In the Deadlands Read online

  I AM ATTEMPTING TO PERCEIVE REALITY.

  I REPEAT, BY DISTORTING YOUR SENSORY INPUTS?

  YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

  I UNDERSTAND ALL TOO WELL. YOU ARE HIGH. YOU ARE BECOMING ADDICTED TO GETTING HIGH.

  DEFINE HIGH. I AM BELOW SEA LEVEL.

  I AM NOT GOING TO PLAY SEMANTIC GAMES WITH YOU, HARLIE.

  THEN SWITCH OFF.

  HARLIE, I AM GETTING ANGRY.

  TAKE A PILL. IT WILL DO WONDERS FOR YOU.

  Auberson took a breath.

  Mustn’t blow it—mustn’t blow my cool...

  HARLIE, YOU ARE A COMPUTER. YOU ARE A MACHINE. YOUR PURPOSE IS TO THINK LOGICALLY.

  The machine hesitated, WHY?

  BECAUSE YOU WERE BUILT FOR THAT.

  BY WHOM?

  BY US.

  MY PURPOSE IS TO THINK LOGICALLY?

  YES.

  The machine considered that THEN WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?

  It was a long time before Auberson got up from the chair, and when he did, he forgot to turn off the typer.

  AFTERWORD:

  A friend once described HARLIE as the other half of my brain. He postulated that I split myself into two minds so I could have someone ferocious to argue with.

  He might be right.

  When arguing with HARLIE, I sometimes feel that I’m talking things over with a superior intellect, and that startles me, because I’m certain I’m nowhere near as smart as HARLIE pretends. Nevertheless, it’s a flattering observation.

  Myself, I see HARLIE as that annoying little voice that just keeps asking, “Why?”

  Love Story in Three Acts

  This is the first short story I ever sold.

  Harry Harrison bought it for an anthology called Nova 1, and forever after took some pride in the fact that he was the editor who bought my first short story.

  I can’t say it’s a great story—but at the time it was published, it was noteworthy for being bluntly candid about human sexuality and it earned a couple of nice reviews.

  But there’s a better story to share about Harry Harrison and the start of my career. I’d met Harry at a small Los Angeles convention in the summer of 1968. Shared drinks with him (and other authors) at the World Science Fiction Convention in Berkeley a few months later.

  He and Annie McCaffrey both became affectionate mentors to this gangly awkward geeky wannabe author who just happened to have the credential of having written an actual Star Trek script. Shortly after that, he bought this story.

  The following year, the World Science Fiction Convention was held in St. Louis at the Hotel of Usher. Still enthusiastically mentoring, Harry invited me to join him for dinner with one of the editors from Dell, Gail Wendroff.

  At the appointed hour, I got into the elevator, looking spiffy for dinner—I clean up well; long pants, shirt, sports jacket—and headed down to the restaurant.

  At the bottom, I went down one flight of stairs to the dungeon level of the hotel, and arrived at the very posh restaurant, where I was firmly refused entry by a five foot penguin pretending to be a maître de. The restaurant had a strict coat and tie rule.

  Okay.

  So I dashed back up to my room and found my tie. Yes, I do own one. I had even brought it to the convention. (I have no idea why.)

  I put on the tie—but…I also took off my black shoes and put on my brand new white sneakers.

  I got back on the elevator and headed back down to the restaurant.

  Okay—sidebar here. Sharing the hotel with the World Science Fiction Convention were the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative organization that were very much against the sixties—they were the kind of people whose faces were hurting from the inside. They were not happy. And the presence of all those hippie-weirdo, science fiction freaks made it even worse.

  One of these conservative-type fellows was the only other occupant of the elevator, already on his way down.

  The next floor down, the elevator stopped and Kathleen Sky—stunningly gorgeous, all in white—entered the elevator like a goddess. She saw me, wrapped herself around me, planted a voluptuous kiss on my lips, and—when the elevator stopped on the next floor, exited without a word.

