Quinby had paper spread out before him. He looked up now, took a sip of milk, and said, “Do you cook?”
“Not much. Concentrates do me most of the time.”
“I can sympathize with Grew. I like old-fashioned food myself, and I’m fairly good at cooking it. I just thought you might have some ideas.”
“For what?”
“Why, a usuform cook, of course. Grew’s android cook broke down. We’ll present him with a usuform, and that will convert him, too—”
“Convert hell!” I snorted. “Nothing can convert that sweetly smiling old— But maybe you have got something there; get at a man through his hobby— Could work.”
“Now, usually,” Quinby went on, “androids break down because they don’t use all their man-shaped body. But an android cook would go nuts because man’s body isn’t enough. I’ve cooked; I know. So we’ll give the usuform more. For instance, give him Martoid tentacles instead of arms. Maybe instead of legs give him an automatic sliding height adjustment to avoid all the bending and stooping, with a roller base for quick movement. And make the tentacles functionally specialized.”
I didn’t quite get that last, and I said so.
“Half your time in cooking is wasted reaching around for what you need next. We can build in a lot of that stuff. For instance, one tentacle can be a registering thermometer. Tapering to a fine point—stick it in a roast and— One can end in a broad spoon for stirring—heat-resistant, of course. One might terminate in a sort of hand, of which each of the digits was a different-sized measuring spoon. And best of all—why the nuisance of bringing food to the mouth to taste? Install taste buds in the end of one tentacle.”
I nodded. Quinby’s pencil was covering the paper with tentative hookups. Suddenly he paused. “I’ll bet I know why android cooks were never too successful. Nobody ever included the Verhaeren factor in their brains.”
The Verhaeren factor, if you’ve studied this stuff at all, is what makes robots capable of independent creative action. For instance, it’s used in the robots that turn out popular fiction—in very small proportion, of course.
“Yes, that’s the trouble. They never realized that a cook is an artist as well as a servant. Well, we’ll give him in his brain what he needs for creation, and in his body the tools he needs to carry it out. And when Mr. Grew has had his first meal from a usuform cook—”
It was an idea, I admitted, that might have worked on anybody but Sanford Grew—get at a man and convert him through what’s dearest to his heart. But I’d worked for Grew. I knew him. And I knew that no hobby, not even his passion for unconcentrated food, could be stronger than his pride in his power as president of Robinc.
So while Quinby worked on his usuform cook and our foreman, Mike Warren, got our dowser ready for the first big demonstration, I went ahead with the anti-Robinc campaign.
“We’ve got four striking points,” I explained to Quinby. “Android robots atrophy or go nuts; usuforms are safe. Android robots are almost as limited as man in what they can do without tools and accessories; usuforms can be constructed to do anything. Android robots are expensive because you’ve got to buy an all-purpose one that can do more than you need; usuforms save money because they’re specialized. Android robots use up mineral resources; usuforms save them.”
“The last reason is the important one,” Quinby said.
I smiled to myself. Sure it was, but can you sell the people on anything as abstract as conservation? Hell no. Tell ’em they’ll save credits, tell ’em they’ll get better service, and you’ve got ’em signed up already. But tell ’em they’re saving their grandchildren from a serious shortage and they’ll laugh in your face.
So as usual, I left Quinby to ideas and followed my own judgment on people, and by the time he’d sent the cook to Grew I had all lined up the campaign that could blast Grew and Robinc out of the Empire. The three biggest telecommentators were all sold on usuforms. A major solly producer was set to do a documentary on them. Orders were piling up about twice as fast as Mike Warren could see his way clear to turning them out.
So then came the day of the big test.
We’d wanted to start out with something big and new that no android could possibly compete with, and we’d had the luck to run onto Mike’s brother-in-law, who’d induced in robot brains the perception of that nth sense that used to enable dowsers to find water. Our usuform dowser was God’s gift to explorers and fresh, exciting copy. So the Head had arranged a big demonstration on a specially prepared field, with grandstands and fireworks and two bands—one human, one android—and all the trimmings.
