Are they all still out there? I wondered.
Or are they all gone?
What if all these worlds are as empty as this one, as the others I’d seen so far? I’d started thinking of it as the Lost Empire sometimes, wondering what could possibly have happened. Did the robot know? I’d asked, more than once, but had so far gotten no answer.
Either it didn’t know, or didn’t know how to tell.
Then a piping voice said, “Wally?”
My heart seized in my chest, then I spun around, “You’re . . . uh.”
I’d been going to say, You’re back!, but the thing before me . . . was not a robot at all. Certainly not my robot. About the same size, but . . . pale gray skin. Big black eyes, slightly slanted. Noseless face. Lipless mouth. Two fingers and a thumb on each hand. Fleshy bird-feet.
More or less, I thought, like the beings they put on those Saucer books, paperbacks at Drug Fair competing for rack space with the science fiction I read. Who was it read that stuff? Kenny. Kenny, who would get something by Charles Fort, when Murray and I would be buying Prince of Peril or whatever Andre Norton title was out. What’d that book been called? Lo!? Something like that.
The being stepped toward me, lifting one of those peculiarly familiar hands. “I’m sorry I startled you.”
“Who . . .” What?
It said, “It’s me, Wally.”
Uhhh . . . “Robot?”
The gash of a mouth seemed to smile. “Well, you can still call me that if you want, but I went for an upgrade. I’m really more of an artificial man now.”
Artificial . . . an inane voice yammered in my head: What, then? Tor-Dur-Bar? Pinocchio? I remembered the joke about “my only begotten son” and sort of snickered.
The robot said, “Come on, Wally. Let’s go home. You must be starving.” Its intonation, I noticed, had suddenly gotten much better.
So. Nighttime. I lay on the floor, wrapped up in a blanket Robot’d produced from who knows where or God knows what, listening to the hiss of the evening rain, alien room suffused with a soft orange light. Even if I had a book, I wouldn’t have been able to read it in this.
But I wanted a book anyway.
I kept my head down, chin tucked in, trying to lose myself somehow. Think about all the books you’ve read. Jesus. I’d read thousands of books, it was practically all I did! Why couldn’t I remember them better?
I started again, imagining myself to be Ghek, slinking alone through the darkness below the pits of Manator, drinking the Ulsios’ blood, finding myself on the cliff over the subterranean river, the one he assumed might wind up flowing toward . . . Omean? The Lost Sea of Korus? Hell. Started to drift back . . .
But I was Tars Tarkas, struggling to get my fat ass through the hole in the base of the tree, while John Carter defended me from the Plant Men, no wait, Carthoris . . . the pimalia blossoms, the garden in Ptarth, Thuvia . . .
No use, me again, though now wondering about the reproductive systems of the Red Martians. Monotremes, obviously. I remembered we’d seen this film in science class one time, the biologist in the film flipping over a platypus, everyone in the class giggling nervously at the hairy slit on its belly. He’d pried open the slit, to more giggles, then . . . damn! There’s an egg in there!
So, what then? When John Carter fucks Dejah Thoris, does he find himself bumping into an egg? What’ll we call it, my incomparable princess of Helium? In my imagination, while they talked, old Johnny kept on humping her and . . .
Oh, great. Now I had a hard on. One of those real tingly ones meaning I’d probably come even if I kept my hands off it. On the other hand . . . right.
I flipped back the blanket, rolling onto my back, wrapping my fingers around the damned thing and . . . stopped, stock still. Robot was standing impassively over by the bathroom door, arms folded across its pale gray chest, featureless black eyes glinting in the orange light.
After a minute, it said, “Is something wrong, Wally?”
I could feel the nice hard on start to go spongy on me.
Then it said, “Would you like me to help?”
To my horror, my dick hardened right back up, Dejah Thoris’s weird monotreme crotch displaced by an image of two-fingers-and-thumb reaching for me, as I remembered doing myself in the tub only a few days before, bright steel robot watching impassively from the door, red eyes motionless, expressionless, merely light bulbs, stolen from a Christmas tree.
