The Compleat Werewolf

by Anthony Boucher

  “Wouldn’t you drop dead?” Fergus concluded simply.

  My throat felt dry as I asked, “What did you tell the insurance company?”

  “Much like Norm’s theory. Man was an artist, had an anatomical model, gave out he was a doctor to keep the natives from conniption fits. Collected expenses, but no bonus: the prints they sent me fitted what I found in his home, and they had to pay the sister.”

  Norman cleared his throat. “I’m beginning to hope they don’t send me back to the island.”

  “Afraid you might get too tempted by a tualala?”

  “No. But on the island we really do have pink caterpillars. I’m not sure I could face them.”

  “There’s one thing I still wonder,” Fergus said reflectively. “Where was Humbert Targ while his skeleton hung at Miller’s side? Or should I say, when was he? He said, ‘It took a little time to get here.’ From where? From when? And what kind of time?”

  There are some questions you don’t even try to answer.

  Q. U. R.

  It’s got so the young sprouts nowadays seem never to have heard of androids. Oh, they look at them in museums and they read the references to them in the literature of the time, but they never seem to realize how essential a part of life androids once were, how our whole civilization, in fact, depended on them. And when you say you got your start in life as trouble shooter for an android factory, they look at you as though you’d worked in two-dimensional shows way back before the sollies, as though you ought to be in a museum yourself.

  Now, I’ll admit I’m no infant. I’ll never see a hundred again. But I’m no antique either. And I think it’s a crying shame that the rising generation is so completely out of touch with the last century. Not that I ever intended to be writing my memoirs; I didn’t exactly construct my life to that end. But somebody’s got to tell the real story of what androids meant, and how they ceased to mean it. And I’m the man to tell it, because I’m the man who discovered Dugg Quinby.

  Yes, I said Quinby. Dugglesmarther H. Quinby, the Q. in Q. U. R. The man who made your life run the way it does today. And I found him.

  That summer was a hell of a season for a trouble shooter for androids. There was nothing but trouble. My five-hour day stretched to eight, and even ten and twelve, while I dashed all over New Washington checking on one android after another that had cracked up. And maybe you know how hot the Metropolitan District gets in summer—even worse than the rest of Oklahoma.

  Because my job wasn’t one that you could carry on comfortably in conditioned buildings and streets, it meant going outside and topside and everywhere that a robot might work. We called the androids robots then. We hadn’t conceived of any kind of robot that wasn’t an android, or at least a naturoid of some sort.

  And these breakdowns were striking everywhere, hitting robots in every line of activity. Even the Martoids and Veneroids that some ex-colonists fancied for servants. It would be an arm that went limp or a leg that crumpled up or a tentacle that collapsed. Sometimes mental trouble, too; slight indications of a tendency toward insubordination, even a sort of mania that wasn’t supposed to be in their make-up. And the thing kept spreading and getting worse. Any manifestation like this among living beings and you’d think of an epidemic. But what germ could attack tempered duralite?

  The worst of it was there was nothing wrong with them. Nothing that I. could find, and to me that meant plain nothing. You don’t get to be head trouble shooter of Robinc if anything can get past you. And the second worst was that it was hitting my own staff. I had had six robots under me—plenty to cover the usual, normal amount of trouble. Now I had two, and I needed forty.

  So all in all, I wasn’t happy that afternoon. It didn’t make me any happier to see a crowd in front of the Sunspot engaged in the merry pastime of Venusian-baiting. It was never safe for one of the little green fellows to venture out of the Venusian ghetto; this sport was way too common a spectacle.

  They’d got his vapor inhalator away from him. That was all there was to the game, but that was enough. No extraphysical torment was needed. There the poor giller lay on the sidewalk, sprawled and gasping like a fish out of water, which he practically was. The men—factory executives mostly, and a few office foremen—made a circle around him and laughed. There was supposed to be something hilariously funny about the struggles of a giller drowning in air, though I never could see it myself.

  Oh, they’d give him back his inhalator just in time. They never killed them off; the few Venusians around had their uses, particularly for repair work on the Veneroid robots that were used under water. But meanwhile there’d be some fun.

