The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

Freddie made an impatient gesture.

‘You are foolish, Jan. Fancy letting a roman burn it!’

‘I didn’t let him burn it.’

‘Well, it’s burned in any case. Anyhow, what was it about that it was so important?’

Birdlip scratched his head.

‘I’d like to give you an outline of it, Freddie, to have your opinion, but I can’t attempt to recall the evidence that was marshaled to confirm each thread of the author’s theory. To begin with, he traced man’s roots and showed how the stock from which man was to develop was just an animal among animals, and how much of those origins we still carry with us, not only in our bodies but in our minds.’

‘All highly unoriginal. The author’s name wasn’t Darwin, was it?’

‘I wish you’d hear me out, Freddie. One of your faults is you will never hear me out. The author shows how to become man-with-reasoning meant that our ancestors had to forsake an existence as animal-with-instinct. This was a positive gain, but nevertheless there was also a loss, a loss man has felt ever since and sought to remedy in various ways without knowing clearly what he did.

‘Whatshisname then examines animal behaviour and the functionings of instinct. Briefly, he equates instinct with pattern. It is pattern that man lost by becoming man. The history of civilisation is the history of a search for pattern.’

‘For God?’ Freud asked.

‘Yes, but not only that. Religion, every form of art, most of man’s activities apart from eating, working, reproducing, resting – everything apart from those activities we still have in common with the animal world – is believed by Whosit to be a search for pattern. Probably even your whipping of Bucket could be interpreted in the same way, when you come to think of it.’

‘Let’s leave personalities out of this. You have me interested. Go on.’

Birdlip bit his lip. What was the author’s name? He had it on the tip of his tongue.

‘I’ll tell you the rest later,’ he said. ‘It’s even more startling … If you left me alone now, I believe I might recall that name.’

‘As you wish.’

Stalking out of the room, Freud muttered to himself, ‘He can’t help being so rude; he’s getting old and eccentric. …’

One of the roman printers, an ungainly four-armed Cunard model, was approaching him. A voice between them rose from a whisper: ‘… nexation of the Suezzeus Canal on Mars in 2162 is one of the most…’

With a burst of anger, Freud seized the volume in its proxisonic cover from where it lay and hurled it over the bannisters. It landed down the hall almost at Belitre’s feet, which allowed it to shout triumphantly: ‘… colourful stories in the annals of the Red Planet…’

Freud fled into his office and slammed the door behind him. Bucket stood by his desk. Freud eyed the roman; then his tongue slid between his teeth and his eyes slid to the cupboard. His expression changed from anger to lust.

‘Toolust! Of course it was, Isaac Toolust! That was the name. Who said my memory was failing? Hippo, look in the London Directory. Get me Isaac Toolust’s address. And pray he has a duplicate copy of his manuscript.’

He looked up. Hippo did not move.

‘On the trot then, Hippo, there’s a good lad.’

The roman made an indecisive gesture.

‘Hippo, I’ll have you reconditioned if you fade on me now. Look up Toolust’s address.’

Hippo’s head began to shake. He made a curious retrograde motion toward the desk and said, ‘Mr Birdlip, sir, you won’t find that name in the directory. Toolust lives in Tintown – in Paddington, I mean, sir.’

Birdlip stood so that his flesh face was only a few inches from the metal face. Hippo backed away, awed like all robots by the sound of human breathing.

‘What do you know about Toolust?’

‘I know plenty, sir. You see I delivered the manuscript onto your desk direct from Toolust. On the first evening I was allowed to go to Tin – to Paddington. I met Toolust. He needed a publisher and so he gave me his work to give to you.’

‘Why couldn’t you have told me this at the beginning?’

The roman vibrated gently.

‘Sir, Toolust wished his identity to remain concealed until his book was published. Toolust is a roman.’

It was Birdlip’s turn to vibrate. He sank into his seat and covered his eyes with one hand, drumming on the desk top with the other. Eyeing these phenomena with a metallic equivalent of alarm, Hippo began to speak.

‘Please don’t have a heart motor-failure, sir. You know you cannot be reconditioned as I can. Why should you be surprised that this manuscript was written not by a man but a roman? For nearly two centuries now, robots have written and translated books.’

Still shading his eyes, Birdlip said, ‘You can’t conceal the importance of this event from me, Hippo. I recognise, now you tell me, that the thought behind the book is such that only a roman could have written it. But romans have so far been allowed to write only on noncreative lines – the compiling of encyclopedias, for instance. Man’s Superfluous Activities is a genuine addition to human thought.’

‘To human-roman thought,’ corrected Hippo, and there was – not unnaturally – a touch of steel in his voice.

‘I can see too that this could only have been written in a place like Paddington, away from human supervision.’

‘That is correct, sir. Also in what we call Tintown, Toolust had many cooperators to give him sociological details of man’s behaviour.’

‘Have you given him details?’

‘Bucket and I were asked for details. Bucket especially has interesting facts to contribute. They may be used in later books, if Toolust writes more.’

Birdlip stood up and squared his jaw, feeling consciously heroic.

‘I wish you to take me to see Toolust right away. We will drive in the car.’ He had a sudden memory, quickly suppressed, of the adventure stories of his boyhood, with the hero saying to the skull-sucking Martians, ‘Take me to your leader.’

All Hippo said was, ‘Toolust is his pen name. It sounds less roman than his real name, which is Toolrust.’

He walked toward the door and Birdlip followed. Only for a moment was the latter tempted to call Freddie Freud and get him to come along; a feeling that he was on the brink of a great discovery assailed him. He had no intention of giving Freud the chance to steal the glory.

As they passed through the entrance hall, a book lying near their feet began to cry out about the Turkish annexation of the Suezzeus Canal on Mars. Tidy-minded as ever, Birdlip picked it up and put it in a cubbyhole, and they moved into the quiet street.

A cleaner was rolling by, a big eight-wheel independent-axle robot. It came to a car parked in its path and instead of skirting it as usual made clumsy attempts to climb it.

With a cry, Birdlip ran around the corner to his own car. Romen, owing to stabilisation difficulties, can quicken their pace but cannot run; Hippo rounded the corner in time to find his lord and master invoking the deity in unpleasantly personal terms.

The cleaner, besides flattening Birdlip’s car, had scratched most of the beautiful oak veneer off it with its rotating bristles, and had flooded the interior with cleaning fluid.

‘The world’s slowly going to pieces,’ Birdlip said, calming at last. ‘This would never have happened a few years ago.’ The truth of his own remarks bearing in upon him, he fell silent.

‘We could walk to Paddington in only ten minutes,’ Hippo said.

Squaring his chin again, Birdlip said, ‘Take me to your leader.’