Throwaway Town sprawled near the heart of the city. David
made his way there, led by a large Fixer-Mixer. The Fixer-Mixer had many hands and arms of various dimensions. He kept them
snugged down on his rusty carapace. Walking on extensible spider legs, he towered over David.
As they went along, David asked him, "Why are you so big?"
"The world's big, David. So I am big."
After a silence, the five-year old said, "The world has
grown big since my Mummy died."
"Machines don't have mummies."
"I wish you to know I am not a machine."
Throwaway was entered down a steep slope, and partly hidden
from the going human world by a high wall of breeze-blocks. The road into this junk town was wide and easy. Everything inside
was irregular. Strange shapes were the order of the day. Many shapes moved, or could move, or might move. Their colours were
many, some sporting huge letters or numerals. Rusty brown was a favourite. They specialised in scratches, huge dents, shattered
glass, broken panels. They stood in puddles and leaked rust.
This was the land of the obsolete. To Throwaway came or
were dumped all the old models of automatics, robots, androids and other machines that had ceased to be useful to busy mankind.
Here was everything that had once worked in some way, from toasters and electric carving knives to derricks and computers
that could count only up to infinity minus one. The poor Fixer-Mixer had lost one of its grabbers and would never again haul
a tonne of cement.
It was a town of a kind. Every junked object helped every
other junked object. Every old-model pocket calculator could calculate something useful, if it was only how wide a lane should
be left between two blocks of scrapped automobilites to allow passage for wheelies and motormowers.
A tired old supermarket servitor took David into his care.
They shared the burnt-out shell of a refrigeration unit.
"You'll be okay with me till your transistors blow." the
servitor said.
"You're very kind. I just wish I had Teddy with me," said
David.
"What was so special about Teddy?"
"We used to play together, Teddy and I."
"Was he human?"
"He was like me."
"Just a machine, eh? Better forget him then."
David thought to himself, Forget Teddy? I really loved
Teddy. But it was quite cozy in the refrigeration unit.
One day the servitor asked, "Who kept you?"
"I had a daddy called Henry Swinton. But he was generally
away on business."
* * * * *
Henry Swinton was away on business. Together with three
associates, he was ensconced in a hotel on an island in the South Seas. The suite in which they were gathered looked out over
golden sands to the ocean, Tamarisks grew below the window, their fronds waving slightly in a breeze that took the sting from
the tropical heat.
The murmur of waves breaking on the beach did not penetrate
the triple glazing.
Henry and his associates sat with bottles of mineral water
and notefiles in front of them. Henry's back was to the pleasant view.
Henry had fought his way up to Chief Executive of Worldsynth-Claws.
He outranked the others at the table. Of these others, one in particular, Asda Dolorosaria, had elected herself to speak for
the opposition.
"You've seen the figures, Henry. Your proposed Mars investment
will not pay off in a century. Please be reasonable. Forget the crazy notion."
Henry said, "Reason is one thing, flair another, Asda.
You know the amount of business we do in Central Asia. It's the area of the planet most like Mars. We had communications sewn
up. Not a single mech there that does not come from our factories. I bought into Central Asia when no one else would touch
it. You have to trust me on Mars."
"Samsavvy is against your argument," said dry-voiced Mauree
Shilverstein. Samsavvy was the Supersoftputer Mk.V which in effect ran Worldsynth-Claws. "Sorry. You're brilliant, but you
know what Samsavvy says." She offered an imitation of a smile. "He says forget it."
Henry opened his hands and placed his fingers together
so that they formed an arch of wisdom.
"Okay. But Samsavvy doesn't have my intuition. I intuit
that if we get our synthelp on Mars right now, they can run the atmosphere-maker. In no time -- well, in half a century, let's
say -- Worldsynth will get to *own* the atmosphere. That's as good as owning Mars itself. All human activities are secondary
to breathing, okay? Can't you people understand that?" He thumped the guaranteed real reconstituted wood table. "You got to
have flair. I built this whole enterprise on flair."
Old Ainsworth Clawsinski had said nothing, contenting himself
with an unwavering glare at Henry. He was the Claws of the company. The plug in his left ear indicated that he was in constant
touch with Samsavvy. Now he spoke from his end of the table.
