Shards of Space

by Robert Sheckley

  Amelia came out to the fields that day. Dirk’s face was outlined by the garish sunset and his clenched fists were on his hips. He was staring at the poor, dwarfed, shoulder-high corn.

  There was nothing Amelia could say. She put her hand comfortingly on his shoulder.

  “We’re not licked,” Dirk muttered.

  “What will you do?” Amelia asked.

  “I’ll plant a crop a week, if need be. I’ll work the robots until their joints crystallize. This soil will yield. It must yield!”

  Amelia stepped back, surprised at the vehemence of his tone. But she could understand how he felt. On Earth, a farmer simply gave the orders to his Control Robot, and in a few days he was ready to harvest. Dirk had been working and watching this miserable crop for over a week.

  “What will you do with it?” she asked.

  “Feed it to the animals,” Dirk said contemptuously. They walked to the house together in the gathering twilight.

  The next day, Dirk took his farm animals out of the freezers, reanimated them, and set up their pens and stalls. The beasts fed continually on the corn and wheat. Force-seeds went back into the ground—and the second growing was of normal size.

  Amelia had little time to observe this triumph. Their five-room dwelling was small by Earth standards, but it still needed coordinating.

  It was difficult. She had grown up in an ordinary suburban home, where the housekeeping duties were arranged in automatic time sequences. Here, each function was handled by an individual machine. There was no time to recess them into the walls and they were forever in the way, ruining her decor, making the house look like a machine shop.

  Instead of a single, centralized switchboard, Amelia had dials, buttons, and switches everywhere, jury-rigged in a casual style. At first, she had to spend a large part of each day just hunting for the proper controls for dry-cleaning, floor-scrubbing, window-washing, and other necessities she had taken for granted at home. Dirk had promised to hook all the circuits together, but he was always busy with his own work.

  Her House Robots were impossible. They were frontier models, built for durability, with none of the refinements she had known. Their memories were poor and they could anticipate nothing. At the end of the day, Amelia’s ears would ring from their harsh, raucous voices. And most of the time her house looked as though the robots had been attacking it, instead of cleaning it.

  The long five-hour days of drudgery went on and on, until Amelia felt she couldn’t take any more of it. In desperation, she called her mother on the tele-circuit.

  In the tiny, streaked screen, she could see her mother sitting in her favorite pneumo-chair beside the polarized glass wall. It was adjusted for vision now, and Amelia could see the city in the distance, springing upward in its glistening beauty.

  “What seems to be wrong?” her mother asked.

  A robot glided behind her mother’s chair and noiselessly put down a cup of tea. Amelia was sure that no command had been given. The sensitive mechanical had anticipated her, the way Earth robots did after long acquaintance with a family.

  “Well, it’s—” Amelia began to explain almost hysterically.

  Her own robot lurched through the room, almost breaking down a door when the photo-electric circuit didn’t respond quickly enough. It was too much.

  “I want to come home!” Amelia cried.

  “You know you’re always welcome, dear. But what about your husband?”

  “Dirk will come, I’m sure of it. We can find him a good job, can’t we, Mother?”

  “I suppose so. But is that what he wants?”

  “What?” Amelia asked blankly.

  “Will a man like that be satisfied on Earth? Will he return?”

  “He will if he loves me.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Mother, that’s unfair!” Amelia said, feeling a little sick inside.

  “It’s a mistake to make a man do something he doesn’t want to do,” her mother told her. “Your father.. .Anyhow, don’t you think you could make it work?”

  “I don’t know,” Amelia said. “I guess—I guess I’ll try.”

  Things did get better after that. Amelia learned how to live with her home, to overlook its inconveniences. She could see that someday it might be as pleasant as they had eventually made their farm on the Cap.

  But they had left the Cap. And as soon as this place was livable, Dirk would want to move on, into a fresh wilderness.

  One day, Dirk found her sitting beside their tiny swimming pool, weeping hopelessly.

