The Trouble with Machines

The long-legged blonde on the chrome motor scooter seemed to have a fever. As she blurred into the fog on the coastal highway, Bill Majors drove his Volkswagen bus into the back end of a produce truck. The little bus quivered and buckled slightly, hopped ahead when the truck made a stalling stop. In the shadowed storage area behind Bill, the sky-blue refrigerator he was hauling fell over backward and made an angry sound.

"Oh, boy," Bill said and hit his own brakes hard.

The refrigerator got itself upright and, after a faint whir, handed Bill a yellow note.

"Not now," said Bill. He clicked off the engine of his bus.

The vanguard of a motorcycle gang shot out of the fog behind Bill and rear-ended the bus. The refrigerator toppled forward and slammed against Bill's shoulder.

"Take it easy, Maximo," said Bill.

The blue refrigerator snorted and got itself standing again. It whirred and slipped Bill another note.

Bill wouldn't read the messages. "Don't do this in front of people," he said, straight-lipped. The first two words of the top message were, "You schmuck!"

The produce-truck driver had a languid face. He rested his large hands on the window ledge beside Bill. "You didn't come talk to me, so I'll come and talk to you."

"This fog," said Bill.

"My cases of soybeans and kelp are all topsy-turvy," said the driver, scratching at the freckled skin below the rolled-up cuffs of his plaid shirt.

The leader of the motorcycle gang came and stood beside the truck driver. "Don't let the death's-heads and red devils on our outfits fool you. I'm David G. Germershausen and that's my high school civics class back there. Our project today is to dress up like a band of roving speedway hoodlums. Afterward we'll have a picnic lunch."

"I got distracted by all this fog," said Bill. "Sorry." The refrigerator was poking him on the shoulder with a new note. "Now I'll just get out my insurance plate and we can send a report in on the nearest telephone slot."

"Your refrigerator has little arms and hands," said the produce-truck driver. "Is that new in refrigerators?"

"Yes, it is." Bill gave the refrigerator a negative hunch. "Won't be in the stores until, oh, a couple of years. Until 1976 at the earliest. This is a test model."

"Could I bring the kids over for a look?" asked Germershausen. He twisted one of the jewels in the eye of his coat's front skull. "They're very interested in gadgetry."

"No, actually," Bill told him, "this machine is sort of secret and when the front office learns about even this little incident, I'll be really criticized." He reached into the left-hand breast pocket of his driving tunic and took out an identification packet. "Yes, here are all my insurance cards. The pile-up was my fault. I'll mark the responsibility square, there. Do you have a phone in your truck? We can slot this right to the insurance company and let them make the report to the highway patrol."

"Sure," said the truck driver. "Then we can all resume our journeys." A silver trailer swung by, honking angrily. The produce-truck driver thumbed his nose, then took the insurance charge plate and cards. "I'll handle it, Mr. Netcher. Charles Netcher is your name, huh? They call you Charlie?"

"Chuck," said Bill.

"Your Volks going to run OK?" asked Germershausen as the driver returned to his truck.

Bill turned on the switch and the electric engine hummed. "Sounds fine. You're sure your pupils are all in good shape?"

"Yes." The refrigerator dropped another note over Bill's shoulder and the teacher asked, "What are the little memos for?"

"Household hints," said Bill. "Another new feature. Also confidential." The yellow note in his lap read: You dumb nitwit! You've probably blown the whole thing. Get us the hell out of here and stop shooting the breeze!

Germershausen adjusted the bill of his cap and nodded. "Yes, my wife would like that. What company is going to put this baby on the market?"

"That," said Bill, "I'm not at liberty to say."

"Well, can I give you my home address and have you send my wife a brochure in 1976?"

"Fine," said Bill.

The refrigerator snorted.

• • •

Fifteen miles from the gate of the Carlquist Estate, the big blue refrigerator began shuffling restlessly and exuding wispy yellow smoke. After a full minute of that, the machine shot out a hand and gave Bill a note.

