Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  There was no corpse. The audiosonic recording was not sufficient. Moreover, there were vital questions involving habeus corpus and search warrants. Johnson called Headquarters Jurisprudence and the argument raged over the heads of Gallegher and the imperturbable Mackenzie. It ended with Johnson leaving, with his crew—and the increasing recording—and threatening to return as soon as a judge could issue the appropriate writs and papers. Meanwhile, he said, there would be officers on guard outside the house. With a malignant glare for Mackenzie, he stamped out.

  “And now to business,” said Mackenzie, rubbing his hands. “Between ourselves”—he leaned forward confidentially—“I’m just as glad to get rid of that partner of mine. Whether or not you killed him, I hope he stays vanished. Now I can run the business my way, for a change.”

  “It’s all right about that,” Gallegher said, “but what about me? I’ll be in custody again as soon as Johnson can wangle it.”

  “But not convicted,” Mackenzie pointed out. “A clever lawyer can fix you up. There was a similar case in which the defendant got off with a defense of non esse—his attorney went into metaphysics and proved that the murdered man had never existed. Quite specious, but so far the murderer’s gone free.”

  Gallegher said: “I’ve searched the house, and Johnson’s men did, too. There’s simply no trace of Jonas Harding or my grandfather. And I’ll tell you frankly, Mr. Mackenzie, I haven’t the slightest idea what happened to them.”

  Mackenzie gestured airily. “We must be methodical. You mentioned you had solved a certain problem for Adrenals, Incorporated. Now, I’ll admit, that interested me.”

  Silently Gallegher pointed to the blue-eyed dynamo. Mackenzie studied the object thoughtfully.

  “Well?” he said.

  “That’s it. The perfect quarry.”

  Mackenzie walked over to the thing, rapped its hide, and looked deeply into the mild azure eyes.

  “How fast can it run?” he asked shrewdly.

  Gallegher said: “It doesn’t have to run. You see, it’s invulnerable.”

  “Ha. Hum. Perhaps if you’d explain a wee bit more—”

  But Mackenzie did not seem pleased with the explanation. “No,” he said, “I don’t see it. There would be no thrill to hunting a critter like that. You forget our customers demand excitement—adrenal stimulation.”

  “They’ll get it. Anger has the same effect as rage—” Gallegher went into detail.

  But Mackenzie shook his head. “Both fear and anger give you excess energy you’ve got to use up. You can’t, against a passive quarry. You’ll just cause neuroses. We try to get rid of neuroses, not create them.”

  Gallegher, growing desperate, suddenly remembered the little brown beast and began to discuss that. Once, Mackenzie interrupted with a demand to see the creature. Gallegher slid around that one fast.

  “Ha,” Mackenzie said finally. “It isna canny. How can you hunt something that’s invisible?”

  “Oh—ultraviolet. Scent-analyzers. It’s a test for ingenuity—”

  “Our customers are not ingenious. They don’t want to be. They want a change and a vacation from routine, hard work—or easy work, as the case may be—they want a rest. They don’t want to beat their brains working out methods to catch a thing that moves faster than a pixy, nor do they want to chase a critter that’s out of sight before it even gets there. You are a vurra clever man, Mr. Gallegher, but it begins to look as though Jonas’s insurance is my best bet after all.”

  “Now wait—”

  Mackenzie pursed his lips. “I’ll admit the beasties may—I say may—have some possibilities. But what good is quarry that can’t be caught? Perhaps if you’d work out a way to capture these other—worldly animals of yours, we might do business. At present, I willna buy a pig in a poke.”

  “I’ll find a way,” Gallegher promised wildly. “But I can’t do it in jail.”

  “Ah. I am a little irritated with you, Mr. Gallegher. You tricked me into believing you had solved our problem. Which you havena done—yet. Consider the thought of jail. Your adrenalin may stimulate your brain into working out a way to trap these animals of yours. Though, even so, I can make no rash promises—”

  Murdoch Mackenzie grinned at Gallegher and went out, closing the door softly behind him. Gallegher began to dine off his finger nails.