It said, “Your facial skin is changing color, Wally. Turning pink. That never happened before.”
My dick shrank out of my hand, suddenly soft and little again. Littler than usual. Kind of puckered. I said, “Uh. Sorry. It’s . . . kind of different now. I . . .”
What did I want? Did I want it to help? A sudden vision of a difficult reality. The one where I live here, along with this thing, until I was old and dead. No pussy for you, dude.
Robot seemed to smile, making me think of all those jokes I’d been hearing at school for years. It. It. Not he for gosh sakes. It’d be like jerking off in a sock. A very friendly and helpful sock. It said, “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me. Call out when you’re done. I’ll bring some warm milk to help you sleep.”
Then it was gone.
I wrapped the blanket around myself, suddenly feeling very cold indeed.
Did you ever wake up directly from a dream? No, that’s not right. Did you ever wake up in a dream? The dream is running along, telling its tale, real as life, and suddenly you’re there as you, knowing it’s a dream, thinking about it as a dream, while the story continues to run.
In my dream, it was summer, June I think, and I was maybe ten or eleven years old. Fifth or sixth grade, so maybe it was 1961 or 1962? Maybe school just about to end, or just over, which’d put it no later than maybe June 8th or thereabouts.
We were down by the big clearing, big patch of bare dirt down by the end of Carter Lane, across from Kenny’s house, where, sometimes, we could get together enough boys to play a real sandlot baseball game, back where the creek came in sight of the road, where they’d build that big private pool, the one where my parents refused to buy a family membership, in time for the summer of 1963. Right now, it was just scraggly woods and swampy ground, bare dirt ending suddenly where the ground sloped off down to the creek.
The little blonde girl and I were sitting on the horizontal trunk of a not-quite-fallen tree, looking at each other. What was her name? Of course I remember. It was Tracy, my age, in my grade and school, though not in my class. I only saw her out on the playground, at recess, and here on weekends.
Blonde, blue eyes, pale face, searching look. Thin, no sign of the adult she might one day become. Not yet. Her hair was done up in long braids that were wrapped round and round and pinned at the crown. Once, I’d asked her how come she always wore it that way.
“You’d be so pretty with your hair worn long and brushed out.”
That searching look, blue eyes reaching for my childish soul. “My mom thinks it makes me look too grown up.”
“Would you take it down for me now?”
I don’t remember that I ever saw her smile. Not a sad little girl, just so serious. More like me than anyone else I’d ever met. She said, “I can’t get it back like this by myself. Mom would kill me.” For once, the frown faded away. “I wish I could though. I’d do it for you, Wally.”
I could smile, and I did.
In dreams, you can see a future that didn’t happen.
A couple of eleven-year-olds fall in love, despite the fact that her mom didn’t want her “too grown up,” despite the fact she never said a word about her dad, or just why she was so . . . not sad. Just so serious. Whatever it was, it made her see right into me. Maybe those two eleven-year-olds could’ve waited out the decade it would take, and, free at last, live happily ever after?
In real life, that was the day she told me her dad had been transferred, that she’d be moving away to Texas. When? Tomorrow. In the morning.
Then s
he’d looked up at the sun, shading her eyes, and said, “I better get on home. Mom doesn’t know I’m out here.” To my astonishment, when we stood up, she gave me a hug, fierce and strong, then turned and ran.
I’d walked home in the noonday sun, feeling that burn in my throat that means you want to cry, but can’t. Mom was making lunch when I got there, tuna salad sandwiches with too much chopped celery. She’d looked at me, and said, “What’s wrong?” Felt my head, looking for a fever.
I opened my eyes on the pink light of a Lost Empire morning, and Robot was sitting cross-legged by my side, slowly stroking my hair, which was getting pretty long, and rather greasy from the lack of shampoo. How do primitives clean their hair? I . . .
