Ability Quotient

by Mack Reynolds

  “Confound it,” the other said testily. “You’ll find out in due time.”

  It was evidently a matter of put up or shut up. It was the time to take his stand, if he wanted to turn down this whole confusing mess. Damn it, he had come to this university to cash in on his veteran’s rights to a free education of top quality. Also in the back of his mind was the fact that he had a free ride for at least eight years. Like many a long-term army man he was basically lazy. His inclination was to take life easy. It could be awfully short—you found that out in the military. The thing was, he was getting more intrigued by the minute. The triple Guaranteed Annual Income. That wealth beyond dreams of avarice gobbledygook. This suite. He assumed everything went with it. From food to liquor. He had half a mind to ask Marsh whether or not he could have a call-girl sent up. That’d probably shock the puffy old buzzard.

  He said, “Kay,” and began to unbuckle his belt.

  The doctor was a pro. Bert Alshuler didn’t even feel the injection.

  The other turned and fiddled in his briefcase some more, to emerge with two rather large pill bottles, one brown, one green. He held them up to the light, for some reason or other, as if to check the contents, though as far as Bert could see, both the bottles were opaque.

  Marsh said with satisfaction, “The brown ones will turn you on, the green ones, off.” He began to unscrew the top of the brown bottle.

  “Now wait a minute. Turn me on what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “The hell I will. I tried charas once, in India, and I can stand without being turned on.”

  The other ignored him and extended a chubby hand, complete with long-sized brown pill. Bert looked at it. The hand shoved further forward.

  Hell, he had already taken the shot. What was the point in chickening out at this mid-point? He took it. Marsh went over to the beautiful antique bar and brought back a glass of water.

  He said, extending the glass, “Never take more than one of these at a time. Nor the green ones either, for that matter?”

  “What happens if I take more than one at a time?”

  “You’ll get deathly sick. I believe the military term is, you toss your cookies.”

  “Maybe in your day in the military, not in mine,” Bert grumbled, but he tossed back the pill and washed it down. “Now what?”

  “Now you begin your studies.”

  Bert looked around the room, not being able to restrain his approval. “So this is where I do my homework, eh?”

  “This is where you do all your work.”

  It was time to scowl again. “How do you mean? How about my classes, my lectures, my lab work and so on?”

  “Some lab work we might have, later on. You’ll have special tutors. Also, possibly a few lectures, though you can get most of these on tape, of course, if not all. But no classes.”

  Bert Alshuler stared at him. “No classes? Are you completely around the bend? The whole idea is that the computers decide what courses I’m to take.”

  “Courses, not classes. Now if you’ll just come over here.” Marsh led the way to the auto-teacher. He looked at his wrist chronometer again and murmured something that Bert didn’t catch, then, “Now, if I’m not mistaken, the computers have decided that your first course is this Refresher in Mathematics from Elementary Arithmetic Through Infinitesimal Calculus.”

  Alshuler said, “It’s going to have its work cut out refreshing me in anything more advanced than high school solid geometry. That’s as far as I got and that was a long time ago.”

  “It takes everything step by step, you won’t have any difficulty,” the other said with satisfaction.

  “Kay. Great. But when I get to that next step, after geometry, I’m going to stumble over it and fall flat on my kisser.”

  “We’ll see. Now, this button speeds things up as you go along.”

  “Where’s the one that slows things down?” Bert growled.

  Marsh ignored him. “If you have questions, simply speak into the screen. Go at whatever pace you wish. When you weary, take one of the green pills. Any questions?”

  Bert looked at him. “Any questions? I have so damn many questions I can’t even think of the first one.”

  The professor-doctor was returning things to his briefcase very briskly. “All right, ask them tomorrow. I’ll see you in the morning. I assume you know how to utilize the auto-kitchen and so forth. I hope you find your quarters satisfactory, Mr. Alshuler.”

  Bert looked after him as the plump little man trotted off to the living room and evidently the front door.

  He turned back to the auto-teacher. It was obviously spanking new. He rubbed his right palm over his mouth. He supposed that he should check out the rest of the apartment, locate his bedroom and possibly do a bit of unpacking, but he was increasingly intrigued.

  He sat down before the screen and activated it. A book was there. The title: Refresher in Mathematics from Elementary Arithmetic Through Infinitesimal Calculus. He grunted contempt of that and pressed the button that turned pages.

  A voice said, “Chapter One. Elementary Arithmetic. Addition.”

  Bert said, “We don’t have to start quite that elementary. I can add.”

  The voice, an even, firm, cultured voice but with still a mechanical something in its tone, said, “It is best to review each chapter in turn, taking the examination at the end of each before proceeding to the next. Your stylus for marking the examinations is to your right hand.”

  “Kay, all right,” Bert grumbled.

