“I wasn’t thinking of the harm in terms of property loss,” the second-in-command answered. “Suppose he’s not permanently disabled, somewhere. There are a dozen possible reasons for his not returning.” He stared out through the ports at the mass of green and brown vegetation standing to all sides of the charred clearing where the three hulls rested. “I don’t like leaving him.”
The captain grunted. “That’s a chance we’ll take; we can’t delay any longer.” He rattled the paper bearing the transcribed subspace radio message. “We’ve got to get back home. Besides, this’s probably an uninhabited planet.”
“We don’t know that as a certainty,” the exec answered.
The captain scowled impatiently. “What could one robot do, in any case?”
BEGINNING:
The robot smashed through a nest of creepers and interlaced vines, further damaging the buggy-whip antenna at the side of his head, but not stopping his precipitous run. He broke out into the edge of the clearing, and then stopped dead suddenly, his purpose lost as he watched the three Earth ships ladder up into the overcast. They punched through the clouds, sending doughnuts of vapor billowing away across the sky, and disappeared, the throaty grunt of their exhausts gradually dwindling.
And so, the robot was marooned; some scores of light years away from the Earth and the culture of which he was now the sole representative on this planet. It was not until he had beaten his way out of the jungle, and into a moderately temperate zone, that he discovered the village in a curve of the shoreline along a broad and quiescent sea.
Tyrrel Cye awoke, rolled off his sleeping mat, and padded barefoot across the room to the washstand, where he buried his face in the water.
Running his wet fingers through his hair, he went over to the stone slab on which he had laid a fire the previous night, took the flint and iron from a peg in the ventilation hood, and set the tinder alight. He filled a pottery bowl with water, hung it over the fire, then walked back to pick up his wraparound.
As he was going by the door, Tyrrel looked out into the village square and saw the robot standing there, his head swiveling as he inspected the buildings.
Tyrrel frowned, stopped for a moment to get a more comprehensive look, then went to the clothes-rack, put on his wraparound, pulled the water pot off the fire, and went outside.
He walked a little carefully, but he had already decided that whatever kind of thing the robot might be, it was definitely displaying intelligent interest.
And intelligence, of course, indicated a lack of combativeness.
The robot turned his head to watch him come. Tyrrel noted that the glossy figure remained motionless, hands dangling open. He raised his own hands, palms forward to show that he was also unarmed; he was only partially surprised to see the robot make a head movement of understanding in reply.
Tyrrel decided to try speech. He stopped a few feet away from the robot and looked up at the expressionless face. “Welcome. I am Tyrrel Cye,” he said, and waited for some answer from the robot
The metal figure shook his head, then squatted down and raq an extended finger through the dust at his feet.
Tyrrel bent over to look at what he was doing. The robot was tracing dots and circles in the dust. He pointed up to the sun and then back down to a fairly large dot
Tyrrel nodded. The dot represented the sun. The robot saw his nod, and nodded in return. Tyrrel remembered that the robot had shaken his head to indicate that speech was not a feasible communications medium as yet. “Well, at least we can say ‘yes’ and *no’ to each other,” Tyrrel remarked.
The robot looked up. He pointed to his head and nodded in an exaggerated manner. Tyrrel frowned slightly, not sure of what the robot wanted, but nodded back in return. The robot shook his head violently, then nodded carefully once again. This time, Tyrrel understood; with equal care, he nodded back, and said “Yes” at the same time.
The robot nodded enthusiastically, and a perfect imitation of Tyrrel’s voice said “Yes” from a grille in the upper part of his chest.
Tyrrel and the robot then launched into full-scale experiments in communications; and it was not until the robot had acquired a hundred-word vocabulary, and Tyrrel had picked up a smattering of Copemican astronomy in the course of learning that the robot came from another solar system, that they looked up and saw they were surrounded by a ring of villagers.
Tyrrel looked at his shadow; it was nearly noon. “Come on, fellow,” he said to the robot. “It’s time Kes Lorn got a look at you.”
The robot had at least gotten the sense of Tyrrel’s statement; he nodded and began to follow him through the crowd.
“It seems there are other worlds,” Tyrrel said to an acquaintance in the crowd, “with people living on them who can travel from one to another. I can’t quite make out whether this fellow’s one of them or not. Anyway, we’re going to see the Gansha; he’ll probably hold a meeting when we find out a few more things. All right?”
“Sure.”
“That shiny stuff he’s got on is metal. But he isn’t wearing it—it’s him.”
The villager shrugged casually, and stepped aside. The robot fell into step with Tyrrel, and they walked up the street to the Gansha’s home.
II
It was evening before Kes Lorri and Tyrrel had learned as much of the robot’s story as they could. Now the two men sat in silence while the robot waited on the open porch outside the Gansha’s house.
As always when he called on Lorri, Tyrrel found him-self studying the set of the silver-haired head on the tired shoulders, the occasional contraction of thin fingers on the edge of the old man’s chair as a spasm of pain rippled through his body.
There would have to be an election soon, Tyrrel thought. Lorri was still the wisest man in the village, but there were others who could balance inexperience with the physical ability to carry out broader programs.
