"Reads, mostly. He got into the habit back in the 30s, when he was
studying philosophy at the University of Chicago. When the Civil War
broke out in Spain, he signed up with the Lincoln Brigade and went over
there to fight, but it turned out to be a bad mistake. His reading got
him in a lot of trouble, you see; he'd gotten used to asking all sorts
of questions, so when the Moscow Trials came along, he asked about
them. Then the N.K.V.D. began to pop up all over Spain, and he asked
about it.
"His comrades, he discovered, didn't like guys who kept asking
questions. In fact, a couple of Steve's friends who had also had an
inquiring streak were found dead at the front, shot in the _back_,
and Steve got the idea that he was slated for the same treatment.
It seemed that people who asked questions were called saboteurs,
Trotskyite-Fascists or something, and they kept dying at an alarming
rate."
I ordered another Martini for Len and asked how Steve had managed to
save himself.
"He beat it across the mountains into France," Len explained. "Since
then he's steered clear of causes. He goes to sea once in a while
to make a few bucks, drinks a lot, reads a lot, asks some of the
shrewdest questions I know. If he's anything you can put a label on,
I'd say he was a touch of Rousseau, a touch of Tolstoi, plenty of
Voltaire. Come to think of it, a touch of Norbert Wiener too. Wiener,
you may remember, used to ask some damned iconoclastic questions for a
cyberneticist. Steve knows Wiener's books by heart."
Steve sounded like a very colorful fellow, I suggested.
"Yep," Len said. "Marilyn used to think so." I don't think I moved a
muscle when he said it; the smile didn't leave my face. "Ollie," Len
went on, "I've been meaning to speak to you about Marilyn. Now that the
subject's come up--"
"I've forgotten all about it," I assured him.
"I still want to set you straight," he insisted. "It must have looked
funny, me moving down to New York after commencement and Marilyn giving
up her job in the lab and following two days later. But never mind
_how_ it looked. I never made a pass at her all that time in Boston,
Ollie. That's the truth. But she was a screwy, scatter-brained dame and
she decided she was stuck on me because I dabbled in poetry and hung
around with artists and such in the Village, and she thought it was all
so glamorous. I didn't have anything to do with her chasing down to New
York, no kidding. You two were sort of engaged, weren't you?"
"It really doesn't matter," I said. "You don't have to explain." I
finished my drink. "You say she knew Lundy?"
"Sure, she knew Lundy. She also knew Kram, Rossard, Broyold, Boster, De
Kroot and Hayre. She knew a whole lot of guys before she was through."
"She always was sociable."
"You don't get my meaning," Len said. "I am not talking about Marilyn's
gregarious impulses. Listen. First she threw herself at me, but I got
tired of her. Then she threw herself at Steve and _he_ got tired of
her. Damn near the whole male population of the Village got tired of
her in the next couple years."
"Those were troubled times. The war and all."
"They were troubled times," Len agreed, "and she was the source of
a fair amount of the trouble. You were well rid of her, Ollie, take
my word for it. God save us from the intense Boston female who goes
bohemian--the icicle parading as the torch."
"Just as a matter of academic curiosity," I said as we were leaving,
"what became of her?"
"I don't know for sure. During her Village phase she decided her
creative urge was hampered by compasses and T-squares, and in
between men she tried to do a bit of painting--very abstract, very
imitative-original, very hammy. I heard later that she finally gave up
the self-expression kick, moved up to the East Seventies somewhere. If
I remember, she got a job doing circuit designing on some project for
I.B.M."
"She's probably doing well at it," I said. "She certainly knew her
drafting. You know, she helped lay out the circuits for the first robot
bedbug I ever built."
* * * * *
_November 19, 1959_
Big step forward, if it isn't unseemly to use a phrase like that in
connection with Pro research. This afternoon we completed the first
two experimental models of my self-propelled solenoid legs, made of
transparent plastic so everything is visible--solenoids, batteries,
motors, thyratron tubes and transistors.
Kujack was waiting in the fitting room to give them their first tryout,
but when I got there I found Len sitting with him. There were several
empty beer cans on the floor and they were gabbing away a mile a minute.
Len _knows_ how I hate to see people drinking during working hours.
When I put the pros down and began to rig them for fitting, he said
conspiratorially, "Shall we tell him?"
Kujack was pretty crocked, too. "Let's tell him," he whispered back.
Strange thing about Kujack, he hardly ever says a word to me, but he
never closes his mouth when Len's around.
"All right," Len said. "_You_ tell him. Tell him how we're going to
bring peace on Earth and good will toward bedbugs."
"We just figured it out," Kujack said. "What's wrong with war. It's a
steamroller."
"Steamrollers are very undemocratic," Len added. "Never consult people
on how they like to be flattened before flattening them. They just go
rolling along."
"Just go rolling, they go on rolling along," Kujack said. "Like Old Man
River."
"What's the upshot?" Len demanded. "People get upshot, shot up. In all
countries, all of them without exception, they emerge from the war
spiritually flattened, a little closer to the insects--like the hero in
that Kafka story who wakes up one morning to find he's a bedbug, I mean
beetle. All because they've been steamrolled. Nobody consulted them."
