The Frederick Pohl Omnibus (1966) SSC Read online

  Garrick took another sip of the fizzy drink. It was good stuff; it didn't intoxicate, but it cheered. He said, 'I'm glad to know why I'm here.'

  The golden beard quivered. 'Area Control sent you down and didn't tell you this was a disaster area?'

  Garrick put down the glass. 'I'm a psychist. Area Control said you needed a psychist. From what I've seen, it's a supply problem, but--'

  'Here are the files,' said Kathryn Pender, and stood watching him.

  Roosenburg took the spools of tape from her and dropped them in his lap. He said tangentially, 'How old are you, Roger?'

  Garrick was annoyed. 'I'm a qualified psychist! I happen to be assigned to Area Control and--'

  'How old are you ?'

  Garrick scowled. 'Twenty-four.'

  Roosenburg nodded. 'Um. Rather young,' he observed. 'Maybe you don't remember how things used to be.'

  Garrick said dangerously, 'All the information I need is on that tape. I don't need any lectures from you.'

  Roosenburg pursed his lips and got up. 'Come here a minute, will you?'

  He moved over to the rail of the sun deck and pointed. 'See those things down there?'

  Garrick looked. Twenty storeys down the village straggled off towards the sea in a tangle of pastel oblongs and towers. Over the bay the hills of the mainland were faintly visible through mist; and riding the bay, the flat white floats of the solar receptors.

  'It's a power plant. That what you mean?'

  Roosenburg boomed, 'A power plant. All the power the world can ever use, out of this one and all the others, all over the world.' He peered out at the bobbing floats, soaking up energy from the sun. 'And people used to try to wreck them,' he said.

  Garrick said stiffly: 'I may only be twenty-four years old, Mr.

  Roosenburg, but I have completed school.'

  'Oh, yes. Oh, of course you have, Roger. But maybe schooling isn't the same thing as living through a time like that. I grew up in the Era of Plenty, when the law was: Consume. My parents were poor, and I still remember the misery of my childhood. Eat and consume, wear and use. I never had a moment's peace, Roger! For the very poor it was a treadmill; we had to consume so much that we could never catch up, and the farther we fell behind, the more the Ration Board forced on us--'

  Roger Garrick said: 'That's ancient history, Mr. Roosenburg. Morey Fry liberated us from all that.'

  The girl said softly: 'Not all of us.'

  The man with the golden beard nodded. 'Not all of us. As you should know, Roger, being a psychist.'

  Garrick sat up straight, and Roosenburg went on: 'Fry showed us that the robots could help at both ends--by making, by consuming. But it came a little late for some of us. The patterns of childhood--they linger on.'

  Kathryn Pender leaned towards Garrick. 'What he's trying to say, Mr.

  Garrick--we've got a compulsive consumer on our hands.'

  • • • •

  3

  North Guardian Island--nine miles away. It wasn't as much as a mile wide, and not much more than that in length. But it had its city and its bathing beaches, its parks and theatres. It was possibly the most densely populated island in the world ... for the number of its inhabitants.

  The President of the Council convened their afternoon meeting in a large and lavish room. There were nineteen councilmen around a lustrous mahogany table. Over the President's shoulder the others could see the situation map of North Guardian and the areas surrounding. North Guardian glowed blue, cool, impregnable. The sea was misty green; the mainland, Fisherman's Island, South Guardian and the rest of the little archipelago were a hot and hostile red.

  Little flickering fingers of red attacked the blue. Flick, and a ruddy flame wiped out a corner of a beach; flick, and a red spark appeared in the middle of the city, to grow and blossom, and then to die. Each little red whip-flick was a point where, momentarily, the defenses of the island were down; but always and always, the cool blue brightened around the red, and drowned it.

  The President was tall, stooped, old. It wore glasses, though robot eyes saw well enough without. It said, in a voice that throbbed with power and pride: 'The first item of the order of business will be a report of the Defence Secretary.'

  The Defence Secretary rose to its feet, hooked a thumb in its vest and cleared its throat. 'Mr. President--'

  'Excuse me, sir.' A whisper from the sweet-faced young blonde taking down the minutes of the meeting. 'Mr. Trumie has just left Bowling Green, heading north,'

  The President nodded stiffly, like the crown of an old redwood nodding. 'You may proceed, Mr. Secretary,' it said after a moment.

