Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

“Yes, sir!”

“You’re not ACTING, Colihan. You’re stalling!”

“No, sir.”

“Then where’s your Personnelovac report, Colihan? Eh? Where is it?”

Colihan wrung his hands. “Almost ready, sir,” he lied. “Just running it through now, sir.”

“Speed it up. Speed it up! Time’s a’wastin’, boy. You’re not afraid, are you, Colihan?”

“No, sir.”

“Then let’s have it. No more delay! Bull by the horns! Expect it in an hour, Colihan. Understand?”

“Yes, sir!”

The boss clicked off. Colihan groaned audibly.

“What can I do?” he said to himself. He went to the Brain and shook his fist helplessly at it. “Damn you!” he cursed.

He had to think. He had to THINK!

It was an effort. He jerked about in his swivel chair like a hooked fish. He beat his hands on the desk top. He paced the floor and tore at the roots of his hair. Finally, exhausted, he gave up and flopped ungracefully on the office sofa, abandoning himself to the inevitable.

At that precise moment, the mind being the perverse organ it is, he was struck by an inspiration.

The Maintainovac bore an uneasy resemblance to Colihan’s own think-machine. Wilson, the oldest employee of General Products, had been the operator of the maintenance Brain. He had been a nice old duffer, Wilson, always ready to do Colihan a favor. Now that he had been swept out in Colihan’s own purge, the Personnel Manager had to deal with a new man named Lockwood.

Lockwood wasn’t so easy to deal with.

“Stay out of my files, mister,” he said.

Colihan tried to look superior. “I’m the senior around here, Lockwood. Let’s not forget that.”

“Them files is my responsibility.” Lockwood, a burly young man, stationed himself between Colihan and the file case.

“I want to check something. I need the service records of my Brain.”

“Where’s your Requisition Paper?”

“I haven’t got time for that,” said Colihan truthfully. “I need it now, you fool.”

Lockwood set his face like a Rushmore memorial.

“Be a good fellow, can’t you?” Colihan quickly saw that wheedling wasn’t the answer.

“All right,” he said, starting for the door. “I just wanted to help you.”

He opened the door just a crack. Sure enough, Lockwood responded.

“How do you mean, help me?”

“Didn’t you know?” Colihan turned to face him. “I’m running through an aptitude check on the Personnelovac. Special department head check. Mr. Moss’s orders.”

“So?”

“I was just getting around to yours. But I figured I’d better make sure the Brain was functioning properly.” He grew confidential. “You know, that darned machine has been firing everyone lately.”

A little rockslide began on Lockwood’s stoney face.

“Well…” he said. “If that’s the case—”

“I knew you’d understand,” said Colihan very smoothly.

Eagerly, the Personnel Manager collated the records of the Personnelovac. They were far more complex than any employee record, and it took Colihan the better part of an hour.

Any moment he expected to hear the President’s angry voice over the inter-com. His anxiety made him fumble, but at last, the job was done.

He slipped the record, marked by a galaxy of pinholes, into the Brain.

“Now we’ll see,” he said grimly. “Now we’ll find out what’s eating this monster.”

He flipped the switch.

The Personnelovac winked.

It was several minutes before it digested the information in its chamber. Then it chittered.

It chortled.

It chuckled.

Colihan held his breath until the BURP came.

The card appeared. It read:

“Subject #PV8. Mech. Rat. 9987. Mem. Rat. 9995. Last Per. Vac.

“An. None. Cur. Rat. 100.

“Analysis: Subject operating at maximum efficiency. Equipped to perform at peak level. Is completely honest and does not exhibit bias, prejudice, or sentiment in establishing personnel evaluations. Cumulative increase in mnemonic ability. Analytic ability improving.”

Colihan walked slowly over to the Action Chute as he finished reading the card.

“However,” it read, “because of mechanistic approach to humanistic evaluation, subject displays inability to incorporate human equation in analytical computation, resulting in technically accurate but humanistically incorrect deductions.

“Recommendation: Fire him.”

Colihan dropped the pink card into the chute. In half an hour, the Action wheels of General Products concluded their work, and the Personnelovac had winked for the last time.

Tarb Morfatch had read all the information on Terrestrial customs that was available in the Times morgue before she’d left Fizbus. And all through the journey she’d studied her Brief Introduction to Terrestrial Manners and Mores avidly. Perhaps it was a bit overinspirational in spots, but it had facts in it, too.

So she knew that, since the natives were non-alate, she was not to take wing on Earth. She had, however, forgotten to correlate the knowledge of their winglessness with her own vertical habits. As a result, on leaving the tender that had ferried her down from the Moon, she looked up instead of right and narrowly escaped death at the jaws of a raging groundcar that swerved out onto the field.

She recognized it as a taxi from one of the pictures in the handbook. It was a pity, she thought sadly as she was knocked off her feet, that all those lessons she had so carefully learned were to go to waste.

But it was only the wind of the car’s passage that had thrown her down. As she struggled to get up, hampered by her awkward native skirts, the door of the taxi flew open. A tall young man—a Fizbian—burst out, the soft yellowish-green down on his handsome face bristling with fright until each feather stood out separately.

“Miss Morfatch! Are you all right?”

“Just—just a little shaky,” she murmured, brushing dirt from her rosy leg feathers. Too young to be Drosmig; too good-looking to be anyone important, she thought glumly. Must be the office boy.

To her surprise, he didn’t help her up. Probably it would violate some native taboo if he did, she deduced. The handbook hadn’t mentioned anything that seemed to apply, but, after all, a little book like that couldn’t cover everything.

She could see the young man was embarrassed—his emerald crest was waving to and fro.

“I’m Stet Zarnon,” he introduced himself awkwardly.

The Managing Editor! The handsome young employer of her girlish dreams! But perhaps he had a wife on Fizbus—no, the Grand Editor made a point of hiring people without families to use as a pretext for expensive vacations on the Home Planet.

As she opened her mouth to say something brilliantly witty, to show she was no ordinary female but a creature of spirit and fire and intelligence, a sudden cacophony of shrill cries and explosions arose, accompanied by bursts of light. Her feathers stood erect and she clung to her employer with both feathered legs.

“If these are the friendly diplomatic relations Earth and Fizbus are supposed to be enjoying,” she said, “I’m not enjoying them one bit!”

“They’re only taking pictures of you with native equipment,” he explained, pulling away from her. What was the matter with him? “You’re the first Fizbian woman ever to come to Terra, you know.”

She certainly did know—and, what was more, she had made the semi-finals for Miss Fizbus only the year before. Perhaps he had some Terrestrial malady he didn’t want her to catch. Or could it be that in the four years he had spent in voluntary exile on this planet, he had come to prefer the native females? Now it was her turn to shrink from him.