Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  “You’re drunk now,” Brock accused.

  “I approach the pleasanter stages. How would you feel if you woke up and found you’d made a robot for some unknown reason, and hadn’t the slightest idea of the creature’s attributes?”

  “Well—”

  “I don’t feel that way at all,” Gallegher murmured. “Probably you take life too seriously, Brock. Wine is a mocker; strong drink is raging. Pardon me. I rage.” He drank another Martini.

  Brock began to pace around the crowded laboratory, circling various enigmatic and untidy objects. “If you’re a scientist, Heaven help science.”

  “I’m the Larry Adler of science,” Gallegher said. “He was a musician—lived some hundreds of years ago, I think. I’m like him. Never took a lesson in my life. Can I help it if my subconscious likes practical jokes?”

  “Do you know who I am?” Brock demanded.

  “Candidly, no. Should I?”

  There was bitterness in the other’s voice. “You might have the courtesy to remember, even though it was a week ago. Harrison Brock. Me. I own Vox-View Pictures.”

  “No,” the robot said suddenly, “it’s no use. No use at all, Brock.”

  “What the—”

  Gallegher sighed wearily. “I forget the damned thing’s alive. Mr. Brock, meet Joe. Joe, meet Mr. Brock—of Vox-View.”

  Joe turned, gears meshing within his transparent skull. “I am glad to meet you, Mr. Brock. Allow me to congratulate you on your good fortune in hearing my lovely voice.”

  “Uh,” said the magnate inarticulately. “Hello.”

  “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” Gallegher put in, sotto voce. “Joe’s like that. A peacock. No use arguing with him, either.”

  The robot ignored this aside. “But it’s no use, Mr. Brock,” he went on squeakily. “I’m not interested in money. I realize it would bring happiness to many if I consented to appear in your pictures, but fame means nothing to me. Nothing. Consciousness of beauty is enough.” Brock began to chew his lips. “Look,” he said savagely, “I didn’t come here to offer you a picture job. See? Am I offering you a contract? Such colossal nerve—Pah!You’re crazy.”

  “Your schemes are perfectly transparent,” the robot remarked coldly. “I can see that you’re overwhelmed by my beauty and the loveliness of my voice—its grand tonal qualities. You needn’t pretend you don’t want me, just so you can get me at a lower price. I said I wasn’t interested.”

  “You’re cr-r-razy!” Brock howled, badgered beyond endurance, and Joe calmly turned back to his mirror.

  “Don’t talk so loudly,” the robot warned. “The discordance is deafening. Besides, you’re ugly and I don’t like to look at you.” Wheels and cogs buzzed inside the transplastic shell. Joe extended his eyes on stalks and regarded himself with every appearance of appreciation.

  Gallegher was chuckling quietly on the couch. “Joe has a high irritation value,” he said. “I’ve found that out already. I must have given him some remarkable senses, too. An hour ago he started to laugh his damn fool head off. No reason, apparently. I was fixing myself a bite to eat. Ten minutes after that I slipped on an apple core I’d thrown away and came down hard. Joe just looked at me. ‘That was it,’ he said. ‘Logics of probability. Cause and effect. I knew you were going to drop that apple core and then step on it when you went to pick up the mail.’ Like the White Queen, I suppose. It’s a poor memory that doesn’t work both ways.”

  Brock sat on the small dynamo—there were two, the larger one named Monstro, and the smaller one serving Gallegher as a bank—and took deep breaths. “Robots are nothing new.”

  “This one is. I hate its gears. It’s beginning to give me an inferiority complex. Wish I knew why I’d made it,” Gallegher sighed. “Oh, well. Have a drink?”

  “No. I came here on business. Do you seriously mean you spent last week building a robot instead of solving the problem I hired you for?”

  “Contingent, wasn’t it?” Gallegher asked. “I think I remember that.”

  “Contingent,” Brock said with satisfaction. “Ten thousand, if and when.”

  “Why not give me the dough and take the robot? He’s worth that. Put him in one of your pictures.”

  “I won’t have any pictures unless you figure out an answer,” Brock snapped. “I told you all about it.”