We sat in our box, Mike and Quinby and I. Mike had a shakerful of Three Planets cocktails mixed by our usuform barkeep; they aren’t so good when they stand, but they were still powerful enough to keep him going. I was trying to get along on sheer will power, but little streams of sweat were running down my back and my nails were carving designs in my palms.
Quinby didn’t seem bothered. He kept watching the android band and making notes. “You see,” he explained, “it’s idiotic waste to train a robot to play an instrument, when you could make an instrument that was a robot. Your real robot band would be usuforms, and wouldn’t be anything but a flock of instruments that could play themselves. You could even work out new instruments, with range and versatility and flexibility beyond the capacity of human or android fingers and lungs. You could—”
“Oh-oh,” I said. There was Sanford Grew entering our box.
The smile was still gentle and sad, but it had a kind of warmth about it that puzzled me. I’d never seen that on Grew’s face before. He advanced to Quinby and held out his hand. “Sir,” he said, “I have just dined.”
Quinby rose eagerly, his blond head towering above the little old executive. “You mean my usuform—”
“Your usuform, sir, is indubitably the greatest cook since the Golden Age before the devilish introduction of concentrates. Do you mind if I share your box for this great exhibition?”
Quinby beamed and introduced him to Mike. Grew shook hands warmly with our foreman, then turned to me and spoke even my name with friendly pleasure. Before anybody could say any more, before I could even wipe the numb dazzle off my face, the Head’s voice began to come over the speaker.
His words were few—just a succinct promise of the wonders of usuforms and their importance to our civilization—and by the time he’d finished the dowser was in place on the field.
To everybody watching but us, there was never anything that looked less like a robot. There wasn’t a trace of an android trait to it. It looked like nothing but a heavy duralite box mounted on caterpillar treads.
But it was a robot by legal definition. It had a Zwergenhaus brain and was capable of independent action under human commands or direction. That box housed the brain, with its nth-sensory perception, and eyes and ears, and the spike-laying apparatus. For when the dowser’s perception of water reached a certain level of intensity, it laid a metal spike into the ground. An exploring party could send it out on its own to survey the territory, then follow its tracks at leisure and dig where the spikes were.
After the Head’s speech there was silence. Then Quinby leaned over to the mike in our box and said, “Go find water.”
The dowser began to move over the field. Only the Head himself knew where water had been cached at various levels and in various quantities. The dowser raced along for a bit, apparently finding nothing. Then it began to hesitate and veer. Once it paused for noticeable seconds. Even Quinby looked tense. I heard sharp breaths from Sanford Grew, and Mike almost drained his shaker.
Then the dowser moved on. There was water, but not enough to bother drilling for. It zoomed about a little more, then stopped suddenly and definitely. It had found a real treasure trove.
I knew its mechanism. In my mind I could see the Zwergenhaus brain registering and communicating its needs to the metal muscles of the sphincter mechanism that would lay the spike. The dowser sat there
apparently motionless, but when you knew it you had the impression of a hen straining to lay.
Then came the explosion. When my eyes could see again through the settling fragments, there was nothing in the field but a huge crater.
It was Quinby, of course, who saw right off what had happened. “Somebody,” my numb ears barely heard him say, “substituted for the spike an explosive shell with a contact-fuse tip.”
Sanford Grew nodded. “Plausible, young man. Plausible. But I rather think that the general impression will be simply that usuforms don’t work.” He withdrew, smiling gently.
I held Mike back by pouring the rest of the shaker down his throat. Mayhem wouldn’t help us any.
“So you converted him?” I said harshly to Quinby. “Brother, the next thing you’d better construct is a good guaranteed working usuform converter.”
The next week was the low point in the history of Q. U. R. I know now, when Quinby’s usuforms are what makes the world tick, it’s hard to imagine Q. U. R. ever hitting a low point. But one reason I’m telling this is to make you realize that no big thing is easy, and that a lot of big things depend for their success on some very little thing, like that chance remark of mine I just quoted.
