Walter 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, fingered 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 endure 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 window 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. Placement Division checked them,

sent me to Bio-Authority. Period. Okay, so I don't have to work where they send me. I could

ignore 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

patient. "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 any-body 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 in-deed was done for District Inspector Norris of the Federal Bi-

ological 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 high-way 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 involve a chimp K-

48, and what would Georges do with the animal? 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 community centers and lined with narrow belts of industrial

development. There was no open country now, nor had there been since

the days of his grand-parents. 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: "Kiyi 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 sup-pose 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 "neutroids." 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 per-

mitted 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 Community 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 f all 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 normalcy 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

normalcy tests. Forward these to Central Lab. Return standard models 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 re-placement 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 occupied 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

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摘要：

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

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Walter Miller - Conditionally Human

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