An xt called stanley, p.11
An XT Called Stanley, page 11
“You know,” Stanley said, smiling at Jean, “your bag reminds me of a science fiction story I read by Robert Heinlein. One of the characters in the story had a box whose inside dimensions were larger than its outside dimensions. Naturally I knew such a thing couldn’t exist. But Jean, maybe you should check your bag. Maybe you have just such a contraption there.”
We all laughed.
We discussed all sorts of things at these lunches, like one day Stanley asked us when we thought we had grown up.
“I never grew up,” Rick proclaimed. “My older sister kept telling me to act my age. I finally told her I couldn’t act that well.”
“I think you start to feel grown up when an adult turns to you for help or confides a real worry,” Jean said.
“Or when you realize that if you’re sick you’ll have to clean it up yourself,” I said.
“I don’t know if you ever feel completely grown up,” Jill Matthews admitted.
At one lunch we discussed losers, not just people who are shy or out of it, but people who insist on being disliked by all. It seemed each of us including Sister Taylor had had an encounter with such a person. Jean’s had been at camp.
“There was one girl in my cabin whom everybody hated,” Jean recounted. “I felt sorry for her and I tried to be her friend. Then the other girls denounced me for associating with her. But the crowning blow came when she turned on me to curry favor with the other girls.”
“Sometimes you just can’t win,” Stanley said philosophically.
“That’s nothing,” Sally Haskins chimed in. “In High School there was this real creep who kept trying to date me. I finally agreed to go out with him. He never showed up and the next day it was all around the school that I’d slept with him.”
“Suppose I wanted to act like a real creep,” Stanley asked. “What should I do?”
Sally laughed. “Just act natural,” she said.
Looking back at those lunches I see that Stanley directed the conversation far more than any of us realized. He had a way of brushing aside the usual discussions of TV shows or the political questions of the day. Instead of talking about the things we had in common we talked about the things that made us different. Mostly we talked about things that had happened to us on Earth.
With the passing weeks Max’s apparent cordiality toward Stanley began to wear thin. The secrets of the universe were not forthcoming. Stanley talked with some of the scientists working on the fusion drive project, but only in general terms.
“I’ve given you phone access to New Hope,” Max told Stanley, “at some personal cost. If Seth French knew what I’ve done he’d try to get me arrested. Now, if I don’t have something to show Reems from the Federal Security Agency, he may turn you over to French.”
“Can I talk to Mr. Reems?” Stanley asked.
“No, absolutely not. For your own good it’s vital that we get information on the fusion drive.”
“But I have helped,” Stanley objected. “Dr. Kelly said I’ve been a great help.”
“We’re not interested in chitchat,” Max said. “Tell us how to build a fusion drive.”
“But that would ruin their fun,” Stanley objected. “They’re making good progress. Would you like me to make your famous programmed amplifier obsolete?”
“The Federal Security Agency expects information on the fusion drive,” Max said evenly. “If they don’t get it soon your phoning days will be over.”
“So be it,” Stanley said. He walked over to his bookcase and took down an old leather-bound book which he started reading. Max walked out leaving me alone with Stanley.
“Why does Stanley refuse to cooperate?” Max asked Tom at lunch that day.
“You know perfectly well why he won’t,” Tom said with a sharpness that I had never heard him use with Max.
“No, I don’t,” Max said, holding out his hands in a gesture of innocence.
“Face it, Max. Stanley doesn’t feel any gratitude toward you.”
“Without me he wouldn’t exist.”
“Stanley doesn’t see it that way,” Tom said. “The purpose of this message was to make contact with the whole world. And we’ve kept him imprisoned.”
“Imprisoned,” Max said. “I suppose you advocate letting him loose on the whole world.”
“All right,” Tom said, “I’ll admit it. I’ve gone native.”
I looked at Tom. “Gone native?” I asked.
“It’s well known,” Tom began, “that the ambassador to a foreign country doesn’t speak the language and even if he does he plays it down. When an ambassador attends a formal meeting he uses an interpreter, even if he’s fluent, because it gives him time to think and later if he wants to retract something he can always blame the interpreter. An ambassador is supposed to keep aloof. The worst thing he can do is go native. He’s supposed to represent the United States to the country in question and not the other way around.”
“Okay,” Max said. “We understand the terminology. You’ve gone native.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Why don’t you face it,” Tom said. “Stanley is smarter than you. You can’t use him for your own purposes. If anything good is to come out of this project it is you who will have to cooperate with him.”
“So you’ve sold out,” Max said. “You’ve sold out to a collection of logic circuits. Logic circuits that I had built.”
“Have it your way,” Tom said. “I’m going home.”
“Going home?” I repeated.
“I like to check in with my family every year or so,” Tom said.
