His hand stopped over the tranquillizer dispenser. He didn’t want to be tranquillized. In this, the hour of his agony, he wanted to feel, to sense the vivid ache of his loneliness. To cry. To feel the salt rush of the tears on his cheeks. To know that it was he who was there, feeling, weeping, lonely, alone.
“Nothing else meant anything,” he thought. “Only Meryl. This pad is an empty box. A coffin. A casket for the ashes of what had been just a little more than an ash itself. A something.”
No escape. Nothing to do. No dead-eyed woman to take her place. Four dead eyes between four dead walls. A new sexometer tuned to a new rhythm. No. Never. But what else could he do? Narcotics and the sensories, bud-stimulants and the pale red fluid ?
“I’m so lonely,” he groaned. Lonely. Lonely. Lonely. An empty bed at an angle of five degrees to the horizontal. Taste bud tea and the programmes. There was no one to whom he could talk. There was no one who could generate a flicker of interest in his problems, smaller and less poignant than the problems of the programmes. No one at all.
There was IT. The respect proferred to the wiser, the cleverer, the great. To these one turned in times of trouble. It was not IT’s function, of course. Comment on emotional outpourings. But somehow, IT understood. A great IT. A greater IT than any of the other ten million ITs in ten million other Workers’ pads.
“Work!” said IT.
That was the answer, of course. Work. He had really enjoyed the A alarm, the responsibility, real responsibility, even if only simulated real. The happening of something. But how did one work? At what? His shift was 1000 till 1600 hours. Fourteen hours to wait. To wait, sleepless and weeping. Swop with the night shift? Oppel! 2200 till 0400 hours. Oppel was only slightly comatose. He would listen to reason and agree. Elvin saw him up on the video. Oppel, disturbed at his programme viewing was hostile, testy, un-forthcoming and conventional.
“You can’t swop shifts,” he said. “You are conditioned to 1000 till 1600. Your efficiency is impaired if you change sequence and rhythms.”
“Please!” Elvin begged. “Just this once as a favour. We can both do the job well enough, conditioned or not.”
“Why?” Oppel asked.
“Meryl’s left me,” Elvin’s lip quivered.
“It happens,” Oppel’s eyes strayed back to his screen. They lost focus.
“Please, Oppel!”
“I’d miss my programmes and see yours. I don’t know your programmes.”
“I’ll do your shift as well as mine and you can watch both.”
“Twelve hours in a day!”
“It’s all right. I could do it. No one would know. I’ll press your button instead of mine.”
“Oh! All right!”
“Thanks Oppel!” But Oppel had already faded. Elvin could only hope that he would remember. The habit of 2200 till 0400 is hard to break. He would forget and press in at the 2200 tweet.
But Oppel apparently did remember. There was no Oppel on the travelator. Punctually on the tweet of 2200, Elvin stepped from the tunnel, nodded vacantly to the evening shift, who passed from sight without a glance of non-recognition. One Worker was very like another.
It was a long, dull shift. The lights moved in their accustomed sequence change, electronic notes sounded at intervals, demanding the register of presence, assimilation, response. He coped. He ackled. Nothing, apart from the sign-on button, demanded registration of personality and that had been simple. A depression of the “Oppel”. No As. No Bs.
0400 came far too soon. It was surprising how quickly time passed in the necessity of application. He could not face the return home. To the empty pad. To the pad where Meryl was not. At the tweet of 0400, he begged Oppel’s relief to let him do the morning shift. The relief was 75% comatose and gave no trouble. Elvin turned him about, put his hat in his hand and his iron ration dispenser under his arm and guided him back to the travelator. He returned, believing it was 1000.
The morning passed uneventfully, 1000 tweeted and he at last pressed his own “Elvin” button. He was himself again. Dubois had not noticed, if he ever used the Welfare Monitor. He was punctual on his own shift. One face was the same as another. Stay alert and the day would have passed. Twenty-four hours between him and the jolt of last night’s emotion. Time to assess. To re-assess. To think. Whether to fight back somehow, or slip into the comatose and quietly atrophy.