  When they said elementary arithmetic, they evidently meant elementary arithmetic. They started out with one plus one equals two. Unconsciously, Bert flicked the switch to speed things up. They went through addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in short order and before he knew it he was into elementary algebra. It had been a long time since he had done any algebra. He was surprised how well it came back to him. Once again, he was able to speed up the lesson. The pages flicked past. Once or twice in each chapter, and particularly at the tests, the screen voice brought him up. Once or twice, he asked questions on his own. The book, he realized, was very well down. Each step was absolutely clear to him before he went on to the next. It was a flow. He never hesitated. Trigonometry he had never studied before and was astonished to find how easily he went through it, amazed that he found himself speeding up the lessons still once again.

  It came as a shock when he reached the end of the hook.

  He sat back in his chair and stared, put down the stylus with which he had been marking the tests.

  A voice, a different voice, said, “You have been credited with Math One.”

  Bert Alshuler blinked. It came to him, almost like a slap in the face, that he had completed a course meant to take a semester. He staggered to his feet, went over to the table on which Professor Marsh had left the two bottles and picked up the brown one and stared at it.

  He looked at his watch and stared again. It was lunch time. It had been about two hours since Marsh had left. Then he scowled and shook the wrist chronometer. Something was wrong with it. The second hand was going very slowly.

  He went over to the massive mahogany desk, set in one corner, leaned over it and dialed the time on the phone screen. The time was exactly the same as his own wrist chronometer proclaimed. He looked at the watch again, uncomprehendingly. The second hand was still going at approximately one quarter or less what he would have thought normal speed.

  Without thinking, he returned to the table and took up the green bottle. He opened it, shook out a pill and took it. There was still some water in the glass Professor Marsh had brought him earlier. He finished it, to wash down the pill. He felt as though in a daze. Nothing made sense. And then he realized that he felt ravenously hungry. For the first time he explored the apartment.

  The balance of the suite lived up to the promise of the living room and study. It was luxurious and done in a taste that could only be thought of in terms of tomorrow.

  T
here was a dining room, a large one, but the auto-kitchen also had a table with a serving unit and he wound up there, sitting down and flicking the switch for the lunch menu. Then something came to him. He looked at the watch again. The second hand was speeding around the face at normal rate.

  “The green pills turn it off,” he muttered wonderingly.

  He gave his order into the screen, realizing all over again that he had an appetite greater than he could remember for years. He was ravenous.

  He had assumed that the steak would be from the whale herds, but it wasn’t. It was beef. Who could afford beef these days? He ate two of them, a monstrous amount of potatoes, a king-size salad and a huge dish of ice cream and strawberries.

  Lunch over, he pushed the dishes and utensils onto the table’s center and pressed the button that would return them to the kitchens in the bowels of the basement floors of the building.

  He made his way back to the study and stared at the auto-teacher accusingly for a long moment, his hands jammed into his jacket pockets. Then he shook his head and went over to the table and got himself one of the brown pills. Something came to him and he put the pill down and returned to the auto-teacher and sat down before the screen.

  He activated it and said, “What’s next?”

  A voice said, “Have you taken your stimulant?”

  Bert said, “No. I’d like to take a crack at this without it.”

  “Please take your stimulant.”

  How in the hell can you argue with a computer’s robot voice? He glared at the screen for a moment but then got to his feet and went back for the pill.

  “The brown one turns you on,” he growled. “I feel like Alice In Wonderland.” He began to take the pill but then thought of something. He returned to the student’s chair and sank back into it and activated the screen again. “Kay. Let’s go,” he said.

  “Have you taken your stimulant?”

  “Yes.”

  “The next subject will be Anthropology One, Elementary Ethnology.”

  Bert groaned. He had a very vague idea of what anthropology was but didn’t even know the definition of ethnology.

  A book appeared on the screen. Elementary Ethnology.

  The screen said, “Ethnology, the branch of anthropology which utilizes the data furnished by ethnography, the recording of living cultures, and archeology, to analyze and compare the various cultures of mankind. In short, social anthropology which evolves broader generalizations based partly on the findings of the other social sciences.”

  Inwardly, Bert groaned again but flicked his button to turn to Chapter One, page one.

  Shortly, the voice said, “You have not taken your stimulant.”

  He looked at the screen in disgust. “How did you know?”

  “Please take your stimulant.”

  Bert got to his feet and went back to where he had left the brown pill. “How could you brazen out a lie to a damn computer?”

  He took the pill and returned to the student’s chair and slumped down into it. “Kay,” he said. “So I’ve taken the stimulant.”

  Within a few minutes he was speeding up the rate of page turning. The tests at the end of each chapter seemed irritatingly simple He wanted to get on with it. He plowed on through, speeding up, speeding up. And, once again, came to the end of the course, startled.

  The screen said, “You have been credited with Anthropology One.”

  He sat there for a moment and stared at it. He licked his lips and said, “Kay. What’s next?”

  “Ancient History One. Our Oriental Heritage.”

  “Jesus,” Bert said in resignation.

  “No,” the screen said. “The period previous to the emergence of the Christian ethic.”

  Who could expect a computer to have a sense of humor?

  “Kay, let’s go.”

  At six o’clock he called it quits and stumbled from his chair and to the bar in the corner. He looked up at the selection of potables. It looked as though it had been chosen by a multi-millionaire Some of the Scotch was forty years old. If they wanted to woo him with forty-year-old whisky, he’d be glad to cooperate. He reached up for bottle and glass and poured himself a healthy slug, a very healthy one. The military had taught him to take his drink where he could find it and to get it down quickly before somebody, or something, changed the situation under which you could imbibe.

