All the Traps of Earth
Clifford D. Simak
A runaway robot gains the ability to telekinetically fix any problem, yet can't fix his own problem: the need to be needed.
Clifford D. Simak
All the Traps of Earth
The inventory list was long. On its many pages, in his small and precise script, he had listed furniture, paintings, china, silverware and all the rest of it — all the personal belongings that had been accumulated by the Barringtons through a long family history.
And now that he had reached the end of it, he noted down himself, the last item of them all:
One domestic robot, Richard Daniel, antiquated but in good repair.
He laid the pen aside and shuffled all the inventory sheets together and stacked them in good order, putting a paper weight upon them — the little exquisitely carved ivory paper weight that aunt Hortense had picked up that last visit she had made to Peking.
And having done that, his job came to an end.
He shoved back the chair and rose from the desk and slowly walked across the living room, with all its clutter of possessions from the family's past. There, above the mantel, hung the sword that ancient Jonathon had worn in the War Between the States, and below it, on the mantelpiece itself, the cup the Commodore had won with his valiant yacht, and the jar of moon-dust that Tony had brought back from Man's fifth landing on the Moon, and the old chronometer that had come from the long-scrapped family spacecraft that had plied the asteroids.
And all around the room, almost cheek by jowl, hung the family portraits, with the old dead faces staring out into the world that they had helped to fashion.
And not a one of them from the last six hundred years, thought Richard Daniel, staring at them one by one, that he had not known.
There, to the right of the fireplace, old Rufus Andrew Barrington, who had been a judge some two hundred years ago. And to the right of Rufus, Johnson Joseph Barrington, who had headed up that old lost dream of mankind, the Bureau of Paranormal Research. There, beyond the door that led out to the porch, was the scowling pirate face of Danley Barrington, who had first built the family fortune.
And many others — administrator, adventurer, corporation chief. All good men and true.
But this was at an end. The family had run out.
Slowly Richard Daniel began his last tour of the house — the family room with its cluttered living space, the den with its old mementos, the library and its rows of ancient books, the dining hall in which the crystal and the china shone and sparkled, the kitchen gleaming with the copper and aluminum and the stainless steel, and the bedrooms on the second floor, each of them with its landmarks of former occupants. And finally, the bedroom where old Aunt Hortense had finally died, at long last closing out the line of Barringtons.
The empty dwelling held a not-quite-haunted quality, the aura of a house that waited for the old gay life to take up once again. But it was a false aura. All the portraits, all the china and the silverware, everything within the house would be sold at public auction to satisfy the debts. The rooms would be stripped and the possessions would be scattered and, as a last indignity, the house itself be sold.
Even he, himself, Richard Daniel thought, for he was chattel, too. He was there with all the rest of it, the final item on the inventory.
Except that what they planned to do with him was worse than simple sale. For he would be changed before he was offered up for sale. No one would be interested in putting up good money for him as he stood. And, besides, there was the law — the law that said no robot could legally have continuation of a single life greater than a hundred years.
And he had lived in a single life six times a hundred years. He had gone to see a lawyer and the lawyer had been sympathetic, but had held forth no hope.
"Technically," he had told Richard Daniel in his short, clipped lawyer voice, "you are at this moment much in violation of the statute. I completely fail to see how your family got away with it."
"They liked old things," said Richard Daniel. "And, besides, I was very seldom seen. I stayed mostly in the house. I seldom ventured out."
"Even so," the lawyer said, "there are such things as records. There must be a file on you…"
"The family," explained Richard Daniel, "in the past had many influential friends. You must understand, sir, that the Barringtons, before they fell upon hard times, were quite prominent in politics and in many other matters."
The lawyer grunted knowingly.
"What I can't quite understand," he said, "is why you should object so bitterly. You'll not be changed entirely. You'll still be Richard Daniel."
"I would lose my memories, would I not?'
"Yes, of course you would. But memories are not too important. And you'd collect another set."
"My memories are dear to me," Richard Daniel told him.
"They are all I have. After some six hundred years, they are my sole worthwhile possession. Can you imagine, counselor, what it means to spend six centuries with one family?"
"Yes, I think I can," agreed the lawyer. "But now, with the family gone, isn't it just possible the memories may prove painful?"
"They're a comfort. A sustaining comfort. They make me feel important. They give me perspective and a niche."
"But don't you understand? You'll need no comfort, no importance once you're reoriented. You'll be brand new. All that you'll retain is a certain sense of basic identity — that they cannot take away from you even if they wished. There'll be nothing to regret. There'll be no leftover guilts, no frustrated aspirations, no old loyalties to hound you."
"I must be myself," Richard Daniel insisted stubbornly. "I've found a depth of living, a background against which my living has some meaning. I could not face being anybody else."
"You'd be far better off," the lawyer said wearily. "You'd have a better body. You'd have better mental tools. You'd be more intelligent."
