by John Sladek
‘Took it off. To uh, wrap some stuff I was carrying.’
‘What stuff, hey?’
‘Just stuff, spare parts.’ Pa suppressed a heaving cough. ‘Don’t say anything to Ma, okay? Our little secret.’
Roderick carried the wet mackinaw out of the room, but did not close the door quite shut. He put his eye to the crack and looked in.
But all he could see was Pa’s hand, hanging up a key under the picture of Rex Reason. He went back upstairs to say his prayers:
‘Our Father, if we have one, Who might be in Heaven, if there is one …’
There was an awful lot of God at school, but whenever Roderick tried to ask a question, Sister Olaf just looked cross and told him to take it up with Father Warren. So he tried working it out for himself.
The Holy Trinity must be a lot like in the Oz stories. After all, God was God the Father, but God was also the Holy Trinity, the place where He or She lived with two friends. Oz was just like that: it was this terrific wizard who could do anything, and it was also the place where he lived. Anyway, OZ = PA, that was plain, and nobody knew what Oz (or God) looked like.
God the Father was so wise that his wisdom turned into this pigeon called the Holy Ghost. Couldn’t that be the Scarecrow? Crows and pigeons being birds, and ghosts being scarey. The Scarecrow was always worried about fire, too, and didn’t Sister Olaf say something about the H.G. turning into tongues of flame? Well then.
The Father and H.G. loved each other a lot and had this Son, the one you always saw pointing to his shiny heart and smiling. That just about had to be the Tin Woodman. He too was a carpenter, and Oz gave him a heart made out of shiny silk. ,
Dorothy was kind of a problem until he read through his book of Bible stories. Because in this house at Bethany, God the Son was just sitting there when this woman came up and poured oil all over him – just the way Dorothy poured oil all over the Tin Woodman!
That just about settled it. Roderick didn’t bother much with the minor characters like Mary (= MA = Ozma), the story all seemed strong enough without them. Only one thing bothered him:
Oz kept acting like such a slippery character. It was almost as if he didn’t have any real power at all. As if he faked it.
Pa said there wasn’t any God, and both stories were hokum.
Ma said everybody was God, and no story was ever hokum.
Sister Oaf just got mad.
‘Blasphemy, and this close to Christmas!’
‘Well yeah I thought Father Warren was taking care of this kid. Been meaning to have another little pow-wow with him myself, Sister, only you know how it’s been what with trying to squeeze in a couple more basketball games before our Centre eats himself sick at Christmas and gets all outa shape, and what with trying to schedule early training for the baseball team. You know if I didn’t keep after these kids our whole sports programme would go right down the tubes …’
Sister Olaf twisted the rosary on her belt. ‘He seems to think he’s preparing for his First Communion right along with all the others, that’s the problem. Not even baptized, I wonder if he even understands what a sincere confession is, and anyway.’
‘Anyway?’
‘The poor little thing doesn’t even seem to have a mouth.’
‘He must eat somehow.’ Father O’Bride finished cleaning his rifle and squinted down the barrel at her.
‘Eat? I’m not so sure, Father. We never find him in the refectory at lunch hour, he’s always lurking around the playground by himself or just sitting reading the Bible – and once I caught him carrying out the garbage for Sister Mary Martha!’
‘Uh-oh, can’t have that. You put a stop to it?’
‘Of course, a child could hurt himself carrying those heavy cans. Besides, the Community agreed that since Sister Mary Martha is too old to teach, housework is her little duty. Her little cross. And she takes it up joyfully.’
Father O’Bride found such expressions embarrassing. He tugged at the neckband of his sweatshirt as though it were a tight white collar. ‘Little too joyfully, if you ask me. I mean, she keeps polishing that same spot in the hall out there, I darn near broke my neck on it this morning. None of my business, of course, up to Mother Sup – and of course we all think the Sisters are doing one heck of a great job here, batting a thous –’
‘Whether the poor little pagan eats or not, Father, he doesn’t seem ready to make his First. It’s hard to get through to him, he seems to get everything mixed up with fairy tales and robot stories and I don’t know what. When I started telling the class about the Flight into Egypt, he kept interrupting to ask about the Deadly Desert, and Dorothy and Toto – yes and wasn’t Bethlehem where the steel came from, the metallic conception he called it! The metallic conception!’
