by John Sladek
‘An experimental observation?’
‘Why not? Three years later, he was making a sea voyage, taking along an automaton girl, whom he called “ma fille Francine”.’
‘Too good to be true! What happened to her?’
‘Destroyed by superstition. He brought her aboard the ship in a box. The captain peeked inside, saw her move, and, thinking her the work of the Devil, threw her overboard.’
‘Another mystery of Prague down the drain,’ he said.
‘Three centuries later Karel Čapek put on his play R.U.R. in Prague, and added the word robot to the world’s vocabulary. Čapek was born in Prague, too.’
‘It’s always Prague – the Infant, the golem, Rossum’s Universal Robots – you begin to wonder what was really going on there?’
Outside it was spring, warm enough for students to lie on the lawn with bag lunches and define their terms in arguments, if they were not better occupied cuddling or daydreaming or dozing or throwing frisbees.
‘… a surrealist musical, he calls it Hello Dali …’
‘But hey listen, the Golden Section …’
‘Basically I guess I must be a Manichee, I always see two sides to everything …’
‘… this Golden Section, this computer worked it out to thousands of decimal places, I still don’t know what it is exactly …’
‘… to match up these thousands of potsherds, only the program went wrong. That or else the Beaker people made a beaker without a mouth, so much for Keats …’
‘La vie électrique, by Albert Robida.’
‘Br’er Robbie …?’
‘Ah ah ah!’
Someone sneezed, someone spoke of spring the sweet spring. A frisbee player stepped on a tuna salad sandwich. Someone looking quickly through a book on Rodin remarked that some of his stuff wouldn’t be bad when it was finished.
A few heads turned as a woman in white passed. Her long hair, in sunlight the colour of clean copper, hung long over her shoulders and back, all but obscuring the legend on the back of her white coveralls: SANDRO’S SHELL SERVICE.
Down the line, heads were turning for a different reason as Lyle Tate passed, coming the other way. The birthmark down his cheek was darker than usual because he was angry; it rendered one side of his face a mask of infinite fury, its eye weeping ink. He and the woman in white met by the frisbee players.
‘What is it? Weren’t we meeting at the Faculty Club bar?’
‘Nothing, I just can’t – we’ll have to go have lunch somewhere else, Shirl.’
‘Lyle, what’s wrong?’
‘I met that sonofabitch Gary Indiana, that’s all. I just can’t stay in the room with him, not after what he did to my one-man show, did you see his review?’
‘No. Look let’s skip lunch, we can just sit down here on the grass and talk this out, can’t we?’
He sat down but continued to wave a clipping from a slick art magazine. ‘After this I’ll be lucky if the department doesn’t drop me, that’s all.’
‘It looks like a long review for a bad one.’
His face twisted more. ‘That’s the worst of it, he pretends to like my work, then tears it apart – I mean for instance getting the titles of the paintings wrong! Cigar Tragic he changes to Cigarette Tragedy, the palindrome was the whole point of the title, the whole painting is a visual palindrome with Castro’s exploding Havana mirroring the vaudeville gag, was trying to show the comic-book minds behind it, but no not only does he change the name he spends half the review talking about America’s position on puppet governments, turns out to be some fucking speech he ghosted for General Fleischman – you see what I’m up against? And he claims it’s all some problem with his word processor, a page of speech got slipped in by mistake. Can that happen?’
She shrugged. ‘If he’s an idiot.’
‘He’s – I don’t know what he is, talks about me handling my faeces and then says the word processor put in an e, it was faces I don’t know what to believe. And it keeps getting worse, listen to this: “Tate, handling his faeces with a skill that betokens a savouring of every movement and at the same time reminds us of his personal affliction, piles on de tail.” Can a word processor really do this? Wreck my whole future like this?’
She nudged him. ‘Hey look, one of those fraternity boys going by – he looks just like you in profile.’
Lyle did not look. ‘My good side, no doubt. But just tell me, you’re the expert, can a word processor make all those mistakes?’
‘Yes and no, Lyle. In any case, why didn’t this Indiana character read his copy over before transmitting it? Why didn’t his editor catch anything? Even with direct setting somebody’s supposed to read the stuff.’
