The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

Punctiliously, Bucket began to imitate a cry of pain, making it coincide with the blows.

‘My God, it’s hot in here,’ said Freud, laying to.

‘Oh dear, it’s hot in here,’ said Birdlip, laying two plates of snacks on his desk. ‘Hippo, go and see what’s the matter with the air-conditioning. … I’m sorry, Mr Gavotte; you were saying …?’

And he looked politely and not without fascination at the little man opposite him. Gavotte, even when sitting nursing a gin corallina, was never still. From buttock to buttock he shifted his weight, or he smoothed back a coif of hair, or brushed real and imaginary dandruff from his shoulders, or adjusted his tie. With a ball-point, with a vernier, and once with a comb, he tapped little tunes on his teeth. This he managed to do even while talking volubly.

It was a performance in notable contrast to the immobility of the new assistant roman that had accompanied him and now stood beside him awaiting orders.

‘Eh, I was saying, Mr Birdlip, how fashionable the homing device has become, very fashionable. I mean, if you’re not contemporary you’re nothing. Firms all over the world are using them – and no doubt the fashion will soon spread to the system, although as you know on the planets there are far more robots than romen – simply because, I think, men are becoming tired of seeing their menials about all day, as you might say.’

‘Exactly how I feel, Mr Gavotte; I have grown tired of seeing my – yes, yes, quite.’ Realising that he was repeating himself, Birdlip closed that sentence down and opened up another. ‘One thing you have not explained. Just where do the romen go when they go home?’

‘Oh ha ha, Mr Birdlip, ha ha, bless you, you don’t have to worry about that, ha ha,’ chuckled Gavotte, performing a quick obligato on his eyeteeth. ‘With this little portable device with which we supply you, which you can carry around or leave anywhere according to whim, you just have to press the button and a circuit is activated in your roman that impels him to return at once to work immediately by the quickest route.’

Taking a swift tonic sip of his gin, Birdlip said, ‘Yes, you told me that. But where do the romen go when they go away?’

Leaning forward, Gavotte spun his glass on the desk with his finger and said confidentially, ‘I’ll tell you, Mr Birdlip, since you ask. As you know, owing to tremendous population drops both here and elsewhere, due to one or two factors too numerous to name, there are far less people about than there were.’

‘That does follow.’

‘Quite so, ha ha,’ agreed Gavotte, gobbling a snack. ‘So, large sections of our big cities are now utterly deserted or unfrequented and falling into decay. This applies especially to London, where whole areas once occupied by artisans stand derelict. Now my company has bought up one of these sections, called Paddington. No humans live there, so the romen can conveniently stack themselves in the old houses – out of sight and out of ha ha harm.’

Birdlip stood up.

‘Very well, Mr Gavotte. And your roman here is ready to start conversions straight away? He can begin on Hippocrates now, if you wish.’

‘Certainly, certainly! Delighted.’ Gavotte beckoned to the new and gleaming machine behind him. ‘This by the way is the latest model from one of our associates, Anglo-Atomic. It’s the “Fleetfeet,” with streamlined angles and heinleined joints. We’ve just had an order for a dozen – this is confidential, by the way, but I don’t suppose it’ll matter if I tell you, Mr Birdlip – we’ve just had an order for a dozen from Buckingham Palace. Can I send you one on trial?’

‘I’m fully staffed, thank you. Now if you’d like to start work … I have another appointment at seventeen-fifty.’

‘Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two. Fifty-two! What stamina he has!’ exclaimed the RSPCR captain, Warren Pavment, to his assistant.

‘He has finished now,’ said the assistant, a 71 AEI model called Toggle. ‘Do you detect a look of content on his face, Captain?’

Hovering in a copter over the Central area, man and roman peered into the tiny screen by their knees. On the screen, clearly depicted by their spycast, a tiny Freddie Freud collapsed into a chair, rested on his laurels, and gave a tiny Bucket the whip to return to the cupboard.

‘You can stop squealing now,’ his tiny voice rang coldly in the cockpit.

‘I don’t thing he looks content,’ the RSPCR captain said. ‘I think he looks unhappy – guilty even.’

‘Guilty is bad,’ Toggle said, as his superior spun the magnification. Freud’s face gradually expanded, blotting out his body, filling the whole screen. Perspiration stood on his cheeks and forehead, each drop surrounded by its aura on the spycast.