Father O’Bride hated dealing with out-of-bounds decisions like these. He looked up for inspiration, but saw only a poster advertising the sign of the cross. Superimposed on a boy was a baseball diamond. The legend said: BE SURE TO TOUCH ON ALL BASES. ‘Look, take him out of religion altogether for now, let Father Warren handle that department. Teamwork, right?’
‘All right, and –’
‘Who knows, kid might shape up by next season anyway. If not, well, we hold him in reserve, bench him but maybe let him work out once in a while with the A squad …’
Sister Olaf went back to her class, pausing to check on Sister Mary Martha. The old woman was once more polishing the same little spot of hall floor, already mirror-bright. Have to do something about her, poor old forgetful … sees her own face in it, her own lost … now as in a glass, darkly, but soon … slippery as glass … glass slipp – stop that! She shook herself out of it. nodded at the crouching figure, and passed on. Upstairs Father O’Bride kicked his office door shut, but not before she heard him say, ‘Call that a little thing do you Charlie? I’m trying to start spring training here and my boys gotta work out in uniforms with that on ’em? Bell Caps, you call that –?’
The door slammed and there was no sound but the children’s choir practice.
A disappointment. All that work on the Bible stories and the catechism for nothing, just because of some lousy regulation. And Sister O. wouldn’t even tell him what the lousy regulation was just that he wasn’t going to have religion with the other kids any more, and he probably wouldn’t be making his First in May.
He guessed what the regulation was, something to do with his not being a meat person. Meat people got to die and go to the Emerald City and be happy with God forever and ever, and what did he get? Next to nothing. No matter how good he was, all he could count on was lousy Limbo, with a bunch of yelling babies around and nobody to talk to.
It didn’t seem fair, not after he’d worked so hard. Extra work, even, like when they had that bit about the Word becoming Flesh and he got to school early one morning and worked it all out on the blackboard:
WORD
wood
mood
moot
moat
MEAT
As usual, that made Sister O. real mad and she told him to stand in the corner and ask forgiveness and never call people meat again.
Heck they called them meat in Oz, anyway it was no worse than calling somebody a bunch of letters. She didn’t even care that he used ‘moot’ – a word half the kids didn’t even know was in the dictionary – nor that he was showing the whole thing right there, words turning into words.
Holy cow. Sister O. even threatened to yank him out of the Christmas play, just because he got mixed up in rehearsal and forgot his line (‘Here’s the frankincense, Jesus’) and said:
‘Jesus! Here’s the Frankenstein!’
Holy cow.
And here it was the last day of school before Christmas, the last afternoon of the last day, all he had now was this wrap session with Father Warren …
Mrs Feeney, the old housekeeper, showed him into the study. She reminded Roderick a lot of Sister Mary Martha, except she moved faster and cleaned more stuff, and except she n
ever smiled.
‘The Father will be here in a minute,’ she said. ‘Now you sit right there and don’t touch a thing.’
‘The chair? I mean …’
‘Don’t give me no lip, neither.’ She went out, polishing doorknobs behind her. He sat for what seemed like a minute, then got up and went to see what was on the desk. A silver cigarette-box, candy dish and lighter – those would be Father Warren’s. A spring grip developer and an electronic thing for keeping golf scores – Father O’Bride’s. The other stuff could be anybody’s. A stack of blank magnetic cards, each one headed A.M.D.G., a desk-set in onyx plastic and a letter:
… His Grace notes your request for approval of the Holy Trinity School team name, ‘Hell Cats’, and asks me to write, strongly urging you to reconsider. Any association of the name of the Holy Trinity with Hell is to be avoided, being distasteful at least! Your alternative suggestion ‘Hep Cats’ is not all together acceptable either.
