“My name,” the girl said, “is Pris Stratton. That’s my married name; I always use it. I never use any other name but Pris. You can call me Pris.” She reflected, then said, “No, you’d better address me as Miss Stratton. Because we don’t really know each other. At least I don’t know you.” The door shut after her and he found himself alone in the dust-strewn dim hall.
7
Well, so it goes, J. R. Isidore thought as he stood clutching his soft cube of margarine. Maybe she’ll change her mind about letting me call her Pris. And possibly, if I can pick up a can of pre-war vegetables, about dinner, too.
But maybe she doesn’t know how to cook, he thought suddenly. Okay, I can do it; I’ll fix dinner for both of us. And I’ll show her how so she can do it in the future if she wants. She’ll probably want to, once I show her how; as near as I can make out, most women, even young ones like her, like to cook: it’s an instinct.
Ascending the darkened stairs, he returned to his own apartment.
She’s really out of touch, he thought as he donned his white work uniform; even if he hurried he’d be late to work and Mr. Sloat would be angry, but so what? For instance, she’s never heard of Buster Friendly. And tha’s impossible; Buster is the most important human being alive, except of course for Wilbur Mercer…but Mercer, he reflected, isn’t a human being; he evidently is an archetypal entity from the stars, superimposed on our culture by a cosmic template. At least that’s what I’ve heard people say; that’s what Mr. Sloat says, for instance. And Hannibal Sloat would know.
Odd that she isn’t consistent about her own name, he pondered. She may need help. Can I give her any help? he asked himself. A special, a chickenhead; what do I know? I can’t marry and I can’t emigrate and the dust will eventually kill me. I have nothing to offer.
Dressed and ready to go, he left his apartment and ascended to the roof where his battered used hovercar lay parked.
An hour later, in the company truck, he had picked up the first malfunctioning animal for the day. An electric cat: it lay in the plastic dust-proof carrying cage in the rear of the truck and panted erratically. You’d almost think it was real, Isidore observed as he headed back to the Van Ness Pet Hospital—that carefully misnamed little enterprise which barely existed in the tough, competitive field of false-animal repair.
The cat, in its travail, groaned.
Wow, Isidore said to himself. It really sounds as if it’s dying. Maybe its ten-year battery has shorted, and all its circuits are systematically burning out. A major job; Milt Borogrove, Van Ness Pet Hospital’s repairman, would have his hands full. And I didn’t give the owner an estimate, Isidore realized gloomily. The guy simply thrust the cat at me, said it had begun failing during the night, and then I guess he took off for work. Anyhow, all of a sudden the momentary verbal exchange had ceased; the cat’s owner had gone roaring up into the sky in his custom new-model handsome hovercar. And the man constituted a new customer.
To the cat, Isidore said, “Can you hang on until we reach the shop?” The cat continued to wheeze. “I’ll recharge you while we’re en route,” Isidore decided; he dropped the truck toward the nearest available roof and there, temporarily parked with the motor running, crawled into the back of the truck and opened the plastic dust-proof carrying cage, which, in conjunction with his own white suit and the name on the truck, created a total impression of a true animal vet picking up a true animal.
The electric mechanism, within its compellingly authentic-style gray pelt, gurgled and blew bubbles, its vidlenses glassy, its metal jaws locked together. This had always amazed him, these “disease” circuits built into false animals; the construct which he now held on his lap had been put together in such a fashion that when a primary component misfired, the whole thing appeared—not broken—but organically ill. It would have fooled me, Isidore said to himself as he groped within the ersatz stomach fur for the concealed control panel (quite small on this variety of false animal) plus the quick-charge battery terminals. He could find neither. Nor could he search very long; the mechanism had almost failed. If it does consist of a short, he reflected, which is busy burning out circuits, then maybe I should try to detach one of the battery cables; the mechanism will shut down, but no more harm will be done. And then, in the shop, Milt can charge it back up.
Deftly, he ran his fingers along the pseudo bony spine. The cables should be about here. Damn expert workmanship; so absolutely perfect an imitation. Cables not apparent even under close scrutiny. Must be a Wheelright & Carpenter product—they cost more, but look what good work they do.
