes rather large, and his only good feature.

Willard said, “I don’t understand you. What kind of writer are you if you have trouble describing things? What do you write?”

Laborian said, gently, somewhat as though this was not the first time he had had to defend himself along those lines, “You’ve read T hree in One. I’ve written other novels and they’re all in the same style. Mostly conversation. I don’t see things when I write; I hear, and for most part, what my characters talk about are ideas-competing ideas. I’m strong on that and my readers like it.”

“Yes, but where does that leave me? I can’t devise a compudrama based on conversation alone. I have to create sight and sound and subliminal messages, and you leave me nothing to work on.” “Are you thinking of doing Three in One, then?”

“Not if you give me nothing to work on. Think, Mr. Laborian, think! This Parental. He’s the dumb one.”

“Not dumb,” said Laborian, frowning. “Single-minded. He only has room in his mind for children, real and potential.”

“Blockish! If you didn’t use that actual word for the Parental in the novel, and I don’t remember offhand whether you did or not, it’s certainly the impression I got. Cubical. Is that what he is?”

“Well, simple. Straight lines. Straight planes. Not cubical. Longer than he is wide.”

“How does he move? Does he have legs?”

“I don’t know. I honestly never gave it any thought.”

“Hmp. And the Rational. He’s the smart one and he’s smooth and quick. What is he? Egg- shaped?”

“I’d accept that. I’ve never given that any thought, either, but I’d accept that.”

“And no legs?”

“I haven’t described any.”

“And how about the middle one. Your ‘she’ character-the other two being ‘he’s.”‘

“The Emotional.”

“That’s right. The Emotional. You did better on her.”

“Of course. I did most of my thinking about her. She was trying to save the alien intelligences-us-of an alien world, Earth. The reader’s sympathy must be with her, even though she fails.”

“I gather she was more like a cloud, didn’t have any firm shape at all, could attenuate and tighten.”

“Yes, yes. That’s exactly right.”

“Does she flow along the ground or drift through the air?”

Laborian thought, then shook his head. “I don’t know. I would say you would have to suit yourself when it came to that. “

“I see. And what about the sex?”

Laborian said, with sudden enthusiasm. “That’s a crucial point. I never have any sex in my novels beyond that which is absolutely necessary and then I manage to refrain from describing it-”

“You don’t like sex?”

“I like sex fine, thank you. I just don’t like it in my novels. Everyone else puts it in and, frankly, I think that readers find its absence in my novels refreshing; at least, my readers do. And I must explain to you that my books do very well. I wouldn’t have a hundred thousand dollars to spend if they didn’t.”

“All right. I’m not trying to put you down.”

“However, there are always people who say I don’t include sex because I don’t know how, so-out of vainglory, I suppose-I wrote this novel just to show that I c ould do it. The entire novel deals with sex.

Of course, it’s alien sex, not at all like ours.”

“That’s right. That’s why I have to ask you about the mechanics of it. How does it work?” Laborian looked uncertain for a moment. “They melt.”

“I know that that’s the word you use. Do you mean they come together? Superimpose?”

“I suppose so.”

Willard sighed. “How can you write a book without knowing anything about so fundamental a part of it?”

“I don’t have to describe it in detail. The reader gets the impression. With subliminal suggestion so much a part of the compu-drama, how can you ask the question?”

Willard’s lips pressed together. Laborian had him there. “Very well. They superimpose. What do they look like after they have superimposed? “

Laborian shook his head. “I avoided that. “

“You realize, of course, that I can’t.” Laborian nodded. “Yes.”

Willard heaved another sigh and said, “Look, Mr. Laborian, assuming that I agree to do such a compu-drama-and I have not yet made up my mind on the matter-I would have to do it entirely my way. I would tolerate no interference from you. You have ducked so many of your own responsibilities in writing the book that I can’t allow you to decide suddenly that you want to participate in my creative endeavors.”

“That’s quite understood, Mr. Willard. I only ask that you keep my story and as much of my dialogue as you can. All of the visual, sonic, and subliminal aspects I am willing to leave entirely in your hands.”

“You understand that this is not a matter of a verbal agreement which someone in our industry, about a century and a half ago, described as not worth the paper it was written on. There will have to be a written contract made firm by my lawyers that will exclude you from participation.”

“My lawyers will be glad to look over it, but I assure you I am not going to quibble.”

