Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (201 page)

It withdrew a crucible of glowing gold from the electric furnace, turned, capered hideously, sang crazily, and splashed a sluggish gobbet of molten gold over Dallas Brady’s head. She screamed and collapsed, her hair and clothes flaming, her skin crackling. The android poured again while it capered and sang.

“Be fleet be fleet, cool and discreet, honey…” It sang and slowly poured and poured the molten gold. Then I left the workshop and rejoined James Vandaleur in his hotel suite. The android’s charred clothes and squirming fingers warned its owner that something was very much wrong.

Vandaleur rushed to Dallas Brady’s workshop, stared once, vomited, and fled. I had enough time to pack one bag and raise nine hundred dollars on portable assets. He took a third-class cabin on the
Megaster Queen,
which left that morning for Lyra Alpha. He took me with him. He wept and counted his money and I beat the android again.

And the thermometer in Dallas Brady’s workshop registered 98.1° beautifully Fahrenheit.

* * * *

On Lyra Alpha we holed up in a small hotel near the university. There, Vandaleur carefully bruised my forehead until the letters MA were obliterated by the swelling and the discoloration. The letters would reappear again, but not for several months, and in the meantime Vandaleur hoped the hue and cry for an MA android would be forgotten. The android was hired out as a common laborer in the university power plant. Vandaleur, as James Venice, eked out life on the android’s small earnings.

I wasn’t too unhappy. Most of the other residents in the hotel were university students, equally hard up, but delightfully young and enthusiastic. There was one charming girl with sharp eyes and a quick mind. Her name was Wanda, and she and her beau, Jed Stark, took a tremendous interest in the killing android which was being mentioned in every paper in the galaxy.

“We’ve been studying the case,” she and Jed said at one of the casual student parties which happened to be held this night in Vandaleur’s room. “We think we know what’s causing it. We’re going to do a paper,” They were in a high state of excitement.

“Causing what?” somebody wanted to know.

“The android rampage.”

“Obviously out of adjustment, isn’t it? Body chemistry gone haywire. Maybe a kind of synthetic cancer, yes?”

“No.” Wanda gave Jed a look of suppressed triumph.

“Well, what is it?”

“Something specific.”

“What?”

“That would be telling.”

“Oh come on.”

“Nothing doing.”

“Won’t you tell us?” I asked intently. “I… We’re very much interested in what could go wrong with an android.”

“No, Mr. Venice,” Wanda said. “It’s a unique idea and we’ve got to protect it. One thesis like this and we’ll be set up for life. We can’t take the chance of somebody stealing it.”

“Can’t you give us a hint?”

“No. Not a hint. Don’t say a word, Jed. But I’ll tell you this much, Mr. Venice. I’d hate to
be the man who owns that android.”

“You mean the police?” I asked.

“I mean projection, Mr. Venice. Projection! That’s the danger… and I won’t say any more. I’ve said too much as is.”

I heard steps outside, and a hoarse voice singing softly: “Be fleet be fleet cool and discreet, honey …” My android entered the room, home from its tour of duty at the university power plant. It was not introduced. I motioned to it and I immediately responded to the command and went to the beer keg and took over Vandaleur’s job of serving the guests. Its accomplished fingers writhed in a private rumba of their own. Gradually they stopped their squirming, and the strange humming ended.

Androids were not unusual at the university. The wealthier students owned them along with cars and planes. Vandaleur’s android provoked no comment, but young Wanda was sharp-eyed and quick-witted. She noted my bruised forehead and she was intent on the history-making thesis she and Jed Stark were going to write. After the party broke up, she consulted with Jed walking upstairs to her room.

“Jed, why’d that android have a bruised forehead?”

“Probably hurt itself, Wanda. It’s working in the power plant. They fling a lot of heavy stuff around.”

“That all?”

“What else?”

“It could be a convenient bruise.”

“Convenient for what?”

“Hiding what’s stamped on its forehead.”

“No point to that, Wanda. You don’t have to see marks on a forehead to recognize an android. You don’t have to see a trademark on a car to know it’s a car.”

“I don’t mean it’s trying to pass as a human. I mean it’s trying to pass as a lower-grade android.”

“Why?”

