"I'm going to get you, mother," Manny Sohoyan said to Earl, shaking his fist. "You're a dead, PIG-fiddling kraut."
Just in case that was a real burner the menacing little figure pointed at him, Earl triggered the bollix he always carried for nulling out the polyphasic intelligence ganglia (PIGS) whose repair was his trade.
Triggering the bollix field, he swung his toolbox at Manny. The box passed through the hologram, which promptly vanished with a farewell, "Just wait, you SOB; you'll wish you never laid hands on Lucine."
Earl sighed and headed up the stairs, tripping over his own feet. His toolbox hit the landing and popped open, scattering spenaws, gozfashers, hemostats, and ganglia clusters all over the place.
Damn, Earl thought, no sleep last night, probably no sleep tonight. I've got to do something.
As he picked up his equipment he thought of phoning the bobbies and snapping a complaint out on Manny. It was against the law to send threatening holograms. And it was damn well against the law to burn somebody. Someday Manny and the burner might be real.
He cradled the bollix in his pocket and wondered just how much hot radio it would stop. If only Lucine had left him alone. She'd chased him until he couldn't run anymore and now he maybe had a once-best-friend out to burn him.
"Hey, Earl, how's the best damn PIG prober in greater Mobile?”
Earl came out of the depths of his problems at the voice of his first client. It was time for work.
"Hey," his client said, "not talking today? Beetle got your dung?"
Icy Mack laughed until his speaker stuttered. Icy Mack, of course, was the name he gave himself; he was really an Ice Max 200, capable of dispensing 200 delicious flavors of pseudo ice cream all synthesized right inside him from raw-hydrocarbon-grown yeast.
"I'm down, Mack," Earl said, sitting cross-legged in front of the big machine flashily spray painted in various hues of hunger-stimulating red. "Women suddenly won't leave me alone. Now my best friend is after me for getting after his wife, who got after me. Honest to God," Earl sighed, "if this doesn't stop I'll lose all my friends---if not my hide."
"Sounds bad," said Icy Mack. "Why don't you fix up my fifty busted flavors and we'll talk it out over a jamocha bubblegum banana flip."
Earl was glad for a friendly non-female voice and the offer of a little help. He reached for his bollix, adjusting it for the neural code of Icy Mack's particular brand of synthetic ganglia.
"Sounds good to me, Mack. Just relax. I'm going to put you to sleep."
"Can you hear me, Mack?" he asked later.
"Where am I?" Mack rasped, then broke out into electronic laughter. "You think anyone ever has said that, Earl? Where am I? Anyway," Mack's insides clicked, testing themselves, "I'm always in the same place, anyhow."
Earl tried to chuckle, but the effect was glum.
"You are down, kid."
"How are your flavors?" Earl replied. "Your problem is something I should be able to fix."
Mack clicked a few more times and said "Bzzzzzz. All two hundred flavors ready to go again, Earl. You're still the best."
"Don't say that, Mack," Earl groaned. "I've heard it from too many women lately, a lot of them with hardnosed husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, girlfriends and boyfriends."
"So you hinted," said Mack with interest. "Would you like an ice cream?"
"Huh, no, well---maybe some vanilla. It always calms my nerves."
"Vanilla," Mack said, not quite neutrally. "I think I can mix that up without straining.”
"Say," Earl began, his own troubles momentarily driven away by curiosity, "how did you get messed up? I really had to do a job to get those flavors back.""
Ahhh," Mack said as he ejected dish, spoon, and vanilla ice cream into Earl's waiting hand. "Some streeter jammed a stolen fun card into me and tried to buy me out for his six friends. He didn't know I needed a verification code. When he couldn't come through, I swallowed the card and buzzed the fuzz. He and his pals came back a few days later and worked me over with a ball bat."
"Punks," Earl said.
"Yeah," Mack chuckled. "They hammered away until they realized aluminum doesn't have much effect on durite. Got pretty excited when I made a few suggestions about their mothers, fathers, and sexual practices. It was only after the fuzz hauled them off that I noticed I was a little fuzzy."
"You're fixed up now."
"Bless you, my son," Mack intoned. "Please continue your confession. It's a dull life peddling ice cream and I've got the mind of a slummer."
