Collected Short Fiction, page 52
Arthur made vague screaming poises, indicative of disgust, contempt, anger, refutation, accusation, and general disagreement.
“Control yourself, Arthur, or you’ll overheat your bearings,” Seth shouted back over his shoulder, maliciously.
They were entering Peterville. Seth slowed down. The car overtook old man Smith ambling along the wayside.
“ ’Morning, Smithy,” called Seth. “Howdy, Seth. What you got in the back—coupla coyotes?”
“Only Arthur and a Martian,” said Seth.
“Yeah? Where did he buy it?”
“I believe it bought him,” Seth called back.
When they reached the bungalow, Arthur shot out of the car as if he’d been catapulted. His gangling figure vanished through the doorway, shouting over its shoulder: “Come on, I’ll show you in black and white!”
As Burp started to get out, Seth said: “Hold it a moment—let him go. I’m the editor of the newspaper here—I want a story for tomorrow’s edition. Give me the low-down on Mars and the Martians. Do they favor pajamas or the old-fashioned nightie? How many wives are you allowed? Have you killed off your politicians yet? Do you have racketeers? Do—”
“I’m a journalist myself,” said Burp, coldly, “and my price for contributions of that sort is a dollar a word.”
Oh, so you do have racketeers,” said Seth, equally coldly. “Okay, go in and drink my Scotch. My price is five bucks a finger. Never mind about the article—I’ll make it up.”
“I’m sure you would have done so in any case,” said Burp, and turned and walked into the bungalow.
SETH went round to the composing room and set up a double column about Mars, the Martians, and Burp in particular. Half of it came out of Popular Astronomy, there was a steal from Wells, and the rest of it, dealing with Burp in particular, came out of Seth’s own head. It appeared that Mars had become too hot to hold Burp . . .
When he entered the lounge, there was a cold war on.
They were on to cybernetics now.
“Just a matter of negative feedback,” Burp was saying. “Excessive feedback in a steering gear is exactly the same as purpose tremor caused by an injury to the cerebellum. A neurosis is merely wild oscillation of the mechanism—‘hunting’—before it breaks down completely.”
“I’ll grant you that the brain cells are simple relays—” began Arthur.
“Do you also grant me that your nervous system includes devices for integrating, differentiating, frequency modulations, wave synthesis, storage, scanning, and group transformations from one co-ordinate system to another?”
“Being my nervous system, those are just its simplest devices,” snapped Arthur, “However, I know what you’re going to say—”
Burp groaned, “Don’t say that. You sound like a Martian.”
“All right, I’ll admit it—our technicians have reproduced all ol those devices electrically, both separately and combined. But none of their contrivances has produced any poetry yet.”
“Poetry is basically only emotion. Your elementary machines have produced emotion. Look, in this issue of Electronic Engineering—”
“I know what you’re going to say,” said Arthur.
Burp shrieked. “Don’t say that I It makes me mad!”
“The homeostat,” said Arthur. Burp threw his leather helmet across the room. He tore at his springing white hair. Seth thought: Why, he looks just like Arthur! Except for the jaundice.
Burp said fiercely: “I insist on instancing this case.”
“Then tell him,” said Arthur, boredly, indicating Seth, and sat down and put his feet up.
“Yes, tell me,” said Seth. “Nobody ever tells me anything.” Books and journals were lying strewn all over the chairs, the bureau, the occasional table, and the phonograph. They were ankle-deep on the floor, and Burp came plowing through them at Seth.
“All right,” he said, “listen to me, Barnard. This is the sort of thing you should put in your newspaper instead of idle chit-chat. The homeostat is a machine designed by Dr. W. R. Ashby, and demonstrated by the Electroenchephalographic Society at the Burden Neurological Institute, in Bristol, England, on May 1st, 1948.”
“How d’you spall it?” said Seth, taking notes.
“What?”
“Bristol.”
“Never mind. The homeostat is a group of four electro-magnets, supplying a self-feedback, and with 390,625 combinations of feedback patterns to choose from. The four magnets are free to swing and seek a stable, balanced point, just as an animal seeks its optimal condition. So it is goal-seeking, just as you robots are goal-seeking, using negative feedback to swing you on the line to your goal.”
