The Mile Long Spaceship (8 page)

"I remember," her voice came back. "You get her inside and I follow and close and bar the door. Are you sure you can handle her?"

He laughed. Jenny watched him walk toward the cabin; everything was forgotten as an icy rage filled her. She waited until he stopped in the doorway and lit a match. Carefully she placed her books in the crook of the tree. Then silently as an owl she swooped down on the woman and without a sound grasped her about the waist with one arm, clamping her hand over her mouth, and swinging upward at the same moment. The woman struggled briefly until they were fifteen feet or so off the ground and then she went limp. Swiftly Jenny flew with her to the road a mile away and deposited her in the top of a tree, slapping her rudely several times to make sure she was fully conscious before she left her clinging there. She returned to the cabin. Steve was leaning against the door frame.

Jenny circled around in full view and slowly came in to land thirty feet away from him. She stopped and held out her arms. For a moment Steve hesitated, but then he ran toward her.

"Darling," he murmured into her hair. "I was afraid you wouldn't come." His breath was warm against her neck and she put her arms around him and holding him very tight spread her wings and lifted. Steve cried out hoarsely and tried to squeeze her. She laughed.

"Look down, Steve," she said calmly. "Do you really want me to let go?"

"Jenny," he cried. "I can't breathe. Let's go back down. This isn't funny."

"Soon," she said softly. "Soon." She flew with him into the valley and past a dude ranch and its corral. She had seen a posted area nearby and she thought she remembered exactly where it was, if she didn't tire too soon. Grimly she flew on. Then she recognized the land below. A military area, posted and guarded with men and dogs. She flew in low to avoid the radar and skimming twenty feet over the ground she sought a lake she knew to be on the other side of the hill. She slowed her flight and said regretfully, "Steve, I do believe I am tiring. Talk your way out of this, Steve, honey." He clutched at her trying to hold on, but she shook him off and circled him as he fell screaming all the way. The splash he made was immediately answered by shouting and barking. Silently she flew away only inches above the tops of the trees.

Then, her anger spent, she glided effortlessly, aimlessly. What now, Jenny? she asked herself sadly. Perhaps she would return to Dr. Lindquist and request the surgery that would make her normal. He had been so nice. Besides she'd have to return the books and explain that she wouldn't need them after all. He had said she was beautiful—Perhaps—She squealed in fright suddenly and did a quick manuever, turning over completely and hovering on her back, looking about wildly. Something had touched her! Then arms were about her waist, and a warm body pressing against her back.

She twisted her head about and gasped, "Dr. Lindquist!"

"Call me Tor," he murmured in her ear. This time it was his body twist that righted them both, and another slight motion that headed them up into the sky. They flew in perfect unison.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded and found that she was shivering. That's why he had been so stiff. His wings had been wrapped around him.

"I wanted to tell you. I couldn't believe it until I saw and touched your wings, and then you said you were in love and I had to let you find out that you weren't. I knew you would find out. You were in love with a peach blossom against a blue sky." His arms didn't have to hold her up any longer and his hands moved over her unhurriedly.

"Oh," she breathed and his laugh was low in her ear.

"There's the current," he said softly. "Just glide. We'll stay up for hours. There's so much to talk about. So much to do."

To her surprise she found that she wasn't shivering at all.

G. B. led
the admiring group of men down the ramp that wound to the main floor, and gestured expansively, "And here they come out boxed and stacked on the outgoing belt ready for the boxcar."

"A marvel of engineering, Mr. McKeldridge, A marvel." Senator Williams beamed at the young president of McKeldridge, Inc. The plant was in his state, and he had the proprietary air of a new father.

"To think, not a human hand touched those toys." Mr. Schultz of the chamber of commerce was staring in fascination at the conveyor belt with the precisely-spaced toys being deftly boxed and stacked. At that moment, the whole stack of the boxes began to move in a slow, smooth movement toward the immense doors at the other end of the plant The door opened upward; the boxes were carried outside the building and neatly deposited in a waiting freight boxcar.

