Mechasm (1968) John Sladek

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 AN ACE SCIENCE FICTION SPECIAL 71435I75C

MECHASM bv JOHN T.SLADEK

First U.S. Publication. Original title: The Reproductive System
 This inventive and delightful science fiction ad­
venture is the story of the Reproductive System, a
new kind of machine that can feed on any metal and
drink at power outlets in order to grow and repro­
duce itself. But the System quickly gets out of control,
and almost before its creators realize what's happen­
ing the gray boxlike machines are well on their way
to conquering and absorbing the entire state of Utah,
then the United States, and . . . tomorrow the world?

Filled with memorable comic characters and fea­

turing a plot that barrels along with the speed of a
M arx Brothers movie, M E C H A SM is both nightmarish
and riotously funny. Either way, it's a book to re­
member.
JO H N T. SLADEK was born in Iowa in 1937. He studied
mechanical engineering, then English literature and compo­
sition at the University of Minnesota; he says he "writes pass­
able technical manuals" and that his first published work
was The Baker Fork-Lift Truck.

Sladek has contributed to Playboy, Ambit, Fantasy &

Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Galaxy and New Worlds,
and he is the editor of Ronald Reagan, The Magazine of
Poetry. M ECH ASM is his first novel, and its publication in this
Ace Science Fiction Special edition is its first appearance in
the United States. Sladek currently lives in London.
MECHASM byJOHNTSLADEK

O riginal title: THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM

A N ACE BOOK
Ace Publishing Corporation
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10036
MECHASM ( t h e REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM )

Copyright © , 1968, by John T. Sladek

An Ace Book, A ll Rights Reserved.

Author’s dedication:

To P. Z.

Printed in U.S.A.
 P R O L O G U E

D ID YOU SEE HER IN “H EID I”?

S uppose that it is once more 196—, that fateful year,

and suppose that you are passing through Millford, Utah,
that most fated of crossroads. Population, a battered,
bird-spattered sign informs you, is “3810 And Still Grow­
ing! Home of Shelly B—”
Home of Shelley something, Millford lies about half­
way between Las Vegas, Nevada, and the North Ameri­
can Air Defense Command (NORAD) buried deep in
a Colorado mountain. The name “Millford” is honorific;
there has never been a stream through this part of the
desert, nor a mill, nor anything to grind in a mill. Per­
haps it was named ironically, or wishfully. Founders of
other desert towns have, after all, given them pretty
names, hoping that (by sympathetic magic) pretty real­
ity would follow’.
Millford is not pretty, it is worn and warped. There is
little to distinguish it from Eden Acres, Greenville or
Paradise. Its feed store, like theirs, is checkered red and
white. Along its main drag lurk old familiar faces: The
Eateria; The Idle Hour; Marv’s Eat-Gas; The Dew
Drop Inn Motel.
You, the casual tourist—say you are an Air Force
General from NORAD on his way to get a divorce—are
more interested in your odometer than in that Coca-cola
bottling plant or whatever it is over there on the right.
You are barely conscious of an ugly factory of glazed
brick, with a glass-block window on its rounded corner.
“Wompler Toy Corporation. Makers of—”

5
 The worn sign slides past you, lost forever. There is
only one sign you are interested in: “Resume Speed.” Ah,
there it is. And there’s another: “You are now leaving
Millford, Utah, Home of Shelley Belle. Hurry back!
Your foot comes down on the gas, hard. The rattle of
tappets asks:

Who the hell

Is Shelley Belle?

You are irritated with Millford. You are annoyed with

your own faulty memory. You are bored with all ugly
little desert towns with their smug signs: “Biggest Little
City in the Universe!” You are hot and bored and tired,
and you exceed the speed limit a little, fleeing from the
place where world history is being made . . .

6
 Chapter I

TH E W OMPLERS AT WORK

“She was a phantom o f delight

W hen first she gleam ed upon my sight.
. . . And now I see with eye serene
T he very pulse o f the m achine.”

W ordsworth

“S orry I ’m late , gang.” Louie Guthridge Wompler, vice-

president in charge of public relations, bounced into the
conference room on ripple-soled shoes. He smiled at the
other three members of the board, but they seemed not
to notice.
"Where were you?” asked the president, Grandison
Wompler. His jowls shook with annoyance. “We’ve got
important business to discuss.”
Sorry, Pop.” Louie threw himself into a chair at the
right hand of his father. “I was getting in some work on
my lats. You know, latissimus dorsiP That’s here.” He
pointed a thick finger at his own armpit.
“We’re dissolving the company, son.”
“You know, I’m getting some pretty clean definition—
Dissolving the company! But why, Pop? Why?”
Grandison’s gavel made a sound like a pistol shot.
“Meeting to order,” he rumbled.
“What’s the scoop, Pop?” Louie persisted, and shone
upon his father a winning, Harold Teen smile.
“Son,” the old man began, then stopped. He was
searching for a cliche that Louie could grasp. Though

7
 MECHASM

forty-one years old he did not seem, at times, far re­

moved from adolescence. Now, as he toyed with a spring
grip developer and a jar of SooperProteen tablets, Louie
seemed even—his father frowned at the thought—even
childish.
The two men did not look much like father and son.
The president was tall, sunburned and rangy, fleshing
out slightly in his middle age to a dignified thickness.
His face was heavy and serious, with a stem jaw and
thick, dark brows. There were, however, laugh lines, and
his black eyes were festooned with kindly wrinkles. With
no gray in his hair, Grandison ( “Granny”) Wompler
looked ten years younger than his sixty-five.
Louie, known by some as “Louie the Womp,” was pale
and porcine. He somehow managed to resemble a water-
color of his father, one which had been through the laun­
dry. His blond, tentatively wavy hair, milk-colored eyes
and pastry-cook skin might have made him effete but
for his immense bulk. There was something athletic in
Louie’s sagging shoulders and pyknik belly; he seemed a
man who had been hit repeatedly in the face. His nose
was flattened, and indeed all his features were a trifle
smooth, a trifle melted.
He wore no tie, and beneath the white fabric of his
shirt could be discerned the T-shirt legend: “sooper-
proteen club .” His smile, as he waited for his father to
go on, was as pure and meaningless as that of dentures
in a glass, and as constant.
“Son, I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to
you—”
“Let me try, Granny.” Gowan Dill, the joky ninety-year-
old production manager, turned to Louie and said,
“What your father wants to say is, we’ve hitched our
wagon to a falling star.”
“Summer slump, that’s all it is,” Louie whined, still
smiling. “Sales gotta pick up by Christmas.”
“We’ll be rooned by Christmas!” snarled his father.
“Rooned/” “—summer slump, or—”
“No, son. The truth is, we’re finished. No one wants
Wompler’s Walking Babies any more.”

8
 MECHASM

Grandison’s gnarled hands trembled slightly as they

lifted a doll from its tissue paper packing and placed it
on its feet. It began to toddle along the polished surface
of the table, mewing at every step. The president’s jaw
clenched with emotion. A kazoo in his head was faintly
playing “The March of the Wooden Soldiers."

Hardly anyone knew what really happened to Shelley

Belle. She had been put away in tissue paper, so to
speak, with other, happier memories of the thirties (A1
Jolson, Bank Nite movies, the Cord roadster, Paul White­
man’s orchestra), as though she were indeed a sunny,
golden-haired doll. Just as no one wished to remember
the real thirties (soup lines, bread lines, work lines), so
no one wished to remember the real history of Shelley
(grown, married, divorced, married, suicide attempt, bit
parts in Alfred Hitchcock movies). She would always be
as they first knew her, in 1935, tossing her curls and grin­
ning impishly at W. C. Fields or Wallace Beery. All
over America, housewives clutched their free dishes and
gaped. As this five-year-old shrugged, tap-dancing her
way through “The March of the Wooden Soldiers,” they
tsked in blank amazement. Wasn’t she precious? Wasn’t
she the darlingest, sassiest, ittiest yummkins sweetheart,
though? Wasn’t she a living doll?
Doll. The word exploded in the brain of Grandison
Wompler during a performance of H eidi at the Belmont
Theater. He had leaped up and begun cursing joyfully,
until the manager, Ned Lambert, had been obliged to
throw him out. Granny didn’t mind. He didn’t even
mind missing the Spin-O-Cash. What were a hundred
silver dollars to him? He was bursting with a million-
dollar planl He went straight home and wrote, in the
center of a sheet of paper: “dolls = dollars."
Why not make dolls of Shelley Belle right here in her
home town, and why not distribute them all over the
nation—the world? He would by God make a million
and put Millford on the map at the same time.
There had been a few catches, as time went on. He
had already got production started when a court order

9
 MECHASM

enjoined him from use of the name “Shelley Belle,” But

Grandison had established his market; he did not need
her name any longer. Soon, Wampler’s Walking Babies
became famous in their own right, and his fortune was
assured.
Even during the war he’d done well. The main plant
had turned to making howitzer shells, while the seam­
stresses sewed canteen covers. The company had won
two “E ” awards. Louie had gone into the army and
been decorated with the Quartermaster’s Cross. It seems
he had bought more canteen covers than any other
quartermaster. Father and son had been sorry to see the
enemy give up so easily.
In 1946 Wompler’s Babies walked again, but not near­
ly so profitably. Sales kept slipping, slipping, as people
forgot about the aging, alcoholic Shelley Belle. Now,
twenty years later, the factory had come to a stop. As
Gowan Dill put it, with many winks and digs of his
frail elbow, “Production has come to the end of the line,
boys. The eye division is tight shut. Not a head rolling
off the assembly line. We might just as well take the re­
mainder of our dolls and—”
“Stuff them, I know,” said Grandison wearily. “I know,
I know, I know.” He stared, bleary-eyed, at the doll walk­
ing away from him.
It had huge blue eyes and gold, stiff, sausage curls. It
wore a red-white-and-blue pleated dress with silver
spangles, and a tiny pillbox hat. Its pink dimpled knees
were barely visible between the silver fringe of the skirt
and the thick white boots with silver tassels.
“Mew, mew, mew, mew, mew,” it said.
“Looks swell to me, Pop,” said Louie loyally. He had
caught his fist inside the jar of SooperProteen tablets. It
had not occurred to Louie not to reach into a jar with
the spring grip developer in his hand. “I think it’s a neat
little product.”
"But it isn’t wanted, son. Little girls don’t want Wom­
pler’s Walking Babies any more. They want Barby dolls.
Dolls they can dress up in fashions.” His voice grew thick

TO
 MECHASM

with fury, and he flushed purple beneath his sunburn.