Stay alert! A stimulator!
A 1,2,3,4. A 8,7,6,5. Miss one. A 13,14,15,16. Below the A lights, the Bs flashed in synchronous unison. A/B 17,18,19,20. “I love her.” A/B 24,23,22,21. “Meryl come back to me!” 36,37,38,39. “I won’t atrophy, Meryl, I promise I won’t atrophy.” 48,47,46,45. “Come back to me, Meryl!” Reverse the sequence and back. A 2,3,4. A 8,7,6,5. “Meryl come back....” What was that? The A 1 missed. The B 1 missed. Warning red over A and B. A B 1 ? Reactor wild? It couldn’t be, not now on his shift. Tiredness and the stimulator? He rubbed his eyes. The red lights still glowed. My God! It was a B 1. Inform the Foreman. Foreman activated. Check reactors closed—B 2. Reactor doors still open. The Foreman! Activate B2! Oh no! The Foreman didn’t ackle on B 2. A faulty Foreman!
He screamed at the Foreman, “Ackle B 2!” The. Foreman had missed. B 2 still red. Hose nozzles functioning. Alarm. Fire brigade. Radiation disposal squad. Military. Police. Defence organizations alerted. All in order. Reactor doors still open.
“What do I do?” he screamed at the Foreman. What should he do? Routine. Inform management. Dubois. No— not Dubois, it wouldn’t be Dubois this time. This wasn’t a personnel job. This was it. This was a real B 1. Whose face was that on the screen. A physicist? An electronics director ? None of his business.
“Sir! B 1 alarm. Foreman faulty. B 2 check missed!”
The face on the screen raised dull unseeing eyes, holding for a moment a glimmer of partial animation before the thick lids fell and the flaccid mouth parted in a sigh of uncomprehending weariness, sagged and dropped open. A trickle of saliva glistened on the chin.
“He’s atrophied!”
This Thinker, this minion of management—he’s atrophied! It couldn’t be. Not a Thinker. Or could it? What was this vacant, drooling shell, this vacuous inanity? A Thinker who had thought. Once, for a while—how long ago ? Years of flawless automation, years of waiting for the fault that never came, the fault that should claim the focus of a thought. Years since a B of any sort, a B 1, perhaps, never. And the Thinkers had no IT. IT was for the Workers. A device of Management and Unions to stimulate some animation in the ceaseless checking of the automated flow. To stave off atrophy.
What was he doing, thinking and speculating on the atrophy of a physicist, an automotive engineer, whatever the Thinker was or had been? A faulty Foreman, a wild reactor, reactor doors open and himself—a Worker. Who cared ? What was a wild reactor and why should the doors be shut? He was a Worker, why should he care? He did care. The evacuation! My God! Had the message gone out? He had heard no message from the faulty Foreman, from that flashing expanse of non-ackle. What was the message? Evacuate an area of ten miles radius with all speed. Anti-radiation precautions to be taken in a fifty mile radius. The disposal squads could not warn everyone—it must go out on the screens. Radiation level? Radiation level 120 milliPennies. God what a lot of milliPennies. Whatever milliPennies were. The message had got to go out. The A was flashing on the Foreman check but the B was dead. Damn the Foreman! Think, Elvin, think!
Long ago at the Tech, what had they said about manual ? There was always a manual somewhere. What did a manual look like? What would it look like? What did it do, or what did you do to it ? Something to speak into, like a toy microphone, somewhere under cameras for the visual. Where ? Where else but on the Foreman ? He ran to the Foreman, to the maze of lights and knobs and buttons, relays and microscreens. Somewhere there must be a device that called for the grasp of a hand. A lever switch. In all his life, he had never pulled a switch. And there it was. There they all were. A lever switch, a tag marked “Manual” a
nd a microphone. For a moment, he hesitated. For a Worker to question the Foreman was unthinkable. Only management could override the Foreman and Management never did. To tinker with a Foreman was worse than sacrilege. No one ever tinkered with a Foreman.
