Anything You Can Do! by Randall Garrett (smart books to read .txt) 📗

himself. But he fielded the next one nicely and slammed it home.

Pok! Pok! Ping!

The physical therapist who was standing by glanced at his watch. It was almost time.

Pok! Pok! Ping!

The machine, having delivered its last ball, shut itself off with a smug click. Stanton turned away from the handball court and walked toward the physical therapist, who held out a robe for him.

"That was good, Bart," he said, "real good."

"One miss," Stanton said as he shrugged into the robe.

"Yeah. Your timing was a shade off there, I guess. But you ran a full minute over your previous record."

Stanton looked at him. "You re-set the timer again," he said accusingly. But there was a grin on his face.

The P.T. man grinned back. "Yup. Come on, step into the mummy case." He waved toward the narrow niche in the wall of the court, a niche just big enough to hold a standing man. Stanton stepped in, and various instrument pick-ups came out of the walls and touched his body. Hidden machines recorded his heartbeat, blood pressure, brain activity, muscular tension, and several other factors.

After a minute, the P.T. man said, "O.K., Bart; let's hit the steam box."

Stanton stepped out of the niche and accompanied the therapist to another room, where he took off the robe again and sat down on the small stool inside an ordinary steam box. The box closed, leaving his head free, and the box began to fill with steam.

"Did I ever tell you what I don't like about that machine?" Bart asked as the therapist draped a heavy towel around his head.

"Nope. Didn't know you had any gripe. What is it?"

"You can't gloat after you beat it. You can't walk over and pat it on the shoulder and say, 'Well, better luck next time, old man.' It isn't a good loser, and it isn't a bad loser. The damn thing doesn't even know it lost, and if it did, it wouldn't care."

"I see what you mean," said the P.T. man, chuckling. "You beat the pants off it and what d'you get? Not even a case of the sulks out of it."

"Exactly. And what's worse, I know perfectly good and well that it's only half trying. The damned thing could beat me easily if you just turned that knob over a little more."

"You're not competing against the machine, anyway," the therapist said. "You're competing against yourself, trying to beat your own record."

"I know. And what happens when I can't do that any more, either?" Stanton asked. "I can't just go on getting better and better forever. I've got limits, you know."

"Sure," said the therapist easily. "So does a golf player. But every golfer goes out and practices by himself to try to beat his own record."

"Bunk! The real fun in any game is beating someone else! The big kick in golf is in winning over the other guy in a twosome."

"How about crossword puzzles or solitaire?"

"Solve a crossword puzzle, and you've beaten the guy who made it up. In solitaire, you're playing against the laws of chance, and even that can become pretty boring. What I'd like to do is get out on the golf course with someone else and do my best and then lose. Honestly."

"With a handicap...." the therapist began. Then he grinned weakly and stopped. On the golf course, Stanton was impossibly good. One long drive to the green, one putt to the cup. An easy thirty-six strokes for eighteen holes; an occasional hole-in-one sometimes brought him below that, an occasional worm-cast or stray wind sometimes raised his score.

"Sure," Stanton said. "A handicap. What kind of handicap do you want on a handball game with me?"

The P.T. man could imagine himself trying to get under one of Stanton's lightning-like returns. The thought of what would happen to his hand if he were to accidentally catch one made him wince.

"We wouldn't even be playing the same game," Stanton said.

The therapist stepped back and looked at Stanton. "You know," he said puzzledly, "you sound bitter."

"Sure I'm bitter," Stanton said. "All I get is exercise. All the fun has gone out of it." He sighed and grinned. There was no point in worrying the P.T. man. "I'll just have to stick to cards and chess if I want competition. Speed and strength don't help anything if I'm holding two pair against three of a kind."

Before the therapist could say anything, the door opened and a tall, lean man stepped into the fog-filled room. "You are broiling a lobster?" he asked the P.T. blandly.

"Steaming a clam," came the correction. "When he's done, I'll pound him to chowder."

"Excellent. I came for a clam-bake," the tall man said.

"You're early then, George," Stanton said. He didn't feel in the mood for light humor, and the appearance of Dr. Yoritomo did nothing to improve his humor.

George Yoritomo beamed, crinkling up his heavy-lidded eyes. "Ah! A talking clam! Excellent! How much longer does he have to cook?"

"Twenty-three minutes, why?"

"Would you be so good as to return at the end of that time?"

The therapist opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and said: "Sure, Doc. I can get some other stuff done. I'll see you then. I'll be back, Bart." He went out through the far door.

After the door closed, Dr. Yoritomo pulled up a chair and sat down. "New developments," he said, "as you may have surmised."

"I guessed," Stanton said. "What is it?" He flexed his muscles under the caress of the hot, moist currents in the box.

He wondered why it was so important that the psychologist interrupt him while he was relaxing after strenuous exercise. Yoritomo looked excited, in spite of his calm. And yet Stanton knew that there couldn't be anything urgent or Yoritomo would have acted differently.

