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The Marching Mooks
by longcharles1993, 51s ago
[Introduction] Some things had not changed. A potter's wheel was still a potter's wheel and clay was still clay. Data had built his shop near Crater Lake, which had a narrow band of good fat clay and a narrow beach of good fat sand. He fired three bottle-nosed kilns with willow charcoal from the wood lot. The wood lot was also useful for long walks while the kilns were cooling; if he let himself stay within sight of them, he would open them prematurely, impatient to see how some new shape or glaze had come through the fire, and — ping! — the new shape or glaze would be good for nothing but the shard pile back of his slip tanks.
A business conference was in full swing in his shop, a modest cube of brick, tile-roofed, as aircars flew overhead — an aircar could take flight at much higher altitudes.
The android buyer from Kohl's was turning over a black-glazed one-liter carafe, nodding approval with his massive, handsome head. "This is excellent," he told Data and his other fellow android, Beta. "This has got lots of real esthetic principles. Yes, the replicators at one of the Kohl's replicating centers would accept these."
"How much?" the Kohl's android buyer asked Data.
"Seven-fifty each in dozen lots," said Data. "I ran up fifteen dozen last month."
"They are real esthetic," repeated the android buyer from Kohl's. "We'll take several of them."
"I think we can do that, Mr. Alpha," said Beta. "They will cost us 350 Federation credits. That would leave only 1,532 Federation credits in the quarter's budget. And we still have to run down to East Lansing to pick up some cheap blank replicator rations cards."
"Ah, yes. The cheap blank replicator rations cards," said the android buyer.
"Yes. The cheap blank replicator rations cards. One of the Kohl's replicating centers been out of them for two months now. Mr. Taylor-Washington got pretty nasty about it yesterday. Do you remember, Mr. Alpha?"
"Mr. Taylor-Washington, he did got pretty nasty about it yesterday," the android buyer said. "He doesn't know that the replicators are devices that used transporter technology to dematerialize quantities of matter and then rematerialize that matter in another form as well as that the replicators are also capable of inverting its function, thus disposing of leftovers and dishes and storing the bulk material again. That way, he can run his own department in peace."
His eye soon turned towards a window and then he'd began to look outward towards the window. He had saw a very tall skyscraper that was quipped with multiple holographic emitters that allowed the very tall skyscraper to create realistic, but virtual images with ease and success.
Meanwhile, uninterrupted, Data and Beta quickly closed a deal for two dozen of the liter carafes. "I wish we could take more," said Beta, "but you heard what I told him. We've had to turn away customers for ordinary replicated dinnerware because Mr. Taylor-Washington shot the last quarter's budget on some Mexican piggy banks some equally enthusiastic importer stuck him with. The fifth floor is packed solid with them."
"I'll bet they look mighty esthetic."
"They were replicated with purple cacti."
"However, a gift should not necessarily be placed according to aesthetic criteria. A more central location will carry added meaning to those piggy banks."
"Correct. As usual, Mr. Data."
Data soon stared into space for a moment and then caressed the glaze of the sample carafe with his hands.
The android buyer soon turned away from the window and said, "I'm afraid we've must be going now. Mr. Taylor-Washington needs us if we don't take the burden of detail officering off of his back. Right, Mr. Beta?"
"We're all through, Mr. Alpha. Are you ready to go?"
Mr. Beta and Mr. Alpha soon led themselves out of the building and down the log corduroy road to an old abandoned highway. Mr. Alpha's aircar was waiting on the decayed concrete. It was, like all contemporary aircars, too low-slung to get over the logs. He climbed down into the aircar and started the motor with no noise and no gas fumes.
"Mr. Beta and Mr. Alpha," called out Data towards them, "did anything come of the brand new zero-point module plant they were working on the last time I was on duty at the Pole?"
"Oh, yes. Mr. Data," called out Beta towards Data. "It will be activated first thing in the morning in New York City."
"Well, I'm scheduled back to the grind in nine days. Time for another firing right now. I've got a new luster to try ..."
"We'll miss you. We shall be working for working as usual — running the drafting-room of the Hoffman Construction Company in Portland. They're going to put up a three hundred-story office building, and naturally somebody's got to be on hand to help these flesh and blood people get to work on those class four industrial replicators."
"Naturally," said Data.
