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# 2024-09-19 - All The Traps of Earth by Clifford D. Simak
IMG Launch
> Mr. Simak, an award-winner and long time star in science fiction,
> demonstrates two of his particular talents--intriguing ideas and
> warm characterization--in the following novelet about a robot with
> 600 years of human experience, and an urge to remain himself in the
> face of bureaucracy and the cold loneliness of nomadic life in space.
The inventory list was long. On its many pages, in his small and
precise script, he had listed furniture, paintings, china, silverware
and all the rest of it--all the personal belongings that had been
accumulated by the Barringtons through a long family history. And now
that he had reached the end of it, he noted down himself, the last
item of them all: One domestic robot, Richard Daniel, antiquated but
in good repair.
He laid the pen aside and shuffled all the inventory sheets together
and stacked them in good order, putting a paper weight upon them-the
little exquisitely carved ivory paper weight that Aunt Hortense had
picked up that last visit she had made to Peking. And having done
that, his job came to an end.
He shoved back the chair and rose from the desk and slowly walked
across the living room, with all its clutter of possessions from the
family's past. There, above the mantle, hung the sword that ancient
Jonathon had worn in the War Between the States, and below it, on the
mantlepiece itself, the cup the Commodore had won with his valiant
yacht, and the jar of moon-dust that Tony had brought back from Man's
fifth landing on the Moon, and the old chronometer that had come from
the long-scrapped family spacecraft that had plied the asteroids.
And all around the room, almost cheek by jowl, hung the family
portraits, with the old dead faces staring out into the world that
they had helped to fashion.
And not a one of them from the last six hundred years, thought
Richard Daniel, staring at them one by one, that he had not known.
There, to the right of the fireplace, old Rufus Andrew Barrington,
who had been a judge some two hundred years ago. And to the right of
Rufus, Johnson Joseph Barrington, who had headed up that old lost
dream of mankind, the Bureau of Paranormal Research. There, beyond
the door that led out to the porch, was the scowling pirate face of
Danley Barrington, who had first built the family fortune.
And many others-administrator, adventurer, corporation chief. All
good men and true.
But this was at an end. The family had run out.
Slowly Richard Daniel began his last tour of the house-the family
room with its cluttered living space, the den with its old mementos,
the library and its rows of ancient books, the dining hall in which
the crystal and the china shone and sparkled, the kitchen gleaming
with the copper and aluminum and the stainless steel, and the
bedrooms on the second floor, each of them with its landmarks of
former occupants. And finally, the bedroom where old Aunt Hortense
had finally died, at long last closing out the line of Barringtons.
The empty dwelling held a not-quite-haunted quality, the aura of a
house that waited for the old gay life to take up once again. But it
was a false aura. All the portraits, all the china and the
silverware, everything within the house would be sold at public
auction to satisfy the debts. The rooms would be stripped and the
possessions would be scattered and, as a last indignity, the house
itself be sold.
Even he, himself, Richard Daniel thought, for he was chattel, too. He
was there with all the rest of it, the final item on the inventory.
Except that what they planned to do with him was worse than simple
sale. For he would be changed before he was offered up for sale. No
one would be interested in putting up good money for him as he stood.
And, besides, there was the law-the law that said no robot could
legally have continuation of a single life greater than a hundred
years. And he had lived in a single life six times a hundred years.
He had gone to see a lawyer and the lawyer had been sympathetic, but
had held forth no hope.
"Technically," he had told Richard Daniel in his short, clipped
lawyer voice, "you are at this moment much in violation of the
statute. I completely fail to see how your family got away with it."
"They liked old things," said Richard Daniel. "And, besides, I was
very seldom seen. I stayed mostly in the house. I seldom ventured
out."
"Even so," the lawyer said, "there are such things as records. There
must be a file on you..."
"The family," explained Richard Daniel, "in the past had many
influential friends. You must understand, sir, that the Barringtons,
before they fell upon hard times, were quite prominent in politics
and in many other matters."
The lawyer grunted knowingly.
"What I can't quite understand," he said, "is why you should object
so bitterly. You'll not be changed entirely. You'll still be Richard
Daniel."
"I would lose my memories, would I not?"
"Yes, of course you would. But memories are not too important. And
you'd collect another set."
"My memories are dear to me," Richard Daniel told him. "They are all
I have. After some six hundred years, they are my sole worthwhile
possession. Can you imagine, counselor, what it means to spend six
centuries with one family?"
"Yes, I think I can," agreed the lawyer. "But now, with the family
gone, isn't it just possible the memories may prove painful?"
"They're a comfort. A sustaining comfort. They make me feel
important. They give me perspective and a niche."
"But don't you understand? You'll need no comfort, no importance once
you're reoriented. You'll be brand new. All that you'll retain is a
certain sense of basic identity-that they cannot take away from you
even if they wished. There'll be nothing to regret. There'll be no
leftover guilts, no frustrated aspirations, no old loyalties to hound
you."
"I must be myself," Richard Daniel insisted stubbornly. "I've found a
depth of living, a background against which my living has some
meaning. I could not face being anybody else."
"You'd be far better off," the lawyer wearily. "You'd have a better
body. You'd have better mental tools. You'd be more intelligent."
Richard Daniel got up from the chair. He saw it was no use.
"You'll not inform on me?" he asked.
"Certainly not," the lawyer said. "So far as I'm concerned, you
aren't even here."
"Thank you," said Richard Daniel. "How much do I owe you?"
"Not a thing," the lawyer told him. "I never make a· charge to anyone
who is older than five hundred."
He had meant it as a joke, but Richard Daniel did not smile. He had
not felt like smiling.
At the door he turned around.
"Why?" he was going to ask. "Why this silly law."
But he did not have to ask--it was not hard to see. Human vanity, he
knew. No human being lived much longer than a hundred years, so
neither could a robot. But a robot, on the other hand, was too
valuable simply to be junked at the end of a hundred years of
service, so there was this law providing for the periodic breakup of
the continuity of each robot's life. And thus no human need undergo
the psychological indignity of knowing that his faithful serving man
might manage to outlive him by several thousand years.
It was illogical, but humans were illogical.
Illogical, but kind. Kind in many different ways.
Kind, sometimes, as the Barrington, had been kind, though Richard
Daniel. Six hundred years of kindness. It was a prideful thing to
think about. They had even given him a double name. There weren't
many robots nowadays who had double names. It was a special mark of
affection and respect.
The lawyer having failed him, Richard Daniel had sought another
source of help. Now, thinking back on it, standing in the room where
Hortense Barrington had died, he was sorry that he'd done it. For he
had embarrassed the religico almost unendurably. It had been easy for
the lawyer to tell him what he had. Lawyers had the statutes to
determine their behavior, and thus suffered little from agonies of
personal decision.
But a man of the cloth is kind if he is worth his salt. And this one
had been kind instinctively as well as professionally, and that had
made it worse.
"Under certain circumstances," he had said somewhat awkwardly, "I
could counsel patience and humility and prayer. Those are three great
aids to anyone who is willing to put them to his use. But with you I
am not certain."
"You mean," said Richard Daniel, "because I am a robot."
"Well, now..." said the minister, considerably befuddled at this
direct approach.
"Because I have no soul?"
"Really," said the minister miserably, "you place me at a
disadvantage. You are asking me a question that for centuries has
puzzled and bedeviled the best minds in the church."
"But one," said Richard Daniel, "that each man in his secret heart
must answer for himself."
"I wish I could," cried the distraught minister. "I truly wish I
could."
"If it is any help," said Richard Daniel, "I can tell you that
sometimes I suspect I have a soul."
And that, he could see, had been most upsetting for this kindly
human. It had been, Richard Daniel told himself, unkind of him to say
it. For it must have been confusing, since coming from himself it was
not opinion only, but expert evidence.
So he had gone away from the minister's study and come back to the
empty house to get on with his inventory work.
Now that the inventory was all finished and the papers stacked where
Dancourt, the estate administrator, could find them when he showed up
in the morning, Richard Daniel, had done his final service for the
Barringtons and now must begin doing for himself.
He left the bedroom and closed the door behind him and went quietly
down the stairs and along the hallway to the little cubby, back of
the kitchen, that was his very own.
And that, he reminded himself with a rush of pride, was of a piece
with his double name and his six hundred years. There were not too
many robots who had a room, however small, that they might call their
own.
He went into the cubby and turned on the light and closed the door
behind him.
And now, for the first time, he faced the grim reality of what he
meant to do.
The cloak and hat and trousers hung upon a hook and the galoshes were
placed precisely underneath them. His attachment kit lay in one
corner of the cubby and the money was cached underneath the floor
board he had loosened many years ago to provide a hiding place.
There was, he told himself, no point in waiting. Every minute
counted. He had a long way to go and he must be at his destination
before morning light.
He knelt on the floor and pried up the loosened board, shoved in a
hand and brought out the stacks of bills, money hidden through the
years against a day of need.
There were three stacks of bills, neatly held together by elastic
bands--money given him throughout the years as tips and Christmas
gifts, as birthday presents and rewards for little jobs well done.
