Walter M. Miller - Conditionally Human

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Walter M Miller
Conditionally Human
HE KNEW there was no use hanging around after breakfast, but he could not bear leaving her
like this. He put on his coat in the kitchen, stood uncertainly in the doorway, and twisted his hat in
his hands. His wife still sat at the table, fin-gered the handle of an empty cup, stared fixedly out the
window at the kennels behind the house, and pointedly ignored his small coughings and scrapings.
He watched the set of her jaw for a moment, then cleared his throat.
"Anne?"
"What?"
"I can't stand seeing you like this."
"Then go away."
"Can't I do anything—?"
"I told you what to do."
Her voice was a monotone, full of hurt. He could neither en-dure the hurt nor remove it. He
gingerly crossed the room to stand behind her, hoping she'd look up at him and let her face go soft,
maybe even cry a little. But she kept gazing at the win-dow in accusing silence. He chuckled
suddenly and touched her silk-clad shoulder. The shoulder shivered away. Her dark hair quivered
as she shuddered, and her arms were suddenly locked tightly about her breasts as if she were cold.
He pulled his hand back, and his big pliant face went slack. He gulped forlornly.
"Honeymoon's over, huh?"
"Ha!"
He backed a step away, paused again. "Hey, Baby, you knew before you married me," he
reminded her gently.
"I did not."
"You knew I was a District Inspector for the F.B.A. You knew I had charge of a pound."
"I didn't know you killed them!" she snapped, whirling.
"I don't have to kill many," he offered.
"That's like saying you don't kill them very dead."
"Look, honey, they're only animals."
"Intelligent animals!"
"Intelligent as a human imbecile, maybe."
"A baby is an imbecile. Would you kill a baby?— Of course you would! You do! That's what
they are: babies. I hate you." He withered, groped desperately for a new approach, tried a semantic
tack. "Look, `intelligence' is a word applicable only to humans. It's the name of a human function,
and . . . "
"And that makes them human!" she finished. "Murderer!"
"Baby—!"
"Don't call me baby! Call them baby!"
He made a miserable noise in his throat, backed a few steps toward the door, and beat down his
better judgment to speak again: "Anne, honey, look! Think of the good things about the job.
Sure—everything has its ugly angles. But just think: we get this house rent-free; I've got my own
district with no local bosses to hound me; I make my own hours; you'll meet lots of people that
stop in at the pound. It's a fine job, honey!"
Her face was a mask again. She sipped her coffee and seemed to be listening. He blundered
hopefully on.
"And what can I do about it? I can't help my aptitudes. Place-ment Division checked them, sent
me to Bio-Authority. Period. Okay, so I don't have to work where they send me. I could ig-nore the
aptitudes and pick common labor, but that's all the law allows, and common laborers don't have
families. So I go where they need my aptitudes."
"You've got aptitudes for killing kids?" she asked sweetly. He groaned, clenched his eyes closed,
shook his head fiercely as if to clear it of a sudden ache. His voice went desperately pa-tient. "They
assigned me to the job because I like babies. And because I have a degree in biology and an
aptitude for dealing with people. Understand? Destroying unclaimed units is the smallest part of it.
Honey, before the evolvotron, before anybody ever heard of Anthropos Incorporated, people used
to elect animal catchers. Dogcatchers, they called them. Didn't have mutant dogs, of course. But
just think of it that way—I'm a dog-catcher."
Ice-green eyes turned slowly to meet his gaze. Her face was delicately cut from cold marble. One
corner of her mouth twitched contempt at him. Her head turned casually away again to stare out the
window toward the kennels again.
He backed to the door, plucked nervously at a splinter on the woodwork, watched her hopefully
for a moment.
"Well, gotta go. Work to do."
She looked at him again as if he were a specimen. "Do you need to be kissed?"
He ripped the splinter loose, gulped, "See you tonight," and stumbled toward the front of the
house. The honeymoon indeed was done for District Inspector Norris of the Federal Biological
Authority.