  “Hey!” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  Clumsily he stroked her hair. “Tell me.”

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Oh, it’s all the work of making a nice home and putting up curtains and training robots and everything, and knowing—”

  “Knowing what?”

  “That someday you’ll want to move on and it’ll all be for nothing.” She sat up and tried to smile. “I’m sorry, Dirk. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  Dirk thought for a long time. Then he looked at her closely, and said, “I want to make you happy. You believe that, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “I guess we’ve done enough moving around. This is our home. We’ll stay right here.”

  “Really, Dirk?”

  “It’s a promise.”

  She hugged him tightly. Then she remembered. “Good heavens! My Napoleons will be ruined!” She ran off to the kitchen.

  The next weeks were the happiest Amelia had ever known. In the morning, their pre-set sun burst into glory, waking them to the morning chores. After they had a hearty breakfast, the work of the day began.

  It was never dull. One day Amelia and Dirk might erect a meteor screen to reinforce their pressure dome. Or they might tinker with the wind machine, to help the reanimated bees provide better pollination for the crops.

  In the evenings, they had their sunsets. Sometimes Dirk would have the Field Robots stage a clumsy dance. He was a firm but understanding master. He believed that a little variety was good for robots as well as for humans.

  Amelia regretted Earth only once. That was when Dirk picked up a Lunar rebroadcast of the Easter Parade on their television set. The music and bright colors made Amelia’s heart ache—but it was only for a moment.

  Their first visitor came several months later in a gaily decorated spaceship that settled on Dirk’s rough-hewn landing field. Painted on its side in letters eight feet high was the sign POTTER’S TRAVELING STORE. A dapper young man climbed out, sniffed the atmosphere, wrinkled his nose, and walked up to the house.

  “What can I do for you, stranger?” Dirk asked at the door.

  “Good day, countryman. I’m Potter,” the young man said, extending his hand which Dirk did not shake. “I was making my usual swing around Mars when I heard about you folks out here. Thought you might like to buy a few gimcracks to—to brighten up the place.”

  “Don’t want a thing,” Dirk said.

  Potter grinned amiably, but he had seen the severe, undecorated farmhouse and the spartan swimming pool.

  “Something for the wife?” Potter asked, winking at Amelia. “I won’t be around this way for a while.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Dirk said.

  But Amelia, her eyes glowing, wanted to go through Potter’s whole stock, and she dragged Dirk along.

  Like a child, she tried out all the household appliances, the modern time-saving gadgets for the home. She looked longingly at the dresses—dainty, sheer, with automatic necklines and hems—and thought of her own drab tailored fashions.

  But then she saw the Acting Robots. With their amazingly human appearance and civilized mannerisms, they reminded her poignantly of home.

  “Couldn’t we buy a troupe?” she asked Dirk.

  “We’ve got the movies, haven’t we? They were good enough for my father—”

  “But, Dirk, thes
e robots put on real plays!”

  “This particular troupe puts on all hit plays clear back to George Bernard Shaw,” Potter told them.

  Dirk looked with distaste at the handsome humanoid machines. “What else do they do?”

  “Do? They act,” Potter said. “Good Lord, countryman, you wouldn’t expect a work of art to do farm labor, would you?”

  “Why not?” Dirk asked. “I don’t believe in pampering robots. Farm labor’s good enough for my Control Robot and I’ll bet he’s smarter than these gimcracks.”

  “Your Control Robot is not an artist,” Potter said loftily.

  Amelia was so wistful that Dirk bought the troupe. While he was lugging them to the house—Acting Robots were too delicate to walk over stony ground—Amelia bought a dress.

  “What’s a girl like you doing in this wilderness?” Potter asked.

  “I like it.”

  “Oh, it’s livable, I suppose. Life of toil, doing without luxuries, advancing the frontier, all that sort of thing. But don’t you get sick of roughing it’“

  Amelia didn’t answer him.

  Potter shrugged his shoulders. “Well,” he said, “this sector’s ripe for colonization. You’ll be having company before long.”

