Short Stories Vol.1

by Isaac Asimov

  Meyerhof shrugged. Trask's attendance was obviously a matter of indifference to him.

  '' Meyerhof had selected the last in the series with particular care. What that care consisted of, he could not have said, but he had revolved a dozen possibilities in his mind, and over and over again had tested each for some indefinable quality of meaningfulness.

  He said, "Ug, the caveman, observed his mate running to him in tears, her leopard-skin skirt in disorder. 'Ug,' she cried, distraught, 'do something quickly. A saber-toothed tiger has entered Mother's cave. Do something!' Ug grunted, picked up his well-gnawed buffalo bone and said, 'Why do anything? Who the hell cares what happens to a saber-toothed tiger?' "

  It was then that Meyerhof asked his two questions and leaned back, closing his eyes. He was done.

  "I saw absolutely nothing wrong," said Trask to Whistler. "He told me what he was doing readily enough and it was odd but legitimate."

  "What he claimed he was doing," said Whistler.

  "Even so, I can't stop a Grand Master on opinion alone. He seemed queer but, after all, Grand Masters are supposed to seem queer. I didn't think him insane."

  "Using Multivac to find the source of jokes?" muttered the senior analyst in discontent. "That's not insane?"

  "How can we tell?" asked Trask irritably. "Science has advanced to the point where the only meaningful questions left are the ridiculous ones. The sensible ones have been thought of, asked and answered long ago."

  "It's no use. I'm bothered."

  "Maybe, but there's no choice now, Whistler. We'll see Meyerhof and you can do the necessary analysis of Multivac's response, if any. As for me, my only job is to handle the red tape. Good Lord, I don't even know what a senior analyst such as yourself is supposed to do, except analyze, and that doesn't help me any."

  Whistler said, "It's simple enough. A Grand Master like Meyerhof asks questions and Multivac automatically formulates it into quantities and operations. The necessary machinery for converting words to symbols is what makes up most of the bulk of Multivac. Multivac then gives the answer in quantities and operations, but it doesn't translate that back into words except in the most simple and routine cases. If it were designed to solve the general retranslation problem, its bulk would have to be quadrupled at least."

  "I see. Then it's your job to translate these symbols into words?"

  "My job and that of other analysts. We use smaller, specially designed computers whenever necessary." Whistler smiled grimly. "Like the Delphic priestess of ancient Greece, Multivac gives oracular and obscure answers. Only we have translators, you see."

  They had arrived. Meyerhof was waiting.

  Whistler said briskly, "What circuits did you use, Grand Master?" Meyerhof told him and Whistler went to work.

  Trask tried to follow what was happening, but none of it made sense. The government official watched a spool unreel with a pattern of dots in endless incomprehensibility. Grand Master Meyerhof stood indifferently to one side while Whistler surveyed the pattern as it emerged. The analyst had put on headphones and a mouthpiece and at intervals murmured a series of instructions which, at some far-off place, guided assistants through electronic contortions in other computers.

  Occasionally, Whistler listened, then punched combinations on a complex keyboard marked with symbols that looked vaguely mathematical but weren't.

  A good deal more than an hour's time elapsed.

  The frown on Whistler's face grew deeper. Once, he looked up at the two others and began, "This is unbel-" and turned back to his work.

  Finally, he said hoarsely, "I can give you an unofficial answer." His eyes were red-rimmed. "The official answer awaits complete analysis. Do you want it unofficial?"

  "Go ahead," said Meyerhof.

  Trask nodded.

  Whistler darted a hangdog glance at the Grand Master. "Ask a foolish question-" he said. Then, gruffly, "Multivac says, extraterrestrial origin."

  "What are you saying?" demanded Trask.

  "Don't you hear me? The jokes we laugh at were not made up by any man. Multivac has analyzed all data given it and the one answer that best fits that data is that some extraterrestrial intelligence has composed the jokes, all of them, and placed them in selected human minds at selected times and places in such a way that no man is conscious of having made one up. All subsequent jokes are minor variations and adaptations of these grand originals."

