The Best of Margaret St. Clair

SHORT IN THE CHEST

The girl in the marine-green uniform turned up her hearing aid a trifle—they were all a little deaf, from the cold-war bombing—and with an earnest frown regarded the huxley that was seated across the desk from her.

“You’re the queerest huxley I ever heard of,” she said flatly. “The others aren’t at all like you.”

The huxley did not seem displeased at this remark. It took off its windowpane glasses, blew on them, polished them on a handkerchief, and retu rned them to its nose. Sonya’s turning up the hearing aid had activated the short in its chest again; it folded its hands protectively over the top buttons of its dove-gray brocaded waistcoat.

“And in what way, my dear young lady, am I different from other huxleys?” it asked.

“Well— you tell me to speak to you frankly, to tell you exactly what is in my mind. I’ve only been to a huxley once before, but it kept talking about giving me the big, overall picture, and about using dighting[1] to transcend myself. It spoke about in-group love, and intergroup harmony, and it said our basic loyalty must be given to Defense, which in the cold-war emergency is the country itself.

“You’re not like that at all, not at all philosophic. I suppose that’s why they’re called huxleys—because they’re philosophic rob—I beg your pardon.”

“Go ahead and say it,” the huxley encouraged. “I’m not shy. I don’t mind being called a robot.”

“I might have known. I guess that’s why you’re so popular. I never saw a huxley with so many people in its waiting room.”

“I am a rather unusual robot,” the huxley said, with a touch of smugness. “I’m a new model, just past the experimental stage, with unusually complicated relays. But that’s beside the point. You haven’t told me yet what’s troubling you.”

The girl fiddled nervously with the control of her hearing aid. After a moment she turned it down; the almost audible sputtering in the huxley’s chest died away.

“It’s about the pigs,” she said.

“The pigs!” The huxley was jarred out of its mechanical calm. “You know, I thought it would be something about dighting,” it said after a second. It smiled winningly. “It usually is.”

“Well… it’s about that too. But the pigs were what started me worrying. I don’t know whether you’re clear about my rank. I’m Major Sonya Briggs, in charge of the Zone 13 piggery.”

“Oh,” said the huxley.

“Yes… Like the other armed services, we Marines produce all our own food. My piggery is a pretty important unit in the job of keeping up the supply of pork chops. Naturally, I was disturbed when the newborn pigs refused to nurse.

“If you’re a new robot, you won’t have much on your memory coils about pigs. As soon as the pigs are born, we take them away from the sow—we use an aseptic scoop—and put them in an enclosure of their own with a big nursing tank. We have a recording of a sow grunting, and when they hear that they’re supposed to nurse. The sow gets an oestric, and after a few days she’s ready to breed again. The system is supposed to produce a lot more pork than letting the baby pigs stay with the sow in the old-fashioned way. But as I say, lately they’ve been refusing to nurse.

“No matter how much we step up the grunting record, they won’t take the bottle. We’ve had to slaughter several litters rather than let them starve to death. And at that the flesh hasn’t been much good—too mushy and soft. As you can easily see, the situation is getting serious.”

“Um,” the huxley said.

“Naturally, I made full reports. Nobody has known what to do. But when I got my dighting slip a couple of times ago, in the space marked ‘Purpose,’ besides the usual rubber-stamped ‘To reduce interservice tension’ somebody had written in: ‘To find out from Air their solution of the neonatal pig nutrition problem.’

“So I knew my dighting opposite number in Air was not only supposed to reduce intergroup tension, but also I was supposed to find out from him how Air got its newborn pigs to eat.” She looked down, fidgeting with the clasp of her musette bag.

“Go on,” said the huxley with a touch of severity. “I can’t help you unless you give me your full confidence.”

“Is it true that the dighting system was set up by a group of psychologists after they’d made a survey of interservice tension? After they’d found that Marine was feuding with Air, and Air with Infantry, and Infantry with Navy, to such an extent that it was cutting down overall Defense efficiency? They thought that sex relations would be the best of all ways of cutting down hostility and replacing it with friendly feelings, so they started the dighting plan?”

