Part 3 (1/2)

”Irma Fellowes?”

Faintly, dimly came the reply, unformed and wordless, but nonetheless it was the awareness of Irma Fellowes. Motion became a struggle, but they fought to move, urged on by some unknown drive.

Now the awareness of Irma Fellowes was stronger, mental flashes of Joe Fellowes began to come in, and as the latter increased in clarity, others began. There was the doctor; his awareness was concern for his patient. The interne was merely anxious to get back to his post. The nurse was impatient because she had a date that evening and didn't want to miss it. The baby was complaining, as babies do, about the rough treatment that was meted upon one's first appearance on Earth.

”Is it a boy or girl?” wondered Irma Fellowes.

”How can we possibly find out in this ... this ... nothingness?”

The interne advised, ”Find out whether baby's thinking blue or pink thoughts.”

Nurse wanted to know, ”Is it born?”

Joe Fellowes' thought was a snort. ”How can anything be born of a diffused essence that's spread out over a spherical volume of probability about a hundred and fifty miles in diameter? The term's meaningless.”

”But what are we breathing? And how will we eat?”

The question, unanswerable by any form of reasoning or logic, was interrupted by a stronger cry from the baby, a feeling of strain having been eased. The packed-in awareness flowed away and throughout the entire volume of probability, motion became fluid, fast, and free.

The exit terminals of Teleportransit began to spew forth humanity. They landed running, some of them; others were pushed violently because they did not move forward out of the way fast enough. The big rush hour of Megapolis, started two hours ago, was finis.h.i.+ng. With the finish on one hundred and twenty minutes of overtime, the mysterious medium between the terminals was doing its best to live up to the definition, ”forbidden gap.”

Being people once more instead of merely aware essences, they raised their voices.

”It's a boy,” said the doctor.

”But what happened?” asked Trudy.

”It was like a log jam,” explained Joe Fellowes. ”And baby was the key log.”

”But how could the teleport system form such a jam?” demanded Johnny Peters.

”We were too efficient,” said Fellowes. ”Our coincidence-counting circuits are set up to make a double check on the transits. Some s.h.i.+ny-bottomed accountant wanted to be more than certain that every transit was paid for, so all trips are checked at the entrance and again at the exit. Baby made 'em mismatch.”

”All right, so how did we break the jam?”

”You did,” chuckled Fellowes. ”You went in to the teleport booth and plugged in your key without entering a destination. That made the number of in-counts match the number of out-counts. And once your awareness approached the troubled area, the uncertainty of which was which, or in this case, whose was whose, became high enough in probability to effect a transfer. Boom! The log jam breaks and everything comes tumbling home.”

”But-?”

”Baby? Well, you've heard it said that when they start, nothing will stop 'em,” chuckled Fellowes. ”And so baby has the dubious honor of being the first kid born en route to the hospital by teleport.”

”And,” said the doctor dryly, ”delivered by a diffused medical team of essences.”

A BAD DAY FOR SALES.

by Fritz Leiber.

Fritz Leiber is the son of a famed Shakespearean actor, and is himself a man of formidable stage presence, awesomely tall, with a magnificently resonant voice. He makes no secret of the fact that he is a frustrated actor; but for some thirty years his stories of science fiction and fantasy have been winning him a loyal following in the profession that was his second choice. A note of subtle horror runs through most Leiber stories, not only those that are frankly designed as weird tales but even the ones supposedly intended as science fiction. Perhaps the perfect blending of these two Leiberesque strains came in his cla.s.sic short story, ”Coming Attraction,” a nightmarish vision of futurity.

The story at hand begins, like most Leiber stories, in a deceptively innocent way, gradually widening to reveal depths of terror. At the heart of it is a machine that is neither villain nor hero, for it does not comprehend human woe and remains apart, tirelessly uttering its sales pitch, in a moment of devastation. Equally impersonal is the machine that brings that devastation-aloof, uncaring, unaware.

The big bright doors of the office building parted with a pneumatic whoosh and Robie glided onto Times Square. The crowd that had been watching the fifty-foot-tall girl on the clothing billboard get dressed, or reading the latest news about the Hot Truce scrawl itself in yard-high script, hurried to look.

Robie was still a novelty. Robie was fun. For a little while yet, he could steal the show. But the attention did not make Robie proud. He had no more emotions than the pink plastic giantess, who dressed and undressed endlessly whether there was a crowd or the street was empty, and who never once blinked her blue mechanical eyes. But she merely drew business while Robie went out after it.

For Robie was the logical conclusion of the development of vending machines. All the earlier ones had stood in one place, on a floor or hanging on a wall, and blankly delivered merchandise in return for coins, whereas Robie searched for customers. He was the demonstration model of a line of sales robots to be manufactured by Shuler Vending Machines, provided the public invested enough in stocks to give the company capital to go into ma.s.s production.

The publicity Robie drew stimulated investments handsomely. It was amusing to see the TV and newspaper coverage of Robie selling, but not a fraction as much fun as being approached personally by him. Those who were usually bought anywhere from one to five hundred shares, if they had any money and foresight enough to see that sales robots would eventually be on every street and highway in the country.

Robie radared the crowd, found that it surrounded him solidly, and stopped. With a carefully built-in sense of timing, he waited for the tension and expectation to mount before he began talking.

”Say, Ma, he doesn't look like a robot at all,” a child said. ”He looks like a turtle.”

Which was not completely inaccurate. The lower part of Robie's body was a metal hemisphere hemmed with sponge rubber and not quite touching the sidewalk. The upper was a metal box with black holes in it. The box could swivel and duck.

A chromium-bright hoopskirt with a turret on top.

”Reminds me too much of the Little Joe Paratanks,” a legless veteran of the Persian War muttered, and rapidly rolled himself away on wheels rather like Robie's.

His departure made it easier for some of those who knew about Robie to open a path in the crowd. Robie headed straight for the gap. The crowd whooped.

Robie glided very slowly down the path, deftly jogging aside whenever he got too close to ankles in skylon or socka.s.sins. The rubber buffer on his hoopskirt was merely an added safeguard.

The boy who had called Robie a turtle jumped in the middle of the path and stood his ground, grinning foxily.

Robie stopped two feet short of him. The turret ducked. The crowd got quiet.

”h.e.l.lo, youngster,” Robie said in a voice that was smooth as that of a TV star, and was, in fact, a recording of one.

The boy stopped smiling. ”h.e.l.lo,” he whispered.

”How old are you?” Robie asked.

”Nine. No, eight.”

”That's nice,” Robie observed. A metal arm shot down from his neck, stopped just short of the boy.

The boy jerked back.

”For you,” Robie said.

The boy gingerly took the red polly-lop from the neatly fas.h.i.+oned blunt metal claws, and began to unwrap it.

”Nothing to say?” asked Robie.

”Uh-thank you.”