  Amelia took her dress and returned to the house. Potter blasted off.

  Dirk was forced to admit the Acting Robots made pleasant company during the long, still evenings. He even became quite fond of Man and Superman. After a while, he began to give the robots acting directions, which they naturally ignored.

  Still, he was always certain that his Control Robot could do as well, if the voice box were only improved a little

  Amusements, however, were swallowed in the long Five-hour working days. Dirk began to collect other little asteroids and grapple them to his original claim. He force-planted a forest, constructed a waterfall, and tinkered with his father’s old climate machine.

  Finally he got it working and was able to reproduce seasons on their planetoid.

  One day, the tele-circuit spluttered into life and Dirk received a spacegram. It was from Explorers, Inc., an Earth firm that manufactured a complete line of equipment for pioneers. They offered Dirk a job as head of their main testing laboratory, at a salary just a little short of stupendous.

  “Oh, Dirk!” Amelia gasped. “What an opportunity!”

  “Opportunity? What are you talking about?”

  “You could be wealthy. You could have anything you wanted.”

  “I’ve got what I want,” Dirk said. “Tell them no, thanks.”

  Amelia sighed wearily. She cabled Dirk’s refusal to the firm—but added that his services might possibly be available later.

  After all, there was no sense in completely shutting the door.

  During the long summer, another spaceship swung over Dirk’s landing field. This one was older and even more battered than Dirk’s, and it dropped the last five feet to the ground, jarring the whole small planetoid. A young couple staggered out, on the point of collapse.

  They were Jean and Percy Phillips, who had homesteaded several thousand miles from Dirk’s holdings. Everything had gone wrong. Their power had failed, their robots had broken down, their food had run out. In desperation, they had set out for Dirk’s farm. They were near starvation, having been without food for almost two whole days.

  Dirk and Amelia gave them the hospitality of the frontier and quickly nursed them back to health. It became readily apparent that the Phillipses were ignorant of any of the rules of survival.

  Percy Phillips didn’t even know how to handle robots. Dirk had to explain it to him.

  “You have to show them who’s boss,” Dirk said.

  “But I should think that the proper command, given in a low, pleasant voice—”

  “Not out here,” Dirk said, with a positive shake of his head. “These Work Robots are a stupid, unresponsive lot. They’re sullen and resentful. You have to pound the commands into them. Kick them, if need be.”

  Phillips raised both eyebrows. “Mistreat a robot?”

  “You have to show them who the human is.”

  “But in Colonization School, we were taught to treat our robots with dignity,” Phillips protested.

  “You’ll lose a lot of Earth notions out here,” Dirk said bluntly. “Now listen to me. I was raised by robots. Some of my best friends are robots. I know what I’m talking about. The only way they’ll show you any respect is if you make them.”

  Phillips admitted doubtfully that Dirk might be right.

  “Of course I’m right!” Dirk stated. “You say your power supply failed?”

  “Yes, but the robots didn’t—”

  “Didn’t they? They have access to the charge outlets, haven’t they?”

  “Of course. When they’re low, they recharge themselves.”

  “You think they stop when they’re full? A robot’ll keep on drawing power until it’s all gone. Haven’t you learned that old robot stunt?”

  “I guess that’s what happened,” Phillips said. “But why would they do it?”

  “Robots are congenital drunks,” Dirk told him. “The manufacturers stamp it into them. That way, they bum out faster and you have to buy more robots. Believe me, you’ll be doing them a favor if you keep them power-starved.”

  “I guess I’ve got a lot to learn,” Phillips sighed.

  And Jean, his wife, had even more to learn. Amelia had to show her over and over again diat buttons won’t push themselves, switches won’t close without timing circuits, dials won’t leap of their own free will to the proper setting, Cleaning Robots can’t be trusted with the cooking, and the Rub-A-Tub, although a versatile instrument, won’t put up the preserves.