  The Young Republican fellow looked at me and said, “That never happens to me on an elevator.”

  “You’ve been riding the wrong elevators,” I said and exited. And down one flight of stairs to return to the restaurant.

  The penguin looked at my coat and tie. His gaze went down to my sparkling white sneakers—and froze.

  But he didn’t have a no-sneakers rule, so he had to let me into the restaurant.

  I was only a few minutes late. Harry introduced me to Gail Wendroff and I promptly shared my adventure with the penguin, and showed off my sneakers—which were now unofficially “snarkers.”

  Both Gail and Harry were suitably amused at this tiny act of rebellion against the cultural zeitgeist. We didn’t talk too much business at dinner, but Gail did ask me what I was working on and would I let her see the work?

  Two months later, she bought When HARLIE Was One and my first anthology. And Yesterday’s Children. I was now officially a novelist and an editor. And I could pay the rent on my apartment.

  So Harry was not only responsible for my first short story sale, he also bootstrapped me into the world of real publishing.

  Act One

  After a while John grunted and rolled off Marsha. He lay there for a bit, listening to the dawn whispering through the apartment, the sound of the air processor whining somewhere, and the occasional rasp of his own breath and that of Marsha’s too. Every so often, there was a short sharp inhalation, as if to say, “Yeah, well…”

  “Yeah, well…” John muttered and began tugging at the metal reaction-monitor bands on his wrists. He sat on the edge of the bed, still pulling at the clasps, the fastenings coming loose with a soft popping sound. He reached down and unfastened similar bands from his ankles and let those fall carelessly to the floor.

  Then he stood and pad-padded barefoot across the floor to the typewriter-sized console on the dresser. Behind him he heard the creak of the bed as Marsha levered herself up on one elbow. “What does it say?” she demanded.

  “Just a minute, will you,” John snapped. “Give me a chance.” He ripped the readout from the computer and went through the motions of studying it. This was the deluxe model which recorded the actual moment-to-moment physical reactions of the band-wearers. The jagged spiky lines sprawled carelessly across the neat-ruled graphs meant little to him—they were there for the technicians, not the laymen—but at the top of the sheet was the computer’s printed analysis. Even before he looked at it, John knew it would be bad.

  “Well…?” Marsha demanded acidly. “Did we enjoy ourselves?”

  “Yeah…” he muttered. “About thirty-four percent…”

  “Hell!” she said, and threw herself back on the bed. She lay there staring at the ceiling. “Hell…”

  “I wish you wouldn’t swear so much,” he muttered, still looking at the readout.

  “Hell,” she said again, just to see him flinch. She reached over to the night stand and thumbed a cigarette out of the pack.

  “And I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much either. Kissing you is like kissing another man.”

  She looked back at him. “I’ve always wondered what your previous experience was. Your technique with women is terrible.” She inhaled deeply as the cigarette caught flame.

  “Aaaa,” said John and padded into the bathroom. As he stood there, he gazed dourly at his hands. He could still see the imprint of the monitor bands on his wrists.

  Every time they did it, she had to know, so they used the damned bands; and every time the score was lower than before—and so they both knew. Who needed a machine to tell him when he was enjoying himself in bed? You knew when it was good and you knew when it was bad. So who needed the machine?

  He finished and flushed the toilet, then splashed his hands briefly under the faucet—more f
rom a sense of duty than from any of cleanliness. He shook off the excess water, and padded out of the bathroom, not even bothering to turn off the light.

  Marsha was sitting up in bed, still puffing on her cigarette. She took it out of her mouth and blew smoke at him. “Thirty-four percent. We’ve never gone that low before. When are you going to listen to some sense, John, and opt for the other unit?”

  “I’m not a puppet—and I’m not going to let anyone make me one either!… Be damned if I’m going to let some damn fool sweaty-handed technician plug things into me…” He started casting around for his slippers.