  Despite the heat of the day, I shuddered a little. Then I crossed to the other side of the street. I couldn’t watch the game. But I turned back when I heard one loud shout of fury.

  That was when I found Dugg Quinby. That shout was the only sound he made. He was ragingly silent as he plowed through that mass of men, found the biggest of them, snatched the inhalator away from him, and restored it to its gasping owner. But there was noise enough from the others.

  Ever try to take a bone from a dog? Or a cigar from a Martian mountaineer? Well, this was worse. Those boys objected to having their fun spoiled, and they expressed their objection forcibly.

  I liked this young blond giant that had plowed in there. I liked him because his action had asked me what I was doing crossing over to the other side of the street, and I didn’t have an answer. The only way even to try to answer was to cross back.

  Androids or Q. U. R., single-drive space ships or modern multiples, one thing that doesn’t change much is a brawl, and this was a good one. I don’t know who delivered the right that met my chin as I waded in, and I don’t know who it was meant for, but it was just what I needed. Not straight enough to do more than daze me for a minute, but just hard enough to rouse my fighting spirit to the point of the hell with anything but finding targets for my knuckles. I avenged the Venusian, I avenged the blond youth, I avenged the heat of the day and the plague of the robots. I avenged my job and my corns and the hangover I had two weeks ago.

  The first detail that comes clear is sitting inside the Sunspot I don’t know how much later. The blond boy was with me, and so was one of the factory men. We all seemed to be the best of friends, and there wasn’t any telling whose blood was which.

  Guzub was beaming at us. When you know your Martians pretty well you learn that that trick of shutting the middle eye is a beam. “You zure bolished ’em ub, boys,” he gurgled.

  The factory man felt his neck and decided his head was still there. “Guzub,” he declared, “I’ve learned me a lesson: From now on, any green giller is safe around me.”

  “That’z the zbird,” Guzub glurked. “Avder all, we’re all beings, ain’d we? Now, wad’ll id be?”

  Guzub was hurt when the blond youth ordered milk, but delighted when the factory man said he’d have a Three Planets with a double shot of margil. I’m no teetotaler, but I don’t go for these strong drinks; I stuck to my usual straight whiskey.

  We exchanged names while we waited. Mike Warren, the factory man was; and the other—but then I tipped that off already. That was Quinby. They both knew me by name.

  “So you’re with Robinc,” Mike said. “I want to have a talk with you about that sometime. My brother-in-law’s got a new use for a robot that could make somebody, including me, a pile of credits, and I can’t get a hearing anyplace.”

  “Glad to,” I said, not paying much attention. Everybody’s got a new use for a robot, just like writers tell me everybody’s got a swell idea for a solly.

  Dugg Quinby had been staring straight ahead of him and not listening. Now he said, “What I don’t see is why.”

  “Well,” Mike began, “it seems like he was stuck once on the lunar desert and—”

  “Uh-uh. Not that. What I don’t see is why Venusians. Why we act that way about them, I mean. After all, they’re more or less like us. They’re featherless bipeds, p
retty much on our general model. And we treat them like they weren’t even beings. While Martians are a different shape of life altogether, but we don’t have ghettos for them, or Martian-baiting.”

  “That’s just it,” said Mike. “The gillers are too much like us. They’re like a cartoon of us. We see them, and they’re like a dirty joke on humans, and we see red. I mean,” he added hastily, his hand rubbing his neck, “that’s the way I used to feel. I was just trying to explain.”

  “Nuts,” I said. “It’s all a matter of historical parallel. We licked the pants—which they, don’t wear—off the Venusians in the First War of Conquest, so we feel we can push ’em around. The Second War of Conquest went sour on us and damned near put an end to the Empire and the race to boot, so we’ve got a healthy respect for the Martians.” I looked over at the bartender, his tentacles industriously plying an impressive array of bottles and a gleaming duralite shaker. “We only persecute the ones it’s safe to persecute.”

  Quinby frowned. “It’s bad enough to do what no being ought to do, but to do it only when you know you can get away with it— I’ve been reading,” he announced abruptly, as though it was a challenge to another fight.