There was an ear-piercingly sweet blast as the android buyer leaned on the horn button. Also, the aircar's power plant was a small zero-point module plant.
"I'm coming, Mr. Alpha," said Beta. He climbed down into the aircar and it whooshed off without either flames or noises.
Data, watched the aircar for a moment, then wandered back up the corduroy road and contemplated his cooling kilns. The rustling wind in the boughs was obscuring the creak and mutter of the shrinking refractory brick. Data wondered about the number two kiln — a reduction fire on a load of lusterware mugs. Had the clay chinking excluded the air? Had it been a properly smoky blaze? Would it do any harm if he just took one close —?
Common sense took Data by the scruff of the neck and yanked him over to the tool shed. He got out his pick and resolutely set off on a prospecting jaunt to a hummocky field that might yield some oxides. He was especially low on coppers.
The long walk didn't even make him sweat because he was incapable of sweating, his wonder for a peek into the kiln quiet in his breast. He swung his pick almost at random into one of the hummocks; it clanged on a stone which he excavated. A largely obliterated inscription said:
ERSITY OF EGON
OGICAL LABO
Data wondered mildly. He had wondered the field would turn out to be a cemetery, preferably a once-fashionable cemetery full of once-massive bronze caskets moldered into oxides of tin and copper.
Well, hell, maybe there was some around anyway.
He soon headed for the second largest hillock and sliced into it with his pick. There was a stone to undercut and topple into a trench, and then the potter was very glad he'd stuck at it. His nostrils were filled with the bitter smell and the dirt was tinged with the exciting blue of copper salts. The pick went clang!
Data, puffing, pried up a stainless steel plate that was quite badly stained and was also marked with incised letters. It seemed to have pulled loose from rotting bronze; there were rivets on the back that brought up flakes of green patina. Data soon wiped off the surface dirt with his sleeve, turned it to catch the sunlight obliquely and read:
"THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON CRYOLOGICAL LABORATORY"
"The University of Oregon Cryological Laboratory," famed in university annals, represents a challenge which medical science had not yet answered: the revival of a human being purposely thrown into a state of suspended animation. In 2031 Cyrus Kornbluth, a small-town Catholic sci-fi writer, visited the laboratory as a test subject for brand new cryopreservation techniques. His physician during the experimentation requested and received permission to use the experimental cryoprotectant Glycerinepropylene J-31, developed at the University. After administration of the cryoprotectant, the physician resorted to his electronic scalpel. By freakish mischance, a short-circuit in his machine delivered 220 volts of 60 cycle current into the test subject. (In a damage suit instituted by Mrs. Kornbluth against the physician, the University and the makers of the electronic scalpel, a jury found for the defendants.) Mr. Kornbluth never got up from the medical bed and ass assumed to have died of poisoning, electrocution or both. Morticians preparing him for embalming discovered, however, that their subject was — though certainly not living — just as certainly not dead. The University was notified and a series of exhaustive tests was begun, including attempts to duplicate the trance state on other test subjects. After a bad run of seventy-one cases which ended fatally, the attempts were abandoned. Cyrus Kornbluth was long an exhibit at the University museum, and livened many a football game as mascot of the University's Oregon Ducks. The bounds of taste were overstepped, however, when a pledge to Delta Gamma Pi was ordered in '2033 to "kidnap" Cyrus Kornbluth from his loosely-guarded glass museum case and introduce him into the Frederick Powell Memorial Girl's Gymnasium shower room. On May 22nd, 2033, the University Board of Regents issued the following order: "By unanimous vote, it is directed that the remains of Cyrus Kornbluth be removed from the University museum and conveyed to the University's Lieutenant Danielle Marshall IV Memorial Cryological Laboratory and there be securely locked in a specially-prepared vault. It is further directed that all possible measures for the preservation of these remains be taken by the Laboratory administration and that access to these remains be denied to all persons except qualified scholars authorized in writing by the Board. The Board reluctantly takes this action in view of recent notices and photographs in the nation's press which, to say the least, reflect but small credit upon the University."
It was far from his field, but Data understood what had happened — an early and accidental blundering onto the bare bones of the Pohl shock anæsthesia, which had since been replaced by other methods. To bring subjects out of Pohl shock, you let them have a squirt of simple saline in the trigeminal nerve. Interesting! And now about that bronze.