“Dolls that can’t walk a single step!”
“Gee, Pop, that’s keen! Why don’t we build a doll
they can dress up?”
“Because we don’t know the first thing about fashion,
that’s why. Mrs. Lumsey’s seamstresses can’t sew any­
thing but spangles and pleats.”
“And canteen covers,” cracked Dill, shooting his cuffs.
No one was smiling. Grandison stared at the walking
doll, looking as if he wanted to cry, but was just too
strong. Louie was staring, mystified, at his entrapped
hand. Moley, the chairman, was sliding down in his chair,
preparing to sleep.
“Send this company to camp!” ventured Dill. No re­
sponse. “Ah, well,” he sighed. “Let’s put on our thinking
caps,”
The doll, still mewing, walked off the end of the table.
There came the crack of a gutta percha face against
the floor.
“The end of a great era,” the president muttered
hoarsely.
They thought. Louie had a hard time concentrating.
He wanted to be outside, doing some road-work, or just
getting a tan. He wanted to study up on his karate. He
wanted to get home to see if that book had come in the
mail: Seventeen n e w W ays to Kill a Man with Your Bare
Hands, And the book on Sumo wrassling.
The trouble with books was, they didn’t give a guy
the feel of killing with his bare hands. That was the
trouble with living in Millford, too. There was nowhere
a guy could go to learn from an instructor. Louie wanted
to leam all those Jap systems of self-defense. He wanted
to leam how to kill a man with Zen—without even touch­
ing him, they say. Then there was Kabuki, and there was
deadliest Origami. Man!
He continued staring out the window for inspiration,
until a car, air-force blue, whizzed by. It reminded him
of isometric exercises. Then, somewhere in Louie’s ru­
dimentary forebrain, a tiny circuit completed itself.
“I got it!” he shouted. “I got an idea!”

11
 MECHASM

Dill groaned. “Not another idea,” he said. “We haven’t

even finished paying for that coffee machine yet.”
Louie’s last brain-storm had been to sell the workers
coffee from a machine he’d bought and installed in the
cafeteria, at 25< a cup. To increase profits on the ma­
chine, he ran the grounds through again and again. The
machine would thus, he reasoned, pay for itself. The
workers agreed. The machine should pay for itself.
“No, this is a real keen idea. Listen. Why don’t we get
some money from the govermint?”
“Why don’t we . . his father repeated uncompre-
hendingly.
“I think he has something, Granny!” shouted Dill.
“Why don’t we get some money from the government?”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” said Moley, sitting up and opening
his eyes a little. “He does have something. Why don’t
r> ^
we—
“Why don’t we get some money from the govermint?”
said Louie excitedly, and strained to complete the
thought. His hand, encased in glass, waved impatiently.
“From the govermint—for research!”
Bald heads nodded. “For research, yes!”
“But wouldn’t we have to be making some product the
government needs?” Grandison asked, puzzled. “Some­
thing vital to the defense of our nation? Something im­
portant to its welfare? The government doesn’t just
throw its money around, does it?”
When the others had finished laughing, Dill placed a
bird-claw hand on Grandison’s sleeve. “You’re an old-
fashioned, unpractical dreamer, Granny,” he croaked,
chuckling. “Maybe I am, too. We got to look to the boy
here for real ideas. Times have changed since WPA,
y’know. This here’s the age of the astronaut. In the old
days, I’ll admit, you had to build a battleship or a munic­
ipal swimming pool—something useful. But tell me:
practically speaking, of what use is it to have a man on
the moon?”
“Well, I guess . . . ”
“None! No earthly use at all,” cackled Dill. “But seri­
ously, the government spends millions, zillions, to put

12
 MECHASM

one man on the moon. On the other hand, if you have

some real, some practical idea to sell them, forget it.”
“That's right!” shouted Louie, jumping up and pacing
about the room. “Remember the time I tried to sell them
my idea for invisible ink? Milk, it was, plain milk. Spies
could write messages in it, like invisible ink. Then you
heat it up and the writing appears as if by magic. I
wrote to the Pentagon, remember, Pop?” He threw him­
self into his chair again. “They never answered,” he
added, in a more subdued tone.
“The fact is,” Dill went on, tapping his sere hand on
the table, “if we can show the government a project
that is utterly, hopelessly useless, they’ll give us a grant
for pure research.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know it as sure as I know that the head of the
Industrial Spending Committee is Senator Dill—my
cousin, get it?”
. Grandison was not yet used to the idea. “But—but
what could we do research upon? We have no facilities.”
“They provide all that stuff, don’t worry,” smiled Dill.
“Concrete labs, bomb shelters, Marine guards, you name
it. All we have to do is figure out a project.”
“How about a robot?” suggested Louie.
“No money in it,” Dill snapped. “We need some­
thing which sounds easier, so that the rest of the com­
mittee can’t object to it, but which is so hard in practice
that we can spend years on it. Like a bigger, faster
plane.”
“How about a robot, though?” Louie put forth.
Ignoring the frantic waving of the jar under his nose,
Moley said, “Now, why don’t we build a machine that
can reproduce itself? I was reading about an idea like
that in L ife, just the other day. A self-reproducing ma­
chine-sure sounds easy enough, don’t it?”
“But what is it good for?” Grandison asked. “Besides
making duplicates of itself, what is its function?”
“A robot,” declared Louie softly, “could instruct me in
hand-to-hand Kabuki.”
“You still don’t understand, Granny,” Dill said, with a

13
 MECHASM

patronizing shake of his head. “It isn’t good for anything.

That’s exactly what the government wants. What w e
want.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Grandison. He sighed.
“It seems so dishonest,”
“We’ll be creating thousands of new jobs—for scientists,
Marine guards, government clerks who keep us on file.”
“I know, I know, but will w e make money?” the pres­
ident snapped.
“Millions.”
They voted at once. The vote was “aye” all around
the table, to Louie.
“Aye, I guess,” he muttered. “But hey, Pop, how about
a robot, though? Huh, how about—”
Grandison reached over and cracked the jar with his
gavel. The spring grip device leaped out, scattering glass
and brown pills, and releasing the thick fingers of Louie
the Womp from captivity.
“Motion carried.

Chapter II

ANOMALIES

“$u # e$$!”
Sign on wall at Wompler Research Laboratories

“I, too, am a failure,” murmured Cal, staring at the jelly­

fish thing in the tank. It was supposed to be bright pink
and right-side up. “This is the end for me too, old
Plagyodus. I’ve ruined my last experiment.”
He did not deem it necessary to add that it was his
first experiment at Wompler Research, or that he had

14
 M EC H A S M

only been hired through the wonderful mistake of an

IBM machine. The gray, deflated mass in the tank did
not seem to be listening, anyway. A twisted rope of
multicolored wires rose from it to a panel of dials. The
dials were all at zero.
Sighing, Cal began to write on the chart hanging next
to the tank, “Biomech. arrgt. 173b aborted 1750 hours.”
It was more than a job he would be losing; it was a
chance to do work leading to a doctorate. Everything I
touch, he thought, turns to failure. As if bearing out his
words, the ballpoint pen ran dry.
Experimenting, he found that it would write on his
hand perfectly, but not on the wall chart. He covered
his palm with blue scrawls and trial signatures: “Calvin
Codman Potter, Ph.D.”
“It’s the angle,” said Hamuro Hita, the project statis­
tician. “It won’t feed ink uphill.”
Cal blushed, corrected the angle of the pen and signed
the chart. “Thanks. I guess I’m not very observant for an
experimenter. In fact, I’ve just ruined this experiment. I
suppose you won’t be seeing much of me around here
from now on.”
“Oh, I don’t think they’ll can you for one mistake. What
happened, anyway?” Hita spoke without pausing in his
work, totaling figures on an adding machine.
“I forgot to put the temperature control on automatic
last night.” Ripping loose the wires from their instru­
ments, Cal hauled up the gray, dripping lump. “It—it
poached, or something.” Lifting the lid of a garbage can,
he plumped in the jellyfish and stuffed in the bright
stiff wires after it. Hita nodded at a chair by his desk,
and Cal flopped into it.
“That’s what’ll happen to me, when they find out all
about me,” he said, indicating the garbage can. “The way
they saw it, I was a bright, promising lad, having grad­
uated at the top of my class at MIT. They expected me
to set the world on fire. Whereas—”
“Whereas—?”
“I guess I’d rather not talk about it after all. Let’s say

15
 M EC H A S M

I was hired by mistake, and I’m scared that any minute

they’ll realize it.”
Hita nodded, and the two men lapsed into moody
silence. Finishing his addition, the mathematician began
cleaning his briar pipe with one blade of a pair of black-
handled scissors. Cal stared about the lab, unable to con­
quer the feeling that he was saying goodbye to it all.
Goodbye, QUIDNAC modular computer; goodbye, maze
for phototropic “rats”; goodbye, solution in which grew
a green crystalline tree, every branch of which formed
part of an electronic circuit; goodbye, miniature auto­
matic forge. He did not forget a goodbye to the main
entrance, guarded by a stiff, humorless adolescent in the
uniform of the Marine Corps.
“We’re all flying false colors here,” said Hita, sliding
a paperback book out of his desk drawer. “Do you know
why the Womplers hired me? Because Louie wanted
to learn Origami. The way he saw it, I’m Japanese,
ergo . . . "
“I don’t believe it!”
“But you’ve only been here a week. You hardly know
the Womplers, father and son. You haven’t even met the
project head, Dr. Smilax. I assume your main dealings
have been with them.”
“Meaning the Mackintosh brothers?”
Hita smiled. “Or as some of us call them, the brothers
Frankenstein.”
“But what were you telling me about Origami?”
“Officially, I’m a mathematician. In fact, my duties
include teaching Louie Origami. I’ve had to study up on
it myself, of course. Luckily, I found this book at the
drugstore.” He riffled the pages of the paperback. “It’s a
good job, all the same. I can make enough money at this
to start my own statistical lab soon, and I only need to
be silly for a half-hour a day.”
“But how have you fooled them, if you don’t even
know?”
“It’s easy. You see, Louie thought Origami was a kind
of Japanese self-defense. I’ve been able to make up my

