Platinum Pohl - The Collected Best Stories

by Frederik Pohl

  This story, which was a finalist for the Hugo Award when published in 1983, catches O’Hare in the toughest campaign of his career. This is set in the future, when robots have become more than mere machines—they have voting rights.

  O’Hare is getting older and is faced with an opponent who has come up through the ranks, who has a strong base of support. O’Hare is fighting for his political life.

  It’s a hell of a campaign, and a story not many authors could bring off as Frederik Pohl manages.

  For Congressman Fiorello Delano Fitzgerald O’Hare, the election campaign started traditionally on the Tuesday after Labor Day. That was traditional for the congressman, anyway, a feisty little seventy-plus-year-old who liked his own traditions and didn’t care much what anyone else’s were; the summer was his own and his lady wife’s, and when he started to press the flesh and hunt the votes was at the League of Women Voters televised debate and not a minute before. So at six o’clock on the evening of the eighth of September there was Carrie O’Hare one more time, straightening the fidgeting congressman’s tie, dabbing a blob of the congressman’s shaving cream off the lobe of the congressman’s fuzzy pink ear and reassuring the congressman that he was wiser, juster and, above all, far more beloved by his constituents than that brash new interloper of an opponent, the mayor of Elk City, could ever hope to be. “Quit fussing,” said the congressman, with his famous impudent elf’s smile. “The voters don’t mind if a candidate looks a little messy.”

  “Hold still a minute, hon.”

  “What for? It all has to come off again for the doctor, maybe.”

  “Or maybe he’ll just take your pulse, so hold still. And listen. Please don’t tell them about game hunting in the Sahara tonight.”

  “No, Carrie—” twinkling grin—“we leave the speeches to me and everything else to you, right? They’re going to want to know what their congressman did over the summer, aren’t they?”

  Carrie sighed and released him. It had been a successful safari—the congressman had photographed dozens of mules, and even one actual live camel—but what did it have to do with the congressman’s qualifications for one more term in the United States House of Representatives? “Hold it a minute,” she said as an afterthought, sent one of the household robots for a fresh pocket handkerchief, repinned the American flag button in his lapel, and let it go at that. She needed all the rest of the time available for the larger task of herself. Voters might forgive a congressman for looking rumpled, true enough, but a congressman’s wife, never.

  She sat before her mirror and reviewed all the things she had to do. There were plenty, not made easier by the little knot of worry in her stomach. Well, not worry. Normal nervousness, maybe, but not real worry. The congressman was a winner and always had been. Fiorello Delano Fitzgerald O’Hare, servant of the people for half a century plus a year, eight months and a week, might have been custom-built for politics, as well designed as any robot, and with the further advantage (she thought guiltily that you shouldn’t call it an “advantage”) of being human. He had the name for it. He had the friendly and trustworthy look, with enough leprechaun mischief to make him interesting. He had the manner that caused each of thirty thousand voters to think himself personally known to the congressman, and above all he had the disposition. He actually enjoyed such things as eating rubber chicken at a dinner for the B’nai B’rith, square-dancing at a fireman’s fair, joining the Policemen’s Benevolent Association for a communion breakfast. He even liked getting up at 5 A.M. to get to a factory gate to shake the hands of nine hundred workers on the early shift. All of these things were a lot less enjoyable for the congressman’s wife, but what she unfailingly enjoyed was the congressman himself. For he was a sweet man.

  Carrie Madeleine O’Hare was quite a sweet woman, too. You could tell that by the way she spoke to the maid, tidying up behind her. Carrie had had that same maid since her marriage, forty years before. The congressman had been thirty-five years old, Carrie herself twenty-two, and the maid a wedding present, fresh off the assembly line, an old-style robot with all its brains in some central computation facility—no personality, no feelings to hurt. But Carrie treated the robot just as she would a human being—or one of the new Josephson-junction machines, so close to human that they even had voting rights…for which they had to thank in very large part the congressman himself and damn well, Carrie thought, better remember it come November.

