The Midas Plague Page 6

  Morey flushed gratefully.

  Wainwright left, exuding praise, and Morey patted his pilot model affectionately and admired its polychrome gleam. The looks of the machine, as Wainwright had lectured many a time, were as important as its function: “You have to make them want to play it, boy! They won’t play it if they don’t see it!” And consequently the whole K series was distinguished by flashing rainbows of light, provocative strains of music, haunting scents that drifted into the nostrils of the passerby with compelling effect.

  Morey had drawn heavily on all the old masterpieces of design— the one-arm bandit, the pinball machine, the juke box. You put your ration book in the hopper. You spun the wheels until you selected the game you wanted to play against the machine. You punched buttons or spun dials or, in any of 325 different ways, you pitted your human skill against the magnetic-taped skills of the machine.

  And you lost. You had a chance to win, but the inexorable statistics of the machine’s setting made sure that if you played long enough, you had to lose.

  That is to say, if you risked a ten-point ration stamp—showing, perhaps, that you had consumed three six-course meals—your statistic return was eight points. You might hit the jackpot and get a thousand points back, and thus be exempt from a whole freezerful of steaks and joints and prepared vegetables; but it seldom happened. Most likely you lost and got nothing.

  Got nothing, that is, in the way of your hazarded ration stamps. But the beauty of the machine, which was Morey’s main contribution, was that, win or lose, you always found a pellet of vitamin-drenched, sugarcoated antibiotic hormone gum in the hopper. You played your game, won or lost your stake, popped your hormone gum into your mouth and played another. By the time that game was ended, the gum was used up, the coating dissolved; you discarded it and started another.

  “That’s what the man from the NRB liked,” Howland told Morey confidentially. “He took a set of schematics back with him; they might install it on all new machines. Oh, you’re the fair-haired boy, all right!”

  It was the first Morey had heard about a man from the National Ration Board. It was good news. He excused himself and hurried to phone Cherry the story of his latest successes. He reached her at her mother’s, where she was spending the evening, and she was properly impressed and affectionate. He came back to Howland in a glowing humor.

  “Drink?” said Howland diffidently.

  “Sure,” said Morey. He could afford, he thought, to drink as much of Howland’s liquor as he liked; poor guy, sunk in the consuming quicksands of Class Three. Only fair for somebody a little more successful to give him a hand once in a while.

  And when Howland, learning that Cherry had left Morey a bachelor for the evening, proposed Uncle Piggotty’s again, Morey hardly hesitated at all.

  The Bigelows were delighted to see him. Morey wondered briefly if they had a home; certainly they didn’t seem to spend much time in it.

  It turned out they did, because when Morey indicated virtuously that he’d only stopped in at Piggotty’s for a single drink before dinner, and Howland revealed that he was free for the evening, they captured Morey and bore him off to their house.

  Tanaquil Bigelow was haughtily apologetic. “I don’t suppose this is the kind of place Mr. Fry is used to,” she observed to her husband, right across Morey, who was standing between them. “Still, we call it home.”

  Morey made an appropriately polite remark. Actually, the place nearly turned his stomach. It was an enormous glaringly new mansion, bigger even than Morey’s former house, stuffed to bursting with bulging sofas and pianos and massive mahogany chairs and tri-D sets and bedrooms and drawing rooms and breakfast rooms and nurseries.

  The nurseries were a shock to Morey; it had never occurred to him that the Bigelows had children. But they did and, though the ■children were only five and eight, they were still up, under the care of a brace of robot nursemaids, doggedly playing with their overstuffed animals and miniature trains.

  “You don’t know what a comfort Tony and Dick are,” Tanaquil Bigelow told Morey. “They consume so much more than their rations. Walter says that every family ought to have at least two or three children to, you know. Help out. Walter’s so intelligent about these things, it’s a pleasure to hear him talk. Have you heard his poem, Morey? The one he calls The Twoness of—”

  Morey hastily admitted that he had. He reconciled himself to a glum evening. The Bigelows had been eccentric but fun back at Uncle Piggotty’s. On their own ground, they seemed just as eccentric, but painfully dull.