‘Then somebody’s out to get me.’
‘With a reamer, Lyle.’
Someone spoke of spring training. A frisbee player stepped on a Rodin book, while someone opened a tuna sandwich to study it. Someone sneezed, unblessed.
‘Brother Robbie, come on.’
Time for a class.
*
‘We can say for example that a work of art resembles other works of art in that it is art, but it differs from them in that it is a different work, not too hard to follow that, is it? And this blend of similarity and difference, this tension serves not only to place the work in the field but to move the field itself in some specific direction. In the same way, if we use an iterative algorithm to calculate the value say of pi, we may get 3 the first time through, then 3.1, then 3.14 and so on. Each new value is in part like its predecessor, but in part different. And the movement is towards a true value, which we might call an ideal …’
As usual, the lecture was reaching less than half the class at any moment. By some law, eleven of the twenty-one students were always lost in sleep or diversions.
In the first row, only Ali was dozing off while the rest were alert. In the second row, Fergusen and Gage were playing tic-tac-toe, though the rest took notes. In the third row, only Klein and Loomis paid attention, while the other three were having a whispered political discussion. In the fourth row, only Potter was staring towards the lectern; the rest were otherwise occupied.
Alone in the last row sat Robert Underwood Robey (the boy they called ‘Robbie’) sound asleep as always.
Gage won the game and took lecture notes, while Fergusen began a new game with Halley. Morris stopped discussing politics long enough to scribble a note or two, while Loomis started cutting his nails.
Ali awoke just as Blake began to daydream. Halley won the game and went back to work, while Fergusen mulled over new strategy and Ingersoll looked at a knitting pattern. Morris commenced an elaborate doodle and O’Toole unwrapped a sandwich while between them Noble took in the lecture. Potter borrowed a newspaper from Quaglione, who attended the lecture.
While Ingersoll folded up the knitting pattern and resumed listening, Jones developed a leg cramp that took precedence. Immediately behind Jones, O’Toole put down the sandwich and observed the lecturer while Noble started reading a popular novel whose protagonist was a pigeon.
Black snapped out of the daydream as Clayburn turned to borrow a pencil or pen from Gage. Fergusen followed the lecture, while behind him Klein played with a ‘15’ puzzle and Loomis started taking notes. Quaglione put in an earphone and listened to the ball game. Reed woke up.
Jones’s cramp ceased as Ingersoll took another look at the knitting pattern. Noble put down the novel while O’Toole picked up the sandwich.
Clayburn took notes while Drumm fell asleep. Gage and Halley began a political discussion. Morris stopped doodling while Noble read more of the pigeon’s adventures. Reed began a crossword puzzle, and Smith stopped worrying about money and paid attention.
Since Gage refused to argue any more, Halley took up the political discussion with Ingersoll. Loomis started examining his scalp for dandruff, while Noble finished a chapter and took notes again.
Drumm came alert as Esperanza began a game of connect-the-dots with J
ones; behind him. Halley tried to read Hegel while Ingersoll tried to catch up with the lecture. Noble read more of the pigeon; O’Toole finished lunch and took notes. Smith went back to financial worries on the back of an envelope, while Teller stopped looking at pictures of pubic hair and noticed the lecture.
Halley too at last preferred the lecture to Hegel, as Ingersoll began knitting and Morris began an even more elaborate doodle. Noble put down his book for a few last notes as the lecture ended.
In the cafeteria Robbie sat alone at an empty formica table among other formica tables ranged, with their fibreglass chairs (many occupied), in ranks and files across an acre of thermoplastic tile floor. At other tables drama students talked of Meyerhold’s bio-mechanics, music students talked of red noise generators, art students talked of mimetic sculpture.
‘Calamital,’ someone at one table was saying. ‘Or Equapace. And the dark red ones must be Trancalept. I got some Risibal here someplace.’ A finger stirred among the bright beads spread on a table napkin.
‘You got any Fenrisol, though?’ Allbright asked.