Anne heard his footsteps on the porch, heard the sudden grumble of the kennel-truck's turbines,
choked on a sob and darted for the door, but the truck had backed into the street, lurched suddenly
away with angry acceleration toward the highway that lay to the east. She stood blinking into the red
morning sunlight, shoulders slumped. Things were wrong with the world, she decided.
A bell rang somewhere, rang again. She started slightly, shook herself, went to answer the
telephone. A carefully enunciated voice that sounded chubby and professional called for Inspector
Norris. She told it disconsolately that he was gone.
"Gone? Oh, you mean to work. Heh heh. Can this be the new Mrs. Norris?" The voice was too
hearty and greasy, she thought, muttered affirmatively.
"Ah, yes. Norris spoke of you, my dear. This is Doctor Georges. I have a very urgent problem
to discuss with your husband. But perhaps I can talk to you."
"You can probably get him on the highway. There's a phone in the truck." What sort of urgent
problems could doctors discuss with dogcatchers, she wondered.
"Afraid not, my dear. The inspector doesn't switch on his phone until office hours. I know him
well, you see."
"Can't you wait?"
"It's really an emergency, Mrs. Norris. I need an animal from the pound—a Chimp-K-48-3,
preferably a five year old."
"I know nothing about my husband's business," she said stiffly. "You'll have to talk to him."
"Now see here, Mrs. Norris, this is an emergency, and I have to have ...”
"What would you do if I hadn't answered the phone?" she interrupted.
"Why I—I would have—"
"Then do it," she snapped, dropped the phone in its cradle, marched angrily away. The phone
began ringing again. She paused to glance back at it with a twinge of guilt. Emergency, the fat voice
had said. But what sort of emergency would in-volve a chimp K-48, and what would Georges do
with the ani-mal? Butchery, she suspected, was somehow implied. She let the phone ring. If Norris
ever, ever, ever asked her to share his work in any way, she'd leave him, she told herself.
The truck whirred slowly along the suburban street that wound among nestled groups of pastel
plasticoid cottages set approximately two to an acre on the lightly wooded land. With its population
legally fixed at three hundred million, most of the country had become one gigantic suburb, dotted
with com-munity centers and lined with narrow belts of industrial develop-ment. There was no open
country now, nor had there been since the days of his grandparents. There was nowhere that one
could feel alone.
He approached an intersection. A small animal sat on the curb, wrapped in its own bushy tail.
The crown of its oversized head was bald, but its body was covered with blue-gray fur. A pink
tongue licked daintily at small forepaws equipped with prehensile thumbs. It eyed the truck
morosely as Norris drew to a halt and smiled down out of the window at it.
"Hi, kitten," he called. "What's your name?"
The Cat-Q-5 stared at him indifferently for a moment, uttered a stuttering high-pitched wail, then
cried: "Kitty Rorry."
"Kitty Rorry. That's a nice name. Where do you live, Rorry?"
The Cat-Q-5 ignored him.
"Whose child are you, Rorry? Can you tell me that?"
Rorry regarded him disgustedly. Norris glanced quickly around. There were no houses near the
intersection, and he feared that the animal might be lost. It blinked at him, sleepily bored, then
resumed its paw-bath. He repeated the questions.
"Mama kiyi, kiyi Mama," it finally reported.
"That's right, Mama's kitty. But where's Mama? Do you suppose she ran away?"
The Cat-Q-5 looked startled. It stuttered for a moment. Its fur crept slowly erect. It glanced both
ways along the street, shot suddenly away at a fast scamper along the sidewalk. Norris followed it
in the truck for two blocks, where it darted onto a porch and began wailing through the screen:
"Mama no run ray! Mama no run ray!"
He chuckled and drove on. A couple who failed the genetic requirements, who could have no
children of their own, could get quite attached to a Cat-Q-5, but the cats were emotionally safer
than any of the quasi-human chimp-K models called "neu-troids." The death of a neutroid could
strike a family as hard as the death of a child, while most couples could endure the loss of a cat-Q
or a dog-F. A couple with a genetic "C" rating were permitted to own one neutroid, or two
non-humanized models of daily food intake less than four hundred calories each. Most
psychologists regarded the neutroids as emotional dynamite, and advised attaching affections to
some tail-wagger with a lower love-demand potential.
