PLATINUM POHL (46 page)

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Authors: Frederik Pohl

BOOK: PLATINUM POHL
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“Certainly not,” he said inevitably.
“You really do need a rest—”
“It’s only a week till the election,” he pointed out reasonably, “and then we’ll rest as much as you like—maybe even back to the Sahara for a few days in the sun. Now, what are you going to do?”
She stared at him uncertainly. “Do when?”
“Do now, while I go see the Baptists—it’s a
men’s
breakfast, you know.”
For once he had caught Carrie unprepared. Gender-segregated events were so rare that she had simply forgotten about this one. “Martin can drop me off and take you home, if you like,” her husband supplied, “but of course it’s going the wrong way—”
“No.” She opened the door on her side, kissed her husband’s warm cheek—too warm? she wondered—and got out. “I’ll take a cab. You go ahead.”
And she watched her husband pull out of one end of the parking lot just as the six-car procession she had seen coming down the far side of the fence entered at the other.
The mayor.
It was the old days all over again, the next thing to a circus parade. Six cars! And not just cars, but bright orange vehicles, purpose-built for nothing but campaigning. The first was an open car with half a dozen pretty young she-robots—no! They were human, Carrie was sure!—with pretty girls tossing pink and white carnations to the passersby. There were not many passersby, at that hour of the morning, but the mayor’s parade was pulling out all the stops. Next another open car, with the neat, smiling figure of the mayor bestowing waves and nods on all sides. Next a PA car, with a handsome male singer and a beautiful female alternating to sing all the traditional political campaign numbers,
Happy Days Are Here Again
and Schiller’s
Ode to Joy
and
God Bless America
with an up-tempo beat. And then two more flower-girl cars, surrounding a vehicle that was nothing more than a giant animated electronic display showing the latest and constantly changing poll results and extrapolations. All, of course, favoring the mayor. How gross! And how very effective, Carrie conceded dismally to herself … . “You the lady that wants the taxi?” someone called behind her, and she turned to see a cab creeping up toward her. Reliable Martin had sent for it, of course. She sighed and turned to go inside it, and then paused, shaking her head.
“No, not now. I’ll stay here a while.”
“Whatever you say, lady,” the driver agreed, gazing past her at the mayor’s procession. He was only a central-intelligence mechanical, but Carrie was sure she saw admiration in his eyes.
The mayor had not noticed her. Carrie devoted herself to noticing him, as inconspicuously as she could. He was repeating her husband’s tour of the plant—fair enough—but then she saw that it was not fair at all, for the mayor had a built-in advantage. It too was a robot. In her husband’s tour of the plant he had given each worker a minute’s conversation. The mayor gave each worker just as much conversation, but both it and the
workers had their communications systems in fast mode. The sound of their voices was like the sonar squeaks of bats. The pumping of arms in the obligatory handshake like the flutter of hummingbird wings, too fast for Carrie’s eyes to follow.
A voice from behind her said, “I know who you are, Mrs. O’Hare, but would you like a carnation anyhow?”
It was one of the flower girls—not, however, one of the human ones from the first car, for human girls did not have liquid-crystal readouts across their foreheads that said
Vote for Thom!
There was no guile in its expression, no hidden photographer waiting to sneak a tape of the congressman’s wife accepting a flower from the opponent. It seemed to be simple courtesy, and Carrie O’Hare responded in kind. “Thank you. You’re putting on a really nice show,” she said, her heart envious but her tone, she hoped, only admiring. “Could you tell me something?”
“Of course, Mrs. O’Hare!”
Carrie hesitated; it was her instinct to be polite to everyone, robots included—her own programming, of course. How to put what she wanted to know? “I notice,” she said delicately, “that Mayor Thom is spending time even with the old-fashioned mechanicals that don’t have a vote. Can you tell me why?”