16
 M EC H A S M

own rules, mostly, as we go along ( I told Mm I was

“black scissors,’ and he was properly impressed).
“As for Grandison Wompler, he seems to think I ought
to speak Spanish, for some reason. I rather like the two
of them. There are even days when I can stand the
brothers F. The only person around here who gives me
the creeps is Dr. Smilax Mmself.”
“Have you met him? What’s he like?” asked Cal.
“No, I haven’t met him, and neither has anyone else I
know of, except the twins; that’s the odd thing about
Mm. No one even seems to know anything about Mm ex­
cept that he’s a surgeon and a biochemist. You’d think
the head of a research team would at least want to meet
Ms subordinates, but he’s so inaccessible—”
Cal nudged him and pointed to the entrance, above
which a red bulb had begun glowing. The Marine guard
drew Ms automatic and covered the two persons enter­
ing, until they showed him the red badges of Kurt and
Karl Mackintosh.
Kurt skipped to get into step with his twin, and they
strode on across the lab rapidly.
Their immense, bulging foreheads, exaggerated by ad­
vanced baldness and invisibly pale eyebrows, loomed
over tiny, pouting faces to give them the look of kewpies
or dimestore cherubs. They were plump and sexless
creatures, these two, and it was hard to believe them the
best cybernetics engineers this side of the Iron Curtain.
The only features they possessed that were not of idiot
quality were their eyes. Restless, flickering, intelligent,
they were the color of bluebottle flies.
The brothers flicked a glance at the empty tank, an­
other at the chart, another at Cal.
“We expected more of an M IT valedictorian,” Karl
said nastily, as if speaking to Ms brother.
“That’s right, Karl. He has not only ruined experi­
ment 173b, but we have not had a single original idea
from him, and he has not hypothesized a single bio­
mechanical arrangement.”
“True enough, Kurt.” The brothers, perhaps because
of their similarity, seemed to find it desirable to identify

17
 M ECHASM

one another often. “True it is, Kurt. I begin to wonder

if M IT’s standards have not declined.”
Hita cleared his throat. Steering themselves, as it
were, by the clipboards under their arms, the two spun
towards him. “But, gentlemen,” he said, “Potter was just
now discussing with me his new idea for a biomechani­
cal arrangement. A sort of steel-shelled oyster, wasn’t it,
Cal?”
“Yes. A sort of—um—steel-shelled oyster. Yes. You see,
it would have a number of advantages. Too numerous
to mention.”
“Such as—?” said the twins together.
“Well—instead of a pearl, it produces a ball-bearing.
A slow way to make ball-bearings, admittedly, but then
we’re mot really interested in the manufacture of—”
“I hope, Kurt, that he will follow out his line of in­
quiry,” said Karl.
“And write a monograph,” Kurt added. “But mean­
while we’ll assign him to Project 32 as a special assistant.
He can help wire up circuits, Karl.”
Cal felt he had been both chastised and given a sec­
ond chance. He was about to stammer out his thanks
when the light above the door glowed a second time.
“Good eveningl” boomed Grandison Wompler from
the doorway. “Say, it’s long after five, and we don’t pay
overtime, you know.”
The Mackintosh twins drew themselves up slightly.
Karl said, “Dedication to the human race cannot be
curtailed by mere time.”
“Our work goes on,” his brother intoned, “day and
night, committed ever to the achievement of peace in
our time, final, eternal peace—”
“That’s fine. But do you have to have all these lights
on?” Grandison entered, waving aside the aimed pistol
of the Marine guard, and donned a white lab coat from
a locker.
“Our newest project will consume immense quantities
of power,” Kurt informed him. “But it will benefit the
human race immeasurably.”
“Great. Good work, boys. But will it get me a new

18
 MECHASM

contract? Will it put Millford on the map? Will it make

the government want to shower money on me?”
The twins looked at one another for a flickering sec­
ond. “It will indeed,” they chorused.
Louie stuck his head in the door and shouted to Hita,
“Oh, there you are.” He smiled and nodded at the Ma­
rine guard, who was trying to decide whether or not to
shoot him. “Hita, I’ll meetcha in the gym, OK?” Hita
smiled and nodded, and the ebullient intruder with­
drew.
Grandison turned around and noticed the statistician.
“Hi there, amigo!” he said grinning, and walked over to
him, hand extended. Hita was the only member of the
staff with whom Grandison ever shook hands. “Com o
esta UstedF’
“Muy bien,” replied the Japanese, without enthusiasm.
“That’s fine, fine. Now, if any of these fellows don’t
treat you right, you just come tell me, hear? I signed a
government contract, and that means I got to give fair
and equal employment to You Fellows. It don’t matter
what your race, creed, color or religion is, you’re all
Americans!”
“But I’m not an American,” Hita protested. Grandison
affected not to hear him.
“Yes, I rebuilt this company from nothing, in less than
a year—and I want to keep what we got We got the
finest cafeteria, the best coffee machines, the nicest
bowling alleys and gym, the cleanest bomb shelters mon­
ey can buy—and I want us to keep ’em. I want all you
boys, black and white, to put your backs into it and
really pull—for the company!”
“I’m sure we’re all doing our best,” said Hita, picking
up a pair of scissors. “Well, I must go. Aclios.”
“We, too, must leave, Kurt,” said Karl. “We must con­
fer with Dr. S. just now. Potter here can show you
around the lab, Mr. Wompler.” The brothers moved off,
in lock-step.
“Say,” said Grandison behind his hand. “I heard some­
one say tiheir name was Frankenstein.” His voice

19
 M EC H A S M

dropped to a confidential whisper and his face grew

solemn, “They ain’t—they ain’t Jews, are they?”
“I believe they are Irish Protestants, sir,” said Cal, try­
ing to keep his face straight. “Their name is Mackintosh.
Would you like to see the lab?”
“Yes, fine.”
At each exhibit, Grandison would pause while Cal
named the piece of equipment. Then he would repeat
the name softly, with a kind of wonder, nod sagely, and
move on. Cal was strongly reminded of the way some
people look at modem art exhibitions, where the labels
become more important to them than the objects. He
found himself making up elaborate names.
“And this, you’ll note, is the Mondriaan Modular Mne-
monicon.”
onicon, yes.”
“And the Empyrean diffractosphere.”
“—sphere. Mn. I see.”
Nothing surprised Grandison, for he was looking at
nothing. Cal became wilder. Pointing to Hita’s desk, he
said, “The chiarascuro thermocouple.”
“Couple? Looks like only one, to me. Interesting,
though.”
A briar pipe became a “zygotic pipette,” the glass ash­
tray a “Piltdown retort,” and the lamp a “pnase-con-
ditioned Aeolian.” Paperclips became “nuances. ’
“Nuances, I see. Very fine. What’s that thing, now?”
He pointed to an oscilloscope. Cal took a deep breath.
“Its full name,” he said, "is the Praetorian eschata-
logical morphomorphic tangram, Endymion-type, but we
usually just call it a ramification.”
The old man fixed him with a stem black eye. “Are
you trying to be funny or something? I mean, I may not
be a smart-aleck scientist, but I sure as hell know a
television when I see one.”
Cal assured him it was not a television, and proved it
by switching it on. “See,” he said, pointing to a pattern
of square waves, “there are the little anapests.”
“I ’ll be damned! So they are.”

20
 MECHASM

Cal went on to show him a few revanchist doctrines

before the president, satisfied, took his departure.
“Keep up the good work,” he called out, “and take
good care of the company equipment. Them ramifica­
tions don’t grow on trees, y’know.
Cal began to chew his fingernails off, one by one, lean­
ing against a lab table and dropping the parings in a
Piltdown retort. How long can I get aw ay with this? he
wondered. They still think I’m from MIT. And so I am.
From Miami Institute o f Technocracy.
Miami Institute of Technocracy was the only school in
the nation that gave a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree
in biophysics. Cal had graduated in a class of four:
Harry Stropp, Bachelor of Physical Education, Mary
Junes, Home Economics Technician, Barthemo Beele,
Associate of Journalism. Cal had headed the class.
I’ll go confess to Dr. Smilax, he decided. I can explain
it was all a mistake. He switched off the lights and left.
The Marine guard remained alone, standing at attention
in the darkness.
Cal stopped at the hall bulletin board. A new notice
had been posted, aqd now, stalling for time, he stopped
to read it.
“pro ject 32. Supervisors: dr. k . mackintosh & dr. k .
mackintosh . Special Assistant: potter . Inspection will
be June 21, 196—. At some time after this date, dr. a.
candlewood (Behavioral Psychol.) will join the staff.”
Cal looked from the signature (impersonally mimeo­
graphed) to the door marked:

T. Smilax M.D.
no unauthorized personnel
THIS MEANS YOU
ABSOLUTELY RESTRICTED AREA

Changing' his mind, Cal spun around and headed for

the main door. As he passed the open window of the
gymnasium building, he heard Hita shout, “Hail” There
was the sound of shearing paper.

21
 MECHASM

Chapter III
i
A REPORT ON PROJECT 32

“H e w ho understands m e finally recognizes my

propositions as senseless.”
L udwig W ittgenstein

TOP SECRET TOP SECRET

TOP SECRET TOP SECRET

I. T he Purpose o f Project 32
Project 32 is the code name of a series of experiments
undertaken at the Wompler Research Laboratory in Mill-
ford, Utah, in 196—. The purpose of Project 32 was to
determine:
(a ) if it were possible to set into motion an autono­
mous, self-reproducing mechanism, a “Reproductive
System,” and
(b ) the military use, if any, of such a system.

II. T he Background o f Project 32

Prior to the initation of this project, it was generally
considered impracticable, if not impossible, to design
and set into motion a system capable of self-support,
learning, and reproduction. ( a ) Although computers had
been programmed to perform simple analogies1 or
“learn,” i.e., profit from their mistakes in straightfor­

1Yet semantics vs. syntax arguments cast such doubts on

these experiments as to make their results puzzling and amus­
ing rather than significant. Thus while a computer saw the
answer to “ spear:?: m arrow:arrow” was “pear,” it could not
see why “ head:bed::?:chair” should be “back” and not
“hair.” Also a computer diagrammed the follow ing sentence
two ways: “ She bears each cross patiently.” “ She” may be
the subject and “bears” the verb; or “ She bears” the subject
and “cross” the verb.

