Title: Hagerty's Enzymes
Author: Haley, A. L.
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Hagerty's Enzymes" ***


                           HAGERTY'S ENZYMES

                            By A. L. HALEY

             _There's a place for every man and a man for
              every place, but on robot-harried Mars the
                situation was just a little different._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Spring 1955.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Harper Breen sank down gingerly into the new Relaxo-Lounge. He placed
twitching hands on the arm-rests and laid his head back stiffly. He
closed his fluttering eyelids and clamped his mouth to keep the corner
from jumping.

"Just lie back, Harp," droned his sister soothingly. "Just give in and
let go of everything."

Harper tried to let go of everything. He gave in to the chair. And
gently the chair went to work. It rocked rhythmically, it vibrated
tenderly. With velvety cushions it massaged his back and arms and legs.

For all of five minutes Harper stood it. Then with a frenzied lunge
he escaped the embrace of the Relaxo-Lounge and fled to a gloriously
stationary sofa.

"Harp!" His sister, Bella, was ready to weep with exasperation. "Dr.
Franz said it would be just the thing for you! Why won't you give it a
trial?"

Harper glared at the preposterous chair. "Franz!" he snarled. "That
prize fathead! I've paid him a fortune in fees. I haven't slept for
weeks. I can't eat anything but soup. My nerves are jangling like
a four-alarm fire. And what does he prescribe? A blasted jiggling
baby carriage! Why, I ought to send him the bill for it!" Completely
outraged, he lay back on the couch and closed his eyes.

"Now, Harp, you know you've never obeyed his orders. He told you
last year that you'd have to ease up. Why do you have to try to run
the whole world? It's the strain of all your business worries that's
causing your trouble. He told you to take a long vacation or you'd
crack up. Don't blame him for your own stubbornness."

Harper snorted. His large nose developed the sound magnificently.
"Vacation!" he snorted. "Batting a silly ball around or dragging a hook
after a stupid fish! Fine activities for an intelligent middle-aged
man! And let me correct you. It isn't business worries that are driving
me to a crack-up. It's the strain of trying to get some sensible,
reasonable coöperation from the nincompoops I have to hire! It's the
idiocy of the human race that's got me whipped! It's the--"

"Hey, Harp, old man!" His brother-in-law, turning the pages of the
new colorama magazine, INTERPLANETARY, had paused at a double-spread.
"Didn't you have a finger in those Martian equatorial wells they sunk
twenty years ago?"

Harper's hands twitched violently. "Don't mention that fiasco!" he
rasped. "That deal nearly cost me my shirt! Water, hell! Those wells
spewed up the craziest conglomeration of liquids ever tapped!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Scribney, whose large, phlegmatic person and calm professorial brain
were the complete antithesis of Harper's picked-crow physique and
scheming financier's wits, looked severely over his glasses. Harp's
nervous tribulations were beginning to bore him, as well as interfere
with the harmony of his home.

"You're away behind the times, Harp," he declared. "Don't you know
that those have proved to be the most astoundingly curative springs
ever discovered anywhere? Don't you know that a syndicate has built
the largest extra-terrestial hotel of the solar system there and that
people are flocking to it to get cured of whatever ails 'em? Old man,
you missed a bet!"

Leaping from the sofa, Harper rudely snatched the magazine from
Scribney's hands. He glared at the spread which depicted a star-shaped
structure of bottle-green glass resting jewel-like on the rufous rock
of Mars. The main portion of the building consisted of a circular
skyscraper with a glass-domed roof. Between its star-shaped annexes,
other domes covered landscaped gardens and noxious pools which in the
drawing looked lovely and enticing.

"Why, I remember now!" exclaimed Bella. "That's where the Durants went
two years ago! He was about dead and she looked like a hag. They came
back in wonderful shape. Don't you remember, Scrib?"

Dutifully Scribney remembered and commented on the change the Martian
springs had effected in the Durants. "It's the very thing for you,
Harp," he advised. "You'd get a good rest on the way out. This gas
they use in the rockets nowadays is as good as a rest-cure; it sort of
floats you along the time-track in a pleasant daze, they tell me. And
you can finish the cure at the hotel while looking it over. And not
only that." Confidentially he leaned toward his insignificant looking
brother-in-law. "The chemists over at Dade McCann have just isolated an
enzyme from one species of Martian fungus that breaks down crude oil
into its components without the need for chemical processing. There's a
fortune waiting for the man who corners that fungus market and learns
to process the stuff!"

