The robot children said, "Sure, Grandfather," and went away laughing behind his back.
They were smooth and sharp and bright, and they thought that they were the only ones who had ever been modern, and it never occurred to them that others had been so before them and that others would be so after them. And if they had been told that someday they would be put back on the shelf with other pieces of discarded merchandise they would have laughed all the harder. That is the way of the young robots and no amount of programming seems able to change it.
But that was still in the far future. Now there was the robot and there was Mishkin, journeying together into the forest, both of them filled with knowledge of the most exquisitely detailed sort, none of it apropos to their situation. It was probably about this time that Mishkin came to his great realization — that knowledge is never pertinent to one's needs. What you need is always something else, and a wise man builds his life around this knowledge about the lack of usefulness of knowledge.
Mishkin worried around danger. He wanted to do the right thing when he faced danger. Ignorance of the appropriate action made him anxious. He was more afraid of appearing ridiculous than he was of dying.
"Look," he said to the robot, "we must make up our minds. We may meet a danger at any time, and we really must decide how we will handle it."
"Do you have any suggestions?" the robot asked.
"We could toss a coin," Mishkin suggested.
"That," said the robot, "is the epitome of fatalism and quite opposed to the scientific attitude we both represent. Give ourselves up to chance after all our training? It is quite unthinkable."
"I don't like it much, myself," Mishkin said, "but I think that we can agree that no plan of action is a disastrous course."
The robot said, "Perhaps we could decide each case upon its merits."
"Will we have time for that?" Mishkin asked.
"Here's the chance to find out," the robot said.
Up ahead, Mishkin saw something flat and thin and wide, like a sheet. It was coloured a mouse-grey. It floated about three feet above the ground. It was coming straight towards them, like everything else in Harmonia.
"What do you think we ought to do?" Mishkin asked.
"Damned if I know," the robot said, "I was going to ask you."
"I don't think we could outrun it."
"I don't think immobility would do any good," the robot said.
"Should we shoot it?"
"Blasters don't seem to work too well on this planet. We'd probably just get it angry."
"What if we just stroll along, minding our own business," Mishkin said. "Maybe it'll just leave us alone."
"The hope of despair," said the robot.
"Do you have any other ideas?"
"No."
"Then let's start strolling."
9
Mishkin and the robot were strolling through the forest one day in the merry, merry month of May when they happened to surprise a pair of bloodshot eyes in the merry, merry month of May.
Nothing is very funny when you're underneath.
"Stand up and be counted," Mishkin's father had said to him. So Tom Mishkin stood up to be counted, and the number was one. This was not very instructive. Mishkin never stood up to be counted again.
Let's take it now from the point of view of the monster who was approaching Mishkin.
Usually reliable sources tell us that the monster did not feel at all monstrous. The monster felt anxious. That is the way everyone feels except when they are drunk or high.
It would be good to remember that when making any strange contacts: The monster feels anxious. Now, if only you can convince him that you too, despite being a monster, also feel anxious. The sharing of anxieties is the first step in communication.
"Ouch," said Mishkin.
"What's the matter?" asked the robot.
"I stubbed my toe."
"You'll never get out of this spot like that."
"What should I do?"
"It might be best to continue strolling."
The sun beat down. The forest contained many colours. Mishkin was a complicated human being with a past and a sex life and various neuroticisms. The robot was a complicated simulacrum of a man and might just as well be considered a man. The creature who was approaching them was a complete unknown but can be presumed to have had a certain pleasurable amount of complication about him. Everything was complicated.
As Mishkin approached the monster he had various fantasies, none of which are interesting enough to record.
The monster also had various fantasies.
The robot never permitted himself fantasies. He was an old-fashioned, inner-directed, Protestant ethic type of robot, and he didn't hold with tomfoolery.
There were drops of crystal clear water trembling on the green, pouting, heart-curved lips. Actually, they weren't drops of water at all; they were decals made in some loathsome factory in Yonkers. The children had decorated the trees with them.
The monster he went astrolling. He nodded civilly to Mishkin and the robot nodded civilly to the monster as they strolled past.
The monster did a double take. "What in hell was that?" he asked.
"Beats the hell out of me," said one of the perambulatory trees, who had moved back from the north forty in hopes of making a killing on the stock exchange.
"It seems to have worked," Mishkin said.
"It usually does," the robot said, "on Darbis IV."
"Do you suppose it would usually work here on Harmonia?"
"I don't see why not. After all, if a thing is right once, it is capable of being right an infinite number of times. The actual figure is n minus one, which is a very large number indeed and contains only one possibility of error out of an infinity of correct actions."
"How often does that once come up?" Mishkin asked.
"Too damned often," the robot told him. "It really knocks hell out of the law of averages."
"Well, then," Mishkin said, "maybe your formula is wrong."
"Not a chance of it," the robot said. "The theory is right, even if it usually doesn't work out in practice."
"I suppose that's good to know," Mishkin said.
