William Campbell Gault

“ Then they were seated, the lights all on, and the tractor was pulling the giant to the channelled runway, guarded by the blast walls.
Milwaukee, here I come.
The whirr of the rolling wheels, the reverberations from the blast walls, a crescendo of sound, and they were free of earth. An accelerating, effortless flight, a faint tremor as they passed the sonic barrier, then no sensory impressions at all.
Flight as free as the wind's passage but more silent. ”

“ Very few riders, this time of the afternoon. The brain would go in, intact, and then the knowledge instiller would work during the incubation period, feeding the adolescent memories to the retentive circuits. She would really spend her mental childhood in the mold, while the warmth sent the human spark through her body.
Robot? Huh! What did they know? A human being, a product of science, a flawless human being.
The rise, the big hiss of the final airlock, and Inglewood. Joe stood on the platform a second, looking for his car, and then realized she wasn't there. ”

“ To those in the crowd, to those watching on the video screens, the ones who are briefed and know about rioting, about how to steer a revolution. Think of the irony of it—man's prejudice building the army of resentment and man's genius building the machines that army can use to destroy man—white man. White man—first."
"First—?" Manny said. "You've dreams beyond tonight, Joe?"
Joe smiled disarmingly. "I use too many words. That one got away. We can't think beyond tonight, now." He turned to Alix. "It's not an involved signal, Alix. It's just one word. The word is 'kill'. ”

“ Both the new pilot and the new robot master were young and properly respectful, space-dedicated boys, and my life, I knew, was going to be pleasant. And once I had mastered navigation, I was going to be damned near irreplaceable.
As we bored through space on the old familiar run, the thought came to me that probably Horse would head for his asteroid, and if he should make it, wouldn't that be something? Two men and one girl. I wonder how long Van would live.
Van was no fullback, nor a reasonably accurate facsimile thereof. Unless he had a weapon, he'd be no match for Horse. ”

“ I'm admitting nothing along that line, not yet, Doak. I want to see what kind of fighter you are, how much man you are."
"I wish I knew," he said quietly. "One thing I'm sure of, I'm going to enjoy the battle."
"You're going to enjoy both battles," Martha said. "And probably win both. But oh, the bastards we're going to have to fight."
He smiled and looked out at the shadowed lawn. This would be a place for the historians, the writing historians, Dubbinville, U.S.A. And why should a man be happy, looking forward to so damned much trouble? ”

“ Ted asked, "Who's a beautiful girl?"
The squirrel went over to nose the golf ball, again.
"I asked a question," Ted said.
The squirrel sat up, looking at the nutmeg tree. "Look, Mr. Truesdale, we've got to have a meeting of minds. You know who's a beautiful girl, and so do I. Good gosh, you've been sitting there, drooling, all morning. And now you're back for more." The bright black eyes turned Ted's way. "Don't be so conventional. That's what kept you from being a first rate artist." ”

“ She began to remind him of Vera, which didn't make sense.
Alice was sad when he was sad, gay when he was gay, and romantic to the same split-degree in the same split-second. She even told him his old jokes with the same inflection he always used.
Their mood affinity was geared as closely as the comptin-reduco-determina. What more could a man want? And, damn it, why should Vera's perfume linger in that back bedroom?
The fumigators could do nothing. They left, after the third trip, shaking their heads. Joe stood in the doorway, insisting he could still smell it. ”

“ The country that could have been a cultural and industrial center of the world was a robot-land of nine million square miles, getting ready for war, getting ready to take over the dreams of Hitler and make them come true. ”

“ He walked down the hill toward the blonde.
He pushed through the willows and came into the glade, and saw her quick smile of recognition.
He smiled in return. "I won't believe it in the morning." He sat on the grass beside her. "Is it Venus?"
"Where else?" Her face was finely modeled with faintly discernible cheek bones and a smooth jaw line. "The lover's planet, hidden from the universe by its atmosphere. Hamilton's work, I'll wager."
"Hamilton?"
"You know him, our friend from the nutmeg tree. He arranged it, didn't he?" ”

“ Strange lands and strange people."
"Jupiter isn't a strange land. It's simply a land of ice and lava, a grotesque, fascinating, frightening...."
"No people," Horse interrupted. "And how about Mars?"
"Mars is a disappointment, sure. I was talking about Jupiter, and you say 'no people.' Earth is full of people. Too full. That's why we have the Massago-Lust." ”

“ Alix said slowly, "that we fight man's wars and pulverate his garbage and dehydrate his sewerage, but we're not citizens. Why, Manny?"
"We're not human. We're not—orthodox." Manny was watching him closely as he spoke. ”