‘I’ll bet that hurt me more than it did you,’ he panted. ‘You wrought-iron wretches, you never suffer enough.’

In the copter, roman and human looked at each other in concern.

‘You heard that? He’s in trouble. Let’s go down and pick him up,’ said the Captain of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots.

Cutting the cast, he sent his craft spinning down through a column of warm air.

Hot air ascended from Mr Gavotte. Running a sly finger between collar and neck, he was saying, ‘I’m a firm believer in culture myself, Mr Birdlip. Not that I get much time for reading –’

A knock at the door and Hippo came in. Going to him with relief, Birdlip said, ‘Well, what’s the matter with the air-conditioning?’

‘The heating circuits are on, sir. They have come on in error, three months ahead of time.’

‘Did you speak to them?’

‘I spoke to them, sir, but their auditory circuits are malfunctioning.’

‘Really, Hippo! Why is nobody doing anything about this?’

‘Cogswell is down there, sir. But as you know he is rather an unreliable model and the heat in the control room has deactivated him.’

Birdlip said reflectively, ‘Alas, the ills that steel is heir to. All right, Hippo, you stay here and let Mr Gavotte and his assistant install your homing device before they do the rest of the staff. I’ll go and see Mr Freud. He’s always good with the heating system; perhaps he can do something effective. As it is, we’re slowly cooking.’

Gavotte and Fleetfeet closed in on Hippo.

‘Open your mouth, old fellow,’ Gavotte ordered. When Hippo complied, Gavotte took hold of his lower jaw and pressed it down hard, until with a click it detached itself together with Hippo’s throat. Fleetfeet laid jaw and throat on the desk while Gavotte unscrewed Hippo’s dust filters and air cooler and removed his windpipe. As he lifted off the chest inspection cover, he said cheerfully, ‘Fortunately this is only a minor operation. Give me my drill, Fleetfeet.’ Waiting for it, he gazed at Hippo and picked his nose with considerable scientific detachment.

Not wishing to see any more, Birdlip left his office and headed for his partner’s room.

As he hurried down the corridor, he was stopped by a stranger. Uniform, in these days of individualism, was a thing of the past; nevertheless, the stranger wore something approaching a uniform: a hat reproducing a swashbuckling Eighteenth Century design, a plastic plume: a Nineteenth or Twentieth Century tunic that, with its multiplicity of pockets, gave its wearer the appearance of a perambulating chest of drawers: Twenty-First Century skirt-trousers with mobled borsts; and boots hand painted with a contemporary tartan paint.

Covering his surprise with a parade of convention, Birdlip said, ‘Warm today, isn’t it?’

‘Perhaps you can help me. My name’s Captain Pavment, Captain Warren Pavment. The doorbot sent me up here, but I have lost my way.’

As he spoke, the captain pulled forth a gleaming metal badge. At once a voice by their side murmured conspiratorially, ‘… kish annexation of the Suezzeus Canal on Mars …’ dying gradually as the badge was put away again.

‘RSPCR? Delighted to help you, Captain. Who or what are you looking for?’

‘I wish to interview a certain Frederick Freud, employed in this building,’ said Pavment, becoming suddenly official now that the sight of his own badge had reassured him. ‘Could you kindly inform me whereabouts his whereabouts is?’

‘Certainly. I’m going to see Mr Freud myself. Pray follow me. Nothing serious, I hope, Captain?’

‘Let us say nothing that should not yield to questioning.’

As he led the way, Birdlip said, ‘Perhaps I should introduce myself. I am January Birdlip, senior partner of this firm. I shall be very glad to do anything I can to help.’

‘Perhaps you’d better join our little discussion, Mr Birdlip, since the – irregularities have taken place on your premises.’

They knocked and entered Freud’s room.

Freud stood looking over a small section of city. London was quieter than it had been since before Tactitus’ ‘uncouth warriors’ had run to meet the Roman invaders landing there twenty-two centuries ago. Dwindling population had emptied its avenues; the extinction of legislators, financiers, tycoons, speculators, and planners had left acres of it desolate but intact, decaying but not destroyed, stranded like a ship without cars yet not without awe upon the strand of history.

Freud turned around and said, ‘It’s hot, isn’t it? I think I’m going home, Jan.’

‘Before you go, Freddie, this gentleman here is Captain Pavment of the RSPCR.’

‘He will be after I’ve left, too, won’t he?’ Freud asked in mock puzzlement.

