The Reproductive System (Gollancz SF Library)

by John Sladek

  ‘Look! I yanked this off it!’ Jack exhibited a valve handle,

  wheel-shaped, apparently made of gold.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Cautiously Cal scraped the handle against a rough stone until the steel showed through. There was about a quarter-inch of gold about a steel core. ‘Looks as if it’s being used for rustproofing. It’s gold all right.’

  ‘Then that’s the best use for it,’ Daisy stoutly declared.

  ‘Even though it isn’t solid gold, there’s still enough there to make us all rich!’ Brian said ‘Rich, my dear!’ He took both of Daisy’s hands in his, but she drew them away.

  ‘Gold is the root of all evil,’ she said tonelessly.

  ‘Now there you are wrong, my dear. It isn’t gold that’s the root of all evil, but the love of gold. Cupiditas. And as far as that goes, I hate gold as much as the next man. But do be a dear, my dear, and let us, this once, prosper.’

  ‘Prosper!’ As she inhaled the word, Daisy’s nostrils began to dilate. ‘Prosper! If you have no more sense than to clamber up there and fool with dangerous machinery, so be it! Go ahead and prosper!’ The nostrils continued dilating. ‘If you are so hungry for gold, add this to your treasury!’

  And tearing off her engagement ring (she had to resort at last to the milk van and find some rancid butter to slather on it, but finally succeeded), she threw it at him.

  ‘If that is the way you wish to behave, woman, I am your humble servant, to be sure!’ the Professor shouted, and colour began mounting in his veinous neck. But it had not crept up to his eyebrows when Brian was disconcerted by Daisy’s sobbing. Her great, red-rimmed eyes, long over-burdened, now fairly exploded tears over her face.

  At the sight of this tall, thick statue of a woman so far forgetting her goddess-like composure as to weep, Brian himself burst into tears. Running to her, he slipped the ring back on her still-slathered finger.

  ‘I don’t want this gold, my dear,’ he sobbed, and for once almost forgot to make a figure of speech, ‘this, or any other!’

  Harry made a disgusted sound. ‘Women make a guy soft,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ Jack chuckled, rubbing his hands together. ‘I guess that leaves just the three of us.’

  ‘Count me out,’ said Cal. ‘I’ve been doing some thinking. In the first place, we haven’t any guarantee we’ll ever get out of here (or, if out of here, to any place where gold is valuable again). In the second place, I don’t see any way of getting at it,

  other than by melting down the whole machine or bringing it all with us—which doesn’t seem likely,’ he added, eyeing the thirty-pound handle.

  ‘In the third place, maybe it belongs to someone else—a small point, but one worth considering, since as far as we know the laws of Nevada or Utah are still operating, and people have a way of defending their property with arms. I can’t believe anyone walked off and left this to take care of itself. No, I’m sure this is a piece of the Reproductive System, which brings us to the fourth place.

  ‘The Reproductive System is even more finicky about its property than people. It has a nasty way of defending itself against vandalism. I’d be very careful how I approached it, if I were to approach it at all.’

  ‘Careful? As a favour to you, I suppose?’ Harry sneered.

  ‘Should I go on?’ Cal asked. ‘In the fifth place, I saw a movie once called The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, in which it turned out that the real danger attached to handling gold is—’

  ‘Why don’t you skip all that intellectual malarky?’ Harry shouted, his voice hoarse with fury. ‘Either you’re scared of the law or else you just can’t stand me to have anything of my own. Is that it? Just because I discovered it, this gold ain’t good enough for you, huh? First you took away my girl, then you got rid of her, and now you want to take away my steam engine. Well, it’s mine! Jack and I are going up there and take it apart now, and anyone who follows us is gonna be sorry!’ Harry patted his gun.

  The two men strode off up the hill, their identical natty summer hats trimmed to an identical angle. They went into the cabin. Cal, Brian and Daisy remained rooted to the spot, not knowing what to think of Harry’s wanton outburst. A few minutes passed.