  Mike grunted. “Sollies and telecasts are enough for a man, I always say. You get to reading and you get mixed up.”

  “Do you think you aren’t mixed up without it? Do you think you aren’t all mixed up? If people would only try to look at things straight—”

  “What have you been reading?” I asked.

  “Old stuff. Dating, oh, I guess, a millennium or so back. There were people then that used to write a lot about the Brotherhood of Man. They said good things. And it all means something to us now if you translate it into the Brotherhood of Beings. Man is unified now, but what’s the result? The doctrine of Terrene Supremacy.”

  Guzub brought the drinks and we forked out our credits. When he heard the phrase “Terrene Supremacy,” his left eyelid went into that little quiver that is the Martian expression of polite incredulity, but he said nothing.

  Quinby picked up his milk. “It’s all because nobody looks at things straight. Everybody looks around the corners of his own prejudices. If you look at a problem straight, there isn’t a problem. That’s what I’m trying to do,” he said with that earnestness you never come back to after youth. “I’m trying to train myself to look straight.”

  “So there isn’t a problem. No problems at all.” I thought of the day I’d had and the jobs still ahead of me and I snorted. And then I had an idea and calmly, between swallows of whiskey, changed the course of terrene civilization. “I’ve got problems,” I asserted. “How’d you like to look straight at them? Are you working now?”

  “I’m in my free-lance period,” he said. “I’ve finished technical college and I’m not due for my final occupational analysis for another year.”

  “All right,” I said. “How’s about it?”

  Slowly he nodded.

  “If you can look,” said Mike, wobbling his neck, “as straight as you can hit—”

  I was back in my office when the call came from the space port. I’d seen Thuringer’s face red before, but never purple. He had trouble speaking, but he finally spluttered out, “Somebody did a lousy job of sterilization on your new assistant’s parents.”

  “What seems to be the trouble?” I asked in my soothingest manner.

  “Trouble! The man’s lunatic stock. Not a doubt. When you see what he’s done to—” He shuddered. He reached out to switch the ike-range, but changed his mind. “Uh-uh. Come over here and see it for yourself. You wouldn’t believe it. But come quick, before I go and apply for sterilization myself.”

  We had a special private tube to the space port; they used so many of our robots. It took me less than five minutes to get there. A robot parked my bus, and another robot took me up in the lift. It was a relief to see two in good working order, though I noticed that the second one showed signs of incipient limpness in his left arm. Since he ran the lift with with his right, it didn’t really matter, but Robinc had principles of perfection.

  Thuringer’s robot secretary said, “Tower room,” and I went on up. The space-port manager scanned me and gave the click that meant the beam was on. The tower door opened as I walked in.

  I don’t know what I’d expected to see. I couldn’t imagine what would get that hard-boiled Thuringer into such a blasting dither. This had been the first job that I’d tried Quinby out on, and a routine piece of work it was, or should have been. Routine, that is, in these damnable times. The robot that operated the signal tower had gone limp in the legs and one arm. He’d been quoted as saying some pretty strange things on the beam, too. Backsass to pilots and insubordinate mutterings.

  The first thing I saw was a neat pile of scrap in the middle of the room. Some of it looked like robot parts. The next thing I saw was Thuringer, who had gone from purple to a kind of rosy black. “It’s getting me!” he burst out. “I sit here and watch it and I’m going mad! Do something, man! Then go out and annihilate your assistant, but do something first!” I looked where he pointed. I’d been in this tower control room before. The panel had a mike and an ike, a speaker and a viewer, and a set of directional lights. In front of it there used to be a chair where the robot sat, talking on the beam and watching the indicators.

  Now there was no chair. And no robot. There was a table, and on the table was a box. And from that box there extended one arm, which was alive. That arm punched regularly and correctly at the lights, and out of the box there issued the familiar guiding voice.

  I walked around and got a gander at the front of the box. It had eyes and a mouth and a couple of holes that it took me a minute to spot as ear holes. It was like a line with two dots above and two below it, so:

  It was like no face that ever was in nature, but it could obviously see and hear and talk.