Coupled with the thought was the certain knowledge that he was the logical candidate to take the old Gansha’s place.
He was half-afraid of the realization. The villagers were accustomed to the calm, deliberate counsel of experience—experience that stretched back to the time of the village’s founding. If a young man became Gansha, then the village would have to fall back on trial-and-error. Would the villagers be satisfied with that, after the almost error-less guidance which Lorri had given them? And what would happen to the village if they were not?
What of the robot? How serious was the crisis he represented? He had come into the village this morning, and now the people of the village—the planet, Tyrrel corrected himself on the basis of his newly-acquired cosmology—knew that there were other worlds, other solar systems, and other men, all of which could come crashing down on the village at any time with overwhelming power.
Lorri broke the silence. “What do you think, Ty?” he asked.
Tyrrel frowned. “I don’t know. There’s too much to assimilate. Think of it!—infinities of circling globes around infinities of suns—the sheer cubic volume! And a culture that builds intelligence!
“We don’t even know why he was abandoned; he doesn’t know himself. There must have been some emergency, either aboard the ships or back home. But what? When are they coming back? Nobody can know that, either. What will happen when they do?”
Lorn said slowly, “It is a series of dependent riddles—and we have no answers except those we can imply from the questions themselves.”
The old man shifted his position a little, and an expression of pain flickered across the lined face. “I’m afraid much of that will be left for you to deal with, Terrel,” he said, his voice riding the gasp it could not cover. “But there are certain things that must go on, up to the very time the Earthmen come back.”
“Are you sure they will come back?”
“If they came here once, they will return. Intelligent life does not retrogress; it cannot retrogress, or it betrays its own greatness. That is why we must continue as we have. We cannot plan on t
he return of the’Earthmen as anything but another incident in our history, a brush with the rest of the universe, nothing more. We have to go our own way. We have no idea of what the Earthmen are like. They may have six tentacles and multifaceted eyes, for all we know. Their civilization couldn’t possibly fit us as well as our own can.”
“What are we going to do about the robot?” Tyrrel asked.
“We’ll have to know more about him before we can decide that. I’ll leave that to you.”
Tyrrel nodded. “He can stay at my house as well as he can at any other. He’s learning our language rapidly—we’ll be able to talk in fairly complicated sentences very soon, I think.”
“All right.” The old man looked around the room. “I think that’s all we can do, for the present. Will you help me to my bed?”
Walking slowly, they crossed the room to Lorri’s mat, where the old man sat down with a sigh. “Thank you,” he said. He stretched out and looked up at Tyrrel, his eyes in shadow.
“I wish I were stronger,” he said; “I wish I had years enough to see what our village will be.”
He reached up and took Tyrrel’s hand in his own. “A man always wishes for things, Tyrrel. When he grows old, he knows how many wishes he will never see fulfilled. But he knows, too, that r the wishing—not the attainment—is the basis Of civilization, and of learning. For, even’ if a wish is fulfilled, there are always new wishes, and as long as man keeps wishing—as long as men keep wishing, and trying—then life moves.
“There is no good in hoping that everything will be attained. Life is not so arranged.”
Kes Lorn sighed again. “Goodnight, Tyrrel.”
“Goodnight, Gansha Lorri,” Tyrrel replied quietly, and walked softly across the room to the porch where the robot was waiting with machined patience.
III
While Tyrrel slept, the robot sat motionless in the darkness of his house. Most of his attention was devoted to an analysis of the information he had acquired during the day.
He felt no emotion. A man would have been incredulous and startled, the robot knew, for he was aware of emotion as a measurable abstract.
This village was primitive, true—but not ignorant. The villagers were humanoid—but inhuman, or, perhaps, superhuman, in the manner in which they were aware of their future course toward civilization. The very fact that they could conceive of such a thing, and be aware of their own lack of it, was unprecedented.
For example, they used crude meteoric iron. They knew about iron ore, and had reasoned out the process of smelting, but didn’t bother. Tyrrel had pointed out, in answer to the robot’s question, that iron was unsatisfactory in many respects. They were waiting, he had told the robot, until they found out how to modify it into forms more suitable for machinery.
The robot shook his head in the acquired Terrestrial mannerism. This was a young, vigorous civilization—and inhuman or not, its potentialities were staggering. And yet…Only Tyrrel had really displayed any great curiosity about him. The other villagers had been content to stand about idly, both while he and Tyrrel established communication, and later when the headman—the Gan-sha, Lorri—had told them what Tyrrel had learned about their extraordinary visitor.
Odd. He had always thought that curiosity was a prerequisite to intelligence. And Lorri—what of him?
The robot knew full well that human beings who asked no questions, and let subordinates convey information, were wary of the answers their own questions might imply. But Lorri was not a human being; still, he was intelligent, and logic was universal with intelligences of all sorts, was it not?
The robot nodded to himself in the darkness. Perhaps, tomorrow, he’d tell them about steel. But he’d have to be careful.
The village straddled the river, forming a cluster of houses to either side of the delta. At the river’s mouth, light wharves ran out into the bay, and small sailing vessels were anchored near them.