  Then a shot rang out, followed by two more in rapid succession. The echoes had not died away when Jack reeled out of the cabin door, the front of his pale suit turning black with blood. He staggered a few steps down the slope towards them, pitched forward and rolled the rest of the way down. When he reached the bottom his hat was still on, still at an elegant angle.

  Cal turned him over and loosened his collar. This was all the first aid he could think of.

  ‘He’s crazy,’ Jack whispered. ‘I wanted to take it kind of easy

  —you see, that thing is still running full blast, and neither of us know anything about dismantling steam engines—I was afraid it might blow up or something. I wanted to take it slow, maybe shut it off first. He got angry, I don’t know why, I guess he figures I was chicken. “Take it easy?” he said. “As a favour to you, I suppose. Boy, that really is rich.” He said it two or three times, as he shot me:

  ‘“That really is rich.” ’

  Jack coughed, fell back, and lost the thread of his narrative.

  Ts he—?’ Daisy asked.

  A sudden concussion smote the ground like a giant drumhead, flinging them all off their feet. The little cabin vanished in a bulbous flash that sprouted at once, growing into a tall flower of black smoke. Clouds of steam and dust boiled out from its base. A weak-rooted tree peeled off the cliff above, adding its crash to the clatter of ratchel and debris. When it ended, it was as if the little cabin had never been.

  There was no use looking for Harry, but they did. Straw from his hat, a scrap of shoe leather, some of the fabric from his suit—still wrinkle-free—were all they found of him. They buried these with Jack, and put two crosses on the grave. Brian recited a suitable elegy by Thomas Gray. Cal would always remember pan of it:

  Their scaly armour’s Tyrian hue

  Thro’ richest purple to the view

  Betrayed a golden gleam

  By midafternoon, using the gold valve handle—the only gold the three of them ever saw—as bait, they picked up another ride eastward. It was a grocery van.

  CHAPTER XIX

  WELTSCHMERZ

  ‘Nature has placed man under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do.’

  BENTHAM

  ‘I don’t think I quite understand,’ Aurora stammered. At Smilax’s announcement shock had so stiffened her features that she was barely able to speak.

  ‘You mean, perhaps, you don’t believe me,’ he said with pleasant pedantry. ‘Then come, I’ll show you.’ Taking her arm just above the elbow in a grip that hurt, he steered Aurora through what seemed to be a dentist’s office, down several corridors, and into a conference room. A giant screen covering one wall displayed, in blue-lighted outline, a map of North America.

  ‘Sit down, please. Now, just so we won’t misunderstand one another, you are going to become my employee. I am, as you know, head of Project 32.’

  ‘And if I no longer wish to work for Project 32?’

  ‘You have no choice, as I’ll shortly explain. In any case, before long to be alive will mean to work, in some capacity, for Project 32. In a short time there will exist nothing else, only Project 32, only the Reproductive System, in my world. Let me show you.’

  He touched a button on the arm of a chair and a yellow dot appeared on the map. ‘That is NORAD.’ As he touched other controls, a red area spread from the dot, like inflammation from a pimple. Well over a third of the United States, Aurora saw, was engulfed in red. Other comedos appeared yellow in the redness, and the doctor pointed them out. ‘You see our other production centres, so to speak, our nuclei in Millford, Altoona and Las Vegas.’

  ‘How were you able to get control of them?’

  ‘A young lab worker at Millford,
Calvin Potter, “shut off” the System after a disastrous demonstration. I let it be known that the System was absolutely finished. In reality, of course, it had merely gone underground with my help—literally underground, for it made its way via caverns and abandoned mine tunnels to

  Altoona. From there it took the territory you see.

  ‘These are my latest acquisitions,’ he added proudly, and lighted two yellow dots at Washington DC. ‘They have an interesting history. Last evening, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were here. I managed to introduce into the briefcase of one of them a kind of “living time-bomb”. I’ve been in constant contact with the Pentagon since, over NORAD’s hot line, and I’m happy to say that the giant game theory computer there—the military’s war brain—is now mine. I have, without firing a shot, rendered the United States helpless.

  ‘The other mark represents the State Department. Another cell insinuated itself into their mail room; it is sending replicas of itself in diplomatic pouches to our embassies and consulates all over the world. It should not be long before we begin to hear from various world capitals, I should think.’

