Return to Otherness (1962) SSC

by Henry Kuttner

  “Hello,” he said.

  Dr. Farr’s distant voice sounded loud in the still, hot room. Michaela and Phil sat like carved figures under the bright overhead light. Presently Melton said, “No. No, we changed our minds. We’re not going to move.”

  He hung up.

  Hibernation, he thought. The process had cumulative acceleration. For this was the house that Jack built. This was the den that Jack built. Some races - not human races - may need periods of hibernation. And they will build robot machines - very simple machines - to care for them while they sleep.

  Adaptable machines. Machines that can adapt to other organisms. Human organisms. With a difference.

  Hibernation for Jack - yes. But for Melton and Michaela and Phil - it wouldn’t work out in quite the same manner. For they were not of Jack’s breed or race.

  “We’re never going to move,” Melton said softly, and saw that it was 1:03.

  Within the walls the machine stirred, recharging itself. Moonlight came through the windows, distorted by some quality in the clear panes. The three figures sat motionless, not even waiting now, in the house that Jack built.

  THE PROUD ROBOT

  Things often happened to Gallegher, who played at science by ear. He was, as he often remarked, a casual genius. Sometimes he’d start with a twist of wire, a few batteries, and a button hook, and before he finished, he might contrive a new type of refrigerating unit.

  At the moment he was nursing a hangover. A disjointed, lanky, vaguely boneless man with a lock of dark hair falling untidily over his forehead, he lay on the couch in the lab and manipulated his mechanical liquor bar. A very dry Martini drizzled slowly from the spigot into his receptive mouth.

  He was trying to remember something, but not trying too hard. It had to do with the robot, of course. Well, it didn’t matter.

  “Hey, Joe,” Gallegher said.

  The robot stood proudly before the mirror and examined its innards. Its hull was transparent, and wheels were going around at a great rate inside.

  “When you call me that,” Joe remarked, “whisper. And get that cat out of here.”

  “Your ears aren’t that good.”

  “They are. I can hear the cat walking about, all right.”

  “What does it sound like?” Gallegher inquired, interested.

  “Jest like drums,” said the robot, with a put-upon air. “And when you talk, it’s like thunder.” Joe’s voice was a discordant squeak, so Gallegher meditated on saying something about glass houses and casting the first stone. He brought his attention, with some effort, to the luminous door panel, where a shadow loomed - a familiar shadow, Gallegher thought.

  “It’s Brock,” the annunciator said. “Harrison Brock. Let me in!”

  “The door’s unlocked.” Gallegher didn’t stir. He looked gravely at the well-dressed, middle-aged man who came in, and tried to remember. Brock was between forty and fifty; he had a smoothly massaged, cleanshaven face, and wore an expression of harassed intolerance. Probably Gallegher knew the man. He wasn’t sure. Oh, well.

  Brock looked around the big, untidy laboratory, blinked at the robot, searched for a chair, and failed to find it. Arms akimbo, he rocked back and forth and glared at the prostrate scientist.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Never start conversations that way,” Gallegher mumbled, siphoning another Martini down his gullet. “I’ve had enough trouble today. Sit down and take it easy. There’s a dynamo behind you. It isn’t very dusty, is it?”

  “Did you get it?” Brock snapped. “That’s all I want to know. You’ve had a week I’ve a check for ten thousand in my pocket. Do you want it, or don’t you?”

  “Sure,” Gallegher said. He extended a large, groping hand. “Give.”

  “Caveat emptor. What am I buying?”

  “Don’t you know?” the scientist asked, honestly puzzled.

  Brock began to bounce up and down in a harassed fashion. “My God,” he said. “They told me you could help me if anybody could. Sure. And they also said it’d be like pulling teeth to get sense out of you. Are you a technician or a drivelling idiot?”

  Gallegher pondered. “Wait a minute. I’m beginning to remember. I talked to you last week, didn’t I?”

  “You talked -” Brock’s round face turned pink. “Yes! You lay there swilling liquor and babbled poetry. You sang ‘Frankie and Johnnie.’ And you finally got around to accepting my commission.”