Norris suddenly lost his vestigial smile. What about Anne? What outlet would she choose for her
maternal needs?—for his own Social Security card was stamped "Genetic-C"—and Anne loved
kids. He had been thinking in terms of the kennel animals, how she might direct her energies toward
helping him take care of them, but now that her hostility was evident . . . well .. . suppose she
wanted a pseudoparty and a neutroid of her own? Of this, he disapproved.
He shuddered slightly, fumbled in his pocket, and brought out a slightly battered invitation card
that had come in yesterday's mail:
You are cordially invited
to attend the pseudoparturition
and ensuing cocktail hour
to celebrate the arrival of
HONEY BLOSSOM
Blessed event to occur on
Twelveweek's Sixday of 2063
at 19:30 hours
Reception Room, Rockabye Hours Clinic
R.s.v.p. Mr. & Mrs. John Hanley Slade
The invitation had come late, the party would be tonight. He had meant to call Slade today and
say that he and Anne would probably drop in for cocktails, but would be unable to get there in time
for the delivery. But now that she had reacted so hostilely to the nastier aspects of his job, perhaps
he had better keep her away from sentimental occasions involving neutroids.
The battered card reminded him to stop in Sherman III Com-munity Center for his mail. He
turned onto the shopping street that paralleled the great highway and drove past several blocks of
commercial buildings that served the surrounding suburbs. At the down-ramp he gave the attendant
a four-bit bill and sent the truck down to be parked under the street, then went to the message
office. When he dropped his code-disk in the slot, the feedway under his box number chattered out
a yard of paper tape at him. He scanned it slowly from end to end—note from Aunt Maye, bill from
SynZhamilk Products, letter from Anne's mother. The only thing of importance was the memo from
the chief, a troublesome tidbit that he had been expecting for days:
Attention All District Inspectors: Subject: Deviant Neutroid.
You will immediately begin a systematic and thorough survey of all animals whose serial
numbers fall in the Bermuda-K-99 series for birth dates during weeks 26 to 32 of year 2062. This
is in connection with the Delmont Negligency case. Seize all animals in this category, impound,
and run applicable sections of nor-malcy tests. Watch for signs of endocrinal deviation and
non-standard response patterns. Delmont has confessed to passing only one non-standard
model, but there may have been others. He disclaims memory of deviant's serial number. This
could be a ruse to bring a stop to investigation when one animal is found. Be thorough.
If allowed to reach age-set or adulthood, such a deviant could be dangerous to its owner or to
others. Hold all seized K-99s who exhibit the slightest departure from standard in the nor-malcy
tests. Forward these to Central Lab. Return standard mod-els to their owners. Accomplish entire
survey project within seven days.
C. Franklin
"Seven days!" he hissed irritably, wadded the tape in his pocket, stalked out to get the truck.
His district covered two hundred square miles. With a replacement quota of seventy-five
neutroids a week, the district would have probably picked up about forty K-99s from the Bermuda
factory influx during the six-week period last year. Could he round them up in a week? Doubtful.
And there were only eleven empty cages in the kennel. The other forty-nine were oc-cupied by the
previous inspector's "unclaimed" inventory—awaiting destruction. The crematorium behind the
kennels would have a busy week. Anne would love that.
He was halfway to Wylo City when the radiophone buzzed on the dashboard. He pulled into the
slow lane and answered quickly, hoping for Anne's voice. A polite professional purr came instead.
"Inspector Norris? Doctor Georges."
Norris made a sour mouth, managed a jovial greeting.
"Are you extremely busy at the moment?" Georges asked. He paused. Georges usually wanted a
favor for some wealthy patient, or for some wealthy patient's tail-wagger.
"Extremely," he grunted.
