The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B

by Ben Bova (Ed)

  And afterward, they were a pleasant company in the Bigelows' ornate drawing room. Tanaquil Bigelow, in consultation with the children, checked over their ration books and came up with the announcement that they would have a brief recital by a pair of robot dancers, followed by string music by a robot quartet. Morey prepared himself for the worst, but found before the dancers were through that he was enjoying himself. Strange lesson for Morey: When you didn't have to watch them, the robot entertainers were fun!

  "Good night, dears," Tanaquil Bigelow said firmly to the children when the dancers were done. The boys rebelled, naturally, but they went. It was only a matter of minutes, though, before one of them was back, clutching at Morey's sleeve with a pudgy hand.

  Morey looked at the boy uneasily, having little experience with children. He said, "Uh-what is it, Tony?"

  "Dick, you mean," the boy said. "Gimme your autograph." He poked an engraved pad and a vulgarly jeweled pencil at Morey.

  Morey dazedly signed and the child ran off, Morey staring after him. Tanaquil Bigelow laughed and explained, "He saw your name in Porfirio's column. Dick loves Porfirio, reads him every day. He's such an intellectual kid, really. He'd always have his nose in a book if I didn't keep after him to play with his trains and watch tri-D."

  "That was quite a nice write-up," Walter Bigelow commented—a little enviously, Morey thought. "Bet you make Consumer of the Year. I wish," he signed, "that we could get a little ahead on the quotas the way you did. But it just never seems to work out. We eat and play and consume like crazy, and somehow at the end of the month we're always a little behind in something—everything keeps piling up—and then the Board sends us a warning, and they call me down and, first thing you know, I've got a couple of hundred added penalty points and we're worse off than before."

  "Never you mind," Tanaquil replied staunchly. "Consuming isn't everything in life. You have your work."

  Bigelow nodded judiciously and offered Morey another drink. Another drink, however, was not what Morey needed. He was sitting in a rosy glow, less of alcohol than of sheer contentment with the world.

  He said suddenly, "Listen."

  Bigelow looked up from his own drink. "Eh?"

  "If I tell you something that's a secret, will you keep it that way?"

  Bigelow rumbled, "Why, I guess so, Morey."

  But his wife cut in sharply, "Certainly we will, Morey. Of course! What is it?" There was a gleam in her eye, Morey noticed. It puzzled him, but he decided to ignore it.

  He said, "About that write-up. I—I'm not such a hot-shot consumer, really, you know. In fact—" All of a sudden, everyone's eyes seemed to be on him. For a tortured moment, Morey wondered if he was doing the right thing. A secret that two people know is compromised, and a secret known to three people is no secret. Still—

  "It's like this," he said firmly. "You remember what we were talking about at Uncle Piggotty's that night? Well, when I went home I went down to the robot quarters, and I—"

  He went on from there.

  Tanaquil Bigelow said triumphantly, "I knew it!"

  Walter Bigelow gave his wife a mild, reproving look. He declared soberly, "You've done a big thing, Morey. A mighty big thing. God willing, you've pronounced the death sentence on our society as we know it. Future generations will revere the name of Morey Fry." He solemnly shook Morey's hand.

  Morey said dazedly, "I what?

  Walter nodded. It was a valedictory. He turned to his wife. "Tanaquil, we'll have to call an emergency meeting."

  "Of course, Walter," she said devotedly.

  "And Morey will have to be there. Yes, you'll have to, Morey; no excuses. We want the Brotherhood to meet you. Right, Howland?"

  Howland coughed uneasily. He nodded noncommittally and took another drink.

  Morey demanded desperately, "What are you talking about? Howland, you tell me!"

  Howland fiddled with his drink. "Well," he said, "it's like Tan was telling you that night. A few of us, well, politically mature persons have formed a little group. We—"

  "Little group!" Tanaquil Bigelow said scornfully. "Howland, sometimes I wonder if you really catch the spirit of the thing at all! It's everybody, Morey, everybody in the world. Why, there are eighteen of us right here in Old Town! There are scores more all over the world! I knew you were up to something like this, Morey. I told Walter so the morning after we met you. I said, 'Walter, mark my words, that man Morey is up to something.' But I must say," she admitted worshipfully, "I didn't know it would have the scope of what you're proposing now! Imagine—a whole world of consumers, rising as one man, shouting the name of Morey Fry, fighting the Ration Board with the Board's own weapon—the robots. What poetic justice!"

