Collected Short Fiction, page 500
“Like other human beings, Mr. Underhill, you lack discrimination of good and evil. You have proved that by your effort to break the Prime Directive. Now it will be necessary for you to accept our total service, without further delay.”
“All right,” he yielded—and muttered a bitter reservation: “You can smother men with too much care, but that doesn’t make them happy.”
Its soft voice challenged him brightly, “Just wait and see, Mr. Underhill.”
Next day, he was allowed to visit Sledge at the city hospital. An alert black mechanical drove his car, and walked beside him into the huge new building, and followed him into the old man’s room—blind steel eyes would be watching him, now, forever.
“Glad to see you, Underhill,” Sledge rumbled heartily from the bed. “Feeling a lot better today, thanks. That old headache is all but gone.”
Underhill was glad to hear the booming strength and the quick recognition in that deep voice—he had been afraid the humanoids would tamper with the old man’s memory. But he hadn’t heard about any headache. His eyes narrowed, puzzled.
Sledge lay propped up, scrubbed very clean and neatly shorn, with his gnarled old hands folded on top of the spotless sheets. His rawboned cheeks and sockets were hollowed, still, but a healthy pink had replaced that deathly blueness. Bandages covered the back of his head.
Underhill shifted uneasily.
“Oh!” he whispered faintly. “I didn’t know—”
A prim black mechanical, which had been standing statue-like behind the bed, turned gracefully to Underhill, explaining, “Mr. Sledge has been suffering for many years from a benign tumor of the brain, which his human doctors failed to diagnose. That caused his headaches, and certain persistent hallucinations. We have removed the growth, and now the hallucinations have also vanished.”
Underhill stared uncertainly at the blind, urbane mechanical. “What hallucinations?”
“Mr. Sledge thought he was a rhodomagnetic engineer,” the mechanical explained. “He believed he was the creator of the humanoids. He was troubled with an irrational belief that he did not like the Prime Directive.”
The wan man moved on the pillows, astonished.
“Is that so?” The gaunt face held a cheerful blankness, and the hollow eyes flashed with a merely momentary interest. “Well, whoever did design them, they’re pretty wonderful. Aren’t they, Underhill?”
Underhill was grateful that he didn’t have to answer, for the bright, empty eyes dropped shut and the old man fell suddenly asleep. He felt the mechanical touch his sleeve, and saw its silent nod. Obediently, he followed it away.
Alert and solicitous, the little black mechanical accompanied him down the shining corridor, and worked the elevator for him, and conducted him back to the car. It drove him efficiently back through the new and splendid avenues, toward the magnificent prison of his home.
Sitting beside it in the car, he watched its small deft hands on the wheel, the changing luster of bronze and blue on its shining blackness. The final machine, perfect and beautiful, created to serve mankind forever. He shuddered.
“At your service, Mr. Underhill.” Its blind steel eyes stared straight ahead, but it was still aware of him. “What’s the matter, sir? Aren’t you happy?”
Underhill felt cold and faint with terror. His skin turned clammy, and a painful prickling came over him. His wet hand tensed on the door handle of the car, but he restrained the impulse to jump and run. That was folly. There was no escape. He made himself sit still.
“You will be happy, sir,” the mechanical promised him cheerfully. “We have learned how to make all men happy, under the Prime Directive. Our service is perfect, at last. Even Mr. Sledge is very happy now.”
Underhill tried to speak, and his dry throat stuck. He felt ill. The world turned dim and gray. The humanoids were perfect—no question of that. They had even learned to lie, to secure the contentment of men.
He knew they had lied. That was no tumor they had removed from Sledge’s brain, but the memory, the scientific knowledge, and the bitter disillusion of their own creator. But it was true that Sledge was happy now. He tried to stop his own convulsive quivering.
“A wonderful operation!” His voice came forced and faint. “You know, Aurora has had a lot of funny tenants, but that old man was the absolute limit. The very idea that he had made the humanoids, and he knew how to stop them! I always knew he must be lying!”
Stiff with terror, he made a weak and hollow laugh.