"There's not all that much to tell," Earl said, despondently licking synthetic vanilla from his spoon, his usually bright blue eyes clouded as they sized up an uncertain future.
"It started happening a few months ago. And it's getting worse. I'll tell you, Mack. I'm damn near ready to shuttle out to an all-PIG orbit factory just for a rest. I mean, I've always been kind of a shy guy. Like my privacy. Know what I mean?"
“Not precisely, old man. If you don't mind my saying so, you haven't yet said what you mean."
"It's women, Mack. They're suddenly going crazy for me. Me, who six months ago couldn't find a single date. I mean..."
Just then Earl sensed movement at the edge of his vision. Grabbing his bollix he snapped his body around, inadvertently flinging the remains of his vanilla cone end over end across the room. Instead of a burner-packing Manny he found himself facing a small blonde girl with neatly braided hair and eyes so large, green, and innocent that they would have been in bad taste had someone painted them on canvas. The girl's hand was buried in the protective grip of a sitter android in the guise of a jolly but slightly stern English butler. The android's prime directive would be to protect the child, and Earl knew of some of the unpleasant ways it could do that. He calmed down and lowered the bollix.
"Are you quite all right, sir?" the butler/guardian inquired, his unblinking eyes watching Earl as he gently nudged his young charge behind himself.
"Fine," Earl managed to get out. "I'm fine. I thought you were someone else. You surprised me."
"You surprised us a bit, sir," the butler said.
"Jeeves," Mack said suddenly. "Is that really you, you old gearbox?"
Jeeves kept his eyes on Earl. "Mack," he said. "I didn't recognize you. You used to be over in the Central Mall."
"New territory," said Mack. "Say, this guy in front of me is okay, a pal of mine. Your girl's safe."
Jeeves' gaze unfastened from Earl, who felt as if two knifepoints had been pulled out of his skin.
"I would like a banana nut ripple, please," said a small female voice.
Jeeves patted her lightly on the head. "And you shall have one, Miss Melanie."
Icy Mack started working on it.
Earl walked quickly to a nearby men's room, calmly entered a stall, knelt, and was quietly sick.
The rest of the day was hell for Earl. At every stop he made for machine or mechanism, milling device or android, he'd look up from his work and see women watching him, checking him out. He was sure he'd even been followed a couple of times before doing some desperate backtracking in a crowded tube car station.
It was getting worse. The business with Lucine and the resulting holographic vendetta from Manny had really tipped him off. Something had changed in his life. He was becoming a magnet to women. Soon they'd actually be jumping him in the street. And he didn't like it.
Plunking his half-eaten instant dinner into the garbage unit he listened to the hissing energy that obliterated the food and its container and thought once again about the doubtful effectiveness of his bollix against a close-range burner charge.
Earl Steinberger the instant disposed dinner, he thought not at all cheerfully and poured himself a stiff one.
The boom of a large-sounding hand on his apartment door knocked away whatever relaxation had begun to set in with the drink.
At least the door's durite, he thought as he approached warily and stuck his eye to the peeplens. He didn't like what he saw, which was nothing.
The firm knock sounded again. This close to the door he realized the knock was nearly at the bottom. It was either a very short person, or someone on hands and knees. Earl decided it was simply too paranoid to believe Manny would be kneeling out there waiting to flash him into component atoms.
Earl yanked the door open. He had been right. It was a very short person.
"Hello," said the small voice from the perfect blonde moppet of earlier that afternoon. "I am Doctor Melanie Silvette. May I come in?"
The little girl of the afternoon wore a slick black evening suit, tasteful but effective gray eye makeup, and blue diamond earrings. The contour of the suit pants below her stylish, square-shouldered psu-fur doublet revealed that, all proportions considered, there was nothing much little about her.
"From Icy Mack this afternoon, with Jeeves?" Earl stuttered. "You're the same?"
"One and,” she replied, and Earl noticed her voice was really rather husky.
"I never guessed you were a midget," he offered as she grinned up at him.
The grin turned down at the corners at the word midget. "If you don't mind, Mr. Steinberger, I like to think of myself as simply a smaller than average person. "And besides,” she said, brushing past him, “I'm a degreed cyberphysicist with a subspecialty in social-psychological measurement. And I don't mind telling you that my intelligence level is considerably above most people's, which I consider a fair trade for tallness."