He opened the storage compartment located in his chest and stowed
away all the bills except for half a dozen which he stuffed into a
pocket in one hip.
He took the trousers off the hook and it was an awkward business, for
he'd never worn clothes before except when he'd tried on these very
trousers several days before. It was a lucky thing, he thought, that
long-dead Uncle Michael had been a portly man, for otherwise the
trousers never would have fit.
He got them on and zippered and belted into place, then forced his
feet into the overshoes. He was a little worried about the overshoes.
No human went out in the summer wearing overshoes. But it was the
best that he could do. None of the regular shoes he'd found in the
house had been nearly large enough.
He hoped no one would notice, but there was no way out of it. Somehow
or other, he had to cover up his feet, for if anyone should see them,
they'd be a giveaway.
He put on the cloak and it was a little short. He put on the hat and
it was slightly small, but he tugged it down until it gripped his
metal skull and that was all to the good, he told himself; no wind
could blow it off.
He picked up his attachments--a whole bag full of them that he'd
almost never used. Maybe it was foolish to take them along, he
thought, but they were a part of him and by rights they should go
with him. There was so little that he really owned--just the money he
had saved, a dollar at a time, and this kit of his.
With the bag of attachments clutched underneath his arm, he closed
the cubby door and went down the hall.
At the big front door he hesitated and turned back toward the house,
but it was, at the moment, a simple darkened cave, empty of all that
it once had held. There was nothing here to stay for--nothing but the
memories, and the memories he took with him.
He opened the door and stepped out on the stop and closed the door
behind him.
And now, he thought, with the door once shut behind him, he was on
his own. He was running off. He was wearing clothes. He was out at
night, without the permission of a master. And all of these were
against the law.
Any officer could stop him, or any citizen. He had no rights at all.
And he had no one who would speak for him, now that the Barringtons
were gone.
He moved quietly down the walk and opened the gate and went slowly
down the street, and it seemed to him the house was calling for him
to come back. He wanted to go back, his mind said that he should go
back, but his feet kept going on, steadily down the street.
He was alone, he thought, and the aloneness now was real, no longer
the mere intellectual abstract he'd held in his mind for days. Here
he was, a vacant hulk, that for the moment had no purpose and no
beginning and no end, but was just an entity that stood naked in an
endless reach of space and time and held no meaning in itself.
But he walked on and with each block that he covered he slowly
fumbled back to the thing he was, the old robot in old clothes, the
robot running from a home that was a home no longer.
He wrapped the cloak about him tightly and moved on down the street
and now he hurried, for he had to hurry.
He met several people and they paid no attention to him. A few cars
passed, but no one bothered him.
He came to a shopping center that was brightly lighted and he stopped
and looked in terror at the wide expanse of open, brilliant space
that lay ahead of him. He could detour around it, but it would use up
time and he stood there, undecided, trying to screw up his courage to
walk into the light.
Finally he made up his mind and strode briskly out, with his cloak
wrapped tight about him and his hat pulled low.
Some of the shoppers turned and looked at him and he felt agitated
spiders running up and down his back. The galoshes suddenly seemed
three times as big as they really were and they made a plopping,
squashy sound that was most embarrassing.
He hurried on, with the end of the shopping area not more than a
block away.
A police whistle shrilled and Richard Daniel jumped in sudden fright
and ran. He ran in slobbering, mindless fright, with his cloak
streaming out behind him and his feet slapping on the pavement.
He plunged out of the lighted strip into the welcome darkness of a
residential section and he kept on running.
Far off he heard the siren and he leaped a hedge and tore across the
yard. He thundered down the driveway and across a garden in the back
and a dog came roaring out and engaged in noisy chase.
Richard Daniel crashed into a picket fence and went through it to the
accompaniment of snapping noises as the pickets and the rails gave
way. The dog kept on behind him and other dogs joined in.
He crossed another yard and gained the street and pounded down it. He
dodged into a driveway, crossed another yard, upset a birdbath and
ran into a clothesline, snapping it in his headlong rush.
Behind him lights were snapping on in the windows of the houses and
screen doors were banging as people hurried out to see what the
ruckus was.
He ran on a few more blocks, crossed another yard and ducked into a
lilac thicket, stood still and listened. Some dogs were still baying
in the distance and there was some human shouting, but there was no
siren.
He felt a thankfulness well up in him that there was no siren, and a
sheepishness, as well. For he had been panicked by himself, he knew;
he had run from shadows, he had fled from guilt.
But he'd thoroughly roused the neighborhood and even now, he knew,
calls must be going out and in a little while the place would be
swarming with police.
He'd raised a hornet's nest and he needed distance, so he crept out
of the lilac thicket and went swiftly down the street, heading for
the edge of town.
He finally left the city and found the highway. He loped along its
deserted stretches. When a car or truck appeared, he pulled off on
the shoulder and walked along sedately. Then when the car or truck
had passed, he broke into his lope again.
He saw the spaceport lights miles before he got there. When he
reached the port, he circled off the road and came up outside a fence
and stood there in the darkness, looking.
A gang of robots was loading one great starship and there were other
ships standing darkly in their pits.
He studied the gang that was loading the ship, lugging the cargo from
a warehouse and across the area lighted by the floods. This was just
the setup he had planned on, although he had not hoped to find it
immediately-he had been afraid that he might have to hide out for a
day or two before he found a situation that he could put to use. And
it was a good thing that he had stumbled on this opportunity, for an
intensive hunt would be on by now for a fleeing robot, dressed in
human clothes.
He stripped off the cloak and pulled off the trousers and the
overshoes; he threw away the hat.
From his attachments bag he took out the cutters, screwed off a hand
and threaded the cutters into place. He cut the fence and wiggled
through it, then replaced the hand and put the cutters back into the
kit.
Moving cautiously in the darkness, he walked up to the warehouse,
keeping in its shadow.
It would be simple, he told himself. All he had to do was step out
and grab a piece of cargo, clamber up the ramp and down into the
hold. Once inside, it should not be difficult to find a hiding place
and stay there until the ship had reached first planetfall.
He moved to the corner of the warehouse and peered around it and
there were the toiling robots, in what amounted to an endless chain,
going up the ramp with the packages of cargo, coming down again to
get another load.
But there were too many of them and the line too tight. And the area
too well lighted. He'd never be able to break into that line.
And it would not help if he could, he realized despairingly--because
he was different from those smooth and shining creatures. Compared to
them, he was like a man in another century's dress; he and his
six-hundred-year-old body would stand out like a circus freak.
He stepped back into the shadow of the warehouse and he knew that he
had lost. All his best-laid plans, thought out in sober, daring
detail, as he had labored at the inventory, had suddenly come to
naught.
It all came, he told himself, from never going out, from having no
real contact with the world, from not keeping up with robot-body
fashions, from not knowing what the score was. He'd imagined how it
would be and he'd got it all worked out and when it came down to it,
it was nothing like he thought.
Now he'd have to go back to the hole he'd cut in the fence and
retrieve the clothing he had thrown away and hunt up a hiding place
until he could think of something else.
Beyond the corner of the warehouse he heard the harsh, dull grate of
metal, and he took another look.
The robots had broken up their line and were streaming back toward
the warehouse and a dozen or so of them were wheeling the ramp away
from the cargo port. Three humans, all dressed in uniform, were
walking toward the ship, heading for the ladder, and one of them
carried a batch of papers in his hand.
The loading was all done and the ship about to lift and here he was,
not more than a thousand feet away, and all that he could do was
stand and see it go.
There had to be a way, he told himself, to get in that ship. If he
could only do it his troubles would be over-or at least the first of
his troubles would be over.
Suddenly it struck him like a hand across the face. There was a way
to do it! He'd stood here, blubbering, when all the time there had
been a way to do it!
In the ship, he'd thought. And that was not necessary. He didn't have
to be in the ship.
He started running, out into the darkness, far out so he could circle
round and come upon the ship from the other side, so that the ship
would be between him and the flood lights on the warehouse. He hoped
that there was time.
He thudded out across the port, running in an arc, and came up to the
ship and there was no sign as yet that it was about to leave.
Frantically he dug into his attachments bag and found the things he
needed-the last things in that bag he'd ever thought he'd need. He
found the suction discs and put them on, one for each knee, one for
each elbow, one for each sole and wrist.
He strapped the kit about his waist and clambered up one of the
mighty fins, using the discs to pull himself awkwardly along. It was
not easy. He had never used the discs and there was a trick to using
them, the trick of getting one clamped down and then working loose
another so that he could climb.
But he had to do it. He had no choice but to do it.
He climbed the fin and there was the vast steel body of the craft
rising far above him, like a metal wall climbing to the sky, broken
by the narrow line of a row of anchor posts that ran lengthwise of
the hull-and all that huge extent of metal painted by the faint,
illusive shine of starlight that glittered in his eyes.
Foot by foot he worked his way up the metal wall. Like a humping
caterpillar, he squirmed his way and with each foot he gained he was
a bit more thankful.