  “The fact is,” Gallegher said, “I have been drunk. I often get drunk. Especially on my vacation. It releases my subconscious, and then I can work. I’ve made my best gadgets when I was tizzied,” he went on happily. “Everything seems so clear then. Clear as a bell. I mean a bell, don’t I? Anyway -” He lost the thread and looked puzzled. “Anyway, what are you talking about?”

  “Are you going to keep quiet?” the robot demanded from its post before the mirror.

  Brock jumped. Gallegher waved a casual hand. “Don’t mind Joe. I just finished him last night, and I rather regret it.”

  “A robot?”

  “A robot. But he’s no good, you know. I made him when I was drunk, and I haven’t the slightest idea how or why. All he’ll do is stand there and admire himself. And sing. He sings like a banshee. You’ll hear him presently.”

  With an effort Brock brought his attention back to the matter in hand. “Now look, Gallegher. I’m in a spot. You promised to help me. If you don’t, I’m a ruined man.”

  “I’ve been ruined for years,” the scientist remarked. “It never bothers me. I just go along working for a living and making things in my spare time. Making all sorts of things. You know, if I’d really studied, I’d have been another Einstein. So they tell me. As it is, my subconscious picked up a first-class scientific training somewhere. Probably that’s why I never bothered. When I’m drunk or sufficiently absent-minded, I can work out the damnedest problems.”

  “You’re drunk now,” Brock accused.

  “I approach the pleasanter stages. How would you feel if you woke up and found you’d made a robot for some unknown reason, and hadn’t the slightest idea of the creature’s attributes?”

  “Well -”

  “I don’t feel that way at all,” Gallegher murmured. “Probably you take life too seriously, Brock. Wine is a mocker; strong drink is raging. Pardon me. I rage.” He drank another Martini.

  Brock began to pace around the crowded laboratory, circling various enigmatic and untidy objects. “If you’re a scientist, Heaven help science.”

  “I’m the Larry Adler of science,” Gallegher said. “He was a musician - lived some hundreds of years ago, I think I’m like him. Never took a lesson in my life. Can I help it if my subconscious likes practical jokes?”

  “Do you know who I am?” Brock demanded.

  “Candidly, no. Should I?”

  There was bitterness in the other’s voice. “You might have the courtesy to remember, even though it was a week ago. Harrison Brock. Me. I own Vox-View Pictures.”

  “No,” the robot said suddenly, “it’s no use. No use at all, Brock.”

  “What the -”

  Gallegher sighed wearily. “I forget the damned thing’s alive. Mr. Brock, meet Joe. Joe, meet Mr. Brock - of Vox-View.”

  Joe turned, gears meshing within his transparent skull. “I am glad to meet you, Mr. Brock. Allow me to congratulate you on your good fortune in hearing my lovely voice.”

  “Ugh,” said the magnate inarticulately. “Hello.”

  “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” Gallegher put in, sotto voce. “Joe’s like that. A peacock. No use arguing with him either.”

  The robot ignored this aside. “But it’s no use, Mr. Brock,” he went on squeakily. “I’m not interested in money. I realize it would bring happiness to many if I consented to appear in your pictures, but fame means nothing to me. Nothing. Consciousness of beauty is enough.”

  Brock began to chew his lips. “Look,” he said savagely, “I didn’t come here to offer you
a picture job. See? Am I offering you a contract? Such colossal nerve - Pah! You’re crazy.”

  “Your schemes are perfectly transparent,” the robot remarked coldly. “I can see that you’re overwhelmed by my beauty and the loveliness of my voice - its grand tonal qualities. You needn’t pretend you don’t want me, just so you can get me at a lower price. I said I wasn’t interested.”

  “You’re cr-r-razy!” Brock howled, badgered beyond endurance, and Joe calmly turned back to his mirror.

  “Don’t talk so loudly,” the robot warned. “The discordance is deafening. Besides you’re ugly and I don’t like to look at you.” Wheels and cogs buzzed inside the transplastic shell. Joe extended his eyes on stalks and regarded himself with every appearance of appreciation.

