I chuckled, thinking of it—of this great, bumbling, earnest Elmer clumping across the fairy campus and stumbling down the venerated, almost sacred halls, hunting out professors from their academic lairs to ask them insistent, silly questions about a long-gone student that many of them, no doubt, had trouble in recalling.
“There was yet another professor,” said Elmer, “who impressed me greatly and I had a long talk with him. He was not in the arts, but in archaeology. He said he knew you well.”
“That would be Thorndyke. He is an old and trusted friend.”
“That’s the name,” said Elmer.
I was a bit amused, but somewhat resentful, too. What business did this blundering robot have to be checking up on me?
“And you are now convinced,” I asked, “that I am fully capable of building a compositor?”
“Oh, most assuredly,” he said.
“If you have come with the hope of being hired, you have wasted your time,” I said. “Not that I don’t need the help. Not that I wouldn’t like to have you. But I’ve run out of money.”
“It wasn’t that entirely, sir. I would, of course, be delighted to work on it with you. But my real reason was I want to go back to Earth. I was born there, you see; I was fabricated there.”
“You were what?” I yelled.
“I was forged on Earth,” said Elmer. “I’m a native of the Earth. I would like to see the planet once again. And I thought that if you were going …”
“Once again,” I said, “and slow. Do you really mean that you were forged on Earth? In the olden days?”
“I saw the last of Earth,” said Elmer. “I worked on the last of the war machines. I was a project manager.”
“But you would have worn out,” I said. “You would be worn out by now. A robot can be long-lived, of course, but …”
“I was very valuable,” Elmer pointed out. “Ship room was found for me when men began going to the stars. I was not just a robot. I was a mechanic, an engineer. Humans needed robots such as I to help establish their new homes far in space. They took good care of me. Worn parts were replaced, I was kept in good repair. And since I gained my freedom I have taken good care of myself. I have never bothered with the external body. I have never changed it. I have kept it free of rust and plated, but that is all. The body does not count, only the internal working parts. Although now it is impossible to get shelf replacements. They are no longer in stock, but must be placed on special order.”
What he said had the ring of truth to it. In that long-gone moving day when, in a century or so, men had fled the Earth, a wrecked and ruined planet, because there was nothing left to keep them there, they would have needed robots such as Elmer. But it was not only this. Elmer had the sound of truth in him. This was no tall tale, I am sure, to impress the listener.
And here he sat beside me, after all the years, and if I would only ask him, he could tell me of the Earth. For it all would still be with him—all that he had ever seen or heard or known would be with him still, for robots do not forget as biologic creatures do. The memories of the ancient Earth would be waiting within his memory core, waiting to be tapped, as fresh as if they had been implanted only yesterday.
I found that I was shaking—not shaking outwardly, physically, but within myself. I had tried to study Earth for years and there was so little left to study. The records and the writings had been lost and scattered, and in those cases where they still existed it was often in only fragmentary form. In that ancient day when men had left the Earth, fleeing for the stars, they had gone out too fast to give much thought to the preservation of the heritage of the planet. On thousands of different planets some of that heritage might still remain, preserved because it had been forgotten, hidden in old trunks or packing boxes tucked beneath the eaves. But it would take many lifetimes for one to hunt it out and even could one find it, more than likely a good part of it would be disappointing—mere trivia that would have no actual bearing on the questions that bobbled in one’s mind.
But here sat a robot that had known the Earth and could tell of Earth—although perhaps not as much as one might hope, for those must have been desperate, busy days for him and with much of Earth already gone.
I tried to frame a question and there was nothing I could think of that it seemed that he could answer. One after another the questions came to mind and each one was rejected because it did not fit into the frame of reference of a robot engaged in building war machines.
And while I tried to form a proper question he said something that knocked the questions completely from my mind.
“For years,” he said, “I have been wandering around from one job to another and the pay was always good. There’s nothing, you understand, that a robot really needs, that he’d feel called to spend his money on. So it has just piled up. And here finally is something I’d like to spend it on. If you would not be offended, sir …”
“Offended about what?” I asked, not entirely catching the drift of all his talk.
“Why,” he said, “I’d like to put my money into your compositor. I think I might have enough that we could finish it.”
I suppose I should have got all happy, I should have leaped to my feet and shouted out my joy. I just sat cold and stiff, afraid to move, afraid that if I moved I might scare it all away.
I said, still stiff and cold, “It’s not a good investment. I would not recommend it.”
He almost pleaded with me. “Look, it is not just the money. I can offer more than that. I’m a good mechanic. Together, the two of us could put together an instrument that would be the best one ever made.”
Chapter 4
As I came down the steps, the woman sitting at the wheel of the pink car spoke to me.
“You are Fletcher Carson, are you not?”
“Yes,” I said, completely puzzled, “but how did you know that I was here? There is no way you could have known.”
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “I knew you’d be on the funeral ship, but it took so long to get here. My name is Cynthia Lansing and I must talk with you.”