"I told you I can't read when I'm driving." Bill hunched and squinted through the thick Pacific fog. He was 100 miles down the coast from the Carmel laboratory of Dr. Jack Mackinson; and before he could complete his mission, in Southern California, he had to stop at the eclectic hilltop estate of Con Carlquist. The delay couldn't be avoided. Carlquist, who controlled Bogman/Carlquist Appliances, was funding this whole operation and had insisted on a look at Maximo. Maximo was what Dr. Mackinson called the refrigerator.

Bill dropped his glance for an instant, returned to studying the blurred road. "Hey," he said and grabbed up the latest note.

The memo (continued on page 124)The Trouble with Machines(continued from page 105) said, "Don't drive so fast! I'm carsick."

"Carsick?" asked Bill. "How can you be any kind of sick? You're a machine. A robot built to look like a refrigerator."

"I have feelings," said the next note. "Don't talk to me so harshly."

"Me harsh? You've been dropping nasty remarks since we left Mackinson's damn lab."

"Everyone yearns to communicate. Don't scorn me for having a deep need to express my thoughts and emotions."

To get a machine such as Maximo-- at present, anyway, though Bogman/ Carlquist was working on it--you had to deal with eccentric people like Dr. Mackinson. The doctor had programed a lot of useless stuff into Maximo's brain. Including the entire contents of the Great Books. And Dr. Mackinson had built into Maximo someplace inside himself the ability to print notes, to make comments. Another useless function; but you couldn't argue with the mavericks like Dr. Mackinson.

Bill watched the far lane of the six-lane speedway for some guidepost to indicate they should turn off for Carlquist. Finally he asked the machine, "Did that crash we had hurt you, Maximo?"

"Maximo is a harsh name. A fittingly brutal name for a killer."

"Don't start having qualms already." Bill saw Carlquist Private Estate Next Left No Admittance in the rolling mist and swung the Volkswagen bus carefully into the leftmost lane. "The crash joggled you, didn't it? Because, look, you're a machine. A machine we want to do just one simple thing for us, Maximo."

"The trouble with machines," said Maximo's next note, "is that they don't care."

The stopping at the Carlquist Estate was slowing the whole job down and now Maximo might even need repairs. That damned muckraker Lionel Mitchum was sitting in his testing center in Santa Riorita Beach, ready to rip the lid the rest of the way off the whole appliance business. And here was Maximo, built to solve the problem. Getting them together, though, was taking much too long.

"Death and killing," printed Maximo. "The oldest profession. My soul sickens when I realize what I am being thrust into."

Bill didn't answer. The little bus began climbing the pebbled road that wound uphill to guarded walls of Con Carlquist's estate. Eucalyptus trees and transplanted redwoods framed the tight twisting roadway. Maximo handed over two more notes and Bill ignored them. He was hoping the robot would joggle back to normal before the interview. The road was bumpy enough.

Bill stopped the bus too close to the solid-beam gates and that made the guard drop the taco he'd been eating. The green-uniformed man let the taco stay in the ferns along the high stone wall. He snatched up a burp gun from the kitchen stool beside him and approached Bill.

"Sorry," Bill said out into the tumbling fog.

"Easy," said the mustached guard. "Keep the mitts in sight, buster. No fancy stuff or I start dealing out death with my roscoe."

"I thought it was pistols they called roscoes," said Bill. "I'm Bill Majors. The entrance password is: 019/141/198/572."

The guard grinned, lowering the gun barrel. "2004/218/241. Is that the countersign?"

"240 at the end. Otherwise, OK."

"Welcome aboard, Mr. Majors. Lunch is in half an hour." He tilted his head, his misted mustache serving as a pointer. "I guess she, up atop the wall there, distracted you and caused you to almost drive into me and send me crashing through the hot hinges of the Devil's domain. Am I correct?"

