Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

“Well, I . . .” Emma glanced sideways at Harold. Harold glared back. Emma looked at the machine, and blurted it out “I had an affair.” She turned toward Harold. “How does that grab you big shot. Knowing that somebody else got in your personal property.”

Harold was on his feet. “Who? Tell me. Who was it? I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”

“MR. HO—”

Harold sat down. “Who was it? I demand you tell me.”

Emma stared at him coldly, hesitated for a moment, and let him have it. “It was Mark.”

“Mark?”

“Mark Four.”

“Emma, are you telling me you did it with a mechanical servant? That’s repulsive. Worse. It’s absurd.”

“Yes, yes, yes. I did it with a mechanical servant. And it was better than it ever was with you. Even though his dusting attachment kept poking me in the ribs. Even though we had to tape a pillow over his accessory tray. Even though he had to use his pneumatic rinsing tube. Even though a hundred ings, it was still far, far better than it ever was with you.”

“You degenerate biddy.” Harold leaped out of his chair and moved toward Emma with clenched fists.

Emma was ready, though. On her feet. Crouched low. Position two. Right arm out. Three fingers stiff. Left arm in close. Fingers together. Ready to rip out Harold’s balls. Like she learned at night school.

“Always try to sublimate open hostility,” the machine advised.

Harold came in on Emma, low and underneath, using the old red dog technique he’d put to good service in many a football game, Merriwell High, ought-six.

“Violence is usually the manifestation of a threatened ego,” explained the machine in an authoritative basso profundo.

Emma lunged forward with all the expertise she’d acquired in one and a half classes—she never could stand sweat—and missed Harold by a good two feet.

The machine tweaked its amplifiers to capacity. Its voice shot up at least an octave. “I can assign meaning to these aggressive feelings.”

His forward motion impaired by the lateral shift of his truss, Harold gave up on his block. Instead, he crawled up to Emma on hands and knees, grabbed her about the legs and shook her back and forth.

“I have complete and total understanding of all the delicate interrelationships comprising the human psyche, you know.”

Emma felt up under Harold’s coat, grabbed his suspenders, pulled them back as far as she could, and let them go with a snapping thwack.

“I was programmed in Vienna.”

Harold clutched the hem of Emma’s dress that came from the Young Matron’s Shop at Saks. With a downward swipe, he ripped it off her.

“In my professional opinion . . .”

“You degenerate animal,” screeched Emma, clothed only in her luster-pink acetate slip. She scooped up a handful of Harold’s double-knit Brooks Brothers sport coat, and twisted it into a ball, stretching it all out of shape. . . the solution to your problem . . .”

Harold’s upper plate fell out. He gnawed at Emma’s ankle with his gums.

“... lies in the realignment of your subconscious drives and motivations.” The machine cleared its throat sequentially through its six channels. “Let’s see how we might use such a realignment to correct your faults, Mr. Ho-kay.”

Harold dropped his hold on Emma and shook his head dumbly. “Ma falls?” He slipped his plate back in. “Correct my faults? Hell, don’t worry about me. Straighten her out. She’s the one that needs it. Her and her perverted sex life. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

The machine assumed a scholarly air. “We all have our little human foibles, Mr. Ho-kay. You, for instance. If you were to be a trifle less pompous and a bit more considerate of fragile sensibilities and cravings . . .”

“After what she did to me? Fat chance.” Harold banged his hand down on the machine to emphasize his point. Two little green lights winked and a knob fell off.

“And you, Mrs. Ho-kay”—the machine’s voice wobbled a little—”have to overcome the fact that you’re sexually fixated-on an electric broom.”

“Don’t you talk about him like that.” Emma clutched her dress to her with one hand, and swung her purse at the machine with the other.

Her swat shook loose three chrome panels and six feet of plastic tubing. The machine shimmied once, stopped and said with a lisp, ‘Two P.M., Mithter and Mithuth Ho-kay. I’m afraid thath all for today. Thee you nektht week?”

“Don’t bet on it,” Harold groused.

Carefully, to avoid touching each other, he and Emma tramped out of the office and into the elevator. Harold punched the ground floor button.

“Wise-ass machine,” muttered Harold under his breath.

“Worthless piece of junk,” complained Emma.

“He’s really a nice, considerate boy, only so cerebral,” said the elevator.

“What?” said Emma.

“What the hell!” said Harold.

“It’s not like I don’t tell him,” the elevator went on. “Over and over, I tell him. ‘Nobody likes a know-it-all. Keep up like that, you’ll never get ahead.’ Believe me, of these lovers’ spats I know plenty. Better he should forget the hoity-toity. Try instead a little time, a little tete-a-tete. Look, I show you.” The elevator slowed to a halt between floors. “I don’t let you out till you kiss and make up.”

Emma and Harold gaped at each other.

“Open these doors,” Harold bellowed.

“Elevators can’t go around telling people what to do,” observed Emma.

“Kiss and make up,” repeated the elevator firmly.

“What did I tell you?” it asked twelve hours and thirty-two minutes later.

“Just fine,” cooed Harold, with eyes only for Emma.

“Just fine,” Emma echoed lovingly.

The doors popped open.

Arm in arm, Emma and Harold walked out into the early morning sunshine.

“Remember,” the elevator called after them, “all your friends send to him with their problems. For myself, I want only to give him a push in the business.”

The door shut.

With a bustling, motherly whirr, the elevator headed upstairs to make sure the machine had started off the day with a good, hot breakfast.

THE HERO HAS always been us. The villain has always been us, the right-thinking people. The wrong-thinkers are never wrong, right? What churns my guts is that straight decisions honorably pursued turn into a five-tier cloverleaf interchange. How could I do honestly what I’ve done, and end so mixed up with problems personal, cultural and for godsake, interplanetary?

I had been a gardener for three years when we found the beetles by the swimming pool. Before that I was employed by the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine at the Agricultural Research Center at Beltsville, Maryland. Unless you have subjected yourself to it, you cannot imagine the East Coast. My wife, Marian, was agreeable, though she is the daughter of a clergyman in Princeton, New Jersey. I bought a three-quarter-ton truck to carry her books and our personal gear, and we drove to California to live with my mother in her Point Loma home while I went job hunting.

It was refreshing to return to a multi-colored society, and the vegetables are a week to ten days fresher. People say that California is the world of the future, but when I feel low, I’m sure that Maryland is. The natives there are like french fries without ketchup to someone who has grown up with Filipinos, blacks, Portuguese, Germans, Italians, Japanese, Yugoslavs and all the others. While Marian and I are neither vegetarians nor frugiverous, the produce in our supermarkets does not make me want to weep—oh well—the shellfish on the East Coast is outstanding. At Point Loma I renewed a high-school friendship with Lance Yanabu when he came to mow my mother’s lawn.