Robot and the Man - [Adventures in Science Fiction 04]
Page 23
“Um-m-m.” He picked the little machine up, noting the yellowed incomplete page still in it, even as he slipped the carriage tension cord back on its hook. But his real attention was devoted to the cement dust ground into the splintered handle of the pick.
No man or robot could be such a complete and hopeless dope, and yet he no longer doubted. She was a robot moron! And if knowledge were evil, then surely she belonged to God! All the horror of his contemplated murder vanished, leaving his mind clean and weak before the relief that flooded him as he motioned her out.
“All right, you’re not evil. You can go.”
“And you?”
And himself? Before, as Satan, her arguments would have been plausible, and he had discounted them. But now—it had been the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil! And yet-
“Dogs!” She caught at him, dragging him to the entrance where the baying sound was louder. “They’re hunting you, Adam—dozens of them!”
He nodded, studying the distant forms of men on horseback, while his fingers busied themselves with a pencil and scrap of paper. “And they’ll be here in twenty minutes. Good or evil, they must not find what’s here. Eve, there’s a boat by the river; pull the red handle the way you want to go, hard for fast, a light pull for slow. Here’s a map to my cave, and you’ll be safe there.”
Almost instantly, he was back at the excavator and in its saddle, his fingers flashing across its panel; its heavy generator bellowed gustily, and the squat, heavy machine began twisting through the narrow aisles and ramming obstructions aside. Once outside, where he could use its full force without danger of backwash, ten minutes would leave only a barren hill; and the generator could be overdriven by adjustment to melt itself and the machine into useless slag.
“Adam!” She was spraddling into the saddle behind him, shouting over the roar of the thin blade of energy that was enlarging the tunnel.
“Go on, get away, Eve! You can’t stop me!”
“I don’t want to—they’re not ready for such machines as this, yet! And between us, we can rebuild everything here, anyhow. Adam?”
He grunted uneasily, unable to turn away from the needle beam. It was hard enough trying to think without her distraction, knowing that he dared not take chances and must destroy himself, while her words and the instincts within him fought against his resolution. “You talk too much!”
“And I’ll talk a lot more, until you behave sensibly! You’ll make your mind sick, trying to decide now; come up the river for six months with me. You can’t do any harm there, even if you are Satan! Then, when you’ve thought it over, Adam, you can do what you like. But not now!”
“For the last time, will you go?” He dared not think now, while he was testing his way through the flawed, cracked cement, and yet he could not quiet his mind to her words, that went on and on. “GO!”
“Not without you! Adam, my receiver isn’t defective; I knew you’d try to kill me when I rescued you! Do you think I’ll give up so easily now?”
He snapped the power to silence with a rude hand, flinging around to face her. “You knew—and still saved me? Why?”
“Because I needed you, and the world needs you. You had to live, even if you killed me!”
Then the generator roared again, knifing its way through the last few inches, and he swung out of the dome and began turning it about. As the savage bellow of full power poured out of the main orifice, he turned his head to her and nodded.
She might be the dumbest robot in creation, but she was also the sweetest. It was wonderful to be needed and wanted!
And behind him, Eve nodded to herself, blessing Simon Ames for listing psychology as a humanity. In six months, she could complete his re-education and still have time to recite the whole of the Book he knew as a snatch of film. But not yet! Most certainly not Leviticus yet; Genesis would give her trouble enough.
It was wonderful to be needed and wanted!
~ * ~
Spring had come again, and Adam sat under one of the budding trees, idly feeding one of the new crop of piglets as Eve’s hands moved swiftly, finishing what were to be his clothes, carefully copied from those of Dan.
They were almost ready to go south and mingle with men in the task of leading the race back to its heritage. Already the yielding plastic he had synthesized and she had molded over them was a normal part of them, and the tiny magnetic muscles he had installed no longer needed thought to reveal their emotions in human expressions. He might have been only an uncommonly handsome man as he stood up and went over to her.
“Still hunting God?” she asked lightly, but there was no worry on her face. The metaphysical binge was long since cured.
A thoughtful smile grew on his face as he began donning the clothes. “He is still where I found Him-Something inside us that needs no hunting. No, Eve, I was wishing the other robot had survived. Even though we found no trace of his dome where your records indicated, I still feel he should be with us.”
“Perhaps he is, in spirit, since you insist robots have souls. Where’s your faith, Adam?”
But there was no mockery inside her. Souls or not, Adam’s God had been very good to them.
~ * ~
And far to the south, an aged figure limped over rubble to the face of a cliff. Under his hands, a cleverly concealed door swung open, and he pushed inward, closing and barring it behind him, and heading down the narrow tunnel to a rounded cavern at its end. It had been years since he had been there, but the place was still home to him as he creaked down onto a bench and began removing tattered, travel-stained clothes. Last of all, he pulled a mask and gray wig from his head, to reveal the dented and worn body of the third robot.
He sighed wearily as he glanced at the few tattered books and papers he had salvaged from the ruinous growth of stalagmites and stalactites within the chamber, and at the corroded switch the unplanned dampness had shorted seven hundred years before. And finally, his gaze rested on his greatest treasure. It was faded, even under the plastic cover, but the bitter face of Simon Ames still gazed out in recognizable form.
The third robot nodded toward it with a strange mixture of old familiarity and ever-new awe. “Over two thousand miles in my condition, Simon Ames, to check on a story I heard in one of the colonies, and months of searching for them. But I had to know. But they’re good for the world. They’ll bring all the things I couldn’t, and their thoughts are young and strong, as the race is young and strong.”
For a moment, he stared about the chamber and to the tunnel his adapted bacteria had eaten toward the outside world, resting his eyes again on the picture. Then he cut off the main generator and settled down in the darkness.
“Seven hundred years since I came out to find man extinct on the earth,” he muttered to the picture. “Four hundred since I learned enough to dare attempt his re-creation, and over three hundred since the last of my superfrozen human ova grew to success. Now I’ve done my part. Man has an unbroken tradition back to your race, with no knowledge of the break. He’s strong and young and fruitful, and he has new leaders, better than I could ever be alone. I can do no more for him!”
For a moment there was only the sound of his hands sliding against metal, and then a faint sigh. “Into my hands, Simon Ames, you gave your race. Now, into Thy Hands, God of that race, if you exist as my brother believes, I commend him—and my spirit,”
Then there was a click as his hands found the switch to his generator, and final silence.
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