Paycheck (2003) (24 page)

One shape followed, as Walsh reached the descent lift.
‘Why?’
Jimmy wailed unhappily. ‘I had it all fixed - you didn’t have to worry!’

His thin, metallic voice faded as the lift plunged down the well to the ground floor. Behind Walsh, the police were coming cautiously out into the hall; the sound of their boots echoed dismally after him.

He examined his watch. Probably, he had fifteen or twenty minutes. They’d get him, then; it was inevitable. Taking a deep breath, he stepped from the lift and as calmly as possible walked down the dark, deserted commercial corridor, between the rows of black store-entrances.

Charley was lit up and animate when Walsh entered the ante-chamber. Two men were waiting, and a third was being interviewed. But at the sight of the expression on Walsh’s face the robot waved him instantly in.

‘What is it, Don?’ it asked seriously, indicating a chair. ‘Sit down and tell me what’s on your mind.’

Walsh told it.

When he was finished, the analyst sat back and gave a low, soundless whistle. ‘That’s a felony, Don. They’ll freeze you for that; it’s a provision of the new Amendment.’

‘I know,’ Walsh agreed. He felt no emotion. For the first time in years the ceaseless swirl of feelings and thoughts had been purged from his mind. He was a little tired and that was all.

The robot shook its head. ‘Well, Don, you’re finally off the fence. That’s something, at least; you’re finally moving.’ It reached thoughtfully into the top drawer of its desk and got out a pad. ‘Is the police pick-up van here, yet?’

‘I heard sirens as I came in the ante-room. It’s on its way.’

The robot’s metal fingers drummed restlessly on the surface of the big mahogany desk. ‘Your sudden release of inhibition marks the moment of psychological integration. You’re not undecided anymore, are you?’

‘No,’ Walsh said.

‘Good. Well, it had to come sooner or later. I’m sorry it had to come this way, though.’

‘I’m not,’ Walsh said. ‘This was the only way possible. It’s clear to me, now. Being undecided isn’t necessarily a negative thing. Not seeing anything in slogans and organized parties and beliefs and dying can be a belief worth dying for, in itself. I thought I was without a creed … now I realize I have a very strong creed.’

The robot wasn’t listening. It scribbled something on its pad, signed it, and then expertly tore it off. ‘Here.’ It handed the paper briskly to Walsh.

‘What’s this?’ Walsh demanded.

‘I don’t want anything to interfere with your therapy. You’re finally coming around - and we want to keep moving.’ The robot got quickly to its feet. ‘Good luck, Don. Show that to the police; if there’s any trouble have them call me.’

The slip was a voucher from the Federal Psychiatric Board. Walsh turned it over numbly. ‘You mean this’ll get me off?’

‘You were acting compulsively; you weren’t responsible. There’ll be a cursory examination, of course, but nothing to worry about.’ The robot slapped him good-naturedly on the back. ‘It was your final neurotic act … now you’re free. That was the pent-up stuff; strictly a symbolic assertion of libido - with no political significance.’

‘I see,’ Walsh said.

The robot propelled him firmly toward the external exit. ‘Now go on out there and give the slip to them.’ From its metal chest the robot popped a small bottle. ‘And take one of these capsules before you go to sleep. Nothing serious, just a mild sedative to quiet your nerves. Everything will be all right; I’ll expect to see you again, soon. And keep this in mind: we’re finally making some real progress.’

Walsh found himself outside in the night darkness. A police van was pulled up at the entrance of the unit, a vast ominous black shape against the dead sky. A crowd of curious people had collected at a safe distance, trying to make out what was going on.

Walsh automatically put the bottle of pills away in his coat pocket. He stood for a time breathing the chill night air, the cold clear smell of darkness and evening. Above his head a few bright pale stars glittered remotely.

‘Hey,’ one of the policemen shouted. He flashed his light suspiciously in Walsh’s face. ‘Come over here.’

‘That looks like him,’ another said. ‘Come on, buddy. Make it snappy.’

Walsh brought out the voucher Charley had given him. ‘I’m coming,’ he answered. As he walked up to the policeman he carefully tore the paper to shreds and tossed the shreds to the night wind. The wind picked the shreds up and scattered them away.

