Gordon R. Dickson's SF Best

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "Oh, yes," he said. "It was a little too big for one man, anyway. First the Earth Council grabbed it, then the Solar Commission. Then it went out in all directions, with every system grabbing a chunk and setting up their own manufactories and regulators."

  "I'm sorry to hear that," I said.

  "Don't be." He shook his head, sticking out his lower lip like someone deprecating something already so small as to be beneath notice. "It was probably inevitable. Then, I think my robots have done more harm than good in the long run, no matter what's been accomplished with them." He shook his head again, smiling. "Not that I was always so resigned to the situation."

  "No?"

  "No – I had my dreams, when I was younger. To build a better universe, to better people – I was an idealist."

  "An idealist?" I repeated. "I don't know the word."

  "It's an old one," he answered. "Almost lost its meaning, now. It means – well, that you have a very high opinion of the human race, or people. That you expect the best of them, and want the best for them."

  I laughed. "It sounds like being in love with everyone at once."

  He nodded, smiling.

  "Something like that, Commandant – perhaps not so violent. Tone it down a little and call it being fond of people. I'm a fond sort of person, I suppose. I've been fond of a great many things. Of people, of my robots, of my first wife, of . . ." His voice trailed off and he looked into the firelight. He sighed. "Perhaps," he added, "you'd better tell me about my son, now, Commandant."

  I told him briefly. It is always best that way. Make it like a news report, impersonal, then sit back for the questions. There are always the questions.

  Jonas Wellman was no different. He sat a little longer than most, after I had finished, staring into the fire, but he came to it at last.

  "Commandant," he said, "what did you think of Alvin?"

  "Why," I told him, "I didn't know him too well, you know. He was liaison officer from another outfit – almost a visitor aboard our ship. We had different customs, and he kept pretty much to himself." I stopped, but when I saw him still waiting, I had to go on. "He was very quiet, a good sort of officer, not self-conscious with us Dorsai, the way a lot of outsiders are . . ."

  I talked on, trying to bring my memory of Alvin Wellman back into focus, but it was not too good. You try to remember the best on these occasions, to forget the worst. The truth was, there was very little to remember. Young Wellman had been like a ghost among us. The only clear memory I could bring to mind was of his sitting back in his corner of the table at mess, his pale young features withdrawn from the place and the technical conversation that went on among the rest of us.

  "He was a good man," I wound up finally. "We all liked him."

  "Yes." The old man lifted his face from the flames. "He was drafted, you know."

  "Oh?" I said – although, of course, I had known it perfectly well. It was why we had called the Solar Contingent the Earth Draft among ourselves. None of them had any real stake in the war, and few had wanted to come. It was Arcturus' doing, as everybody knew. The home system is under Arcturus' thumb, and probably always will be. But you don't tell that to an old man who has lost his only son in a war resulting from such a situation.

  "His mother never wanted him to go – but there was no choice." Jonas picked up his drink, sipped it, as an old man will, then put it down again. But his voice was a little stronger when he went on.

  "His mother was my second wife, you know. We separated when Alvin was six. That was – that was . . ." His voice took on a fretful note. For the first time a true note of his age rang through it. "When was that, Adam?"

  "Eighteen years ago,"' said the robot suddenly, startling me. I had almost forgotten that he was still with us. His voice, coming unexpectedly out of the fire-cast shadows behind us, made me start.

  "Oh, yes – yes. Eighteen years ago," said Jonas, with a sigh of pleasure and relief. He looked over at me with something that was almost like shyness. "Adam is my memory," he said. "Everything that I forget, he remembers – everything! Tell the Commandant what the house was like, then, Adam."

  "It was as it is now," said the robot. "The lawn was the same, except that we had a bed of roses along the south edge."

  "Ah, yes – those roses," said Jonas, nodding. "Alvin was very fond of those roses. Even as a baby – even when he stuck himself with the thorns."

  "Did they have thorns?" I asked, surprised.

