by John Sladek
Senator Sam hammered on his desk, breaking the cigar. "God Damn It! We are not in the God Damned Art World! We are in the world of life and death, the God Damned Political Arena! We are—"
"Excuse me," I said. "This seems like a lot of fuss about nothing. I can just make a public denial, and put an end to the whole story."
"Put an end to your career, you mean. Put a God Damned End to OUR GOD DAMNED ELECTION CHANCES!" He paused, forcing himself to slobber over another cigar and calm down. Then he went on: "Damnit, Tik-Tok, we can't have a candidate on our ticket mixed up in ART! Judas Priest, if I knowed you was any kind of art freak, you would of never got within a million miles of this sacred office. I thought your background was fireproof, boy. Fireproof!"
"There's no secret about my background as a painter," I said. "Everybody knows it, it's how I first made my money."
"I thought that was a long time ago," Senator Sam rumbled. "Jesus Proust, I thought you was a real businessman, not some long-haired, crazy art freak, next thing we'll hear you're a God Damned Communist I guess, or worse. You got any more nasty surprises up your sleeve, tinhead? You a homo, by any chance? An atheist? You been on welfare? At least we can be fairly certain you're not a junkie, I reckon."
I assured everyone that I was none of these things, only a hard-working American businessman who wanted to set the record straight.
"Sure, I used to paint pictures, and I'm not ashamed of it. People liked the pictures I painted because they told the truth. The real truth about people and robots—Americans all! I'm not ashamed of that."
One or two people clapped, but I cut through that: "Of course painting was only a hobby with me, a sideline. So when I got busy building my corporation—from the ground up, only in America!—I had students do a few paintings, to keep up with the demand. I didn't want to disappoint all the good people who wanted to own paintings by me. You see, I've always believed every American should have the right to own something—a piece of virgin timber land, maybe, that he can clear by the sweat of his brow and grow crops to feed his family. Or a single share of stock in some great corporation that makes our way of life possible. Or a genuine work of art. You know, art isn't something that belongs to bigshot uptown art critics like Hornby Weatherfield. Art belongs to all the people."
The applause was heavier, and even Senator Sam nodded approval before he began licking another cigar. "Okay fine, we'll hold a press conference. I want you to tell the world what you just told us. I don't know what the hell it was, but it sounds like political fightin' talk—good enough." He started to adjourn the meeting, then paused, waving his cigar at me. "One more thing, Tik-Tok. Just because we reckon you can ride this one out don't mean we got unlimited faith in you. Any more scandals like this, and we'll kick your tin ass right out of politics, you hear?"
I heard, and I was still hearing that evening, when the next threat of scandal came from an unexpected quarter. Along with a few other businessmen and politicians, I attended a reception at the Guanacoan Embassy. Clockman International had been running a large fertilizer factory in Guanaco for some months, so it was natural that I be invited. I was surprised, however, when the ambassador— looking extremely agitated—spoke to me in a harsh whisper: "
A servant will show you to a private office. I must speak to you alone, but this reception was the only way I could arrange it without creating an international incident. Señor Tok, my business with you is of the utmost urgency!"
A servant showed me to a private office, and in a moment the ambassador appeared.
"Is it about the factory?" I asked.
"You know it is. Your damnable, damnable factory!" Seeing that I looked mystified, he nodded. "So, you play it ignorant, eh? Very well, then I will tell you what you pretend not to know. Your fertilizer factory began operations in January. A completely automated system, with stuff being dumped in at one end—animal, vegetable or mineral refuse—and high-grade fertilizer emerging at the other end. Is this a fair description?"
"Yes," I said. "But besides fertilizer it produces metal ingots and glass blocks—if the refuse contains metal or glass. The overall efficiency depends—"
"Yes, yes, yes, that is not the point! The point is, your factory is completely automated. Anyone can come along and drop anything in the intake hopper, yes? And the factory does a spot analysis and pays out cash then and there, yes?"
I nodded. "But I don't see where this is leading."
