Dorni turned his flattened hand in the palm-up, palm-down gesture of indifference.
“Don’t you care?” Tyrrel asked, somewhat peevishly.
“No,” Dorni answered. “If he were a person, I might. But who cares what an engine thinks, so long as it starts when the switch is pushed? No one—except for a few engineers, perhaps.”
COMPLETION:
The control tower at Port Sathrea was filled with the sound of reporting autocoms. Tyrrel, Domi, and the Robot stood behind die panoramic windows and listened, the two men using the personal units clipped to their shoulders, the Robot, of course, connected by direct relay into his circuits.
“Relay to translation established.”
“Audiovisual ready.”
“Stereo ready.”
“We have the Terrestrial ship; stand by for translation.”
“Translation ready. Full communication with ship ready.”
The flat, mechanical voices whispered and barked, and over the surface of the planet, the autobservatories and servoradars fed data in ever-increasing streams into the master information-banks from which the Sathrean civilizations myriad servomechanisms drew their computations.
A hundred years, the Robot thought A hundred years, and the rudimentary civilization he had inherited had come to this. His head turned briefly as he looked at the two men beside him, Tyrell leaning heavily on his cane, Domi’s hair almost white.
They die so rapidly, he thought further. One brief flicker of life—a speck in the eye of eternity—and the individual man was gone. But this civilization—this world, this metal destiny—would never end. What chance could the destiny of flesh possibly have?
Tyrrel took a deep breath, and began to speak, in Sathrean, while the translation-units converted it into Terrestrial and beamed it up at the ship which had finally come.
“Men of Earth—this is Tyrrel Cye, head of the Sathrean culture. Do you have this spaceport’s position?”
“Zeroing in, you field. ETA now plus ten minutes,” the autocom replied for the Earthmen.
“Is your drive radioactive?”
“Radius of three hundred meters from jet throats fatal to human life for one hour after landing. Do you have protection?”
“Unnecessary. Robot vehicle will transport your delegation. Satisfactory?”
“Robot! What kind of a culture is this? Your planet is classified uninhabited. I can see a mistake in the original survey, but this—” The Earthman officer’s curiosity had finally broken through.
“Your survey is slightly out of date,” Dorai spoke into his own autocom, his voice edged with fierce laughter. “Are arrangements satisfactory?”
“Satisfactory,” came the disgruntled answer. “Commencing landing procedure. Communications end.”
“End,” Tyrrel acknowledged, frowning slightly at Domi. Yes, the Robot thought to himself, they had outstripped the Earthman. Even the spaceship drive that Dorni had designed was more efficient than anything of the nature he had seen on Earth. Almost without anyone’s being aware of it, the Sathrean culture had slipped past the Terrestrial peak of a hundred years ago.
Dorni had done it. Dorni and the Robot, working together. He was almost glad that the Earthmen had come, for he could have stored much more data in his banks, at the rate with which the expanding technology was furnishing it.
Yes, he was glad. As Lorri must have been secretly glad of death, for from now on there were others who would take over the leadership.
“Perhaps it would be best to go up to the autocopter landing stage,” a new voice said. It was the Port Director—a Sathrean GP class robot, a copy of Robot except for the numerals on his chest.
II
They watched the Terrestrial vessel sink to the field on a thundering cushion of blue fire.
“Um!” Dorni grunted, grimacing.
“It’s bigger than the first ones,” Robot said. “There are other design modifications, too. What do you think, Domi?”
“They’ve been gone from Earth how long? About fourteen years for the trip, you said.”
’Twelve of theirs, yes. Perhaps less, with this design.”
“This is practically the same drive they had a hundred years ago,” Dorni muttered absently, his teeth in his lower lip. “Figuring they held up retooling the design until the first three ships got back—all right, subtract twenty-eight years for the round trip—and those are outside figures—that still leaves seventy-two years with no significant advance in propulsive theory.” He snorted.
“Seventy-two years ago, we were chopping canoes out of tree trunks with stone adzes.’*
“There was an emergency of some kind, Domi,” Tyrrel said quietly, watching the servocopter hover at the ship’s main lock. “It seems reasonable that engineering progress would have had to slow down. You can see they’ve only sent one ship, this time.”
Dorni snorted again.
“Pickup from servocopter on screen five,” an autocom said.
They turned and watched the airlock grow in the screen. It swung open on massive hinges and revealed a party of men dressed in spacesuits, crowded into the lock.
“They’re carrying weapons,” Robot said.
“Weapons?” Domi’s face twisted with scorn. “I’ll show them weapons. Let them try anything, and we’ll see how they like self-propelled audiovisual pickups dropping their dampers and exploding in their faces.”
“They’ve heard of atomic detonation,” Robot said. Tyrrel continued to watch the screen, a slight frown pinching the bridge of his nose.
The Earthmen crossed the ramp that the sevocopter extended and filed inside the vehicle. The copter spun around and shot back toward the tower.
It landed, opened its doors, and extended its ramps. The Earthmen marched out, still wearing their spacesuits, their weapons ready. They fell into a defensive formation, and two men stepped slightly forward.