"Take the case of an amputee," Kujack said. "Before the land mine
exploded, it didn't stop and say, 'Look, friend, I've got to go off;
that's my job. Choose which part you'd prefer to have blown off--arm,
leg, ear, nose, or what-have-you. Or is there somebody else around who
would relish being clipped more than you would? If so, just send him
along. I've got to do some clipping, you see, but it doesn't matter
much which part of which guy I clip, so long as I make my quota.' Did
the land mine say that? No! The victim wasn't consulted. Consequently
he can feel victimized, full of self-pity. We just worked it out."
"The whole thing," Len said. "If the population had been polled
according to democratic procedure, the paraplegia and other maimings
could have been distributed to each according to his psychological
need. See the point? Marx corrected by Freud, as Steve Lundy would
say. Distribute the injuries to each according to his need--not his
economic need, but his masochistic need. Those with a special taste
for self-damage obviously should be allowed a lion's share of it. That
way nobody could claim he'd been victimized by the steamroller or got
anything he didn't ask for. It's all on a voluntary basis, you see.
Democratic."
"Whole new concept of war," Kujack agreed. "Voluntary amputeeism,
voluntary paraplegia, voluntary everything else that usually happens to
people in a war. Just to get some human dignity back into the thing."
"Here's how it works," Len went on. "Country A and Country B reach the
breaking point. It's all over but the shooting. All right. So they pool
their best brains, mathematicians, actuaries, strategists, logistics
geniuses, and all. What am I saying? They pool their best _robot_
brains, their Emsiacs. In a matter of seconds they figure out, down
to the last decimal point, just how many casualties each side can be
expected to suffer in dead and wounded, and then they break down the
figures. Of the wounded, they determine just how many will lose eyes,
how many arms, how many legs, and so on down the line. Now--here's
where it gets really neat--each country, having established its
quotas in dead and wounded of all categories, can send out a call for
volunteers."
"Less messy that way," Kujack said. "An efficiency expert's war. War on
an actuarial basis."
"You get exactly the same results as in a shooting war," Len insisted.
"Just as many dead, wounded and psychologically messed up. But you
avoid the whole steamroller effect. A tidy war, war with dispatch,
conceived in terms of ends rather than means. The end never did justify
the means, you see; Steve Lundy says that was always the great dilemma
of politics. So with one fool sweep--fell swoop--we get rid of means
entirely."
"As things stand with me," Kujack said, "if _anything_ stands with me,
I might get to feeling sore about what happened to me. But nothing
happens _to_ the volunteer amputee. He steps up to the operating
table and says, 'Just chop off one arm, Doc, the left one, please,
up to the elbow if you don't mind, and in return put me down for
one-and-two-thirds free meals daily at Longchamps and a plump blonde
every Saturday.'"
"Or whatever the exchange value for one slightly used left arm would
be," Len amended. "That would have to be worked out by the robot
actuaries."
By this time I had the pros fitted and the push-button controls
installed in the side pocket of Kujack's jacket.
"Maybe you'd better go now, Len," I said. I was very careful to show no
reaction to his baiting. "Kujack and I have some work to do."
"I hope you'll make him a moth instead of a bedbug," Len said as he got
up. "Kujack's just beginning to see the light. Be a shame if you give
him a negative tropism to it instead of a positive one." He turned to
Kujack, wobbling a little. "So long, kid. I'll pick you up at seven and
we'll drive into New York to have a few with Steve. He's going to be
very happy to hear we've got the whole thing figured out."
I spent two hours with Kujack, getting him used to the extremely
delicate push-button controls. I must say that, drunk or sober,
he's a very apt pupil. In less than two hours he actually walked! A
little unsteadily, to be sure, but his balance will get better as he
practices and I iron out a few more bugs, and I _don't_ mean bedbugs.
For a final test, I put a little egg cup on the floor, balanced a
football in it, and told Kujack to try a place kick. What a moment! He
booted that ball so hard, it splintered the mirror on the wall.
* * * * *
_November 27, 1959_
Long talk with the boss. I gave it to him straight about breaking up
the lab into K-Pro and N-Pro, and about there being little chance that
Goldweiser would come up with anything much on the neuro end for a
long, long time. He was awfully let down, I could see, so I started to
talk fast about the luck I'd been having on the kinesthetic end. When
he began to perk up, I called Kujack in from the corridor and had him
demonstrate his place kick.
He's gotten awfully good at it this past week.
"If we release the story to the press," I suggested, "this might make
a fine action shot. You see, Kujack used to be one of the best kickers
in the Big Ten, and a lot of newspapermen will still remember him."
Then I sprang the biggest news of all. "During the last three days of
practice, sir, he's been consistently kicking the ball twenty, thirty
and even forty yards farther than he ever did with his own legs. Than
anybody, as a matter of fact, ever has with real legs."
"That's a wonderful angle," the boss said excitedly. "A world's record,
made with a cybernetic leg!"