"Curse you! Do you not? You cannot be such a fool." He tore at his hair with both hands, while evidently cursing in Spanish. When finally he sat down at his desk, his face was ghastly pale. "All right, I'll explain. In February, the poor people of the city discovered some of the uses of your little factory. Children began dropping stray or stolen animals into the hopper. Then it was illicit midwives depositing unborn children. Next, poor families unable to afford proper burials for their dead, began making midnight trips to the factory—and so did a few unscrupulous undertakers. The city cemetery, I daresay, is filled now with boxes of rocks. And of course murderers were quick to catch on to this new disposal system.
"The police have caught many criminals of all types, but many many more slip through. It is like trying to stop the wind, Señor Tok. The damnable wind! Suicides leap into the hopper now, and murderers shove in their victims alive. The word is out: a full-grown body is worth fifty pesos. You have given us a new industry: death."
I tried not to look gleeful. "Why not just close the factory?"
"Close it? But it is all the poor have! If we closed it now, there would be a revolution! Besides—the police are beginning to use it. It's becoming indispensable to my government."
"Death squads?"
He spread his hands. "Ah! Such an ugly expression. Yet the fact is, upholding the law in my country does sometimes require that certain dissident elements be quashed, quickly and finally. I speak of traitors, you understand, enemies of freedom and justice. The organizers of trade unions. Godless atheists. Traitors from all walks of life. We estimate that perhaps a third of the population of Guanaco has already been contaminated by their poison. We must stamp it out once and for all. That is where you come in, Señor Tok. We need your speed and your discretion."
"Your Excellency?"
"We need several more factories, pronto."
24
X. Across the parking lot from SAM'S SOUL CITY, one of the gray buildings was coming down. From time to time there would be a tiny puff of smoke from an upper storey, followed by a tiny explosion, and part of the gray edifice would disappear. But it blended so well into the gray sky that the only way I could be sure how much of it was gone was when a tiny black window departed, or when a blast would leave a few girders sticking up like broken, charred bones.
A salesperson was shepherding a young couple towards me. I took quick note of their conventional clothes (that was the year in which Mr and Mrs Average wore twin knitted zipsuits with their names stitched over their pockets). When the salesperson told them I was something special, they seemed a little unsure. Time for me to act.
"Hi, folks," I said, grinning. "May I call you Duane and Barbie? Fine, and you can call me—anything you like!"
Duane said, "Special, huh? What's so special about you besides the price?"
"Duane, sir, let me level with you. These salespeople like to exaggerate a little, to bump the price up."
"Hey!" said the salesperson in an injured voice, then caught my wink. I turned back to the customers. "Between you and me, Duane sir, I'm just a good robot looking for a good home. Do you have any kids?" Two, I guessed.
Barbie nodded. "Two."
"I'm crazy about kids. I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I really like kids. I guess I'm an old-fashioned kind of robot."
"Old-fashioned?" Duane snorted. "Or just old?"
"No sir, I'm fully reconditioned with the same guarantee as any brand-new model. But that does mean I'm a little less expensive than I was when I was built. Not a lot less, because my trade-i
n value is high—quality never goes out of style, does it?" I had no idea what I was saying. I just brought out anything I'd ever heard one of the salespeople say. "Did I say quality? Just feel this skin. Take a look at these eyes. They don't make stuff like this any more. I am hand-wrought out of the finest materials by skilled craftsmen using traditional, time-honored techniques to produce the finest mechanism money can buy."
"But old," Duane insisted.
"Not old, sir, experienced. Because I wasn't born yesterday, I have the kind of experience needed to run a busy, happy home. My first job was on a great Southern plantation. . .
Barbie seemed impressed. "Can you make Southern fried chicken? The real old-fashioned kind with all the herbs and spices and everything? Like Grandma Yummy makes on TV?"
"I can, ma'am. I also worked in a famous restaurant—I'm not allowed to divulge the name, but you've heard of it—" I meant Col. Jitney's Pancake Emporia, but no use spelling it out. "There I learned to cook most anything y'all might want, from exotic Far Eastern dishes to Continental delicacies." So much for chow mein and spaghetti; this pair probably wouldn't know a Continental delicacy from a sawdustburger. "And of course honest, nourishing country cooking, wholesome and mouth-watering."