22
 M EC H A S M

ward games, they showed little promise as learning ma­

chines. And for a sytem to be autonomous, it must be
able to discriminate portions of its environment, analo­
gize from past experiences and profit from mistakes of
a rather complex nature, (b ) Although “autonomous”
automated production lines already existed, they were
at the mercy of their environments for power and ma­
terials. (c ) Some computers had already been used to
solve problems in circuitry, thus in effect “redesigning”
themselves. But there remained what seemed an un­
bridgeable gap between these and a true self-reproduc­
ing machine.

III. T he Experiments
Early experiments comprised attempts to construct
living/non-living “symbioses”: Inculcating in the nervous
system of a coelentrate an electric motor circuit;2 en­
casing oysters in shells of flexible steel;3 equipping mice
with electro-hydraulically-operated tails;4 and many sim­
ilar attempts, none satisfactory.

IV. T he Theory
Out of these early experiments a modular of cellular
system was conceived of, functioning somewhere be­
tween a polypidon and a highly structured society. Each
cell should be:
(a ) Organized along similar lines with its fellows, and
equipped to recognize order and respond to it.
(b ) Equipped to repair infracellular breakdowns, as
far as possible, and to “eat” non-functional cells.
(c ) Able to convert power and material from its
environment into itself, and to construct new cells
like itself from any surplus power and material, i.e.,
to reproduce.

3Failure due to unstable ambient temperatures, causing

shock.
3Failuxe due to unforeseen corrosion, by sea-water, o f steel.
Successful, but of questionable m ilitary value. Results
published separately as m il -p -980089, pr o sth etic t a il s .

23
 MECHASM

(d ) Able to prevent its own destruction by flight, by

diversion of or neutralization of the destructive
agent. E.g., if made of steel, it should (1 ) flee from
sea-water contact; (2 ) paint itself to seal out sea­
water; or (3 ) develop some chemical means to
neutralize the corrosive action of sea-water.
No practical means were available to test or even
construct a working model of this theoretical system,
until the completion and adaptation of the QUIDNAC
computer.

V. T he Quidnac
The QUIDNAC, or Quantifiable Universal Integral
DNA Computer, as originally designed by- T. Smilax,
had three qualities that recommended it to the project:
(a ) compact size; (b ) a virtually infinitely-extensible
memory; (c ) suitability for learning complex analogic
processes. In addition, T. Smilax was the head of Pro­
ject 32.

VI. G eneral Principles o f Construction o f Cells

Each cell may be considered in some respects an egg,
having “yolk,” “white” and “shell.” In this simplified
scheme:
( a ) The “yolk” consisted of the QUIDNAC computer,
along with various coupling and control devices to
functions in the “white” and “shell.”
(b ) The “white” contained automatic production tools
and storage facilities for raw materials, spare tools
and parts, and power.
(c ) The “shell” of metal armor contained means of
locomotion, sensory devices, paint, simple extensors,
and ( though not in all cases) means of communica­
tion.
Within this framework many variations were con­
structed, differing in their means of locomotion, sensory
devices, means of communication and production meth­
ods. It was expected that, in addition to variations pro­
posed by the experimenter, others would be adapted or
invented by the system itself.

24
 M EC H A S M
o * »

“I just don’t get it,” said Cal, laying down his solder­
ing gun. Though he spoke to Louie Wompler, all the
Army and Navy technicians around them looked up,
eager for a chance to stop and talk. Louie sat frowning
at a folded piece of paper in his hand.
“Neither do I,” he said. “Something wrong here. It’s
supposed to flap its wings when I do this, but look.” He
pulled at a flap, and the square of paper came unfolded.
It was a magazine illustration of food.
“I mean I don’t understand Dr. Smilax. What does
he do all day, alone in there? He can’t be still working
on the QUIDNAC; I thought he finished with that long
before he came here. Why do we never see him to talk
to? What does he look like?”
Lance-corporal Martin looked up from a circuit dia­
gram. “Are you kidding?” he said, pasting a Lucky in
the comer of his wide, griping mouth. “ I hear all kindsa
crap about the Old Man.” After looking around the room,
he leaned closer to Cal. “I hear he carves up kittens on
a big white table in there—just for kicks. I hear he’s a
junky. I hear he ain’t no real doctor at all, just some
bum chiropractor that saved a Senator’s life once, so
they give him this cushy job. I hear he just sits in there
all day, sticking himself with dope. I hear—”
“Crap!” spat a Navy technician whose rolled-up sleeves
revealed tattoos of Walt Disney characters. “The real
scuttlebutt is, he’s a Rooshian. All that security stuff is
to keep the other Rooshians from assassinating him. The
real scuttlebutt is, he invented a way of putting monkey
brains in the heads of little children.”
A civilian technical writer spoke. He was the author
of a famous military manual, The F ork Lift Truck. “I
understand,” he said carefully, “that Dr. S. used to be a
famous surgeon. But he was operating on the President’s
mother and something went wrong. They hushed it
up, of course, but he’s been in semi-retirement ever
since.”
Others heard them and wandered over to join in.

25
 MECHASM

“I hear the brothers Frankenstein was bom joined at

the head. He split ’em. But he gets fits, see, and tries to
kill people—”
“—big abortion racket, remember? In all the papers—”
“They say he invented a cancer cure in Rooshia, but
he was hit in the head, see, and lost his memory—”
“Devil’s food cake,” sighed Louie over the picture. He
seemed oblivious of the discussion raging around him.
“I’m not allowed to have any sweets while I’m in train­
ing for Origami.”
“—and the ASPCA would raise holy hell if they found
out what he was up to. So—”
Cal finished his work and stepped into the hall to get
away from the babble of sensational theories about Smi-
lax. The facts about the man behind that restricted
door were nil. Yet why did all the rumors about him
contain a strain of hideosity? Why was it no one saw
him as a harmless old recluse? Why did every story in­
clude paradigms of cruelty, madness, meglomanic im­
portance? It was almost as if . . . but no one could start
such rumors about himself. Himself? For a moment Cal
wondered if there really were such a person as “T.
Smilax, M.D.” Placing his ear to the restricted door, Cal
listened.
There came to him a faint, high-pitched mechanical
whine. It was the snarl of a thousand muted dental
drills, humming into a thousand rotting teeth. It paused
a moment, and he heard another sound: The whimpering
of a small dog in pain. Almost as soon as this began, the
mechanical whine started up again, overriding it.
As Cal reentered the lab, Karl said, “We were just
looking for you.”
“We’re ready for a test,” Kurt explained. They stood,
clipboards at the ready, one each side of the lab table,
while Cal made final adjustments and turned on the
system.
It was an array of gray metal boxes, each about the
size of a cigarette package, stacked loosely together in a
cube about two feet high. When the toggle switch, prom­
inent on the top of any one box was thrown, it sent out

26
 MECHASM

a tuned starting signal to the rest; they were switched

off in the same way.
As soon as each box was activated, it began to roll
about on the table on its little casters, avoiding collison
with its fellows. When all the boxes were moving, they
resembled a complicated Brownian movement on the
dark surface of the table, as they explored every inch
of it.
Kurt and Karl placed bits and scraps of metal on the
table. The smaller bits were at once devoured by in­
dividual boxes, but the larger bars attracted the entire
brood. The gray packages, now the size of king-size
cigarette cases, swarmed over them like ants, gouging
away with tiny cutters and torches—and growing fatter.
It made Cal shiver to look at their orderly feeding.
“Has anyone a watch?” asked Karl, looking intently at
the watch-chain across Hita’s vest. The mathematician
sighed.
“All right,” he said, giving up his half-hunter. “But
take care of it, please. It’s an antique eight-day watch.
Irreplaceable.”
Karl dangled it on its chain above the table. The boxes
began quavering, altering their random movements.
They clustered beneath the watch. Karl swung it gently,
and the gray brood responded, excitedly tracking its
movements. They began to climb upon one another, to
stack themselves in a swaying, rolling pyramid, reaching
towards the shape of its metal body, the sound of its tick­
ing heart. The gray pile began a sympathetic trembling.
Each time they would nearly reach the watch, Karl
would raise it higher. His childlike face had a look of
cruel, rapt concentration as he teased the pyramid. It
grew taller and thinner. Cal could see lower boxes
gripping one another with extensors to steady the pile.
Karl raised the watch a third time, a fourth.
The top box, standing on edge, split like a tiny suit­
case. Two thin rods slithered upwards.
“What are those? Look like car antennae,” said Louie.
“Look out!” shouted Hita. “It’s making a grab for it.”
“No it isn’t,” Karl assured him. “Just watch this.”

27
 M EC H A S M

The two rods passed the half-hunter and moved a

link or two up the chain. They paused. A group of boxes
stopped “drinking” at the lab table’s DC outlet and
formed a chain from it to the pyramid. There was a sud­
den flashing fizz of light and the watch fell; the tiny
suitcase caught it, drew in its horns instantly and
snapped shut.
“Hey! Give that back!” The mathematician caught
up the offending box and shook it. He tried to pry it
open, then shook it again.
“Ouch!” Suddenly the box clattered to the table, where
it scooted about madly and was soon lost among its kind.
There was a drop of blood on the end of Hita’s finger.
“Bit me!” he exclaimed, incredulous.
“Yes.” Kurt nodded enthusiastically. “You’ve got to ex­
pect it to fight back. You were threatening it.”
“Yes, it was only defending its property,” Karl added.
“Its property!” Hita looked from one of the twins to
the other. They wore pleased smiles, like those of in­
dulgent parents. Without another word, the mathema­
tician stalked out of the laboratory.
“Let’s see what it will do with this,” chorused the
brothers. They wheeled over the oscilloscope on its stand
and jammed it against the table. The gray creatures took
notice of it at once. They now varied in size, from those
which had scarcely grown at all to those which had
swollen to the size of small tool boxes. None had so far
reproduced.
Now they swarmed around the oscilloscope and be­
gan to pile up against the side of it. From the top box a
tiny screwdriver emerged to probe the cabinet. Finding
a louver, it pried. The shaft broke. There was a muffled
click and its stump retracted.
“Watch,” Karl cautioned.
Smoke rose from the tool box, and there came a sound
of loud, rapid hammering. A moment later a large screw­
driver blade, still glowing, appeared. By main force it
pried open the cabinet of the oscilloscope, bending
back the steel cover to open a fist-sized hole. From an­
other box came a pair of pliers. They entered the oscil­

28
 MECHASM

loscope cabinet and began to rummage hastily inside.