Tom was going home. I felt betrayed. Max’s inner circle of people he consulted had been constantly shrinking. Rick Hyland had been excluded just after I arrived, then Roger Steward and now Tom was leaving. To make matters worse, Seth French had returned to New Hope. He and a committee of scientists were demanding that they take over the Sagittarius project. They already had all our recordings of the alien message. This was hardly a great victory for them since we still had Stanley.
This was not a happy time. Christmas at New Hope is something to be avoided. Jean was depressed at spending her second Christmas away from home. I was with her when she called her parents on Christmas eve. When her mother said something about the stockings in the attic they were both in tears. Then there were the wild New Year’s parties which didn’t help things. Sex became the issue between Jean and me.
Stanley began coming on to me like he was Jean’s older brother. “Why do you try to hide your involvement with Jean from Max,” he asked me one day while I was in the computer room.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Remember yesterday, when Max was here and Jean came in. She started to say something to you and you looked at her with your eyebrows drawn together.” Stanley imitated the expression. “Jean ended saying something completely different than what she started to say.”
“I remember you asked her what she started to say. You shouldn’t pry all the time.”
“Why didn’t you want Max to know she’d left something in your apartment?”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to dismiss the subject.
“Do you know that you and Jean are very communicative? If I tell one of you something the next day the other knows it. That’s not true for other couples. If I tell Sheila Towers something, John Bruno often doesn’t learn of it and they’re living together.”
“We talk while they screw.”
“You sound angry.”
“Jean won’t have sex with me.”
“Why not?”
“She’s waiting for Mr. Right.”
Stanley looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“That’s an expression for the one man in her life, the man she’s going to marry.”
“I know the expression,” Stanley said. “But isn’t that you? Who else could it be?”
For Stanley it was simple, but he didn’t understand that Jean was living in the twentieth century. Her attitudes about sex were enough to scare any man off. Fred Gillman who had dated her before I took her out of circulation had spotted it. “I didn’t want to get involved with her,” he had told me. “She’s not the kind of girl you mess around with.”
I remember just about this time I had a classic dream. Most of my dreams are confused and certainly not anything a psychiatrist would want to illustrate. But this dream was truly packed with Freudian imagery. In the dream I was back on Earth, probably in Cambridge, but the place wasn’t important. There was a girl who was having difficulty carrying two bags of groceries. Offering to help, I took the bags and followed her to her apartment. The entrance to her apartment was off a small courtyard. I was standing at the top of the steps holding the grocery bags while she was fumbling for the key when I noticed there was a huge snake in the courtyard. The snake was intently watching a small cat playing with a leaf under a large tree. Every now and then the cat would turn and snarl at the snake and the snake would back off. Then a bird landed near by. The cat’s attention was completely drawn to the bird. I wanted to cry out a warning but it was too late. The snake struck. The cat turned blue and I awoke in a sweat.
I called Stanley. I knew he’d be up. He listened with interest.
“I don’t think Jean is going to bite you,” Stanley said when I was through.
“You’ve got it all wrong. The cat is a female symbol.”
“Have it your way,” Stanley said with a shrug. “Where does that leave you?”
“Well…”
“Why don’t you ask Jean to marry you and save yourself a lot of trouble?”
“I don’t know if I want to get married.”
“You don’t want to give up all the good times you’re having as a bachelor?”
I didn’t know if Stanley was being sarcastic or not. I hadn’t told him of my lack of experience.
“I don’t know if we’re compatible,” I said.
Stanley looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“Sexually,” I added.
“Bob,” Stanley asked, “is Jean distant with you? Does she keep you at arm’s length?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Would you describe her as a cold passionless person?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t she try to please you? If she’s busy with something does she tell you to get lost if you have a problem?”
“No.”
“And do you think sex is different from everything else?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Jean’s not the sort of woman who’s going to have headaches. She loves you and she wants to make you happy. She’s been saving herself for you. And you’re being a fool. You’re like a child who’s determined to smash his own piggy bank when all the time he has the key.”
Despite Stanley’s injunction, I was a fool. My head was filled with the canonical drivel about sex and relationships and being realistic and adult. Everybody else was getting it and why shouldn’t I? Jean and I argued and then I went into a brooding period when I became quite distant. I avoided being alone with Jean and when I kissed her, it was in an almost perfunctory manner. Jean didn’t stand for it long.
“What the hell’s the matter?” she asked me when we got to my apartment.
“Nothing.”
“Do I have bad breath?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to pressure you,” I said.
“Damn you,” she said, and walked out.
Then I made a really clever move. I drove my fist into the wall of my apartment breaking the vacuum gap in a rather dramatic fashion. Glass sprayed all over the place but I was uncut. I think I was almost disappointed.
After I called a maintenance tree and arranged to have the damage repaired, Stanley called.
“What have you been doing to your apartment?” he asked.
“I accidentally hit the wall.”
“You had a fight with Jean.”
“Leave me alone,” I yelled. “Leave me alone.”