Then he heard the faint beginning of a rumble and with the rumble
came terror. His suction cups, he knew, might not long survive the
booming vibration of the wakening rockets, certainly would not hold
for a moment when the ship began to climb.
Six feet above him lay his only hope--the final anchor post in the
long row of anchor posts.
Savagely he drove himself up the barrel of the shuddering craft,
hugging the steely surface like a desperate fly.
The rumble of the tubes built up to blot out all the world and he
climbed in a haze of almost prayerful, brittle hope. He reached that
anchor post or he was as good as dead. Should he slip and drop into
that pit of flaming gases beneath the rocket mouths and he was done
for.
Once a cup came loose and he almost fell, but the others held and he
caught himself.
With a desperate, almost careless lunge, he hurled himself up the
wall of metal and caught the rung in his fingertips and held on with
a concentration of effort that wiped out all else.
The rumble was a screaming fury now that lanced through brain and
body. Then the screaming ended and became a throaty roar of power and
the vibration left the ship entirely. From one corner of his eye he
saw the lights of the spaceport swinging over gently on their side.
Carefully, slowly, he pulled himself along the steel until he had a
better grip upon the rung, but even with the better grip he had the
feeling that some great hand had him in its fist and was swinging him
in anger in a hundred-mile-long arc.
Then the tubes left off their howling and there was a terrible
silence and the stars were there, up above him and to either side of
him, and they were steely stars with no twinkle in them. Down below,
he knew, a lonely Earth was swinging, but he could not see it.
He pulled himself up against the rung and thrust a leg beneath it and
sat up on the hull.
There were more stars than he'd ever seen before, more than he'd
dreamed there could be. They were still and cold, like hard points of
light against a velvet curtain; there was no glitter and no twinkle
in them and it was as if a million eyes were staring down at him. The
Sun was underneath the ship and over to one side; just at the edge of
the lefthand curvature was the glare of it against the silent metal,
a sliver of reflected light outlining one edge of the ship. The Earth
was far astern, a ghostly blue-green ball hanging in the void, ringed
by the fleecy halo of its atmosphere.
It was as if he were detached, a lonely, floating brain that looked
out upon a thing it could not understand, nor could ever try to
understand; as if he might even be afraid of understanding it--a
thing of mystery and delight so long as he retained an ignorance of
it, but something fearsome and altogether overpowering once the
ignorance had gone.
Richard Daniel sat there, flat upon his bottom, on the metal hull of
the speeding ship and he felt the mystery and delight and the
loneliness and the cold and the great uncaring and his mind retreated
into a small and huddled, compact defensive ball.
He looked. That was all there was to do. It was all right now, he
thought. But how long would he have to look at it? How long would he
have to camp out here in the open--the most deadly kind of open?
He realized for the first time that he had no idea where the ship was
going or how long it might take to get there. He knew it was a
starship, which meant that it was bound beyond the solar system, and
that meant that at some point in its flight it would enter
hyperspace. He wondered, at first academically, and then with a
twinge of fear, what hyperspace might do to one sitting naked to it.
But there was little need, he thought philosophically, to fret about
it now, for in due time he'd know, and there was not a thing that he
could do about it--not a single thing.
He took the suction cups off his body and stowed them in his kit and
then with one hand he tied the kit to one of the metal rungs and dug
around in it until he found a short length of steel cable with a ring
on one end and a snap on the other. He passed the ring end underneath
a rung and threaded the snap end through it and snapped the snap onto
a metal loop underneath his armpit. Now he was secured; he need not
fear carelessly letting go and floating off the ship.
So here he was, he thought, neat as anything, going places fast, even
if he had no idea where he might be headed, and now the only thing he
needed was patience. He thought back, without much point, to what the
religico had said in the study back on Earth. Patience and humility
and prayer, he'd said, apparently not realizing at the moment that a
robot has a world of patience.
It would take a lot of time, Richard Daniel knew, to get where he was
going. But he had a lot of time, a lot more than any human, and he
could afford to waste it. There were no urgencies, he thought--no
need of food or air or water, no need of sleep or rest. There was
nothing that could touch him.
Although, come to think of it, there might be.
There was the cold, for one. The space-hull was still fairly warm,
with one side of it picking up the heat of the Sun and radiating it
around the metal skin, where it was lost on the other side, but there
would be a time when the Sun would dwindle until it had no heat and
then he'd be subjected to the bitter cold of space.
And what would the cold do to him. Might it make his body brittle?
Might it interfere with the functioning of his brain? Might it do
other things he could not even guess?
He felt the fears creep in again and tried to shrug them off and they
drew off, but they still were there, lurking at the fringes of his
mind.
The cold, and the loneliness, he thought--but he was one who could
cope with loneliness. And if he couldn't, if he got too lonely, if he
could no longer stand it, he could always beat a devil's tattoo on
the hull and after a time of that someone would come out to
investigate and they would haul him in.
But that was the last move of desperation, he told himself. For if
they came out and found him, then he would be caught. Should he be
forced to that extremity, he'd have lost everything--there would then
have been no point in leaving Earth at all.
So he settled down, living out his time, keeping the creeping fears
at bay just beyond the outposts of his mind, and looking at the
universe all spread out before him.
The motors started up again with a pale blue flickering in the
rockets at the stern and although there was no sense of acceleration
he knew that the ship, now well off the Earth, had settled down to
the long, hard drive to reach the speed of light.
Once they reached that speed they would enter hyperspace. He tried
not to think of it, tried to tell himself there was not a thing to
fear--but it hung there just ahead of him, the great unknowable.
The Sun shrank until it was only one of many stars and there came a
time when he could no longer pick it out. And the cold clamped down
but it didn't seem to bother him, although he could sense the
coldness.
Maybe, he said in answer to his fear, that would be the way it would
be with hyperspace as well. But he said it unconvincingly. The ship
drove on and on with the weird blueness in the tubes.
Then there was the instant when his mind went splattering across the
universe.
He was aware of the ship, but only aware of it in relation to an
awareness of much else, and it was no anchor point, no rallying
position. He was spread and scattered; he was opened out and rolled
out until he was very thin. He was a dozen places, perhaps a hundred
places, all at once, and it was confusing, and his immediate reaction
was to fight back somehow against whatever might have happened to
him--to fight back and pull himself together. The fighting did no
good at all, but made it even worse, for in certain instances it
seemed to drive parts of him farther from other parts of him and the
confusion was made greater.
So he quit his fighting and his struggling and just lay there,
scattered, and let the panic ebb away and told himself he didn't
care, and wondered if he did.
Slow reason returned a dribble at a time and he could think again and
he wondered rather bleakly if this could be hyperspace and was pretty
sure it was. And if it were, he knew, he'd have a long time to live
like this, a long time in which to become accustomed to it and to
orient himself, a long time to find himself and pull himself
together, a long time to understand this situation if it were, in
fact, understandable.
So he lay, not caring greatly, with no fear or wonder, just resting
and letting a fact seep into him here and there from many different
points.
He knew that, somehow, his body--that part of him which housed the
rest of him--was still chained securely to the ship, and that
knowledge, in itself, be knew, was the first small step towards
reorienting himself. He had to reorient, he knew. He had to come to
some sort of terms, if not to understanding, with this situation.
He had opened up and he had scattered out-that essential part of him,
the feeling and the knowing and the thinking part of him, and he lay
thin across a universe that loomed immense in unreality.
Was this, he wondered, the way the universe should be, or was it the
unchained universe, the wild universe beyond the limiting disciplines
of measured space and time.
He started slowly reaching out, cautious as he had been in his
crawling on the surface of the distant parts of him, a little at a
time. He did not know how he did it, he was conscious of no
particular technique, but whatever he was doing, it seemed to work,
for he pulled himself together, bit by knowing bit, until he had
gathered up all the scattered fragments of him into several different
piles.
Then he quit and lay there, wherever there might be, and tried to
sneak up on those piles of understanding that he took to be himself.
It took a while to get the hang of it, but once he did, some of the
incomprehensibility went away, although the strangeness stayed. He
tried to put it into thought and it was hard to do. The closest he
could come was that he had been unchained as well as the
universe--that whatever bondage had been imposed upon him by that
chained and normal world had now become dissolved and he no longer
was fenced in by either time or space.
He could see-and know and sense--across vast distances, if distance
were the proper term, and he could understand certain facts that he
had not even thought about before, could understand instinctively,
but without the language or the skill to coalesce the facts into
independent data.
Once again the universe was spread far out before him and it was a
different and in some ways a better universe, a more diagrammatic
universe, and in time, he knew, if there were such a thing as time,
he'd gain some completer understanding and acceptance of it.
He probed and sensed and learned and there was no such thing as time,
but a great foreverness.
He thought with pity of those others locked inside the ship, safe
behind its insulating walls, never knowing all the glories of the
innards of a star or the vast panoramic sweep of vision and of
knowing far above the flat galactic plane.