  "Yes," he answered. "Yes, indeed. I'm very old-fashioned in some ways, Commandant, as you can tell by this house. Something in me has always yearned toward the past. That's why I like it here, with the trees all around me and the mountains standing over and behind them, unchanging, year after year."

  "And you were the man who came up with the first practical humanoid robots," I said.

  "Why should that surprise you?" He looked at me almost wonderingly. "I didn't intend them to lead us farther away from old virtues, but back to them again."

  I shook my head. "I don't see how," I said.

  "Why, I wanted to set people free," he said. "I wanted to unite their hands, and their minds. The average man is essentially good, Commandant. A hundred and forty years of life have never changed my mind about that. He wants to be fond of his fellowman and will, given half a chance."

  I shook my head again, but without saying anything. I did not want to argue with him.

  "Love is life," he said, "and life is love. All the accidents in the world can't prove that false. Did the accident that took my first wife's life prove that I didn't love her when she was alive? Did the accidental combination of political powers that took my robots from me negate the love for people that caused me to create those robots in the first place?

  "Did the accident that my second wife never really loved me deny the life that was given to Alvin, or my love for him, or his for me – before she took him away? I tell you, he loved me as a baby – didn't he, Adam?"

  "He loved you, Jason."

  "And I was very fond of him. I was already an old man then. I didn't remarry for many, many years, after my first – my Elaine – died. I thought I would never marry again. But then she came along – and she gave me Alvin. But then she took him away again, for no good reason, except that she knew I was fond of him, and wanted him. She was very bitter against me for not having what she believed I had when she married me." He paused.

  "Money," said the robot quietly.

  "Yes, money. She thought I still controlled some part of the robot franchise, here in the system, that no one knew about. She was too cautious, too clever, to check fully before she married me. After we were married, it was too late.

  "She tried to make a go of it, though, which is much more than another woman might have done in her place. She gave me Alvin. But she had never really liked me, and her dislike grew worse and worse, until she couldn't stand it. So she left me, and took him."

  He stopped. The fire flickered on the pillars of the house.

  "That's too bad," I said awkwardly. "It – is she still alive?

  "No." He said it abruptly. "She died shortly after AIvin was drafted. I went to see her, but she wouldn't see me. And so, she died. It was then I learned that Alvin was gone. She hadn't told me about the draft."

  "I see," I said.

  "I was fond of her, too – still," he went on. "But it hurt me that I had not been able to see my son, before he went off to die, so many millions and millions of miles away. If she had left him with me as a boy, I would have taught him to love people, to love everything as I myself have. Perhaps he would have been a success, where I have been a failure." He flung up his head and turned suddenly to the robot.

  "Adam, I've been a failure!" he cried.

  "No," said the robot.

  The old man heaved a heavy sigh. Slowly, the tension leaked out of him, and he slumped back in his chair. His eyes were abstracted, and on the fire.

  "No," I said. "In my opinion, you're no failure, Mr. Wellman. You have t
o judge success or failure by concrete things. You set out to give robots to people, and you did. That's the one big accomplishment of your life."

  "No." He shook his head, his eyes still locked in the heart of the fire. "Love is life. Love should create life to some good, purposeful end. I poured out my love, and all I created came to a dead end. Not the theory, but I fell down. I have Adam tell me that I didn't but this is the sort of soothing syrup an old man feeds himself. Well . . ."

  He roused himself. He looked at me and I was surprised at the change in Wellman's face. The sad and merry lines were all fallen into the still mask of great age. It was a face which sees at once the empty future and the lid of the coffin closing soon upon it.

  "I get tired quickly nowadays," he said. "If you'll forgive me, Commandant, I'll have Adam take you back to the taxi-area. Thank you for coming this long distance to tell me about Alvin."

  He held out his hand. I took it briefly, and stood up. "It's nothing," I said. "We mercenaries spend our lives in moving from one place to another. I was close as star-distances go. Good-by, Mr. Wellman."

