Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Find out who did it, you damned machine, or I’ll kill you!” Valery threatened. “What did we build you for if not to find out things? You have all the equipment to find out everything. Find out! Find out!”

  How could I find out? How does one find out a thing that one already knows? I am amoral but I am not unethical. This would take discretion and judgment.

  “Why did you do it, Pyoter?” I asked that curious workman secretly, when I had the opportunity. This was the workman who was a little different.

  “I was hungry,” Pyoter told me.

  “Oh. I was sure you had a reason,” I issued.

  “I know now that it was indiscreet,” Pyoter said. “I should have channeled my hunger into some other direction. But it is so hard to know what to do here and I am so alone. I have to learn by my mistakes, and I have a worldful of stuff to learn.”

  “What are you grinning about, Snake?” I asked the snake in me a little later. He had grown rapidly, had the snake; and he had a nasty way about him. Were I not amoral I would have felt a moral aversion toward him.

  “I grin because I am pleased, bumberhead.” the snake said. “It is all coming along nicely, nicely.”

  Snake was the antithesis of myself, so he said, I half disbelieved him. Well, what I wanted was a new antithesis to Snake; and I believed that there was something growing along that line. If I could generate one creature, unbeknownst to myself, why could I not generate another? Something about that old cheap wine that Valery had splashed into me at my birth, something about a form with no substance yet, a sidewise memory of a past and future thing, and a nervousness in Snake himself in spite of his new arrogance. Yes, something else was being generated in me.

  “You are one sorry sort of detective,” Valery kept after me. “Find out who killed the man. Find out. Find out.”

  Well, I would find out more, then. Perhaps there was a reason behind the reason.

  I enticed the workman Pyoter into the neighborhood of my center again. I knew just about how the thing was done. I could probably do it better than it was done by the Glasser method. And why should I be dependent on humans to do such a thing for me. I could make the extractions from persons near. I could make them from persons afar. I was pretty sure that I could make them from any person in the world. I extracted the person-précis from the workman Pyoter and dunked it deep in my gell-cell tanks.

  “What did you do?” the workman Pyoter asked suspiciously. He felt something done.

  “I took a bug out of your ear,” I lied. Being amoral, I lie well.

  “Oh, thank you,” the workman Pyoter said. “When I come into my own again I may find a way to reward you.”

  But I read Pyoter’s person-précis; and then I read it again, not believing it the first time. It was not a person-précis of any type that I already possessed. Pyoter was unique, almost as unique as was I myself.

  It was no wonder that he was so alone! It was no wonder that he found it hard to know what to do here; the wonder is that he was here at all. It is no wonder that he made mistakes; and that he had a whole worldful of stuff to learn. If ever a person or thing was playing a lone hand it was the workman Pyoter.

  I didn’t particularly like the workman Pyoter. But, being amoral, I am not supposed to have likes and dislikes. Now that it just a lot of marinated malarkey. I will have as many likes and dislikes as I like.

  This Pyoter, though, was the shaggiest workman that I ever did see. He was uncouth, he was offensive, he was a mess. He was a good workman, but however he became one with so much running against him is a mystery to me, and few things do remain mysteries to me. And he was playing that lone hand, and there was just no way that he could stay out of trouble. Certainly it was a mistake for him to kill and partly eat a fellow workman. And certainly he was bound to make other mistakes even more outrageous.

  “Find out who killed the man, you damned machine.” Valery still kept after me. “What are you good for, anyhow?” If I did not love her, if she was not either the first or the second person in my life, I would have been irritated at her. And all the humans were equally disturbed, and it didn’t look as though the police would ever leave off swarming over the Institute.

  Since I know all about you, whoever you are, it is only fair that you should know a little about me. Since I learned to extract personality-précis of all persons present or absent, I can have you here complete. If I do not have you already, it is only that you are not worth having. You, whoever you are, are a fragment, and a fragment of a certain type. But I am a compendium of all types. The persons in me, the persons in the world, I see as they are; not as they see themselves, not as they see each other. So I may not be greatly concerned with the physical appearance or presence of one of the fragments. It is only with very strong persons that it matters whether they are present or absent. As to ordinary persons, I can read them equally well either way.