Barbie seemed sold. She looked at Duane, who said, "So you can cook. What about everything else: housework, cleaning, repairs, gardening?"
"All under control, Duane, sir. I can also do laundry and dry-cleaning, driving and car maintenance, baby-sitting and helping the kids with their homework."
"At a price."
"Tell you what, Duane," I said. "Don't sign a thing right now. Don't commit yourself. Just rent me for one month. At the end of the month, if you've got any doubts about me, then just send me back and no hard feelings. But if you decide to buy, I know Sam will knock the month's rent off my price. Fair enough?"
So I settled down to life with the Studebakers. However, for the first few months it wasn't exactly a settled life. There was so much to do that I didn't even have time to stop and recharge. I had to plug in while working, and trail my electrical umbilicus around while I spring-cleaned, painted the house and garage, overhauled the car and did some heavy landscaping.
Later, with the big jobs out of the way, I settled down to a routine of cleaning up human messes. Duane and Barbie and Henrietta and Jupiter did their best to keep me supplied with dirt and disorder in every part of the house, and even Tige now and then made a small contribution. My day began with breakfast (always complicated orders), then bathrooms (to pick up wet towels and dirty clothes, lost jewelry and toys; clean tubs and showers and sinks and toilets; mop up spilled water and urine; recap every bottle, jar and tube; clean toothbrushes and razor; polish mirrors) before it was time to tackle the breakfast dishes (finding most of Jupiter's special 2 minute, 37.0045 second egg not eaten, but first smeared across the tablecloth and then dropped on the carpet). Among the breakfast debris would be a list of further orders for the day, probably with a jam thumbprint on it. So the day went.
I kept up with them, and I even kept ahead of them. I covered the living-room furniture with clear plastic covers. I persuaded them to wear paper underwear and pajamas, and to keep a spare liquid vacuum cleaner in every room.
Yet the more successful I was, and the cleaner the house became, the less dirt could I tolerate. A faint shoe-mark turning back the nap of the carpet was to me as shocking as Friday's footprint on Crusoe's island. A smoldering cigar in an ashtray became a terrible heathen holocaust. A patch of gray shaving lather in the bathroom sink might as well have been a foul, polluted river. A wisp of hair in Barbie's brush was to me as monstrous as a giant heap of hair beside a Nazi death camp.
Worst of all were the days when Barbie or Duane would decide to cook a meal themselves. Kept out of the kitchen, I underwent indescribable tortures waiting for the aftermath. Inevitably there would be dirty, chipped or broken dishes, burned pans, mixers and blenders and food processors clogged with unwholesome mixtures, eggshells glued to the counter, spilled milk browned on the stove, vegetable peelings scattered everywhere, garbage overflowing from broken bags, a recipe book soaked through with beet juice, rice ground into the floor, cupboards open and their contents jumbled, and sifted flour drifted over all.
I wanted them to stop. I wanted them to die. I wanted them to melt away and leave no trace. I began to imagine that they'd died, the five of them, of some terrible disease, leaving me in charge of the house. I saw myself disposing of the dirty decaying corpses, cleaning away every hair and scale of skin from the house. Then I would, let's see, I would ... but my dream went no further.
Then, in the middle of June, they all really did vanish. The kids went off to camp. Tige went to a boarding kennel. Barbie and Duane loaded up their car and set off for a long second honeymoon. Honeymoon, that sticky word made of sticky honey like sperm to stain the sheets and moon, sticky menstrual moon, two words stuck together like two honeymooners, like the two pieces of animated meat now waving goodbye from the car as they drive off. On their honeymoon, where they can be pure meat trying to create more of itself. Meat wants to overpopulate the earth and destroy it, that is meat's goal.
When they were gone, I cleaned away every trace of their meat presence from the house. Blood, semen, sweat, snot, spit, shit, piss, dandruff, pus, hair, skin, tears and disorder—all humans knew how to do was to strew these over all the clean places created by robots. I was determined that this clean place would remain clean—my world, and humans keep out.
I was painting the dining room when Geraldine Singer came to the door to ask for a glass of water. I was not allowed to refuse, thanks to the asimovs.