“And, “ said Willard severely, “I will want an advance on the money you offered me. I can’t afford to have you change your mind on me and I am not in the mood for a long lawsuit.”

At this, Laborian frowned. He said, “Mr. Willard, those who know me never question my financial honesty. You don’t know me so I’ll permit the remark, but please don’t repeat it. How much of an advance do you wish?”

“Half,” said Willard, briefly.

Laborian said, “I will do better than that. Once you have obtained the necessary commitments from those who will be willing to put up the money for the compu-drama and once the contract between us is drawn up, then I will give you every cent of the hundred thousand dollars even before you begin the first scene of the book.”

Willard’s eyes opened wide and he could not prevent himself from saying, “Why?”

“Because I want to urge you on. What’s more, if the compu-drama turns out to be too hard to do, if it won’t work, or if you turn out something that will not do-my hard luck-you can keep the hundred thousand. It’s a risk I’m ready to take.”

“Why? What’s the catch?”

“No catch. I’m gambling on immorality. I’m a popular writer but I have never heard anyone call me a great one. My books are very likely to die with me. Do Three in One as a compu-drama and do it well and that at least might live on, and make my name ring down through the ages,” he smiled ruefully, “or at least some ages. However-”

“Ah,” said Willard. “Now we come to it.”

“Well, yes. I have a dream that I’m willing to risk a great deal for, but I’m not a complete fool. I will give you the hundred thousand I promised before you start and if the thing doesn’t work out you can keep it, but the payment will be electronic. It : however, you turn out a product that satisfies me, then you will return the electronic gift and I will give you the hundred thousand globo-dollars in gold pieces. You have nothing to lose except that to an artist like yourself, gold must be more dramatic and worthwhile than blips in a finance-card. “ And Laborian smiled gently.

Willard said, “Understand, Mr. Laborian! I would be taking a risk, too. I risk losing a great deal of time and effort that I might have devoted to a more likely project. I risk producing a docudrama that will be a failure and that will tarnish the reputation I have built up with Lear. In my business, you’re only as good as your most recent product. I will consult various people-” “On a confidential basis, please.”

“Of course! And I will do a bit of deep consideration. I am willing to go along with your proposition for now, but you mustn’t think of it as a definite commitment. Not yet. We will talk further.”

Jonas Willard and Meg Cathcart sat together over lunch in Meg’s apartment. They were at their coffee when Willard said, with apparent reluctance as one who broaches a subject he would rather not, “Have you read the book? “

“Yes, I have.”

“And what did you think?”

“I don’t know,” said Cathcart peering at him from under the dark, reddish hair she wore clustered over her forehead. “ At least not enough to judge.”

“You’re not a science fiction buff either, then?”

“Well, I’ve read science fiction, mostly sword and sorcery, but nothing like Three in One. I’ve heard of Laborian, though. He does what they call ‘hard science fiction.”‘

“It’s hard enough. I don’t see how I can do it. That book, whatever its virtues, just isn’t me.”

Cathcart fixed him with a sharp glance. “How do you know it isn’t you?”

“Listen, it’s important to know what you can’t do.”

“And you were born knowing you can’t do science fiction?”

“I have an instinct in these things.”

“So you say. Why don’t you think what you might do with those three undescribed characters, and what you would want subliminally, before you let your instinct tell you what you can and can’t do. For instance, how would you do the Parental, who is referred to constantly as ‘he’ even though it’s the Parental who bears the children? That struck me as jackassy, if you must know.”

“No, no,” said Willard, at once. “I accept the ‘he.’ Laborian might have invented a third pronoun, but it would have made no sense and the reader would have gagged on it. Instead, he reserved the pronoun, ‘she,’ for the Emotional. She’s the central character, differing from the other two enormously. The use of ‘she’ for her and only for her focuses the reader’s attention on her, and it’s on her that the reader’s attention must focus. What’s more, it’s on her that the viewer’s attention must focus in the compu-drama.”

“Then you have been thinking of it. “ She grinned, impishly. “I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t needled you.”

Willard stirred uneasily. “ Actually, Laborian said something of the sort, so I can’t lay claim to complete creativity here. But let’s get back to the Parental. I want to talk about these things to you because everything is going to depend on subliminal suggestion, if I do try to do this thing. The Parental is a block, a rectangle.”

“A right parallelepiped, I think they would call it in solid geometry.”