  Carrie’s preparations only went as far as makeup, hair and underwear—there was no point in putting on the dress until they were ready to go, and the congressman’s doctor hadn’t even arrived yet for his traditional last-minute medical check. So she pulled on a robe and descended the back stairs to the big screened porch for a breath of air. The house was ancient and three stories high. It stood on a little hill in the bend of the river, water on two sides. It would have been a fine house to raise children in—but there hadn’t been any children—and it was a first-rate house for a congressman even without children. All through the years when small was status, the congressman had stuck to his sixteen rooms because they were so fine for parties, so fine for entertaining delegations of voters and putting up visiting political VIPs and all the other functions of political power. Carrie sat on the porch swing, and found herself shivering. It wasn’t the temperature. That had to be at least seventy-five degrees, in the old Fahrenheit system Carrie still used inside her head. It was still summer. But the wind made her feel cold. And that was strange, when you came to think of it. When had the TV weathermen started talking about wind-chill factors even in July and September? Why was it always so windy these days? Was it just because of the simple fact that, without ever willing it to happen, Carrie herself had somehow become sixty-two years old?

  And then her husband’s angry bellow from inside the house: “Carrie! Where are you? What’s this damn thing doing here?”

  Carrie ran inside the house. There was her husband, flushed and angry, with that ruffled-sparrow look he got when he was excited, facing down a stranger. The doctor had arrived when she wasn’t looking, and it was a new model.

  If you looked at the doctor what you saw was a sandy-haired man of youthful maturity, with little laugh wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the expression of smiling competence that doctors cultivated. If you touched him, his handshake was firm and warm. If you listened to his voice, that was also warm—it was only if you went so far as to sniff him that you could notice a possible lack. There was no human scent of body and sweat. That meant a very recent shower, a foolproof deodorant—or a robot.

  And, of course, a robot was what it was. “Oh, come on, Fee,” she coaxed, anxiously good-humored, “you know it’s just a doctor come to check your blood pressure and so on.”

  “It’s not my regular doctor!” roared the congressman, standing as tall and strong as possible for a man who, after all, was a shade shorter than Carrie herself. “I want my doctor! I’ve had the same doctor for thirty-five years, and that’s the one I want now.”

  It was so bad for him to get upset right before the kickoff debate! “Now, Fee,” Carrie scolded humorously, trying to soothe him down, “you know that old dented wreck was due for the scrap-heap. I’m sure that Doctor—uh—” She looked at the new robot for a name, and it supplied it, smilingly self-assured.

  “I am Dr. William,” it said. “I am a fully programmed Josephson-junction autonomous-intellect model robot, Mr. Congressman, with core storage for diagnostics, first aid, and general internal medicine, and of course I carry data-chip memory for most surgical procedures and test functions.”

  The congressman’s cheeks had faded from red to pink; he was not generally an irascible man. “All the same,” he began, but the robot was still talking.

  “I’m truly sorry if I’ve caused you any concern, Mr. Congressman. Not only for professional reasons,” it added warmly, “but because I happen to be one of your strongest supporters. I haven’t yet had the privilege of voting in a congressional election,
I’m sorry to say, because I was only activated last week, but I certainly intend to vote for you when I do.”

  “Huh,” said O’Hare, looking from the robot to his wife. And then the reflexes of half a century took over. “Well, your time’s valuable, Doctor William,” he said, “so why don’t we just get on with this examination? And we can talk about the problems of this district while we do. As I guess you know, I’ve always been a leader in the fight for robot rights—” And Carrie slipped gratefully away.

