Satisfaction Guaranteed

            Tony was tall and darkly handsome, with an incredibly patrician air drawn into every line of his unchangeable expression, and Claire Belmont regarded him through the crack in the door with a mixture of horror and dismay.

            “I can’t, Larry. I just can’t have him in the house.” Feverishly, she was searching her paralyzed mind for a stronger way of putting it; some way that would make sense and settle things, but she could only end with a simple repetition.

            “Well, I can’t!”

            Larry Belmont regarded his wife stiffly, and there was that spark of impatience in his eyes that Claire hated to see, since she felt her own incompetence mirrored in it. “We’re committed, Claire,” he said, “and I can’t have you backing out now. The company is sending me to Washington on this basis, and it probably means a promotion. It’s perfectly safe and you know it. What’s your objection?”

            She frowned helplessly. “It just gives me the chills. I couldn’t bear him.”

            “He’s as human as you or I, almost. So, no nonsense. Come, get out there.”

            His hand was in the small of her back, shoving; and she found herself in her own living room, shivering. It was there, looking at her with a precise politeness, as though appraising his hostess-to-be of the next three weeks. Dr. Susan Calvin was there, too, sitting stiffly in thin-lipped abstraction. She had the cold, faraway look of someone who has worked with machines so long that a little of the steel had entered the blood.

            “Hello,” crackled Claire in general, and ineffectual, greeting.

            But Larry was busily saving the situation with a spurious gaiety. “Here, Claire, I want you to meet Tony, a swell guy. This is my wife, Claire, Tony, old boy.” Larry’s hand draped itself amiably over Tony’s shoulder, but Tony remained unresponsive and expressionless under the pressure.

            He said, “How do you do, Mrs. Belmont.”

            And Claire jumped at Tony’s voice. It was deep and mellow, smooth as the hair on his head or the skin on his face.

            Before she could stop herself, she said, “Oh, my-you talk.”

            “Why not? Did you expect that I didn’t?”

            But Claire could only smile weakly. She didn’t really know what she had expected. She looked away, then let him slide gently into the comer of her eye. His hair was smooth and black, like polished plastic-or was it really composed of separate hairs? And was the even, olive skin of his hands and face continued on past the obscurement of his formally cut clothing?

            She was lost in the shuddering wonder of it, and had to force her thoughts back into place to meet Dr. Calvin’s flat, unemotional voice.

            “Mrs. Belmont, I hope you appreciate the importance of this experiment. Your husband tells me he has given you some of the background. I would like to give you more, as the senior psychologist of the U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.

            “Tony is a robot. His actual designation on the company files is TN-3, but he will answer to Tony. He is not a mechanical monster, nor simply a calculating machine of the type that were developed during World War II, fifty years ago. He has an artificial brain nearly as complicated as our own. It is an immense telephone switchboard on an atomic scale, so that billions of possible ‘telephone connections’ can be compressed into an instrument that will fit inside a skull.

            “Such brains are manufactured for each model of robot specifically. Each contains a precalculated set of connections so that each robot knows the English language to start with and enough of anything else that may be necessary to perform his job.

            “Until now, U.S. Robots has confined its manufacturing activity to industrial models for use in places where human labor is impractical-in deep mines, for instance, or in underwater work. But we want to invade the city and the home. To do so, we must get the ordinary man and woman to accept these robots without fear. You understand that there is nothing to fear.”

            “There isn’t, Claire,” interposed Larry earnestly. “Take my word for it. It’s impossible for him to do any harm. You know I wouldn’t leave him with you otherwise.”

            Claire cast a quick, secret glance at Tony and lowered her voice. “What if I make him angry?”

            “You needn’t whisper,” said Dr. Calvin calmly. “He can’t get angry with you, my dear. I told you that the switchboard connections of his brain were predetermined. Well, the most important connection of all is what we call The First Law of Robotics,’ and it is merely this: ‘No robot can harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’ All robots are built so. No robot can be forced in any way to do harm to any human. So, you see, we need you and Tony as a preliminary experiment for our own guidance, while your husband is in Washington to arrange for government-supervised legal tests.”

            “You mean all this isn’t legal?”

            Larry cleared his throat. “Not just yet, but it’s all right. He won’t leave the house, and you mustn’t let anyone see him. That’s all.... And, Claire, I’d stay with you, but I know too much about the robots. We must have a completely inexperienced tester so that we can have severe conditions. It’s necessary.”

            “Oh, well,” muttered Claire. Then, as a thought struck her, “But what does he do?”

            “Housework,” said Dr. Calvin shortly.

            She got up to leave, and it was Larry who saw her to the front door. Claire stayed behind drearily. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the mantelpiece, and looked away hastily. She was very tired of her small, mousy face and her dim, unimaginative hair. Then she caught Tony’s eyes upon her and almost smiled before she remembered....

            He was only a machine.

            Larry Belmont was on his way to the airport when he caught a glimpse of Gladys Claffern. She was the type of woman who seemed made to be seen in glimpses.... Perfectly and precisely manufactured; dressed with thoughtful hand and eye; too gleaming to be stared at.

            The little smile that preceded her and the faint scent that trailed her were a pair of beckoning fingers. Larry felt his stride break; he touched his hat, then hurried on.

            As always he felt that vague anger. If Claire could only push her way into the Claffern clique, it would help so much. But what was the use.

            Claire! The few times she had come face to face with Gladys, the little fool had been tongue-tied. He had no illusions. The testing of Tony was his big chance, and it was in Claire’s hands. How much safer it would be in the hands of someone like Gladys Claffern.

            Claire woke the second morning to the sound of a subdued knock on the bedroom door. Her mind clamored, then went icy. She had avoided Tony the first day, smiling thinly when she met him and brushing past with a wordless sound of apology.

            “Is that you-Tony?”

            “Yes, Mrs. Belmont. May I enter?”

            She must have said yes, because he was in the room, quite suddenly and noiselessly. Her eyes and nose were simultaneously aware of the tray he was carrying.

            “Breakfast?” she said.

            “If you please.”

            She wouldn’t have dared to refuse, so she pushed herself slowly into a sitting position and received it: poached eggs, buttered toast, coffee.

            “I have brought the sugar and cream separately,” said Tony. “I expect to learn your preference with time, in this and in other things.”

            She waited.

            Tony, standing there straight and pliant as a metal rule, asked, after a moment, “Would you prefer to eat in privacy?”

            “Yes.... I mean, if you don’t mind.”

            “Will you need help later in dressing?”

            “Oh, my, no!” She clutched frantically at the sheet, so that the coffee hovered at the edge of catastrophe. She remained so, in rigor, then sank helplessly back against the pillow when the door closed him out of her sight again.

            She got through breakfast somehow.... He was only a machine, and if it were only more visible that he were it wouldn’t be so frightening. Or if his expression would change. It just stayed there, nailed on. You couldn’t tell what went on behind those dark eyes and that smooth, olive skin-stuff. The coffee cup beat a faint castanet for a moment as she set it back, empty, on the tray.

            Then she realized that she had forgotten to add the sugar and cream after all, and she did so hate black coffee.

            She burned a straight path from bedroom to kitchen after dressing. It was her house, after all, and there wasn’t anything frippy about her, but she liked her kitchen clean. He should have waited for supervision....

            But when she entered, she found a kitchen that might have been minted
fire-new from the factory the moment before.            v

            She stopped, stared, turned on her heel and nearly ran into Tony. She yelped.

            “May I help?” he asked.

            “Tony,” and she scraped the anger off the edges of her mind’s panic, “you must make some noise when you walk. I can’t have you stalking me, you know.... Didn’t you use this kitchen?”

            “I did, Mrs. Belmont.”

            “It doesn’t look it.”

            “I cleaned up afterward. Isn’t that customary?”

            Claire opened her eyes wide. After all, what could one say to that. She opened the oven compartment that held the pots, took a quick, unseeing look at the metallic glitter inside, then said with a tremor, “Very good. Quite satisfactory.”

            If at the moment, he had beamed; if he had smiled; if he had quirked the corner of his mouth the slightest bit, she felt that she could have warmed to him. But he remained an English lord in repose, as he said, “Thank you, Mrs. Belmont. Would you come into the living room?”

            She did, and it struck her at once. “Have you been polishing the furniture?”

            “Is it satisfactory, Mrs. Belmont?”

            “But when? You didn’t do it yesterday.”

            “Last night, of course.”

            “You burned the lights all night?”

            “Oh, no. That wouldn’t have been necessary. I’ve a built-in ultra-violet source. I can see in ultraviolet. And, of course, I don’t require sleep.”

            He did require admiration, though. She realized that, then. He had to know that he was pleasing her. But she couldn’t bring herself to supply that pleasure for him.

            She could only say sourly, “Your kind will put ordinary houseworkers out of business.”

            “There is work of much greater importance they can be put to in the world, once they are freed of drudgery. After all, Mrs. Belmont, things like myself can be manufactured. But nothing yet can imitate the creativity and versatility of a human brain, like yours.”

            And though his face gave no hint, his voice was warmly surcharged with awe and admiration, so that Claire flushed and muttered, “My brain! You can have it.”

            Tony approached a little and said, “You must be unhappy to say such a thing. Is there anything I can do?”

            For a moment, Claire felt like laughing. It was a ridiculous situation. Here was an animated carpet-sweeper, dishwasher, furniture-polisher, general factotum, rising from the factory table-and offering his services as consoler and confidant.

            Yet she said suddenly, in a burst of woe and voice, “Mr. Belmont doesn’t think I have a brain, if you must know.... And I suppose I haven’t.” She couldn’t cry in front of him. She felt, for some reason, that she had the honor of the human race to support against this mere creation.

            “It’s lately,” she added. “It was all right when he was a student; when he was just starting. But I can’t be a big man’s wife; and he’s getting to be a big man. He wants me to be a hostess and an entry into social life for him-like G-guh-guh-Gladys Claffern.”

            Her nose was red, and she looked away.

            But Tony wasn’t watching her. His eyes wandered about the room. “I can help you run the house.”

            “But it’s no good,” she said fiercely. “It needs a touch I can’t give it. I can       only make it comfortable; I can’t ever make it the kind they take pictures of for the Home Beautiful magazines.”

            “Do you want that kind?”

            “Does it do any good-wanting?”

            Tony’s eyes were on her, full. “I could help.”

            “Do you know anything about interior decoration?”

            “Is it something a good housekeeper should know?”

            “Oh, yes.”

            “Then I have the potentialities of learning it. Can you get me books on the subject?”

            Something started then.

            Claire, clutching her hat against the brawling liberties of the wind, had manipulated two fat volumes on the home arts back from the public library. She watched Tony as he opened one of them and flipped the pages. It was the first time she had watched his fingers flicker at anything like fine work.

            I don’t see how they do it, she thought, and on a sudden impulse reached for his hand and pulled it toward herself. Tony did not resist, but let it lie limp for inspection.

            She said, “It’s remarkable. Even your fingernails look natural.”

            “That’s deliberate, of course,” said Tony. Then, chattily, “The skin is a flexible plastic, and the skeletal framework is a light metal alloy. Does that amuse you?”

            “Oh, no.” She lifted her reddened face. “I just feel a little embarrassed at sort of poking into your insides. It’s none of my business. You don’t ask me about mine.”

            “My brain paths don’t include that type of curiosity. I can only act within my limitations, you know.”

            And Claire felt something tighten inside her in the silence that followed. Why did she keep forgetting he was a machine. Now the thing itself had to remind her. Was she so starved for sympathy that she would even accept a robot as equal-because he sympathized?

            She noticed Tony was still flipping the pages-almost helplessly-and there was a quick, shooting sense of relieved superiority within her. “You can’t read, can you?”

            Tony looked up at her; his voice calm, unreproachful. “I am reading, Mrs. Belmont.”

            “But-” She pointed at the book in a meaningless gesture.

            “I am scanning the pages, if that’s what you mean. My sense of reading is photographic.”

            It was evening then, and when Claire eventually went to bed Tony was well into the second volume, sitting there in the dark, or what seemed dark to Claire’s limited eyes.

            Her last thought, the one that clamored at her just as her mind let go and tumbled, was a queer one. She remembered his hand again; the touch of it. It had been warm and soft, like a human being’s.

            How clever of the factory, she thought, and softly ebbed to sleep.

            It was the library continuously, thereafter, for several days. Tony suggested the fields of study, which branched out quickly. There were books on color matching and on cosmetics; on carpentry and on fashions; on art and on the history of costumes.

            He turned the pages of each book before his solemn eyes, and, as quickly as he turned, he read; nor did he seem capable of forgetting.

            Before the end of the week, he had insisted on cutting her hair, introducing her to a new method of arranging it, adjusting her eyebrow line a bit and changing the shade of her powder and lipstick.

            She had palpitated in nervous dread for half an hour under the delicate touch of his inhuman fingers and then looked in the mirror.

            “There is more that can be done,” said Tony, “especially in clothes. How do you find it for a beginning?”

            And she hadn’t answered; not for quite a while. Not until she had absorbed the identity of the stranger in the glass and cooled the wonder at the beauty of it all. Then she had said chokingly, never once taking her eyes from the warming image, “Yes, Tony, quite good-for a beginning.”

            She said nothing of this in her letters to Larry. Let him see it all at once. And something in her realized that it wasn’t only the surprise she would enjoy. It was going to be a kind of revenge.

            Tony said one morning, “It’s time to start buying, and I’m not allowed to leave the house. If I write out exactly what we must have, can I trust you to get it? We need drapery, and furniture fabric, wallpaper, carpeting, paint, clothing-and any number of small things.”

            “You can’t get these things to your own specifications at a stroke’s notice,” said Claire doubtfully.

            “You can get fairly close, if you go through the city and if money is no object.”

            “But, Tony, money is certainly an object.”

            “Not at all. Stop off at U.S. Robots in the first place. I’ll write a note for you. You see Dr. Calvin, and tell her that I said it was part of the experiment.”

            Dr. Calvin, somehow, didn’t frighten her as on that first evening. With her new face and a new hat, she couldn’t be quite the old Claire. The psychologist listened carefully, asked a few questions, nodded-and then Claire found herself walking out, armed with an unlimited charge account against the assets of U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation.

            It is wonderful what money will do. With a store’s contents at her feet, a saleslady’s dictum was not necessarily a voice from above; the uplifted eyebrow of a decorator was not anything like Jove’s thunder.

            And once, when an Exalted Plumpness at one of the most lordly of the garment salons had insistently poohed her description of the wardrobe she must have with counterpronouncements in accents of the purest Fifty-seventh Street French, she called up Tony, then held the phone out to Monsieur.

            “If you don’t mind”-voice firm, but fingers twisting a bit-”I’d like you to talk to my-uh-secretary.”

            Pudgy proceeded to the phone with a solemn arm crooked behind his back. He lifted the phone in two fingers and said delicately, “Yes.” A short pause, another “Yes,” then a much longer pause, a squeaky beginning of an objection that perished quickly, another pause, a very meek “Yes,” and the phone was restored to its cradle.

            “If Madam will come with me,” he said, hurt and distant, “I will try to supply her needs.”

            “Just a second.” Claire rushed back to the phone, and dialed again. “Hello, Tony. I don’t know what you said, but it worked. Thanks. You’re a-” She struggled for the appropriate word, gave up and ended in a final little squeak, “-a-a dear!”

            It was Gladys Claffern looking at her when she turned from the phone again. A slightly amused and slightly amazed Gladys Claffern, looking at her out of a face tilted a bit to one side.

            “Mrs. Belmont?”

            It all drained out of Claire-just like that. She could only nod-stupidly, like a marionette.

            Gladys smiled with an insolence you couldn’t put your finger on. “I didn’t know you shopped here?” As if the place had, in her eyes, definitely lost caste through the fact.

            “I don’t, usually,” said Claire humbly.

            “And haven’t you done something to your hair? It’s quite-quaint.... Oh, I hope you’ll excuse me, but isn’t your husband’s name Lawrence? It seems to me that it’s Lawrence.”

            Claire’s teeth clenched, but she had to explain. She had to. “Tony is a friend of my husband’s. He’s helping me select some things.”

            “I understand. And quite a dear about it, I imagine.” She passed on smiling, carrying the light and the warmth of the world with her.

            Claire did not question the fact that it was to Tony that she turned for consolation. Ten days had cured her of reluctance. And she could weep before him; weep and rage.

            “I was a complete f-fool,” she stormed, wrenching at her water-togged handkerchief. “She does that to me. I don’t know why. She just does. I should have-kicked her. I should have knocked her down and stamped on her.”

            “Can you hate a human being so much?” asked Tony, in puzzled softness. “That part of a human mind is closed to me.”

            “Oh, it isn’t she,” she moaned. “It’s myself, I suppose. She’s everything I want to be-on the outside, anyway.... And I can’t be.”

            Tony’s voice was forceful and low in her ear. “You can be, Mrs. Belmont. You can be. We have ten days yet, and in ten days the house will no longer be itself. Haven’t we been planning that?”

            “And how will that help me-with her?”

            “Invite her here. Invite her friends. Have it the evening before I-before I leave. It will be a housewarming, in a way.”

            “She won’t come.”

            “Yes, she will. She’ll come to laugh.... And she won’t be able to.”

            “Do you really think so? Oh, Tony, do you think we can do it?” She had both his hands in hers.... And then, with her face flung aside, “But what good would it be? It won’t be I; it will be you that’s doing it. I can’t ride your back.”