“Come on. I don’t care what they call it in solid geometry. The point is we can’t just have a block. We have to give it personality. The Parental is a ‘he’ who bears children, so we have to get across an epicene quality. The voice has to be neither clearly masculine nor feminine. I’m not sure that I have in mind exactly the timbre and sound I will need, but that will be for the voice-recorder and myself to work out by trial and error, I think. Of course, the voice isn’t the only thing.”

“What else?”

“The feet. The Parental moves about, but there is no description of any limbs. He has to have the equivalent of arms; there are things he does. He obtains an energy source that he feeds the Emotional, so we’ll have to evolve arms that are alien but that are arms. And we need legs. And a number of sturdy, stumpy legs that move rapidly.”

“Like a caterpillar? Or a centipede?”

Willard winced. “Those aren’t pleasant comparisons, are they?”

“Well, it would be my job to subliminate, if I may use the expression, a centipede, so to speak, without showing one. Just the notion of a series of legs, a double fading row of parentheses, just on and off as a kind of visual leitmotiv for the Parental, whenever he appears.”

“I see what you mean. We’ll have to try it out and see what we can get away with. The Rational is ovoid. Laborian admitted it might be egg-shaped. We can imagine him progressing by rolling but I find that completely inappropriate. The Rational is mind-proud, dignified. We can’t make him do anything laughable, and rolling would be laughable.”

“We could have him with a flat bottom slightly curved, and he could slide along it, like a penguin belly-whopping.”

“Or like a snail on a layer of grease. No. That would be just as bad. I had thought of having three legs extrude. In other words, when he is at rest, he would be smoothly ovoid and proud of it, but when he is moving three stubby legs emerge and he can walk on them.”

“Why three?”

“It carries on the three motif; three sexes, you know. It could be a kind of hopping run. The foreleg digs in and holds firm and the two hind legs come along on each side.”

“Like a three-legged kangaroo?”

“Yes! Can you subliminate a kangaroo?” “I can try.”

“The Emotional, of course, is the hardest of the three. What can you do with something that may be nothing but a coherent cloud of gas?”

Cathcart considered. “What about giving the impression of draperies containing nothing. They would be moving about wraithlike, just as you presented Lear in the storm scene. She would be wind, she would be air, she would be the filmy, foggy draperies that would represent that.”

Willard felt himself drawn to the suggestion. “Hey, that’s not bad, Meg. For the subliminal effect, could you do Helen of Troy?” “Helen of Troy?”

“Yes! To the Rational and Parental, the Emotional is the most beautiful thing ever invented. They’re crazy about her. There’s this strong, almost unbearable sexual attraction-their kind of sex-and we’ve got to make the audience aware of it in their terms. If you can somehow get across a statuesque Greek woman, with bound hair and draperies-the draperies would exactly fit what we’re imagining for the Emotional-and make it look like the paintings and sculptures everyone is familiar with, that would be the Emotional’s leitmotiv.”

“You don’t ask simple things. The slightest intrusion of a human figure will destroy the mood.” “You don’t intrude a human figure. Just the suggestion of one. It’s important. A human figure, in actual fact, may destroy the mood, but we’ll have to suggest human figures throughout. The audience has to think of these odd things as human beings. No mistake.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Cathcart, dubiously.

“Which brings us to another thing. The melting. The triple-sex of these things. I gather they superimpose. I gather from the book that the Emotional is the key to that. The Parental and Rational can’t melt without her. She’s the essential part of the process. But, of course, that fool, Laborian, doesn’t describe it in detail. Well, we can’t have the Rational and Parental running toward the Emotional and jumping on her. That would kill the drama at once no matter what else we might do.”

“I agree.”

“What we must do, then, and this is off the top of my head, is to have the Emotional expand, the draperies move out and enswathe (if that’s the word) both Parental and Rational. They are obscured by the draperies and we don’t see exactly how it’s done but they get closer and closer until they superimpose.”

“We’ll have to emphasize the drapery,” said Cathcart. “We’ll have to make it as graceful as possible in order to get across the beauty of it, and not just the eroticism. We’ll have to have music.”

“Not the Romeo and Juliet overture, please. A slow waltz, perhaps, because the melting takes a long time. And not a familiar one. I don’t want the audience humming along with it. In fact, it would be best if it comes in occasional bits so that the audience gets the impression of a waltz, rather than actually hearing it.”