  They had a round of cocktails, and another, and then the Bigelows no longer seemed so dull. Dinner was ghastly, of course; Morey was nouveau-riche enough to be a snob about his relatively Spartan table. But he minded his manners and sampled, with grim concentration, each successive course of chunky protein and rich marinades. With the help of the endless succession of table wines and liqueurs, dinner ended without destroying his evening or his strained digestive system.

  And afterward, they were a pleasant company in the Bigelows’ ornate drawing room. Tanaquil Bigelow, in consultation with the children, checked over their ration books and came up with the announcement that they would have a brief recital by a pair of robot dancers, followed by string music by a robot quartet. Morey prepared himself for the worst, but found before the dancers were through that he was enjoying himself. Strange lesson for Morey: When you didn’t have to watch them, the robot entertainers were fun!

  “Good night, dears,” Tanaquil Bigelow said firmly to the children when the dancers were done. The boys rebelled, naturally, but they went. It was only a matter of minutes, though, before one of them was back, clutching at Morey’s sleeve with a pudgy hand.

  Morey looked at the boy uneasily, having little experience with children. He said, “Uh-what is it, Tony?”

  “Dick, you mean,” the boy said. “Gimme your autograph.” He poked an engraved pad and a vulgarly jeweled pencil at Morey.

  Morey dazedly signed and the child ran off, Morey staring after him. Tanaquil Bigelow laughed and explained, “He saw your name in Porfirio’s column. Dick loves Porfirio, reads him every day. He’s such an intellectual kid, really. He’d always have his nose in a book if I didn’t keep after him to play with his trains and watch tri-D.”

  “That was quite a nice write-up,” Walter Bigelow commented—a little enviously, Morey thought. “Bet you make Consumer of the Year. I wish,” he signed, “that we could get a little ahead on the quotas the way you did. But it just never seems to work out. We eat and play and consume like crazy, and somehow at the end of the month we’re always a little behind in something—everything keeps piling up—and then the Board sends us a warning, and they call me down and, first thing you know, I’ve got a couple of hundred added penalty points and we’re worse off than before.”

  “Never you mind,” Tanaquil replied staunchly. “Consuming isn’t everything in life. You have your work.”

  Bigelow nodded judiciously and offered Morey another drink. Another drink, however, was not what Morey needed. He was sitting in a rosy glow, less of alcohol than of sheer contentment with the world.

  He said suddenly, “Listen.”

  Bigelow looked up from his own drink. “Eh?”

  “If I tell you something that’s a secret, will you keep it that way?”

  Bigelow rumbled, “Why, I guess so, Morey.”

  But his wife cut in sharply, “Certainly we will, Morey. Of course! What is it?” There was a gleam in her eye, Morey noticed. It puzzled him, but he decided to ignore it.

  He said, “About that write-up. I—I’m not such a hot-shot consumer, really, you know. In fact—” All of a sudden, everyone’s eyes seemed to be on him. For a tortured moment, Morey wondered if he was doing the right thing. A secret that two people know is compromised, and a secret known to three people is no secret. Still—

  “It’s like this,” he said firmly. “You remember what we were talking about at Uncle Piggotty’s that ni
ght? Well, when I went home I went down to the robot quarters, and I—”

  He went on from there.

  Tanaquil Bigelow said triumphantly, “I knew it!”

  Walter Bigelow gave his wife a mild, reproving look. He declared soberly, “You’ve done a big thing, Morey. A mighty big thing. God willing, you’ve pronounced the death sentence on our society as we know it. Future generations will revere the name of Morey Fry.” He solemnly shook Morey’s hand.

  Morey said dazedly, “I what?

  Walter nodded. It was a valedictory. He turned to his wife. “Tanaquil, we’ll have to call an emergency meeting.”

  “Of course, Walter,” she said devotedly.

  “And Morey will have to be there. Yes, you’ll have to, Morey; no excuses. We want the Brotherhood to meet you. Right, Howland?”

  Howland coughed uneasily. He nodded noncommittally and took another drink.

  Morey demanded desperately, “What are you talking about? Howland, you tell me!”

