Selected Stories of Alfred Bester

  Nothing but newspapers. Each paper contained an account of one crime in the android’s ghastly career. Each paper also contained news, domestic and foreign, sports, society, weather, shipping news, stock exchange quotations, human-interest stories, features, contests, puzzles. Somewhere in that mass of uncollated facts was the secret Wanda and Jed Stark had discovered. Vandaleur pored over the papers helplessly. It was beyond him. So jeet your seat!

  “I’ll sell you,” I told the android. “Damn you. When we land on Terra, I’ll sell you. I’ll settle for three percent of whatever you’re worth.”

  “I am worth fifty-seven thousand dollars on the current exchange,” I told him.

  “If I can’t sell you, I’ll turn you in to the police,” I said.

  “I am valuable property,” I answered. “It is forbidden to endanger valuable property. You won’t have me destroyed.”

  “Christ damn you!” Vandaleur cried. “What? Are you arrogant? Do you know you can trust me to protect you? Is that the secret?”

  The multiple-aptitude android regarded him with calm accomplished eyes. “Sometimes,” it said, “it is a good thing to be property.”

  It was three below zero when the Lyra Queen dropped at Croydon Field. A mixture of ice and snow swept across the field, fizzling and exploding into steam under the Queen’s tail jets. The passengers trotted numbly across the blackened concrete to customs inspection, and thence to the airport bus that was to take them to London . Vandaleur and the android were broke. They walked.

  By midnight they reached Piccadilly Circus. The December ice storm had not slackened and the statue of Eros was encrusted with ice. They turned right, walked down to Trafalgar Square and then along the Strand , shaking with cold and wet. Just above Fleet Street, Vandaleur saw a solitary figure coming from the direction of St. Paul’s. He drew the android into an alley. “We’ve got to have money,” he whispered. He pointed to the approaching figure. “He has money. Take it from him.”

  “The order cannot be obeyed,” the android said.

  “Take it from him,” Vandaleur repeated. “By force. Do you understand? We’re desperate.”

  “It is contrary to my prime directive,” the android repeated. “The order cannot be obeyed.”

  “Damn you!” Vandaleur burst out. “You’ve attacked, destroyed, murdered. Don’t gibber about prime directives. Get his money. Kill him if you have to. I tell you, we’re desperate!”

  “It is contrary to my prime directive,” I said. I cannot endanger life or property. The order cannot be obeyed.”

  I thrust the android back and leaped out at the stranger. He was tall, austere, poised. He had an air of hope curdled by cynicism. He carried a cane. I saw he was blind.

  “Yes?’ he said. “I hear you near me. What is it?”

  “Sir...” Vandaleur hesitated. “I’m desperate.”

  “We are all desperate,” the stranger replied. “Quietly desperate.”

  “Sir... I’ve got to have some money.”

  “Are you begging or stealing?” The sightless eyes passed over Vandaleur and the android.

  “I’m prepared for either.”

  “Ah. So are we all. It is the history of our race.” The stranger motioned over his shoulder. “I have been begging at St. Paul’s, my friend. What I desire cannot be stolen. What is it you desire that you are lucky enough to be able to steal?”

  “Money,” Vandaleur said.

  “Money for what? Come, my friend, let us exchange confidences. I will tell you why I beg, if you will tell me why you steal. My name is Blenheim.”

  “My name is... Vole.”

  “I was not begging for sight at St. Paul’s, Mr. Vole. I was begging for a number.”

  “A number?”

  “An, yes. Numbers rational, numbers irrational. Numbers imaginary. Positive integers. Negative integers. Fractions, positive and negative. Eh? You have never heard of Blenheim’s immortal treatise on Twenty Zeros, or The Differences in Absence of Quantity?” Blenheim smiled bitterly. “I am the wizard of the Theory of Numbers, Mr. Vole, and I have exhausted the charm of number for myself. After fifty years of wizardry, senility approaches and appetite vanishes. I have been praying in St. Paul’s for inspiration. Dear God, I prayed, if you exist, send me a Number.”

  Vandaleur slowly lifted the cardboard portfolio, and touched Blenheim’s hand with it. “In here,” he said, “is a number. A hidden number. A secret number. The number of a crime. Shall we exchange, Mr. Blenheim? Shelter for a number?”

