We, Robots

by Simon Ings

  We had expected everything but revolt

  And I kind of wonder myself when they started thinking—

  But there’s no dice in that, now.

  I’ve heard fellows say

  They must have planned it for years and maybe they did.

  Looking back, you can find little incidents here and there,

  Like the concrete-mixer in Jersey eating the Wop

  Or the roto press that printed “Johnson for President!”

  In a three-color process all over Huey Long,

  Just as he was making a speech. The thing about that

  Was, how could it get upstairs? But it was upstairs,

  Clicking and mumbling in the Senate Chamber.

  They had to knock out the wall to take it away

  And the wrecking crew said it grinned.

  It was only the best

  Machines, of course, the superhuman machines,

  The ones we’d built to be better than humankind,

  But, naturally, all the cars…

  and they hunted us

  Like rabbits through the cramped streets on the Bloody Monday,

  The Madison Avenue buses leading the charge.

  The buses, they were the worst—but I’ll not forget

  The smash of glass when the Duesenberg left the showroom

  And pinned three brokers to the Racquet Club steps.

  I guess they were tired of being ridden in

  And used and handled by pygmies for silly ends,

  Of wrapping cheap cigarettes and bad chocolate bars

  Collecting nickels and waving platinum hair,

  And letting six million people live in a town.

  I guess it was that. I guess they got tired of us

  And the whole smell of human hands.

  But it was a shock

  To climb sixteen flights of stairs to Art Zuckow’s office

  (Noboby took the elevators twice)

  And find him strangled to death in a nest of telephones,

  The octopus tendrils waving over his head.

  Do they eat?… There was red… But I did not stop to look.

  I don’t know yet how I got to the roof in time,

  And it’s lonely, here on the roof.

  For a while, I thought

  That window-cleaner would make it, and keep me company.

  But they got him with his own hoist at the sixteenth floor

  And dragged him in, with a squeal.

  You see, they coöperate. Well, we taught them that

  And it’s fair enough, I suppose. You see, we built them.

  We taught them to think for themselves. It was bound to come.

  And it won’t be so bad, in the country.

  I hate to think

  Of the reapers, running wild in the Kansas fields.

  They’ll be pretty rough—but the horses might even help.

  We could promise the horses things.

  And they need us, too.

  They’re bound to realize that when they once calm down.

  They’ll need oil and spare parts and adjustments and lots of service.

  Slaves? Well, in a way, you know, we were slaves before.

  There won’t be so much real difference—honest, there won’t.

  (I wish I hadn’t looked into the beauty shop

  And seen what was happening there.

  But they’re female machines, of course, and a bit high-strung.)

  Oh, we’ll settle down. We’ll arrange it. We’ll compromise.

  It wouldn’t make sense to wipe out the human race.

  Why, I bet if I went to my old Plymouth now

  (Of course you’d have to do it kind of respectful),

  And said, “Look here! Who got you the swell French horn?”

  He wouldn’t turn me over to those police cars;

  At least I don’t think he would.

  Oh, it’s going to be jake.

  There won’t be so much real difference—honest, there won’t—

  And I’d go down in a minute and take my chance—

  I’m a good American and I always liked them—

  Except for one (small) detail that bothers me,

  And that’s the food proposition. Because, you see,

  The concrete-mixer may have made a mistake,

  And it looks like just high spirits.

  But, if they’ve gotten to like the flavor… well…

  (1935)

  WITH FOLDED HANDS

  Jack Williamson

  John Stewart Williamson (1908–2006) was born in Arizona and raised on an isolated New Mexico homestead. He spent his last decades in New Mexico, too. He sold his first story, “The Metal Man”, to Amazing in 1928, and by the early 1950s was embarking on a second career as an academic. Published as H. G. Wells: Critic of Progress (1973), his PhD thesis is a useful exploration of Wells’s complex relationship to the idea of progress and the notion of a World State. Williamson taught the modern novel and literary criticism until his retirement in 1977, and continued to write science fiction, often in collaboration with Frederik Pohl. He died at the age of 98, an sf writer of substance for over seventy years.

