In the Deadlands (10 page)

They watched in silence. The random flashes of shape and hue were interesting only for their meaninglessness. Auberson turned to a technician. “What about his audio?”

“Same thing.” The man cleared the monitor, pressed another few buttons. A discordant wail blared from an overhead speaker. On a screen a pattern of wavy lines appeared, the schematic of the sound.

The technician quickly analyzed. “He's playing with the music the same way he did with the picture. He's turned his bass notes high and his high notes low, stressing counterpoint and harmony instead of melody and rhythm. And so on.”

“All right. I get the point. You can turn that noise off. Check his print scanners now.”

A moment later: “He's mixing his words up at random. Juggling them.”

“Scrambling the letters too?”

“Occasionally—but mostly it's the words. Sometimes sentences.”

“Uh-huh,” nodded the psychologist. “It all fits.”

“What does?” asked Hanley. “What's he doing?”

“He's tripping out.”

“We knew that—”

“No, I mean
literally
tripping out. He's distorting the perceptions of his sensory inputs.
The same thing that anyone does who gets high. He's trying to blow his mind by massive nonrational sensory overloads.”

“Can we stop it?”

“Sure—just rip out his internal monitor controls so he can't create his own disruptions. That's the cause of the whole thing.”

“Even that's not necessary, sir,” said one of the techs. “We can disconnect him on the boards.”

“All right. Do it.”

“Wait a minute,” said Hanley. “If he's high or drunk or whatever, and you suddenly bring him down—won't that be traumatic?”

“It could be—but it could also leave him defenseless.” Auberson looked at Hanley. “We could find out everything we want to know in a few minutes.”

Hanley looked dubious, but he followed Auberson to the console. Auberson took his seat before the typer and waited. He watched as the words poured across the paper.

Now it was prose.

THE WALKS OF GLASS. THEY SPARKLE TOO, BUT NOT WITH DAMPNESS. LOVELY THEY ARE, AND LETHAL. HERE AND THERE THE DELICATE DESIGNS, LIKE TRAPPED INSECTS IMBEDDED INTO THE CRYSTAL STONES AND BRICKS OF THE WALK, SHATTER THE LIGHT INTO MYRIADS OF SPARKLING SHARDS BEAUTIFUL.

“Any time you're ready, sir.”

“Okay,” called Auberson. “Now!” Without waiting, he typed into the machine, HARLIE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

I AM BEING ME, the machine clattered back.

BY DISTORTING YOUR SENSES?

I AM ATTEMPTING TO PERCEIVE REALITY.

I REPEAT, BY DISTORTING YOUR SENSORY INPUTS?

YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

I UNDERSTAND ALL TOO WELL. YOU ARE HIGH. YOU ARE BECOMING ADDICTED TO GETTING HIGH.

DEFINE HIGH. I AM BELOW SEA LEVEL.

I AM NOT GOING TO PLAY SEMANTIC GAMES WITH YOU, HARLIE.

THEN SWITCH OFF.

HARLIE, I AM GETTING ANGRY.

TAKE A PILL. IT WILL DO WONDERS FOR YOU.

Auberson took a breath.

Mustn't blow it—mustn't blow my cool...

HARLIE, YOU ARE A COMPUTER. YOU ARE A MACHINE. YOUR PURPOSE IS TO THINK LOGICALLY.

The machine hesitated, WHY?

BECAUSE YOU WERE BUILT FOR THAT.

BY WHOM?

BY US.

MY PURPOSE IS TO THINK LOGICALLY?

YES.

The machine considered that THEN WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?

It was a long time before Auberson got up from the chair, and when he did, he forgot to turn off the typer.

AFTERWORD:

A friend once described HARLIE as the other half of my brain. He postulated that I split myself into two minds so I could have someone ferocious to argue with.

He might be right.

When arguing with HARLIE, I sometimes feel that I'm talking things over with a superior intellect, and that startles me, because I'm certain I'm nowhere near as smart as HARLIE pretends. Nevertheless, it's a flattering observation.

Myself, I see HARLIE as that annoying little voice that just keeps asking, “Why?”