He gave up; the false cat had ceased functioning, so evidently the short—if that was what ailed the thing—had finished off the power supply and basic drive-train. That’ll run into money, he thought pessimistically. Well, the guy evidently hadn’t been getting the three-times-yearly preventive cleaning and lubricating, which made all the difference. Maybe this would teach the owner—the hard way.
Crawling back in the driver’s seat, he put the wheel into climb position, buzzed up into the air once more, and resumed his flight back to the repair shop.
Anyhow he no longer had to listen to the nerve-wracking wheezing of the construct; he could relax. Funny, he thought; even though I know rationally it’s faked the sound of a false animal, burning out its drive-train and power supply ties my stomach in knots. I wish, he thought painfully, that I could get another job. If I hadn’t failed that IQ test I wouldn’t be reduced to this ignominious task with its attendant emotional by-products. On the other hand, the synthetic sufferings of false animals didn’t bother Milt Borogrove or their boss Hannibal Sloat. So maybe it’s I, John Isidore said to himself. Maybe when you deteriorate back down the ladder of evolution as I have, when you sink into the tomb world slough of being a special—well, best to abandon that line of inquiry. Nothing depressed him more than the moments in which he contrasted his current mental powers with what he had formerly possessed. Every day he declined in sagacity and vigor. He and the thousands of other specials throughout Terra, all of them moving toward the ash heap. Turning into living kipple.
For company he clicked on the truck’s radio and tuned for Buster Friendly’s aud show, which, like the TV version, continued twenty-three unbroken warm hours a day…the additional one hour being a religious sign-off, ten minutes of silence, and then a religious sign-on.
“—glad to have you on the show again,” Buster Friendly was saying. “Let’s see, Amanda; it’s been two whole days since we’ve visited with you. Starting on any new pics, dear?”
“Vell, I vuz goink to do a pic yestooday baht vell, dey vanted me to staht ad seven—”
“Seven
A.M
.?” Buster Friendly broke in.
“Yess, dot’s
right,
Booster; it vuz seven hey hem!” Amanda Werner laughed her famous laugh, nearly as imitated as Buster’s. Amanda Werner and several other beautiful, elegant, conically breasted foreign ladies, from unspecified vaguely defined countries, plus a few bucolic so-called humorists, comprised Buster’s perpetual core of repeats. Women like Amanda Werner never made movies, never appeared in plays; they lived out their queer, beautiful lives as guests on Buster’s unending show, appearing, Isidore had once calculated, as much as seventy hours a week.
How did Buster Friendly find the time to tape both his aud and vid shows? Isidore wondered. And how did Amanda Werner find time to be a guest every other day, month after month, year after year? How did they keep talking? They never repeated themselves—not so far as he could determine. Their remarks, always witty, always new, weren’t rehearsed. Amanda’s hair glowed, her eyes glinted, her teeth shone; she never ran down, never became tired, never found herself at a loss as to a clever retort to Buster’s bang-bang string of quips, jokes, and sharp observations. The Buster Friendly Show, telecast and broadcast over all Earth via satellite, also poured down on the emigrants of the colony planets. Practice transmissions beamed to Proxima had been attempted, in case human colonization extended that far. Had the
Salander 3
reached its destination, the travelers aboard would have found the Buster Friendly Show awaiting them. And they would have been glad.
But something about Buster Friendly irritated John Isidore, one specific thing. In subtle, almost inconspicuous ways, Buster ridiculed the empathy boxes. Not once but many times. He was, in fact, doing it right now.
“—no rock nicks on me,” Buster prattled away to Amanda Werner. “And if I’m going up the side of a mountain I want a couple of bottles of Budweiser beer along!” The studio audience laughed, and Isidore heard a sprinkling of handclaps. “And I’ll reveal my carefully documented exposé from
up there
—that exposé coming exactly ten hours from now!”