In these troubled times, the Church must avoid giving scandal even in small matters. World Communism is on the prowl, seeking whom it may devour, preying on the weak and ignorant. We trust you will keep all this in mind and consider less contr versial alternatives such as ‘Tornadoes’ or ‘Tigers’. Or why not a name inspired by some popular saint, e.g., Patrick: The ‘Sham Rocks’ …
Father Warren came in kneading his hands. ‘Well now, have you read that book I lent you?’
‘Yes Father, I mean I read all the words and looked them up and all, only I still couldn’t understand it.’
‘Ah. Might be a little hard for such a young –’
‘I mean on the very first page there’s these three laws of robots and they don’t make any sense.’
‘Ah! The famous Three Laws of Robotics? They make perfect sense. Believe me, this is airtight logic.’ He quoted from memory, counting fingers. ‘First, “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Seems plain enough. Second, “A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.” No nonsense there. And third, “A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.” Now which of these gives you trouble?’
‘Well all of them. Look Father I’m a robot and I don’t –’
‘Still insisting on that, are we? Roderick, do me a favour. Take this pin.’ The priest plucked a pin from a desk drawer and held it out. ‘Go on take it. Now, stick me with it.’
‘What?’
‘Stick the pin in my hand there, go on. You’re supposed to be a robot, so I’m ordering you, go on.’
‘Yeah but – well okay.’ Roderick made a weak swipe with the pin, raising a tiny scratch on the back of the hand.
‘Ouch!’ Father Warren smiled. ‘You have just proved that you can’t possibly be a robot. You violated the First Law.’
Roderick watched a drop of blood form on the scratch. ‘I guess so. Only –’
‘No guessing about it. Logic says you can either be a robot or stick me with a pin, but not both.’
‘Yeah that’s logic all right, but only if you go along with these here three laws. But I mean they’re only in stories and this is real life. I mean like in the Oz stories they just got one law in Oz, “Behave yourself”. Only in real life people don’t, do they?’
‘No, Roderick, but listen –’
‘And like this here other story about the man going up on the mountain and getting these here pills with laws on them, heck even by the time he gets down the mountain everybody’s breaking the laws all over the place, worshipping a golden leg and –’
‘No, listen –’
‘I mean like nobody ever pays attention to the laws except like cops and Sheriff Benson and maybe lawyers like Perry Ma – What was that?’ He referred to a series of rapid explosions that seemed to come from the floor.
‘Nothing, just Father O’Bride getting in some target practice, he’s got a little gallery rigged up in the base, but wait, listen, the point is, in real life there are no robots, not real thinking, humanoid creatures. They’re all in stories. And in these stories, they have to obey the Three Laws. Right?’
‘Maybe, but even in stories they have to have big arguments about laws, look at Perry Mason, holy cow they argue all the time about whether somebody did or didn’t break this here law, holy cow Mr Swann makes all his money just telling people how to get around the law.’
‘Roderick, let me explain: there are two kinds of law. You’re talking about legal statutes, yes of course people can break those. Just as they can break moral laws like the Ten Commandments. But there’s also another kind of law, natural law. That includes things like the law of gravity, or the law that says 2 + 2 = 4, or the law that says if Tom is taller than Dick and Dick is taller than Harry, then Tom must be taller than Harry. And you see, nobody on earth can break laws like those. And so robots are programmed in such a way that the Three Laws are their natural laws. They can’t be broken.’
‘Yeah but how? How can they program a robot to obey some dumb law he can’t even understand? Like first thing he needs to know who’s a human being and who ain’t. Like I heard this old guy by the post office saying the president was a son of a bitch and somebody ought to shoot him. I’m just saying what he said, Father. But with these dumb laws a robot could hear that and get a gun and go shoot the president because he’s only a dog so it’s okay.’
‘Now you’re just being silly. Everybody knows the president is human.’
‘Yeah, but the Robotic Law don’t say how a robot’s supposed to find out who’s human and who’s robots, like what’s he supposed to do, go see Mr Swann every time he wants to stick a pin in a doll or –’
‘Excuse me for a minute …’ The priest hurried out, lifting his skirts as he thumped down the basement stairs into the dark gallery.
