Thomas said, “The news sheets are full of it, Stu. Biggest thing since total automation. People are scared, Stu, but they’re scared the right way. There aren’t any big smash sessions, but people are considering their position and the relation of the robot to them.”
“There’s a big movement afoot for a return to human domination. I — I hate to admit it, Stu … but I think you were right all along. I wanted to settle back too easily. It took guts, Stu. A lot of guts. I’m afraid I’d have sent that woman away, not gone to tend her man.”
Bergman waved away his words. He sat staring at his hands, trying to find a place for himself in the sudden rationale that had swept over his world.
Thomas said, “They’ve got Calkins for investigation. Seems there was some sort of collusion between him and the manufacturer of the phymechs. That was why they were put in so quickly, before they’d been fully tested. But they called in the man from the Zsebok Company, and he had to testify they couldn’t build in a bedside manner … too nebulous a concept, or something.”
“I’ve been restored to full status as a surgeon, Stu. They’re looking around for a suitable reward for you.”
Stuart Bergman was not listening. He was remembering a man twisted up in death — who need not have died — and a blue-eyed girl who had lived, and an amputee who had screamed his life away. He thought of it all, and of what had happened, and he knew deep within himself that it was going to be all right now. It wasn’t just his victory … it was the victory of humanity. Man had stopped himself on the way to dependence and decadence, and had reversed a terrible trend.
The machines would not be put away entirely.
They would work along with people, and that was as it should have been, for the machines were tools, like any other tools. But human involvement was the key factor now, again.
Bergman settled back against the cell wall, and closed his eyes in the first real rest he had known for oh so long a time. He breathed deeply, and smiled to himself.
Reward?
He had his reward.
Deeper than the Darkness
Repetitiously, the unifying theme to the stories in this collection is pain, human anguish. But there is a subtext that informs the subject; it is this: we are all inescapably responsible, not only for our own actions, but for our lack of action, the morality and ethic of our silences and our avoidances, the shared guilt of hypocrisy, voyeurism, and cowardice; what might be called the “spectator-sport social conscience.” Catherine Genovese, Martin Luther King, Viola Luizzo, Nathanael West, Marilyn Monroe … how the hell do we face them if there’s something like a Hereafter? And how do we make it day-to-day, what with mirrors everywhere we look, if there isn’t a Hereafter? Perhaps it all comes down to the answer to the question any middle-aged German in, say, Munich, might ask today: “If I didn’t do what they said, they’d kill me. I had to save my life, didn’t I?” I’m sure when it comes right down to it, the most ignominious life is better than no life at all, but again and again I find the answer coming from somewhere too noble to be within myself: “What for?” Staying alive only has merit if one does it with dignity, with purpose, with responsibility to his fellow man. If these are absent, then living is a sluglike thing, more a matter of habit than worth. Without courage, the pain will destroy you. And, oh, yeah, about this story … the last section came first. It was a tone-poem written to a little folk song Tom Scott wrote, titled “38th Parallel,” which Rusty Draper recorded vocally some years later as “Lonesome Song.” lf you can find a 45 rpm of it anywhere, and play it as you read the final sections, it will vastly enhance, audibly coloring an explanation of what I mean when I talk about pain that is Deeper than the Darkness
THEY CAME TOALFGUNNDERSONin the Pawnee County jail.
He was sitting, hugging his boney knees, against the plasteel wall of the cell. On the plasteel floor lay an ancient, three-string mandolin he had borrowed from the deputy, he had been plunking with some talent all that hot, summer day. Under his thin buttocks the empty trough of his mattressless bunk curved beneath his weight. He was an extremely tall man, even hunched up that way.
He was more than tired-looking, more than weary. His was an inside weariness … he was a gaunt, empty-looking man. His hair fell lanky and drab and gray-brown in shocks over a low forehead. His eyes seemed to be peas, withdrawn from their pods and placed in a starkly white face. It was difficult to tell whether he could see from them.
Their blankness only accented the total cipher he seemed. There was no inch of expression or recognition on his face, in the line of his body.
More, he was a thin man. He seemed to be a man who had given up the Search long ago. His face did not change its hollow stare at the plasteel-barred door opposite, even as it swung back to admit the two nonentities.
The two men entered, their stride as alike as the unobtrusive grey mesh suits they wore; as alike as the faces that would fade from memory moments after they had turned. The turnkey — a grizzled country deputy with a minus 8 rating — stared after the men with open wonder on his bearded face.
One of the grey-suited men turned, pinning the wondering stare to the deputy’s face. His voice was calm and uprippled. “Close the door and go back to your desk.” The words were cold and paced. They brooked no opposition. It was obvious: they were mindees.
The roar of a late afternoon inverspace ship split the waiting moment, outside, then the turnkey slammed the door, palming it loktite. He walked back out of the cell block, hands deep in his coverall pockets. His head was lowered as though he were trying to solve a complex problem. It, too, was obvious: he was trying to block his thoughts off from those goddamned mindees.
When he was gone, the telepaths circled Gunnderson slowly. Their faces softly altered, subtly, and personality flowed in with quickness. They shot each other confused glances.
Him? The first man thought, nodding slightly at the still, knee-hugging prisoner.
That’s what the report said, Ralph . The other man removed his forehead-concealing snapbrim and sat down on the edge of the bunk trough. He touched Gunnderson’s leg with tentative fingers. He’s not thinking, for God’s sake! the thought flashed. I can’t get a thing .
Incredulousness sparkled in the thought.
He must be blocked off by trauma barrier , came the reply from the telepath named Ralph.
“Is your name Alf Gunnderson?” the first mindee inquired softly, a hand on Gunnderson’s shoulder.
The expression never changed. The head swiveled slowly and the dead eyes came to bear on the dark-suited telepath. “I’m Gunnderson,” he replied briefly. His tones indicated no enthusiasm, no curiosity.
The first man looked up at his partner, doubt wrinkling in his eyes, pursing his lips. He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, Who knows?
He turned back to Gunnderson.
Immobile, as before. Hewn from rock, silent as the pit.
“What are you in here for, Gunnderson?” He spoke as though he were unused to words. The halting speech of the telepath.
The dead stare swung back to the plasteel bars. “I set the woods on fire,” he said shortly.
The mindee’s face darkened at the prisoner’s words. That was what the report had said. The report that had come in from one of the remote corners of the country.
The American Continent was a modern thing, all plasteel and printed circuits, all relays and fast movement, but there had been areas of backwoods country that had never taken to civilizing. They still maintained roads and jails, and fishing holes and forests. Out of one of these had come three reports, spaced an hour apart, with startling ramifications — if true. They had been snapped through the primary message banks in Capitol City in Buenos Aires, reeled through the computalyzers, and handed to the Bureau for check-in. While the inverspace ships plied between worlds, while Earth fought its transgalactic wars, in a rural section of the American Continent, a strange thing was happening.