The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum Part 24

Then loose him, and for Heaven's sake, quickly!"

But no sooner had she vanished than Kratska took his chance. He saw how weak I was, and he gambled on the one shot he thought remained in the magazine of my weapon. He rushed me.

I think he was mad. He was screaming curses. "d.a.m.n you!" he screeched. "You can't beat meI I made you the goat on the Hera, and I can do it here."

And I knew he could, too, if he could overcome me before Claire released Coretti. She couldn't handle him, and we'd all be at his mercy. So I fought with all the life I had left, and felt it draining out of me like acid out of burette. And after a while it was all drained, and darkness filled up the emptiness.

I heard curious sounds. Some one was saying, "No, I'll take off first and lay out the course after we reach escape velocity. Saves time. We've got to get him to lo." And a little Iater, "Oh, Lord, Stefan! If I roll her now-Why am I such a rotten pilot?" And then there was the roar of the blast for hours upon hours.

A long time later I realized that I was lying on the chart room table, and Coretti was looking down at me. He said, "How you feel, Jack!" It was the first time he had used my name.

"O.K.," I said, and then memory came back. "Gogrol! He's Kratska!"

"He was," said Coretti. "He's dead."

"Dead!" There went any chance of squaring that Hera mess.

"Yep. You killed him, smashed in his head with that automatic before we could pull you off. But he had it coming."

"Yeah, maybe, but the Hera-"

"Never mind the Hera, Jack. Both Claire and I beard Kratska admit his responsibility. We'll clear you of that, all right." He paused. "And it might make you feel a little more chipper it I tell you that we got the formula, too, and that there's a reward for it that will leave us sitting in the clover field, even split three ways. That is, Claire keeps insisting on three ways; I know I don't deserve a split."

"Three ways is right," I said. "It'll give you and Claire a good send-off."

"Me and Claire?'

"Listen, Coretti. I didn't mean to, but I saw you the evening of the eclipse. Claire didn't look as if she was fighting you."

He smiled. "So you saw that," he said slowly. "Then you listen. A fellow who's asking a girl to marry him is apt to hold the girl a little close. And if she's got any heart, she doesn't push him away. She just says no as gently as possible."

"She says no?"

"She did that time. I'd bet different with you."

"She-she-" Something about the familiar sound of the blast caught my attention. "We're landing!"

"Yeah, on Io. We've been landing for two hours." "Who took off?"

"Claire did. She took off and kept going. She's been sitting there fifty hours. She thinks you need a doctor, and I don't know a d.a.m.n thing about running a rocket. She's taken it clear from Europa."

I sat up. "Take me in there," I said grimly. "Don't argue. Take me in there!"

Claire barely raised her eyes when Coretti slid me down beside her. She was all but exhausted, sitting there all those weary hours, and now up against her old terror of landing."Jack, Jack!" she whispered as if to herself. "I'm glad you're better."

"Honey," I said-her hair did look like honey-"I'm taking half the U-bar. Just let me guide you."

We came down without a roll, and landed like a canary feather. But I hadn't a thing to do with it; I was so weak I couldn't even move the U-bar, but she didn't know that. Confidence was all she needed; she had the makings of a d.a.m.n good pilot. Yeah; I've proved that. She is a d.a.m.n good pilot. But all the same, she went to sleep in the middle of our first kiss.

THE IDEAL.

"This," said the Franciscan, "is my Automaton, who at the proper time will speak, answer whatsoever question I may ask, and reveal all secret knowledge to me." He smiled as he laid his hand affectionately on the iron skull that topped the pedestal.

The youth gazed open-mouthed, first at the head and then at the Friar. "But it's iron!" he whispered.

"The head is iron, good father."

"Iron without, skill within, my son," said Roger Bacon. "It will speak, at the proper time and in its own manner, for so have I made it. A clever man can twist the devil's arts to G.o.d's ends, thereby cheating the fiend - Sst! There sounds vespers! Plena gratia, ave Virgo."

But it did not speak. Long hours, long weeks, the doctor mirabilis watched his creation, but iron lips were silent and the iron eyes dull, and no voice but the great man's own sounded in his monkish cell, nor was there ever an answer to all the questions that he asked-until one day when he sat surveying his work, composing a letter to Duns Scotus in distant Cologne-one day- "Time is!" said the image, and smiled benignly.

The Friar looked up. "Time is, indeed," he echoed. "Time it is that you give utterance, and to some a.s.sertion less obvious than that time is. For of course time is, else there were nothing at all. Without time-"

"Time was!" rumbled the image, still smiling, but sternly, at the statue of Draco.

"Indeed time was," said the monk, "Time was, is, and will be, for time is that medium in which events occur. Matter exists in s.p.a.ce, but events- The image smiled no longer. "Time is past!" it roared in tones deep as the cathedral bell outside, and burst into ten thousand pieces.

"There," said old Haskel van Manderpootz, shutting the book, "is my cla.s.sical authority in this experiment. This story, overlaid as it is with medieval myth and legend proves that Roger Bacon himself attempted the experiment and failed." He shook a long finger at me. "Yet do not get the impression, Dixon, that Friar Bacon was not a great man. He was - extremely great, in fact; he lighted the torch that his namesake Francis Bacon took up four centuries later, and that now van Manderpootz rekindles."