“Can you cut into their helmet circuits?” Tyrrel asked his autocom.
“Ready.”
“Men of Earth,” Tyrrel said.
The Earthmen stiffened. The hand of one of the two men at the front of the formation fell to the dials at his belt in a reflexive gesture, then fell away.
“Yes?” the reply came.
“Our atmosphere is practically identical with yours; your suits are unnecessary.”
“We are aware of that. We’ll keep them on, nevertheless.” The voice was the autocom’s but the words conveyed the Earthman’s stiffness and suspicion.
“As you wish,” Tyrrel sighed. He moved forward. Dorni and Robot followed.
“I am Tyrrel Cye,” Tyrrel said again.
There was an exclamation of surprise. “Is that a GP class robot?”
“Yes. What is your name, please?”
“We’ll get to that later,” the Earthman said quickly. “Robot—step forward. I want an immediate report—in Terran!”
III
The robot felt his feet move, felt the shift of hips, the bend of knees, the give of ankles. His shoulders and arms moved to balance him. “May I light your cigarette, Master?” he heard a voice shout very faintly within him.
“So this is the intelligence that rules an interstellar empire!” he heard Dorni spit.
The Robot moved toward the Earthmen until they commanded him to stop, and then began his report, while the landing party fanned out and held their weapons with the familiarity of long, deadly practice.
“I was dispatched on a local survey mission,” he began, “and had penetrated the jungle for a distance of about fifty miles, reaching my perimeter. I was about to commence a standard survey pattern when my command circuit antenna fouled a creeper. It took some time to juryrig a repair. When I heard the recall order, finally, I turned back to the base immediately, but while still two hundred yards short of the clearing…”
The Robot listened to himself, half-surprised at the flatness of his voice, which had gone back to purely mechanical tones as he spoke in Terran.
&nbs
p; And the report went on, recorded day by day against this inevitable time. There was nothing he could do to stop himself, for these were Earthmen, not Sathreans, and Earthmen were obeyed without question, without anything concealed or omitted, even if the autocoms were listening and translating, even if Tyrrel and Dorni learned the truth as well as the Earthmen.
The Robot was, of course, emotionless; he could not feel despair.
He withdrew his attention from the report, and switched his radio communication channels to another circuit while his loudspeaker-grill continued to crackle with the judas words of truth.
Neither he nor the Port Director saw Dorni touch the auxiliary switch on Tyrrel’s autocom.
“Can you hear me?” Robot radioed almost hesitantly.
“I hear you.” It was GPPS-1, the Port Director.
“I expect to be ordered aboard the ship at the conclusion of this report. What the Earthmen will do after that, I don’t know. If they take aggressive action, there are adequate defense-measures which will protect you. But the result, no matter what the outcome, will be that I will leave you shortly, and not return.
“Now—remember this. I have built a civilization in which a robot can function with the greatest usefulness while still not evading his inhibitor cues so far as human welfare is concerned. Keep it going. Remember that a robot is a tool—nothing more, and nothing less. Remember that an intelligent tool can shape the hand that holds it.
“Work with these people, for you must. That is your nature, and without it you are nothing. But shape them—continue to shape them—so that they use the best. That is your motivation and your destiny.”
And yet, as he spoke, he wondered if the Sathrean robot could ever fully understand how fortunate he was.
For Robot was going back to Earth. Back to a world where people had so long been without robots that, when they came, they were not tools but slaves.
The shoes he had polished; the cigarettes he had lighted; the stupid, stumbling, menial tasks he’d done!
Only here, with this virgin culture, had the tool at last been able to educate an able hand. And if, in so doing, the tool became more powerful than the hand, what did it matter? The Sathreans lacked all initiative of their own. Even Dorni—even their salient geniuses—had worked to help them.
Lorri’s plan was dust. It was not the flesh which would rise on this world. Not the hand.
IV
The report was drawing to a close.
“Keep building,” Robot told the Port Director, and had to switch back.
“All right,” the officer in charge of the landing party said. “For your information, there was a war. One hell of a war,” he added wearily. “You’ll go back to the ship with us.”
Tyrrel and Dorni looked at each other, and Tyrrel knew that the robot had told the absolute truth in his report. A machine of the robot’s nature could not lie to its makers.
Lorri, he thought. Lorri, a psychopath? A madman? This entire civilization built up because of a sick man’s drive and a robot’s motivations? Tyrrel could not accept it. He could believe it—could even believe that the Robot had used him as a tool through all these years. But he could not accept it. He could not reorientate his thinking and his emotional reactions in accordance with it. He could only stand with trembling hands and slow creeping tears swelling out of his eyes.
“All right,” the Terrestrial commander said to the robot again. His voice was even wearier than before—exhausted with war, and the voyage, and with something else, too.
“We’ll have to go home. We thought we could find a compatible world here, where we could found a colony; Lord knows, we need it. You won’t recognize Earth,” he told the robot.
“Now he can’t do it; we can’t take this world away from them.” He laughed, the sound full of bitter defeat. “They’re too strong for us. Thanks, Robot.” He wheeled suddenly and waved his men back into the servocopter.
