Ahead of Time

by Henry Kuttner

  But Grandpaw said I oughta of seen the Appian Way when it was being set up.

  I fixed him and the baby up nice and comfortable, and then I flew back to Piperville. It was coming on dawn, and I didn't want nobody to see me flying. This time I spit on a pigeon.

  There was a rumpus going on in the city hall. Seems like Maw and Paw and Lemuel had plumb vanished. There was people running around remarkable upset, and there was great confusion. I knowed what had happened, though. Maw spoke to me, in my haid, and told me to come up to the cell at the end of the block, which was spacious. They was all there. Invisible, though.

  I fergot to say I'd made myself invisible too, after I'd snuck in, seen Mr. Armbruster was still asleep, and noticed the excitement.

  "Grandpaw told me what was happening," Maw said. "I figgered we'd better stay out'n the way for a while. Raining hard, ain't it?"

  "Shore is," I said. "What's everybody so excited about?"

  "They cain't figger out what become of us," Maw told me. "Soon as the ruckus quiets down, we'll all go home. You fixed it, I guess."

  "I done what Grandpaw said," I explained, and then there was sudden yells from down the corridor. A little old fat coon came trundling in, carrying a bundle of sticks. He come right along till he got to the bars in front of where we was. Then he sot himself down and begun arranging the sticks to make a fire. He had that dazed look in his eyes, so I knew Lemuel must of hypnotized him.

  People came crowding around outside. They couldn't see us, natcherally, but they were watching that there little old coon. I watched too, on account of I never was able to figger out how Lemuel could get the critter skun. I seen them build fires before—Lemuel could make 'em do that—but I just never happened to be around when one of his coons stripped down and skun hisself. That I wanted to see.

  Just before the coon got started, though, a policeman put him in a bag and took him away, so I never did know. It was light by then. I kept hearing bellers from somewheres, and once I heard a voice I knew sing out.

  "Maw," I said, "that sounds like Mr. Armbruster. I better go see what they're doing to the pore little guy."

  "Time we was going home," she said. "We got to dig up Grandpaw and the baby. You say the water wheel's turning?"

  "Yes, Maw," I said. "There's plenty electric power now."

  She reached around till she found Paw and whammed him. "Wake up," she said.

  "Have a drink," Paw said.

  But she roused him and said we was going home. Ain't nobody can wake up Lemuel, though. Finally Maw and Paw took Lemuel between them and flew out through the window, after I fixed the bars so they could get through. They stayed invisible, on account of there was a crowd down below. It was raining, but Maw said they warn't made of sugar nor salt, and I'd better come along or I'd get my britches tanned.

  "Yes, Maw," I said, but I wasn't going to. I stayed behind. I was going to find out what they were doing to Mr. Armbruster.

  They had him in that big room with the lights on. Mr. Gandy was standing by the window, looking real mean, and they had Mr. Armbruster's sleeve rolled up and was going to stick a sort of glass needle into his hide. Well! Right away I made myself get visible again.

  "You better not do that," I said.

  "It's the Hogben kid!" somebody yelled. "Grab him!"

  They grabbed me. I let 'em. Pretty soon I was sitting in a chair with my sleeve rolled up, and Mr. Gandy was grinning at me like a wolf.

  "Use the truth serum on him," he said. "No need to ask that tramp questions now."

  Kind of dazed, Mr. Armbruster kept saying, "I don't know what happened to Saunk! I wouldn't tell you if I knew——"

  They whammed him.

  Mr. Gandy stuck his face right into mine.

  "We'll get the truth about that uranium pile now," he told me. "One shot of this and you'll answer our questions. Understand?"

  So they stuck the needle in my arm and squirted the stuff into me. It tickled.

  Then they asked me questions. I said I didn't know nothing. Mr. Gandy said to give me another shot. They done it.

  It tickled worse than ever.

  Right then somebody ran into the room and started yelling.

  "The dam's busted!" he bellered. "The Gandy Dam! It's flooded out half the farms in the south valley!"

  Mr. Gandy rared back and squalled. "You're crazy!" he told everybody. "It's impossible! There's been no water in Big Bear River for a hundred years!"

  Then they all got together and started whispering. Something about samples. And a big mob downstairs.

  "You've got to calm 'em down," somebody told Mr. Gandy. "They're boiling mad. All the crops ruined——"

  "I'll calm 'em down," Mr. Gandy said. "There's no proof. And only a week before election!"