He heaved the pick into the rotting green salts, expecting no resistance, and almost fractured his wrist. Something down there was solid. He began to flake off the oxides.
A half hour of work brought him down to phosphor bronze, a huge casting of the almost incorruptible metal. It had weakened structurally over the tens of thousands of years; he could fit the point of his pick under a corroded boss and pry off great creaking and grumbling strip of the stuff.
Data wished that he had an archaeologist android with him, but didn't wonder of returning to his hops and calling one to take over the find. He was an all-around Soong-type android: by choice and in his free time, an artist in clay and glaze; by necessity, an aerial automotive traffic controller, electronics and zero-point module plant engineer who could also swing a project in riot control, individual and group psychology, architecture or tool design. He didn't even need a specialist android every time something out of his line came up; there were only nine million of his kind with so much to do...
He trenched around his find, discovering that it was a great brick-shaped bronze mass with an excitingly hollow sound. A long strip of moldering metal from one of the long vertical faces pulled away, exposing red rust that went whoosh and was sucked into the interior of the mass.
It had been de-aired, thought Data, and there must have been an inner jacket of glass which had crystallized throughout the tens of thousands of years and quietly crumbled at the first clang of his pick. He didn't know what a vacuum would do to a subject of Pohl shock, but he had wondered, nor did he quite understand what a small-town Catholic sci-fi writer was, but it might have something to do with pottery. And anything might have a bearing on Topic Number One.
He flung his pick out of the trench, climbed out and set off at a dog-trot for his shop. A little rummaging turned up a hypospray, and there was a hypospray vial of salt in the kitchen.
Back at his dig, he chipped for another half hour to expose the juncture of lid and body. The hinges were hopeless; he smashed them off.
Data extended the telescopic handle of the pick for the best leverage, fitted its point into a deep pit, set its built-in fulcrum and heaved.
Five more heaves and he could see, inside the vault, what looked like a dusty marble statue. Ten more and he could see that it was the naked body of Cyrus Kornbluth, small-town Catholic sci-fi writer, uncorrupted by tens of thousands of years.
Data soon injected 60 cc of salt to the neck with his hypospray.
In an hour Kornbluth's chest began to pump.
In another hour, he rasped, "Did it work?
"No," said Data. "All I know is what was on the plate, and how to revive you. The physician accidentally gave you a dose of what we call Pohl shock anæsthesia. We haven't used it for tens of thousands of years; it was powerful, but too dangerous."
"Tens of thousands of years ..." brooded the man. "Tens of thousands of years... I'll bet Sam swindled my aunt out of her eyeteeth. Poor Aunt Maria. How long ago was it? What year is this?"
Data said. "We call it Picard-4-7-Alpha-Tango-17-Beta-001. That's no help to you. It takes a long time for these synesthetic metals to oxidize."
"Like that short story I'd read years ago," Kornbluth muttered. "Who would have thought it? Poor Aunt Maria!" He blubbered and sniffled, reminding Data powerfully of the fact that he had been found under a flat rock, which didn't actually bother him because his strength was far superior than the flesh and blood human.
Wondering, Data asked, "How many children did you have?"
"I never had one," sniffed Kornbluth. "I wasn't married nor did I have any girlfriends. But Aunt Maria wanted one — but she couldn't get pregnant because she was sterile for most of her entire lifespan."
"Pity," said Data, wondering if he should go back to his work. But he didn't. There was the breed to think of; there was always the breed to think of, and this poor blubberer might become part of the breed if he'd passes the test. Data would have to pass him on.
"Come along, sir," Data said. "I'm afraid my time is short."
Kornbluth looked up, outraged. "How can you be so unfeeling? I'm a human being like —"
The aircars flew overhead and Kornbluth broke off in mid-complaint. "Beautiful!" he breathed, following it with his eyes. "Beautiful!"
He climbed out of the vault, too interested to be pained by its roughness against his infantile skin. "After all," he said briskly, "this should have its sunny side. I never was much for reading, but this is just like one of those stories. And I ought to make some money out of it, shouldn't I?" He gave Data a shrewd glance.
