Men and Machines - Robert ...

Men and Machines - Robert Silverberg, ebook, Temp

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For Walt Cole
Copyright Q MCMLXVIH by Robert Silverberg
Published by arrangement with Meredith Press
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 68-28721
AWARD BOOKS are published by Universal-Award House, Inc., a subsidiary of Cor
235 East Forty-fifth Street New York, N. Y. 10017
TANDEM BOOKS are published by Universal-Tandem Publishing Company Limited
14 Gloucester Road, London SW7, England
Manufactured in the United States of America
Acknowledgments
"Counter Foil," by George O. Smith, copyright © 1964 by The Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
Reprinted by per-mission of the author's agent, Lurton Blassingame, from Analog.
"A Bad Day for Sales," by Fritz Leiber, copyright 1953 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation.
Reprinted by permis-sion of the author and his agent, Robert P. Mills, from Galaxy Science Fiction.
"Without a Thought," by Fred Saberhagen, copyright © 1962 by Digest Productions Corporation.
Reprinted by permission of the author from If.
"Solar Plexus," by James Blish, copyright 1941 by Fic-tioneers, Inc. Revised version copyright
1952 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Robert P. Mills,
from Astonishing Stories.
"The Macauley Circuit,
"
by Robert Silverberg, copyright © 1956 by King-Size Publications, Inc.
Revised version copyright © 1968 by Robert Silverberg. Reprinted by per-mission of the author's
agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from Fantastic Universe.
"But Who Can Replace a Man?" by Brian W. Aldiss, copyright © 1958 by Royal Publications, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from
Infinity.
"Instinct," by Lester del Rey, copyright 1951 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted by
permission of the author and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from Astounding
Science Fiction.
"The Twonky," by Lewis Padgett, copyright 1942 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted
by permission of the Harold Matson Company, Inc., from Astounding Science Fiction.
"The Hunting Lodge," by Randall Garrett, copyright 1954 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from
Astounding Science Fiction.
"With Folded Hands," by Jack Williamson, copyright 1947 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from
Astounding Science Fiction.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
ix
COUNTER FOIL
11
George O. Smith
A BAD DAY FOR SALES
37
Fritz Leiber
WITHOUT A THOUGHT
45
Fred Saberhagen
SOLAR PLEXUS
57
THE MACAULEY CIRCUIT
71
Robert Silverberg
BUT WHO CAN REPLACE A MAN?
82
Brian W. Aldiss
INSTINCT
93
Lester del Rey
THE TWONKY
109
THE HUNTING LODGE
133
Randall Garrett
WITH FOLDED HANDS
170
Jack Williamson
Introduction
The first man to use a machine was the first of our primitive ancestors who picked up a rock to
hurl at some passing animal or to crack open some edible nut. In the million-plus years since then,
our machines have grown much more complex, but even in our modern era of com-puters, rockets,
and color television, their basic purpose remains the same: to serve man.
Whether our machines truly serve us is a question much debated by science-fiction writers and
other professional speculative philosophers. Does some essential quality go out of human life when
it becomes too easy? Have our automobiles, telephones, typewriters, and elevators sapped our
vigor? Are we speeding into flabby decay because we have made things too easy for ourselves?
And as our machines grow more able, when do they cross the boundary that separates the living
from the un-living? Is it possible that we are building machines that will make humanity obsolete?
Perhaps the day is coming when we ourselves will be rendered unnecessary, and our sleek
successors, creatures of metal and plastic, will inherit the earth.
The relationship between man and his machines is a complex and many-sided one, compounded
by love and hate. Many a bitter attack on the encroachments of the machine age has been produced
James Blish
Lewis Padgett
by a writer using an electric typewriter in an air-conditioned room, innocently unaware of the inner
contradictions involved. We need our machines, but we fear them; and out of this tension come
ideas best dealt with in the guise of science fiction.
