Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (16 page)

“How do we find out for sure?”

“Easy. Infrared film. That’ll show what’s under the bruise. Borrow a camera. Buy some film. We’ll sneak down to the power plant tomorrow afternoon and take some pictures. Then we’ll know.”

They stole down into the university power plant the following afternoon. It was a vast cellar, deep under the earth. It was dark, shadowy, luminous with burning light from the furnace doors. Above the roar of the fires they could hear a strange voice shouting and chanting in the echoing vault: “All reet! All reet! So jeet your seat. Be fleet be fleet, cool and discreet, honey …” And they could see a capering figure dancing a lunatic rumba in time to the music it shouted. The legs twisted. The arms waved. The fingers writhed.

Jed Stark raised the camera and began shooting his spool of infrared film, aiming the camera sights at that bobbing head. Then Wanda shrieked, for I saw them and came charging down on them, brandishing a polished steel shovel. It smashed the camera. It felled the girl and then the boy. Jed fought me for a desperate hissing moment before he was bludgeoned into helplessness. Then the android dragged them to the furnace and fed them to the flames, slowly, hideously. It capered and sang. Then it returned to my hotel.

The thermometer in the power plant registered 100.9° murderously Fahrenheit. All reet! All reet!

We bought steerage on the
Lyra Queen
, and Vandaleur and the android did odd jobs for their meals. During the night watches, Vandaleur would sit alone in the steerage head with a cardboard portfolio on his lap, puzzling over its contents. That portfolio was all he had managed to bring with him from Lyra Alpha. He had stolen it from Wanda’s room. It was labeled ANDROID. It contained the secret of my sickness.

And it contained nothing but newspapers. Scores of newspapers from all over the galaxy, printed, microfilmed, engraved, etched, offset, photostated … Rigel
Star-Banner
… Paragon
Picayune
… Megaster
Times-Leader
… Lalande
Herald
… Lacaille
Journal
… Indi
Intelligencer
… Eridani
Telegram-News
. All reet! All reet!

Nothing but newspapers. Each paper contained an account of one crime in the android’s ghastly career. Each paper also contained news, domestic and foreign, sports, society, weather, shipping news, stock exchange quotations, human interest stories, features, contests, puzzles. Somewhere in that mass of uncollated facts was the secret Wanda and Jed Stark had discovered. Vandaleur pored over the papers helplessly. It was beyond him. So jeet your seat!

“I’ll sell you,” I told the android. “Damn you. When we land on Terra, I’ll sell you. I’ll settle for three percent on whatever you’re worth.”

“I am worth fifty-seven thousand dollars on the current exchange,” I told him.

“If I can’t sell you, I’ll turn you in to the police,” I said.

“I am valuable property,” I answered. “It is forbidden to endanger valuable property. You won’t have me destroyed.”

“Christ damn you!” Vandaleur cried. “What? Are you arrogant? Do you know you can trust me to protect you? Is that the secret?”

The multiple-aptitude android regarded him with calm accomplished eyes. “Sometimes,” it said, “it is a good thing to be property.”

It was three below zero when the
Lyra Queen
dropped at Croydon Field. A mixture of ice and snow swept across the field, fizzing and exploding into steam under the
Queen’s
tail jets. The passengers trotted numbly across the blackened concrete to customs inspection, and thence to the airport bus that was to take them to London. Vandaleur and the android were broke. They walked.

By midnight they reached Piccadilly Circus. The December ice storm had not slackened, and the statue of Eros was encrusted with ice. They turned right, walked down to Trafalgar Square and then along the Strand shaking with cold and wet. Just above Fleet Street, Vandaleur saw a solitary figure coming from the direction of St. Paul’s. He drew the android into an alley.

“We’ve got to have money,” he whispered. He pointed at the approaching figure. “He has money. Take it from him.”

“The order cannot be obeyed,” the android said.

“Take it from him,” Vandaleur repeated. “By force. Do you understand? We’re desperate.”

“It is contrary to my prime directive,” I said. “I cannot endanger life or property. The order cannot be obeyed.”

“For God’s sake!” Vandaleur burst out. “You’ve attacked, destroyed, murdered. Don’t gibber about prime directives. You haven’t any left. Get his money. Kill him if you have to. I tell you, we’re desperate!”