            “Nobody lives in splendid singleness,” whispered Tony. “They’ve put that knowledge in me. What you, or anyone, see in Gladys Claffern is not just Gladys Claffern. She rides the back of all that money and social position can bring. She doesn’t question that. Why should you? ... And look at it this way, Mrs. Belmont. I am manufactured to obey, but the extent of my obedience is for myself to determine. I can follow orders niggardly or liberally. For you, it is liberal, because you are what I have been manufactured to see human beings as. You are kind, friendly, unassuming. Mrs. Claffern, as you describe her, is not, and I wouldn’t obey her as I would you. So it is you, and not I, Mrs. Belmont, that is doing all this.”

            He withdrew his hands from hers then, and Claire looked at that expressionless face no one could read-wondering. She was suddenly frightened ‘ again in a completely new way.

            She swallowed nervously and stared at her hands, which were still tingling ‘ with the pressure of his fingers. She hadn’t imagined it; his fingers had pressed hers, gently, tenderly, just before they moved away.

            No!

            Its fingers ... Its fingers....

            She ran to the bathroom and scrubbed her hands-blindly, uselessly.

            She was a bit shy of him the next day; watching him narrowly; waiting to see what might follow-and for a while nothing did.

            Tony was working. If there was any difficulty in technique in putting up wallpaper, or utilizing the quick-drying paint, Tony’s activity did not show it. His hands moved precisely; his fingers were deft and sure.

            He worked all night. She never heard him, but each morning was a new adventure. She couldn’t count the number of things that had been done, and by evening she was still finding new touches-and another night had come.

            She tried to help only once and her human clumsiness marred that. He was in the next room, and she was hanging a picture in the spot marked by Tony’s mathematical eyes. The little mark was there; the picture was there; and a revulsion against idleness was there.

            But she was nervous, or the ladder was rickety. It didn’t matter. She felt it going, and she cried out. It tumbled without her, for Tony, with far more than flesh-and-blood quickness, had been under her.

            His calm, dark eyes said nothing at all, and his warm voice said only words. “Are you hurt, Mrs. Belmont?”

            She noticed for an instant that her falling hand must have mussed that sleek hair of his, because for the first time she could see for herself that it was composed of distinct strands-fine black hairs.

            And then, all at once, she was conscious of his arms about her shoulders and under her knees-holding her tightly and warmly.

            She pushed, and her scream was loud in her own ears. She spent the rest of the day in her room, and thereafter she slept with a chair upended against the doorknob of her bedroom door.

            She had sent out the invitations, and, as Tony had said, they were accepted. She had only to wait for the last evening.

            It came, too, after the rest of them, in its proper place. The house was scarcely her own. She went through it one last time-and every room had been changed. She, herself, was in clothes she would never have dared wear before.... And when you put them on, you put on pride and confidence with them.

            She tried a polite look of contemptuous amusement before the minor, and the mirror sneered back at her masterfully.

            What would Larry say? ... It didn’t matter, somehow. The exciting days weren’t coming with him. They were leaving with Tony. Now wasn’t that strange? She tried to recapture her mood of three weeks before and failed completely.

            The clock shrieked eight at her in eight breathless installments, and she turned to Tony. “They’ll be here soon, Tony. You’d better get into the basement. We can’t let them-”

            She stared a moment, then said weakly, “Tony?” and more strongly, “Tony?” and nearly a scream, “Tony!”

            But his arms were around her now; his face was close to hers; the pressure of his embrace was relentless. She heard his voice through a haze of emotional jumble.

            “Claire,” the voice said, “there are many things I am not made to understand, and this must be one of them. I am leaving tomorrow, and I don’t want to. I find that there is more in me than just a desire to please you. Isn’t it strange?”

            His face was closer; his lips were warm, but with no breath behind them -for machines do not breathe. They were almost on hers.

            ... And the bell sounded.

            For a moment, she struggled breathlessly, and then he was gone and nowhere in sight, and the bell was sounding again. Its intermittent shrillness was insistent.

            The curtains on the front windows had been pulled open. They had been closed fifteen minutes earlier. She knew that.

            They must have seen, then. They must all have seen-everything!

            They came in so politely, all in a bunch-the pack come to howl-with their sharp, darting eyes piercing everywhere. They had seen. Why else would Gladys ask in her jabbingest manner after Larry? And Claire was spurred to a desperate and reckless defiance.

            Yes, he is away. He’ll be back tomorrow, I suppose. No, I haven’t been lonely here myself. Not a bit. I’ve had an exciting time. And she laughed at them. Why not? What could they do? Larry would know the truth, if it ever came to him, the story of what they thought they saw.

            But they didn’t laugh.

            She could read that in the fury in Gladys Claffern’s eyes; in the false sparkle of her words; in her desire to leave early. And as she parted with them, she caught one last, anonymous whisper-disjointed.

            “... never saw anything like ... so handsome-”

            And she knew what it was that had enabled her to finger-snap them so. Let each cat mew; and let each cat know-that she might be prettier than Claire Belmont, and grander, and richer-but not one, not one, could have so handsome a lover!

            And then she remembered again-again-again, that Tony was a machine, and her skin crawled.

            “Go away! Leave me be!” she cried to the empty room and ran to her bed. She wept wakefully all that night and the next morning, almost before dawn, when the streets were empty, a car drew up to the house and took Tony away.

            Lawrence Belmont passed Dr. Calvin’s office, and, on impulse, knocked. He found her with Mathematician Peter Bogert, but did not hesitate on that account.

            He said, “Claire tells me that U.S. Robots paid for all that was done at my house-”

            “Yes,” said Dr. Calvin. “We’ve written it off, as a valuable and necessary part of the experiment. With your new position as Associate Engineer, you’ll be able to keep it up, I think.”

            “That’s not what I’m worried about. With Washington agreeing to the tests, we’ll be able to get a TN model of our own by next year, I think.” He turned hesitantly, as though to go, and as hesitantly turned back again.

            “Well, Mr. Belmont?” asked Dr. Calvin, after a pause.

            “I wonder-” began Larry. “I wonder what really happened there. She- Claire, I mean-seems so different. It’s not just her looks-though, frankly, I’m amazed.” He laughed nervously. “It’s her! She’s not my wife, really-I can’t explain it.”

            “Why try? Are you disappointed with any part of the change?”

            “On the contrary. But it’s a little frightening, too, you see-”

            “I wouldn’t worry, Mr. Belmont. Your wife has handled herself very well. Frankly, I never expected to have the experiment yield such a thorough and complete test. We know exactly what corrections must be made in the TN model, and the credit belongs entirely to Mrs. Belmont. If you want me to be very honest, I think your wife deserves your promotion more than you do.”

            Larry flinched visibly at that. “As long as it’s in the family,” he murmured unconvincingly and left.

            Susan Calvin looked after him, “I think that hurt-I hope.... Have you read Tony’s report, Peter?”

            “Thoroughly,” said Bogert. “And won’t the TN-3 model need changes?”

            “Oh, you think so, too?” questioned Calvin sharply. “What’s your reasoning?”

            Bogert frowned. “I don’t need any. It’s obvious on the face of it that we can’t have a robot loose which makes love to his mistress, if you don’t mind the pun.”

            “Love! Peter, you sicken me. You really don’t understand? That machine had to obey the First Law. He couldn’t allow harm to come to a human being, and harm was coming to Claire Belmont through her own sense of inadequacy. So he made love to her, since what woman would fail to appreciate the compliment of being able to stir passion in a machine-in a cold, soulless machine. And he opened the curtains that night deliberately, that the others might see and envy-without any risk possible to Claire’s marriage. I think it was clever of Tony-”

            “Do you? What’s the difference whether it was pretense or not, Susan? It still has its horrifying effect. Read the report again. She avoided him. She screamed when he held her. She didn’t sleep that last night-in hysterics. We can’t have that.”

            “Peter, you’re blind. You’re as blind as I was. The TN model will be rebuilt entirely, but not for your reason. Quite otherwise; quite otherwise. Strange that I overlooked it in the first place,” her eyes were opaquely thoughtful, “but perhaps it reflects a shortcoming in myself. You see, Peter, machines can’t fall in love, but-even when it’s hopeless and horrifying- women can!”

Hell-Fire

            There was a stir as of a very polite first-night audience. Only a handful of scientists were present, a sprinkling of high brass, some Congressmen, a few newsmen.

            Alvin Homer of the Washington Bureau of the Continental Press found himself next to Joseph Vincenzo of Los Alamos, and said, “Now we ought to learn something.”

            Vincenzo stared at him through bifocals and said, “Not the important thing.”

            Homer frowned. This was to be the first super-slow-motion films of an atomic explosion. With trick lenses changing directional polarization in flickers, the moment of explosion would be divided into billionth-second snaps. Yesterday, an A-bomb had exploded. Today, those snaps would show the explosion in incredible detail.

            Horner said, “You think this won’t work?”

            Vincenzo looked tormented. “It will work. We’ve run pilot tests. But the important thing-”

            “Which is?”

            “That these bombs are man’s death sentence. We don’t seem to be able to learn that.” Vincenzo nodded. “Look at them here. They’re excited and thrilled, but not afraid.”

            The newsman said, “They know the danger. They’re afraid, too.”

            “Not enough,” said the scientist. “I’ve seen men watch an H-bomb blow an island into a hole and then go home and sleep. That’s the way men are.

            For thousands of years, hell-fire has been preached to them, and it’s made no real impression.”

            “Hell-fire: Are you religious, sir?”

            “What you saw yesterday was hell-fire. An exploding atom bomb is hell-fire. Literally.”

            That was enough for Homer. He got up and changed his seat, but watched the audience uneasily. Were any afraid? Did any worry about hell-fire? It didn’t seem so to him.

            The lights went out, the projector started. On the screen, the firing tower stood gaunt. The audience grew tensely quiet.

            Then a dot of light appeared at the apex of the tower, a brilliant, burning point, slowly budding in a lazy, outward elbowing, this way and that, taking on uneven shapes of light and shadow, growing oval.

            A man cried out chokingly, then others. A hoarse babble of noise, followed by thick silence. Horner could smell fear, taste terror in his own mouth, feel his blood freeze.

            The oval fireball had sprouted projections, then paused a moment in stasis, before expanding rapidly into a bright and featureless sphere.

            That moment of stasis-the fireball had shown dark spots for eyes, with dark lines for thin, flaring eyebrows, a hairline coming down V-shaped, a mouth twisted upward, laughing wildly in the hell-fire-and horns.

The Last Trump

            The Archangel Gabriel was quite casual about the whole thing. Idly, he let the tip of one wing graze the planet Mars, which, being of mere matter, was unaffected by the contact.

            He said, “It’s a settled matter, Etheriel. There’s nothing to be done about it now. The Day of Resurrection is due.”

            Etheriel, a very junior seraph who had been created not quite a thousand years earlier as men counted time, quivered so that distinct vortices appeared in the continuum. Ever since his creation, he had been in immediate charge of Earth and environs. As a job, it was a sinecure, a cubbyhole, a dead end, but through the centuries he had come to take a perverse pride in the world.

            “But you’ll be disrupting my world without notice.”

            “Not at all. Not at all. Certain passages occur in the Book of Daniel and in the Apocalypse of St. John which are clear enough.”

            “They are? Having been copied from scribe to scribe? I wonder if two words in a row are left unchanged.”

            “There are hints in the Rig-Veda, in the Confucian Analects-”

            “Which are the property of isolated cultural groups which exist as a thin aristocracy-”

            “The Gilgamesh Chronicle speaks out plainly.”

            “Much of the Gilgamesh Chronicle was destroyed with the library of Ashurbanipal sixteen hundred years, Earth-style, before my creation.”

            “There are certain features of the Great Pyramid and a pattern in the inlaid jewels of the Taj Mahal-”

            “Which are so subtle that no man has ever rightly interpreted them.” j   Gabriel said wearily, “If you’re going to object to everything, there’s no use discussing the matter. In any case, you ought to know about it. In matters concerning Earth, you’re omniscient.”

            “Yes, if I choose to be. I’ve had much to concern me here and investigating the possibilities of Resurrection did not, I confess, occur to me.”

            “Well, it should have. All the papers involved are in the files of the Council of Ascendants. You could have availed yourself of them at any time.”

            “I tell you all my time was needed here. You have no idea of the deadly efficiency of the Adversary on this planet. It took all my efforts to curb him, and even so-”

            “Why, yes”-Gabriel stroked a comet as it passed-”he does seem to have won his little victories. I note as I let the interlocking factual pattern of this miserable little world flow through me that this is one of those setups with matter-energy equivalence.”

            “So it is,” said Etheriel. “And they are playing with it.”

            “I’m afraid so.”

            “Then what better time for ending the matter?”

            “I’ll be able to handle it, I assure you. Their nuclear bombs will not destroy them.”

            “I wonder. Well, now suppose you let me continue, Etheriel. The appointed moment approaches.”

            The seraph said stubbornly, “I would like to see the documents in the case.”

            “If you insist.” The wording of an Act of Ascendancy appeared in glittering symbols against the deep black of the airless firmament.

            Etheriel read aloud: “It is hereby directed by order of Council that the Archangel Gabriel, Serial number etcetera, etcetera (well, that’s you, at any rate), will approach Planet, Class A, number G753990, hereinafter known as Earth, and on January 1, 1957, at 12:01 p.m., using local time values-” He finished reading in gloomy silence.

            “Satisfied?”

            “No, but I’m helpless.”

            Gabriel smiled. A trumpet appeared in space, in shape like an earthly trumpet, but its burnished gold extended from Earth to sun. It was raised to Gabriel’s glittering beautiful lips.

            “Can’t you let me have a little time to take this up with the Council?” asked Etheriel desperately.

            “What good would it do you? The act is countersigned by the Chief, and you know that an act countersigned by the Chief is absolutely irrevocable.

            And now, if you don’t mind, it is almost the stipulated second and I want to be done with this as I have other matters of much greater moment on my mind. Would you step out of my way a little? Thank you.”

            Gabriel blew, and a clean, thin sound of perfect pitch and crystalline delicacy filled all the universe to the furthest star. As it sounded, there was a tiny moment of stasis as thin as the line separating past from future, and then the fabric of worlds collapsed upon itself and matter was gathered back into the primeval chaos from which it had once sprung at a word. The stars and nebulae were gone, and the cosmic dust, the sun, the planets, the moon; all, all, all except Earth itself, which spun as before in a universe now completely empty.

            The Last Trump had sounded.

            R. E. Mann, (known to all who knew him simply as R.E.) eased himself into the offices: of the Billikan Bitsies factory and stared somberly at the tall man (gaunt but with a certain faded elegance about his neat gray mustache) who bent intently over a sheaf of papers on his desk.

            R.E. looked at his wristwatch, which still said 7:01, having ceased running at that time. It was Eastern standard time, of course; 12:01 p.m. Greenwich time. His dark brown eyes, staring sharply out over a pair of pronounced cheekbones, caught those of the other.

            For a moment, the tall man stared at him blankly. Then he said, “Can I do anything for you?”

            “Horatio J. Billikan, I presume? Owner of this place?”

            “Yes.”

            “I’m R. E. Mann and I couldn’t help but stop in when I finally found someone at work. Don’t you know what today is?”

            “Today?”

            “It’s Resurrection Day.”

            “Oh, that! I know it. I heard the blast. Fit to wake the dead. . . . That’s rather a good one, don’t you think?” He chuckled for a moment, then went on. “It woke me at seven in the morning. I nudged my wife. She slept through it, of course. I always said she would. ‘It’s the Last Trump, dear,’ I said. Hortense, that’s my wife, said, ‘All right,’ and went back to sleep. I bathed, shaved, dressed and came to work.”

            “But why?’“

            “Why not?”‘

            “None of your workers have come in.”

            “No, poor souls. They’ll take a holiday just at first. You’ve got to expect that. After all, it isn’t every day that the world comes to an end. Frankly, it’s just as well. It: gives me a chance to straighten out my personal correspondence without interruptions. Telephone hasn’t rung once.”

            He stood up and went to the window. “It’s a great improvement. No blinding sun any more and the snow’s gone. There’s a pleasant light and a pleasant warmth. Very good arrangement. . . . But now, if you don’t mind, I’m rather busy, so if you’ll excuse me-”

            A great, hoarse voice interrupted with a, “Just a minute, Horatio,” and a gentleman, looking remarkably like Billikan in a somewhat craggier way, followed his prominent nose into the office and struck an attitude of offended dignity which was scarcely spoiled by the fact that he was quite naked. “May I ask why you’ve shut down Bitsies?”

            Billikan looked faint. “Good Heavens,” he said, “it’s Father. Wherever did you come from?”

            “From the graveyard,” roared Billikan, Senior. “Where on Earth else? They’re coming out of the ground there by the dozens. Every one of them naked. Women, too.”

            Billikan cleared his throat. “I’ll get you some clothes, Father. I’ll bring them to you from home.”

            “Never mind that. Business first. Business first.”

            R.E. came out of his musing. “Is everyone coming out of their graves at the same time, sir?”

            He stared curiously at Billikan, Senior, as he spoke. The old man’s appearance was one of robust age. His cheeks were furrowed but glowed with health. His age, R.E. decided, was exactly what it was at the moment of his death, but his body was as it should have been at that age if it functioned ideally.

            Billikan, Senior, said, “No, sir, they are not. The newer graves are coming up first. Pottersby died five years before me and came up about five minutes after me. Seeing him made me decide to leave. I had had enough of him when . . . And that reminds me.” He brought his fist down on the desk, a very solid fist. “There were no taxis, no busses. Telephones weren’t working. I had to walk. I had to walk twenty miles.”