"Sure it is. It's always good to know things. Anyhow, we have another chance to test it out. Here comes another monster."
10
Not everyone in the forest was capable of taking consolation from philosophy. The raemit, for example, walked along in a fog of self-loathing. The raemit knew that he was utterly and completely alone. In part this was because the raemit was the only one of his species, which tended to reinforce his feeling of isolation. But the raemit also knew that the responsibility for alienation resides with the individual and that circumstance, no matter how apparently normative, was merely the neutral ground against which the individual worked out his own internal dramas. That was a depressing thought and also a confusing one, so the raemit walked along feeling weird and spaced out and like the only raemit on Harmonia, which it was.
"What's that?" the raemit asked himself. He stared long and hard at the two alien creatures. Then he said, "Hallucinations, yet. That's what having a sensitivity such as mine brings you."
The two alien creatures or hallucinations continued walking. The raemit quickly reviewed his entire life.
"It's all a bag of shit," the raemit concluded. "A raemit works all his life and what happens? He gets himself into trouble with the cops, his girlfriend leaves him, his wife leaves him, and then he starts seeing hallucinations. I mean, really, alien creatures, what will it be next?"
11
"What I'm going to do," said the Countess of Melba, "I am going to take the pledge."
"Then for the love of God Almighty," cried the Duke of Melba, "get on with it, do get on with it, and stop nattering on about it."
"I do not believe in you any more," the Duchess of Melba said.
At that instant the Duke of Melba vanished like the insubstantial thing he was and, as far as I'm concer
ned, always will be.
Mishkin remembered something that had happened to him as a little boy on a stud ranch near Abilene. But he didn't pursue it because he couldn't see how it would help him in his present circumstances, whatever they were.
"One can be on the verge of violent death," said the robot, "and still be bored. I wonder why that is so?"
"One can get damned sick of the thoughts of robots," Mishkin replied.
The forest died. It was an attack of the floral version of hoof and mouth disease that had wracked such ruin around the countryside. Nothing for it, we will simply have to get along without that forest.
12
Mishkin was walking through a large parking lot. It was a beige parking lot with green and yellow stripes. The parking meters were mauve, and the crumpled old newspapers were scarlet and bronze. It was a humdinger of a parking lot.
"This seems to be a parking lot," Mishkin remarked.
"It does seem so, doesn't it?" the Duke of Melba replied, twirling the ends of his long blond moustaches. "Reminds me of a story. Rather good story. Friend of mine was staying at a friend's house in Surrey. Cotswolds, actually. He had retired for the night in a room that was purported to be haunted. My friend thought that a rather piquant touch, but he didn't buy it, of course. No one does. Well, then. My friend set the guttering candle down by his bedside — the place had no electricity, you see; or rather, it did have electricity but a sudden storm had sent it all kaput. He was just settling in for the night, in quite a calm mood, when…"
"Excuse me," Mishkin said. "Who are you?"
"Duke of Melba," said the Duke of Melba. "But call me Clarence. I don't hold with all of that title nonsense. I don't believe I caught your name."
"That's because I didn't throw it," Mishkin said.
"Oh, I say, that's rather good. Original?"
"It was, once," Mishkin said.
"Very good!"
"My name is Mishkin," Mishkin said. "I don't suppose you happened to see a robot anywhere around here?"
"I didn't actually."
"Strange. He just vanished."
"Nothing strange about that," the Duke of Melba said. "Just a minute ago my wife remarked that she didn't believe in me, and lo and behold, I just vanished. Strange, isn't it?"
"Very strange," Mishkin said. "But I suppose it does happen."
"I suppose it does," Clarence said. "After all, it just happened to me. Damned funny feeling, vanishing."
"What does it feel like?"
"Hard to put your finger on it. A sort of insubstantial thing, if you know what I mean."
You're sure you didn't see my robot?"
"Reasonably sure. I suppose you were fond of him?"
"We've been through a lot together."
"Old war buddies," the Duke said, nodding and untwisting his moustaches. "Nothing quite like old war buddies. Or old wars. I remember a time outside of Ypres…"
"Excuse me," Mishkin said. "I don't know where you came from, but I think that I must warn you that you have vanished or been vanished into a place of considerable danger."
"It's uncommonly kind of you to warn me," the Duke said. "But, actually, I'm in no danger at all. The danger number is your movie, whereas I am in an entirely different and much less satisfactory sequence. Projection doth make mockery of us all, as the poet said. Whimsical anachronism is more my line of country, old chap. Now, as I was saying…"
The Duke of Melba interrupted himself by stopping. A shadow of discontent had just crossed his mind. He was unsatisfied with his delineation of himself. All that he had presented so far was the fact that he had long blond moustaches, sounded vaguely English, and seemed a little silly. This seemed to him insufficient. He decided to rectify the situation at once.
The Duke of Melba was a large and impressive individual. His eyes were a frosty blue.
