The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (51 page)

"But that's what
you
were doing," one
pointed out with a faint note of threat.

"Oh, no!" Morey quickly objected. "I built in
satisfaction circuits —my training in design, you know. Adjustable circuits, of
course."

"Satisfaction circuits?" he was asked.
"Adjustable?"

"Well, sure. If the robot gets no satisfaction out of
using up things-"

"Don't talk nonsense," growled the Ration Board
official. "Robots aren't human. How do you make them feel satisfaction?
And adjustable satisfaction at that!"

Morey explained. It was a highly technical explanation,
involving the use of great sheets of paper and elaborate diagrams. But there
were trained men in the group and they became even more excited than before.

"Beautiful!" one cried in scientific rapture.
"Why, it takes care of every possible moral, legal and psychological
argument!"

"What does?" the Ration Board official demanded.
"How?"

"You tell him, Mr. Fry."

Morey tried and couldn't. But he could
show
how his
principle operated. The Ration Board lab was turned over to him, complete with
more assistants than he knew how to give orders to, and they built satisfaction
circuits for a squad of robots working in a hat factory.

Then Morey gave his demonstration. The robots manufactured
hats of all sorts. He adjusted the circuits at the end of the day and the
robots began trying on the hats, squabbling over them, each coming away
triumphantly with a huge and diverse selection. Their metallic features were
incapable of showing pride or pleasure, but both were evident in the way they
wore their hats, their fierce possessiveness . . . and their faster, neater,
more intensive, more
dedicated
work to produce a still greater quantity
of hats . . . which they also were allowed to own.

"You see?" an engineer exclaimed delightedly.
"They can be adjusted to
want
hats, to wear them lovingly, to wear
the hats to pieces. And not just for the sake of wearing them out—the hats are
an incentive for them!"

"But how can we go on producing just hats and more
hats?" the Ration Board man asked puzzledly. "Civilization does not
live by hats alone."

"That," said Morey modestly, "is the beauty
of it. Look."

He set the adjustment of the satisfaction circuit as porter
robots brought in skids of gloves. The hat-manufacturing robots fought over the
gloves with the same mechanical passion as they had for hats.

"And that can apply to anything we—or the
robots—produce,"

Morey added. "Everything from pins to yachts. But the
point is that they get satisfaction from possession, and the craving can be
regulated according to the glut in various industries, and the robots show
their appreciation by working harder." He hesitated. "That's what I
did for my servant-robots. It's a feedback, you see. Satisfaction leads to more
work—and
better
work—and that means more goods, which they can be made
to want, which means incentive to work, and so on, all around."

"Closed cycle," whispered the Ration Board man in
awe. "A
real
closed cycle this time!"

And so the inexorable laws of supply and demand were
irrevocably repealed. No longer was mankind hampered by inadequate supply or
drowned by overproduction. What mankind needed was there. What the race did not
require passed into the insatiable—and adjustable-robot maw. Nothing was
wasted.

For a pipeline has two ends.

Morey was thanked, complimented, rewarded, given a
ticker-tape parade through the city, and put on a plane back home. By that
time, the Ration Board had liquidated itself.

Cherry met him at the airport. They jabbered excitedly at
each other all the way to the house.

In their own living room, they finished the kiss they had
greeted each other with. At last Cherry broke away, laughing.

Morey said, "Did I tell you I'm through with Bradmoor? From
now on I work for the Board as civilian consultant.
And,"
he added
impressively, "starting right away, I'm a Class Eight!"

"My!" gasped Cherry, so worshipfully that Morey
felt a twinge of conscience.

He said honestly, "Of course, if what they were saying
in Washington is so, the classes aren't going to mean much pretty soon. Still,
it's quite an honor."

"It certainly is," Cherry said staunchly.
"Why, Dad's only a Class Eight himself and he's been a judge for I don't
know
how
many years."

