Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Where am I supposed to go? I can’t get back to my spaceship on my own. “

  “Since Wayne 1332A brought you here,” Car Eater said, “he can also take you back. Right, Wayne?”

  A loud sound of backfires came from the assembled carhunters. It took Hellman a moment to realize it was laughter.

  “Sorry about this, Wayne,” Hellman said. He and Jorge had mounted and were clinging to the carhunter’s back plates.

  “Hell, it don’t make no never mind,” Wayne said. “I don’t sit around a whole lot fretting about how I pass my time. Sometimes it’s more convenient for us carhunters to turn onto emergency mode, which of course is timebound. But most of the time life just goes along here on the concrete prairie much as it has ever done.”

  Hellman learned from Wayne that the carhunters had lived in this region, the badlands of Northwest Mountain and Concrete Prairie, for as long as anyone could remember. Jorge broke in and said that this was a lie, or at least an untruth: the carhunters had been around only a hundred years or so, just like everyone else. Wayne said he didn’t want to argue, but he did point out that there was one hell of a lot city robots didn’t know. Hellman himself was interested in what it was like to be a city robot.

  “Aren’t there any people in your city?” Hellman asked Jorge.

  “I told you, all of us are people.”

  “Well, I mean people like me. Humans. Flesh-and-blood sort of people. You know what I mean?”

  “If you mean natural human beings, no. There are none in Robotsville. We separated from them. It was for the good of everyone. Just didn’t get along. We tried producing flesh-and-blood androids for a while—robots with protoplasmic bodies. But it was aesthetically unpleasing.”

  “I didn’t know aesthetics was a concern,” Hellman said.

  “It’s the only real issue,” Jorge told him, “once you’ve solved the problems of maintenance and upkeep and part replacement.”

  “Yeah, I guess it would be,” Hellman said. “Do you know how your people got to this planet?”

  “Of course. The Great Fabricator put us here, back when he divided the intelligent species and gave each a portion of the land and of the good things thereof.”

  “How long ago was that?” Hellman asked.

  “A long time ago. Before the beginning of time.”

  Jorge told Hellman the Creation Story, which, in slightly altered versions, was known to every being on the planet Newstart. How the Great Fabricator, a being made up equally of flesh, metal, and spirit, had produced all the races and watched them go to war with each other. How he decided that this was wrong. The Great Fabricator tried various plans. He tried putting the humans in charge of everyone. That didn’t work. He tried letting the robots rule, and that didn’t work, either. Finally he divided the planet of Newstart into equal portions. “Each of you has a place now,” the Great Fabricator said. “Go down there now and access information. “

  And so they went down, all the species, and each picked his lot and his fortune. The humans found green places where they could grow things. The robots split into various groups. One of those groups was the carhunters. They didn’t want to live in cities. They denied that the purpose of a robot was to further technology. They insisted that just living was enough purpose for anyone. This was at the time of the choosing of modalities. The carhunters selected bodies for themselves that were swift and long-enduring. They programmed themselves with a love of desolate places. And the Great Fabricator put at their disposal a race of automobiles, direct descendants of the autos of Earth. The cars were belligerent herd animals, and it was all right to kill them because they weren’t intelligent enough to mind. The carhunters had been programmed so that they found car innards delicious. It was a deliberately studied-out ethic, because at the beginning each of the groups had its own choice of an ethic. They worked from ancient models, of course, old-time human models, since intelligence is the ability to choose your programming. It was a good life, but in the view of the other robots, those who had chosen to live in cities, it was a blind alley in the life game of machine evolution. The nomadic model was satisfying, but limiting.

  “You see,” Jorge said, as they bounced along on Wayne’s back, “some of us believe that life is an art that must be learned. We believe that we must learn what we are to do. We devote our lives to taking the next step.”

  Wayne was bored by this sort of talk. The librarian was obviously crazy. What could be better than careening around the landscape, killing things? He pointed out that there was no moral problem, since the things they killed weren’t intelligent enough to know what was being done to them. Also, they weren’t given pain circuits.

  They were coming through a long narrow pass, with towering peaks on either side. Suddenly Wayne came to a stop and extruded his antennae. He swiveled them back and forth in a purposeful manner, and a little instrument deep inside his armoring began a quiet, urgent tick-tick.

  “What is it?” Hellman asked.

  “Believe we got trouble ahead,” Wayne said. He swung around and started back the way he had come. In fifty yards, he stopped again.

  “What is it this time?” Hellman asked.

  “They’re on both sides of us. “

  “Who is on either side of us? Is it those hyenoids again?”

  “They’re no real trouble,” Wayne said. “No, this is a little more serious than that. “

  “What is it?” Jorge asked.

  “I think it’s a group of Deltoids.”

  “How could that be?” Jorge asked. “The Deltoids live far to the south, in Mechanicsville and Gasketoon.”

  “I don’t know what they’re doing here,” Wayne said. “Maybe you can ask them yourself. They seem to be on all sides of us.”

