Complete Short Fiction, page 457
“How do you mean?” In surprise.
“She knows which is you without uncertainty.”
The woman gazed at the android uneasily. The question somehow threatened . . . Jane. Threatened her, now. At once. Not later. Alpha thought tensely, “If I say the truth, that there’s no signal, will that be against Jane or for her?” Before she could resolve the complexity, Dan Two seemed to come to a decision. And, in fact, a moment later he said, “I’ll ask Dr. Schneiter about it in the morning.”
The threat receded as rapidly as it had come. Alpha stood up and excused herself. The new thought was that she must ask Jane about the meeting in the store and the rationale of the optimistic conclusions about it.
Catching Jane turned out to be not simple at all. The first time she glanced into her daughter’s bedroom, she saw an entrancing sight. The two Janes were sitting up on adjoining twin beds. As Alpha entered, both girls waggled their blonde tresses and gazed at her expectantly with duplicate pairs of blue eyes.
One of the duo said, “We’re doing an African dialect, Mother. It’s really something.”
Alpha withdrew hastily, saying, “See you later.”
But when she approached the door the next time, she could hear what sounded like ancient gypsy music playing. And when she peered in, the two girls were arrayed in blues and reds and dancing wildly, but gracefully.
That did it. As she walked away, Alpha thought Really, ifs much better for her to be doing diverting things than for me to ask her to explain exactly how she thinks this whole problem has been solved when, in fact, I may prove that it isn’t.
She spent the rest of the evening in the same peculiar quandary as she had the afternoon. She would lie down and then start to get up. Then would come the mental admonishment Better lie down again. Conserve your strength. And she would dutifully stretch out once more.
Somewhere in there, she slept.
Alpha woke up and had several almost simultaneous awarenesses.
Bright sunlight was pouring through her view window. Soft music was playing, she recognized one of her favorite classical works. Her bed-end clock showed 7:58—8/23/87. Alpha Two stood at the foot of her bed, beyond the clock. And one of the Janes, dressed for outdoors, along with Dan Two similarly arrayed, was standing in her doorway.
The girl said, “I got up early, Mom, and Dan Two and I went down and watched Dr. Schneiter being released from jail.”
“It was the rational thing to do,” said Dan Two. “That way, we established that he was actually released.”
The woman dared not speak right away. She swallowed, felt baffled, had the thought Was this trip necessary? and then managed, “He was released?”
“At seven o’clock this morning,” said Jane cheerfully. “Dan and I stood in the background, but I got a perfect image of him.”
The android corrected, “She means she got a good look at him.”
“I guess that’s what I mean,” said the girl. She waved. “See you at breakfast, Mom.”
Whereupon, she and Dan walked off out of sight.
As the human woman brought her attention back to her own duplicate, the android who looked and acted like her said in a perfect imitation of Alpha’s musical voice, “Madam, we think you should get dressed. It’s about to be eight o’clock and your husband is coming.”
Breakfast was served to her and Jane by two nervous androids who kept glancing through the window toward the street. Abruptly, they must have seen what they were looking for. “Here he comes!” The speaker was Alpha Two, and she was visibly upset. Her voice sounded semihysterical.
For a long moment that completely distracted the human woman from the information that the words conveyed, she thought Do I sound like that, ever?
Dan Two was speaking: “We’ll have to hide from him until Dr. Schneiter arrives,” he seemed to be pointing the explanation directly at Alpha, “so you’ll have to serve yourself.”
With that, the two androids hurried through the alcove that separated the breakfast room from the dining room. Next, they headed through the second alcove to the living room, and there they separated. Alpha Two exited by way of the patio door and Dan Two disappeared through the door of the combination music room-library.
As he vanished, the phone rang.
“I’ll take it in here,” Dan Two’s voice came eerily floating out from his hiding place. He added, “And when Dr. Thaler comes in, tell him to sit down and make no sudden moves. We’ve got you and your daughter covered.”
Alpha wasn’t quite sure how he could both answer the phone and participate in keeping them “covered.” But, in a way, she believed, and she had no intention of testing the claim.
In the distant room, there was a pause. Then Dan Two’s voice, sounding somewhat more subdued but still audible, said, “Yes, Dr. Schneiter, everything is fine. He’ll be entering in a minute, just in time for breakfast, so come over any time—”
At that point, Alpha happened to glance at Jane. She was startled to see that the girl was leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed.
“What?—” the woman began vaguely.
A finely shaped hand and arm waved her into silence. “Ssshh,” admonished Jane, “I’m noticing two things at the same time. It’s hard.”
At least a minute went by, and then Jane opened her eyes. “All right,” she said, “that’s done.”
The sun was shining through the dinette window. Out there was cloudless brightness, and the brilliance of it spilled across the finely netted table cloth and the gleaming dishes.
Inside Alpha’s skin was the intense darkness of fear and anticipation of the crisis that, with the coming of her former husband, was now upon them. Her daughter’s words penetrated the psychic blackness like a single ray of light in stygian night.
The woman stirred, as if a warmth had momentarily unthawed all the frozen distances within her. She ceased the automatic movements of eating, blinked and said, “What’s done?”