  Thuringer moaned. “And that’s what you call a repair job! My beautiful robot! Your A-l-A Double Prime All-Utility Extra-Quality De Luxe Model! Nothing of him left but this”—he pointed at the box—“and this”—he gestured sadly at the scrap heap.

  I looked a long time at the box and I scratched my head. “He works, doesn’t he?”

  “Works? What? Oh, works.”

  “You’ve been here watching him. He pushes the right lights? He gets messages right? He gives the right instructions?”

  “Oh yes, I suppose so. Yes, he works all right. But damn it, man, he’s not a robot any more. You’ve ruined him.”

  The box interrupted its beam work. “Ruined hell,” it said in the same toneless voice. “I never felt so good since I was animated. Thanks, boss.”

  Thuringer goggled. I started to leave the room.

  “Where are you going? Are you going to make this right? I demand another A-l-A Double Prime at once, you understand. And I trust you’ll kill that assistant.”

  “Kill him? I’m going to kiss him.”

  “Why, you—” He’d picked up quite a vocabulary when he ran the space port at Venusberg. “I’ll see that you’re fired from Robinc tomorrow!”

  “I quit today,” I said. “One minute ago.”

  That was the birth of Q. U. R.

  I found Quinby at the next place on the list I’d given him. This was a job repairing a household servant—one of the Class B androids with a pretty finish, but not up to commercial specifications.

  I gawped when I saw the servant. Instead of two arms he had four tentacles, which he was flexing intently.

  Quinby was packing away his repair kit. He looked up at me, smiling. “It was very simple,” he said. “He’d seen Martoid robots at work, and he realized that flexible tentacles would be much more useful than jointed arms for housework. The more he brooded about it, the clumsier his arms got. But it’s all right now, isn’t it?”

  “Fine, boss,” said the servant. He seemed to be reveling in the free pleasure of those tentacles.

  “There were some Martoid spares in the kit,” Quinby expla
ined, “and when I switched the circuit a little—”

  “Have you stopped,” I interposed, “to think what that housewife is going to say when she comes home and finds her servant waving Martoid tentacles at her?”

  “Why, no. You think she’d—”

  “Look at it straight,” I said. “She’s going to join the procession demanding that I be fired from Robinc. But don’t let it worry you. Robinc’s nothing to us. From now on we’re ourselves. We’re Us Incorporated. Come on back to the Sunspot and we’ll thrash this out.”

  “Thanks, boss,” the semi-Martoid called after us, happily writhing.

  I recklessly ordered a Three Planets. This was an occasion. Quinby stuck to milk. Guzub shrugged—that is, he wrinkled his skin where shoulders might have been on his circular body—and said, “You loog abby, boys. Good news?”

  I nodded. “Best yet, Guzub. You’re dishing ’em up for a historic occasion. Make a note.”

  “Lazd dime you zelebrade izdorig oggazion,” said Guzub resignedly, “you breag zevendy-vour glazzes. Wy zhould I maig a node?”

  “This is different, Guz. Now,” I said to Quinby, “tell me how you got this unbelievable idea of repair.”

  “Why, isn’t it obvious?” he asked simply. “When Zwergenhaus invented the first robot, he wasn’t thinking functionally. He was trying to make a mechanical man. He did, and he made a good job of it. But that’s silly. Man isn’t a functionally useful animal. There’s very little he can do himself. What’s made him top dog is that he can invent and use tools to do what needs doing. But why make his mechanical servants as helplessly constructed as he is?

  “Almost every robot, except perhaps a few like farmhands, does only one or two things and does those things constantly. All right. Shape them so that they can best do just those things, with no parts left over. Give them a brain, eyes and ears to receive commands, and whatever organs they need for their work.

  “There’s the source of your whole robot epidemic. They were all burdened down with things they didn’t need—legs when their job was a sedentary one, two arms when they used only one—or else, like my house servant, their organs were designed to imitate man’s rather than to be ideally functional. Result: the unused waste parts atrophied, and the robots became physically sick, sometimes mentally as well because they were tortured by unrealized potentialities. It was simple enough, once you looked at it straight.”