  Jorge’s mobile face took on a look of alarm. “May the Great Fabricator preserve us!”

  “What is it?” Hellman asked. “What’s he so upset about?”

  “The Deltoids are not like the rest of us,” Wayne told him.

  “Not robots?”

  “Oh, they’re robots all right. But something went wrong with their conditioning back when the race was first laid down by the Great Fabricator. Unless he did it on purpose, which is what the Deltoid Church of the Black Star maintains. “

  “What, exactly, did the Great Fabricator do to them?” Hellman demanded.

  “He taught them to like killing,” Jorge said.

  “Hang on,” Wayne said. “Up them cliffs is the only way out of here.”

  “Can you climb a gradient like that?” Hellman asked. “Going to find out,” said Wayne.

  “But you kill things, too,” Hellman said.

  “Sure. But only lawful animals. The Deltoids like to kill other intelligent beings.”

  He started picking his way up the rock face. Behind, a group of big machines in camouflage colors had collected and was watching them.

  Three times Wayne tried to bull his way up the cliffside, and each time lost traction a third of the way from the top. Only the most skillful weight shifting and double clutching prevented the carhunter from turning over as it slid down to its starting point. The Deltoids seemed in no hurry to attack them, something which was incomprehensible to Wayne at the time, but which had a simple explanation that was supplied later, when they were safe for the moment in Poictesme.

  But that was later; for now, it looked a desperate situation, and Wayne turned, ready to charge head-on into the machines and take his chances. Hellman and Jorge had no say in the matter. This was Wayne’s decision and his alone to make. But it was taken out of his hands when the ground suddenly began to collapse beneath his feet. The Deltoids noticed this and noisily started motors, eager to get away from the treacherous ground. But now they were caught in it too, and the entire plain seemed to be collapsing under them. Hellman and Jorge could do nothing but hang on as Wayne slipped and slithered and fought for traction. But there was nothing to be done, and Hellman felt himself battered by flying dirt and sand
as the bottom dropped out from under them.

  It was the alarm clock that woke him.

  Alarm clock?

  Hellman opened his eyes. He was in a large bed under a pink and blue quilt. He was propped up nicely on down cushions. There was an alarm clock on the nightstand next to him. It was ringing.

  Hellman turned it off.

  “Feeling all right?” a voice asked him.

  Hellman looked around. To his right, sitting in an overstuffed chair, there was a woman. A young woman. A good-looking young woman. She wore a yellow and tangerine hostess gown. She had crisp blond hair and gray eyes. She looked at Hellman with an air of boldness and self-possession.

  “Yeah, I’m all right,” Hellman said. “But who are you?”

  “I’m Lana,” the young woman said.

  “Are you a prisoner?”

  She laughed. “My goodness, no! I work for these people. You’re in Poictesme.”

  “The last thing I remember is the ground giving way. “

  “Yes. You fell into Poictesme.”

  “What about the Deltoids?”

  “There is no love lost between Deltoids and the robots of Poictesme. The robots rebuked them for trespassing and sent them away chagrined. The Deltoids had to take it because they were in the wrong. It amused the Poictesmeans very much to see the usually arrogant and self-assured Deltoids slink off with their tails dragging. “

  “Tails?”

  “Yes, the Deltoids have tails. “

  “I didn’t get close enough to see the tails,” Hellman said.

  “Believe me, they have tails. There is an albino tailless model, but they only occur in Lemurton Valley which is over eight hundred varsks from here.”

  “How much is a varsk?”

  “It is roughly equal to the Terran mile, equal to five thousand two hundred and eighty yups. “

  “Feet?”

  “Approximately, yes.”

  “How did they happen to fall into Poictesme? Didn’t they know it was there?”

  “How could they? Poictesme is one of the burrowing cities.”

  “Oh, how stupid of me,” Hellman said. “A burrowing city! Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “You’re making fun of me,” the young woman said.

  “Well, maybe just a little. So Poictesme was burrowing past where all these Deltoids had assembled to capture or kill the carhunter?”

  “That’s it, exactly. The crust of the earth was thin at that point, and they shouldn’t have been here anyway, because this entire region was given to the Poictesmeans to live in or under as they pleased.”

  “Well, maybe I get it,” Hellman said. “Where are the Poictesmeans, anyhow?”

  “Right here. You’re in Poictesme,” Lana said.

  Hellman looked around. He didn’t get it. Then he got it.

  “You mean this room—?”

  “No, the house itself. The Poictesmeans are housemaking robots.”