Sitting on the wall, with her long bare legs hanging over the edge, was the feverish blonde who had caused Bill to get distracted before and drive into the soybean truck. "How can she sit up there? Isn't there broken glass on top?"

"She's Beverly Lee Tate," the guard explained. "Mr. Carlquist's private secretary. Watch out for her, Mr. Majors, because dames can be deadly."

"You must read a lot of--"

"Hard-boiled detective stories. Right. I have my own facsimile printer in my quarters. I buy four a day. Well, you'd best drive on in."

"But how does she manage to sit up there?"

"Had me clear a place for her. Nobody argues with Beverly Lee Tate. She likes to lounge up there and watch if any young fellows drive up to the gates, though they seldom do."

"Oh," said Bill. He started the bus and rolled onto the estate grounds after the guard had worked all the combination locks and swung the high thick gates slowly open.

• • •

Con Carlquist moved his wineglass and fingered a toggle beside his plate. "This is linked with our computer center in Santa Ana," he said across the stiff white lunch table to Bill. "We used to have to time-share our computers with a lending library in Gardena. When I assumed full control of Bogman/Carlquist, I smoothed functions out." He was tall, grinning, the wrinkles on his 60-year-old face white on his sunburned skin.

"I already know the Lionel Mitchum situation pretty well," said Bill. Carlquist's chair was in front of a glass wall showing the thick forests of the estate, the gingerbread guest chalets and the low geodesic storage warehouses. The mist spun and danced in the wind from the forest. Bill turned away from Carlquist and the view.

Beverly Lee Tate smiled at him. She had a miniaturized conference recorder sitting in the palm of one slender warm hand and she was stroking it absently, the way you stroke a pet lizard. "We don't need any more info input, Con. Forget about whatever else our computers have on file. Mr. Majors has outlined the how and why of things. I think his ideas for getting Maximo into Lionel Mitchum's private testing lab are fine. Provided we can be sure the key man on the consumer board is working for us."

"He is, certainly," said Bill. "We have his written agreement. It's even notarized."

"Wasn't that risky?" asked Carlquist.

"He had his own notary seal," explained Bill. "Mr. Carlquist, as soon as you inspect Maximo, I know you'll be more than satisfied."

"That's right, Con," said the blonde girl.

"You play tennis a lot?" Bill asked her.

"No, not at all. I just like to wear shorts."

"That Lionel Mitchum," said Carlquist, his grin expanding and contracting. "That no-good muckraking bastard. We can't afford to have that book of his, that Infernal Machines, come out. His magazine articles have done us enough harm. Bogman/Carlquist can't drop any further. If only the Government had cooperated more openly. We've had seven decades of these guys. Steffens. Sinclair, Packard and Nader, and still Washington won't give us a law against muckraking. Well, nobody's going to do Bogman/Carlquist dirt."

"We all agree, Con," said Beverly Lee. "The solution Mr. Majors has come up with is excellent."

"Actually," said Bill, "the solution is a joint effort of myself and my superiors in the trouble-shooting department of the San Francisco office of Bogman/Carlquist. We all worked on the research and the tracking down and negotiating with Dr. Mackinson."

"What's Dr. Mackinson like?" asked the blonde Beverly Lee.

"He's short," said Bill.

"The man's made a half dozen other robots," said Carlquist, "for similar jobs, as I understand."

"Right," said Bill, "and each one has been successful. Once we place Maximo in Lionel Mitchum's testing rooms, we're set. To our muckraking friend, Maximo will appear on the surface to be a regular 1974-model refrigerator, sky-blue shade."

"The industry is calling that shade bluebell blue this year." corrected Carlquist.

"Sorry, yes, bluebell blue. So Lionel Mitchum thinks Maximo is simply another dangerous shoddy appliance, a target for his forthcoming exposé book."

"However," said Beverly Lee. "Maximo only seems to be a refrigerator. He's also a highly mobile robot, with powerful hands and limbs. Programed to stalk, hunt and kill."

