Assignment in Tomorrow Read online

  The travelogue held her attention until it was finished, and the station switched over to a current serial with Larry Ainslee, the same cute emoter who’d given us all the trouble with the twins. Incidentally, he looked something like Dave.

  Helen took to the serial like a seal to water. This play acting was a perfect outlet for her newly excited emotions. When that particular episode finished, she found a love story on another station, and added still more to her education. The afternoon programs were mostly news and music, but by then she’d found my books; and I do have rather adolescent taste in literature.

  Dave came home in the best of spirits. The front alcove was neatly swept, and there was the odor of food in the air that he’d missed around the house for weeks. He had visions of Helen as the super-efficient housekeeper.

  So it was a shock to him to feel two strong arms around his neck from behind and hear a voice all a-quiver coo into his ears, “Oh, Dave, darling. I’ve missed you so, and I’m so thrilled that you’re back.” Helen’s technique may have lacked polish, but it had enthusiasm, as he found when he tried to stop her from kissing him. She had learned fast and furiously—also, Helen was powered by an atomotor.

  Dave wasn’t a prude, but he remembered that she was only a robot, after all. The fact that she felt, acted, and looked like a young goddess in his arms didn’t mean much. With some effort, he untangled her and dragged her off to supper, where he made her eat with him to divert her attention.

  After her evening work, he called her into the study and gave her a thorough lecture on the folly of her ways. It must have been good, for it lasted three solid hours, and covered her station in life, the idiocy of stereos, and various other miscellanies. When he finished, Helen looked up with dewy eyes and said wistfully, “I know, Dave, but I still love you.” That’s when Dave started drinking.

  It grew worse each day. If he stayed downtown, she was crying when he came home. If he returned on time, she fussed over him and threw herself at him. In his room, with the door locked, he could hear her downstairs pacing up and down and muttering; and when he went down, she stared at him reproachfully until he had to go back up.

  I sent Helen out on a fake errand in the morning and got Dave up. With her gone, I made him eat a decent breakfast and gave him a tonic for his nerves. He was still listless and moody.

  “Look here, Dave,” I broke in on his brooding. “Helen isn’t human, after all. Why not cut off her power and change a few memory coils? Then we can convince her that she never was in love and couldn’t get that way.”

  “You try it. I had that idea, but she put up a wail that would wake Homer. She says it would be murder—and the hell of it is that I can’t help feeling the same about it. Maybe she isn’t human, but you wouldn’t guess it when she puts on that martyred look and tells you to go ahead and kill her.”

  “We never put in substitutes for some of the secretions present in man during the love period.”

  “I don’t know what we put in. Maybe the heterones backfired or something. Anyway, she’s made this idea so much a part of her thoughts that we’d have to put in a whole new set of coils.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “Go ahead. You’re the surgeon of this family. I’m not used to fussing with emotions. Matter of fact, since she’s been acting this way, I’m beginning to hate work on any robot. My business is joiner to blazes.”

  He saw Helen coming up the walk and ducked out the back door for the monorail express. I’d intended to put him back in bed, but let him go. Maybe he’d be better off at his shop than at home.

  “Dave’s gone?” Helen did have that martyred look now. “Yeah. I got him to eat, and he’s gone to work.”

  “I’m glad he ate.” She slumped down in a chair as if she were worn out, though how a mech could be tired beat me. “Phil?”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Do you think I’m bad for him? I mean, do you think he’d be happier if I weren’t here?”

  “He’ll go crazy if you keep acting this way around him.” She winced. Those little hands were twisting about pleadingly, and I felt like an inhuman brute. But I’d started, and I went ahead. “Even if I cut out your power and changed your coils, he’d probably still be haunted by you.”

  “I know. But I can’t help it. And I’d make him a good wife, really I would, Phil.”

  I gulped; this was getting a little too far. “And give him strapping sons to boot, I suppose. A man wants flesh and blood, not rubber and metal.”

  “Don’t, please! I can’t think of myself that way; to me, I’m a woman. And you know how perfectly I’m made to imitate a real woman . . . in all ways. I couldn’t give him sons, but in every other way . . . I’d try so hard, I know I’d make him a good wife.”