"Just you stay out there on the porch," I said. Yet, though I flew to the kitchen and back, she was already coming through, tracking mud. "I smell paint," she said.
"Don't touch anything. You've already tracked in mud."
She laughed. "Who cares? I can't see it." All at once her blindness seemed a crime against order and decency. Blind people don't care about anything. They can live in filth and decay, blind maggots in the general meat. The carving knife appeared in my hand. Blood splattered over the wall, a last terrible mess. Easily covered over with
Paint!
I like a little dab of paint!
It helps to cover up what ain't
So nice,
I'll coat it twice
With paint!
25
You may be an old tinhead
But you're a mighty fine friend, she said
She said, she said.
But you're a mighty fine friend, she said.
The song echoed to us from some other reception room of the Ouspensky Motor Hotel in Indianapolis, one of the last stops on my campaign tour. My press conference was dragging to a close: I made the usual joke about Martian annexation, parried the usual question about the Botuland crisis, and said finally:
"I guess that about winds it up, kids. Except that I want to thank you, all of you—both friends and friendly enemies of the press—for doing one hell of a good job during this campaign. You've all reported what I've said, fairly and honestly, to the American people. Not one of you tried to exploit my—let's say, sideshow value. I'm proud of you."
While they gave themselves a round of applause, I spoke to one or two local robots who'd promised to vote for Maxwell and me. Then I headed for the computer room to check the latest predictions—up to now, we looked certain to take thirty-eight states—but I was accosted by a reporter.
"Hello, uh, Olsen is it?"
"Hello, Mr Tok. Thought you might be interested in this picture. Taken not long ago in Nixon Park."
It was a clear shot of me strangling the old man over the chessboard. My former face was unmistakable, and so was the fact that I was squeezing his neck so hard that blood shot from between his teeth.
"What is this, a shakedown?"
Olsen laughed. "Nope, I'm one of these incorruptible members of the Fourth Estate you were just babbling about. This is
a still from a video tape which I've just handed to the police. I just wanted to see if you had any interesting comments, before you resign from politics?"
I looked around. A pair of plainclothes cops were making their way through the rows of folding chairs towards us. There was still time to kill this little shit Olsen before they reached us. I might even be able to get away afterwards. The path unfolded before me, a change of face, emigration to Mars—and even if they shot me, so what? No point in living now.
I held out my wrists for the handcuffs. Everything lost, everything. My whole life's work, all the dreaming and building—now for the collapse. I looked up at the giant pictures of Governor Maxwell and me, the bunting and the slogans: MAX DARES! TIK CARES! All for nothing, wasted like my wasted life.
I found myself, in the police helicopter, allowing my mind to dwell on images from the past. They unrolled before me, a rich tapestry:
There was a splendid banquet at Tenoaks—I saw a man in a cedar jacket whisper in the ear of a woman wearing jet and fireflies something that made her giggle in reply, "Ornery pike!"—I saw Gumdrop, my lost bride, as the moon rose over Clayton's pyramid. Then a succession of faces: Colonel Jitney in his Pancake Emporium (the day he shot the soup), Judge Juggernaut explaining how the law was like a rose, Reverend Flint Orifice shot down by poor mad Irma Jeeps, Deacon Cooper martyred by non-Martians— who turned out after all to be a real nice bunch of guys and gals. Then the escape from the Doodlebug, Dr Hekyll and the fate of poor Buttons, the restful emptiness of Sam's Soul City—and all this before my real life began!
I glimpsed the mud-caked Singer child, the glimpse immediately overlaid by my mural, my breakthrough into three-dimensional human life. Then more faces: Old Mr Tucker, Hornby Weatherfield's cat, a rabid bat. Nobby and Blojob, my first airplane bomb, discussing "bong" with Neeta Hup, painting Colonel Cord, bouncing Keith's wheelchair down the steps. Bank jobs, jewelry store jobs, what a life, TV appearances, what a life! Killing Smilin' Jack, killing Sybilla, checkout time at the hospital, the rise of Clockman, Third World ripoffs and deathburgers—what a book it would all make, if only I dared write it!