“I haven’t too much time,” I said. “Perhaps a little later.”
She was not exactly beautiful, but there was, even at first sight, something engaging and extremely likeable about her. She had a face that fell just short of being heart-shaped, her eyes were quiet and calm, her black hair fell down to her shoulders; she wasn’t smiling with the lips, but her entire face was ready to break into a smile.
“You’re going out to the shed,” she said, “to uncrate Elmer and Bronco. I could drive you out there.”
“Is there anything,” I asked, “that you don’t know about me?”
She did smile then. “I knew that as soon as you got in you’d have to pay a courtesy call on Maxwell Peter Bell. How did you make out?”
“In Maxwell Peter’s book I achieved the rating of a heel.”
“Then he didn’t take you over?”
I shook my head. I didn’t quite trust myself to speak.
How the hell, I wondered, could she know all she seemed to know? There was only one place she could have learned any of it at all—on Alden at the university. Those old friends of mine, I told myself, might have hearts of gold, but they were blabbermouths.
“Come on, get in,” she said. “We can talk on the way out to the shed. And I want to see this wondrous robot, Elmer.”
I got into the car. There was an envelope lying in her lap and she handed it to me.
“For you,” she said.
It had my name scrawled across the face of it and there was no mistaking that misshapen scrawl. Thorney, I told myself. What the hell did Thorney have to do with Cynthia Lansing ambushing me as soon as I got to Earth?
She started up the car and headed down the driveway. I ripped the letter open. It was a sheet of official University of Alden stationery and in the upper left-hand corner was neatly printed: William J. Thorndyke, Ph.D., Department of Archaeology.
; The letter itself was in the same scrawl as the name upon the envelope. It read:
Dear Fletch: The bearer of this letter is Miss Cynthia Lansing and I would impress upon you that whatever she may tell you is the truth; I have examined the evidence and I would pledge my reputation that it is authentic. She will be wanting to accompany you on your trip and I would take it as the greatest favor you could do me if you should bear with her and supply her with all co-operation and assistance that is possible. She will be taking a Pilgrim ship to Earth and should be there and waiting for you when you arrive. I have placed some departmental funds at her disposal and you are to make use of them if there is any need. All that I need tell you is—that her presence on the Earth has to do with what we talked about that last time, when you came to see me just before you left.
I sat with the letter in my hand and I could see him as he had been on that last time I had seen him, in the fire-lit littered room that he called his study, with books shelved to the ceiling, with the shabby furniture, the dog curled upon the hearth rug, the cat upon its cushion. He had sat on a hassock and rolled the brandy glass between his palms, and he had said, “Fletch, I am certain I am right, that my theory’s right. The Anachronians were not galactic traders, as so many of my colleagues think. They were observers; they were cultural spies. It makes a deal of sense when you look at it. Let us say that a great civilization had the capacity to roam among the stars. Let us say that in some manner they could spot a planet where an intellectual culture was rising or about to rise. So they plant an observer on that planet and keep him there, alert to developments that might be of value. As we know, cultures vary greatly. This can be observed even among the human colonies that were planted from the Earth. Even a few centuries are enough to provide some variations. The variations are much greater, of course, among those planets that still have or at one time had alien cultures—alien as opposed to human. No two groups of intelligences ever go at anything in parallel manner. They may arrive, eventually, at the same result, or at an approximation of the same result, but they go about it differently, and in the process each develops some capability or some concept which the other does not have. Even a great galactic culture would have developed in this fashion, and because it did develop in this fashion there would be many approaches, many concepts, many abilities which it bypassed or missed along the way. It would seem, this being true, that it would have been worth the while of even our great galactic culture to learn about and have at hand for study those cultural developments it had missed, perhaps had never even thought of. Probably not more than one in ten of these missed developments would be applicable to their culture, but that one in ten might be most important. It might give a new dimension, might make them a more well-rounded and more solid culture. Let us say, which is not true, of course, that Earth had been the only culture that dreamed up the wheel. Even the great galactic culture had missed the wheel, had gone on to its greatness on some other principle that left the lack of the wheel unnoticed. Still, would it not seem likely that knowledge of the wheel, even at a much later date, might be of value? The wheel is such a handy thing to have.”
I came back to the present. I still clutched the letter in my hand. The car was nearing the shed. The funeral ship stood on its pad, but there was no sign of the vehicles that had been unloading the cargo. The work must all be done.
“Thorney says that you are expecting to go with us,” I said to Cynthia Lansing. “I don’t know if that’ll be possible. We’ll be roughing it. Camping out in all kinds of weather.”
“I can rough it. I can camp.”
I shook my head.
“Look,” she protested, “I gambled everything I had on this, to be here when you landed. I scratched up every credit that I had to pay the outrageous fare on a Pilgrim ship …”
“Thorney said something about some funds. A grant.”