Not that any of us guessed then how important that remark was. We had other things to worry about. The fiasco of that demonstration had just about cooked our goose. Sure, we explained it must’ve been sabotage, and the Head backed us up; but the wiseacres shook their heads and muttered “Not bad for an alibi, but—”
Two or three telecommentators who had been backing us switched over to Grew. The solly producer abandoned his plans for a documentary. I don’t know if this was honest conviction or the power of Robinc; it hit us the same either way. People were scared of usuforms now; they might go boom! And the biggest and smartest publicity and advertising campaign of the past century was fizzling out ffft before our helpless eyes.
It was the invaluable Guzub who gave us our first upward push. We were drinking at the Sunspot when he said, “Ah, boys— Zo things are going wrong with you, bud you zdill gome ’ere. No madder wad abbens, beoble zdill wand three things: eading and dringing and—”
Quinby looked up with the sharp pleasure of a new idea. “There’s nothing we can do with the third,” he said. “But eating and drinking— Guzub, you want to see usuforms go over, don’t you?”
“And remember,” I added practically, “you’ve got a royalty interest in our robot barkeep.”
Guzub rolled all his eyes up once and down once—the Martian trick of nodding assent.
“All right,” said Quinby. “Practically all bartenders are Martians, the tentacles are so useful professionally. Lots of them must be good friends of yours?”
“Lodz,” Guzub agreed.
“Then listen …”
That was how we launched the really appealing campaign. Words? Sure, people have read and heard millions upon billions of words, and one set of them is a lot like another. But when you get down to Guzub’s three essentials—
Within a fortnight there was one of our usuform barkeeps in one bar out of five in the influential metroplitan districts. Guzub’s friends took orders for drinks, gave them to the usuforms, served the drinks, and then explained to the satisfied customers how they’d been made—pointing out besides that there had not been an explosion. The customers would get curious. They’d order more to watch the usuform work. (It had Martoid tentacles and its own body was its shaker.) The set-up was wonderful for business—and for us.
That got at the men. Meanwhile we had usuform cooks touring the residential districts and offering to prepare old-fashioned meals free. There wasn’t a housewife whose husband didn’t say regularly once a week, “Why can’t we have more old-fashioned food instead of all these concentrates? Why, my mother used to—”
Few of the women knew the art. Those of them who could afford android cooks hadn’t found them too satisfactory. And husbands kept muttering about Mother. The chance of a happy home was worth the risk of these dreadful dangerous new things. So our usuform cooks did their stuff and husbands were rapturously pleased and everything began to look swell. (We remembered to check up on a few statistics three quarters of an hour later—it seemed we had in a way included Guzub’s third appeal after all.)
So things were coming on sweetly until one day at the Sunspot I looked up to see we had a visitor. “I heard that I might find you here,” Sanford Grew said, smiling. He beckoned to Guzub and said, “Your oldest brandy.”
Guzub knew him by sight. I saw one tentacle flicker hesitantly toward a bottle of mikiphin, that humorously named but none the less effective knockout liquor. I shook my head, and Guzub shrugged resignedly.
“Well?” Quinby asked directly.
“Gentlemen,” said Sanford Grew, “I have come here to make a last appeal to you.”
“You can take your appeal,” I said, “and—”
Quinby shushed me. “Yes, sir?”
“This is not a business appeal, young men. This is an appeal to your consciences, to your duty as citizens of the Empire of Earth.”
I saw Quinby looking a little bothered. The smiling old boy was shrewd; he knew that the conscience was where to aim a blow at Quinby. “Our consciences are clear—I think and trust.”
“Are they? This law that you finagled through the Council, that destroyed what you call my monopoly—it did more than that. That ‘monopoly’ rested on our control of the factors that make robots safe and prevent them from ever harming living beings. You have removed that control.”
