"Mindswap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sheckley Robert)

Chapter 8

They stood face to face, Flynn slack-jawed, McHonnery clam-mouthed. Several seconds of silence ensued. Then McHonnery said: 'Look, kid, this ain't no goddamned peep show and I ain't no goddamned freak. If you got something to say, spit it out. Otherwise take a walk for yourself before I break your back.'

Marvin could see at once that this man was no fawning, honey-mouthed body salesman. There was no hint of obsequiousness in that rasping voice, no trace of ingratiation in that downturned mouth. Here was a man who said what he wanted to say, and took no heed of the consequences.

'I – I am a client,' Flynn said.

'Big deal,' McHonnery harshed. 'Am I supposed to turn handsprings or something?'

His sardonic retort and blunt, inner-directed demeanour gave Flynn a sensation of confidence. He knew, of course, that appearances could be deceiving; but no one had ever told him what to judge by instead of appearances. He was inclined to trust this proud and bitter man.

'I am going to be dispossessed of this body in a matter of hours,' Marvin explained. 'Since my own body has been stolen, I am in desperate need of a substitute. I have very little money, but I – I am quite willing and prepared to work.'

McHonnery stared at him, and a sardonic grin twisted the man's tight lips. 'Prepared to work, huh? Ain't that nice! And just what are you prepared to work at?'

'Why – anything.'

'Yeah? Can you operate a Montcalm metal lathe with light-sensitive switchboard and manual cull? No? Think you could handle a Quick-Greeze Particle Separator for the Rare Earths Novelty Company? Not your sort of thing, huh? … I got a surgeon on Vega who wants somebody to run his Nerve-Impulse-Rejection Simulator (the old model with the double pedals). Not exactly what you had in mind? Well, we got a jazz band on Potemkin II which needs a stomach-horn man, and a restaurant near Boötes which could use a short-order cook, with working knowledge of Cthensis specialities. Doesn't ring a bell? Maybe you could pick flowers on Moriglia; of course, you'd have to be able to predict anthesis without more than a five-second variation. Or you could do spot-flesh-welding, if you've got the nerves for it, or boss a phylopod reclamation project, or draw up intermediate creeper systems, or – but I don't guess none of them strike your fancy, huh?'

Flynn shook his head and mumbled, 'I don't know anything about any of those jobs, sir.'

'Somehow,' McHonnery said, 'that doesn't surprise me as much as you might think. Is there anything you can do?'

'Well, in college I was studying-'

'Don't give me your goddamned life story! I'm interested in your trade, skill, talent, profession, ability, whatever you want to call it. What, specifically, can you do?'

'Well,' Marvin said, 'I guess when you put it that way, I can't do anything much.'

'I know,' McHonnery said, sighing. 'You're unskilled; it's written all over you. Kid, it may interest you to know that unskilled minds are common as dirt, commoner. The market's glutted with them, the universe is crammed to overflowing with them. It may interest you to know that there is nothing you can do that a machine can't do better, faster, and a damn sight more cheerfully.'

'I'm sorry to hear that, sir.' Marvin said, sadly but with dignity. He turned to go.

'Just a minute,' McHonnery said. 'I thought you wanted to work.'

'But you said-'

'I said you were unskilled, which you are. And I said that a machine can do anything you can do better, faster, and more cheerfully, but not more cheaply.'

'Oh.' Marvin said.

'Yep, in the cheapness department, you still got an edge over the gadgets. And that's quite an achievement in this day and age. I have always considered it one of the glories of mankind that, despite its best efforts, it has never completely succeeded in rendering itself superfluous. You see, kid, our instincts order us to multiply, while our intelligence commands us to conserve. We are like a father who bears many sons, but contrives to dispossess all but the eldest. We call instinct blind, but intelligence is equally so. Intelligence has its passions, its loves and its hates; woe to the logician whose superbly rational system does not rest upon a solid base of raw feeling. Lacking such a base, we call that man – irrational!'

'I never knew that,' Marvin said.

'Well, hell, it's obvious enough,' McHonnery said. 'The aim of intelligence is to put the whole goddamned human race out of work. Luckily, it can never be done. A man will outwork a machine any day in the week. In the brute-labour department, there'll always be opportunities for the unwanted.'

