Penrose was not as clear as he had been. “Be sure my message gets through,” he said.
The androids were gone and the door closed.
There was a wet sound now. A waterfall it sounded like. And soft organ music began to fill the room.
Penrose tried to remember. He couldn’t quite believe that Harrison was right. That he was with the Welfare Squad, with the Efficiency Detail.
It didn’t seem to him that he could have been a part of a setup like this. Not at all.
A silver tube slid up out of the floor, then another. A gas with a faint floral odor was being released.
Penrose drifted back in the chair.
The room was doing a smooth job of termination.
“Very efficient,” said Penrose.
Sixty-five was a sort of comeback year for robopsychology. There were three other stories that missed inclusion here by the thinnest of margins: Robert L. Fish’s “Sonny” in F&SF, and another of Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker stories, “What T and I Did” from If, and Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Nail and the Oracle” in Playboy. Goulart himself did another which tempted me: “Badinage” in Bill Nolan’s anthology The Pseudo-People—a very funny story, much more typical of Goulart’s usual vein than “Terminal.”
According to the resumé sent on by his agent, Goulart has: . . . written ads and commercials about beer, dog food, margarine, ice cream and peanut butter. He has drawn an advertising strip about cigars, written and directed a radio quiz show heard on two stations in upstate New York and turned out a newspaper which ran on the back of breakfast-food boxes.
Oddly enough—I mean, would you expect it from an ice-cream, dog-food, peanut-butter, and breakfast-food man?—”Terminal” is the only story in this volume that makes any noticeable use of “psychic” drugs.
With the newspapers rampaging on their demi-decade crusade against drug decadence in the colleges and universities, with a special Time-Life report on The Drug Takers, and whole shelves of books devoted to LSD—where, I wonder, are all the stories on psychedelics? There has been a scattering in the magazines, but the only one I recall lingering over was Henry Slesar’s “Melodramine” in Playboy.
Ah well, perhaps next year . . .
Meantime, we are beginning to get a kind of story which might even constitute a renascence of “solid science fiction”—the educated-psychology (or sci-chology?) story, as distinct from the truism that all fiction above the hackest level is “psychological fiction.”
THE PLOT
TOM HERZOG
The scrambled eggs gave Filmore a bad case of indigestion. At the office that morning he was quite sick and had to take something to quiet his stomach. He came home early and assailed his wife as soon as he got inside the door.
“What the hell did you do to those eggs this morning, Elvira?” he demanded. “I damn near puked all over my desk. Just made it to the washroom in time.”
Mrs. Filmore looked down at the floor.
“They tasted all right to me,” she said quietly. She was small, quiet by nature, and blended in well with the walls. “Perhaps you ate too fast, George. You’re not as young as you used to be, and you shouldn’t eat too fast.”
Filmore looked at his paunch. After all, he was on the wrong side of fifty. On the other hand, his health was good and he felt like a king. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had an attack of indigestion.
“Hogwash!” he roared. “What time are we having supper?”
“At five,” said Mrs. Filmore, “if that’s all right with you.”
“I’m going to shave,” he said, ignoring her. He shaved twice a day with his electric razor, once before going to the office in the morning and once before supper. He had a remarkably fertile crop of whiskers, and since, as an advertising man, he believed in the value of appearances, he shaved them off twice a day.
In the bathroom he plugged in his electric razor and examined his beard in the mirror. He was about to begin shaving when his razor spoke to him.
“I would like a word with you,” it said.
“What the hell. . . ! !” said Filmore, dropping it into the sink as if it had burned his hand.
“Please be civil,” said the razor. “I’m trying to do you a service.”
“Are you really talking?” Filmore asked, in the face of the fact.
“Of course I’m talking,” replied the razor. “Do you see anyone else about?”
Filmore glanced around the room. He peered out into the hallway.
“No, I don’t,” he said at last.
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, would you mind getting me out of here?” said the razor.
Filmore cautiously picked up his razor.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “How . . . ?”
“That’s not important. What’s really important is that I’m trying to warn you. Your life is in danger.”
“My life?”
“Yes, your life. Your wife is trying to kill you.”
At this, Filmore guffawed.
“Please keep your voice down,” said the razor.
“Elvira try to kill me? Come off it. Elvira is a titmouse.”
“You’re not very observant, are you?” said the razor. “How did you like your eggs this morning?”
“My eggs?”
“Yes, your eggs.”
“Oh. . . . Those eggs.”
“Those eggs.”
“What are you driving at?” Filmore demanded.
“Do eggs usually upset your stomach?” the razor countered.
“No, but I’m getting old. I’m past fifty.”
“That’s what your wife said.”
“So what?” Filmore said angrily. A seed had been sown in his mind.
“Lower your voice,” said the razor. “Do you want your wife to hear you?”
“No,” replied Filmore, quietly.
“Now, then,” the razor continued, “think back. Exactly what was your wife doing when you entered the kitchen this morning?”
Filmore strained his memory.
“I remember now. Her back was turned, then very suddenly she whirled around.”
“Does your wife usually whirl around when you come into the kitchen?”
“No,” said Filmore, passively. “She doesn’t whirl around anytime.”
“Have you any idea what she was doing with her back turned to you when you came into the kitchen?”
“Well, I ... I assume she was putting a little salt or pepper on my eggs.”
“Of course. It had to be either salt or pepper, didn’t it?”
“Well, what do you think it was?” said Filmore. He was prefacing most of his statements with “well” now.
“Whatever it was,” said the razor, “she didn’t finish putting it on, did she?”
“Well. ... No, she didn’t,” Filmore said.
“And so we return to the original question,” said the razor, summing up. “Can you think of any good reason why your eggs should have upset your stomach this morning when they haven’t done so for years and years?”
“Now look,” Filmore said, “I know she was putting either salt or pepper on those eggs. I remember, now, seeing the shaker in her hand. Now that I think about it, I clearly remember seeing a shaker in her hand,” he insisted.
“Do you think that salt and pepper are the only substances that might be found in salt- and pepper-shakers?” the razor asked.
“We can settle this matter once and for all,” Filmore said with authority. “I’ll just go and see what is in the salt- and pepper-shakers.”