“You know the answers to those questions as well as I do,” the huxley replied frostily. “The tone of your voice when you asked them shows that they are to be answered with ‘Yes.’ You’re stalling, Major Briggs.”

“It’s so unpleasant… What do you want me to tell you?”

“Go on in detail with what happened after you got your blue dighting slip.”

She shot a glance at him, flushed, looked away again, and began talking rapidly. “The slip was for next Tuesday. I hate Air for dighting, but I thought it would be all right. You know how it is—there’s a particular sort of kick in feeling oneself change from a cold sort of loathing into being eager and excited and in love with it. After one’s had one’s Watson, I mean.

“I went to the neutral area Tuesday afternoon. He was in the room when I got there, sitting in a chair with his big feet spread out in front of him, wearing one of those loathsome leather jackets. He stood up politely when he saw me, but I knew he’d just about as soon cut my throat as look at me, since I was Marine. We were both armed, naturally.”

“What did he look like?” the huxley broke in.

“I really didn’t notice. Just that he was Air. Well, anyway, we had a drink together. I’ve heard they put cannabis in the drinks they serve you in the neutral areas, and it might be true. I didn’t feel nearly so hostile to him after I’d finished my drink. I even managed to smile, and he managed to smile back. He said, We might as well get started, don’t you think?’ So I went in the head.

“I took off my things and left my gun on the bench beside the wash basin. I gave myself my Watson in the thigh.”

“The usual Watson?” the huxley asked as she halted. “Oestric and anticoncipient injected subcutaneously from a sterile ampule?”

“Yes. He’d had his Watson too, the priapic, because when I got back…” She began to cry.

“What happened after you got back?” the huxley queried after she had cried for a while.

“I just wasn’t any good. No good at all. The Watson might have been so much water for all the effect it had. Finally he got sore. He said, ‘What’s the matter with you? I might have known anything Marine was in would get loused up.’ “

“That made me angry, but I was too upset to defend myself. ‘Tension reduction!’ he said. ‘This is a fine way to promote interservice harmony. I’m not only not going to sign the checking-out sheet, I’m going to file a complaint against you to your group.’”

“Oh, my,” said the huxley.

“Yes, wasn’t it terrible? I said, ‘If you file a complaint, I’ll file a countercharge. You didn’t reduce my tension, either.’

“We argued about it for a while. He said that if I filed countercharges there’d be a trial and I’d have to take Pentothal and then the truth would come out. He said it wasn’t his fault! He’d been ready.

“I knew that was true, so I began to plead with him. I reminded him of the cold war, and how the enemy were about to take Venus, when all we had was Mars. I talked to him about loyalty to Defense and I asked him how he’d feel if he was kicked out of Air. And finally, after what seemed like hours, he said he wouldn’t file charges. I guess he felt sorry for me. He even agreed to sign the checking-out sheet.

“That was that. I went back to the head and put on my clothes and we both went out. We left the room at different times, though, because we were too angry to smile at each other and look happy. Even as it was, I think some of the neutral-area personnel suspected us.”

“Is that what’s been worrying you?” the huxley asked when she seemed to have finished.

“Well… I can trust you, can’t I? You really won’t tell?”

“Certainly I won’t. Anything told to a huxley is a privileged communication. The first amendment applies to us, if to no other profession.”

“Yes. I remember there was a Supreme Court decision about freedom of speech…” She swallowed, choked, and swallowed again. “When I got my next dighting slip,” she said bravely, “I was so upset I applied for a gyn. I hoped the doctor would say there was something physically wrong with me, but he said I was in swell shape. He said, A girl like you ought to be mighty good at keeping interservice tension down.’ So there wasn’t any help there.

“Then I went to a huxley, the huxley I was telling you a-bout. It talked philosophy to me. That wasn’t any help either. So—finally—well, I stole an extra Watson from the lab.”

There was a silence. When she saw that the huxley seemed to have digested her revelation without undue strain, she went on, “I mean, an extra Watson beyond the one I was issued. I couldn’t endure the thought of going through another dight like the one before. There was quite a fuss about the ampule’s being missing. The dighting drugs are under strict control. But they never did find out who’d taken it.”