Rolled away hard, heart pounding.
It said, “I’m sorry, Wally. I won’t do that anymore, if it bothers you.”
I swallowed, wishing I’d stop waking up with an erection. Futile hope. “No. No. You just startled me. I can’t get used to you like that.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not reversible.”
I felt my face flush. “Never mind. It’s okay.”
“You want breakfast now?”
“Sure.” Tuna fish sandwiches? Surely we can figure this out? As it stood up, I found myself looking at its featureless crotch. Not quite featureless. Kind of a faint divided bump, like you see on some of the neighborhood moms in their tight, white summer shorts.
Unbidden, as Robot turned away, heading for the kitchen, I wondered about “upgrades.” Even from the back, you could see the shape was there, if not the details. Like a girl in gray coveralls.
The image of Tracy came up, briefly, from the dream. Not the shape of her, which, at that age, hadn’t been much different from mine. Just the face, the eyes, the hair.
So. Robot can give me a hand job. It’s already volunteered. And you’ve already managed to think of a blow job on your own, you sick bastard. What kind of upgrades are available? Just stuff thrintun would know about? What good is that? Other races of the Lost Empire?
Maybe the Saucer People from those paperbacks were real, and this was the closest thing to a human Robot could get for itself, from its stash of upgrades? So it tried hard for me when I describe food and stuff I’d like it to make. Remember the ice cream? Not to mention the “soap.”
Heh.
That tasty soap. I’d had it again already, for dessert.
So what if I asked it to grow a pussy for me, as an upgrade?
What would I ask for?
I’d seen my sisters in the bathtub from time to time. Not much to work with there. An accidental glimpse of my mom one summer, changing her clothes in a room with the door open, her not knowing she was reflected in a mirror. Hell, I was maybe five years old back then. She probably didn’t care if I saw her. Not yet.
I remembered I’d been startled by the black hair.
What else?
Well, there was a diagram in one of our encyclopedias. A line drawing labeled “vulva” that didn’t make much sense.
Those magazines, the ones Murray’s dad kept down in the basement? Nothing. I knew enough about human anatomy and the mechanics of commercial art to know those women’s pussies had been swept away by something called an air brush.
I snickered, and thought, Jesus. Maybe I’d better just stick with soap? Maybe when I can get it to make me a cake of Lifebuoy, we’ll try something more complicated?
Out in the kitchen, it was just finishing up making me some sliced meat, solid this time, rare and juicy, to go with my mug of milk. We’d tried for bread a few times, and wound up with something like grayish Play-Doh that tasted more like soap than the soap had.
I put my hand gingerly on its shoulder, realizing that I was really tired of this bland diet of sweet milk and venison-pork. “Robot?”
“Yes, Wally.”
“Can you help me get back home?”
It turned toward me, giving me a long, long look out of those empty black eyes. “Are you so lonely, Wally?”
I swallowed past a tight spot in my throat and nodded, unable to speak. Yes, damn you. I miss everything about my nasty little life. Even the bad stuff. That hurt too. I wouldn’t have imagined I would, just like I didn’t imagine I’d miss my dad ’til he was gone.
It said, “How much do you know about accelerated frames of reference, and probabilistic space-time attractors?”
“Well. . . .”
That same long look continued. “Eat your breakfast, Wally. Take your bath, then we’ll see what we can do.”
By midmorning, it’d led me back through the town and out to the so-called spaceport once more. Led me out onto the empty concrete apron, off to one side, reddish-yellow sunshine warm and smarmy on my bare skin. I almost skipped my shoes this time, but Robot told me not to.
“No sense getting a stubbed toe, is there?”
Which made me remember when I was a little kid, pre-school, going to the beach with my mother’s family. We’d lived in Massachusetts then, some little town outside Boston, and the beaches of New England are rocky indeed. Where did we used to go? Not Nantucket. That’s an island where rich bastards live. Nantasket? That’s it. I remember Grandpa took me to see a beached freighter one time.