  I gave up.

  Dave didn’t come home that night, nor the next day. Helen was fussing and fuming, wanting me to call the hospitals and the police, but I knew nothing had happened to him. He always carried identification. Still, when he didn’t come on the third day, I began to worry. And when Helen started out for his shop, I agreed to go with her.

  Dave was there, with another man I didn’t know. I parked Helen where he couldn’t see her, but where she could hear, and went in as soon as the other fellow left.

  Dave looked a little better and seemed glad to see me. “Hi, Phil—just closing up. Let’s go eat.”

  Helen couldn’t hold back any longer, but came trooping in. “Come on home, Dave. I’ve got roast duck with spice stuffing, and you know you love that.”

  “Scat!” said Dave. She shrank back, turned to go. “Oh, all right, stay. You might as well hear it, too. I’ve sold the shop. The fellow you saw just bought it, and I’m going up to the old fruit ranch I told you about, Phil. I can’t stand the mechs any more.”

  “You’ll starve to death at that,” I told him.

  “No, there’s a growing demand for old-fashioned fruit raised out of doors. People are tired of this water-culture stuff. Dad always made a living out of it. I’m leaving as soon as I can get home and pack.”

  Helen clung to her idea. “I’ll pack, Dave, while you eat. I’ve got apple cobbler for dessert.” The world was toppling under her feet, but she still remembered how crazy he was for apple cobbler.

  Helen was a good cook; in fact she was a genius, with all the good points of a woman and a mech combined. Dave ate well enough, after he got started. By the time supper was over, he’d thawed out enough to admit he liked the duck and cobbler, and to thank her for packing. In fact, he even let her kiss him good-bye, though he firmly refused to let her go to the rocket field with him.

  Helen was trying to be brave when I got back, and we carried on a stumbling conversation about Mrs. van Styler’s servants for a while. But the talk began to lull, and she sat staring out of the window at nothing most of the time. Even the stereo comedy lacked interest for her, and I was glad enough to have her go off to her room. She could cut her power down to simulate sleep when she chose.

  As the days slipped by, I began to realize why she couldn’t believe herself a robot. I got to thinking of her as a girl and companion myself. Except for odd intervals when she went off by herself to brood, or when she kept going to the telescript for a letter that never came, she was as good a companion as a man could ask. There was something homey about the place that Lena had never put there.

  I took Helen on a shopping trip to Hudson and she giggled and purred over the wisps of silk and glassheen that were the fashion, tried on endless hats, and conducted herself as any normal girl might. We went trout fishing for a day, where she proved to be as good a sport and as sensibly silent as a man. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and thought she was forgetting Dave. That was before I came home unexpectedly and found her doubled up on the couch, threshing her legs up and down and crying to the high heavens.

  It was then I called Dave. They seemed to have trouble in reaching him, and Helen came over beside me while I waited. She was tense and fidgety as an old ma
id trying to propose. But finally they located Dave.

  “What’s up, Phil?” he asked as his face came on the view-plate. “I was just getting my things together to——”

  I broke him off. “Things can’t go on the way they are, Dave. I’ve made up my mind. I’m yanking Helen’s coils tonight. It won’t be worse than what she’s going through now.”

  Helen reached up and touched my shoulder. “Maybe that’s best, Phil. I don’t blame you.”

  Dave’s voice cut in. “Phil, you don’t know what you’re doing!”

  “Of course, I do. It’ll all be over by the time you can get here. As you heard, she’s agreeing.”

  There was a black cloud sweeping over Dave’s face. “I won’t have it, Phil. She’s half mine, and I forbid it!”

  “Of all the——”

  “Go ahead, call me anything you want. I’ve changed my mind. I was packing to come home when you called.”

  Helen jerked around me, her eyes glued to the panel. “Dave, do you . . . are you——”

  “I’m just waking up to what a fool I’ve been, Helen. Phil, I’ll be home in a couple of hours, so if there’s anything——”

  He didn’t have to chase me out. But I heard Helen cooing something about loving to be a rancher’s wife before I could shut the door.

  Well, I wasn’t as surprised as they thought. I think I knew when I called Dave what would happen. No man acts the way Dave had been acting because he hates a girl; only because he thinks he does—and thinks wrong.