‘Naw, you gotta ask Dave Coppola, his old man’s a doctor in the U Hospital psycho ward, he can get anything. All I got here is street medication, Ultracalm or Agonistyl, Anxifran and here’s Somrepose …’
Allbright’s dirty fingers selected a few pills, dropped a few crumpled bills as he lurched to his feet, his black baseball cap with a skull-and-crossbones just missing a tray going past in the hands of someone saying:
‘… actually had somebody ask if I cut holes in dogs’ heads to watch them drool, that’s all people know about behaviourism. That or they think it’s all rats – watch it! – and reflexes …’
Allbright lurched again, rounding a table where someone was saying, ‘… Olimpia, Antonia, Nani, Swanhilda, La Poupée de Nurnberg, La Fille aux yeux d’émail …’ and came to a table with a familiar face.
The face showed no recognition as Allbright sat down. ‘I am sorry, this table is reserved, sir or madam.’
‘Hey it’s me. Remember?’
‘I am saving this table for members of Digamma Upsilon Nu only.’
‘Don’t worry, I only want to sit here for a minute.’ Allbright tilted his chair back, and glanced around. ‘This place never changes: same people, same plastics, same tuneless background music behind empty talk within walls of no colour, no colour at all. I miss it.’ He swallowed a pill. ‘Yes, I miss it. I don’t just come back here to score for pills, I – any more than the salmon leaps and leaps all the way upriver just to drop a few eggs. No, it’s just being in the mob, being in the swim. Returning to the scene of the crime I should have committed. Okay, I didn’t poach the salmon.’
After a few minutes, Allbright said, ‘Salmon is very wise, according to the Irish, that’s why Yeats put it on the money – okay I’ve been quoting Yeats, self-pity on a stick, the young in each other’s orifices, so what? So what? So what?’
After another pause, Allbright said, ‘This is where you say, “Well, how’s the old poetry going, Allbright? Wrote any good poems lately?”’
Robbie said, ‘Well, how’s the old poetry going, Allbright? Wrote any good poems lately?’
‘So you talk, anyway. You are talking. There is a talker here … Any good poems? No. Poems all finished. Just waiting now for the holy fire. Just waiting for the Grecian goldsmiths to get their asses in gear and prepare the holy fire. You say something?’
Pause. ‘I seem to have said everything anyway. I’m turning into an automaton that keeps making little jokes, Jarrell said that about Auden only at least Auden had been one of the five or six best poets in the world first, maybe good poets and bad can be refined in the holy fire though, why not end up a gold automaton, might become one of the gold mechanical women helping Hephaestus at his forge, “machines for making more machines”, why not?’
Allbright put his head down on the formica and went to sleep. Robbie sat motionless, apparently listening to background music: ‘Moon River’, ‘Carioca’, ‘A Certain Smile’, ‘Hello Dolly’, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, ‘Sunshine Balloon’ and ‘Love Walked In’, After an interval, ‘Moon River’ began again.
‘Germ warfare? That sounds sick,’ said Indica. Dr Tarr had heard it before, but Col. Shagg, who had the seat next to the window, laughed and winked.
‘You folks coming to Bimibia to entertain the troops by any chance? You got some great material there.’
Tarr leaned forward. ‘What troops? There aren’t any American troops in Bimibia, are there?’
Shagg winked again. ‘Well we’re getting together a little outfit, you might call us mercenaries, we’re just down there to pull General Bami’s irons out of the fire.’
‘General who?’ Indica asked. ‘You mean there’s some kind of war going on? We never heard a word about it.’
Dr Tarr nodded. ‘I’m supposed to be going down to set up a market survey for a frozen yoghurt firm, but if things are that unstable I’m not so sure. Maybe we’ll just get off the plane at Gocringsburg and catch the next flight to Cairo instead of going on to Himmlerville.’
The Colonel laughed and winked more. ‘No sweat, kids. The whole country’s a lot safer than New York. We’re just going down to make it a whole lot safer.’