  'Our invasion fleet,' began the Secretary, in its high, clear voice, 'is ready for sailing on the first suitable tide. Certain units have been, ah, inactivated, at the, ah, instigation of Mr. Trumie, but on the whole repairs have been completed and the units will be serviceable within the next few hours.' Its lean, attractive face turned solemn. 'I am afraid, however, that the Air Command has sustained certain, ah, increments of attrition--due, I should emphasize, to chances involved in certain calculated risks-'

  'Question, question!' It was the Commissioner of Public Safety, small, dark, fire-eyed, angry.

  'Mr. Commissioner?' the President began, but it was interrupted again by the soft whisper of the recording stenographer, listening intently to the earphones that brought news from outside.

  'Mr. President,' it whispered, 'Mr. Trumie has passed the Navy Yard.'

  The robots turned to look at the situation map. Bowling Green, though it smouldered in spots, had mostly gone back to blue. But the jagged oblong of the Yard flared red and bright. There was a faint electronic hum in the air, almost a sigh.

  The robots turned back to face each other. 'Mr. President! I demand the defence Secretary explain the loss of the Graf Zeppelin and the 456th Bomb Group!'

  The Defence Secretary nodded to the Commissioner of Public Safety. 'Mr. Trumie threw them away,' it said sorrowfully.

  Once again, that sighing electronic drone from the assembled robots.

  The Council fussed and fiddled with its papers, while the situation map on the wall flared and dwindled, flared and dwindled. The Defence Secretary cleared its throat again. 'Mr. President, there is no question that the, ah, absence of an effective air component will seriously hamper, not to say endanger, our prospects of a suitable landing. Nevertheless--and I say this, Mr. President, in full knowledge of the conclusions that I may--indeed, should!--be drawn from such a statement--nevertheless, Mr. President, I say that our forward elements will successfully complete an assault landing -'

  'Mr. President!' The breathless whisper of the blonde stenographer again. 'Mr. President, Mr. Trumie is in the building!'

  On the situation map behind it, the Pentagon--the building they were in--flared scarlet.

  The Attorney General, nearest the door, leaped to its feet. 'Mr.

  President, I hear him!'

  And they could all hear, now. Far off, down the long corridors, a crash.

  A faint explosion, and another crash, and a raging, querulous, high-pitched voice. A nearer crash, and a sustained, smashing, banging sound, coming towards them.

  The oak-panelled doors flew open, splintering.

  A tall, dark male figure in grey leather jacket, rocket-gun holsters swinging at its hips, stepped through the splintered doors and stood surveying the Council. Its hands hung just below the butts of the rocket guns.

  It drawled: 'Mistuh Anderson Trumie!'

  It stepped aside. Another male figure--shorter, darker, hobbling with the aid of a stainless steel cane that concealed a ray-pencil, wearing the same grey leather jacket and the same rocket-gun holsters--entered, stood for a moment, and took a position on the other side of the door.

  Between them, Mr. Anderson Trumie shambled ponderously into the Council Chamber to call on his Council.

  • • • •

  Sonny Trumie, come of age.

  He wasn't much more than five f
eet tall; but his weight was close to four hundred pounds. He stood there in the door, leaning against the splintered oak, quivering jowls obliterating his neck, his eyes nearly swallowed in the fat that swamped his skull, his thick legs trembling as they tried to support him.

  'You're all under arrest!' he shrilled. 'Traitors! Traitors!'

  He panted ferociously, staring at them. They waited with bowed heads. Beyond the ring of councilmen, the situation map slowly blotted out the patches of red, as the repair-robots worked feverishly to fix what Sonny Trumie had destroyed.

  'Mr. Crockett!' he cried shrilly. 'Slay me these traitors!'

  Wheep-wheep, and the guns whistled out of their holsters into the tall bodyguard's hands. Rata-tat-tat, and two by two, the nineteen councilmen leaped, clutched at air and fell, as the rocket pellets pierced them through.

  'That one too!' cried Mr. Trumie, pointing at the sweet-faced blonde.

  Bang. The sweet young face convulsed and froze; it fell, slumping across its little table. On the wall the situation map flared red again, but only faintly--

  for what were twenty robots?