  “Men can know the nature of things,” Joe said, with an air of solid conviction.

  At that point matters were complicated even further by the appearance, on the televisor screen, of a gray-haired man who announced that one of Gallegher’s checks had just bounced. Three hundred and fifty credits, the man said, and how about it?

  Gallegher looked dazedly at the identification card on the screen. “You’re with United Cultures? What’s that?”

  The gray-haired man said silkily, “Biological and medical supplies and laboratories, Mr. Gallegher.”

  “What did I order from you?”

  “We have a receipt for six hundred pounds of Vita-plasm, first grade. We made delivery within an hour.”

  “And when—”

  The gray-haired man went into more detail. Finally Gallegher made a few lying promises and turned from the blanking screen. He looked wildly around the lab.

  “Six hundred pounds of artificial protoplasm,” he murmured. “Ordered by Gallegher Plus. He’s got delusions of economic grandeur.”

  “It was delivered,” Joe said. “You signed the receipt, the night Grandpa and Jonas Harding disappeared.”

  “But what could I do with the stuff? It’s used for plastic surgery and for humano-prosthesis. Artificial limbs and stuff. It’s cultured cellular tissue, this Vitaplasm. Did I use it to make some animals? That’s biologically impossible. I think. How could I have molded Vitaplasm into a little brown animal that’s invisible? What about the brain and the neural structure? Joe, six hundred pounds of Vitaplasm has simply disappeared. Where has it gone?” But Joe was silent.

  Hours later Gallegher was furiously busy. “The trick is,” he explained to Joe, “to find out all I can about those critters. Then maybe I can tell where they came from and how I got ’em. Then perhaps I can discover where Grandpa and Harding went. Then—”

  “Why not sit down and think about it?”

  “That’s the difference between us. You’ve got no instinct of self-preservation. You could sit down and think while a chain reaction took place in your toes and worked up, but not me. I’m too young to die. I keep thinking of Reading Gaol. I need a drink. If I could only get high, my demon subconscious could work out the whole problem for me. Is that little brown animal around?”

  “No, “Joe said.

  “Then maybe I can steal a drink.” Gallegher exploded, after an abortive attempt that ended in utter failure: “Nobody can move that fast.”

  “Accelerated metabolism. It must have smelled alcohol. Or perhaps it has additional senses. Even I can scarcely varish it.”

  “If I mixed kerosene with the whisky, maybe the dipsomaniacal little monster wouldn’t like it. Still, neither would I. Ah, well. Back to the mill,” Gallegher said, as he tried reagent after reagent on the blue-eyed dynamo, without any effect at all.

  “Men can know the nature of things.” Joe said irritatingly.

  “Shut up. I wonder if I could electroplate this creature? That would immobilize it, all right. But it’s immobilized already. How does it eat?”

  “Logically, I’d say osmosis.”

  “Very likely. Osmosis of what?”

  Joe clicked irritatedly. “There are dozens of ways you could solve your problem. Instrumentalism. Determinism. Vitalism. Work from a posteriori to a priori. It’s perfectly obvious to me that you’ve solved the problem Adrenals, Incorporated, set you.”

  “I have?”

  “Certainly.”

  “How?”

  “Very simple. Men can know the nature of things.”

  “Will you stop repeating that outmoded basic and try to be useful? You’re wrong, any
way. Men can know the nature of things by experiment and reason combined!”

  Joe said: “Ridiculous. Philosophical incompetence. If you can’t prove your point by logic, you’ve failed. Anybody who has to depend on experiment is beneath contempt.”

  “Why should I sit here arguing philosophical concepts with a robot?” Gallegher demanded of no one in particular. “How would you like me to demonstrate the fact that ideation is dependent on your having a radioatomic brain that isn’t scattered all over the floor?”

  “Kill me, then,” Joe said. “It’s your loss and the world’s. Earth will be a poorer place when I die. But coercion means nothing to me. I have no instinct of self-preservation.”

  “Now look,” Gallegher said, trying a new tack, “if you know the answer, why not tell me? Demonstrate that wonderful logic of yours. Convince me without having to depend on experiment. Use pure reason.”