“ The Chief was a sentimentalist and he'd just lost a fine friend. This friend was his terrier, Murph, who'd been hit by a speeding car.
The story of Murph from birth to death was a fairly long one, but never dull. The Chief had a way with words. Even Joe, one of the world's top-ranking non-sentimentalists, was touched by the tale. When they came to the end, where Murph had lain in his master's arms, whimpering, as though to comfort him, trying to lick his face, Joe's eyes were wet and the drink wobbled in his hand. ”

“ In France it was all the heat and no light, charges and counter-charges, lies and counter-lies, confusion and corruption.
In Berlin, it was Russia. The cloud that darkens the world looms darkest in Berlin. The apathy that grips the world is epitomized in Berlin. A people with no sense of guilt and no reason for hope, nor stirring to the promise of a re-armed Germany. A bled and devastated people, shorn of their chief strength, their national pride.
Jean said, "I've seen enough. Haven't you, Fred? ”

“ You're imagining things, Ann."
"Look at your hand. Look how it's trembling. Ted—what is the matter?"
"Nothing. I had a dream. Ann, I don't want to talk about it."
"Drinking," she said. "It's those drinks you had, yesterday, I'll bet. You're just not a drinking man, Theodore Truesdale, and you're too old to begin."
"I'm not old. You know I'm not old. You wish I were, but I'm not. Do we always have to quarrel?"
She didn't answer. Her lips quavered, but she didn't cry. She rose and carried a few dishes to the sink.
Ted went out to the porch with his coffee and cigarette. ”

“ A poet with revolutionary leanings, all heart, a bleeder and a believer. Studious, Doak sat, on the front porch in another world.
Were the people so stupid they couldn't be trusted with words? They could be misled with words and confused and stirred to unrighteous anger. And informed with words and guided and ennobled and solaced and stirred to high destiny.
How had wrestling ever taken the place of words? [Pg 19]
Someone said, "Dreaming, city-man?"
He looked up quickly to see Martha standing there. Mrs. Klein had evidently gone into the house without his being aware of it. ”

“ Mrs. Tullgren answered. She smiled at Alice.
The smile faded after about ten minutes. For Alice was telling her all about the comptin-reduco-determina. For an hour and nineteen minutes, Alice talked to this woman who had been humiliated twice, telling her all the things about the famous thinking machine that Mrs. Tullgren didn't want to know.
It wasn't until Alice was through talking animatedly that the entranced Joe began to suspect that perhaps the Tullgrens weren't as interested in the dingus as a scientific mind would assume. ”

“ Alix looked again at his hands, the hands that had taken him to the first mixed fight in history, to a title fight. 'Man Versus The Machine' most of the sports scribes had labeled it, though not Joe Nettleton. Machine? A machine that had assimilated Voltaire? A machine that had listened to Brahms?
What differentiates man from his machines? Supremacy? Supremacy would be established tonight. No, it wasn't physical supremacy. And there were robots far beyond man's mental powers. ”

“ They're evil things, Ted."
"I think they're cute."
"Cute. Without the tail, they're just another rat. How some people can eat them is beyond me."
The pinkness and the sluice and the three-armed man with the enormous chest seemed to swim, for a moment, in Ted's memory. Hamilton went scurrying up the nutmeg tree.
"The little devil," Ann said.
Little devil? The devil, maybe? No, not Hamilton. Ted said, "No club meeting today? No garden, home, cooking, household management or knitting circle shindigs?"
"Not a one."
"Why don't we drive up the coast and eat out, tonight?" ”

“ Burke was lost. Burke stared and swallowed and grinned like a green stage hand at a burlesque show. Burke's smile was perpetual and nauseating. Even in the face of Alice's cool reserve.
The dinner was fine, the liquor mellow.
Then Joe said, "Well, Alice, it's time for the volition. It's time for your birth as a person."
"Of course," she said, and smiled.
They went down into the basement, the three of them; she sat in the chair he'd prepared and he clamped on the wired helmet and adjusted the electrodes.
Burke said weakly, "It isn't—dangerous, is it?"
"Dangerous?" Joe stared at him. ”

“ In a little while, I saw him out there on the ramp putting on a great show of trying to adjust the robot's delemeter, which is what gives them their uncanny balance.
After about twenty minutes, he waved and stood to one side, and Van Elling sent the impulse through. The robot staggered, and then came back to an upright position. Collins stood at the broad part of the ramp as the line began to move again.
Discipline begins with self-discipline, I told myself. No man ever achieved anything without self-control. ”

“ These robots were coming up in the world, getting too big for their britches. Nick Nolan would show this Alix his place.
Nick was the champ, a man, made in His image. He butted and thumbed and gouged and heeled. His favorite target was the groin. But he was a man. Oh, yes, he was a man. A champion among men.
Manny came in. His real title was Manuel 4307, but robots like to forget the numbers. He was Manny, Alix's manager and number one second. A deft and sharp and able robot, Manny. ”