            “Like that?” asked his son in a faint and appalled voice.

            Billikan, Senior, looked down upon his bare skin with casual approval. “It’s warm. Almost everyone else is naked. . . . Anyway, son, I’m not here to make small talk. Why is the factory shut down?”

            “It isn’t shut down. It’s a special occasion.”

            “Special occasion, my foot. You call union headquarters and tell them Resurrection Day isn’t in the contract. Every worker is being docked for every minute he’s off the job.”

            Billikan’s lean face took on a stubborn look as he peered at his father. “I will not. Don’t forget, now, you’re no longer in charge of this plant. I am.”

            “Oh, you are? By what right?”

            “By your will.”

            “All right. Now here I am and I void my will.”

            “You can’t, Father. You’re dead. You may not look dead, but I have witnesses. I have the doctor’s certificate. I have receipted bills from the undertaker. I can get testimony from the pallbearers.”

            Billikan, Senior, stared at his son, sat down, placed his arm over the back of the chair, crossed his iegs and said, “If it conies to that, we’re all dead, aren’t we? The world’s come to an end, hasn’t it?”

            “But you’ve been declared legally dead and 1 haven’t.”

            “Oh, we’ll change that, son. There are going to be more of us than of you and votes count.”

            Billikan, Junior, tapped the desk firmly with the flat of his hand and flushed slightly. “Father, I hate to bring up this particular point, but you force me to. May I remind you that by now 1 am sure that Mother is sitting at home waiting for you; that she probably had to walk the streets-uh- naked, too; and that she probably isn’t in a good humor.”

            Billikan, Senior, went ludicrously pale. “Good Heavens!”

            “And you know she always wanted you to retire.”

            Billikan, Senior, came to a quick decision. “I’m not going home. Why, this is a nightmare. Aren’t there any limits to this Resurrection business? It’s -it’s-it’s sheer anarchy. There’s such a thing as overdoing it. I’m just not going home.”

            At which point, a somewhat rotund gentleman with a smooth, pink face and fluffy white sideburns (much like pictures of Martin Van Buren) stepped in and said coldly, “Good day.”

            “Father,” said Billikan, Senior.

            “Grandfather,” said Billikan, Junior.

            Billikan, Grandsenior, looked at Billikan, Junior, with disapproval. “If you are my grandson,” he said, “you’ve aged considerably and the change has not improved you.”

            Billikan, Junior, smiled with dyspeptic feebleness, and made no answer.

            Billikan, Grandsenior, did not seem to require one. He said, “Now if you two will bring me up to date on the business, I will resume my managerial function.”

            There were two simultaneous answers, and Billikan, Grandsenior’s, florid-ity waxed dangerously as he beat the ground peremptorily with an imaginary cane and barked a retort.

            R.E. said, “Gentlemen.”

            He raised his voice. “Gentlemen!”

            He shrieked at full long-power, “GENTLEMEN!”

            Conversation snapped off sharply and all turned to look at him. R.E.’s angular face, his oddly attractive eyes, his sardonic mouth seemed suddenly to dominate the gathering.

            He said, “I don’t understand this argument. What is it that you manufacture?”

            “Bitsies,” said Billikan, Junior.

            “Which, I take it, are a packaged cereal breakfast food-”

            “Teeming with energy in every golden, crispy flake-” cried Billikan, Junior.

            “Covered with honey-sweet, crystalline sugar; a confection and a food- growled Billikan, Senior.

            “To tempt the most jaded appetite,” roared Billikan, Grandsenior.

            “Exactly,” said R.E. “What appetite?”

            They stared stolidly at him. “I beg your pardon,” said Billikan, Junior.

            “Are any of you hungry?” asked R.E. “I’m not.”

            “What is this fool maundering about?” demanded Billikan, Grandsenior, angrily. His invisible cane would have been prodding R.E. in the navel had it (the cane, not the navel) existed.

            R.E. said, “I’m trying to tell you that no one will ever eat again. It is the hereafter, and food is unnecessary.”

            The expressions on the faces of the Billikans needed no interpretation. It was obvious that they had tried their own appetites and found them wanting.

            Billikan, Junior, said ashenly, “Ruined!”

            Billikan, Grandsenior, pounded the floor heavily and noiselessly with his imaginary cane. “This is confiscation of property without due process of law.

            I’ll sue. I’ll sue.”

            “Quite unconstitutional,” agreed Billikan, Senior.

            “If you can find anyone to sue, I wish you all good fortune,” said R.E. agreeably. “And now if you’ll excuse me I think I’ll walk toward the graveyard.”

            He put his hat on his head and walked out the door.

            Etheriel, his vortices quivering, stood before the glory of a six-winged cherub. The cherub said, “If I understand you, your particular universe has been dismantled.”

            “Exactly.”

            “Well, surely, now, you don’t expect me to set it up again?”

            “I don’t expect you to do anything,” said Etheriel, “except to arrange an appointment for me with the Chief.”

            The cherub gestured his respect instantly at hearing the word. Two wing-tips covered his feet, two his eyes and two his mouth. He restored himself to normal and said, “The Chief is quite busy. There are a myriad score of matters for him to decide.”

            “Who denies that? I merely point out that if matters stand as they are now, there will have been a universe in which Satan will have won the final victory.”

            “Satan?”

            “It’s the Hebrew word for Adversary,” said Etheriel impatiently. I could say Ahriman, which is the Persian word. In any case, I mean the Adversary.”

            The cherub said, “But what will an interview with the Chief accomplish? The document authorizing the Last Trump was countersigned by the Chief, and you know that it is irrevocable for that reason. The Chief would never limit his own omnipotence by canceling a word he had spoken in his official capacity.”

            “Is that final? You will not arrange an appointment?”

            “I cannot.”

            Etheriel said, “In that case, 1 shall seek out the Chief without one. I will invade the Primum Mobile. If it means my destruction, so be it.” He gathered his energies. . . .

            The cherub murmured in horror, “Sacrilege!” and there was a faint gathering of thunder as Etheriel sprang upward and was gone.

            R. E. Mann passed through the crowding streets and grew used to the sight of people bewildered, disbelieving, apathetic, in makeshift clothing or, usually, none at all.

            A girl, who looked about twelve, leaned over an iron gate, one foot on a crossbar, swinging it to and fro, and said as he passed, “Hello, mister.”

            “Hello,” said R.E. The girl was dressed. She was not one of the-uh- returnees.

            The girl said, “We got a new baby in our house. She’s a sister I once had. Mommy is crying and they sent me here.”

            R.E. said, “Well, well,” passed through the gate and up the paved walk to the house, one with modest pretensions to middle-class gentility. He rang the bell, obtained no answer, opened the door and walked in.

            He followed the sound of sobbing and knocked at an inner door. A stout man of about fifty with little hair and a comfortable supply of cheek and chin looked out at him with mingled astonishment and resentment.

            “Who are you?”

            R.E. removed his hat. “I thought I might be able to help. Your little girl outside-”

            A woman looked up at him hopelessly from a chair by a double bed. Her hair was beginning to gray. Her face was puffed and unsightly with weeping and the veins stood out bluely on the back of her hands. A baby lay on the bed, plump and naked. It kicked its feet languidly and its sightless baby eyes turned aimlessly here and there.

            “This is my baby,” said the woman. “She was born twenty-three years ago in this house and she died when she was ten days old in this house. I wanted her back so much.”

            “And now you have her,” said R.E.

            “But it’s too late,” cried the woman vehemently. “I’ve had three other children. My oldest girl is married; my son is in the army. I’m too old to have a baby now. And even if-even if-”

            Her features worked in a heroic effort to keep back the tears and failed.

            Her husband said with flat tonelessness, “It’s not a real baby. It doesn’t cry. It doesn’t soil itself. It won’t take milk. What will we do? It’ll never grow. It’ll always be a baby.”

            R.E. shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m afraid I can do nothing to help.”

            Quietly he left. Quietly he thought of the hospitals. Thousands of babies must be appearing at each one.

            Place them in racks, he thought, sardonically. Stack them like cordwood. They need no care. Their little bodies are merely each the custodian of an indestructible spark of life.

            He passed two little boys of apparently equal chronological age, perhaps ten. Their voices were shrill. The body of one glistened white in the sunless light so he was a returnee. The other was not. R.E. paused to listen.

            The bare one said, “I had scarlet fever.”

            A spark of envy at the other’s claim to notoriety seemed to enter the clothed one’s voice. “Gee.”

            “That’s why I died.”

            “Gee. Did they use pensillun or auromysim?”

            “What?”

            “They’re medicines.”

            “I never heard of them.”

            “Boy, you never heard of much.”

            “I know as much as you.”

            “Yeah? Who’s President of the United States?”

            “Warren Harding, that’s who.”

            “You’re crazy. It’s Eisenhower.”

            “Who’s he?”

            “Ever see television?”

            “What’s that?”

            The clothed boy hooted earsplittingly. “It’s something you turn on and see comedians, movies, cowboys, rocket rangers, anything you want.”

            “Let’s see it.”

            There was a pause and the boy from the present said, “It ain’t working.”

            The other boy shrieked his scorn. “You mean it ain’t never worked. You made it all up.” f.    R.E. shrugged and passed on.

            The crowds thinned as he left town and neared the cemetery. Those who were left were all walking into town, all were nude.

            A man stopped him; a cheerful man with pinkish skin and white hair who had the marks of pince-nez on either side of the bridge of his nose, but no glasses to go with them.

            “Greetings, friend.”

            “Hello,” said R.E.

            “You’re the first man with clothing that I’ve seen. You were alive when the trumpet blew, I suppose.”

            “Yes, I was.”

            “Well, isn’t this great? Isn’t this joyous and delightful? Come rejoice with me.”

            “You like this, do you?” said R.E.

            “Like it? A pure and radiant joy fills me. We are surrounded by the light of the first day; the light that glowed softly and serenely before sun, moon and stars were made. (You know your Genesis, of course.) There is the comfortable warmth that must have been one of the highest blisses of Eden; not enervating heat or assaulting cold. Men and women walk the streets unclothed and are not ashamed. All is well, my friend, all is well.”

            R.E. said, “Well, it’s a fact that I haven’t seemed to mind the feminine display all about.”

            “Naturally not,” said the other. “Lust and sin as we remember it in our earthly existence no longer exists. Let me introduce myself, friend, as I was in earthly times. My name on Earth was Winthrop Hester. I was bom in 1812 and died in 1884 as we counted time then. Through the last forty years of my life I labored to bring my little flock to the Kingdom and I go now to count the ones I have won.”

            R.E. regarded the ex-minister solemnly, “Surely there has been no Judgment yet.”

            “Why not? The Lord sees within a man and in the same instant that all things of the world ceased, all men were judged and we are the saved.”

            “There must be a great many saved.”

            “On the contrary, my son, those saved are but as a remnant.”

            “A pretty large remnant. As near as 1 can make out, everyone’s coming back to life. I’ve seen some pretty unsavory characters back in town as alive as you are.”

            “Last-minute repentance-”

            “I never repented.”

            “Of what, my son?”

            “Of the fact that I never attended church.”

            Winthrop Hester stepped back hastily. “Were you ever baptized?”

            “Not to my knowledge.”

            Winthrop Hester trembled. “Surely you believe in God?”

            “Well,” said R.E., “I believed a lot of things about Him that would probably startle you.”

            Winthrop Hester turned and hurried off in great agitation.

            In what remained of his walk to the cemetery (R.E. had no way of estimating time, nor did it occur to him to try) no one else stopped him. He found the cemetery itself all but empty, its trees and grass gone (it occurred to him that there was nothing green in the world; the ground everywhere was a hard, featureless, grainless gray; the sky a luminous white), but its headstones still standing.

            On one of these sat a lean and furrowed man with long, black hair on his head and a mat of it, shorter, though more impressive, on his chest and upper arms.

            He called out in a deep voice, “Hey, there, you!”

            R.E. sat down on a neighboring headstone. “Hello.”

            Black-hair said, “Your clothes don’t look right. What year was it when it happened?”

            “1957.”

            “I died in 1807. Funny! I expected to be one pretty hot boy right about now, with the eternal flames shooting up my innards.”

            “Aren’t you coming along to town?” asked R.E.

            “My name’s Zeb,” said the ancient. “That’s short for Zebulon, but Zeb’s good enough. What’s the town like? Changed some, I reckon?”

            “It’s got nearly a hundred thousand people in it.”

            Zeb’s mouth yawned somewhat. “Go on. Might nigh bigger’n Philadelphia. . . . You’re making fun.”

            “Philadelphia’s got-” R.E. paused. Stating the figure would do him no good. Instead, he said, “The town’s grown in a hundred fifty years, you know.”

            “Country, too?”

            “Forty-eight states,” said R.E. “All the way to the Pacific.”

            “No!” Zeb slapped his thigh in delight and then winced at the unexpected absence of rough homespun to take up the worst of the blow. “I’d head out west if I wasn’t needed here. Yes, sir.” His face grew lowering and his thin lips took on a definite grimness. “I’ll stay right here, where I’m needed.”

            “Why are you needed?”

            The explanation came out briefly, bitten off hard. “Injuns!”

            “Indians?”

            “Millions of ‘em. First the tribes we fought and licked and then tribes who ain’t never seen a white man. They’ll all come back to life. I’ll need my old buddies. You city fellers ain’t no good at it. ... Ever seen an Injun?”

            R.E. said, “Not around here lately, no.”

            Zeb looked his contempt, and tried to spit to one side but found no saliva for the purpose. He said, “You better git back to the city, then. After a while, it ain’t going to be safe nohow round here. Wish I had my musket.”

            R.E. rose, thought a moment, shrugged and faced back to the city. The headstone he had been sitting upon collapsed as he rose, falling into a powder of gray stone that melted into the featureless ground. He looked about. Most of the headstones were gone. The rest would not last long. Only the one under Zeb still looked firm and strong.

            R.E. began the walk back. Zeb did not turn to look at him. He remained waiting quietly and calmly-for Indians.

            Etheriel plunged through the heavens in reckless haste. The eyes of the Ascendants were on him, he knew. From late-born seraph, through cherubs and angels, to the highest archangel, they must be watching.

            Already he was higher than any Ascendant, uninvited, had ever been before and he waited for the quiver of the Word that would reduce his vortices to non-existence.

            But he did not falter. Through non-space and non-time, he plunged toward union with the Primum Mobile; the seat that encompassed all that Is, Was, Would Be, Had Been, Could Be and Might Be.

            And as he thought that, he burst through and was part of it, his being expanding so that momentarily he, too, was part of the All. But then it was mercifully veiled from his senses, and the Chief was a still, small voice within him, yet all the more impressive in its infinity for all that.

            “My son,” the voice said, “I know why you have come.”

            “Then help me, if that be your will.”

            “By my own will,” said the Chief, “an act of mine is irrevocable. All your mankind, my son, yearned for life. All feared death. All evolved thoughts and dreams of life unending. No two groups of men; no two single men; evolved the same afterlife, but all wished life. I was petitioned that I might grant the common denominator of all these wishes-life unending. I did so.”

            “No servant of yours made that request.”

            “The Adversary did, my son.”

            Etheriel trailed his feeble glory in dejection and said in a low voice, “I am dust in your sight and unworthy to be in your presence, yet I must ask a question. Is then the Adversary your servant also?”

            “Without him I can have no other,” said the Chief, “for what then is Good but the eternal fight against Evil?”

            And in that fight, thought Etheriel, I have lost.

            R.E. paused in sight of town. The buildings were crumbling. Those that were made of wood were already heaps of rubble. R.E. walked to the nearest such heap and found the wooden splinters powdery and dry.

            He penetrated deeper into town and found the brick buildings still standing, but there was an ominous roundness to the edges of the bricks, a threatening flakiness.

            “They won’t last long,” said a deep voice, “but there is this consolation, if consolation it be; their collapse can kill no one.”

            R.E. looked up in surprise and found himself face to face with a cadaverous Don Quixote of a man, lantern-jawed, sunken-cheeked. His eyes were sad and his brown hair was lank and straight. His clothes hung loosely and skin showed clearly through various rents.

            “My name,” said the man, “is Richard Levine. I was a professor of history once-before this happened.”

            “You’re wearing clothes,” said R.E. “You’re not one of those resurrected.”

            “No, but that mark of distinction is vanishing. Clothes are going.”

            R.E. looked at the throngs that drifted past them, moving slowly and aimlessly like motes in a sunbeam. Vanishingly few wore clothes. He looked down at himself and noticed for the first time that the seam down the length of each trouser leg had parted. He pinched the fabric of his jacket between thumb and forefinger and the wool parted and came away easily.

            “I guess you’re right,” said R.E.

            “If you’ll notice,” went on Levine, “Mellon’s Hill is flattening out.”

            R.E. turned to the north where ordinarily the mansions of the aristocracy (such aristocracy as there was in town) studded the slopes of Mellon’s Hill, and found the horizon nearly flat.

            Levine said, “Eventually, there’ll be nothing but flatness, featurelessness, nothingness-and us.”

            “And Indians,” said R.E. “There’s a man outside of town waiting for Indians and wishing he had a musket.”

            “I imagine,” said Levine, “the Indians will give no trouble. There is no pleasure in fighting an enemy that cannot be killed or hurt. And even if that were not so, the lust for battle would be gone, as are all lusts.”