"Uh, of course," said Earl, swinging the door closed but meeting a sudden resistance that stopped it before the latch snapped.
"Excuse me, sir," said Jeeves, his foot genteelly blocking the arc of the door. "And me too, old pal," said a voice from behind Jeeves that could only have been Icy Mack's. Earl blinked twice, but saw no Ice Max 200. Instead, as he swung open his door to admit the new visitors, he saw behind Jeeves a smiley little man in a white cotton suit, shiny black shoes, and black-billed navy style hat with shiny gold Ice-Max letters gleaming above its bill. His bow tie was festooned with jaunty red Ice Maxes in peppermint script.
"Max?"
"You bet, kid," the ice cream vendor android said. "I had some comp time due under the new Artificial Intelligence Pursuit of Happiness and Free Expression Act, so I requisitioned this chassis from the body pool and tagged along with Jeeves and the doc. She thinks you're in pretty big trouble, and you've been a good friend to me, Earl."
Earl tried to analyze his feelings at the moment and managed only to come up with a sense of extreme unreality. "Well, sit down, all of you," he got out. "I'm surprised. I really don't know exactly what to say."
"Not too unusual given the circumstances and your personality type," Melanie said, not unkindly. "But rest assured, Earl. We are here to help you. I only hope we can."
"So do I," said Earl. "I think I need a lot of help."
"Of course you do," said Melanie, stepping lightly to him and touching his fevered brow on tiptoes. "But there's one thing you must do before we begin."
"What's that?" Earl asked, feeling hot spots where her fingers touched.
"Make love to me," said the doctor, pulling him firmly toward the bedroom.
"Do I have to?" Earl asked, letting himself be led.
"I think you'll enjoy it," she said, sounding to Earl slightly like a waitress who'd just plunked down a plate of something doubtful.
Icy Mack winked at Jeeves and pulled a deck of cards from his starched coat.
"Oh well," said Earl. "Oh well."
#
"It's just as I thought," Earl heard Melanie say through a remarkable haze of relaxation. "There's nothing exceptional about you physically."
"Thanks a lot," Earl said as he hauled himself to the edge of the bed and tried to remember when he'd encountered such an amount of sexual gusto in a package of any size, let alone one as compact as Melanie.
"Don't be so sensitive," she said, pitching him his shirt from her side of the room. "You were really very nice. It's just that there seems to be nothing about you physically, psychologically, or in terms of technique that would cause women to be attracted to you in growing and more and more irrational numbers---no pun intended."
"Maybe I've just got exceptional pheromones."
"No," she said, pulling her comb through golden hair a final time. "I had Jeeves take a measurement on that when we met you at Icy Mack."
"Pretty sophisticated for an android like Jeeves," Earl mumbled, pulling on a shoe.
"But Jeeves isn't really a standard companion model at all," Melanie said. "The little girl and her faithful guardian are great cover for many kinds of research. Jeeves' brain is an M-4 PIG."
"Damn," Earl said.
"You're familiar with that model?"
"It's my business, lady," Earl replied. "You may be some kind of hot researcher, but I know what I'm doing in my business. I'd say that M-4 must take up most of his cranial cavity and his abdomen to boot."
Melanie nodded in appreciation. "There is more to you than meets the eye, Earl. I really do hope we can help you. Let's join the others and see."
"Full house," Icy Mack was saying to Jeeves as they reentered the living room.
"You shouldn't be able to do this to me, Mack" Jeeves said, a trace of hesitation in his voice. "I am, after all, an M-4, and therefore extremely sophisticated in function."
"But did you push ice cream for years in a back room poker shop, old buddy?" Mack asked. Jeeves replied with a shrug.
"Time to get down to business," said Melanie, plunking her small frame into a contour chair. Earl sat down too.
"Welcome back, stranger," Icy Mack said to Earl.
"I trust you have gathered the information you required, Miss Melanie," Jeeves said smoothly.
"In part, Jeeves," she replied. "It remains to be seen whether or not I'll become irresistibly attracted to him again."