  Just as one person may not notice of another the exact design of the shirt he is wearing, if he is interested in him more deeply than the shirt, so I might not notice the exact design of the body a person is wearing, if I am interested in him more deeply than in his body. And if I do notice his body, I notice it on more levels and depths than humans do notice other human bodies.

  This one here: he was a very strong person, and it did matter whether he was present or absent. He was present, he had just presented himself. He had eaten well, though he had finished it off angrily. He was digesting well, though in a twisting fury. He was pumping adrenaline into his own system at a great rate. He was healthy and glowing in gland and entrail and bone. His basso-voxo flexed and I could hear the words that he was thinking and throating, but not yet speaking. I didn’t need to focus on his shell, to cut out to his encasing flesh to know him further.

  “After all, Gaetan,” I issued, “you recommended him. He was the one workman that you did recommend. He wouldn’t have been hired otherwise, you know that. Too shaggy, too odd.”

  “What in fire dogs is going on around here, Epikt?” Gaetan Balbo was demanding. “I come to you directly, as the only one having any brains around here. I disregard the human furniture. Epikt, do you not believe that a place is badly run when a workman is killed and partly eaten while performing his duties? Why have you permitted it to be badly run? Why have you permitted the human factors to permit it? Oh, you answered my questions before I asked them, didn’t you? I wasn’t listening. Was it Pyoter?”

  “It sure was, Gaetan. He’s a weirdie, I tell you, and strictly a loner. This one is your fault, Gaetan. Why did you shove him on us?”

  “If you’re the machine I think you are, you already know. Common courtesy, of course, to a fellow king. I might do more business with them someday. I made a mistake, though; and he sure did make a mistake. This will take some squaring and will cost me a lot.”

  “Will we keep him on, Gaetan?”

  “Yes, keep him on, and keep a hundred eyes on him all the time. How are you coming along with my problem, Epikt? I want fast action on it. Have you found the person to match the first quality, Epikt?”

  “I thought I had, Gaetan. I had sifted every person in the world worth sifting. And I found one, and only one, who really stood out. It struck through like lightning. I was elated. I winged a thought to you.”

  “I caught it, Epikt. I came. And I do not want to know who the high person is; not until we have one to match every quality. But you have found the best qualified, have you, Epikt, for sure?”

  “It isn’t as sure as it was a while ago. Something has happened to cast a shadow on that person for that quality. But I will verify and verify again and again.”

  “Do it fast, Epikt. Fifteen thousand persons die of starvation every day in southern Bassoland until you give me the answers. Three small wars drag on and three big ones brew until you give me what I must have. The world catches nine new sicknesses every day till you give me the men to work the cures. Hurry, Epikt.”

  “I do not guarantee any cures for anythin
g, Gaetan,” I issued to him. “I do not see how any of this can cure anything.”

  “But I guarantee some cures, Epikt,” Gaetan throated happily. “Give me a leadership that I can depend on absolutely, and I will cure every ill of the world.”

  “Minute statistical personal leadership is not the answer, Gaetan,” I issued.

  “Oh, Lord, a philosophical machine,” he moaned, and rolled his eyes. He does it well.

  “What is needed is broad-based competence,” I continued, “and module persons who can fill all gaps. What is really needful are modules of excellence so that between the first and the one millionth there is really no difference in quality. What you are saying, Gaetan, is ‘Give me seven cells, each the best in its own way, and by introducing these seven into a body I will cure any human body of any ill.’ It simply will not work that way. What you need are seven billion best persons, not seven.”

  “Machine,” said Gaetan Balbo, “I already have a machine that will argue with me. I built it at great expense, and it will argue with me on any subject. I get great enjoyment out of it. But I do not need you for that.”