"That finished the carload," G. B. explained. "They were automatically counted and weighed so that they came out exactly right. There will be two more carloads before the order is filled. Great seller, I understand."

One of the men started to remove a toy from the belt, and G. B. hurriedly said, "You mustn't do that, Mr. Hammler, It will throw things out of kilter. Mr. Stacey, here, will tell you all about that later—but I should warn you that if even one of the objects on the belt were removed, the brain would stop the whole operation and make adjustments that would consume hours. It is geared to produce so many of the things in a given time, and has its own warning system if anything goes wrong along the way. We couldn't start it again manually, no matter what."

The under secretary of defense quickly placed his hands in his pockets and looking abashed, asked, "But bow can you people afford to retool and still underbid everyone else for this government contract?"

"Ah, but we don't retool." G. B. smiled benignly at Mr. Stacey. "Gentlemen, here is one of the greatest authorities on automation living today. And he designed the brain that controls this plant in such a way that she—that is—it," he glanced about guiltily at the slip, "does all the necessary work about changing over for a different product."

He gave a passing glance at his watch and suggested a recess of the tour. "This afternoon, after lunch, Mr. Stacey will explain how that part of it works. Suffice it to say right now that this order for these toy robots is the third order we have manufactured without adding a piece of machinery or taking out a piece. All that is in excess is stored at the highest level up there until it will be needed again. It was expensive—but in time saved and ease of operation, it has already paid for itself. And with this government contract assured us, the monetary value of it is finally paying off."

The official photographer took some pictures then and the others waited until he was finished. There were fifteen of them in all, and they all had questions to ask about the operation, the comparative cost of the machinery and brain as against human pay for the same work.

"That's the beauty of the thing," G. B. said. "Once the machinery is paid for, there are no further expenses connected with it other than a few technicians who feed it additional data for each new order. And, of course, the checker, who happens to be either Mr. Stacey or myself at the present." He smiled deprecatorily, "At first, there was some hesitation at accepting merchandise that hadn't at least been looked at by humans—but that has gone, now that the thing has proven itself. We do a spot check. Every hundredth toy has been channelled away from the rest and into our office for inspection. From there it goes back into the line to be boxed with the others."

"And to think that no man or woman actually works in here." Senator Morrison sighed pompously, "What will they do when all the plants are automated this way? I can see trouble ahead, if we don't begin planning now for it."

Quickly his colleagues in Congress said, "We'll have to bring it up with the President, Senator—perhaps write a bill or two to handle the situation." They dropped back to discuss it fully.

G. B. was pointing out the most interesting angles to the photographer when Mr. Stacey said, "But there is one person here. Remember Old Mike, G. B.?"

The group turned as a person to G. B.

"So a human
is
needed after all?"

"I didn't think it was completely automatic. That day hasn't come yet, although it will. It will."

"All machinery needs a human brain to direct it, no matter how well it functions."

"Who is Old Mike?"

"Gentlemen, gentlemen." G. B.'s smile was a trifle forced as he put both hands before his face. "Really, I almost hate to tell you after all that. But I shall, anyway. Old Mike is as necessary as the lights. Which aren't. The brain doesn't need the light to see by, any more than McKeldridge, Inc. needs Old Mike. But for sentimental reasons we keep him on. And will continue to keep him on as long as he wants to continue with us."

G. B. turned, as if to leave it at that, but they pressed him for a reason. He said, reluctantly, "My father stipulated in his will that Old Mike was to stay on as long as there was a plant, and he wanted to work in it. So you see, there's nothing that can be done about Old Mike. I believe he calls himself the watchman. As you have seen, the place is burglar-proof, and there's absolutely nothing that can burn up—and there are signals to cover any contingency that could conceivably arise. Therefore, no watchman is necessary. But the old man doesn't want to retire, so we permit him to stay on. I believe he saved Father's life some fifty years ago when a press got away from the operator, or something like that. Anyway, Mike was injured in the accident, and Father was determined to make it up to him some way. This is what the old fellow wanted."

He did turn and lead them away then; and high in the building, Old Mike turned off the television screens that had let him follow the tour from one section to another.