Quinby laughed with relief. “Is that all? I knew you’d been using that line in publicity, but I didn’t think you expected us to believe it. There are other safety factors beside yours. We’re using them, and the law still insists on the use of some, though not necessarily Robinc’s. I’m afraid my conscience is untouched.”
“I do not know,” said Sanford Grew, “whether I am flattering or insulting you when I say I know that it is no use trying to buy you out at any price. You are immune to reason—”
“Because it’s on our side,” said Quinby quietly.
“I am left with only one recourse.” He rose and smiled a gentle farewell. “Good day, gentlemen.”
He’d left the brandy untouched. I finished it, and was glad I’d vetoed Guzub’s mild.
“One recourse—” Quinby mused. “That must mean—”
I nodded.
But it started quicker than we’d expected. It started, in fact, as soon as we left the Sunspot. Duralite arms went around my body and a duralite knee dug into the small of my back.
The first time I ever met Dugg Quinby was in a truly major and wondrous street brawl, where the boy was a whirlwind. Quinby was mostly the quiet kind, but when something touched him off—and injustice was the spark that usually did it—he could fight like fourteen Martian mountaineers defending their idols.
But who can fight duralite? Me, I have some sense; I didn’t even try. Quinby’s temper blinded his clear vision for a moment. The only result was a broken knuckle and some loss of blood and skin.
The next thing was duralite fingers probing for the proper spots at the back of my head. Then a sudden deft pressure, and blackness.
We were in a workshop of some sort. My first guess was one of the secret workshops that honeycomb the Robinc plant, where nobody but Grew’s most hand-picked man ever penetrate. We were cuffed to the wall. They’d left only one of the androids to guard us.
It was Quinby who spoke to him, and straight to the point. “What happens to us?”
“When I get my next orders,” the android said in his completely emotionless voice, “I kill you.”
I tried to hold up my morale by looking as indifferent as he did. I didn’t make it.
“The last recourse—” Quinby said.
I nodded. Then, “But look!” I burst out. “This can’t be what it looks like. He can’t be a Robinc android because he’s going—” I gulped a fractional gulp “—to kill
us. Robinc’s products have the safety factor that prevents them from harming a living being, even on another being’s orders.”
“No,” said Quinby slowly. “Remember that Robinc manufactures androids for the Empire’s army? Obviously those can’t have the safety factor. And Mr. Grew has apparently held out a few for his own bootleg banditti.”
I groaned. “Trust you,” I said. “We’re chained up with a murderous android, and trust you to stand there calmly and look at things straight. Well, are you going to see straight enough to get us out of this?”
“Of course,” he said simply. “We can’t let Grew destroy the future of usuforms.”
There was at least one other future that worried me more, but I knew there was no use bringing up anything so personal. I just stood there and watched Quinby thinking—what time I wasn’t watching the android’s hand hovering around his holster and wondering when he’d get his next orders.
And while I was waiting and watching, half scared sweatless, half trusting blindly in Quinby, half wondering impersonally what death was like—yes, I know that makes three halves of me, but I was in no state for accurate counting-while I waited, I began to realize something very odd.
It wasn’t me I was most worried about. It was Dugg Quinby. Me going all unselfish on me! Ever since Quinby had first seen the nonsense in androids—no, back of that, ever since that first magnifiscrumptious street brawl, I’d begun to love that boy like a son—which’d have made me pretty precocious.
There was something about him—that damned mixture of almost stupid innocence, combined with the ability to solve any problem by his—not ingenuity, precisely, just his inborn capacity for looking at things straight.
Here I was feeling selfless. And here he was coming forth with the first at all tricky or indirect thing I’d ever known him to pull. Maybe it was like marriage—the way two people sort of grow together and average up.
Anyway, he said to the android now, “I bet you military robots are pretty good marksmen, aren’t you?”
“I’m the best Robinc ever turned out,” the android said.
The Compleat Werewolf Page 11
