Mockingbird Read Free Page A

corrosives. A few had gone completely insane before being destroyed by humans, freaking out madly, destructively, rampaging down city streets at midnight screaming obscenities. Using a real human brain as a model for a sophisticated robot had been an experiment. The experiment had been judged a failure, and no more were made. The factories still turned out moron robots, and a few Make Sevens and Make Eights, to take over from the humans more and more of the functions of government and education and medicine and law and planning and manufacturing; but all these had synthetic, nonhuman brains, without a flicker of emotion, of inwardness, of self-consciousness in them. They were merely machines—clever, human-looking, well-made machines—and they did what they were supposed to do.
    Spofforth had been designed to live forever, and he had been designed to forget nothing. Those who made the design had not paused to consider what a life like that might be like.
    The girl in the red coat grew old and fat and had sex with ten dozen men and had a few babies and drank too much beer and led a trivial, purposeless life and lost her beauty. And at the end of it she died and was buried and forgotten. And Spofforth went on, youthful, superbly healthy, beautiful, seeing her at seventeen long after she had forgotten, as a middle-aged woman, the sexy, flirtatious girl she had once been. He saw her and loved her and he wanted to die. And some heedless human engineer had even made that impossible for him.
     
    The University Provost and the Dean of Studies were waiting for him when he returned from his June night alone.
    The duller of the two was the provost. His name was Carpenter and he wore a brown Synlon suit and nearly worn-out sandals and his belly and flanks trembled visibly in the tight suit as he walked. He was standing near Spofforth’s big teakwood desk, smoking a joint, when the robot came in and walked briskly toward him. Carpenter stood nervously aside while Spofforth seated himself.
    After a moment Spofforth looked at him—not just a bit to the right of him in the way that Mandatory Politeness required, but directly at him. “Good morning,” Spofforth said, in his strong, controlled voice. “Is something wrong?”
    “Well . . .” Carpenter said, “I’m not sure.” He seemed disturbed by the question. “What do you think, Perry?”
    Perry, the Dean of Studies, rubbed his nose with his forefinger. “Somebody called, Dean Spofforth. On the University Line. Called twice.”
    “Oh?” Spofforth said. “What did he want?”
    “He wants to talk to you,” Perry said. “About a job. A summer teaching. . .”
    Spofforth looked at him. “Yes?”
    Perry went on nervously, his eyes avoiding Spofforth’s. “What he wants to do is something that I couldn’t understand on the telephone. It’s a new thing—something he said he had discovered a yellow or two ago.” He looked around him until his gaze found that of the fat man in the brown suit. “What was it he said, Carpenter?”
    “Reading?” Carpenter said.
    “Yes,” Perry said. “
Reading
. He said he could do
reading
. Something about words. He wants to teach it.”
    Spofforth sat up at the word. “Someone has learned to
read
?”
    The men looked away, embarrassed at the surprise in Spofforth’s voice.
    “Did you record the conversation?” Spofforth asked.
    They looked at one another. Finally, Perry spoke. “We forgot,” he said.
    Spofforth suppressed his annoyance. “Did he say he would call back?”
    Perry looked relieved. “Yes, he did, Dean Spofforth. He said he would try to establish a connection with you.”
    “All right,” Spofforth said. “Is there anything else?”
    “Yes,” Perry said, fobbing his nose again. “The usual curriculum BB’s. Three suicides among the student body. And there are plans recorded somewhere for the closing down of the East Whig of Mental Hygiene; but none of the robots could find them.” Perry . seemed pleased to