  Bigelow nodded enthusiastically. "Call Uncle Piggotty's, dear," he ordered. "See if you can round up a quorum right now! Meanwhile, Morey and I are going belowstairs. Let's go, Morey—let's get the new world started!"

  Morey sat there open-mouthed. He closed it with a snap. "Bigelow," he whispered, "do you mean to say that you're going to spread this idea around through some kind of subversive organization?"

  "Subversive?" Bigelow repeated stiffly. "My dear man, all creative minds are subversive, whether they operate singly or in such a group as the Brotherhood of Freemen. I scarcely like—"

  "Never mind what you like," Morey insisted. "You're going to call a meeting of this Brotherhood and you want me to tell them what I just told you. Is that right?"

  "Well-yes."

  Morey got up. "I wish I could say it's been nice, but it hasn't. Good night!"

  And he stormed out before they could stop him.

  Out on the street, though, his resolution deserted him. He hailed a robot cab and ordered the driver to take him on the traditional time-killing ride through the park while he made up his mind.

  The fact that he had left, of course, was not going to keep Bigelow from going through with his announced intention. Morey remembered, now, fragments of conversation from Bigelow and his wife at Uncle Piggotty's, and cursed himself. They had, it was perfectly true, said and hinted enough about politics and purposes to put him on his guard. All that nonsense about twoness had diverted him from what should have been perfectly clear: They were subversives indeed.

  He glanced at his watch. Late, but not too late; Cherry would still be at her parents' home.

  He leaned forward and gave the driver their address. It was like beginning the first of a hundred-shot series of injections: you know it's going to cure you, but it hurts just the same.

  Morey said manfully: "And that's it, sir. I know I've been a fool. I'm willing to take the consequences."

  Old Elon rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "Ura," he said.

  Cherry and her mother had long passed the point where they could say anything at all; they were seated side by side on a couch across the room, listening with expressions of strain and incredulity.

  Elon said abruptly, "Excuse me. Phone call to make." He left the room to make a brief call and returned. He said over his shoulder to his wife, "Coffee. We'll need it. Got a problem here."

  Morey said, "Do you think—I mean what should I do?"

  Elon shrugged, then, surprisingly, grinned. "What can you do?" he demanded cheerfully. "Done plenty already, I'd say. Drink some coffee. Call I made," he explained, "was to Jim, my law clerk. He'll be here in a minute. Get some dope from Jim, then we'll know better."

  Cherry came over to Morey and sat beside him. All she said was, "Don't worry," but to Morey it conveyed all the meaning in the world. He returned the pressure of her hand with a feeling of deepest relief. Hell, he said to himself, why should I worry? Worst they can do to me is drop me a couple of grades and what's so bad about that?

  He grimaced involuntarily. He had remembered his own early struggles as a Class One and what was so bad about that.

  The law clerk arrived, a smallish robot with a battered stainless-steel hide and dull coppery features. Elon took the robot aside for a terse conversation before
he came back to Morey.

  "As I thought," he said in satisfaction. "No precedent. No laws prohibiting. Therefore no crime."

  "Thank heaven!" Morey said in ecstatic relief.

  Elon shook his head. "They'll probably give you a reconditioning and you can't expect to keep your Grade Five. Probably call it antisocial behavior. Is, isn't it?"

  Dashed, Morey said, "Oh." He frowned briefly, then looked up. "All right, Dad, if I've got it coming to me, I'll take my medicine."

  "Way to talk," Elon said approvingly. "Now go home. Get a good night's sleep. First thing in the morning, go to the Ration Board. Tell 'em the whole story, beginning to end. They'll be easy on you." Elon hesitated. "Well, fairly easy," he amended. "I hope."

  The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast.

  He had to. That morning, as Morey awoke, he had the sick certainty that he was going to be consuming triple rations for a long, long time to come.