  “I have been drunk,” Gallegher said. “My mind has been wiped clear, as by a sponge. I am as a little child. Soon I shall be as a drunken little child. Meanwhile, if you’d care to explain the matter again—” Brock gulped down his passion, jerked a magazine at random from the bookshelf, and took out a stylo. “All right. My preferred stocks are at twenty-eight, ’way below par—” He scribbled figures on the magazine.

  “If you’d taken that medieval folio next to that, it’d have cost you a pretty penny,” Gallegher said lazily. “So you’re the sort of guy who writes on tablecloths, eh? Forget this business of stocks and stuff. Get down to cases. Who are you trying to gyp?”

  “It’s no use,” the robot said from before its mirror. “I won’t sign a contract. People may come and admire me, if they like, but they’ll have to whisper in my presence.”

  “A madhouse,” Brock muttered, trying to get a grip on himself. “Listen, Gallegher. I told you all this a week ago, but—”

  “Joe wasn’t here then. Pretend like you’re talking to him.”

  “Uh—look. You’ve heard of Vox-View Pictures, at least.”

  “Sure. The biggest and best television company in the business. Sonatone’s about your only competitor.”

  “Sonatone’s squeezing me out.”

  Gallegher looked puzzled. “I don’t see how. You’ve got the best product. Tri-dimensional color, all sorts of modem improvements, the top actors, musicians, singers—”

  “No use,” the robot said. “I won’t.”

  “Shut up, Joe. You’re tops in your field, Brock. I’ll hand you that. And I’ve always heard you were fairly ethical. What’s Sonatone got on you?”

  Brock made helpless gestures. “Oh, it’s politics. The bootleg theaters. I can’t buck ’em. Sonatone helped elect the present administration, and the police just wink when I try to have the bootleggers raided.”

  “Bootleg theaters?” Gallegher asked, scowling a trifle. “I’ve heard something—”

  “It goes ’way back. To the old sound-film days. Home television killed sound film and big theaters. People were conditioned away from sitting in audience groups to watch a screen. The home televisors got good. It was more fun to sit in an easy-chair, drink beer, and watch the show. Television wasn’t a rich man’s hobby by that time. The meter system brought the price down to middle-class levels. Everybody knows that.”

  “I don’t,” Gallegher said. “I never pay attention to what goes on outside of my lab, unless I have to. Liquor and a selective mind. I ignore everything that doesn’t affect me directly. Explain the whole thing in detail, so I’ll get a complete picture. I don’t mind repetition. Now, what about this meter system of yours?”

  “Televisors are installed free. We never sell ’em; we rent them. People pay according to how many hours they have the set tuned in. We run a continuous show, stage plays, wire-tape films, operas, orchestras, singers, vaudeville—everything. If you use your televisor a lot, you pay proportionately. The man comes around once a month and reads the meter: Which is a fair system. Anybody can afford a Vox-View. Sonatone and the other companies do the same thing, but Sonatone’s the only big competitor I’ve got. At least, the only one that’s crooked as hell. The rest of the boys—they’re smaller than I am, but I don’t step on their toes. Nobody’s ever called me a louse,” Brock said darkly.

  “So what?”

  “So Sonatone has started to depend on audience appeal. It was impossible till lately—you couldn’t magnify tri-dimensional television on a big screen without streakiness and mirage-effect. That’s why the regular three-by-four home screens were used. Results were perfect.


  But Sonatone’s bought a lot of the ghost theaters all over the country—”

  “What’s a ghost theater?” Gallegher asked.

  “Well—before sound films collapsed, the world was thinking big. Big—you know? Ever heard of the Radio City Music Hall? That wasn’t in it! Television was coming in, and competition was fierce. Sound-film theaters got bigger and more elaborate. They were palaces. Tremendous. But when television was perfected, nobody went to the theaters any more, and it was often too expensive a job to tear ’em down. Ghost theaters—see? Big ones and little ones. Renovated them. And they’re showing Sonatone programs. Audience appeal is quite a factor. The theaters charge plenty, but people flock into ’em. Novelty and the mob instinct.”

  Gallegher closed his eyes. “What’s to stop you from doing the same thing?”