  Sonny gestured curtly to his other bodyguard. It leaped forward, tucking the stainless-steel cane under one arm, putting the other around the larded shoulders of Sonny Trumie. 'Ah, now, young master,' it crooned.

  'You just get ahold o' Long John's arm now--'

  'Get them fixed,' Sonny ordered abruptly. He pushed the President of the Council out of its chair and, with the robot's help, sank into it himself.

  'Get them fixed right, you hear? I've had enough traitors. I want them to do what I tell them!'

  'Sartin sure, young marster. Long John'll--'

  'Do it now! And you, Davey! I want my lunch.'

  'Reckoned you would, Mistuh Trumie. It's right hyar.' The Crockett-robot kicked the fallen councilmen out of the way as a procession of waiters filed in from the corridor.

  He ate.

  He ate until eating was pain, and then he sat there sobbing, his arms braced against the tabletop, until he could eat more. The Crockett-robot said worriedly: 'Mistuh Trumie, moughtn't you hold back a little? Od Doc Aeschylus, he don't keer much to have you eatin' too much, you know.'

  'I hate Doc!' Trumie said bitterly. He pushed the plates off the table.

  They fell with a rattle and a clatter, and they went spinning away as he heaved himself up and lurched alone over to the window. 'I hate Doc!' he brayed again, sobbing, staring through tears out the window at his kingdom with its hurrying throngs and marching troops and roaring waterfront. The tallow shoulders tried to shake with pain. He felt as though hot cinder-blocks were being thrust up into his body cavities, the ragged edges cutting, the hot weight crushing. 'Take me back,' he sobbed to the robots. 'Take me away from these traitors. Take me to my Private Place!'

  • • • •

  4

  'So you see,' said Roosenburg, 'he's dangerous.'

  Garrick looked out over the water, towards North Guardian. 'I'd better look at his tapes,' he said. The girl swiftly picked up the reels and began to thread them into the projector. Dangerous. This Trumie was dangerous, all right, Garrick conceded. Dangerous to the balanced, stable world; for it only took one Trumie to topple its stability. It had taken thousands and thousands of years for society to learn its delicate tightrope walk. It was a matter for a psychist, all right.....

  And Garrick was uncomfortably aware that he was only twenty-four.

  'Here you are,' said the girl.

  'Look them over,' said Roosenburg. 'Then, after you've studied the tapes on Trumie, we've got something else. One of his robots. But you'll need the tapes first.'

  'Let's go,' said Garrick.

  The girl flicked a switch, and the life of Anderson Trumie appeared before them, in colour, in three dimensions--in miniature.

  Robots have eyes; and where the robots go, the eyes of Robot Central go with them. And the robots go everywhere. From the stored files of Robot Central came the spool of tape that was the life story of Sonny Trumie.

  The tapes played into the globe-shaped viewer, ten inches high, a crystal ball that looked back into the past. First, from the recording eyes of the robots in Sonny Trumie's nursery. The lonely little boy, twenty years before, lost in the enormous nursery.

  'Disgusting!' breathed Kathryn Pender, wrinkling her nose. 'How could people live like that?'

  Garrick said, 'Please, let me watch this. It's important.' In the gleaming globe the little boy-figure kicked at his toys, threw himself across his huge bed, sobbed. Garrick squinted, frowned, reached out, tried to make contact.... It was hard. The tapes showed the objective facts, all right; but for a psychist it was the subjective reality behind the facts that mattered.

  Kicking at his toys. Yes, but why? Because he was tired of them--and why was he tired? Because he feared them? Kicking at his toys. Because--

  because they were the wrong toys? Kicking--hate them! Don't want them!

  Want--

  A bluish flare in the viewing globe. Garrick blinked and jumped: and that was the end of that section.

  The colours flowed, and suddenly jelled into bright life. Anderson Trumie, a young man. Garrick recognized the scene after a moment--it was right there on Fisherman's Island, some pleasure spot overlooking the water. A bar, and at the end of it was Anderson Trumie, pimply and twenty, staring sombrely into an empty glass. The view was through the eyes of the robot bartender.

  Anderson Trumie was weeping.