  Gallegher was chuckling quietly on the couch. “Joe has a high irritation value,” he said. “I’ve found that out already. I must have given him some remarkable senses, too. An hour ago he started to laugh his damn fool head off. No reason, apparently. I was fixing myself a bite to eat. Ten minutes after that I slipped on an apple core I’d thrown away and came down hard. Joe just looked at me. ‘That was it,’ he said. ‘Logics of probability. Cause and effect. I knew you were going to drop that apple core and then step on it when you went to pick up the mail.’ Like the White Queen, I suppose. It’s a poor memory that doesn’t work both ways.”

  Brock sat on the small dynamo - there were two, the larger one named Monstro, and the smaller one serving Gallegher as a bank - and took deep breaths. “Robots are nothing new.”

  “This one is. I hate its gears. It’s beginning to give me an inferiority complex. Wish I knew why I’d made it,” Gallegher sighed. “Oh, well. Have a drink?”

  “No. I came here on business. Do you seriously mean you spent last week building a robot instead of solving the problem I hired you for?”

  “Contingent, wasn’t it?” Gallegher asked. “I think I remember that.”

  “Contingent,” Brock said with satisfaction. “Ten thousand, if and when.”

  “Why not give me the dough and take the robot? He’s worth that. Put him in one of your pictures.”

  “I won’t have any pictures unless you figure out an answer,” Brock snapped. “I told you all about it.”

  “I have been drunk,” Gallegher said. “My mind has been wiped clear, as by a sponge. I am as a little child. Soon I shall be as a drunken little child. Meanwhile, if you’d care to explain the matter again -”

  Brock gulped down his passion, jerked a magazine at random from the bookshelf, and took out a stylo. “All right. My preferred stocks are at twenty-eight, way below par -” He scribbled figures on the magazine.

  “If you’d taken that medieval folio next to that, it’d have cost you a pretty penny,” Gallegher said lazily. “So you’re the sort of guy who writes on tablecloths, eh? Forget this business of stocks and stuff. Get down to cases. Who are you trying to gyp?”

  “It’s no use,” the robot said from before its mirror. “I won’t sign a contract. People may come and admire me, if they like, but they’ll have to whisper in my presence.”

  “A madhouse,” Brock muttered, trying to get a grip on himself. “Listen, Gallegher. I told you all this a week ago, but -”

  “Joe wasn’t here then. Pretend like you’re talking to him.”

  “Uh - look. You’ve heard of Vox-View Pictures, at least.”

  “Sure. The biggest and best television company in the business. Sonatone’s about your only competitor.”

  “Sonatone’s squeezing me out.”

  Gallegher looked puzzled. “I don’t see how. You’ve got the best product. Tn-dimensional color, all sorts of modern improvements, the top actors, musicians, singers -”

  “No use,” the robot said. “I won’t.”

  “Shut up, Joe. You’re tops in your field, Brock. I’ll hand you that. And I’ve always heard you were fairly ethical. What’s Sonatone got on you?”

  Brock made helpless gestures. “Oh, it’s politics. The bootleg theaters. I can’t buck ‘em. Sonatone helped elect the present administration, and the police just wink when I try to have the bootleggers raided.”

  “Bootleg theaters?” Gallegher asked, scowling a trifle. “I’ve heard something -”

  “It goes way back. To the old sound-film days. Home television killed sound film and big theaters. People were conditioned away from sitting in audience groups to watch a screen. The home televisors got good. It was more fun to sit in an easy-chair, drink beer, and watch the show. Television wasn’t a rich man’s hobby by that time. The meter system brought the price down to middle-class levels. Everybody knows that.”

  “I don’t,” Gallegher said. “I never pay attention to what goes on outside of my lab, unless I have to. Liquor and a selective mind. I ignore everything that doesn’t affect me directly. Explain the whole thing in detail, so I’ll get a complete picture. I don’t mind repetition. Now, what about this meter system of yours?”

  “Televisors are installed free. We never sell ‘em; we rent them. People pay according to how many hours they have the set tuned in. We run a continuous show, stage plays, wire-tape films, operas, orchestras, singers, vaudeville - everything. If you use your televisor a lot, you pay proportionately. The man comes around once a month and reads the meter. Which is a fair system. Anybody can afford a Vox-View. Sonatone and the other companies do the same thing, but Sonatone’s the only big competitor I’ve got. At least, the only one that’s crooked as hell. The rest of the boys - they’re smaller than I am, but I don’t step on their toes. Nobody’s ever called me a louse,” Brock said darkly.