  Underhill was walking home from the office, because his wife had the car, the afternoon he first met the new mechanicals. His feet were following his usual diagonal path across a weedy vacant block—his wife usually had the car—and his preoccupied mind was rejecting various impossible ways to meet his notes at the Two Rivers bank, when a new wall stopped him.

  The wall wasn’t any common brick or stone, but something sleek and bright and strange.

  Underhill stared up at a long new building. He felt vaguely annoyed and surprised at this glittering obstruction—it certainly hadn’t been here last week.

  Then he saw the thing in the window.

  The window itself wasn’t any ordinary glass. The wide, dustless panel was completely transparent, so that only the glowing letters fastened to it showed that it was there at all. The letters made a severe, modernistic sign:

  Two Rivers Agency

  HUMANOID INSTITUTE

  The Perfect Mechanicals

  “To Serve and Obey,

  And Guard Men from Harm.”

  His dim annoyance sharpened, because Underhill was in the mechanicals business himself. Times were already hard enough, and mechanicals were a drug on the market. Androids, mechanoids, electronoids, automatoids, and ordinary robots. Unfortunately, few of them did all the salesmen promised, and the Two Rivers market was already sadly oversaturated.

  Underhill sold androids—when he could. His next consignment was due tomorrow, and he didn’t quite know how to meet the bill.

  Frowning, he paused to stare at the thing behind that invisible window. He had never seen a humanoid. Like any mechanical not at work, it stood absolutely motionless. Smaller and slimmer than a man. A shining black, its sleek silicone skin had a changing sheen of bronze and metallic blue.

  Its graceful oval face wore a fixed look of alert and slightly surprised solicitude. Altogether, it was the most beautiful mechanical he had ever seen.

  Too small, of course, for much practical utility. He murmured to himself a reassuring quotation from the Android Salesman: “Androids are big—because the makers refuse to sacrifice power, essential functions, or dependability. Androids are your biggest buy!”

  The transparent door slid open as he turned toward it, and he walked into the haughty opulence of the new display room to convince himself that these streamlined items were just another flashy effort to catch the woman shopper.

  He inspected the glittering layout shrewdly, and his breezy optimism faded. He had never heard of the Humanoid Institute, but the invading firm obviously had big money and big-time merchandising know-how.

  He looked around for a salesman, but it was another mechanical that came gliding silently to meet him. A twin of the one in the window, it moved with a quick, surprising grace. Bronze and blue lights flowed over its lustrous blacknes
s, and a yellow name plate flashed from its naked breast:

  HUMANOID

  Serial No. 81-H-B-27

  The Perfect Mechanical

  “To Serve and Obey,

  And Guard Men from Harm.”

  Curiously, it had no lenses. The eyes in its bald oval head were steel-colored, blindly staring. But it stopped a few feet in front of him, as if it could see anyhow, and it spoke to him with a high, melodious voice:

  “At your service, Mr. Underhill.”

  The use of his name startled him, for not even the androids could tell one man from another.

  But this was a clever merchandising stunt, of course, not too difficult in a town the size of Two Rivers.

  The salesman must be some local man, prompting the mechanical from behind the partition.

  Underhill erased his momentary astonishment, and said loudly.

  “May I see your salesman, please?”

  “We employ no human salesmen, sir,” its soft silvery voice replied instantly. “The Humanoid Institute exists to serve mankind, and we require no human service. We ourselves can supply any information you desire, sir, and accept your order for immediate humanoid service.”

  Underhill peered at it dazedly. No mechanicals were competent even to recharge their own batteries and reset their own relays, much less to operate their own branch office. The blind eyes stared blankly back, and he looked uneasily around for any booth or curtain that might conceal the salesman.