Scribney had gauged his victim's mental processes accurately. The
magazine sagged in Harp's hands, and his sharp eyes became shrewd and
calculating. He even forgot to twitch. "Maybe you're right, Scrib," he
acknowledged. "Combine a rest-cure with business, eh?"

Raising the magazine, he began reading the advertisement. And that
was when he saw the line about the robots. "--the only hotel staffed
entirely with robot servants--"

"Robots!" he shrilled. "You mean they've developed the things to that
point? Why hasn't somebody told me? I'll have Jackson's hide! I'll
disfranchise him! I'll--"

"Harp!" exploded Bella. "Stop it! Maybe Jackson doesn't know a thing
about it, whatever it is! If it's something at the Emerald Star Hotel,
why don't you just go and find out for yourself instead of throwing a
tantrum? That's the only sensible way!"

"You're right, Bella," agreed Harper incisively. "I'll go and find out
for myself. Immediately!" Scooping up his hat, he left at his usual
lope.

"Well!" remarked his sister. "All I can say is that they'd better turn
that happy-gas on extra strong for Harp's trip out!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The trip out did Harper a world of good. Under the influence of the
soporific gas that permeated the rocket, he really relaxed for the
first time in years, sinking with the other passengers into a hazy
lethargy with little sense of passing time and almost no memory of the
interval.

It seemed hardly more than a handful of hours until they were strapping
themselves into deceleration hammocks for the landing. And then Harper
was waking with lassitude still heavy in his veins. He struggled out of
the hammock, made his way to the airlock, and found himself whisked by
pneumatic tube directly into the lobby of the Emerald Star Hotel.

Appreciatively he gazed around at the half-acre of moss-gray carpeting,
green-tinted by the light sifting through the walls of Martian
copper-glass, and at the vistas of beautiful domed gardens framed by a
dozen arches. But most of all, the robots won his delighted approval.

He could see at once that they had been developed to an amazingly high
state of perfection. How, he wondered again, had this been done without
his knowledge? Was Scrib right? Was he slipping? Gnawing at the doubt,
he watched the robots moving efficiently about, pushing patients in
wheelchairs, carrying trays, guiding newcomers, performing janitorial
duties tirelessly, promptly, and best of all, silently.

Harper was enthralled. He'd staff his offices with them. Hang the
expense! There'd be no more of that obnoxious personal friction and
proneness to error that was always deviling the most carefully trained
office staffs! He'd investigate and find out the exact potentialities
of these robots while here, and then go home and introduce them into
the field of business. He'd show them whether he was slipping! Briskly
he went over to the desk.

He was immediately confronted with a sample of that human obstinacy
that was slowly driving him mad. Machines, he sighed to himself.
Wonderful silent machines! For a woman was arguing stridently with the
desk clerk who, poor man, was a high strung fellow human instead of a
robot. Harper watched him shrinking and turning pale lavender in the
stress of the argument.

"A nurse!" shouted the woman. "I want a nurse! A real woman! For what
you charge, you should be able to give me a television star if I want
one! I won't have another of those damnable robots in my room, do you
hear?"

No one within the confines of the huge lobby could have helped hearing.
The clerk flinched visibly. "Now, Mrs. Jacobsen," he soothed. "You know
the hotel is staffed entirely with robots. They're much more expensive,
really, than human employees, but so much more efficient, you know.
Admit it, they give excellent service, don't they, now?" Toothily he
smiled at the enraged woman.

"That's just it!" Mrs. Jacobsen glared. "The service is _too_ good.
I might just as well have a set of push buttons in the room. I want
someone to _hear_ what I say! I want to be able to change my mind once
in awhile!"

Harper snorted. "Wants someone she can devil," he diagnosed. "Someone
she can get a kick out of ordering around." With vast contempt he
stepped to the desk beside her and peremptorily rapped for the clerk.

"One moment, sir," begged that harassed individual. "Just one moment,
please." He turned back to the woman.