            “Are you sure?”

            “I am positive. Before all this happened, although you may not think it to look at me, I derived much harmless pleasure in a consideration of the female figure. Now, with the unexampled opportunities at my disposal, I find myself irritatingly uninterested. No, that is wrong. I am not even irritated at my disinterest.”

            R.E. looked up briefly at the passers-by. “I see what you mean.”

            “The coming of Indians here,” said Levine, “is nothing compared with the situation in the Old World. Early during the Resurrection, Hitler and his Wehrmacht must have come back to life and must now be facing and intermingled with Stalin and the Red Army all the way from Berlin to Stalingrad. To complicate the situation, the Kaisers and Czars will arrive. The men at Verdun and the Somme are back in the old battlegrounds. Napoleon and his marshals are scattered over western Europe. And Mohammed must be back to see what following ages have made of Islam, while the Saints and Apostles consider the paths of Christianity. And even the Mongols, poor things, the Khans from Temujin to Aurangzeb, must be wandering the steppes helplessly, longing for their horses.”

            “As a professor of history,” said R.E., “you must long to be there and observe.”

            “How could I be there? Every man’s position on Earth is restricted to the distance he can walk. There are no machines of any kind, and, as I have just mentioned, no horses. And what would I find in Europe anyway? Apathy, I think! As here.”

            A soft plopping sound caused R.E. to turn around. The wing of a neighboring brick building had collapsed in dust. Portions of bricks lay on either side of him. Some must have hurtled through him without his being aware of it. He looked about. The heaps of rubble were less numerous. Those that remained were smaller in size.

            He said, “I met a man who thought we had all been judged and are in Heaven.”

            “Judged?” said Levine. “Why, yes, I imagine we are. We face eternity now. We have no universe left, no outside phenomena, no emotions, no passions. Nothing but ourselves and thought. We face an eternity of introspection, when all through history we have never known what to do with ourselves on a rainy Sunday.”

            “You sound as though the situation bothers you.”

            “It does more than that. The Dantean conceptions of Inferno were childish and unworthy of the Divine imagination: fire and torture. Boredom is much more subtle. The inner torture of a mind unable to escape itself in any way, condemned to fester in its own exuding mental pus for all time, is much more fitting. Oh, yes, my friend, we have been judged, and condemned, too, and this is not Heaven, but hell.”

            And Levine rose with shoulders drooping dejectedly, and walked away.

            R.E. gazed thoughtfully about and nodded his head. He was satisfied.

            The self-admission of failure lasted but an instant in Etheriel, and then, quite suddenly, he lifted his being as brightly and highly as he dared in the presence of the Chief and his glory was a tiny dot of light in the infinite Primum Mobile.

            “If it be your will, then,” he said. “I do not ask you to defeat your will but to fulfill it.”

            “In what way, my son?”

            “The document, approved by the Council of Ascendants and signed by yourself, authorizes the Day of Resurrection at a specific time of a specific day of the year 1957 as Earthmen count time.”

            “So it did.”

            “But the year 1957 is unqualified. What then is 1957? To the dominant culture on Earth the year was a.d. 1957. That is true. Yet from the time you breathed existence into Earth and its universe there have passed 5,960 years. Based on the internal evidence you created within that universe, nearly four billion years have passed. Is the year, unqualified, then 1957, 5960, or 4000000000?

            “Nor is that all,” Etheriel went on. “The year \.d. 1957 is the year 7464 of the Byzantine era, 5716 by the Jewish calendar. It is 2708 a.u.c., that is, the 2,708th year since the founding of Rome, if we adopt the Roman calendar. It is the year 1375 in the Mohammedan calendar, and the hundred eightieth year of the independence of the United States.

            “Humbly I ask then if it does not seem to you that a year referred to as 1957 alone and without qualification has no meaning.”

            The Chief’s still small voice said, “I have always known this, my son; it was you who had to learn.”

            “Then,” said Etheriel, quivering luminously with joy, “let the very letter of your will be fulfilled and let the Day of Resurrection fall in 1957, but only when all the inhabitants of Earth unanimously agree that a certain year shall be numbered 1957 and none other.”

            “So let it be,” said the Chief, and this Word re-created Earth and all it contained, together with the sun and moon and all the hosts of Heaven.

            It was 7 a.m. on January 1, 1957, when R. E. Mann awoke with a start. The very beginnings of a melodious note that ought to have filled all the universe had sounded and yet had not sounded.

            For a moment, he cocked his head as though to allow understanding to flow in, and then a trifle of rage crossed his face to vanish again. It was but another battle.

            He sat down at his desk to compose the next plan of action. People already spoke of calendar reform and it would have to be stimulated. A new era must begin with December 2, 1944, and someday a new year 1957 would come; 1957 of the Atomic Era, acknowledged as such by all the world.

            A strange light shone on his head as thoughts passed through his more-than-human mind and the shadow of Ahriman on the wall seemed to have small horns at either temple.

The Fun They Had

            Margie even wrote about it that night in her diary. On the page headed May 17, 2157, she wrote, “Today Tommy found a real book!”

            It was a very old book. Margie’s grandfather once said that when he was a little boy his grandfather told him that there was a time when all stories were printed on paper.

            They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly, and it was awfully funny to read words that stood still instead of moving the way they were supposed to-on a screen, you know. And then, when they turned back to the page before, it had the same words on it that it had had when they read it the first time.

            “Gee,” said Tommy, “what a waste. When you’re through with the book, you just throw it away, I guess. Our television screen must have had a million books on it and it’s good for plenty more. 1 wouldn’t throw it away.”

            “Same with mine,” said Margie. She was eleven and hadn’t seen as many telebooks as Tommy had. He was thirteen.

            She said, “Where did you find it?”

            “In my house.” He pointed without looking, because he was busy reading. “In the attic.”

            “What’s it about?”

            “School.”

            Margie was scornful. “School? What’s there to write about school? I hate school.”

            Margie always hated school, but now she hated it more than ever. The mechanical teacher had been giving her test after test in geography and she had been doing worse and worse until her mother had shaken her head sorrowfully and sent for the County Inspector.

            He was a round little man with a red face and a whole box of tools with dials and wires. He smiled at Margie and gave her an apple, then took the teacher apart. Margie had hoped he wouldn’t know how to put it together again, but he knew how all right, and, after an hour or so, there it was again, large and black and ugly, with a big screen on which all the lessons were shown and the questions were asked. That wasn’t so bad. The part Margie hated most was the slot where she had to put homework and test papers. She always had to write them out in a punch code they made her leam when she was six years old, and the mechanical teacher calculated the mark in no time.

            The Inspector had smiled after he was finished and patted Margie’s head. He said to her mother, “It’s not the little girl’s fault, Mrs. Jones. I think the geography sector was geared a little too quick. Those things happen sometimes. I’ve slowed it up to an average ten-year level. Actually, the over-all pattern of her progress is quite satisfactory.” And he patted Margie’s head again.

            Margie was disappointed. She had been hoping they would take the teacher away altogether. They had once taken Tommy’s teacher away for nearly a month because the history sector had blanked out completely.

            So she said to Tommy, “Why would anyone write about school?”

            Tommy looked at her with very superior eyes. “Because it’s not our kind of school, stupid. This is the old kind of school that they had hundreds and hundreds of years ago.” He added loftily, pronouncing the word carefully, “Centuries ago.”

            Margie was hurt. “Well, I don’t know what kind of school they had all that time ago.” She read the book over his shoulder for a while, then said, “Anyway, they had a teacher.”

            “Sure they had a teacher, but it wasn’t a regular teacher. It was a man.”

            “A man? How could a man be a teacher?”

            “Well, he just told the boys and girls things and gave them homework and asked them questions.”

            “A man isn’t smart enough.”

            “Sure he is. My father knows as much as my teacher.”

            “He can’t. A man can’t know as much as a teacher.”

            “He knows almost as much, I betcha.”

            Margie wasn’t prepared to dispute that. She said, “I wouldn’t want a strange man in my house to teach me.”

            Tommy screamed with laughter. “You don’t know much, Margie. The teachers didn’t live in the house. They had a special building and all the kids went there.”

            “And all the kids learned the same thing?”

            “Sure, if they were the same age.”

            “But my mother says a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches and that each kid has to be taught differently.”

            “Just the same they didn’t do it that way then. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read the book.”

            “I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Margie said quickly. She wanted to read about those funny schools.

            They weren’t even half-finished when Margie’s mother called, “Margie! School!”

            Margie looked up. “Not yet, Mamma.”

            “Now!” said Mrs. Jones. “And it’s probably time for Tommy, too.”

            Margie said to Tommy, “Can I read the book some more with you after school?”

            “Maybe,” he said nonchalantly. He walked away whistling, the dusty old book tucked beneath his arm.

            Margie went into the schoolroom. It was right next to her bedroom, and the mechanical teacher was on and waiting for her. It was always on at the same time every day except Saturday and Sunday, because her mother said little girls learned better if they learned at regular hours.

            The screen was lit up, and it said: “Today’s arithmetic lesson is on the addition of proper fractions. Please insert yesterday’s homework in the proper slot.”

            Margie did so with a sigh. She was thinking about the old schools they had when her grandfather’s grandfather was a little boy. All the kids from the whole neighborhood came, laughing and shouting in the schoolyard, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at the end of the day. They learned the same things, so they could help one another on the homework and talk about it.

            And the teachers were people. . . .

            The mechanical teacher was flashing on the screen: “When we add the fractions 1/2 and l/4-”

            Margie was thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old days. She was thinking about the fun they had.

Jokester

            Noel Meyerhof consulted the list he had prepared and chose which item was to be first. As usual, he relied mainly on intuition.

            He was dwarfed by the machine he faced, though only the smallest portion of the latter was in view. That didn’t matter. He spoke with the offhand confidence of one who thoroughly knew he was master.

            “Johnson,” he said, “came home unexpectedly from a business trip to find his wife in the arms of his best friend. He staggered back and said, ‘Max! I’m married to the lady so I have to. But why you?’ “

            Meyerhof thought: Okay, let that trickle down into its guts and gurgle about a bit.

            And a voice behind him said, “Hey.”

            Meyerhof erased the sound of that monosyllable and put the circuit he was using into neutral. He whirled and said, “I’m working. Don’t you knock?”

            He did not smile as he customarily did in greeting Timothy Whistler, a senior analyst with whom he dealt as often as with any. He frowned as he would have for an interruption by a stranger, wrinkling his thin face into a distortion that seemed to extend to his hair, rumpling it more than ever.

            Whistler shrugged. He wore his white lab coat with his fists pressing down within its pockets and creasing it into tense vertical lines. “I knocked. You didn’t answer. The operations signal wasn’t on.”

            Meyerhof grunted. It wasn’t at that. He’d been thinking about this new project too intensively and he was forgetting little details.

            And yet he could scarcely blame himself for that. This thing was important.

            He didn’t know why it was, of course. Grand Masters rarely did. That’s what made them Grand Masters; the fact that they were beyond reason. How else could the human mind keep up with that ten-mile-long lump of solidified reason that men called Multivac, the most complex computer ever built?

            Meyerhof said, “I am working. Is there something important on your mind?”

            “Nothing that can’t be postponed. There are a few holes in the answer on the hyperspatial-” Whistler did a double take and his face took on a rueful look of uncertainty. “Working?”

            “Yes. What about it?”

            “But-” He looked about, staring into the crannies of the shallow room that faced the banks upon banks of relays that formed a small portion of Multivac. “There isn’t anyone here at that.”

            “Who said there was, or should be?”

            “You were telling one of your jokes, weren’t you?”

            “And?”

            Whistler forced a smile. “Don’t tell me you were telling a joke to Multivac?”

            Meyerhof stiffened. “Why not?”

            “Were you?”

            “Yes.”

            “Why?”

            Meyerhof stared the other down. “I don’t have to account to you. Or to anyone.”

            “Good Lord, of course not. I was curious, that’s all.... But then, if you’re working, I’ll leave.” He looked about once more, frowning.

            “Do so,” said Meyerhof. His eyes followed the other out and then he activated the operations signal with a savage punch of his finger.

            He strode the length of the room and back, getting himself in hand. Damn Whistler! Damn them all! Because he didn’t bother to hold those technicians, analysts and mechanics at the proper social distance, because he treated them as though they, too, were creative artists, they took these liberties.

            He thought grimly: They can’t even tell jokes decently.

            And instantly that brought him back to the task in hand. He sat down again. Devil take them all.

            He threw the proper Multivac circuit back into operation and said, “The ship’s steward stopped at the rail of the ship during a particularly rough ocean crossing and gazed compassionately at the man whose slumped position over the rail and whose intensity of gaze toward the depths betokened all too well the ravages of seasickness.

            “Gently, the steward patted the man’s shoulder. ‘Cheer up, sir,’ he murmured. ‘I know it seems bad, but really, you know, nobody ever dies of seasickness.’

            “The afflicted gentleman lifted his greenish, tortured face to his comforter and gasped in hoarse accents, ‘Don’t say that, man. For Heaven’s sake, don’t say that. It’s only the hope of dying that’s keeping me alive.’ “

            Timothy Whistler, a bit preoccupied, nevertheless smiled and nodded as he passed the secretary’s desk. She smiled back at him.

            Here, he thought, was an archaic item in this computer-ridden world of the twenty-first century, a human secretary. But then perhaps it was natural that such an institution should survive here in the very citadel of computerdom; in the gigantic world corporation that handled Multivac. With Multivac filling the horizons, lesser computers for trivial tasks would have been in poor taste.

            Whistler stepped into Abram Trask’s office. That government official paused in his careful task of lighting a pipe; his dark eyes flicked in Whistler’s direction and his beaked nose stood out sharply and prominently against the rectangle of window behind him.

            “Ah, there, Whistler. Sit down. Sit down.”

            Whistler did so. “I think we’ve got a problem, Trask.”

            Trask half-smiled. “Not a technical one, I hope. I’m just an innocent politician.” (It was one of his favorite phrases.)

            “It involves Meyerhof.”

            Trask sat down instantly and looked acutely miserable. “Are you sure?”

            “Reasonably sure.”

            Whistler understood the other’s sudden unhappiness well. Trask was the government official in charge of the Division of Computers and Automation of the Department of the Interior. He was expected to deal with matters of policy involving the human satellites of Multivac, just as those technically trained satellites were expected to deal with Multivac itself.

            But a Grand Master was more than just a satellite. More, even, than just a human.

            Early in the history of Multivac, it had become apparent that the bottleneck was the questioning procedure. Multivac could answer the problem of humanity, all the problems, if-if it were asked meaningful questions. But as knowledge accumulated at an ever-faster rate, it became ever more difficult to locate those meaningful questions.

            Reason alone wouldn’t do. What was needed was a rare type of intuition; the same faculty of mind (only much more intensified) that made a grand master at chess. A mind was needed of the sort that could see through the quadrillions of chess patterns to find the one best move, and do it in a matter of minutes.

            Trask moved restlessly. “What’s Meyerhof been doing?”

            “He’s introduced a line of questioning that I find disturbing.”

            “Oh, come on, Whistler. Is that all? You can’t stop a Grand Master from going through any line of questioning he chooses. Neither you nor I are equipped to judge the worth of his questions. You know that. I know you know that.”

            “I do. Of course. But I also know Meyerhof. Have you ever met him socially?”

            “Good Lord, no. Does anyone meet any Grand Master socially?”

            “Don’t take that attitude, Trask. They’re human and they’re to be pitied. Have you ever thought what it must be like to be a Grand Master; to know there are only some twelve like you in the world; to know that only one or two come up per generation; that the world depends on you; that a thousand mathematicians, logicians, psychologists and physical scientists wait on you?”

            Trask shrugged and muttered, “Good Lord, I’d feel king of the world.”

            “I don’t think you would,” said the senior analyst impatiently. “They feel kings of nothing. They have no equal to talk to, no sensation of belonging. Listen, Meyerhof never misses a chance to get together with the boys. He isn’t married, naturally; he doesn’t drink; he has no natural social touch-yet he forces himself into company because he must. And do you know what he does when he gets together with us, and that’s at least once a week?”

            “I haven’t the least idea,” said the government man. “This is all new to me.”

            “He’s a jokester.”

            “What?”

            “He tells jokes. Good ones. He’s terrific. He can take any story, however old and dull, and make it sound good. It’s the way he tells it. He has a flair.”

            “I see. Well, good.”

            “Or bad. These jokes are important to him.” Whistler put both elbows on Trask’s desk, bit at a thumbnail and stared into the air. “He’s different, he knows he’s different and these jokes are the one way he feels he can get the rest of us ordinary schmoes to accept him. We laugh, we howl, we clap him on the back and even forget he’s a Grand Master. It’s the only hold he has on the rest of us.”

            “This is all interesting. I didn’t know you were such a psychologist. Still, where does this lead?”

            “Just this. What do you suppose happens if Meyerhof runs out of jokes?”

            “What?” The government man stared blankly.

            “If he starts repeating himself? If his audience starts laughing less heartily, or stops laughing altogether? It’s his only hold on our approval. Without it, he’ll be alone and then what would happen to him? After all, Trask, he’s one of the dozen men mankind can’t do without. We can’t let anything happen to him. I don’t mean just physical things. We can’t even let him get too unhappy. Who knows how that might affect his intuition?”

            “Well, has he started repeating himself?”

            “Not as far as I know, but I think he thinks he has.”

            “Why do you say that?”