  Howland fiddled with his drink. “Well,” he said, “it’s like Tan was telling you that night. A few of us, well, politically mature persons have formed a little group. We—”

  “Little group!” Tanaquil Bigelow said scornfully. “Howland, sometimes I wonder if you really catch the spirit of the thing at all! It’s everybody, Morey, everybody in the world. Why, there are eighteen of us right here in Old Town! There are scores more all over the world! I knew you were up to something like this, Morey. I told Walter so the morning after we met you. I said, ‘Walter, mark my words, that man Morey is up to something.’ But I must say,” she admitted worshipfully, “I didn’t know it would have the scope of what you’re proposing now! Imagine—a whole world of consumers, rising as one man, shouting the name of Morey Fry, fighting the Ration Board with the Board’s own weapon—the robots. What poetic justice!”

  Bigelow nodded enthusiastically. “Call Uncle Piggotty’s, dear,” he ordered. “See if you can round up a quorum right now! Meanwhile, Morey and I are going belowstairs. Let’s go, Morey—let’s get the new world started!”

  Morey sat there open-mouthed. He closed it with a snap. “Bigelow,” he whispered, “do you mean to say that you’re going to spread this idea around through some kind of subversive organization?”

  “Subversive?” Bigelow repeated stiffly. “My dear man, all creative minds are subversive, whether they operate singly or in such a group as the Brotherhood of Freemen. I scarcely like—”

  “Never mind what you like,” Morey insisted. “You’re going to call a meeting of this Brotherhood and you want me to tell them what I just told you. Is that right?”

  “Well-yes.”

  Morey got up. “I wish I could say it’s been nice, but it hasn’t. Good night!”

  And he stormed out before they could stop him.

  Out on the street, though, his resolution deserted him. He hailed a robot cab and ordered the driver to take him on the traditional time-killing ride through the park while he made up his mind.

  The fact that he had left, of course, was not going to keep Bigelow from going through with his announced intention. Morey remembered, now, fragments of conversation from Bigelow and his wife at Uncle Piggotty’s, and cursed himself. They had, it was perfectly true, said and hinted enough about politics and purposes to put him on his guard. All that nonsense about twoness had diverted him from what should have been perfectly clear: They were subversives indeed.

  He glanced at his watch. Late, but not too late; Cherry would still be at her parents’ home.

  He leaned forward and gave the driver their address. It was like beginning the first of a hundred-shot series of injections: you know it’s going to cure you, but it hurts just the same.

  Morey said manfully: “And that’s it, sir. I know I’ve been a fool. I’m willing to take the consequences.”

  Old Elon rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Ura,” he said.

  Cherry and her mother had long passed the point where they could say anything at all; they were seated side by side on a couch across the room, listening with expressions of strain and incredulity.

  Elon said abruptly, “Excuse me. Phone call to make.” He left the room to make a brief call and returned. He said over his shoulder to his wife, “Coffee. We’ll need it. Got a problem here.”

  Morey said, “Do you think—I mean what should I do?”

  Elon shrugged, then, surprisingly, grinned. “What can you do?” he demanded cheerfully. “Done plenty already, I’d say. Drink some coffee. Call I made,” he explained, “was to Jim, my law clerk. He’ll be here in a minute. Get some dope from Jim, then we’ll know better.”

  Cherry came over to Morey and sat beside him. All she said was, “Don’t worry,” but to Morey it conveyed all the meaning in the world. He returned the pressure of her hand with a feeling of deepest relief. Hell, he said to himself, why should I worry? Worst they can do to me is drop me a couple of grades and what’s so bad about that?

  He grimaced involuntarily. He had remembered his own early struggles as a Class One and what was so bad about that.

  The law clerk arrived, a smallish robot with a battered stainless-steel hide and dull coppery features. Elon took the robot aside for a terse conversation before he came back to Morey.

  “As I thought,” he said in satisfaction. “No precedent. No laws prohibiting. Therefore no crime.”

  “Thank heaven!” Morey said in ecstatic relief.