“It is contrary to my prime directive,” I said. “I cannot endanger life or property. The order cannot be obeyed.”

I thrust the android back and leaped out at the stranger. He was tall, austere, competent. He had an air of hope curdled by cynicism. He carried a cane. I saw he was blind.

“Yes?” he said. “I hear you near me. What is it?”

“Sir …” Vandaleur hesitated. “I’m desperate.”

“We all are desperate,” the stranger replied. “Quietly desperate.”

“Sir … I’ve got to have some money.”

“Are you begging or stealing?” The sightless eyes passed over Vandaleur and the android.

“I’m prepared for either.”

“Ah. So are we all. It is the history of our race.” The stranger motioned over his shoulder. “I have been begging at St. Paul’s, my friend. What I desire cannot be stolen. What is it you desire that you are lucky enough to be able to steal?”

“Money,” Vandaleur said.

“Money for what? Come, my friend, let us exchange confidences. I will tell you why I beg, if you will tell me why you steal. My name is Blenheim.”

“My name is … Vole.”

“I was not begging for sight at St. Paul’s, Mr. Vole. I was begging for a number.”

“A number?”

“Ah, yes. Numbers rational, numbers irrational, numbers imaginary. Positive integers. Negative integers. Fractions, positive and negative. Eh? You have never heard of Blenheim’s immortal treatise on Twenty Zeros, or The Differences in Absence of Quantity?” Blenheim smiled bitterly. “I am the wizard of the Theory of Number, Mr. Vole, and I have exhausted the charm of number for myself. After fifty years of wizardry, senility approaches and the appetite vanishes. I have been praying in St. Paul’s for inspiration. Dear God, I prayed, if You exist, send me a number.”

Vandaleur slowly lifted the cardboard portfolio and touched Blenheim’s hand with it. “In here,” he said, “is a number. A hidden number. A secret number. The number of a crime. Shall we exchange, Mr. Blenheim? Shelter for a number?”

“Neither begging nor stealing, eh?” Blenheim said. “But a bargain. So all life reduces itself to the banal.” The sightless eyes again passed over Vandaleur and the android. “Perhaps the All-Mighty is not God but a merchant. Come home with me.”

On the top floor of Blenheim’s house we shared a room—two beds, two closets, two washstands, one bathroom. Vandaleur bruised my forehead again and sent me out to find work, and while the android worked, I consulted with Blenheim and read him the papers from the portfolio, one by one. All reet! All reet!

Vandaleur told him so much and no more. He was a student, I said, attempting a thesis on the murdering android. In these papers which he had collected were the facts that would explain the crimes of which Blenheim had heard nothing. There must be a correlation, a number, a statistic, something which would account for my derangement, I explained, and Blenheim was piqued by the mystery, the detective story, the human interest of number.

We examined the papers. As I read them aloud, he listed them and their contents in his blind, meticulous writing. And then I read his notes to him. He listed the papers by type, by typeface, by fact, by fancy, by article, spelling, words, theme, advertising, pictures, subject, politics, prejudices. He analyzed. He studied. He meditated. And we lived together in that top floor, always a little cold, always a little terrified, always a little closer … brought together by our fear of it, our hatred between us. Like a wedge driven into a living tree and splitting the trunk, only to be forever incorporated into the scar tissue, we grew together. Vandaleur and the android. Be fleet be fleet!

And one afternoon Blenheim called Vandaleur into his study and displayed his notes. “I think I’ve found it,” he said, “but I can’t understand it.”

Vandaleur’s heart leaped.

“Here are the correlations,” Blenheim continued. “In fifty papers there are accounts of the criminal android. What is there, outside the depredations, that is also in fifty papers?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Blenheim.”

“It was a rhetorical question. Here is the answer. The weather.”

“What?”

“The weather.” Blenheim nodded. “Each crime was committed on a day when the temperature was above ninety degrees Fahrenheit.”

“But that’s impossible,” Vandaleur exclaimed. “It was cool on Lyra Alpha.”

“We have no record of any crime committed on Lyra Alpha. There is no paper.”

“No. That’s right, I—” Vandaleur was confused. Suddenly he exclaimed. “No. You’re right. The furnace room. It was hot there. Hot! Of course. My God, yes! That’s the answer. Dallas Brady’s electric furnace … The rice deltas on Paragon. So jeet your seat. Yes. But why? Why? My God, why?”

