THE ENGRAMMAR AGE

Originally published in Infinity, February 1957.

Walter Ludlow looked into the glass without reflecting on the twisting and doubling of his tie, looked into the glass without seeing either his brow beetling nobly over his precise features or, as he automatically jacked up his chin, the slight whipping of the twin antennae sprouting from that brow.

And yet in a sense he was seeing himself. He was gazing not at the mirroring of space but of time. He was seeing in his mind’s eye the President handing him the Think Award, and himself graciously acknowledging the enthusiastic applause of the distinguished gathering and accepting the token with a telling speech.

But only for a moment. Back in the present, he tightened the knot of his tie with steady hands. The momentousness of the occasion would not unnerve him. He would not go blank as soon as he opened his mouth. In pre-engrammar days he would have been beside himself with dread, certain in his own mind that he would forget the words he had memorized. And with horrible certainty, he would forget.

But—he smiled pleasurably, and vaguely took note of the mirrored antennae—this was the Engrammar Age, as every one of tonight’s speakers was sure to mention more than once with an antennae-quivering bow in his direction. (He himself, however, would modestly remember to refrain from employing the phrase.) In the Engrammar Age there was no forgetting, just as there was no long, painful process of learning to begin with.

Again he beamed unseeingly at himself. He was more than willing to credit the groundwork of others, their mapping of the brain. For the brain child was indisputably of his fathering. He alone had designed the transistor circuits making up the artificial memory. He alone had perfected the ingrafting technique. He alone—He jumped as something moist touched his ear.

A voice said, “You seem so preoccupied. What’s on your mind?”

He saw his wife’s face in the mirror, her antennae swaying gently, the green shafts contrasting spectacularly with her red hair and giving a strange impression of two seasons vying—spring and fall.

“Martha!” Walter said reprovingly. He rubbed at a redness that seemed to burn his ear. “I didn’t see you come in.”

She said in a low tone, “Sometimes I think you don’t see me, period.”

“What?” He satisfied himself he had rid himself of the crimson smear. “What did you say?”

“Nothing,” she said quietly.

“I have the distinct impression that someone said something,” he said with heavy humor, “and I have the further impression it was not myself.”

She smiled faintly, as if out of a sense of duty.

He studied himself in the mirror and asked, rather peevishly, “Sure you won’t change your mind?”

She hung her head. She seemed very vulnerable just then, with her slender neck bared and her antennae reaching out like uncertain feelers. But anger at her meek stubbornness choked off the hurting tenderness rising in his throat.

He said harshly, “I do wish this once you could summon the will to come along.”

As soon as he spoke he wished he could unsay the words. Martha was passing a limp hand across her pale brow under what were now rods of chastisement. She smiled wanly. He could see he had been unfair to her, but what troubled him more deeply was shame at having allowed himself to betray emotion.

He passed it off with a light sigh and a smile. “Never mind, you’ll be with me in spirit, my dear. You’re watching the proceedings on your screen, of course.”

“Of course, dear,” she echoed. “Here, let me.”

He turned his head away with an impatient casting motion as she straightened his tie.

“Really,” she said, stepping back with a nod that he would do, “I’m so sorry I don’t feel up to coming, tonight of all nights. But even if I did, I’d never rest easy in my mind leaving the baby with a robot sitter.”

“Nonsense!” He felt the veins throbbing at his temples and forced himself to speak rationally. “It’s all in the mind. This is the—the Electronic Age. You have no right to give in to foolish feelings. You have no right to mistrust the fruits of science. It’s unthinkable.”

“I’m sorry,” she said helplessly, “but that’s the way I am.”

He nodded tiredly, batoning their discord. Then he shrugged mentally and said, “Don’t give it another thought. You needn’t feel badly about staying away. You’ll be in good company.” She looked up quickly and raised her eyebrows at that, and he explained. “All those the engrammar did out of plush teaching jobs are boycotting the meeting.” He paused a moment. “That means I will have to forgo the pleasure of meeting Ash Cemack.”

It was more of his heavy humor, but Martha shivered; her antennae trembled and she shot up a hand automatically to make sure of their seating in the socket.

“What made you say a silly thing like that?” she said, frowning prettily. “You know I can’t stand even the mention of that creature’s name.” She shook her head dangerously and said grimly, “I’d like to give him a piece of my mind.”

Walter allowed himself to smile as a warm feeling suffused him. How many times had he teased her into saying just that in just that way! True, it was the normal reaction of a devoted wife, and he accepted Martha’s attachment to him and his cause, and her dislike of his enemies, as his due. All the same, he was glad Martha showed a fitting sense of values. For, to give the devil his due, Cemack had a singularly prepossessing exterior that appealed to the ladies—the weaker-minded ladies, of course. And that made Cemack, as head of the Anti-Engrammar League, a formidable foe.

