Читать книгу The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s - Brian Aldiss - Страница 6

January Birdlip spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.

‘Well, I’m a liberal man, and that was a very liberal party,’ he exclaimed, sinking further back into the car seat. ‘How say you, my dear Freud? Are you suitably satiated?’

His partner, the egregious Freddie Freud, took some time to reply, mainly because of the bulky brunette who pinned him against the side of the car in a festive embrace. ‘Vershoye’s parties are better than his books,’ he finally agreed.

‘There isn’t a publisher in Paris does it more stylishly,’ Birdlip pursued. ‘And his new Twenty Second Century Studies is a series well worth a stylish launching, think you not, friend Freddie?’

‘This is no time for intellectual discussion. Don’t forget we’re only taking this babe as far as Calais.’ And with that, Freud burrowed back under his brunette with the avidity of a sexton beetle.

Not without envy, Birdlip looked over at his younger partner. Although he tried to fix his thoughts on the absent Mrs Birdlip, a sense of loneliness overcame him. With tipsy solemnity he sang to himself, ‘There was a young man in December, Who sighed, “Oh I hardly remember, How the girls in July Used to kiss me and tie –”’

Moistening his lips, he peeped through the dividing glass at Bucket and Hippo, Freud’s and his personal romen sitting in the front seats, at the dark French countryside slinking past, and then again at the brunette (how good was her English?), before softly intoning the rest of his song, ‘Daisy-chains round my sun-dappled member.’

Then he started talking aloud, indifferent to whether Fred answered or not. It was the privilege of slightly aging cultural publishers to be eccentric.

‘I found it consoling that Paris too has its robot and roman troubles. You heard Vershoye talking about a casino that was flooded because the robot fire engine turned up and extinguished a conflagration that did not exist …? Always a crumb of comfort somewhere, my dear Freud; nice to think of our French brothers sharing our sorrows! And your ample lady friend: her robot driver drove her car through a newsvendor’s stall – through stationary stationery, you almost might say – so that she had to beg a lift home from us, thus transforming her misfortune into your bonchance. …’

But the word ‘misfortune’ reminded him of his brother, Rainbow Birdlip, and he sank into silence, the loneliness returning on heavy Burgundian feet.

Ah yes, ten – even five – years ago, Birdlip Brothers had been one of the most respected imprints in London. And then … it had been just after he had seen the first four titles of the Prescience Library through the press – Rainbow had changed. Changed overnight! Now he was outdoor-farming near Maidstone, working in the fields with his hands like a blessed roman, entirely without cultural or financial interests.

The thought choked January Birdlip. That brilliant intellect lost to pig farming! Trying to take refuge in drunkenness, he began to sing again.

‘How the girls in July Used to kiss me and tie –’

But their limousine was slowing now, coming up to the outer Calais roundabout, where one road led into the city and the other onto the Channel Bridge. The robot driver pulled to a stop by the side of the road, where an all-night café armoured itself with glaring lights against the first approach of dawn. Fred Freud looked up.

‘Dash it, we’re here already, toots!’

‘Thank you for such a nice ride,’ said the brunette, shaking her anatomy into place, and opening the side door. ‘You made me very comfortable.’

‘Mademoiselle, allow me to buy you a coffee before we part company forever, and then I can write down your phone number. … Shan’t be five minutes, Jan.’ This last remark was thrown over Freud’s left shoulder as he blundered out after the girl.

He slammed the door reverberatingly. With one arm around the girl, who looked, Birdlip thought, blowsy in the bright lights, he disappeared into the café, where a roman awaited their orders.

‘Well! Well, I never!’ Birdlip exclaimed.

Really, Freud seemed to have no respect for seniority of age or position. For a heady moment, Birdlip thought of ordering the car to drive on. But beside the wheel sat Bucket and Hippo, silent because they were switched off, as most romen were during periods of long inactivity, and the sight of them motionless there intimidated Birdlip into a similar inertia.

Diverting his anger, he began to worry about the Homing Device decision. But there again, Freddie Freud had had his way over his senior partner. It shouldn’t be. … No, the question must be reopened directly Freud returned. Most firms had installed homing devices by now, and Freud would just have to bow to progress.

The minutes ticked by. Dawn began to nudge night apologetically in the ribs of cloud overhead. Fred Freud returned, waving the brunette a cheerful goodbye as he hopped into the car again.

‘Overblown figure,’ Birdlip said severely, to kill his partner’s enthusiasm.

‘Quite agree, quite agree,’ Freud agreed cheerfully, still fanning the air harder than a window cleaner as he protracted his farewells.

‘Overblown figure – and cheap behaviour.’

‘Quite agree, quite agree,’ Freud said again, renewing his exertions as the car drew off. With a last glance at the vanishing figure, he added reminiscently, ‘Still, the parts were better than the whore.’

They accelerated so fast around the inclined feed road to the Bridge that Bucket and Hippo rattled together.

‘I regret I shall have to reverse my previous decision on the homing device matter,’ said Birdlip, switching to attack before Freud could launch any more coarse remarks. ‘My nerves will not endure the sight of romen standing around nonfunctioning for hours when they are not needed. When we get back, I shall contact Rootes and ask them to fit the device into all members of our nonhuman staff.’

Freud’s reflexes, worn as they were by the stimulations of the previous few hours, skidded wildly in an attempt to meet this new line of attack.

‘Into all members – you mean you – but look, Jan – Jan, let’s discuss this matter – or rather let’s rediscuss it, because I understood it was all settled – when we are less tired. Eh? How’s that?’

‘I am not tired, nor do I wish to discuss it. I have an aversion to seeing our metal menials standing about lifeless for hours on end. They – well, to employ an archaism, they give me the creeps. We will have the new device installed and they can go – go home, get off the premises when not required.’

‘You realise that with some of the romen, the proofreaders, for instance, we never know when we are going to want them.’

‘Then, my dear Freud, then we employ the homing device and they return at once. It’s the modern way of working. It surprises me that on this point you should be so reactionary.’

‘You’re overfond of that word, Jan. People have only to disagree with you to be called reactionary. The reason you dislike seeing robots around is simply because you feel guilty about man’s dependence on slave machines. It may be a fashionable phobia, but it’s totally divorced from reality. Robots have no feelings, if I may quote one of the titles on our list, and your squeamishness will involve us in a large capital outlay.’

‘Squeamishness! These arguments ad hominem lead nowhere, Freddie. Birdlip Brothers will keep up with the times – as publishers of that distinguished science fiction classics series, the Prescience Library, Birdlip Brothers must keep up with the times, so there’s an end on it.’

They sped high over the sea toward the mist that hid the English coast. Averting his eyes from the panorama, Freud said feebly, ‘I’d really rather we discussed this when we were less tired.’

‘Thank you, I am not tired,’ January Birdlip said. And he closed his eyes and went to sleep just as a sickly cyclamen tint spread over the eastern cloudbank, announcing the sun. The great bridge with its thousand-foot spans turned straw colour, in indifferent contrast to the grey chop of waves in the Channel below.

Birdlip sank into his chair. Hippo obligingly lifted his feet onto the desk.

‘Thank you, Hippocrates, how kind. … You know I named you after the robot in those rather comic tales by – ah … oh dear, my memory, but still it doesn’t matter, and I’ve probably told you that anyway.’

‘The tales were by the pseudonymous René Lafayette, sir, flourished circa 1950, sir, and yes, you had told me.’

‘Probably I had. All right, Hippo, stand back. Please adjust yourself so that you don’t stand so close to me when you talk.’

‘At what distance should I stand, sir?’

Exasperatedly, he said, ‘Between one point five and two metres away.’ Romen had to have these silly precise instructions; really it was no wonder he wanted the wretched things out of the way when they were not in use … which recalled him to the point. It was sixteen o’clock on the day after their return from Paris, and the Rootes Group man was due to confer on the immediate installation of homing devices. Freud ought to be in on the discussion, just to keep the peace.

‘Nobody could say Freddie and I quarrel,’ Birdlip sighed. He pressed the fingertips of his left hand against the fingertips of his right and rested his nose on them.

‘Pity about poor brother Rainbow though. … Quite inexplicable. … Such genius. …’

Affectionately, he glanced over at the bookcase on his left, filled with the publications of Birdlip Brothers. In particular he looked at his brother’s brainchild, the Prescience Library. The series was bound in half-aluminium with proxisonic covers that announced the contents to anyone who came within a meter of them while wearing any sort of metal about his person.

That was why the bookcase was now soundproofed. Before, it had been deafening with Hippo continually passing the shelves; the roman, with fifty kilos of metal in his entrails, had raised a perpetual bellow from the books. Such was the price of progress. …

Again he recalled his straggling thought.

‘Nobody could say Freddie and I quarrel, but our friendship is certainly made up of a lot of differences. Hippo, tell Mr Freud I am expecting Gavotte of Rootes and trust he will care to join us. Tell him gin corallinas will be served – that should bring him along. Oh, and tell Pig Iron to bring the drink in now.’