  He rushed out of the room and everybody ran out after him. I got up out of my chair and scratched. That stuff they pumped into me itched fearful inside my skin. I was kind of mad at Mr. Gandy.

  "Quick!" Mr. Armbruster said. "Let's sneak out. Now's our chance."

  We snuck out the back way. It was easy. We circled around to the front, and there was a big mob standing there in the rain. Up on the court-house steps was Mr. Gandy, mean as ever, facing a big, husky feller who was waving a chunk of rock.

  "Every dam has its breaking point," Mr. Gandy said, but the big feller roared and shook the rock over his haid.

  "I know good concrete from bad!" he bellered. "This stuff's all sand. That dam wouldn't hold a gallon of water backed up behind it!"

  Mr. Gandy shook his haid.

  "Outrageous!" he said. "I'm just as shocked as you are. Of course we gave out the contracts in all good faith. If the Ajax Construction Company used shoddy material, we'll certainly sue them."

  At that point I got so tired of itching that I decided to do something about it. So I did.

  The husky feller stepped back a pace and pointed his finger at Mr. Gandy. "Listen," he said. "There's a rumor around that you own the Ajax Construction Company. Do you?"

  Mr. Gandy opened his mouth and closed it. He shivered a little.

  "Yes," he said. "Yes, I own it."

  You should of heard the roar that went up from that mob.

  The big feller sort of gasped.

  "You admit it? Maybe you'll admit that you knew the dam was no good, too, huh? How much did you make out of the deal?"

  "Eleven thousand dollars," Mr. Gandy said. "That was net, after I'd paid off the sheriff, the aldermen, and——"

  But at that point the crowd sort of moved up the steps, and there wasn't no more heard from Mr. Gandy.

  "Well, well," said Mr. Armbruster. "Now I've seen everything. Know what this means, Saunk? Gandy's gone crazy. He must have. But the reform administration will go in, they'll throw out all the crooks, and I will have a pleasant life in Piperville once more. Until I move south, that is. Come winter, I always move south. By a strange happenstance, I find I have a few coins in my pocket. Will you join me in a drink, Saunk?"

  "No, thanks," I said. "Maw'll be wondering where I got to. Won't there be no more trouble, Mr. Armbruster?"

  "Eventually," he said. "But not for quite awhile. They're carrying old Gandy into the jail, see? For his own protection, probably. I must celebrate this, Saunk. Sure you won't—Saunk! Where are you?"

  But I had went invisible.

  Well, that was all there was to it. I didn't itch no more, so I flew back home and helped rig up the electric current from the water wheel. After a time the flood had died down, but we got a steady flow down the crick thereafter, because of the way I'd arranged things upstream. We settled down to the sort of quiet life we Hogbens like. It's safest, for us.

  Grandpaw said it was quite a flood. It reminded him of something his Grandpaw had told him. Seems like when Grandpaw's Grandpaw was alive, they had uranium piles and a lot more, and pretty soon the things got out of hand and they had a real flood. Grandpaw's Grandpaw had to move out of the country right fast. Ain't nothing been heard of the place from
that day to this. I gather everybody in Atlantis got drowned daid. But they was only furriners.

  Mr. Gandy went to jail. Nobody ever knew what made him confess the way he did; maybe he got an attack of conscience. I don't suppose it could of been because of me. 'Tain't likely. Still——

  Remember that trick Paw showed me about making a short-circuit in space and pumping the corn likker from his blood into mine? Well, I got tired of itching where I couldn't scratch it, so I used that trick myself. That stuff they'd squirted into me was making me itch, whatever it was. I just twisted space around a mite and pumped it right into Mr. Gandy's blood, up where he was standing on them court-house steps. After that I stopped itching, but Mr. Gandy must have been itching real bad. Served him right, though.

  Wonder if it could have plumb itched him into telling the truth?

  Deadlock

  THOR WAS THE FIRST ROBOT who didn't go mad. It might have been better had he followed the example of his forerunners.

  The trouble, of course, lay in creating a sufficiently complicated thinking machine that wouldn't be too complicated. Balder IV was the first robot that could be called successful, and after three months he began to behave erratically, giving the wrong answers and spending most of his time staring blankly at nothing. When he became actually destructive, the Company took steps. Naturally, it was impossible to destroy a duraloy-constructed robot, but they buried Balder IV in concrete. Before the stuff had set, it was necessary to throw Mars II after him.