  He held the glass up in a sarcastic toast and said, “Here’s to education,” and belted it down.

  It was ultra-smooth, ultra-strong and had an absolutely wonderful bouquet. He had never tasted a more delicate spirit in his life. He hadn’t known that strong liquor could go down so wonderfully.

  He looked into his now empty glass and then at the bottle from which he had poured it and said, admiringly, “Now that’s what I call whiskey.”

  And then he fell unconscious.

  Chapter Four

  He had awakened how many hours later, he didn’t know. He had failed to check the time between finishing his last lesson and taking the drink. He felt nauseated, but, surprisingly, at the same time desperately hungry. He was starved. He looked out the fabulous picture window. It was pitch dark outside. He looked at his wrist chronometer. The second hand was creeping.

  “Oh, oh,” he said. He pushed himself to his feet, groaning, and made his way over to the table where—how many centuries ago?—Professor Ralph Marsh, the fink, had left the two pill bottles. What was it? Brown turned you on, green turned off. Oh great. He felt like one of the victims of some mad scientist type.

  However, he shook out one of the green pills, knocked it back and went over to the bar for water.

  He couldn’t imagine getting any food into his stomach, feeling as it did, but on the other hand he was still desperately hungry It came to him that when he was stimulated, turned on, or call it whatever you will, that he burned up energy like a dynamo. Nervous energy, perhaps, but where physical consumption of energy ended and nervous began, he didn’t know. In combat you could spend several days sitting in a foxhole, immobile for endless hours at a time, and come out having lost as much as ten pounds, although you had eaten reasonably well of the high energy foods the military provided.

  He stumbled to the kitchen and, lacking imagination, ordered the same dishes he had eaten at lunch. He managed to get down three steaks this time. The nausea had largely disappeared after the first few bites of hot food.

  He went back into the study, irritation growing in him by the minute, and sat down at the desk phone screen. He activated it and said, “Professor Ralph Marsh.”

  “The number is restricted. Who is calling, please?”

  He grunted sarcastically. These people were really exclusive. “Albert Alshuler.”

  “You name is listed. Thank you.”

  “It had better be,” he growled.

  Marsh’s face faded in. By the grain, he was evidently on his pocket phone and from the appearance of his image, evidently in a moving vehicle.

  “Yes, Alshuler?”

  Bert said, “Look. The booze in this apartment. Somebody’s put a mickey in it.”

  “Mickey?”

  “Somebody’s poisoned it. I took a slug a few hours ago and bang, passed out. I still feel a little sick.”

  The other was staring at him. “But that’s impossible!”

  “Great. And here I stand, wasting my time telling you fairy stories, eh?”

  “How do you feel now?”

  “Better. I got some food into my stomach.”

  Marsh thought about it, his plump face pouting. “Well, I’ll go over it with you in the morning. I’d suggest you don’t drink anything more before then.”

  Bert looked at him in disgust and switched the phone off.

  He awoke at first dawn, opened one eye to take a look at the light, growled and turned over again.

  But there was no sleep in him. Too much was pounding away in his mind. He got up and explored the bathroom that led off the master bedroom. It was ultramodern, as
was the rest of the suite, and was well stocked with a man’s toilet articles.

  He performed standard ablutions, then returned to where he had left his suitcases. He opened them in search for clean clothing but then something came to him He went over to one of the huge closets and opened it. There were at least a dozen suits, obviously brand new, inside. He turned and went over to a set of drawers and inside found a wide selection of shirts, underclothing, socks, a veritable warehouse of clothing. He had a sneaking suspicion that it would fit him. It did, suits and all, and was of a quality he had never experienced. He went on a search for shoes and found them, a score of pairs, running from dress shoes to loafers.

  When he was fully dressed, he stared at himself in a full length mirror. “Beyond dreams of avarice,” he muttered.

  The door screen summoned him before he had decided whether to take another of the brown pills and give his next subject a whirl.

  It was the lardy Professor Marsh, as well turned out and as condescending as ever, and with oversized briefcase in hand. As soon as he was in the door, he said, “Now, what was this about being poisoned? How do you feel?”

  “Better,” Bert said, leading the way back to the living room. “Listen, what’s all this about?”

  “First, the alleged poisoning.”

  Bert took him to the bar and indicated the Scotch. “I knocked back about two ounces of that and in no time flat, passed out like a light.”

  At Bert’s nod, he removed the top, poured himself a small portion and drank it.

  “You’ll be sorry,” Bert told him sourly.

  But there was no reaction. Marsh said testily, “You were under the influence of the ganglioside?”

  “The what?”

  “The brown pill.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It never occurred to us. Evidently, alcohol is toxic when you are, ah, turned on.”

  Bert Alshuler was indignant. “You mean to tell me you haven’t worked this out any further than that?”

  “We’ll look into it further. It’s not important. Now, how far did you get yesterday?”