“ She said, "I was too forward to be believed this afternoon, perhaps? Did you listen last night?"
"I listened. I'm from Security, Martha—or was. I'm resigning."
"Oh? To fight the good fight?"
He nodded. "But legally—or what is known as legally. Through the pressure-group pattern. I know my way around Washington, Martha. I think, in time and with the right people behind me, I think I could—oh, hell!"
"Yes," she said. "Oh, hell! When you were swimming this afternoon we could have got this, Doak. I told them to wait. I told them I thought you had the makings of an honest man." ”

“ Showering, I was thinking of Akers for some reason and his directed theory and what was that other theory he'd had? Oh, yes, the twin planets. Senile, he was, by that time and not much listened to, but a mind like that? And who had he been associated with at that time? It was before my birth, but I'd read about it, long ago. The Visitor, Akers had called this man. The Earth man who had come to Venus. And what had his name been?
Beer—? Beers—? No, but like that—and it came.
Ambrose Bierce.
Jean wore a light green robe, for breakfast, and it was difficult for me to take my eyes away from her. ”

“ A person without faults is not a person. And if—it or he—she were, I don't think I'd care to know him or her or it."
"Naturally. You're a sentimentalist. You've seen so much misery, so much human error, so much stupidity that you've built up your natural tolerance into a sloppy and unscientific sentimentality. It happens to sociologists all the time."
"Joe, I'm not going to argue with you. Only one thing I ask. When you—break the news to Vera, break it gently. And get her back to the Center as quickly as you can. She's a choice, rare number."
Joe said nothing to that. Sam looked miserable. ”

“ Hamilton looked at the nutmeg tree. "Oh, Truesdale, if you knew the story. If you knew what this meant." He started up the tree, and paused. "Well, there are others, plenty of them." He went quickly up the rest of the way.
Ted didn't even glance at the blonde, again, before going back into the house. He put some Cole Porter on the record player and sat by the fireplace.
Honolulu and Houston and Sweeney's and the country club merged in his mind as the whiskey drowsiness started to creep through him. He couldn't go to sleep, not before Ann came home. He had some things to tell her. ”

“ Collins was a typical space bum in one way. He was restless, he wanted to see what was out there. But he lacked discipline. And his thinking was earth-bound conventional. He'd even played football at college, and that's where he'd picked up the 'Horse' nickname. He'd been an All-Earth fullback, and why he'd gone on to navigator's school from there I'm not competent to judge. A man who can make All-Earth in a game dominated by robots is bound to have some body. No one but a sportswriter would suspect he might also have a mind. ”

“ Old Wisconsin Germans. I'm Irish myself."
Bright scintillating dialogue, stirring the quick response. But he felt as relaxed as though he had hay in his hair. He looked out at the deserted road, at the fields beyond, at the clouds on the clear horizon. Rural summer—a quiet Saturday morning in the agricultural Midwest only nineteen minutes from Chicago.
People spoke of other worlds and here was one, nineteen minutes from Chicago. And last night, under the lucidate, the town banker had gone to another world, three hundred years away, had gone back to the magic of Burns. ”

“ There were two smells in that pretty car with the canvas top. One smell was of gasoline, the other was of alcohol.
"There's obviously alcohol in the gasoline," I said, "though that shouldn't prevent it from igniting."
"A funny, funny man," she said. "Keep the dialogue to a minimum, will you, Bogart? I'm not exactly sharp, right now."
I depressed the starter button, and the motor caught. I swung left onto Sunset, and started up the hill.
The car was clearly a recent model, but Jars had been wrong about the mechanical excellence of these huddlers. The machine simply had no life, no zest. ”

“ No words from Ted.
Hamilton looked down at the house below, and back at Ted. "Don't blame me for that Venus trip, Truesdale. You wanted it, but bad."
"I'm not blaming anybody for anything," Ted said. "Just because I had a dream."
"Dream? Why don't you go down and ask her if she had the same dream? What a man won't say to clear his conscience! Let go, Truesdale, enjoy yourself."
Below, the blonde came out onto her patio. She was wearing white shorts and halter today. She looked Ted's way for seconds—and then waved. ”

“ Not human? They feed us Bach and Brahms and Beethoven and Shakespeare and Voltaire in our incubation period, don't they? And all the others I've forced myself to forget. Does this—this soul come from somewhere outside the system? ”

“ Driving over to Westchester that night, Joe told Alice, "Sam's a timid bidder. His wife's inclined to overbid. Plays a sacrificing game when she knows it will gain points. Our job will be to make her oversacrifice." ”

