Alfred Bester: The Computer Connection

“Short for Fee-mally.”

“Short for female,” Fee corrected with great dignity.

The Chief shook his head. “I think I’d better go back to JPL. At least the machines make sense there.”

“No, no. It makes sense. When she was born—”

“In the orchestra of Grauman’s.” Very proud.

“Her dumb mother couldn’t think of a name, so the demographer listed her as Female. The mother liked it and called her Fee-mally. She calls herself Fee-5.”

“Why the five?”

“Because,” Fee explained patiently, “I was born in the fifth row. Any fool would understand that, but against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain. Gas!”

A capsule floated down on top of the bods with its jets spraying fireworks. A blue-eyed blond astronaut stepped out and came up to us. “Duh,” he mumbled in Kallikak. “Duh-duh-duh-duh…”

“What’s this thing selling?” Uncas asked.

“Duh,” Fee told him. “That’s about all the honks can say, so they named the product after it. I think it’s a penis amplifier.”

“How old is this squaw?” Sequoya demanded.

“Thirteen.”

“She’s too young for her frame of reference. Next you’ll be telling me she can count.”

“Oh, she can, she can. She can do anything. She picks it up from the bug broadcasts. This brat is picking all the brains on Earth. By ear.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. She doesn’t either.”

“Probably some sort of interface.” The Chief produced an otoscope from the interior of his tutta. I had a glimpse and the interior looked like a portable laboratory. “Let me have a look, Fee-Fie-Fo.” She presented an ear obediently and he had his look. He grunted. “Fantastic. She’s got a wild canal circuitry and there’s an otolith in there that looks like a transponder.”

“When I die,” Fee said, “I’ll leave my ears to science.”

“What’s the Fraunhofer wavelength of calcium?” he shot.

She cocked her head. “Well?” he asked after a pause.

“I’ve got to find somebody who’s talking about it. Wait for it… Wait for it… Wait for it…”

“What do you hear when you listen?”

“Like the wind in a thousand wires. Ah! Here it is. 3968 Angstroms, in the extreme violet.”

“This kid is a treasure.”

“Don’t flatter her. She’s vain enough as it is.”

“I want her. I can use her at JPL. She’ll make an ideal assistant.”

“You’re not bugged,” Fee told him, “and you’re not being monitored. Did you know?”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “I suppose you are.”

“No,” I said. “Fee and I aren’t bugged because we’ve never been in a hospital. She was born in a movie house and I was born in a volcano.”

“I’m going back to JPL,” he muttered. “You’re all scrambled around here. Will you let her come and work for me?”

“If you can stand her, but she’s got to come home nights. I’m raising her old-fashioned. You’re not really serious about this, are you, Geronimo?”

“Damn serious. I won’t have to waste time teaching her the things an assistant ought to know. She can pick everything up reading the bugs. The people I’ve had to fire for illiteracy! Education in Spangland! Pfui!”

“So where were you educated that makes you so literate?”

“On the reservation,” he said grimly. “Indians are traditional. We still revere Sequoya and we’ve got the best schools in the world.” He groped inside the inexhaustible tutta, produced a silver medallion, and handed it to Fee. “Wear this when you come to JPL. It opens the front gate. You’ll find me in the Cryonics Section. Better wear something. It’s damned cold.”

“Russian sable,” Fee said.

“Does that mean she’s going to come?”

“If she wants to and if you pay my price,” I said.

He took the spectacles off her chest. “Oh, she wants to. She’s been batting her cockeyed boozalums at me without success and she never gives up.”

“I’ve been rejected by better men than you,” Fee said indignantly.

“So what’s your price, Ned?”

“Sell me your soul,” I said brightly.

“Hell, you can have it for free if you can get it back from United Conglomerate.”

“Let’s have dinner first. The only question is, do we feed the girls before or after?”

“Me! Me! Me!” Fee cried. “I want to be one of the girls.”

“Virgins are so pushy,” I said.

“I was raped when I was five.”

“The wish is father to the thought, Fee.”

“Who said that?” Montezuma shot at her. “Well?”

“Shush. Shush. Shush. Nobody’s talking about — Ah! Got it. Shakespeare. Henry IV.”

“It’s the Jung caper,” Guess said in awe. “She can tap the collective conscious of the world. I’ve got to have her.”

“If I come to JPL will you pay my price?” Fee asked.

“What is it?”

“Criminal assault.”

He looked at me. I winked at him.

“All right, Fee, and I’ll make it real criminal; inside the centrifuge at 1,000 rpm, in the vacuum chamber at half a millimeter of mercury, in one of the cryonics coffins with the lid on. It’s a promise.”

“There! See?” she threw at me, as triumphant as she was eight months back when her boobs jumped up.

“I never thought you were such a conformist, Fee-doll. Now go to the hospital and comfort Jacy. He’s registered as J. Kristman. Tell them you’re the confidential assistant of Dr. Guess and they’ll sink to their knees.”

“Eight o’clock tomorrow morning, Fee-Fie. If it’s a deal.”

She stuck out a paw and slapped hands. “It’s a deal,” she said and walked out through Louis Pasteur, who was waving test tubes and selling a mugging repellent.

We picked up a couple of girls who claimed they were coeds and might well have been; one of them could recite the alphabet all the way to L . The only problem was how to stop her from reciting. A show-off. We took them to Powhatan’s pad, which really was impressive, an enormous tepee guarded by three very unfriendly timber wolves. When we got inside I understood the reason for the security; it was decorated with some of the most beautiful art I’ve ever seen in my life, all museum pieces.

We swopped the girls a couple of times and then Guess cooked us a traditional Cherokee dinner in a huge thermal stewpot: rabbit, squirrel, onions, peppers, tomatoes, corn, and lima beans. He called it msiquatash . I took the girls home. They were living in the fuselage of a Messerschmitt in a TV prop dump, and then I called Pepys in Paris.

“Sam, it’s Guig. All right if I project?”

“Come on in, Guig.”

So I projected. He was having breakfast in the bright morning sun. You’d think that being the Group historian he’d identify with someone like Tacitus or Gibbon, but no, it was Balzac, complete with monk’s drag. We’re all a little loose.

“Good to see you, Guig. Sit down and join me.” Joke. When you project you’re only two-dimensional and you ooze through furniture and floors if you don’t keep moving, so I kept moving. It was like walking through slush.

“Sam, I’ve got another candidate, a beauty this time. Let me tell you about him.”

I described Sequoya. Sam nodded appreciatively. “Sounds perfect, Guig. What’s the problem?”

“Me. I don’t trust myself anymore; I’ve failed too often. I swear if I fail with Rain-in-the-Face I’m going to quit for good.”

“Then we must make sure you don’t fail.”

“Which is why I’m here. I’m afraid to try it on my own. I want the Group to pitch in and help me.”

“Murder a man. Hmmm. But what’s your plan?”

“I haven’t got any. I’m asking the Group to come up with horror suggestions and then come out and work with me.”