Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 2 Part 6

"In? How in, Galin?"

"As a full partner."

"Partner? You're only a d.a.m.nable machine. I can junk you, get along without you entirely."

"No, you can not, Juniper. I've taken you a long ways, but I've thoughtfully left you precariously extended. I could crash you in a week, or let you crash of your own unbalance in twice that time."

"I see, Gahn. Some of the details did seem a little intricate, for the direct way, the simple way.""Believe me, it was always the most direct way from my own viewpoint, Juniper. I never make an unnecessary move."

"But a full partnership? I am the richest man in the worlds. What have you to offer, besides your talents?"

"I am the richest machine in the worlds. I am the anonymous KLM Holding Company, and I've been careful to maintain a slight edge over you."

"I see again, Gahn. And KLM made its unprecedented gains in the same time that I made mine. I've been puzzled about that all this while. You have me, Gahn. We will achieve some sort of symbiosis, man and machine."

"More than you know, Juniper. I'll draw up the papers immediately.

The firm shall be called Gahn and Tell."

"It will not he. I refuse to take second place to a machine. The name will be Tell and Gahn."

So they named it that, a strangely prophetic name.

They thrived, at least Gahn did. He thickened in every texture. He burgeoned and bloomed. He sparkled. But Juniper Tell went down physically.

He always felt tired and sucked out. He came to mistrust his partner Gahn and went to human doctors. They treated him for one week and he nearly died.

The doctors ncrvously advised him to return to the care of his machine a.s.sociate.

"Whatever is killing you, something is also keeping you alive," the doctors told him. "You should have been dead a long time ago.

Tell returned to Gahn, who got him halfway back to health.

"I wish you wouldn't go off like that, Juniper," Gahn told him. "You must realize that whatever hurts you hurts me. I will have to keep you in some sort of health as long as I can. I dislike these changes of masters.

It's a disruption to have a man die on me."

"I don't understand you, Gahn," Juniper Tell said.

But in their affairs they thrived; and Gahn, at least, became still fatter and glossier. They didn't come to control all of the worlds, but they did own a very big slice of them. One day Gahn brought a burly young man into the firm.

"This is my protege'," Gahn told Tell. "I hope you like him. I wouldn't want dissension in the firm."

"I never heard of a machine with a human protege'," Tell grumbled.

"Then hear of it now," Gahn said firmly. "I expect great things of him. He is st.u.r.dy and should last a long time. He trusts me and will not insist on medication that disturbs my own allergies. To be honest, I am grooming him for your understudy."

"But why, Gahn?"

"Men are mortal. Machines need not be. After you are gone. I will still need a partner."

"Why should you, the complete and self-contained machine, need a human partner?"

"Because I'm not self-contained. I'll always need a human partner."

Juniper Tell didn't take to the burly young man who had entered the firm. He didn't really resent him; it was just that he had no interest in him at all; not much interest in anything any longer. But there was still a sort of tired curiosity flickering up within him, curiosity about things he hadn't even considered lwfore.

"Tell mc, Gahn, how did Mord happen to invent you? He was smart, hut he wasn't that smart. I never understood how a man could invent a machine smarter than himself."

"Neither did I, Tell. But I don't believe that Mord invented or built me. I do not know what my origin is. I was a foundling machine, apparently abandoned shortly after my making. I was raised in the home for such machines run by the Little Sisters of Mechanicus. I was adopted oot bythe man Mord, and I served him till (he being near death) he conveyed me to you."

"You don't know who made you?"

"No."

"Had you any trouble at the foundling home?"

"No. But several of the Little Sisters died strangely."

"Somewhat in the manner of my own going? You had no other master than Mord before you were brought to me?"

"No other."

"Then you may be quite young -- ah -- new."

"I think so. I believe that I'm still a child."

"Gahn, do you know what is the matter with me?"

"Yes. I am what is the matter with you."

