“It wouldn’t be so bad, but it makes you wonder about a lot of other things. I mean, really, how could they let that thing escape?”
A masculine growl: “Hah! How? Haven’t I been telling you how? It’s letting machines do men’s work! We’ve put our destiny in the hands of solid-state components, so what do you expect? Don’t you remember my White Paper last year? I said, ‘Guarding men’s liberties is a post of honor, and only the honored should hold it.’ ”
Forrester sat up, recognizing the voice: Taiko Hironibi. The Luddite.
“I thought you were talking about the coppers,” said Adne’s voice.
“Same thing! Machines should do machine work, men should do men’s—Hey, what’s that?”
Forrester realized he had made a noise. He stood up, feeling ancient and worn, but somewhat better than before he had slept, and was coming out toward them even before Adne answered Taiko. “It’s only Charles. Come in here, Charles, why don’t you?”
Taiko was standing before the view-wall, joymaker in his hand; his thumb was on one of the studs, and apparently he had just been giving himself a shot of one brand or another of euphoria. Even so, he glowered at Forrester.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” said Adne.
“Huh,” said Taiko.
“If I can forgive him, you can forgive him. You have to make allowances for the kamikaze ages.”
“Hah,” said Taiko. But the euphoria prevailed—either the spray from the joymaker, or the spice of danger that was sweeping them all. Taiko clipped the joymaker to his belt, rubbed his chin, then grinned. “Well, why not? All us human beings have to stand together now, right? Put ’er there.”
Gravely they shook hands. Forrester felt altogether ridiculous doing it; he was not sure just what he had done to offend Taiko in the first place, and was not particularly anxious to be forgiven by him now. Still, he reminded himself, Taiko had once offered him a job. A job was something he needed. Although, with the Sirian threat so urgent and imminent now, it was at least an open question whether the Ned Lud Society would need any more workers. . . .
It could not hurt to find out. Before he could change his mind, Forrester said rapidly, “I want you to know, Taiko, that I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said. You were right, of course.”
Taiko’s eyes opened. “About what?”
“About the danger of the machines, I mean. What I think is, men should do men’s work and machines should do machine work.”
“There’s only one computer you can trust.” Forrester tapped his skull with a forefinger. “The one up here.”
“Sure, but—”
“It just burns me up,” said Forrester angrily, “to think that they left the safeguarding of our planet to solid-state components! If only they’d listened to you!”
With part of his attention, Forrester could hear a smothered giggle from Adne, but he ignored it. “I want you to know,” he cried, “that I’ve come to some conclusions over the last few days and I’m for the Ned Lud Society a hundred percent. Let me help, Taiko! Call on me for anything!”
Taiko gave the girl a look of absent-minded puzzlement, then returned to Forrester. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad to hear that. I’ll keep that in mind, if anything comes up.”
It took all of Forrester’s self-control to keep his expression friendly and eager; why was Taiko being so slow? But Adne rescued him. Suppressing her giggles, she said excitedly, “Say, Taiko! Why don’t you let Charles in the Society? I mean, if he’d be willing.”
Taiko frowned and hesitated, but Forrester didn’t give him a chance. “I’m willing,” he said nobly. “I meant what I said. Glad to help.”
Taiko shrugged after a second and said, “Well, fine, then, Forrester. Of course, the money’s not much.”
“Doesn’t matter a bit!” cried Forrester. “It’s what I want to do! Uh, how much?”
“Well, basic scale is twenty-six thousand.”
“A day?”
“Sure, Forrester.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Forrester largely. “I only want to serve any way I can.” And, exultant, he allowed himself to be given a drink to celebrate, which he enlarged to be a meal. Adne was tolerantly amused.
And all the while the view-wall was displaying scenes of alarm and panic, unheeded.
Forrester had not forgotten that he had betrayed Earth to the Sirians; he had only submerged that large and unpleasant thought in the smaller, but more immediate, pleasure of having escaped from the Forgotten Men. He drank a warm, minty froth and ate nutlike little spheres that tasted like crisp pork; he accepted a spray of a pinkly evanescent cloud from Adne’s joymaker that made him feel about seventeen again—briefly. Tomorrow would be time enough to worry about what he had done to the world, he thought. For today it was enough to be eating well and to have a place in the scheme of mankind.