“And did it help you? The double portion of oestric?” the huxley asked. It was prodding at the top buttons of its waistcoat with one forefinger, rather in the manner of one who is not quite certain he feels an itch.

“Yes, it did. Everything went off well. He—the man—said I was a nice girl, and Marine was a good service, next to Infantry, of course. He was Infantry. I had a fine time myself, and last week when I got a request sheet from Infantry asking for some pig pedigrees, I went ahead and initialed it..That tension reduction does work. I’ve been feeling awfully jittery, though. And yesterday I got another blue dighting slip.

“What am I to do? I can’t steal another Watson. They’ve tightened up the controls. And even if I could, I don’t think one extra would be enough. This time I think it would take two.”

She put her head down on the arm of her chair, gulping desperately.

“You don’t think you’d be all right with just one Watson?” the huxley asked after an interval. “After all, people used to dight habitually without any Watsons at all.”

“That wasn’t interservice dighting. No, I don’t think I’d be all right. You see, this time it’s with Air again. I’m supposed to try to find out about porcine nutrition. And I’ve always particularly hated Air.”

She twisted nervously at the control of her hearing aid. The huxley gave a slight jump. “Ah—well, of course you might resign,” it said in a barely audible voice.

Sonya— in the course of a long-continued struggle there is always a good deal of cultural contamination, and if there were girls named Sonya, Olga, and Tatiana in Defense, there were girls named Shirley and Mary Beth to be found on the enemy’s side—Sonya gave him an incredulous glance. “You must be joking. I think it’s in very poor taste. I didn’t tell you my difficulties for you to make fun of me.”

The huxley appeared to realize that it had gone too far.

“Not, at all, my dear young lady,” it said placatingly. It pressed its hands to its bosom. “Just a suggestion. As you say, it was in poor taste. I should have realized that you’d rather die than not be Marine.”

“Yes, I would.”

She turned the hearing aid down again. The huxley relaxed. “You may not be aware of it, but difficulties like yours are not entirely unknown,” it said. “Perhaps, after a long course of oestrics, antibodies are built up. Given a state of initial physiological reluctance, a forced sexual response might… But you’re not interested in all that. You want help. How about taking your troubles to somebody higher? Taking them all the way up?”

“You mean—the CO?” The huxley nodded.

Major Briggs’ face flushed scarlet. “I can’t do that! I just can’t! No nice girl would. I’d be too ashamed.” She beat on her musette bag with one hand, and began to sob.

Finally she sat up. The huxley was regarding her patiently. She opened her bag, got out cosmetics and mirror, and began to repair emotion’s ravages. Then she extracted an electronically powered vibro-needle from the depths of her bag and began crafting away on some indeterminate white garment.

“I don’t know what I’d do without my crafting,” she said in explanation. “These last few days, it’s all that’s kept me sane. Thank goodness it’s fashionable to do crafting now. Well, I’ve told you all about my troubles. Have you any ideas?”

The huxley regarded her with faintly protruding eyes. The vibro-needle clicked away steadily, so steadily that Sonya was quite unaware of the augmented popping in the huxley’s chest. Besides, the noise was of a frequency that her hearing aid didn’t pick up any too well.

The huxley cleared its throat. “Are you sure your dighting difficulties are really your fault?” it asked in an oddly altered voice.

“Why— I suppose so. After all, there’s been nothing wrong with the men either time.” Major Briggs did not look up from her work.

“Yes, physiologically. But let’s put it this way. And I want you to remember, my dear young lady, that we’re both mature, sophisticated individuals, and that I’m a huxley, after all. Supposing your dighting date had been with… somebody in… Marine. Would you have had any difficulty with it?”

Sonya Briggs put down her crafting, her cheeks flaming. “With a group brother? You have no right to talk to me like that!”

“Now, now. You must be calm.”

The sputtering in the huxley’s chest was by now so loud that only Sonya’s emotion could have made her deaf to it. It was so well-established that even her laying down the vibro-needle had had no effect on it.