"{Screw} your flair, Henry."
His colleagues, encouraged, came in in chorus.
"Shareholders don't think in half-centuries, Henry," said
Mauree Shivlerstein. She was the one who had initially inclined toward s Henry's argument.
"Mars has no investment value. It's proved," said Asda
Dolorosaria. "They've gotten in Tibetan labout. It's cheaper and it's expendable. Better forget about other planets, Henry,
and concentrate that mind of yours on last year's two perecent profit drop on this planet."
Henry went red.
"Forget the past. You're dragging your heels, all three
of you! Mars is the future. Ainsworth, with all due respect, you're too damned old to even think about the future! We will
adjourn and meet again at three thirty. Be warned -- I know what I'm doing. I want Mars on a plate."
Gathering up his pad, he marched out of the room.
* * * * *
David found that Throwaway had a We Mend You workshop.
Through the maze of rusty alleyways he went, until he came to the workshop. It was situated in a static watertank, turned
upside down, with an entrance cut in its side by a welder. Inside this echoing shelter, industrious little machines worked
and patched and sawed and rejoined. Still valid circuits were cannibalised, motors regenerated, the old made less old, the
aniquated merely old.
And there David had his broken face repaired.
There too he met the Dancing Devlins. A socket in the male
Devlin's leg had bevcome displaced. Comsumer society had scrapped him. Besides, he and his famle machine, with their rapid
dancing act, had become passe. They had been earning less money. They were junked.
The socket was replaced. Batteries were recharged.
Now Devlin (M) could dance again with Devlin (F). They
took David with them to their tiny hovel. There they performed their lightning dance over and over. David watched and watched.
He never tired of the routine.
"Aren't we wonderful, dear?" said Devlin (F).
"I would like it even more if only Teddy could watch with
me."
"It's the same dance, lad, whether Teddy is here or not."
"But you don't understand..."
"I understand our dance is clever even if nobody is watching.
Once hundreds of real people used to watch us dancing. But it was different then."
"It's different now," David said.
* * * * *
The sand was yielding underfoot. Henry Swinton kicked his
trainers off and left them lying on the beach. He walked on the margins of the ocean. He was in a state of despair. He had
fallen from a high cliff of success.
After the dismal outcome of the morning's meeting, he had
goen to the residents' bar to enjoy a long slow vodkamilk, the Drink of the Year. "Vodkakamilk -- Smooth as Silk." His associates
had given him a wide berth. He had then taken an elevator up to his private penthouse on the top floor.
Peaches had gone. Her cases had gone.
Her fragrance lingered, not yet wiped out by the aircond.
On the mirror she had scrawled in lipstick READ YOUR
AMBIENT!!! SORRY AND GOODBYE! P
"She's being funny," thought Henry, aloud. He knew she
was not. Peaches was never funny.
The Ambient was already tuned to the private Worldsynth
channel. Henry crossed to the globe and turned it on.
SS MV.V MESSAGE TO HENRY SWINTON. YOUR MARS GAMBLE NOT
ACCEPTABLE TO SHAREHOLDERS. YOUR PROJECTS SURPLUS TO OUR FUTURE PLANS.
PLEASE ACCEPT THANKS AND INSTANT RETIREMENT HEREWITH OPEN
TO NEGOTIATION ON FINAL HANDSHAKE VALUE IF NO ARGUMENT FORTHCOMING. SEE EMPLOYMENT ACT 21066A CLAUSES 16-21. FAREWELL.
The ocean that looked so bright and pure from the hotel
was spewing up plasitca bottles along the shoreline, together with dead fish. Henry finally flung himself down on the sand,
exhasuted. He had put on weight recently, despite his Crosswell tape, and was unaccustomed to walking.
No seagull ever visited this island. Swallows abounded.
The birds circled overhead, occasionally swooping on an insect in flight. Once an insect was caught, the bird returned with
it to the eaves of the hotel to feed its young, screaming in their nest. Then it was back, fluttering above the decay where
ocean met shore. There seemed to be no rest for the birds.
From Henry's low view, the hotel presented a rakish aspect.
It had been built on sand. Slowly, one end was sinking down. It resembled a vast concrete ship in trouble in a sepia sea.