  “Why should I want to convince you? I’m convinced. And I’m so beautiful and perfect that I can achieve no higher glory than to admire me.”

  “Narcissus,” Gallegher snarled. “You’re a combination of Narcissus and Nietzsche’s Superman.”

  “Men can know the nature of things,” Joe said.

  The next development was a subpoena for the transparent robot. The legal machinery was beginning to move, an immensely complicated gadget that worked on a logic as apparently twisted as Joe’s own. Gallegher himself, it seemed, was temporarily inviolate, through some odd interpretation of jurisprudence. But the State’s principle was that the sum of the parts was equal to the whole. Joe was classified as one of the parts, the total of which equaled Gallegher. Thus the robot found itself in court, listening to a polemic with impassive scorn.

  Gallegher, flanked by Murdoch Mackenzie and a corps of attorneys, was with Joe. This was an informal hearing. Gallegher didn’t pay much attention; he was concentrating on finding a way to put the bite on the recalcitrant robot, who knew all the answers but wouldn’t talk. He had been studying the philosophers, with an eye toward meeting Joe on his own ground, but so far had succeeded only in acquiring a headache and an almost unendurable longing for a drink. Even out of his laboratory, though, he remained Tantalus. The invisible little brown animal followed him around and stole his liquor.

  One of Mackenzie’s lawyers jumped up. “I object,” he said. There was a brief wrangle as to whether Joe should be classified as a witness or as Exhibit A. If the latter, the subpoena had been falsely served. The Justice pondered.

  “As I see it,” he declared, “the question is one of determinism versus voluntarism. If this . . . ah . . . robot has free will—”

  “Ha!” Gallegher said, and was shushed by an attorney. He subsided rebelliously.

  “—then it, or he, is a witness. But, on the other hand, there is the possibility that the robot, in acts of apparent choice, is the mechanical expression of heredity and past environment. For heredity read . . . ah . . . initial mechanical basics.”

  “Whether or not the robot is a rational being, Mr. Justice, is beside the point,” the prosecutor put in.

  “I do not agree. Law is based on res—”

  Joe said: “Mr. Justice, may I speak?”

  “Your ability to do so rather automatically gives you permission,” the Justice said, studying the robot in a baffled way. “Go ahead.”

  Joe had seemingly found the connection between law, logic, and philosophy. He said happily: “I’ve figured it all out. A thinking robot is a rational being. I am a thinking robot—therefore I am a rational being.”

  “What a fool,” Gallegher groaned, longing for the sane logics or electronics and chemistry. “The old Socratic syllogism. Even I could point out the flaw in that?”

  “Quiet,” Mackenzie whispered. “All the lawyers really depend on is tying up the case in such knots nobody can figure it out. Your robot is perhaps not such a fool as you think.”

  An argument started as to whether thinking robots really were rational beings. Gallegher brooded. He couldn’t see the point, really. Nor did it become clear until, from the maze of contradictions, there emerged the tentative decision that Joe was a rational being. This seemed to please the prosecutor immensely.

  “Then,” the prosecutor said triumphantly, “I wish to bring a charge of assault and battery against Mr. Gallegher. Since this robot has been tentatively classed as a rational being, any activity causing him, or it, to lose consciousness or the power of mobility is contra bonos mores, and may be classed as mayhem.”

  Mackenzie’s attorneys were ruffled. Gallegher said: “What does that mean?”

  A lawyer whispered: “They can hold you, and hold that robot as a witness.” He stood up. “Mr. Justice. Our statements were in reply to purely theoretical questions.”

  The prosecutor said: “But the robot’s statement answered a non-theoretical question.”

  “The robot was not on oath.”

  “Easily remedied,” said the prosecutor, while Gallegher saw his last hopes slipping rapidly away.

  He thought hard, while matters proceeded.

  “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?”

  Gallegher leaped to his feet. “Mr. Justice, I object.”

  “Indeed. To what?”

  “To the validity of that oath.”

  Mackenzie said: “Ah-ha!”