There came a tinkle of broken glass from time to time.
At regular intervals, the pliers emerged, bearing booty:
a broken tube, a two-inch hank of wire, half a resistor
or a glass shard. On these, the tool box fed greedily.
“Hey!” said Louie, coming awake to what was hap­
pening. “You better not let Pop see that.”
It was too late. At the same time, Grandison put his
head in the door. “See what?” He saw the tool box come
up with a hank of transistors which it gobbled like suc­
culent grapes. “What the hell is going on here?” Glower­
ing at Cal, he shouted, “It ain’t two weeks since I told
you to take care of the equipment. What the hell do you
mean, destroying my property like that?”
Cal moved to shut off the system, but Kurt laid a
restraining hand on his arm. “No,” he said. “It is mak­
ing mistakes, but it will learn. We’re having an inspec­
tion next week by General Grawk of the Air Force. Let
it go until then. We’ll give it a comer of the lab of its
own, to grow in.” Turning to the company president he
added, “Don’t worry, sir. This system will make the
company billions for every dollar it costs.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Grandison’s expression altered.
“I got some bad news, though. Hita just died in the
infirmary.”
Cal stared. “W hat did you say?”
“Hita. The statistics man. Just died of snakebite.”
With a small thunderclap, the cathode-ray collapsed.
The tool boxes continued to browse quietly.
“Poor ramification,” Cal murmured, shuddering. “Poor
little anapests.”

29
 M EC H A S M

Chapter IV

TH E INSPECTOR GENERAL

‘Es ist ein eigentiim licher Apparat,’ sagte der

Offizier.”
K afka

B y three o’clock on the afternoon of the inspection, al­

most the entire staff of Wompler Research Laboratories
had assembled on the lawn, wearing clean lab coats.
They stood in serried ranks, so perfectly still that the
loudest sound was the faint susurrus of the lawn
sprinklers. At the fore, faces uplifted to the sun, stood
Grandison and Louie, wearing lab coats especially de­
signed for the occasion by Mrs. Lumsey.
At precisely three o’clock, a silver helicopter de­
scended from the sun. Its terrific downdraft ruffled the
American flag on the flagpole and the two “E” pen­
nants below it. It stirred slightly the silver fringe on the
pleated lab coats of the two Womplers. The helicopter
settled in the lush carpet of green. A silver door swung
open.
General Grawk emerged amid a cloud of beautiful
women. Actually there were only four red-headed wom­
en, each very like the other three, that is, tall, good-look­
ing, and possessed of curves even Air Force tailoring
could not disguise as angles. Here were four sane, at­
tractive WAF officers bustling about to adjust his rib­
bons, straighten his tie, hand him his cap and relight
his black stump of a cigar—bathing, in short, in an
ambience of lovely femininity-

30
 MECHASM

The ugliest man within a thousand miles.

Imagine a face as red and furious as that of a new­
born child. Imagine sparse black hair like broken quills,
lying this way and that around a bald spot the color of
a baboon’s bum. Imagine the nose of a Pekinese but the
upper lip of Peking man, and imagine moreover the
former permanently wrinkled with disgust and the lat­
ter drawn back in a set sneer from yellow, crooked
teeth. Add boiled, bulging eyes, an underslung jaw that
needed a shave the day it was created, and the neck of
a particularly obese walrus, complete with three folds
of fat in back. Got all that? Now add black clots of eye­
brow and asymmetric lumps as desired, set it all on a
stumpy, strutting figure in uniform, and top it off—as
Grawk now did—with a tall, tall cap loaded with silver
foliage.
Putting on his cap increased Grawk’s height to about
five feet. He spat out the cigar and looked around, arms
akimbo.
“So this,” he said, “is the great Wompler Research
Laboratory, is it?”
“Yes, indeed. I’m Grandison Wompler and this is my
son, Louie. Louie, say hello to General Grawk.”
“Hi!” shouted Louie.
The general squinted the Womplers over, ignoring no
detail but their proffered hands. “Cute little outfits you
got there,” he said, jabbing a finger at their silver fringe.
“Who’s your dressmaker?” Then to one of the WAF’s,
“Make a note of it, Meg. First of all, they got cruddy
security. Nobody asked to see my ID card. I coulda been
a Russky spy, for chrissake. Second, I think the two top
boys are fruits. Father and son, my eye! And all dressed
up in Mother’s clothes, I guess, eh?”
Louie’s grin wavered, disappeared. “Now wait a min­
ute,” he said. “Whose mother? Now just wait a minute.”
His immense pudgy hands became fists.
“Like to lose your old man a couple million in govern­
ment contracts?” shrilled the general. “Like to fix it so
you’re out of government work for good? Well, just lay
a mitt on me, Junior. Go ahead, hit me!”

31
 M ECHASM

Grandison managed to keep his son from complying.

Grawk smirked slightly, stretched out the folds of fat in
his neck, and peered around him. “Are we gonna stand
out here all day?”
The entire menage fell in behind Kurt and Karl, who
guided the general to the outer door of the lab building.
To Grawk’s fresh indignation, a Marine guard insisted on
seeing his ID card.
“Great,” he said, producing it. “Just great. This guy
can’t see I’m wearing the uniform of a general in the
US Air Force. He has to m ake sure. Just swell. Oh, I can
see this is a well-run place all right.”
They moved on inside.
“Which one of you ginks is Smilax, head-of-projeet?
You?” he asked Karl, who shook his head.
“He sends his regrets,” Karl said. “He’s unable to meet
you in person.”
“What do you mean, ‘unable’? Where is he?”
“In his office.” The twins pointed out the office door.
A bitter smile rippled over the simian lip. “I get it.
I’m not important enough for him to get up off his bacon
and come out to meet, is that it? A mere four-star general
is nothing, huh? I guess he only talks to the Joint Chiefs
of Staff or something.”
As the twins made no reply to this, the general stepped
to the office door and tried it. It was locked. Lifting a
set of knuckles designed to be walked upon, he rapped
smartly on the restricted area sign.
A nearby door opened, and a Marine guard, bearing
a sub-machine gun, stepped out.
“I’m afraid you can’t go in there, General,” he said.
‘no unauthorized personnel , this means you,’ ” he
quoted from the quite legible sign.
“What the hell do you mean? I got a top secret clear­
ance. I’m supposed to be inspecting this plant. If I ain’t
authorized, who is? What the Christ is going on here,
anyway? Smilax, you come out of there!” He rattled
the knob and pounded on the door until the guard
trained his gun on him and waved him away.
“Look,” Grawk said to him, a more conciliatory note

32
 M EC H A S M

creeping into his voice, “I come seven hundred miles in

that hot, stuffy helicopter to inspect Smilax’s project.
You mean to tell me this freak can’t even come out of
his office to talk to me?”
“I ’m afraid not, General. Dr. Smilax comes and goes
at his pleasure,” said the Marine tersely. “If you want to
contact him, you’d better forward your message to the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
“------ ” said the general. That is, he opened his
mouth but no sound came forth. Purple veins began to
writhe in his face, and his boiled eyes bulged.
Then he turned on his heel, emitting at the same time
a short, hysterical laugh. “All right,” he said. “Let’s see
this so-called project, and get it over with.”
In one comer of the lab a considerable space had been
cleared. A bulky object roughly the size of an automobile
here lay shrouded in a drop cloth. Now the Mackintosh
brothers moved in to lift the cloth, folding it rapidly
and expertly into a cocked hat,
"What’s all this?” said the general, waving at the pile
of large gray boxes thus revealed. They lay on three
lab tables, quivering, turning slightly on their hidden
wheels as they sensed movement about them.
“It is a self-reproducing machine,” the twins an­
nounced. “A Reproductive System.”
“Yeah? Ugly, ain’t it?”
During the week, they explained, the boxes had de­
voured over a ton of scrap metal, as well as a dozen
oscilloscopes with attached signal generators, thirty-odd
test sets, desk calculators both mechanical and elec­
tronic, a pair of scissors, an uncountable number of bot­
tle caps, paper clips, coffee spoons and staples (for the
lab and office staff liked feeding their new pet), dozens
of surplus walky-talky storage batteries and a small gaso­
line-driven generator.
The cells had multiplied—better than doubled their
original number—and had grown to various sizes, rang­
ing from shoeboxes and attache cases to steamer trunk
proportions. They now reproduced constantly but slowly,
in various fashions. One steamer trunk emitted, every

33
 M EC H A S M

five or ten minutes, a pair of tiny boxes the size of 3 x 5

card files. Another box, of extraordinary length, seemed
to be slowly sawing itself in half.
General Grawk remained unimpressed. “What does it
do for an encore?” he growled.
“I don’t know much about this stuff myself,” Grandi-
son candidly admitted. “I leave all the heavy think-work
to my boys here, Kurt, Karl and Cal. They know all
about Endymions and revanchist doctrines, all that suff.”
With savage glee, the general spoke to one of his
WAF’s. “Amy, make a note. I think this one is a commy,”
he spat with disgust, “as well as a fairy.”
“Let me hit him, Pop!” bawled Louie. “Let me use
Origami on him.”
Kurt and Karl went on explaining the system, as
though they had not been interrupted.
“It is ‘ergetropic,’ ” Karl explained. “That is, it can
seek and use nearly any kind of power.” He gestured to
his brother as one vaudeville partner to another.
“It is metabotropic,” Kurt added. “Some cells are
oriented more towards metal, some towards energy. May
we demonstrate?”
The twins each picked up one box gently. They were
the size of fat attache cases. “This is a power-seeking
cell,” Karl explained. “That one is metal-seeking.”
The wheels of the two machines whined as they set
them on the floor. One spun around and headed straight
for the light socket. The other dashed about the room,
sampling the legs of metal furniture, pausing to nibble
at the comer of a filing cabinet. Cal shooed it away and
it scooted behind a lab table, out of his reach. Between
the table and the wall, he could see the box working
its way along towards the far corner, towards the oyster
tank.
“Kinda cute at that,” said the general.
One of its legs eaten through, the oyster tank col­
lapsed. As water from it spread across the floor, the fat
box outran it, heading for the door. It carried a metal
wastebasket, holding it aloft in crab-claws, a hard-won
trophy.