"Fools! Everyone of them, fools! Marvelous place! Hah! Place could blow up and them not even here to know it," he muttered to himself angrily. "Gadgets! Nothing but gadgets." He spat expressively. Old Mike was seventy one, and walked with a limp that became progressively worse each winter; but otherwise, his health was excellent. A constant source of irritation to G. B., who wanted him retired and out of the plant, the old man refused the armchair and pension that awaited him.

He had laughed at the doctor at his last examination. "Tell that young smart aleck that my pappy lived to be a hundred," he said, and cackled all the way back to his tiny office.

He kept up his running line of disconnected conversation with himself most of the time when he was alone, ever since the night that he had found himself speaking to the brain as if it were a person. Calling it Sarah, the way those cocksure engineers did. That had frightened him, and following the scare had come hatred of the machine.

"No-good thing. Wanting to be a person. Think you're getting smart, don't you? Making things without nobody telling you how or pushing buttons even. But you're just a hunk of metal. That's all you are. A hunk of metal with some wire running around inside you." So he talked to the machine on the occasions he forced himself to visit the brain. Every Monday he stood before it as if to reassure himself that it was, after all, just a machine. He always backed out of the room that housed Sarah.

Mostly he stayed in his office with the screens turned on, and he read or dozed and talked to himself. And lived with his memories of the past. "Them was the days, boy. This place was alive then when old Mr. McKeldridge was running things. He sure could make the place hum when he stepped out and looked around. And we knew who was boss them days. No sashaying about and getting machines to do man's work for him, no siree bob. He knew what men was supposed to do, and he saw to it that they done it." He added darkly, "If God had a wanted the world run by machines, He'd a put them here instead of decent men."

His alarm tinkled softly on the hour, and meticulously he scanned every screen to make sure that the plant was in operation as it should be. He watched the overhead conveyor belts in their perpetual motion of supplying and storing parts and surplus. He looked in on the great wall, where the lights flickered off and on continually, as Sarah guided the work electronically. He watched the metal being unloaded and spray-painted; stamped out and pressed into shape; and finally, the interior works being riveted in, and the whole robot come from the packing belt ready for the boxcar. Satisfied, he leaned back in his rocker and took out his pipe. Then with a puzzled look he turned once more to the closeup of the robots as they glided down toward the boxcar. There was something...

Limping badly, he hurried down the ramp that transversed the building, and came to the belt he had just scanned. With a frown, he hobbled to the office used by G. B. and Mr. Stacey jointly in their inspection. There was the prototype of the robots made to the specifications of the toy company that had ordered them preparatory to their Christmas rush.

"I knew it!" he exclaimed gleefully, and was startled at the sound of his own cracked voice above the ordered hum of excellent machinery. "I knew that dad-burned thing would mess up somehow," he said more quietly. "Just wait til Mr. Smarty Pants sees this." He clutched the toy to his chest and hurried back to the line, where he snatched another from the belt. Instantly, a buzzing alarm sounded; abruptly, a sudden silence filled the vast plant that was more alarming to the old man than would have been a siren at that moment.

He ran in his awkward gait to his office to collect his coat and hat, and cast an apprehensive glance at Sarah, whose whole face was filled with the lights flashing their messages. He hurried from the cavernous quiet of the place to the downtown office where G. B. conducted his business, chortling again once away from Sarah's building.

"You just tell him it's Old Mike, and he'll see me," he said to the pert girl behind the desk.

"I'm sorry, sir, but he is not to be disturbed. I have his direct orders to that effect. If you will be seated..." She motioned to the spacious reception room, luxurious with overstuffed chairs and low tables done in shades of brown from a coppery red to a nearly black mahogany. It was a room meant to impress, and Old Mike was suitably awed by it as he hesitantly took a seat, self-consciously aware of the two robots he was holding. The girl paid no further attention to him however, and continued her typing as if he weren't there. She answered the phone from time to time, and each call received the same treatment that Old Mike had been given: G. B. could not be disturbed. G. B. was in conference.