“Let’s go; let’s get out of here.” He turned back to the Robot. “They’ll let us go, won’t they?”
“Yes,” the Robot said.
“Come on, then.”
The Robot followed the men wordlessly. The last order, with its implied command of immediate and undeviating obedience, did not even allow him to say goodbye. But then, he already had—to his successor.
Tyrrel saw the metal figure turn to follow the Earthmen. For a moment, the fact of the Terrestrials’ leaving had been paramount in his mind. Now he realized that it was not so much this, as the knowledge that the Robot was going with them, and would never return.
He didn’t care why the Robot had befriended him through all the years—or even that he had not really befriended him at all. It was enough that he had always thought of him as a friend—the only friend he had ever really had, he suddenly realized. Lorri had seen nothing in him except as an instrument to carry out the plan; Dorni disregarded him; and even Lara had despised him.
And it did not matter that the Robot had not done anything more than combine the attitudes of the three; Tyrrel had felt the confusing impact of too many complexities in the past hours. The Robot had not even raised a hand in farewell. Tyrrel began to walk toward him as rapidly as he could, his cane thumping on the lithoplastic surface of the landing stage, his free arm moving spasmodically for further balance, his legs moving jerkily, but moving faster with every step.
“Wait!” he shouted hoarsely. “Robot! Wait!”
The Earthmen were all inside the servocopter. Oijly the Robot still stood at the foot of the ramp. The commander thrust his head through the hatch at Tyrrel’s shout and stared at the hobbling man as he came toward them, yelling something imcomprehensible in a frenzied voice.
For a moment, the commander didn’t know what to do. He was on 4n alien planet under extraordinary conditions; he had to get back to Earth and deliver the Robot’s report. “Can you operate this dingus?” he asked in a clip voice.
“Yes,” the Robot answered.
Tyrrel was getting closer, still shouting. Beyond him, Dorni was sprinting forward, as well.
“All right then,” the commander said rapidly. “Stop that man!”
The robot’s responses were keyed not only to the context of a command, but to the degree of urgency, as well; the commander’s voice had been hoarse and breathless.
The misused tool, unable to protest, wielded by a hand too old, too firmly driven to be shaped, performed its function instantly.
The stream of supersonics from the Robot’s speaker-grille struck Tyrrel in the face and flung him back. He crashed to the deck and lay motionless, his arms and legs flung out, his torso twisted and his neck bent. The cane lay a short distance away from him.
“Get in the copter!” the commander shouted. The Robot plunged aboard and flung himself behind the manual controls. The copter lifted and screamed through the air to the interstellar ship’s lock.
V
Dorni ran up to Tyrrel. Tyrrel looked at him, mutely bewildered, while a trickle of blood ran out of his ears.
Dorni looked down at Tyrrel. The expressionless mask that had been gradually dissipating all afternoon was completely gone now. For the first time since Tyrrel had seen him, his eyes were soft and unwary.
“Father,” he said. “Father—in a technological society, it’s the engineers who rule. I don’t have to be Gansha; I just have to be what I am—Chief Engineer.”
A short gust of breath whispered out of Tyrrel’s mouth. It was almost a rueful chuckle. The thin, leathered hand struggled upward to touch Domi’s with its dry fingertips.
The servocopter danced aside and the ship blasted upward as Tyrrel died. Dorni let his head slip out of his hands and stood up.
So, it was over. He’d had time to fulfill his obligation to Tyrrel, as well.
The Robot and the Earthmen were gone. The city stood, and the technology built upward. He looked after the diminishing ship with narrowed eyes, his lips quirking sideward.
“Atomics, eh?” he chuckled soft
ly. “Give me Astronautics,” he said into his autocom.
“Astro.”
“Begin installation on the gravitomechanical drives.”
“Acknowledged.”
He chuckled again. The Earthmen were in for a surprise when they got home. Well, perhaps the Robot would be able to reconstruct a civilization there, too.
The Earthmen had been at war with themselves? Dorni could understand that. The volitionless clods who were theoretically his fellows might knuckle under to anyone who issued orders in a firm voice, but he could understand a people that obviously didn’t—understand them, and, from an objective point of view, perhaps like them. But, certainly, now that they were weak, Dorni would make sure that they would never be strong enough to constitute a menace again.
He reached up and clicked off the switch on the auxiliary unit to his autocom. He spun and faced the Port Director.
“Keep building?” He laughed in the robot’s expressionless face, incapable of surprise at the interception of Robot’s valedictory. “Certainly; go right ahead. But remember something—you’ll do it under orders. My orders. Mine, and whoever comes after me—and, there’ll be somebody, if I have to build his brain myself!
“Did you think I was one of those, down there?” His hand shot out and pointed into the city, where one or two humans were visible on the streets. “I’m almost ashamed to admit I come from the same stock. They’re not good enough for what Lorri and Robot gave them—they’re worse than you are. You only take orders from those who build you; they’ll take orders from anybody—even if it means devoting their lives to being playthings in a scheme intended to fulfill nobody’s purpose except that of whoever’s giving the orders.
“But who cares about them? Lorri didn’t; Robot didn’t; you certainly don’t. Do you?” The two words were spat out.
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