"It should make a terrific picture," Kujack said. "I've also been
practicing a big, broad, photogenic grin." Luckily the boss didn't hear
him--by this time he was bending over the legs, studying the solenoids.
After Kujack left, the boss congratulated me. Very, _very_ warmly. It
was a most gratifying moment. We chatted for a while, making plans for
the press conference, and then finally he said, "By the way, do you
happen to know anything about your friend Ellsom? I'm worried about
him. He went off on Thanksgiving and hasn't been heard from at all ever
since."
That was alarming, I said. When the boss asked why, I told him a
little about how Len had been acting lately, talking and drinking more
than was good for him. With all sorts of people. The boss said that
confirmed his own impressions.
I can safely say we understood each other. I sensed a very definite
rapport.
* * * * *
_November 30, 1959_
It was bound to happen, of course. As I got it from the boss, he
decided after our talk that Len's absence needed some looking into, and
he tipped off Security about it. A half dozen agents went to work on
the case and right off they headed for Steve Lundy's apartment in the
Village and, sure enough, there was Len.
Len and his friend were both blind drunk and there were all sorts of
incriminating things in the room--lots of peculiar books and pamphlets,
Lundy's identification papers from the Lincoln Brigade, an article
Lundy was writing for an anarchist-pacifist magazine about what he
calls Emsiac. Len and his friend were both arrested on the spot and a
full investigation is going on now.
The boss says that no matter whether Len is brought to trial or not,
he's all washed up. He'll never get a job on any classified cybernetics
project from now on, because it's clear enough that he violated his
loyalty oath by discussing MS all over the place.
The Security men came around to question me this morning. Afraid my
testimony didn't help Len's case any. What could I do? I had to own up
that, to my knowledge, Len had violated Security on three counts: he'd
discussed MS matters with Kujack in my presence, with Lundy (according
to what he told me), and of course with me (I am technically an
outsider, too). I also pointed out that I'd tried to make him shut up,
but there was no stopping him once he got going. Damn that Len, anyhow.
Why does he have to go and put me in this ethical spot? It shows a lack
of consideration.
These Security men can be _too_ thorough. Right off they wanted to pick
up Kujack as well.
I got hold of the boss and explained that if they took Kujack away we'd
have to call off our press conference, because it would take months to
fit and train another subject.
The boss immediately saw the injustice of the thing, stepped in and got
Security to calm down, at least until we finish our demonstration.
* * * * *
_December 23, 1959_
What a day! The press conference this afternoon was _something_. Dozens
of reporters and photographers and newsreel men showed up, and we took
them all out to the football field for the demonstrations. First the
boss gave a little orientation talk about cybernetics being teamwork in
science, and about the difference between K-Pro and N-Pro, pointing
out that from the practical, humanitarian angle of helping the amputee,
K is a lot more important than N.
The reporters tried to get in some questions about MS, but he parried
them very good-humoredly, and he said some nice things about me, some
very nice things indeed.
Then Kujack was brought in. He really went through his paces, walking,
running, skipping, jumping and everything. It was damned impressive.
And then, to top off the show, Kujack place-kicked a football
ninety-three yards by actual measurement, a world's record, and
everybody went wild.
Afterward Kujack and I posed for the newsreels, shaking hands while the
boss stood with his arms around us. They're going to play the whole
thing up as IFACS' Christmas present to one of our gallant war heroes
(just what the boss wanted: he figures this sort of things makes IFACS
sound so much less grim to the public), and Kujack was asked to say
something in line with that idea.
"I never could kick this good with my real legs," he said, holding my
hand tight and looking straight at me. "Gosh, this is just about the
nicest Christmas present a fellow could get. Thank you, Santa."
I thought he was overdoing it a bit toward the end there, but the
newsreel men say they think it's a great sentimental touch.
Goldweiser was in the crowd, and he said, "I only hope that when _I_
prove I'm God, this many photographers will show up." That's just about
the kind of remark I'd expect from Goldweiser.
Too bad the Security men are coming for Kujack tomorrow. The boss
couldn't argue. After all, they were patient enough to wait until after
the tests and demonstration, which the boss and I agree was white of
them. It's not as if Kujack isn't deeply involved in this Ellsom-Lundy
case. As the boss says, you can tell a man by the company, etc.
* * * * *
_December 25, 1959_
Spent the morning clipping pictures and articles from the papers; they
gave us _quite_ a spread. Late in the afternoon I went over to the
boss's house for eggnogs, and I finally got up the nerve to say what's
been on my mind for over a month now. Strike while the iron's, etc.
"I've been thinking, sir," I said, "that this solenoid system I've
worked out for Pros has other applications. For example, it could
easily be adapted to some of the tricky mechanical aspects of an
electronic calculator." I went into some of the technical details
briefly, and I could see he was interested. "I'd like very much to work
on that, now that K-Pro is licked, more or less. And if there _is_ an
opening in MS--"
"You're a go-getter," the boss said, nodding in a pleased way. He was
looking at a newspaper lying on the coffee table; on the front page was
a large picture of Kujack grinning at me and shaking my hand. "I like
that. I can't promise anything, but let me think about it."