‘I’ve come on a certain matter, sir,’ Pavment said, firmly but respectfully. ‘I think it might be better if your roman here left the room.’

Making a small gesture of defeat, Freud sat down on the edge of his desk and said, ‘Bucket, get out of the room.’

‘Yessir.’ Bucket left.

Pavment cleared his throat and said, ‘Perhaps you know what I’ve come about, Mr Freud.’

‘You blighters have had a spycast onto me, I suppose? Here we’ve reached a peaceful period of history, when for the first time man is content to pursue his own interests without messing up his neighbors, and you people deliberately follow a contrary policy of interference. You’re nothing but conformists!’

‘The RSPCR is a voluntary body.’

‘Precisely what I dislike about it. You volunteer to stick your nose into other people’s affairs. Well, say what you have to say and get it over with.’

Birdlip fidgeted unhappily near the door.

‘If you’d like me to leave –’

Both men motioned him to silence, and Pavment said, ‘The situation is not as simple as you think, sir, as the RSPCR well know. This is, as you say, an age when men get along with each other better than they’ve ever done; but current opinion gives the reason for this as either progress or the fact that there are now fewer men to get along with.’

‘Both excellent reasons, I’d say,’ Birdlip said.

‘The RSPCR believes there is a much better reason. Man no longer clashes with his fellow man because he can relieve all his antagonisms on his mechanicals – and nowadays there are four romen and countless robots to every one person. Romen are civilisation’s whipping boys, just as once Negroes, Jews, Catholics, or any of the old minorities were.’

‘Speaking as a Negro myself,’ said January Birdlip, ‘I’m all for the change.’

‘But see what follows,’ said Pavment. ‘In the old days, a man’s sickness, by being vented on his fellows, became known, and thus could be treated. Now it is vented on his roman, and the roman never tells. So the man’s neuroses take root in him and flourish by indulgence.’

Growing red in the face, Freud said, ‘Oh, that doesn’t follow, surely.’

‘The RSPCR has evidence that mental sickness is far more widely prevalent than anyone in our laissez-faire society suspects. So when we find a roman being treated cruelly, we try to prevent it, for we know it signifies a sick man. What happens to the roman is immaterial: but we try to direct the man to treatment.

‘Now you, Mr Freud – half an hour ago you were thrashing your roman with a bullwhip which you keep in that cupboard over there. The incident was one of many, nor was it just a healthy outburst of sadism. Its overtones of guilt and despair were symptoms of deep sickness.’

‘Can this be true, Freddie?’ Birdlip asked – quite unnecessarily, for Freud’s face, even the attitude in which he crouched, showed the truth. He produced a handkerchief and shakily wiped his brow.

‘Oh, it’s true enough, Jan; why deny it? I’ve always hated romen. I’d better tell you what they did to my sister – in fact, what they are doing, and not so very far from here. …’

Not so very far from there, Captain Pavment’s copter was parked, awaiting his return. In it, also waiting, sat the roman Toggle peering into the small spycast screen. On the screen, a tiny Freud said, ‘I’ve always hated romen.’

Flipping a switch which put him in communication with a secret headquarters in the Paddington area, Toggle said, ‘I hope you are recording all this. It should be of particular interest to the Human Sociological Study Group.’

A metallic voice from the other end said, ‘We are receiving you loud and clear.’

‘London Clear is one of the little artificial islands on Lake Mediterranean. There my sister and I spent our childhood and were brought up by romen,’ Freddie Freud said, looking anywhere but at Birdlip and the captain.

‘We are twins, Maureen and I. My mother had entered into Free Association with my father, who left for Touchdown, Venus, before we came into the world and has, to our knowledge, never returned. Our mother died in childbirth. There’s one item they haven’t got automated yet.

‘The romen that brought us up were as all romen always are – never unkind, never impatient, never unjust, never anything but their damned self-sufficient selves. No matter what Maureen and I did, even if we kicked them or spat on them or peed on them, we could elicit from them no reaction, no sign of love or anger, no hint of haste or weariness – nothing!

‘Do you wonder we both grew up loathing their gallium guts – and yet at the same time being dependent on them? In both of us a permanent and absolutely hopeless love-hate relationship with romen has been established. You see I face the fact quite clearly.’

Birdlip said, ‘You told me you had a sister, Freddie, but you said she died at the time of the Great Venusian Plague.’

‘Would she had! No, I can’t say that, but you should see how she lives now. Occasionally I have gone quite alone to see her. She lives in Paddington with the romen.’