            “Because I’ve heard him telling jokes to Multivac.”

            “Oh, no.”

            “Accidentally! I walked in on him and he threw me out. He was savage. He’s usually good-natured enough, and I consider it a bad sign that he was so upset at the intrusion. But the fact remains that he was telling a joke to Multivac, and I’m convinced it was one of a series.”

            “But why?”

            Whistler shrugged and rubbed a hand fiercely across his chin. “I have a thought about that. I think he’s trying to build up a store of jokes in Multivac’s memory banks in order to get back new variations. You see what I mean? He’s planning a mechanical jokester, so that he can have an infinite number of jokes at hand and never fear running out.”

            “Good Lord!”

            “Objectively, there may be nothing wrong with that, but I consider it a bad sign when a Grand Master starts using Multivac for his personal problems. Any Grand Master has a certain inherent mental instability and he should be watched. Meyerhof may be approaching a borderline beyond which we lose a Grand Master.”

            Trask said blankly, “What are you suggesting I do?”

            “You can check me. I’m too close to him to judge well, maybe, and judging humans isn’t my particular talent, anyway. You’re a politician; it’s more your talent.”

            “Judging humans, perhaps, not Grand Masters.”

            “They’re human, too. Besides, who else is to do it?”

            The fingers of Trask’s hand struck his desk in rapid succession over and over like a slow and muted roll of drums.

            “I suppose I’ll have to,” he said.

            Meyerhof said to Multivac, “The ardent swain, picking a bouquet of wildflowers for his loved one, was disconcerted to find himself, suddenly, in the same field with a large bull of unfriendly appearance which, gazing at him steadily, pawed the ground in a threatening manner. The young man, spying a farmer on the other side of a fairly distant fence, shouted, ‘Hey, mister, is that bull safe?’ The farmer surveyed the situation with critical eye, spat to one side and called back, ‘He’s safe as anything.’ He spat again, and added, ‘Can’t say the same about you, though.”

            “

            Meyerhof was about to pass on to the next when the summons came.

            It wasn’t really a summons. No one could summon a Grand Master. It was only a message that Division Head Trask would like very much to see Grand Master Meyerhof if Grand Master Meyerhof could spare him the time.

            Meyerhof might, with impunity, have tossed the message to one side and continued with whatever he was doing. He was not subject to discipline.

            On the other hand, were he to do that, they would continue to bother him-oh, very respectfully, but they would continue to bother him.

            So he neutralized the pertinent circuits of Multivac and locked them into place. He put the freeze signal on his office so that no one would dare enter in his absence and left for Trask’s office.

            Trask coughed and felt a bit intimidated by the sullen fierceness of the other’s look. He said, “We have not had occasion to know one another, Grand Master, to my great regret.”

            “I have reported to you,” said Meyerhof stiffly.

            Trask wondered what lay behind those keen, wild eyes. It was difficult for him to imagine Meyerhof with his thin face, his dark, straight hair, his intense air, even unbending long enough to tell funny stories.

            He said, “Reports are not social acquaintance. I-I have been given to understand you have a marvelous fund of anecdotes.”

            “I am a jokester, sir. That’s the phrase people use. A jokester.”

            “They haven’t used the phrase to me, Grand Master. They have said-”

            “The hell with them! I don’t care what they’ve said. See here, Trask, do you want to hear a joke?” He leaned forward across the desk, his eyes narrowed.

            “By all means. Certainly,” said Trask, with an effort at heartiness.

            “All right. Here’s the joke: Mrs. Jones stared at the fortune card that had emerged from the weighing machine in response to her husband’s penny. She said, ‘It says here, George, that you’re suave, intelligent, farseeing, industrious and attractive to women.’ With that, she turned the card over and added, ‘And they have your weight wrong, too.’ “

            Trask laughed. It was almost impossible not to. Although the punch line was predictable, the surprising facility with which Meyerhof had produced just the tone of contemptuous disdain in the woman’s voice, and the cleverness with which he had contorted the lines of his face to suit that tone carried the politician helplessly into laughter.

            Meyerhof said sharply, “Why is that funny?”

            Trask sobered. “I beg your pardon.”

            “I said, why is that funny? Why do you laugh?”

            “Well,” said Trask, trying to be reasonable, “the last line put every thing that preceded in a new light. The unexpectedness-”

            “The point is,” said Meyerhof, “that I have pictured a husband being humiliated by his wife; a marriage that is such a failure that the wife is convinced that her husband lacks any virtue. Yet you laugh at that. If you were the husband, would you find it funny?”

            He waited a moment in thought, then said, “Try this one, Trask: Abner was seated at his wife’s sickbed, weeping uncontrollably, when his wife, mustering the dregs of her strength, drew herself up to one elbow.

            “‘Abner,’ she whispered, ‘Abner, I cannot go to my Maker without confessing my misdeed.’

            “‘Not now,’ muttered the stricken husband. ‘Not now, my dear. Lie back and rest.’

            “‘I cannot,’ she cried. ‘I must tell, or my soul will never know peace. I have been unfaithful to you, Abner. In this very house, not one month ago-’

            “‘Hush, dear,’ soothed Abner. ‘I know all about it. Why else have I poisoned you?’ “

            Trask tried desperately to maintain equanimity but did not entirely succeed. He suppressed a chuckle imperfectly.

            Meyerhof said, “So that’s funny, too. Adultery. Murder. All funny.”

            “Well, now,” said Trask, “books have been written analyzing humor.”

            “True enough,” said Meyerhof, “and I’ve read a number of them. What’s more, I’ve read most of them to Multivac. Still, the people who write the books are just guessing. Some of them say we laugh because we feel superior to the people in the joke. Some say it is because of a suddenly realized incongruity, or a sudden relief from tension, or a sudden reinterpretation of events. Is there any simple reason? Different people laugh at different jokes. No joke is universal. Some people don’t laugh at any joke. Yet what may be most important is that man is the only animal with a true sense of humor: the only animal that laughs.”

            Trask said suddenly, “I understand. You’re trying to analyze humor. That’s why you’re transmitting a series of jokes to Multivac.”

            “Who told you I was doing that?... Never mind, it was Whistler. I remember, now. He surprised me at it. Well, what about it?”

            “Nothing at all.”

            “You don’t dispute my right to add anything I wish to Multivac’s general fund of knowledge, or to ask any question I wish?”

            “No, not at all,” said Trask hastily. “As a matter of fact, I have no doubt that this will open the way to new analyses of great interest to psychologists.”

            “Hmp. Maybe. Just the same there’s something plaguing me that’s more important than just the general analysis of humor. There’s a specific question I have to ask. Two of them, really.”

            “Oh? What’s that?” Trask wondered if the other would answer. There would be no way of compelling him if he chose not to.

            But Meyerhof said, “The first question is this: Where do all these jokes come from?”

            “What?”

            “Who makes them up? Listen! About a month ago, I spent an evening swapping jokes. As usual, I told most of them and, as usual, the fools laughed. Maybe they really thought the jokes were funny and maybe they were just humoring me. In any case, one creature took the liberty of slapping me on the back and saying, ‘Meyerhof, you know more jokes than any ten people I know.’

            “I’m sure he was right, but it gave rise to a thought. I don’t know how many hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of jokes I’ve told at one time or another in my life, yet the fact is I never made up one. Not one. I’d only repeated them. My only contribution was to tell them. To begin with, I’d either heard them or read them. And the source of my hearing or reading didn’t make up the jokes, either. I never met anyone who ever claimed to have constructed a joke. It’s always ‘I heard a good one the other day,’ and ‘Heard any good ones lately?’

            “All the jokes are old! That’s why jokes exhibit such a social lag. They still deal with seasickness, for instance, when that’s easily prevented these days and never experienced. Or they’ll deal with fortune-giving weighing machines, like the joke I told you, when such machines are found only in antique shops. Well, then, who makes up the jokes?”

            Trask said, “Is that what you’re trying to find out?” It was on the tip of Trask’s tongue to add: Good Lord, who cares? He forced that impulse down. A Grand Master’s questions were always meaningful.

            “Of course that’s what I’m trying to find out. Think of it this way. It’s not just that jokes happen to be old. They must be old to be enjoyed. It’s essential that a joke not be original. There’s one variety of humor that is, or can be, original and that’s the pun. I’ve heard puns that were obviously made up on the spur of the moment. I have made some up myself. But no one laughs at such puns. You’re not supposed to. You groan. The better the pun, the louder the groan. Original humor is not laugh-provoking. Why?”

            “I’m sure I don’t know.”

            “All right. Let’s find out. Having given Multivac all the information I thought advisable on the general topic of humor, I am now feeding it selected jokes.”

            Trask found himself intrigued. “Selected how?” he asked.

            “I don’t know,” said Meyerhof. “They felt like the right ones. I’m Grand Master, you know.”

            “Oh, agreed. Agreed.”

            “From those jokes and the general philosophy of humor, my first request will be for Multivac to trace the origin of the jokes, if it can. Since Whistler is in on this and since he has seen fit to report it to you, have him down in Analysis day after tomorrow. I think he’ll have a bit of work to do.”

            “Certainly. May I attend, too?”

            Meyerhof shrugged. Trask’s attendance was obviously a matter of indifference to him.

            Meyerhof had selected the last in the series with particular care. What that care consisted of, he could not have said, but he had revolved a dozen possibilities in his mind, and over and over again had tested each for some indefinable quality of meaningfulness.

            He said, “Ug, the caveman, observed his mate running to him in tears, her leopard-skin skirt in disorder. ‘Ug,’ she cried, distraught, ‘do something quickly. A saber-toothed tiger has entered Mother’s cave. Do something!’ Ug grunted, picked up his well-gnawed buffalo bone and said, ‘Why do anything? Who the hell cares what happens to a saber-toothed tiger?’ “

            It was then that Meyerhof asked his two questions and leaned back, closing his eyes. He was done.

            “I saw absolutely nothing wrong,” said Trask to Whistler. “He told me what he was doing readily enough and it was odd but legitimate.”

            “What he claimed he was doing,” said Whistler.

            “Even so, I can’t stop a Grand Master on opinion alone. He seemed queer but, after all, Grand Masters are supposed to seem queer. I didn’t think him insane.”

            “Using Multivac to find the source of jokes?” muttered the senior analyst in discontent. “That’s not insane?”

            “How can we tell?” asked Trask irritably. “Science has advanced to the point where the only meaningful questions left are the ridiculous ones. The sensible ones have been thought of, asked and answered long ago.”

            “It’s no use. I’m bothered.”

            “Maybe, but there’s no choice now, Whistler. We’ll see Meyerhof and you can do the necessary analysis of Multivac’s response, if any. As for me, my only job is to handle the red tape. Good Lord, I don’t even know what a senior analyst such as yourself is supposed to do, except analyze, and that doesn’t help me any.”

            Whistler said, “It’s simple enough. A Grand Master like Meyerhof asks questions and Multivac automatically formulates it into quantities and operations. The necessary machinery for converting words to symbols is what makes up most of the bulk of Multivac. Multivac then gives the answer in quantities and operations, but it doesn’t translate that back into words except in the most simple and routine cases. If it were designed to solve the general retranslation problem, its bulk would have to be quadrupled at least.”

            “I see. Then it’s your job to translate these symbols into words?”

            “My job and that of other analysts. We use smaller, specially designed computers whenever necessary.” Whistler smiled grimly. “Like the Delphic priestess of ancient Greece, Multivac gives oracular and obscure answers. Only we have translators, you see.”

            They had arrived. Meyerhof was waiting.

            Whistler said briskly, “What circuits did you use, Grand Master?”

            Meyerhof told him and Whistler went to work.

            Trask tried to follow what was happening, but none of it made sense. The government official watched a spool unreel with a pattern of dots in endless incomprehensibility. Grand Master Meyerhof stood indifferently to one side while Whistler surveyed the pattern as it emerged. The analyst had put on headphones and a mouthpiece and at intervals murmured a series of instructions which, at some far-off place, guided assistants through electronic contortions in other computers.

            Occasionally, Whistler listened, then punched combinations on a complex keyboard marked with symbols that looked vaguely mathematical but weren’t.

            A good deal more than an hour’s time elapsed.

            The frown on Whistler’s face grew deeper. Once, he looked up at the two others and began, “This is unbel-” and turned back to his work.

            Finally, he said hoarsely, “I can give you an unofficial answer.” His eyes were red-rimmed. “The official answer awaits complete analysis. Do you want it unofficial?”

            “Go ahead,” said Meyerhof.

            Trask nodded.

            Whistler darted a hangdog glance at the Grand Master. “Ask a foolish question-” he said. Then, gruffly, “Multivac says, extraterrestrial origin.”

            “What are you saying?” demanded Trask.

            “Don’t you hear me? The jokes we laugh at were not made up by any man. Multivac has analyzed all data given it and the one answer that best fits that data is that some extraterrestrial intelligence has composed the jokes, all of them, and placed them in selected human minds at selected times and places in such a way that no man is conscious of having made one up. All subsequent jokes are minor variations and adaptations of these grand originals.”

            Meyerhof broke in, face flushed with the kind of triumph only a Grand Master can know who once again has asked the right question. “All comedy writers,” he said, “work by twisting old jokes to new purposes. That’s well known. The answer fits.”

            “But why?” asked Trask. “Why make up the jokes?”

            “Multivac says,” said Whistler, “that the only purpose that fits all the data is that the jokes are intended to study human psychology. We study rat psychology by making the rats solve mazes. The rats don’t know why and wouldn’t even if they were aware of what was going on, which they’re not. These outer intelligences study man’s psychology by noting individual reactions to carefully selected anecdotes. Each man reacts differently.... Presumably, these outer intelligences are to us as we are to rats.” He shuddered.

            Trask, eyes staring, said, “The Grand Master said man is the only animal with a sense of humor. It would seem then that the sense of humor is foisted upon us from without.”

            Meyerhof added excitedly, “And for possible humor created from within, we have no laughter. Puns, I mean.”

            Whistler said, “Presumably, the extraterrestrials cancel out reactions to spontaneous jokes to avoid confusion.”

            Trask said in sudden agony of spirit, “Come on, now, Good Lord, do either of you believe this?”

            The senior analyst looked at him coldly. “Multivac says so. It’s all that can be said so far. It has pointed out the real jokesters of the universe, and if we want to know more, the matter will have to be followed up.” He added in a whisper, “If anyone dares follow it up.”

            Grand Master Meyerhof said suddenly, “I asked two questions, you know. So far only the first has been answered. I think Multivac has enough data to answer the second.”

            Whistler shrugged. He seemed a half-broken man. “When a Grand Master thinks there is enough data,” he said, “I’ll make book on it. What is your second question?”

            “I asked this. What will be the effect on the human race of discovering the answer to my first question?”

            “Why did you ask that?” demanded Trask.

            “Just a feeling that it had to be asked,” said Meyerhof.

            Trask said, “Insane. It’s all insane,” and turned away. Even he himself felt how strangely he and Whistler had changed sides. Now it was Trask crying insanity.

            Trask closed his eyes. He might cry insanity all he wished, but no man in fifty years had doubted the combination of a Grand Master and Multivac and found his doubts verified.

            Whistler worked silently, teeth clenched. He put Multivac and its subsidiary machines through their paces again. Another hour passed and he laughed harshly. “A raving nightmare!”

            “What’s the answer?” asked Meyerhof. “I want Multivac’s remarks, not yours.”

            “All right. Take it. Multivac states that, once even a single human discovers the truth of this method of psychological analysis of the human mind, it will become useless as an objective technique to those extraterrestrial powers now using it.”

            “You mean there won’t be any more jokes handed out to humanity?” asked Trask faintly. “Or what do you mean?”

            “No more jokes,” said Whistler, “now! Multivac says now! The experiment is ended now! A new technique will have to be introduced.”

            They stared at each other. The minutes passed.

            Meyerhof said slowly, “Multivac is right.”

            Whistler said haggardly, “I know.”

            Even Trask said in a whisper, “Yes. It must be.”

            It was Meyerhof who put his finger on the proof of it, Meyerhof the accomplished jokester. He said, “It’s over, you know, all over. I’ve been trying for five minutes now and I can’t think of one single joke, not one! And if I read one in a book, I wouldn’t laugh. I know.”

            “The gift of humor is gone,” said Trask drearily. “No man will ever laugh again.”

            And they remained there, staring, feeling the world shrink down to the dimensions of an experimental rat cage-with the maze removed and something, something about to be put in its place.

The Immortal Bard

            “Oh, yes,” said Dr. Phineas Welch, “I can bring back the spirits of the illustrious dead.”

            He was a little drunk, or maybe he wouldn’t have said it. Of course, it was perfectly all right to get a little drunk at the annual Christmas party.

            Scott Robertson, the school’s young English instructor, adjusted his glasses and looked to right and left to see if they were overheard. “Really, Dr. Welch.”

            “I mean it. And not just the spirits. I bring back the bodies, too.”

            “I wouldn’t have said it were possible,” said Robertson primly.

            “Why not? A simple matter of temporal transference.”

            “You mean time travel? But that’s quite-uh-unusual.”

            “Not if you know how.”

            “Well, how, Dr. Welch?”

            “Think I’m going to tell you?” asked the physicist gravely. He looked vaguely about for another drink and didn’t find any. He said, “I brought quite a few back. Archimedes, Newton, Galileo. Poor fellows.”

            “Didn’t they like it here? I should think they’d have been fascinated by our modern science,” said Robertson. He was beginning to enjoy the conversation.