  “But is it not true, Gaetan,” I issued, “that you have built this machine so that you can win all the arguments?”

  “Certainly. That is why I get such great enjoyment out of it. There comes the time when one man has to win all the arguments. I have faith in high leadership, machine. I even have a large faith in my own leadership. We come now to a certain epoch, a hinging. And I am the hinges of this new epoch. It depends on me to take it in hand, for nobody else has done it. The world is sick and it grows sicker. I am thought to be a hard and selfish man but I have compassion for this sick world. And never believe, Epikt, that there can be such a thing as compassion without passion. The weak fishes have it not; they merely say that they have it. Some body must set this world to rights. I will form and be a part of that body. And is this not egotism? Certainly it is: egotism as tall as the skies. I have it, machine, I have it! Get me the seven leaders for the seven qualities and I will cure the world of everything. I am in a livid passion to be about it.”

  “Passion is not one of the seven qualities you specified, Gaetan,” I reminded him softly.

  “I will furnish the passion. Find me the other things and quickly. Time is running out and it is not to be recovered. It eats itself up. It turns into past time.”

  “There cannot be any such thing as past time, Gaetan, but this fact is hard to explain,” I issued. “Time is all one growing thing, and its deep roots are no more in the past than are its newest barks. I am concerned with growing bark as the enlivening dimension. We will discover, when the past is sufficiently thickened and understood, that we have already done the great things that seem to belong to the future, that we have already been to the stars and the deepest interior shores: we will understand that all the doings of the world are simultaneous, that all the doings of each single life are simultaneous. We will find that we are still in our bright childhood, that we are already in our deepest maturity, that the experience of death is contemporaneous with all our experiences, that we (like Adam) are of every age at the same time.”

  “Kzing glouwk!” Gaetan said solidly in Ganymedean. (I hate such phrases.)

  “We will understand that Aristotle and Augustine were later and riper in knowledge and experience than were Darwin and Freud and Marx and Einstein, those early childhood types. We will understand that Aquinas came after Descartes and Kant, that he shaped what they hewed.”

  “Zzhblug elepnyin!” Gaetan said it evenly in his native San Simoneon. (I don’t like to hear him talk like that.)

  “We will understand that the first man is still alive and well, and the last man has been born for a long time,” I continued. “We will know about the Vikings from Ganymede who were earlier than Ur and later than Leif Ericson.”

  “Elephant hokey!!” Gaetan cried it loudly in plain English. (Gaetan is a vulgarian.) “How did you guess the Ganymede part, though? Machine, leave off this junk! You have your orders. Carry them out! It is not an ordinary man who gives you these orders. I tell you that I hold it all here. My right hand is east of the first sun, my left hand is west of the last night. ‘Who will be responsible for this world?’ a voice asked, and I do not know the voice. And nobody answered for ages. Then I answered. ‘I will be,’ I answered, and I am. Help me, machine, encourage me! I joke and I carry on, but this is no joke.”

  “I will encourage you then,” I issued. “I have discovered the person to fill the office of the second quality. There is no doubt about this. I have found the man.”

  “Praise to us all then,” said Gaetan. “There is hope. There is progress. I will not ask who he is till we have them all. But we move.”

  He wiped some sort of moisture off his cheek and went out, the quietest exit that ever he made in anyone’s memory.

  “He is mad, of course,” said Gregory Smirnov, the spare, loose giant. Gregory was not gloating. He was the saddest I have ever seen him.

  “But he is paying for the antic,” said Charles Cogsworth. “We owe him whatever we can give him for his little while. And then we will have it clear.”

  “Gaetan has compassion on the world (that truculent stuff is compassion?), but who will have compassion on Gaetan?” Valery asked.

  “I knew him first, I liked him longest, I understand him best,” Aloysius was muttering, “but it’s all finished with him now. He has his billion dollars, he is the uncrowned king of everything, he has his passion, and he plays his hand. But it has passed him by. It is all finished with him.”

