Mockingbird Read Free Page B

be able to report a failure among the staff robots. “None of the Make Sixes knew anything about them, sir.”
    “That’s because
I
have them, Dean Perry,” Spofforth said. He opened his desk drawer and took out one of the little steel balls— the BB’s, they were called—that were used to make voice recordings. He held it out to Perry. “Play this into a Make Seven. He’ll know what to do about the Mental Hygiene classrooms.”
    Perry, somewhat shamefaced, took the recording and left. Carpenter followed him out of the room. When they were gone Spofforth sat at his desk for a while, wondering about the news of the man who said he could read. He had heard of reading often enough when he was young, and knew that it had died out long before. He had seen books—very ancient things. There were still a few of them left undestroyed in the University Library.
    Spofforth’s office was big, and very pleasant. He had decorated it himself, with prints of shore birds and with a carved oak sideboard he had taken from a demolished museum. On the sideboard was a row of small models of Robotic Engineering, roughly showing the history of anthropoid forms that had been used in the development of the art. The earliest, on the far left, was of a wheeled creature with a cylindrical body and four arms—very early, and somewhere between a servomechanism and an autonomous mechanical being. The model was made of Permoplastic and was about six inches tall. The robot had been, during its brief span of usefulness, called a Wheelie; none had been made for centuries.
    To the right of the Wheelie was a more manlike shape, somewhat close to that of a contemporary moron robot. The statuettes became more detailed, more human, as they proceeded from left to right, until they concluded with a miniature of Spofforth himself—sleek, entirely human in appearance, poised on the balls of his feet and with his eyes, even in the model, seeming alive.
    A red light began to blink on Spofforth’s desk. He pressed a button and said, “Spofforth here.”
    “My name is Bentley, Dean Spofforth,” the voice on the other end said. “Paul Bentley. I’m calling from Ohio.”
    “Are you the one who can read?” Spofforth said.
    “Yes,” the voice said. “I taught myself how. I can read.”
     
    The great ape sat wearily on the overturned side of a bus. The city was deserted.
    At the center of the screen a white vortex appeared and began to enlarge and whirl. When it stopped it had filled more than half the screen. It became clear that it was the front page of a newspaper, with a huge headline.
    Spofforth stopped the projector with the headline on the screen. “Read that,” he said.
    Bentley cleared his throat nervously. “Monster Ape Terrifies City,” he read.
    “Good,” Spofforth said. He started the projector again.
    The rest of the film had no written words on it. They watched it in silence, through the ape’s final destructive rampage, his pathetic failure to be able to express his love, on through to his death as he fell, as though floating, from the impossibly tall building to the wide and empty street below.
    Spofforth threw the switch that brought the lights back on in his office and made the bay window transparent again. The office was now no longer dark, no longer a projection room. Outside, amid the bright flowers of Washington Square, a circle of elderly graduate students sat on the unkempt grass in their denim robes. Their faces were vacant. The sun was high, distant, in the June sky. Spofforth looked at Bentley.
    “Dean Spofforth,” Bentley said, “will I be able to teach the course?”
    Spofforth watched him thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, “No. I’m sorry. But we should not teach reading at this university.”
    Bentley stood up awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I thought. . .”
    “Sit down, Professor Bentley,” Spofforth said. “I believe we can use this skill of yours, for the summer.”
    Bentley seated