“Ssss,” Krug said.
Their alpha waiter had returned, bearing a fresh bottle of wine. The men at the table sat tensely while the alpha poured. He went out, closing the hatch tightly behind him.
Mordecai Salah al-Din, the Speaker of Congress, said gently, “I’ve received at least five million petitions from the AEP. I’ve granted three audiences to the party’s leaders. And I must say that they’re a sincere and orderly group, worth taking seriously. I also want to say, though I wouldn’t care to be quoted, that I’m sympathetic to some of their goals.”
“Would you explain that?” Spaulding said, his voice crisp.
“Surely. I feel that the inclusion of a delegation of alphas in Congress is desirable and probably will come about within the next decade. I feel that the selling of alphas without their consent is improper and ought to be made illegal. I think that’ll happen in fifteen to twenty years. I believe that we’ll be extending full civil rights to alphas before 2250, to betas by the end of the century, and to gammas not long afterward.”
“A revolutionary!” cried Franz Giudice in wonder. “The Speaker is a revolutionary!”
“A visionary, rather,” said Senator Fearon. “A man of vaulting insight and splendid compassion. As always, somewhat ahead of his time.”
Spaulding shook his head. “Alphas in Congress, maybe, yes. As a safety valve, to keep them from getting out of control. Toss them a bone, you know? But the rest of it? No. No. Never. Mr. Salah al-Din, we should not forget that androids are merethings , the product of chemogenetic research, created in a factory, manufactured by Krug Enterprises to serve mankind—”
“Softly,” Krug murmured. “You’re getting excited.”
Lou Fearon said, “Possibly the Speaker’s right, Leon. Regardless of how they came into existence, they’re more human than you’re willing to admit. And as we gradually relax all arbitrary barriers of law and custom, as the Witherer ideals gradually take over — as I think you’ll agree is quite subtly happening already — I expect that we’ll go easier on the androids. At least on the alphas. We don’t need to keep them under.”
“What do you say, Simeon?” Franz Giudice demanded of Krug. “After all, they’re your babies. When you decided to produce the first androids, did you ever imagine that they’d be calling for the rights of citizenship, or did you think of them as—”
“Leon put it in the right words,” Krug said. “How was it?Things. Factory-made things. I was building a better kind of robot. I wasn’t building men.”
“The borderline between man and android is so vague,” Senator Fearon said. “Since the androids are genetically identical to us, the fact that they’re synthetic—”
Krug said, “In one of my plants I can make you the Mona Lisa in perfect replica, so that it takes six months of laboratory tests to prove it isn’t the original. Yes? And so?Is it the original? The original came out of Leonardo’s studio. The replica came out of Krug’s factory. I’d pay a billion for the original. I wouldn’t give a brass thumb for the replica.”
“Yet you recognize that Thor Watchman, for example, is an unusually capable and gifted person,” said Lou Fearon, “and you give him wide responsibilities. I’ve heard it said that you trust him more than any man in your organization. Yet you wouldn’t allow Thor to vote? You wouldn’t give Thor a chance to protest if you decided to make him a waiter here? You agree that the law should give you the right to destroy Thor if the whim takes you?”
“I made Thor,” Krug replied heavily. “He’s the finest machine I have. I love and admire him the way I love and admire any superb machine. But Iown Thor. Thor isn’t a man, he’s just a clever imitation of a man, a flawless imitation, and if I want to be so wasteful and foolish as to destroy Thor, why, I’ll destroy him.” Krug’s hand began to tremble. He glared at it as if willing it to be still, but the tremor intensified, and a full glass of wine spilled onto the table. Stonily Krug said, “Destroy him. I never had anything else in mind when I brought out the androids. Servants. Tools of man. Cunning machines.”
Sensors in the Nemo Club’s service core announced the spilling of the wine. The waiter entered and efficiently mopped it up. Outside the window, a cluster of giant translucent crustaceans wheeled and danced.
When the alpha was gone again Senator Fearon said to Krug, “I didn’t realize you felt this strongly about android equality. You’ve never spoken out.”
“I’ve never been asked.”
“Would you testify against the AEP,” Salah al-Din asked, “if the matter were to come before Congress?”
Krug shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I stay out of politics. I’m a manufacturer. Businessman. Entrepreneur, you know? Why look for controversies?”
“If androids were granted civil rights,” said Leon Spaulding, “it might have repercussions for Krug Enterprises. What I mean is, if you’re manufacturing actual human beings, you’d come under the scope of the population control laws, which—”
“Enough,” Krug said. “It won’t happen. I make the androids; I know them. There’s a little group of malcontents, yes. Too intelligent for their own good. They think it’s black slavery all over again. But it isn’t. It isn’t. The others know that. They’re content. Thor Watchman is content. Why don’t all the alphas back the AEP? They oppose it, and why? Because they think it’s idiocy. They’re treated well as is. This talk of selling alphas against their will, of killing them on whims, it’s all just theory; no one sells a good alpha, and nobody kills androids for fun, any more than people wreck their own houses for fun. No need for android rights, eh? The alphas realize it. The betas aren’t worried. The gammas can’t possibly care. So you see? Gentlemen, it makes good table talk, no more. The AEP will fade way. My respects, Mr. Speaker; your sweetness of soul leads you astray. You will have no alphas in your Congress.”
Krug’s lengthy speech had left him thirsty. He reached for his wine. Again the tension in his muscles betrayed him; again he knocked the glass over; again a watchful alpha, alerted by hidden eyes, rushed in to tidy up the mess. Beyond the thick glass wall of the Nemo Club, a dark red fish a meter in length, with a gigantic toothy satchel of a mouth and a narrow spiny tail, began to move through the school of crustaceans, gulping them down in a terrible hunger.
28
January 15, 2219.
The tower is 1001 meters high. In celebration, Krug has decreed a holiday tomorrow for all workers. It is now estimated that the structure will reach its full height before the middle of March.
29
Lilith Meson said, “I had a visitor here yesterday morning, Thor.”
“Manuel Krug?”
“No. Siegfried Fileclerk.”
Watchman uncoiled himself from Lilith’s all-engulfing tesseract-divan. “Fileclerk? Here?Why ?”
Lilith laughed. “Are you so human these days that you feel jealousy, Thor?”
“That doesn’t amuse me. How did it happen that he came to you?”
“He was at the office,” Lilith said. “You know, he’s with Property Protection of Buenos Aires, and he came in to discuss some new actuarial pivot clause in their contract. Afterward he asked me if he could see me home. All right. I invited him in. He seemed harmless.”
“And?”
“He tried to recruit me for AEP.”
“Is that all?”
“No,” Lilith said. “He wants me to recruit you, too.”
Watchman coughed. “A very slender chance of that.”
“He’s immensely earnest, Thor. Devoted to the cause of equality and liberation, et cetera, et cetera. Two minutes after we walked in he began burying me under arguments for immediate political action. I told him I was religious. He said that didn’t matter, that I could go right on praying for the miraculous intervention of Krug, but meanwhile would I please sign this petition? No, I said. I never sign things. He gave me a stack of propaganda cubes, the whole AEP line. They’re in the kitchen, if you’re interested. He was here more than an hour.” Lilith flashed a dazzling grin. “I didn’t sign his petition.”