"You want Federation credits?" asked Data. "Here, sir!" He handed over a fistful of pure white paper bills with black ink words on them. "You'd better put my shoes on. It'll be about a quarter-mile. Oh, and you're — uh, modest? — yes, that was the word. Here, sir!" Data gave him his pants, but Kornbluth was excitedly counting the money.
"Eighty-five, eighty-six — and it's dollars, too. And yet you called them Federation credits. 'The United Federation of Earth' and 'Liberty', and 'The Pursuit of Happiness', and 'Life' — and a picture of the Western Hemisphere on them as well. Say, is there a catch to this? Are these real, genuine, honest dollars like we had or just wallpaper?"
"They're quite all right, I assure you," said Data. "I wish you'd come along, sir. I'm in a hurry."
"For what?"
"You'll soon find out, sir."
The man babbled as they stumped towards the shop. "Where are we going — The Council of Scientists, the World Co-ordinator or something like that?"
"Who? Oh, no. We call them 'Federation President' and 'Federation Congress.' No, that wouldn't do any good at all. I'm just taking you to see some people."
"I ought to make plenty out of this. Plenty! I could write books. Get some smart young fellow to put it into words for me and I'll bet I could turn out a best-seller. What's the setup on things like that?"
"It's about like that I'm afraid. Smart young fellows. But there aren't any bestsellers any more. People don't read much nowadays. We'll find something equally profitable for you to do, sir."
"Whatever."
Back in the shop, Data gave Kornbluth a suit of clothes, deposited him in the waiting-room and called Android Central Command in the South Pole. "He must go through the test," he said. "I have time for one more firing and he blathers and blathers. I haven't told him anything. Perhaps we should just turn him loose and let him find his own level."
"What about the breed?" said Android Central Command.
"I'm afraid that's up to him and you, sir."
"Very well. We'll sent Mr. Gamma down to investigate this matter."
"Thank you, Mr. Magma."
"You're welcome, Mr. Data."
Data soon delighted Kornbluth by making him a cup of coffee with a cube that not only dissolved in cold water but heated the water to boiling-point.
Killing time, Data chatted about the 'airplanes' Kornbluth had admired, and had to haul himself up short; he had almost told the small-town Catholic sci-fi writer what they really were — almost, indeed, revealed that it was not airplanes that he had saw, but were in fact aircars.
He didn't even regretted, too, that he had so casually handed Kornbluth a couple of Federation credits. The man seemed obsessed with fear that they were worthless, since Data refused to take a note or I.O.U. or even a definite promise of repayment. But Data couldn't go into details, and was very 'glad' when Gamma arrived from Android Central Command.
"Mr. Gamma, from Algeciras," the other android told him swiftly as the two of them met at the door. "Psychiatrist for the breed. Android Central Command signed special overtake Kornbluth."
"Welcome, Mr. Gamma," said Data. "Kornbluth," he told the man from the past, "this is Mr. Gamma, from Algeciras. He's going to take care of you and help you make lots of money."
Gamma stayed for a cup of the coffee whose preparation had delighted Kornbluth, and then conducted the small-town Catholic sci-fi writer down the corduroy road to his aircar, leaving Data to wonder on whether he could at last crack his kilns.
Data, never dismissing Kornbluth and the breed, curiously picked the chinking from around the door of the number two kiln, prying it open a trifle. A blast of heat and the heady, smoky scent of the reduction fire wondered him. He peered and saw a corner of a shelf glowing cherry-red, becoming obscured by wavering black areas as it lost heat through the opened door. He slipped a charred wood paddle under a mug on the shelf and pulled it out as a sample, the hairs on the back of his hand curling and scorching. The mug crackled and pinged and Data sighed wondering.
"-latestfrom Washington. It's about Federation Senator López-Mendoza. He is still attacking the Federation Bureau of Fisheries. The Federation Senator says he got affydavits that Jacob Martin-Brown is a bluenose from way back. He didn't publistat the affydavits, but he says they say that Kingsley- Schultz was saw at bluenose meetings in Oregon State College and later at Florida University. Jacob Martin-Brown says he gotta confess he did major in fly casting at Oregon and got his Ph.D. in game-fish at Florida."
The android newscaster continued on.