Morey pursed his lips. "We can't all be
fortunate," he said generously. "Of course, the classes still will
count for
something—
that is, a Class One will have so much to consume in
a year, a Class Two will have a little less, and so on. But each person in each
class will have robot help, you see, to do the actual consuming. The way it's
going to be, special facsimile robots will—"

Cherry flagged him down. "I know, dear. Each family
gets a robot duplicate of every person in the family."

"Oh," said Morey, slightly annoyed. "How did
you know?"

"Ours came yesterday," she explained. "The
man from the Board said we were the first in the area—because it was your idea,
of course. They haven't even been activated yet. I've still got them in the
Green Room. Want to see them?"

"Sure," said Morey buoyantly. He dashed ahead of
Cherry to inspect the results of his own brainstorm. There they were, standing
statue-still against the wall, waiting to be energized to begin their endless
tasks.

"Yours is real pretty," Morey said gallantly.
"But—say, is that thing supposed to look like me?" He inspected the
chromium face of the man-robot disapprovingly.

"Only roughly, the man said." Cherry was right
behind him. "Notice anything else?"

Morey leaned closer, inspecting the features of the
facsimile robot at a close range. "Well, no," he said. "It's got
a kind of a squint that I don't like, but—Oh, you mean
that!"
he
bent over to examine a smaller robot, half hidden between the other pair. It
was less than two feet high, big-headed, pudgy-limbed, thick-bellied. In fact,
Morey thought wonderingly, it looked almost like—

"My God!" Morey spun around, staring wide-eyed at
his wife. "You mean-"

"I mean," said Cherry, blushing slightly.

Morey reached out to grab her in his arms.

"Darling!" he cried. "Why didn't you
tell
me?"

It was around the Hub of the evening on the planet of
Porlumma that Captain Pausert, commercial traveler from the Republic of
Nikkeldepain, met the first of the witches of Karres.

It was just plain fate, so far as he could see.

He was feeling pretty good as he left a high-priced bar on a
cobbly street near the spaceport, with the intention of returning straight to
his ship. There hadn't been an argument, exactly. But someone grinned broadly,
as usual, when the captain pronounced the name of his native system; and the
captain had pointed out then, with considerable wit, how much more ridiculous
it was to call a planet Porlumma, for instance, than to call it Nikkeldepain.

He proceeded to collect a gradually increasing number of
pained stares by a detailed comparison of the varied, interesting and
occasionally brilliant role Nikkeldepain had played in history with Porlumma's
obviously dull and dumpy status as a sixth-rate Empire outpost.

In conclusion, he admitted frankly that he wouldn't care to
be found dead on Porlumma.

Somebody muttered loudly in Imperial Universum that in that
case it might be better if he didn't hang around Porlumma too long. But the
captain only smiled politely, paid for his two drinks and left.

There was no point in getting into a rhubarb on one of these
border planets. Their citizens still had an innocent notion that they ought to
act like frontiersmen—but then the Law always showed up at once.

He felt pretty good. Up to the last four months of his young
life, he had never looked on himself as being particularly patriotic. But
compared to most of the Empire's worlds, Nikkeldepain was downright attractive
in its stuffy way. Besides, he was returning there solvent—would they ever be
surprised!

And awaiting him, fondly and eagerly, was Illyla, the Miss
Onswud, fair daughter of the mighty Councilor Onswud, and the captain's
secretly affianced for almost a year. She alone had believed in him!

The captain smiled and checked at a dark cross-street to get
his bearings on the spaceport beacon. Less than half a mile away—He set off
again. In about six hours, he'd be beyond the Empire's space borders and headed
straight for Illyla.

Yes, she alone had believed! After the prompt collapse of
the captain's first commercial venture—a miffel-fur farm, largely on capital
borrowed from Councilor Onswud—the future had looked very black. It had even
included a probable ten-year stretch of penal servitude for "willful and
negligent abuse of intrusted monies." The laws of Nikkeldepain were rough
on debtors.

"But you've always been looking for someone to take out
the old
Venture
and get her back into trade!" Illyla reminded her
father tearfully.