Ten science-fictional explorations of the man-machine re-lationship are offered here. Some are
lighthearted excursions into fantasy, others bleak and forlorn visions of a hopeless future. They
show man as the master and as the slave of his machines, as the victim and the tyrant, as conqueror
and as conquered. No sermons are intended: the purpose of these tales is to entertain, to stimulate,
to suggest possi-bilities. But implicit in them is the awareness that we have only begun to cope with
the problems that our age of fabu-lous machines is creating.
R.S.
COUNTER FOIL
by George O. Smith
We sometimes used to be reminded how dependent we have become on our machines.
A
substan-tial part of the northeast United States received such a reminder one November evening
in 1965, when a trifling technical difficulty blotted out lights and power for 30,000,000 people
over a vast area. George O. Smith's story, written before the great power failure, shows the even
more devastating possibilities in a trans-portation breakdown
.
Of course, the transportation
system he describes is one that doesn
'
t yet happen to be in use—but allow him that one bit of
fantasy and everything else follows with devilishly consistent logic.
George O. Smith has long been well known as a devil-ishly logical character anyway. An
engineer by trade who has been involved in military electronics research, he has been writing s-f
since 1942 and has published over one hundred stories. A good many of them deal with the
technical problems engineers of the future are likely to encounter, and are impressive both for
their insight into technological processes and for the sly, lively wit that makes them favorites even
of nontechnical readers.
It was near the close of a normal day in late July, if a day in late July can properly be called
normal. The tempera-ture and the humidity were tied in the mid-nineties; a reporter from the
News
fired the usual egg on the pavement while his photographer snapped the picture that would adorn
tomorrow's front page. There had been three flying saucer sightings reported, and the Loch Ness
monster had made his appearance right on schedule. The cases of heat prostration were running at
par, and nerves in the un-air-conditioned areas were fraying short. Still, the clock dis-played hope as
it crawled on toward the end of the work day and promised freedom from bondage and the right to
pursue both internal and external liquid happiness.
Gertrude, the videophone receptionist, still looked crisp in her office. Her voice as she responded
with the singy-songy, "Tele-por-TRAN-sit," had not lost its lilt. But it was obvious to the caller that
Trudy sat in air-conditioned splendor. And either she loathed the idea of leaving her comfort and
going home, or she despised him who called. For after the lilting greeting, her voice dropped to a
flat, "Oh, it's you again."
Johnny Peters smiled. "Show?"
"No."
 "Swim?"
"No."
"Dinner?
"
"No."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing!"
"Trudy, I'm not poison, you know.
"
"Johnny, I know you're not poison. But you're not very ambitious, either."
"Now listen," he said sharply, "I'm only asking for a date. I'm not offering to have you share my
frugal life, bed, and board as a lowly technician. A date I can afford; a wife I can't."
"You could try to get ahead."
"I've made my bid. I asked my illustrious leader for advanced training and an accelerated course
so I could move along faster, and he said that moving too fast was bad for a young man. Shall I quit
now and go elsewhere?"
"Where would you go?"
"That's the trouble, Trudy. I majored in teleportonics, and it's either teleportonics or I go back to
school and start something new. Think the boss-man will move me faster in Greater Chicago? I
doubt it. So I might as well stay right here in Megapolis."
"I suppose you're right."
"All right, let's start over again. Show?"
"Johnny, not tonight. I'm busy."
"
Tomorrow?"
"If we're not all cooked by then. Call me, Johnny.
"
"Will do," he said with a growing smile.
Johnny Peters broke the connection and checked his instrument panel. The primary powerline
from Con Edison was running a tenth of a volt low; with bored, routine gesture he twitched a knob,
watched the voltage rise, and then he settled back with little more to do until the end of his shift of
duty.
In the distant reaches of the city, the uneasy slumber of a napping woman was broken by a wave
of pain. A gush of body-warm wetness brought a flash of things to mind that came and went as fast
as thought, far too rapidly to reproduce in any electromechanical medium of expres-sion. She
thought, in turn: It was her firstborn. The doctor said there was little point in predicting the arrival of
a firstborn because they had no record upon which to base an estimate. The women in her family
were prone to deliver in taxicabs and ambulances on the way to the hospital.
