“What’s his first name?” Gallegher asked.
“Who?”
“Fatty.”
“Never heard of him,” Cuff said, and chuckled. A page boy came over and touched the alderman’s arm.
“Someone to see you, sir. They’re waiting outside.”
“Right. Back in a minute, pal. Everybody always knows where to find me—’specially here. Don’t go ’way. There’s still Y and…and the other one.”
He vanished. Gallegher put down his untasted drink, stood up, swaying slightly, and headed for the lounge. A televisor booth there caught his eye, and, on impulse, he went in and vised his lab.
“Drunk again,” said Narcissus, as the robot’s face appeared on the screen.
“You said it,” Gallegher agreed. I’m…urp…high as a kite. But I got a clue, anyway.”
“I’d advise you to get a police escort,” the robot said. “Some thugs broke in looking for you, right after you left.”
“S-s-some what? Say that again.”
“Three thugs,” Narcissus repeated patiently. “The leader was a thin, tall man in a checkered suit with yellow hair and a gold front tooth. The others—”
“I don’t want a description,” Gallegher snarled. “Just tell me what happened?”
“Well, that’s all. They wanted to kidnap you. Then they tried to steal the machine. I chased them out. For a robot, I’m pretty tough.”
“Did they hurt the machine?”
“What about me?” Narcissus demanded plaintively. “I’m much more important than that gadget. Have you no curiosity about my wounds?”
“No,” Gallegher said. “Have you some?”
“Of course not. But you could have demonstrated some light curiosity—”
“Did they hurt that machine?”
“I didn’t let them get near it,” the robot said. “And the hell with you.”
“I’ll ring you back,” Gallegher said. “Right now I need black coffee.”
He beamed off, stood up, and wavered out of the booth. Max Cuff was coming toward him. There were three men following the alderman.
One of them stopped short, his jaw dropping. “Cripes!” he said. “That’s the guy, boss. That’s Gallegher. Is he the one you been drinking with?”
Gallegher tried to focus his eyes. The man swam into clarity. He was a tall, thin chap in a checkered suit, and he had a yellow hair and a gold front tooth.
“Conk him,” Cuff said. “Quick, before he yells. And before anybody else comes in here. Gallegher, huh? Smart guy, huh?” Gallegher saw something coming at his head, and tried to leap back into the visor booth like a snail retreating into its shell. He failed. Spinning flashes of glaring light dazzled him.
He was conked.
The trouble with this social culture, Gallegher thought dreamily, was that it was suffering both from overgrowth and calcification of the exoderm. A civilization may be likened to a flowerbed.
Each individual plant stands for a component part of the culture. Growth is progress. Technology, that long-frustrated daffodil, had had B1 concentrate poured on its roots, the result of wars that forced its growth through sheer necessity. But no world is satisfactory unless the parts are equal to the whole.
The daffodil shaded another plant that developed parasitic tendencies. It stopped using its roots. It wound itself around the daffodil, climbing up on its stem and stalks and leaves, and that strangling liana was religion, politics, economics, culture — outmoded forms that changed too slowly, outstripped by the blazing comet of the sciences riding high in the unlocked skies of this new era. Long ago writers had theorized that in the future — their future — the sociological pattern would be different. In the day of rocketships such illogical mores as watered stock, dirty politics, and gangsters would not exist. But those theorists had not seen clearly enough. They thought of rocketships as vehicles of the far distant future.
Ley landed on the moon before automobiles stopped using carburetors.
The great warfare of the early twentieth century gave a violent impetus to technology, and that growth continued. Unfortunately most of the business of living was based on such matters as man-hours and monetary fixed standards. The only parallel was the day of the great bubbles — the Mississippi bubble and its brothers. It was, finally, a time of chaos, reorganization, shifting precariously from old standards to new, and a seesaw bouncing vigorously from one extreme to the other. The legal profession had become so complicated that batteries of experts needed Pedersen Calculators and the brain machine of Mechanistra to marshal their far-fetched arguments, which went wildly into unchartered realms of symbolic logic and — eventually — pure nonsense. A murderer could get off scot-free provided he didn’t sign a confession. And even if he did, there were ways of discrediting solid, legal proof. Precedents were shibboleths. In that maze of madness, administrators turned to historical solidities — legal precedents — and these were often twisted against them.
Thus it went, all down the line. Later sociology would catch up with technology. It hadn’t, just yet. Economic gambling had reached a pitch never before attained in the history of the world. Geniuses were needed to straighten out the mess. Mutations eventually provided such geniuses, by natural compensation; but a long time was to pass until that satisfactory conclusion had been reached. The man with the best chance for survival, Gallegher had realized by now, was one with a good deal of adaptability and a first-class, all-around stock of practical and impractical knowledge, versed in practically everything. In short, in matters vegetable, animal or mineral—
Gallegher opened his eyes. There was little to see, chiefly because, as he immediately discovered, he was slumped face down at a table. With an effort Gallegher sat up. He was unbound and in a dimly lighted attic that seemed to be a storeroom; it was littered with broken-down junk. A fluorescent burned faintly on the ceiling. There was a door, but the man with the gold tooth was standing before it. Across the table sat Max Cuff, carefully pouring whiskey into a glass.
“I want some,” Gallegher said feebly.
Cuff looked at him. “Awake, huh? Sorry Blazer socked you so hard.”
“Oh well, I might have passed out anyway. Those alphabetical pub-crawls are really something.”
“Heigh-ho,” Cuff said, pushing the glass toward Gallegher and filling another for himself. “That’s the way it goes. It was smart of you to stick with me — the one place the boys wouldn’t think of looking.”
“I’m naturally clever,” Gallegher said modestly. The whiskey revived him. But his mind still felt foggy. “Your…uh…associates, by which I mean lousy thugs, tried to kidnap me earlier, didn’t they?”
“Uh-huh. You weren’t in. That robot of yours—”
“He’s a beaut.”
“Yea. Look, Blazer told me about the machine you had set up. I’d hate to have Smith get his hands on it.”
Smith — Fatty. Hm-m-m. The jigsaw was dislocated again. Gallegher sighed.
If he played the cards close to his chest—
“Smith hasn’t seen it yet,”
“I know that,” Cuff said. “We’ve been tapping his visor beam. One of our spies found out he’d told DU he had a man working on the job — you know? Only he didn’t mention the man’s name. All we could do was shadow Smith and tap his visor till he got in touch with you. After that — well, we caught the conversation. You told Smith you’d got the gadget.”
“Well?”
“We cut in on the beam, fast, and Blazer and the boys went down to see you. I told you I didn’t want Smith to keep that contract.
“You never mentioned a contract,” Gallegher said.