34
 MECHASM

“Stop it!” Cal shouted. The general began to laugh.

“Halt!” shouted the Marine guard. He fired a warning
shot but the attache case kept coming. He lowered his
gun and fired directly at the little box. Bullets rang on
the wastebasket. The Marine emptied his gun. just as
the box dashed between his polished boots and out of
the door.
“All you had to do,” said Karl, “was pick it up.”
The general leaned on the table, doubled up with
coarse laughter. The twins and Cal were trying to trap
the other box. Excited by the gun-flashes, it scooted in
circles all over the room.
“HI be goddamned,” the general kept saying. “Fun­
niest thing I seen since the war.” His weight was tipping
the table, and as the boxes rushed towards him it tipped
even further.
Cal cornered the energy-seeking box and bent to turn
it off. He saw that the toggle switch had been damaged,
apparently by a welding arc. It was a fused lump of
metal on top of the box. Something else occurred to him
then: there had been a lot of cells running around on
the table with broken or missing switches. Odd. He
would have to ask someone about that.
But just now there was nothing to do but pick this
one up off the floor. Cal was frightened of it, but he
was even more frightened of letting it go free.
“Careful!” someone shouted. “You’re standing in brine!”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Cal. He looked up to see the
table overturn on General Grawk, the boxes sliding
off . . .
But then the scene froze, like a film hung up in the
projector. And, like a stuck film, everything shriveled
and vanished, leaving only bright white emptiness.

35
 MECHASM

Chapter V

M.I.T.

“O goodly usage o f those ancient times,

In which the sword was servant unto right.”
S penser

C al was brought up on a farm in Minnesota. His father,

Codman Codman Potter, was taciturn, even for a
farmer. In fact, Cal could only recall his father's speak­
ing to him twice in all his life. Codman seemed a bot­
tomless reservoir of wisdom; whenever he spoke, the
family went into a panic.
The awful voice first sounded when Cal was eight.
His mother had given him a book of Aesop’s fables, and
one evening he lay on the living room floor, reading of
the frogs who wanted a king. His father looked at him
and said loudly:
“There’s plenty of things you don’t leam from books.
Books only ruin your eyes. It’s life that’s important, not
God damned books!”
Alarmed, Cal’s mother took the book from him and
burned it. He never dreamed of objecting. From then on,
he merely skimmed his lessons and school, and avoided
bringing home any of the hated books. At home his
only lapse was glancing at the back of the cereal box:
“Niacin, Thiamine, Riboflavin . . .” Surely, he reasoned,
it was all right to read, as long as he did not undertand.
This idea of reading only the unreadable stayed with
him until he asked his father for permission to study
Latin and Greek.

36
 MECHASM

“What? If you want to go to college at all, you’ll by

God become an engineer. Or else I’ll Latin you, God
damn it!”
Cal went off to the Miami Institute of Technocracy,
then, to become an engineer. At the station, Codman
nodded goodbye.
M IT was small. There were just twenty students and
one professor altogether, and in Cal’s class there were
but three other students. The entire school occupied one
large room above a dry-cleaning plant. In after years,
Cal would always associate the smell of chemicals and
the hiss of steam with Dr. Elwood Trivian.
“You have an interest in the inimicable classics? I
laud that, young man. We have, alack, no time to teach
them here. They are, you cogitate, useless. I must de­
plore you to study science, and science alone.
“I had a thorough grinding in the classics myself, and
am today but a humble pedagod. Why, I earn less here
in an entire year than I would in a single week on the
railroad, steering a train! And that takes no learning at
all!”
Half-way through his course, Cal switched his major
from Engrg. Arts to Biophys. Arts. He wrote his father
explaining that this had more to do with life. In a sense,
he was telling the truth, for it enabled him to sit next
to Mary Junes, whom he loved.
Mary did not love him back; she was not likely to
love him; she did not even know his name. She seemed
to love Harry Stropp, their tall, thickset, swart classmate,
who majored in Phys. Ed.
She was a short, chunky, tough-looking girl with a
great gob of yellow hair like dirty cotton. As everyday
attire she wore borrowed sweatshirts, mixed and
matched with dungarees and borrowed sweatpants. She
seemed addicted to black cough drops. Her breath
smelled of menthol, her hands were always sticky, and
her wide, sluttish mouth was stained black. Cal dreamed
of pasting a kiss on those gummy lips.
He schemed to sit next to her in every class: Current
Events (where Dr. Trivian read his morning paper

37
 MECHASM

aloud), Phonics Praxis and Appreciation of Thermody­

namics. Still, her nights were spent with Harry.
Barthemo Beele, the fourth member of the class and
a Journalism student,- published the mimeo school paper,
The MIT W orker’s Torch, He bitterly complained of see­
ing Mary and Harry kiss in public, in editorials headed:
“Is Decency Finished?”
One day Harry came down with a cold. After strug­
gling through morning classes, he gave up and went
home. Mary clicked a black cough drop deliciously, and
winked at Cal. “What’s your name?”
Harry arose from his sickbed in a week, to find he’d
lost his girl to Cal.
“I don’t care,” he’d say, flexing his big arm and study­
ing it. “She’s not the only pebble on the beach. There
are plenty of other fish in the sea.” He remained an
absolute recluse, going swimming and fishing alone, and
doing lots of roadwork on the roof above the schoolroom.
Cal felt terribly guilty every time he heard the sound of
giant, sad tennis shoes on the roof, running tirelessly.
The MIT W orker’s Torch named Cal valedictorian of
the class. On the same day, it announced the engage­
ment of Miss Mary Junes to Barthemo Beele.
“When did this happen?” Cal asked her, holding up
the mimeo sheet in a trembling hand.
“Oh, you know that night last week, when you had
to study?”
“But—engaged?”
“Yup. Right after graduation, me and Barty are going
to live somewheres out West, where he’s got a swell job
as a editor already. Isn’t that great?”
Great. The next few days Cal knew not what he did.
He wept unashamedly, tore up all her notes ( “Can I
borrow your sweatshirt, darling? Thanx, M.” ), and took
long walks, at times avoiding all meaningful places, at
times haunting them. He began to feel he might be­
come a dedicated scientist, a seeker after truth.
Most of the hundred foundations, academies and labs
to which he applied for a research grant replied that
they had no need for holders of the rather special

38
 MECHASM

degree, Bachelor of Biophysics Arts, The Wompler Re­

search Laboratory, however, sent a letter expressing in­
terest and an IBM card to fill out and return. In the
tiny box on the card where he was to write the name
of his school, there was only room for the abbreviation
“M IT.” He was hired by return mail.
The MIT W o rkers Torch kept up its morality cam­
paign (now directed against its editor and his fiancee)
to the last day, Dr. Trivian gave a stirring Commence­
ment speech to his four new graduates, though most of
it was drowned out by the 'hiss of steam from below,
where the shirts lived.
a * *

“Oh, don’t worry,” Cal said. It seemed to him that he

was still trying to pick up the runaway cell, but bright
white clouds kept getting in his way. Steam?
All at once he realized the clouds were real; he was
looking at the sky. He rolled over and sat up, hands
buried in cool grass.
A file drawer marked “Secret” scooted past, pursued
by a mob of people in white coats. “Stop itl Catch it!”
How odd, he thought with a tolerant smile. Chasing
file drawers. He began to walk around the building.
Other boxes, made of garbage cans, cabinets, bent signs,
swarmed over the green, pursuing and pursued by hu­
man figures. Near the fence a group of Marines had
set up a light machine gun. Now they were defending
it desperately against the slow, blunt, methodical attacks
of a kiln and a small safe, in tandem. Finally a fork-lift
track rushed in, seized the gun and apparently digested
it.
Chuckling, Cal strode around another comer of the
building. The helicopter lay on its side as the swarming
boxes picked it clean. It was beginning to look like the
skeleton of a beached whale.
The general was no longer laughing; he was scream­
ing at the twin brothers, “Somebody is gonna have to

39
 MECHASM

pay for this! That is government property your toy is

tearing up!”
“Government property hell!” Grandison roared. “That
gizmo is tearing up my property! If you can’t shut it
o ff-”
“Mr. Wompler, General Grawk,” said Karl solemnly,
“there seems to be no safe way to shut it off—without
jeopardizing the whole experiment, that is. We simply
cannot permit it.”
Grandison caught sight of Cal. “So you finally came
to, eh?” he said. “Just in time, too. I guess one of them
Endymions musta give you a little electric shot, eh boy?
Well, I hope you can shut that thing off—Kurt and Karl
here are chicken.”
“There should be nothing easier than shutting it off,”
Cal said, “Every cell is equipped with a sympathetic,
tuned switch that—”
“Not any more,” said Karl with a condescending smile.
“That was last week. The more sophisticated mutations
of the system have shed that apparatus long ago.”
“Well then, I’ll shut off the ones that haven’t, and
we’ll smash the rest.”
“No, you don’t!” Kurt said, bridling. “If you go in that
lab and tamper, you’re fired!”
Grandison wavered, less sure of himself now. “Maybe
you shouldn’t—”
“I’m not worried about protecting property,” said Cal
quietly. “I’m worried about protecting a few lives. None
of you seem to realize how dangerous this thing is/*
“What are a few lives, in comparison to—” Karl be­
gan, but Cal did not stay to listen. He dashed around
the comer to the main entrance and back to the lab.
It was scarcely recognizable. Larger and larger cells
had formed, some viable, some not, which forced them­
selves into the corners of the room and ate away at the
very structure of the building. Festoons of insulation hung
above, where once there had been a fluorescent lighting
system. Now the lamps and conduit were gone, and the
very copper wires stripped from their insulation, which

40
 MECHASM

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 slow­
ly, 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, scat­
tered like groups of statuary on the lawn. The statues
were all looking at Cal.
Grandison Wampler 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.”
“b u t -”
“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 pile of
junk.”
“That’s right,” Karl said nodding emphatically. “You
realize that shutting off the Reproductive System com­
pletely 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 shoul­
der. “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.