  Meyerhof broke in, face flushed with the kind of triumph only a Grand Master can know who once again has asked the right question. "All comedy writers," he said, "work by twisting old jokes to new purposes. That's well known. The answer fits."

  "But why?" asked Trask. "Why make up the jokes?"

  "Multivac says," said Whistler, "that the only purpose that fits all the data is that the jokes are intended to study human psychology. We study rat psychology by making the rats solve mazes. The rats don't know why and wouldn't even if they were aware of what was going on, which they're not. These outer intelligences study man's psychology by noting individual reactions to carefully selected anecdotes. Each man reacts differently. . . . Presumably, these outer intelligences are to us as we are to rats." He shuddered.

  Trask, eyes staring, said, "The Grand Master said man is the only animal

  with a sense of humor. It would seem then that the sense of humor is foisted upon us from without."

  Meyerhof added excitedly, "And for possible humor created from within, we have no laughter. Puns, I mean."

  Whistler said, "Presumably, the extraterrestrials cancel out reactions to spontaneous jokes to avoid confusion."

  Trask said in sudden agony of spirit, "Come on, now, Good Lord, do either of you believe this?"

  The senior analyst looked at him coldly. "Multivac says so. It's all that can be said so far. It has pointed out the real jokesters of the universe, and if we want to know more, the matter will have to be followed up." He added in a whisper, "If anyone dares follow it up."

  Grand Master Meyerhof said suddenly, "I asked two questions, you know. So far only the first has been answered. I think Multivac has enough data to answer the second."

  Whistler shrugged. He seemed a half-broken man. "When a Grand Master thinks there is enough data," he said, "I'll make book on it. What is your second question?"

  "I asked this. What will be the effect on the human race of discovering the answer to my first question?"

  "Why did you ask that?" demanded Trask.

  "Just a feeling that it had to be asked," said Meyerhof.

  Trask said, "Insane. It's all insane," and turned away. Even he himself felt how strangely he and Whistler had changed sides. Now it was Trask crying insanity.

  Trask closed his eyes. He might cry insanity all he wished, but no man in fifty years had doubted the combination of a Grand Master and Multivac and found his doubts verified.

  Whistler worked silently, teeth clenched. He put Multivac and its subsidiary machines through their paces again. Another hour passed and he laughed harshly. "A raving nightmare!"

  "What's the answer?" asked Meyerhof. "I want Multivac's remarks, not yours."

  "All right. Take it. Multivac states that, once even a single human discovers the truth of this method of psychological analysis of the human mind, it will become useless as an objective technique to those extraterrestrial powers now using it."

  "You mean there won't be any more jokes handed out to humanity?" asked Trask faintly. "Or what do you mean?"

  "No more jokes," said Whistler, "now! Multivac says now! The experiment is ended now! A new technique will have to be introduced."

  They stared at each other. The minutes passed.

  Meyerhof said slowly, "Multivac is right."

  Whistler said haggardly, "I know."

  Even Trask said in a whisper, "Yes. It must be."

  It was Meyerhof who put his finger on the proof of it, Meyerhof the accomplished jokester. He said, "It's over, you know, all over. I've been trying for five minutes now and I can't th
ink of one single joke, not one! And if I read one in a book, I wouldn't laugh. I know."

  "The gift of humor is gone," said Trask drearily. "No man will ever laugh again."

  And they remained there, staring, feeling the world shrink down to the dimensions of an experimental rat cage-with the maze removed and something, something about to be put in its place.

  The Immortal Bard

  "Oh, yes," said Dr. Phineas Welch, "I can bring back the spirits of the illustrious dead."

  He was a little drunk, or maybe he wouldn't have said it. Of course, it was perfectly all right to get a little drunk at the annual Christmas party.

  Scott Robertson, the school's young English instructor, adjusted his glasses and looked to right and left to see if they were overheard. "Really, Dr. Welch."

  "I mean it. And not just the spirits. I bring back the bodies, too."

  "I wouldn't have said it were possible," said Robertson primly.

  "Why not? A simple matter of temporal transference."

  "You mean time travel? But that's quite-uh-unusual."

  "Not if you know how."