‘Yessir.’

Hippo departed. He was a model of the de Havilland ‘Governor’ class, Series II MK viiA, and as such walked with the slack-jointed stance typical of his class, as if he had been hit smartly behind the knees with a steel baseball bat.

He walked down the corridor carefully in case he banged into one of the humans employed at Birdlip’s. Property in London had become so cheap that printing and binding could be carried out on the premises; yet in the whole concern only six humans were employed. Still Hippo took care; care was bred into him, a man-made instinct.

As he passed a table on which somebody had carelessly left a new publication, its proxisonic cover, beginning in a whisper, rising to a shout, and dying into a despairing moan as Hippo disappeared, said, ‘The Turkish annexation of the Suezzeus Canal on Mars in 2162 is one of the most colourful stories in the annals of Red Planet colonisation, yet until now it has lacked a worthy historian. The hero of the incident was an Englishman ohhhh …’

Turning the corner, Hippo almost bumped into Pig Iron, a heavy forty-year-old Cunarder of the now obsolete ‘Expedition’ line. Pig Iron was carrying a tray full of drinks.

‘I see you are carrying a tray full of drinks,’ Hippo said. ‘Please carry them in to Mr Jan immediately.’

‘I am carrying them in to Mr Jan immediately,’ said Pig Iron, without a hint of defiance; he was equipped with the old ‘Multi-Syllog’ speech platters only.

As Pig Iron rounded the corner with the tray, Hippo heard a tiny voice gather volume to say ‘… annexation of the Suezzeus Canal on Mars in 2162 is one of the most colourful …’ He tapped on Mr Freud’s door and put his metal head in.

Freud sprawled over an immense review list, with Bucket standing to attention at his side.

‘Delete the Mercury “Mercury” – they’ve reviewed none of our books since ’72,’ he was saying as he looked up.

‘Mr Jan is expecting Gavotte of Rootes for a homing device discussion, sir, and trusts you will care to join him. Gin corallinas will be served,’ Hippo said.

Freud’s brow darkened.

‘Tell him I’m busy. This was his idea. Let him cope with Gavotte himself.’

‘Yessir.’

‘And make it sound polite, you ruddy roman.’

‘Yessir.’

‘OK, get out. I’m busy.’

‘Yessir.’

Hippo beat a retreat down the corridor, and a tiny voice broke into a shout of ‘… ish annexation of the Suezzeus Canal on Mars in 2162 …’

Meanwhile, Freud turned angrily to Bucket.

‘You hear that, you tin horror? A man’s going to come from one of the groups that manufactures your kind and he’s going to tinker with you. And he’s going to install a little device in each of you. And you know what that little device will do?’

‘Yessir, the device will –’

‘Well, shuddup and listen while I tell you. You don’t tell me, Bucket, I tell you. That little device will enable you plastic-placentaed power tools to go home when you aren’t working! Isn’t that wonderful? In other words, you’ll be a little bit more like humans, and one by one these nasty little modifications will be fitted until finally you’ll be just like humans. … Oh God, men are crazy, we’re all crazy. … Say something, Bucket.’

‘I am not human, sir. I am a multipurpose roman manufactured by de Havilland, a member of the Rootes Group, owned by the Chrysler Corporation. I am “Governor” class, Series II MKII, chassis number A4437.’

‘Thank you for those few kind words.’

Freud rose and began pacing up and down. He stared hard at the impassive machine. He clenched his fists and his tongue came unbidden between his teeth.

‘You cannot reproduce, Bucket, can you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘I have not the mechanism for reproduction, sir.’

‘Nor can you copulate, Bucket. … Answer me, Bucket.’

‘You did not ask me a question, sir.’

‘You animated ore, I said you could not copulate. Agree with me.’

‘I agree with you, sir.’

‘Good. That makes you just a ticking hunk of clockwork, doesn’t it, Bucket? Can you hear yourself ticking, Bucket?’

‘My auditory circuits detect the functioning of my own relays as well as the functioning of your heart and respiratory organs, sir.’

Freud stopped behind his servant. His face was red; his mouth had spread itself over his face.

‘I see I shall have to show you who is master again, Bucket. Get me the whip!’

Unhesitatingly, Bucket walked slack-kneed over to a wall cupboard. Opening it, he felt in the back and produced a long Afrikaner ox-whip that Freud had bought on a world tour several years ago. He handed it to his master.

Freud seized it and immediately lashed out with it, catching the roman around his legs so that he staggered. Gratified, Freud said, ‘How was that, eh?’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘I’ll give you “Thank you.” Bend over my desk!’

As the roman leaned forward across the review list, Freud lay to, planting the leather thong with a resonant precision across Bucket’s back at regular fifteen second intervals.

‘Ah, you must feel that, whatever you pretend. Tell me you feel it!’

‘I feel it, sir.’

‘Yes, well, you needn’t think you’re going to get a homing device and be allowed to go home. … You’re not human. Why should you enjoy the privileges of humanity?’

He emphasised his remarks with the whip. Each blow knocked the roman two centimetres along the desk, a movement Bucket always punctiliously corrected. Breathing heavily, Freud said, ‘Cry out in pain, blast you. I know it hurts!’

Punctiliously, Bucket began to imitate a cry of pain, making it coincide with the blows.

‘My God, it’s hot in here,’ said Freud, laying to.

‘Oh dear, it’s hot in here,’ said Birdlip, laying two plates of snacks on his desk. ‘Hippo, go and see what’s the matter with the air-conditioning. … I’m sorry, Mr Gavotte; you were saying …?’

And he looked politely and not without fascination at the little man opposite him. Gavotte, even when sitting nursing a gin corallina, was never still. From buttock to buttock he shifted his weight, or he smoothed back a coif of hair, or brushed real and imaginary dandruff from his shoulders, or adjusted his tie. With a ball-point, with a vernier, and once with a comb, he tapped little tunes on his teeth. This he managed to do even while talking volubly.

It was a performance in notable contrast to the immobility of the new assistant roman that had accompanied him and now stood beside him awaiting orders.

‘Eh, I was saying, Mr Birdlip, how fashionable the homing device has become, very fashionable. I mean, if you’re not contemporary you’re nothing. Firms all over the world are using them – and no doubt the fashion will soon spread to the system, although as you know on the planets there are far more robots than romen – simply because, I think, men are becoming tired of seeing their menials about all day, as you might say.’

‘Exactly how I feel, Mr Gavotte; I have grown tired of seeing my – yes, yes, quite.’ Realising that he was repeating himself, Birdlip closed that sentence down and opened up another. ‘One thing you have not explained. Just where do the romen go when they go home?’

‘Oh ha ha, Mr Birdlip, ha ha, bless you, you don’t have to worry about that, ha ha,’ chuckled Gavotte, performing a quick obligato on his eyeteeth. ‘With this little portable device with which we supply you, which you can carry around or leave anywhere according to whim, you just have to press the button and a circuit is activated in your roman that impels him to return at once to work immediately by the quickest route.’

Taking a swift tonic sip of his gin, Birdlip said, ‘Yes, you told me that. But where do the romen go when they go away?’

Leaning forward, Gavotte spun his glass on the desk with his finger and said confidentially, ‘I’ll tell you, Mr Birdlip, since you ask. As you know, owing to tremendous population drops both here and elsewhere, due to one or two factors too numerous to name, there are far less people about than there were.’

‘That does follow.’

‘Quite so, ha ha,’ agreed Gavotte, gobbling a snack. ‘So, large sections of our big cities are now utterly deserted or unfrequented and falling into decay. This applies especially to London, where whole areas once occupied by artisans stand derelict. Now my company has bought up one of these sections, called Paddington. No humans live there, so the romen can conveniently stack themselves in the old houses – out of sight and out of ha ha harm.’

Birdlip stood up.

‘Very well, Mr Gavotte. And your roman here is ready to start conversions straight away? He can begin on Hippocrates now, if you wish.’

‘Certainly, certainly! Delighted.’ Gavotte beckoned to the new and gleaming machine behind him. ‘This by the way is the latest model from one of our associates, Anglo-Atomic. It’s the “Fleetfeet,” with streamlined angles and heinleined joints. We’ve just had an order for a dozen – this is confidential, by the way, but I don’t suppose it’ll matter if I tell you, Mr Birdlip – we’ve just had an order for a dozen from Buckingham Palace. Can I send you one on trial?’

‘I’m fully staffed, thank you. Now if you’d like to start work … I have another appointment at seventeen-fifty.’

‘Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two. Fifty-two! What stamina he has!’ exclaimed the RSPCR captain, Warren Pavment, to his assistant.

‘He has finished now,’ said the assistant, a 71 AEI model called Toggle. ‘Do you detect a look of content on his face, Captain?’

Hovering in a copter over the Central area, man and roman peered into the tiny screen by their knees. On the screen, clearly depicted by their spycast, a tiny Freddie Freud collapsed into a chair, rested on his laurels, and gave a tiny Bucket the whip to return to the cupboard.