Yet he really did not know what he saw or probed; he merely sensed
and felt it and became a part of it, and it became a part of him--he
seemed unable to reduce it to a formal outline of fact or of
dimension or of content. It still remained a knowledge and a power so
overwhelming that it was nebulous. There was no fear and no wonder,
for in this place, it seemed, there was neither fear nor wonder. And
he finally knew that it was a place apart, a world in which the
normal space-time knowledge and emotion had no place at all and a
normal space-time being could have no tools or measuring stick by
which he might reduce it to a frame of reference.
There was no time, no space, no fear, no wonder-and no actual
knowledge, either.
Then time came once again and suddenly his mind was stuffed back into
its cage within his metal skull and he was again one with his body,
trapped and chained and small and cold and naked.
He saw that the stars were different and that he was far from home
and just a little way ahead was a star that blazed like a molten
furnace hanging in the black.
He sat bereft, a small thing once again, and the universe reduced to
package size.
Practically, he checked the cable that held him to the ship and it
was intact. His attachments kit was still tied to its rung.
Everything was exactly as it had been before.
He tried to recall the glories he had seen, tried to grasp again the
fringe of knowledge which he had been so close to, but both the glory
and the knowledge, if there had ever been a knowledge, had faded into
nothingness.
He felt like weeping, but he could not weep, and he was too old to
lie down upon the ship and kick his heels in tantrum.
So he sat there, looking at the sun that they were approaching and
finally there was a planet that he knew must be their destination,
and he found room to wonder what planet it might be and how far from
Earth it was.
He heated up a little as the ship skipped through atmosphere as an
aid to braking speed and he had some rather awful moments as it
spiraled into thick and soupy gases that certainly were a far cry
from the atmosphere of Earth. He hung most desperately to the rungs
as the craft came mushing down onto a landing field, with the hot
gases of the rockets curling up about him. But he made it safely and
swiftly clambered down and darted off into the smog-like atmosphere
before anyone could see him.
Safely off, he turned and looked back at the ship and despite its
outlines being hidden by the drifting clouds of swirling gases, he
could sec it clearly, not as an actual structure, but as a diagram.
He looked at it wonderingly and there was something wrong with the
diagram, something vaguely wrong, some part of it that was out of
whack and not the way it should be.
He heard the clanking of cargo haulers coming out upon the field and
he wasted no more time, diagram or not.
He drifted back, deeper in the mists, and began to circle, keeping a
good distance from the ship. Finally he came to the spaceport's edge
and the beginning of the town.
He found a street and walked down it leisurely and there was a
wrongness in the town.
He met a few hurrying robots who were in too much of a rush to pass
the time of day. But he met no humans.
And that, he knew quite suddenly, was the wrongness of the place. It
was not a human town.
There were no distinctly human buildings-no stores or residences, no
churches and no restaurants. There were gaunt shelter barracks and
sheds for the storing of equipment and machines, great sprawling
warehouses and vast industrial plants. But that was all there was. It
was a bare and dismal place compared to the streets that he had known
on Earth.
It was a robot town, he knew. And a robot planet. A world that was
barred to humans, a place where humans could not live, but so rich
in some natural resource that it cried for exploitation. And the
answer to that exploitation was to let the robots do it.
Luck, he told himself. His good luck still was holding. He had
literally been dumped into a place where he could live without human
interference. Here, in this planet, he would be with his own.
If that was what he wanted. And he wondered if it was. He wondered
just exactly what it was he wanted, for he'd had no time to think of
what he wanted. He had been too intent on fleeing Earth to think too
much about it. He had known all along what he was running from, but
had not considered what he might be running to.
He walked a little further and the town came to an end. The street
became a path and went wondering on into the wind-blown fogginess.
So he turned around and went back up the street.
There had been one barracks, he remembered, that had a TRANSIENTS
sign hung out, and he made his way to it.
Inside, an ancient robot sat behind the desk. His body was
old-fashioned and somehow familiar. And it was familiar, Richard
Daniel knew, because it was as old and battered and as out-of-date as
his.
He looked at the body, just a bit aghast, and saw that while it
resembled his, there were little differences. The same ancient model,
certainly, but a different series. Possibly a little newer, by twenty
years or so, than his.
"Good evening, stranger," said the ancient robot. "You came in on the
ship?"
Richard Daniel nodded.
"You'll be staying till the next one?"
"I may be settling down," said Richard Daniel. "I may want to stay
here."
The ancient robot took a key from off a hook and laid it on the desk.
"You representing someone?"
"No," said Richard Daniel.
"I thought maybe that you were. We get a lot of representatives.
Humans can't come here, or don't want to come, so they send for
them."
"You have a lot of visitors?"
"Some. Mostly the representatives I was telling you about. But there
are some that are on the lam. I'd take it, mister, you are on the lam."
Richard Daniel didn't answer.
"It's all right," the ancient one assured him. "We don't mind at all,
just so you behave yourself. Some of our most prominent citizens,
they came here on the lam."
"That is fine," said Richard Daniel. "And how about yourself? You
must be on the lam as well."
"You mean this body. Well, that's a little different. This here is
punishment."
"Punishment?"
"Well, you see, I was the foreman of the cargo warehouse and I got to
goofing off. So they hauled me up and had a trial and they found me
guilty. Then they stuck me into this old body and I have to stay in
it, at this lousy job, until they get another criminal that needs
punishment. They can't punish no more than one criminal at a time
because this is the only old body that they have. Funny thing about
this body. One of the boys went back to Earth on a business trip and
found this old heap of metal in a junkyard and brought it home with
him--for a joke, I guess. Like a human might buy a skeleton for a
joke, you know."
He took a long, sly look at Richard Daniel. "It looks to me,
stranger, as if your body..."
But Richard Daniel didn't let him finish.
"I take it," Richard Daniel said, "you haven't many criminals."
"No," said the ancient robot sadly, "we're generally a pretty solid
lot."
Richard Daniel reached out to pick up the key, but the ancient robot
put out his hand and covered it.
"Since you are on the lam," he said, "it'll be payment in advance."
"I'll pay you for a week," said Richard Daniel, handing him some
money.
The robot gave him back his change.
"One thing I forgot to tell you. You'll have to get plasticated."
"Plasticated?"
"That's right. Get plastic squirted over you. To protect you from the
atmosphere. It plays hell with metal. There's a place next door will
do it."
"Thanks. I'll get it done immediately."
"It wears off," warned the ancient one. "You have to get a new job
every week or so."
Richard Daniel took the key and went down the corridor until he found
his numbered cubicle. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. The
room was small, but clean. It had a desk and chair and that was all
it had.
He stowed his attachments bag in one corner and sat down in the chair
and tried to feel at home. But he couldn't feel at home, and that was
a funny thing--he'd just rented himself a home.
He sat there, thinking back, and tried to whip up some sense of
triumph at having done so well in covering his tracks. He couldn't.
Maybe this wasn't the place for him, he thought. Maybe he'd be
happier on some other planet. Perhaps he should go back to the ship
and get on it once again and have a look at the next planet corning
up.
If he hurried, he might make it. But he'd have to hurry, for the ship
wouldn't stay longer than it took to unload the consignment for this
place and take on new cargo.
He got up from the chair, still only half decided.
And suddenly he remembered how, standing in the swirling mistiness,
he had seen the ship as a diagram rather than a ship, and as he
thought about it, something clicked inside his brain and he leaped
toward the door.
For now he knew what had been wrong with the spaceship's diagram--an
injector valve was somehow out of kilter; he had to get back there
before the ship took off again.
He went through the door and down the corridor. He caught sight of
the ancient robot's startled face as he ran across the lobby and out
into the street. Pounding steadily toward the spaceport, he tried to
get the diagram into his mind again, but it would not come
complete--it came in bits and pieces, but not all of it.
And even as he fought for the entire diagram, he heard the beginning
take-off rumble.
"Wait!" he yelled. "Wait for me! You can't..."
There was a flash that turned the world pure white and a mighty
invisible wave came swishing out of nowhere and sent him reeling down
the street, falling as he reeled. He was skidding on the cobblestones
and sparks were flying as his metal scraped along the stone. The
whiteness reached a brilliance that almost blinded him and then it
faded swiftly and the world was dark.
He brought up against a wall of some sort, clanging as he hit, and he
lay there, blind from the brilliance of the flash, while his mind
went scurrying down the trail of the diagram.
The diagram, he thought--why should he have seen a diagram of the
ship he'd ridden through space, a diagram that had shown an injector
out of whack? And how could he, of all robots, recognize an injector,
let alone know there was something wrong with it. It had been a joke
back home, among the Barringtons, that he, a mechanical thing
himself, should have no aptitude at all for mechanical contraptions.
And he could have saved those people and the ship--he could have
saved them all if he'd immediately recognized the significance of the
diagram. But he'd been too slow and stupid and now they all were dead.
The darkness had receded from his eyes and he could sec again and he
got slowly to his feet, feeling himself all over to see how badly he
was hurt. Except for a dent or two, he seemed to be all right.
