Funny Money td-18

by Warren Murphy

  "Remo. I look good when people are sober, too."

  "I'm not drunk, shithead," said Dr. Carlton and took a good long swallow on her martini.

  "Where was I?"

  "Columbus being denied a rudder," said Remo. A door on the far side of the room opened and a small tray on wheels came rolling to the little table. On top were two steaming bowls. The tray served them onto the desk with the same metallic arm.

  "Dammit," shrieked Dr. Carlton. "You burned the rice." She kicked the cart across the room. "Dammit. Now you know why I drink. These machines."

  "Rudders," said Remo.

  "Right. Well, that's taken care of, anyway," said Dr. Carlton, unbuttoning one button on the top of her blouse and airing a glorious crevice. "But do you know what they did? You know what they do all the time? First they give me a ton of money. They tell me to make this and buy that and try this. Do you know that I've got a rocket ready to launch, built right into the ground here at these labs? My own rocket. Right here. They insisted on it. So they give you all this money and you get staff and materials and you get started, and then they tell you no more money, and you've got to fire your staff, and the materials you bought gather dust on the shelves. Ah, piss on them."

  "Of course," said Chiun, and Remo knew he was acting because he abhorred Western profanity, especially in women.

  "What we have come about," Chiun said, "is a creativity. How does one make creativity out of a machine?"

  "Aha," said Dr. Carlton. "Come with me. You want to know about creativity, well, I'll show you. It has to do with survival," and she grabbed Remo's arm on her way to her feet and held on as she led them into a room the size of a stadium. Rising to the arched beamed ceiling were frontplates of machines, dials so high Remo looked for elevators for people to get up to read them. Three stories high and Remo assumed that was only the control panel.

  "That, my friends, is Mr. Daniels. I have christened him Mr. Jack Daniels. You couldn't send him into space, could you?"

  She led them into the room. A man stood to the left, his back to them, looking up at the machine.

  Quietly, Dr. Carlton walked up behind him, then gave a tremendous uppercut swing of her right toe. It caught the man in the buttocks and propelled him across the room where he flopped, thwack, head first against the floor.

  "Stay out of the way, Mr. Smirnoff," Dr. Carlton yelled. The figure of the man did not move, but lay awkwardly awry on the hard stone floor. "Hahaha-hahahaha." Dr. Carlton's laugh echoed through the high-domed room like the shrieks of a malevolent bird. She turned and saw Remo and Chiun staring at her in silence.

  "Hey," she said quickly, "don't take it so hard. That's not a person. It's a dummy. Mr. Smirnoff. We use it for measurements in the lab here. Somebody must have left it out in the middle of the floor. Now where were we? Oh, yes, creativity."

  Dr. Carlton walked closer to the control panels, Chiun and Remo on her heels. "Jack Daniels here is a computer. Do you know what a synapse is?"

  Remo looked blank. Chiun said, "Not nearly as much as you do, gracious and brilliant doctor." He whispered behind his hand to Remo, "A synapse is when they tell you what happened in yesterday's story. But let her tell us. It will make her feel smart."

  "A synapse," said Dr. Carlton, "is a junction of two brain cells. The human brain has more than two billion of them. Out of all those junctions comes what we know as intelligence. Mr. Jack Daniels is the closest we've got to it. He's got two billion synapses, too. If it weren't for transistors and miniaturization, to have that many he'd have to be as big as Central Park. Thanks to transistors, I've been able to shrink him down to a little less than the size of a city block."

  "Let her babble," Chiun whispered. "A synapse is a retelling, but shorter, of a story."

  "That's a synopsis, Chiun, not a synapse," said Remo.

  "You whites all stick together," Chiun muttered.

  Vanessa Carlton was looking up at the control panel. Remo saw that her nostrils were pinched, her lips set in a thin straight line, her bosom rising and falling like boiling pudding.

  "Look at it," she said. "A city-block-sized cretin. An imbecile."

  "Send it back to the manufacturer," said Remo.

  "I am the manufacturer," she said. "I've put into this goddam thing everything I know."