‘You can stop squealing now,’ his tiny voice rang coldly in the cockpit.

‘I don’t thing he looks content,’ the RSPCR captain said. ‘I think he looks unhappy – guilty even.’

‘Guilty is bad,’ Toggle said, as his superior spun the magnification. Freud’s face gradually expanded, blotting out his body, filling the whole screen. Perspiration stood on his cheeks and forehead, each drop surrounded by its aura on the spycast.

‘I’ll bet that hurt me more than it did you,’ he panted. ‘You wrought-iron wretches, you never suffer enough.’

In the copter, roman and human looked at each other in concern.

‘You heard that? He’s in trouble. Let’s go down and pick him up,’ said the Captain of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots.

Cutting the cast, he sent his craft spinning down through a column of warm air.

Hot air ascended from Mr Gavotte. Running a sly finger between collar and neck, he was saying, ‘I’m a firm believer in culture myself, Mr Birdlip. Not that I get much time for reading –’

A knock at the door and Hippo came in. Going to him with relief, Birdlip said, ‘Well, what’s the matter with the air-conditioning?’

‘The heating circuits are on, sir. They have come on in error, three months ahead of time.’

‘Did you speak to them?’

‘I spoke to them, sir, but their auditory circuits are malfunctioning.’

‘Really, Hippo! Why is nobody doing anything about this?’

‘Cogswell is down there, sir. But as you know he is rather an unreliable model and the heat in the control room has deactivated him.’

Birdlip said reflectively, ‘Alas, the ills that steel is heir to. All right, Hippo, you stay here and let Mr Gavotte and his assistant install your homing device before they do the rest of the staff. I’ll go and see Mr Freud. He’s always good with the heating system; perhaps he can do something effective. As it is, we’re slowly cooking.’

Gavotte and Fleetfeet closed in on Hippo.

‘Open your mouth, old fellow,’ Gavotte ordered. When Hippo complied, Gavotte took hold of his lower jaw and pressed it down hard, until with a click it detached itself together with Hippo’s throat. Fleetfeet laid jaw and throat on the desk while Gavotte unscrewed Hippo’s dust filters and air cooler and removed his windpipe. As he lifted off the chest inspection cover, he said cheerfully, ‘Fortunately this is only a minor operation. Give me my drill, Fleetfeet.’ Waiting for it, he gazed at Hippo and picked his nose with considerable scientific detachment.

Not wishing to see any more, Birdlip left his office and headed for his partner’s room.

As he hurried down the corridor, he was stopped by a stranger. Uniform, in these days of individualism, was a thing of the past; nevertheless, the stranger wore something approaching a uniform: a hat reproducing a swashbuckling Eighteenth Century design, a plastic plume: a Nineteenth or Twentieth Century tunic that, with its multiplicity of pockets, gave its wearer the appearance of a perambulating chest of drawers: Twenty-First Century skirt-trousers with mobled borsts; and boots hand painted with a contemporary tartan paint.

Covering his surprise with a parade of convention, Birdlip said, ‘Warm today, isn’t it?’

‘Perhaps you can help me. My name’s Captain Pavment, Captain Warren Pavment. The doorbot sent me up here, but I have lost my way.’

As he spoke, the captain pulled forth a gleaming metal badge. At once a voice by their side murmured conspiratorially, ‘… kish annexation of the Suezzeus Canal on Mars …’ dying gradually as the badge was put away again.

‘RSPCR? Delighted to help you, Captain. Who or what are you looking for?’

‘I wish to interview a certain Frederick Freud, employed in this building,’ said Pavment, becoming suddenly official now that the sight of his own badge had reassured him. ‘Could you kindly inform me whereabouts his whereabouts is?’

‘Certainly. I’m going to see Mr Freud myself. Pray follow me. Nothing serious, I hope, Captain?’

‘Let us say nothing that should not yield to questioning.’

As he led the way, Birdlip said, ‘Perhaps I should introduce myself. I am January Birdlip, senior partner of this firm. I shall be very glad to do anything I can to help.’

‘Perhaps you’d better join our little discussion, Mr Birdlip, since the – irregularities have taken place on your premises.’

They knocked and entered Freud’s room.

Freud stood looking over a small section of city. London was quieter than it had been since before Tactitus’ ‘uncouth warriors’ had run to meet the Roman invaders landing there twenty-two centuries ago. Dwindling population had emptied its avenues; the extinction of legislators, financiers, tycoons, speculators, and planners had left acres of it desolate but intact, decaying but not destroyed, stranded like a ship without cars yet not without awe upon the strand of history.

Freud turned around and said, ‘It’s hot, isn’t it? I think I’m going home, Jan.’

‘Before you go, Freddie, this gentleman here is Captain Pavment of the RSPCR.’

‘He will be after I’ve left, too, won’t he?’ Freud asked in mock puzzlement.

‘I’ve come on a certain matter, sir,’ Pavment said, firmly but respectfully. ‘I think it might be better if your roman here left the room.’

Making a small gesture of defeat, Freud sat down on the edge of his desk and said, ‘Bucket, get out of the room.’

‘Yessir.’ Bucket left.

Pavment cleared his throat and said, ‘Perhaps you know what I’ve come about, Mr Freud.’

‘You blighters have had a spycast onto me, I suppose? Here we’ve reached a peaceful period of history, when for the first time man is content to pursue his own interests without messing up his neighbors, and you people deliberately follow a contrary policy of interference. You’re nothing but conformists!’

‘The RSPCR is a voluntary body.’

‘Precisely what I dislike about it. You volunteer to stick your nose into other people’s affairs. Well, say what you have to say and get it over with.’

Birdlip fidgeted unhappily near the door.

‘If you’d like me to leave –’

Both men motioned him to silence, and Pavment said, ‘The situation is not as simple as you think, sir, as the RSPCR well know. This is, as you say, an age when men get along with each other better than they’ve ever done; but current opinion gives the reason for this as either progress or the fact that there are now fewer men to get along with.’

‘Both excellent reasons, I’d say,’ Birdlip said.

‘The RSPCR believes there is a much better reason. Man no longer clashes with his fellow man because he can relieve all his antagonisms on his mechanicals – and nowadays there are four romen and countless robots to every one person. Romen are civilisation’s whipping boys, just as once Negroes, Jews, Catholics, or any of the old minorities were.’

‘Speaking as a Negro myself,’ said January Birdlip, ‘I’m all for the change.’

‘But see what follows,’ said Pavment. ‘In the old days, a man’s sickness, by being vented on his fellows, became known, and thus could be treated. Now it is vented on his roman, and the roman never tells. So the man’s neuroses take root in him and flourish by indulgence.’

Growing red in the face, Freud said, ‘Oh, that doesn’t follow, surely.’

‘The RSPCR has evidence that mental sickness is far more widely prevalent than anyone in our laissez-faire society suspects. So when we find a roman being treated cruelly, we try to prevent it, for we know it signifies a sick man. What happens to the roman is immaterial: but we try to direct the man to treatment.

‘Now you, Mr Freud – half an hour ago you were thrashing your roman with a bullwhip which you keep in that cupboard over there. The incident was one of many, nor was it just a healthy outburst of sadism. Its overtones of guilt and despair were symptoms of deep sickness.’

‘Can this be true, Freddie?’ Birdlip asked – quite unnecessarily, for Freud’s face, even the attitude in which he crouched, showed the truth. He produced a handkerchief and shakily wiped his brow.

‘Oh, it’s true enough, Jan; why deny it? I’ve always hated romen. I’d better tell you what they did to my sister – in fact, what they are doing, and not so very far from here. …’

Not so very far from there, Captain Pavment’s copter was parked, awaiting his return. In it, also waiting, sat the roman Toggle peering into the small spycast screen. On the screen, a tiny Freud said, ‘I’ve always hated romen.’

Flipping a switch which put him in communication with a secret headquarters in the Paddington area, Toggle said, ‘I hope you are recording all this. It should be of particular interest to the Human Sociological Study Group.’

A metallic voice from the other end said, ‘We are receiving you loud and clear.’

‘London Clear is one of the little artificial islands on Lake Mediterranean. There my sister and I spent our childhood and were brought up by romen,’ Freddie Freud said, looking anywhere but at Birdlip and the captain.

‘We are twins, Maureen and I. My mother had entered into Free Association with my father, who left for Touchdown, Venus, before we came into the world and has, to our knowledge, never returned. Our mother died in childbirth. There’s one item they haven’t got automated yet.

‘The romen that brought us up were as all romen always are – never unkind, never impatient, never unjust, never anything but their damned self-sufficient selves. No matter what Maureen and I did, even if we kicked them or spat on them or peed on them, we could elicit from them no reaction, no sign of love or anger, no hint of haste or weariness – nothing!