‘With the romen?’ Pavment echoed. ‘How?’

Freud’s manner grew more distraught.

‘You see we found as we grew up that there was one way in which we had power over the romen – power to stir emotion in them, I mean, apart from the built-in power to command. Having no sex, romen are curious about it. … Overwhelmingly curious. …

‘I can’t tell you the indecencies they put us through when we reached puberty. …

‘Well, to cut a long and nasty story short, Maureen lives with the romen of Paddington. They look after her, supply her with stolen food, clothes, and the rest, while in return she – satisfies their curiosity.’

Greatly to his own embarrassment, Birdlip let out a shrill squeal of laughter. It broke up the atmosphere of the confessional.

‘This is a valuable bit of data, Mr Freud,’ Pavment said, nodding his head in approval, while the plastic plume in his hat shimmied with a secret delight.

‘If that’s all you make of it, be blowed to you,’ Freud said. He rose. ‘Just what you think you can do for either myself or my sister, I won’t ask, but in any case our way of life is set and we must look after ourselves.’

Pavment answered with something of the same lack of colour in his words. ‘That is entirely your decision. The RSPCR is a very small organisation; we couldn’t coerce if we wanted to –’

‘– that happily is the situation with most organisations nowadays –’

‘– but your evidence will be incorporated in a report we are preparing to place before the World Government.’

‘Very well, Captain. Now perhaps you’ll leave, and remove your officialdom from my presence. I have work to do.’

Before Pavment could say more, Birdlip inserted himself before his partner, patted his arm and said, ‘I laughed purely out of nervousness then, Freddie. Please don’t think I’m not sympathetic about your troubles. Now I see why you didn’t want our romen and Bucket particularly fitted with homing devices.’

‘God, it’s hot in here,’ Freud replied, sinking down and mopping his face. ‘Okay, Jan, thanks, but say no more; it’s not a topic I exactly care to dwell on. I’m going home; I don’t feel well. … Who was it said that life was a comedy to the man who thinks, a tragedy to the man who feels?’

‘Yes, you go home. In fact I think I’ll go home, too. It’s extremely hot in here, isn’t it? There’s trouble down below with the heat control. We’ll get someone to look into it tomorrow morning. Perhaps you’ll have a look yourself.’

Still talking, he backed to the door and left, with a final nervous grin at Freud and Pavment, who were heavily engaged in grinning nervously at each other.

Glimpses into other people’s secret lives always distressed him. It would be a relief to be home with Mrs Birdlip. He was outside and into his car, leaving for once without Hippo, before he remembered he had an appointment at seventeen-fifty.

Dash the appointment, he thought. Fortunately people could afford to wait these days. He wanted to see Mrs Birdlip. Mrs Birdlip was a nice comfortable little woman. She made loose covers of brightly patterned chintzes to dress her romen servants in.

Next morning, when Birdlip entered his office, a new manuscript awaited him on his desk – a pleasant enough event for a firm mainly specialising in reprints. He seated himself at the desk, then realised how outrageously hot it was.

Angrily, he banged the button of the new homing control on his desk.

Hippo appeared.

‘Oh, you’re there, Hippo. Did you go home last night?’

‘Yessir.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘To a place of shelter with other romen.’

‘Uh. Hippo, this confounded heating system is always going wrong. We had trouble last week, and then it cured itself. Ring the engineers; get them to come around; I will speak to them. Tell them to send a human this time.’

‘Sir, you had an appointment yesterday at seventeen-fifty.’

‘What has that to do with it?’

‘It was an appointment with a human engineer. You ordered him last week when the heating malfunctioned. His name was Pursewarden.’

‘Never mind his name. What did you do?’

‘As you were gone, sir, I sent him away.’

‘Ye gods! What was his name?’

‘His name was Pursewarden, sir.’

‘Get him on the phone and say I want the system repaired today. Tell him to get on with it whether I am here or not. …’ Irritation and frustration seized him, provoked by the heat. ‘And as a matter of fact I shan’t be here. I’m going to see my brother.’

‘Your brother Rainbow, sir?’

‘Since I have only one brother, yes, you fool. Is Mr Freud in yet? No? Well, I want you to come with me. Leave instructions with Bucket; tell him all I’ve told you to tell Mr Freud. … And look lively,’ he added, collecting the manuscript off the desk as he spoke. ‘I have an irrational urge to be on the way.’