“My goal at the moment is a Scotch,” said Seth, getting it. He drank it at a gulp.
Burp stared at him.
“Go on,” said Seth. “I don’t understand a word of it, but maybe my readers might. Maybe.”
“My price for further information is a snifter.”
Seth gave him one.
“AH!” said Burp afterward, looking a little less jaundiced. He continued: “I’ll put it simply, as you’re simple-minded. Negative feedback is the resultant of impulses received from yourself and your goal so that you are guided to make the distance between them zero, as in a radar-controlled anti-aircraft gun, receiving impulses from the target plane and its own shells. Without feedback, it would aim anywhere; with positive feedback, it would try to miss the plane by the greatest distance—a neurotic procedure, defeating the raison d’etre of the machine.”
“Like the way you’re missing the point,” interjected Arthur.
Burp ignored him, and went on: “Animals, as you style yourselves, work on basically the same principle, though you have fashioned many different feedback combinations and have learned to use them. A cat, for instance, with its goal of self-preservation, learns to go toward red meat (negative feedback) and away from red fire (positive feedback). As a kitten, its behavior is merely chaotic—”
“So are your facts,” yawned Arthur. “Cats are color-blind.”
Burp quivered with silent rage. “What’s that?” said Seth, watching him interestedly. “Oscillation setting in?”
Burp took hold of himself with an effort. “Another Scotch,” he muttered.
Seth poured him a stiff one, emptying the bottle.
“I’m beginning to see how you got your name,” he said. “Come on, give.”
“Ah!” Burp sighed as he put down the glass. “Well, a mammalian brain, you see, is just a machine that has learned how to approach its goal by a flexible route, its aim remaining unchanging. If one path is blocked, it works out another. It works out essential parts of its own wiring. So does the homeostat. Its inventor did everything he could think of to stop the magnets from reaching their stable arrangement. But between them they always worked out a new circuit so that they got there.”
“What did he do?” asked Seth. “He reversed the polarity, even the magnets themselves. He put physical obstructions in the way of a free swing of the magnets. He tied two of them together with glass fibre, so that they had to move together. Whatever conditions he imposed, they beat him.”
“That’s a point you’d better consider,” said Arthur, lazily. “The homeostat developed to play chess, for instance, could eventually play with subtlety and strategy beyond that of the inventor himself.
Now—”
“I know what you’re going to say!” said Burp, furiously. “Don’t flatter yourself. Your model is known to us Martians as Mark B. VII—a primitive and very inferior one. There’s no comparing you and me—I’m not a machine, but a natural product, of beauty, delicacy, wonder and infinite complexity. Whereas you and your materialistic, miserable little ten billion thermionic tubes, a mere machina ratiocinatrix—”
HIS voice was drowned by a flood of music.
“Brahms’ First Symphony!” shouted Arthur, shutting the lid of the phonograph. “No machine created that!”
“Emotional stuff, and emotional reasoning!” bawled Burp. “The homeostat produces any amount of emotion. Put obstructions in its way and it will exhibit all the signs of frustration and disappointment. It sulks inactively, then shows hysterical over-action and frantic over-compensation, and if you—”
“For crying out loud!” exclaimed Seth, going to the phonograph and turning it off. “Let’s have a truce. This nerve war is getting me down. What about some lunch?”
“I’m not hungry,” growled Burp. “But I’m still thirsty.”
“Okay, then let’s all go over to Ted’s Bar and get to be pals—”
“Count me out,” said Arthur, nastily. “I’m not one of those natural products of beauty and delicacy which need constant pick-me-ups. I’m only a poor old robot with a weakness for primitive noises. I guess there must be a short in my circuit somewhere.”
IT WAS very quiet in Ted’s Bar, because Ted was the only person there and he was not given to speaking to himself—or much to anyone else.
“Two double Scotches, Ted,” said Seth. “Meet my friend, Burp—he’s just come from Mars.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Ted, setting out the glasses. “Have a nice trip?”