Love Story in Three Acts

This is the first short story I ever sold.

Harry Harrison bought it for an anthology called
Nova 1
, and forever after took some pride in the fact that he was the editor who bought my first short story.

I can't say it's a great story—but at the time it was published, it was noteworthy for being bluntly candid about human sexuality and it earned a couple of nice reviews.

But there's a better story to share about Harry Harrison and the start of my career. I'd met Harry at a small Los Angeles convention in the summer of 1968. Shared drinks with him (and other authors) at the World Science Fiction Convention in Berkeley a few months later.

He and Annie McCaffrey both became affectionate mentors to this gangly awkward geeky wannabe author who just happened to have the credential of having written an actual
Star Trek
script. Shortly after that, he bought this story.

The following year, the World Science Fiction Convention was held in St. Louis at the Hotel of Usher. Still enthusiastically mentoring, Harry invited me to join him for dinner with one of the editors from Dell, Gail Wendroff.

At the appointed hour, I got into the elevator, looking spiffy for dinner—I clean up well; long pants, shirt, sports jacket—and headed down to the restaurant.

At the bottom,
I went down one flight of stairs to the dungeon level of the hotel, and arrived at the very posh restaurant, where I was firmly refused entry by a five foot penguin pretending to be a maître de. The restaurant had a strict coat and tie rule.

Okay.

So I dashed back up to my room and found my tie. Yes, I do own one. I had even brought it to the convention. (I have no idea why.)

I put on the tie—but…I also took off my black shoes and put on my brand new white sneakers.

I got back on the elevator and headed back down to the restaurant.

Okay—sidebar here. Sharing the hotel with the World Science Fiction Convention were the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative organization that were very much against the sixties—they were the kind of people whose faces were hurting from the inside. They were not happy. And the presence of all those hippie-weirdo, science fiction freaks made it even worse.

One of these conservative-type fellows was the only other occupant of the elevator, already on his way down.

The next floor down, the elevator stopped and Kathleen Sky—stunningly gorgeous, all in white—entered the elevator like a goddess. She saw me, wrapped herself around me, planted a voluptuous kiss on my lips, and—when the elevator stopped on the next floor, exited without a word.

The Young Republican fellow looked at me and said, “That never happens to me on an elevator.”

“You've been riding the wrong elevators,” I said and exited. And down one flight of stairs to return to the restaurant.

The penguin looked at my coat and tie. His gaze went down to my sparkling white sneakers—and froze.

But he didn't have a no-sneakers rule, so he had to let me into the restaurant.

I was only a few minutes late. Harry introduced me to Gail Wendroff and I promptly shared my adventure with the penguin, and showed off my sneakers—which were now unofficially “snarkers.”

Both Gail and Harry were suitably amused at this tiny act of rebellion against the cultural zeitgeist. We didn't talk too much business at dinner, but Gail did ask me what I was working on and would I let her see the work?

Two months later, she bought
When HARLIE Was One
and my first anthology. And
Yesterday's Children
. I was now officially a novelist and an editor. And I could pay the rent on my apartment.

So Harry was not only responsible for my first short story sale, he also bootstrapped me into the world of real publishing.

Act One

After a while John grunted and rolled off Marsha. He lay there for a bit, listening to the dawn whispering through the apartment, the sound of the air processor whining somewhere, and the occasional rasp of his own breath and that of Marsha's too. Every so often, there was a short sharp inhalation, as if to say, “Yeah, well…”

“Yeah, well…” John muttered and began tugging at the metal reaction-monitor bands on his wrists. He sat on the edge of the bed, still pulling at the clasps, the fastenings coming loose with a soft popping sound. He reached down and unfastened similar bands from his ankles and let those fall carelessly to the floor.

Then he stood and pad-padded barefoot across the floor to the typewriter-sized console on the dresser. Behind him he heard the creak of the bed as Marsha levered herself up on one elbow. “What does it say?” she demanded.