  Elon shook his head. “They’ll probably give you a reconditioning and you can’t expect to keep your Grade Five. Probably call it antisocial behavior. Is, isn’t it?”

  Dashed, Morey said, “Oh.” He frowned briefly, then looked up. “All right, Dad, if I’ve got it coming to me, I’ll take my medicine.”

  “Way to talk,” Elon said approvingly. “Now go home. Get a good night’s sleep. First thing in the morning, go to the Ration Board. Tell ’em the whole story, beginning to end. They’ll be easy on you.” Elon hesitated. “Well, fairly easy,” he amended. “I hope.”

  The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast.

  He had to. That morning, as Morey awoke, he had the sick certainty that he was going to be consuming triple rations for a long, long time to come.

  He kissed Cherry good-by and took the long ride to the Ration Board in silence. He even left Henry behind.

  At the Board, he stammered at a series of receptionist robots and was finally brought into the presence of a mildly supercilious young man named Hachette.

  “My name,” he started, “is Morey Fry. I—I’ve come to—talk over something I’ve been doing with—”

  “Certainly, Mr. Fry,” said Hachette. “I’ll take you in to Mr. Newman right away.”

  “Don’t you want to know what I did?” demanded Morey.

  Hachette smiled. “What makes you think we don’t know?” he said, and left.

  That was Surprise Number One.

  Newman explained it. He grinned at Morey and ruefully shook his head. “All the time we get this,” he complained. “People just don’t take the trouble to learn anything about the world around them. Son,” he demanded, “what do you think a robot is?”

  Morey said, “Huh?”

  “I mean how do you think it operates? Do you think it’s just a kind of a man with a tin skin and wire nerves?”

  “Why, no. It’s a machine, of course. It isn’t human.”

  Newman beamed. “Fine!” he said. “It’s a machine. It hasn’t got flesh or blood or intestines—or a brain. Oh”—he held up a hand—“robots are smart enough. I don’t mean that. But an electronic thinking machine, Mr. Fry, takes about as much space as the house you’re living in. It has to. Robots don’t carry brains around with them; brains are too heavy and much too bulky.”

  “Then how do they think?”

  “With their brains, of course.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I said they didn’t carry them. Each robot is in constant radio communication with the Master Cont
rol on its TBR circuit—the ‘Talk Between Robots’ radio. Master Control gives the answer, the robot acts.”

  “I see,” said Morey. “Well, that’s very interesting, but—”

  “But you still don’t see,” said Newman. “Figure it out. If the robot gets information from Master Control, do you see that Master Control in return necessarily gets information from the robot?”

  “Oh,” said Morey. Then, louder, “Oh! You mean that all my robots have been—” The words wouldn’t come.

  Newman nodded in satisfaction. “Every bit of information of that sort comes to us as a matter of course. Why, Mr. Fry, if you hadn’t come in today, we would have been sending for you within a very short time.”

  That was the second surprise. Morey bore up under it bravely. After all, it changed nothing, he reminded himself.

  He said, “Well, be that as it may, sir, here I am. I came in of my own free will. I’ve been using my robots to consume my ration quotas—”

  “Indeed you have,” said Newman.

  “—and I’m willing to sign a statement to that effect any time you like. I don’t know what the penalty is, but I’ll take it. I’m guilty; I admit my guilt.”

  Newman’s eyes were wide. “Guilty?” he repeated. “Penalty?”

  Morey was startled. “Why, yes,” he said. “I’m not denying anything.”

  “Penalties,” repeated Newman musingly. Then he began to laugh. He laughed, Morey thought, to considerable excess; Morey saw nothing he could laugh at, himself, in the situation. But the situation, Morey was forced to admit, was rapidly getting completely incomprehensible.

  “Sorry,” said Newman at last, wiping his eyes, “but I couldn’t help it. Penalties! Well, Mr. Fry, let me set your mind at rest. I wouldn’t worry about the penalties if I were you. As soon as the reports began coming through on what you had done with your robots, we naturally assigned a special team to keep observing you, and we forwarded a report to the national headquarters. We made certain—ah—recommendations in it and—well, to make a long story short, the answers came back yesterday.