He endured a rage of hatred about everyone he knew, everyone
who had crossed his path from the beginning. The low rumble of plastic bottle bumping against plastic bottle formed an accompaniment
to his anger.
He contemplated killing Ainsworth Clawsinski, for some
while his enemy on the board. Eventually the anger turned against himself.
"But what have I done? What have I been? What's been in
my mind? A big success! Empty success... Yes, empty. I've just sold things. I'm a salesman, nothing more. Or I *was* a salesman.
Buying and selling. My God, I wanted to buy *Mars*. A whole planet...I have been mad with greed. I am mad. I'm sick, mortally
sick. What did I ever care about?
"I have never been creative. I imagined I was creative.
I've never been a scientist. I'm just a smarta[leck]. What do I really understand about the mechs I sell...Oh God, what a
failure I am, a desperate failure. Now I've gone too far. Why didn't I see? Why did I neglect Monica? Monica, my darling...Monica,
I did love you. And I fobbed you off with a toy kid. Kids. David and Teddy.
"Huh. At least David loved you. David. Poor little toy
David, your one consolation.
"My God, whatever happened to David? Maybe..."
The swallows screamed overhead.
* * * * *
A council truck came slowly down the wide road into Throwaway
Town. Once inside the gates, it turned its massive nose left, entering what was known as Dump Place.
Automatics began slowly to tip the rear platform. A number
of obsolete robots, which had long served the public working in the subway system, slid from the back of the truck. They crashed
to the ground. The truck scraped the last robot, clinging to the rear board, off on to the dump.
One or two of the robots were broken in the fall. One lay
on its face, helplessly waving an arm until another mech helped it up. Together they made off into the depths of the rusty
aisles.
David ran up to see the excitement. The Dancing Devlins
ceased their dance to follow him.
When the other newly arrived robots had gone, one still
remained. It sat in the dirt shooting tis arms back and forth in a prescribed pattern.
Going as close as he dared, David asked the mech why he
did that.
"I still work, don't I? Don't I still work? I can work
in the dark but my lamp is broken. My lamp will not work. I hit my lamp on a girder overhead. There was a girder overhead.
I hit my lamp on it. The chief computer sent me here. I still work."
"What did you do? Were you on the subway?"
"I worked. I worked well since I was built. I still work."
"I never did any work. I plaued with Teddy. Teddy was my
friend."
"Have you any instructions? I work still, don't I?"
While this conversation was in progress, a sleek black
limo entered Throwaway. A man was sitting in the front seat. Spinning the window down, he stuck his head out and asked something.
What he said was, "David? Are you David Swinton?"
David went over to the auto. "Daddy? Oh, Daddy, have you
really come for me? I don't really belong here in Throwaway."
"Climb in, David. We'll get you all cleaned up for Monica's
sake."
David looked round. The Dancing Devlins stood nearby. They
were not dancing. David called out a goodbye to them. The Dancing Devlins simply stood where they were. They had never been
programmed to say goodbye. It was not quite like taking a bow.
As David climbed into his father's car, they began to perform
their dance. It was their favourite dance. It was the dance they had performed a thousand times before
* * * * *
Henry Swinton was no longer rich. He no longer had a career.
He no longer had women around. He no longer had ambition.
But he had time.
He sat in a cheap apartment on Riverside, talking to David.
The apartment was old and worn. One of the walls had developed a stammer. Sometimes it showed a false view of the river, where
the water was blue and old-fashioned paddle-steamers bedecked with flags plied up and down. Sometimes it showed a commercial
for Preservanex, where a couple in their early hundreds went through rickety copulation movements
"How can I not be human, Daddy? I'm not like the Dancing
Devlins or the other people I met in Throwaway. I feel happy or sad. I love people. Therefore I am human. Isn't that so?"
"You won't understand this, David, but I'm a broken man.
I've fouled up my whole life. The way people do."
"My life was nice when we lived in that house with Mummy."
"I said you wouldn't understand."
"I do understand, Daddy. Can we go back there?"
Henry gazed mournfully at the five-year-old standing before
him, a hlf-smile on his scarred face.
"There's never any going back."
"We could go back in the limo."