"To kill only Mitchum," said Carlquist. "Isn't that right, Majors?"

Bill hesitated. Dr. Mackinson was vague. Bill's superiors had hinted that Maximo had done something to one of Dr. Mackinson's part-time cleaning women during the testing stages. Bill hadn't favored driving over 400 miles with Maximo, but it fit in with the carefully constructed cover stories they'd built. "Yes, that's correct, Mr. Carlquist."

"Very good." The grin flexed. "We'll take care of Lionel Mitchum. And Maximo is also designed, I have been led to believe, to destroy Mitchum's files and burn down the guy's whole setup. All of which will give the outside world the notion Lionel Mitchum went too far in testing some dubious appliance and got himself frizzled."

Beverly Lee rose, knifing one slender arm straight into the air and stretching so her breasts rose under the tennis jersey. "The public will realize you shouldn't mess around too much with machines, that you should simply accept them."

"Let's get out to your van now and take a good look at this Maximo," said Carlquist. "If you've had enough lunch."

"Perhaps a little more tempura?" asked Beverly Lee.

"Since you're all standing," Bill said, getting up, "we can go now."

"Excellent," said the warm girl.

The Volkswagen bus was parked beneath a thick dark tree and circled by chill mist. "You understand." Bill said as they approached, "Maximo may be surly. It's tied in with the killer instinct."

"All the better," said Carlquist.

Beside the blonde girl, Bill asked, "Aren't you cold without a coat?"

"No. My body temperature always remains an even one hundred. Cold never bothers me."

Bill opened the back of the bus. Maximo was not there. "He's run off," mumbled Bill. He reached in and picked up the yellow note resting where Maximo had stood.

"He really is mobile," said Carlquist.

Beverly Lee Tate took the note out of Bill's hand. " 'Goodbye to all this!' What's that mean. Bill?"

"Well," said Bill.

• • •

The mustached guard raised his flash and searchlighted the thick night fog. "Did Carlquist give you a tongue-lashing?" he asked Bill.

"Not exactly." But if they didn't find Maximo soon, Bill's job with the San Francisco office of Bogman/Carlquist wouldn't be there anymore.

A party of six assorted Carlquist Estate employees passed Bill's group of five. "Anything?" asked the mustached guard, whose name was Greyfriar.

"We checked storage warehouse number one and storage warehouse number two," called the associate gardener. "No sign. You?"

"Nothing yet."

A pastry chef shivered. "I don't like it. A crazy refrigerator roaming the grounds. It's spooky."

Bill shook his head. He had wanted to search for Maximo by himself. Too many people meant a chance of a leak. But Con Carlquist was mad, and anxious and willing to risk security for results. "He's really harmless." Bill told the two parties of men. "Things have been built up out of proportion."

Leaves crackled downhill and another guard came running up through the trees. "Good Lord!" he said.

"What?" asked Greyfriar.

"Good Lord, good Lord!"

"He's seen something creepy," said the pastry chef, shining his lantern on the shaking guard.

"He got Curly," said the guard.

"Curly?"

"That refrigerator got Curly," said the thin man, his head ticking. "Good Lord! The refrigerator broke into Curly's quarters and strangled him with those funny little hands. Good Lord! I saw it through the open door. There was no time to save Curly, so I escaped by way of the rumpus-room window."

"Is the machine still down there?" asked Greyfriar, his mustache pointing.

"He set fire to the chalet me and Curly and Buck live in. You can just barely see it if the fog lifts. Downhill, blazing like a bonfire. We'd better get it put out before the fire spreads."

"That refrigerator," said the pastry chef. "It's gone too far now. Let's forget about capturing it. We should smash it good, knock it down and jump up and down on it and rip out its works and scatter them."

"Now, wait," put in Bill. "Mr. Carlquist wants Maximo found, not destroyed."

"You didn't see Curly, buddy," said the thin guard.

"Let's get that damn thing," someone yelled. "Damn lousy machine."