“We can’t see how to do it, until we try it and see what works.”

“Everything I say now is a first-order suggestion that may have to be yanked about this way and that under the pressure of actual events. And what about the orgasm? We’ll have to indicate that somehow.”

“Color.”

“Hmm.”

“Better than sound, Jonas. You can’t have an explosion. I wouldn’t want some kind of eruption, either. Color. Silent color. That might do it.”

“What color? I don’t want a blinding flash, either. “

“No. You might try a delicate pink, very slowly darkening, and then toward the end suddenly becoming a deep, deep red.”

“I’m not sure. We’ll have to try it out. It must be unmistakable and moving and not make the audience giggle or feel embarrassed. I can see ourselves running through every color change in the spectrum, and, in the end, finding that it will depend on what you do subliminally. And that brings us to the triple-beings.”

“The what?”

“You know. After the last melting, the superimposition remains permanent and we have the adult form that is all three components together. There, I think, we’ll have to make them more human. Not human, mind you. Just more human. A faint suggestion of human form, not just subliminal, either. We’ll need a voice that is somehow reminiscent of all three, and I don’t know how the recorder can make that work. Fortunately, the triple-beings don’t appear much in the story.”

Willard shook his head. “ And that brings us to the rough fact that the compu-drama might not be a possible project at all.”

“Why not? You seem to have been offering potential solutions of all kinds for the various problems.”

“Not for the essential part. look! In King Lear, we had human characters, more than human characters. You had searing emotions. What have we got here? We have funny little cubes and ovals and drapery. Tell me how my Three in One is going to be different from an animated cartoon?”

“For one thing, an animated cartoon is two-dimensional. Even with elaborate animation it is flat, and its coloring is without shading. It is invariably satiricial-”

“I know all that. That’s not what I want you to tell me. You’re missing the important point. What a compu-drama has, that a mere animated cartoon does not, are subliminal suggestions such as can only be created by a: complex computer in the hands of an imaginative genius. What my compu-drama has that an animated cartoon doesn’t is you, Meg.”

“Well, I was being modest. “

“Don’t be. I’m trying to tell you that everything -everything- is going to depend on you. We have a story here that is dead serious. Our Emotional is trying to save Earth out of pure idealism; it’s not her world. And she doesn’t succeed, and she won’t succeed in my version, either. No cheap, happy ending.”

“Earth isn’t exactly destroyed.”

“No, it isn’t. There’s still time to save it if Laborian ever gets around to doing a sequel, but in this story the attempt fails. It’s a tragedy and I want it treated as one-as tragic as Lear. No funny voices, no humorous actions, no satirical touches. Serious. Serious. Serious. And I’m going to depend on you to make it so. It will be you who makes sure that the audience reacts to the Rational, the Emotional, the Parental, as though they were human beings. All their peculiarities will have to melt away and they’ll have to be recognized as intelligent beings on a par with humanity, if not ahead of it. Can you do it?”

Cathcart said dryly, “It looks as though you will insist I can.” “I do so insist.”

“Then you had better see about getting the ball rolling, and you leave me alone while you’re doing it. I need time to think. Lots of time.”

The early days of the shooting were an unmitigated disaster. Each member of the crew had his copy of the book, carefully, almost surgically trimmed, but with no scenes entirely omitted.

“We’re going to stick to the course of the book as closely as we can, and improve it as we go along just as much as we can,” Willard had announced confidently. “ And the first thing we do is get a hold on the triple-beings.”

He turned to the head voice-recorder. “How have you been working on that?” “I’ve tried to fuse the three voices. “

“Let’s hear. All right, everyone quiet.”

“I’ll give you the Parental first,” said the recorder. There came a thin, tenor voice, out of key with the blockish figure that the Image man had produced. Willard winced slightly at the mismatch, but the Parental was mismatched-a masculine mother. The Rational, rocking slowly back and forth, had a somewhat self-important voice; enunciation over-careful, and it was a light baritone.

Willard interrupted. “Less rocking in the Rational. We don’t want the audience to become seasick. He rocks when he is deep in thought, and not all the time.”

He then nodded his head at Dua’s draperies, which seemed quite successful, as did her clear and infinitely sweet soprano voice.

“She must never shriek,” said Willard, severely, “not even when she is in a passion.”

“She won’t,” said the recorder. “The trick is, though, to blend the voices in setting up the triple- being, in having each one distantly identifiable.”