  “So what?”

  “So Sonatone has started to depend on audience appeal. It was impossible till lately - you couldn’t magnify tn-dimensional television on a big screen without streakiness and mirage-effect. That’s why the regular three-by-four home screens were used. Results were perfect. But Sonatone’s bought a lot of the ghost theaters all over the country -”

  “What’s a ghost theater?” Gallegher asked.

  “Well - before sound films collapsed, the world was thinking big. Big - you know? Ever heard of the Radio City Music Hall? That wasn’t in it! Television was coming in, and competition was fierce. Sound-film theaters got bigger and more elaborate. They were palaces. Tremendous. But when television was perfected, nobody went to the theaters any more, and it was often too expensive a job to tear ‘em down. Ghost theaters - see? Big ones and little ones. Renovated them. And they’re showing Sonatone programs. Audience appeal is quite a factor. The theaters charge plenty, but people flock into ‘em. Novelty and the mob instinct.”

  Gallegher closed his eyes. “What’s to stop you from doing the same thing?”

  “Patents,” Brock said briefly. “I mentioned that dimensional television couldn’t be used on big screens till lately. Sonatone signed an agreement with me ten years ago that any enlarging improvements would be used mutually. They crawled out of that contract. Said it was faked, and the courts upheld them. They uphold the courts - politics. Anyhow, Sonatone’s technicians worked out a method of using the large screen. They took out patents - twenty-seven patents, in fact, covering every possible variation on the idea. My technical staff has been working day and night trying to find some similar method that won’t be an infringement, but Sonatone’s got it all sewed up. They’ve a system called the Magna. It can be hooked up to any type of televisor - but they’ll only allow it to be used on Sonatone machines. See?”

  “Unethical, but legal,” Gallegher said. “Still, you’re giving your customers more for their money. People want good stuff. The size doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah,” Brock said bitterly, “but that isn’t all. The newstapes are full of A. A. - it’s a new catchword. Audience Appeal. The herd instinct. You’re right about people wanting good stuff - but would you buy Scotch at four a quart if you could get it for half that amount?”

  “Depends on the quality. What’s happening?”

  “Boot
leg theaters,” Brock said. “They’ve opened all over the country. They show Vox-View products, and they’re using the Magna enlarger system Sonatone’s got patented. The admission price is low - lower than the rate of owning a Vox-View in your own home. There’s audience appeal. There’s the thrill of something a bit illegal. People are having their Vox-Views taken out right and left. I know why. They can go to a bootleg theater instead.”

  “It’s illegal,” Gallegher said thoughtfully.

  “So were speakeasies, in the Prohibition Era. A matter of protection, that’s all. I can’t get any action through the courts. I’ve tried. I’m running in the red. Eventually I’ll be broke. I can’t lower my home rental fees on Vox-Views. They’re nominal already. I make my profits through quantity. Now, no profits. As for these bootleg theaters, it’s pretty obvious who’s backing them.”

  “Sonatone?”

  “Sure. Silent partners. They get the take at the box office. What they want is to squeeze me out of business, so they’ll have a monopoly. After that, they’ll give the public junk and pay their artists starvation salaries. With me it’s different. I pay my staff what they’re worth - plenty.”

  “And you offered me a lousy ten thousand,” Gallegher remarked. “Uh-huh!”

  “That was only the first installment,” Brock said hastily. “You can name your own fee. Within reason,” he added.

  “I shall. An astronomical sum. Did I say I’d accept the commission a week ago?”

  “You did.”

  “Then I must have had some idea how to solve the problem.” Gallegher pondered. “Let’s see. I didn’t mention anything in particular, did I?”

  “You kept talking about marble slabs and … uh … your sweetie.”

  “Then I was singing,” Gallegher explained largely. “‘St. James Infirmary.’ Singing calms my nerves, and God knows they need it sometimes. Music and liquor. I often wonder what the vintners buy -”

  “What?”

  “One half so precious as the stuff they sell. Let it go. I am quoting Omar. It means nothing. Are your technicians any good?”