"First we get the fire under control," said Greyfriar. "Then we can run that fridge to ground and fix it for good."

"No, now," said Bill. "It's awfully expensive, remember." He moved aside as the men began to run down through the misty forest. "Use discretion with him," he called. He'd have to find Maximo himself and talk him back into the bus.

Beyond the woods were more chalets and storage domes. The first dome Bill searched was filled with Carlquist's past hobbies. Cardboard boxes packed with foreign-stamp approval sheets, knick-knack shelves thick with crystal cats, packing crates overflowing with stuffed birds and the articulated skeletons of reptiles. But no Maximo. Bill wandered through and around the dusty dome, his flashlight swinging slowly in his hand. Outside, he could hear, at a distance, the search parties fighting the chalet fire. As he left the storage dome, the wind suddenly blew the fog high above the treetops and Bill noticed an apple orchard to his left. He entered it, calling softly, "Maximo."

Fog was seeping down thick through the tree branches again. A red-and-yellow lady apple rolled across the soft ground and bonked Bill's ankle. Off on the left, a muffled whir sounded and something tapped cautiously against the bark of a tree. "Maximo, is that you?" Bill asked carefully. He moved toward the subdued humming. "Don't make too much noise, if that is you, because there are bunches of guys out there who want to dismantle you."

He bumped into something blue. Bill felt with the palm of his hand. A tiny arm caught his sleeve and gave him a yellow note. "Where am I?"

"What have you got now, amnesia? Don't you remember setting fire to Curly's chalet?"

Maximo produced another memo-sized note. "I don't remember anything after you made that dumb mistake and drove into the garbage truck."

"It was a produce truck. We haven't got time to debate the details now, though. You've been on a rampage and there are all kinds of guys running around this estate, looking for you with lanterns and torches." Bill took hold of one of Maximo's springy arms. "I don't know if I'll be able to talk them out of doing you violence, so we better try to sneak back to the main house. Carlquist should be able to keep anybody from hurting you."

"You're more worried about screwing up another job than you are about my welfare."

"No more note passing, Maximo. And try to whir as quietly as you can. Are you able to bend down some? Or at least hunker a little?"

The big blue refrigerator let itself fall forward and little running wheels appeared at its four corners. "Thanks to you, I have to crawl around a crab-apple orchard on my stomach."

Bill crumpled the note into his coat pocket. He listened, heard nothing of the search parties. "We'll head over that way, Maximo, through the trees and up by that row of chalets. This bunch of houses seems to be dark--nobody there. We can pick up the bridle paths and get the hell back to the big house. Want me to help you steer yourself?"

Maximo gave a growl and they started through the misty orchard. The robot had some trouble cornering but otherwise moved well in the horizontal position. They cleared the orchard and began climbing over thick wet grass, through tangles of dry-leaved underbrush. Bill realized the machine had halted when he stumbled over it.

A warm slender hand picked him off the turf. "Bill, come this way."

It was Beverly Lee Tate, still in tennis shorts and jersey. "I've got to get Maximo back to the main house," Bill told her.

"You won't be able to, the men are closing in." She pointed at the fog, half turning. "My chalet is just up there. Hurry, you can both hide there." She squeezed his hand, turned fully and hurried away.

"OK," agreed Bill. He nudged the refrigerator and Maximo stood upright and ran through the fog after Beverly Lee.

The long lean girl had turned on one low lamp in the rustic living room. "Bolt the door," she told Bill.

"If they look in here," Bill said after locking the door and closing the quail-print curtains, "it's going to look strange. With a big refrigerator standing in the middle of the living room."

The girl crossed to a redwood door and opened it, fingering on a faint bluish light. "Get in the kitchen, Maximo. Purloined-letter sort of logic. Nobody will notice a refrigerator in the kitchen, even an extra one. Hurry."

