“And that, of course,” I said, “could not possibly be true. Or could it, Mr. Bell?”
I knew, of course, that it couldn’t be. I was just needling him, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He sighed. “Certainly it isn’t true. Even those persons who heard it should have known it wasn’t. They should have known it was a most malicious rumor and shrugged it off. But a lot of them went running to complain about it and there was a most messy investigation of the whole affair, causing us no end of trouble, both mental and financial. The worst part of it is that the rumor is still reverberating throughout the galaxy. Even now, on some planets out there, it is still being whispered. We try to stamp it out. Whenever it comes to our attention we try to deal with it. We’ve been emphatic in our denials, but it seems to do no good.”
“It still may sell plots for you,” I pointed out. “If I were you, I would not try too hard to stamp it out.”
He puffed out his cheeks. “You do not understand,” he said. “Fairness and utmost honesty have always been our guides. And in view of that we do not feel that we should be held to strict accountability for the actions of that one sales person. Because of the distances involved and the resultant difficulties in communication, our organization table is, of necessity, a rather loose affair.”
“Which brings up the question,” I said, “of the rest of Earth, the part of it that is not Cemetery. What might it be like? I am very anxious . . .”
He waved a chubby hand, dismissing not only the question, but the rest of Earth.
“There is nothing there,” he said. “Just a wilderness. An utter wilderness. All that is significant on the planet is the Cemetery. For all practical purposes, the Earth is Cemetery.”
“Nevertheless,” I said, “I would like . . .” But he cut me off again and went on with his lecture on the trials of operating Cemetery.
“There is always,” he declared, “the question of our charges, always with the implication that they are excessive. But let us, for a moment, consider the costs that are involved. The mere cost of maintaining an organization such as ours staggers the imagination. Add to this the cost of operating our fleets of funeral ships, which make their constant rounds to the many planets, gathering in the bodies of the late departed and returning them to Earth. Now add to this the cost of our operations here on Mother Earth and you’ll arrive at a total which fully justifies our charges.
“Few family members, you must understand, care to experience the inconvenience necessary to accompany their loved ones on the funeral ship. Even if they did, we could not offer many of them such accommodations. You have had some months of it and you know that traveling on a funeral ship is no luxury cruise. The cost of chartered ships runs too high for all but the very wealthy and the arrival of the Pilgrim ships, which are not cheap to travel on, does not, as a rule, coincide with the arrival of the funeral ships. Since the family members most often are not able to attend the service of commitment to the sacred soil, we must take care of all the traditional considerations. It is unthinkable, of course, that one be given to Mother Earth without an appropriate expression of sorrow and of human loss. For that reason we must maintain a large corps of pallbearers and of mourners. There are also the florists and the grave diggers, the monument makers and the gardeners, not to forget the pastors. The pastors are a case in point. There are, as you must realize, quite a lot of pastors. In the process of spreading to the stars, mankind’s religions have splintered yet and yet again, until now there are thousands of sects and creeds. But despite this, it is the proud boast of Mother Earth that no body is placed within the grave without the precise officiation of the loved one’s exact and peculiar sect. To accomplish this, we must maintain a great number of pastors, each qualified in his particular faith, and there are many cases where some of those affiliated with the more obscure sects are called upon no more than a couple of times a year. Still, so that they may be available when the need arises, we must pay their salaries all the year around.
“It is true, of course, that we could effect certain economies. We could realize a substantial savings if we used mechanical excavators for the digging of the graves. But here we stand foursquare and solid in a great tradition and in consequence our human grave diggers number in the thousands. There would be a saving, too, if we were content to use metal markers for the graves, but here, too, we subscribe to tradition. Each marker in the entire Cemetery is carved by hand from the very rocks of Mother Earth.
“There is yet another thing which many are prone to pass over without understanding. There will come a day—far distant, but still it will come—when Mother Earth is filled, when every foot of ground has been consecrated with the beloved dead. Then our income will cease, but there will still remain the duty and the cost of perpetual care. So to this end each year we must add to the fund for perpetual care, insuring that at no time, so long as Earth shall stand, will ruin or neglect obliterate the monuments to the everlasting memory which has been established here.”
“This is all very well,” I told him, “and I am glad you told me. But would you mind, I wonder, saying why you told me?”
“Why,” he said in some astonishment that I should ask, “just to clear the air. To set the record straight. So that you might realize the problems that we face.”
“And so that I might know your deep sense of duty and your firm devotion.”
“Yes, that as well,” he said, quite unabashed and without any shame at all. “We want to show you all there is to see. The pleasant little villages where our workers live, the beauty of our many woodland chapels, the workshops where the monuments are carved.”
“Mr. Bell,” I said, “I am not here to take a guided tour. I am not a pilgrim.”
“But surely you’ll accept the small assistances and the little courtesies it would be our pleasure to extend.”
I shook my head, I hope not too mulishly. “I must go on my own. It’s the only way that it will work. I and Elmer and the Bronco.”
“You and Elmer and the what?”
“The Bronco.”
“The Bronco? I do not understand.”
“Mr. Bell,” I said, “you’d have to know the history of the Earth, and some of its old legends to really understand.”