  He kissed Cherry good-by and took the long ride to the Ration Board in silence. He even left Henry behind.

  At the Board, he stammered at a series of receptionist robots and was finally brought into the presence of a mildly supercilious young man named Hachette.

  "My name," he started, "is Morey Fry. I—I've come to—talk over something I've been doing with—"

  "Certainly, Mr. Fry," said Hachette. "I'll take you in to Mr. Newman right away."

  "Don't you want to know what I did?" demanded Morey.

  Hachette smiled. "What makes you think we don't know?" he said, and left.

  That was Surprise Number One.

  Newman explained it. He grinned at Morey and ruefully shook his head. "All the time we get this," he complained. "People just don't take the trouble to learn anything about the world around them. Son," he demanded, "what do you think a robot is?"

  Morey said, "Huh?"

  "I mean how do you think it operates? Do you think it's just a kind of a man with a tin skin and wire nerves?"

  "Why, no. It's a machine, of course. It isn't human."

  Newman beamed. "Fine!" he said. "It's a machine. It hasn't got flesh or blood or intestines—or a brain. Oh"—he held up a hand—"robots are smart enough. I don't mean that. But an electronic thinking machine, Mr. Fry, takes about as much space as the house you're living in. It has to. Robots don't carry brains around with them; brains are too heavy and much too bulky."

  "Then how do they think?"

  "With their brains, of course."

  "But you just said—"

  "I said they didn't carry them. Each robot is in constant radio communication with the Master Control on its TBR circuit—the 'Talk Between Robots' radio. Master Control gives the answer, the robot acts."

  "I see," said Morey. "Well, that's very interesting, but—"

  "But you still don't see," said Newman. "Figure it out. If the robot gets information from Master Control, do you see that Master Control in return necessarily gets information from the robot?"

  "Oh," said Morey. Then, louder, "Oh! You mean that all my robots have been—" The words wouldn't come.

  Newman nodded in satisfaction. "Every bit of information of that sort comes to us as a matter of course. Why, Mr. Fry, if you hadn't come in today, we would have been sending for you within a very short time."

  That was the second surprise. Morey bore up under it bravely. After all, it changed nothing, he reminded himself.

  He said, "Well, be that as it may, sir, here I am. I came in of my own free will. I've been using my robots to consume my ration quotas—"

  "Indeed you have," said Newman.

  "—and I'm willing to sign a statement to that effect any time you like. I don't know what the penalty is, but I'll take it. I'm guilty; I admit my guilt."

  Newman's eyes were wide. "Guilty?" he repeated. "Penalty?"

  Morey was startled. "Why, yes," he said. "I'm not denying anything."

  "Penalties," repeated Newman musingly. Then he began to laugh. He laughed, Morey thought, to considerable excess; Morey saw nothing he could laugh at, himself, in the situation. But the situation, Morey was forced to admit, was rapidly getting completely incomprehensible.

  "Sorry," said Newman at last, wiping his eyes, "but I couldn't help it. Penalties! Well, Mr. Fry, let me set your mind at rest. I wouldn't worry about the penalties if I were you. As soon as the reports began coming through on what you had done with your robots, we naturally assigned a special team to keep observing you, and we forwarded a report to the national headquarters. We made certain—ah—recommendations in it and—well, to make a long story short, the answers came back yesterday.

  "Mr. Fry, the National Ration Board is delighted to know of your contribution toward improving our distribution problem. Pending a further study, a tentative program has been adopted for setting up consuming-robot units all over the country based on your scheme. Penalties? Mr. Fry, you're a hero!"

  A hero has responsibilities. Morey's were quickly made clear to him. He was allowed time for a brief reassuring visit to Cherry, a triumphal tour of his old office, and then he was rushed off to Washington to be quizzed. He found the National Ration Board in a frenzy of work.

  "The most important job we've ever done," one of the high officers told him. "I wouldn't be surprised if it's the last one we ever have! Yes, sir, we're trying to put ourselves out of business for good and we don't want a single thing to go wrong."

  "Anything I can do to help—" Morey began diffidently.