  A half-dozen more yellow dots appeared, like an outbreak of acne. ‘Fort Knox, Pittsburg, Birmingham, some of the industrial sections of Los Angeles are ours,’ he said, ‘though not in every case aware of it. Fully automated factories may be taken over with a minimum of trouble and waste, quietly. Ah, I wish I had only perfectible machines to deal with, instead of frail flesh! But alas, sooner or later, one must encounter the—’ he made a grimace ‘—the human element. One must inform the public who’s in charge, and that, Dr. Candlewood, is partly why I need your help.’

  ‘My help? You seem to be subduing the world quite on your own doctor,’ she said, assuming a tone of irritation to hide the depth of her shock. ‘I don’t see how I can be of the slightest assistance.’

  ‘But you can, and in two ways. First, I am interested in structuring the relationship between the System and the people so that it is not only clear who is slave, who master, but also in a way in which the slaves can see no alternatives. In short, I want you to make the Reproductive System almost omnipotent and inscrutable—a maze, let us say, which the rats can never solve.

  ‘As I see it, this can come about in only one way: We must make the System not only cruel, but arbitrarily cruel, without regard for the behaviour of its subjects. The Nazi concentration camps were a model of this sort of treatment, as you may know. There, guards beat prisoners savagely and deliberately very often—and seldom with any purpose. So too do I wish the Reproductive System to treat its slaves, as a child treats toys: now

  playing with them, now tearing them to bits, as the mood seizes it.

  ‘The psychological effects will be most gratifying. The reasoning powers of the slaves will grow dim, and slack will appear in their thinking. They will be less and less able to cope with their environment, more and more willing to submit to it. They develop superstitions in regard to the System; they will make feeble attempts to placate it or cheat its punishments, but all in vain.’

  Aurora, still dazed, nodded vaguely.

  ‘I have left nothing undone which it lay within my power to do, Dr. Candlewood, to make this work. But now I need a behavioural psychologist of your calibre to fill in the gaps. You must train the System.’

  ‘Train it? But towards what goal? World domination is a fictive goal, Dr. Smilax, hardly an end in itself. What do you plan to do with your world when you get it?’ She was amazed somewhat by her own audacity in speaking calmly and rationally about the end of the world to this madman.

  He smiled. ‘My goal? My goal is one rather difficult of achievement—ah, but worthy of any effort. It is simply this.’ Having switched the map to a polar map of the Northern Hemisphere, Smilax rose and began to pace up and down before it.

  ‘My goal,’ he said in ringing tones, ‘is the infliction of the greatest possible amount of pain upon the greatest possible number of beings, at all times, everywhere: Weltschtnerzf

  ‘It sounds mad, do you think? Yet need I remind you that life itself, in many philosophies, is equated with suffering? The greatest mystics of all world religions have known what it is to suffer—and suffering made them great. How many men of genius have suffered it would be tiresome to relate. All great moments of history have been moments of intense suffering: The persecution of the early Christians; the Black Plague; the conquest of Mexico; the Inquisition; the Reign of Terror; the World Wars.

  ‘Not to suffer is to be dead, is it not? What is suffering but the stuff of life itself, yes, and the staff of life!’ His eyes wild, he leaned across the table and painted in her face, a sour, dogbiscuit smell. ‘Yes! My rod and my staff shall console them, hahaha, and they shall hearken to,’ he cocked his head to one side, ‘their master’s voice!’

  After a moment of silence, he wiped the spittle from his lips

  and turned off the map display. ‘For you, of course, there is the reward of being the first behavioural scientist to work on such a scope,’ he said in a more rational voice. ‘Think of it, the whole world in one of your Skinner boxes! Think of the opportunities for research when you can use human subjects—for any purpose whatsoever!’

  Aurora could see he was awaiting her answer. There was clearly no way to refuse; even to appear lukewarm might be dangerous. Managing a weak smile, she murmured that she’d be happy to begin work.