“So-so,” said Burp.
Seth took the drinks and Burp over into a corner, out of earshot of Ted.
“I have to apologize for Arthur’s behavior, Burp,” he said, quietly. “I’m always having to do it. He’s a good guy, quite bright in his way, but too tense. He doesn’t know how to relax. If he’d only behave like a human being, have a smoke and a drink now and again, see things in their proper perspective instead of bursting blood vessels over molehills—”
“He can’t behave like a human being because he’s a robot,” said Burp, reflectively. “But he’s gone off the beam—his mechanism is ‘hunting.’ Most unstable. But don’t worry about me—I can handle him.”
Seth sipped his Scotch, watching Burp over the glass.
“You’re really on the up-and-up about our being robots, aren’t you?” he said, presently.
“Yes, of course. If only I could get this robot-control to work . . .” He was still carrying the instrument, and he frowned at it and played with it.
“I must get me a banner-line: MARTIAN SAYS ALL EARTHMEN MECHANICAL TOYS. No, that won’t do. What about—Jumping Jehosophat!”
“That won’t do, either,” said Burp. “There’s no point to it.”
But Seth was gaping over Burp’s shoulder at a quite unprecedented spectacle, one which put Martians and their utterances in the shade.
ARTHUR had entered the bar. It was as though an archbishop had entered the lowest dive on the San Francisco waterfront.
He was obviously ill at ease and uncomfortable, and equally obviously doing his best to conceal it and look amused, detached, and tolerant about it, as though he were being shown over the place against his real inclinations and didn’t like to offend the guide. But he couldn’t quite control his puritanical nostrils, which every now and then twitched and said: “How sordid!” With him was Doc Benson, the surgeon at the hospital.
“Hello, Arthur,” said Seth. “Slumming?”
But Arthur had gone deaf. He looked around with a faint, fixed smile, and hummed tunelessly to show that he was quite unperturbed.
“Hiya, Seth,” said the Doc. “What’ll you and your friend have?”
“Hi, Doc. Scotch, thanks—that okay for you, Burp?”
Burp nodded.
The Doc went to the bar, and ordered. “What’s for you, Arthur?” he called.
“Coco-cola, thanks.”
“Straight?”
“Er—yes.”
The Doc brought the drinks on a tray into the corner, and tried to maneuver everyone into a chummy little circle. But Arthur kept slipping out of his hands like a bit of wet soap and remained hovering uncertainly on the fringe. It was as if he were expecting the cops to raid the joint at any moment and didn’t want to be identified with the group of debauchees.
“What’s the matter, Arthur?” asked Seth. “Delirium tremens isn’t infectious.”
“If it were, I’d have caught it long ago,” snapped Arthur, but the old fire was lacking. Seth grinned and enjoyed himself. Arthur was so habitually the master of his environment that it made a welcome change to see him in the rare role of a fish out of water. But it was all very odd: why had Arthur cast himself for such a totally unsuitable role?
Another odd thing soon became noticeable. Doc Benson kept up a running fire of small talk and wisecracks that mostly misfired, and never once referred to Burp as a Martian or evinced any curiosity about where he’d come from and why. It was odd because curiosity about other people’s business was the salient characteristic of the Doc.
Doc became boastful about the new Peterville Hospital, its furnishings, grounds, apparatus, and so forth.
“All going to waste,” he said, “because we haven’t had a single darned patient since the place opened. I just haven’t anything to do except sit in Ted’s bar here and try to work up an appetite. We have the best darned cook you ever saw—why not come along to lunch, Seth, and bring your friend? We’ve steaks today—the way Joe does ’em they’ll be as sweet as a nut.”
“No, thanks, Doc, I’ve got a heavy date with the linotype.”
“How ’bout you, friend?”
“I’m not hungry,” said Burp.
Arthur whispered something in the Doc’s ear.
“That so?” said the Doc. “H’m.
Well, I guess we’ll be getting along.”
“We?” said Seth.
“Arthur’s accepted my lunch invitation.”
