Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection Read online

Part One: The Final Stories The Smile Of The Chipper

  Johnson was reminiscing in the way old men do and I had been warned he would talk about chippers-those peculiar people who flashed across the business scene for a generation at the beginning of this twenty-first century of ours. Still, I had had a good meal at his expense and I was ready to listen.

  And, as it happened, it was the first word out of his mouth. "Chippers," he said, "were just about unregulated in those days. Nowadays, their use is so controlled no one can get any good out of them, but back a ways-One of them made this company the ten-billion-dollar concern it now is. I picked him, you know. "

  I said, "They didn't last long, I'm told. "

  "Not in those days. They burned out. When you add microchips at key points in the nervous system, then in ten years at the most, the wiring burns out, so to speak. Then they retired-a little vacant- minded, you know. "

  "I wonder anyone submitted to it. "

  "Well, all the idealists were horrified, of course, and that's why the regulating came in, but it wasn't that bad for the chippers. Only certain people could make use of the microchips-about eighty percent of them males, for some reason-and, for the time they were active, they lived the lives of shipping magnates. Afterward, they always received the best of care. It was no different from top-ranking athletes, after all; ten years of active early life, and then retirement. "

  Johnson sipped at his drink. " An unregulated chipper could influence other people's emotions, you know, if they were chipped just right and had talent. They could make judgments on the basis of what they sensed in other minds and they could strengthen some of the judgments competitors were making, or weaken them-for the good of the home company. It wasn't unfair. Other companies had their own chippers doing the same thing. " He sighed. "Now that sort of thing is illegal. Too bad. "

  I said, diffidently, "I've heard that illegal chipping is still done. " Johnson grunted and said, "No comment. "

  I let that go, and he went on. "But even thirty years ago, things were still wide open. Our company was just an insignificant item in the global economy, but we had located two chippers who were willing to work for us. "

  "Two?" I had never heard that before.

  Johnson looked at me slyly. "Yes, we managed that. It's not widely known in the outside world, but it came down to clever recruiting and it was slightly-just a touch-illegal, even then. Of course, we couldn't hire them both. Getting two chippers to work together is impossible. They're like chess grandmasters, I suppose. Put them in the same room and they would automatically challenge each other. They would compete continually, each trying to influence and confute the other. They wouldn't stop- couldn't, actually-and they would burn each other out in six months. Several companies found that out, to their great cost, when chippers first came into use. "

  "I can imagine," I murmured.

  "So since we couldn't have both, and could only take one, we wanted the more powerful one, obviously, and that could only be determined by pitting them against each other, without letting them ruin each other. I was given the job, and it was made quite clear that if I picked the one who, in the end, turned out to be inadequate, that would be my end, too. "

  "How did you go about it, sir?" I knew he had succeeded, of course. A person can't become chairman of the board of a worldclass firm for nothing.

  Johnson said, "I had to improvise. I investigated each separately first. The two were known by their code-letters, by the way. In those days, their true identities had to be hidden. A chipper known to be a chipper was half-useless. They were C-12 and F-71 in our records. Both were in their late twenties. C-12 was unattached; F-71 was engaged to be married. " "Married?" I said, a little surprised.

  "Certainly. Chippers are human, and male chippers are much sought after by women. They're sure to be rich and, when they retire, their fortunes are usually under the control of their wives. It's a good deal for a young woman. -So I brought them together, with F-71 's fiancee. I hoped earnestly she would be good-looking, and she was. Meeting her was almost like a physical blow to me. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, tall, dark-eyed, a marvelous figure and rather more than a hint of smoldering sexuality. "

  Johnson seemed lost in thought for a moment, then he continued. "I tell you I had a strong urge to try to win the woman for myself but it was not likely that anyone who had a chipper would transfer herself to a mere junior executive, which is what I was in those days. To transfer herself to another chipper would be something else-and I could see that C-12 was as affected as I was. He could not keep his eyes off her.

  So I just let things develop to see who ended with the young woman. " "And who did, sir?" I asked.

  "It took two days of intense mental conflict. They must each have peeled a month off their working lives, but the young lady walked off with C-12 as her new fiancee. "

  "Ah, so you chose C-12 as the firm chipper. "

  Johnson stared at me with disdain. " Are you mad? I did no such thing. I chose F-71, of course.

  We placed C-12 with a small subsidiary of ours. He'd be no good to anyone else, since we knew him, you see. "

  "But did I miss something? F-71 lost his fiancee and C-12 gained her. Surely C-12 was the superior. "

  "Was he? Chippers show no emotion in a case like this; no obvious emotion. It is necessary for business purposes for chippers to hide their powers so that the pokerface is a professional necessity for them. But I was watching closely-my own job was at stake-and, as C-12 walked off with the woman, I noticed a small smile on F71 's lips and it seemed to me there was the glitter of victory in his eyes. " "But he lost his fiancee. "

  "Doesn't it occur to you he wanted to lose her and it would not be easy to pry her loose? He had to work on C-12 to want her and on the woman to want to be wanted-and he did it. He won. "

  I thought about that. "But how could you have been sure? If the woman was as good-looking as you say she was-if she was smoldering so with sexuality, surely F71 would have wanted to keep her. "

  "But F-71 was making her seem desirable," said Johnson, grimly. "He aimed at C-12, of course, but with such power that the overflow was sufficient to affect me drastically. After it was allover and C-12 was walking away with her, I was no longer under the influence and I could see there was something hard and overblown about her-a kind of unlovely and predatory gleam in her eye.

  "So I chose F-71 at once and he was all we could want. The firm is now where you see it is, and I am chairman of the board. "