  “Patents,” Brock said briefly. “I mentioned that dimensional television couldn’t be used on big screens till lately. Sonatone signed an agreement with me ten years ago that any enlarging improvements would be used mutually. They crawled out of that contract. Said it was faked, and the courts upheld them. They uphold the courts—politics. Anyhow, Sonatone’s technicians worked out a method of using the large screen. They took out patents—twenty-seven patents, in fact, covering every possible variation on the idea. My technical staff has been working day and night trying to find some similar method that won’t be an infringement, but Sonatone’s got it all sewed up. They’ve a system called the Magna. It can be hooked up to any type of televisor—but they’ll only allow it to be used on Sonatone machines. See?”

  “Unethical, but legal,” Gallegher said. “Still, you’re giving your customers more for their money. People want good stuff. The size doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah,” Brock said bitterly, “but that isn’t all. The newspapers are full of A.A.—it’s a new catchword. Audience Appeal. The herd instinct. You’re right about people wanting good stuff—but would you buy Scotch at four a quart if you could get it for half that amount?”

  “Depends on the quality. What’s happening?”

  “Bootleg theaters,” Brock said. “They’ve opened all over the country. They show Vox-View products, and they’re using the Magna enlarger system Sonatone’s got patented. The admission price is low—lower than the rate of owning a Vox-View in your own home. There’s audience appeal. There’s the thrill of something a bit illegal. People are having their Vox-Views taken out right and left. I know why. They can go to a bootleg theater instead.”

  “It’s illegal,” Gallegher said thoughtfully.

  “So were speakeasies, in the Prohibition Era. A matter of protection, that’s all. I can’t get any action through the courts. I’ve tried. I’m running in the red. Eventually I’ll be broke. I can’t lower my home rental fees on Vox-Views. They’re nominal already. I make my profits through quantity. Now, no profits. As for these bootleg theaters, it’s pretty obvious who’s backing them.”

  “Sonatone?”

  “Sure. Silent partners. They get the take at the box office. What they want is to squeeze me out of business, so they’ll have a monopoly. After that they’ll give the public junk and pay their artists starvation salaries. With me it’s different. I pay my staff what they’re worth—plenty.”

  “And you offered me a lousy ten thousand,” Gallegher remarked. “Uh-huh!”

  “That was only the first installment,” Brock said hastily. “You can name your own fee. Within reason,” he added.

  “I shall. An astronomical sum. Did I say I’d accept the commission a week ago?”

  “You did.”

  “Then I must have had some idea how to solve the problem,” Gallegher pondered. “Let’s see. I didn’t mention anything in particular, did I?”

  “You kept talking about marble slabs and . . . uh . . . your sweetie.”

  “Then I was singing,” Gallegher explained largely. “ ‘St. James infirmary.’ Singing calms my nerves, and Lord knows they need it sometimes. Music and liquor. ‘I often wonder what the vintners buy—’ ”

  “What?”

  “ ‘One half so precious as the stuff they sell.’ Let it go. I am quoting Omar. It means nothing. Are your technicians any good?”

  “The best. And the best paid.”

  “They can’t find a magnifying process that won’t infringe on the Sonatone Magna patents?”

  “In a nutshell, that’s it.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to do some research,” Gallegher said sadly. I hate it like poison. Still, the sum of the parts equals the whole. Does that make sense to you? It doesn’t to me. I have trouble with words.

  After I say things, I start wondering what I’ve said. Better than watching a play,” he finished wildly. “I’ve got a headache. Too much talk and not enough liquor. Where were we?”

  “Approaching the madhouse,” Brock suggested. “If you weren’t my last resort, I’d—”

  “No use,” the robot said squeakily. “You might as well tear up your contract, Brock. I won’t sign it. Fame means nothing to me—nothing.”

  “If you don’t shut up,” Gallegher warned, “I’m going to scream in your ears.”

  “All right!” Joe shrilled. “Beat me! Go on, beat me! The meaner you are, the faster I’ll have my nervous system disrupted, and then I’ll be dead. I don’t care. I’ve got no instinct of self-preservation. Beat me. See if I care.”

  “He’s right, you know,” the scientist said after a pause. “And it’s the only logical way to respond to blackmail or threats. The sooner it’s over, the better. There aren’t any gradations with Joe. Anything really painful to him will destroy him. And he doesn’t give a damn.”