But she had turned her glare on Harper. "You could at least be civil
enough to wait your turn!"

Harper smirked. "My good woman, I'm not a robot. Robots, of course,
are always civil. But you should know by now that civility isn't a
normal human trait." Leaving her temporarily quashed, he beckoned
authoritatively to the clerk.

"I've just arrived and want to get settled. I'm here merely for a
rest-cure, no treatments. You can assign my quarters before continuing
your--ah--discussion with the lady."

The clerk sputtered. Mrs. Jacobsen sputtered. But not for nothing was
Harper one of the leading business executives of the earth. Harper's
implacable stare won his point. Wiping beads of moisture from his
forehead, the clerk fumbled for a card, typed it out, and was about to
deposit it in the punch box when a fist hit the desk a resounding blow
and another voice, male, roared out at Harper's elbow.

"This is a helluva joint!" roared the voice. "Man could rot away to the
knees while he's waitin' for accommodations. Service!" Again his fist
banged the counter.

The clerk jumped. He dropped Harper's card and had to stoop for it.
Absently holding it, he straightened up to face Mrs. Jacobsen and the
irate newcomer. Hastily he pushed a tagged key at Harper.

"Here you are, Mr. Breen. I'm sure you'll find it comfortable." With a
pallid smile he pressed a button and consigned Harper to the care of a
silent and efficient robot.

       *       *       *       *       *

The room was more than comfortable. It was beautiful. Its bank of clear
windows set in the green glass wall framed startling rubicund views of
the Martian hinterland where, Harper affectionately thought, fungi were
busy producing enzymes that were going to be worth millions for him and
his associates. There remained only the small detail of discovering how
to extract them economically and to process them on this more than arid
and almost airless planet. Details for his bright young laboratory men;
mere details....

Leaving his luggage to be unpacked by the robot attendant, he went up
to the domed roof restaurant. Lunching boldly on broiled halibut with
consomme, salad and a bland custard, he stared out at the dark blue
sky of Mars, with Deimos hanging in the east in three-quarter phase
while Phobos raced up from the west like a meteor behind schedule.
Leaning back in his cushioned chair, he even more boldly lit a slim
cigar--his first in months--and inhaled happily. For once old Scribney
had certainly been right, he reflected. Yes sir, Scrib had rung the
bell, and he wasn't the man to forget it. With a wonderful sense of
well-being he returned to his room and prepared to relax.

Harper opened his eyes. Two robots were bending over him. He saw that
they were dressed in white, like hospital attendants. But he had no
further opportunity to examine them. With brisk, well-co-ordinated
movements they wheeled a stretcher along-side his couch, stuck a hypo
into his arm, bundled him onto the stretcher and started wheeling him
out.

Harper's tongue finally functioned. "What's all this?" he demanded.
"There's nothing wrong with me. Let me go!"

He struggled to rise, but a metal hand pushed him firmly on the chest.
Inexorably it pushed him flat.

"You've got the wrong room!" yelled Harp. "Let me go!" But the hypo
began to take effect. His yells became weaker and drowsier. Hazily, as
he drifted off, he thought of Mrs. Jacobsen. Maybe she had something,
at that.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a tentative knock on the door. "Come in," called Harper
bleakly. As soon as the door opened he regretted his invitation, for
the opening framed the large untidy man who had noisily pounded on the
desk demanding service while he, Harp, was being registered.

"Say, pardner," he said hoarsely, "you haven't seen any of them robots
around here, have you?"

Harper scowled. "Oh, haven't I?" he grated. "Robots! Do you know what
they did to me." Indignation lit fires in his pale eyes. "Came in here
while I was lying down peacefully digesting the first meal I've enjoyed
in months, dragged me off to the surgery, and pumped it all out! The
only meal I've enjoyed in months!" Blackly he sank his chin onto his
fist and contemplated the outrage.

"Why didn't you stop 'em?" reasonably asked the visitor.

"Stop a robot?" Harper glared pityingly. "How? You can't reason with
the blasted things. And as for using force--it's man against metal. You
try it!" He ground his teeth together in futile rage. "And to think I
had the insane notion that robots were the last word! Why, I was ready
to staff my offices with the things!"