  Hellman learned how the Poictesmeans began life as tiny metal spheres within which were infinitesimal moving parts, as well as a miniature chemical factory. The Poictesmeans started as little robots, hardly more than DNA and parts. From this their plan unfolded. They slowly began to build a house around them. They were equally skilled at working in wood or stone. By puberty they could make bricks in their own in-built kiln. Most Poictesmeans made six- to eight-room houses. These houses were not for their own use. It was obvious that the Poictesmeans didn’t need the elaborate structure, with its bay windows and carports, that they carried around with them, adding to bit by bit and painting once a year. But their instruction tapes, plus their racial steering factor (RSF) combined to make them produce finer and finer houses. They lived in neat suburbs, each Poictesmean occupying his allotted quarter acre of land. At night, in accordance with ancient ordinance, street lamps and house lights came on. The Poictesmeans also had a few communal projects. A theater and motion-picture house. But no pictures were ever shown, because the Poictesmeans had never mastered the art of moviemaking. And anyhow, who would there be to occupy their theaters? The Poictesmeans were a symbiotic race, but they didn’t have any symbiotes to share stuff with.

  “Is that why they have you here?” Hellman asked. “To live in one of their houses?”

  “Oh, no, I’m a design consultant,” Lana said. “They are very fastidious, especially about their rugs and curtains. And they import vases from the humans, because they aren’t programmed or motivated to make such things themselves.”

  “When do I meet one of them?”

  “They wanted you to feel at home before they talked to you.”

  “That’s nice of them.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, they have their reasons. The Poictesmeans have reasons for everything they do. “

  Hellman wanted to know what had happened to the librarian and the carhunter, for he thought of them now as his friends. But Lana either did not know or would not tell him. Hellman worried about it for a while, then stopped thinking about it. His friends were both made of metal and could be expected to take care of themselves.

  Lana sometimes talked about her friends and family back on Zoo Hill. She wouldn’t answer Hellman’s direct questions, but she liked to reminisce. From what she said Hellman got a picture of an idyllic life, sort of half Polynesian and half hippie. The humans didn’t do much, it seemed. They had their gardens and their fields, but robots took care of them. In fact, young robots from the cities of Newstart volunteered for this work. These were robots who thought there was something noble about men. The other robots called them humanizers. Usually, though, it was just the sort of fad you’ d expect of a young robot.

  Hellman got out of bed and wandered around the house. It was a nice house. Everything was automatic. The Poictesmean who was the intelligence at the house’s core did all the work and also arranged all the scheduling. The Poictesmeans liked to anticipate your needs. The house was always cooking special meals for Hellman. Where it got roast beef and kiwi fruit, Hellman didn’t ask. There was such a thing as trying to find out too much.

  Each house had its own climate and, in its backyard, a swimming pool. Although they were underground, lamps on high standards provided circadian illumination.

  Hellman became very fond of Lana. He thought she was a little dumb, but sweet. She looked great in a bathing suit. It wasn’t long before Hellman approached Lana with a request for mutual procreation, him and her, just you and me, babe. Lana said she’d love to, but not now. Maybe sometime, but not now. When Hellman asked why not now, she said that someday she’d explain it and they’d both laugh about it. Hellman had heard that one before. Nevertheless he remained fond of Lana, and she seemed to like him, too. Although perhaps that was because he was the only human person in Poictesme. She said that wasn’t it at all; she liked him; he was different; he was from Earth, a place she had always wanted to see, because even this far from the solar system she had heard of Paris and New York.

  One day Hellman wandered into the living room. Lana had gone off on one of her mysterious trips. She never told him where she was going. She just gave a little smile, half apologetic, half defiant, and said, “See you later, cutie.” It annoyed Hellman because he didn’t have any place to go to and he felt he was being one-upped.

  In the living room, he noticed for the first time the thirty-inch TV set into one wall. He had probably seen it before but not really noticed it. You know how it is when you’re far away from your favorite shows.

  He walked over to it. It looked like a normal TV set. It had a dial in its base. Curious, he turned the dial. The screen lit up and a woman’s face appeared in it.

  “Hello, Hellman,” the woman said. “I’m glad you decided to have a conversation with me at last.”

  “I didn’t know you were in there,” Hellman said.

  “But where else would the spirit of a house be but in its TV set?” she asked him.

  “Is that what you really look like?” Hellman asked.

  “Str
ictly speaking,” she told him, “I don’t look like anything. Or I look like whatever I want to look like. In actual fact, I look like the house that I am. But a house is too big and complicated to serve as a focus of conversation. Therefore we Poictesmeans personalize ourselves and become the spirit of our own place. “

  “Why do you appear as a woman?”

  “Because I am a woman,” she said. “Or at least feminine. Feminine and masculine are two of the great principles of the Universe, when viewed from a particular aspect. We Poictesmeans take either view, in accord with deep universal rhythms. I understand that you come from the planet Earth.”

  “That’s right,” Hellman said. “And I’d like to go back there.”

  “It is possible,” she said, “that can be arranged. Assuming your cooperation, of course.”

  “Hell yes, I’m cooperative,” Hellman said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “We want your help in getting out of here.”

  “Out of Poictesme?”

  “No, you idiot, we are Poictesme. We want to move our entire city to your planet Earth.”

  “But you don’t know what it’s like on Earth.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like here. There is very serious trouble on this planet, Hellman. All hell is going to break out here very soon. We Poictesmeans are house robots and we don’t care for warfare, nor for the strange evolutionary schemes of some of the people of Poictesme.”