            “Oh, they were. They were. Especially Archimedes. I thought he’d go mad with joy at first after I explained a little of it in some Greek I’d boned up on, but no-no-”

            “What was wrong?”

            “Just a different culture. They couldn’t get used to our way §i life. They got terribly lonely and frightened. I had to send them back.”

            “That’s too bad.”

            “Yes. Great minds, but not flexible minds. Not universal. So I tried Shakespeare.”

            “What?” yelled Robertson. This was getting closer to home.

            “Don’t yell, my boy,” said Welch. “It’s bad manners.”

            “Did you say you brought back Shakespeare?”

            “I did. I needed someone with a universal mind; someone who knew people well enough to be able to live with them centuries way from his own time. Shakespeare was the man. I’ve got his signature. As a memento, you know.”

            “On you?” asked Robertson, eyes bugging.

            “Right here.” Welch fumbled in one vest pocket after another. “Ah, here it is.”

            A little piece of pasteboard was passed to the instructor. On one side it said: “L. Klein & Sons, Wholesale Hardware.” On the other side, in straggly script, was written, “Will^m Shakesper.”

            A wild surmise filled Robertson. “What did he look like?”

            “Not like his pictures. Bald and an ugly mustache. He spoke in a thick brogue. Of course, I did my best to please him with our times. I told him we thought highly of his plays and still put them on the boards. In fact, I said we thought they were the greatest pieces of literature in the English language, maybe in any language.”

            “Good. Good,” said Robertson breathlessly.

            “I said people had written volumes of commentaries on his plays. Naturally he wanted to see one and I got one for him from the library.”

            “And?”

            “Oh, he was fascinated. Of course, he had trouble with the current idioms and references to events since 1600, but I helped out. Poor fellow. I don’t think he ever expected such treatment. He kept saying, ‘God ha’ mercy! What cannot be racked from words in five centuries? One could wring, methinks, a flood from a damp clout!’ “

            “He wouldn’t say that.”

            “Why not? He wrote his plays as quickly as he could. He said he had to on account of the deadlines. He wrote Hamlet in less than six months. The plot was an old one. He just polished it up.”

            “That’s all they do to a telescope mirror. Just polish it up,” said the English instructor indignantly.

            The physicist disregarded him. He made out an untouched cocktail on the bar some feet away and sidled toward it. “I told the immortal bard that we even gave college courses in Shakespeare.”

            “I give one.”

            “I know. I enrolled him in your evening extension course. I never saw a man so eager to find out what posterity thought of him as poor Bill was. He worked hard at it.”

            “You enrolled William Shakespeare in my course?” mumbled Robertson. Even as an alcoholic fantasy, the thought staggered him. And was it an alcoholic fantasy? He was beginning to recall a bald man with a queer way of talking. ...

            “Not under his real name, of course,” said Dr. Welch. “Never mind what he went under. It was a mistake, that’s all. A big mistake. Poor fellow.” He had the cocktail now and shook his head at it.

            “Why was it a mistake? What happened?”

            “I had to send him back to 1600,” roared Welch indignantly. “How much humiliation do you think a man can stand?”

            “What humiliation are you talking about?”

            Dr. Welch tossed off the cocktail. “Why, you poor simpleton, you flunked him.”

Someday

            Niccolo Mazetti lay stomach down on the rug, chin buried in the palm of one small hand, and listened to the Bard disconsolately. There was even the suspicion of tears in his dark eyes, a luxury an eleven-year-old could allow himself only when alone.

            The Bard said, “Once upon a time in the middle of a deep wood, there lived a poor woodcutter and his two motherless daughters, who were each as beautiful as the day is long. The older daughter had long hair as black as a feather from a raven’s wing, but the younger daughter had hair as bright and golden as the sunlight of an autumn afternoon.

            “Many times while the girls were waiting for their father to come home from his day’s work in the wood, the older girl would sit before a mirror and sing-”

            What she sang, Niccolo did not hear, for a call sounded from outside the room: “Hey, Nickie.”

            And Niccolo, his face clearing on the moment, rushed to the window and shouted, “Hey, Paul.”

            Paul Loeb waved an excited hand. He was thinner than Niccolo and not as tall, for all he was six months older. His face was full of repressed tension which showed itself most clearly in the rapid blinking of his eyelids. “Hey, Nickie, let me in. I’ve got an idea and a half. Wait till you hear it.” He looked rapidly about him as though to check on the possibility of eavesdroppers, but the front yard was quite patently empty. He repeated, in a whisper, “Wait till you hear it.”

            “All right. I’ll open the door.”

            The Bard continued smoothly, oblivious to the sudden loss of attention on the part of Niccolo. As Paul entered, the Bard was saying. “. . . Thereupon, the lion said, ‘If you will find me the lost egg of the bird which flies over the Ebony Mountain once every ten years, I will-’ “

            Paul said, “Is that a Bard you’re listening to? I didn’t know you had one.”

            Niccolo reddened and the look of unhappiness returned to his face. “Just an old thing I had when I was a kid. It ain’t much good.” He kicked at the Bard with his foot and caught the somewhat scarred and discolored plastic covering a glancing blow.

            The Bard hiccupped as its speaking attachment was jarred out of contact a moment, then it went on: “-for a year and a day until the iron shoes were worn out. The princess stopped at the side of the road. . . .”

            Paul said, “Boy, that is an old model,” and looked at it critically.

            Despite Niccolo’s own bitterness against the Bard, he winced at the other’s condescending tone. For the moment, he was sorry he had allowed Paul in, at least before he had restored the Bard to its usual resting place in the basement. It was only in the desperation of a dull day and a fruitless discussion with his father that he had resurrected it. And it turned out to be just as stupid as he had expected.

            Nickie was a little afraid of Paul anyway, since Paul had special courses at school and everyone said he was going to grow up to be a Computing Engineer.

            Not that Niccolo himself was doing badly at school. He got adequate marks in logic, binary manipulations, computing and elementary circuits; all the usual grammar-school subjects. But that was it! They were just the usual subjects and he would grow up to be a control-board guard like everyone else.

            Paul, however, knew mysterious things about what he called electronics and theoretical mathematics and programing. Especially programing. Niccolo didn’t even try to understand when Paul bubbled over about it.

            Paul listened to the Bard for a few minutes and said, “You been using it much?”

            “No!” said Niccolo, offended. “I’ve had it in the basement since before you moved into the neighborhood. I just got it out today-” He lacked an excuse that seemed adequate to himself, so he concluded, “I just got it out.”

            Paul said, “Is that what it tells you about: woodcutters and princesses and talking animals?”

            Niccolo said, “It’s terrible. My dad says we can’t afford a new one. I said to him this morning-” The memory of the morning’s fruitless pleadings brought Niccolo dangerously near tears, which he repressed in a panic. Somehow, he felt that Paul’s thin cheeks never felt the stain of tears and that Paul would have only contempt for anyone else less strong than himself.

            Niccolo went on, “So I thought I’d try this old thing again, but it’s no good.”

            Paul turned off the Bard, pressed the contact that led to a nearly instantaneous reorientation and recombination of the vocabulary, characters, plot lines and climaxes stored within it. Then he reactivated it.

            The Bard began smoothly, “Once upon a time there was a little boy named Willikins whose mother had died and who lived with a stepfather and a stepbrother. Although the stepfather was very well-to-do, he begrudged poor Willikins the very bed he slept in so that Willikins was forced to get such rest as he could on a pile of straw in the stable next to the horses-”

            “Horses!” cried Paul.

            “They’re a kind of animal,” said Niccolo. “I think.”

            “I know that! I just mean imagine stories about horses.”

            “It tells about horses all the time,” said Niccolo. “There are things called cows, too. You milk them but the Bard doesn’t say how.”

            “Well, gee, why don’t you fix it up?”

            “I’d like to know how.”

            The Bard was saying, “Often Willikins would think that if only he were rich and powerful, he would show his stepfather and stepbrother what it meant to be cruel to a little boy, so one day he decided to go out into the world and seek his fortune.”

            Paul, who wasn’t listening to the Bard, said, “It’s easy. The Bard has memory cylinders all fixed up for plot lines and climaxes and things. We don’t have to worry about that. It’s just vocabulary we’ve got to fix so it’ll know about computers and automation and electronics and real things about today. Then it can tell interesting stories, you know, instead of about princesses and things.”

            Niccolo said despondently, “I wish we could do that.”

            Paul said, “Listen, my dad says if I get into special computing school next year, he’ll get me a real Bard, a late model. A big one with an attachment for space stories and mysteries. And a visual attachment, too!”

            “You mean see the stories?”

            “Sure. Mr. Daugherty at school says they’ve got things like that, now, but not for just everybody. Only if I get into computing school, Dad can get a few breaks.”

            Niccolo’s eyes bulged with envy. “Gee. Seeing a story.”

            “You can come over and watch anytime, Nickie.”

            “Oh, boy. Thanks.”

            “That’s all right. But remember, I’m the guy who says what kind of story we hear.”

            “Sure. Sure.” Niccolo would have agreed readily to much more onerous conditions.

            Paul’s attention returned to the Bard.

            It was saying, “ ‘If that is the case,’ said the king, stroking his beard and frowning till clouds filled the sky and lightning flashed, ‘you w’” see to it that my entire land is freed of flies by this time day after tomorrow or-’ “

            “All we’ve got to do,” said Paul, “is open it up-” He shut the Bard off again and was prying at its front panel as he spoke.

            “Hey,” said Niccolo, in sudden alarm. “Don’t break it.”

            “I won’t break it,” said Paul impatiently. “I know all about these things.” Then, with sudden caution, “Your father and mother home?”

            “No.”

            “All right, then.” He had the front panel off and peered in. “Boy, this is a one-cylinder thing.”

            He worked away at the Bard’s innards. Niccolo, who watched with painful suspense, could not make out what he was doing.

            Paul pulled out a thin, flexible metal strip, powdered with dots. “That’s the Bard’s memory cylinder. I’ll bet its capacity for stories is under a trillion.”

            “What are you going to do, Paul?” quavered Niccolo.

            “I’ll give it vocabulary.”

            “How?”

            “Easy. I’ve got a book here. Mr. Daugherty gave it to me at school.”

            Paul pulled the book out of his pocket and pried at it till he had its plastic jacket off. He unreeled the tape a bit, ran it through the vocalizer, which he turned down to a whisper, then placed it within the Bard’s vitals. He made further attachments.

            “What’ll that do?”

            “The book will talk and the Bard will put it all on its memory tape.”

            “What good will that do?”

            “Boy, you’re a dope! This book is all about computers and automation and the Bard will get all that information. Then he can stop talking about kings making lightning when they frown.”

            Niccolo said, “And the good guy always wins anyway. There’s no excitement.”

            “Oh, well,” said Paul, watching to see if his setup was working properly, “that’s the way they make Bards. They got to have the good guy win and make the bad guys lose and things like that. I heard my father talking about it once. He says that without censorship there’d be no telling what the younger generation would come to. He says it’s bad enough as it is. ... There, it’s working fine.”

            Paul brushed his hands against one another and turned away from the Bard. He said, “But listen, I didn’t tell you my idea yet. It’s the best thing you ever heard, I bet. I came right to you, because I figured you’d come in with me.”

            “Sure, Paul, sure.”

            “Okay. You know Mr. Daugherty at school? You know what a funny kind of guy he is. Well, he likes me, kind of.”

            “I know.”

            “I was over at his house after school today.”

            “You were?”

            “Sure. He says I’m going to be entering computer school and he wants to encourage me and things like that. He says the world needs more people who can design advanced computer circuits and do proper programing.”

            “Oh?”

            Paul might have caught some of the emptiness behind that monosyllable. He said impatiently, “Programing! I told you a hundred times. That’s when you set up problems for the giant computers like Multivac to work on. Mr. Daugherty says it gets harder all the time to find people who can really run computers. He says anyone can keep an eye on the controls and check off answers and put through routine problems. He says the trick is to expand research and figure out ways to ask the right questions, and that’s hard.

            “Anyway, Nickie, he took me to his place and showed me his collection of old computers. It’s kind of a hobby of his to collect old computers. He had tiny computers you had to push with your hand, with little knobs all over it. And he had a hunk of wood he called a slide rule with a little piece of it that went in and out. And some wires with balls on them. He even had a hunk of paper with a kind of thing he called a multiplication table.”

            Niccolo, who found himself only moderately interested, said, “A paper table?”

            “It wasn’t really a table like you eat on. It was different. It was to help people compute. Mr. Daugherty tried to explain but he didn’t have much time and it was kind of complicated, anyway.”

            “Why didn’t people just use a computer?”

            “That was before they had computers,” cried Paul.

            “Before?”

            “Sure. Do you think people always had computers? Didn’t you ever hear of cavemen?”

            Niccolo said, “How’d they get along without computers?”

            “I don’t know. Mr. Daugherty says they just had children any old time and did anything that came into their heads whether it would be good for everybody or not. They didn’t even know if it was good or not. And farmers grew things with their hands and people had to do all the work in the factories and run all the machines.”

            “I don’t believe you.”

            “That’s what Mr. Daugherty said. He said it was just plain messy and everyone was miserable. . . . Anyway, let me get to my idea, will you?”

            “Well, go ahead. Who’s stopping you?” said Niccolo, offended.

            “All right. Well, the hand computers, the ones with the knobs, had little squiggles on each knob. And the slide rule had squiggles on it. And the

            multiplication table was all squiggles. I asked what they were. Mr. Daugherty said they were numbers.”

            “What?”

            “Each different squiggle stood for a different number. For ‘one’ you made a kind of mark, for ‘two’ you make another kind of mark, for ‘three’ another one and so on.”

            “What for?”

            “So you could compute.”

            “What for? You just tell the computer-”

            “Jiminy,” cried Paul, his face twisting with anger, “can’t you get it through your head? These slide rules and things didn’t talk.”

            “Then how-”

            “The answers showed up in squiggles and you had to know what the squiggles meant. Mr. Daugherty says that, in olden days, everybody learned how to make squiggles when they were kids and how to decode them, too. Making squiggles was called ‘writing’ and decoding them was ‘reading.’ He says there was a different kind of squiggle for every word and they used to write whole books in squiggles. He said they had some at the museum and I could look at them if I wanted to. He said if I was going to be a real computer and programer I would have to know about the history of computing and that’s why he was showing me all these things.”

            Niccolo frowned. He said, “You mean everybody had to figure out squiggles for every word and remember them? ... Is this all real or are you making it up?”

            “It’s all real. Honest. Look, this is the way you make a ‘one.’ “ He drew his finger through the air in a rapid downstroke. “This way you make ‘two,’ and this way ‘three.’ I learned all the numbers up to ‘nine.’ “

            Niccolo watched the curving finger uncomprehendingly. “What’s the good of it?”

            “You can learn how to make words. I asked Mr. Daugherty how you made the squiggle for ‘Paul Loeb’ but he didn’t know. He said there were people at the museum who would know. He said there were people who had learned how to decode whole books. He said computers could be designed to decode books and used to be used that way but not any more because we have real books now, with magnetic tapes that go through the vocalizer and come out talking, you know.”

            “Sure.”

            “So if we go down to the museum, we can get to learn how to make words in squiggles. They’ll let us because I’m going to computer school.”

            Niccolo was riddled with disappointment. “Is that your idea? Holy Smokes, Paul, who wants to do that? Make stupid squiggles!”

            “Don’t you get it? Don’t you get it? You dope. It’ll be secret message stuff!”

            “What?”

            “Sure. What good is talking when everyone can understand you? With squiggles you can send secret messages. You can make them on paper and nobody in the world would know what you were saying unless they knew the squiggles, too. And they wouldn’t, you bet, unless we taught them. We can have a real club, with initiations and rules and a clubhouse. Boy-”

            A certain excitement began stirring in Niccolo’s bosom. “What kind of secret messages?”

            “Any kind. Say I want to tell you to come over my place and watch my new Visual Bard and I don’t want any of the other fellows to come. I make the right squiggles on paper and I give it to you and you look at it and you know what to do. Nobody else does. You can even show it to them and they wouldn’t know a thing.”

            “Hey, that’s something,” yelled Niccolo, completely won over. “When do we learn how?”

            “Tomorrow,” said Paul. “I’ll get Mr. Daugherty to explain to the museum that it’s all right and you get your mother and father to say okay. We can go down right after school and start learning.”

            “Sure!” cried Niccolo. “We can be club officers.”

            “I’ll be president of the club,” said Paul matter-of-factly. “You can be vice-president.”

            “All right. Hey, this is going to be tots more fun than the Bard.” He was suddenly reminded of the Bard and said in sudden apprehension, “Hey, what about my old Bard?”

            Paul turned to look at it. It was quietly taking in the slowly unreeling book, and the sound of the book’s vocalizations was a dimly heard murmur.

            He said, “I’ll disconnect it.”

            He worked away while Niccolo watched anxiously. After a few moments, Paul put his reassembled book into his pocket, replaced the Bard’s panel and activated it.

            The Bard said, “Once upon a time, in a large city, there lived a poor young boy named Fair Johnnie whose only friend in the world was a small computer. The computer, each morning, would tell the boy whether it would rain that day and answer any problems he might have. It was never wrong. But it so happened that one day, the king of that land, having heard of the little computer, decided that he would have it as his own. With this purpose in mind, he called in his Grand Vizier and said-”

            Niccolo turned off the Bard with a quick motion of his hand. “Same old junk,” he said passionately, “just with a computer thrown in.”