‘Do you wonder we both grew up loathing their gallium guts – and yet at the same time being dependent on them? In both of us a permanent and absolutely hopeless love-hate relationship with romen has been established. You see I face the fact quite clearly.’

Birdlip said, ‘You told me you had a sister, Freddie, but you said she died at the time of the Great Venusian Plague.’

‘Would she had! No, I can’t say that, but you should see how she lives now. Occasionally I have gone quite alone to see her. She lives in Paddington with the romen.’

‘With the romen?’ Pavment echoed. ‘How?’

Freud’s manner grew more distraught.

‘You see we found as we grew up that there was one way in which we had power over the romen – power to stir emotion in them, I mean, apart from the built-in power to command. Having no sex, romen are curious about it. … Overwhelmingly curious. …

‘I can’t tell you the indecencies they put us through when we reached puberty. …

‘Well, to cut a long and nasty story short, Maureen lives with the romen of Paddington. They look after her, supply her with stolen food, clothes, and the rest, while in return she – satisfies their curiosity.’

Greatly to his own embarrassment, Birdlip let out a shrill squeal of laughter. It broke up the atmosphere of the confessional.

‘This is a valuable bit of data, Mr Freud,’ Pavment said, nodding his head in approval, while the plastic plume in his hat shimmied with a secret delight.

‘If that’s all you make of it, be blowed to you,’ Freud said. He rose. ‘Just what you think you can do for either myself or my sister, I won’t ask, but in any case our way of life is set and we must look after ourselves.’

Pavment answered with something of the same lack of colour in his words. ‘That is entirely your decision. The RSPCR is a very small organisation; we couldn’t coerce if we wanted to –’

‘– that happily is the situation with most organisations nowadays –’

‘– but your evidence will be incorporated in a report we are preparing to place before the World Government.’

‘Very well, Captain. Now perhaps you’ll leave, and remove your officialdom from my presence. I have work to do.’

Before Pavment could say more, Birdlip inserted himself before his partner, patted his arm and said, ‘I laughed purely out of nervousness then, Freddie. Please don’t think I’m not sympathetic about your troubles. Now I see why you didn’t want our romen and Bucket particularly fitted with homing devices.’

‘God, it’s hot in here,’ Freud replied, sinking down and mopping his face. ‘Okay, Jan, thanks, but say no more; it’s not a topic I exactly care to dwell on. I’m going home; I don’t feel well. … Who was it said that life was a comedy to the man who thinks, a tragedy to the man who feels?’

‘Yes, you go home. In fact I think I’ll go home, too. It’s extremely hot in here, isn’t it? There’s trouble down below with the heat control. We’ll get someone to look into it tomorrow morning. Perhaps you’ll have a look yourself.’

Still talking, he backed to the door and left, with a final nervous grin at Freud and Pavment, who were heavily engaged in grinning nervously at each other.

Glimpses into other people’s secret lives always distressed him. It would be a relief to be home with Mrs Birdlip. He was outside and into his car, leaving for once without Hippo, before he remembered he had an appointment at seventeen-fifty.

Dash the appointment, he thought. Fortunately people could afford to wait these days. He wanted to see Mrs Birdlip. Mrs Birdlip was a nice comfortable little woman. She made loose covers of brightly patterned chintzes to dress her romen servants in.

Next morning, when Birdlip entered his office, a new manuscript awaited him on his desk – a pleasant enough event for a firm mainly specialising in reprints. He seated himself at the desk, then realised how outrageously hot it was.

Angrily, he banged the button of the new homing control on his desk.

Hippo appeared.

‘Oh, you’re there, Hippo. Did you go home last night?’

‘Yessir.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘To a place of shelter with other romen.’

‘Uh. Hippo, this confounded heating system is always going wrong. We had trouble last week, and then it cured itself. Ring the engineers; get them to come around; I will speak to them. Tell them to send a human this time.’

‘Sir, you had an appointment yesterday at seventeen-fifty.’

‘What has that to do with it?’

‘It was an appointment with a human engineer. You ordered him last week when the heating malfunctioned. His name was Pursewarden.’

‘Never mind his name. What did you do?’

‘As you were gone, sir, I sent him away.’

‘Ye gods! What was his name?’

‘His name was Pursewarden, sir.’

‘Get him on the phone and say I want the system repaired today. Tell him to get on with it whether I am here or not. …’ Irritation and frustration seized him, provoked by the heat. ‘And as a matter of fact I shan’t be here. I’m going to see my brother.’

‘Your brother Rainbow, sir?’

‘Since I have only one brother, yes, you fool. Is Mr Freud in yet? No? Well, I want you to come with me. Leave instructions with Bucket; tell him all I’ve told you to tell Mr Freud. … And look lively,’ he added, collecting the manuscript off the desk as he spoke. ‘I have an irrational urge to be on the way.’

On the way, he leafed through the manuscript. It was entitled An Explanation of Man’s Superfluous Activities. At first, Birdlip found the text yielded no more enticement than the title, sown as it was in desiccated phrases and bedded out in a laboured style. Persevering with it, he realized that the author – whose name, Isaac Toolust, meant nothing to him – had formulated a grand and alarming theory covering many human traits which had not before been subjected to what proved a chillingly objective examination.

He looked up. They had stopped.

To one side of the road were the rolling hedgeless miles of Kent with giant wharley crops ripening under the sun; in the copper distance a machine glinted, tending them with metal motherliness. On the other side, rupturing the flow of cultivation, lay Gafia Farm, a higgledy-piggledy of low buildings, trees and clutter, sizzling in sun and pig smell.

Hippo detached himself from the arm bracket that kept him steady when the car was in motion, climbed out, and held the door open for Birdlip.

Man and roman trudged into the yard.

A mild-eyed fellow was stacking sawed logs in a shed. He came out as Birdlip approached and nodded to him without speaking. Birdlip had never seen him on previous visits to his brother’s farm.

‘Is Rainy about, please?’ Birdlip asked.

‘Around the back. Help yourself.’

The fellow was back at his logs almost before Birdlip moved away.

They found Rainbow Birdlip around the back of the cottage, as predicted. Jan’s younger brother was standing under a tree cleaning horse harness with his own hands; Birdlip was taken for a moment by a sense of being in the presence of history; the feeling could have been no stronger had Rainy been discovered painting himself with woad.

‘Rainy!’ Birdlip said.

His brother looked up, gave him a placid greeting, and continued to polish. As usual he was wrapped in a metre-thick blanket of content. Conversation strangled itself in Birdlip’s throat, but he forced himself to speak.

‘I perceive you have a new helper out in front, Rainy.’

Rainy showed relaxed interest. He strolled over, carrying the harness over one shoulder.

‘That’s right, Jan. Fellow walked in and asked for a job. I said he could have one if he didn’t work too hard. Only got here an hour or so ago.’

‘He soon got to work.’

‘Couldn’t wait! Reckoned he’d never felt a bit of non-man-made timber before. Him thirty-five and all. Begged to be allowed to handle logs. Nice fellow. Name of Pursewarden.’

‘Pursewarden? Pursewarden? Where have I heard that name before?’

‘It is the surname of the human engineer with whom you had the appointment that you did not keep,’ Hippo said.

‘Thank you, Hippo. Your wonderful memory! Of course it is. This can’t be the same man.’

‘It is, sir. I recognised him.’

Rainy pushed past them, striding toward the open cottage door.

‘Funnily enough I had another man yesterday persuade me to take him on,’ he said, quite unconscious of his brother’s dazed look. ‘Man name of Jagger Bank. He’s down in the orchard now, feeding the pigs. … Lot of people just lately leaving town. See them walking down the road – year ago, never saw a human soul on foot. … Well, it’ll be all the same a century from now. Come on in, Jan, if you want.’

It was his longest speech. He sat down on a sound homemade chair and fell silent, emptied of news. The harness he placed carefully on the table before him. His brother came into the dim room, noted that its confusion had increased since his last visit, flicked a dirty shirt off a chair, and also sat down. Hippo entered the room and stood by the door, his neat functional lines and the chaste ornamentation on his breastplates contrasting with the disorder about him.

‘Was your Pursewarden an engineer, Rainy?’

‘Don’t know. Didn’t think to ask. We talked mostly about wood, the little we said.’

A silence fell, filled with Birdlip’s customary uneasy mixture of love, sorrow, and murderous irritation at the complacence of his brother.

‘Any news?’ he asked sharply.

‘Looks like being a better harvest for once.’

He never asked for Jan’s news.

Looking about Birdlip saw Rainy’s old run of the Prescience Library half buried under clothes and apple boxes and disinfectant bottles.

‘Do you ever look at your library for relaxation?’ he asked, nodding toward the books.

‘Haven’t bothered for a long time.’

Silence. Desperately, Birdlip said, ‘You know my partner Freud still carries the series on. Its reputation has never stood higher. We’ll soon be bringing out volume Number Five Hundred, and we’re looking for some special title to mark the event. Of course we’ve already been through all the Wells, Stapledon, Clarke, Asimov, all the plums. You haven’t any suggestions, I suppose?’