“But the Bronco?”
“ ‘Bronco’ is an old Earth term for horse. A special kind of horse.”
“This Bronco is a horse?”
“No, it’s not,” I said.
“Mr. Carson, I am not entirely sure I understand who you are or what you mean to do.”
“I’m a compositor operator, Mr. Bell. I intend to make a composition of the planet Earth.”
He nodded sagely, all doubt cleared from his mind. “Oh, yes, a composition. I should have known at once. You have the look of a sensitive. And you could have chosen no better subject or no better place. Here on Mother Earth you’ll find the inspiration that is nowhere else. There is a certain fleeting quality to this planet that has so far escaped the telling. There is music in the very warp and weave of it . . .”
“Not music,” I told him. “Not entirely music.”
“You mean a composition isn’t music?”
“Not in this sense. A composition is a great deal more than music. It is a total art form. It includes music, but it includes as well the written and the spoken word, sculpture, painting, song.”
“You mean you do all this?”
I shook my head. “Actually I do little of it. Bronco is the one that really does it.”
He flapped his hands. “I am afraid,” he said, “that I have become confused.”
“Bronco is a compositor,” I told him. “It absorbs the mood, the visual impact, the underlying nuances, the sounds, the shape, the form. It takes all these and turns out a product. Not an entirely finished product, but the tapes and patterns for the product. I work with it; the two of us work together. For a time, I suppose you could say, I become a part of it.
It picks up the basic material
s and I furnish interpretation, although not all the interpretation. That also is shared between us. It becomes, I fear, a bit hard to explain.”
He shook his head. “I have never heard of anything like this. It is new to me.”
“It is a fairly new concept,” I told him. “It was developed on the planet Alden only a couple of centuries ago and has been in the process of refinement ever since. No two of the instruments are ever alike. There is always something that can be done to make the next one better. It is an open-ended project when you settle down to design a compositor, which is an awkward name for it, but no one has thought of a better one.”
“But you call this one Bronco. There must be something in the name . . .”
“It’s like this,” I said. “The compositor is rather large and heavy. It is a complex mechanism and there are many rather delicate components that require heavy shielding. It is not something that one could drag around; it has to be self-propelling. So while we were about it, we built a saddle on it so a man could ride.”
“By ‘we’ I suppose you mean yourself and Elmer. How does it happen Elmer is not with you now?”
“Elmer,” I told him, “is a robot and he is in a crate. He traveled on board the ship as freight.”
Bell moved uneasily, protesting. “But Mr. Carson, you must know. Surely you must know. Robots are not allowed on Mother Earth. I am afraid we must . .
“In this case, you have no choice,” I said. “You cannot refuse him entry to the planet. He is a native of the Earth and this is something neither you nor I can claim.”
“A native! It’s impossible. You must be jesting, Mr. Carson.”
“Not in the least. He was fabricated here. In the days of the Final War. He helped build the last of the great war machines. Since then he has become a free robot and, according to galactic law, holds all the rights a human has, with a very few exceptions.”
Bell shook his head. “I am not sure,” he said. “I am not sure at all . . .”
“You need not be sure,” I said. “I am. I checked into the law, most thoroughly. Not only is Elmer a native, but in the meaning of the law he is native-born. Not fabricated. Born. Back on Alden there is a very legal document that attests to all of this and I have a copy with me.”
He did not ask to see the copy. “For all intents,” I said, “Elmer is a human being.”
“But surely the captain would have questioned . . .”
“The captain didn’t care,” I said. “Not after the bribe I paid him. And in case the law is not enough, I might point out that Elmer is all of eight feet tall and very, very tough. What is more, he is sentient. He wouldn’t let me turn him off when I nailed him in the crate. I’d hate to think of what might happen if someone other than myself opened up that crate.” Bell eyed me almost sleepily, but there was a wariness behind the sleepiness. “Why, Mr. Carson,” he asked, “do you think so badly of us? We appreciate your coming, your having thought of us. Any aid that Mother Earth can give is yours if you only mention it. If there should be financial problems . . .”
“There are financial problems, certainly. But we seek no aid.”
He persisted. “There have been occasions when we extended monetary grants to other persons of the arts. To writers, painters . . .”
“I have tried as plainly as I can,” I said, “to indicate that we want no ties to Mother Earth or to the Cemetery. But you deliberately persist in your misunderstanding. Must I put it bluntly?”
“No,” he said, “I would think there is no need. You are laboring under a romantic misapprehension that there is more to Earth than the Cemetery and I tell you, sir, there is nothing else. Earth is worthless. It was destroyed and abandoned ten thousand years ago and it would have been forgotten long ago if it had not been for us. Will you not reconsider? There would be much mutual benefit to the both of us. I am intrigued by this new art form that you have described.”
“Look,” I said, “you might as well understand this. I don’t propose to turn out a Cemetery work. I’m not up for hire as a press agent for Mother Earth. And I owe you nothing. I paid your precious captain five thousand credits to haul us here and . . .”
“Which was less,” Bell said angrily, “than you would have paid on a Pilgrim ship. And a Pilgrim ship would not have taken all your freight.”
“I thought,” I said, “that it was sufficient payment.”