  He looked up at me from the depths of his chair. "One thing, Commandant," he said. "Just one more thing – were people fond – did the men on your ship really like Alvin?"

  "Why . . ." I said, fumbling, for the truth was that none of us had known the young man well enough to like or dislike him – and the question had caught me off balance. "Why – they liked him well enough."

  The old man sagged. "Yes," he said. His downcast eyes, as if drawn by some force greater than the life within him, wandered back to the fire. "Well, thank you again, Commandant."

  "It was nothing. Good-by," I said.

  I offered my hand again, but he did not see it. He was seated staring into the flames, seeing something could not imagine. I left him that way.

  Outside, the robot opened the door of the ground car for me and slid behind the controls himself. The rain had stopped falling, but the night was heavy and dark. We moved silently down the road, man and mechanical, behind a little yellow pool of light dancing before us from the headlights.

  For some time, I sat without saying anything, thinking to myself of odd things the old man's words had somehow conjured up within me – memories of the Dorsai Worlds, of Hevflum, my planet, of the cobalt seas beside our home in Tunisport, of the women of our family – of my grandfather, probably dead by now. What I thought about them, I don't know. I only know that I did think of them, one after the other, like a man counting over his possessions.

  I roused myself at last, to become conscious of the robot beside me. We were almost at the parking-area, and I could make out my waiting taxi, parked off to one side in the shadows.

  "Over there," I directed the robot.

  "Yes, sir," he said.

  He turned the ground car a trifle in that direction, and we rolled up beside the taxi. He got out, went around to open the door on my side of the car, and let me out. I stepped from floor cushion to the glassy surface of the area and looked at the tall, black metal body of the robot, a full head above me in height.

  "Adam . . ." I said.

  "Sir?"

  But I found I had no words for what seemed to be inside me.

  "Nothing," I said.

  I stepped up to the entrance of the taxi, closed the door behind me, and moved forward, into the pilot's seat. Out through the window beside me, I could see Adam standing silently, his head now at last a little below mine. I started the engine, then, on sudden impulse, throttled back to idling-power and set the window down. I leaned out of it.

  "Adam, come here," I ordered.

  The robot took two steps forward, so that he was standing just below the window.

  "When you get back to Mr. Wellman," I said, "give him the following message from me. Say that – that. . ."

  But it was no use. There was still nothing for me to say. I wanted, with a strange desperation, to send some word to Jonas Wellman, to prove to him that he was not alone in the world, that his love had not failed in its task of creation as we both knew it had. But what could I say in the face of the facts?

  "Never mind. Cancel! " I said angrily, and turned away, reaching for the throttle. But, just as my hand touched it, the robot's voice drew me back to the window.

  "Commandant," it said.

  I turned and looked out. The robot had taken a step nearer, and, as I looked, his head swiveled back on its smooth bearings, his face raised to mine. I remember the twin dull gleam of his red eye-lens scanners coming up to me in the shadowy dimness, like two embers in a fire uncovered by a breath and glowing into sudden life.

  "Rest easy, Commandant," he said. "I love him."

  I have a personal weakness for zany stories and demented heroes (they're easier for me to identify with), but that's not why I like this story so much. Most of us writers are a bit superstitious about creativity – we don't like to examine the creative process in any detail; we shy away from trying to discover where all those funny little ideas come from. Perhaps we think of the Muse as a timid unicorn, who will flee forever if we beat the bushes for her. Or perhaps we are wary of getting locked in a Centipede's Dilemma. Gordy wades right in, of course.

  What is genius? A good question. And when it's asked by a genius, it's a courageous one.

  Ah, forget it. Have fun.

  IDIOT SOLVANT

  The afternoon sun, shooting the gap of the missing slat in the venetian blind on the window of Art Willoughby's small rented room, splashed fair in Art's eyes, blinding him.

  "Blast!" muttered Art. "Got to do something about that sun."

  He flipped one long, lean hand up as an eyeshield and leaned forward once more over the university news sheet, unaware that he had reacted with his usual gesture and litany to the sun in his eyes. His mouth watered. He spread out his sharp elbows on the experiment-scarred surface of his desk and reread the ad.