"Eh? Oh well, this won't take long. One of my patients—a Mrs. Sarah Glubbes—called a while
ago and said her baby was sick."
"So?"
"No baby. I must be getting absent minded, because I forgot she's class C until I got there."
"I'll guess," Norris muttered. "Turned out to be a neutroid."
"Of course, of course."
"Why tell me?"
"It's dying. Eighteenth order virus. Naturally, I can't get it admitted to a hospital."
"Ever hear of vets?"
"You don't understand. She insists it's her baby, believes it's her own. How can I send it to a
vet?"
"That's your worry. Is this an old patient of yours?"
"Why, yes, I've known Sarah since—"
"Since you presided at her pseudopart?"
"How did you know?"
"Just a guess. If you put her through pseudopart, then you deserve all the trouble you get."
"I take it you're a prohibitionist."
"Skip it. What did you want from me?"
"A replacement neutroid. From the kennel."
"Baloney. You couldn't fool her. If she's blind, she'd still know the difference."
"I'll have to take the chance. Listen, Norris, it's pathetic. She knows the disease can be
cured—in humans—with hospitaliza-tion and expensive treatment that I can't get for a neutroid. No
vet could get the drug either. Scarce. It's pathetic."
"I'm crying all over the steering wheel."
The doctor hesitated. "Sorry, Norris, I thought you were hu-man."
"Not to the extent of doing quasi-legal favors that won't be ap-preciated for some rich neurotic
dame and a doc who practices pseudopart."
"One correction," Georges said stiffly. "Sarah's not rich. She's a middle-aged widow and
couldn't pay for treatment if she could get it."
"Oh—"
"Thanks anyway, Norris."
"Hold it," he grunted. "What's the chimp's series?" "It's a K-48, a five-year-old with a three-year
age set." Norris thought for a moment. It was a dirty deal, and it wouldn't work.
"I think I've got one in the kennel that's fairly close," he offered doubtfully.
"Good, good, I'll have Fred go over and—"
"Wait, now. This one'll be spooky, won't know her, and the serial number will be different."
"I know, I know," Georges sighed. "But it seems worth a try. An attack of V-i8 can cause mild
amnesia in humans; that might explain why it won't know her. About the serial number—"
"Don't try changing it," Norris growled.
"How about obliterating—"
"Don't, and I'll check on it a couple of weeks from now to make damn sure you didn't. That's a
felony, Georges."
"All right, all right, I'll just have to take the chance that she won't notice it. When can I pick it
up?"
"Call my wife in fifteen minutes. I'll speak to her first."
"Uh, yes . . . Mrs. Norris. Uh, very well, thanks, Inspector." Georges hung up quickly.
Norris lit a cigaret, steeled himself, called Anne. Her voice was dull, depressed, but no longer
angry.
"All right, Terry," she said tonelessly. "I'll go out to the kennel and get the one in cage thirty-one,
and give it to Georges when he comes."
"Thanks, babe."
He heard her mutter, "And then I'll go take a bath," just before the circuit clicked off.
He flipped off the auto-driver, took control of the truck, slipped into the fast lane and drove
furiously toward Wylo City and the district wholesale offices of Anthropos Incorporated to begin
tracing down the suspected Bermuda K-99s in accordance with Franklin's memo. He would have to
check through all incom-ing model files for the six week period, go over the present in-ventory,
then run down the Bermuda serial numbers in a moun-tain of invoices covering a thirty-week
period, find the pet shops and retail dealers that had taken the doubtful models, and finally survey
the retail dealers to trace the models to their present owners. With cooperation from wholesaler and
dealers, he might get it down to the retail level by mid-afternoon, but getting the models away from
their owners would be the nasty part of the job. He was feeling pretty nasty himself, he decided.
The spat with Anne, the distasteful thoughts associated with Slade's pseudoparty, the gnawing
remorse about collaborating with Dr. Georges in a doubtful maneuver to pacify one Sarah Glubbes,
a grim week's work ahead, plus his usual charge of suppressed re-sentment toward Chief
Franklin—it all added up to a mood that could turn either black or vicious, depending on
circumstance.