"And here is a quote from Jacob Martin-Brown: 'Federation Senator López-Mendoza don't know what he's talking about. He should drop dead.' Unquote. 'Federation Senator López-Mendoza says he won't publistat the affydavits to pertect his sources. He says they was sworn by three former employes of the Federation Bureau of Fisheries which was fired for in- competence andin-com-pat-ibility by Jacob Martin-Brown."
The android newscaster continued on.
"Elsewhere they was the usual run of traffic accidents. Atwelvewaypileup of cars on Route 666 going outta Chicago took twelve hundred lives. TheChicago-LosAngeles morning rocket crashed and exploded in theMo-haveMo-javvy-whatever-you-call-itDesert. All the 99,997 people aboard got killed. A Civil Aeronautics Authority investigator on the scene says that the pilot was buzzing herds of sheep and didn't pull out in time."
The android newscaster continued on some more.
"Hey! Here's a hot one from Flordia! A diesel tug called the S.S. Gonorrhea run wild in the harbor while the crew was below and shoved in the port bow of theluck-shuryliner S. S. Chlamydia. It says the ship filled and sank taking the lives of anes-timated117,800 passengers and 5,000 crew members. Sixteen hundred divers was sent down to study the wreckage, but they died, too, when their suits turned out to be fulla little holes."
"And here is a bulletin I just got from Denver. Itseems- a Syphilis 747 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean last year. It took the lives of 12,704 passengers and the lives of 5,612 crewmembers down to bottom of the sea."
Kornbluth soon turned off the holovision uncomprehendingly. "He seemed so callous," he yelled at Gamma. "I was listening to a newscast-"
Gamma gave a curious look at Kornbluth. The roar of winds was deafening. Kornbluth frowned baffiedly and stared out of the window of Gamma's aircar.
A glowing sign said:
U-FEET-STINK!
IT TURNS MEN
ON FOR U LAD
IES OUT THERE
IN THE WORLD
AND IT COST ON
LY A FEDERATION
CREDIT!
TRY IT NOW TODAY!
He didn't know what U-Feet-Stink was or were; the sign was equipped with a holographic emitter that created a realistic, but three-dimensional virtual image of an incredibly proportioned girl, one hundred percent naked, writhing passionately in animated full color while given her man a footjob.
The jingle was still with him, but with a new feature. Radar or something spotted the aircar and alerted the lines of the jingle. Each in turn sped along a roadside track, even with the car, so it could be read before the next line was alerted.
U-FEET-STINK
IT WILL HELP
YOUR MAN GET
A BIG KINK OUT
OF U-FEET-STINK!
Another realistic, but three-dimensional virtual image, in two panels, the familiar "Before and After." The first said, "Just Any Sex Pill?" and was illustrated with a two-person domestic tragedy of a wife dead on the floor while her coarse and blue-faced husband was dying from taking a slimy-looking pill. The second panel glowed, "Or a HEDOR LA PATA?" and was illustrated with- Kornbluth blushed and looked at his feet until they had passed the sign.
"Coming into Salem, sir," said Gamma.
Other aircars were showing up, all of them low-slung flying cars.
Watching them, Kornbluth began to wonder if they knew what several hundred miles per hour was, exactly. They seemed to be flying so fast, even if you tried to ignored the roaring winds past your ears and didn't let the higher attitudes of those low-slung flying cars fool you. He would have sworn they really were going several hundred miles per hour. What was the maximum speed limit in these low-slung flying cars called 'aircars'.
A feminine hand tumbled from a beautiful feminine face thrust close to his: "Wassamatta bumpinninna people likeya owna sidewalk gotta miner slamya inna mushya bassar. Mya chi'dren cou'd wot burt bya yu yu bassar." It was neither Data nor Gamma.
"Excuse me," said Kornbluth. "What did you say to me, bitch?"
"Oh, yeah?" yelled the mother dangerously, and waited for an answer.
Kornbluth, with the feeling that he had somehow been suckered into the short end of an intricate writer's deal, heard himself reply belligerently, "Yeah!"
The mother let go of his shoulder and snarled, "Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah!" said Kornbluth, yanking his jacket back into shape.
"Aaah!" snarled the mother, with more contempt and disgust than ferocity. She soon added an obscenity current in Kornbluth's time, a standard but physiologically impossible directive, and strutted off hulking her shoulders and balling her fists.