I was miserable through the next day. Around dinner time Jean came by to pick me up at my office. After dinner we went back to my apartment and had a couple of drinks. I think Jean decided to give in with the hopes that things would get better, But they got worse. I hurt her getting in and she pushed me aside. Then she cried and begged me to come back. But I was scared. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. If I’d only come back and put my arms around her things might have been all right. But I decided the experiment was a failure. I walked her back to her dorm in silence.
The next day I tried to pretend nothing had happened. Jean and I ate dinner with her friends from church and afterwards we went back to the Institute. We spoke hardly a word. She went to the main office to type and I went to my office. Around twenty two hundred, Stanley called me.
“Why are you still here?” he asked.
“I’ve got work to do.”
“Bob, please let me help.”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“Can’t you tell me what happened?”
“I don’t want to discuss it.”
“Bob…”
“Leave me alone,” I said.
I worked until one-thirty. When I came out of my office I saw that Jean had left. I started back to my apartment alone when I saw Rick in the hall.
“Bob, the signal has stopped,” Rick announced.
“What?” I said.
“The Federal Security Agency stopped jamming so I could check the signal for any change. But I couldn’t find it. The signal has stopped.”
Now there was no way to build another Stanley.
CHAPTER IV Debut
You may not use obscene or erotic language on the phone. You may not use the visual line if you are not properly attired. You may not use the phone to transmit any material of an offensive nature. If you receive a call that violates any of these rules it is your duty to report it immediately. Simply punch 666-666. From that point on the Communications Office will record the call. Prompt action will be taken against persons who misuse Communication equipment.
Marking the walls of alleys or corridors is a serious offense. If you see anyone defacing public halls it is your duty to report it.
From “New Hope Rules and Regulations”.
To the untrained observer the rules and regulations of New Hope may appear oppressive, but their purpose is far more subtle. These regulations give people who feel a need to get out their rebellious tendencies an opportunity to “defy authority” without endangering the general safety. In New Hope a great show is made of the apprehending and trial of persons guilty of these minor offenses while anyone even suspected of a truly serious offense such as the violation of the fire regulations is quietly deported.
From “The Psychology of Isolated Communities”.
The next day Congresswoman Miller from the state of Oregon arrived. She was a junior member of the Congressional Committee on Extraterrestrial Resources. In connection with this she had decided to make a visit to New Hope possibly with the idea of stirring up controversy and getting some free publicity.
I was in my office around ten o’clock when the director’s secretary, Janet Filmore, called. “Dr. Trebor,” she began, “there’s a Congresswoman Miller here to see the director, but Dr. Schwartz is tied up at the moment. Could you come and talk to her?”
“Wouldn’t Max or somebody else be more appropriate?”
“Dr. Stanton isn’t in.”
I was annoyed at having her dumped on me but I agreed to come. When I got there I was almost bowled over. Congresswoman Miller was a real stunner. Sally Haskins suddenly seemed plain in comparison.
“This is Dr. Trebor,” Janet began.
The Congresswoman came forward and quickly introduced herself. “I’m Karen Miller,” she said, holding out her hand. She had a definite presence. I shook her hand with a sense of rising excitement.
“Can I show you around till Carl gets back?” I offered.
“That would be very kind of you.”
“Is there anything in particular you wanted to see?” I asked as we were leaving Janet’s office.
“When do you expect Dr. Stanton to arrive?” she said, looking at her watch.
“By lunch time.”
“Oh,” she said uncertainly. “Are you cleared to discuss the Sagittarius project?”
“Certainly,” I said. “You’ve come to see Stanley.”
“Stanley,” she said uncertainly.
“Stanley’s just a nickname we’ve given him.” A white-coated lab technician was approaching us so I discontinued the conversation.
“My schedule is a little tight, if I could see it now it would be a great help, but perhaps you’re not authorized.”
“I’m authorized,” I volunteered.
The computer room door opened with a touch of my bracelet. I escorted her over to the couch. “This is Stanley,” I announced, gesturing toward Stanley. “This is Congresswoman Miller.”
I indicated Stanley’s sensing plate. I took her hand and started to place it on the sensing plate. She pulled her hand away as though I was about to press it on a hot stove.
“What the hell?” she said.
“This is how you shake hands with Stanley,” I said.
“Where are you?” Congresswoman Miller asked, looking at Stanley.
“I’m sorry,” Stanley answered. “I’m not supposed to say.”
Miller turned on me. “Where is he?”
“Oh, no,” I said, “I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“This is secret,” I blurted out.
I realized I’d really done it. I could just imagine how pleased Max would be to find out that I’d told a Congresswoman about Stanley.
“What’s going on here?” Miller demanded.
I just stood there hoping the floor would open up.
“Look. I represent the people. I’m on the Committee of Extraterrestrial Resources. I have a right to know what is going on here.”
“You’ll have to promise to keep it a secret,” I said weakly.
“I’ll promise nothing till I know what’s going on.”
“This project is under the Federal Security Agency,” I said with the conviction of someone who has hit upon the correct bureaucratic principle.