All three voices sounded softly, the words not clear. They seemed to melt into each other and then the voice could be heard enunciating.

Willard shook his head in immediate discontent. “No, that won’t do at all. We can’t have three voices in a kind of intimate patchwork. We’d be making the triple-being a figure of fun. We need one voice which somehow suggests all three.”

The voice-recorder was clearly offended. “It’s easy to say that. How do you suggest we do it?”

“I do it,” said Willard, brutally, “by ordering you to do it. I’ll tell you when you have it. And Cathcart-where is Cathcart?”

“Here I am,” she said, emerging from behind her instrumentation. “Where I’m supposed to be.”

“I don’t like the sublimination, Cathcart. I gather you tried to give the impression of cerebral convolutions.”

“For intelligence. The triple-beings represent the intelligence-peak of these aliens.”

“Yes, I understand, but what you managed to do was to give the impression of worms. You’ll have to think of something else. And I don’t like the appearance of the triple-being, either. He looks just like a big Rational.”

“He is like a big Rational,” said one of the imagists.

“Is he described in the book that way?” asked Willard, sharply. “Not in so many words, but the impression I get-”

“Never mind your impression. I’ll make the decisions.”

Willard grew fouler-tempered as the day wore on. At least twice he had difficulty controlling his passion, the second time coming when he happened to notice someone watching the proceedings from a spot at one edge of the lot.

He strode toward him angrily. “What are you doing here?”

It was Laborian, who answered quietly, “Watching. “

“Our contract states-”

“That I am to interfere in the proceedings in no way. It does not say I cannot watch quietly.” “You’ll get upset if you do. This is the way preparing a compudrama works. There are lots of glitches to overcome and it would be upsetting to the company to have the author watching and disapproving.”

“I’m not disapproving. I’m here only to answer questions if you care to ask them.” “Questions? What kind of questions?”

Laborian shrugged. “I don’t know. Something might puzzle you and you might want a suggestion.”

“I see,” said Willard, with heavy irony, “so you can teach me my business.”

“No, so I can answer your questions.”

“Well, I have one.”

“Very well,” and Laborian produced a small cassette recorder. “If you’ll just speak into this and say that you are asking me a question and wish me to answer without prejudicing the contract, we’re in business.”

Willard paused for a considerable time, staring at Laborian as though he suspected trickery of some sort, then he spoke into the cassette.

“Very well,” said Laborian. “What’s your question?”

“Did you have anything in mind for the appearance of the triple-being in the book?” “Not a thing,” said Laborian, cheerfully.

“How could you do that?” Willard’s voice trembled as though he were holding back a final “you idiot” by main force.

“Easily. What I don’t describe, the reader supplies in his own mind. Each reader does it differently to suit himself, I presume. That’s the advantage of writing. A compu-drama would have an enormously larger audience than a book could have, but you must pay for that by having to present an image.”

“I understand that,” said Willard. “So much for the question, then.” “Not at all. I have a suggestion.”

“Like what?”

“Like a head. Give the triple-being a head. The Parental has no head, nor the Rational, nor the Emotional, but all three look up to the triple-beings as creatures of intelligence beyond their own. That is the entire difference between the triple-beings and the three Separates. Intelligence.”

“A head?”

“Yes. We associate intelligence with heads. The head contains the brain, it contains the sense organs. Omit the head and we cannot believe in intelligence. The headless oysters or clams are mollusks that seem no more intelligent to us than a spring of grass would be, but the related octopus, also a mollusk, we accept as possibly intelligent because it has a head-and eyes. Give the triple-being eyes, too.”

Work had, of course, ceased on the set. Everyone had gathered in as closely as they thought judicious to listen to the conversation between director and author.

Willard said, “What kind of head?”

“ Your choice. All you need is a bulge suggesting a head. And eyes. The viewer is sure to get the idea.”

W illard turned away, shouting, “Well, get back to work. Who called a vacation? Where are the imagists? Back to the machine and begin trying out heads.”

He turned suddenly and said, in an almost surly fashion, to Laborian. “Thank you! “ “Only if it works,” said Laborian, shrugging.

The rest of the day was spent in testing heads, searching for one that was not a humorous bulge, and not an unimaginative copy of the human head, and eyes that were not astonished circles or vicious slits.