“I’ve finally figured it all out,” Jane replied. “To be like is not to be but to be able.”
Alpha gazed blankly at her daughter, and with each passing moment the words the girl had spoken seemed more meaningless. And yet, in another part of her brain, the meaning made an impression of impact size . . . “I have just heard,” decided Alpha, “one of those deep, deep thoughts with which philosophers confuse all of us poor nitwits with I.Q.’s of a mere 140 or so.”
Her mind poised because . . . the words had come from her fourteen-year-old daughter whom she had always considered smart but not a genius.
“I resemble,” continued Jane, “leads to ‘I can’, and not to ‘I am’.” She waved her left hand vaguely. “All these years of living with duplicate parents,” she said, “finally made me realize—”
Alpha was staring at the girl, blinking several times as she tried to grasp the obscure meanings that were being offered her. Whatever it was obviously couldn’t be explained by the word, “finally.” It must have been a maturing process, the brain constantly completing an identification, sorting out real fathers and mothers from android substitutes.
With that clarification, words came, a basic question. “But what do you do?” Alpha virtually breathed.
“I,” announced Jane triumphantly, “speak Latin, French, and probably any language I choose. But I have to be with an android who speaks those languages in order to do it.”
“You mean you read their minds?”
Jane made an infinitely resigned negating gesture with her head. “For heaven’s sake, Mother, I was tested for ESP and I’m zero at that. Didn’t you hear a single word I said?”
Alpha did a mental glance back over the dialogue and swallowed her continuing bafflement. What she wanted most desperately to ask was, “But can you do anything that will help us in this awful situation?”
She didn’t say it. Instead, she finally ventured lamely, “What you get out of this is a new ability to learn?”
“Mother! Didn’t you hear what I said? I haven’t learned anything. At least, not yet. Maybe it will work out that way in the long run. But the method doesn’t require it.”
“What,” asked Alpha, bracing herself, “is the method?”
“It comes from noticing. I’ve described that to you before.” As she spoke the words, and saw her mother’s expression, Jane One shook her head at the hopelessness of this attempt at communication. She realized, once again, that these explanations were a gosh-awful waste of time.
We really are different, we children brought up with the look-alike android parents . . .
Since there were no visible differences between the living human and the duplicate android, from babyhood she had had to find a new way of telling the difference.
In the early grades, when you did most of your school work away from home, you came rushing into the house after school and there was mother—or was it? For a moment, then, you had to notice.
In the brain, the process of noticing differences is normally a single act of long ago. You saw in that first instant thousands of differences between one person and all others. In that initial observation you made your decision as to who this was.
Thereafter, on seeing that individual or thinking about him, it was this decision that you brought into the forefront of your mind, and reaffirmed.
With a look-alike android, you couldn’t make a final decision. So you had to notice each time. Thousands of noticings presently evolved in Jane a permanent projective circuit There had even been a period when she had fought a silent battle with hallucination . . . she kept seeing androids and their human look-alikes even when they weren’t around.
Actual projections—out there—with three-dimensional reality. So she had to notice that Presently, by being aware of differences, she gained control over the projections.
She had noticed quite early that the projection of an android look-alike was quite, quite, quite different from the projection of a human being. You could see inside a projection and observe the inner person. After that, she had perfect awareness. She simply looked at the projections fleetingly, almost automatically, whenever she was in the presence of a real human or an android duplicate. And knew.
End of problem? Well, not completely. Jane became weary of explaining the details to her mother. “It’s just there,” she would say. “It’s noticing.”
“But what do you notice?”
“For Pete’s sake, Mother, I keep trying to tell you—”
As she had so often in the past, Alpha said now, sadly, “Yes, I suppose you have.”
Far more important, and what seemed unhappily all too clear, was that noticing, or at least the portion of it relating to languages, did not provide any way of defeating the super-androids. “I suppose,” she thought wearily, “I’ll have to leave that up to Dan—”
As he got out of his combo-cruiser and approached his former wife’s residence, Dan Thaler was stimulated, but not surprised, when what seemed to be a thought from his daughter came into his mind. It was a hasty message. “Dad, Dan Two is talking to Dr. Schneiter. I think you ought to hear what’s being said. I’ll try to let it pass through me, because I’m also noticing the image of Dr. Schneiter himself—”
“All right,” the man acknowledged.
He was, he realized, not as calm as he had been in his time. So he couldn’t help but observe that the tension surrounding his personal life was occurring on a perfect morning. The sky was blue. At every level, the silent combo-cruisers like his own were in motion, doing some normal, unthreatened business. He sensed the vast city around him, but did not, as was his custom, try to savor the contentment of being alive on an August day in the wonderful year of 2288 A.D.
He didn’t feel quite that contented. At least, not yet.
He was inside the high fence, and moving past the swimming pool when the next set of thoughts came to him. It was what the android was saying.
Good girl! he thought.