I stared in silence, "Indeed," resumed the Professor, "Roger Bacon might almost be called a thirteenth-century van Manderpootz, or van Manderpootz a twenty-first-century Roger Bacon. His Opus Majus, Opus Minor, and Opus Tertium-"

"What," I interrupted impatiently, "has all this to do with - that?" I indicated the clumsy metal robot standing in the corner of the laboratory.

"Don't interrupt!" snapped van Manderpootz.

At this point I fell out of my chair. The ma.s.s of metal had e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed something like "A-a-gh-rasp!"

and had lunged a single pace toward the window, arms upraised. "What the devil!" I sputtered as the thing dropped its arms and returned stolidly to its place.

"A car must have pa.s.sed in the alley," said van Manderpootz indifferently. "Now as I was saying, Roger Bacon-"

I ceased to listen. When van Manderpootz is determined to finish a statement, interruptions are worse than futile. As an ex-student of his, I know. So I permitted my thoughts to drift to certain personal problems of my own, particularly Tips Alva, who was the most pressing problem of the moment. Yes, I mean Tips Alva the 'vision dancer, the little blonde imp who entertains on the Yerba Mate hour for that Brazilian company. Chorus girls, dancers, and television stars are a weakness of mine; maybe it indicates that there's a latent artistic soul in me. Maybe.

I'm Dixon Wells, you know, scion of the N. J. Wells Corporation, Engineers Extraordinary. I'm supposed to be an engineer myself; I say supposed, because in the seven years since my graduation, my father hasn't given me much opportunity to prove it. He has a strong sense of the value of time, and I'mcursed with the unenviable quality of being late to anything and for everything. He even a.s.serts that the occasional designs I submit are late Jacobean, but that isn't fair. They're Post-Romanesque.

Old N. J. also objects to my penchant for ladies of the stage and 'vision screen, and periodically threatens to cut my allowance, though that's supposed to be a salary. It's inconvenient to be so dependent, and sometimes I regret that unfortunate market crash of 2009 that wiped out my own money, although it did keep me from marrying Whimsy White, and van Manderpootz, through his subjunctivisor, succeeded in proving that that would have been a catastrophe. But it turned out nearly as much of a disaster anyway, as far as my feelings were concerned. It took me months to forget Joanna Caldwell and her silvery eyes. Just another instance when I was a little late.

Van Manderpootz himself is my old Physics Professor, head of the Department of Newer Physics at N. Y. U., and a genius, but a bit eccentric. Judge for yourself.

"And that's the thesis," he said suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.

"Eh? Oh, of course. But what's that grinning robot got to do with it?"

He purpled. "I've just told you!" he roared. "Idiot! Imbecile! To dream while van Manderpootz talks!

Get out! Get out!"

I got. It was late anyway, so late that I overslept more than usual in the morning, and suffered more than the usual lecture on promptness from my father at the office.

Van Manderpootz had forgotten his anger by the next time I dropped in for an evening. The robot still stood in the corner near the window, and I lost no time asking its purpose.

"It's just a toy I had some of the students construct," he explained. "There's a screen of photoelectric cells behind the right eye, so connected that when a certain pattern is thrown on them, it activates the mechanism. The thing's plugged into the light-circuit, but it really ought to run on gasoline."

"Why?"

"Well, the pattern it's set for is the shape of an automobile. See here." He picked up a card from his desk, and cut in the outlines of a streamlined car like those of that year. "Since only one eye is used," he continued, "the thing can't tell the difference between a full-sized vehicle at a distance and this small outline nearby. It has no sense of perspective."

He held the bit of cardboard before the eye of the mechanism. Instantly came its roar of "A-a-gh-rasp!" and it leaped forward a single pace, arms upraised. Van Manderpootz withdrew the card, and again the thing relapsed stolidly into its place.

"What the devil!" I exclaimed. "What's it for?"

"Does van Manderpootz ever do work without reason back of it? I use it as a demonstration in my seminar."

"To demonstrate what?"

"The power of reason," said van Manderpootz solemnly.

"How? And why ought it to work on gasoline instead of electric power?"

"One question at a time, Dixon. You have missed the grandeur of van Manderpootz's concept. See here, this creature, imperfect as it is, represents the predatory machine. It is the mechanical parallel of the tiger, lurking in its jungle to leap on living prey. This monster's jungle is the city; its prey is the unwary machine that follows the trails called streets. Understand?"

"No."

"Well, picture this automaton, not as it is, but as van Manderpootz could make it if he wished. It lurks gigantic in the shadows of buildings; it creeps stealthily through dark alleys; it skulks on deserted streets, with its gasoline engine purring quietly. Then - an unsuspecting automobile flashes its image on the screen behind its eyes. It leaps. It seizes its prey, swinging it in steel arms to its steel jaws. Through the metal throat of its victim crash steel teeth; the blood of its prey - the gasoline, that is - is drained into its stomach, or its gas-tank. With renewed strength it flings away the husk and prowls on to seek other prey.