Then, finally, Willard called a halt and growled, “We’ll try again tomorrow. If anyone gets any brilliant thoughts overnight, give them to Meg Cathcart. She’ll pass on to me any that are worth it.” And he added, in an annoyed mutter, “I suppose she’ll have to remain silent.”

Willard was right and wrong. He was right. There were no brilliant ideas handed to him, but he was wrong for he had one of his own.

He said to Cathcart, “Listen, can you get across a top hat?”

“A what?”

“The sort of thing they wore in Victorian times. Look, when the Parental invades the lair of the triple-beings to steal an energy source, he’s not an impressive sight in himself, but you told me you could just get across the idea of a helmet and a long line that will give the notion of a spear. He’ll be on a knightly quest.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, “but it might not work. We’ll have to try it out.”

“Of course, but that points the direction. If you have just a suggestion of a top hat, it will give the impression of the triple-being as an aristocrat. The exact shape of the head and eyes becomes less crucial in that case. Can it be done?”

“Anything can be done. The question is: will it work? “

“We’ll try it.”

And as it happened, one thing led to another. The suggestion of the top hat caused the voice- recorder to say, “Why not give the triple-being a British accent? “

Willard was caught off-guard. “Why?”

“Well, the British have a language with more tones than we do. At least, the upper classes do. The American version of English tends to be flat, and that’s true of the Separates, too. If the triple-being spoke British rather than English, his voice could rise and fall with the words-tenor and baritone and even an occasional soprano squeak. That’s what we would want to indicate with the three voices out of which his voice was formed.”

“Can you do that?” said Willard. “I think so.”

“Then we’ll try. Not bad-if it works.”

It was interesting to see how the entire group found themselves engaged in the Emotional.

The scene in particular where the Emotional was fleeing across the face of the planet, where she had her brief set-to with the other Emotionals caught at everyone.

Willard said tensely, “This is going to be one of the great dramatic scenes. We’ll put it out as widely as we can. It’s going to be draperies, draperies, draperies, but they must not be entangled one with the other. Each one must be distinct. Even when you rush the Emotionals in toward the audience I want each set of draperies to be a different off-white. And I want Dua’s drapery to be distinct from all of them. I want her to glitter a little, just to be different, and because she’s our Emotional. Got it?”

“Got it,” said the leading imagist. “We’ll handle it.”

“And another thing. All the other Emotionals twitter. They’re birds. Our Emotional doesn’t twitter, and she despises the rest because she’s more intelligent than they are and she knows it. And when she’s fleeing-” he paused, and brooded a bit. “Is there any way we can get away from the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’?”

“ W e don’t want to,” said the soundman promptly. “Nothing better for the purpose has ever been written.”

Cathcart said, “Yes, but we’ll only have snatches of it now and then. Hearing a few bars has the effect of the whole, and I can insert the hint of tossing manes.” “Manes?” said Willard, dubiously.“

Absolutely. Three thousand years of experience with horses has pinned us down to the galloping stallion as the epitome of wild speed. All our mechanical devices are too static, however fast they go. And I can arrange to have the manes just match, emphasize, and punctuate the flowing of the draperies.”

“That sounds good. We’ll try it.”

Willard knew where the final stumbling block would be found. The last melting. He called the troupe together to lecture them, partly to make sure they understood what it was they were all doing now, partly to put off the time of reckoning when they would actually try to put it all into sound, image, and sublimination.

He said, “ All right, the Emotional’s interest is in saving the other world-Earth-only because she can’t bear the thought of the meaningless destruction of intelligent beings. She knows the triple-beings are carrying through a scientific project, necessary for the welfare of her world and caring nothing for the danger into which it puts the alien world-us.

“She tries to warn the alien world and fails. She knows, at last, that the whole purpose of melting is to produce a new set of Rational, Emotional and Parental, and then, with that done, there is a final melting that would turn the original set into a triple-being. Do you have that? It's a sort of larval form of Separates and an adult form of triples.

“But the Emotional doesn't want to melt. She doesn't want to produce the new generation. Most of all, she doesn't want to become a triple-being and participate in what she considers their work of destruction. She is, however, tricked into the final melt and realizes too late that she is not only going to be a triple-being but a triple-being who will be, more than any other, responsible for the scientific project that will destroy the other world.

“All this Laborian could describe in words, words, words, in his book, but we've got to do it more immediately and more forcefully, in images and sublimination as well. That's what we're now going to try to do.”