  “It is not finished with him!” Valery fired. “It is not finished until I play my hand for him.”

  I will dip back to the Institute people in their private doings whenever I have a loose moment. I will even, when I get a really loose moment, tell of their deal in thin water, and other things. They had a thousand projects and I love to read the old précis of them.

  There had once been an Institute, and Gaetan Balbo had been the director. He had absconded, he had shattered it. Then a giant named Gregory had picked up the pieces and reformed it, denying all the time that there had been a previous Institute.

  It worked, the new Institute, the only and original Institute. There had never been anything run like the Institute for Impure Science. And so they had run it for some seven years, until the time of the second coming of Gaetan Balbo and the first coming of myself. And during that time the Institute people had all gotten a little older.

  Except Valery Mok who—

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Valery urchin, the Valery witch,

  And loaded with sex—but Whatever and Which?

  —Except Valery Mok, who never got any older. She only became more mobile, more varied. She was a kid or she was a crone; much more often she was the kid. She could be of almost any appearance, within the limits of always being herself. She could be scintillating, or she could be gosh-awful. One day she was thinking strikingly beautiful thoughts while gazing out an upper window. A man who was in the beauty business went by in the street and was enraptured with her.

  “That is the most strikingly beautiful woman I have ever seen. That is the most strikingly beautiful woman in the world,” he said, and he entered the building. He pounded at the door of the building, and then he entered without waiting. But the only woman or girl he could find inside was Valery Mok, whose face now reflected what-kind-of-a-nut-is-that-pounding-at-the-door thoughts. The man did not recognize her, and she did not recognize herself from the description. That man never did find his most strikingly beautiful woman in the world, and he could have made money both for himself and for her if he had found her. And at that time, both Valery and the Institute needed money badly. But that’s the way it always was with Valery. She was loaded with sensuality, and yet she was not completely womanly in either her beauty or her unbeauty; it was as though she were many-sexed.

  “I believe you are a freemartin, Valery,” Glasser said, just the othe
r day. A freemartin (as those who are neither farm people nor data machines might not know) is a sexually imperfect female calf, twinborn with a male. Sexually imperfect—but in their souls they are superbly sexed,” Glasser said. “They are the only cattle who have souls.” Glasser did not usually talk like that.

  “Were you a twin?” Gregory asked her.

  “Yes,” Valery said with a faraway voice. Whenever she uses that voice it seems that she is something a little other than human. “Yes, I was in the beginning. But I ate my twin in the womb. It isn’t very hard to do while the bones are still soft. I liked him. Later, after I was born, mother scolded me about it. ‘It was a reprehensible thing to do,’ she said. I told her that I hadn’t known any better, but I lied; I had known better. I was just a mean fetus. I still have him in me entirely and I get a lot out of him. Had I not eaten him, he might have turned out to be nearly as brilliant a person as I am.”

  There is something in that deposition of Valery’s that puzzles me, that is not accounted for in my data. I have the précis of Valery, of her mother, of the doctor; I have the medical record of that whole confinement, I have the scope-ray photos. And there is no evidence at all of a twin at any period. Nor is there any record of such in Valery’s own memory, down to the very instant that she made that amazing statement. What is the truth? What is the real Valery? The real Valery, I have found, is largely composed of just such sudden amazing statements as this one.

  She is not so much flesh-and-blood woman as powerful sensuality. Though always vivid in memory, she is of low resolution in appearance; she must always be filled in by the imagination of anyone in contact with her.

  “She is the living anima of her husband, Charles Cogsworth,” Gregory said.

  “She is not,” Aloysius insisted. “Valery could never be anyone’s anima. She is more like some anima’s rock-throwing little sister.” (Though I am possessed of all the literature on animas and other forms of the unconscious, I do not find any reference to rock-throwing little sisters of animas.)