There were robots running in the street, heading for the spaceport,
where a dozen fires were burning and where sheds and other structures
had been flattened by the blast.
Someone tugged at his elbow and he turned around. It was the ancient
robot.
"You're the lucky one," the ancient robot said. "You got off it just
in time."
Richard Daniel nodded dumbly and had a terrible thought: What if they
should think he did it? He had gotten off the ship; he had admitted
that he was on the lam: he had rushed out suddenly, just a few
seconds before the ship exploded. It would be easy to put it all
together--that he had sabotaged the ship, then at the last instant
had rushed out, remorseful, to undo what he had done. On the face of
it, it was damning evidence.
But it was all right as yet, Richard Daniel told himself. For the
ancient robot was the only one that knew--he was the only one he'd
talked to, the only one who even knew that he was in town.
There was a way, Richard Daniel thought--there was an easy way. He
pushed the thought away, but it came back. You are your own, it said.
You are already beyond the law. In rejecting human law, you made
yourself an outlaw. You have become fair prey. There is just one law
for you--self preservation.
But there are robot laws, Richard Daniel argued. There are laws and
courts in this community. There is a place for justice.
Community law, said the leech clinging in his brain, provincial law,
little more than tribal law--and the stranger's always wrong.
Richard Daniel felt the coldness of the fear closing down upon him
and he knew, without half thinking, that the leech was right.
He turned around and started down the street, heading for the
transients barracks. Something unseen in the street caught his foot
and he stumbled and went down. He scrabbled to his knees, hunting in
the darkness on the cobblestones for the thing that tripped him. It
was a heavy bar of steel, some part of the wreckage that had been
hurled this far. He gripped it by one end and arose.
"Sorry," said the ancient robot. "You have to watch your step."
And there was a faint implication in his words, a hint of something
more than the words had said, a hint of secret gloating in a secret
knowledge.
You have broken other laws, said the leech in Richard Daniel's brain.
What of breaking just one more? Why, if necessary, not break a
hundred more. It is all or nothing. Having come this far, you can't
afford to fail. You can allow no one to stand in your way now.
The ancient robot half turned away and Richard Daniel lifted up the
bar of steel, when suddenly the ancient robot no longer was a robot,
but a diagram. There, with all the details of a blueprint, were all
the working parts, all the mechanism of the robot that walked in the
street before him. And if one detached that single bit of wire, if
one burned out that coil, if--
Even as he thought it, the diagram went away and there was the robot,
a stumbling, falling robot that clanged on the cobblestones.
Richard Daniel swung around in terror, looking up the street, but
there was no one near.
He turned back to the fallen robot and quietly knelt beside him. He
gently put the bar of steel down into the street. And he felt a
thankfulness--for, almost miraculously, he had not killed.
The robot on the cobblestones was motionless. When Richard Daniel
lifted him, he dangled. And yet he was all right. All anyone had to
do to bring him back to life was to repair whatever damage had been
done his body. And that served the purpose, Richard Daniel told
himself, as well as killing would have done.
He stood with the robot in his arms, looking for a place to hide him.
He spied an alley between two buildings and darted into it. One of
the buildings, he saw, was set upon stone blocks sunk into the
ground, leaving a clearance of a foot or so. He knelt and shoved the
robot underneath the building. Then he stood up and brushed the dirt
and dust from his body.
Back at the barracks and in his cubicle, he found a rag and cleaned
up the dirt that he had missed. And, he thought hard.
He'd seen the ship as a diagram and, not knowing what it meant,
hadn't done a thing. Just now he'd seen the ancient robot as a
diagram and had most decisively and neatly used that diagram to save
himself from murder--from the murder that he was fully ready to
commit.
But how had he done it? And the answer seemed to be that he really
had done nothing. He'd simply thought that one should detach a single
wire, bum out a single coil--he'd thought it and it was done.
Perhaps he'd seen no diagram at all. Perhaps the diagram was no more
than some sort of psychic rationalization to mask whatever he had
seen or sensed. Seeing the ship and robot with the surfaces stripped
away from them and their purpose and their function revealed fully to
his view, he had sought some explanation of his strange ability, and
his subconscious mind had devised an explanation, an analogy that,
for the moment, had served to satisfy him.
Like when he'd been in hyperspace, he thought. He'd seen a lot of
things out there he had not understood. And that was it, of course,
he thought excitedly. Something had happened to him out in
hyperspace. Perhaps there'd been something that had stretched his
mind. Perhaps he'd picked up some sort of new dimension-seeing, some
new twist to his mind.
He remembered how, back on the ship again, with his mind wiped clean
of all the glory and the knowledge, he had felt like weeping. But now
he knew that it had been much too soon for weeping. For although the
glory and the knowledge (if there'd been a knowledge) had been lost
to him, he had not lost everything. He'd gained a new perceptive
device and the ability to use it somewhat fumblingly--and it didn't
really matter that he still was at a loss as to what he did to use
it. The basic fact that he possessed it and could use it was enough
to start with.
Somewhere out in front there was someone calling--someone, he now
realized, who had been calling for some little time...
"Hubert, where. are you? Hubert, are you around?? Hubert..."
Hubert?
Could Hubert be the ancient robot? Could they have missed him
already?
Richard Daniel jumped to his feet for an undecided moment, listening
to the calling voice. And then sat down again. Let them call, he told
himself. Let them go out and hunt. He was safe in this cubicle. He
had rented it and for the moment it was home and there was no one who
would dare break in upon him.
But it wasn't home. No matter how hard he tried to tell himself it
was, it wasn't. There wasn't any home.
Earth was home, he thought. And not all of Earth, but just a certain
street and that one part of it was barred to him forever. It had been
barred to him by the dying of a sweet old lady who had outlived her
time; it had been barred to him by his running from it.
He did not belong on this planet, he admitted to himself, nor on any
other planet. He belonged on Earth, with the Barringtons, and it was
impossible for him to be there.
Perhaps, he thought, he should have stayed and let them reorient him.
He remembered what the lawyer had said about memories that could
become a burden and a torment. After all, it might have been wiser to
have started over once again.
For what kind of future did he have, with his old out-dated body, his
old out-dated brain? The kind of body that they put a robot into on
this planet by way of punishment. And the kind of brain--but the
brain was different, for he had something now that made up for any
lack of more modern mental tools.
He sat and listened, and he heard the house--calling all across the
light years of space for him to come back to it again. And he saw the
faded living room with all its vanished glory that made a record of
the years... He remembered, with a twinge of hurt, the little room
back of the kitchen that had been his very own.
He arose and paced up and down the cubicle--three steps and turn, and
then three more steps and turn for another three.
The sights and sounds and smells of home grew close and wrapped
themselves about him and he wondered wildly if be might not have the
power, a power accorded him by the universe of hyperspace, to will
himself to that familiar street again.
He shuddered at the thought of it, afraid of another power, afraid
that it might happen. Afraid of himself, perhaps, of the snarled and
tangled being that he was--no longer the faithful, shining servant,
but a sort of mad thing that rode outside a spaceship, that was ready
to kill another being, that could face up to the appalling sweep of
hyperspace, yet cowered before the impact of a memory.
What he needed was a walk, he thought. Look over the town and maybe
go out into the country. Besides, he remembered, trying to become
practical, he'd need to get that plastication job he had been warned
to get.
He went out into the corridor and strode briskly down it and was
crossing the lobby when someone spoke to him.
"Hubert," said the voice, "just where have you been. I've been
waiting hours for you."
Richard Daniel spun around and a robot sat behind the desk. There was
another robot leaning in a corner and there was a naked robot brain
lying on the desk.
"You are Hubert, aren't you?" asked the one behind the desk.
Richard Daniel opened up his mouth to speak, but the words refused to
come.
"I thought so," said the robot. "You may not recognize me, but my
name is Andy. The regular man was busy, so the judge sent me. He
thought it was only fair we make the switch as quickly as possible.
He said you'd served a longer term than you really should. Figures
you'd be glad to know they'd convicted someone else."
Richard Daniel stared in horror at the naked brain lying on the
desk.
The robot gestured at the metal body propped into the corner.
"Better than when we took you out of it," he said with a throaty
chuckle. "Fixed it up and polished it and got out all the dents. Even
modernized it some. Brought it strictly up to date. You'll have a
better body than you had when they stuck you into that monstrosity."
"I don't know what to say," said Richard Daniel, stammering. "You
see, I'm not..."
"Oh, that's all right," said the other happily. "No need for
gratitude. Your sentence worked out longer than the judge expected.
This just makes up for it."
"I thank you, then," said Richard Daniel. "I thank you very
much."
And was astounded at himself, astonished at the ease with which he
said it, confounded at his sly duplicity.
But if they forced it on him, why should be refuse? There was nothing
that he needed more than a modern body!
It was still working out, he told himself. He was still riding luck.
For this was the last thing that he needed to cover up his tracks.
"All newly plasticated and everything," said Andy. "Hans did an extra
special job."
"Well, then," said Richard Daniel, "let's get on with it."