Father O’Bride was a shadowy alien, with a pair of bright orange ear-protectors standing out from the sides of his head like insect eyes. And wasn’t that a picture of the Pope he was shooting at?
‘What? Whatsa matter?’ O’Bride took off the ear-protectors and automatically kissed their strap before putting them down. ‘You still crapping around tryina convert that Wood brat?’
‘He … gets on my nerves sometimes.’
‘Little smart-ass, needs fifty laps, that’s what he needs.’
‘… tried everything, I’ve tried talking to him about Space-ship Earth even, how if he were an alien landing here –’
‘Excuse me while I throw up. I can’t stand all that space crap, can’t stand that kid either. You know what?’
‘– how the alien would wonder Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?’
‘Yeah but you know what?’
‘But listen, I told him we came from the mind of God, and he – he just said, “Pa thinks we’re all apes who got tired of picking fleas and grunting” not even seven years old and he –’
‘Yeah but you know what I think?’
‘Where are we going, to the destiny God prepared for us, he came right out with how his mother says when people die they turn into ether and rise up through seven astral planes –’
‘You know what I think? I think the kid is a darn robot.’
Bzzt bzz-bzzz bzzzt bzz? said the telephone on the desk. Phones that were still cradled shouldn’t be saying anything. Roderick crept closer and listened.
‘… sure this thing’s on? I can’t hear a fucking …’
‘Look, I know my stuff, not like that hick O’Smith … hire a fucking amateur and then wonder what went wrong, man they never learn …’
‘… ill don’t see why we don’t just trash him now, hot trail gets cold while you wait for them motherfucking tankthinkers to make up their fu … ders is orders I guess … Hey I still can’t …’
‘… some kinda bionic boy or what? Hey Pete? What …?’
‘Bionic my ass, all a cover for something …
unny thing you know the first real bionic man wasn’t even scratched in that plane crash, you know? Like he was just … in the hospital … started picking up infections … everything going wrong, one part after another … next thing you know … Hey I can’t hear a damn thing on this …’
‘… short of agents anyway, too much of this crap going on … tired of freezing my ass off in panel trucks … extra help on that whatsit, Kratt … in that thermos?’
Roderick looked out of the window. There was a panel truck parked across the road. The sign said O’Bannion Flowers but there wasn’t any O’Bannion Flowers in town. Okay, so G-men or something watching him, and they wanted to trash him or something, put him in the hospital where he could pick up infections like the six million –
‘… with priests you gotta go careful, see? Priests get headlines … Anyway they want we should surveil to pick up all the contacts … maybe I got the wires crossed or … was that a shot?’
Down the street, the wretched pick-up of Mr Ogilvy back-fired again. As usual, it was wobbling and going too fast, cutting a sine-wave pattern along the route from the public school to Mr O.’s favourite bar. People liked to pretend that it was the old pick-up that knew the way, that Mr O. just put his foot down and went to sleep.
The crash and the flaming explosion weren’t quite as good as on TV. There was hardly any noise at all.
By the time Father Warren came back, the fire trucks and tow trucks were just leaving.
‘I’m sorry I took so long,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t resist trying a couple of shots with Father O’Bride’s handgun. Not much good, I guess, but – now where were we? I was about to say, robots will be programmed to recognize people. After all, people recognize each other, don’t they?’
‘Only you don’t recognize that I’m a robot,’ said Roderick. ‘Sometimes, boy, I don’t even know myself what I am, Mr Swann says it’ll take a lot of money to even find out if I’m a person in law – or just one of these legal statues like you said – or if I’m a dog or a knife or what – but look, even to work these laws you gotta have some way of telling robots from people. You gotta have these other unnatural laws and Mr Swann and Perry Mason to work them out, boy, there goes your logic. I mean if a robot hurts somebody and says I thought he was just a robot, boy, old Perry could really get the District Attorney hung up, holy –’