Maximo rolled across the Navaho rugs and into the kitchen. When the door closed on the machine, Bill could still see a strip of blue light along the floor. "It's warm in here," he said.

Beverly Lee lowered herself to a leather sofa, put her bare tan knees tight together and cupped them with her hands. "I worked out the heating system myself. It's--to simplify considerably--a sort of transistorized sauna system. I'm fond of steam."

Bill leaned as the girl raised herself. He kissed her. It was slightly unsettling, like standing too close to a sun lamp. He was moving his hand toward her waist when he heard a great ratcheting noise from the kitchen. "Hey," he said.

Beverly Lee cupped warm hands over his ears and kissed him again. "It's only Maximo settling in."

She stretched back on the leather sofa. Putting a knee on the middle cushion, Bill started to swing his other foot up off the floor. He stopped. From under the kitchen door, a small silver balance wheel came rolling. "A cogwheel just rolled out of your kitchen, Beverly Lee."

"Ignore it," the girl said softly.

The little wheel spun across one rug and collapsed on the second. Bill crossed and picked it up. "This looks like it could be part of Maximo." He held the wheel up to the girl. "Beverly Lee, is this part of Maximo?"

The girl sat up and folded her arms under her breasts. She shrugged.

Bill grabbed the knob and yanked the kitchen door open. A wide earth-brown stove scurried across the floor and, with tiny arms, stuffed scraps of metal into its open oven. "You can't," Bill started to say.

The stove stopped, back in place against the blue-lit wall. Its oven roared for a second with an intense flame. Through the view window, Bill witnessed the last of Maximo burn away.

"Your stove," he said at the doorway.

"Yes," replied Beverly Lee. "I built it about six months ago. I've done considerable research in the field of applied heat. I like warmth, as you know."

"A robot stove that can kill," said Bill.

"It doesn't kill people. I don't agree with Dr. Mackinson's notions about that," she said. "A machine that kills violates the rules of robotics, I feel. No, I built the stove in anticipation of Maximo."

"Oh, so?"

"If he hadn't gone goofy, I'd have had both of you in here hours ago."

"But Carlquist," said Bill. He went closer to the big stove. It said Hotpoint over its oven.

"I don't really work for Con Carlquist," said Beverly Lee. She leaned against the kitchen door jamb. "Companies like Bogman/Carlquist still don't have any use for a girl with my kind of quirky thermal notions. Nor do they have much in the way of ethics."

"Ethics? You just now murdered a pretty expensive machine."

"To keep it from going down and killing Lionel Mitchum," said the warm girl. "You seem to think that your kind of industrial espionage works only one way."

"You're--what did they call it in my business spying class--you're a double agent," Bill told her. "You're working here and for Mitchum, too."

"Of course. Lionel Mitchum didn't get where he is by being a sitting duck." She backed away. From behind the sofa she pulled a tan suitcase.

"Boy," said Bill, "how can I tell Bogman/Carlquist that a stove ate my refrigerator?"

"I have to get away now," said Beverly Lee.

"I guess I'm out of a job."

"Can I give you a ride anyplace?"

"I still have the VW bus."

"If you go back to get it, you'll have to talk to Con Carlquist."

"I suppose there are job opportunities around Santa Riorita Beach," Bill reflected. "That where you're heading?"

"Initially."

"Can we both fit on your motor scooter?"

"Sure. Come on."

Bill followed the girl out of the chalet. "I was thinking about leaving Bogman/ Carlquist after the first of the year, anyway."

Beverly Lee cut around the house to where her scooter was parked. They passed below the kitchen window and Bill noticed that the glass had been smashed out. In a rosebush, surrounded by a sprinkling of glass, was a small yellow memo. It must have been written by Maximo just before he was dismantled. Bill reached out and pulled the note free.

"Yes," Beverly Lee said, "maybe this is the chance you needed to really start that climb."

Bill read the message. "Another fine mess, you schmuck," it said. He folded it into his pocket and climbed onto the back of the motor scooter.