Stories by R. A. Lafferty Vol 1 Part 20

A Crippled Old Lady came up shaking with palsy. There was real beauty in her face yet, and a serenity that pain could never take away from her.

"A glorious morning to you, my good man," she said to Gnevni.

And he kicked her crutches out from under her.

"I am sure that was an accident, sir," she gasped as she teetered and nearly fell. "Would you be so kind as to hand them to me again? I'm quite unable to stand without them."

Gnevni knocked her down with a smacking blow. He then stomped up and down on her body from stem to stern. And with a heavy two-footed jump on her stomach he left her writhing on the pavement.

Gnevni was again disgusted with himself.

"It doesn't seem to do a thing for me today," he said, "not a thing.

I don't know what's the matter with me this morning."

It was a real lady. We are afraid of dog-lovers, but we are not afraid of people-lovers. There are so few of them. So the lady was not an artificialone. She was real flesh and blood, and the least of both. However, she was neither crippled nor old. She was a remarkably athletic woman and had been a stunt girl before she found her true vocation. She was also a fine young actress and played the Crippled Old Lady role well.

Gnevni went to his job in the Cortin Inst.i.tute Building that was popularly known as the Milk Shed.

"Bring my things, crow-bait," he grumbled at a nice young lady a.s.sistant. "I see the rats have been in your hair again. Are you naturally deformed or do you stand that way on purpose? There's a point, you know, beyond which ugliness is no longer a virtue."

The nice young lady began to cry, but not very convincingly. She went off to get Gnevni's things. But she would bring only a part of them, and, not all of them the right ones.

Old George isn't himself this morning," said the underdoctor Cotrel.

I know," said under-doctor Devon. "We'll have to devise something to get him mad today. We can't have him getting pleasant on us.

The required paranexus could not be synthesized. Many substances had been tried and all of them had been found insufficient. But the thing was needed for the finest operation of the Programmeds. It had to be the real thing, and there was only one way to get a steady supply of it.

At one time they had simplified it by emphasizing the cortin and adrenalin components of it. Later they had emphasized a dozen other components, and then a hundred. And finally they accepted it for what it was too complex for duplication, too necessary an accessory for the programmeds to be neglected, too valuable at its most effective to be taken from random specimens. It could be had only from Humans, and it could be had in fine quality only from a special sort of Humans. The thing was very complex, but at the Inst.i.tute they called it Oil of Dog.

Peredacha was a pleasant little contrivance -- a "Shadler Movement"

or "female" of the species that had once been called h.o.m.o canventus or robot and was now referred to as "Programmed Person."

She had a sound consciousness, hint of developing originality, a capacity for growth and a neatness of mechanism and person. She might be capable of fine work of the speculative sort. She was one of those on whom the added spark might not be wasted.

Always they had worked to combine the best elements of both sorts.

The Programmed Persons were in many respects superior to the Old Becension Persons or Humans. They were of better emotional balance, of greater diligence, of wider adaptability, of much vaster memory or acc.u.mulation and of readier judgment based on that memory. But there was one thing lacking in the most adept of the Programmed that was often to be found in the meanest of the humans. This was a thing very hard to name.

It was the little bit extra; but the Programmed already had the very much extra. It had something of the creative in it, though the Programmed were surely more creative than the Humans. It was the rising to the occasion; the Programmed could do this more gracefully, but sometimes less effectively, than could the Humans. It was the breaking out of a framework, the utter lack of complacency, the sudden surge of power or intellect, the bewildering mastery of the moment, the thing that made the difference.

It was the Programmed themselves who sought out the thing, for they were the more conscious of the difference. It was the Programmed technicians who set up the system. It cost the Humans nothing, and it profited the Programmed very much in their persons and personalities.

On many of them, of course, it had little effect; but on a select few it had the effect of raising them to a genius grade. And many of them who could never become geniuses did become specialists to a degree unheard of before -- and all because of the peculiar human additive.