The robot and Tyrrel stood on the hill that rose to one side of the river and surveyed the scene. “This is the only village on the planet, then?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Tyrrel answered. “There are about a thousand of us, I think. Our ancestors were a small band that moved out of the jungle and settled here. There may be others like them still in the jungles—or, perhaps, there may be offshoots like ours on the other side of the equator—but we don’t know about them.”
“And the village began functioning as a civilized community only about a hundred years ago?”
“Lorri became Gansha at about that time, yes; he deserves most of the credit.”
“But he could never have brought the village up to this level singlehanded,” the robot said. “There must have been others to help.”
“Of course,” Tyrrel agreed. “We’re not all equally intelligent, true, but how can there be any opposition to progress? Most of the things we’re trying to achieve in this generation are obvious necessities—things like a transportation network to provide us with foods that grow best in more distant places, and with supplies unavailable here. There should be a need for various minerals and fuel sources, once we start constructing machinery. We’re working on communications, too. It’s well and good to raise grain in a suitable climate—it’s not so good to be out of touch with the harvesters for three months.”
The robot nodded. “In other words, under the leadership of Lord—though ’advice’ would be a better word, I suppose—it’s taken the village about a hundred years to change over from a huddle of fishermen’s huts to the nucleus of a civilization which is about to enter an industrial period.”
“That’s right.” Tyrrel stood beside the robot and looked out over the village. “I imagine it compares rather badly with Earth,” he said, unable to keep from trying to find out. He recognized the feeling of weakness and inferiority the attempt implied, and his conscience felt no better for it. Still, he was human, Gansha-to-be or no.
The robot, for some reason, did not answer immediately, but continued to look out at the bay. His head moved as he followed the passage of a catamaran loaded with supplies for the grain colony—actually a small group of men living in one temporary building—that lay up the coast.
“You’re a long way from interstellar travel,” the robot said finally.
And what is that supposed to mean? Tyrrel thought, but he didn’t press the point. There was time enough. Even this one week since the robot walked into the village had brought great progress to his visualization of what the future course of the village’s history would have to be.
As they walked down the side of the hill toward the village, Tyrrel found himself studying the robot, watching the delicately-balanced shift of knee joints and ankles, the fluid slip of hips as the metal man strode.
“There must be a lot of similarity between ourselves and Earthmen, I imagine,” he said.
“Quite a bit,” the robot agreed. “The planetary ecology is about the same. The year is somewhat longer on Earth, but this planet was picked for its resemblances, of course.”
That seemed to be all he was going to say on the subject, Tyrrel noted. The robot was obviously not too eager to discuss Earth and Earthmen, but he undoubtedly had some good reason.
The robot was a problem, however. In the past week, a dozen small groups had begun collating the various sciences the robot had mentioned casually, and then outlined comprehensively when Tyrrel asked him to amplify. It had already been necessary to expand the language by half again.
Which was good. Lorn had approved, and reminded Tyrrel that so long as the robot merely spared them basic research, and did not delineate a firm line of approach that could not help but be basically Terrestrial, die villagers would be free to develop basic applications of their own, better suited to their own culture.
Still, the robot was a puzzle, for there was no apparent good reason for him to be so cooperative.
Tyrrel smiled at himself. Undoubtedly, there was one, and it would be discovered in time.
; Yes, he thought suddenly, time…If the Earthmen stayed away.
IV
A man stopped them at the edge of the village, and Tyrrel frowned. The villager looked worried. “What’s wrong, Sem?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. Have you seen Kes Lorn today?” the man suddenly blurted out
“No, I haven’t,” Tyrrel answered. “The robot and I went out right after breakfast.” It’s come, the thought drove into him. He fought to keep his face calm. And I’m not ready.
“I was over at my cousin’s house all morning,” Sem explained. “You know—right across from the Gansha’s house. I noticed he wasn’t out on the porch. He’s always out on the porch.” Sem stopped, confused. “Isn’t he? I mean—I think so. I seem to remember…He stopped again, and mumbled down at his toes. “I guess it isn’t anything important; I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I hadn’t bumped into you. Sorry I bothered you.”
“Wasn’t anything,” Tyrrel said as casually as he could. “It’s probably nothing, but I’ll check anyway. Thanks.”
“All right.” The man was obviously relieved, and continued on his way to the river.
Tyrrel’s teeth nudged his lower lip. Lorri had never said so, but wasn’t it true that the villagers only carried their initiative so far, and then stopped?
But there wasn’t time to stand there thinking brand-new thoughts. He motioned to the robot, and they walked rapidly toward Lorri’s house.
Tyrrel’s footsteps seemed to be impeded as they neared it. The functioning of his muscles was forced, rather than spontaneous. He realized suddenly that he was afraid of what he might find.
And what’s suddenly gone wrong with me? he asked himself, the voice sharp in his mind. But he knew what was wrong. He was loosing the firm support of the old Gansha’s presence.
Lorri had dragged his mat into the farthest comer of his house. In reflex, he had crowded himself against the woven grass of the wall and lay on his side, his head thrown back, his mouth strained open, his knees as high as his hips, his arms stretched limply out behind his back. His hands twitched at every painful breath.
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