Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Amazing Science Fiction Stories April 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
The little man stood in front of the
monstrous machine as the synaptic
drone heightened to a scream. No ...
no, he whispered. Don't you
understand....
WE'RE FRIENDS, NOW
By HENRY HASSE
ILLUSTRATED by VARGA
Today more than other days Raoul Beardsley felt the burden, the draggingsense of inevitability. He frowned; he glanced at his watch; he leanedforward to speak to the copter pilot and then changed his mind. Hesettled back, and from idle habit adjusted his chair-scope to thefamiliar broad-spoked area of Washington just below.
"I'll not have it happening again today!" he told himself grimly ...and at once his thoughts quavered off into many tangles ofself-reproach. "Blasted nonsense the way I've been acting. A machine,a damned gutless machine like that! Why do I persist in letting it getto me?"
He pondered that and found no solace. "Delusion," he snorted. "Hypersynapse-disorder ... that's how Jeff Arnold would explain me. I wishhe'd confine his diagnostics to the Mechanical Division where itbelongs! He's amused, they're all amused at me—but damn it they justdon't know!"
Beardsley's rotund body sagged at the thought. Adjusting thechair-scope, he fixed his gaze on the broad facade of Crime-CentralBuilding far across the city; again he felt the burgeoning embarrassmentand foreboding, but he put it down with an effort before it reached theedge of fear. Not today, he thought fiercely. No, by God, I justwon't permit it to happen.
There. So! He felt much better already. And he had really made good timethis morning. Today of all days he mustn't keep ECAIAC waiting.
Beardsley was the only one not to panic when theinfallible machine broke down.Mustn't.... Something triggered in Beardsley, and he was assailed with aperverse rebellion at the thought.
Must not? But why not? Why shouldn't he just once keep ECAIAC and JeffArnold and his clique stewing in their own tangle of tubes andelectronic juice? And wouldn't this, he gloated, be the perfect dayfor it! Arnold especially—just once to shatter that young man'scomplacent routine....
No. Beardsley savored the thought tastily, and let it trickle away, andthe look of glee on his cherubic face was gone. For too many years hisjob as serological "coördinator" (Crime-Central) had kept him pinned tothe concomitant routine. Pinned or crucified, it was all the same; incrime analysis as in everything these days, personal sense ofachievement had been too unsubtly annihilated. Recalling his justcompleted task—the Citizen Files and persona-tapes and the endlessannotating—Beardsley felt himself sinking still further into that mireof futility that encompassed neither excitement nor particular pride.
He brought himself back with a grimace, aware tha