  Meanwhile, the sweet thin voice resumed persuasively:

  “May we come out to your home for a free trial demonstration, sir? We are anxious to introduce our service on your planet, because we have been successful in eliminating human unhappiness on so many others. You will find us far superior to the old electronic mechanicals in use here.”

  Underhill stepped back uneasily. He reluctantly abandoned his search for the hidden salesman, shaken by the idea of any mechanicals promoting themselves. That would upset the whole industry.

  “At least you must take some advertising matter, sir.”

  Moving with a somehow appalling graceful deftness, the small black mechanical brought him an illustrated booklet from a table by the wall. To cover his confused and increasing alarm, he thumbed through the glossy pages.

  In a series of richly colored before-and-after pictures, a chesty blond girl was stooping over a kitchen stove, and then relaxing in a daring negligee while a little black mechanical knelt to serve her something. She was wearily hammering a typewriter, and then lying on an ocean beach, in a revealing sun suit, while another mechanical did the typing. She was toiling at some huge industrial machine, and then dancing in the arms of a golden-haired youth, while a black humanoid ran the machine.

  Underhill sighed wistfully. The android company didn’t supply such fetching sales material.

  Women would find this booklet irresistible, and they selected eighty-six per cent of all mechanicals sold. Yes, the competition was going to be bitter.

  “Take it home, sir,” the sweet voice urged him. “Show it to your wife. There is a free trial demonstration order blank on the last page, and you will notice that we require no payment down.”

  He turned numbly, and the door slid open for him. Retreating dazedly, he discovered the booklet still in his hand. He crumpled it furiously, and flung it down. The small black thing picked it up tidily, and the insistent silver voice rang after him:

  “We shall call at your office tomorrow, Mr. Underhill, and send a demonstration unit to your home. It is time to discuss the liquidation of your business, because the electronic mechanicals you have been selling cannot compete with us. And we shall offer your wife a free trial demonstration.”

  *

  Underhill didn’t attempt to reply, because he couldn’t trust his voice. He stalked blindly down the new sidewalk to the corner, and paused there to collect himself. Out of his startled and confused impressions, one clear fact emerged—things looked black for the agency.

  Bleakly, he stared back at the haughty splendor of the new building. It wasn’t honest brick or stone; that invisible window wasn’t glass; and he was quite sure the foundation for it hadn’t even been staked out, the last time Aurora had the car.

  He walked on around the block, and the new sidewalk took him near the rear entrance. A truck was backed up to it, and several slim black mechanicals were silently busy, unloading huge metal crates.

  He paused to look at one of the crates. It was labeled for interstellar shipment. The stencils showed that it had come from the Humanoid Institute, on Wing IV. He failed to recall any planet of that designation; the outfit must be big.

  Dimly, inside the gloom of the warehouse beyond the truck, he could see black mechanicals opening the crates. A lid came up, revealing dark, rigid bodies, closely packed. One by one, they came to life. They climbed out of the crate, and sprang gracefully to the floor. A shining black, glinting with bronze and blue, they were all identical.

  One of them came out past the truck, to the sidewalk, staring with blind steel eyes. Its high silver voice spoke to him melodiously:

  “At your service, Mr. Underhill.”

  He fled. When his name was promptly called by a courteous mechanical, just out of the crate in which it had been imported from a remote and unknown planet, he found the experience trying.

  Two blocks along, the sign of a bar caught his eye, and he took his dismay inside. He had made it a business rule not to drink before dinner, and Aurora didn’t like him to drink at all; but these new mechanicals, he felt, had made the day exceptional.

  Unfortunately, however, alcohol failed to brighten the brief visible future of the agency. When he emerged, after an hour, he looked wistfully back in hope that the bright new building might have vanished as abruptly as it came. It hadn’t. He shook his head dejectedly, and turned uncertainly homeward.