  "Maybe you don't know enough," said Remo.

  "No, Browneyes. I know plenty. A grade-A, certifiable, Mensa-type, high-level genius."

  "If she is so smart, surely she would know what a synapse is," whispered Chiun.

  Vanessa Carlton did not hear him. She went on, talking more to the computer than to either man. "You know what a genius is? A genius knows when something is impossible. My greatest act of creative genius is to know that it's impossible to create creativity."

  "Come again?" said Remo.

  "That's something else," she said. "Not again but just once. I'd love to. But get sex off your mind. God, why are you men always interested in nothing but sex. Jugs. Butts. That's all you ever think about. I'm trying to talk sense to you and all you can think of is female orgasm."

  "Do not worry yourself with him," said Chiun. "He is untrained and couthless."

  Vanessa Carlton nodded in agreement. "Anyway," she said, "I've given up. I've programmed my machines for everything. For speech. For movement. For strength. For adaptability. For analysis. For survival. I've gone further than anyone else ever has gone. But I just can't build creativity into them."

  "So what?" asked Remo.

  She shook her head at what she regarded as rampant stupidity. "You must be good in the sack, Browneyes, 'cause you ain't too shiny any other way."

  "Call me Remo," said Remo.

  "Fine. And you can call me Dr. Carlton. If we could have designed creativity into a spaceship computer, three unmanned probes that we lost would still be working. A computer, you see, works fine when everything is predictable."

  "Weather changes. Malfunctions. Meteor showers, all those things that knock out spaceships. They don't seem very predictable," said Remo.

  "But they are. Variables are the most predictable things of all. You just program in different possibilities and teach the computer what to do in response to them. But what you can't do is teach a machine to respond to something unique, something that wasn't programmed in. Or to do anything unique, for that matter. You can't find a computer that's going to paint a Gioconda smile on the Mona Lisa."

  In Remo's ear, Chiun whispered, "That is a picture of a fat Italian woman with a silly smirk."

  "Thanks, Chiun," said Remo.

  "You've seen computers play chess," the woman said. "You can program them with a million different games played by a thousand different masters. And the first time they run up against a player who makes a move that's got brilliance in it, a move that's not in their program, they start to babble like idiots. They not only can't create, they can't function in the face of creativity. What a drag."

  They were interrupted by the cart called Mr. Seagrams rolling in silently and taking Dr. Carlton's martini glass from her hand. It mixed a fresh martini and extended it to her. She took it wordlessly and the cart went into reverse and rolled back toward the door. Dr. Carlton took a vicious sip.

  "What a drag," she repeated. "My contribution to scientific history is going to be to say that there's a limit to man's creativity. He cannot create its duplicate. An interesting paradox, don't you think? Man is so unlimited that he meets his limit when he tries to duplicate himself. The Carlton Paradox."

  "What is she talking about?" asked Remo.

  "Quiet," hissed Chiun. "She is teaching us how to combat Mr. Gordons."

  "Well, if you can't create creativity, what was this creativity program you put together for NASA a little while ago?" asked Remo.

  "It was the best I could do," she said. "A five-year-old's creativity. It's kind of creativity at random. A five-year-old can't focus. Neither could my creativity program. You couldn't put it to use to solve any specific problem because you never
knew when it was going to be creative."

  "Then why'd the government take it?" asked Remo.

  "Why not? They might get lucky. Suppose it decided to get creative at just the right time, at just the moment some unforeseen problem arises on a mission? Whammo, it could save a flight. It couldn't hurt and it might help."

  "And that's the program they gave Mr. Gordons," Remo said.

  The martini glass dropped from Vanessa Carlton's hand and shattered on the stone floor, splashing the liquor upon her mini-skirted legs, but she was oblivious to it.

  "What did you say?" She stared hard at Remo.

  "That was the program Mr. Gordons got his hands on," said Remo.

  "No," she said in disbelief. "No. They weren't stupid enough to…"

  "Sure were," said Remo cheerily.

  "Do they know what they've done? Do they have any idea?"