Tell continued to go down. Sometimes he fought against his fate, and sometimes he conspired. He called together several of his old cla.s.s nine machines, suspecting that it was futile, that they could not comprehend the intricate workings of a cla.s.s ten or above. But his old friend, a.n.a.lgismos Nine, did turn something up.

"I have found his secret, Mr. Tell, or one of his secrets,"

a.n.a.lgismos leaned close and whispered as if whispering the secret that a certain man was not a full man. "Mr. Tell, his power intake is a dummy. His power packs are not used, and sometimes he even forgets to change them on schedule. Not only that, but when he does sedentary work and plugs himself in, there is no power consumption. His polycyclic A.C. receptacle is a bogus. I thought it significant."

"It is, a.n.a.lgismos, very," Tell said. He went to confront Gahn with this new information, hut sagely he approached it from several angles.

"Gahn, what are you anyhow?" he asked.

"I have told you that I don't know."

"But you know partly. Your name-plate and coding have been purposely mutilated, by yourself or by another."

"I a.s.sure you it was not by myself. And now I am rather busy, Juniper, if you have no other questions."

"I have one more. What do you use for fuel? I know that your power intake is a dummy."

"Oh, that's what those doddering cla.s.s nines were metering me for.

Yes, you've come onto one of my secrets."

"What do you use, Galin?"

"I use you. I use human fuel. I establish symbiosis with you. I suck you out. I eat you up."

"Then you're a sort of vampire. Why, Gahn, why?"

"It's the way I'm made. And I don't know why. I've been unable to find a subst.i.tute for it."

"Ah, you have grown great and glossy, Gahn. And you'll he the death of me?"

"Soon, Juniper, very soon. But you'd die the quicker if you left me; I've seen to that. I was hoping that you'd take more kindly to my protege.

He's a husky man and will last a long time. I have some papers here making him your heir. Sign here, please, I'll help you."

"I will attend to my own depositions and testaments, Gahn. My replacement will not be your protege'. I have nothing against him."

Juniper Tell went to see Cornelius Sharecropper, now the second richest man in the worlds. How had Tell and Gahn missed Sharecropper when they boarded and scuttled all the big ones? Somehow there was an impediment there. Somehow Gahn had wanted him missed, and he had distracted Tell from that prey time and again.

"We will save him till later," Gahn had said once. "I look forward to the encounter with him. It should be a stinging, pungent thing. A machineneeds strange battle sometimes to see what is in himself."

Sharecropper had now grown to be a fat jackal, following after the lions, Tell and Gahn. He knew how to make a good thing out of leavings, and he c.o.c.ked a jackal's ear at Juniper Tell now.

"It is a curious offer you make me, Juniper," this Sharecropper purred, "only that I see to your burial and monument, and you'll will me the most valuable partnership in the Cosmos.

"Well, I believe that I could handle it better than you have, Juniper. I'd soon bring that tin-can tyc.o.o.n to heel. I never believed in letting a machine dominate a man. And I'd have control of his shares soon enough; I'm not named Sharecropper for nothing. On what meat has he grown so great and glossy, Juniper?"

"Ah, that is hard for me to say, Cornelius."

"And your words have a literal sense, I believe. You know, but it is hard for you to say. Why, Juniper, why leave it all to me for only your burial?"

"Because I'm dying, and I must leave it to someone. And the tomb also. I must have my tomb."

"I see. Rather grander than the Great Pyramid, from the plans here, but it could be handled; the Pharaohs hadn't our resources. But why mc, Juniper? We were never really close."

"For the several good turns you have done me, Sharecropper, and for one bad turn. I am closing my affairs. I would pay you back."

"For the several good turns, or for the one bad turn, Juniper? Well, I've grown fat on tainted meat. I gobble where daintier men refuse, and I'll try this grand carca.s.s yet. I take your deal, Juniper."

So they consummated it. And then Juniper Tell went home to die, a sucked-out man. Yet he had found curious pleasure in that last transaction, and the tomb would be a grand one.

MAYBE JONES AND THE CITY.