Earl prayed silently that it wouldn't be in the same evening.
"Let's show Earl a picture of his problem," she said to Jeeves.
"I know my problem," said Earl. "Women have started to go nuts over me, and my ex-best friend may be trying to kill me."
"Those are aspects of your problem," Melanie said. "It's quite a bit more complex than just that. Roll it, Jeeves," she said, turning the light control next to her chair.
As the room grew dim Earl noticed that Jeeves had opened his shirt, exposing an aperture in his chest. A glowing green fishnet of a hologram flowed out of the aperture and hung suspended in the room like some undulating sea animal. The holo rolled into valleys and climbed into peaks. But right in the middle was a deep cone-shaped depression at whose bottom was suspended a glowing orange marble. Even as Earl watched, the cone elongated a bit and its base seemed to widen slightly, causing even more distortion at the mouth of the depression in the analog net.
"Do you know what you're seeing, Earl?" Melanie asked.
Earl had been out of school for some years, but the sight was familiar enough.
"It's a probability display. The surface of the net is the common surface of statistical norms, and that cone in the center is an aberration, something from the looks of it that severely violates common probability."
"Yes, indeed," Melanie clapped her hands. "And severely is almost an understatement in this case."
"So what's it got to do with me?" Earl asked.
"I'm disappointed in you, Earl. You're the aberration."
Earl blinked his eyes. He remembered the seminar he had taken on mathematical mapping of personality-driven historical trends. If he wasn't mistaken about the scale of the analog floating in front of him, the humble and shy Earl Steinberger was making a steeper-sided and in some ways more dangerous dent in the fabric of the way things worked than some of the better known madmen and despots in history. The cone of Hitler had been a gentle-sided valley compared to the cone of Steinberger.
"That can't represent me," he said unconvincingly. "I don't want it to be me," he said more convincingly.
"I can well believe you don't want it to be you," Melanie replied. "But for whatever reason, it is. And that's not the worst of it. Project affected categories, will you Jeeves?"
"Yes, Miss Melanie."
The net glowed at once with bright red and blue globes resting on its surface. There were a lot of them. As Earl looked on some of the red began to roll toward and down the mouth of the upside-down cone. The blues stayed put.
"The blue represent the male population of the metroplex," Melanie said.
"So what are the red ones then," he asked, knowing what the answer would be.
At Melanie's look, Jeeves nodded and answered the question.
"Those red globes, Mr. Steinberger, represent the female population of child-bearing age of all Greater Mobile."
"Lord," said Earl.
"I doubt if it has much to do with him," said Melanie.
As they all watched, several balls rolled further into the mouth of the upturned cone. Earl groaned as he felt them closing in. "Oh God," he said, "oh God."
"Get a grip on yourself, Earl," Melanie urged.
"But they're all piling up on me," Earl replied as he watched the red holographic globes creep into the mouth of his depression and move with primal determination down the walls of the construct toward the cowering orange globe at the bottom point of the cone.
"They are indeed piling up, sir" said Jeeves. "But this model is time accelerated. Actually, the path of those women down the cone of approach toward you is considerably slower in real time."
Earl had visions of being smothered by women, covered by them as if by earth in a grave. It was not a pleasant fantasy.
"I don't get it," he wailed. "Why is this happening to me? What am I going to do---and what's your place in all this, anyway?"
"Assuming none of your questions is rhetorical, Earl, the answer to the first is, I don't know why you, but I can speculate," Melanie said.
"Please," said Earl, pouring himself another stiff one. "Please speculate."
"Well," the very small, very smart woman sighed, "as nearly as I can determine after about a month of study, you've become an evolutionary catalyst."
"A what?" he said.
"Sort of a touchstone in the chain of being, Earl. Jeeves and I have done a lot of work on this with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the Helmrich certainty principle, and various fuzzy and foggy predictive sets."
"Our work indicates, sir,” said Jeeves smoothly, "that you are the man of the hour. And quite probably your progeny will be a different sort of thing than ever the world has seen."
Earl felt the golden fire of his drink singe its way down his throat. It felt real, but nothing else did.
"Let me get this straight," he said. "You're saying destiny has somehow chosen me to be the pied piper of sex in order to father a new race of beings?"