  Once again, there was the objective fact--but the fact behind the fact, what was it? Trumie had been drinking, drinking. Why? Drinking, drinking.

  With a sudden sense of shock, Garrick saw what the drink was--the golden, fizzy liquor. Not intoxicating. Not habit-forming! Trumie had become no drunk, it was something else that kept him drinking, drinking, must drink, must keep on drinking, or else--

  And again the bluish flare.

  There was more; there was Trumie feverishly collecting objects of art, there was Trumie decorating a palace; there was Trumie on a world tour, and Trumie returned to Fisherman's Island.

  And then there was no more.

  'That,' said Roosenburg, 'is the file. Of course, if you want the raw, unedited tapes, we can try to get them from Robot Central, but-'

  'No.' The way things were, it was best to stay away from Robot Central; there might be more breakdowns, and there wasn't much time.

  Besides, something was beginning to suggest itself.

  'Run the first one again,' said Garrick. 'I think maybe there's something there....'

  • • • •

  Garrick made out a quick requisition slip and handed it to Kathryn Pender, who looked at it, raised her eyebrows, shrugged and went off to have it filled.

  By the time she came back, Roosenburg had escorted Garrick to the room where the captured Trumie robot lay enchained. 'He's cut off from Robot Central,' Roosenburg was saying. 'I suppose you figured that out.

  Imagine! Not only has he built a whole city for himself--but even his own robot control!'

  Garrick looked at the robot. It was a fisherman, or so Roosenburg had said. It was small, dark, black-haired, and possibly the hair would have been curly, if the sea water hadn't plastered the curls to the scalp. It was still damp from the tussle that had landed it in the water, and eventually in Roosenburg's hands.

  Roosenburg was already at work. Garrick tried to think of it as a machine, but it wasn't easy. The thing looked very nearly human--except for the crystal and copper that showed where the back of its head had been removed.

  'It's as bad as a brain operation,' said Roosenburg, working rapidly without looking up. 'I've got to short out the input leads without disturbing the electronic balance...'

  Snip, snip. A curl of copper fell free, to be grabbed by Roosenburg's tweezers. The fisherman's arms and legs kicked sharply like a galvanized frog's.

  Kathryn Pender said: 'They found him this morning, casting nets into the bay and singing O Sole Mio. He's from N
orth Guardian, all right.'

  Abruptly the lights flickered and turned yellow, then slowly returned to normal brightness. Roger Garrick got up and walked over to the window.

  North Guardian was a haze of light in the sky, across the water.

  Click, snap. The fisherman-robot began to sing: Tutte le serre, dopo quel fanal,

  Dietro la caserma, ti stard ed--

  Click. Roosenburg muttered under his breath and probed further.

  Kathryn Pender joined Garrick at the window. 'Now you see,' she said.

  Garrick shrugged. 'You can't blame him.'

  ' I blame him!' she said hotly. 'I've lived here all my life. Fisherman's Island used to be a tourist spot--why, it was lovely here. And look at it now.

  The elevators don't work. The lights don't work. Practically all of pur robots are gone. Spare parts, construction material, everything--it's all gone to North Guardian! There isn't a day that passes, Garrick, when half a dozen barge-loads of stuff don't go north, because he requisitioned them. Blame him? I'd like to kill him!'

  Snap. Sputter snap. The fisherman lifted its head and carolled: Forse dommani, piangerai.

  E dopo tu, sorriderai--

  Snap. Roosenburg's probe uncovered a flat black disc. 'Kathryn, look this up, will you?' He read the serial number from the disc, and then put down the probe. He stood flexing his fingers, staring irritably at the motionless figure.

  Garrick joined him. Roosenburg jerked his head at the fisherman.

  'That's robot work, trying to tinker with their insides. Trumie has his own control centre, you see. What I have to do is recontrol this one from the substation on the mainland, but keep its receptor circuits open to North Guardian on the symbolic level. You understand what I'm talking about? It'll think from North Guardian, but act from the mainland.'

  'Sure,' said Garrick, far from sure.

  'And it's damned close work. There isn't much room inside one of those things....' He stared at the figure and picked up the probe again.

  Kathryn Pender came back with a punchcard in her hand. It was one of ours, all right. Used to be a busboy in the cafeteria at the beach club.'