I didn’t say good-bye. I turned around and left. Walking down the steps of the administration building, I saw a ground car parked in front of the steps, in the traffic circle. It was the only car in sight. The woman who sat in it was looking straight at me, as if she might have known that I was in the building and had been waiting for me.
The car was a screaming pink and that color, pink, made my thoughts go back to Alden, where it had all started.
III
It had been early evening and I’d been in the garden watching the purple cloud that hung above the pink horizon (for Alden was a pink world), listening to the evensong of the temple birds that had gathered in the little grove of trees at the garden’s foot. I was listening with some pleasure, when trampling down the dusty path that led across the pink and sandy plain came this great eight-foot monstrosity, lurching along with his awkward stride like a drunken behemoth. Watching him, I hoped that he would pass by and leave me with the evening and the birds, for I was in no mood for strangers. I was considerably depressed and there was nothing I wanted quite so much as to be left alone so I’d have a chance to heal. For this had been the day when I’d finally come face-to-face with hard reality and had known that the dream of Earth was dead unless I could get more money. I knew how little chance I had of getting money. I had scraped up all I could and borrowed all I could and would have stolen if there’d been any chance of stealing. I’d had a hard look at it all and knew I wasn’t going to be able to build the kind of compositor I wanted and the sooner I got reconciled to all of this, the better it would be.
I sat in the garden and watched this great monstrosity lurching down the path and I tried to tell myself that he was headed elsewhere and would not stop. But that was purely wishful thinking, for my garden was the only place he could be heading for.
He looked like a worker robot, perhaps a heavy construction robot, although what a heavy construction robot would be doing on a planet such as Alden I could not imagine. Heavy construction is just one of the many things that are not done on Alden.
He came lurching up and stopped beside the gate. “With your permission, sir,” he said, very politely.
“Welcome to my home,” I told him, through my teeth.
He unlatched the gate and came through, stopping to make sure it was latched again before coming on. He came over to me and hunkered down as gently as he could and hissed a little at me as a matter of politeness. Have you ever heard a three-ton robot hiss? I tell you, it’s uncanny.
“The birds are doing nicely,” said this hunk of metal, squatting there beside me.
“They do very well,” I said.
“Allow me,” said the robot, “to introduce myself.”
“If you would please,” I said.
“My name is Elmer,” said the robot. “I am a free machine. I was given freedom papers many centuries ago. I have been my own man ever since.”
“Well,” I said, “congratulations. How are you making out?”
“Very well,” said Elmer. “I just sort of wander, going here and there.”
I nodded, believing him. You saw them now and then, these free and wandering robots who had gained, technically, the status of a human after many years of servitude.
“I have heard,” said Elmer, “that you’re going back to Earth.”
Not to the Earth, but back to Earth—that was the way of it. After more than ten millennia, one still went back to Earth. As if the human race had left it only yesterday.
“You have been misinformed,” I said.
“But you have a compositor. . .”
“A basi
c instrument,” I told him, “that needs a million things to do the kind of job that should be done. It would be pitiful to go to Earth with such a pile of junk.”
“Too bad,” said Elmer. “There is a glorious composition waiting on the Earth. There is only one thing, sir . . .”
He stuttered to a halt, embarrassed for some reason I could not detect. I waited, not wishing to embarrass him further by saying anything.
“What I meant to say, sir—and it may not be in my province to say anything at all—is that you must not allow yourself to be trapped by the Cemetery. The Cemetery is no part of the Earth. It is something that has been grafted onto the Earth. Grafted, if I may say so, with a colossal cynicism.”
I pricked up my ears at that. Here, I told myself with more surprise than I would admit, was someone who was in agreement with me. I took a closer look at him in the gathering dusk. He wasn’t much to look at. His body was old-fashioned, at least by Alden standards: a clumsy thing, all brawn, an unsoftened lusty body, and his head piece was one upon which no effort had been expended to make it sympathetic. But rough and tough as he might seem, his speech was not the kind of language one would expect from a hulking, outdated labor robot.
“I am somewhat surprised,” I told him, “and at the same time gratified, to find a robot who has an interest in the arts, especially in an art so complicated.”
“I have tried,” said Elmer, “to make myself a whole man. Not being a man, I suppose, might explain why I tried so hard. Once I got my freedom papers and was given in the process the status of a human, I felt it incumbent on myself to try to be a human. It’s not possible, of course. There is a great deal of machine still left in me . . .”
“But composition work,” I said, “and myself—how did you know I was at work on an instrument?”
“I am a mechanic, see,” said Elmer. “I’ve been a mechanic all my life, by nature. I look at a thing and I know instinctively how it works or what is wrong with it. Tell me what kind of machine you want built and the chances are that I can build it for you. And when you come right down to it, a compositor is about as complicated a piece of mechanism as one can happen on and, more than that, it is far from finished yet. It is still in the process of development and there is no end to the ways that one can go. I see you looking at these hands and wondering how I can do the kind of work a compositor requires. The answer is that I have other hands, very special kinds of hands. I screw off my everyday hands and screw on whatever other kind is needed. You have heard of this, of course?”
The Complete Serials Page 120