  The robots worked—yes. For a time. Then there was an ambiguous sort of mental breakdown, and they cracked up. The Company couldn't even salvage the parts—a blowtorch couldn't melt plastic duraloy after it had hardened, and so twenty-eight robots, thinking lunatic thoughts, reposed in beds of cement, reminding Chief Engineer Harnahan of Reading Gaol.

  "And their grave has no name," Harnahan amplified, lying full length on the couch in his office and blowing smoke rings.

  He was a big man with tired eyes and a perpetually worried frown. No wonder, in this day of gigantic corporations that fought each other tooth and nail for economic supremacy. It was vaguely feudal, for if a company went under, it was annexed by its conqueror, and vae victis.

  Van Damm, who was more of a trouble-shooter than anything else, sat on the edge of the desk, biting his nails. Small, gnomish, and dark as a Pict, his shrewd wrinkled face was as impassive as that of Thor, who stood motionless against the wall. Now Van Damm looked at the robot.

  "How do you feel?" he asked. "Any sign of a mental crack-up?"

  Thor said, "Mentally I am in fine shape, ready to cope with any problem."

  Harnahan turned over on his stomach. "O.K. Cope with this, then. Luxingham Incorporated swiped Dr. Sadler and his formula for increasing the tensile strength of mock-iron. The louse was holding out on us for a bigger salary. Now he's taken a run-out powder and gone over to Luxingham."

  Thor nodded. "Contract?"

  "Fourteen-X-Seven. The usual metallurgist's contract. Technically unbreakable.

  "The courts would uphold us. However, by this time Luxingham's facial surgeons would have altered Sadler's body and fingerprints. The case would run . . . two years. By that time Luxingham would have made sufficient use of the mock-iron formula."

  Van Damm made a horrible face. "Solution, Thor." He shot a quick glance at Harnahan. Both men knew what was coming. Thor didn't disappoint them.

  "Force," the robot remarked. "You need the formula. A robot is not legally responsible—as yet. I'll visit Luxingham."

  "O.K.," Harnahan said reluctantly, and Thor turned and went out. The chief engineer scowled.

  "Yeah," Van Damm nodded. "I know. He'll just walk in and snaffle the formula. And we'll get another injunction against operating an uncontrollable machine. And we'll keep on just as we have been doing."

  "Is brute force the best logic?" Harnahan wondered.

  "The simplest, maybe. Thor doesn't need to work out complicated legal methods. He's indestructible. He'll just walk into Luxingham and take the formula. If the courts decide Thor's dangerous, we can bury him in cement and make more robots. He's without ego, you know. It won't matter to him."

  "We expected more," Harnahan grumbled. "A thinking machine ought to be able to do a lot."

  "Thor can do a lot. So far, he hasn't gone crazy like the others. He's solved every problem we've given him—even that trend chart that had everyone else buffaloed."

  Harnahan nodded. "Yeah. He predicted Snowmany's election . . . that got the Company out of a scrape. He can think, all right. For my money, there's no problem he can't solve. Just the same, he isn't inventive enough."

  "If the occasion arose——" Van Damm went off at a tangent. "We've got the monopoly on robots, anyhow. Which is something. It's about time to give the go-ahead signal on more robots of Thor's type."

  "Better wait a bit. See if Thor goes crazy. He's the most complicated one so far."

  The visiphone on the desk came to life with an outraged screech. "Harnahan! You lousy, unethical murderer! You——"

  "I'm recording that, Blake," the engineer called as he stood up. "You'll get a libel suit slammed on you within the hour."

  "Sue and be damned," Blake of Luxingham Incorporated yelled. "I'm coming over and break your prognathous jaw myself! So help me, I'll burn you down and spit on the ashes!"

  "Now he's threatening my life," Harnahan said in a loud aside to Van Damm. "Lucky I'm recording this on the tape."

  Blake's crimson face on the screen seemed to swell visibly. Before it burst, however, another portrait took its place—the smooth, bland countenance of Marshal Yale, police administrator to the sector. Yale looked worried.

  "Look, Mr. Harnahan," he said sadly, "this can't keep up. Now just look at things sensibly, will you? After all, I'm an officer of the law——"

  ''Ha!" remarked Van Damm, sotto voce.