'I suppose there's a certain comfort in that,' Flynn said doubtfully. 'And of course, it's very interesting. But when Pengle the Squib told me to go see you, I thought-'

'Hey, how's that?' McHonnery said. 'You're a friend of the Squib?'

'You might say that,' Flynn said, thus avoiding an outright lie, since anyone might say anything whether it was true or not.

'You should have told me that in the first place,' McHonnery said. 'Not that it would have changed anything, since the facts are exactly as I have stated them. But I'd have told you that there's no shame in being unskilled; hell, all of us have to start out that way, don't we? If you do well on a Short-Shuffle contract, you'll pick up skills in no time.'

'I hope so, sir,' Flynn said, growing cautious now that McHonnery had become affable. 'Do you have a job in mind for me?'

'As a matter of fact, I do,' McHonnery said. 'It's a one-week Shuffle, which, even if you don't like it, you could do standing on your head. Not that you should have to, since it's a pleasant and compatible job, combining mild outdoor exercise with modest intellectual stimulation, all in a framework of good working conditions, an enlightened management, and a congenial working force.'

'It sounds marvellous,' Flynn said. 'What's wrong with it?'

'Well, it's not the sort of job you can get rich at,' McHonnery said. 'In fact, the pay is lousy. But what the hell, you can't have everything. A week at this will give you a chance to think things over, talk with your fellow workers, decide upon a direction for yourself.'

'What is the job?' Marvin asked.

'The official job title is Ootheca Indagator, Second Class.'

'That sounds impressive.'

'Glad that you like it. It means that you hunt for eggs.'

'Eggs?'

'Eggs. Or to be more specific, you hunt for and, upon finding, collect the eggs of the rock ganzer. Think you can swing it?'

'Well, I'd like to know a little more about the techniques utilized for the collecting, and also about job conditions, and-'

He stopped because McHonnery was slowly, sadly shaking his head. 'You can find that out when you get there. I ain't delivering no goddamned travelogue, and you ain't deciding on no guided tour. Do you want the job or not?'

'Do you have anything else available?'

'No.'

'Then I'll take the job.'

'You've made a smart decision,' McHonnery said. He took a paper out of his pocket. 'Here is the standard government-approved contract, written in Kro-Melden, which is the official language of the planet Melde II, wherein is licensed the employing company. Can you read Kro-Melden?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'Then I'll translate the pertinent clauses for you, as required by law. Let's see … standard stuff about the Company not being responsible for fire, earthquake, atomic warfare, sun going nova, acts of god or gods, and so forth. The Company agrees to hire you for the sum of one credit a month, plus transportation to Melde; there it will furnish you with a Melde body; it will further issue you a set of clothes, and will feed and shelter you and care for your health and welfare, unless it finds itself unable to do so, in which case it won't and you will hold it harmless for that failure. In return for these and other Services, you will perform designated tasks as instructed, in this case those tasks exclusively relating to and specifically effecting upon the finding and collecting of ganzer eggs. And may God have mercy on your soul.'

'I beg your pardon?' Flynn asked.

'The last is just the standard invocation. Let me see, I think that about covers it. You guarantee, of course, not to commit acts of sabotage, espionage, irreverence, disobedience, etc, and to furthermore eschew and desist from the practices of sexual perversion as defined in Hoffmeyer's Standard Book of Melden Perversions. And you also guarantee not to initiate a war, or to take part in a war on Melde if one is initiated, and to wash once every two days, and to stay out of debt, and not to become an alcoholic or insane person, and various other things to which no reasonable person could possibly object. And that about sums it up. If you have any important questions, I'll endeavour to answer them for you.'

'Well,' Flynn said, 'about those things I'm supposed to guarantee-'

'That's unimportant,' McHonnery said. 'Do you want the job or not? A simple yes or no will suffice.'

Marvin had his doubts, but, unfortunately, he didn't have any alternatives; and this lack rendered his doubts extraneous to the situation. He thought fleetingly of the detective, then he put that thought firmly aside. As McHonnery had said, how bad could a week of anything be? Therefore he agreed to take the job, registering his assent upon the mind-sensitive universal signaturizer at the bottom of the page. McHonnery led him forthwith to the Transportation Centre, from which point minds were shipped across the galaxy at a multiple of the speed of thought.

The next thing Marvin knew, he was on Melde, in a Melden body.