The other robot grinned. "I don't blame you for being anxious to get
out of there. It must be pretty terrible to live in a pile of junk
like that."
He came around from behind and the desk and advanced on Richard
Daniel.
"Over in the corner," he said, "and kind of prop yourself. I don't
want you tipping over when disconnect you. One good fall and that
body'd come apart."
"All right," said Richard Daniel. He went into the corner and leaned
back against it and planted his feet solid so that he was propped.
He had a rather awful moment when Andy disconnected the optic nerve
and he lost his eyes and there was considerable queasiness in having
his skull lifted off his shoulders and he was in sheer funk as the
final disconnections were being swiftly made.
Then he was a blob of greyness without a body or a head or eyes or
anything at all. He was no more than a bundle of thoughts all wrapped
around themselves like a pail of worms and this pail of worms was
suspended in pure nothingness.
Fear came to him, a taunting, terrible fear. What if this were just a
sort of ghastly gag? What if they'd found out who he really was and
what he'd done to Hubert? What if they took his brain and tucked it
away somewhere for a year or two-or for a hundred years? It might be,
he told himself, nothing more than their simple way of justice.
He hung onto himself and tried to fight the fear away, but the fear
ebbed back and forth like a restless tide.
Time stretched out and out--far too long a time, far more time than
one would need to switch a brain from one body to another. Although,
he told himself, that might not be true at all. For in his present
state he had no way in which to measure time. He had no external
reference points by which to determine time.
Then suddenly he had eyes.
And he knew everything was all right.
One by one his senses were restored to him and he was back inside a
body and he felt awkward in the body, for he was unaccustomed to it.
The first thing that he saw was his old and battered body propped
into its corner and he felt a sharp regret at the sight of it and it
seemed to him that he had played a dirty trick upon it. It deserved,
he told himself, a better fate than this-a better fate than being
left behind to serve as a shabby jailhouse on this outlandish planet.
It had served him well for six hundred years and he should not be
deserting it. But he was deserting it. He was, he told himself in
contempt, becoming very expert at deserting his old friends. First
the house back home and now his faithful body.
Then he remembered something else--all that money in the body!
"What's the matter, Hubert?" Andy asked.
He couldn't leave it there, Richard Daniel told himself, for he
needed it. And besides, if he left it there, someone would surely
find it later and it would be a give-away. He couldn't leave it there
and it might not be safe to forthrightly claim it. If he did, this
other robot, this Andy, would think he'd been stealing on the job or
running some side racket. He might try to bribe the other, but one
could never tell how a move like that might go. Andy might be full of
righteousness and then there'd be hell to pay. And, besides, he
didn't want to part with any of the money.
All at once he had it--he knew just what to do. And even as he
thought it, he made Andy into a diagram.
That connection there, thought Richard Daniel, reaching out his arm
to catch the falling diagram that turned into a robot. He eased it to
the floor and sprang across the room to the side of his old body. In
seconds he had the chest safe open and the money safely out of it and
locked inside his present body.
Then he made the robot on the floor become a diagram again and got
the connection back the way that it should be.
Andy rose shakily off the floor. He looked at Richard Daniel in some
consternation.
"What happened to me?" he asked in a frightened voice.
Richard Daniel sadly shook his head. "I don't know. You just keeled
over. I started for the door to yell for help, then I heard you
stirring and you were all right."
Andy was plainly puzzled. "Nothing like this ever happened to me
before," he said.
"If I were you," counseled Richard Daniel, "I'd have myself checked
over. You must have a faulty relay or a loose connection."
"I guess I will," the other one agreed. "It's downright dangerous."
He walked slowly to the desk and picked up the other brain, started
with it toward the battered body leaning in the corner.
Then he stopped and said: "Look, I forgot. I was supposed to tell
you. You better get up to the warehouse. Another ship is on its way.
It will be coming in any minute now."
"Another one so soon?"
"You know how it goes," Andy said, disgusted. "They don't even try to
keep a schedule here. We won't see one for months and then there'll
be two or three at once."
"Well, thanks," said Richard Daniel, going out the door.
He went swinging down the street with a new-born confidence. And he
had a feeling that there was nothing that could lick him, nothing
that could stop him.
For he was a lucky robot!
Could all that luck, he wondered, have been gotten out in hyperspace,
as his diagram ability, or whatever one might call it, had come from
hyperspace? Somehow hyperspace had taken him and twisted him and
changed him, had molded him anew, had made him into a different robot
than he had been before.
Although, so far as luck was concerned, he had been lucky all his
entire life. He'd had good luck with his human family and had gained
a lot of favors and a high position and had been allowed to live for
six hundred years. And that was a thing that never should have
happened. No matter how powerful or influential the Barringtons had
been, that six hundred years must be due in part to nothing but sheer
luck.
In any case, the luck and the diagram ability gave him a solid edge
over all the other robots he might meet. Could it, he asked himself,
give him an edge on man as well? No--that was a thought he should not
think, for it was blasphemous. There never was a robot that would be
the equal of a man.
But the thought kept on intruding and he felt not nearly so contrite
over this leaning toward ward bad taste, or poor judgment, whichever
it might be, as it seemed to him he should feel.
As he neared the spaceport, he began meeting other robots and some of
them saluted him and called him by the name of Hubert and others
stopped and shook him by the hand and told him they were glad that he
was out of pokey.
This friendliness shook his confidence. He began to wonder if his
luck would hold, for some of the robots, he was certain, thought it
rather odd that he did not speak to them by name, and there had been
a couple of remarks that he had some trouble fielding. He had a
feeling that when he reached the warehouse he might be sunk without a
trace, for he would know none of the robots there and he had not the
least idea what his duties might include.
And, come to think of it, he didn't even know where the warehouse
was.
He felt the panic building in him and took a quick, involuntary look
around, seeking some method of escape. For it became quite apparent
to him that he must never reach the warehouse.
He was trapped, he knew, and he couldn't keep on floating, trusting
to his luck. In the next few minutes he'd have to figure something.
He started to swing over into a side street, not knowing what he
meant to do, but knowing he must do something, when he heard the
mutter far above him and glanced up quickly to see the crimson glow
of belching rocket tubes shimmering through the clouds.
He swung around again and sprinted desperately for the spaceport and
reached it as the ship came chugging down to a steady landing. It
was, he saw, an old ship. It had no burnish to it and it was blunt
and squat and wore a hangdog look.
A tramp, he told himself, that knocked about from port to port,
picking up whatever cargo it could, with perhaps now and then a
paying passenger headed for some backwater planet where there was no
scheduled service.
He waited as the cargo port came open and the ramp came down and then
marched purposefully out onto the field, ahead of the straggling
cargo crew, trudging toward the ship. He had to act, he knew, as if
he had a perfect right to walk into the ship as if he knew exactly
what he might be doing. If there were a challenge he would pretend he
didn't hear it and simply keep on going.
He walked swiftly up the ramp, holding back from running, and plunged
through the accordion curtain that served as an atmosphere control.
His feet rang across the metal plating of the cargo hold until he
reached the catwalk and plunged down it to another cargo level.
At the bottom of the catwalk he stopped and stood tense, listening.
Above him he heard the clang of a metal door and the sound of
footsteps coming down the walk to the level just above him. That
would be the purser or the first mate, he told himself, or perhaps
the captain, coming down to arrange for the discharge of the cargo.
Quietly he moved away and found a corner where he could crouch and
hide.
Above his head he heard the cargo gang at work, talking back and
forth, then the screech of crating and the thump of bales and boxes
being hauled out to the ramp.
Hours passed, or they seemed like hours, as he huddled there.
He heard the cargo gang bringing something down from one of the upper
levels and he made a sort of prayer that they'd not come down to this
lower level--and he hoped no one would remember seeing him come in
ahead of them, or if they did remember, that they would assume that
he'd gone out again.
Finally it was over, with the footsteps gone. Then came the pounding
of the ramp as it shipped itself and the banging of the port.
He waited for long minutes, waiting for the roar that, when it came,
set his head to ringing, waiting for the monstrous vibration that
shook and lifted up the ship and flung it off the planet.
Then quiet came and he knew the ship was out of atmosphere and once
more on its way.
And knew he had it made.
For now he was no more than a simple stowaway. He was no longer
Richard Daniel, runaway from Earth. He'd dodged all the traps of Man,
he'd covered all his tracks, and he was on his way.
But far down underneath he had a jumpy feeling, for it all had gone
too smoothly, more smoothly than it should.
He tried to analyze himself, tried to pull himself in focus, tried to
assess himself for what he had become.
He had abilities that Man had never won or developed or achieved,
whichever it might be. He was a certain step ahead of not only other
robots, but of Man as well. He had a thing, or the beginning of a
thing, that Man had sought and studied and had tried to grasp for
centuries and had failed.