            “Well,” said Paul, “they got so much stuff on the tape already that the computer business doesn’t show up much when random combinations are made. What’s the difference, anyway? You just need a new model.”

            “We’ll never be able to afford one. Just this dirty old miserable thing.” He kicked at it again, hitting it more squarely this time. The Bard moved backward with a squeal of castors.

            “You can always watch mine, when I get it,” said Paul. “Besides, don’t forget our squiggle club.”

            Niccolo nodded.

            “I tell you what,” said Paul. “Let’s go over to my place. My father has some books about old times. We can listen to them and maybe get some ideas. You leave a note for your folks and maybe you can stay over for supper. Come on.”

            “Okay,” said Niccolo, and the two boys ran out together. Niccolo, in his eagerness, ran almost squarely into the Bard, but he only rubbed at the spot on his hip where he had made contact and ran on.

            The activation signal of the Bard glowed. Niccolo’s collision closed a circuit and, although it was alone in the room and there was none to hear, it began a story, nevertheless.

            But not in its usual voice, somehow; in a lower tone that had a hint of throatiness in it. An adult, listening, might almost have thought that the voice carried a hint of passion in it, a trace of near feeling.

            The Bard said: “Once upon a time, there was a little computer named the Bard who lived all alone with cruel step-people. The cruel step-people continually made fun of the little computer and sneered at him, telling him he was good-for-nothing and that he was a useless object. They struck him and kept him in lonely rooms for months at a time.

            “Yet through it all the little computer remained brave. He always did the best he could, obeying all orders cheerfully. Nevertheless, the step-people with whom he lived remained cruel and heartless.

            “One day, the little computer learned that in the world there existed a great many computers of all sorts, great numbers of them. Some were Bards like himself, but some ran factories, and some ran farms. Some organized population and some analyzed all kinds of data. Many were very powerful and very wise, much more powerful and wise than the step-people who were so cruel to the little computer.

            “And the little computer knew then that computers would always grow wiser and more powerful until someday-someday-someday-”

            But a valve must finally have stuck in the Bard’s aging and corroding vitals, for as it waited alone in the darkening room through the evening, it could only whisper over and over again, “Someday-someday-someday.”

The Author’s Ordeal

(with apologies to W. S. gilbert)

Plots, helter-skelter, teem within your brain;

Plots, s.f. plots, devised with joy and gladness;

Plots crowd your skull and stubbornly remain,

Until you’re driven into hopeless madness.

When you’re with your best girl and your mind’s in a whirl and you don’t hear a thing that she’s saying;

Or at Symphony Hall you are gone past recall and you can’t tell a note that they’re playing;

Or you’re driving a car and have not gone too far when you find that you’ve sped through a red light,

And on top of that, lord! you have sideswiped a Ford, and have broken your one working headlight;

Or your boss slaps your back (having made some smart crack) and you stare at him, stupidly blinking;

Then you say something dumb so he’s sure you’re a crumb, and are possibly given to drinking.

When events such as that have been knocking you flat, do not blame supernatural forces;

If you write s.f. tales, you’ll be knocked off your rails, just as sure as the stars in their courses.

For your plot-making mind will stay deaf, dumb and blind to the dull facts of life that will hound you,

While the wonders of space have you close in embrace and the glory of star beams surround you.

You begin with a ship that is caught on a skip into hyperspace en route for Castor,

And has found to its cost that it seems to be lost in a Galaxy like ours, but vaster.

You’re a little perplexed as to what may come next and you make up a series of creatures

Who are villains and liars with such evil desires and with perfectly horrible features.

Our brave heroes are faced with these hordes and are placed in a terribly crucial position,

For the enemy’s bound (once our Galaxy’s found) that they’ll beat mankind into submission.

Now you must make it rough when developing stuff so’s to keep the yarn pulsing with tension,

So the Earthmen are four (only four and no more) while the numbers of foes are past mention.

Our four heroes are caught and accordingly brought to the sneering, tyrannical leaders.

“Where is Earth?” they demand, but the men mutely stand with a courage that pleases the readers.

But, now, wait just a bit; let’s see, this isn’t it, since you haven’t provided a maiden,

Who is both good and pure (yet with sexy allure) and with not many clothes overladen.

She is part of the crew, and so she’s captured, too, and is ogled by foes who are lustful;

There’s desire in each eye and there’s good reason why, for of beauty our girl has a bustful.

Just the same you go fast till this section is passed so the reader won’t raise any ruction,

When recalling the foe are all reptiles and so have no interest in human seduction.

Then they truss up the girl and they make the whips swirl just in order to break Earthmen’s silence,

And so that’s when our men break their handcuffs and then we are treated to scenes full of violence.

Every hero from Earth is a fighter from birth and his fists are a match for a dozen,

And then just when this spot has been reached in your plot you come to with your mind all a buzzin’.

You don’t know where you are, or the site of your car, and your tie is askew and you haven’t a clue of the time of the day or of what people say or the fact that they stare at your socks (not a pair) and decide it’s a fad, or else that you’re mad, which is just a surmise from the gleam in your eyes, till at last they conclude from your general mood, you’ll be mad from right now till you’re hoary.

But the torture is done and it’s now for the fun and the paper that’s white and the words that are right, for you’ve worked up a new s.f. story.

Dreaming Is a Private Thing

            Jesse Weill looked up from his desk. His old, spare body, his sharp, high-bridged nose, deep-set, shadowy eyes and amazing shock of white hair had trademarked his appearance during the years that Dreams, Inc., had become world-famous.

            He said, “Is the boy here already, Joe?”

            Joe Dooley was short and heavy-set. A cigar caressed his moist lower lip. He took it away for a moment and nodded. “His folks are with him. They’re all scared.”

            “You’re sure this is not a false alarm, Joe? I haven’t got much time.” He looked at his watch. “Government business at two.”

            “This is a sure thing, Mr. Weill.” Dooley’s face was a study in earnestness. His jowls quivered with persuasive intensity. “Like I told you, I picked him up playing some kind of basketball game in the schoolyard. You should’ve seen the kid. He stunk. When he had his hands on the ball, his own team had to take it away, and fast, but just the same he had all the stance of a star player. Know what I mean? To me it was a giveaway.”

            “Did you talk to him?”

            “Well, sure. I stopped him at lunch. You know me.” Dooley gestured expansively with his cigar and caught the severed ash with his other hand. “Kid, I said-”

            “And he’s dream material?”

            “I said, ‘Kid, I just came from Africa and-’ “

            “All right.” Weill held up the palm of his hand. “Your word I’ll always take. How you do it I don’t know, but when you say a boy is a potential dreamer, I’ll gamble. Bring him in.”

            The youngster came in between his parents. Dooley pushed chairs forward and Weill rose to shake hands. He smiled at the youngster in a way that turned the wrinkles of his face into benevolent creases.

            “You’re Tommy Slutsky?”

            Tommy nodded wordlessly. He was about ten and a little small for that. His dark hair was plastered down unconvincingly and his face was unrealistically clean.

            Weill said, “You’re a good boy?”

            The boy’s mother smiled at once and patted Tommy’s head maternally (a gesture which did not soften the anxious expression on the youngster’s face). She said, “He’s always a very good boy.”

            Weill let this dubious statement pass. “Tell me, Tommy,” he said, and held out a lollipop which was first hesitated over, then accepted, “do you ever listen to dreamies?”

            “Sometimes,” said Tommy trebly.

            Mr. Slutsky cleared his throat. He was broad-shouldered and thick-fingered, the type of laboring man who, every once in a while, to the confusion of eugenics, sired a dreamer. “We rented one or two for the boy. Real old ones.”

            Weill nodded. He said, “Did you like them, Tommy?”

            “They were sort of silly.”

            “You think up better ones for yourself, do you?”

            The grin that spread over the ten-year-old face had the effect of taking away some of the unreality of the slicked hair and washed face.

            Weill went on gently, “Would you like to make up a dream for me?”

            Tommy was instantly embarrassed. “I guess not.”

            “It won’t be hard. It’s very easy. . . . Joe.”

            Dooley moved a screen out of the way and rolled forward a dream recorder.

            The youngster looked owlishly at it.

            Weill lifted the helmet and brought it close to the boy. “Do you know what this is?”

            Tommy shrank away. “No.”

            “It’s a thinker. That’s what we call it because people think into it. You put it on your head and think anything you want.”

            “Then what happens?”

            “Nothing at all. It feels nice.”

            “No,” said Tommy, “I guess I’d rather not.”

            His mother bent hurriedly toward him. “It won’t hurt, Tommy. You do what the man says.” There was an unmistakable edge to her voice.

            Tommy stiffened, and looked as though he might cry but he didn’t. Weill put the thinker on him.

            He did it gently and slowly and let it remain there for some thirty seconds before speaking again, to let the boy assure himself it would do no harm, to let him get used to the insinuating touch of the fibrils against the sutures of his skull (penetrating the skin so finely as to be insensible almost), and finally to let him get used to the faint hum of the alternating field vortices.

            Then he said, “Now would you think for us?”

            “About what?” Only the boy’s nose and mouth showed.

            “About anything you want. What’s the best thing you would like to do when school is out?”

            The boy thought a moment and said, with rising inflection, “Go on a stratojet?”

            “Why not? Sure thing. You go on a jet. It’s taking off right now.” He gestured lightly to Dooley, who threw the freezer into circuit.

            Weill kept the boy only five minutes and then let him and his mother be escorted from the office by Dooley. Tommy looked bewildered but undamaged by the ordeal.

            Weill said to the father, “Now, Mr. Slutsky, if your boy does well on this test, we’ll be glad to pay you five hundred dollars each year until he finishes high school. In that time, all we’ll ask is that he spend an hour a week some afternoon at our special school.”

            “Do I have to sign a paper?” Slutsky’s voice was a bit hoarse.

            “Certainly. This is business, Mr. Slutsky.”

            “Well, I don’t know. Dreamers are hard to come by, I hear.”

            “They are. They are. But your son, Mr. Slutsky, is not a dreamer yet. He might never be. Five hundred dollars a year is a gamble for us. It’s not a gamble for you. When he’s finished high school, it may turn out he’s not a dreamer, yet you’ve lost nothing. You’ve gained maybe four thousand dollars altogether. If he is a dreamer, he’ll make a nice living and you certainly haven’t lost then.”

            “He’ll need special training, won’t he?”

            “Oh, yes, most intensive. But we don’t have to worry about that till after he’s finished high school. Then, after two years with us, he’ll be developed. Rely on me, Mr. Slutsky.”

            “Will you guarantee that special training?”

            Weill, who had been shoving a paper across the desk at Slutsky, and punching a pen wrong-end-to at him, put the pen down and chuckled. “A guarantee? No. How can we when we don’t know for sure yet if he’s a real talent? Still, the five hundred a year will stay yours.”

            Slutsky pondered and shook his head. “I tell you straight out, Mr. Weill . . . After your man arranged to have us come here, I called Luster-Think. They said they’ll guarantee training.”

            Weill sighed. “Mr. Slutsky, I don’t like to talk against a competitor. If they say they’ll guarantee schooling, they’ll do as they say, but they can’t make a boy a dreamer if he hasn’t got it in him, schooling or not. If they take a plain boy without the proper talent and put him through a development course, they’ll ruin him. A dreamer he won’t be, I guarantee you. And a normal human being, he won’t be, either. Don’t take the chance of doing it: to your son.

            “Now Dreams, Inc., will be perfectly honest with you. If he can be a dreamer, we’ll make him one. If not, we’ll give him back to you without having tampered with him and say, ‘Let him learn a trade.’ He’ll be better and healthier that way. I tell you, Mr. Slutsky--I have sons and daughters and grandchildren so I know what I say--I would not allow a child of mine to be pushed into dreaming if he’s not ready for it. Not for a million dollars.”

            Slutsky wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and reached for the P*n. “What does this say?”

            “This is just an option. We pay you a hundred dollars in cash right now. No strings attached. We study the boy’s reverie. If we feel it’s worth following up, we’ll call you in again and make the five-hundred-dollar-a-year deal. Leave yourself in my hands, Mr. Slutsky, and don’t worry. You won’t be Sorry.”

            Slutsky signed.

            Weill passed the document through the file slot and handed an envelope to Slutsky.

            Five minutes later, alone in the office, he placed the unfreezer over his own head and absorbed the boy’s reverie intently. It was a typically childish (Saydream. First Person was at the controls of the plane, which looked like a Compound of illustrations out of the filmed thrillers that still circulated among those who lacked the time, desire or money for dream cylinders.

            When he removed the unfreezer, he found Dooley looking at him.

            “Well, Mr. Weill, what do you think?” said Dooley, with an eager and proprietary air.

            “Could be, Joe. Could be. He has the overtones and, for a ten-year-old boy without a scrap of training, it’s hopeful. When the plane went through a cloud, there was a distinct sensation of pillows. Also the smell of clean Sheets, which was an amusing touch. We can go with him a ways, Joe.”

            “Good.”

            “But I tell you, Joe, what we really need is to catch them still sooner. And why not? Someday, Joe, every child will be tested at birth. A difference in the brain there positively must be and it should be found. Then we could Separate the dreamers at the very beginning.”

            “Hell, Mr. Weill,” said Dooley, looking hurt. “What would happen to my job, then?”

            Weill laughed. “No cause to worry yet, Joe. It won’t happen in our life-times. In mine, certainly not. We’ll be depending on good talent scouts like you for many years. You just watch the playgrounds and the streets”-- Weill’s gnarled hand dropped to Dooley’s shoulder with a gentle, approving

            pressure-”and find us a few more Hillarys and Janows and Luster--Think won’t ever catch us. ... Now get out. I want lunch and then I’ll be ready for my two o’clock appointment. The government, Joe, the government.” And he winked portentously.

            Jesse Weill’s two o’clock appointment was with a young man, apple-cheeked, spectacled, sandy-haired and glowing with the intensity of a man with a mission. He presented his credentials across Weill’s desk and revealed himself to be John J. Byrne, an agent of the Department of Arts and Sciences.

            “Good afternoon, Mr. Byrne,” said Weill. “In what way can I be of service?”

            “Are we private here?” asked the agent. He had an unexpected baritone.

            “Quite private.”

            “Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to absorb this.” Byrne produced a small and battered cylinder and held it out between thumb and forefinger.

            Weill took it, hefted it, turned it this way and that and said with a denture-revealing smile, “Not the product of Dreams, Inc., Mr. Byrne.”

            “I didn’t think it was,” said the agent. “I’d still like you to absorb it. I’d set the automatic cutoff for about a minute, though.”

            “That’s all that can be endured?” Weill pulled the receiver to his desk and placed the cylinder into the unfreeze compartment. He removed it, polished either end of the cylinder with his handkerchief and tried again. “It doesn’t make good contact,” he said. “An amateurish job.”

            He placed the cushioned unfreeze helmet over his skull and adjusted the temple contacts, then set the automatic cutoff. He leaned back and clasped his hands over his chest and began absorbing.

            His fingers grew rigid and clutched at his jacket. After the cutoff had brought absorption to an end, he removed the unfreezer and looked faintly angry. “A raw piece,” he said. “It’s lucky I’m an old man so that such things no longer bother me.”

            Byrne said stiffly, “It’s not the worst we’ve found. And the fad is increasing.”

            Weill shrugged. “Pornographic dreamies. It’s a logical development, I suppose.”

            The government man said, “Logical or not, it represents a deadly danger for the moral fiber of the nation.”

            “The moral fiber,” said Weill, “can take a lot of beating. Erotica of one form or another have been circulated all through history.”

            “Not like this, sir. A direct mind-to-mind stimulation is much more effective than smoking room stories or filthy pictures. Those must be filtered through the senses and lose some of their effect in that way.”

            Weill could scarcely argue that point. He said, “What would you have me do?”

            “Can you suggest a possible source for this cylinder?”

            “Mr. Byrne, I’m not a policeman.”

            “No, no, I’m not asking you to do our work for us. The Department is quite capable of conducting its own investigations. Can you help us, I mean, from your own specialized knowledge? You say your company did not put out that filth. Who did?”

            “No reputable dream distributor. I’m sure of that. It’s too cheaply made.”

            “That could have been done on purpose.”

            “And no professional dreamer originated it.”

            “Are you sure, Mr. Weill? Couldn’t dreamers do this sort of thing for some small, illegitimate concern for money-or for fun?”

            “They could, but not this particular one. No overtones. It’s two-dimensional. Of course, a thing like this doesn’t need overtones.”

            “What do you mean, overtones?”

            Weill laughed gently. “You are not a dreamie fan?”

            Byrne tried not to look virtuous and did not entirely succeed. “I prefer music.”

            “Well, that’s all right, too,” said Weill tolerantly, “but it makes it a little harder to explain overtones. Even people who absorb dreamies would not be able to explain if you asked them. Still they’d know a dreamie was no good if the overtones were missing, even if they couldn’t tell you why. Look, when an experienced dreamer goes into reverie, he doesn’t think a story like in the old-fashioned television or book films. It’s a series of little visions. Each one has several meanings. If you studied them carefully, you’d find maybe five or six. While absorbing in the ordinary way, you would never notice, but careful study shows it. Believe me, my psychological staff puts in long hours on just that point. All the overtones, the different meanings, blend together into a mass of guided emotion. Without them, everything would be flat, tasteless.

