The Steam-Driven Boy Read online

‘Rub your wrists to restore circulation, while I explain. They tied me up, too, and blindfolded me. They took me to another planet, but I counted the turns the space ship made, so I could find my way back. They’re an unscrupulous gang of servo-mechanisms, all right. The old phonograph record was just a blind. What they really wanted was the satchel itself.’

  ‘The satchel?’

  ‘It’s an antique, worth millions. The owner was stealing it from himself, to collect the insurance. But I wasn’t sure, so I hid the old phonograph record.’

  ‘Quick thinking, chief. Where did you hide it?’

  ‘In the most obvious place – Annie’s old phonograph.’

  ‘Amazing! But how did you know he wasn’t the real Virgil?’ asked Adrian.

  ‘He gave himself away when he mentioned the Slough of Despond. You see, William Faulkner didn’t invent the name until years after the real John Bunyan’s death. From there on, the rest was easy.’

  Peter punched the dents out of Adrian’s green hat and handed it to him. He held a pocket mirror while Adrian put on the hat. Then Peter reloaded his gun and put eight slugs in him.

  Well, that’s the spy game, he thought. The good die young. You never get rich, but you have your kicks. One week the Arcrusian space pirates get out of hand, and the next week, at about the same time, something rises out of the sea to nibble at Los Angeles.

  I’ll miss old Earth, though. Along about now it’s turning into a ball of flame, as Lumpkin goes to war.

  Chuckling, he pushed open the door of Annie’s Earthside Bar.

  THE HAPPY BREED

  1987 AD.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said James, lifting himself from the cushions scattered like bright leaves on the floor. ‘I can’t say that I’m really, you know, happy. Gin or something phoney?’

  ‘Aw, man, don’t give me decisions, give me drink,’ said Porter. He lay across the black, tufted chaise that he called James’s ‘shrink couch’.

  ‘Gin it is, then.’ James thumbed a button, and a martini glass, frosty and edible-looking, slid into the wall niche and filled. Holding it by the stem, he passed it to Porter, then raised his shaggy brows at Marya.

  ‘Nada,’ she said. She was sprawled in a ‘chair’, really a piece of sculpture, and one of her bare feet had reached out to touch Porter’s leg.

  James made himself a martini and looked at it with distaste. If you broke this glass, he thought, it would not leave any sharp edges to, say, cut your wrists on.

  ‘What was I saying? Oh – I can’t say I’m really happy, but then I’m not – uh –’

  ‘Sad?’ volunteered Marya, peering from under the brim of her deerstalker.

  ‘Depressed. I’m not depressed. So I must be happy,’ he finished, and hid his confusion behind the glass. As he sipped, he looked her over, from her shapely calves to her ugly brown deerstalker. Last year at this time, she’d been wearing a baseball cap, blue with gold piping. It was easy to remember it, for this year all the girls in the Village were wearing baseball caps. Marya Katyovna was always ahead of the pack, in her dress as well as in her paintings.

  ‘How do you know you’re happy?’ she said. ‘Last week, I thought I was happy, too. I’d just finished my best work, and I tried to drown myself. The Machine pulled the drain. Then I was sad.’

  ‘Why did you try to kill yourself?’ James asked, trying to keep her in focus.

  ‘I had this idea that after a perfect work, the artist should be destroyed. Dürer used to destroy the plates of his engravings, after a few impressions.’

  ‘He did it for money,’ muttered Porter.

  ‘All right then, like that architect in Arabia. After he created his magnum opus, the Sultan had him blinded, so he couldn’t do any cheap copies. See what I mean? An artist’s life is supposed to lead toward his masterpiece, not away from it.’

  Porter opened his eyes and said, ‘Exist! The end of life is life. Exist, man, that’s all you gotta do.’

  ‘That sounds like cheap existentialism,’ she snarled, withdrawing her foot. ‘Porter, you are getting more and more like those damned Mussulmen.’

  Porter smiled angrily and closed his eyes.

  It was time to change the subject.

  ‘Rave you heard the one about the Martian who thought he was an earthman?’ James said, using his pleasant-professional tone. ‘Well, he went to his psychiatrist –’

  As he went on with the joke, he studied the two of them. Marya was no worry, even with her dramatic suicide attempts. But Porter was a mess.