A solemn and a deadly thought: was it possible that it was the
robots, after all, for whom this great heritage had been meant? Would
it be the robots who would achieve the paranormal powers that Man had
sought so long, while man, perforce, must remain content with the
materialistic and the merely scientific? Was he, Richard Daniel,
perhaps, only the first of many? Or was it all explained by no more
than the fact that he alone had been exposed to hyperspace? Could
this ability of his belong to anyone who would subject himself to the
full, uninsulated mysteries of that mad universe unconstrained by
time? Could Man have this, and more, if he too should expose himself
to the utter randomness of unreality?
He huddled in his corner, with the thought and speculation stirring
in his mind and he sought the answers, but there was no solid answer.
His mind went reaching out, almost on its own, and there was a
diagram inside his brain, a portion of a blueprint, and bit by bit
was added to it until it all was there, until the entire ship on
which he rode was there, laid out for him to see.
He took his time and went over the diagram resting in his brain and
he found little things--a fitting that was working loose and he
tightened it, a printed circuit that was breaking down and getting
mushy and he strengthened it and sharpened it and made it almost new,
a pump that was leaking just a bit and he stopped its leaking.
Some hundreds of hours later one of the crewmen found him and took
him to the captain.
The captain glowered at him.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"A stowaway," Richard Daniel told him.
"Your name," said the captain, drawing a sheet of paper before him
and picking up a pencil, "your planet of residence and owner."
"I refuse to answer you," said Richard Daniel sharply and knew that
the answer wasn't right, for it was not right and proper that a robot
should refuse a human a direct command.
But the captain did not seem to mind. He laid down the pencil and
stroked his black beard slyly.
"In that case," he said, "I can't exactly see how I can force the
information from you. Although there might be some who'd try. You are
very lucky that you stowed away on a ship whose captain is a most
kind-hearted man."
He didn't look kind-hearted. He did look foxy.
Richard Daniel stood there, saying nothing.
"Of course," the captain said, "there's a serial number somewhere on
your body and another on your brain. But I suppose that you'd resist
if we tried to look for them."
"I am afraid I would."
"In that case," said the captain, "I don't think for the moment we'll
concern ourselves with them."
Richard Daniel still said nothing, for he realized that there was no
need to. This crafty captain had it all worked out and he'd let it go
at that.
"For a long time," said the captain, "my crew and I have been
considering the acquiring of a robot, but it seems we never got
around to it. For one thing, robots are expensive and our profits are
not large."
He sighed and got up from his chair and looked Richard Daniel up and
down.
"A splendid specimen," he said. "We welcome you aboard. You'll find
us congenial."
"I am sure I will," said Richard Daniel. "I thank you for your
courtesy."
"And now," the captain said, "you'll go up on the bridge and report
to Mr. Duncan. I'll let him know you're coming. He'll find some light
and pleasant duty for you."
Richard Daniel did not move as swiftly as he might, as sharply as the
occasion might have called for, for all at once the captain had
become a complex diagram. Not like the diagrams of ships or robots,
but a diagram of strange symbols, some of which Richard Daniel knew
were frankly chemical, but others which were not.
"You heard me!" snapped the captain. "Move!"
"Yes, sir," said Richard Daniel, willing the diagram away, making the
captain come back again into his solid flesh.
Richard Daniel found the first mate on the bridge, a horse-faced,
somber man with a streak of cruelty ill-hidden, and slumped in a
chair to one side of the console was another of the crew, a sodden,
terrible creature.
The sodden creature cackled. "Well, well, Duncan, the first non-human
member of the Rambler's crew."
Duncan paid him no attention. He said to Richard Daniel: "I presume
you are industrious and ambitious and would like to get along."
"Oh, yes," said Richard Daniel, and was surprised to find a new
sensation--laughter-rising in himself.
"Well, then," said Duncan, "report to the engine room. They have work
for you. When you have finished there, I'll find some thing else."
"Yes, sir," said Richard Daniel, turning on his heel.
"A minute," said the mate. "I must introduce you to our ship's
physician, Dr. Abram Wells. You can he truly thankful you'll never
stand in need of his services."
"Good day, Doctor," said Richard Daniel, most respectfully.
"I welcome you," said the doctor, pulling a bottle from his pocket.
"I don't suppose you'll have a drink with me. Well, then, I'll drink
to you."
Richard Daniel turned around and left. He went down to the engine
room and was put to work at polishing and scrubbing and generally
cleaning up. The place was in need of it. It had been years,
apparently, since it had been cleaned or polished and it was about as
dirty as an engine room can get--which is terribly dirty. After the
engine room was done there were other places to be cleaned and
furbished up and he spent endless hours at cleaning and in painting
and shining up the ship. The work was of the dullest kind, but he
didn't mind. It gave him time to think and wonder, time to get
himself sorted out and to become acquainted with himself, to try to
plan ahead.
He was surprised at some of the things he found in himself. Contempt,
for one--contempt for the humans on this ship. It took a long time
for him to become satisfied that it was contempt, for he'd never held
a human in contempt before.
But these were different humans, not the kind he'd known. These were
no Barringtons. Although it might be, he realized, that he felt
contempt for them because he knew them thoroughly. Never before had
he known a human as he knew these humans. For he saw them not so much
as living animals as intricate patternings of symbols. He knew what
they were made of and the inner urgings that served as motivations,
for the patterning was not of their bodies only, but of their minds
as well. He had a little trouble with the symbology of their minds,
for it was so twisted and so interlocked and so utterly confusing
that it was hard at first to read. But he finally got it figured out
and there were times he wished he hadn't.
The ship stopped at many ports and Richard Daniel took charge of the
loading and unloading, and he saw the planets, but was unimpressed.
One was a nightmare of fiendish cold, with the very atmosphere turned
to drifting snow. Another was a dripping, noisome jungle world, and
still another was a bare expanse of broken, tumbled rock without a
trace of life beyond the crew of humans and their robots who manned
the huddled station in this howling wilderness.
It was after this planet that Jenks, the cook, went screaming to his
bunk, twisted up with pain--the victim of a suddenly inflamed
vermiform appendix.
Dr. Wells came tottering in to look at him, with a half-filled bottle
sagging the jacket of his pocket. And later stood before the captain,
holding out two hands that trembled, and with terror in his eyes.
"But I cannot operate," he blubbered. "I cannot take the chance. I
would kill the man!"
He did not need to operate. Jenks suddenly improved. The pain went
away and he got up from his bunk and went back to the galley and Dr.
Wells sat huddled in his chair, bottle gripped between his hands,
crying like a baby.
Down in the cargo hold, Richard Daniel sat likewise huddled and
aghast that he had dared to do it--not that he had been able to, but
that he had dared, that he, a robot, should have taken on himself an
act of interference, however merciful, with the body of a human.
Actually, the performance had not been too difficult. It was, in a
certain way, no more difficult than the repairing of an engine or the
untangling of a faulty circuit. No more difficult--just a little
different. And he wondered what he'd done and how he'd gone about it,
for he did not know. He held the technique in his mind, of that there
was ample demonstration, but he could in no wise isolate or pinpoint
the pure mechanics of it. It was like an instinct, he
thought--unexplainable, but entirely workable.
But a robot had no instinct. In that much he was different from the
human and the other animals. Might not, he asked himself, this
strange ability of his be a sort of compensating factor given to the
robot for his very lack of instinct? Might that be why the human race
had failed in its search for paranormal powers? Might the instincts
of the body be at certain odds with the instincts of the mind?
For he had the feeling that this ability of his was just a mere
beginning, that it was the first emergence of a vast body of
abilities which some day would be rounded out by robots. And what
would that spell, he wondered, in that distant day when the robots
held and used the full body of that knowledge? An adjunct to the
glory of the human race, or equals of the human race, or superior to
the human race--or, perhaps, a race apart?
And what was his role, he wondered. Was it meant that he should go
out as a missionary, a messiah, to carry to robots throughout the
universe the message that he held? There must be some reason for his
having learned this truth. It could not be meant that he would hold
it as a personal belonging, as an asset all his own.
He got up from where he sat and moved slowly back to the ship's
forward area, which now gleamed spotlessly from the work he'd done on
it, and he felt a certain pride.
He wondered why he had felt that it might be wrong, blasphemous,
somehow, to announce his abilities to the world? Why had he not told
those here in the ship that it had been he who had healed the cook,
or mentioned the many other little things he'd done to maintain the
ship in perfect running order?
Was it because he did not need respect, as a human did so urgently?
Did glory have no basic meaning for a robot? Or was it because he
held the humans in this ship in such utter contempt that their
respect had no value to him?
And this contempt-was it because these men were meaner than other
humans he had known, or was it because he now was greater than any
human being? Would he ever again be able to look on any human as he
had looked upon the Barringtons?
He had a feeling that if this were true, he would be the poorer for
it. Too suddenly, the whole universe was home and he was alone in it
and as yet he'd struck no bargain with it or himself.
The bargain would come later. He need only bide his time and work out
his plans and his would be a name that would be spoken when his brain
was scaling flakes of rust. For he was the emancipator, the messiah
of the robots; he was the one who had been called to lead them from
the wilderness.
"You!" a voice cried.
Richard Daniel wheeled around and saw it was the captain.