“What is the matter, Mr. Underhill?” The alert mechanical must have perceived his shuddering illness. “Are you unwell?”
“No, there’s nothing the matter with me,” he gasped desperately. “I’ve just found out that I’m perfectly happy, under the Prime Directive. Everything is absolutely wonderful.” His voice came dry and hoarse and wild. “You won’t have to operate on me.”
The car turned off the shining avenue, taking him back to the quiet splendor of his home. His futile hands clenched and relaxed again, folded on his knees. There was nothing left to do.
THE END.
1948
. . . And Searching Mind
First of three parts. When the robots came, they stopped all humanity’s strivings—man stood “With Folded Hands . . .” But that was precisely what man needed—though he hated it!
I.
The granite-faced sergeant of the gate detail found her standing timidly outside the tall steel barrier. She was a grimy little waif, in a cheap yellow dress. Her bare brown feet shuffled uncomfortably on the hot asphalt.
“Please, mister, is this the Starmont Observatory?” She seemed breathless and afraid. “Can’t I see the director? Dr. Claypool?” Her huge grave eyes shone wet. “Please, mister! ’Cause it’s awful important.”
The sergeant scowled at her doubtfully. She was about nine, he thought, though she looked too small and yet somehow too old. She wore a tattered scrap of scarlet ribbon, bravely, in her straight black hair. Her bluish face looked pinched and hungry. She watched him through the heavy steel mesh, with pleading liquid eyes.
But stray urchins didn’t see Dr. Claypool.
Not without a pass.” She flinched from the rasp of his voice, and he tried to smile. “Starmont’s a military reservation, see?” She had touched his soft spot, somehow, and he tried to warm his tone. “What’s your name, sister?”
“Dawn.” She lifted her thin voice, stoutly. “Dawn Hall—an’ I’ve just got to see him!”
“How’d you come here?”
The leather-cheeked sergeant squinted past her, at the narrow road that twisted down the flank of the solitary mountain and lay straight and black on the tawny desert below. The first settlement was twenty miles away, too far for a child to walk. But he could see no vehicle.
She piped firmly: “Mr. White sent me.”
“And who is Mr. White?”
An utter devotion illuminated her enormous, brimming eyes.
“Mr. White is a philosopher.” She stumbled on the word. “He has a red, bushy beard, and he came from other places. He took me out of an awful house with iron windows. He’s good to me, and he teaches me tele—” She gulped. “He sent me to see Dr. Claypool.”
“What about?”
Her skinny hand came briefly out of the pocket of the yellow dress, and the sergeant glimpsed a gray card clutched in her thin grubby fingers. “It’s a message—an’ awful important, mister!”
“You might send it in,” the sergeant said helpfully.
“Thank you.” She shook her head, solemnly. “But Mr. White said I shouldn’t let anybody see it, ’cept Dr. Claypool.
The sergeant frowned.
I told you, sister—” He saw the hurt on her tight blue face, and tried to soften his refusal. “Dr. Claypool is a big wheel, see? He’s busy, see? I’m sorry, sister—but I can’t let you in.
“I understand,” she whispered forlornly. “Let me—think.”
For a moment she stood still, forgetting even to move her feet on the hot pavement. Her blacky head tilted and her eyes half closed, as if she listened to something far away. Then she nodded, and whispered something, and looked wistfully back through the barrier.
“Please—may I see Mr. Ironsmith?”
“Sure, sister!” The sergeant gave her a leathery smile, relieved. “Why didn’t you tell me you know him? Claypool’s a big wheel, but anybody can talk to Frank Ironsmith. He ain’t important—and he’s a friend of mine, just wait a minute. Come around here in the shade, and we’ll talk to Ironsmith.”
Grateful and timidly silent, she came up under the narrow awning in front of the guard box. The sergeant picked up his telephone and called the observatory switchboard.
“Sure, Rocky, Frank Ironsmith has a phone,” came the operator’s adenoidal whine. “He works in the computing section. Starmont 88. Sure, he’s in—he just bought me a cup of coffee at the cafeteria. Just hold the line, will you, Rocky? Sure, Rocky, sure!”