“Ent me, too, dahlink!” Amanda gushed. “Tek me wit you! I go alonk en ven dey trow a rock et us I protek you!” Again the audience howled, and John Isidore felt baffled and impotent rage seep up into the back of his neck. Why did Buster Friendly always chip away at Mercerism? No one else seemed bothered by it; even the U.N. approved. And the American and Soviet police had publicly stated that Mercerism reduced crime by making citizens more concerned about the plight of their neighbors. Mankind needs more empathy, Titus Corning, the U.N. Secretary General, had declared several times. Maybe Buster is jealous, Isidore conjectured. Sure, that would explain it; he and Wilbur Mercer are in competition. But for what?
Our minds, Isidore decided. They’re fighting for control of our psychic selves; the empathy box on one hand, Buster’s guffaws and off-the-cuff jibes on the other. I’ll have to tell Hannibal Sloat that, he decided. Ask him if it’s true; he’ll know.
When he had parked his truck on the roof of the Van Ness Pet Hospital, he quickly carried the plastic cage containing the inert false cat downstairs to Hannibal Sloat’s office. As he entered, Mr. Sloat glanced up from a parts-inventory page, his gray, seamed face rippling like troubled water. Too old to emigrate, Hannibal Sloat, although not a special, was doomed to creep out his remaining life on Earth. The dust, over the years, had eroded him; it had left his features gray, his thoughts gray; it had shrunk him and made his legs spindly and his gait unsteady. He saw the world through glasses literally dense with dust. For some reason, Sloat never cleaned his glasses. It was as if he had given up; he had accepted the radioactive dirt and it had begun its job, long ago, of burying him. Already it obscured his sight. In the few years he had remaining it would corrupt his other senses until at last only his bird-screech voice would remain, and then that would expire, too.
“What do you have there?” Mr. Sloat asked.
“A cat with a short in its power supply.” Isidore set the cage down on the document-littered desk of his boss.
“Why show it to me?” Sloat demanded. “Take it down in the shop to Milt.” However, reflexively, he opened the cage and tugged the false animal out. Once, he had been a repairman. A very good one.
Isidore said, “I think Buster Friendly and Mercerism are fighting for control of our psychic souls.”
“If so,” Sloat said, examining the cat, “Buster is winning.”
“He’s winning now,” Isidore said, “but ultimately he’ll lose.”
Sloat lifted his head, peered at him. “Why?”
“Because Wilbur Mercer is always renewed. He’s eternal. At the top of the hill he’s struck down; he sinks into the tomb world but then he rises inevitably. And us with him. So we’re eternal, too.” He felt good, speaking so well; usually around Mr. Sloat he stammered.
Sloat said, “Buster is immortal, like Mercer. There’s no difference.”
“How can he be? He’s a man.”
“I don’t know,” Sloat said. “But it’s true. They’ve never admitted it, of course.”
“Is that how come Buster Friendly can do forty-six hours of show a day?”
“That’s right,” Sloat said.
“What about Amanda Werner and those other women?”
“They’re immortal, too.”
“Are they a superior life-form from another system?”
“I’ve never been able to determine that for sure,” Mr. Sloat said, still examining the cat. He now removed his dust-filmed glasses, peered without them at the half-open mouth. “As I have conclusively in the case of Wilbur Mercer,” he finished almost inaudibly. He cursed then, a string of abuse lasting what seemed to Isidore a full minute. “This cat,” Sloat said finally, “isn’t false. I knew sometime this would happen. And it’s dead.” He stared down at the corpse of the cat. And cursed again.
Wearing his grimy blue sailcloth apron, burly pebble-skinned Milt Borogrove appeared at the office door. “What’s the matter?” he said. Seeing the cat, he entered the office and picked up the animal.
“The chickenhead,” Sloat said, “brought it in.” Never before had he used that term in front of Isidore.
“If it was still alive,” Milt said, “we could take it to a real animal vet. I wonder what it’s worth. Anybody got a copy of
Sidney’s
?”
“D-Doesn’t y-y-your insurance c-c-cover this?” Isidore asked Mr. Sloat. Under him his legs wavered and he felt the room begin to turn dark maroon cast over with specks of green.
“Yes,” Sloat said finally, half snarling. “But it’s the waste that gets me. The loss of one more living creature. Couldn’t you tell, Isidore? Didn’t you
notice
the difference?”