The big man placed his large hands on his own capacious stomach and
groaned. "I'm sure sorry it was you and not me, pardner. I could use
some of that treatment right now. Musta been that steak and onions I
ate after all that tundra dope I've been livin' on."

"Tundra?" A faint spark of alertness lightened Harper's dull rage. "You
mean you work out here on the tundra?"

"That's right. How'd you think I got in such a helluva shape? I'm
superintendent of one of the fungus plants. I'm Jake Ellis of Hagerty's
Enzymes. There's good money in it, but man, what a job! No air worth
mentionin'. Temperature always freezin' or below. Pressure suits. Huts.
Factory. Processed food. Nothin' else. Just nothin'. That's where they
could use some robots. It sure ain't no job for a real live man. And in
fact, there ain't many men left there. If old man Hagerty only knew it,
he's about out of business."

Harper sat up as if he'd been needled. He opened his mouth to speak.
But just then the door opened briskly and two robots entered. With a
horrified stare, Harper clutched his maltreated stomach. He saw a third
robot enter, wheeling a chair.

"A wheel chair!" squeaked the victim. "I tell you, there's nothing
wrong with me! Take it away! I'm only here for a rest-cure! Believe me!
Take it away!"

The robots ignored him. For the first time in his spectacular and
ruthless career Harper was up against creatures that he could neither
bribe, persuade nor browbeat, inveigle nor ignore. It shattered his
ebbing self-confidence. He began waving his hands helplessly.

The robots not only ignored Harper. They paid no attention at all to
Jake Ellis, who was plucking at their metallic arms pleading, "Take
me, boys. I need the treatment bad, whatever it is. I need all the
treatment I can get. Take me! I'm just a wreck, fellers--"

Stolidly they picked Harper up, plunked him into the chair, strapped
him down and marched out with him.

Dejectedly Ellis returned to his own room. Again he lifted the receiver
of the room phone; but as usual a robot voice answered sweetly,
mechanically, and meaninglessly. He hung up and went miserably to bed.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was something nagging at Harper's mind. Something he should do.
Something that concerned robots. But he was too exhausted to think it
out.

For five days now his pet robots had put him through an ordeal that
made him flinch every time he thought about it. Which wasn't often,
since he was almost past thinking. They plunked him into stinking
mud-baths and held him there until he was well-done to the bone, he
was sure. They soaked him in foul, steaming irradiated waters until he
gagged. They brought him weird concoctions to eat and drink and then
stood over him until he consumed them. They purged and massaged and
exercised him.

Whenever they let him alone, he simply collapsed into bed and slept.
There was nothing else to do anyway. They'd taken his clothes; and the
phone, after an announcement that he would have no more service for two
weeks, gave him nothing but a busy signal.

"Persecution, that's what it is!" he moaned desperately. And he turned
his back to the mirror, which showed him that he was beginning to look
flesh-colored instead of the parchment yellow to which he had become
accustomed. He closed his mind to the fact that he was sleeping for
hours on end like the proverbial baby, and that he was getting such an
appetite that he could almost relish even that detestable mush they
sent him for breakfast. He was determined to be furious. As soon as he
could wake up enough to be.

He hadn't been awake long this time before Jake Ellis was there again,
still moaning about his lack of treatments. "Nothin' yet," he gloomily
informed Harp. "They haven't been near me. I just can't understand it.
After I signed up for the works and paid 'em in advance! And I can't
find any way out of this section. The other two rooms are empty and the
elevator hasn't got any button. The robots just have to come and get a
man or he's stuck."

"Stuck!" snarled Harp. "I'm never stuck! And I'm damned if I'll wait
any longer to break out of this--this jail! Listen, Jake. I've been
thinking. Or trying to, with what's left of me. You came in just when
that assinine clerk was registering me. I'll bet that clerk got rattled
and gave me the wrong key. I'll bet you're supposed to have this room
and I'm getting your treatments. Why don't we switch rooms and see what
happens?"

"Say, maybe you're right!" Jake's eyes gleamed at last with hope. "I'll
get my clothes."

Harp's eyebrows rose. "You mean they left you your clothes?"

"Why, sure. You mean they took yours?"

Harp nodded. An idea began to formulate. "Leave your things, will you?
I'm desperate! I'm going to see the manager of this madhouse if I have
to go down dressed in a sheet. Your clothes would be better than that."