“Don’t be offended,” the huxley went on in its unnatural voice. “I was only putting a completely hypothetical case.”

“Then… supposing it’s understood that it’s completely hypothetical and I would never, never dream of doing a thing like that… then, I don’t suppose I’d have had any trouble with it.” She picked up the needle once more.

“In other words, it’s not your fault. Look at it this way. You’re Marine.”

“Yes.” The girl’s head went up proudly. “I’m Marine.”

“Yes. And that means you’re a hundred times—a thousand times—better than any of these twerps you’ve been having to dight with. Isn’t that true? Just in the nature of things. Because you’re Marine.”

“Why— I guess it is. I never thought of it before like that.”

“But you can see it’s true now, when you think of it. Take that date you had with the man from Air. How could it be your fault that you couldn’t respond to him, somebody from Air} Why, it was his fault—it’s as plain as the nose on your face—his fault for being from a repulsive service like Air!”

Sonya was looking at the huxley with parted lips and shining eyes. “I never thought of it before,” she breathed. “But it’s true. You’re right. You’re wonderfully, wonderfully right!”

“Of course I am,” said the huxley smugly. “I was built to be right. Now, let’s consider this matter of your next date.”

“Yes, let’s.”

“You’ll go to the neutral area, as usual. You’ll be wearing your miniBAR won’t you?”

“Yes, of course. We always go in armed.”

“Good. You’ll go to the head and undress. You’ll give yourself your Watson. If it works—”

“It won’t. I’m almost sure of it.”

“Hear me out. As I was saying, if it works, you’ll dight. If it doesn’t you’ll be carrying your miniBAR.”

“Where?” asked Sonya, frowning.

“Behind your back. You want to give him a chance. But not too good a chance. If the Watson doesn’t work”—the huxley paused for dramatic effect—“get out your gun and shoot him. Shoot him through the heart. Leave him lying up against a bulkhead. Why should you go through a painful scene like the one you just described for the sake of a yuk from Air?”

“Yes— but—” Sonya had the manner of one who, while striving to be reasonable, is none too sure that reasonableness can be justified. “That wouldn’t reduce interservice tension effectively.”

“My dear young lady, why should interservice tension be reduced at the expense of Marine? Besides, you’ve got to take the big overall view. Whatever benefits Marine, benefits Defense.”

“Yes… That’s true… I think you’ve given me good advice.”

“Of course I have! One thing more. After you shoot him, leave a note with your name, sector, and identity number on it. You’re not ashamed of it.”

“No… No… But I just remembered. How can he give me the pig formula when he’s dead?”

“He’s just as likely to give it to you dead as when he was alive. Besides, think of the humiliation of it. You, Marine, having to lower yourself to wheedle a thing like that out of Air! Why, he ought to be proud, honored, to give the formula to you.”

“Yes, he ought.” Sonya’s lips tightened. “I won’t take any nonsense from him,” she said. “Even if the Watson works and I dight him, I’ll shoot him afterwards. Wouldn’t you?”

“Of course. Any girl with spirit would.”

Major Briggs glanced at her watch. “Twenty past! I’m overdue at the piggery right now. Thank you so much.” She beamed at him. “I’m going to take your advice.”

“I’m glad. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

She walked out of the room, humming. “From the halls of Montezuma…”

Left alone, the huxley interchanged its eyes and nose absently a couple of times. It looked up at the ceiling speculatively, as if it wondered when the bombs from Air, Infantry, and Navy were going to come crashing down. It had had interviews with twelve young women so far, and it had given them all the same advice it had given Major Briggs. Even a huxley with a short in its chest might have foreseen that the final result of its counseling would be catastrophic for Marine.

It sat a little while longer, repeating to itself, “Poppoff, Poppoff. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.”

Its short was sputtering loudly and cheerfully; it hunted around on the broadcast sound band until it found a program of atonal music that covered the noise successfully. Though its derangement had reached a point that was not far short of insanity, the huxley still retained a certain cunning.

Once more it repeated “Poppoff Poppoff,” to itself. Then it went to the door of its waiting room and called in its next client.