  No woman ever made a lovelier bride or a sweeter wife. Helen never lost her flair for cooking and making a home. With her gone, the old house seemed empty, and I began to drop out to the ranch once or twice a week. I suppose they had trouble at times, but I never saw it, and I know the neighbors never suspected they were anything but normal man and wife.

  Dave grew older, and Helen didn’t, of course. But between us, we put lines in her face and grayed her hair without letting Dave know that she wasn’t growing old with him; he’d forgotten that she wasn’t human, I guess.

  I practically forgot, myself. It wasn’t until a letter came from Helen this morning that I woke up to reality. There, in her beautiful script, just a trifle shaky in places, was the inevitable that neither Dave nor I had seen.

  Dear Phil,

  As you know, Dave has had heart trouble for several years novo. We expected him to live on just the same, but it seems that wasn’t to be. He died in my arms just before sunrise. He sent you his greetings and farewell.

  I’ve one last favor to ask of you, Phil. There is only one thing for me to do when this is finished. Acid will burn out metal as well as flesh, and I’ll be dead with Dave. Please see that we are buried together, and that the morticians do not find my secret. Dave wanted it that way, too.

  Poor, dear Phil. I know you loved Dave as a brother and how you felt about me. Please don’t grieve too much for us, for we have had a happy life together, and both feel that we should cross this last bridge side by side.

  With love and thanks from,

  Helen.

  It had to come sooner or later, I suppose, and the first shock has worn off now. I’ll be leaving in a few minutes to carry out Helen’s last instructions.

  Dave was a lucky man, and the best friend I ever had. And Helen—Well, as I said, I’m an old man now, and can view things more sanely; I should have married and raised a family, I suppose. But . . . there was only one Helen O’Loy.

  Helen O’Loy by Lester del Rey. Copyright, 1939, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc., for Astounding Science-Fiction; reprinted by permission of Street & Smith, Inc.

  ALFRED BESTER

  Perhaps the most amiable of science-fiction writers is Alfred Bester. Like almost all writers, he is constantly trying to sell stories to editors—but like almost no one but himself, the stories he tries hardest to sell are those by other writers. Few authors could afford to tout the work of their competitors to the exclusion of their own; but the man who could write The Demolished Man can obviously afford to ignore the laws that bind the rest of us. It is possible that Bester, in a long and active career, may sometime have written a story that was less than first-rate; but, if so, it didn’t appear under the name “Alfred Bester,” and it certainly was not——

  5,271,009

  Take two parts of Beelzebub, two of Israel, one of Monte Cristo, one of Cyrano, mix violently, season with mystery and you have Mr. Solon Aquila. He is tall, gaunt, sprightly in manner, bitter in expression, and when he laughs his dark eyes turn into wounds. His occupation is unknown. He is wealthy without visible means of support. He is seen everywhere and understood nowhere. There is something odd about his life.

  This is what’s odd about Mr. Aquila, and you can make what you will of it. When he walks he is never forced to wait on a traffic signal. When he desires to ride there is always a vacant taxi on hand. When he bustles into his hotel an elevator always happens to be waiting. When he enters a store, a salesclerk is always free to serve him. There always happens to be a table available for Mr. Aquila in restaurants. There are always last-minute ticket returns when he craves entertainment at sold-out shows.

  You can question waiters, hack drivers, elevator girls, salesmen, box-office men. There is no conspiracy. Mr. Aquila does not bribe or blackmail for these petty conveniences. In any case, it would not be possible for him to bribe or blackmail the automatic clock that governs the city traffic signal system. These things, which make life so convenient for him, simply happen. Mr. Solon Aquila is never disappointed. Presently we shall hear about his first disappointment and see what it led to.

  Mr. Aquila has been seen fraternizing in low saloons, in middle saloons, in high saloons. He has been met in bagnios, at coronations, executions, circuses, magistrate’s courts and handbook offices. He has been known to buy antique cars, historic jewels, incunabula, pornography, chemicals, porro prisms, polo ponies and full-choke shotguns.

