The Reproductive System (Gollancz SF Library) by John Sladek Read Free Book Online

lighting system. Now the lamps and conduit were gone, and the very copper wires stripped from their insulation, which hung like abandoned snakeskins. There was not a scrap of metal in the room which had not been made into something else. Steel partitions, cabinets, desks had all been melted, running together in fantastic shapes.
    There was a solid barrier before him, waist-high, of dead or dying cells welded together as dead polyps are clustered to make coral. He began to climb over them, looking for one with an intact toggle switch.
    He found one, and threw it. The system shut off slowly, in stages. Cal heard the muffled whine of slowing dynamos in the basement, the dying fall of gears.
    In the queer, sudden silence, he made his way out to the sunlight once more.
    With the exception of a group of Marines, who were beating to death a small suitcase, the people who had been running madly about before were now still, scattered like groups of statuary on the lawn. The statues were all looking at Cal.
    Grandison Wompler finally moved, shaking his head sadly. ‘I never thought you’d do a thing like that to me,’ he said. ‘Why, boy, why? I took you right out of school, I gave you the best opportunity a young man ever had to make something out of hisself, and here you stab me in the back, first chance you get.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘Oh, don’t try to worm your way out of it. I got the whole story from them Frankenstein fellows. You just turned a billion-dollar machine into a great big pile of junk.’
    ‘That’s right,’ Karl said nodding emphatically. ‘You realize that shutting off the Reproductive System completely inactivated the QUIDNAC memory?’
    ‘But it was running berserk !’ Cal cried. ‘It’s already killed
    one man. It might have—’
    ‘Oh, it’s easy for
you
to say what might have been,’ Grandison thundered.
    ‘Don’t, Pop.’ Louie laid a hand on his father’s shoulder. ‘Don’t get yourself worked up over
him
. He ain’t worth it.’ He led his father away. Grandison’s shoulders seemed to sag more with every step he took.
    ‘Yas, a complete security blackout, button it up tight,’ said Grawk into a field telephone. He hung up and turned to face Cal. ‘Well, boys,’ he said to the Mackintosh brothers, ‘what do we do with this one? Shoot him? (We can do it legal, you know. Caught in an act of sabotage, etc. etc.)’
    A kindly-looking middle-aged man in rimless glasses wandered near, and seemed to take an interest in the proceedings.
    ‘No need to trouble,’ said Kurt, grinning. ‘He’s harmless—now—and I’m sure by the time Senator Moley’s committee get through with him—if you get my meaning?’
    ‘Meanwhile, you’re fired,’ said Karl brusquely. ‘Better get going before we have you arrested for trespassing, eh?’
    Grawk laughed at Cal’s look of consternation.
    ‘Don’t bother turning in your lab coat,’ Kurt said. ‘Or your pocket slide rule. Keep them. Just go.’
    ‘Has everyone lost their minds? I’ve just saved your lives, maybe, and you act like I’m Benedict Arnold. You, sir,’ he said, appealing to the kind-looking stranger. ‘Tell me, do I look like a traitor? Do you think my shutting off this damned machine is such a crime?’
    The man smiled apologetically. ‘I’m afraid I’m really too prejudiced in the matter to be of much help,’ he said, and gave a small cough. ‘You see, I’m Smilax, and it’s my machine you’ve just put to death.’
    There seemed nothing to do but go. As Cal walked away, he could hear the general talking about him in a very loud voice.
    ‘There goes a helluva rotten bastard, if you ask me. A guy that would sell out his country like that—well, it’s just lucky for him I ain’t armed. Because if I was armed—’ Grawk lowered his voice and added something Cal couldn’t hear. Whatever it was, it made the four WAF’s laugh very hard indeed.
    He had lost his job, disgraced himself, submitted even to the flaying