If some doting Mama gave him trouble about impounding her darling tail-wagger, he was, he
decided, in the right kind of mood to get a warrant and turn the job over to the sheriff.
The gasping neutroid lay on the examining table under the glaring light. The torso quivered and
twitched as muscles con-tracted spasmodically, but the short legs were already limp and paralyzed,
allowing the chubby man in the white coat to lift them easily by the ankles and retrieve the rectal
thermometer. The neutroid wheezed and chattered plaintively as the nurse drew the blanket across
its small body again.
"A hundred and nine," grunted the chubby man, his voice muffled by the gauze mask. His eyes
probed the nurse's eyes for a moment. He jerked his head toward the door. "She still out there?"
The nurse nodded.
The doctor stared absently at the thermometer stem for a moment, looked up again, spoke
quietly. "Get a hypo—necrofine." She turned toward the sterilizer, paused briefly. "Three c.c.s?"
she asked.
"Twelve," he corrected.
Their eyes locked with his for several seconds; then she nod-ded and went to the sterilizer.
"May I leave first?" she asked tonelessly while filling the syr-inge.
"Certainly."
"What'll I say to Mrs. Glubbes?" She crossed to the table again and handed him the hypo.
"Nothing. Use the back way. Go tell Fred to run over to the kennels and pick up the substitute.
I've called Mrs. Norris. Oh yeah, and tell Fred to stop in here first. I'll have something for him to
take out."
The nurse glanced down at the squirming, whimpering newt, shivered slightly, and left the room.
When the door closed, Georges bent over the table with the hypo. When the door opened again,
Georges looked up to see his son looking in.
"Take this along," he grunted, and handed Fred the bundle wrapped in newspapers.
"What'll I do with it?" the youth asked.
"Chuck it in Norris's incinerator."
Fred glanced at the empty examining table and nodded indifferently. "Can Miss Laskell come
back now?" he asked in go-ing.
"Tell her yeah. And hurry with that other neut."
"Sure, Pop. See you later."
The nurse looked in uncertainly before entering.
"Get cleaned up," he told her. "And go sit with Mrs. Glubbes."
"What'll I say?"
"The `baby' will recover. She can take it home late this afternoon if she gets some rest first."
"What're you going to do?—about the substitute."
"Give it a shot to put it to sleep, give her some codeine to feed it."
"Why?"
"So it'll be too groggy for a few days to even notice her, so it'll get addicted and attached to her
because she gives it the coedine."
"The serial number?"
"I'll put the tattooed foot in a cast. V-18 paralysis—you know."
"Smart," she muttered, but there was no approval in her voice.
When she had changed clothes in the anteroom, she unlocked the door to the office, but paused
before passing on into the reception room. The door was ajar, and she gazed through the crack at
the woman who sat on the sofa.
Sarah Glubbes was gray and gaunt and rigid as stone. She sat with her hands clenched in her lap,
her wide empty eyes—dull blue spots on yellowed marble orbs—staring ceilingward while the
colorless lips of a knife-slash mouth moved tautly in earnest prayer. The nurse's throat felt tight.
She rubbed it for a moment. After all, the thing was only an animal.
She straightened her shoulders, put on a cheerful smile, and marched on into the reception room.
The yellowed orbs snapped demandingly toward her.
"Everything's all right, Mrs. Glubbes," she began.
"Finished," Norris grunted at three o'clock that afternoon.
"Thirty-six K-99s," murmured the Anthropos file-clerk, gazing over Norris's shoulder at the
clip-board with the list of doubtful neuts and the dealers to whom they had been sent. "Lots of
owners may be hard to locate."
"Yeah. Thanks, Andy, and you too, Mabel."
The girl smiled and handed him a slip of paper. "Here's a list of owners for thirteen of them. I
called the two local shops for you. Most of them live here close."