“ Mrs. Klein still sat on her front porch. "Any luck?" she asked, as he came up to sit on the glider near her chair.
"Some. I'll see him again tomorrow."
Her voice was dry. "One of our most prominent citizens, the Senator. The other's Glen Ryder. I guess you know who he is."
He stiffened, trying to see her face in the dark. "Ryder? Oh, yes, in the Security Department."
"That's right. Glen isn't anything to be ashamed of really. But that Senator Arnold—my, the stories my mother told me about him!"
"I've heard," Doak said, "he was pretty wild as a young man."
"Wild?" Mrs. Klein sniffed. ”

“ Jars talked and the assembly listened. They always do, when Jars talks.
And I was their boy, and went into a concentrated and complete briefing. They put me under the lucidate and poured it to me, night and day, all the information we had on the huddlers and all the theories based on that information.
They put me into a space sphere, and said "good luck" and do our people proud, young man. Oh, yes. And don't fall in love. Oh, no. They'd pick me up, again, when they got a signal. They didn't expect to wait too long for that, I guess, at the time. ”

“ Why don't we go out to dinner, some place where we can dance?"
"Tonight? Have you forgotten the Drews are coming over?"
"I've been trying to. Couldn't you phone them?"
"Ted." She made two syllables out of it. She looked at him quietly. "Do they bore you terribly?"
"They do."
"And do I?"
"No. You should, but you don't. You've still a potential. Well, if the Drews are coming, I'd better shave."
She was looking at him thoughtfully as he left the room.
Peak outer-thought, "Well, Ha, what do you think of Earthians?"
"They're like us," Ha thought wonderingly, "except for that stuff growing on them." ”

“ I hope so, though very few people are." Joe looked at Sam squarely. "Every man wants a perfect wife, doesn't he?"
Sam shrugged. "I suppose."
"And no human is perfect, so no man gets a perfect wife. Am I right, so far?"
"Sounds like it."
"Okay." Joe tapped Sam's chest with a hard finger. "I'm going to make a perfect wife." He tapped his own chest. "For me, just for me, the way I want her. No human frailties. Ideal."
"A perfect robot," Sam objected.
"A wife," Joe corrected. "A person. A human being." ”

“ Deering rose, and went to the window, to look out. "Who will win this war that's shaping up among the huddlers, Fred?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure I give a damn."
Deering continued to look out the window. "The gray nation, the mixed nation, this America; they have some promise of the light, have they not?"
"Some."
"But this black nation, this nation of robots, there is no chance of of light there?"
"Not under their present leaders. If they should win the war the planet would be set back five hundred years."
Deering shook his head, and turned to face me sadly. "It would be worse than that. ”

“ Ted answered. "Been to Venus, lately?"
The drink wobbled in Henri's left hand. The poise, for a moment, was shattered. "Ven—Venice? In Italy, you mean?"
"In California. You're trembling, Henri. Your heart?"
"Heart—?" Blank, oafish stare, the poise scrambling to get back.
"At our age, we have to watch the ticker," Ted warned him. "What are you drinking?"
Henri stared at his nearly-empty glass. "Scotch—I—ah—"
"Sure thing. I'll have one with you." Ted went over to the liquor cabinet.
When he returned, with the pair of drinks, Ann was in the room. Ann said, "I could use one, myself." ”

“ Sam shook his head. "Vera's been too busy to have much time for the director. She's our most popular number." Sam paused. "About the new one. Hear she's something to see."
"You heard right. She's practically flawless, Sam. She's just what a man needs at home." His voice, for some reason, didn't indicate the enthusiasm he should have felt.
Sam chewed one corner of his mouth. "Why not bring her over, say, tonight? We'll play some bridge."
That would be something. Two minds, perfectly in harmony, synchronized, working in partnership. Joe's smile was smug. "We'll be there. ”

“ In what way, ready?"
"The only way they know, the only thing they seem to have time for—ready for war."
"War—," Deering said, and sighed. "Oh, Jars, they will be beyond war, certainly, before they are cognizant of us. They are no tribe of incompetents; they grow each day." ”

“ Henri likes the place. I've been showing it to him. And pointing out its advantages. No husbands to come home, unexpectedly." Hamilton paused. "He'll be up there, again. And with whom, Truesdale?"
"Not Ann. She's incorruptible, you devil."
"Sure, she is. So what are you worried about?"
From the back porch, Ann said, "Ted, what are you doing?"
He turned to face her, as did Hamilton. Ted said, "I was going to climb up and knock down that nest."
"Oh, forget it. It was a silly whim of mine, anyway. Look at him, Ted. He seems to be begging you."
"You don't know him," Ted said. "He fools us all." ”