“But,” he thought, “he’s faulty. He didn’t ackle. And the Management has atrophied.”
A hundred thousand people like himself in nearby pads and a radiation level of 120 milliPennies. He shuddered.
He pulled the lever and the Foreman died. Not a light flashed, not a needle quivered. The control room was empty, silent, a tomb with a dead Foreman and a half-dead Worker. Manual as never before. What now? A message must go out. He picked up the microphone and the cameras swivelled their focus on him. That much ackled.
“1, 2, 3, 4.” He tested. “1, 2, 3, 4,” boomed from the video-screens. He saw himself in every corner of the room. White and pasty-faced, limp sagging shoulders, insubstantial knees. A yellow boiler-suited, anti-radiation clad Worker like any other. A Worker who had just killed a Foreman.
“Emergency!” He shouted. “Wild reactor at No. 129. Map Reference H67. B 346. Radiation level 120 milliPennies. It is urgent that an area of ten miles in radius from 129 should be evacuated immediately. Anti-radiation precautions should be taken in an area of fifty miles radius. Your anti-radiation squads in the area will advise you. This is Elvin speaking—a Worker in the control. The Management has atrophied.”
Waldorf was on the video demanding to know if it was an A. Probably the disposal and evacuation squads were taking their time, none caring, none knowing that this was it.
“It’s a B!” he shouted.
Waldorf’s cheeks blanched visibly as he rummaged for his anti-rad helmet. “My leggings!” he moaned. “I’ve come without my leggings. We all have!”
“Your legs will drop off,” Elvin told him tersely and returned to the microphone. It was imperative to broadcast continually. Many of the Workers and perhaps Thinkers too, would be comatose. Only constant repetition would reach them. Over and over again on the screens until it registered. Till some semblance of urgency rubbed off.
“This is Elvin, Worker in 129, map reference H67. B 346...”
For how long he continued to broadcast, he never knew. Time lost its meaning in the exhilaration of doing. He had repeated his message at least a hundred times before he became aware of a figure standing by the travelator, watching him. A short spare man in the antique dress of a pre-automotive age. Black coat, black trousers with white stripes, a bowler hat. An umbrella. Elvin recognized at once the symbol of Higher Management. A common figure on the programmes, but rarely seen in life itself. Higher Management in person!
“Sir!” he said.
“You are Elvin?” the Higher Management asked quietly.
“Yes, sir!”
“I am the Managing Director.”
He had heard of Managing Directors. They were unbelievably important, very near to the top. Higher than High. Much higher than Dubois. He trembled.
“Tell me what happened.” Elvin was near to tears. The strain of thinking, of acting and now of cross-question was damping his last feeble rhythm to an intermittent flutter.
“There was B 1. The reactor doors stayed open—B 2. The Foreman missed the check. The A linked with the screens but the B missed the ackle.”
“So you found the manual and killed the Foreman ?”
“Did I do right, sir?”
“Sit down, Elvin.” The Managing Director steered him to the chair with the ferrule of his umbrella. “As it happens you did not do right. There was no B 1. The fault was a moth settling on a relay in the alarm circuits, unfortunately also affecting the radiation readings. But the Foreman was certainly faulty and the Management, as I have since ascertained, was indeed comatose.”
“Then it was all for nothing?” Elvin began to sob.
“No, Elvin. It was not for nothing. You thought. I am amazed to find a Thinker among my Workers. Not only this company, but the entire outside world has far too few Thinkers left. Too few to waste them here in the control room. There will be a new job for you tomorrow, Elvin. You have watched your last light sequence.”
“As a Thinker?” Elvin breathed.
“You are now Management,” the Managing Director directed. “Tomorrow, you will report to me. Tomorrow you will continue thinking.”