“Suppose it had ‘MA’ on its forehead.”

“Multiple aptitude? Then why in hell would Venice waste it stoking furnaces if it could earn more—Oh. Oh! You mean it’s—?”

Wanda nodded.

“Jesus!” Stark pursed his lips. “What do we do? Call the police?”

“No. We don’t know if it’s an MA for a fact. If it turns out to be an MA and the killing android, our paper comes first anyway. This is our big chance, Jed. It it’s
that
android we can run a series of controlled tests and—”

“How do we find out for sure?”

“Easy. Infrared film. That’ll show what’s under the bruise. Bor-
»
row a camera. Buy some film. We’ll sneak down to the power plant tomorrow afternoon and take some pictures. Then we’ll know.”

They stole down into the university power plant the following afternoon. It was a vast cellar, deep under the earth. It was dark, shadowy, luminous with burning light from the furnace doors. Above the roar of the fires they could hear a strange voice shouting and chanting in the echoing vault: “All reet! All reet! So jeet your seat. Be fleet be fleet, cool and discreet, honey…” And they could see a capering figure dancing a lunatic rumba in time to the music it shouted. The legs twisted. The arms waved. The fingers writhed.

Jed Stark raised the camera and began shooting his spool of infrared film, aiming the camera sights at that bobbing head. Then Wanda shrieked, for I saw them and came charging down on them, brandishing a polished steel shovel. It smashed the camera. It felled the girl and then the boy. Jed fought me for a desperate hissing moment before he was bludgeoned into helplessness. Then the android dragged them to the furnace and fed them to the flames, slowly, hideously. It capered and sang. Then it returned to my hotel.

The thermometer in the power plant registered 100.9° murderously Fahrenheit. All reet! All reet!

* * * *

We bought steerage on the
Lyra Queen,
and Vandaleur and the android did odd jobs for their meals. During the night watches, Vandaleur would sit alone in the steerage head with a cardboard portfolio on his lap, puzzling over its contents. That portfolio was all he had managed to bring with him from Lyra Alpha. He had stolen it from Wanda’s room. It was labeled ANDROID. It contained the secret of my sickness.

And it contained nothing but newspapers. Scores of newspapers from all over the galaxy, printed, microfilmed, engraved, etched, offset, photostated…Rigel Star-Banner…Paragon
Picayune…
Megaster
Times-Leader…
La lande
Herald…
Lacaille
Journal…
Indi
Intelligencer…
Eridani Telegram-News. All reet! All reet!

Nothing but newspapers. Each paper contained an account of one crime in the android’s ghastly career. Each paper also contained news, domestic and foreign, sports, society, weather, shipping news, stock exchange quotations, human interest stories, features, contests, puzzles. Somewhere in that mass of uncollated facts was the secret Wanda and Jed Stark had discovered. Vandaleur pored over the papers helplessly. It was beyond him. So jeet your seat!

“I’ll sell you,” I told the android. “Damn you. When we land on Terra, I’ll sell you. I’ll settle for three percent on whatever you’re worth.”

“I am worth fifty-seven thousand dollars on the current exchange,” I told him.

“If I can’t sell you, I’ll turn you in to the police,” I said.

“I am valuable property,” I answered. “It is forbidden to endanger valuable property. You won’t have me destroyed.”

“Christ damn you!” Vandaleur cried. “What? Are you arrogant? Do you know you can trust me to protect you? Is that the secret?”

The multiple-aptitude android regarded him with calm accomplished eyes. “Sometimes,” it said, “it is a good thing to be property.”

* * * *

It was three below zero when the Lyra Queen dropped at Croydon Field. A mixture of ice and snow swept across the field, fizzing and exploding into steam under the Queen’s tail jets. The passengers trotted numbly across the blackened concrete to customs inspection, and thence to the airport bus that was to take them to London. Vandaleur and the android were broke. They walked.

By midnight they reached Piccadilly Circus. The December ice storm had not slackened, and the statue of Eros was encrusted with ice. They turned right, walked down to Trafalgar Square and then along the Strand shaking with cold and wet. Just above Fleet Street, Vandaleur saw a solitary figure coming from the direction of St. Paul’s. He drew the android into an alley.