  O. Henry Porter was his full adopted name, after some minor earlier writer. Porter was a writer, too, or had been. Up to a few months ago, he’d been considered a genius – one of the few of the twentieth century.

  Something had happened. Perhaps it was the general decline in reading. Perhaps there was an element of self-defeat in him. For whatever reason, Porter had become little more than a vegetable. Even when he spoke, it was in the cheapest cliches of the old ‘Hip’ of twenty years ago. And he spoke less and less.

  Vaguely, James tied it in with the Machines. Porter had been exposed to the therapeutic environment machines longer than most, and perhaps his genius was entangled with whatever they were curing. James had been too long away from his practice to guess how this was, but he recalled similar baby/bathwater cases.

  ‘“So that’s why it glows in the dark”,’ James finished. As he’d expected, Marya laughed, but Porter only forced a smile, over and above his usual smirk of mystical bliss.

  ‘It’s an old joke,’ James apologized.

  ‘You are an old joke,’ Porter enunciated. ‘A headshrinker without no heads to shrink. What the hell do you do all day?’

  ‘What’s eating you?’ said Marya to the ex-writer. ‘What brought you up from the depths?’

  James fetched another drink from the wall niche. Before bringing it to his lips, he said. ‘I think I need some new friends.’

  As soon as they were gone, he regretted his boorishness. Yet somehow there seemed to be no reason for acting human any more. He was no longer a psychiatrist, and they were not his patients. Any little trauma he might have wreaked would be quickly repaired by their Machines. Even so, he’d have made an extra effort to sidestep the neuroses of his friends if he were not able to dial FRIENDS and get a new set.

  Only a few years had passed since the Machines began seeing to the happiness, health and continuation of the human race, but he could barely remember life before Them. In the dusty mirror of his unused memory, there remained but a few clear spots. He recalled his work as a psychiatrist on the Therapeutic Environment tests.

  He recalled the argument with Brody.

  ‘Sure, they work on a few test cases. But so far these gadgets haven’t done anything a qualified psychiatrist couldn’t do,’ said James.

  ‘Agreed,’ said his superior. ‘but they haven’t made any mistakes, either. Doctor, these people are cured. Morever, they’re happy!’

  Frank envy was written all over Bro Brody’s heavy face. James knew his superior was having trouble with his wife again.

  ‘But, Doctor,’ James began, ‘these people are not being taught to deal with their environment. Their environment is learning to deal with them. That isn’t medicine, it’s spoon-feeding!

  ‘When someone is depressed, he gets a dose of Ritalin, bouncy tunes on the Muzik, and some dear friend drops in on him unexpectedly. If he is manic or violent, he gets Thorazine, sweet music, melancholy stories on TV, and maybe a cool bath. If he’s bored, he gets excitement; if he’s frustrated, he gets something to break; if –’

  Brady interrupted. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let me ask you the sixty-four-dollar question: Could you do better?’

  No one could do better. The vast complex of Therapeutic Environment Machines which grew up advanced Medicine a millennium in a year. The government took control, to ensure that anyone of however modest means could have at his disposal the top specialists in the country, with all the latest data and techniqu
es. In effect, these specialists were on duty round-the-clock in each patient’s home, keeping him alive, healthy, and reasonably happy.

  Nor were they limited to treatment. The Machines had extensions clawing through the jungles of the world, spying on witch-doctors and learning new medicines. Drug and dietary research became their domain, as did scientific farming and birth control. By 1985, when it became manifest that machines could and did run everything better, and that nearly everyone in the country wanted to be a patient, the U.S. government capitulated. Other nations followed suit.

  By now, no one worked at all, so far as James knew. They had one and only one duty – to be happy.

  And happy they were. One’s happiness was guaranteed, by every relay and transistor from those that ran one’s air-conditioner right up to those in the chief complex of computers called MEDCENTRAL in Washington – or was it the Hague, now? James had not read a newspaper since people had stopped killing each other, since the news had dwindled to weather and sports. In fact, he’d stopped reading the newspaper when the M.D. Employment Wanted ads began to appear.