He patted Elvin on the shoulder with his umbrella and disappeared down the travelator. 1600 tweeted and Elvin’s relief arrived with two Thinkers to tinker with the Foreman.
“All quiet ?” asked the relief.
“All quiet,” Elvin told him, a song in his heart and a dizzy surge in his alpha rhythm. He ran to the travelator, eyes animated, eager to go. Home to the pad. A Thinker! Management!
“A Thinker! Management!” He told himself over and over again the cycle of the day’s happenings. The B 1. His thought processes. His killing of the Foreman. His broadcast. The Higher Management. He couldn’t wait to get home. To tell Meryl.
Meryl. Suddenly the elation died within him. There was no Meryl. No one at all to tell. What use to see up his fellow travellers on the video, pour out his excitement into their dull ears and meet the uncomprehending stares of their inanimate eyes ? No. There was no one to tell. No one who could generate a flickering ten seconds interest to share his programme from real life, live with him the drama of a B 1, a faulty Foreman and an avuncular Higher Management.
His eyes were tired again as he reached the pad door, twiddled his alpha rhythm around the lock code relay. 17 beat 3.
There was a ripple of fabric inside, the undulation of nylon tights, a swift pert bobbing of breasts and Meryl’s arms were around his neck.
“Elvin! I heard you! You thought!”
“Yes,” he said, dazed and giddy. “I think I did.”
“Elvin, I’ve come back to you!”
She led him to the bed at an angle of five degrees to the horizontal and supported him as he sagged on to the fibre-glass. Her kiss was the warm, soft, salty tremble of the south seas under the potted palms. It was urgent. Demanding. He turned his head and looked at the dials.
“There’s another two hours ...” he said.
“Damn the sexometer,” she whispered. “I know my own rhythms best.” It was good to be a Thinker.
<
* * * *
ADVANTAGE
by John Rackham
Caddas had an unusual affliction—he mentally suffered other people’s accidents before they happened! A useful gift on a construction site—until his one weakness was exposed.
* * * *
Colonel Jack Barclay awoke that morning with a foul taste in his mouth and a strong sense of impending doom. The combination had become a familiar one over recent months and he made himself ignore it. “Precognition,” he told himself harshly, “is not for me. Let’s leave that to the one who specializes in it.” To the orderly-robot which brought him his pre-breakfast draught of protein-vitamin fluid he said, “Defer rousing Mr. Caddas for thirty minutes. He has had a bad night.”
The terminal phrase was superfluous, meaning nothing to the robot, but one so easily got into the habit of talking to the things as if they were humanly intelligent. And it was true, in any case. Barclay had heard Rikki moaning and whimpering most of the night, tossing in nightmare on his narrow bunk in the annexe. The knowledge added slightly to his sense of doom, so that he had to make an extra effort to reject it. Dressed for the day and feeling fractionally better after his unappetizing cocktail, he stalked into the living room of his quarters, settled to his breakfast, and switched on his master read-out screen. The sour thought struck him, as it had done many times before, that given a minor change or two he might be any ordinary businessman, back home on Earth, reading the world news over breakfast. The figures and symbols which slid up over the screen in shimmering green were, in fact, world news. A world in the making. To his trained eye the information was easier to read than any bold headlines, and left a considerabl
e part of his mind free for private thoughts.
General State and Progress, Unit Three, corrected as of midnight last night and compared with similar data for Units One to Five. Estimating roughly, he judged Unit Three to be about one week ahead of anyone else. His own Unit. Colonel jack Barclay in command. The knowledge gave him some satisfaction. All five units were hitting a hard-driving schedule, as was right and proper. And his was away out in front of all the others, which was exactly as he wanted it to be. His grouch began to sweeten a little. These were hard facts. In the face of them, impressions of doom had to take their proper place as not worthy of consideration.
New Writings in SF 6 - [Anthology] Page 15