Richard Daniel got up from the chair. He saw it was no use.
"You'll not inform on me?" he asked.
"Certainly not," the lawyer said. "So far as I'm concerned, you aren't even here."
"Thank you," said Richard Daniel. "How much do I owe you?"
"Not a thing," the lawyer told him. "I never make a charge to anyone who is older than five hundred."
He had meant it as a joke, but Richard Daniel did not smile. He had not felt like smiling.
At the door he turned around.
"Why?" he was going to ask. "Why this silly law."
But he did not have to ask — it was not hard to see.
Human vanity, he knew. No human being lived much longer than a hundred years, so neither could a robot. But a robot, on the other hand, was too valuable simply to be junked at the end of a hundred years of service, so there was this law providing for the periodic breakup of the continuity of each robot's life. And thus no human need undergo the psychological indignity of knowing that his faithful serving man might manage to outlive him by several thousand years.
It was illogical, but humans were illogical.
Illogical, but kind. Kind in many different ways.
Kind, sometimes, as the Barringtons had been kind, thought Richard Daniel. Six hundred years of kindness. It was a prideful thing to think about. They had even given him a double name. There weren't many robots nowadays who had double names. It was a special mark of affection and respect.
The lawyer having failed him, Richard Daniel had sought another source of help. Now, thinking back on it, standing in the room where Hortense Barrington had died, he was sorry that he'd done it. For he had embarrassed the religico almost unendurably. It had been easy for the lawyer to tell him what he had. Lawyers had the statutes to
determine their behavior, and thus suffered little from agonies of personal decision.
But a man of the cloth is kind if he is worth his salt. And this one had been kind instinctively as well as professionally, and that had made it worse.
"Under certain circumstances," he had said somewhat awkwardly, "I could counsel patience and humility and prayer. Those are three great aids to anyone who is willing to put them to his use. But with you I am not certain."
"You mean," said Richard Daniel, "because I am a robot." "Well, now…" said the minister, considerably befuddled at this direct approach.
"Because I have no soul?"
"Really," said the minister miserably, "you place me at a disadvantage. You are asking me a question that for centuries has puzzled and bedeviled the best minds in the church."
"But one," said Richard Daniel, "that each man in his secret heart must answer for himself."
"I wish I could," cried the distraught minister. "I truly wish I could."
"If it is any help," said Richard Daniel, "I can tell you that sometimes I suspect I have a soul."
And that, he could see, had been most upsetting for this kindly human. It had been, Richard Daniel told himself, unkind of him to say it. For it must have been confusing, since coming from himself it was not opinion only, but expert evidence.
So he had gone away from the minister's study and come back to the empty house to get on with his inventory work.
Now that the inventory was all finished and the papers stacked where Dancourt, the estate administrator, could find them when be showed up in the morning, Richard Daniel had done his final service for the Barringtons and now must begin doing for himself.
He left the bedroom and closed the door behind him and went quietly down the stairs and along the hallway to the little cubby, back of the kitchen, that was his very own.
And that, he reminded himself with a rush of pride, was of a piece with his double name and his six hundred years. There were not too many robots who had a room, however small, that they might call their own.
He went into the cubby and turned on the light and closed the door behind him.
And now, for the first time, he faced the grim reality of what he meant to do.
The cloak and hat and trousers hung upon a hook and the galoshes were placed precisely underneath them. His attachment kit lay in one corner of the cubby and the money was cached underneath the floor board he had loosened many years ago to provide a hiding place.
There was, he, told himself, no point in waiting. Every minute counted. He had a long way to go and he must be at his destination before morning light.
He knelt on the floor and pried up the loosened board, shoved in a hand and brought out the stacks of bills, money hidden through the years against a day of need.
There were three stacks of bills, neatly held together by elastic bands — money given him throughout the years as tips and Christmas gifts, as birthday presents and rewards for little jobs well done.
He opened the storage compartment located in his chest and stowed away all the bills except for half a dozen which he stuffed into a pocket in one hip.
He took the trousers off the hook and it was an awkward business, for he'd never worn clothes before except when he'd tried on these very trousers several days before. It was a lucky thing, he thought, that long-dead Uncle Michael had been a portly man, for otherwise the trousers never would have fit.
He got them on and zippered and belted into place, then forced his feet into the overshoes. He was a little worried about the overshoes. No human went out in the summer wearing overshoes. But it was the best that he could do. None of the regular shoes he'd found in the house had been nearly large enough.
He hoped no one would notice, but there was no way out of it. Somehow or other, he had to cover up his feet, for if anyone should see them, they'd be a giveaway.
He put on the cloak and it was a little short. He put on the hat and it was slightly small, but he tugged it down until it gripped his metal skull and that was all to the good, he told himself; no wind could blow it off.