  "Well, how, Dr. Welch?"

  "Think I'm going to tell you?" asked the physicist gravely. He looked vaguely about for another drink and didn't find any. He said, "I brought quite a few back. Archimedes, Newton, Galileo. Poor fellows."

  "Didn't they like it here? I should think they'd have been fascinated by our modern science," said Robertson. He was beginning to enjoy the conversation.

  "Oh, they were. They were. Especially Archimedes. I thought he'd go mad with joy at first after I explained a little of it in some Greek I'd boned up on, but no-no-"

  "What was wrong?"

  Copyright (c) 195? by Palmer Publications, Inc.

  "Just a different culture. They couldn't get used to our way ѓ@i life. They got terribly lonely and frightened. I had to send them back." ja

  "That's too bad."

  "Yes. Great minds, but not flexible minds. Not universal. So I tried Shakespeare."

  "What?" yelled Robertson. This was getting closer to home.

  "Don't yell, my boy," said Welch. "It's bad manners."

  "Did you say you brought back Shakespeare?"

  "I did. I needed someone with a universal mind; someone who knew people well enough to be able to live with them centuries way from his own time. Shakespeare was the man. I've got his signature. As a memento, you know."

  "On you?" asked Robertson, eyes bugging.

  "Right here." Welch fumbled in one vest pocket after another. "Ah, here it is."

  A little piece of pasteboard was passed to the instructor. On one side it said: "L. Klein & Sons, Wholesale Hardware." On the other side, in straggly script, was written, "Will1" Shakesper."

  A wild surmise filled Robertson. "What did he look like?"

  "Not like his pictures. Bald and an ugly mustache. He spoke in a thick brogue. Of course, I did my best to please him with our times. I told him we thought highly of his plays and still put them on the boards. In fact, I said we thought they were the greatest pieces of literature in the English language, maybe in any language."

  "Good. Good," said Robertson breathlessly.

  "I said people had written volumes of commentaries on his plays. Naturally he wanted to see one and I got one for him from the library."

  "And?"

  "Oh, he was fascinated. Of course, he had trouble with the current idioms and references to events since 1600, but I helped out. Poor fellow. I don't think he ever expected such treatment. He kept saying, 'God ha' mercy! What cannot be racked from words in five centuries? One could wring, methinks, a flood from a damp clout!' "

  "He wouldn't say that."

  "Why not? He wrote his plays as quickly as he could. He said he had to on account of the deadlines. He wrote Hamlet in less than six months. The plot was an old one. He just polished it up."

  "That's all they do to a telescope mirror. Just polish it up," said the English instructor indignantly.

  The physicist disregarded him. He made out an untouched cocktail on the bar some feet away and sidled toward it. "I told the immortal bard that we even gave college courses in Shakespeare."

  "/ give one."

  "I know. I enrolled him in your evening extension course. I never saw a

  man so eager to find out what posterity thought of him as poor Bill was. He worked hard at it."

  "You enrolled William Shakespeare in my course?" mumbled Robertson. Even as an alcoholic fantasy, the thought staggered him. And was it an alcoholic fantasy? He was beginning to recall a bald man with a queer way of talking. ...

  "Not under his real name, of course," said Dr. Welch. "Never mind what he went under. It was a mistake, that's all. A big mistake. Poor fellow." He had the cocktail now and shook his head at it.

  "Why was it a mistake? What happened?"

  "I had to send him back to 1600," roared Welch indignantly. "How much humiliation do you think a man can stand?"

  "What humiliation are you talking about?"

  Dr. Welch tossed off the cocktail. "Why, you poor simpleton, you flunked him."

  Someday

  Niccolo Mazetti lay stomach down on the rug, chin buried in the palm of one small hand, and listened to the Bard disconsolately. There was even the suspicion of tears in his dark eyes, a luxury an eleven-year-old could allow himself only when alone.

  The Bard said, "Once upon a time in the middle of a deep wood, there lived a poor woodcutter and his two motherless daughters, who were each as beautiful as the day is long. The older daughter had long hair as black as a feather from a raven's wing, but the younger daughter had hair as bright and golden as the sunlight of an autumn afternoon.