Jake, looking over Harper's skimpy frame, grunted doubtfully. "Maybe
you could tie 'em on so they wouldn't slip. And roll up the cuffs. It's
okay with me, but just don't lose something when you're down there in
that fancy lobby."

Harper looked at his watch. "Time to go. Relax, old man. The robots
will be along any minute now. If you're the only man in the room, I'm
sure they'll take you. They aren't equipped to figure it out. And don't
worry about me. I'll anchor your duds all right."

Harper had guessed right. Gleefully from the doorway of his new room
he watched the robots wheel away his equally delighted neighbor for
his first treatment. Then he closed the door and began to don Jake's
clothing.

The result was unique. He looked like a small boy in his father's
clothes, except for the remarkably aged and gnome-like head sticking
up on a skinny neck from a collar three sizes too big. And he was
shoeless. He was completely unable to navigate in Jake's number
twelves. But Harper was a determined man. He didn't even flinch from
his image in the mirror. Firmly he stepped over to Jake's telephone.
"This is room 618," he said authoritatively. "Send up the elevator for
me. I want to go down to the lobby."

He'd guessed right again. "It will be right up, sir," responded the
robot operator. Hopefully he stepped out into the hall and shuffled to
the elevator.

       *       *       *       *       *

Only the robots were immune to Harper Breen's progress across the huge
suave lobby.

He was a blot on its rich beauty, a grotesque enigma that rooted the
other visitors into paralyzed staring groups. Stepping out of the
elevator, he had laid a course for the desk which loomed like an island
in a moss-gray lake, and now he strode manfully toward it, ignoring the
oversize trousers slapping around his stocking feet. Only the robots
shared his self control.

The clerk was the first to recover from the collective stupor.
Frantically he pushed the button that would summon the robot guard.
With a gasp of relief he saw the two massive manlike machines moving
inexorably forward. He pointed to Harper. "Get that patient!" he
ordered. "Take him to the--to the mud-baths!"

"No you don't!" yelled Harper. "I want to see the manager!" Nimbly he
circled the guard and leaped behind the desk. He began to throw things
at the robots. Things like inkwells and typewriters and card indexes.
Especially, card indexes.

"Stop it!" begged the clerk. "You'll wreck the system! We'll never get
it straight again! Stop it!"

"Call them off!" snarled Harper. "Call them off or I'll ruin your
switchboard!" He put a shoulder against it and prepared to heave.

With one last appalled glare at the madman, the clerk picked up an
electric finger and pointed it at the approaching robots. They became
oddly inanimate.

"That's better!" Harper straightened up and meticulously smoothed the
collar of his flapping coat. "Now--the manager, please."

"This--this way, sir." With shrinking steps the clerk led Harper across
the width of the lobby among the fascinated guests. He was beyond
speech. Opening the inconspicuous door, he waved Harper inside and
returned doggedly to his desk, where he began to pick up things and at
the same time phrase his resignation in his mind.

Brushing aside the startled secretary in the outer cubicle, Harper
flapped and shuffled straight into the inner sanctum. The manager, who
was busy chewing a cigar to shreds behind his fortress of gun metal
desk, jerked hastily upright and glared at the intruder. "My good
man--" he began.

"Don't 'my-good-man' me!" snapped Harper. He glared back at the
manager. Reaching as far across the expanse of desktop as he could
stretch, he shook his puny fist. "Do you know who I am? I'm Harper
S. Breen, of Breen and Helgart, Incorporated! And do you know why I
haven't even a card to prove it? Do you know why I have to make my way
downstairs in garb that makes a laughing stock of me? Do you know why?
Because that assinine clerk of yours put me in the wrong room and those
damnable robots of yours then proceeded to make a prisoner of me! Me,
Harper S. Breen! Why, I'll sue you until you'll be lucky if you have a
sheet of writing-paper left in this idiot's retreat!"

Hayes, the manager, blanched. Then he began to mottle in an apoplectic
pattern. And suddenly with a gusty sigh, he collapsed into his chair.
With a shaking hand he mopped his forehead. "_My_ robots!" he muttered.
"As if I invented the damned things!"