41
 MECHASM

“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 Mackin­
tosh brothers, “what do we do with this one? Shoot him?
(W e 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 harm­
less—now—and I’m sure by the time Senator Dill’s
committee get through with him—if you get my mean­
ing?”
“Meanwhile, you’re fired,” said Karl brusquely. “Bet­
ter get going before we have you arrested for trespass­
ing, 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 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 knives of pretty women’s scorn. Cal was
in no condition to do anything like rational thinking. For

42
 MECHASM

if he had been, there was one question he surely would

have asked himself:
How was it a system as intelligent, as adaptable, as
clever at self-protection as this one was supposed to be
had given up almost without a fight?

Chapter VI

TH E BOXES THAT ATE ALTOONA

“I have taught my gears to talk

N icky-nicky Poop, tic-toc.”
Louis S acchetti ( attrib.)

“O f Altoona, Nevada, lying quite near Parsnip Peak

(8,905 ft.) and not far from Railroad Valley, where no
railroads run, I sing,” wrote Mary Junes Beele on her
husband’s L. C. Smith typewriter. Below it, she typed
asterisks: a row of posies. The swollen belly of her thumb
pressed the space bar.
From the next room came the clanking of a hand press.
Editor Barthemo Beele was running off the second edi­
tion of the Altoona W eekly Truth. His hand, she thought,
that rocks the cradle . . . Mary cursed the paper and she
cursed the paper’s editor, her husband of one week.
The keys of the typewriter, she saw, were like black
cough drops. Black cough drops were not to be had in
Altoona. One of the typewriter’s keys had broken one of
Mary’s nails. She began to chew it off, cursing everything
she could think of—especially cursing Altoona. If that
sailor did not take her away soon, she was going to die
of this town. As she bit into another nail spitefully, con­
trary Mary cursed her rotten luck.

43
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Assi que con la partida
no'stá mi mal en morir
siendo qual será la vida,
mas consiste en el viuir,
que si pensaua
todo el mal que me causaua
lo que yo no merecia,
quanto en ella adolecia
me sanaua
cada vegada c'os via.
De suerte que mi dolencia,
me fuerça para que muera
pues la salud no se espera
que daua vuestra presencia,
pues sin ella
todo'l mal de mi querella
no'stá más d'en el viuir
junto con ella,
no hauria mucho que sofrir.
Assi que parto muriendo
e voy viuo desseando
la muerte que ya demando
por no morir mas viuiendo.
Dios me guarde
que su venir no se tarde
mas que abreuie su venida,
porque ya estoy de la vida
tan cobarde
quanto estoy de la partida.
De manera que tardarse
lo poco que durará
no es viuir pero será
la muerte más alargarse,
porque della
menor mal es padecel'a
que penando desealla
pues el triste qu'en buscalla
 va tras ella
descansará si la halla.
Y de ser con ella cierto
no puedo mucho tardar
pues començadme a contar
dende agora ya por muerto:
que lo ya soy
e no creays que dende hoy,
porque dende el primer dia
c'os puse en mi fantasia
muerto estoy
e muerta el anima mia.

Pues embiadas estas coplas con

vn paje suyo para que a la señora
Yssiana se las diesse, porque de
su mano a noticia de Belisena
viniessen, Flamiano se partió con
el marques de Persiana que avn
no era partido, e con el prior de
Albano y el prior de Mariana, los
quales juntos partieron. Vasquiran
salió con ellos vna gran pieça del
camino, en la cual siempre con
Flamiano fue hablando. Llegados
donde despedirse deuian,
Flamiano dixo a Vasquiran: Señor
Vasquiran, esto que agora os
quiero dezir, va fuera de todas las
passiones e fantasias de las
cosas de amores, ni sus
vanidades, saluo que la verdad es
esta, que despues que esta
partida determiné nunca mi
coraçon, dello ha podido tener
contentamiento e alegria, ante
vna intrinseca tristeça que del
espiritu e del animo me nace e
nunca vna hora me dexa, sin
poder conocer causa que para
ello tenga, quitadas las que te
dixe que no son desta qualidad,
por lo que apartarme de ti me
fatiga, desseo y esperança de
tornarte a ver daria consuelo e de
la señora Belissena assi mesmo;
mas creeme vna cosa e mira en
qué hora te lo digo, que mi vida
será muy poca porque yo me lo
siento en la mano e verlo has que
assi será. A lo qual Vasquiran con
muchas razones satisfizo,
apartandoselo de la memoria y en
algo reprehendiendole, aunque en
lo intrinseco no menos alteracion
recibia qu'el otro publicaua. E assi
se despidio Vasquiran del señor
marques e de los dos priores e de
otros caualleros que con ellos
yuan, e a la fin de Flamiano con
tantas lagrimas que ninguno
podia prenunciar palabra al otro;
ante estando vn poco abraçados,
al vno e al otro las entrañas
verdaderamente se les
arrancaban, hasta que
despartidos sin hablar se dieron
paz, e assi Vasquiran e los suyos
se tornó a Noplesano tanto lleno
de tristeça que en todo el camino
ni en aquella noche a ninguno
habló palabra, ante la pasó toda
trastornando por el juyzio
diuersas cosas; venianle a la
memoria sus viejas e frescas
llagas, su nueua soledad, las
palabras que Flamiano le hauia
dicho que de nueuo dolor le
afligian, recelando lo que tenia
como fue.

CUENTA EL AUCTOR LO QUE

VASQUIRAN HIZO DESPUES
DE TORNADO TODO EL
TIEMPO QUE DURÓ HASTA
QUE SUPO LA NUEUA DE LA
BATALLA
Tornado Vasquiran a Noplesano
començó adereçar las cosas de
su partida, en el qual tiempo cada
dia yua a visitar a la señora
duquesa e muchas vezes hablaua
con la señora Belisena de
diversas cosas, en especial de los
caualleros que eran partidos. E
assi a cabo de algun tiempo,
hauida vna naue se partio.
Llegado a Felernisa començo a
poner en orden las cosas
necessarias para partirse al
campo, y en este tiempo siempre
estuuo con mucha congoxa e
tristeça recelando alguna mala
nueua como despues le vino, la
qual fue causa que diuersas
uezes determinara partirse
dissimuladamente, porque las
palabras que Flamiano en la
partida le habló le causauan
infinitos e temerosos
pensamientos. Pues estando assi
recelando e su partida poniendo
en orden, vna noche passada la
semana de passion, que era la
primera de la pascua de alegria
en la qual fue la cruel batalla de
Rauena, Vasquiran estando en su
lecho dormiendo le siguio vn
sueño en el qual vio todo o lo mas
que en aquella triste jornada de
Rauena se era seguido. Lo qual
con mucha turbacion otro dia
contó a sus criados, siempre
diziendoles lo que temia, assi
como fue.

CUENTA VASQUIRAN A SUS

CRIADOS LAS COSAS QUE
LA NOCHE ANTE HAUIA
SOÑADO
Habeys de saber, hermanos, que
no puedo menos de hazer de no
descobriros vn caso qu'esta
noche me ha seguido, como a
fieles seruidores e buenos
amigos, aunque las cosas de los
sueños en general por cosas
vanas son tenidas, como plega a
Dios que esta sea. Mas como la
materia della tan graue me sea, el
recelo que dello tengo me haze
que me parezca a la vista
verdadera. Haueys de saber que
esta noche estando de mis fatigas
con el dolor mas atonito que
dormido, como suelo, me parecio
que me hallaua caminando a la
marina de Venecia por vna llanura
cerca de vna ciudad la qual veya
cercada de gente que no podia
ninguno conocer. E assi andando
por vna ribera de vn rio arriba
sintia muy gran roydo de armas e
de artilleria en tanta manera que
me parecia que la tierra toda se
queria hundir e que el cielo se
caya. E como tal roydo senti,
apressuré mi andar por vn
pequeño bosque y en poco
espacio me vi al salido dél en vna
altura e assi mirando el gran
alarido de las vozes, miré allende
el rio que junto me estaua, vi la
mas cruda batalla e la mayor que
parece hauer oydo, no solo en
vna parte, mas en diuersas, de la
qual me parecia que via salir muy
mucha gente e meterse en el rio
en vnas barcas e los vnos yuan el
rio arriba e los otros el rio abaxo,
de los quales no podia conocer
quién ninguno dellos fuesse,
saluos que los que yuan por el rio
arriba lleuauan vnas cruzes
coloradas en los pechos e los
cuerpos e ropas teñidos de
sangre, e parecia que yuan
cantando e muy alegres. E los
que yuan el rio ayuso lleuauan
vnas cruzes blancas en los
pechos e los cuerpos assi mesmo
de sangre teñidos, e los rostros
assi mesmo de sangre llorosos, e
pareciame que sus barcas yendo
el rio abaxo, que se hundian en el
agua e ninguna parecia, ni los
que en ellos yuan. E las otras que
arriba caminauan me parecia que
se metian por vna floresta la mas
hermosa del mundo, e que todos
yuan cantando e muy alegres, e
assi desaparecian de mi uista.
Estando assi vi venir vna gran
barca con muchos caualleros
mancebos, con la deuisa de los
que arriba caminauan, e vilos a
todos con vnas coronas de flores
en las cabeças e vnos ramos en
las manos, cantando muy alegres,
e como en par de mi llegaron,
vino la barca acostandose a la
ribera del rio donde yo estaua, e
como mas cerca de mi fue, conoci
qu'en la proa de la barca venia
Flamiano con muchas heridas en
el rostro y en la persona, e vi que
me saludó con la cabeça e no
hablaua. Vi junto con él a su
costado al conde de Auertino, de
la misma manera dél herido. Vi en
la delantera assentados al prior
de Mariana e al prior Albano, e vi
a Rosseller el pacifico e Alualader
de Caronis e a Pomerin e a
Petrequin de la Gruta, e vi a
Guillermo de Lauro e a su
hermano el conde de
Torremuestra e mas de cien
caualleros Españoles e de
Noplesano, e vilos todos con
muchas heridas en sus personas.
Vi infinitas barcas de aquella
manera, en las quales parecia
que mucha gente conocia. E
como esta barca principal tanto
cerca de mi llegó, puseme al orilla
del agua por entrar en ella, e
siendo cerca de mi Flamiano,
alargó la mano contra mi, e yo por
entrar en la barca, pareciome
hauer caydo en el agua. Con la
qual turbacion recordé, e tan
alterado que mas no podia ser.
Assi que todo lo que de la noche
quedaua, passé velando en
diuersos pensamientos. Plega a
Dios que no hayamos alguna
mala nueua.