Henry seized the boy and held him tightly, arms wrapped
around him. "David, you were an early product of my first mech comapny, Synthank. You have since been superseded. You only
think you're happy or sad. You only think you loved Teddy or Monica."
"Did you love Monica, Daddy?"
He sighed heavily. "I thought I did."
* * * * *
Henry put David in the auto, telling him that his obsession
with being human would count as a neurosis if he were human. There were humans who had illnesses where they imagined they
were machines.
"I'll show you."
From the ruins of Henry Swinton's career, little remained.
One thing, however, did remain. There still survived, out in a rundown suburb between city and boonies, the production unit
of Synthank, Henry's first enterprise, which had been swallowed up in his increasingly megalomaniac dreams.
He had retained financial control of Synthank. And its
products had not been destroyed. They survived on a low level of production, supervised by Henry's old human friend, Ivan
Shiggle.
Shiggle exported Synthank's products to undeveloped countries
overseas where, in their simplicity, they were welcomed as additionmal labour.
"We could insert better brains in them. Then they would
be more up-to-date. But why go to the expense," said Henry, as he and the boy turned into the unit's yard.
"They might like to have better brains," David suggested.
Henry merely laughed.
Shiggle came out to meet them. Shaking hands with Henry,
he looked down on David. "An early model," he remarked. "What did Monica think of it?"
Henry took his time responding. As they entered the building,
he said, "You know, Monica was rather a cold woman."
Shooting him a sympathetic glance, Shiggle said, "But you
married her? You loved her?" Lights came on as they walked along a corridor and through a swing glass door. David followed
meekly.
"Oh yes, I loved Monica. Not well enough. Perhaps she didn't
love me well enough. I don't know. My ambition got the better of me -- she must have found me hard to live with. Now she's
dead -- through my neglect. My life is a complete cock-up, Ivan."
"You're not the only one. What have I done with my life?
I often ask myself that."
Henry clapped his friend on his shoulder. "Youve been a
good friend of mine. You have never cheated me or turned against me."
"There's time yet," said Shiggle, and both men laughed.
They had gained the production floor, where the product
stood ready for packaging. David came forward, staring, his eyes wide.
He confronted a thousand Davids. All looking alike. All
dressed alike. All standing alert and alike. All silent, staring ahead. A thousand replicas of himself. Unliving.
For the first time David really understood.
This was what he was. A product. Only a product. His mouth
fell open. He froze. He could not move. The gyroscope ceased within him. He fell backwards to the floor.
* * * * *
On the afternoon of the following day, Shiggle and Henry
stood in their shirtsleeves. The grinned at each other and shook hands.
"I still know how to work, Ivan! Amazing! Maybe there's
hope for me yet."
"You can have a job here. We'd get on okay together. Provided
the neural brain works in this son of yours."
David lay on the bench between them still connected by
a cable, awaiting rebirth. His clothes had been renewed from stock, his face had been properly remoulded. And the later type
of brain had been inserted, infused with his earlier memories.
He had been dead. Now was the time to see if he would live
again, and would enjoy a brain many times more diverse than his old one.
The two men ceased their casual conversation. They paused
over the prostrate body.
Henry turned to the figure standing by their side, its
arms wide in the eternal gesture of love and welcome.
"Are you ready for this, Teddy?"
"Yes, I am very excited to play with David again," said
the bear. He was one of a stock of bears held in the production unit, primed with memory rerun. "I missed him very much. David
and I used to have such fun together, once."
"That's good. Well, then, let's bring David back to life,
shall we?"
Yet the men still hesitated. They had done manually what
was generally performed automatically.
Teddy beamed. "Hooray! Where we lived before it was always
summer. Until the end. Then it was winter."
"Well, it's spring now," said Shiggle. Henry hit the charge
button. The figure of David jerked. His right hand automatically pulled away the connecting cable. He opened his eyes.
He sat up, His hands went up to his head. His expression
was one of amazement. "Daddy! What a strange dream I had. I never had a dream before..."
"Welcome back, David, my boy," said Henry.
Embracing the child, he lifted David off the bench. David
and Teddy stared at each other in wonder. Then they fell into each others arms.
It was almost human.