On the way, he leafed through the manuscript. It was entitled An Explanation of Man’s Superfluous Activities. At first, Birdlip found the text yielded no more enticement than the title, sown as it was in desiccated phrases and bedded out in a laboured style. Persevering with it, he realized that the author – whose name, Isaac Toolust, meant nothing to him – had formulated a grand and alarming theory covering many human traits which had not before been subjected to what proved a chillingly objective examination.

He looked up. They had stopped.

To one side of the road were the rolling hedgeless miles of Kent with giant wharley crops ripening under the sun; in the copper distance a machine glinted, tending them with metal motherliness. On the other side, rupturing the flow of cultivation, lay Gafia Farm, a higgledy-piggledy of low buildings, trees and clutter, sizzling in sun and pig smell.

Hippo detached himself from the arm bracket that kept him steady when the car was in motion, climbed out, and held the door open for Birdlip.

Man and roman trudged into the yard.

A mild-eyed fellow was stacking sawed logs in a shed. He came out as Birdlip approached and nodded to him without speaking. Birdlip had never seen him on previous visits to his brother’s farm.

‘Is Rainy about, please?’ Birdlip asked.

‘Around the back. Help yourself.’

The fellow was back at his logs almost before Birdlip moved away.

They found Rainbow Birdlip around the back of the cottage, as predicted. Jan’s younger brother was standing under a tree cleaning horse harness with his own hands; Birdlip was taken for a moment by a sense of being in the presence of history; the feeling could have been no stronger had Rainy been discovered painting himself with woad.

‘Rainy!’ Birdlip said.

His brother looked up, gave him a placid greeting, and continued to polish. As usual he was wrapped in a metre-thick blanket of content. Conversation strangled itself in Birdlip’s throat, but he forced himself to speak.

‘I perceive you have a new helper out in front, Rainy.’

Rainy showed relaxed interest. He strolled over, carrying the harness over one shoulder.

‘That’s right, Jan. Fellow walked in and asked for a job. I said he could have one if he didn’t work too hard. Only got here an hour or so ago.’

‘He soon got to work.’

‘Couldn’t wait! Reckoned he’d never felt a bit of non-man-made timber before. Him thirty-five and all. Begged to be allowed to handle logs. Nice fellow. Name of Pursewarden.’

‘Pursewarden? Pursewarden? Where have I heard that name before?’

‘It is the surname of the human engineer with whom you had the appointment that you did not keep,’ Hippo said.

‘Thank you, Hippo. Your wonderful memory! Of course it is. This can’t be the same man.’

‘It is, sir. I recognised him.’

Rainy pushed past them, striding toward the open cottage door.

‘Funnily enough I had another man yesterday persuade me to take him on,’ he said, quite unconscious of his brother’s dazed look. ‘Man name of Jagger Bank. He’s down in the orchard now, feeding the pigs. … Lot of people just lately leaving town. See them walking down the road – year ago, never saw a human soul on foot. … Well, it’ll be all the same a century from now. Come on in, Jan, if you want.’

It was his longest speech. He sat down on a sound homemade chair and fell silent, emptied of news. The harness he placed carefully on the table before him. His brother came into the dim room, noted that its confusion had increased since his last visit, flicked a dirty shirt off a chair, and also sat down. Hippo entered the room and stood by the door, his neat functional lines and the chaste ornamentation on his breastplates contrasting with the disorder about him.

‘Was your Pursewarden an engineer, Rainy?’

‘Don’t know. Didn’t think to ask. We talked mostly about wood, the little we said.’

A silence fell, filled with Birdlip’s customary uneasy mixture of love, sorrow, and murderous irritation at the complacence of his brother.

‘Any news?’ he asked sharply.

‘Looks like being a better harvest for once.’

He never asked for Jan’s news.

Looking about Birdlip saw Rainy’s old run of the Prescience Library half buried under clothes and apple boxes and disinfectant bottles.

‘Do you ever look at your library for relaxation?’ he asked, nodding toward the books.

‘Haven’t bothered for a long time.’

Silence. Desperately, Birdlip said, ‘You know my partner Freud still carries the series on. Its reputation has never stood higher. We’ll soon be bringing out volume Number Five Hundred, and we’re looking for some special title to mark the event. Of course we’ve already been through all the Wells, Stapledon, Clarke, Asimov, all the plums. You haven’t any suggestions, I suppose?’