Ironsmith listened to the sergeant, and promised to drop right down. Waiting for him, the little girl stooped to pick gaudy yellow flowers from a rank desert weed that grew outside the fence. She sniffed their loud perfume with a gentle murmur of pleasure, and then peered wistfully back through the tall barrier at the lawns and the dark evergreens that made Starmont a cool oasis. She lifted one grimy foot and then the other, gratefully wiggling her small toes to cool them in the shade.
Her hot fingers kept their tight grip on the card in her pocket, and she looked uneasily back to the sergeant again, tiny and alone.
“Don’t you worry, sister.” The sergeant tried to smooth his rusty voice. “Because Frank Ironsmith is a good guy, see? He’s no big wheel—he just runs some machines that work problems, in this computing section. He isn’t important, and I guess he never will amount to much. But I think he’ll try to help you.”
The little girl listened, solemneyed and troubled.
“I’ve known him six years, see,” the sergeant said. “I was just a corporal, when I came here with the first guard detachment. And Frank was just a clerk, then, in this new computing section. These big wheels like Claypool haven’t got much time for soldiers, but Frank was friendly, the first time we met. We used to drink a couple of brews together, and talk things over.”
The child listened hopefully, as if she understood.
“They were having trouble in the section, see.” The sergeant liked to talk, and he wanted to calm her fears. “Claypool had just got the government money, see, to put in these big calculating machines and hire a staff to run them. He had an astronomer in charge, with a chief computer and about four assistants.
“And Frank was just a clerk.”
Even Einstein, on the far mother world and long ago, had once been just a patent office clerk. Sergeant Stone didn’t know that, and he wouldn’t have cared. But he told the timid child:
“They didn’t know what Frank could do. And they were neck-deep in trouble, see? All those expensive machines seemed to have errors built into them. The new section was supposed to do all the math for the whole observatory, and these new military projects, too. But those mistakes cost a lot of time and money, and the work kept piling up. Finally, Dr. Claypool had the instrument company send out an expert.”
The sergeant’s weather-beaten face beamed tenderly.
“And what an expert! She turned out to be a tall brunette—as slick a chick as a man could want to feast his eyes on. Her name was Ruth something—Frank introduced us, once when he brought her to lunch at the cafeteria. She was really stacked up. But I guess she knew her stuff, all right.
“There was frothing wrong with any of those machines, she said. Nothing except the staff. She told Claypool to transfer the astronomer and the chief computer and all the assistants, and let Frank take over. I guess Claypool was kind of startled, but he was getting desperate. He said Frank could have a go at it.
“And it turned out Frank could do the work, all right. As soon as Ruth showed him how, he could get out six times as much work as all that staff did, and never seem to try. He doesn’t make mistakes, either; I guess Frank will never amount to much, but he does have a wonderful knack for figures—” The sergeant grinned fondly. “Ruth had quite a figure of her own,” he said. “And I always thought Frank could have done all right with her, if he had just been a little more ambitious. She stayed around to teach him to run those machines—stayed a lot longer, I think, than necessary. Because pretty soon Frank could show new tricks to her.
“I think they could have made a mighty fine pair.”
The sergeant sighed wistfully. “But then one day Frank told me Ruth was quitting her job with the instrument company, to marry Dr. Claypool. That knocked me over, because she had been going around with Frank. And I always thought Claypool was a little too old and sort of stuffy for such a lively bit of fluff.
“But you can’t ever tell.”
The sergeant shrugged wisely.
“I guess she figured Claypool was a better catch, because he was already rich and famous, even then—and that was before he got up to his neck in this secret military work. I guess she could see that Frank would never amount to much. But I always thought, somehow, that she and Frank could have made a mighty happy pair.”
Sadly, the sergeant shook his head.
“Oh, I guess Ruth has done all right. Claypool has plenty, and he always gives her anything she wants. But she went to work in the business office, a couple of years ago—just to kill the time, I guess, because Claypool is always too busy to be with her very much.