  There were no jobs, only Happiness Jobs – make-work invented by the Machines. In such a job, one could never find an insoluble, or even difficult problem. One finished one’s daily quota without tiring one’s mind or body. Work was no longer work, it was therapy, and, as such, it was constantly rewarding.

  Happiness, normality. James saw the personalities of all people drifting downward, like so many different snowflakes falling at last into the common, shapeless mound.

  ‘I’m drunk, that’s all,’ he said aloud. ‘Alcohol’s a depressant. Need another drink.’

  He lurched slightly as he crossed the room to the niche. The floor must have detected it, for instead of a martini, his pressing the button drew blood from his thumb. In a second, the wall had analysed his blood and presented him with a glass of liquid. A sign lit: ‘Drink this down at once. Replace glass on sink.’

  He drained the pleasant-tasting liquid and at once felt drowsy and warm. Somehow he found his way to the bedroom, the door moving to accommodate him, and he fell into bed.

  As soon as James R. Fairchild, AAAAGTR-RHOLA was asleep, mechanisms went into action to save his life. That is, he was in no immediate danger, but MED 8 reported his decrease in life expectancy by .00005 years as a result of over-indulgence, and MED 19 evaluated his behaviour, recorded on magnetic tape, as increasing his suicide index by a dangerous 15 points. A diagnostic unit detached itself from the bathroom wall and careered into the bedroom, halting silently and precisely by his side. It drew more blood, checked pulse, temp, resp, heart and brain-wave pattern, and x-rayed his abdomen. Not instructed to go on to patcolar reflexes, it packed up and zoomed away.

  In the living-room, a housekeeper buzzed about its work, destroying the orange cushions, the sculpture, the couch and the carpet. The walls took on an almost imperceptibly warmer tone. The new carpet matched them.

  The furniture – chosen and delivered without the sleeping man’s knowledge – was Queen Anne, enough to crowd the room. Its polyethylene wraps were left on while the room was disinfected.

  In the kitchen, PHARMO 9 ordered and received a new supply of anti-depressants.

  It was always the sound of a tractor that awoke Lloyd Young, and though he knew it was an artificial sound, it cheered him all the same. Almost made his day start right. He lay and listened to it awhile before opening his eyes.

  Hell, the real tractors didn’t make no sound at all. They worked in the night, burrowing along and plowing a field in one hour that would take a man twelve. Machines pumped strange new chemicals into the soil, and applied heat, to force two full crops of corn in one short Minnesota summer.

  There wasn’t much use being a farmer, but he’d always wanted to have a farm, and the Machines said you could have what you wanted. Lloyd was about the only man in these parts still living in the country by now, just him and twelve cows and a half-blind dog, Joe. There wasn’t much to do, with Them running it all. He could go watch his cows being milked, or walk down with Joe to fetch the mail, or watch TV. But it was quiet and peaceful, the way he liked it.

  Except for Them and Their pesky ways. They’d wanted to give Joe a new set of machine eyes, but Lloyd said no, if the good Lord wanted him to see, he’d never have blinded him. That was just the way he’d answered Them about the heart operation, too. Seemed almost like They didn’t have enough to keep ’em busy, or something. They was always worrying about him, him who took real good care of himself all through M.I.T. and twenty years of engineering.

  When They’d automated, he’d been done out of a job, but he couldn’t hold that against Them. If Machines was better engineers than him, well, shoot – !

  He opened his eyes and saw he’d be late for milking if he didn’t look sharp. Without even thinking, he chose the baby blue overalls with pink piping from his wardrobe, jammed a blue straw hat on his head, and loped out to the kitchen.

  His pail was by the door. It was a silver one today – yesterday it had been gold. He decided he liked the silver better, for it made the milk look cool and white.

  The kitchen door wouldn’t budge, and Lloyd realized it meant for him to put on his shoes. Damnit, he’d of liked to go barefoot. Damnit, he would of.

  He would of liked to do his own milking, too, but They had explained how dangerous it was. Why, you could get kicked in the head before you knew it! Reluctantly, the Machines allowed him to milk, each morning, one cow that had been tranquillized and all its legs fastened in a steel frame.

  He slipped on his comfortable blue brogans and picked up his pail again. This time the kitchen door opened easily, and as it did, a rooster crowed in the distance.