  Fiorello O’Hare’s vote-getting skills had been tested in more than two dozen elections, from his first runs for the school board and then the county commission—a decade before Carrie had been old enough to vote—through twenty-two terms in the Congress of the United States. Twenty-two terms: from the old days when a congressman actually had to get in a plane or a car and go to Washington, D.C., to do his job, instead of the interactive-electronics sessions that had made the job attractive again. And against twenty-two opponents. The opponents had come in all shapes and sizes, pompous old has-beens when O’Hare was a crusading youth, upstart kids as he grew older. Male or female, black or white, peace-niks and pro-lifers, spenders and budget-balancers—O’Hare had beaten them all. He had, at least, beaten every one of them who dared contest the Twenty-Third Congressional District. He had not done as well the time he made the mistake of trying for governor (fortunately in an off year, so his House seat was safe), and not well at all the time when he had hopes for the Senate, even once for the vice presidency. The primaries had ended one of those dreams. The national convention slew the other. O’Hare learned his lesson. If he stayed in Congress he was safe, and so were his committee chairmanships and his powerful seniority.

  After all these years, Caroline O’Hare could no longer remember by name all the opponents her husband had faced. If she could dredge them out of her recollections at all, it was by a single mnemonic trait. This one was Mean. That one was Hairy. There was a Big and a Scared and a Dangerous. Classified in those terms, Carrie thought as they swept into the underground garage of the Shriner’s Auditorium, this year’s opponent was a Neat. He wore a neat brown suit with a neatly tied brown scarf and neatly shined brown shoes. He was chatting, neatly, with a small and self-assured group of his supporters as the O’Hares got out of their car and approached the elevator, and when he saw O’Hare he gave his opponent a neat, restrained smile of welcome.

  The neat opponent was riding on a record of six years as the very successful mayor of a small city in the district. Mayor Thom had been quite a vote-getter in the hometown, according to the datafile printout Carrie had ordered. Her husband disdained such things—“I’m a personal man, Carrie, and I deal with the voters personally, and I don’t want to hit key issues or play to the demographics, I want them to know me.” But he must have retained a little something for, when he saw the other party, he hurried over, smile flashing, speech ready on his lips. “A great pleasure to see you here, Mr. Mayor,” he cried, pumping the mayor’s hand, “and to congratulate you again on the fine job you’ve been doing in Elk City!”

  “You’re very kind,” smiled Mayor Thorn, nodding politely to Carrie—neat nod, neat smile, neat and pleasant voice.

  “Only truthful,” O’Hare insisted as the elevator door opened for them. “Well, it’s time to do battle, I guess, and may the best man win!”

  “Oh, I hope not,” the mayor said politely. “For in that case, as I am mechanical, it would surely be you.”

  O’Hare blinked, then grinned ruefully at his wife. Cordiality toward his opponents was an O’Hare trademark. It cost nothing, and who knew but what it might soften them up? Not many opponents had played that back to O’Hare. Carrie saw him pat the mayor’s arm, stand courteously aside as they reached the auditorium floor, and bow the other party out. But his expression had suddenly become firm. He was like a current breaker that had felt a surge of unexpected and dangerous power. It had opened unaware, but now it had reset itself. It would be ready for the next surge.

  But actually, when the surge came, O’Hare wasn’t.

  The first rounds of the debate went normally. It wasn’t really a true debate, of course. It was more like a virtuoso-piece ballet, with two prima ballerinas each showing off her own finest bits. A couple of perfect entrechats matched by a string of double fouettes, a marvelous gran jete countered by a superb pas en aire. O’Hare went first. His greatest strengths were the battles he had won, the fights he had led, the famous figures he had worked with. Not just politicians. O’Hare had been the intimate of ambassadors and corporation tycoons and scientists—he had even known Amalfi Amadeus himself, the man who had given the world cheap hydrogen fusion power and made the modern Utopia possible. O’Hare got an ovation after his first seven-minute performance. But so did his opponent. The mayor was a modest and appealing figure; how handsome they made robots these days! The mayor, talking about its triumphs in Elk City, had every name right, every figure detailed; how precise they made them! What O’Hare offered in glamor, the mayor made up in encyclopedic competence…and then Carrie saw how the trick was done.