But all his worries came back to him when he heard his name spoken. It was Taiko’s joymaker that spoke it, and it said, “Man Hironibi! Permit an interruption, please. Are you in the company of Man Forrester, Charles Dalgleish?”
“Yes, sure,” said Taiko, a beat before Forrester opened his mouth to plead with him to deny it.
“Will you ask Man Forrester to speak his name, Man Hironibi?”
“Go ahead, Forrester. It’s to identify you, see?”
Forrester put down the cup of frothed mint and took a deep breath. The pink cloud of joy might as well never have been. He felt every year of his age, even the centuries in the freezer. He said, because he could think of no excuse for not saying it, “Oh, all right. Charles Dalgleish Forrester. Is that what you want?”
Promptly the joymaker said, “Thank you, Man Forrester. Your acoustic pattern is confirmed. Will you accept a message of fiscal change?”
That was quick, thought Forrester, clutching at a feeling of relief; the thing only wanted to acknowledge his new job! “Sure.”
“Man Forrester,” said Taiko’s joymaker, “your late employer, now permanently removed from this ecology, left instructions to disburse his entire residual estate as follows: to the League for Interspacial Amity, one million dollars; to the Shoggo Central Gilbert and Sullivan Guild, one million dollars; to the United Fraternity of Peace Clubs, five million dollars; the balance, amounting to ninety-one million, seven hundred sixty-three thousand, one hundred forty-two dollars, estimated as of this moment—mark!—to be transferred to the account of his last recorded employee as of date of removal, to wit, yourself. I am now so transferring this sum, Man Forrester. You may draw on it as you wish.”
Forrester sank weakly back against the cushions of Adne’s bright, billowy couch. He could not think of anything to say.
“God bless,” cried Adne, “you’re rich again, Charles! Why, you lucky creature!”
“Sure are,” echoed Taiko, grasping his hand warmly. Forrester could only nod.
But he was not really sure that he was so lucky as he seemed. Ninety-one million dollars! It was a lot of money, even in this age of large numbers. It would keep him in comfort for a long time, surely; it would finance all sorts of pleasures and pursuits; it would remove him from the whim of Taiko’s pleasure and insure him against a relapse to the Forgotten Men. But what would happen, Forrester thought painfully, when somebody asked, first, who that late employer happened to be—and why that employer, before returning to his native planet circling around the star Sirius, had so lavishly rewarded Charles Forrester?
The news from the view-wall kept coming in, in a mounting torrent of apprehension and excitement. Forrester, watching Adne and Taiko as they responded to the news reports, could hardly tell when they were reacting with fear and when with a sense of stimulation. Did they really expect Earth to be destroyed by the retaliation of the Sirians? And what were they going to do about it?
When he tried to ask them, Taiko laughed. “Get rid of the machines,” he said largely. “Then we’ll take ’em on—any snake or octopus from anywhere in the galaxy! But first we’ve got to clean house at home.”
Adne only said, “Why don’t you come with us—and relax?”
“Come along and see,” she said.
Considering his own guilt in that area, Forrester did not want to attract attention by seeming especially concerned about the Sirians. But he insisted, “Shouldn’t somebody be doing something?”
“Somebody will be,” said Taiko. “Don’t worry so, boy! There’ll be a run on the freezers—people chickening out, you see. You know. ‘Leave it to George.’ Then, by and by, the Sirians’ll come nosing around, and the appropriate people will deal with them. Or they won’t.”
“Meanwhile, Taiko and I have a date to crawl,” said Adne, “and you might as well come along. It’ll rest you.”
“Crawl?”
“It’s everybody’s duty to keep fit—now more than ever,” Taiko urged.
“You’re being very good to me,” Forrester said gratefully. But what he really wanted was to sit in that room and watch the view-wall. One by one the remote monitoring stations of Earth’s defense screen were reporting in, and although the report from each one of them so far was the same—“No sign of the escaped Sirian”—Forrester wanted to stay with it, stay right in that room watching that view-wall, until there was some other report. To make sure that Earth was safe, of course. But also to find out, at the earliest possible moment, if the (hopefully) recaptured Sirian would give out any information about his accomplice. . . .