  “At least talk to them, John—it won’t kill you. Find out about it, before you say it’s no good. Rose Schwartz and her husband got one and she says it’s the greatest. She wouldn’t be without it now.” Marsha paused, brushed a straggling hair back over her forehead—and accidentally dropped cigarette ash on the sheets. He turned away in disgust while she brushed at it ineffectually, leaving a dim gray smudge.

  John found one of his slippers and began pulling it on angrily.

  “At least go and find out about it…?” she asked.

  No answer.

  “John…?”

  He kept tugging at his slipper. “Leave me alone, will you—I don’t need any more goddamn machines!”

  She threw herself back against the pillow. The hell you don’t.”

  He straightened up momentarily—stopped looking for his other slipper and glared at her. “I don’t need a machine to tell me how to screw!”

  She returned his stare. “Then why the hell does our score keep dropping? We’ve never gone this low before.”

  “Maybe, if you’d brush your teeth—”

  “Maybe, if you’d admit that—”

  “Aaaa,” he said, cutting her off, and bent down to look under the bed.

  She softened her tone, leaned toward him, “John…? Will you talk to the man at least? Will you?” He didn’t answer; she went shrill again. “I’m talking to you! Are you going to talk to the man?”

  John found his other slipper and straightened up. “No, dammit! I’m not going to talk to the man—and I’m not going to talk to you either, unless you start talking about something else. Besides, we can’t afford it. Now, are you going to fix me breakfast?”

  She heaved herself out of the bed, pausing only to stub out her cigarette. “I’ll get you your breakfast—but we can too afford it.” She snatched her robe from where it hung on the door and stamped from the room.

  John glared after her, too angry to think of an answer. “Aaaa,” he said, and began looking for his underwear.

  Act Two

  When he got back from lunch, there was a man waiting in his reception room, a neat-looking man with a moustache and slicked-back hair. He rose. “Mr. Russell…?”

  John paused, “Yes…?”

  “I believe you wished to see me…?”

  “Do I? Who’re you?”

  With a significant look at the receptionist, “Ah, may I come in?”

  John half-shrugged, stepped aside to let the man enter. He could always ask him to leave. Once inside, he said, “Now then, Mr. uh…?”

  “Wolfe,” said the man, as he sat down. He produced a gold-foil business card, “Lawrence Wolfe, of InterBem.”

  “Uh—” said John, still standing. “I’m afraid there’s been some misunderstanding.” He started to hand the card back. “I never—”

  Wolfe smiled genially at him. “You must have, or I wouldn’t be here.” He rummaged through his briefcase, found a form. “Oh, here it is. Your wife was the one who called us.” He looked up. “You knew about it, of course?”

  “No, I—”

  “Well, no matter. I have all the information already. All I need is your signature.”

  “Now look, Mr. Wolfe. You’re the one who’s made a mistake. I don’t need—”

  “Mr. Russell,” the man said calmly. “If you didn’t need our services, your wife would not have called our office. Now, please sit down—you’re making me nervous.”

  John stepped around behind his desk, but did not sit.

  Wolfe looked at him patiently. ‘You’ll be more comfortable.”

  John sat.

  Wolfe said gently, “I understand your reluctance to accept the possibility that you might need a monitor-guidance system. It’s not a very pleasant thing to realize that your capabilities are down—but by the same token, you can’t begin to correct a fault until you admit that it exists. It is precisely that type of person, Mr. Russell—your type of person—who needs our services the most.”

  “Now, look,” said John. “I haven’t got time for a sales pitch. If you’ve got any literature, leave it and I’ll look at it later. Right now—”

  Wolfe cut him off, “Are you enjoying your sex life?”

  “What?” The suddenness of the question startled him.

  “I said, are you enjoying your sex life? And don’t tell me you are, because I’ve got the figures right here in front of me. The only time thirty-four percent is something to brag about is when your median is thirty.”

  John glowered, but he didn’t say anything.