  The Justice was thoughtful. “Will you please elucidate, Mr. Gallegher? Why should the oath not be administered to this robot?”

  “Such an oath is applicable to man only.”

  “And?”

  “It presupposes the existence of the soul. At least it implies theism, a personal religion. Can a robot take an oath?”

  The Justice eyed Joe. “It’s a point, certainly. Ah . . . Joe. Do you believe in a personal deity?”

  “I do.”

  “Mr. Justice,” he announced, “we have learned that Mr. Galloway Gallegher two nights ago inactivated the robot before us now. Is this not true, Mr. Gallegher?”

  But Mackenzie’s hand kept Gallegher in his seat. One of the defending attorneys rose to meet the question.

  “We admit nothing,” he said. “However, if you wish to pose a theoretical question, we will answer it.”

  The query was posed theoretically.

  “Then the theoretical answer is ‘yes,’ Mr. Prosecutor. A robot of this type can be turned on and off at will.”

  “Can the robot turn itself off?”

  “Yes.”

  “But this did not occur? Mr. Gallegher inactivated the robot at the time Mr. Jonas Harding was with him in his laboratory two nights ago?”

  “Theoretically, that is true. There was a temporary inactivation.”

  “Then,” said the prosecutor, “we wish to question the robot, who has been classed as a rational being.”

  “The decision was tentative,” the defense objected.

  “Accepted. Mr. Justice—”

  “All right,” said the Justice, who was still staring at Joe, “you may ask your questions.”

  “Ah . . . ah—” The prosecutor, facing the robot, hesitated.

  “Call me Joe,” Joe said.

  “Thank you. Ah . . . is this true? Did Mr. Gallegher inactivate you at the time and place stated?”

  “Yes.”

  The prosecutor beamed. “Then we can proceed.”

  “Wait a minute,” Murdoch Mackenzie said, rising. “May I ask a question, Mr. Justice?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Mackenzie stared at the robot. “Well, now. Will you tell me, please, what this personal deity of yours is like?”

  “Certainly,” Joe said. “Just like me.”

  After a while it degenerated into a theological argument. Gallegher left the attorneys debating the apparently vital point of how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, and went home temporarily scot-free, with Joe. Until such points as the robot’s religious basics were settled, nothing could be done. All the way, in the aircab,
Mackenzie insisted on pointing out the merits of Calvinism to Joe.

  At the door Mackenzie made a mild threat. “I did not intend to give you so much rope, you understand. But you will work all the harder with the threat of prison hanging over your head. I don’t know how long I can keep you a free man. If you can work out an answer quickly—”

  “What sort of answer?”

  “I am easily satisfied. Jonas’s body, now—”

  “Bah!” Gallegher said, and went into his laboratory and sat down morosely. He siphoned himself a drink before he remembered the little brown animal. Then he lay back, staring from the blue-eyed dynamo to Joe and back again.

  Finally he said: “There’s an old Chinese idea that the man who first stops arguing and starts swinging with his fists admits his intellectual defeat.”

  Joe said: “Naturally. Reason is sufficient; if you need experiment to prove your point, you’re a lousy philosopher and logician.”

  Gallegher fell back on casuistry. “First step, animal. Fist-swinging. Second step, human. Pure logic. But what about the third step?”

  “What third step?”

  “Men can know the nature of things—but you’re not a man. Your personal deity isn’t an anthropomorphic one. Three steps: animal, man, and what we’ll call for convenience, superman—thoughman doesn’t necessarily enter into it. We’ve always attributed godlike traits to the theoretical superbeing. Suppose, just for the sake of having a label, we call this third-stage entity Joe.”

  “Why not?” Joe said.

  “Then the two basic concepts of logic don’t apply. Men can know the nature of things by pure reason, and also by experiment and reason. But such second-stage concepts are as elementary to Joe as Plato’s ideas were to Aristotle.” Gallegher crossed his fingers behind his back. “The question is, then, what’s the third-stage operation for Joe?”

  “Godlike?” the robot said.

  “You’ve got special senses, you know. You can varish, whatever that is. Do you need ordinary logical methods? Suppose—”