It was something like the crossing of the two races, though there could never be a true cross of species so different-one of them not being ofthe reproductive sort. The adrenal complex sometimes worked great changes on a Programmed.

There were but a few consistent prime sources of it -- and each of them somehow had his distinguis.h.i.+ng mark. Often a Programmed felt an immediate kins.h.i.+p, seldom reciprocated, with the Human donor. And Peredacha, a very responsive Programmed, felt the kins.h.i.+p keenly when the additive was given to her.

"I claim for paternity," she cried. It was a standard joke of the Programmed. ~'I claim as daughter to my donor! I never believed it before. I thought it only one of those things that everybody says. The donors are such a surly bunch that it drives them really violent til one of us seeks their acquaintance on this pretext. But I'm curious. Which one was it?"

She was told.

"Oh no! Not him of the whole clutch! How droll can you get? He is my new kindred? But never before did I feel so glorious. Never have I been able to work so well."

The a.s.signed job of George Gnevni was a mechanical one. In the ordinary course of things this would be all wrong, for George had less mechanical apt.i.tude than any man ever born. George had very little apt.i.tude for anything at all in the world -- until his one peculiar talent was discovered.

He was an unhandsome and graceless man, and he lived in poverty.

Much has been said about the compensations of physical ugliness -- mostly the same things that have been said about poverty. It is often maintained that they may be melded behind the dross front, that the sterling character may develop and s.h.i.+ne through the adversity.

It is lies, it is lies! It happens only rarely that these things are enn.o.bling. With persons of the commoner sort it happens not at all. To be ugly and clumsy and poor at the same time will finally drive a man to raving anger against the whole world.

And that was the idea.

Gnevni was a.s.signed a mean lodging, and his meal tickets were peculiar ones. He could not obtain what he wanted to eat. He could have only what was on the list for him to eat, and this was evilly contrived to cover everything that disagreed with him. As a result he was usually in gastric pain and in seething anger at his own entrails. He had an ugly nature to begin with, but the form of life forced upon him deepened and nurtured it.

Gnevni's voice was harsh and jangling, though there was real mastery of resonance in his powerful howling when his anger reached high form. He was denied wifing privileges, and no woman would have had him in any case.

He was allowed just enough of bad whoa-johnny whisky to keep him edgy and mean, but not enough to bring him solace.

He was an oaf -- an obscene distasteful clod of humanity. He knew it and he boiled and seethed with the shoddy knowledge. He was no better than a badger in a cage, but those things are terrific snappers.

For his poor livelihood he was given a quota of mechanical tasks to complete every day, and he had no meehanical apt.i.tude at all. They were simple a.s.sembly jobs. A competent Programmed Person could do in minutes what it took Gnevni all day to do.

Most children of the human species could do the same things easily and quickly -- though some might not be able to do them at all, for the Humans are less uniform in their abilities than the Programmed. The things that Gnevni was to a.s.semble were never all there, some of them were the wrong things, and some of them were defective. A Programmed would have spotted the off stuff at once and sent it back, but ugly George had no way of telling whether things were right or not. He sweated and swore his days away at the grotesque labor and became the angriest man alive.

Joker tools were sometimes subst.i.tuted on him for the true with shafts as flexible as spaghetti, key-drifts with noses as soft as wax,box-end wrench sets that were sized to fit nothing, soldering guns that froze ice on their tips, mismarked calipers with automatic slippage, false templates, unworkable crimpers, continuity testers that shocked a man to near madness.

It is a legend that humans have an affinity for mechanical things.

But normal humans have an innate hatred for machinery, and the accommodation that has grown up between them is a nervous one. The d.a.m.ned stuff just doesn't work right. You hate it, and it hates you. That's the old basic of it.

Swift, a wise old mad man, once wrote a piece on the "Perversity of Inanimate Objects." And they are perverse, particularly to a sick, ugly, ignorant, incompetent, poor man who fights them in a frenzy -- and they fight back.