Anyway, stubbed toes. Lots of them.
Robot said, “Stand over here, Wally. Right by me.”
Then it raised its hands, making a slow sort of Gandalfish gesture.
My stomach lurched as we suddenly rose in the air, taking a patch of concrete with us. “Hey!”
“Stand still, Wally.”
As the thing on which we stood went up and up, things like antennae, like giant radiotelescopes, like Jodrell Bank, like stuff on TV, began unfolding down below, swinging up into sight.
I whispered, “‘Open, sez me.’” What’s that from? A Popeye cartoon?
The upward movement stopped, and suddenly a hatchway opened in the concrete between us. Robot gestured toward it, “Shall we, Wally?”
“What is this?”
“The spaceport information nexus and interstellar communications center.”
“Oh.” Muted.
Down inside was a room just like the main room of an airport control tower, complete with outward leaning windows and things like radar screens. Lots and lots of twinkly little lights, too. Red, green, blue, yellow, you name it.
It started waving its fingers at the lights and, outside, various antennae started groaning around, aiming this way and that, nodding upward to the great green sky.
“What’re you going to do? Are you calling Earth?”
The empty black eyes fixed on me again. “No, Wally. I can only call installations with the same sort of subspace communication systems as these.”
“Oh. Then. . . .”
It said, “I need to find out what’s happened, Wally, before I can know what’s to be done, if anything.” If anything? I felt sick. Then it said, “This will take a while. I assume you can find your way to the museum from here?”
“Well, of course.” Robot thought I was stupid, did it? Maybe so. How many people accidentally stow away on an automated space probe and wound up stranded on a deserted planet?
“I’ll meet you there in time for supper. That elevator cage over there will take you down to ground level.” Then it turned away and resumed playing with all the little lights, while the big antennae creaked and moaned.
I stood and watched for a while, at a loss. What do I want? Do I really want to go home again, back to a pathetic little life that showed no promise of ever getting better? What if the Empire’s not lost? What if the saucers come again, this time full of light and life, full of things ever so much better than people?
What if there’s real adventure to be had?
Eventually, I got in the elevator cage and went on my way, wondering if I could find something to do.
Take a while turned out to be an understatement. Two, three, four days and I gave up going out to the spaceport, gave up watching the antennae wig-wag around, gave up wat
ching the little lights twinkle, reflected in Robot’s slanty goggle eyes.
Eyes like fucking sunglasses.
What’s under them, ole buddy, ole pal?
It’d make me breakfast, make me something I could save for lunch, and would head on out, leaving me alone for the day, like a man going off to work, leaving his wife alone to fend for herself.
I remember my mom used to scream about that, back before the breakup. Dad’d come home from work, wanting nothing more than his supper and a quiet evening in front of the TV, and Mom would snipe and snipe, “I sit here all day long, looking at these same four Goddamned walls. I want to get out once in a while!”
He’d look at her, lying on the couch in his boxer shorts, bleary eyed. “I’m tired.”
You could see a kind of red light behind her eyes then. “Tired? Well, you won’t be quite so tired later on tonight, I know that.”
“Bitch.”
Now he was gone, and Mom had a job of her own from which to come home tired. We were eating a lot of macaroni and cheese then. Macaroni and cheese, and meatloaf. I wondered if she thought about him sometimes, about how tired he’d been, and how she felt now?
On day five, it got dark before Robot came home. I was getting hungry, starting to worry, just the way Mom seemed to worry when Dad would be late getting home from work on nights when the traffic on US 1 clogged to a standstill. Should I go on out to the spaceport and see what was up? What if it wasn’t there? What if it started to rain while I was out?
Then the door opened and Robot came in, moving rather slowly, it seemed. “Sorry I’m late. I’ll get your supper now.”
I followed it out to the kitchen, and, as it touched the blue lights over the trough, beginning the process that would extrude my meat, would fill my mug with milk, it seemed to move as though exhausted.
The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17 Page 11