He glanced at the names, felt tension gathering in his stom-ach. It wasn't going to be easy. What
could he say to them?
Howdy, Ma'am, excuse me, but I've come to take your little boy away to jail ... Oh, yes ma'am,
he'll have a place to stay—in a little steel cage with a forkful of straw, and he'll get vitamin-ized
mush every day. What's that? His sleepy-time stories and his pink honey-crumbles? Sorry,
ma'am, your little boy is only a mutated chimpanzee, you know, and not really human at all.
"That'll go over great," he grumbled, staring absently at the window.
"Beg pardon, sir?" answered the clerk.
"Nothing, Andy, nothing." He thanked them again and strode out into the late afternoon sunlight.
Still a couple of hours work-ing time left, and plenty of things to do. Checking with the other retail
dealers would be the least unpleasant task, but there was no use saving the worst until last. He
glanced at the list Mabel had given him, checked it for the nearest address, then squared his
shoulders and headed for the kennel truck.
Anne met him at the door when he came home at six. He stood on the porch for a moment,
smiling at her weakly. The smile was not returned.
"Doctor Georges' boy came," she told him. "He signed for the—"
She stopped to stare at him, then opened the screen, reached up quickly to brush light fingertips
over his cheek.
"Terry! Those welts! What happened—get scratched by a cat-Q?"
"No, by a human-F," he grumbled, and stepped past her into the hall; Anne followed, eyeing him
curiously while he reached for the phone and dialed.
"Who're you calling?" she asked.
"Society's Watchdog," he answered as the receiver buzzed in his ear.
"Your eye, Terry—it's all puffy. Will it turn black?"
"Maybe."
"Did the human-F do that too?"
"Uh-uh. Human-M—name of Pete Klusky ...
The phone croaked at him suddenly. "This is the record-voice of Sheriff Yates. I'll be out from
five to seven. If it's urgent, call your constable."
He hung up briefly, then irritably dialed the locator service. "Mnemonic register, trail calls, and
official locations," grated a mechanical voice. "Your business, please."
"This is T. Norris, Sherman-9-4566-78B, Official rating B, Pri-ority B, code XT-88-U-Bio. Get
Sheriff Yates for me." "Nature of the call?"
"Offish biz."
"I shall record the call."
He waited. The robot found Yates on the first probability-trial attempt—in the local pool-hall.
"I'm getting to hate that infernal gadget," Yates snapped. "Acts like it's got me psyched.
Whattaya want, Norris?"
"Cooperation. I'm mailing you three letters charging three Wylo citizens with resisting a federal
official—namely me—and charging one of them with assault. I tried to pick up their neu-troids for a
pound inspection, and—"
Yates bellowed lusty laughter in his ear.
"Not funny," he growled. "I've got to get those neutroids. It's connected with the Delmont case."
Yates stopped laughing. "Oh? Well . . . I'll take care of it."
"Rush order, Sheriff. Can you get the warrants tonight and pick up the animals in the morning?"
"Easy on those warrants, boy. Judge Charleman can't be bothered just any time. I can get the
newts to you by noon, I guess, provided we don't have to get a helicopter posse to chase down the
mothers."
"Well, okay—but listen—I want the charges dropped if they cooperate with you. And don't
shake the warrants at them unless you have to. Just get those newts, that's all I want."
"Okay, boy. Give me the dope."
Norris read him the names and addresses of the three unwill-ing owners, and a precise account
of what happened in each case. As soon as he hung up, Anne muttered "Sit still," perched on his
knees, and began stroking chilly ointment across his burn-ing cheek. He watched her cool eyes
摘要：

WalterMMillerConditionallyHumanHEKNEWtherewasnousehangingaroundafterbreakfast,buthecouldnotbearleavingherlikethis.Heputonhiscoatinthekitchen,stooduncertainlyinthedoorway,andtwistedhishatinhishands.Hiswifestillsatatthetable,fin­geredthehandleofanemptycup,staredfixedlyoutthewindowatthekennelsbehindthe...

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