‘What the hell did you do?’ one of the cops demanded.

‘Nothing,’ Walsh answered. ‘I just threw away some waste paper. Something I won’t be needing.’

‘What a strange one this one is,’ a cop muttered, as they froze Walsh with their cold beams. ‘He gives me the creeps.’

‘Be glad we don’t get more like him,’ another said. ‘Except for a few guys like this, everything’s going fine.’

Walsh’s inert body was tossed in the van and the doors slammed shut. Disposal machinery immediately began consuming his body and reducing it to basic mineral elements. A moment later, the van was on its way to the next call.

Tension hung over the three waiting men. They smoked, paced back and forth, kicked aimlessly at weeds growing by the side of the road. A hot noonday sun glared down on brown fields, rows of neat plastic houses, the distant line of mountains to the west.

‘Almost time,’ Earl Perine said, knotting his skinny hands together. ‘It varies according to the load, a half second for every additional pound.’

Bitterly, Morrison answered, ‘You’ve got it plotted? You’re as bad as it is. Let’s pretend it just
happens
to be late.’

The third man said nothing. O’Neill was visiting from another settlement; he didn’t know Perine and Morrison well enough to argue with them. Instead, he crouched down and arranged the papers clipped to his aluminum check-board. In the blazing sun, O’Neill’s arms were tanned, furry, glistening with sweat. Wiry, with tangled gray hair, horn-rimmed glasses, he was older than the other two. He wore slacks, a sports shirt and crepe-soled shoes. Between his fingers, his fountain pen glittered, metallic and efficient.

‘What’re you writing?’ Perine grumbled.

‘I’m laying out the procedure we’re going to employ,’ O’Neill said mildly. ‘Better to systemize it now, instead of trying at random. We want to know what we tried and what didn’t work. Otherwise we’ll go around in a circle. The problem we have here is one of communication; that’s how I see it.’

‘Communication,’ Morrison agreed in his deep, chesty voice. ‘Yes, we can’t get in touch with the damn thing. It comes, leaves off its load and goes on - there’s no contact between us and it.’

‘It’s a machine,’ Perine said excitedly. ‘It’s dead - blind and deaf.’

‘But it’s in contact with the outside world,’ O’Neill pointed out. ‘There has to be some way to get to it. Specific semantic signals are meaningful to it; all we have to do is find those signals. Rediscover, actually. Maybe half a dozen out of a billion possibilities.’

A low rumble interrupted the three men. They glanced up, wary and alert. The time had come.

‘Here it is,’ Perine said. ‘Okay, wise guy, let’s see you make one single change in its routine.’

The truck was massive, rumbling under its tightly packed load. In many ways, it resembled conventional human-operated transportation vehicles, but with one exception - there was no driver’s cabin. The horizontal surface was a loading stage, and the part that would normally be the headlights and radiator grill was a fibrous spongelike mass of receptors, the limited sensory apparatus of this mobile utility extension.

Aware of the three men, the truck slowed to a halt, shifted gears and pulled on its emergency brake. A moment passed as relays moved into action; then a portion of the loading surface tilted and a cascade of heavy cartons spilled down onto the roadway. With the objects fluttered a detailed inventory sheet.

‘You know what to do,’ O’Neill said rapidly. ‘Hurry up, before it gets out of here.’

Expertly, grimly, the three men grabbed up the deposited cartons and ripped the protective wrappers from them. Objects gleamed: a binocular microscope, a portable radio, heaps of plastic dishes, medical supplies, razor blades, clothing, food. Most of the shipment, as usual, was food. The three men systematically began smashing objects. In a few minutes, there was nothing but a chaos of debris littered around them.

‘That’s that,’ O’Neill panted, stepping back. He fumbled for his checksheet. ‘Now let’s see what it does.’

The truck had begun to move away; abruptly it stopped and backed toward them. Its receptors had taken in the fact that the three men had demolished the dropped-off portion of the load. It spun in a grinding half circle and came around to face its receptor bank in their direction. Up went its antenna; it had begun communicating with the factory. Instructions were on the way.