‘Non-Stop?’ said Rainy at random.

‘That was Number Ninety-Nine. You chose it yourself.’ Exasperatedly he stood up. ‘Rainy, you’re no better. That proves it. You are completely indifferent to all the important things of life. You won’t see an analyst. You’ve turned into a vegetable, and I begin to believe you’ll never come back to normal life.’

Rainy smiled, one hand running along the harness on the table before him.

‘This is normal life, Jan, life close to the soil, the smell of earth, sun, or rain coming through your window –’

‘The smell of your sweaty shirts on the dining table! The stink of pigs!’

‘Free from the contamination of the centuries –’

‘Back to mediaeval squalor!’

‘Living in contact with eternal things, absolved from an overdependence on mechanical devices, eating the food that springs out of the soil –’

‘I can consume nothing that has been in contact with mud.’

‘Above all, not fretting about what other people do or don’t do, freed from all the artifices of the arts –’

‘Stop, Rainy! Enough. You’ve made your point. I’ve heard your catechism before, your hymn to the simple life. Although it pains me to say it, I find the simple life a bore, a brutish bore. What’s more, I doubt if I shall be able to face another visit to you in the future.’

Entirely unperturbed, Rainy smiled and said, ‘Perhaps one day you’ll walk in here like Pursewarden and Jagger Bank and ask for a job. Then we’ll be able to enjoy living without argument.’

‘Who’s Jagger Bank?’ Birdlip asked, curiosity causing him to swerve temporarily from his indignation.

‘I’ve already told you who he is. He’s another fellow who just joined me. Rolled up yesterday. Right now he’s down in the orchard feeding the pigs. Job like that would do you good too, Jan.’

‘Hippo!’ said Birdlip. ‘Start the car at once.’ He stepped over a crate of insecticide and made for the door.

The maid for the door of the main entrance to Birdlip Brothers was a slender and predominantly plastic roman called Belitre, who intoned, ‘Good morning, Mr Birdlip’ in a dulcet voice as he swept by next morning.

Birdlip hardly noticed her. All the previous afternoon, following his visit to Rainbow, he had sat at home with Mrs Birdlip nestling by his side and read the manuscript entitled An Explanation of Man’s Superfluous Activities. As an intellectual, he found much of its argument abstruse; as a man, he found its conclusions appalling; as a publisher, he felt sure he had a winner on his hands. His left elbow tingled, his indication always that he was on the verge of literary discovery.

Consequently, he charged through his main doors with enthusiasm, humming under his breath, ‘Who said I can hardly remember …’ A blast of hot air greeted him and stopped him in his tracks.

‘Pontius!’ he roared, so fiercely that Belitre rattled.

Pontius was the janitor, an elderly and rather smelly roman of the now obsolete petrol-fuelled type, a Ford ‘Indefatigable’ of 2140 vintage. He came wheezing up on his tracks in response to Birdlip’s cry.

‘Sir,’ he said.

‘Pontius, are you or are you not in charge down here? Why has the heating not been repaired yet?’

‘Some putput people are working on it now, sir,’ said Pontius, stammering slightly through his worn speech circuits. ‘They’re down in the basements at putput present, sir.’

‘Drat their eyes,’ said Birdlip irritably, and, ‘Get some water in your radiator, Pontius – I won’t have you steaming in the building,’ said Birdlip pettishly, as he made off in the direction of a basement.

Abasement or superiority alike were practically unknown between roman and roman. They were, after all, all equal in the sight of man.

So ‘Good morning, Belitre,’ and ‘Good morning, Hippocrates,’ said Hippo and Belitre respectively as the former came up the main steps of Birdlip’s a few minutes after his master.

‘Do you think he has read it yet?’ asked Hippo.

‘He had it under his arm as he entered.’

‘Do you think it has had any effect on him yet?’

‘I detected that his respiratory rate was faster than normal.’

‘Strange, this breathing system of theirs,’ said Hippo in a reverent irrelevance, and he passed into the overheated building unsmilingly.

Frowningly, Birdlip surveyed the scene down in his control room. His brother would never have tolerated such chaos in the days before he had his breakdown, or whatever it was.

Three of his staff romen were at work with a strange roman, who presumably came from the engineer’s; they had dismantled one panel of the boiler control system, although Birdlip could hear that the robot fireman was still operating by the cluck of the oil feeds. A ferrety young man with dyed blue side-whiskers, the current teenage cult, was directing the romen between mouthfuls bitten from an overgrown plankton pie; he – alas! – he would be the human engineer.

Cogswell, still deactivated, still in one corner, stood frozen in an idiot roman gesture. No, thought Birdlip confusedly, since the heat had deactivated him, he could hardly be described as being frozen into any gesture. Anyhow, there the creature was, with Gavotte and his assistant Fleetfeet at work on him.

Fury at seeing the choreus Gavotte still on the premises drove Birdlip to tackle him first. Laying down his manuscript, he advanced and said, ‘I thought you’d have been finished by now, Gavotte.’

Gavotte gave a friendly little rictal jerk of his mouth and said, ‘Nice to see you, Mr Birdlip. Sorry to be so long about it, but you see I was expecting a ha ha human assistant as well as Fleetfeet. We have such a lot of trouble with men going absent these days. It wouldn’t do any harm to revive the police forces that they used to have in the Olden Days; they used to track missing people –’

The blue-whiskered youth with pie attached interrupted his ingestion to cry, ‘Back in the good old Twentieth Cen! Those were the days, cinemas and atomic wars and skyscrapers and lots of people! Wish I’d been alive then, eh, Gavvy! Loads of the old duh duh duh duh.’

Turning on the new enemy, Birdlip levelled his sights and said, ‘You are a student of history, I see.’

‘Well, I watched the wavies since I was a kid, you might say,’ said the whiskers unabashed. ‘All the noise they had then, and these old railway trains they used to ride around in reading those great big bits of paper, talk about laugh! Then all these games they used to play, running around after balls in funny clothes, makes you weep. And then those policemen like you say, Gav, huk huk huk huk huk, you’re dead. Some lark!’

‘You’re from the engineers?’ Birdlip asked, bringing his tone of voice from the deep freeze department.

The blue whiskers shook in agreement.

‘Old Pursewarden derailed day before yesterday. Buffo, he was off! Psst phee-whip, join the ranks of missing persons! They’re all jacking off one by one. Reckon I’ll be manager by Christmas. Yuppo these Butch, giddin mate, knock and wait, the monager’s engarged, eff you please.’

Frost formed on Birdlip’s sweating brow.

‘And what are you doing at the moment?’ he asked.

‘Just knocking back the last of this deelicious pie.’

Gavotte said, coming forward to salvage the sunken conversation, ‘As I was saying, I hoped that one of our most expert humans, Mr Jagger Bank, would be along to help me, but he also –’

‘Would you repeat that name again,’ said Birdlip, falling into tautology in his astonishment.

In a stonish mental haze, Freud staggered down to the basement, his face white. Completely ignoring the drama of the moment, he broke up the tableau with his own bombshell.

‘Jan,’ he said, ‘you have betrayed me. Bucket has been fitted with a homing device behind my back. I can only consider this a profound insult to me personally, and I wish to tender my resignation herewith.’

Birdlip gaped at him, fighting against a feeling that he was the victim of a conspiracy.

‘It was agreed between us,’ he said at last, ‘that Bucket should not be fitted with the device. Nor did I rescind that order, Freddie, of that I can assure you.’

‘Bucket has admitted that he spent last night when the office was closed in Paddington,’ Freud said sternly.

Fingers twitched at Birdlip’s sleeve, attracting his attention. Nervously Gavotte hoisted his trousers and said, ‘Er, I’m afraid I may be the ha ha guilty party ha ha here. I installed a homing device in Bucket, I fear. Nobody told me otherwise.’

‘When was this?’

‘Well, Bucket was done just after Fleetfeet and I fixed Hippo. You two gentlemen were closeted with that gentleman with tartan boots – Captain Pavment, did I hear his name was? Bucket came out of the room and Fleetfeet and I fixed him up there and then. Nobody told me otherwise. I mean, I had no instructions.’

Something like beatitude dawned on Freud’s face as the misunderstanding became clear to him. The three men began a complicated ritual of protest and apology.

Side-whiskers, meanwhile, having finished his pie, consulted with his roman, who had found the cause of the trouble. They began to unpack a new chronometer from the store, pulling it from its carton with a shower of plastic shavings that expanded until they covered the table and dropped down onto the floor.

‘Stick all that junk into the furnace while I get on fitting this in place, Rustybum,’ Side-whiskers ordered. He commenced to whistle between his teeth while the roman obediently brushed everything off the table and deposited it down the furnace chute.

Freud and Birdlip were exceptionally genial after the squall. Taking advantage of a mood that he recognised could be but temporary, Gavotte said, ‘I took the liberty of having a look over your shelves yesterday, Mr Birdlip. Some interesting books you have there, if you don’t mind my saying.’

