THE IRON JACKASS by John Brunner Read online

  THE IRON JACKASS

  John Brunner

  Illustrated by Krenkel

  In solving problems involving human groups, Justice and Correct Answer are not necessarily synonymous.

  Sometimes Justice stems from fantasy rather than facts…

  “People!” said Wallmeyer in a disgusted tone. “Me, I’ll take robots over people any day of the year.”

  Marghem half-turned from the big window and scowled over his shoulder. As mayor of Eisenberg he had just about had his fill of the trouble both robots and people could cause. He said, “If that’s the way you feel, what are you doing here? Why not go back to Earth, where you’ll have all the robot company you could wish for?”

  “Believe me,” Wallmeyer snapped, “if it wasn’t in my contract to stay here till you were satisfied our robots were functioning properly, I’d have gone long ago. On foot back to the spaceport, if necessary!”

  The port was two hundred and sixty miles distant across one of the world deserts New Earth had to offer. Marghem was very much tempted to take Wallmeyer up on what he said, contract or no contract. The week or two past, the Terran roboticist had reached a climax of accumulated frustration through being cooped up in the drab surroundings of Eisenberg, and since no one would keep company with him except the mayor—who had to—Marghem had absorbed the full blast of his sourness.

  Before he could word the invitation, however, Wallmeyer got up from his tubular steel chair the other side of Marghem’s steel-plate desk and pointed at a blur in the gray-blue sky.

  “Suppose that’s him?” he demanded.

  Marghem followed his gaze. “It must be,” he said. “OK., let’s go and meet him when he lands. I only hope Nagy hasn’t got wind of this somehow.” He picked up his dust mask from the hook on the back of the office door, but before plunging his face into it he stamped with sudden violence.

  “How did this happen? Why? They’re the best kind of people you could want, here in Eisenberg. Used to be that we had a real spirit of enthusiasm, unity, all wanting to get the work done together. Now I feel like an enemy of the people—I talk about keeping things secret from Nagy, and immediately I start wondering whether the phone operators have broken the scrambler code or whether anyone’s sneaked up to this shack and eavesdropped at the window—”

  “Think it’s my fault?” Wallmeyer said in a ragged tone. “Think I asked to be sent here?”

  Marghem gave him a steady look and shook his head. “No,” he said. “You were too obviously prepared to hate everything you found here. Come on.”

  In the anteroom through which they passed on their way to the outside, Joe got to his feet. If it had not been for the fact that the face on the front of his head was an impassive metal stamping, Marghem would have sworn the robot looked eager.

  “Putting me to work today, boss?” he demanded. You had to call a robot like this he for exactly the same reason you had to refer to him Joe, instead of by his official serial number.

  “Not yet, Joe, I’m afraid,” said Marghem in a kindly tone. “Pretty soon though.”

  The robot lowered his seven-foot bulk back to the top of his packing case. He looked positively dispirited. As he and Wallmeyer passed through the exit door, Marghem could have sworn he heard a gigantic sigh. But it could only have been a trick of the wind.

  Dust swirled up around them as they plodded down the road to the main square over which the helicopter was now hovering uncertainly. That dust was in its way granulated wealth—ferrosiliceous specks of the mineral for which the town had bees baptized Eisenberg, Iron Mountain. But it was also an incredible nuisance, because it stung, the eyes unless you wore goggles and in very short order was liable to give you silicosis if you didn’t wear a mask. Marghem could put up with all the other inconveniences of living here, masking up to take even a short walk was the one which irritated him.

  “Getting worried about Joe,” said Wallmeyer when they had covered most of the distance to the square. His voice had changed completely, and it wasn’t only due to the effect of talking through a mask. Marghem fancied he detected tenderness in the words.

  “Me, too,” he grunted.

  “Not the way I am,” said Wallmeyer. “Joe’s programmed to work, you know. He’s been activated for going on two months, and he hasn’t been allowed to do a hand’s turn. Much more frustration, and he’ll suffer the mechanical counterpart of a nervous breakdown. Then what use will he be to you?”