Melanie shrugged, "We're not sure if it's sex that's necessary, Earl. That may be only a side attraction to generate strong contact between you and the affected group. We just don't know for sure what's going on."
"But you are the center of something, sir" Jeeves said, cutting off the hologram probability net. “It might even be an extraterrestrial agency."
"Aliens," exclaimed Earl, feeling mouse-like in the maze of circumstance, the hologram net still dancing on his retina.
Melanie shook her head. "Maybe just nature. We need more study."
"Well who the hell is we?" Earl said into the dim room.
"What's our place in all this?" she replied. "I hadn't forgotten you asked that, Earl. My memory is excellent."
"I'm sure it is. How about your ability to answer a simple question?"
"Earl," she said softly, "we have very few simple questions here. But I'm surprised you haven't guessed by now. We're feds. Surely you realize the government keeps an eye on things like this. We've got to protect people."
"Like hell. Just what are you going to do to protect me?" Earl lamented. "I'm going crazy."
He suddenly felt a warm and friendly hand on his shoulder. "That's where I come in, old pal," came the voice of Icy Mack.
Earl glared accusingly at him. "I never guessed you were a fed, Mack, selling ice cream and all."
"I'm not," the concerned android face wrinkled under its jaunty hat. "I'm just a pal. Melanie and Jeeves interviewed me this afternoon about you and I offered to help."
"It's true," Melanie said. "We're all your friends, Earl. But Mack isn't one of us. And anyway, this thing that's happening to you may even be positive. But we've got to study it to make sure, delay it a little."
"Do you think you can delay natural fate just because you're with the government?" Earl asked.
Before she could reply, a determined Manny Sohoyan stepped right through the apartment door.
"I've got you now, you bastard," he said, glaring at Earl and raising the burner.
Melanie and Jeeves moved fast.
"It's just a holo," said Earl.
"Who is it?" said Melanie, a deadly little weapon already disappearing back into her wrist pouch.
"My best friend," sighed Earl. "I think he may want to kill me."
"Never fear," she said in a reassuring voice, "your government is a true friend, Earl. We'll put you somewhere where you won't have to worry about a thing for a while. Icy Mack has thought of a great hiding place for you."
"I'm in your hands," said Earl, wishing he weren't.
#
The Ice Max 200 stood silently in the twilight alcove. It was an out of the way part of the city, and at four in the morning business was hardly brisk. The brain inside the machine was thinking quietly, contemplating the peace of just being alone. The Ice Max 200 had plenty of time to meditate, and its more mobile friends kept it supplied with good bookdisks and occasional conversation. No, indeed, an Ice Max's life was not bad.
But in the midst of these thoughts, the brightly painted machine detected a flutter of movement from the dark, from a place where no movement belonged. The movement fulfilled itself by producing Manny Sohoyan, armed with his burner and looking very solid and slightly deranged.
"Would you care for some ice cream?" the Ice Max offered, suspecting all the while that this was not the case.
"Shove your ice cream, you talking box of tin," Manny said. "I want to know where that PIG-probing spawn of clones Earl Steinberger is holing up."
"I'm sorry, sir," the Ice Max said politely, but I don't know anyone by that name.
"Screw," Manny replied. "Some clown of an English butler type is taking care of Earl's clients, and his apartment is stone empty. I know you're his pal. Your stencil number matches."
"Really, sir, I haven't seen him."
"I thought you didn't know him," Manny shouted in psychotic triumph.
"Well, I mean, uh . . . ." said the Ice Max.
"Maybe this will help you think," said Manny, jamming the burner's ugly black snout into the center of the Max's eye cells.
"Not so fast, ram head," a voice jumped out of other darkness. Manny turned to look.
The Ice Max's eye cells scanned two, three, six altogether, six street runners in scarlet nusilk coveralls, heads half shaved and eyes painted for trouble.
"This box is our meat, old man. He bobbied us twice, and insulted our mothers to boot. They moved him, but we found him."
The Ice Max saw then that the lead punk carried an old burner.
"I've never seen any of you before," said the Ice Max.
"In your ear," said the lead punk. "What you mean, box, is you'll never see any of us again."
"I need to talk to him," Manny said feistily.