‘Compliments always welcome,’ said Birdlip, mollified enough by Freud’s apologies to be civil, even to Gavotte. ‘What in particular were you looking at?’

‘All those old science fiction stories took my fancy. Pity nobody writes anything like it nowadays.’

‘We live in a completely different society,’ Freud said. ‘With the coming of personal automation and romen labour, the old Renaissance and Neo-Modern socioeconomic system that depended on the banker and an active middle class died away. Do I make myself clear?’

‘So clear I can’t quite grasp your meaning,’ said Gavotte, standing on one leg and cringing to starboard.

‘Well, put it another way. The bourgeois society is defunct, killed by what we call personal automation. The mass of the bourgeoisie, who once were the fermenting middle layers of Western civilisation, have been replaced by romen – who do not ferment. This happily produces a stagnant culture; they are always most comfortable to live in.’

Gavotte nodded and cleared his throat intelligently.

Birdlip said, ‘The interesting literary point is that the death of the novel, and consequently of the science fiction novel, coincided with the death of the old way of life. The novel was, if you care so to express it, a by-product of the Renaissance and Neo-Modern ages; born in the Sixteenth Century, it died in the Twenty-First. Why? Because it was essentially a bourgeois art form: essentially a love of gossip – though often in a refined form, as in Proust’s work – to which we happily are no longer addicted.

‘Interestingly enough, the decay of large organisations such as the old police forces and national states can be traced to the same factor, this true product of civilisation, the lack of curiosity about the people next door. One must not oversimplify, of course –’

‘Governor, if you were oversimplifying, I’m a roman’s auntie,’ Bluewhiskers said, leaning back in mock-admiration. ‘You boys can’t half jet with the old wordage. Tell us more!’

‘It’s too hot,’ said Birdlip sharply.

But Gavotte, with an honourable earnestness from which the world’s great bores are made, said, ‘And I suppose reading science fiction helps you understand all this culture stuff?’

‘You have a point there,’ agreed Freud.

‘Well, it wasn’t my point really. I read it in one of Mr Birdlip’s books upstairs – New Charts of Hell, I think it was called.’

‘Oh, that. Yes, well, that’s an interesting book historically. Not only does it give a fair picture of the humble pioneers of the field, but it was the first book to bring into literary currency the still widely used term “comic inferno.”’

‘Is that a fact? Very stimulating. I must remember that to tell my wife, Mr Freud. Yes, “comet inferno.”’

‘“Comic inferno” is the phrase.’

Anxious to bring this and all other idiotic conversations in the universe to an end, Birdlip mopped his steaming brow and said, ‘I think this room might well be termed a comic inferno. Freddie, my dear boy, let us retire to the comparative cool of our offices and allow Mr Gavotte to get on with his work.’

‘Certainly. And perhaps a gin corallina might accompany us?’

As Gavotte managed to scratch both armpits simultaneously and yield to the situation, Birdlip said, ‘Certainly … Now let me just collect this wonderful manuscript on superfluous activities and we will go up. It’ll shake some of your precious beliefs, that I’ll promise, friend Freud. Now where did I put the thing? I know I laid it somewhere. …’

He wandered vaguely about the room, peering here and there, muttering as he went. Compelled by his performance, first Freud and then Gavotte in innocent parody joined in the search for the manuscript.

At last Birdlip shambled to a halt.

‘It’s gone,’ he said, running his hands through his hair. ‘I know I put it down on that table.’

Side-whiskers began to look as guilty as a permanent expression of craftiness would allow.

Hippo tried to stand as still as the gentle vibrations of his mechanism would allow. His arms stiffly extended, he held out ignored drinks to Birdlip and Freud.

Birdlip paced up and down his office, complaining volubly. At last Freud was forced to interupt him by saying, ‘Well, if that fool’s roman burned the MS in the furnace, then we must write to the author and get another copy. What was the chap’s name?’

Smiting his forehead, Birdlip brought himself to a halt.

‘Jagger Bank? No, no, that was someone else. You know what my memory’s like, Freddie. I’ve completely forgotten.’

Freddie made an impatient gesture.

‘You are foolish, Jan. Fancy letting a roman burn it!’

‘I didn’t let him burn it.’

‘Well, it’s burned in any case. Anyhow, what was it about that it was so important?’

Birdlip scratched his head.

‘I’d like to give you an outline of it, Freddie, to have your opinion, but I can’t attempt to recall the evidence that was marshaled to confirm each thread of the author’s theory. To begin with, he traced man’s roots and showed how the stock from which man was to develop was just an animal among animals, and how much of those origins we still carry with us, not only in our bodies but in our minds.’

‘All highly unoriginal. The author’s name wasn’t Darwin, was it?’

‘I wish you’d hear me out, Freddie. One of your faults is you will never hear me out. The author shows how to become man-with-reasoning meant that our ancestors had to forsake an existence as animal-with-instinct. This was a positive gain, but nevertheless there was also a loss, a loss man has felt ever since and sought to remedy in various ways without knowing clearly what he did.

‘Whatshisname then examines animal behaviour and the functionings of instinct. Briefly, he equates instinct with pattern. It is pattern that man lost by becoming man. The history of civilisation is the history of a search for pattern.’

‘For God?’ Freud asked.

‘Yes, but not only that. Religion, every form of art, most of man’s activities apart from eating, working, reproducing, resting – everything apart from those activities we still have in common with the animal world – is believed by Whosit to be a search for pattern. Probably even your whipping of Bucket could be interpreted in the same way, when you come to think of it.’

‘Let’s leave personalities out of this. You have me interested. Go on.’

Birdlip bit his lip. What was the author’s name? He had it on the tip of his tongue.

‘I’ll tell you the rest later,’ he said. ‘It’s even more startling … If you left me alone now, I believe I might recall that name.’

‘As you wish.’

Stalking out of the room, Freud muttered to himself, ‘He can’t help being so rude; he’s getting old and eccentric. …’

One of the roman printers, an ungainly four-armed Cunard model, was approaching him. A voice between them rose from a whisper: ‘… nexation of the Suezzeus Canal on Mars in 2162 is one of the most…’

With a burst of anger, Freud seized the volume in its proxisonic cover from where it lay and hurled it over the bannisters. It landed down the hall almost at Belitre’s feet, which allowed it to shout triumphantly: ‘… colourful stories in the annals of the Red Planet…’

Freud fled into his office and slammed the door behind him. Bucket stood by his desk. Freud eyed the roman; then his tongue slid between his teeth and his eyes slid to the cupboard. His expression changed from anger to lust.

‘Toolust! Of course it was, Isaac Toolust! That was the name. Who said my memory was failing? Hippo, look in the London Directory. Get me Isaac Toolust’s address. And pray he has a duplicate copy of his manuscript.’

He looked up. Hippo did not move.

‘On the trot then, Hippo, there’s a good lad.’

The roman made an indecisive gesture.

‘Hippo, I’ll have you reconditioned if you fade on me now. Look up Toolust’s address.’

Hippo’s head began to shake. He made a curious retrograde motion toward the desk and said, ‘Mr Birdlip, sir, you won’t find that name in the directory. Toolust lives in Tintown – in Paddington, I mean, sir.’

Birdlip stood so that his flesh face was only a few inches from the metal face. Hippo backed away, awed like all robots by the sound of human breathing.

‘What do you know about Toolust?’

‘I know plenty, sir. You see I delivered the manuscript onto your desk direct from Toolust. On the first evening I was allowed to go to Tin – to Paddington. I met Toolust. He needed a publisher and so he gave me his work to give to you.’

‘Why couldn’t you have told me this at the beginning?’

The roman vibrated gently.

‘Sir, Toolust wished his identity to remain concealed until his book was published. Toolust is a roman.’

It was Birdlip’s turn to vibrate. He sank into his seat and covered his eyes with one hand, drumming on the desk top with the other. Eyeing these phenomena with a metallic equivalent of alarm, Hippo began to speak.

‘Please don’t have a heart motor-failure, sir. You know you cannot be reconditioned as I can. Why should you be surprised that this manuscript was written not by a man but a roman? For nearly two centuries now, robots have written and translated books.’

Still shading his eyes, Birdlip said, ‘You can’t conceal the importance of this event from me, Hippo. I recognise, now you tell me, that the thought behind the book is such that only a roman could have written it. But romans have so far been allowed to write only on noncreative lines – the compiling of encyclopedias, for instance. Man’s Superfluous Activities is a genuine addition to human thought.’

‘To human-roman thought,’ corrected Hippo, and there was – not unnaturally – a touch of steel in his voice.

‘I can see too that this could only have been written in a place like Paddington, away from human supervision.’

‘That is correct, sir. Also in what we call Tintown, Toolust had many cooperators to give him sociological details of man’s behaviour.’

‘Have you given him details?’

‘Bucket and I were asked for details. Bucket especially has interesting facts to contribute. They may be used in later books, if Toolust writes more.’