  “Neither begging nor stealing, eh?” Blenheim said. “But a bargain. So all life reduces itself to the banal.” The sightless eyes again passed over Vandaleur and the android. “Perhaps the Almighty is not God but a merchant. Come home with me.”

  On the top floor of Blenheim’s house we share a room— two beds, two closets, two washstands, one bathroom. Vandaleur bruised my forehead again and sent me out to find work, and while the android worked, I consulted with Blenheim and read him the papers from the portfolio, one by one. All reet! All reet!

  Vandaleur told him this much and no more. He was a student, I said, planning a thesis on the murdering android. In these papers which he had collected were the facts that would explain the crimes, of which Blenheim had heard nothing.

  There must be a correlation, a number, a statistic, something which would account for my derangement, I explained, and Blenheim was piqued by the mystery, the detective story, the human interest of number.

  We examined the papers. As I read them aloud, he listed them and their contents in his blind, meticulous writing. And then I read his notes to him. He listed the papers by type, by type face, by fact, by fancy, by article, spelling, words, theme, advertising, pictures, subject, politics, prejudices. He analyzed. He studied. He meditated. And we lived together in that top floor, always a little cold, always a little terrified, always a little closer... brought together by our fear of us, our hatred between us driven like a wedge into a living tree and splitting the trunk, only to be forever incorporated into the scar tissue. So we grew together. Vandaleur and the android. Be fleet be fleet!

  And one afternoon Blenheim called Vandaleur into his study and displayed his notes. “I think I’ve found it,” he said, “but I can’t understand it.” Vandaleur’s heart leaped. “Here are the correlations,” Blenheim continued. “In fifty papers there are accounts of the criminal android. What is there, outside the depredations, that is also in fifty papers?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Blenheim.”

  “It was a rhetorical question. Here is the answer. The weather.”

  “What?”

  “The weather.” Blenheim nodded. “Each crime was committed on a day when the temperature was above ninety-degrees Fahrenheit.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Vandaleur exclaimed. “It was cool on Lyra Alpha.”

  “We have no record of any crime committed on Lyra Alpha. There is no paper.”

  “No. That’s right. I—” Vandaleur was confused. Suddenly he exclaimed. “No. You’re right. The furnace room. It was hot down there. Hot! Of course. My God, yes! That’s the answer. Dallas Brady’s electric furnace... the rice deltas on Paragon. So jeet your seat. Yes. But why? Why? My God, why?”

  I came into the house at that moment and, passing the study, saw Vandaleur and Blenheim. I entered, awaiting commands, my multiple aptitudes devoted to service.

  “That’s the android, eh?” Blenheim said after a long moment.

  “Yes,” Vandaleur answered, still confused by the discovery. “And that explains why it refused to attack you that night on the Strand. It wasn’t hot enough to break the prime directive. Only in the heat...The heat, all reet!” He looked at the android. A lunatic command passed from man to android. I refused. It is forbidden to endanger life. Vandaleur gestured furiously, then seized Blenheim’s shoulders and yanked him back out of his desk chair to the floor. Blenheim shouted once. Vandaleur leaped on him like a tiger, pinning him to the floor and sealing his mouth with
one hand.

  “Find a weapon,” I called to the android.

  “It is forbidden to endanger life.”

  “This is a fight for self-preservation. Bring me a weapon!” He held the squirming mathematician with all his weight. I went at once to a cupboard where I knew a revolver was kept. I checked it. It was loaded with five cartridges. I handed it to Vandaleur. I took it, rammed the barrel against Blenheim’s head and pulled the trigger. He shuddered once.

  We had three hours before the cook returned from her day off. We looted the house. We took Blenheim’s money and jewels. We packed a bag with clothes. We took Blenheim’s notes, destroyed the newspapers, and we fled, carefully locking the door behind us. In Blenheim’s study we left a pile of crumpled papers under a half inch of burning candle. And we soaked the rug around it with kerosene. No, I did all that. The android refused. I am forbidden to endanger life or property.

  All reet!