All day long George Gnevni and a few of his unfortunate fellows attacked their tasks explosively -- the air blue with multi-syllabled profanity, and anger dancing about like summer lightning. Now and then, people came and inserted tubes into these unfortunates, and performed some other indignities upon them.

The paranexus, the complex substance, the "Oil of Dog" that was needed for stimulation of the Programmed, while it could be taken from any Humans, could only be had in its prime form from a depraved, insane sort of Very Angry Men.

But today George Gnevni was not himself. There was only a sullenness in him, not the required flaming purple anger.

"We have to prod him," said under-doctor Cotrel. "We can't waste a whole day on him. He's sick enough. He tests at a high enough pitch of excitement. Why won't he put out? Why won't he get mad?"

"I have an idea," said under-doctor Devon. "We have an inner-office memo that one of the Programmed has recognized kins.h.i.+p with him. You remember when Wut was in a slump? We got a Programmed up here who threw an arm around him and called him Uncle Wilbur. The way Wut exploded, seismographs must have recorded the shock at a considerable distance. We had to move fast to prevent him from damaging the Programmed. And then Wut was so mad that we were able to use him around the clock for seventy-two hours.

How our Very Angry Men do hate the Programmed! They call them the things."

"Good. Anything that worked on Wet ought to work double on Gnevni.

Get the Programmed Person up here. We'll have him at ugly George."

"Her. She's a Shadier Movement Programmed and so technically a female."

"Better yet. I can hardly wait, Gnevni is the most spectacular of them all when he really goes wild. We should get a good production from him."

Peredacha, the talented little Shadier Movement Programmed, came to the Cortin Inst.i.tute Building -- the Milk Shed. She understood the situation and enjoyed it. The Programmed have their humor -- more urbane than that of Humans, and yet as genuine -- and they appreciate the hilarity of an incongnious confrontation.

Peredacha was something of an actress, for all the Programmed have a talent for mimicry. She considered the role for a moment, and she put all her talent into it.

And she did it! She made herself into the most pathetic urchin since the Little Match Girl. Yet she was a Programmed and not a Human; it was as though a gear box should put on a waif's shawl and turn tear-jerker.

They brought her in.

"Papa!" Peredacha cried and rushed toward Gnevni.

The attendants had closed between them to prevent damage when the anger of the low man should rise like a jagged wave.

The show should have been greater than the one that Wut had once put on for less reason. Gnevni was a bigger man with more power of anger, andthe situation was even more ridiculous. It should have set records on the decibel-recorder, filled the room with brimstone, and enriched the vocabulary of scatology.

But it didn't.

The face of George Gnevni was slack, and he shook his heavy head sadly.

"Take the child away," he said dully. "I will not be responsible for my feelings today."

It was a new morning and George Gnevni must return to his brutal livelihood.

A too-happy puppy came bounding up to him -- a bundle of hysterically gay yipes with a waggling rump and tail hitclied on to them.

"h.e.l.lo, little fellow," Gnevni said and bent down to pet it. But the puppy was not programmed for such treatment. It was made to be kicked by angry men. It threw itself into a series of reverse somersaults and heart-rending wails as though it had been kicked indeed.

"Oh, the poor little toy!" said Gnevni. "It has never known kindness."

"Look, Gnevni," said an inferior sort of man who came up, "the dog was made for one thing only -- so that twelve or thirteen of you hotfires could kick it every morning and get into your mood. Now kick too."

"I won't do it."

"I'll report you."

"I don't care. How could anyone harm that poor little tyke?" The Crippled Old Lady came up, shaking as with palsy. "A glorious good morning to you, my good man," she said to Gnevni.

"And a fine morning to you, my lady," he said.

"What? You're not supposed to say that! You're supposed to kick my crutches out from under me and then knock me down and trample on me. It helps get you in your mood. Crippled Old ladies are infuriating sights to the Very Angry Men; they make them even angrier. Everybody knows that."

