I start to swear at the guy who looks at me. But he says, tired: “Snap it off, fella. We got troubles an’ you’re just another. What are the logics doin’ now?”
I tell him, and he laughs a hollow laugh.
“A light matter, fella,” he says. “A very light matter! We just managed to clamp off all the data plates that give information on high explosives. The demand for instructions in counterfeiting is increasing minute by minute. We are also trying to shut off, by main force, the relays that hook in to data plates that just barely might give advice on the fine points of murder. So if people will only keep busy getting the goods on each other for a while, maybe we’ll get a chance to stop the circuits that are shifting credit-balances from bank to bank before everybody’s bankrupt except the guys who thought of askin’ how to get big bank accounts in a hurry.”
“Then,” I says hoarse, “shut down the tank! Do somethin’!”
“Shut down the tank?” he says, mirthless. “Does it occur to you, fella, that the tank has been doin’ all the computin’ for every business office for years? It’s been handlin’ the distribution of ninety-four per cent of all telecast programs, has given out all information on weather, plane schedules, special sales, employment opportunities and news; has handled all person-to-person contacts over wires and recorded every business conversation and agreement— Listen, fella! Logics changed civilization. Logics are civilization! If we shut off logics, we go back to a kind of civilization we have forgotten how to run! I’m getting hysterical myself and that’s why I’m talkin’ like this! If my wife finds out my paycheck is thirty credits a week more than I told her and starts hunting for that redhead—”
He smiles a haggard smile at me and snaps off. And I sit down and put my head in my bands. It’s true. If something had happened back in cave days and they’d hadda stop usin’ fire— If they’d hadda stop usin’ steam in the nineteenth century or electricity in the twentieth— It’s like that. We got a very simple civilization. In the nineteen hundreds a man would have to make use of a typewriter, radio, telephone, teletypewriter, newspaper, reference library, encyclopedias, office files, directories, plus messenger service and consulting lawyers, chemists, doctors, dietitians, filing clerks, secretaries—all to put down what he wanted to remember an’ to tell him what other people had put down that he wanted to know; to report what he said to somebody else and to report to him what they said back. All we have to have is logics. Anything we want to know or see or hear, or anybody we want to talk to, we punch keys on a logic. Shut off logics and everything goes skiddoo. But Laurine—
Somethin’ had happened. I still didn’t know what it was. Nobody else knows, even yet. What had happened was Joe. What was the matter with him was that he wanted to work good. All this fuss he was raising was, actual, nothing but stuff we shoulda thought of ourselves. Directive advice, tellin’ us what we wanted to know to solve a problem, wasn’t but a slight extension of logical-integrator service. Figurin’ out a good way to poison a fella’s wife was only different in degree from figurin’ out a cube root or a guy’s bank balance. It was gettin’ the answer to a question. But things was goin’ to pot because there was too many answers being given to too many questions.
One of the logics in Maintenance lights up. I go over, weary, to answer it. I punch the answer key. Laurine says:
“Ducky!”
It’s the same hotel room. There’s two glasses on the table with drinks in them. One is for me. Laurine’s got on some kinda frothy hangin’-around-the-house-with-the-boy-friend outfit that automatic makes you strain your eyes to see if you actual see what you think. Laurine looks at me enthusiastic.
“Ducky!” says. Laurine. “I’m lonesome! Why haven’t you come up?”
“I … been busy,” I say, strangling slightly.
“Pooh!” says Laurine. “Listen, Ducky! Do you remember how much in love we used to be?”
I gulp.
“Are you doin’ anything this evening?” says Laurine.
I gulp again, because she is smiling at me in a way that a single man would maybe get dizzy, but it gives a old married man like me cold chills. When a dame looks at you possesive—
“Ducky!” says Laurine, impulsive. “I was so mean to you! Let’s get married!”
Desperation gives me a voice.
“I … got married,” I tell her, hoarse.
Laurine blinks. Then she says, courageous:
“Poor boy! But we’ll get you outta that! Only it would be nice if we could be married today. Now we can only be engaged!”
“I … can’t—”
“I’ll call up your wife,” says Laurine, happy, “and have a talk with her. You must have a code signal for your logic, darling. I tried to ring your house and noth—”
Click! That’s my logic turned off. I turned it off. And I feel faint all over. I got nervous prostration. I got combat fatigue. I got anything you like. I got cold feet.
I beat it outta Maintenance, yellin’ to somebody I got a emergency call. I’m gonna get out in a Maintenance car an’ cruise around until it’s plausible to go home. Then I’m gonna take the wife an’ kids an’ beat it for somewheres that Laurine won’t ever find me. I don’t wanna be fifth in Laurine’s series of husbands and maybe the second one she shoots in a moment of boredom. I got experience of blondes. I got experience of Laurine! And I’m scared to death!
I beat it out into traffic in the Maintenance car. There was a disconnected logic on the back, ready to substitute for one that hadda burned-out, coil or something that it was easier to switch and fix back in the Maintenance shop. I drove crazy but automatic. It was kinda ironic, if you think of it. I was goin’ hoopla over a strictly personal problem, while civilization was crackin’ up all around me because other people were havin’ their personal problems solved as fast as they could state ’em.
It is a matter of record that part of the Mid-Western Electric research guys had been workin’ on cold electron-emission for thirty years, to make vacuum tubes that wouldn’t need a power source to heat the filament. And one of those fellas was intrigued by the “Ask your logic” flash. He asked how to get cold emission of electrons. And the logic integrates a few squintillion facts on the physics data plates and tells him. Just as casual as it told somebody over in the Fourth Ward how to serve left-over soup in a new attractive way, and somebody else on Mason Street how to dispose of a torso that somebody had left careless in his cellar after ceasing to use same.
Laurine wouldn’t never have found me if hadn’t been for this new logics service. But now that it was started—Zowie! She’d shot one husband and got acquitted. Suppose she got impatient because I was still married an’ asked logics service how to get me free and in a spot where I’d have to marry her by 8:30 p.m.? It woulda told her! Just like it told that woman out in the suburbs how to make sure her husband wouldn’t run around no more. Br-r-r-r! An’ like it told that kid how to find some buried treasure. Remember? He was happy totin’ home the gold reserve of the Hanoverian Bank and Trust Company when they caught on to it. The logic had told him how to make some kinda machine that nobody has been able to figure how it works even yet, only they guess it dodges around a couple extra dimensions. If Laurine was to start askin’ questions with a technical aspect to them, that would be logics’ service meat! And fella, I was scared! If you think a he-man oughtn’t to be scared of just one blonde—you ain’t met Laurine!