  They took the tubes to Leicester Square, changed trains and rode to the British Museum. There they got off and went to a small Georgian house just off Russell Square. A shingle in the window read: NAN WEBB, PSYCHOMETRIC CONSULTANT. Vandaleur had made a note of the address some weeks earlier. They went into the house. The android waited in the foyer with the bag. Vandaleur entered Nan Webb’s office.

  She was a tall woman with gray shingled hair, very fine English complexion and very bad English legs. Her features were blunt, her expression acute, She nodded to Vandaleur, finished a letter, sealed it and looked up. “My name,” I said, “is Vanderbilt. James Vanderbilt.”

  “Quite.”

  “I’m an exchange student at London University.”

  “Quite.”

  “I’ve been researching on the killer android, and I think I’ve discovered something very interesting. I’d like your advice on it. What is your fee?”

  “What is your college at the university?”

  “Why?”

  “There is a discount for students.”

  “Merton College.”

  “That will be two pounds, please.”

  Vandaleur placed two pounds on the desk and added to the fee Blenheim’s notes. “There is a correlation,” he said, “between the crimes of the android and the weather. You will note that each crime was committed when the temperature rose above ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Is there a psychometric answer for this?”

  Nan Webb nodded, studied the notes for a moment, put down the sheets of paper and said: “Synesthesia, obviously.”

  “What?”

  “Synesthesia,” she repeated. “When a sensation, Mr. Vanderbilt, is interpreted immediately in terms of a sensation from a different sense organ than the one stimulated, it is called synesthesia. For example: A sound stimulus gives rise to a simultaneous sensation of definite color. Or color gives rise to a sensation of taste. Or a light stimulus gives rise to a sensation of sound. There can be confusion or short circuiting of any sensation of taste, smell, pain, pressure, temperature and so on. D’you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Your research has probably uncovered the fact that the android most probably reacts to temperature stimulus above the ninety-degree level synesthetically. Most probably there is an endocrine response. Probably a temperature linkage with the android adrenal surrogate. High temperature brings about a response of fear, anger, excitement and violent physical activity. . . all within the province of the adrenal gland.”

  “Yes. I see. Then if the android were to be kept in cold climates...”

  “There would be neither stimulus nor response. There would be no crimes. Quite.”

  “I see. What is psychotic projection?’

  “How do you mean?”

  “Is there any danger of projection with regard to the owner of the android?”

  “Very interesting. Projection is a throwing forward. It is the process of throwing out upon another the ideas or impulses that belong to oneself. The paranoid, for example, projects upon others his conflicts and disturbances in order to externalize them. He accuses, directly or by implication, other men of having the very sicknesses with which he is struggling himself.”

  “And the danger of projection?”

  “It is the danger of the victim’s believing what is implied. If you live with a psychotic who projects his sickness upon you, there is a danger of falling into his psychotic pattern and becoming virtually psychotic yourself. As, no doubt, is happening to you, Mr. Vandaleur.”

  Vandaleur leaped to his feet.

  “You are an ass,” Nan Webb went on crisply. She waved the sheets of notes. “This is no exchange student’s writing. It’s the unique cursive of the famous Blenheim. Every scholar in England knows this blind writing. There is no Merton College at London University. That was a miserable guess. Merton is one of the Oxford Colleges. And you, Mr. Vandaleur, are so obviously infected by association with your deranged android... by projection, if you will... that I hesitate between calling the Metropolitan Police and the Hospital for the Criminally Insane.”

  I took the gun out and shot her.

  Reet!

  “Antares II, Alpha Aurigae, Acrux IV, Pollux IX, Rigel Centaurus,” Vandaleur said. “They’re all cold. Cold as a witch’s kiss. Mean temperatures of forty degrees Fahrenheit. Never get hotter than seventy. We’re in business again. Watch that curve.”

  The multiple-aptitude android swung the wheel with its accomplished hands. The car took the curve sweetly and sped on through the northern marshes, the reeds stretching for miles, brown and dry, under the cold English sky. The sun was sinking swiftly. Overhead, a lone flight of bustards flapped clumsily eastward. High above the flight, a lone helicopter drifted toward home and warmth.

  “No more warmth for us,” I said. “No more heat. We’re safe when we’re cold. We’ll hole up in Scotland, make a little money, get across to Norway, build a bankroll and then ship out. We’ll settle on Pollux. We’re safe. We’ve licked it. We can live again.”