It was relatively unimportant now, anyway, Stanton thought. Having made his decision to act on his own had changed his reaction to the decisions of others.

Yoritomo leaned forward in his chair, his thin lips in an excited smile, his black-irised eyes sparkling. "I had to come tell you. The sheer, utter beauty of it is too much to contain. Three times in a row was almost absolute, Bart; the probability that our hypothesis is correct was computed as straight nines to seven decimals. But now! The fourth time! Straight nines to twelve decimals!"

Scanton lifted an eyebrow. "Your Oriental calm is deserting you, George. I'm not reading you."

Yoritomo's smile became broader. "Ah! Sorry. I refer to the theory we have been discussing—about the memory of the Nipe. You know?"

Stanton knew. Dr. Yoritomo was, in effect, one of his training instructors. Advanced Alien Psychology, Stanton thought; Seminar Course. The Mental Whys & Wherefores of the Nipe, or How to Outthink the Enemy in Twelve Easy Lessons. Instructor: Dr. George Yoritomo.

After six years of watching the recorded actions of the Nipe, Yoritomo had evolved a theory about the kind of mentality that lay behind the four baleful violet eyes in that alien head. Now he evidently had proof of that theory. He was smiling and rubbing his long, bony hands together. For George Yoritomo, that was the equivalent of hysterical excitement.

"We have been able to predict the behavior of the Nipe!" he said. "For the fourth time in succession!"

"Great. But how does that fit in with that rule you once told me about? You know, the one about experimental animals."

"Ah, yes. The Harvard Law. 'A genetically standardized strain, under precisely controlled laboratory conditions, when subjected to carefully calibrated stimuli, will behave as it damned well pleases.' Yes. Very true.

"But an animal could not do otherwise, could it? Only as it pleases. And it could not please to behave as something it is not, could it?"

"Draw me a picture," Stanton said.

"I mean that any organism is limited in its choice of behavior. A hamster, for instance, cannot choose to behave in the manner of a Rhesus monkey. A dog cannot choose to react as a mouse would. If I prick a rat with a needle, it may squeal, or bite, or jump—but it will not bark. Never. Nor will it leap up to a trapeze, hang by its tail, and chatter curses at me. Never.

"By observing an organism's reactions, one can begin to see a pattern. If you tell me that you put an armful of hay into a certain animal's enclosure, and that the animal trotted over, ate the hay, and brayed, I can tell you with reasonable certainty that the animal has long ears. Do you see?"

"You haven't been able to pinpoint the Nipe that easily, have you?" Stanton asked.

"Ah, no. The more intelligent a creature is, the greater its scope of action. The Nipe is far from being so simple as a monkey or a hamster. On the other hand—" He smiled widely, showing bright, white teeth. "—he is not so bright as a human being."

"What!? I wouldn't say he was exactly stupid, George. What about all those prize gadgets of his?" He blinked. "Wipe the sweat off my forehead, will you? It's running into my eyes."

Dr. Yoritomo wiped with the towel as he continued. "Ah, yes. He is quite capable in that respect, my friend. It is his great memory—at once his finest asset and his greatest curse."

He draped the towel around Stanton's head again and stepped back, his face unsmiling. "Imagine having a near-perfect memory."

Stanton's jaw muscles tightened. "I think I'd like it."

Yoritomo shrugged slightly. "Perhaps you would. But it would not be the asset you think. Look at it soberly, my friend.

"The most difficult teaching job in the universe is the attempt to teach an organism something it already knows. True? Yes. If a man already knows the shape of the Earth, it will do you no good to attempt to teach him. If he knows that the Earth is flat, your contention that it is round will make no impression whatever. He knows, you see. He knows.

"Now. Imagine a race with a perfect memory—one which does not fade. A memory in which each bit of data is as bright and fresh as the moment it was imprinted, and as readily available as the data stored in a robot's mind. It is, in effect, a robotic memory.

"If you put false data into the memory bank of a computer—such as telling it that the square of two is five—you cannot correct the error simply by telling it that the square of two is four. You must first remove the erroneous data, not so?

"Very good. Then let us look at the Nipe race, wherever it was spawned in this universe. Let us look at their race a long time back—when they first became Nipe sapiens. Back when they first developed a true language. Each child, as it is born or hatched or budded—whatever it is they do—is taught as rapidly as possible all the things it must know to survive. And once it is taught a thing, it knows. And if it is taught a falsehood, then it cannot be taught the truth."

"Wouldn't cold reality force a change?" Stanton asked.

"Ah. In some cases, yes. In most, no. Look: Suppose a primordial Nipe runs across a tiger—or whatever passes for a tiger on their planet. He has never seen a tiger before, so he does not see that this particular tiger is old, ill, and weak. He hits it on the head, and it drops dead. He takes it home for the family to feed on.

"'How did you kill it, Papa?'"

"'I walked up to it, bashed it on the noggin, and it died. That is the way to kill tigers.'"

Yoritomo smiled. "It is also a good way to kill Nipes. Eh?" He took the towel and wiped Stanton's brow again.