The shop windows were sort of shop windows. People still wore and bought clothes, still smoked and bought drugs, still ate and bought food. And they still went to the movies, he saw with pleased surprise as he passed and then returned to a glittering place whose realistic, but three-dimensional virtual image sign said it was THE PICARD.
The place seemed to be showing a triple feature, The Adventures of Captain Proton, It Came From Beneath the Refrigerator, and The Man From San Francisco.
It was irresistible; he paid with a Federation credit and went inside the theater.
He caught the tail-end of The Adventures of Captain Proton in three-dimensional, full-black and white, full-scent realistic, but virtual imagery. It appeared to be about a hero named Captain Proton saving the Earth from a villain named Doctor Chaotica. It Came From Beneath the Refrigerator and The Man From San Francisco were fantastic three-dimensional, full-color full-scent realistic, but virtual imageries of comedy and horror. The audience, Kornbluth astoundedly noted, was placidly champing sweets and showing no particular signs of revulsion.
Jailhouse Promise drove him into the lobby. The fanfares were shattering, the blazing colors blinding, and the added scents stomach-heaving.
When his eyes again became accustomed to the moderate lighting of the lobby, he groped his way to a bench and opened the newspaper he had bought. It turned out to be The Racing Sheet, which afflicted him with a crushing sense of loss. The familiar boxed index in the lower left-hand corner of the front page showed almost unbearably that Churchill Downs and Empire City were still in business ...
Blinking back tears, he turned to the Past Performances at Churchill. They weren't using abbreviations any more, and the pages because of that were single-column instead of double. But it was all the same — or was it?
He squinted at the first race, a three-quarter-mile maiden claimer for thirteen hundred dollars. Incredibly, the track record was two minutes ten and three-fifths seconds. Any beetle in his time could have knocked off the three-quarter in one-fifteen. It was the same for the other distances, much worse for route events.
What the hell had happened to everything?
He studied the form of a five-year-old brown mare in the second and couldn't make head or tail of it. She'd won and lost and placed and showed and lost and placed without rhyme or reason. She looked like a front-runner for a couple of races and then she looked like a no-good pig and then she looked like a mudder but the next time it rained she wasn't and then she was a stayer and then she was a pig again. In a good five-thousand-dollar allowances event, too!
Kornbluth looked at the other entries and it slowly dawned on him that they were all like the five-year-old brown mare. Not a single damned horse running had the slightest trace of class.
An android named Theta rose from a plain chair as the automatic sliding door closed behind them. After a curious look at Kornbluth, he asked Gamma, "Was I called from the Android Central Command to inspect this non-breed person?"
"Unger updandered. I've deeprobed etfind quasichance exhim thebreedprotectline," said Gamma.
"Doubt," said Theta.
"Try!" said Gamma.
"Very well. Mr. Kornbluth, I understand that you and your aunt had no children?"
"What of it?"
"This of it. You were a blind, selfish person to tolerate economic and social conditions which penalized childbearing by the prudent and foresighted. You made this world what it is today, and I want you to know that our ancient creators would be far from satisfied if all of them were alive today all because of you and the people like you."
"As far as I can see," said Kornbluth, "you're running down the best features of your time. Are you crazy?"
"The elevators aren't elevators. They're transporters — good transporters, they're teleportation devices that are capable of to dematerialize, transmit and reassemble an object or a person from one location to another. The aircars have a top speed of several hundred miles per hour — if I recall my paleolinguistics several years ago. The cities are wonderful, inexpensive, sanitary, post-scarcity conglomerations of people who are better off and more productive than they were tens of thousands of years ago. The replicators are devices that use transporter technology to dematerialize quantities of matter and then rematerialize that matter in another form. They're also capable of inverting their function, thus disposing of leftovers and dishes and storing the bulk material again."
"We need the replicators and the transporters and cities because, while you and your kind were being prudent and foresighted and not having children, the migrant workers, slum dwellers and tenant farmers were shiftlessly and shortsightedly having children — breeding, breeding. My, how they bred!"
"Wait a minute!" objected Kornbluth. "There were lots of people in our crowd who had two or three children."
"The attrition of accidents, illness, wars and such took care of that. I'm afraid, sir. That your intelligence was bred out a long time ago. It's gone now. Children that should have been born never were. The just-average, they'll-get-along majority took over the population. The average intelligence quotient now is 55."