A second, identical load was tilted and shoved off the truck.

‘We failed,’ Perine groaned as a duplicate inventory sheet fluttered after the new load. ‘We destroyed all that stuff for nothing.’

‘What now?’ Morrison asked O’Neill. ‘What’s the next strategem on our board?’

‘Give me a hand.’ O’Neill grabbed up a carton and lugged it back to the truck. Sliding the carton onto the platform, he turned for another. The other two men followed clumsily after him. They put the load back onto the truck. As the truck started forward, the last square box was again in place.

The truck hesitated. Its receptors registered the return of its load. From within its works came a low sustained buzzing.

‘This may drive it crazy,’ O’Neill commented, sweating. ‘It went through its operation and accomplished nothing.’

The truck made a short, abortive move toward going on. Then it swung purposefully around and, in a blur of speed, again dumped the load onto the road.

‘Get them!’ O’Neill yelled. The three men grabbed up the cartons and feverishly reloaded them. But as fast as the cartons were shoved back on the horizontal stage, the truck’s grapples tilted them down its far-side ramps and onto the road.

‘No use,’ Morrison said, breathing hard. ‘Water through a sieve.’

‘We’re licked,’ Perine gasped in wretched agreement, ‘like always. We humans lose every time.’

The truck regarded them calmly, its receptors blank and impassive. It was doing its job. The planetwide network of automatic factories was smoothly performing the task imposed on it five years before, in the early days of the Total Global Conflict.

‘There it goes,’ Morrison observed dismally. The truck’s antenna had come down; it shifted into low gear and released its parking brake.

‘One last try,’ O’Neill said. He swept up one of the cartons and ripped it open. From it he dragged a tengallon milk tank and unscrewed the lid. ‘Silly as it seems.’

‘This is absurd,’ Perine protested. Reluctantly, he found a cup among the littered debris and dipped it into the milk. ‘A kid’s game!’

The truck had paused to observe them.

‘Do it,’ O’Neill ordered sharply. ‘Exactly the way we practiced it.’

The three of them drank quickly from the milk tank, visibly allowing the milk to spill down their chins; there had to be no mistaking what they were doing.

As planned, O’Neill was the first. His face twisting in revulsion, he hurled the cup away and violently spat the milk into the road.

‘God’s sake!’ he choked.

The other two did the same; stamping and loudly cursing, they kicked over the milk tank and glared accusingly at the truck.

‘It’s no good!’ Morrison roared.

Curious, the truck came slowly back. Electronic synapses clicked and whirred, responding to the situation; its antenna shot up like a flagpole.

‘I think this is it,’ O’Neill said, trembling. As the truck watched, he dragged out a second milk tank, unscrewed its lid and tasted the contents. ‘The same!’ he shouted at the truck. ‘It’s just as bad!’

From the truck popped a metal cylinder. The cylinder dropped at Morrison’s feet; he quickly snatched it up and tore it open.

STATE NATURE OF DEFECT

The instruction sheets listed rows of possible defects, with neat boxes by each; a punch-stick was included to indicate the particular deficiency of the product.

‘What’ll I check?’ Morrison asked. ‘Contaminated? Bacterial? Sour? Rancid? Incorrectly labeled? Broken? Crushed? Cracked? Bent? Soiled?’

Thinking rapidly, O’Neill said, ‘Don’t check any of them. The factory’s undoubtedly ready to test and resample. It’ll make its own analysis and then ignore us.’ His face glowed as frantic inspiration came. ‘Write in that blank at the bottom. It’s an open space for further data.’

‘Write what?’

O’Neill said, ‘Write:
the product is thoroughly pizzled
.’

‘What’s that?’ Perine demanded, baffled.

‘Write it! It’s a semantic garble - the factory won’t be able to understand it. Maybe we can jam the works.’

With O’Neill’s pen, Morrison carefully wrote that the milk was pizzled. Shaking his head, he resealed the cylinder and returned it to the truck. The truck swept up the milk tanks and slammed its railing tidily into place. With a shriek of tires, it hurtled off. From its slot, a final cylinder bounced; the truck hurriedly departed, leaving the cylinder lying in the dust.