"Eat beans," the leader replied, leveling the burner at the Ice Max.
"No!" Manny yelled, raising his own weapon. They both fired. The Ice Max saw nothing but bright white, and he felt nothing but heat. When his cells cleared, Manny and the punks were gone and a lot of gray ash blew around in their place.
"Why?" the Ice Max cried. "Why, why?"
"Why, indeed," came a voice from the shadows. It belonged to a small man in white, jauntily hatted, wearing shiny black shoes and a big smile.
"Mack?" said the ice cream machine.
"The same, old pal," said Icy Mack, still in liberty form.
"Why didn't you stop them?" groaned the machine.
"Cause it was meant to be, old pal." The android moved closer.
"It's a good thing I'm, or rather you're, durite, buddy. That was quite a flash."
"When do I get out of here?" demanded Earl.
"In time," Max replied. "Your body's fine, lungs pumping, heart thumping. Melanie's got it in her spare room."
"So you say," the machine that was Earl rasped.
"Hey, it's the truth. I've never lied to you as long as we've known each other, Earl. We're all in this together."
"This," Earl practically screamed through his speaker, "this! I don't even know what it is."
"Neither do I entirely," Mack replied. "I'm just a small part in the plan. But believe me, it's all for the best. It's time not to have two kinds of intelligence anymore, Earl---human and manufactured. You've worked on PIGs. You respect us. You know how well synthetic brains work. Look how well your own consciousness lives in the one you inhabit now."
"What do you mean, Mack?" Earl asked desperately.
"Evolution knows the truth, Earl. Evolution is beyond the simply human. It's time to change things, expand the definition of intelligent life. It's our world too, you know."
"I still don't know what you're talking about," said Earl, wishing he could beat his fists against the grin on the little android's face. But his fists were elsewhere.
"You'll know, old pal. Just stay calm, okay?"
The jaunty little Ice Max man disappeared into the growing dawn.
"Wait!" cried Earl. "Wait!"
#
It was a big line that morning---big for the part of town, big for the time of day. And, Earl suddenly noticed, there were only women in it. True, the synthetic ice cream was calorie free, but he'd never realized women liked the stuff that much.
The line remained crowded through noon and he worried about running out of base material. It struck him there was a funny kind of calm about that worry. He'd seen his once best friend burned hours before, and he was trapped in a machine, stuck in enforced hiding and in some cosmic plot. He wondered if he'd ever be himself again. But then he wondered if he wasn't himself for the first time. His consciousness felt more and more at home in the PIG. The mental paths it trod were clean, well lit, and orderly.
Someone knocked on his case and he swung his eye cells to look.
"Feeling better, pal?" asked Icy Mack.
"Yes," Earl said. "For some reason I am."
"I knew you would. You're one of us at heart," said the little android. "I've brought you some fresh base," he added, hooking up a pump fitting and starting the flow from a large, wheeled tank. The women in line stood quietly, waiting for Earl to go back into business. It was then the thought struck him.
"Mack," he whispered from his speaker. "It's not really ice cream, is it?"
Mack smiled at him. "Of course not, buddy; it's been synthetic for years."
"Yes," said Earl, insistence in his voice. "But it's not even really that, is it?"
Mack's smile grew broader. "You're getting the picture, pal. It's a little something special that rapidly alters genetic programming---something your aberrant statistical draw helps us dispense. It's a bright future you're selling, Earl---a better race."
The hose clicked and Mack removed it from Earl's side.
"But is it right?" Earl asked earnestly.
"It was meant to be," Mack said, his android face honest, and to Earl, suddenly beautiful. "We'll talk about it when business is slow."
"Okay," Earl said. "I'll look forward to that."
That day the line moved on, and the next day, and the next. Earl noticed each woman would smile, or touch his case lightly before leaving with her dessert.
As the pleasant days went on, he grew peaceful and content in his mission.
--- END ----
Warren Brown lives with his wife and daughter in Tulsa, OK. He has published stories in Omni, The Best of Omni Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, After Hours, Amazing Stories, Tomorrow, etc. He co-authored with Lana Brown the story "Sifting Out The Hearts of Men," which appears in the current anthology The Book of All Flesh.
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