  Volunteers for medical research testing. $1.60 hr., rm., board. Dr. Henry Rapp, Room 432, A Bldg., University Hospital.

  "Board –" echoed Art aloud, once more unaware he had spoken. He licked his lips hungrily. Food, he thought. Plus wages. And hospital food was supposed to be good. If they would just let him have all he wanted . . .

  Of course, it would be worth it for the dollar-sixty an hour alone.

  "I'll be sensible," thought Art. "I'll put it in the bank and just draw out what I need. Let's see – one week's work, say – seven times twenty-four times sixteen. Twosix-eight-eight – to the tenth. Two hundred sixty-eight dollars and eighty cents . . ."

  That much would support him for – mentally, he totted up his daily expenses. Ordinary expenses, that was. Room, a dollar-fifty. One-and-a-half-pound loaf of day-old bread at half price – thirteen cents. Half a pound of peanut butter, at ninety-eight cents for the three-pound economy size jar – seventeen cents roughly. One all-purpose vitamin capsule – ten cents. Half a head of cabbage, or whatever was in season and cheap – approximately twelve cents. Total, for shelter with all utilities paid and a change of sheets on the bed once a week, plus thirty-two hundred calories a day – two dollars and two cents.

  Two dollars and two cents. Art sighed. Sixty dollars and sixty cents a month for mere existence. It was heartbreaking. When sixty dollars would buy a fine double magnum of imported champagne at half a dozen of the better restaurants in town, or a 1954 used set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or the parts from a mail-order house so that he could build himself a little ocean-hopper shortwave receiver so that he could tune in on foreign language broadcasts and practice understanding German, French, and Italian.

  Art sighed. He had long ago come to the conclusion that since the two billion other people in the world could not very well all be out of step at the same time, it was probably he who was the odd one. Nowadays he no longer tried to fight the situation, but let himself reel uncertainly through life, sustained by the vague, persistent conviction that somewhere, somehow, in some strange fashion destiny would eventually be bound to
call on him to have a profound effect on his fellowmen.

  It was a good twenty-minute walk to the university. Art scrambled lankily to his feet, snatched an ancient leather jacket off the hook holding his bagpipes, put his slide rule up on top of the poetry anthologies in the bookcase so he would know where to find it again – that being the most unlikely place, Q.E.D. – turned off his miniature electric furnace in which he had been casting up a gold pawn for his chess set, left some bread and peanut butter for his pet raccoon, now asleep in the wastebasket, and hurried off, closing the door.

  "There's one more," said Margie Hansen, Dr. Hank Rapp's lab assistant. She hesitated. "I think you'd better see him." Hank looked up from his desk, surprised. He was a short, cheerful, tough-faced man in his late thirties.

  "Why?" he said. "Some difficulties? Don't sign him up if you don't want to."

  "No. No . . . I just think maybe you'd better talk to him. He passed the physical all right. It's just . . . well, you have a look at him."

  "I don't get it," said Hank. "But send him in."

  She opened the door behind her and leaned out through it.

  "Mr. Willoughby, will you come in now?" She stood aside and Art entered. "This is Dr. Rapp, Mr: Willoughby. Doctor, this is Art Willoughby." She went out rather hastily, closing the door behind her.

  "Sit down," said Hank, automatically. Art sat down, and Hank blinked a little at his visitor. The young man sitting opposite him resembled nothing so much as an unbearded Abe Lincoln. A thin unbearded Abe Lincoln, if it was possible to imagine our sixteenth President as being some thirty pounds lighter than he actually had been.

  "Are you a student at the university here?" asked Hank, staring at the decrepit leather jacket.

  "Well, yes," said Art, hoping the other would not ask him what college he was in. He had been in six of them, from Theater Arts to Engineering. His record in each was quite honorable. There was nothing to be ashamed of – it was just always a little bit difficult to explain.