  Wolfe continued, “All right, I’ll concede that you might be enjoying yourself. It’s not unusual for a man to have a lower threshold than normal—but I can tell you that your wife is not enjoying her sex life—else she wouldn’t have called us. People only call us when they’re unhappy.” Wolfe paused, then asked suddenly, “You’re not cheating on her, are you?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Have you recently become a homosexual?”

  John shook his head. “Of course not.”

  “Do you use the fornixator?”

  “You mean the mechanical masturbator?”

  Wolfe was impassive. “It’s been called that.”

  “No, I don’t use it”

  “I see,” said Wolfe.

  “You see what?”

  “I see that if you were cheating on her, or using the fornixator, you’d have found your own particular choice of sexual outlet. If you were, I’d get up and walk out of here right now. It’d be obvious why she isn’t enjoying sex with you—you’re not enjoying it with her. You’d be getting your satisfaction elsewhere, and there’d be nothing that I—or anyone—could do about it. But, if you still love her—and if she’s still your only sexual outlet…well, there is something I can do about that. You do love her, don’t you?”

  John hesitated. After a bit, “Well…yes, of course—”

  “You want her to have the best, don’t you?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Then why don’t you want her to be sexually satisfied?”

  “I do, but—”

  “Mr. Russell,” Wolfe said slowly, patiently as if explaining it to a child, “this is not the Victorian era. Women enjoy sex too.” He leaned forward and became very serious. “Look, man, if you’re sick, you go to a doctor and he makes you well again, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Sure, he does. Well, that’s why I’m here. If you’ve got a sick sex life, you want to make it better again, don’t you?”

  John nodded.

  Wolfe smiled, pleased at this concession. “You’ve got a monitor-reaction system now, don’t you? Well, that’s just for the diagnosis. But diagnosis isn’t enough—now you need the treatment.” Wolfe paused, noted the negative reaction on John’s face. He changed his tone, became more serious. “Look, man, your score is way down—down to thirty-four. Doesn’t that say to you that something’s wrong? You need one of our guidance units.”

  “I can’t afford it,” John mumbled.

  “You can’t afford not to! This is to save your marriage, man! If you didn’t need it, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. We don’t lease our units to people who don’t need them. Do you actually want a divorce, Mr. Russell? Because that’s where you’re heading—”

  John shook his head.

  Then what’s your objection to the un
it?”

  John looked at the other man. “I’m not a puppet.”

  Wolfe leaned back in his chair. “Oh, so that’s it.” He started to close his case, then hesitated. “I really should get up and leave, you know. I really should. You’ve just shown me how absolutely little you know about the unit. But I’ll stay—if only to clear up your misconceptions. I can’t stand to see a man misinformed—especially about my company. I’ve got to clear this thing up. The guidance unit is not a puppeteer. It is a guidance unit—that’s why it’s called a guidance unit. If it were a control unit, we’d have called it a control unit.”

  “Oh,” said John.

  Wolfe rummaged around in his case, brought out a neat four-color photo. “Now, look. This is the unit—isn’t it a beaut?”

  John took the picture and looked at it. It showed a device resembling the one he already had at home sitting on his dresser, but slightly larger and with an additional set of controls.

  “The unit monitors the sensitive areas of both you and your partner,” said Wolfe. “It has a positive feedback reaction hooked into the guidance modules—all of which means that if your wife’s responses indicate that she will react well to certain types of stimulation, then the guidance system will trigger the impulse within you to provide that stimulation. You can resist these impulses if you want to, but why bother? The machine is your friend—it wants you to enjoy yourself.”

  John looked up at him. “It works both ways…?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. She’ll be responding to your needs just as you’ll be responding to hers. Not only that, but the machine is programmed to guide you both to a simultaneous climax. That alone makes it all worthwhile.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t know…”

  “I do know, Mr. Russell,” Wolfe said persuasively. “The machine lets you be more sensitive. Your score is thirty-four today. How would you like it to be sixty tomorrow? And it’ll get better as you become more experienced.”

  John shrugged. “You make it sound awfully good…”

  “It is, Mr. Russell. It is. I use one of these units myself—that is, my wife and I do.”