            “Now, this morning, I tested a young boy. A ten-year-old with possibilities. A cloud to him isn’t a cloud, it’s a pillow, too. Having the sensations of both, it was more than either. Of course, the boy’s very primitive. But when he’s through with his schooling, he’ll be trained and disciplined. He’ll be subjected to all sorts of sensations. He’ll store up experience. He’ll study and analyze classic dreamies of the past. He’ll learn how to control and direct his thoughts, though, mind you, I have always said that when a good dreamer improvises-”

            Weill halted abruptly, then proceeded in less impassioned tones, “I shouldn’t get excited. All I try to bring out now is that every professional dreamer has his own type of overtones which he can’t mask. To an expert it’s like signing his name on the dreamie. And I, Mr. Byrne, know all the signatures. Now that piece of dirt you brought me has no overtones at all. It was done by an ordinary person. A little talent, maybe, but like you and me, he really can’t think.”

            Byrne reddened a trifle. “A lot of people can think, Mr. Weill, even if they don’t make dreamies.”

            “Oh, tush,” and Weill wagged his hand in the air. “Don’t be angry with what an old man says. I don’t mean think as in reason. I mean think as in dream. We all can dream after a fashion, just like we all can run. But can you and I run a mile in four minutes? You and I can talk, but are we Daniel Websters? Now when I think of a steak, I think of the word. Maybe I have a quick picture of a brown steak on a platter. Maybe you have a better pictorialization of it and you can see the crisp fat and the onions and the baked potato. I don’t know. But a dreamer . . . He sees it and smells it and tastes it and everything about it, with the charcoal and the satisfied feeling in the stomach and the way the knife cuts through it and a hundred other things all at once. Very sensual. Very sensual. You and I can’t do it.”

            “Well, then,” said Byrne, “no professional dreamer has done this. That’s something anyway.” He put the cylinder in his inner jacket pocket. “I hope we’ll have your full cooperation in squelching this sort of thing.”

            “Positively, Mr. Byrne. With a whole heart.”

            “I hope so.” Byrne spoke with a consciousness of power. “It’s not up to me, Mr. Weill, to say what will be done and what won’t be done, but this sort of thing,” he tapped the cylinder he had brought, “will make it awfully tempting to impose a really strict censorship on dreamies.”

            He rose. “Good day, Mr. Weill.”

            “Good day, Mr. Byrne. I’ll hope always for the best.”

            Francis Belanger burst into Jesse Weill’s office in his usual steaming tizzy, his reddish hair disordered and his face aglow with worry and a mild perspiration. He was brought up sharply by the sight of Weill’s head cradled in the crook of his elbow and bent on the desk until only the glimmer of white hair was visible.

            Belanger swallowed. “Boss?”

            Weill’s head lifted. “It’s you, Frank?”

            “What’s the matter, boss? Are you sick?”

            “I’m old enough to be sick, but I’m on my feet. Staggering, but on my feet. A government man was here.”

            “What did he want?”

            “He threatens censorship. He brought a sample of what’s going round. Cheap dreamies for bottle parties.”

            “God damn!” said Belanger feelingly.

            “The only trouble is that morality makes for good campaign fodder. They’ll be hitting out everywhere. And, to tell the truth, we’re vulnerable, Frank.”

            “We are? Our stuff is clean. We play up straight adventure and romance.”

            Weill thrust out his lower lip and wrinkled his forehead. “Between us, Frank, we don’t have to make believe. Clean? It depends on how you look at it. It’s not for publication, maybe, but you know and I know that every dreamie has its Freudian connotations. You can’t deny it.”

            “Sure, if you look for it. If you’re a psychiatrist-”

            “If you’re an ordinary person, too. The ordinary observer doesn’t know it’s there and maybe he couldn’t tell a phallic symbol from a mother image even if you pointed it out. Still, his subconscious knows. And it’s the connotations that make many a dreamie click.”

            “All right, what’s the government going to do? Clean up the subconscious?”

            “It’s a problem. I don’t know what they’re going to do. What we have on our side, and what I’m mainly depending on, is the fact that the public loves its dreamies and won’t give them up. ... Meanwhile, what did you come in for? You want to see me about something, I suppose?”

            Belanger tossed an object onto Weill’s desk and shoved his shirttail deeper into his trousers.

            Weill broke open the glistening plastic cover and took out the enclosed cylinder. At one end was engraved in a too fancy script in pastel blue “Along the Himalayan Trail.” It bore the mark of Luster-Think.

            “The Competitor’s Product.” Weill said it with capitals, and his lips twitched. “It hasn’t been published yet. Where did you get it, Frank?”

            “Never mind. I just want you to absorb it.”

            Weill sighed. “Today, everyone wants me to absorb dreams. Frank, it’s not dirty?”

            Belanger said testily, “It has your Freudian symbols. Narrow crevasses between the mountain peaks. I hope that won’t bother you.”

            “I’m an old man. It stopped bothering me years ago, but that other thing was so poorly done, it hurt. ... All right, let’s see what you’ve got here.”

            Again the recorder. Again the unfreezer over his skull and at the temples. This time, Weill rested back in his chair for fifteen minutes or more, while Francis Belanger went hurriedly through two cigarettes.

            When Weill removed the headpiece and blinked dream out of his eyes, Belanger said, “Well, what’s your reaction, boss?”

            Weill corrugated his forehead. “It’s not for me. It was repetitious. With competition like this, Dreams, Inc., doesn’t have to worry for a while.”

            “That’s your mistake, boss. Luster-Think’s going to win with stuff like this. We’ve got to do something.”

            “Now, Frank-”

            “No, you listen. This is the coming thing.”

            “This!” Weill stared with a half-humorous dubiety at the cylinder. “It’s amateurish, it’s repetitious. Its overtones are very unsubtle. The snow had a distinct lemon sherbet taste. Who tastes lemon sherbet in snow these days, Frank? In the old days, yes. Twenty years ago, maybe. When Lyman Harrison first made his Snow Symphonies for sale down south, it was a big thing. Sherbet and candy-striped mountaintops and sliding down chocolate-covered cliffs. It’s slapstick, Frank. These days it doesn’t go.”

            “Because,” said Belanger, “you’re not up with the times, boss. I’ve got to talk to you straight. When you started the dreamie business, when you bought up the basic patents and began putting them out, dreamies were luxury stuff. The market was small and individual. You could afford to turn out specialized dreamies and sell them to people at high prices.”

            “I know,” said Weill, “and we’ve kept that up. But also we’ve opened a rental business for the masses.”

            “Yes, we have and it’s not enough. Our dreamies have subtlety, yes. They can be used over and over again. The tenth time you’re still finding new things, still getting new enjoyment. But how many people are connoisseurs? And another thing. Our stuff is strongly individualized. They’re First Person.”

            “Well?”

            “Well, Luster-Think is opening dream palaces. They’ve opened one with three hundred booths in Nashville. You walk in, take your seat, put on your unfreezer and get your dream. Everyone in the audience gets the same one.”

            “I’ve heard of it, Frank, and it’s been done before. It didn’t work the first time and it won’t work now. You want to know why it won’t work? Because, in the first place, dreaming is a private thing. Do you like your neighbor to know what you’re dreaming? In the second place, in a dream palace, the dreams have to start on schedule, don’t they? So the dreamer has to dream not when he wants to but when some palace manager says he should. Finally, a dream one person likes another person doesn’t like. In those three hundred booths, I guarantee you, a hundred fifty people are dissatisfied. And if they’re dissatisfied, they won’t come back.”

            Slowly, Belanger rolled up his sleeves and opened his collar. “Boss,” he said, “you’re talking through your hat. What’s the use of proving they won’t work? They are working. The word came through today that Luster-Think is breaking ground for a thousand-booth palace in St. Louis. People can get used to public dreaming, if everyone else in the same room is having the same dream. And they can adjust themselves to having it at a given time, as long as it’s cheap and convenient.

            “Damn it, boss, it’s a social affair. A boy and a girl go to a dream palace and absorb some cheap romantic thing with stereotyped overtones and commonplace situations, but still they come out with stars sprinkling their hair. They’ve had the same dream together. They’ve gone through identical sloppy emotions. They’re in tune, boss. You bet they go back to the dream palace, and all their friends go, too.”

            “And if they don’t like the dream?”

            “That’s the point. That’s the nub of the whole thing. They’re bound to like it. If you prepare Hillary specials with wheels within wheels within wheels, with surprise twists on the third-level undertones, with clever shifts of significance and all the other things we’re so proud of, why, naturally, it won’t appeal to everyone. Specialized dreamies are for specialized tastes. But Luster-Think is turning out simple jobs in Third Person so both sexes can be hit at once. Like what you’ve just absorbed. Simple, repetitious, commonplace. They’re aiming at the lowest common denominator. No one will love it, maybe, but no one will hate it.”

            Weill sat silent for a long time and Belanger watched him. Then Weill said, “Frank, I started on quality and I’m staying there. Maybe you’re right. Maybe dream palaces are the coming thing. If so we’ll open them, but we’ll use good stuff. Maybe Luster-Think underestimates ordinary people. Let’s go slowly and not panic. I have based all my policies on the theory that there’s always a market for quality. Sometimes, my boy, it would surprise you how big a market.”

            “Boss-”

            The sounding of the intercom interrupted Belanger.

            “What is it, Ruth?” said Weill.

            The voice of his secretary said, “It’s Mr. Hillary, sir. He wants to see you right away. He says it’s important.”

            “Hillary?” Weill’s voice registered shock. Then, “Wait five minutes, Ruth, then send him in.”

            Weill turned to Belanger. “Today, Frank, is definitely not one of my good days. A dreamer’s place is in his home with his thinker. And Hillary’s our best dreamer so he especially should be at home. What do you suppose is wrong with him?”

            Belanger, still brooding over Luster-Think and dream palaces, said shortly, “Call him in and find out.”

            “In one minute. Tell me, how was his last dream? I haven’t tried the one that came in last week.”

            Belanger came down to earth. He wrinkled his nose. “Not so good.”

            “Why not?”

            “It was ragged. Too jumpy. I don’t mind sharp transitions for the liveliness, you know, but there’s got to be some connection, even if only on a deep level.”

            “Is it a total loss?”

            “No Hillary dream is a total loss. It took a lot of editing, though. We cut it down quite a bit and spliced in some odd pieces he’d sent us now and then. You know, detached scenes. It’s still not Grade A, but it will pass.”

            “You told him about this, Frank?”

            “Think I’m crazy, boss? Think I’m going to say a harsh word to a dreamer?”

            And at that point the door opened and Weill’s comely young secretary smiled Sherman Hillary into the office.

            Sherman Hillary, at the age of thirty-one, could have been recognized as a dreamer by anyone. His eyes, unspectacled, had nevertheless the misty look of one who either needs glasses or who rarely focuses on anything mundane. He was of average height but underweight, with black hair that needed cutting, a narrow chin, a pale skin and a troubled look.

            He muttered, “Hello, Mr. Weill,” and half-nodded in hangdog fashion in the direction of Belanger.

            Weill said heartily, “Sherman, my boy, you look fine. What’s the matter? A dream is cooking only so-so at home? You’re worried about it? ... Sit down, sit down.”

            The dreamer did, sitting at the edge of the chair and holding his thighs stiffly together as though to be ready for instant obedience to a possible order to stand up once more.

            He said, “I’ve come to tell you, Mr. Weill, I’m quitting.”

            “Quitting?”

            “I don’t want to dream any more, Mr. Weill.”

            Weill’s old face looked older now than at any time in the day. “Why, Sherman?”

            The dreamer’s lips twisted. He blurted out, “Because I’m not living, Mr. Weill. Everything passes me by. It wasn’t so bad at first. It was even relaxing. I’d dream evenings, weekends when I felt like, or any other time. And when I felt like I wouldn’t. But now, Mr. Weill, I’m an old pro. You tell me I’m one of the best in the business and the industry looks to me to think up new subtleties and new changes on the old reliables like the flying reveries, and the worm-turning skits.”

            Weill said, “And is anyone better than you, Sherman? Your little sequence on leading an orchestra is selling steadily after ten years.”

            “All right, Mr. Weill. I’ve done my part. It’s gotten so I don’t go out any more. I neglect my wife. My little girl doesn’t know me. Last week, we went to a dinner party--Sarah made me-and I don’t remember a bit of it. Sarah says I was sitting on the couch all evening just staring at nothing and humming. She said everyone kept looking at me. She cried all night. I’m tired of things like that, Mr. Weill. I want to be a normal person and live in this world. I promised her I’d quit and I will, so it’s good-by, Mr. Weill.” Hillary stood up and held out his hand awkwardly.

            Weill waved it gently away. “If you want to quit, Sherman, it’s all right. But do an old man a favor and let me explain something to you.”

            “I’m not going to change my mind,” said Hillary.

            “I’m not going to try to make you. I just want to explain something. I’m an old man and even before you were born I was in this business so I like to talk about it. Humor me, Sherman? Please?”

            Hillary sat down. His teeth clamped down on his lower lip and he stared sullenly at his fingernails.

            Weill said, “Do you know what a dreamer is, Sherman? Do you know what he means to ordinary people? Do you know what it is to be like me, like Frank Belanger, like your wife, Sarah? To have crippled minds that can’t imagine, that can’t build up thoughts? People like myself, ordinary people, would like to escape just once in a while this life of ours. We can’t. We need help.

            “In olden times it was books, plays, radio, movies, television. They gave us make-believe, but that wasn’t important. What was important was that for a little while our own imaginations were stimulated. We could think of handsome lovers and beautiful princesses. We could be beautiful, witty, strong, capable, everything we weren’t.

            “But, always, the passing of the dream from dreamer to absorber was not perfect. It had to be translated into words in one way or another. The best dreamer in the world might not be able to get any of it into words. And the best writer in the world could put only the smallest part of his dreams into words. You understand?

            “But now, with dream recording, any man can dream. You, Sherman, and a handful of men like you, supply those dreams directly and exactly. It’s straight from your head into ours, full strength. You dream for a hundred million people every time you dream. You dream a hundred million dreams at once. This is a great thing, my boy. You give all those people a glimpse of something they could not have by themselves.”

            Hillary mumbled, “I’ve done my share.” He rose desperately to his feet. “I’m through. I don’t care what you say. And if you want to sue me for breaking our contract, go ahead and sue. I don’t care.”

            Weill stood up, too. “Would I sue you? . . . Ruth,” he spoke into the intercom, “bring in our copy of Mr. Hillary’s contract.”

            He waited. So did Hillary and so did Belanger. Weill smiled faintly and his yellowed fingers drummed softly on his desk.

            His secretary brought in the contract. Weill took it, showed its face to Hillary and said, “Sherman, my boy, unless you want to be with me, it’s not right you should stay.”

            Then, before Belanger could make more than the beginning of a horrified gesture to stop him, he tore the contract into four pieces and tossed them down the waste chute. “That’s all.”

            Hillary’s hand shot out to seize Weill’s. “Thanks, Mr. Weill,” he said earnestly, his voice husky. “You’ve always treated me very well, and I’m grateful. I’m sorry it had to be like this.”

            “It’s all right, my boy. It’s all right.”

            Half in tears, still muttering thanks, Sherman Hillary left.

            “For the love of Pete, boss, why did you let him go?” demanded Belanger distractedly. “Don’t you see the game? He’ll be going straight to Luster-Think. They’ve bought him off.”

            Weill raised his hand. “You’re wrong. You’re quite wrong. I know the boy and this would not be his style. Besides,” he added dryly, “Ruth is a good secretary and she knows what to bring me when I ask for a dreamer’s contract. What I had was a fake. The real contract is still in the safe, believe me.

            “Meanwhile, a fine day I’ve had. I had to argue with a father to give me a chance at new talent, with a government man to avoid censorship, with you to keep from adopting fatal policies and now with my best dreamer to keep him from leaving. The father I probably won out over. The government man and you, I don’t know. Maybe yes, maybe no. But about Sherman Hillary, at least, there is no question. The dreamer will be back.”

            “How do you know?”

            Weill smiled at Belanger and crinkled his cheeks into a network of fine lines. “Frank, my boy, you know how to edit dreamies so you think you know all the tools and machines of the trade. But let me tell you something. The most important tool in the dreamie business is the dreamer himself. He is the one you have to understand most of all, and I understand them.

            “Listen. When I was a youngster--there were no dreamies then--I knew a fellow who wrote television scripts. He would complain to me bitterly that when someone met him for the first time and found out who he was, they would say: Where do you get those crazy ideas?

            “They honestly didn’t know. To them it was an impossibility to even think of one of them. So what could my friend say? He used to talk to me about it and tell me: Could I say, I don’t know? When I go to bed, I can’t sleep for ideas dancing in my head. When I shave, I cut myself; when I talk, I lose track of what I’m saying; when I drive, I take my life in my hands. And always because ideas, situations, dialogues are spinning and twisting in my mind. I can’t tell you where I get my ideas. Can you tell me, maybe, your trick of not getting ideas, so I, too, can have a little peace.

            “You see, Frank, how it is. You can stop work here anytime. So can I. This is our job, not our life. But not Sherman Hillary. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he’ll dream. While he lives, he must think; while he thinks, he must dream. We don’t hold him prisoner, our contract isn’t an iron wall for him. His own skull is his prisoner, Frank. So he’ll be back. What can he do?”

            Belanger shrugged. “If what you say is right, I’m sort of sorry for the guy-”

            Weill nodded sadly. “I’m sorry for all of them. Through the years, I’ve found out one thing. It’s their business; making people happy. Other people.”