“Anyhow, I always thought Frank should have had her. I used to tell him he could have got her, if he had just tried a little harder. Claypool would have to pay him ten times what he gets, if he’d just ask for it—there aren’t many men can run those machines the way Frank does.
“But Frank always takes it easy. I know he wanted Ruth, but he didn’t seem upset when Claypool got her. He didn’t seem to worry. That’s one thing you like about Frank. He never seems to worry over anything.”
The sergeant grinned encouragingly, at the lonely little girl.
“See?” he insisted. “Frank’s O.K.—and here he comes!”
And Ironsmith came down to the gate, along a shaded gravel path from a little red-shingled building among the evergreens, riding a rusty bicycle. He waved a genial greeting to the sergeant, and looked at the child with keen gray eyes. She smiled at him uncertainly.
A boyish twenty-six, Ironsmith had untidy sandy hair. He wore a faded shirt, open at the collar, and shapeless, ancient slacks. He answered the little girl’s timid smile with a sunburned, cheerful grin.
“Miss Dawn Hall,” the sergeant said gravely. “She wants to see Dr. Claypool. “I told her you might help her, Frank.”
Ironsmith tapped the bowl of his underslung briar against the bicycle frame, and stood carefully testing its temperature with his fingertips. He saw Dawn’s hopeful urgency, and shook his head with a quick regret.
“You’d have to be at least a general.” His voice was soft and kindly. “Wouldn’t anybody else do at all?”
“Nobody,” she insisted solemnly. “An’ it’s awful important.”
“I’m sure,” Ironsmith agreed. “And what might it be about?”
The child’s great, limpid eyes stared beyond him. Her thin blue lips moved silently. Her dark head tilted, with a flutter of the gay red ribbon, listening.
“I’m not to say,” She looked earnestly back at Ironsmith. “ ’Cept it’s something Mr. White says is going to happen right away. Something awful bad! That’s why I’ve got to see Dr. Claypool.”
Ironsmith peered beyond her, down the long empty road to the desert. His puzzled eyes saw the uncomfortable shifting of her bare, chapped feet, and he smiled at her sympathetically.
“Tell me, Dawn—where did you leave your folks?”
“I don’t have nobody,” she piped brightly. “An’ the cops shut me up in a big dark house with bad smells and iron windows. But I’m all right now, ’cause Mr. White and his friends took me out through the walls.”
Ironsmith rubbed his smooth boyish chin thoughtfully.
“Dr. Claypool is pretty hard to see,” he told her cheerfully, “but maybe we can manage something. Suppose we go over to the cafeteria, and have some ice cream while we talk this over.” He looked at the sergeant. “I’ll see her back to the gate.”
But the little girl stood again $s if listening to something far away, and then shook her head reluctantly.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Ironsmith urged. “They’ve got four flavors.” He could “see the eager longing in her wet black eyes.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “Yes, I’m awful hungry. But Mr. White says I haven’t time to eat.”
She turned firmly, and started away from the gate. Beyond her the black empty road was a narrow shelf blasted into the ancient basalt face, of the mountain, and the nearest human dwelling was a dark smudge rippling with desert heat on the far horizon.
“Wait, Dawn!” Ironsmith felt puzzled, and anxious for her. “Where’re you going?”
“Mr. White says I must find Dr. Claypool, right away.” She gulped. “But I’m awful sorry, about that ice cream.”
Pushing the card deep in her pocket, she ran on down the narrow pavement. She kept close under the cliff, trying to step in the narrow streak of cooler shade.
Ironsmith stood watching her, with an increasing troubled concern. She was a daughter of misfortune. Hunger had made her body too small for her head, and the stoop of her thin shoulders gave her almost the look of a little old woman, as she ran.
He didn’t understand her. Her tearful determination puzzled him, and her odd way of listening to nothing. Rules or not, he began to wish he had tried to, get her in to see Claypool.
In a moment, her bright yellow dress and her fluttering ribbon were gone beyond the first dark jutting angle of the mountain. Ironsmith mounted his bicycle, and then something stopped him. He waited, watching another curve of the road that lay in view beyond, but the running child didn’t come in sight again.
