“Your lines of distinction between types of fraud escape me.”
“We’ll be doing a public service, Chester. We’ll bring a little glamour into a lot of dull, drab lives. We’ll be public benefactors, sort of. Why not look at it that way?”
“Restrain yourself, Case. We’re not going into politics; we’re just honest, straightforward charlatans, remember?”
“Not that there won’t be problems,” Case went on. “It’s going to be a headache picking the right kind of scenes. Take ancient Greece, for example. They had some customs that wouldn’t do for a family-type show. In the original Olympics none of the contestants wanted to be loaded with anything as confining as a G string. And there were the public baths—coeducational—and the slave markets, with the merchandise in full view. We’ll have to watch our step, Chester. Practically everything in ancient history was too dirty for the public to look at.”
“We’d better restrict ourselves to later times when people were Christians,” Chester said. “We can show the Inquisition, seventeenth-century witch burnings—you know, wholesome stuff.”
“How about another trial run, Chester? Just a quickie. Something simple, just to see if the machine gets the idea.”
Chester sighed. “We may as well.”
“What do you say to a nice cave-man scene, Chester?” said Case. “Stone axes, animal skins around the waist, bear-tooth necklaces—the regular Alley Oop routine.”
“Very well—but let’s avoid any large carnivores. They’re overly realistic.”
There was a faint sound from behind them. Chester turned. A young girl stood on the rug, looking around as if fascinated by the neo-Victorian décor. Glossy dark hair curled about her oval face. She caught Chester’s eye and stepped around to stand before him on the rug, a slender, modest figure wearing a golden suntan and a scarlet hair ribbon. Chester gulped audibly. Case dropped his cigar.
“Perhaps I should have mentioned, Mr. Chester,” the computer said, “that the mobile speaker you requested is ready. I carried on the work in an entropic vacuole, permitting myself thereby to produce a complex entity in a very brief period, subjectively speaking.”
Chester gulped again.
“Hi!” Case said, breaking the stunned silence.
“Hello,” said the girl. Her voice was melodiously soft. She reached up to adjust her hair ribbon, smiling at Case and Chester. “My name is Genie.”
“Uh . . . wouldn’t you like to borrow my shirt?”
“Knock it off, Chester,” Case said. “You remind me of those characters you see on Tri-D that hide every time they see a pretty girl in the bathtub.”
“I don’t think the computer got the idea after all,” Chester said weakly.
“It’s pretty literal,” Case said. “We only worried about the scenes . . . ”
“I selected this costume as appropriate to the primitive setting,” the girl said. “As for my physical characteristics, the intention was to produce the ideal of the average young female, without mammary hypertrophy or other exaggeration, to evoke a sisterly or maternal response in women, while the reaction of male members of the audience should be a fatherly one.”
“I’m not sure it’s working on me,” said Chester, breathing hard.
The pretty face looked troubled. “Perhaps the body should be redesigned, Mr. Chester.”
“Don’t change a thing,” Case said hastily. “And call me Case.”
Chester moved closer to Case. “Funny,” he whispered. “She talks just like the computer.”
“What’s funny about that? It is the computer talking. This is just a robot, remember, Chester.”
“Shall we proceed with the view of Neolithic Man?” Genie inquired.
“Sure, shoot,” Case boomed.
The walls seemed to fade from view to reveal a misty-morning scene of sloping grassland scattered with wild flowers and set here and there with trees.
“Say, this is O.K.,” said Case, lighting a fresh cigar. “Nice-looking country.”
“If you’ll observe to the left,” Genie said. “I believe these are a party of hunters returning to their dwelling.”
Case and Chester turned.
Two squat, bearded men in fur pants emerged from a thicket down the slope, saw the watching trio and stopped dead. More savages followed. The two leaders stood, eyes and mouths agape, hefting long sticks sharpened at one end.
“These guys are practically midgets,” Case said. “I thought cave men were pretty big guys.”
“They seem to see us,” said Chester. “Apparently the audience is on view as well as the actors. I feel rather exposed. What do you suppose they’re planning to do with those spears?”