  “I never thought there was so much to it,” Jean said. “How do you do it all?”

  “You’ll learn,” Amelia assured her, remembering her own early days on the frontier.

  The Phillipses set out again for their claim. Amelia had thought it would be lonely when they were gone, but it was pleasant to be alone with Dirk again, to get back to work on their farm.

  But people wouldn’t leave them alone. Next, a man from Mars Rural Power called. Homesteaders were moving into the Asteroid

  Belt, he explained, so the power outlets were being extended. He wanted to hook up Dirk’s farm to the Mars Power tight-beam network.

  “Nope,” Dirk said.

  “Why not? It’s not expensive—”

  “I make my own power.”

  “Oh, these little generators,” the man said, looking scornfully at Dirk’s sun. “But for really high-gain performance—”

  “Don’t need it. This farm runs fast enough to suit me.”

  “You could get more work out of your robots.”

  “Just wear them out faster.”

  “Then you could get the latest models.”

  “The new ones just burn out faster.”

  “A better generating system, then,” the man said. “That little sun of yours doesn’t have much of an output.”

  “Puts out enough to satisfy me.”

  The man shook his head wonderingly. “I guess I’ll never understand you pioneers,” he said, and left.

  They tried to resume their life. But lights were beginning to wink on from neighboring asteroids, and the Lunar television was jammed with local signals. The mail rocket began to make weekly stops and a travel bureau started trips into the Belt.

  The familiar, dissatisfied look came over Dirk’s face. He studied the sky around him. It was closing in. He was losing his elbow room, and the silence of his farm was broken by the flame of passing rockets.

  But he had promised Amelia and he was going to keep that promise if it killed him. His face grew gaunt and he began to work six, seven—sometimes actually eight—hours a day.

  A sewing machine salesman called, and a bright, determined woman tried to sell Dirk the Solar Encyclopedia. The ship routes were established now and the long, dangerous trail had become a superhighway.
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br />   One night, while Dirk and Amelia were sitting on their porch, they saw an immense sign light up the sky. It stretched over miles of space, and read: Rosen’s Shopping Center, stores, restaurants, best drinks in the asteroids.

  “Stores,” Amelia murmured. “And a restaurant! Oh, Dirk, couldn’t we go?”

  “Why not?” he said, with a helpless shrug of his shoulders.

  The next day, Amelia put on her new dress and made Dirk wear his one custom-tailored suit. They got into the old spaceship and set out.

  Rosen’s Center, a bustling frontier town sprawling across four linked asteroids, was struggling valiantly to become a city. Already driftways had been installed on all the streets. The town was filled with noisy, eager people, and robots clumped down the ways, loaded with gear.

  Amelia took Dirk into a restaurant, where they were served a real Earthside dinner. Dirk didn’t enjoy it. He was slightly nauseous from breathing other people’s air and the food was too delicate to stick to one’s ribs. The meal ended with Dirk ordering the wrong wine and trying to tip the robot waiter.

  Thoroughly miserable, he allowed himself to be dragged from one store to another. The only time he showed any interest was when they entered a heavy-tools shop.

  He examined a new anti-gravity engine. It was a model he had never seen.

  “Just the thing for canceling heavy-planet effects,” the robot clerk told him. “We believe this machine would work splendidly on the moons of Jupiter, for example.”

  “The moons of Jupiter?”

  “Just an example, sir,” the robot said. “No one’s ever been there. It’s completely unexplored territory.”

  Dirk nodded absently, rubbing his hand along the machine’s burnished surface.

  “Look, Amelia,” he said. “Do you suppose that job on Earth is still open?”

  “It might be,” she answered. “Why?”

  “Might as well be on Earth as here. These people are playing at pioneering.”

  “Do you think you’d be happy on Earth?”

  “Might.”

  “I doubt it,” Amelia said. She was remembering how contented they had been on the asteroid. Their life had been full and complete, just the two of them, pushing back the wilderness with their rude tools—doing without—improvising.