“We’ve got to have money,” he whispered. He pointed at the approaching figure. “He has money. Take it from him.”

“The order cannot be obeyed,” the android said.

“Take it from him,” Vandaleur repeated. “By force. Do you understand? We’re desperate.”

“It is contrary to my prime directive,” I said. “I cannot endanger life or property. The order cannot be obeyed.”

“For God’s sake!” Vandaleur burst out. “You’ve attacked, destroyed, murdered. Don’t gibber about prime directives. You haven’t any left. Get his money. Kill him if you have to. I tell you, we’re desperate!”

“It is contrary to my prime directive,” I said. “I cannot endanger life or property. The order cannot be obeyed.”

I thrust the android back and leaped out at the stranger. He was tall, austere, competent. He had an air of hope curdled by cynicism. He carried a cane. I saw he was blind.

“Yes?” he said. “I hear you near me. What is it?”

“Sir…” Vandaleur hesitated. “I’m desperate.”

“We are all desperate,” the stranger replied. “Quietly desperate.”

“Sir…I’ve got to have some money.”

“Are you begging or stealing?” The sightless eyes passed over Vandaleur and the android.

“I’m prepared for either.”

“Ah. So are we all. It is the history of our race.” The stranger motioned over his shoulder. “I have been begging at St. Paul’s, my friend. What I desire cannot be stolen. What is it you desire that you are lucky enough to be able to steal?”

“Money,” Vandaleur said.

“Money for what? Come, my friend, let us exchange confidences. I will tell you why I beg, if you will tell me why you steal. My name is Blenheim.”

“My name is…Vole.”

“I was not begging for sight at St. Paul’s, Mr. Vole. I was begging for a number.”

“A number?”

“Ah yes. Numbers rational, numbers irrational, numbers imaginary. Positive integers. Negative integers. Fractions, positive and negative. Eh? You have never heard of Blenheim’s immortal treatise on Twenty Zeros, or The Differences in Absence of Quantity?” Blenheim smiled bitterly. “I am the wizard of the Theory of Number, Mr. Vole, and I have exhausted the charm of number for myself. After fifty years of wizardry, senility approaches and the appetite vanishes. I have been praying in St. Paul’s for inspiration. Dear God, I prayed, if You exist, send me a number.”

Vandaleur slowly lifted the cardboard portfolio and touched Blenheim’s hand with it. “In here,” he said, “is a number. A hidden number. A secret number. The number of a crime. Shall we exchange, Mr. Blenheim? Shelter for a number?”

“Neither begging nor stealing, eh?” Blenheim said. “But a bargain. So all life reduces itself to the banal.” The sightless eyes again passed over Vandaleur and the android. “Perhaps the All-Mighty is not God but a merchant. Come home with me.”

* * * *

On the top floor of Blenheim’s house we shared a room—two beds, two closets, two washstands, one bathroom. Vandaleur bruised my forehead again and sent me out to find work, and while the android worked, I consulted with Blenheim and read him the papers from the portfolio, one by one. All reet! All reet!

Vandaleur told him so much and no more. He was a student, I said, attempting a thesis on the murdering android. In these papers which he had collected were the facts that would explain the crimes of which Blenheim had heard nothing. There must be a correlation, a number, a statistic, something which would account for my derangement, I explained, and Blenheim was piqued by the mystery, the detective story, the human interest of number.

We examined the papers. As I read them aloud, he listed them and their contents in his blind, meticulous writing. And then I read his notes to him. He listed the papers by type, by typeface, by fact, by fancy, by article, spelling, words, theme, advertising, pictures, subject, politics, prejudices. He analyzed. He studied. He meditated. And we lived together in that top floor, always a little cold, always a little terrified, always a little closer…brought together by our fear of it, our hatred between us. Like a wedge driven into a living tree and splitting the trunk, only to be forever incorporated into the scar tissue, we grew together. Vandaleur and the android. Be fleet be fleet!

And one afternoon Blenheim called Vandaleur into his study and displayed his notes. “I think I’ve found it,” he said, “but I can’t understand it.”

Vandaleur’s heart leaped.

“Here are the correlations,” Blenheim continued. “In fifty papers there are accounts of the criminal android. What is there, outside the depredations, that is also in fifty papers?”