Raphael Lafferty: Hog-Belly Honey

I point it at half a bushel of bolts and nuts I got there. “Get rid of everything that ain’t standard thread,” I program it. “Half that stuff is junk.”

And half that stuff is gone right now! This thing works! Just set in what you want it to get rid of, and it’s gone without a trace.

“Get rid of everything here that’s no good for nothing,” I program it. I had me a place there that has been described as cluttered. That machine blinked once, and then I had a place you could get around in. That thing knew junk when it saw it, and it sure sent that no-good stuff clear over the edge. Of course anybody can make a nullifier that won’t leave no remains of whatever it latches on to, but this is the only one that knows what not to leave no remains of by itself. Maurice and me is tickled as pink rabbits over the thing.

“Maurice,” I say, and I slap him on the back so his nose bleeds a little, “this is one bushy-tailed gadget. There ain’t nothing we can’t do with it.”

But Maurice looks kind of sad for a moment.

“A quo bono?” he ask, which I think is the name of a mineral water, so I slosh him out some brandy which is better. He drink the brandy but he’s still thoughtful.

“But what good is it?” he ask. “It is a triumph, of course, but in what category could we market it? It seems that I’ve been here a dozen times with the perfect apparatus that nobody wants. Is there really a mass market for a machine that can posit moral and ethical judgments, that can set up and enforce categories, that is able to discern, and to make philosophical pronouncements? Have I not racked up one more triumphant folly?”

“Maurice, this thing is a natural-born garbage disposal,” I tell him. He turn that green color lots of people do when I shed a big light on them.

“A garbage disposal!” he sing out. “The aeons labored to give birth to it through the finest mind — mine — of the millennium, and this brother of a giant ape says it is a garbage disposal! It is a new aspect of thought, the novo instauratio, the mind of tomorrow fruited today, and this obscene ogre says it is a Garbage Disposal!! The Constellations do homage to it, and Time has not waited in vain, and you, you splay-footed horse-herder, you call it a GARBAGE DISPOSAL!”

Maurice was so carried away with the thought that he cried a little.

It sure is nice when someone agrees with you as long and loud as Maurice did. When he was run out of words he got aholt of the brandy bottle with both hands and drunk it all off. Then he slept the clock around. He was real tired.

He looked kind of sheepful when he finally woke up. “I feel better now, outside of feeling worse,” he say. “You are right, Spade, it’s a garbage disposal.’”He programmed it to get all the slush out of his blood and liver and kidneys and head. It did it. It cured his hangover in straight-up no time at all. It also shaved him and removed his appendix. Just give it the nod and it would nullify anything.

“We will call it the Hog-Belly Honey,” I say, “on account of it will eat anything, and it work so sweet.”

“That is what we will call it privately.” Maurice nodded. “But in company it will be known as the Pantophag.” That is the same thing in Greek.

It was at the time of this area of good feeling that I split a Voxo with Maurice. Each of you have one-half of a tuned Voxo and you can talk to each other anywhere the world, and the thing is so nonconspicuous that nobody can see it on you.

We got a big booth and showed the Hog-Belly Honey, the Pantophag, at the Trade Fair.

Say, we did put on a good show! The people came in and looked and listened till they were walleyed. That Maurice could give a good spiel, and I’m about the best there is myself. We sure were two fine-looking men, after Maurice told me that maybe I detracted a little bit by being in my undershirt, and I went and put a shirt on. And that bushy-tailed machine just sparkled — like everything does that is made out of Wotto-metal.

Kids threw candy-bar wrappers at it, and they disappeared in the middle of the air. “Frisk me,” they said, and everything in their pockets that was no good for nothing was gone. A man held up a stuffed briefcase, and it was almost empty in a minute. A few people got mad when they lost beards and moustaches, but we explained to them that their boscage hadn’t done a thing for them; if the ornaments had had even appearance value the machine would have left them be. We pointed out other people who kept their brush; whatever they had behind it, they must have needed the cover.

“Could I have one in my house, and when?” a lady asks.

“Tomorrow, for forty-nine ninety-five installed,” I tell her. “It will get rid of anything no good. It’ll pluck chickens, or bone roasts for you. It will clear out all those old love letters from that desk and leave just the ones from the guy that meant it. It will relieve you of thirty pounds in the strategic places, and frankly, lady, this alone will make it worth your while. It will get rid of old buttons that don’t match, and seeds that won’t sprout. It will destroy everything that is not so good for nothing.”

“It can posit moral and ethical judgments,” Maurice tells the people. “It can set up and enforce categories.”

“Maurice and me is partners,” I tell them all. “We look alike and think alike. We even talk alike.”

“Save I in the hieratic and he in the demotic,” Maurice say. “This is the only nullifier in the world able to make full philosophical pronouncements. It is the unfailing judge of what is of some use and what is not. And it disposes neatly.”

Man, the people did pour in to see it all that morning! They slacked off a little bit just about noon.

“I wonder how many people have come into our booth this morning?”

Maurice wondered to me. “I would guess near ten thousand.”

“I don’t have to guess,” I say. “There is nine thousand three hundred and fifty-eight who have come in, Maurice,” I tell him, for I am always the automatic calculator. “There is nine thousand two hundred and ninety-seven who have left,” I go on, “and there are forty-four here now.”

Maurice smiled. “You have made a mistake,” he says. “It doesn’t add up.”

And that is when the hair riz up on the back of my neck.

I don’t make mistakes when I calculate, and I can see now that the Hog-Belly Honey don’t make none either. Well, it’s too late to make one now if you’re not trained for it, but it might not be too late to get out theway of the storm before it hits.

“Crank the cuckoo,” I whisper to Maurice, “make the bindlestiff, hit the macadam!”

“Je ne comprends pas,” says Maurice, which means “Let’s hit the road, boys,” in French, so I know my partner understands me.

I am out of the display hall at a high run, and Maurice racing along beside me so lightfoot that he don’t make no noise. There is a sky-taxi just taking off.

“Jump for it, Maurice!” I sing out I jump for it myself, and hook my fingers over the rear rail and am dangling in the air. I look to see if Maurice make it. Make it! He isn’t even there! He didn’t come out with me. I look back, and I see him through a window going to his spiel again.

Now that is a mule-headed development. My partner, who is as like me as two heads in one hat, had not understand me.

At the port I hook onto a sky-freight just going to Mexico.

I don’t never have to pack no bag. I say that a man who don’t always carry two years’ living in that crimp green stuff in his back pocket ain’t in no condition to meet fait. In thirty minutes I am sit down in a hotel in Cueva Peoquita and have all the pleasantries at hand. Then I snap on my Voxo to hear what Maurice is signaling about.