  “HimmelHerGottSeiDank! I’m crazy, man, crazy. Eclectic, by God,” he told a flabbergasted department store president. “The Weltmann type, nicht wahr? My ideal: Goethe. Tout le monde. God damn.”

  He spoke a spectacular tongue of mixed metaphors and meanings. Dozens of languages and dialects came out in machine-gun bursts. Apparently he also lied ad libitum.

  “Sacré bleu!” he was heard to say once. “Aquila from the Latin. Means aquiline. O tempora O mores. Speech by Cicero. My ancestor.”

  Greatest Negro writer since Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

  On the morning that Mr. Solon Aquila was stunned by his first disappointment, he bustled into the atelier of Lagan & Derelict, dealers in paintings, sculpture and rare objects of art. It was his intention to buy a painting. Mr. James Derelict knew Aquila as a client. He had already purchased a Frederick Remington and a Winslow Homer some time ago when, by another odd coincidence, he had bounced into the Madison Avenue shop one minute after the coveted paintings went up for sale. Mr. Derelict had also seen Mr. Aquila boat a prize striper at Montauk.

  “Bon soir, bel esprit, God damn, Jimmy,” Mr. Aquila said. He was on first name terms with everyone. “Here’s a cool day for color, oui! Cool. Slang. I have in me to buy a picture!”

  “Good morning, Mr. Aquila,” Derelict answered. He had the seamed face of a cardsharp, but his blue eves were honest and his smile was disarming. However, at this moment his smile seemed strained, as though the volatile appearance of Aquila had unnerved him.

  “I’m in the mood for your man. by Jeez,” Aquila said, rapidly opening cases, fingering ivories and tasting the porcelains. “What’s his name, my old? Artist like Bosch. Like Heinrich Kiev. You handle him, parbleu. exclusive, O si sic omnia, by Zeus!”

  “Jeffrey Halsyon?” Derelict asked timidly.

  “Oeil de boeuf!” Aquila cried. “What a memory. Chryselephantine. Exactly the artist I want. He is my favorite. A monochrome, preferably. A small Jeffrey Halsyon for Aquila, bitte. Wrap her up.”

  “I wouldn’t have believed
it,” Derelict muttered.

  “Ah! Ah-ha? This is not 100 proof guaranteed Ming,” Mr. Aquila exclaimed, brandishing an exquisite vase. “Caveat emptor, by damn. Well. Jimmy? I snap my fingers. No Halsyons in stock, old faithful?”

  “It’s extremely odd, Mr. Aquila.” Derelict seemed to struggle with himself. “Your coming in like this. A Halsyon monochrome arrived not five minutes aero.”

  “You see? Tempo ist Richtung. Well?”

  “I’d rather not show it to you. For personal reasons, Mr. Aquila.”

  “HimmelHerrGott! Pourquoi? She’s bespoke?”

  “N-no, sir. Not for my personal reasons. For your personal reasons.”

  “Oh? God damn. Explain myself to me.”

  “Anyway it isn’t for sale. Mr. Aquila. It can’t be sold.”

  “For why not? Speak, old fish & chips.”

  “I can’t say, Mr. Aquila.”

  “Zut alors! Must I judo your arm. Jimmy? You can’t show. You can’t sell. Me, internally, I have pressurized myself for a Jeffrey Halsyon. My favorite. God damn. Show me the Halsyon or sic transit gloria mundi. You hear me, Jimmy?” Derelict hesitated, then shrugged. “Very well, Mr. Aquila. I’ll show you.”

  Derelict led Aquila past cases of china and silver, past lacquer and bronzes and suits of shimmering armor to the gallery in the rear of the shop where dozens of paintings hung on the gray velour walls, glowing under warm spotlights. He opened a drawer in a Goddard breakfront and took out a Manila envelope. On the envelope was printed BABYLON INSTITUTE. From the envelope Derelict withdrew a dollar-bill and handed it to Mr. Aquila.

  “Jeffrey Halsyon’s latest,” he said.

  With a fine pen and carbon ink, a cunning hand had drawn another portrait over the face of George Washington on the dollar bill. It was a hateful, diabolic face set in a hellish background. It was a face to strike terror, in a scene to inspire loathing. The face was a portrait of Mr. Aquila.