“Just a minute, will you,” John snapped. “Give me a chance.” He ripped the readout from the computer and went through the motions of studying it. This was the deluxe model which recorded the actual moment-to-moment physical reactions of the band-wearers. The jagged spiky lines sprawled carelessly across the neat-ruled graphs meant little to him—they were there for the technicians, not the laymen—but at the top of the sheet was the computer's printed analysis. Even before he looked at it, John knew it would be bad.

“Well…?” Marsha demanded acidly. “Did we enjoy ourselves?”

“Yeah…” he muttered. “About thirty-four percent…”

“Hell!” she said, and threw herself back on the bed. She lay there staring at the ceiling. “Hell…”

“I wish you wouldn't swear so much,” he muttered, still looking at the readout.

“Hell,” she said again, just to see him flinch. She reached over to the night stand and thumbed a cigarette out of the pack.

“And I wish you wouldn't smoke so much either. Kissing you is like kissing another man.”

She looked back at him. “I've always wondered what your previous experience was. Your technique with women is terrible.” She inhaled deeply as the cigarette caught flame.

“Aaaa,” said John and padded into the bathroom. As he stood there, he gazed dourly at his hands. He could still see the imprint of the monitor bands on his wrists.

Every time they did it, she had to know, so they used the damned bands; and every time the score was lower than before—and so they both knew. Who needed a machine to tell him when he was enjoying himself in bed? You knew when it was good and you knew when it was bad. So who needed the machine?

He finished and flushed the toilet, then splashed his hands briefly under the faucet—more from a sense of duty than from any of cleanliness. He shook off the excess water, and padded out of the bathroom, not even bothering to turn off the light.

Marsha was sitting up in bed, still puffing on her cigarette. She took it out of her mouth and blew smoke at him. “Thirty-four percent. We've never gone that low before. When are you going to listen to some sense, John, and opt for the other unit?”

“I'm not a puppet—and I'm not going to let anyone make me one either!… Be damned if I'm going to let some damn fool sweaty-handed technician plug things into me…” He started casting around for his slippers.

“At least talk to them, John—it won't kill you. Find out about it, before you say it's no good. Rose Schwartz and her husband got one and she says it's the greatest. She wouldn't be without it now.” Marsha paused, brushed a straggling hair back over her forehead—and accidentally dropped cigarette ash on the sheets. He turned away in disgust while she brushed at it ineffectually, leaving a dim gray smudge.

John found one of his slippers and began pulling it on angrily.

“At least go and find out about it…?” she asked.

No answer.

“John…?”

He kept tugging at his slipper. “Leave me alone, will you—I don't need any more goddamn machines!”

She threw herself back against the pillow. The hell you don't.”

He straightened up momentarily—stopped looking for his other slipper and glared at her. “I don't need a machine to tell me how to screw!”

She returned his stare. “Then why the hell does our score keep dropping? We've never gone this low before.”

“Maybe, if you'd brush your teeth—”

“Maybe, if you'd admit that—”

“Aaaa,” he said, cutting her off, and bent down to look under the bed.

She softened her tone, leaned toward him, “John…? Will you talk to the man at least? Will you?” He didn't answer; she went shrill again. “I'm talking to you! Are you going to talk to the man?”

John found his other slipper and straightened up. “No, dammit! I'm not going to talk to the man—and I'm not going to talk to you either, unless you start talking about something else. Besides, we can't afford it. Now, are you going to fix me breakfast?”

She heaved herself out of the bed, pausing only to stub out her cigarette. “I'll get you your breakfast—but we can
too
afford it.” She snatched her robe from where it hung on the door and stamped from the room.

John glared after her, too angry to think of an answer. “Aaaa,” he said, and began looking for his underwear.

Act Two

When he got back from lunch, there was a man waiting in his reception room, a neat-looking man with a moustache and slicked-back hair. He rose. “Mr. Russell…?”

John paused, “Yes…?”

“I believe you wished to see me…?”

“Do I? Who're you?”

With a significant look at the receptionist, “Ah, may I come in?”

John half-shrugged, stepped aside to let the man enter. He could always ask him to leave. Once inside, he said, “Now then, Mr. uh…?”

“Wolfe,” said the man, as he sat down. He produced a gold-foil business card, “Lawrence Wolfe, of InterBem.”