Tarr wondered who we included. The other passengers on the plane did not, so far as he could tell, resemble mercenaries. There were two nuns in the distinctive gingham habits of a Wyoming order; hungover ore salesmen on their way home from a convention; the crew and cast of the low-budget film Ratstar who, to save luggage charges, wore their gaudy spacesuits and silver lamé capes; a minor Ruritanian envoy who had, it was said, committed an indecency with a Senate page; a noisy contingent of haemophiliacs en route to a clinic in Dar, their gloved hands gesticulating as they talked excitedly of new experimental cures ahead; a score of silent South Africans who would turn out to be lawyers specializing in dental malpractice suits, returning from a world conference in Miami; a party of schoolchildren on a cultural visit to Mali (or, as some of their teachers thought, Malawi); a frightened-looking man who would turn out to be that most romantic of fugitives, a bank clerk fleeing from a deficit.
Seeing Indica refusing her dinner, Col Shagg said, ‘Mind if I grab it? Hate to see food wasted.’
‘Be my guest.’
‘Ain’t had a chance to grab a bite all day. Big push on, spent the day setting up our logistics net. KOWs and RDMs, more materiel support than my boys could use in a month of D-days. Course, with a local beef like this, you never get a chance to use the KOWs.’
‘What are those?’
‘Khaki Operations Weapon, all-purpose GTG missile launcher, damn things cost half a million apiece, I’d like to get some mileage out of ’em before we have to scrap ’em. Obsolescence, damn arms salesmen nowadays keep six jumps ahead of you, you buy the latest gadget and before the ink’s dry on the contract they run out of spare parts. In the past few years I bought – oh yeah, I remember this Mark II Carthage warhead, you know? Neat, it’s supposed to blow radioactive salt all over the place, wipes out the city and poisons the livestock too, you know? I had to scrap it within six months. Six months! Never even got the chance to use it. I tell you, these arms salesmen get away with murder. And they call us mercenaries!’
Indica watched him sprinkling salt over his dinner, then she went off to the toilet to be sick.
Col. Shagg turned his attention to Dr Tarr and launched into a history of Bimibia, which had been a Dutch slave depot, a French prison colony, a British trading post and a Belgian diamond colony. When Germany seized it during the First World War, no diamonds had yet been found. Belgium did not ask for it back at Versailles, and Germany forgot she owned it (an absent-minded Colonial Office clerk named it Deutsche Ostwest Afrika). In the 1930s, Germany was swept by a wonderful theory that the earth is not convex but concave. This Hollow Earth Theory convinced not only the public but the government, who sent an expedition of mining engineers to the African colony, with
orders to try drilling through to the outside. It was this that began Bimibia’s mining industry, seized by South Africa after the Second World War. When the vanadium ran out, South Africa offered to grant Bimibia a kind of independence. A puppet king was enthroned, schools forbidden, and the tobacco companies invited to open plantations. Yet even while the palace guard were running up the new flag (a crowned B) the rest of the army were talking mutiny. In just a week, the colours of General Dada went up (Gold on sky blue: the letters SPQR surmounting a sunburst over the words Honi soit qui mal y pense). Before he was driven into exile by the Bimibian Liberation Army of General Bobo, the Emperor Dada massacred half the population. General Bobo in turn was driven back by a mercenary army supporting the tobacco-company troops of General Bami Goering. Waiting in the wings too were East German forces from Hermosa, a Portuguese colony which after independence had brought in the East Germans to rid itself of the Albanian-Chinese technicians who had come to replace the CIA agents who’d countered the –
At this point the colonel’s narrative was interrupted by an announcement:
‘This plane is now in the control of the Bimibian Liberation Army. Remain in your seats and no one will be shot.’
‘Damn it,’ said the colonel with admiration. ‘I wish I’d pulled this off. This General Bobo must be a real wargamer.’
XVII
The panel discussion drew a large and noisy audience to Agnew Memorial Auditorium. Probably some came because it was sponsored by the Science Fiction Club, and they approved of science fiction; just as others were probably attracted by the panel of distinguished names. Many, perhaps, came because they had nothing better to do this evening. No few were intrigued by the advertised title, ‘Are Machines Getting Too Smart for Their Own Good?’ But the largest and noisiest part of the audience, without question, came to see DIMWIT. DIMWIT was an intelligent or pseudo-intelligent machine. DIMWIT was chairing the panel discussion.
Robbie and his brothers had good seats in the front row (he’d been saving the seats for them all day); this was even worth missing an evening at the Pitcher O’ Suds.