  ‘Excellent! I have your first task cut out for you. Come back to the control booth.’ He led her back to the room with the long amber window, out of which she could see Grawk’s cage. ‘You can experiment on our caged animal here. I’ll demonstrate the sort of thing I’ve developed, and you will no doubt be able to make improvements.’

  Grawk lay sleeping in the cage. After pressing a button that caused the machine to prod him awake with an electric cattle prod, Smilax turned on the intercom and asked him how he felt.

  ‘What? Ow! I’m hungry,’ Grawk said, as he backed away from the prod. ‘When are you letting me out of here? And when is chow time?’

  ‘Chow time? As in breed of dog, chow?’ Smilax asked, prodding him again. ‘I don’t believe I know that expression.’

  ‘I mean—ow—when do we eat?’

  Though Grawk seemed more annoyed than hurt by the prod, Aurora could not stand watching it. She felt her stomach contract each time Smilax reached for that button. The doctor, of course, relished this ritual, as he would bear-baiting.

  ‘Actually I’m very tired,’ Aurora said. ‘Couldn’t we do this some other time? I’ve been driving all night.’

  ‘Tired?’ Smilax raised an eyebrow. ‘But the dedicated scientist must be willing always to overtire himself in the chase. We hunt truth, not comfort, Dr. Candlewood. How can you make others suffer imaginatively if you refuse to undergo a little discomfort yourself? Now then.’

  He pressed another button and a microphone boom swung out from the wall and untelescoped itself towards Grawk. In place of a microphone, it carried a banana. ‘Lunchtime,’ the doctor sang out. In a lower tone he added, ‘A little invention of mine, crude but effective.’

  The boom swung so that it stayed just out of Grawk’s reach.

  It would approach, then shy away as he grabbed. ‘Hey, what is this? What the hell—?’

  ‘It was difficult for me to train it to do just this manoeuvre.’ Smilax explained. ‘It is in the very nature of a machine to wish to complete an action once begun. It was difficult for it to grasp the gestalt of the situation—but I forget, you do not use such terms.’

  Wearying of his sport, the surgeon let Grawk capture the banana. But as the former general started to peel it, Smilax bellowed: ‘Stop! I feel I ought to warn you, Grawk—that banana is poisoned.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll die in agony if you eat so much as a bite of it.’

  Grawk looked from the banana to his inquisitor and back again. Then he laid the banana down and looked at it some more. Finally he sat down on the floor of the cage and beg
an to weep.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Smilax with a sigh. ‘I had begun to believe Grawk was not quite human. Well, I leave him in your hands, my dear. I have urgent business to attend to, and I’m sure you will have no trouble chastising him properly, heh heh. By the way, I’ll have to caution you not to leave NORAD and not to misuse the computers here, which are a part of the Reproductive System. If you should ask the computers any questions or give them any commands which contradict my explicit orders, you will be put to death. Do you understand?’

  ‘But how can I be expected to train the System without the freedom to ask it questions—’

  ‘Ah, you misunderstand me. By questions which contradict my explicit orders, I mean only a relatively few questions, such as: “How is it that Dr. Smilax retains control over such a complex, intelligent, apparently autonomous system?” or “How should I go about killing off the System?” I’m sure you know the sort of questions and commands I mean. I’ll leave it to your judgement, but I warn you, the System is intelligent. It can beat you at chess, or any other game you’d care to teach it, for example. Don’t try to fool the System.

  ‘Well, auvoir my dear, and don’t forget—take pains, take pains.’ Giggling, a slightly one-sided smile on his usually grave features, Smilax departed. Aurora sat down and covered her face with her hands.

  There was no question about what lay ahead. She was going

  to have to do just what he had warned her against, and she was going to have to get away with it. Already, as she told herself that this couldn’t possibly be happening, that it was some kind of nightmare, already another part of her brain was formulating a list of questions to ask the computer.

  She looked up and noticed that Grawk was still staring at the banana. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, go ahead and eat it!’ she said into the microphone. ‘It isn’t poisoned.’

  ‘It isn’t? How do you know?’

  ‘Because that isn’t the way Smilax’s mind works. He wouldn’t enjoy killing you half so much as making you suffer. He’s a sadist of the cheapest sort—a magnified practical joker.’