"I just don't believe that I will do it today, ah -- Margaret, is that not your name? A fine day to you, my dear."

"Knock off that fine day stuff! I have my job to do. I'm a mood piece. You blow-tops are supposed to kick out my crutches and tromp me down to get in your mood. Now start kicking or I'll report you."

"Do so if you must, my dear."

Gnevni went to his job in the Cortin Inst.i.tute Building, and there he was good for nothing.

Mad? He wasn't even sullen. He was puzzled and pleasant, and when you have one of the old stand-bys go pleasant on you you're in trouble. He was civil to everybody and gave them all the jitters. He completed his mechanical tasks in an houur -- finding them much easier when he attacked them calmly. But he wasn't supposed to find them easier.

So there was ecostemation in the Department. Gnevni had been the best producer of them all. They couldn't let him go by like that.

"d.a.m.n you, get mad!" under-doctor Cotrel shouted and shook him. "We won't have any malingering on the job. Get mad and start putting out."

"I just don't seem able to get mad today," said Gnevni honestly.

"You double-d.a.m.ned will get mad, you crudhead!" pursued under-doctor Cotrel.

Cotrel seemed rather upset himself. "Under-doctor Devon! Over-doctor Ratracer! Director Duggle! Come help me with this pig-headed fellow. He won't get mad."

"He's got to get mad," said underdoctor Devon. "We'll make the filth-eating fink get mad."

"It looks bad," said Director Duggle. "He was at only half efficiency yesterday, and today he's good for nothing at all. Well, put him through the routine. We can't have him going sour at us."They put him through the routine. It was brutal. It would have made a roaring devil out of the sweetest saint. Even spectators commonly became white with fury when such a thing was put on, and there was no limit to the effect on the victim. Gnevni endured it with composed sorrow but without anger. And when even the routine didn't work what more could you do to him?

Under-doctor Cotrel began to cuff and kick him: "Get mad, you slimy sulphurous son of a she s.h.i.+nk! Get mad, you mud-headed old monkey! Get mad, you dirt-eating mutt-head! You s...o...b..r-mouthed donkey, get mad!"

They brought in others. They even brought in Peredacha -- hoping she would have a more positive effect on him than she had had the day before.

But Gnevni brightened up to see her.

"Ah, it is my little daughter! I sent you notes at intervals through the evening and night, but I guess you did not receive them. It is so wonderful just to see you again."

"Why you bat-whiskered old b.u.m, was it you who sent those notes?

'Sweet papa.' You? By the shop where I was made, I never heard of anything like it before!"

"Do not be cruel, Peredacha. You are all that I care for in the world. With you I could become a new man."

"Well, not being human I guess I can be humane. I'll look after you, ugly papa. But they don't want you to become a new man; as the old one you were the best they had. Come now, get mad for the people. It's your job."

"I know, but I'm unable to do it. I have been thinking, Peredacha, that since you are my daughter in a way -- cortin of my cortin and adrenalin of my adrenalin -- perhaps the two of us might go off somewhere and --"

"Holy howling hog!" Under-doctor Cotrel took off in a screech too high for the human ear to follow, so perhaps only Peredacha heard and flushed. And then Cotrel broke up completely. He kicked and beat on Gnevni.

He shrilled and sobbed and gobbled. And when his sounds once more became intelligible it was a screaming, "Get mad, d.a.m.n you, get mad!"

Cotrel was a lean man, hut powerfully corded and muscled, and now every cord of muscle and nerve stood glaringly out on him black and purple.

That man was plain frantic in his displeasure at Gnevni. The flying foam from his lips flecked the room-something you would not have expected from under-doctor Cotrel.

"It is all right," said Director Duggle. "Gnevni was about finished in any case. The best of them are only good for a year or two -- the pace is a terrific one. And we are lucky to have his replacement ready at hand."