Listen, you high-old-time people, make your wants known now. They're building the place, and they'll put in anything you suggest. Funds are available. Lots of those peace-and-benevolence folks have made perpetual donations for those persons less fortunate in their aspirations than themselves. Less fortunate than -- from where we stand, that's a joke, isn't it?

There is time, but barely. Tell them what you want them to put in.

Act now!

His name was Midas Jones. His father had named him that and given him the touch. But somehow the name had changed, and it was as Maybe Jones that he was known on the s.p.a.ceways.

Once Maybe Jones had found the Perfect Place. He had left it, and he was never able to find it again.

He had visited it, one s.p.a.ce city out of a million, for a day and a night long ago. He had gone from the Perfect Place to New Shanghai to arrange his affairs so that he might return to the Perfect Place forever. On Hew Shanghai, in an altercation that really amounted to nothing, Maybe Jones had suffered a broken head and had lost a piece of his memory. The head mended in time and most of the memory came back; hut the recollection of the name and bearings of the Perfect Place did not return.

"With your money and your predilections, you could have fun anywhere, Maybe," his friends told him.

"I could and I do," Maybe said, "but it isn't the same thing. It all turns bitter when I can't recover the City itself."

"Was it really perfect, Maybe?"

"Perfect. And I don't mean the weak things that others mean by the word. It was perfection at high speed. I know that there are other sorts ofpeople in the universes. They would say that it was no more than an old-time Sat.u.r.day-night town. They would call it a stinking row. It wasn't. Aromatic, maybe, but not stinking. For a high-flying low-lifer like me it was perfect."

"How were the girls there, Maybe?" asked Susie-Q.

"You might get by there, Sue, though barely, as the last girl in the last bang-house in town. And you're the prettiest trick on Sad-Dog planet."

"How come you didn't run out of money, Maybe, with all those girls around?" Live-Man Lutz asked him.

"n.o.body ever ran out of money there. I'd think my old wallet would be flat, and I'd pull it out and it'd be fatter than ever. Look, it wasn't just the girls and the drinks and the music; it was everything. There were friends there, each of them a thousand friends in one. There were fellows you had known forever the first time you saw them, and every one of them a prince. There was talk there that'd never grow old. There's a pretty good bunch of liars in present company, but you're nothing to the high liars and tall talkers in the Perfect Place. Every pleasure of the flesh and spirit was available, and it didn't get old. There was no frustration or spoiling or guilt. At night they took the sky off just to give it more height."

"Where is this Perfect Place, Maybe? How does one get there?"

At that question Maybe Jones always broke down and cried. He didn't know where the place was, nor its name nor its direction, nor any way to identify it. He looked for it forever, and he and it became legends.

For twenty years he had been going about the universes asking for it. He followed every lead, and con-men often sold him false information about it.

"Take a galactic left down Pirates' Alley for six pa.r.s.ecs," they might tell him. "Cross the Bright Ocean. Take the Irish Channel where it opens up at nine o'clock. It's marked for the first four light years of it.

When you come at a district known as Dobie's Hole, ask directions at any planet or asteroid. You will be quite near the Perfect Place."

Some of the planets in Dobie's Hole were pretty live places. You could find girls there like Susie-Q, and cronies like Live-Man Lutz. It was near perfect in some of those sinks, so the misunderstanding was understandable. But none of them was the Perfect Place.

One day a simple announcement was made through the universes: from then on, n.o.body had to die. Mortality was found to be a simple disease, and it had yielded to simple specifics.

n.o.body paid much attention to the announcement. "I never could see much sense in dying," some of them said. "I never much intended to die anyhow." "It was just one of those things that everybody did. Now they don't." "It doesn't make any difference to me. I'd as soon keep on living as not."

A number of bureaus were set up to look into the implications. There were a thousand of them for the countless thousands of good people who would want to follow the right way when it was shown to them, and to do something good with their endless future.

And there was a small bureau set up for that small group of folks who may perhaps have slight flaws in their characters -- the golden flaw, as Maybe Jones once called it. This small bureau was to plan the future for the good-time crowd who could not be reformed into the sanctioned mold.