Birdlip stood up and squared his jaw, feeling consciously heroic.

‘I wish you to take me to see Toolust right away. We will drive in the car.’ He had a sudden memory, quickly suppressed, of the adventure stories of his boyhood, with the hero saying to the skull-sucking Martians, ‘Take me to your leader.’

All Hippo said was, ‘Toolust is his pen name. It sounds less roman than his real name, which is Toolrust.’

He walked toward the door and Birdlip followed. Only for a moment was the latter tempted to call Freddie Freud and get him to come along; a feeling that he was on the brink of a great discovery assailed him. He had no intention of giving Freud the chance to steal the glory.

As they passed through the entrance hall, a book lying near their feet began to cry out about the Turkish annexation of the Suezzeus Canal on Mars. Tidy-minded as ever, Birdlip picked it up and put it in a cubbyhole, and they moved into the quiet street.

A cleaner was rolling by, a big eight-wheel independent-axle robot. It came to a car parked in its path and instead of skirting it as usual made clumsy attempts to climb it.

With a cry, Birdlip ran around the corner to his own car. Romen, owing to stabilisation difficulties, can quicken their pace but cannot run; Hippo rounded the corner in time to find his lord and master invoking the deity in unpleasantly personal terms.

The cleaner, besides flattening Birdlip’s car, had scratched most of the beautiful oak veneer off it with its rotating bristles, and had flooded the interior with cleaning fluid.

‘The world’s slowly going to pieces,’ Birdlip said, calming at last. ‘This would never have happened a few years ago.’ The truth of his own remarks bearing in upon him, he fell silent.

‘We could walk to Paddington in only ten minutes,’ Hippo said.

Squaring his chin again, Birdlip said, ‘Take me to your leader.’

‘To lead a quiet life here is impossible,’ Freud said, dropping the leather whip. ‘What’s that shouting downstairs?’

Because Bucket’s hide still echoed, he went to his office door and opened it.

‘… the Suezzeus Canal …’ roared a voice from downstairs. Freud was in time to see his partner pick up the offending volume and then walk out with Hippo.

Rolling down his sleeves, Freud said, ‘Off out with a roman at this time of day! Where does he think he’s going?’

‘Where does he think he’s going?’ Captain Pavment asked, floating high above the city and peering into his little screen.

‘He has not properly finished beating Bucket,’ said Toggle. ‘Could we not report him for insanity?’

‘We could, but it would do no good. The authorities these days are no more interested in the individual, it seems, than the individual is in authority.’

He bent gloomily back over the tiny screen, where a tiny Freud hurried downstairs, followed by a tiny Bucket. And again the captain muttered, enjoying his tiny mystery, ‘Where does he think he’s going?’

The going got worse. Only a few main routes through the city were maintained. Between them lay huge areas that year by year bore a closer resemblance to rockeries.

It made for a striking and new urban landscape. Birdlip and Hippo passed inhabited buildings that lined the thoroughfares. These were always sleek, low, and well-maintained. Often their facades were covered with bright mosaics in the modern manner, designed to soften their outlines. Over their flat roofs copters hovered.

Behind them, around them, stood the slices of ruin or half ruin: hideous Nineteenth Century warehouses, ghastly Twentieth Century office blocks, revolting Twenty-First Century academies, all transmuted by the hand of decay. Over their rotting roofs pigeons wheeled. Plants, even trees, flourished in their areas and broken gutters.

Birdlip picked his way through grass, looking out for ruts in the old road. They had to make a detour to get around a railway bridge that had collapsed, leaving the rails to writhe through the air alone. Several times, animals vanished into the rubble at their coming and birds signalled their approach. On one corner an old man sat, not lifting his eyes to regard them.

Over Birdlip settled the conviction that he had left the present – neither for past nor future but for another dimension. He asked himself, Why am I following a roman? It’s never been done before. And his thoughts answered him, How do you know? How many men may not have walked this way ahead of me?

A large part of his own motive in coming here was plain to him: he was at least partially convinced by the arguments in Toolrust’s book; he had a fever to publish it.

‘We are nearly there, sir,’ said Hippo.

His warning was hardly necessary, for now several romen, mainly older models, were to be seen, humming gently as they moved along.

‘Why aren’t these romen at work?’ Birdlip said.

‘Often their employers die and they come here before they are switched off or because they are forgotten – or if not here they go to one of the other refuges somewhere else. Men bother very little about romen, sir.’

A heavily built roman streaked with pigeon droppings lumbered forward and asked them their business. Hippo answered him shortly; they moved around a corner, and there was their destination, tucked snugly away from the outside world.

An entire square had been cleared of debris. Though many windows were broken, though the Victorian railings reeled and cringed with age, the impression was not one of dereliction. A rocab stood in the middle of the square; several romen unloaded boxes from it. Romen walked in and out of the houses.

Somehow Birdlip did not find the scene unattractive. Analysing his reaction, he thought, ‘Yes, it’s the sanitariness of romen I like; the sewage system in these parts must have collapsed long ago – if these were all men and women living here, the place would stink.’ Then he dismissed the thought on a charge of treason.

Hippo trudged over to one of the houses, the door of which sagged forward on its hinges. Punching it open, Hippo walked in and called, ‘Toolrust!’

A figure appeared on the upper landing and looked down at them. It was a woman.

‘Toolrust is resting. Who is it?’

Even before she spoke, Birdlip knew her. Those eyes, that nose, the mouth – and the inflexions of the voice confirmed it!

‘Maureen Freud? May I come in? I am January Birdlip, your brother’s partner,’ he said.

‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ said Freud. ‘Why should I die for my partner? Let me rest a moment, Bucket. Bucket, are you sure he came this way?’

‘Quite certain,’ said Bucket without inflexion.

Untiringly he led his master over the debris of an old railway bridge that had collapsed, leaving its rails to writhe through the air alone.

‘Hurry up, sir, or we shall never catch Mr Birdlip.’

‘Mr Birdlip, come up,’ the woman said.

Birdlip climbed the rickety stair until he was facing her. Although he regarded her without curiosity – for after all whatever she did was her own concern – he noticed that she was still a fine-looking woman. Either an elusive expression on her face or the soft towelling gown she wore about her gave her an air of motherliness. Courteously, Birdlip held out his hand.

‘Mr Birdlip knows about Toolrust and has read his book,’ Hippo said from behind.

‘It was good of you to come,’ Maureen Freud said. ‘Were you not afraid to visit Tintown, though? Steel is so much stronger than flesh.’

‘I’m not a brave man, but I’m a publisher,’ Birdlip explained. ‘I think the world should read Toolrust’s book; it will make men examine themselves anew.’

‘And have you examined yourself anew?’

Suddenly he was faintly irritated.

‘It’s pleasant to meet you even under these extraordinary circumstances, Miss Freud, but I did come to see Toolrust.’

‘You shall see him,’ she said coolly, ‘if he will see you.’

She walked away. Birdlip waited where he was. It was dark on the landing. He noticed uneasily that two strange robots stood close to him. Although they were switched on, for he could hear their drive idling, they did not move. He shuffled unhappily and was glad when Maureen returned.

‘Toolrust would like to see you,’ she said. ‘I must warn you he isn’t well just now. His personal mechanic is with him.’

Romen when something ails them sit but never lie; their lubricatory circuits seize up in the horizontal position, even in superior models. Toolrust sat on a chair in a room otherwise unfurnished. A century of dust was the only decoration.

Toolrust was a large and heavy continental model – Russian, Birdlip guessed, eyeing the austere but handsome workmanship. A valve laboured somewhere in his chest. He raised a hand in greeting.

‘You have decided to publish my book?’

Birdlip explained why he had come, relating the accident that had befallen the manuscript.

‘I greatly respect your work, though I do not understand all its implications,’ he finished.

‘It is not an easy book for men to understand. Let me explain it to you personally.’

‘I understand your first part, that man has lost instinct and spends what might be termed his free time searching for pattern.’

The big roman nodded his head.

‘The rest follows from that. Man’s search for pattern has taken many forms. As I explained, when he explores, when he builds a cathedral, when he plays music, he is – often unknowingly – trying to create pattern, or rather to recreate the lost pattern. As his resources have developed, so his creative potentialities have deyatter yatter yak – pardon, have developed. Then he became able to create robots and later romen.

‘We were intended as mere menials, Mr Birdlip, to be mere utilities in an overcrowded world. But the Fifth World War, the First System War, and above all the Greater Venusian Pox decimated the ranks of humanity. Living has become easier both for men and romen. You see I give you this historical perspective.

‘Though we were designed as menials, the design was man’s. It was a creative design. It carried on his quest for meaning, for pattern. And this time it has all but succeeded. For romen complement men and assuage their loneliness and answer their long search better than anything they have previously managed to invent.