But when the world no longer needed to waste vast amounts of public funds on schooling; when everyone—even an idiot—was a walking library and could pick up and store the latest findings of genius; and when Cemack himself sported an engrammar that, ironically, enabled him to remember literally thousands of searing speeches attacking the engrammar and its inventor—then all this agitating against compulsory engramming was plainly the work of a man not in his right mind.

With a start, Walter glanced at his watch, suddenly mindful of the fugitive time.

“Say good-bye to the baby for me,” he said. And he brushed Martha’s cheek hurriedly—but carefully, to keep from locking antennae—and was off in his copter.

Heading west, racing the sun, he flew in brooding solitude. He couldn’t get Cemack out of his thoughts.

Some of Cemack’s arguments were hard to ignore. Walter turned the matter over in his mind. The man baldly stated that the engrammar was becoming too much of a crutch, that while releasing the mind of the burden of memory it was gradually spreading its clutch over much of the functioning of consciousness, and that there was no telling what havoc it was wreaking in the labyrinth of the unconscious.

Nonsense!

Walter cleared his brow. Why should the least doubt cloud his mind? He was fully persuaded his course was the right one.

He gazed across the streaking woolscape at a veiled sunset. His heart accelerated as he looked ahead into time. Again the President was handing him the Think Award. Again Walter was graciously acknowledging the enthusiastic applause. And again he was modestly delivering his memorable speech of acceptance.

Out of a cloud mass another copter shot straight at his.

Snapping back to the present, Walter thought indignantly, “That idiot’s flying at the wrong level!”

* * * *

Walter Ludlow wakened, with a sensation of a bright light licking, flame-like, at the darkness in his mind, to find himself lying on the slope of a peak. Nearby, the two copters, locked in death, were blazing their own pyre. The clouds reflected the fire in a crimson that rivaled the sunset glow.

Walter dragged himself out of the radius of heat. He groaned, shakenly thankful to be alive and able to groan. Transcending pain, ghosts of memory haunted his skull, too flickeringly bodiless to grasp. And with a sinking feeling he grew aware that, even as he was coming to, awareness was slipping away.

In panic his hand shot to his brow. The antennae-memory bank unit was missing.

Numbly he realized that the same impact that had thrown him clear had also torn the engrammar plug from the socket.

Frightenedly racing the clouding of consciousness, he felt around in the weakening light of the dying deathfire. It seemed to him he scrabbled over unending acres of slashing, puncturing stones—and searched in vain. Then his fingers ran over something and his heart leaped like a draft-drunk flame. His hands were shaping to a familiar object.

The engrammar!

It appeared to be intact. But he didn’t dare to breathe relief quite yet. The engrammar might have sustained a damaging shaking up. Trembling, he plugged it into his socket.

Lightning flashed across his inward sky. The thundering echo of the crash sounded in his brain and he winced. “The damn fool’s flying at the wrong level!” he heard himself thinking.

And for the first time he gave thought to the pilot of the other copter. What had happened to the damned fool?

It was dark now. Vaguely he heard moaning. It sounded ghostly. Then suddenly he made out a shadowy form rising out of shadowy earth. It writhed like a black flame.

By the time Walter felt his way along the slope the form had pitched headlong and lay still, save for a twitching now and then that soon ended. The poor devil was too badly charred to last long, too far gone for anyone to do anything for him.

It was just as well the fellow’s engrammar was missing; he sighed out his life in unawareness.

Walter bowed his head.

The whirring of a traffic copter shook the air. Its beam swept over the wreckage, painting a bleak abstraction. The copter settled, still beating its vanes to stay level, and an officer jumped out.

Walter moved to meet him. He moved uncertainly, as if his body were going one way and his mind another.

“You all right?” the officer asked.

Walter was not able to make much sense. But luckily the officer recognized the great Walter Ludlow. And dimly Walter was aware that someone was patching him and that another someone was speeding him to the meeting. His head ached exceedingly and he tried not to think.

Slowly, slowly, Walter came out of shock. One after another, speakers had risen to their feet and spoken and he had heard none of them, but it seemed to him a phalanx of antennae had thrust in his direction. When he came to himself again he was standing on the platform, the Think Award in his hands.

The President was gazing at him kindly, as if he understood that Walter was too overcome to speak at once. What was Martha, watching the proceedings on her screen, thinking at this moment?

Martha! All those wonderful times together while Ludlow was busy with his damn engrammar, Martha, I’m coming tonight…

One part of him was able to hear himself think that, detachedly, while another heard himself launch into a searing attack on the engrammar and its inventor.

He was facing the stunned, suddenly whispering throng. But he was staring at emptiness.