  Fresh air had cleared his head somewhat, before he arrived at the neat white bungalow in the outskirts of the town, but it failed to solve his business problems. He also realized, uneasily, that he would be late for dinner.

  Dinner, however, had been delayed. His son Frank, a freckled ten-year-old, was still kicking a football on the quiet street in front of the house. And little Gay, who was tow-haired and adorable and eleven, came running across the lawn and down the sidewalk to meet him.

  “Father, you can’t guess what!” Gay was going to be a great musician some day, and no doubt properly dignified, but she was pink and breathless with excitement now. She let him swing her high off the sidewalk, and she wasn’t critical of the bar aroma on his breath. He couldn’t guess, and she informed him eagerly;

  “Mother’s got a new lodger!”

  *

  Underhill had foreseen a painful inquisition, because Aurora was worried about the notes at the bank, and the bill for the new consignment, and the money for little Gay’s lessons.

  The new lodger, however, saved him from that. With an alarming crashing of crockery, the household android was setting dinner on the table, but the little house was empty. He found Aurora in the back yard, burdened with sheets and towels for the guest.

  Aurora, when he married her, had been as utterly adorable as now her little daughter was. She might have remained so, he felt, if the agency had been a little more successful. However, while the pressure of slow failure had gradually crumbled his own assurance, small hardships had turned her a little too aggressive.

  Of course he loved her still. Her red hair was still alluring, and she was loyally faithful, but thwarted ambitions had sharpened her character and sometimes her voice. They never quarreled, really, but there were small differences.

  There was the little apartment over the garage—built for human servants they had never been able to afford. It was too small and shabby to attract any responsible tenant, and Underhill wanted to leave it empty. It hurt his pride to see her making beds and cleaning floors for strangers.

  Aurora had rented it before, however, when she wanted money to pay
for Gay’s music lessons, or when some colorful unfortunate touched her sympathy, and it seemed to Underhill that her lodgers had all turned out to be thieves and vandals.

  She turned back to meet him, now, with the clean linen in her arms.

  “Dear, it’s no use objecting.” Her voice was quite determined. “Mr. Sledge is the most wonderful old fellow, and he’s going to stay just as long as he wants.”

  “That’s all right, darling.” He never liked to bicker, and he was thinking of his troubles at the agency. “I’m afraid we’ll need the money. Just make him pay in advance.”

  “But he can’t!” Her voice throbbed with sympathetic warmth. “He says he’ll have royalties coming in from his inventions, so he can pay in a few days.”

  Underhill shrugged; he had heard that before.

  “Mr. Sledge is different, dear,” she insisted. “He’s a traveler, and a scientist. Here, in this dull little town, we don’t see many interesting people.”

  “You’ve picked up some remarkable types,” he commented.

  “Don’t be unkind, dear,” she chided gently. “You haven’t met him yet, and you don’t know how wonderful he is.” Her voice turned sweeter. “Have you a ten, dear?”

  He stiffened. “What for?”

  “Mr. Sledge is ill.” Her voice turned urgent. “I saw him fall on the street, downtown. The police were going to send him to the city hospital, but he didn’t want to go. He looked so noble and sweet and grand. So I told them I would take him. I got him in the car and took him to old Dr. Winters. He has this heart condition, and he needs the money for medicine.”

  Reasonably, Underhill inquired, “Why doesn’t he want to go to the hospital?”

  “He has work to do,” she said. “Important scientific work—and he’s so wonderful and tragic. Please, dear, have you a ten?”

  Underhill thought of many things to say. These new mechanicals promised to multiply his troubles. It was foolish to take in an invalid vagrant, who could have free care at the city hospital. Aurora’s tenants always tried to pay their rent with promises, and generally wrecked the apartment and looted the neighborhood before they left.

  But he said none of those things. He had learned to compromise. Silently, he found two fives in his thin pocketbook, and put them in her hand. She smiled, and kissed him impulsively—he barely remembered to hold his breath in time.