  “Neither do I,” Brock grunted. “What I want to find out—”

  “Yeah. I know. Well, I’ll wander around and see what occurs to me. Can I get into your studios?”

  “Here’s a pass.” Brock scribbled something on the back of a card. “Will you get to work on it right away?”

  “Sure,” Gallegher lied. “Now you run along and take it easy. Try and cool off. Everything’s under control. I’ll either find a solution to your problem pretty soon or else—”

  “Or else what?”

  “Or else I won’t,” the scientist finished blandly, and fingered the buttons on a control panel near the couch. “I’m tired of Martinis. Why didn’t I make that robot a mechanical bartender, while I was at it? Even the effort of selecting and pushing buttons is depressing at times. Yeah, I’ll get to work on the business, Brock. Forget it.”

  The magnate hesitated. “Well, you’re my only hope. I needn’t bother to mention that if there’s anything I can do to help you—”

  “A blonde,” Gallegher murmured. “That gorgeous, gorgeous star of yours, Silver O’Keefe. Send her over. Otherwise I want nothing.”

  “Good-by, Brock,” the robot said squeakily. “Sorry we couldn’t get together on the contract, but at least you’ve had the ineluctable delight of hearing my beautiful voice, not to mention the pleasure of seeing me. Don’t tell too many people how lovely I am. I really don’t want to be bothered with mobs. They’re noisy.”

  “You don’t know what dogmatism means till you’ve talked to Joe,” Gallegher said. “Oh, well. See you later. Don’t forget the blonde.” Brock’s lips quivered. He searched for words, gave it up as a vain task, and turned to the door.

  “Good-by, you ugly man,” Joe said.

  Gallegher winced as the door slammed, though it was harder on the robot’s supersensitive ears than on his own. “Why do you go on like that?” he inquired. “You nearly gave the guy apoplexy.”

  “Surely he didn’t think he was beautiful,” Joe remarked.

  “Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder.”

  “How stupid you are. You’re ugly, too.”

  “And you’re a collection of rattletrap gears, pistons and cogs. You’ve got worms,” said Gallegher, referring, of course, to certain mechanisms in the robot’s body.

  “I’m lovely.” Joe stared r
aptly into the minor.

  “Maybe, to you. Why did I make you transparent, I wonder?”

  “So others could admire me. I have X-ray vision, of course.”

  “And wheels in your head. Why did I put your radioatomic brain in your stomach? Protection?”

  Joe didn’t answer. He was humming in a maddeningly squeaky voice, shrill and nerve-racking. Gallegher stood it for a while, fortifying himself with a gin rickey from the siphon.

  “Get it up!” he yelped at last. “You sound like an old-fashioned subway train going around a curve.”

  “You’re merely jealous,” Joe scoffed, but obediently raised his tone to a supersonic pitch. There was silence for a half-minute. Then all the dogs in the neighborhood began to howl.

  Wearily Gallegher dragged his lanky frame up from the couch. He might as well get out. Obviously there was no peace to be had in the laboratory. Not with that animated junk pile inflating his ego all over the place. Joe began to laugh in an off-key cackle. Gallegher winced. “What now?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  Logic of causation and effect, influenced by probabilities, X-ray vision and other enigmatic senses the robot no doubt possessed. Gallegher cursed softly, found a shapeless black hat, and made for the door. He opened it to admit a short, fat man who bounced painfully off the scientist’s stomach.

  “Whoof! What a corny sense of humor that jackass has. Hello, Mr. Kennicott. Glad to see you. Sorry I can’t offer you a drink.”

  Mr. Kennicott’s swarthy face twisted malignantly. “Don’ wanna no drink. Wanna my money. You gimme. Howzabout it?”

  Gallegher looked thoughtfully at nothing. “Well, the fact is, I was just going to collect a check.”

  “I sella you my diamonds. You say you gonna make somet’ing wit’ ’em. You gimme check before. It go bounca, bounca, bounca. Why is?”

  “It was rubber,” Gallegher said faintly. “I never can keep track of my bank balance.”

  Kennicott showed symptoms of going bounca on the threshold. “You gimme back diamonds, eh?”