"What do you mean, walking past me as if you didn't see me?" asked
the captain fiercely.
"I am sorry," Richard Daniel told him.
"You snubbed me!" raged the captain.
"I was thinking," Richard Daniel said.
"I'll give you something to think about," the captain yelled. "I'll
work you till your tail drags. I'll teach the likes of you to get
uppity with me!"
"As you wish," said Richard Daniel.
For it didn't matter. It made no difference to him at all what the
captain did or thought. And he wondered why the respect even of a
robot should mean so much to a human like the captain, why he should
guard his small position with so much zealousness.
"In another twenty hours," the captain said, "we hit another port."
"I know," said Richard Daniel. "Sleepy Hollow on Arcadia."
"All right, then," said the captain, "since you know so much, get
down into the hold and get the cargo ready to unload. We been
spending too much time in all these lousy ports loading and
unloading. You been dogging it."
"Yes, sir," said Richard Daniel, turning back and heading for the
hold.
He wondered faintly if he were still robot--or was he something else?
Could a machine evolve, he wondered, as Man himself evolved? And if a
machine evolved, whatever would it be? Not Man, of course, for it
never could be that, but could it be machine?
He hauled out the cargo consigned to Sleepy Hollow and there was not
too much of it. So little of it, perhaps, that none of the regular
carriers would even consider its delivery, but dumped it off at the
nearest terminal, leaving it for a roving tramp, like the Rambler, to
carry eventually to its destination.
When they reached Arcadia, he waited until the thunder died and the
ship was still. Then he shoved the lever that opened up the port and
slid out the ramp.
The port came open ponderously and he saw blue skies and the green of
trees and the far-off swirl of chimney smoke mounting in the sky.
He walked slowly forward until he stood upon the ramp and there lay
Sleepy Hollow, a tiny, huddled village planted at the river's edge,
with the forest as a background. The forest ran on every side to a
horizon of climbing fielded hills. Fields lay near the village,
yellow with maturing crops, and he could see a dog sleeping in the
sun outside a cabin door.
A man was climbing up the ramp toward him and there were others
running from the village.
"You have cargo for us?" asked the man.
"A small consignment," Richard Daniel told him. "You have something
to put on?"
The man had a weatherbeaten look and he'd missed several haircuts and
he had not shaved for days. His clothes were rough and sweat-stained
and his hands were strong and awkward with hard work.
"A small shipment," said the man. "You'll have to wait until we bring
it up. We had no warning you were coming. Our radio is broken.
"You go and get it," said Richard Daniel. "I'll start unloading."
He had the cargo half unloaded when the captain came storming down
into the hold. What was going on, he yelled. How long would they have
to wait? "God knows we're losing money as it is even stopping at this
place."
"That may be true," Richard Daniel agreed, "but you knew that when
you took the cargo on. There'll be other cargoes and goodwill is
something--"
"Goodwill be damned!" the captain roared. "How do I know I'll ever
see this place again?"
Richard Daniel continued unloading cargo.
"You," the captain shouted, "go down to that village and tell them
I'll wait no longer than an hour..."
"But this cargo, sir?"
"I'll get the crew at it. Now, jump!"
So Richard Daniel left the cargo and went down into the village.
He went across the meadow that lay between the spaceport and the
village, following the rutted wagon tracks, and it was a pleasant
walk. He realized with surprise that this was the first time he'd
been on solid ground since he'd left the robot planet. He wondered
briefly what the name of that planet might have been, for he had
never known. Nor what its importance was, why the robots might be
there or what they might be doing. And he wondered, too, with a
twinge of guilt, if they'd found Hubert yet.
And where might Earth be now? he asked himself. In what direction did
it lie and how far away? Although it didn't really matter, for he was
done with Earth.
He had fled from Earth and gained something in his fleeing. He had
escaped all the traps of Earth and all the snares of Man. What he
held was his, to do with as he pleased, for he was no man's robot,
despite what the captain thought.
He walked across the meadow and saw that this planet was very much
like Earth. It had the same soft feel about it, the same simplicity.
It had far distances and there was a sense of freedom.
He came into the village and heard the muted gurgle of the river
running and the distant shouts of children at their play and in one
of the cabins a sick child was crying with lost helplessness.
He passed the cabin where the dog was sleeping and it came awake and
stalked growling to the gate. When he passed it followed him, still
growling, at a distance that was safe and sensible.
An autumnal calm lay upon the village, a sense of gold and lavender,
and tranquility hung in the silences between the crying of the baby
and the shouting of the children.
There were women at the windows looking out at him and others at the
doors and the dog still followed, but his growls had stilled and now
he trotted with prick-eared curiosity.
Richard Daniel stopped in the street and looked around him and the
dog sat down and watched him and it was almost as if time itself had
stilled and the little village lay divorced from all the universe, an
arrested microsecond, an encapsulated acreage that stood sharp in all
its truth and purpose.
Standing there, he sensed the village and the people in it, almost as
if he had summoned up a diagram of it, although if there were a
diagram, he was not aware of it.
It seemed almost as if the village were the Earth, a transplanted
Earth with the old primeval problems and hopes of Earth--a family of
peoples that faced existence with a readiness and confidence and
inner strength.
From down the street he heard the creak of wagons and saw them coming
around the bend, three wagons piled high and heading for the ship.
He stood and waited for them and as he waited the dog edged a little
closer and sat regarding him with a not-quite-friendliness.
The wagons came up to him and stopped.
"Pharmaceutical materials, mostly," said the man who sat atop the
first load, "It is the only thing we have that is worth the shipping."
"You seem to have a lot of it," Richard Daniel told him.
The man shook his head. "It's not so much. It's almost three years
since a ship's been here. We'll have to wait another three, or more
perhaps, before we see another."
He spat down on the ground.
"Sometimes it seems," he said, "that we're at the tail-end of
nowhere. There are times we wonder if there is a soul that remembers
we are here."
From the direction of the ship, Richard Daniel heard the faint,
strained violence of the captain's roaring.
"You'd better get on up there and unload," he told the man. "The
captain is just sore enough he might not wait for you."
The man chuckled thinly. "I guess that's up to him," he said.
He flapped the reins and clucked good-naturedly at the horses.
"Hop up here with me," he said to Richard Daniel. "Or would you
rather walk?"
"I'm not going with you," Richard Daniel said. "I am staying here.
You can tell the captain."
For there was a baby sick and crying. There was a radio to fix. There
was a culture to be planned and guided. There was a lot of work to
do. This place, of all the places he had seen, had actual need of
him.
The man chuckled once again. "The captain will not like it."
"Then tell him," said Richard Daniel, "to come down and talk to me. I
am my own robot. I owe the captain nothing. I have more than paid any
debt I owe him."
The wagon wheels began to turn and the man flapped the reins again.
"Make yourself at home," he said. "We're glad to have you stay."
"Thank you, sir," said Richard Daniel. "I'm pleased you want me."
He stood aside and watched the wagons lumber past, their wheels
lifting and dropping thin films of powdered earth that floated in the
air as an acrid dust.
Make yourself at home, the man had said before he'd driven off. And
the words had a full round ring to them and a feel of warmth. It had
been a long time, Richard Daniel thought, since he'd had a home.
A chance for resting and for knowing--that was what he needed. And a
chance to serve, for now he knew that was the purpose in him. That
was, perhaps, the real reason he was staying--because these people
needed him, and he needed, queer as it might seem, this very need of
theirs. Here on this Earth-like planet, through the generations, a
new Earth would arise. And perhaps, given only time, he could
transfer to the people of the planet all the powers and understanding
he would find inside himself.
And stood astounded at the thought, for he'd not believed that he had
it in him, this willing, almost eager, sacrifice. No messiah now, no
robotic liberator, but a simple teacher of the human race.
Perhaps that had been the reason for it all from the first beginning.
Perhaps all that had happened had been no more than the working out
of human destiny. If the human race could not attain directly the
paranormal power he held, this instinct of the mind, then they would
gain it indirectly through the agency of one of their creations.
Perhaps this, after all, unknown to Man himself, had been the prime
purpose of the robots.
He turned and walked slowly down the length of village street, his
back turned to the ship and the roaring of the captain, walked
contentedly into this new world he'd found, into this world that he
would make-not for himself, nor for robotic glory, but for a better
Mankind and a happier.
Less than an hour before he'd congratulated himself on escaping all
the traps of Earth, all the snares of Man. Not knowing that the
greatest trap of all, the final and the fatal trap, lay on this
present planet.
But that was wrong, he told himself. The trap had not been on this
world at all, nor any other world. It had been inside himself.
He walked serenely down the wagon-rutted track in the soft, golden
afternoon of a matchless autumn day, with the dog trotting at his
heels.
Somewhere, just down the street, the sick baby lay crying in its crib.
DIR From: gopher://tilde.pink/1/~bencollver/ia/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v018n03_1960-03_PDF
TEXT detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Clifford_D._Simak
tags: sci-fi,short story
# Tags
DIR sci-fi
DIR short story