  "No," said Remo. "Neither do we. That's why we're here. To talk to you about Mr. Gordons. Just who is he anyway?"

  "Mr. Gordons is the most dangerous… man in the world."

  "He used to work here?" Remo asked.

  "You might say that. And if they give him creativity, even a little of it, he could run amok. Creativity might just tell him to kill everybody because everybody's a threat to him."

  "And then what?"

  "And then a lot of people will die. Who are you anyway? You're not from NASA, are you?"

  "Let me handle this, Remo," said Chiun. He turned to Dr. Carlton. "No, dear lady, we are just two humble people attracted by your brilliance and who have come to learn at your feet."

  "You know, old fella, I don't think I trust you anymore."

  Chiun nodded. "It is best to be cautious. I myself never trust anyone under seventy. But you can trust us."

  "Not until you tell me who you are," said Dr. Carlton.

  Remo interrupted Chiun. "We're from the government. We've got to track down Gordons and put him out of commission before he floods the country with counterfeits. Now we need your help." He stopped. Dr. Carlton was laughing.

  "What's so funny?" Remo asked.

  "You can't put Mr. Gordons out of commission," she said.

  "Maybe," said Remo. "But for openers, you might just tell us where his printing plant is. If I can get to that…" Again he stopped. Dr. Carlton was laughing uproariously, her eyes filled with tears. Remo tried again to talk, but could barely hear himself over her high-pitched gales of laughter.

  "Dammit, this is serious," he tried to say. He looked at Chiun. Chiun said, "We will learn nothing more here today. What can we learn from a woman who doesn't even know what a synapse is?" He looked hurt.

  They walked toward the door, retreating from the peals of laughter that reverberated in the room as Dr. Carlton went from hilarity to hysteria. Silently, they trudged down the hallway toward the metal front door. As they reached the sliding panel, Remo said, "Dammit, Chiun, I'm not taking this."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Attack," Remo said. "Attack. Wait outside for me."

  Chiun shrugged and went out through the automatic door. Remo was alone in the corridor. He walked noiselessly back toward the main computer room.

  The door to the room was still open, but there was no more laughter from within. Inside, instead, Remo heard the drone of voices. The female voice was Vanessa Carlton's.

  "… you must change all the lock combinations and install additional electronic detectors. Do you understand?"

  The male voice that answered was dull and thin sounding. "I understand. Anything you wish, Doctor."

  "Then do it."

  At that moment, Remo entered the room.

  Standing before the control panel where he had left her was Dr. Carlton. But in front of her stood a man. He wore a gray business suit. Remo looked to the left. The dummy that she had kicked to the floor was gone. It too had worn a gray suit. Both Dr. Carlton and the man turned as Remo entered the room, the man's eyes following Dr. Carlton's startled gaze. Herkily, jerkily, it took a step forward toward Remo. Its eyes were clear, but seemed unfocussed, yet locked on Remo with a look he would have sworn was hate had it been seen anywhere but on that expressionless face.

  "No, Mr. Smirnoff," said Vanessa Carlton. "Do what I said about the locks."

  The man stopped his advance toward Remo. His metallic voice answered again. "As you wish, Doctor."

  Remo watched as the creature moved toward him, walking deliberately like a man recovering from a paralyzing stroke who has found that his body no longer does the simple basic things naturally, and each act is the direct result of will. Remo stepped aside, watching Mr. Smirnoff's hands waiting for a move against him, and then realizing he was a fool: would robots tip their moves with their hands? But Mr. Smirnoff slid past him silently, without a glance, and went through the door.

  After he had left, Dr. Carlton spoke. "So what now, Browneyes?"

  "You can start anywhere."

  "Where's your friend?"

  "Waiting outside."

  "How much do you know about Mr. Gordons?" she asked.

  "I know one thing now."

  "Which is?"

  "He's not human," Remo said.

  Vanessa Carlton nodded. "No, he's not. But you'll probably wish he were."

  "You in the business of making robots?" Remo said.