  Against all advice, the congressman in his second session was telling the audience about the highlights of their summer photo safari along the Nile. Against Carrie’s expectations, the audience was enjoying it. Even the mayor. As O’Hare described how they had almost, but not quite, seen a living crocodile and the actual place where a hippopotamus had once been sighted, the mayor was chuckling along with everyone else. But while it was chuckling it was reaching for its neat brown attache case; opened it, pulled out a module of data-store microchips, opened what looked like a pocket in the side of its jacket, removed one set of chips and replaced them with another.

  It was plugging in a new set of memories! How very unfair! Carrie glanced around the crowded audience to see if any of the audience were as outraged as she, but if they were they didn’t show it. They were intent on the congressman’s words, laughing with him, nodding with interest, clapping when applause was proper. They were a model audience, except that they did not seem to notice, or to care about, the unfairness of the mayor. But why not? They certainly looked normal and decent enough, so friendly and so amiable and—

  So neat.

  Carrie’s hand flew to her mouth. She gazed beseechingly at her husband, but he was too wily a campaigner to have failed to read the audience. Without a hitch, husbanding his time to spend it where it would do the most good, he swung from the pleasures of the summer holiday to the realities of his political life. “And now,” he said, leaning forward over the lectern to beam at the audience, “it’s back to work, to finish the job you’ve been electing me for. As you know, I was one of the sponsors of the Robot E.R.A. A lot of voters were against that, in the old days. Even my friends in political office advised me to leave that issue alone. They said I was committing political suicide, because the voters felt that if the amendment passed there would be no way anybody could tell the difference between a human and a mechanical anymore, and the country would go to the dogs. Well, it passed—and I say the country’s better off than ever, and I say I’m proud of what I did and anxious to go back and finish the job!” And he beamed triumphantly at his opponent as the applause swelled and he relinquished the floor.

  But the mayor was not in the least disconcerted. In fact, he led the clapping. When he reached the podium he cried, “I really thank you, Congressman O’Hare, and I believe that now every voter in the district, organic and mechanical alike, knows just how right you were! That amendment did not only give us mechanicals the vote. It not only purged from all the datastores any reference to the origins of any voter, mechanical or organic, but it also did the one great thing that remained to do. It freed human beings from one more onerous and difficult task—namely, the job of selecting, alone, their elected officials. What remains? Just one thing, I say—the task of carrying this one step further, by electing mechanicals to the highest offices in the land, so that human life can be pure pleasure!”


  And the ovation was just as large. The mayor waited it out, smiling gratefully toward O’Hare, and when the applause had died away it went on to supply specifics to back up its stand—all dredged, Carrie was sure, out of the store of chips she had seen it plug in.

  On the stage, her husband’s expression did not change, but Carrie saw the eyes narrow again. The relay had popped open once more and reset itself, snick-snick; O’Hare knew that this opponent was a cut above the others. This campaign was not going to be quite like those that had gone before.

  And indeed it wasn’t, although for the first few weeks it looked as though it would have the same sure outcome.

  By the first of October the congressman was hitting his stride. Three kaffee-klatsches a day, at least one dinner every evening—he had long ago learned how to push the food around his plate to disguise the fact that he wasn’t eating. And all the hundreds of block parties and TV spots and news conferences and just strolling past the voters. The weather turned cooler, but still muggy, and the outdoor appearances every day began to worry Carrie. The congressman’s feet would never give out, or his handshake, or his smile muscles. What was vulnerable was his voice. Up on a streetcorner platform his enemies were the damp wind and the sooty air. Walking along a shopping block, the same—plus the quiches and pitas, the ravioli and the dim sum, the kosher hot dogs and sushi—the whole spectrum of ethnic foods that an ethnic-wooing candidate traditionally had to seem to enjoy. “The tradition’s out of date,” Carrie told him crossly, throat lozenges in one hand and antacid pills in the other as he gamely tried to recuperate before going to bed, “when half the voters are robots!”

  Her husband sat on the edge of their bed, rubbing his throat and his feet alternately. “It’s the organics I need, love. The robots know where I stand!”