  "Many times while the girls were waiting for their father to come home from his day's work in the wood, the older girl would sit before a mirror and sing-"

  What she sang, Niccolo did not hear, for a call sounded from outside the room: "Hey, Nickie."

  And Niccolo, his face clearing on the moment, rushed to the window and shouted, "Hey, Paul."

  Paul Loeb waved an excited hand. He was thinner than Niccolo and not as tall, for all he was six months older. His face was full of repressed tension which showed itself most clearly in the rapid blinking of his eyelids. "Hey, Nickie, let me in. I've got an idea and a half. Wait till you hear it." He looked rapidly about him as though to check on the possibility of eavesdroppers, but the front yard was quite patently empty. He repeated, in a whisper, "Wait till you hear it."

  Copyright (c) 1956 by Royal Publications, Inc.

  "All right. I'll open the door."

  The Bard continued smoothly, oblivious to the sudden loss of attention on the part of Niccolo. As Paul entered, the Bard was saying. ". . . Thereupon, the lion said, 'If you will find me the lost egg of the bird which flies over the Ebony Mountain once every ten years, I will-' "

  Paul said, "Is that a Bard you're listening to? I didn't know you had one."

  Niccolo reddened and the look of unhappiness returned to his face. "Just an old thing I had when I was a kid. It ain't much good." He kicked at the Bard with his foot and caught the somewhat scarred and discolored plastic covering a glancing blow.

  The Bard hiccupped as its speaking attachment was jarred out of contact a moment, then it went on: "-for a year and a day until the iron shoes were worn out. The princess stopped at the side of the road. . . ."

  Paul said, "Boy, that is an old model," and looked at it critically.

  Despite Niccofo's own bitterness against the Bard, he winced at the other's condescending tone. For the moment, he was sorry he had allowed Paul in, at least before he had restored the Bard to its usual resting place in the basement. It was only in the desperation of a dull day and a fruitless discussion with his father that he had resurrected it. And it turned out to be just as stupid as he had expected.

  Nickie was a little afraid of Paul anyway, since Paul had special courses at school and everyone said he was going to grow up to be a Computing En
gineer.

  Not that Niccolo himself was doing badly at school. He got adequate marks in logic, binary manipulations, computing and elementary circuits; all the usual grammar-school subjects. But that was it! They were just the usual subjects and he would grow up to be a control-board guard like everyone else.

  Paul, however, knew mysterious things about what he called electronics and theoretical mathematics and programing. Especially programing. Niccolo didn't even try to understand when Paul bubbled over about it.

  Paul listened to the Bard for a few minutes and said, "You been using it much?"

  "No!" said Niccolo, offended. "I've had it in the basement since before you moved into the neighborhood. I just got it out today-" He lacked an excuse that seemed adequate to himself, so he concluded, "I just got it out."

  Paul said, "Is that what it tells you about: woodcutters and princesses and talking animals?"

  Niccolo said, "It's terrible. My dad says we can't afford a new one. I said to him this morning-" The memory of the morning's fruitless pleadings brought Niccolo dangerously near tears, which he repressed in a panic. Somehow, he felt that Paul's thin cheeks never felt the stain of tears and that Paul would have only contempt for anyone else less strong than himself.

  Niccolo went on, "So I thought I'd try this old thing again, but it's no good."

  Paul turned off the Bard, pressed the contact that led to a nearly instantaneous reorientation and recombination of the vocabulary, characters, plot lines and climaxes stored within it. Then he reactivated it.

  The Bard began smoothly, "Once upon a time there was a little boy named Willikins whose mother had died and who lived with a stepfather and a stepbrother. Although the stepfather was very well-to-do, he begrudged poor Willikins the very bed he slept in so that Willikins was forced to get such rest as he could on a pile of straw in the stable next to the horses-"

  "Horses!" cried Paul.

  "They're a kind of animal," said Niccolo. "I think."

  "I know that! I just mean imagine stories about horses."

  "It tells about horses all the time," said Niccolo. "There are things called cows, too. You milk them but the Bard doesn't say how."