The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (50 page)

"Never you mind," Tanaquil replied staunchly.
"Consuming isn't everything in life. You have your work."

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

He said suddenly, "Listen."

Bigelow looked up from his own drink. "Eh?"

"If I tell you something that's a
secret,
will
you keep it that way?"

Bigelow rumbled, "Why, I guess so, Morey."

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

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

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

He went on from there.

Tanaquil Bigelow said triumphantly, "I
knew
it!"

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

Morey said dazedly, "I
what?

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

"Of course, Walter," she said devotedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well-yes."

Morey got up. "I wish I could say it's been nice, but
it hasn't. Good night!"

And he stormed out before they could stop him.

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

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

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

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

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

Old Elon rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "Ura," he
said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Thank heaven!" Morey said in ecstatic relief.

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

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

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

The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast.

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

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

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

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

"Certainly, Mr. Fry," said Hachette. "I'll
take you in to Mr. Newman right away."

"Don't you want to know what I did?" demanded
Morey.

Hachette smiled. "What makes you think we don't
know?" he said, and left.

That was Surprise Number One.

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

Morey said, "Huh?"

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

"Why, no. It's a machine, of course. It isn't
human."

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

"Then how do they think?"

"With their brains, of course."

"But you just said—"

"I said they didn't
carry
them. Each robot is in
constant radio communication with the Master Control on its TBR circuit—the
'Talk Between Robots' radio. Master Control gives the answer, the robot
acts."

"I see," said Morey. "Well, that's very
interesting, but—"

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

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

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

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

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

"Indeed you have," said Newman.

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

Newman's eyes were wide. "Guilty?" he repeated.
"Penalty?"

Morey was startled. "Why, yes," he said. "I'm
not denying anything."

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

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

"Mr. Fry, the National Ration Board is delighted to
know of your contribution toward improving our distribution problem. Pending a
further study, a tentative program has been adopted for setting up
consuming-robot units all over the country based on your scheme. Penalties? Mr.
Fry, you're a
hero!"

A hero has responsibilities. Morey's were quickly made clear
to him. He was allowed time for a brief reassuring visit to Cherry, a triumphal
tour of his old office, and then he was rushed off to Washington to be quizzed.
He found the National Ration Board in a frenzy of work.

"The most important job we've ever done," one of
the high officers told him. "I wouldn't be surprised if it's the last one
we ever have! Yes, sir, we're trying to put ourselves out of business for good
and we don't want a single thing to go wrong."

"Anything I can do to help—" Morey began
diffidently.

"You've done fine, Mr. Fry. Gave us just the push we've
been needing. It was there all the time for us to see, but we were too close to
the forest to see the trees, if you get what I mean. Look, I'm not much on
rhetoric and this is the biggest step mankind has taken in centuries and I
can't put it into words. Let me show you what we've been doing."

He and a delegation of other officials of the Ration Board
and men whose names Morey had repeatedly seen in the newspapers took Morey on
an inspection tour of the entire plant.

"It's a closed cycle, you see," he was told, as
they looked over a chamber of industriously plodding consumer-robots working
off a shipment of shoes. "Nothing is permanently lost. If you want a car,
you get one of the newest and best. If not, your car gets driven by a robot
until it's ready to be turned in and a new one gets built for next year. We
don't lose the metals—they can be salvaged. All we lose is a little power and
labor. And the Sun and the atom give us all the power we need, and the robots
give us more labor than we can use. Same thing applies, of course, to all
products."

"But what's in it for the robots?" Morey asked.

"I beg your pardon?" one of the biggest men in the
country said uncomprehendingly.

Morey had a difficult moment. His analysis had conditioned
him against waste and this decidedly was sheer destruction of goods, no matter
how scientific the jargon might be.

"If the consumer is just using up things for the sake
of using them up," he said doggedly, realizing the danger he was inviting,
"we could use wear-and-tear machines instead of robots. After all why
waste
them?"

They looked at each other worriedly.