A second wave of pain assailed her, interrupting the rapid flow of thought. Then as the pain
subsided, she went on: That was fast!
She struggled to her feet and duckwalked heavily on her heels to the videophone. She pressed the
button for one of the stored-program numbers and immediately a crisp, cool voice responded,
"Tele-port-TRAN-sit," in the lilt with all four clear tones sounding in order.
"Trudy, this is Irma Fellowes. Can you connect me with Joe?"
"Sure thing. Half a mo' and you're on. How's things?"
"Baby's on the way." The simple statement was em-phasized by a smothered groan and the
grimace of pain on Irma Fellowes' face.
Trudy gulped and lost her cool, crisp, composure. "Whoops! I'll give Joe the double-whammy
ring."
The muted wail of a siren came, and almost instantly the scene on the videophone switched to a
 man, seated at his desk. His face was still changing to a look of puzzled concern. He barked,
"Where's the emergency and wha .. . oh! Irma. Wh . . . er . . . ?"
"Baby's on the way, Joe."
"Fine," he said. "Have you called Maternity?"
"Not yet."
"Irma, I can't do you any good at all. I appreciate the information, but it could have waited until
you got to the hospital."
"Joe! It's your child!"
"Sure. And you're my wife. Now buzz off here and call the hospital. Get going."
He hung up; reluctantly because he hated the harshness of the act, but deliberately because it was
the only way he could get her to move in the right direction.
Irma Fellowes stared at the videophone as though it should resume operation after a brief
interruption. It didn't. Whatever she started to think at that moment was stopped by another wave of
agony. When it subsided, she pressed another button, one that had been set up for a temporary
emergency. It connected her with the maternity ward of City Hospital; the plate showed an elderly
woman in nurse's uniform, who said, "Maternity, Nurse Wilkins speaking."
"This is Mrs. Fellowes. Baby's on the way."
"Just how frequent are your pains, Mrs. Fellowes?" "Rapid. And coming faster all the time."
Irma was interrupted by another pain, through which, faintly, she heard the muted siren. Nurse
Wilkins read off some detailed instructions from a card, speaking unhur-riedly to someone that
could not be seen on the videophone. When she finished, Nurse Wilkins said to Irma Fellowes,
"Take it easy now, there's a resident doctor, an interne, and a nurse on their way."
Irma closed the circuit, waddled to the kitchen and drank a glass of water, returned to the living
room and paced a bit. Perhaps two minutes passed, then came a rap on the door. She opened it to
admit doctor and nurse, followed by the interne pushing a wheeled stretcher. "Hop on," said the
intern.
"I can't," groaned Irma.
The doctor scooped her up and deposited her on the stretcher. He applied stethoscope, then
palpated her ab-domen gently. "O.K.," he said after a moment. "Let's go. No problem."
Irma said, "But I was born in an ambulance, and—"
The doctor laughed. "Mrs. Fellowes, from what little I know of the process, teleportation flips
you from entry to exit at the speed of light. Now, even if it were from here to Alpha Centauri, your
baby couldn't be born en route simply because at the speed of light all timing processes come to a
quiet standstill. And by
`
timing processes' I mean things like clocks, and biochemical reactions,
births, aging, and death. O.K.?"
"That's what Joe always says, but—"
"Well, let's find out if he's right."
The corridor was partly cooled from leakage from the air-conditioned apartments, but by contrast
it was stifling enough to make Irma gasp. The interne had used foresight; the elevator door was
blocked open so that no one could call it away and tie it up. He held the "No Stops" button as the
elevator dropped them smoothly to the stage below the first floor. Here the full heat of the city hit
them as they made their way along a short corridor to the teleportransit booth.
The signal light turned green as soon as the interne inserted the credit key in the lock-register. He
pressed the buttons with a practiced hand, then paused to check the number in the address readout
carefully.
"Pays to be careful," be said.
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