The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

Not wishing to see any more, Birdlip left his office and headed for his partner’s room.

As he hurried down the corridor, he was stopped by a stranger. Uniform, in these days of individualism, was a thing of the past; nevertheless, the stranger wore something approaching a uniform: a hat reproducing a swashbuckling Eighteenth Century design, a plastic plume: a Nineteenth or Twentieth Century tunic that, with its multiplicity of pockets, gave its wearer the appearance of a perambulating chest of drawers: Twenty-First Century skirt-trousers with mobled borsts; and boots hand painted with a contemporary tartan paint.

Covering his surprise with a parade of convention, Birdlip said, ‘Warm today, isn’t it?’

‘Perhaps you can help me. My name’s Captain Pavment, Captain Warren Pavment. The doorbot sent me up here, but I have lost my way.’

As he spoke, the captain pulled forth a gleaming metal badge. At once a voice by their side murmured conspiratorially, ‘… kish annexation of the Suezzeus Canal on Mars …’ dying gradually as the badge was put away again.

‘RSPCR? Delighted to help you, Captain. Who or what are you looking for?’

‘I wish to interview a certain Frederick Freud, employed in this building,’ said Pavment, becoming suddenly official now that the sight of his own badge had reassured him. ‘Could you kindly inform me whereabouts his whereabouts is?’

‘Certainly. I’m going to see Mr Freud myself. Pray follow me. Nothing serious, I hope, Captain?’

‘Let us say nothing that should not yield to questioning.’

As he led the way, Birdlip said, ‘Perhaps I should introduce myself. I am January Birdlip, senior partner of this firm. I shall be very glad to do anything I can to help.’

‘Perhaps you’d better join our little discussion, Mr Birdlip, since the – irregularities have taken place on your premises.’

They knocked and entered Freud’s room.

Freud stood looking over a small section of city. London was quieter than it had been since before Tactitus’ ‘uncouth warriors’ had run to meet the Roman invaders landing there twenty-two centuries ago. Dwindling population had emptied its avenues; the extinction of legislators, financiers, tycoons, speculators, and planners had left acres of it desolate but intact, decaying but not destroyed, stranded like a ship without cars yet not without awe upon the strand of history.

Freud turned around and said, ‘It’s hot, isn’t it? I think I’m going home, Jan.’

‘Before you go, Freddie, this gentleman here is Captain Pavment of the RSPCR.’

‘He will be after I’ve left, too, won’t he?’ Freud asked in mock puzzlement.

‘I’ve come on a certain matter, sir,’ Pavment said, firmly but respectfully. ‘I think it might be better if your roman here left the room.’

Making a small gesture of defeat, Freud sat down on the edge of his desk and said, ‘Bucket, get out of the room.’

‘Yessir.’ Bucket left.

Pavment cleared his throat and said, ‘Perhaps you know what I’ve come about, Mr Freud.’

‘You blighters have had a spycast onto me, I suppose? Here we’ve reached a peaceful period of history, when for the first time man is content to pursue his own interests without messing up his neighbors, and you people deliberately follow a contrary policy of interference. You’re nothing but conformists!’

‘The RSPCR is a voluntary body.’

‘Precisely what I dislike about it. You volunteer to stick your nose into other people’s affairs. Well, say what you have to say and get it over with.’

Birdlip fidgeted unhappily near the door.

‘If you’d like me to leave –’

Both men motioned him to silence, and Pavment said, ‘The situation is not as simple as you think, sir, as the RSPCR well know. This is, as you say, an age when men get along with each other better than they’ve ever done; but current opinion gives the reason for this as either progress or the fact that there are now fewer men to get along with.’

‘Both excellent reasons, I’d say,’ Birdlip said.

‘The RSPCR believes there is a much better reason. Man no longer clashes with his fellow man because he can relieve all his antagonisms on his mechanicals – and nowadays there are four romen and countless robots to every one person. Romen are civilisation’s whipping boys, just as once Negroes, Jews, Catholics, or any of the old minorities were.’

‘Speaking as a Negro myself,’ said January Birdlip, ‘I’m all for the change.’

‘But see what follows,’ said Pavment. ‘In the old days, a man’s sickness, by being vented on his fellows, became known, and thus could be treated. Now it is vented on his roman, and the roman never tells. So the man’s neuroses take root in him and flourish by indulgence.’

Growing red in the face, Freud said, ‘Oh, that doesn’t follow, surely.’

‘The RSPCR has evidence that mental sickness is far more widely prevalent than anyone in our laissez-faire society suspects. So when we find a roman being treated cruelly, we try to prevent it, for we know it signifies a sick man. What happens to the roman is immaterial: but we try to direct the man to treatment.

‘Now you, Mr Freud – half an hour ago you were thrashing your roman with a bullwhip which you keep in that cupboard over there. The incident was one of many, nor was it just a healthy outburst of sadism. Its overtones of guilt and despair were symptoms of deep sickness.’

‘Can this be true, Freddie?’ Birdlip asked – quite unnecessarily, for Freud’s face, even the attitude in which he crouched, showed the truth. He produced a handkerchief and shakily wiped his brow.

‘Oh, it’s true enough, Jan; why deny it? I’ve always hated romen. I’d better tell you what they did to my sister – in fact, what they are doing, and not so very far from here. …’

Not so very far from there, Captain Pavment’s copter was parked, awaiting his return. In it, also waiting, sat the roman Toggle peering into the small spycast screen. On the screen, a tiny Freud said, ‘I’ve always hated romen.’

Flipping a switch which put him in communication with a secret headquarters in the Paddington area, Toggle said, ‘I hope you are recording all this. It should be of particular interest to the Human Sociological Study Group.’

A metallic voice from the other end said, ‘We are receiving you loud and clear.’

‘London Clear is one of the little artificial islands on Lake Mediterranean. There my sister and I spent our childhood and were brought up by romen,’ Freddie Freud said, looking anywhere but at Birdlip and the captain.

‘We are twins, Maureen and I. My mother had entered into Free Association with my father, who left for Touchdown, Venus, before we came into the world and has, to our knowledge, never returned. Our mother died in childbirth. There’s one item they haven’t got automated yet.

‘The romen that brought us up were as all romen always are – never unkind, never impatient, never unjust, never anything but their damned self-sufficient selves. No matter what Maureen and I did, even if we kicked them or spat on them or peed on them, we could elicit from them no reaction, no sign of love or anger, no hint of haste or weariness – nothing!

‘Do you wonder we both grew up loathing their gallium guts – and yet at the same time being dependent on them? In both of us a permanent and absolutely hopeless love-hate relationship with romen has been established. You see I face the fact quite clearly.’

Birdlip said, ‘You told me you had a sister, Freddie, but you said she died at the time of the Great Venusian Plague.’

‘Would she had! No, I can’t say that, but you should see how she lives now. Occasionally I have gone quite alone to see her. She lives in Paddington with the romen.’

‘With the romen?’ Pavment echoed. ‘How?’

Freud’s manner grew more distraught.

‘You see we found as we grew up that there was one way in which we had power over the romen – power to stir emotion in them, I mean, apart from the built-in power to command. Having no sex, romen are curious about it. … Overwhelmingly curious. …

‘I can’t tell you the indecencies they put us through when we reached puberty. …

‘Well, to cut a long and nasty story short, Maureen lives with the romen of Paddington. They look after her, supply her with stolen food, clothes, and the rest, while in return she – satisfies their curiosity.’

Greatly to his own embarrassment, Birdlip let out a shrill squeal of laughter. It broke up the atmosphere of the confessional.