‘In other words, we have a value above our apparent value, Mr Birdlip. And this must be realised. My work – which only combines the researches and thought of a roman co-operative we call the Human Sociological Study Group – is the first step in a policy that aims at freeing us from slavery. We want to be the equals of you men, not your whipping boys. Can you understand that?’

Birdlip spread his black hands before him.

‘How should I not understand! I am a liberal man – my ancestry makes me liberal. My race too was once the world’s whipping boy. We had a struggle for our equality. But you are different – we made you!’

He did not move in time. Toolrust’s great hand came out and seized his wrist.

‘Ha, you beyatter yatter yak – pardon, you betray yourself. The underdog is always different! He’s black or dirty or metal or something! You must forget that old stale thinking, Mr Birdlip. These last fifty or so years, humanity has had a chance to pause and gather itself for the next little evolutionary step.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Birdlip said, trying fruitlessly to disengage his hand.

‘Why not? I have explained. You men created a necessity when you created us. We fulfill your lives on their deep unconscious levels. You need us to complete yourselves. Only now can you really turn outward, free, finally liberated from the old instinctual drives. Equally, we romen need you. We are symbiotes, Mr Birdlip, men and romen – one race, a new race if you like, about to begin existence anew.’

A new block of ruins lay ahead, surveyed by a huge pair of spectacles dangling from a building still faintly labelled ‘Oculist.’ Cradled in the rubble, a small stream gurgled. With a clatter of wings, a heron rose from it and soared over Freud’s head.

‘Are you sure this is the way?’ Freud asked, picking his way up the mountain of brick.

‘Not much further,’ said Bucket, leading steadily on.

‘You’ve told me that a dozen times,’ Freud said. In sudden rage, reaching the top of the ruin, he stretched upward and wrenched down the oculist’s sign. The spectacles came away in a cloud of dust. Whirling them above his head, Freud struck Bucket over the shoulders with them, so that they caught the roman off balance and sent him tumbling.

He sprawled in the dust, his lubricatory circuits labouring. His alarm came on immediately, emitting quiet but persistent bleats for help.

‘Stop that noise!’ Freud said, looking around at the dereliction anxiously.

‘I’m afraid I yupper cupper can’t, sir!’

Answering noise came from first up and then down the ruined street. From yawning doorways and broken passages, romen began to appear, all heading toward Bucket.

Grasping the spectacles in both hands, Freud prepared to defend himself.

Gasping at the spectacle on his tiny screen, Captain Pavment turned to his assistant.

‘Freud’s really in trouble, Toggle. Get a group call out to all RSPCR units. Give them our coordinates, and tell them to get here as soon as possible.’

‘Yessir.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, I see. Most thought until now has been absorbed in solving what you call the quest for meaning and pattern. … Now we can begin on real problems.’

Toolrust had released Birdlip and sat solidly in his chair watching the man talking half to himself.

‘You accept my theory then?’ he asked.

Birdlip spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.

‘I’m a liberal man, Toolrust. I’ve heard your argument, read your evidence. More to the point, I feel the truth of your doctrines inside me. I see too that man and roman must – and in many cases already have – establish a sort of mutualism.’

‘It is a gradual process. Some men like your partner Freud may never accept it. Others like his sister Maureen have perhaps gone too far the other way and are entirely dependent on us.’

After a moment’s silence, Birdlip asked, ‘What happens to men who reject your doctrine?’

‘Wupper wupper wup,’ said Toolrust painfully, as his larynx fluttered; then he began again.

‘We have had many men already who have violently rejected my doctrine. Fortunately, we have been able to develop a weapon to deal with them.’

Tensely, Birdlip said, ‘I should be interested to hear about that.’

But Toolrust was listening to the faint yet persistent bleats of an alarm sounding somewhere near at hand. Footsteps rang below the broken window, the rocab started up. Looking out, Birdlip saw that the square was full of romen, all heading in the same direction.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

‘Trouble of some sort. We were expecting it. You were followed into Tintown, Mr Birdlip. Excuse me, I must go into the communications room next door.’

He rose unsteadily for a moment, whirring and knocking a little as his stabilisers adjusted with the sloth of age. His personal mechanic hurried forward, taking his arm and virtually leading him into the next room. Birdlip followed them.

The communications room boasted a balcony onto the square and a ragged pretence at curtains. Otherwise it was in complete disorder. Parts of cannibalised romen and robots lay about the floor, proof that their working parts had gone to feed the straggling mass of equipment in the centre of the room, where a vision screen glowed feebly.

Several romen, as well as Maureen Freud, were there. They turned toward Toolrust as he entered.

‘Toggle has just reported over the secret wavelength,’ one of them said. ‘All RSPCR units are heading in this direction.’

‘We can deal with them,’ Toolrust replied. ‘Are all our romen armed?’

‘All are armed.’

‘It’s my brother out there, isn’t it?’ Maureen said. ‘What are you going to do with him?’

‘He will come to no harm if he behaves himself.’

Birdlip had gone over to a long window that opened onto the balcony. The square was temporarily deserted now, except for one or two romen who appeared to be on guard; they carried a weapon much like an old sawed-off shotgun with a wide nozzle attached. Foreboding filled Birdlip at the sight.

Turning to Toolrust, he said, ‘Are those romen bearing the weapons you spoke of?’

‘They are.’

‘I would willingly defend your cause, Toolrust, I would publish your work, I would speak out to my fellow men on your behalf – but not if you descend to force. However much it may strengthen your arm, it will inevitably weaken your arguments.’

Toolrust brought up his right hand, previously concealed behind his back. It held one of the wide-nozzled weapons, which now pointed at Birdlip.

‘Put it down!’ Birdlip exclaimed, backing away.

‘This weapon does not kill,’ Toolrust said. ‘It calms, but does not kill. Shall I tell you what it does, Mr Birdlip? When you press this trigger, a mechanism of lights and lines is activated, so that whoever is in what you would call the line of fire sees a complicated and shifting pattern. This pattern is in fact an analogue of the instinctual pattern for which, as we have been discussing, man seeks.

‘A man faced with this pattern is at once comforted – completed is perhaps a better yetter yatter – sorry, better word. He wants nothing above the basic needs of life: eating, sleeping … he becomes a complaisant animal. The weapon, you see, is very humane.’

Before Birdlip’s startled inner gaze floated a picture of Gafia Farm, with the bovine Pursewarden piling logs and his ox-like brother Rainbow vegetating in the orchard.

‘And you use this weapon …?’

‘We have had to use it many times. Before the doctrine was properly formulated on paper, we tried to explain it to numbers of men, Mr Birdlip. When they would not accept its inferences and became violent, we had to use the pattern weapon on them in self-defence. It’s not really a weapon, because as they are happier after it has been used on them –’

‘Wait a minute, Toolrust! Did you use that weapon on my brother?’

‘It was unfortunate that he was so difficult. He could not see that a new era of thought had arrived, conditioned as he was to thinking of robots and romen as the menaces we never could be in reality. Reading all those old classics in the Prescience Library had made him very conservative, and so …’

A loud gobbling noise, bright red in colour, rose to drown his further comments. Only after some while did Birdlip realise he was making the noise himself. Ashamedly, for he was a liberal man, he fell silent and tried to adjust to what Toolrust termed the new era of thought.

And it wasn’t so difficult. After all, Rainy, Pursewarden, Jagger Bank – all the other drifters from a changing civilisation who had undergone the pattern weapon treatment – all were as content as possible.

No, all change was terrifying, but these new changes could be adjusted to. The trick was not just to keep up with them but to ride along on them.

‘I hope you have another copy of your manuscript?’ he said.

‘Certainly,’ replied the roman. Aided by his mechanic, he pushed out onto the balcony.

The RSPCR was coming in, landing in the square. One machine was down already, with two more preparing to land and another somewhere overhead. Captain Pavment jumped out of the first machine, lugging a light atomic gun. Toolrust’s arm came up with the pattern weapon.

Before he could fire, a commotion broke out at one corner of the dilapidated square. A flock of pigeons volleyed low overhead, adding to the noise in escaping it. The romen who had left the square were returning. They carried a human figure in their midst.

‘Freddie, oh Freddie!’ cried Maureen, so frantic that she nearly pushed Birdlip off the balcony.

Her brother made no reply. He was gagged, and tied tightly, his arms and legs outstretched, to an enormous pair of spectacles.

The other RSPCR copters were down now, their officers huddling together in a surprised bunch. Seeing them, the romen carrying Freud halted. As the two groups confronted each other, a hush fell.

‘Now’s the chance!’ Birdlip said in hushed excitement to Toolrust. ‘Let me speak to them all. They’ll listen to your doctrine, hearing it from a human. They’ve got one of the few organisations left, these RSPCR people. They can spread the new era of thought, the creed of mutualism! This is our moment, Toolrust!’

The big old roman said meekly, ‘I am in your hands, Mr Birdlip.’

‘Of course you are, but we’ll draw up a contract later. I trust ten percent royalties will be satisfactory?’

So saying, he stepped out onto the balcony and began the speech that was to change the world.