CUENTA EL AUCTOR COMO

DENDE A POCOS DIAS
LLEGÓ FELISEL A
FELERNISA CON LA NUEUA
DE LA BATALLA
Passados algunos dias despues
desto, llegó en el puerto de
Felernisa vna nave que de
Noplesano venia, por la qual se
supieron las nueuas de la batalla
passada. Venia en la nave Felisel,
el qual como a Vasquiran vio,
¿quién podrá contar los dolorosos
gemidos, los entrañables gritos
que en su presencia dio, estando
gran pieça sin palabra poderle
pronunciar? Al qual con muchos
ruegos e consolaciones,
Vasquiran començo a rogar que
se reposasse, aunque no menos
alteracion en él hauia para oyr lo
que ya pensaua que le podria
contar que en él para poderselo
dezir. Pues algo Felisel sosegado,
començó en esta manera a dezir:
Agora podras, Vasquiran, de
verdad plañir, agora no tienes
quien tu porfia te vença, agora el
más de los solos te puedes
llamar, agora el más
verdaderamente lastimado, agora
el más sin consuelo e con menos
remedio; agora podras dezir que
tus males esperança de bien no
tienen, agora con raçon pediras la
muerte porque en ella halles
reposo, agora con raçon della te
podras quexar, pues lo que
recelas perder te llena e a ti que
la pides dexa, agora tienes raçon
de aborrecer la vida, agora
conozco que ninguno en
desdichas te es igual, agora
puedes dezir que la fortuna
teniendote debaxo su rueda ha
parado fuera de toda raçon contra
ti; agora comiença de nueuo a
plañir e llorar con la muerte de
Violina, la de tu carissimo amigo
Flamiano, con todos quantos
amigos en el mundo tenias, pues
que la muerte ninguno te ha
dexado. Assi que no me pidas
más particularidades de tu mal e
mis malas nueuas, sino que
ninguno te queda de quien
alegrarte puedas; por eso en
general comiença de todos a
dolerte e de ti a hauer lastima,
porque ellos con honrrosas
muertes ya repossan e tu amarga
e triste vida viuiras desseandola.
Vna carta te traygo de mi señor, la
qual en mi presencia acauó de
escreuir dando fin a su vida.

CARTA DE FLAMIANO A
VASQUIRAN
ESTANDO PARA MORIR
Vasquiran, si la breuedad de mi
muerte más largo espacio me
diera, más larga te huuiera hecho
mi carta. Pero pues la vida no ha
tenido más lugar para partirse de
mi, perdoname. No te escribo del
caso, ni de como nuestra batalla
passó, porque de muchos lo
sabras, e ninguno sabe como fue,
ni puede saber mas de lo que vió.
Solo quiero que sepas que sin mi
ninguno de quantos amigos tenias
te queda viuo, salvo algunos que
en prission quedan. Bien sé que
nos ternás envidia por no hauerte
hallado con nosotros para dexar
nuestra compañia, como soy
cierto que lo hizieras. Yo te lloro
porque agora conozco que tu vida
será qual publicauas. Ningun
remedio para tu consuelo tienes
mejor que con la discrecion
esperar tras lastimada vida
honrrosa muerte, donde segun
comienço a sentir, creo que el
verdadero reposo se halla. Assi
que discreto eres, conforma tu
desseo con la voluntad de Dios y
él te dara remedio a tus pesares
como a mi me ha hecho. De mi te
ruego que no plangas mi muerte
porque es la cosa de que en este
mundo he sido más contento. Si
mi ausencia te fuere graue,
piensa en que la vida no es tan
larga que presto no nos veamos e
con esta esperança que de tu
desseo me consuela, vive
contento. Solo vna cosa me
parece que a mi anima da pena
queriendo de mí partirse e a mi
cuerpo queriendo despedirse
della, esto es que mis ojos no
ayan podido ver a mi señora
antes de mi fin, para que dende
aqui començara a sentir la gloria
que allá espero, pues que acá
siempre me fallecio. Verdad es
que siempre esperé en la muerte
el descanso que en la vida no
hallaua. E no alargo mas porque
mi viuir se acorta, que a esta e a
mi vida a vna dió cabo,
encomendandote a Dios a quien
mi alma encomiendo. Hecha en
Ferrara a XVII de Abril. Año 1512.
El que en la muerte mas que tú
ha sido venturoso, tu verdadero
amigo, Flamiano. Deo gratias.

FIN
 NOTAS:
[284] Hemos copiado el título de la obra, como también el
Prólogo y el Argumento, de la edición de Venecia por Gabriel
Giolito de Ferrariis, año 1553, porque al ejemplar que de la de
1513 se conserva en la Biblioteca Nacional faltan dos hojas al
principio.
El título de la edición de Amberes por Filipo Nució, año 1576, es
muy distinto y dice así:
Question de Amor.
Lo que en este presente libro se contiene es lo siguiente:
Vna question de amor de dos enamorados, al vno era muerta su
amiga; el otro sirue sin esperança de galardón. Disputan qual de
los dos sufre mayor pena.
Entretexense en esta controuersia muchas cartas y enamorados
razonamientos.
Introduzense mas, vna caça, vn juego de cañas, vna egloga,
ciertas justas y muchos caualleros y damas con diuersos y ricos
atauios, con letras y inuenciones.
Concluye con la salida del señor Visorey de Napoles, donde los
dos enamorados al presente se hallauan para socorrer al Santo
padre. Donde se cuenta el numero de aquel lucido exercito y la
contraria fortuna de Rauena.
La mayor parte de la obra, historia verdadera.
[285] En la edición de 1513 se lee:
Pues que entonces.
[286] En la edición de Nucio basiliscos.
[287] Ahunca dice por error en las ediciones, pero el consonante
exige que se lea avança.
[288] En otras ediciones precio.
[289] En la edición de Nucio: don Diaguito.
 CRISTOBAL DE
VILLALON

DIALOGO
QUE TRATA DE LAS
TRANSFORMACIONES
DE PITÁGORAS,
EN QUE SE
ENTRUDUCE UN
ZAPATERO LLAMADO
MICYLLO E UN GALLO
EN QUYA FIGURA ANDA
PITÁGORAS.
OBRA INÉDITA
 CAPITULO
PRIMERO

Como el gallo despertó á su amo

Micillo e los
consejos que le da.

Micillo.—Gallo.

Micillo.—¡Oh maldito gallo! que

con esta tu boz ynbidiosa tan
aguda Jupiter te destruya, porque
con tus bozes penetrables me has
despertado del sueño más
apazible que hombre nunca tubo,
porque yo gozaba de muy
conplida bienabenturança,
sonnando que poseya muy
grandes riqueças ¡y que ni en la
noche no me sea posible huyr de
la pobreça!, clamandome tú con
tu canto enojoso, pues segun yo
conjeturo aun no es la media
noche, agora por el gran silencio,
ora por el gran rygor del frio que
avn no me hace cosquillas como
suele hacerme quando quiere
amanescer, lo qual me es muy
cyerto pronostico de la mañana;
mas este, desventurado velador
desde que se puso el sol bozea
como si guardase el bellocyno
dorado; yo te prometo que no te
bayas sin castigo porque con vn
palo te quebrantaré esa tu cabeça
si amanesciere tan presto, porque
agora mayor serbycio me arias si
callases en esta tan esqura
noche.
Gallo.—Mi señor amo Mi[ci]llo,
en verdad que pensaba yo que te
azia muy agladable serbizyo si te
manifestase la mañana con mi
canto, porque levantandote antes
del dia pudieses azer gran parte
de tu labor. Si antes quel sol
saliese hubieses cosidos vnos
çapatos, trabajo más provechoso
seria para ti comer, y si más te
aplaze el dormir yo te contentaré
callando y me haré más mudo
que los peces de la mar; mas
mira bien que aunque durmiendo
te parescas rico no seas pobre
quando despiertes.
Micillo.—¡O Jupiter! destruydor
de malos agueros; ¡o Herqules!
apartador de todo mal, ¿qué cosa
es esta, quel tiene vmana boz?
Gallo.—¿Y encantamyento te
paresce, Micyllo, si yo asi hablo
como vosotros ablays?
Micillo.—¿Pues quién más
verdadero encantamiento? ¡o
Dios soberano! apartad tan gran
mal de mi!
Gallo.—Por cierto tú me
paresces muy sin letras ¡o Micillo!
pues que no as leydo los versos
de Omero, en los quales quenta
que Xanto caballo de Archilles,
despues de aver relinchado en
medio de la batalla, començo a
cantar en alta boz rezando por
orden los versos e no como yo
que ablo en prosa; mas él
profetizaba y dezia grandes
oraqulos de las cosas que
estaban por venir, mas a ninguno
pareszio que azia cosa
misteryosa ni prodigiosa, ni
alguno de los que le oyan le
juzgaban por cosa mala ni
dannosa, como tú agora azes
llamando a Dios, pues no es
maravylla que yo able boz de
honbre siendo tan allegado de
Merençio[290], el más parlero y
eloquente orador entre todos los
dioses y más siendo yo vuestro
continuo conpannero, que lo
puedo bien aprender; y si me
quieres olgaré mucho de te dezir
la causa mas principal de donde
yo tenga lengua y boz como
vosotros y tenga esta faqultad de
ablar.
Micillo.—Oyrete, Gallo, con tal
condicyon que no sea suenno lo
que me contares, mas que me
digas la muy berdadera ocasion
que te mobio a ablar como onbre.
 NOTAS:
[290] Sic, por Mercurio.