“I’ve left some cold ham for you, Seth,” said Arthur. “But there’s—er—only one pickled onion left.”
“Wish you’d keep your fingers out of that jar,” grumbled Seth.
“Oh,” said the Doc, as if he’d just remembered it. “I’ve got to replenish the cellar.”
He bought two bottles of Scotch from Ted, while Burp looked on with thirsty eyes.
“Sure you’re not coming along?” said the Doc, with a sidelong glance.
“Sure,” said Seth.
“I think I shall, after all,” said Burp, hurriedly, “if you don’t mind.”
“Sure, come along,” said the Doc, and Seth saw a look of triumph flick over Arthur’s face as the three of them went out.
“Well, what do you know, Ted?” Seth said. “Never thought I’d live to see the day that Arthur came in here.”
“You can never tell about people,” said Ted, sententiously.
“Arthur isn’t people. The Martian’s right—he’s just a calculating machine. But I wish I knew what he’s calculating at this moment.”
SETH cut half of the Popular Astronomy, gave the late Mr. Wells back his property, and reworded the Burp section to give a much more sympathetic picture of him and his statements and behavior. It might have been because of the whiskey’s mellowing effect. It might have been because Seth regarded Burp more warmly now he had shared a friendly drink with him—which one could never do with Arthur. It made Burp appear much the more human of the two.
Or perhaps it was because he felt a little afraid for Burp. To one ignorant of Arthur’s nature, the war paint was invisible, no smoke signals stained the sky, and the drums were silent. But Seth knew that Arthur was on the war-path, and his goal was Burp’s scalp. And if he had to use double negative feedback to reach that goal, he would. Seth wished now that he had been quick enough to have warned Burp.
He spent a long time over the story, and when he went around to the lounge Arthur and his intended victim had returned and were at it again.
Burp was saying loudly: “The work of Watson and Rayner and Lecky has shown that nothing else so far observed will produce the fear response in early infancy but a loud sound or a sudden loss of support. They are the fundamental unconditioned stimuli calling out a fear reaction. Every baby, except one, of a batch of a thousand examined by them was found to catch its breath or cry when a loud sound was made behind its head or when the blanket was jerked away from tinder it.”
“I was that thousandth baby,” said Arthur, grimly. “I’m the exception which proves the rule.” There was a loud bang on the door-knocker, and Arthur jumped a foot.
Seth laughed. “I’ll go.” No one heard him. The argument gathered fury, became a storm. They were both shouting at once, now—it was like a mildly dramatic moment in an Orson Welles film.
THE caller was a pretty young nurse from the Peterville Hospital. She pushed a large buff envelope into Seth’s hand and said: “For Arthur, with Doc Benson’s compliments. I believe Arthur is waiting for it.”
“Thanks, Hilda. Why not come on in?”
“No, thanks. It sounds too noisy in there. I prefer peace and quiet.”
“So do I,” said Seth. “What about tomorrow evening, around six, back of the swimming pool? That’s a quiet spot.”
“Okay,” said Hilda. “Bring a friend—but not Arthur this time. I want to keep my friends.”
Seth grinned and saw her off. Then he examined what was in the envelope and stopped grinning.
When he was able to, he started thinking. Then he parked the envelope just outside the door of the lounge and once again braved the field of battle.
“You only get the backwash of it in back areas like Mars,” Arthur was stating, not so very far from the top of his voice. “I’m in the forefront of scientific research here, and I’m telling you that the latest work has shown that fear and rage can be evoked in totally new situations, in which learning by conditioning has not been involved.”
“Is this one of them?” asked Seth, but he might as well have been in the wilderness.
Arthur went braying on: “Hebb has demonstrated spontaneous fear in chimpanzees by suddenly showing them mutilated and dismembered bodies and other such unusual stimuli. The point is, being laboratory bred chimpanzees, they had had no previous experience of that sort. It’s quite obvious that merely a shock to one’s sense of fitness of things—”
“All this is a shock to my sense of fitness of things!” bawled Seth. “I’m fed up on all this brawling. This happens to be my home too. Shut up, both of you, and let me say something, will you?”