  “I know! I know!” Marghem sighed.

  They came into the main square Apparently Nagy hadn’t got wind of the government agent’s arrival, for the only people around were a few curious housewives on their way home from the commissariat center with the weekly issue of provisions. If Nagy had heard, nothing would have stopped him from being on the spot. Marghem began to think that luck was temporarily with him, and as the ‘copter settled in a cloud of dust set his shoulders back and tried to look like the mayor of a flourishing and indispensable community instead of like a man unjustly burdened with a whole planet’s problems.

  Which, of course, he was. But he didn’t have to let it show.

  When two figures descended from the ‘copter, he assumed that one of them would merely be a pilot; they were, naturally, goggled and masked and wore air-conditioned suits like anyone here. He looked them over before addressing them at random.

  “Are you Colville?”

  “That’s right,” said the taller and bulkier of the two new arrivals. He put out a gauntleted hand and shook with Marghem. “You must be Mayor Marghem—glad to know you. This is Ira Bell?”

  He indicated his companion, who wordlessly shook with Marghem and then with Wallmeyer when he was presented. “Uh… you’re the pilot?” Marghem suggested.

  Ira Bell’s goggle-and-masked head shook gently. Colville spoke up. “No… uh… hope you have no objection, but Ira’s here studying folklore and wanted the chance to visit one of our new industrial communities to see what continuity of culture exists between it and its parent communities on Earth, and, of course, Eisenberg is one of our most vital and lively towns.”

  “Folklore?” said Marghem, taking a pace backward out of sheer astonishment. “Haven’t we enough problems that actually matter? For—” He broke off, shrugging. “Well, provided you keep out from under my feet, I guess it makes no odds one way or the other. Let’s get up to my office before someone passes the word that you’re here; our chief problem, a man called Nagy, works in the rolling and blooming mills at the far end of the valley, but the whole community’s in such a tense state he’ll get the news within minutes, probably.”

  This time when they passed through the anteroom Joe seemed to be quite resigned, and made no attempt to get up or speak. Wallmeyer, walking behind Marghem and Colville with Ira Bell beside him, cast him a worried glance. Directly he had closed the office door, he turned to Colville.

  “Look, Colville, something must be done, and quickly, if that robot isn’t to break down so badly he has to be shipped home for overhaul!”

  And stopped.

  Taking his place behind his desk and turning to face his visitors, Marghem saw why. Ira Bell was stripping off mask and goggles and shaking out shoulder-long auburn hair from under her cap. That hair framed a perfect oval in which green eyes twinkled apologetically.

  “I’m sorry if I startled you,” she said in a low, pleasant voice. “Ira is a dreadfully confusing name to have.”

  Marghem swallowed loudly. He said, “Now look here… uh… Miss Bell! What I said stands. It’s… uh… well, not so much a shock as a pleasure—” He searched frantically through his mental files for something appropriate and suitably mayor-like, found n
othing available, and improvised. “We’ve got a problem here on which the future economic development of New Earth depends, and with all respect to your doubtless very interesting researches, that’s going to occupy my mind and everyone else’s in Eisenberg till solved!”

  “I’m sure Ira fully understands,” Colville cut in. “I made it quite clear on the trip here that the town is in pretty abnormal state right now.”

  “Abnormal!” said Marghem bitterly. “I prefer chaotic.”

  “Yes. Well, that’s what they set me out here to fix, if possible.” Colville produced from an inside pocket of his suit a file of micronotes and a reader, which he set up on the nearest corner of Marghem’s desk and switched on.

  “Situation,” he said briskly. “Eisenberg is currently producing almost four thousand tons of steel of all grades per week. This is our richest and best-developed strike of ferrous ore; nothing else on the planet touches it for quality. Unfortunately, we need at least double its present output if we’re to get our new ‘copter factory finished on schedule in the new year. We’ve known about this for four years, going on five. We tried our best to get more manpower. Unfortunately again, metallurgists, millhands, and other skilled technicians aren’t to be had in sufficient quantity. Right?”