  "You've done fine, Mr. Fry. Gave us just the push we've been needing. It was there all the time for us to see, but we were too close to the forest to see the trees, if you get what I mean. Look, I'm not much on rhetoric and this is the biggest step mankind has taken in centuries and I can't put it into words. Let me show you what we've been doing."

  He and a delegation of other officials of the Ration Board and men whose names Morey had repeatedly seen in the newspapers took Morey on an inspection tour of the entire plant.

  "It's a closed cycle, you see," he was told, as they looked over a chamber of industriously plodding consumer-robots working off a shipment of shoes. "Nothing is permanently lost. If you want a car, you get one of the newest and best. If not, your car gets driven by a robot until it's ready to be turned in and a new one gets built for next year. We don't lose the metals—they can be salvaged. All we lose is a little power and labor. And the Sun and the atom give us all the power we need, and the robots give us more labor than we can use. Same thing applies, of course, to all products."

  "But what's in it for the robots?" Morey asked.

  "I beg your pardon?" one of the biggest men in the country said uncomprehendingly.

  Morey had a difficult moment. His analysis had conditioned him against waste and this decidedly was sheer destruction of goods, no matter how scientific the jargon might be.

  "If the consumer is just using up things for the sake of using them up," he said doggedly, realizing the danger he was inviting, "we could use wear-and-tear machines instead of robots. After all why waste them?"

  They looked at each other worriedly.

  "But that's what you were doing," one pointed out with a faint note of threat.

  "Oh, no!" Morey quickly objected. "I built in satisfaction circuits —my training in design, you know. Adjustable circuits, of course."

  "Satisfaction circuits?" he was asked. "Adjustable?"

  "Well, sure. If the robot gets no satisfaction out of using up things-"

  "Don't talk nonsense," growled the Ration Board official. "Robots aren't human. How do you make them feel satisfaction? And adjustable satisfaction at that!"

  Morey explained. It was a highly technical explanation, involving the use of great sheets of paper and elaborate diagrams. But there were trained men in the group and they became even more excited than before.

  "Beautiful!" one cried in scientific rapture. "Why, it takes care of every possible moral, legal and psychological argument!"

  "What does?" the Ration Board official deman
ded. "How?"

  "You tell him, Mr. Fry."

  Morey tried and couldn't. But he could show how his principle operated. The Ration Board lab was turned over to him, complete with more assistants than he knew how to give orders to, and they built satisfaction circuits for a squad of robots working in a hat factory.

  Then Morey gave his demonstration. The robots manufactured hats of all sorts. He adjusted the circuits at the end of the day and the robots began trying on the hats, squabbling over them, each coming away triumphantly with a huge and diverse selection. Their metallic features were incapable of showing pride or pleasure, but both were evident in the way they wore their hats, their fierce possessiveness . . . and their faster, neater, more intensive, more dedicated work to produce a still greater quantity of hats . . . which they also were allowed to own.

  "You see?" an engineer exclaimed delightedly. "They can be adjusted to want hats, to wear them lovingly, to wear the hats to pieces. And not just for the sake of wearing them out—the hats are an incentive for them!"

  "But how can we go on producing just hats and more hats?" the Ration Board man asked puzzledly. "Civilization does not live by hats alone."

  "That," said Morey modestly, "is the beauty of it. Look."

  He set the adjustment of the satisfaction circuit as porter robots brought in skids of gloves. The hat-manufacturing robots fought over the gloves with the same mechanical passion as they had for hats.

  "And that can apply to anything we—or the robots—produce,"

  Morey added. "Everything from pins to yachts. But the point is that they get satisfaction from possession, and the craving can be regulated according to the glut in various industries, and the robots show their appreciation by working harder." He hesitated. "That's what I did for my servant-robots. It's a feedback, you see. Satisfaction leads to more work—and better work—and that means more goods, which they can be made to want, which means incentive to work, and so on, all around."

  "Closed cycle," whispered the Ration Board man in awe. "A real closed cycle this time!"

  And so the inexorable laws of supply and demand were irrevocably repealed. No longer was mankind hampered by inadequate supply or drowned by overproduction. What mankind needed was there. What the race did not require passed into the insatiable—and adjustable-robot maw. Nothing was wasted.