  "—and outright mayhem is something I can't condone. Maybe your robot's gone mad?" he added hopefully.

  "Robot?" Harnahan asked, his face blank. "I don't understand. What robot's that?"

  Yale sighed. "Thor. Thor, of course. Who else? Now I realize you don't know a thing about it"—his voice was as heavily sarcastic as he dared to make it—"but Thor has just walked into Luxingham and played merry hell."

  "No!"

  "Yes. He walked right in. The guards tried to stop him, but he just kept on going. He stepped on 'em, in fact. They played a flame hose on him, but he didn't stop for that. Luxingham got out every defense weapon in their arsenal, and that infernal robot of yours simply kept on going. He grabbed Blake by the neck and made him unlock the lab door. And he took a formula away from one of the technicians."

  "I am surprised," Harnahan said, shocked. "By the way, which technician was it? Not a guy named Sadler?"

  "I dunno . . . wait a minute. Yes, Sadler."

  "But Sadler's working for us," the engineer explained. "We've got him on a beryl-bound contract. Any formulas he works out belong to us."

  Yale mopped his shining cheeks. "Mr. Harnahan, please!" he said desperately. "If you'd only think of the spot I'm in! Legally I'm bound to do something about this. You can't let one of your robots try strong-arm stuff like that. It's too . . . too——"

  "Obvious?" Harnahan suggested. "Well, as I say, it's all news to me. I'll check up and call you back. By the way, I'm preferring charges against Blake. Libel, and homicidal threats."

  "Oh, my God," Yale said, and broke the beam.

  Van Damm and Harnahan exchanged delighted glances.

  "Fair enough," the gnomish trouble-shooter chuckled. "It's deadlock. Blake won't try bombing us—we've both got too many antiaircraft defenses—so it'll go to the courts. Courts!" He pursed his mouth wryly.

  Harnahan returned to the couch. "Best thing we ever did was to concentrate on those robots. Within ten years the Company will own the world. And other worlds. We can send out spaceships, with robot operators."

  The door opened, and Thor appeared, looking
none the worse for his ordeal. He put a slip of metal-plaque on the desk.

  "Formula for mock-iron."

  "Hurt?"

  "Impossible."

  Thor went to a filing cabinet, took out an envelope, and vanished again. Harnahan rose to study the plaque.

  "Yeah. This is it." He slipped it into a conveyor slot. "Things are too easy sometimes. Guess I'll knock off for the day. Say! What was Thor up to just now?"

  Van Damm looked at him. "Eh?"

  "At the files. What's on his mind?" Harnahan investigated. "Some electronic thesis—I don't know what he wanted with that. Perhaps he's going to do some research on his own."

  "Maybe," Van Damm said. "Let's go see."

  They took a dropper to the robot's workshop in the basement, but the room was empty. Harnahan used the teleview.

  "Checkup. Where's Thor?"

  "One moment, sir. . . In the Seven Foundry. Shall I connect you with the foreman?"

  "Yeah. Ivar? What's Thor up to?"

  Ivar rubbed his bullet head. "Damfino. He ran in, grabbed a tensile chart, and ran out again. Wait a bit. He's back again."

  "Let me talk to him," Harnahan said.

  "Sure——" Ivar's craggy face vanished, and presently reappeared. "No soap. He picked up a chunk of synthoplat and went."

  "Hm-m-m," Van Damm put in. "Do you suppose——"

  "He's going crazy like the others?" Harnahan scowled. "They didn't act like that. Still, it's possible."

  Just then Thor appeared, his rubbery arms laden with an incongruous array of practically everything. Ignoring the two men, he dumped the stuff on a bench and began to rearrange it, working with swift accuracy.

  "He isn't crazy," Harnahan said. "The light's on."

  In Thor's forehead was a crimson stud that lighted whenever the robot was working on a problem. It was a new improvement, a telltale for robot-madness. Had it been flashing intermittently, there would have been something to worry about—mixing a fresh batch of concrete to provide a grave for a crazy robot.

  "Thor!" Van Damm said sharply. The robot didn't reply.

  "Must be a big problem," Harnahan frowned. "Wonder what it is?"

  "I'm wondering what gave him the idea," the troubleshooter said. "Something that occurred lately, that's certain. An improvement on the mock-iron process?"