  Yes, there had been a lot of doors closed in Lloyd’s face. Enough to have made a bitter man of him, but for Them. He knew They could be trusted, even if they had done him out of his job in nineteen and seventy. For ten years, he had just bummed around, trying to get factory work, anything. At the end of his rope, until they saved him.

  In the barn, Betsy, his favourite Jersey, had been knocked out and shackled by the time he arrived. The Muzik played a bouncy, lighthearted tune, perfect for milking.

  No, it wasn’t Machines that did you dirt, he knew. It was people. People and animals, live things always trying to kick you in the head. As much as he liked Joe and Betsy, which was more than he liked people, he didn’t really trust ’em.

  You could trust Machines. They took good care of you. The only trouble with Them was—well, they knew so much. They were always so damned smart and busy, They made you feel kind of useless. Almost like you were standing in their light.

  It was altogether an enjoyable ten minutes, and when he stepped into the cool milkhouse to empty the pail into a receptacle that led God knew where, Lloyd had a strange impulse. He wanted to taste the warm milk, something he’d promised not to do. They had warned him about diseases, but he just felt too good to worry this morning. He tilted the silver pail to his lips –

  And a bolt of lightning knocked it away, slamming him to the floor. At least it felt like a bolt of lightning. He tried to get up and found he couldn’t move. A green mist began spraying from the ceiling. Now what the hell was that? he wondered, and drifted off to sleep in the puddle of spilled milk.

  The first MED unit reported no superficial injuries. Lloyd C. Young, AAAAMTL-RH01AB was resting well, pulse high, resp normal. MED 8 disinfected the area thoroughly and destroyed all traces of the raw milk. While MED 19 pumped his stomach and swabbed nose, throat, oesophagus and trachea, MED 8 cut away and destroyed all his clothing. An emergency heating unit warmed him until fresh clothing could be constructed. Despite the cushioned floor, the patient had broken a toe in falling. It was decided not to move him, but to erect bed and traction on the spot. MED 19 recommended therapeutic punishment.

  When Lloyd awoke, the television came to life, showing an amiable-looking man with white hair.

  ‘You have my sympathy,’ the m
an said. ‘You have just survived what we call a “Number-One Killer Accident”, a bad fall in your home. Our machines were in part responsible for this, in the course of saving your life from –’ The man hesitated, while a sign flashed behind him: ‘BACTERIAL POISONING.’ Then he went on, ‘– by physically removing you from the danger. Since this was the only course open to us, your injury could not have been avoided.

  ‘Except by you. Only you can save your life, finally.’ The man pointed at Lloyd. ‘Only you can make all of modern science worthwhile. And only you can help lower our shocking death toll. You will cooperate, won’t you? Thank you.’ The screen went dark, and the set dispensed a pamphlet. It was a complete account of his accident, and a warning about unpasteurized milk. He would be in bed for a week, it said, and urged him to make use of his telephone and FRIENDS.

  Professor David Wattleigh sat in the tepid water of his swimming pool in Southern California and longed to swim. But it was forbidden. The gadgets had some way of knowing what he was doing, he supposed, for every time he immersed himself deeper than his chest, the motor of the resuscitator clattered a warning from poolside. It sounded like the snarl of a sheep-dog. Or perhaps, he reflected, a Hound of Heaven, an anti-Mephistopheles, come to tempt him into virtue.

  Wattleigh sat perfectly still for a moment, then reluctantly he heaved his plump pink body out of the water. Ah, it was no better than a bath. As he passed into the house, he cast a glance of contempt and loathing at the squat machine.

  It seemed as if anything he wished to do were forbidden. Since the day he’d been forced to abandon Nineteenth-Century English Literature, the constraints of mechanica had tightened about Wattleigh, closing him off from his old pleasures one by one. Gone were his pipe and port, his lavish luncheons, his morning swim. In place of his library, there now existed a kind of vending machine that each day ‘vended’ him two pages of thoroughly bowdlerized Dickens. Gay, colourful, witty passages they were, too, set in large Schoolbook type. They depressed him thoroughly.

  Yet he had not given up entirely. He pronounced anathema upon the Machines in every letter he wrote to Delphinia. an imaginary lady of his acquaintance, and he feuded with the dining-room about his luncheons.