One of the natives stepped forward a pace and shouted.
“You too, pal,” Case called, puffing out smoke.
The spokesman shouted again, pointing around, at the other man, at the trees, at the sky, then at himself. Bearded warriors continued to appear from the underbrush.
“I wonder what he’s yelling about,” said Case.
“He says that he is the owner of the world and that you have no business in it,” Genie replied.
“His title to the property is probably clearer than mine,” put in Chester.
“How the heck do you know the language?” Case asked admiringly.
“Oh, I have full access to the memory banks,” Genie said, “as long as I remain within the resonance field.”
“Sort of a transmitter and receiver arrangement?”
“In a sense. Actually it is more analogous to an artificially induced telepathic effect.”
“I thought that was only with people—uh, I mean, you know, regular-type people.”
“Regular in what way?” Genie inquired interestedly.
“Well, after all, you are a machine,” said Case. “Not that I’ve got anything against machinery.”
“The owner of the world is coming this way,” interrupted Chester. “And reinforcements are still arriving.”
“Yeah, we’re drawing a good crowd,” Case said.
The troglodytes spread out in a wide half-circle. The leader called instructions, made complicated motions, turned to hurl an occasional imprecation at the three viewers on the slope.
“Looks like he’s getting some kind of show ready. Probably a quaint native dance to get on our good side.”
“He’s disposing the warriors for battle,” Genie said.
“Battle? Who with?” Case looked around. “I don’t see any opposition.”
“With us. Or, more properly, with you two gentlemen.”
“Maybe a strategic withdrawal?” Chester offered.
“I wouldn’t miss this for all the two-dollar bills in Tijuana,” said Case. “Relax, Chester. It’s only a show.”
At a signal the half-ring of bearded warriors started up the slope, spears held at the ready.
“Boy, will they get a shock when they hit the wall,” Case said, chuckling.
Yelping, the advancing savages broke into a run. They were fifty feet away, thirty . . .
“I know they can’t get at us,” Chester wailed, “but do they?”
“Perhaps I should mention,” observed Genie above the din, “that a one-to-one spacio-temporal contiguity has been established.”
Genie’s voice was drowned out in the mob yell as the warriors pelted up the last few yards, converging on the rug.
At the last instant, Case tossed his cigar aside and leaped up, swung a roundhouse right that sent a hairy warrior spinning. Chester leaped aside from another, saw Case seize two men by their beards and sling their heads together, drop them as three more sprang on him, then go down in an avalanche of whiskers and bandy legs. Chester opened his mouth to shout an order to retreat, got an instant’s glimpse of a horny foot aimed at his head . . .
Somewhere, a large brass bell tolled sundown. For a fading moment, Chester was aware of the tumble of dirt-brown bodies, distant cries, an overpowering odor that suggested unsuccessful experiments in cheese-making. Then darkness folded in.
3
The sun was shining in Chester’s eyes. He opened them, felt sharp pains shooting down from the top of his skull, closed them again with a groan. He rolled over, felt the floor sway under him.
“We’ll have to cut down on all this drinking,” he muttered. “Case, where are you?”
There was no answer. Chester tried his eyes again. If he barely opened them, he decided, it wasn’t too bad. And to think that this gargantuan headache had resulted from the consumption of a few bottles of what had always been reputed to be some of the best wines in the old boy’s cellar.
“Case?” he croaked, louder this time. He sat up, felt the floor move again sickeningly. He lay back hastily. It hadn’t been more than two bottles at the most, or maybe three. He and Case had been looking over the computer . . .
“Oh, no,” Chester said aloud. He sat up, winced, pried his eyes open.
He was sitting on the floor of a wicker cage six feet in diameter, with sides that curved into a beehive shape at the top. Outside the cage, nothing was visible but open air and distant treetops. He pushed his face up against the openwork side, saw the ground swaying twenty feet below.
“Case,” he yelled. “Get me out of here!”
“Chester,” a soft voice called from nearby. Chester looked around. Twenty feet away, a cage like his own swung from a massive branch of the next tree. Inside it Genie knelt, her face against the rattan bars.