He picked up his attachments — a whole bag full of them that he'd almost never used. Maybe it was foolish to take them along, he thought, but they were a part of him and by rights they should go with him. There was so little that he really owned — just the money he had saved, a dollar at a time, and this kit of his.
With the bag of attachments clutched underneath his arm, he closed the cubby door and went down the hall.
At the big front door he hesitated and turned back toward the house, but it was, at the moment, a simple darkened cave, empty of all that it once had held. There was nothing here to stay for — nothing but the memories, and the memories he took with him.
He opened the door and stepped out on the stoop and closed the door behind him.
And now, he thought, with the door once shut behind him, he was on his own. He was running off. He was wearing clothes. He was out at night, without the permission of a master. And all of these were against the law.
Any officer could stop him, or any citizen. He had no rights at all. And he had no one who would speak for him, now that the Barringtons were gone.
He moved quietly down the walk and opened the gate and went slowly down the street, and it seemed to him the house was calling for him to come back. He wanted to go back, his mind said that he should go back, but his feet kept going on, steadily down the street.
He was alone, he thought, and the aloneness now was real, no longer the mere intellectual abstract he'd held in his mind for days. Here he was, a vacant hulk, that for the moment had no purpose and no beginning and no end, but was just an entity that stood naked in an endless reach of space and time and held no meaning in itself.
But he walked on and with each block that he covered he slowly fumbled back to the thing he was, the old robot in old clothes, the robot running from a home that was a home no longer.
He wrapped the cloak about him tightly and moved on down the street and now he hurried, for he had to hurry.
He met several people and they paid no attention to him. A few cars passed, but no one bothered him.
He came to a shopping center that was brightly lighted and he stopped and looked in terror at the wide expanse of open, brilliant space that lay ahead of him. He could detour around it, but it would use up time and he stood there, undecided, trying to screw up his courage to walk into the light.
Finally he made up his mind and strode briskly out, with his cloak wrapped tight about him and his hat pulled low.
Some of the shoppers turned and looked at him and he felt agitated spiders running up and down his back. The galoshes suddenly seemed three times as big as they really were and they made a plopping, squashy sound that was most embarrassing.
He hurried on, with the end of the shopping area not more than a block away.
A police whistle shrilled and Richard Daniel jumped in sudden fright and ran. He ran in slobbering, mindless fright, with his cloak streaming out behind him and his feet slapping on the pavement.
He plunged out of the lighted strip into the welcome darkness of a residential section and he kept on running.
Far off he heard the siren and he leaped a hedge and tore across the yard. He thundered down the driveway and across a garden in the back and a dog came roaring out and engaged in noisy chase.
Richard Daniel crashed into a picket fence and went through it to the accompaniment of snapping noises as the pickets and the rails gave way. The dog kept on behind him and other dogs joined in.
He crossed another yard and gained the street and pounded down it. He dodged into a driveway, crossed another yard, upset a birdbath and ran into a clothesline, snapping it in his headlong rush.
Behind him lights were snapping on in the windows of the houses and screen doors were banging as people hurried out to see what the ruckus was.
He ran on a few more blocks, crossed another yard and ducked into a lilac thicket, stood still and lis
tened. Some dogs were still baying in the distance and there was some human shouting, but there was no siren.
He felt a thankfulness well up in him that there was no siren, and a sheepishness, as well. For he had been panicked by himself, be knew; he had run from shadows, he had fled from guilt.
But he'd thoroughly roused the neighborhood and even now, he knew, calls must be going out and in a little while the place would be swarming with police.
He'd raised a hornet's nest and he needed distance, so he crept out of the lilac thicket and went swiftly down the street, heading for the edge of town.
He finally left the city, and found the highway. He loped along its deserted stretches. When a car or truck appeared, he pulled off on the shoulder and walked along sedately. Then when the car or truck had passed, he broke into his lope again.
He saw the spaceport lights miles before he got there.
When he reached the port, he circled off the road and came up outside a fence and stood there in the darkness, looking.
A gang of robots was loading one great starship and there were other ships standing darkly in their pits.
He studied the gang that was loading the ship, lugging the cargo from a warehouse and across the area lighted by the floods. This was just the setup he had planned on, although he had not hoped to find it immediately — he had been afraid that he might have to hide out for a day or two before he found a situation that he could put to use. And it was a good thing that he had stumbled on this opportunity, for an intensive hunt would be on by now for a fleeing robot, dressed in human clothes.
He stripped off the cloak and pulled off the trousers and the overshoes; he threw away the hat. From his attachments bag he took out the cutters, screwed off a hand and threaded the cutters into place. He cut the fence and wiggled through it, then replaced the hand and put the cutters back into the kit.
Moving cautiously in the darkness, he walked up to the warehouse, keeping in its shadow.
It would be simple, he told himself. All he had to do was step out and grab a piece of cargo, clamber up the ramp and down into the hold. Once inside, it should not be difficult to find a hiding place and stay there until the ship had reached first planet-fall.
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