  Marghem scowled and nodded.

  “So what else was to be done? We invested six billion credits in forty general-purpose robots from the Terrestrial Automation Corporation—”

  Wallmeyer kicked his legs out in front of him, thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and snapped, “And I suppose it’s my fault that thirty-nine of those robots are still in their packing cases, unactivated, with the fortieth on the verge of breakdown!”

  Colville turned calm eyes on him. “Not at all. Nobody’s doubting that your robots will fulfill their functions perfectly, and more than double Eisenberg’s steel output—once we figure out a way of getting them into service.”

  “I wish you’d hurry then,” Wallmeyer said sourly, standing up and beginning to pace the narrow office from side to side. “I feel like I’ll break down myself if I have to stay in this one-reactor town any longer.”

  Colville glanced at Marghem and raised his eyebrows sardonically. The gesture seemed to indicate sympathy; Marghem found himself thinking that if the government did have to send out an agent to chivvy him along, they could have sent someone far less supportable than Colville. He brightened a bit.

  “Mayor Marghem,” Colville went on, “up to now all I’ve had access to, of course, are the weekly progress reports you file. I think it would be much better, and give me a clearer picture, if you could sum the problem up in informal terms.”

  Marghem leaned back in his chair. He found that Ira Bell’s eyes were on him, studying him curiously, and tried not to take any notice. Colville should have known better than to bring a pretty girl, for pity’s sake! His spell as mayor of Eisenberg had convinced him that the attitude of the people here towards women and work was the right one: keep ‘em well apart!

  He said, “The trouble is simple. The people of Eisenberg are the finest kind of people you can find anywhere.”

  Colville blinked. “Uh… could you clarify that?”

  “Sure. As Wallmeyer is boiling to inform you, no one in his right mind would want to come and live here for pleasure. Eisenberg is a mining and milling town, nothing else.” He pointed at a wall map across the office to his right. “You won’t find anything superfluous on that plan—no three-dee house, no swimming pool, no pleasurepads, no frills whatever.”

  “Telling me!” rasped Wallmeyer, still moodily pacing. Marghem ignored him.

  “But we have the biggest steel mills on the planet, and we feel proud of the fact. That’s what brought these people here, Colville. Most of them are Hunkies, Polacks, Slavs of various kinds, both from the United States and from Central Europe. Practically everyone on Earth shares Wallmeyer’s opinion—that a man who works when the job can be automated out from under him is off his gyros. These people didn’t. They came here, to live in a permanent cloud of dust, because they didn’t like to be pensioners of a machine. They’re the most fiercely independent people you’ll ever find. I love ‘em. I think they’re wonderful.”

  “The only drawback,” Colville said, nodding, “is that right now everyone else on New Earth is beginning to hate their guts for creating a totally unnecessary bottleneck in steel production. Six billion credits is a sizable slice off the planetary surplus, you know, and nobody’s happy to see the robots lying useless in their crates when our whole plan for economic expansion is keyed to their doubling our steel production.”

  “Look!” said Marghem, drawing a deep breath. “You can’t wonder at it, can you? These people love their work; they’re proud that they are men and they’re doing the job. Back home machines took all that away from them, and they see our attempt to bring GP robots into Eisenberg as the first stage in the same process.”

  “Mayor Marghem!” said Ira Bell unexpectedly. Distracted, Marghem glanced at her.

  “Ah… yes, Miss Bell?” he said impatiently.

  “Please call me Ira. Everyone does. I’m sorry to interrupt, but could you tell me what compliments these people pay each other?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Marghem felt confused. “Look, Miss… I mean Ira… let me make it absolutely clear that I can’t afford to be interrupted to help out with your folklore studies when we’ve got a planetwide problem on our hands!”

  “Magarac?” said Ira on a gently questioning note.