“Certainly, Mrs. O’Hare,” the flower girl said promptly. “There are three reasons. The first is that it looks good, so when he goes to the autonomous-intellect mechanicals they’re disposed in his favor. The second is that the mayor is going to sponsor a bill to give the CIMs a fractional vote, too—did you know that?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t,” Carried confessed. “But surely they can’t be treated the way humans or Josephson-junction mechanicals are?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” it agreed, smiling. “That’s why it’s only a fractional vote. You see, each of the CIMs is controlled by a central computer that is quite as intelligent as any of us, perhaps even more so; the central intelligence has no vote at all. So what Mayor Thom proposes is that each of the CIMs will have a fraction of a vote—one one hundred and ninetieth of a vote, in the case of the workers here, since that’s how many of them the plant computer runs. So if they all vote, the central computer will in effect have the chance to cast a ballot on its own—you know the old slogan, Mrs. O’Hare, one intelligence, one vote!”
Carrie nodded unhappily. It made sense—it was exactly the sort of thing her husband would have done himself, if he had thought of it. But he hadn’t. Maybe he was getting past the point of thinking up the really good political ideas any more. Maybe—“You said there were three reasons.”
“Well, just the obvious one, Mrs. O‘Hare. The same reason as your husband does it. It’s not just for votes with the mayor. It’s love.” The she hesitated, then confided, “I don’t know whether you know this or not, Mrs. O’Hare, but autonomous-intellect mechanicals like Mayor Thom and I have a certain discretion in our behavior patterns. One of the first things we do is study the available modes and install the ones we like best. I happen to have chosen nearly 20 percent you, Mrs. O’Hare. And the mayor—he’s nearly three-quarters your husband.”
 
There is a time for all things, thought Carrie O‘Hare as she walked over to the mayor’s procession to ask them to call her a cab. There is a time to stay, and a time to go, and maybe the time to stay in office was over for Fiorello Delano Fitzgerald O’Hare. Some
of the robots her husband had greeted as they came off the assembly line were standing in a clump, waiting, no doubt, for the arrival of the next truck to bear them away. They waved to Carrie. She responded with a slight decrease of worry—they were sure votes, anyway. Unless—
She stopped short. What was the mayor doing with them? She gazed incredulously at the scene, like a high-speed film, the mayor thrusting a hand into a pouch, jerking it out, swiftly passing something that shone dully to the robot he was talking to and moving briskly to the next … and then, without willing it, Carrie herself was in high-speed mode, almost running toward the mayor, her face crimson with rage. The mayor looked up as she approached and politely geared down. “Mrs. O’Hare,” it murmured, “how nice to see you here.”
“I’m
shocked!”
she cried. “You’re
brainwashing
them!”
The mobile robot face registered astonishment and what was almost indignation. “Why, certainly not, Mrs. O’Hare! I assure you I would never do such a thing.”
“I saw you, Mayor Thorn. You’re reprogramming the robots with data chips!”
Comprehension broke over the mayor’s face, and it gestured to the she-robot who had given Carrie the flower. “Ah, the chips, yes. I see.” It pulled a chip out of the pouch and passed it to the she with a burst of high-speed squeaks. “Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. O’Hare. Let me repeat what I just said in normal mode. I simply asked Millicent here to display the chip contents for you.”
“Sure thing, Mayor,” smiled Millicent, tucking the chip under the strap of its halter top. The running message on Millicent’s forehead disappeared, and the legend appeared:
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense—
“Move it on, please,” ordered the mayor. “Search ‘O’Hare.’ Most of it,” it added to Carrie, “is only the basic legislation, the Constitution, the election laws and so on. We don’t get to your husband until—ah, here it is!” And the legend read:
H.R. 29038, An Act to Propose a Constitutional Amendment to grant equal voting rights and other civil rights to citizens of mechanical origin which satisfy certain requirements as to autonomy of intellect and judgment.
“The Robot E.R.A.,” Carrie said.
“That’s right, Mrs. O’Hare, and of course your husband’s name is on it. Then there’s nothing about him until—advance search, please, Millicent—yes. Until we come to his basic biographical information. Birthplace, education, voting record, medical reports and so on—”
“Medical reports! That’s confidential material!”