He bore a resemblance to Ronald Colman, though the Duke was handsomer, more bitter, and possessed more cool. His hands were finely shaped with long tapering fingers.
Noticeable also were the little crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes. These, together with the feathering of grey at his temples, did nothing to detract from his attractiveness; quite the contrary, they gave him a bold, brooding, weather-beaten appearance that the opposite sex (as well as many members of his own sex, not all of them gay) found distinctively attractive. Taken all in all, he was the man you would pick to advertise your oldest scotch, your best line of clothing, your most expensive motorcars.
The Duke thought that over and found it good. A few things were missing. So he gave himself the faintest suggestion of a limp, just for the hell of it and because he had always considered a limp to be mysterious and attractive.
When he was through, the Duke of Melba was fair pleased. The only thing that galled him was the fact that his wife had caused him to vanish. That seemed to him a very castrating thing to do.
"Do you know?" he said to Mishkin, "I have a wife. The Duchess of Melba, you know."
"Oh. That's nice," Mishkin said.
"In a way it is, I suppose. But the thing is, I don't believe in her."
The Duke smiled to himself: an attractive smile. Then he frowned: an attractive frown, for his wife appeared suddenly in front of him.
The Duchess of Melba took one good look at the Duke, then swiftly changed her appearance. Her hair went from grey to chestnut brown with red highlights. She became tall, slender, with medium-large boobies and a delicious ass. She gave herself delicate bones in her wrists, a faint, blue vein that throbbed in her forehead, a beauty mark shaped like a star on her left cheek, fantastic legs, a Pierre Cardin outfit, a Hermes handbag, shoes by Riboflavin, a tantalizing smile smiled by long, slim lips that didn't need any lipstick because they were naturally red (it ran in the family), a solid gold Dunhill lighter, emaciated cheeks, raven black hair with blue highlights, and a big sapphire ring instead of a gold-plated wedding band.
The Duke and the Duchess looked at each other and found each other admirable. They strolled away arm and arm into the nowhere they had made each other vanish into.
"All the best," Mishkin called after them. He looked around the parking lot but he couldn't find his car. It was one of those days.
At last a parking lot attendant came ambling up to him — a short fat man in a green jumper with the words AMRITSAR HIGH SCHOOL ALL-STARS embroidered over his left breast pocket. The attendant said, "Your ticket, sir? No tickee, no caree."
"Here it be," said Mishkin, and from the transverse pocket of his slung pouch he removed a piece of red pasteboard.
"Don't let him take that ticket!" a voice called out.
"Who is that?" Mishkin asked.
"I am your SPER robot presently disguised as a 1968 Rover TC 2000. You are under the influence of a hallucinating drug. Do not give the attendant that ticket!"
"Give ticket," said the attendant.
"Not so fast," said Mishkin.
"Yes, fast," said the attendant, and reached out.
It seemed to Mishkin that the attendant's fingers split into a mouth. Mishkin stepped back. Very slowly the attendant came towards him. Now he could be seen as a kind of large snake with wings and a forked tail. Mishkin avoided him without trouble.
Mishkin was back in the forest (That damned forest!) The robot was standing beside him. A large, winged snake was advancing very slowly on Mishkin.
13
The snake had a mouth that secreted fantasies. His very breath was illusion. His eyes were hypnotic, and the movement of his wings cast spells. Even his size and shape were matters of illusion, for he was capable of changing himself from gigantic to infinitesimal.
But when the snake had made himself tinier than a fly, Mishkin deftly captured him and shut him up in an aspirin bottle.
"What will you do with him?" the robot asked.
"I will keep him," said Mishkin, "until it is the proper time for me to live in fantasies."
"Why is that time not now?" the robot asked.
"B
ecause I am young now," Mishkin replied, "and it is time for me to be living adventures and to be making actions and suffering reactions. Later, much later, when my fires have dimmed and my memories have lost their bright edge, then I shall release this creature. The winged snake and I will walk together into that final illusion that is death.
But that time is not now."
"Well spoken," the robot said. But he wondered who was speaking with Mishkin's mouth.
So they kept going across the forest. The aspirin bottle was sometimes very heavy, sometimes light. It was evident that the creature had power. But it was not enough to dissuade Mishkin from the work that lay ahead of him. He didn't know what this work was, but he knew that it didn't lie in an aspirin bottle.
14
Mishkin and the robot came to a ravine. There was a plank across the two sides of the ravine. Looking down, one could see a tiny thread of water thousands of feet below.
This was noteworthy, for the ravine had a natural grandeur and attractiveness. But more striking by far was the plank across the two sides of the ravine. There was a table on the plank, near the middle. There were four chairs at the table, and four men sat in the chairs. They were playing a game of cards. They had full ashtrays beside them. There was an unshielded light, suspended by nothing visible, burning palely above their heads.
Mishkin approached and listened to them for a while.
"Open for a dollar."
"Fold."
"Call."
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