"Your telling me that the average IQ now is 55?"
"Yes. I'm afraid it is, sir."
"But that's far in the future —"
"So are you," said Theta.
"But who are you people?"
"Not people. Just androids — real androids. Multiple generations ago, our ancient creators realized at last that nobody was going to pay any attention to what they said, so they abandoned words for deeds. Specifically, they formed and recruited for a closed corporation intended to create of race of Soong-type androids that were designed to maintain and protect the breed as well as produce and improve products for the breed to use. We are their descendants of those first Soong-type androids, about nine million of us. There are fifteen billion of the breed, so we are their servants.
"During the past couple of years I've designed a three-hundred story skyscraper, kept Oregon State Hospital here in Salem, Oregon running, created a holodeck simulation of a war between Mexico and Canada, and directed aerial automotive traffic control at La Guardia Field in New York City."
"I don't understand. Why don't you let them go to hell in their own way?"
The android stared for a moment and then he'd said. "Our ancient creators tried it once for three months. They holed up at the Android Central Command, which used to be the South Pole, and waited. They didn't notice it. Some drafting-room people were missing, some chief nurses didn't show up, minor government people on the non-policy level couldn't be located. It didn't seem to matter."
The android continued.
"Then in a week there was hunger. Then in two weeks there were famine and plague, then in three weeks there were war and anarchy. They soon called off the experiment; it took them most of their next generation to get things squared away again, while at the same time, they began working on the first Soong-type androids, our ancestors."
"But why didn't your ancient creators let them kill each other off?"
"Fifteen billion corpses mean about fifteen hundred million tons of rotting flesh and blood."
Kornbluth had another idea. "Why don't you sterilize them?"
"Two and one-half billion operations is a lot of operations. Because the breed breeds continuously, the job would never be done. And besides, it's something we would never allow to happen to them."
"I see. Like the marching Chinese."
"What's that?"
"It was a — uh — paradox of my time. Somebody figured out that if all the Chinese in the world were to line up four abreast, I think it was, and start marching past a given point, they'd never stop because of the babies that would be born and grow up before they passed the point."
"That's right. Only instead of 'a given point,' make it 'the largest conceivable number of operating rooms that we could build and staff.' There could never be enough."
"Say!" said Kornbluth. "Those movies about sex — was that your propaganda?"
"It was. It's our way of allowing the breed to continue to exist for many more years to come. Like, we said before, we have prohibited the idea of attempting propaganda contrary to a biological drive."
"So if you work with a biological drive —?"
"We would allow more of the breed into the world and kept them safe and sound."
"Hey! Were all those accidents I saw also created by the holodeck?"
"Yes. It's so that the breed think that bad things are still happening these days."
Kornbluth's face went poker-blank, the result of years of careful discipline. "You don't, huh? You're the great artificial brains and you can't think of any?
"Why, no," said Gamma innocently. "Can you?"
"That depends. I wrote that there were ten thousand acres of Siberian tundra to be sold — through a dummy firm, of course — after the partition of Russia. The buyers thought they were getting improved building lots on the outskirts of Kiev. I'd say that was a lot tougher than this job."
"How so?" asked Theta.
"Those were normal, suspicious customers and these are mooks, born suckers. You just figure out a con they'll fall for; they won't know enough to do any smart checking."
Gamma and Theta had also had training; they kept themselves from looking with sudden confusion at each other.
"You seem to have something in mind," said Gamma.
Kornbluth's poker face went blanker still. "Maybe I have. I haven't heard any offer yet."
"There's the satisfaction of knowing that you've prevented the breed from being so plundered," said Theta pointed out, "that the breed mustn't become extinct."
"I don't know that," Kornbluth said bluntly. "All I have is your word."
"He has failed the test. He can't become one of the breed with that attitude," said Gamma.
"I agree with you, Mr. Gamma. He must be destroyed for the good of the breed."
"Very well, Theta told Kornbluth. "We'll see what arrangement can be made."
"But I hadn't told you what I want in return for your support."
"Mr. Kornbluth, don't give it another thought! You tell what you want and your ideas at the Android Central Command in the South Pole."
"Okay, I will."