The mayor looked concerned. “Confidential, Mrs. O’Hare? But I assure you, the data on myself is just as complete—”
“It’s
different
with human beings! Fiorello’s doctor had no business releasing that data!”
“Ah, I see,” said the mayor, nodding in comprehension. “Yes, of course, that is true for his present doctor, Mrs. O’Hare. But previously the congressman made use of a
CIM practicioner—a robot whose central processing functions took place in the general data systems, and of course all of that is public information. I’m sorry. I assumed you knew that. Display the congressman’s medical history,” it added to the she, and Carrie gazed at the moving line of characters through tear-blurred eyes. It was all there. His mild tachycardia, the arthritis that kicked up every winter, the asthma, even the fact that now and then the congressman suffered from occasional spells of constipation.
“It’s disgusting to use his illnesses against him, Mayor Thom! Half of his sickness was on behalf of you robots!”
“Why, that’s true, yes,” the mayor nodded. “It is largely tension-induced, and much of it undoubtedly occurred during the struggle for robot rights. If you’ll look at the detailed record—datum seventy-eight, line four, please Millicent—you’ll see that his hemorrhoidectomy was definitely stress-linked, and moreover occurred just after the Robot E.R.A. debate.” The expression on the mayor’s face was no longer neat and self-assured; it was beginning to be worried. “I don’t understand why you are upset, Mrs. O’Hare,” Thom added defensively.
“It’s a filthy trick, that’s why!” Carrie could feel by the dampness on her cheeks that she was actually weeping now, and mostly out of helpless frustration. It was the one political argument her husband could never answer. It was obvious that the strain of the Robot E.R.A. had cost Congressman O’Hare in physical damage, and the robots would understand that, and would behave as programmed. They served human beings. They spared them drudgery and pain. They would, therefore, remove him from a task which might harm him—not out of dislike, but out of love. “Don’t you see it’s not like that anymore?” she blazed. “There’s no strain to being in Congress anymore—no tax bills to pass, no foreign nations to arm against, no subversives to control—why, if you look at the record you’ll see that his doctor
urged
Fiorello to run again!”
“Ah, yes,” the mayor nodded, “but one never knows what may come up in the future—”
“One damn well does,” she snapped. “One knows that it’ll break Fee’s heart to lose this election!”
The mayor glanced at the she-robot, then returned to Carrie. Its neat, concerned face was perplexed and it was silent for a moment in thought.
Then it spoke in the bat-squeak triple time to the she, which pulled the chip out of its scanning slot, handed it to the mayor, and departed on a trot for the van with the poll displays. “One moment, please, Mrs. O’Hare,” said the mayor, tucking the chip into its own scanner. “I’ve asked Millicent to get me a datachip on human psychogenic medicine. I must study this.” And it closed its eyes for a moment, opening them only to receive and insert the second chip from the she.
When the mayor opened its eyes its expression was—regret? Apology? Neither of those, Carrie decided. Possibly compassion. It said, “Mrs. O’Hare, my deepest apologies. You’re quite right. It would cause the congressman great pain to be defeated by me, and I will make sure that every voting mechanical in the district knows this by this time tomorrow morning.”
There had to be right words to say, but Carrie O’Hare couldn’t find them. She contented herself with “Thank you,” and then realized that those had been the right words after all … but was unable to leave it at that. “Mayor Thom? Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, Mrs. O’Hare.”
“It’s just—well, I’m sure you realize that you people could easily beat my husband if you stuck together. You could probably do that in nearly every election in the country. You could rule the nation—and yet you don’t seem to go after that power.”
The mayor frowned. “Power, Mrs. O‘Hare? You mean the chance to make laws and compel others to do what you want them to? Why, good heavens, Mrs. O’Hare, who in his right mind would want that?”
Carrie shook her head in puzzlement. “I thought you did,” she said. “Otherwise why have you been running for office at all?”

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