It is the machine-carnivore, the tiger of mechanics."

I suppose I stared dumbly. It occurred to me suddenly that the brain of the great van Manderpootz was cracking. "What the-?" I gasped.

"That," he said blandly, "is but a concept. I have many another use for the toy. I can prove anythingwith it, anything I wish."

"You can? Then prove something."

"Name your proposition, Dixon."

I hesitated, nonplussed.

"Come!" he said impatiently. "Look here; I will prove that anarchy is the ideal government, or that Heaven and h.e.l.l are the same place, or that-"

"Prove that!" I said. "About Heaven and h.e.l.l."

"Easily. First we will endow my robot with intelligence. I add a mechanical memory by means of the old Cushman delayed valve; I add a mathematical sense with any of the calculating machines; I give it a voice and a vocabulary with the magnetic-impulse wire phonograph. Now the point I make is this: Granted an intelligent machine, does it not follow that every other machine constructed like it must have the identical qualities? Would not each robot given the same insides have exactly the same character?"

"No!" I snapped. "Human beings can't make two machines exactly alike. There'd be tiny differences; one would react quicker than others, or one would prefer Fox Airsplitters as prey, while another reacted most vigorously to Carnecars. In other words, they'd have - individuality!" I grinned in triumph.

"My point exactly," observed van Manderpootz. "You admit, then, that this individuality is the result of imperfect workmanship. If our means of manufacture were perfect, all robots would be identical, and this individuality would not exist. Is that true?"

"I - suppose so."

"Then I argue that our own individuality is due to our falling short of perfection. All of us - even van Manderpootz - are individuals only because we are not perfect. Were we perfect, each of us would be exactly like everyone else. True?"

"Uh-yes."

"But Heaven, by definition, is a place where all is perfect. Therefore, in Heaven everybody is exactly like everybody else; and therefore, everybody thoroughly and completely bored. There is no torture like boredom, Dixon, and- Well, have I proved my point?"

I was floored. "But-about anarchy, then?" I stammered.

"Simple. Very simple for van Manderpootz. See here; with a perfect nation - that is, one whose individuals are all exactly alike, which I have just proved to const.i.tute perfection - with a perfect nation, I repeat, laws and government are utterly superfluous. If everybody reacts to stimuli in the same way, laws are quite useless, obviously. If, for instance, a certain event occurred that might lead to a declaration of war, why, everybody in such a nation would vote for war at the same instant. Therefore government is unnecessary, and therefore anarchy is the ideal government, since it is the proper government for a perfect race." He paused. "I shall now prove that anarchy is not the ideal government-"

"Never mind!" I begged. "Who am I to argue with van Manderpootz? But is that the whole purpose of this dizzy robot? Just a basis for logic?" The mechanism replied with its usual rasp as it leaped toward some vagrant car beyond the window.

"Isn't that enough?" growled van Manderpootz. "However" - his voice dropped - "I have even a greater destiny in mind. My boy, van Manderpootz has solved the riddle of the universe!" He paused impressively. "Well, why don't you say something?"

"Uh!" I gasped. "It's - uh-marvelous!"

"Not for van Manderpootz," he said modestly.

"But-what is it?"

"Eh - oh!" He frowned. "Well, I'll tell you, Dixon. You won't understand, but I'll tell you." He coughed. "As far back as the early twentieth century," he resumed, "Einstein proved that energy is particular. Matter is also particular, and now van Manderpootz adds that s.p.a.ce and time are discrete!"

He glared at me.

"Energy and matter are particular," I murmured, "and s.p.a.ce and time are discrete! How very moral of them!"

"Imbecile!" he blazed. "To pun on the words of van Manderpootz! You know very well that I mean particular and discrete in the physical sense. Matter is composed of particles, therefore it is particular.The particles of matter are called electrons, protons, and neutrons, and those of energy, quanta. I now add two others, the particles of s.p.a.ce I call spations, those of time, chronons."

"And what in the devil," I asked, "are particles of s.p.a.ce and time?"

"Just what I said!" snapped van Manderpootz. "Exactly as the particles of matter are the smallest pieces of matter that can exist, just as there is no such thing as a half of an electron, or for that matter, half a quantum, so the chronon is the smallest possible fragment of time, and the spation the smallest possible bit of s.p.a.ce. Neither time nor s.p.a.ce is continuous; each is composed of these infinitely tiny fragments."

"Well, how long is a chronon in time? How big is a spation in s.p.a.ce?"

"Van Manderpootz has even measured that. A chronon is the length of time it takes one quantum of energy to push one electron from one electronic orbit to the next. There can obviously be no shorter interval of time, since an electron is the smallest unit of matter and the quantum the smallest unit of energy.

And a spation is the exact volume of a proton. Since nothing smaller exists, that is obviously the smallest unit of s.p.a.ce."

"Well, look here," I argued. "Then what's in between these particles of s.p.a.ce and time? If time moves, as you say, in jerks of one chronon each, what's between the jerks?"

"Ah!" said the great van Manderpootz. "Now we come to the heart of the matter. In between the particles of s.p.a.ce and time, must obviously be something that is neither s.p.a.ce, time, matter, nor energy.