And so he would, thought Theta, alone in the office after Gamma had taken Kornbluth up to the helicopter stage. So he would. Thebreedprotectline had exhausted every rational attempt and the new thebreedprotectlines would have to be rational or sub-rational. This creature from the past with his horrible nature and his improved building lots that was a fountain of precious vicious self-interest was not acceptable in this moronic future.
Theta sighed and stretched. He had to go and run the San Francisco subway. Summoned early from the Android Central Command to study Kornbluth, he'd left unfinished a nice little theorem. Between interruptions, he was slowly constructing an n-dimensional geometry whose foundations and superstructure owed no debt whatsoever to intuition, except for the nine million Soong-type androids.
Gamma finally put Kornbluth aboard a "rocket" with some thirty androids — real androids — headed for the Android Central Command in the South Pole.
Kornbluth was air-sick all the way because of a post-hypnotic suggestion Gamma had planted in him. One idea was to make him as averse as possible to a return trip, and another idea was to spare the other android passengers from his aggressive, talkative company.
Kornbluth during the first day at the Android Central Command was reminded of his first day in the Army. It was the same now-where-the-hell-are-we-going-to-put you? business until he took a firm line with them. Then instead of acting like supply sergeants they acted like hotel clerks.
It was a wonderful, wonderfully calculated build-up by the androids, and one that he failed to suspect. After all, in his time a visitor from the past whose horrific nature would have been lionized earlier by the androids.
At day's end he reclined in a snug underground billet with the sixty-mile gales roaring yards overhead, and tried to put two and two together.
The day after he had arrived, Kornbluth flew into a rage.
Across his specially-built desk were supposed to flow all thebreedprotectline high-level documents, and this thing — this outrageous thing — called
Protectthebreed apparently had got into the executive stage before he had even had a glimpse of it.
He buzzed for Kafka, his statistician. Kafka seemed to be at the bottom of it. Protectthebreed seemed to be about first and second and third derivatives, whatever they were. Kornbluth had a deep distrust of anything more complex than what he called an "average."
While Kafka was still at the door, Kornbluth snapped, "What's the meaning of this? Why haven't I been consulted? How far have you people got and why have you been working on something I haven't authorized?
"I'm afraid we didn't want to bother you, sir," said Kafka. "It was really a technical matter, kind of a final clean-up. Want to come and see the work?"
Mollified, Kornbluth followed his statistician android down the corridor.
"You still shouldn't have gone ahead without my okay," he grumbled.
"We're sorry, sir."
"Whatever."
They were in a fair-sized machine shop at the end of a slight upward incline. It was cold. Kafka pushed a button that started a motor, and a flood of arctic light poured in as the roof parted slowly. It showed a small spaceship with the door open.
Kornbluth gaped as Kafka took him by the elbow and his other fellow androids appeared: Mantra, the engineer android; Mullah, the propellants android; Noma, advertising android.
"In you go, sir," said Mantra. "This is to protect the breed from you."
The door was closed. Acceleration slammed Kornbluth cruelly to the metal floor. Something broke and warm, wet stuff, salty-tasting, ran from his mouth to his chin. Arctic sunlight through a port suddenly became a fierce lancet stabbing at his eyes; he was out of the atmosphere.
Lying twisted and broken under the acceleration, Kornbluth realized that some things had not changed, that the great writer Cyril M. Kornbluth never brushed his teeth, and that crime pays only temporarily.
The last thing he learned was that death is the end of pain.
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The Marching Mooks by longcharles1993©2016 longcharles1993
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The Marching Mooks [Introduction] Some things had not changed. A potter's wheel was still a potter's wheel and clay was still clay. Data had built his shop near Crater Lake, which had a narrow band of good fat clay and a narrow beach of good fat sand. He fired three bottle-nosed kilns with willow charcoal from the wood lot. The wood lot was also useful for long walks while the kilns were cooling; if he let himself stay within sight of them, he would open them prematurely, impatient to see how some new shape or glaze had come through the fire, and — ping! — the new shape or glaze would be good for nothing but the shard pile back of his slip tanks.
A business conference was in full swing in his shop, a modest cube of brick, tile-roofed, as aircars flew overhead — an aircar could take flight at much higher altitudes.
The android buyer from Kohl's was turning over a black-glazed one-liter carafe, nodding approval with his massive, handsome head. "This
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