  “What—? Oh, I see! Yes, Colville, that’s absolutely right, and it’s a very good illustration of what I’ve been saying. These people call an outstandingly hard worker magarac, which means jackass.”

  Wonderingly, he interrupted himself to stare at Ira. “How did you know?” he demanded.

  Ira shrugged and smiled, and Colville, after pausing a moment to let her answer if she was going to, turned to Marghem again.

  “Jackass?” he echoed. “Why?”

  “Because a jackass, according to them, is only interested in working and eating. So it’s a very high compliment.”

  “Jackasses are also obstinate,” Wallmeyer put in grimly. “That makes it fit perfectly!” He dropped into his chair again and glowered at Marghem.

  “Right,” Colville agreed. “Well, Marghem, I suppose it’s pointless to state the rational counter-arguments to this fear they have of being automated out of a job?”

  “I’ve tried,” Marghem said wearily. “I’ve—”

  There was a thunderous hammering at the outside door. Since the office shack, and everything else in Eisenberg, was built out of steel plates as the most available material, the whole place rang about them like… like a welkin, Marghem thought wildly, whatever a welkin might be.

  “Lay you a small bet,” he growled. “That’s Nagy come down from the mill having heard that someone arrived by ‘copter. Since this brilliant idea of bringing robots to Eisenberg, everyone—me included!—has got pathologically suspicious! I warn you, Colville, the end result of the whole thing will be not that we double steel output, but that we chop it in half!”

  He got up and stormed through the anteroom to open the door.

  “I thought so,” he could be heard muttering. “Come on in, Nagy.”

  The workers’ spokesman was huge—almost two meters tall and immensely muscled. He must have come directly from the mill without stopping for anything, for he wore his heatproof suit and carried his dark goggles in his hand. Peeling off his dust-mask he cast a suspicious glare around the office. When it reached Ira, it stopped dead.

  Eyes wide, mouth beginning to curve into a smile, Ira returned his stare with interest, and for a moment Nagy’s air of hostility dropped completely away. You would have sworn he was preening himself, Marghem thought.

  Not for long, though. He recollected what had brought him, hooked his toe around the stem of a nearby chair, and sat down. The chair seemed to bow under his vast weight.

  “A’ri
ght, what’s going on?” he said in a booming voice.

  They hammered at it for an hour. Marghem was delighted to leave most of the talking to Colville, because Nagy’s technique of rebuttal was simple: he just looked as though any sane man ought to realize it was impossible to disagree with him. This was what most often gave Marghem the feeling he was becoming an enemy of the rest of the town.

  Still, Colville was pretty good at his own technique of arguing. Without getting heated, he went through the reasons for bringing in robots one by one.

  “We’ve done our best to get additional manpower, and we only turned to considering GP robots as a last resort.”

  Nagy shrugged. “No news to me,” he answered. “Back on Earth, automation has taken the guts out of everybody. No one cares about pride in their work any more—‘cept us. That’s why we came here. That’s why New Earth ought to be more anxious to take notice of us.”

  “If we don’t get the robots integrated into the scheme of production here, we’ll have barely half the steel we need for our new ‘copter factory. And our whole expansion scheme depends on transport!”

  “If you do try an’… what’s your mealymouth word for it?… integrate the robots here, we quit. An’ you’ll be out your entire steel supply.” Nagy jutted his chin forward, crossed his arms, and drummed his fingers on his vast biceps. “We saw what happened to people like us at home when they started to automate our mills and furnaces.”

  “It’s absurd to think the same thing could happen here in less than a couple of generations—half a century!” Colville pointed out. “We have so much work we need both men and machines to cope with it.”

  “Machines, yes. Robots, no. It didn’t take more than one generation back home—in some places—to reduce everyone to being a pensioner on a machine’s back, though.”

  “But the resources don’t yet exist here to—”

  “Resources, mister?” Nagy jerked a huge thumb towards the wall beyond which loomed the Iron Mountain itself. “Forty billion tons of high-grade iron ore out there! We got resources. Maybe you didn’t notice them yet.”