They were three days in the trying before Willard was satisfied.

The weary Emotional, uncertain, stretching outward, with Cathcart's sublimination instilling the feeling of not-sure, not-sure. The Rational and Parental enfolded and coming together, more rapidly than on previous occasions-hurrying for the superimposition before it might be stopped-and the Emotional realizing too late the significance of it all and struggling-struggling-

And failure. The drenching feeling of failure as a new triple-being stepped out of the superimposition, more nearly human than anyone else in the compu-drama-proud, indifferent.

The scientific procedure would go on. Earth would continue the downward slide.

And somehow this was it-this was the nub of everything that Willard was trying to do-that within the new triple-being the Emotional still existed in part. There was just the wisping of drapery and the viewer was to know that the defeat was not final after all.

The Emotional would, somehow, still try, lost though it was in a greater being.

They watched the completed compu-drama, all of them, seeing it for the first time as a whole and not as a collection of parts, wondering if there were places to edit, to reorder. (Not now, thought Willard, not now. Afterwards, when he had recovered and could look at it more objectively.)

He sat in his chair, slumped. He had put too much of himself into it. It had seemed to him that it contained everything he wanted it to contain; that it did everything he wanted to have done; but how much of that was merely wishful thinking?

When it was over and the last tremulous, subliminal cry of the defeated-but-not-yet-defeated Emotional faded, he said, “Well.”

And Cathcart said, “That’s almost as good as your King Lear was, Jonas.”

There was a general murmur of agreement and Willard cast a cynical eye about him. Wasn’t that what they would be bound to say, no matter what?

His eye caught that of Gregory Laborian. The writer was expressionless, said nothing.

Willard’s mouth tightened. There at least he could expect an opinion that would be backed, or not backed, by gold. Willard had his hundred thousand. He would see now whether it would stay electronic.

He said, and his own uncertainty made him sound imperious, “Laborian. I want to see you in my office.”

They were together alone for the first time since well before the compu-drama had been made. “Well?” said Willard. “What do you think, Mr. Laborian?”

Laborian smiled. “That woman who runs the subliminal background told you that it was almost as good as your King Lear was, Mr. Willard.”

“I heard her.”

“She was quite wrong. “ “In your opinion?”

“Yes. My opinion is what counts right now. She was quite wrong. Your Three in One is much better than your King Lear.”

“Better?” Willard’s weary face broke into a smile.

“Much better. Consider the material you had to work with in doing King Lear. You had William Shakespeare, producing words that sang, that were music in themselves; William Shakespeare producing characters who, whether for good or evil, whether strong or weak, whether shrewd or foolish, whether faithful or traitorous, were all larger than life; William Shakespeare, dealing with two overlapping plots, reinforcing each other and tearing the viewers to shreds.

“What was your contribution to King Lear? You added dimensions that Shakespeare lacked the technological knowledge to deal with; that he couldn’t dream of; but the fanciest technologies and all that your people and your own talents could do could only build somewhat on the greatest literary genius of all time, working at the peak of his power.

“But in Three in One, Mr. Willard, you were working with my words which didn’t sing; my characters, which weren’t great; my plot which tore at no one. You dealt with me, a run-of-the-mill writer and you produced something great, something that will be remembered long after I am dead. One book of mine, anyway, will live on because of what you have done.

“Give me back my electronic hundred thousand, Mr. Willard, and I will give you this.”

The hundred thousand was shifted back from one financial card to the other and, with an effort, Laborian then pulled his fat briefcase onto the table and opened it. From it, he drew out a box, fastened with a small hook. He unfastened it carefully, and lifted the top. Inside it glittered the gold pieces, each one marked with the planet Earth, the western hemisphere on one side, the eastern on the other. Large gold pieces, two hundred of them, each worth five hundred globo-dollars.

Willard, awed, plucked out one of the gold pieces. It weighed about one and a quarter ounces. He threw it up in the air and caught it.

“Beautiful,” he said.

“It’s yours, Mr. Willard,” said Laborian. “Thank you for doing the compu-drama for me. It is worth every piece of that gold.”

Willard stared at the gold and said, “You made me do the compu-drama of your book with your offer of this gold. To get this gold, I forced myself beyond my talents. Thank you for that, and you are right. It was worth every piece of that gold.”

He put the gold piece back in the box and closed it. Then he lifted the box and handed it back to Laborian.