"Hm-m-m, yes! But it's in the blood, my dear! His great-uncle
Threbus went the same way! It would be far better to let the law take its
course," Councilor Onswud said, glaring at Pausert who remained sulkily
silent. He had
tried
to explain that the mysterious epidemic which
suddenly wiped out most of the stock of miffels wasn't his fault. In fact, he
more than suspected the tricky hand of young Councilor Rapport who had been
wagging futilely around Illyla for the last couple of years!

"The
Venture,
now—!" Councilor Onswud
mused, stroking his long, craggy chin. "Pausert can handle a ship, at
least," he admitted.

That was how it happened. Were they ever going to be
surprised! For even the captain realized that Councilor Onswud was unloading
all the dead fish that had gathered the dust of his warehouses for the past
fifty years on him and the
Venture,
in a last, faint hope of getting
some
return on those half-forgotten investments. A value of eighty-two thousand
maels was placed on the cargo; but if he'd brought even three-quarters of it
back in cash, all would have been well.

Instead—well, it started with that lucky bet on a legal
point with an Imperial Official at the Imperial capitol itself. Then came a
six-hour race fairly won against a small, fast private yacht—the old
Venture
7333
had been a pirate-chaser in the last century and could still produce
twice as much speed as her looks suggested. From there on, the captain was
socially accepted as a sporting man and was in on a long string of jovial
parties and meets.

Jovial and profitable—the wealthier Imperials just couldn't
resist a gamble; and the penalty he always insisted on was that they had to
buy!

He got rid of the stuff right and left! Inside of twelve
weeks, nothing remained of the original cargo except two score bundles of
expensively-built but useless tinklewood fishing poles and one dozen gross
bales of useful but unattractive all-weather cloaks. Even on a bet, nobody
would take them! But the captain had a strong hunch those items had been
hopefully added to the cargo from his own stocks by Councilor Rapport; so his
failure to sell them didn't break his heart.

He was a neat twenty percent net ahead, at that point—

And finally came this last-minute rush-delivery of medical
supplies to Porlumma on the return route. That haul alone would have repaid the
miff el-farm losses three times over!

The captain grinned broadly into the darkness. Yes, they'd
be surprised—but just where was he now?

He checked again in the narrow street, searching for the
port-beacon in the sky. There it was—off to the left and a little behind him.
He'd got turned around somehow!

He set off carefully down an excessively dark little alley.
It was one of those towns where everybody locked their front doors at night and
retired to lit-up, inclosed courtyards at the backs of the houses. There were
voices and the rattling of dishes nearby, and occasional whoops of laughter and
singing all around him; but it was all beyond high walls which let little or no
light into the alley.

It ended abruptly in a cross-alley and another wall. After a
moment's debate, the captain turned to his left again. Light spilled out on his
new route a few hundred yards ahead, where a courtyard was opened on the alley.
From it, as he approached, came the sound of doors being violently slammed, and
then a sudden, loud mingling of voices.

"Yeeee-eep!" shrilled a high, childish voice. It
could have been mortal agony, terror, or even hysterical laughter. The captain
broke into an apprehensive trot.

"Yes, I see you up there!" a man shouted excitedly
in Universum. "I caught you now—you get down from those boxes! I'll skin
you alive! Fifty-two customers sick of the stomach ache—YOW!"

The last exclamation was accompanied by a sound as of a
small, loosely-built wooden house collapsing, and was followed by a succession
of squeals and an angry bellowing, in which the only distinguishable words
were: "... threw the boxes on me!" Then more sounds of splintering
wood.

"Hey!" yelled the captain indignantly from the
corner of the alley.

All action ceased. The narrow courtyard, brightly illuminated
under its single overhead bulb, was half covered with a tumbled Utter of what
appeared to be empty wooden boxes. Standing with his foot temporarily caught in
one of them was a very large, fat man dressed all in white and waving a stick.
Momentarily cornered between the wall and two of the boxes, over one of which
she was trying to climb, was a smallish, fair-haired girl dressed in a smock of
some kind, which was also white. She might be about fourteen, the captain
thought— a helpless kid, anyway.