“—No, we won’t tie him until you get here . . . Why not tie him at once? Well, sir, as you know, the procedure was never part of the programming so this morning, when we analyzed this entire situation, we decided to handle it rationally . . . That makes you suspicious. I don’t see why. Androids are perfectly capable of sound reasoning . . . No, it was not suggested to me, and I have not been reprogrammed . . . Yes, there was one visitor. Dr. Camm showed up yesterday for one of his routine interrogations. We handled it very skillfully. Sent the girl out with Alpha Two, and had him talk to Jane Two.”
There was a pause. The human Dan presumed that Dr. Schneiter, at the other end of the phone, was evaluating what had happened to his perfect trap.
Dan continued to move forward. But now he could give more attention to the familiar, two-level house in front of him. He actually felt well-protected by the automatic machinery in his combo, acting through instruments that he carried in his coat. But, nonetheless, he was glad when he saw no shadowy figure at any window, nor was there a movement on the roof or in the shrubbery at the side of the house. Glad, because you could never tell, these days, what new devices existed. He, who knew so many such things, respected the impossibility of any one person ever knowing everything that could be done against a living creature.
But he got safely to the stairs, and he started climbing.
Inside the house, the long silence was suddenly broken. Dan Two called out, “Alpha Two, were you separated from Jane in any way while you were out with her? Dr. Schneiter wants to know.”
As the android, Alpha, was yelling that information, the hall door opened, and the real Dan walked in. He came rapidly through the kitchen, into the breakfast room, and sat down. Alpha did a gesture thing with her arm, which was intended to be a welcome. Jane did not move, did not open her eyes, said nothing.
From where he sat, Dan could now also hear the voice of his duplicate, who said, “I don’t see how that would be a problem. If Alpha Two thought it was all right, then it was. After all, she’s an android, with what that means in terms of superior ability to reason—”
As those words were spoken, Jane One opened her eyes and gave her father a quick smile. “They really are awfully conceited,” she whispered.
Dan One whispered back, “Somebody figured out that that was the way to program them, the idea being they couldn’t be reasoned with by us. So we’re taking full advantage of that.” He added, “Of course, in order to do so we needed somebody who can put—” He stopped, and then finished—“who can notice thoughts into images of other people and into androids.”
“Ssshh,” said Jane. Her eyes closed.
Dan Two’s voice came, “Yes, Jane Two is here. That’s something we want to talk to you about. Whoever put that bomb into her was not thinking of what could happen to her . . . No, that’s been reprogrammed out. If the extreme act becomes necessary, she has Mrs. Thaler’s gun . . . The whole dilemma is right there. When we analyzed this situation, we discovered there was no clear-cut moment for Jane Two to shoot. So she will remain in hiding until you come over here and have your conversation with Mr. Thaler. And if you don’t come, we’ll set the whole thing up again for tomorrow morning. And so on . . . Yes, I heard him come in. I’ll ask him if he’s willing to talk to you.”
He called, “Dan One, would you pick up the phone in the breakfast room? Dr. Schneiter would like to talk to you.”
Dan said, “It must be understood that my talking to him now will in no way be construed as being the conversation which Doctor Schneiter originally intended to have with me here.”
After Dan Two had communicated that into the phone, he called, “It is understood.”
Smiling faintly, the man, whose presence was already making Alpha feel better, reached to the little table by the window and picked up the receiver. “Hello,” he said, “that was a pretty rational account, don’t you think?”
“High praise, indeed,” said Dan Two’s voice out of the receiver, “coming from someone like you. I’ll hang up now, gentlemen.” There was a click.
Dan said, “Well, Doctor, I gather you’re not going to show up here as you were originally scheduled to do.”
The familiar voice at the other end sounded resigned. “Mr. Thaler, we seemed to have arrived at an impasse.”
Dan urged, “You have an edge, since you’re no longer in jail.”
“I don’t know exactly what you did,” sighed the older man, “but as I see it, the situation is a permanent trap for all of us.”
In a few sentences, he thereupon listed the binding elements of their condition. The androids would always hide when Dan was in the house. And one or other would always accompany Alpha or Jane, but would not allow them to go out together. They would only tie up Dan if Schneiter actually entered the house. Which, of course, it would be ridiculous for him to do in view of the weapons that Dr. Camm had undoubtedly brought into the house on his “routine” call, plus whatever Jane had brought back from the store.
“The situation is even more binding than that,” said Dan. “They considered all the possibilities as they might apply in future. They will let me leave at 10:30 every morning, but insist I come back next morning by 8, in case that’s the morning you decide to come over. They recognize that this might be inconvenient for me, so they are agreeable to my coming here the night before and remaining all night. But, since it would be an immoral thing for me to stay with my ex-wife, they insist that we remarry.”
There was silence at the other end. When the older man’s voice came again, there was in his tone that cheerfulness which some males feel when another has got himself into a severe female predicament.
“Well, well,” he said, “I’m beginning to make my peace with what has happened. I can’t see a married Dan Thaler being as dangerous to my plans as a single one has been. And you will be in that perpetual trap, won’t you?”
He finished almost happily, “I’ll call from time to time to make sure that nothing has changed.”
There was a click of disconnection.
Jane could have pointed out to the two men that there were several additional consequences. The androids were now forever in a position where they could have their freedom; but, of course, they couldn’t accept. And, therefore, they had to stay, and stay. And, besides—