I came into the house at that moment, and passing the study, saw Vandaleur and Blenheim. I entered, awaiting commands, my multiple aptitudes devoted to service.

“That’s the android, eh?” Blenheim said after a long moment.

“Yes,” Vandaleur answered, still confused by the discovery. “And that explains why it refused to attack you that night on the Strand. It wasn’t hot enough to break the prime directive. Only in the heat … The heat, all reet!” He looked at the android. A silent lunatic command passed from man to android. I refused. It is forbidden to endanger life. Vandaleur gestured furiously, then seized Blenheim’s shoulders and yanked him back out of his desk chair to the floor. Blenheim shouted once. Vandaleur leaped on him like a tiger, pinning him to the floor and sealing his mouth with one hand.

“Find a weapon,” he called to the android.

“It is forbidden to endanger life.”

“This is a fight for self-preservation. Bring me a weapon!” He held the squirming mathematician with all his weight. I went at once to a cupboard where I knew a revolver was kept. I checked it. It was loaded with five cartridges. I handed it to Vandaleur. I took it, rammed the barrel against Blenheim’s head and pulled the trigger. He shuddered once.

We had three hours before the cook returned from her day off. We looted the house. We took Blenheim’s money and jewels. We packed a bag with clothes. We took Blenheim’s notes, destroyed the newspapers; and we left, carefully locking the door behind us. In Blenheim’s study we left a pile of crumpled papers under a half inch of burning candle. And we soaked the rug around it with kerosene. No, I did all that. The android refused. I am forbidden to endanger life or property.

All reet!

They took the tubes to Leicester Square, changed trains, and rode to the British Museum. There they got off and went to a small Georgian house just off Russell Square. A shingle in the window read: NAN WEBB, PSYCHOMETRIC CONSULTANT. Vandaleur had made a note of the address some weeks earlier. They went into the house. The android waited in the foyer with the bag. Vandaleur entered Nan Webb’s office.

She was a tall woman with gray shingled hair, very fine English complexion, and very bad English legs. Her features were blunt, her expression acute. She nodded to Vandaleur, finished a letter, sealed it and looked up.

“My name,” I said, “is Vanderbilt. James Vanderbilt.”

“Quite.”

“I’m an exchange student at London University.”

“Quite.”

“I’ve been researching on the killing android, and I think I’ve discovered something very interesting. I’d like your advice on it. What is your fee?”

“What is your college at the University?”

“Why?”

“There is a discount for students.”

“Merton College.”

“That will be two pounds, please.”

Vandaleur placed two pounds on the desk and added to the fee Blenheim’s notes. “There is a correlation,” he said, “between the crimes of the android and the weather. You will note that each crime was committed when the temperature rose above ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Is there a psychometric answer for this?”

Nan Webb nodded, studied the notes for a moment, put down the sheets of paper, and said: “Synesthesia, obviously.”

“What?”

“Synesthesia,” she repeated. “When a sensation, Mr. Vanderbilt, is interpreted immediately in terms of a sensation from a different sense organ from the one stimulated, it is called synesthesia. For example: A sound stimulus gives rise to a simultaneous sensation of definite color. Or color gives rise to a sensation of taste. Or a light stimulus gives rise to a sensation of sound. There can be confusion or short circuiting of any sensation of taste, smell, pain, pressure, temperature and so on. D’you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Your research has uncovered the fact that the android most probably reacts to temperature stimulus above the ninety-degree level synesthetically. Most probably there is an endocrine response. Probably a temperature linkage with the android adrenal surrogate. High temperature brings about a response of fear, anger, excitement, and violent physical activity … all within the province of the adrenal gland.”

“Yes. I see. Then if the android were to be kept in cold climates …”

“There would be neither stimulus nor response. There would be no crimes. Quite.”

“I see. What is projection?”

“How do you mean?”

“Is there any danger of projection with regard to the owner of the android?”

“Very interesting. Projection is a throwing forward. It is the process of throwing out upon another the ideas or impulses that belong to oneself. The paranoid, for example, projects upon others his conflicts and disturbances in order to externalize them. He accuses, directly or by implication, other men of having the very sicknesses with which he is struggling himself.”