  There was a startling bleep from overhead, and then a ragged roar: “ATTENTION JAMES VANDALEUR AND ANDROID. ATTENTION JAMES VANDALEUR AND ANDROID!”

  Vandaleur started and looked up. The lone helicopter was floating above them. From its belly came amplified commands: “YOU ARE SURROUNDED. THE ROAD IS BLOCKED. YOU ARE TO STOP YOUR CAR AT ONCE AND SUBMIT TO ARREST. STOP AT ONCE!”

  I looked at Vandaleur for orders.

  “Keep driving,” Vandaleur snapped.

  The helicopter dropped lower “ATTENTION ANDROID. YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF THE VEHICLE. YOU ARE TO STOP AT ONCE. THIS IS A STATE DIRECTIVE SUPERSEDING ALL PRIVATE COMMANDS.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” I shouted.

  “A state directive supersedes all private commands,” the android answered. “I must point out to you that—”

  “Get the hell away from the wheel,” Vandaleur ordered. I clubbed the android, yanked him sideways and squirmed over him to the wheel. The car veered off the road in that moment and went churning through the frozen mud and dry reeds. Vandaleur regained control and continued westward through the marshes toward a parallel highway five miles distant.

  “We’ll beat their goddamned block,” he grunted. The car pounded and surged. The helicopter dropped even lower. A searchlight blazed from the belly of the plane.

  “ATTENTION JAMES VANDALEUR AND ANDROID. SUBMIT TO ARREST. THIS IS A STATE DIRECTIVE SUPERSEDING ALL PRIVATE COMMANDS.”

  “He can’t submit,” Vandaleur shouted wildly. “There’s no one to submit to. He can’t and I won’t.”

  “Christ!” I muttered. “We’ll beat them yet. We’ll beat the block. We’ll beat the heat. We’ll—”

  “I must point out to you,” I said, “that I am required by my prime directive to obey state directives which supersede all private commands. I must submit to arrest.”

  “Who says it’s a state directive?” Vandaleur said. “Them? Up in that plane? They’ve got to show credentials. They’ve got to prove it’s state authority before you subm
it. How d’you know they’re not crooks trying to trick us?”

  Holding the wheel with one arm, he reached into his side pocket to make sure the gun was still in place. The car skidded. The tires squealed on frost and reeds. The wheel was wrenched from his grasp and the car yawed up a small hillock and overturned. The motor roared and the wheels screamed. Vandaleur crawled out and dragged the android with him. For the moment we were outside the cone of light blazing down from the helicopter. We blundered off into the marsh, into the blackness; into concealment. . . Vandaleur running with a pounding heart, hauling the android along.

  The helicopter circled and soared over the wrecked car, searchlight peering, loudspeaker braying. On the highway we had left, lights appeared as the pursuing and blocking parties gathered and followed radio directions from the plane. Vandaleur and the android continued deeper and deeper into the marsh, working their way towards the parallel road and safety. It was night by now. The sky was a black matte. Not a star showed. The temperature was dropping. A southeast night wind knifed us to the bone.

  Far behind there was a dull concussion. Vandaleur turned, gasping. The car’s fuel had exploded. A geyser of flame shot up like a lurid fountain. It subsided into a low crater of burning reeds. Whipped by the wind, the distant hem of flame fanned up into a wall, ten feet high. The wall began marching down on us, crackling fiercely. Above it, a pall of oily smoke surged forward. Behind it, Vandaleur could make out the figures of men… a mass of beaters searching the marsh.

  “Christ!” I cried and searched desperately for safety. He ran, dragging me with him, until their feet crunched through the surface ice of a pool. He trampled the ice furiously, then flung himself down in the numbing water, pulling the android with us.

  The wall of flame approached. I could hear the crackle and feel the heat. He could see the searchers clearly. Vandaleur reached into his side pocket for the gun. The pocket was torn. The gun was gone. He groaned and shook with cold and terror.

  The light from the marsh fire was blinding. Overhead, the helicopter floated helplessly to one side, unable to fly through the smoke and flames and aid the searchers, who were beating far to the right of us.