Despondently he looked at Harper. "Go ahead and sue, Mr. Breen. If you
don't, somebody else will. And if nobody sues, we'll go broke anyway,
at the rate our guest list is declining. I'm ready to hand in my
resignation."

Again he sighed. "The trouble," he explained, "is that those fool
robots are completely logical, and people aren't. There's no way to mix
the two. It's dynamite. Maybe people can gradually learn to live with
robots, but they haven't yet. Only we had to find it out the hard way.
We--" he grimaced disgustedly--"had to pioneer in the use of robots.
And it cost us so much that we can't afford to reconvert to human help.
So--Operation Robot is about to bankrupt the syndicate."

Listening, an amazing calm settled on Harper. Thoughtfully now he
hooked a chair to the desk with his stockinged foot, sat down and
reached for the cigar that Hayes automatically offered him. "Oh, I
don't know," he said mildly.

Hayes leaned forward like a drowning man sighting a liferaft. "What
do you mean, you don't know? You're threatening to take our shirts,
aren't you?"

Meticulously Harper clipped and lit his cigar. "It seems to me that
these robots might be useful in quite another capacity. I might even
make a deal with your syndicate to take them off your hands--at a
reasonable price, of course--and forget the outrages I've suffered at
your establishment."

Hayes leaned toward him incredulous. "You mean you want these robots
after what you've seen and experienced?"

Placidly Harper puffed a smoke ring. "Of course, you'd have to take
into consideration that it would be an experiment for me, too. And
there's the suit I'm clearly justified in instituting. However, I'm
willing to discuss the matter with your superiors."

With hope burgeoning for the first time in weeks, Hayes lifted his
head. "My dear Mr. Breen, to get rid of these pestiferous robots, I'll
back you to the hilt! I'll notify the owners at once. At once, Mr.
Breen! And while we wait for them, allow me to put you up as a guest of
the hotel." Coming around to Harper, he effusively shook Harp's scrawny
hand, and then personally escorted him not merely to the door but
across the lobby to the elevator.

Harper gazed out at the stunned audience. This was more like the
treatment he was accustomed to! Haughtily he squared his bony shoulders
inside the immense jacket and stepped into the elevator. He was ready
for the second step of his private Operation Robot.

       *       *       *       *       *

Back on Earth it was a warm, misty spring day--the kind of day unknown
to the planet Mars. Bella and Scribney, superb in new spring outfits,
waited restlessly while the rocket cooled and the passengers recovered
from deceleration.

"Look, Scrib!" Bella clutched Scribney's substantial arm. "It's finally
opening."

They watched the airlock open and the platform wheel into place. They
watched the passengers descend, looking a trifle dazed.

"There he is!" cried Bella. "Why, doesn't he look wonderful! Scrib,
it's amazing! Look at him!

And indeed, Harper was stepping briskly downward, looking spry and fit
and years younger. He came across to them actually beaming. It was the
first pleasant expression they had seen on his face in years.

"Well, you old dog!" exclaimed Scribney affectionately. "So you did it
again!"

Harper smirked. "Yep, I turned a neat little deal. I bought out
Hagerty's Enzymes and staffed the plant with the hotel's robots. Got
both of 'em dirt cheap. Both concerns going bankrupt because they
didn't have sense enough to swap their workers. Feel I owe you a bit
for that tip about enzymes, Scrib, so I made out a block of stock to
you. All right?"

"All right?" Scribney gulped. Why, the dried-up little turnip was human
after all. "All right! Yes, sir! But aren't you going to use some of
those robots for office help? Aren't they efficient and all that?"

Harper's smile vanished. "Don't even mention such a thing!" he yelped.
"You don't know what you're saying! I lived with those things for
weeks. I wouldn't have one around! Keep 'em in the factory where they
belong!"

He glimpsed the composed, wonderfully human face of his secretary,
waiting patiently in the background. "Oh there you are, Smythe." He
turned to his relatives. "Busy day ahead. See you later, folks--"

"Same old Harp," observed Scribney. Then he thought of the block of
stock. "What say we celebrate our rise to a position in the syndicate,
honey?"

"Wonderful!" She squeezed his arm, and smiling at each other, they left
the port.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Hagerty's Enzymes" ***

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