“I didn’t have quite enough for the fare,” she said. “I used part of it for that. And I’ve been waiting for you to arrive, staying at the Pilgrim Inn, which isn’t cheap. There is very little left. Really, nothing left …”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “But you knew it was a gamble. You had no reason to believe …”
“But I did,” she said. “You are as broke as I am.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you haven’t got the money to get back to Alden once you have your composition.”
“I know that,” I said, “but if I have the composition …”
“No money,” she said, “and Mother Earth not about to make it easy for you.”
“There is that,” I said, “but I can’t see how taking you along …”
“That is what I have been trying to tell you. This may sound silly to you …”
Her words ran out and she sat there looking at me. Her face no longer looked as if it were about to smile.
“Damn you,” she said, “why don’t you say something? Why don’t you help me just a little? Why don’t you ask me what I have?”
“All right. What is it that you have?”
“I know where the treasure is.”
“For the love of Christ, what treasure?”
“The Anachron treasure.”
“Thorney is convinced,” I told her, “that the Anachronians had been on Earth. He wanted me to watch for any possible clues to their being here. It was a fool’s errand, of course, as he spelled it out to me. The archaeologists aren’t even sure there was such a race. Their planet never has been found. All that had been found are fragments of inscriptions on half a dozen planets, fragmentary inscriptions found among the inscriptions and the shreds of the native culture. Some evidence, although it seems to me shaky evidence, that at one time members of this supposedly mysterious race lived on other planets—perhaps as traders, which is what most archaeologists believe, or as observers, which is what Thorney believes, or for some other reason, neither as traders or observers. He told me all of this, but he never mentioned treasure.”
“But there was a treasure,” she said. “It was brought from olden Greece to olden America in the Final War. I found an account of it and Professor Thorndyke …”
“Start making some sort of sense,” I said. “If Thorney is right, they weren’t here for treasure. They were here for data, to observe.”
“For data, sure,” she said, “but what about the observer? He would have been a professional, wouldn’t he? A historian, perhaps far more than a historian. He would have recognized the cultural value of certain artifacts—the ceremonial hand axe of a prehistoric tribe, a Grecian urn, Egyptian jewelry …”
I crammed the letter into my jacket pocket, jumped out of the car. “We can talk about this later,” I said. “Right now I have to turn Elmer loose so we can start setting up the Bronco.”
“Am I going with you?”
“We’ll see,” I said.
How the hell, I wondered, could I keep her from going?
She had Thorney’s blessing; she maybe did have something about the Anachronians, perhaps even about a treasure. And I couldn’t leave her here, flat broke—for if she wasn’t quite broke yet, she would be if she stayed on at the inn and there was no place else for her to stay. God knows, I didn’t want her. She would be a nuisance. I was not on a treasure hunt. I had come to Earth to put together a composition. I hoped to capture some of the feel of Earth—Earth minus Cemetery. I couldn’t go off chasing treasure or Anachronians. All that I’d ever told Thorney was that I’d keep my eyes open for clues and that didn’t mean going out to hunt for them.
I headed for the open door of the shed, with Cynthia trailing at my heels. Inside the shed was dark and I paused for a moment to let my eyes become accustomed to the darkness. Something moved and I made out three men—three workmen from the looks of them.
“I have some boxes here,” I said. There were a lot of boxes, the piled cargo off the funeral ship.
“Right over there, Mr. Carson,” said one of them. He gestured to one side and I saw them—
the big crate enclosing Elmer and the four crates in which we had boxed the Bronco.
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate your keeping them separate from the rest. I’d asked the captain, but …”
“There’s just one little matter,” said the man. “Handling and storage.”
“I don’t get it. Handling and storage?”
“Sure, the charges. My men don’t work for free.”
“You’re the foreman here?”
“Yeah. Reilly is the name.”
“How much is this storage?”
Reilly reached into his back pocket and hauled forth a paper. He studied it fixedly, as if making sure he had the figures right.
“Well,” he said, “it runs to four hundred and twenty-seven credits, but let us say four hundred.”
“You must be wrong,” I told him, trying to keep my temper. “All you did was unship the crates and haul them in here and, as for storage, they’ve been here only an hour or so.”
Reilly shook his head, sadly. “I can’t help that. Them’s the charges. You either pay them or we hold the cargo. Them’s the rules.”
The other two men had moved up silently, one to either side of him.
“It’s all ridiculous,” I protested. “This must be a joke.”
“Mister,” said the foreman, “it isn’t any joke.”
I didn’t have four hundred credits, and I wouldn’t have paid it if I had, but neither was I going to tackle the foreman and the husky stevedores standing with him.
“I’ll look into this,” I said, trying to save face, having no idea what I could do next. They had me cold, I knew. Although it wasn’t them; it was Maxwell Peter Bell. He was the one who had me cold.
“You do that, mister,” said Reilly. “You just go ahead and do it.”
I could go storming back to Bell and that was exactly what he wanted. He expected that I would and it would be all right, of course, and all would be forgiven, if I accepted a Cemetery grant and did Cemetery work. But I wasn’t going to do that, either.
Cemetery World Page 3