  "No. Spaceship components." Vanessa Carlton put down her new martini glass, and, stepping lightly over the glass chips from her dropped last drink, went to the computer console. From a small cabinet in the front of the computer, she took out a handful of electrical leads. Carefully, she began to separate the tangled wires as she talked.

  "It was just more efficient to make them in humanoid shape," she said. "It allowed them to understand better what will face a crewmember on a later manned mission. What is a problem for a six-foot astronaut might not be a problem for a foot-square metal box. So I used the humanoid shape."

  "Why didn't you use it on your rolling bartender there, Mr. Seagrams?"

  "He was just an early experiment in getting computers to respond to voice signals." She began to lay the electrical leads out, as she separated each one from the cluster, onto the long table in front of the computer panel. "I worked out that problem. Not only could they hear and understand but I made it possible for them to talk. I programmed them for increasingly more difficult tasks. But…" She shook her head sadly. "No creativity. Let's face it, Browneyes, machines don't mean a thing if they ain't got that swing. Mr. Gordons was the closest I've come."

  Remo perched on the edge of a chair, watching Dr. Carlton, follow her bouncing breasts around the table, stretching wires out to their full length.

  "What's the difference between Gordons, say, and Mr. Smirnoff there?"

  "Night and day," the blonde said. "Mr. Smirnoff is programmed to obey and to do whatever pleases me. He's just a dedicated mechanical butler. But Mr. Gordons, now he's different."

  "How?"

  "He's an assimilator and fabricator. It was a major breakthrough. Mr. Gordons is the entire American military-industrial complex gathered up in one. He can take anything and make anything out of it. Put a chair in front of him and he can make paper out of it or an exact replica of the tree it came from. Given raw materials, he can duplicate anything. If you must know, that man-like look of his, he created it all himself out of plastics and metals."

  She had all the leads separated now and she raised herself up on the conference table, sitting on its edge. She took one of the electrical leads and began to fasten it with tape to her left temple.

  "So what makes him different?" asked Remo. "So he's a strong robot that looks like a man. Why's he coming after us?"

  Dr. Carlton shook her head with the dismay of the specialist trying to explain the complicated to the layman. "It's his program," she said. "Look. Here is how it went. The government wanted a creativity program. I couldn't give them one. It looked like the government was going to close down our lab. I needed to come up with something. I came up with survi
val."

  "Survival," said Remo.

  "Right. Mr. Gordons is programmed for survival. Nothing else matters to him except how to survive." Left electrode in place, she began to tape another electrode to her right temple. "Somehow, he must have gotten the idea that you and your friend threaten his chances for survival. I guess he decided he must get rid of you to survive. Remember, that's all he knows."

  "What did the government say about it?"

  "Well, that was my thought," said Dr. Carlton. "If I couldn't design creative intelligence, I might be able to get practically the same result if I could program a robot to survive. That was why they wanted creative intelligence anyway: to help a spaceship survive. I thought a survival mechanism might work just as well as a creatively intelligent one."

  "So?"

  "So," she said bitterly, "I couldn't convince the government. They didn't want anything to do with it. They gave me three months to come up with creativity."

  The two head electrodes were in place and Dr. Carlton now began attaching a third to her left wrist.

  "So I came back here and told the staff we were in trouble. That it looked like the lab wouldn't survive. Mr. Gordons heard me. That night, he devised a human form for himself and ran out. I haven't seen him since."

  "Well, didn't you tell anybody? Give them a warning?"

  "Warn them about what? Remember, when Mr. Gordons was here, he was just a machine. He looked kind of like a butter churn atop a hospital cart. He took human form as a survival mechanism when he was leaving. He assimilated plastic and metal and redesigned himself. But I've never seen him. I don't know what he looks like. That's why I have such security here. I've been afraid he'll come back, if he decides there's something here that he needs, and I for one wouldn't want to try to stop him."

  She had finished strapping the electrodes on both wrists and now beckoned Remo to her with a finger.

  "Come here, Browneyes."

  Remo walked to where Vanessa Carlton sat on the edge of the table. She put her arms around his chest. "For all I know, you might be Mr. Gordons. That's why I'm going to have to test you."