Turn Left at Thursday (1961) SSC

by Frederik Pohl

  Sonny shook Davey Crockett's arm off. "Get lost," he said petulantly. "Who wants you around?"

  Long John Silver came out of the closet, hobbling on its wooden leg, crouched over its knobby cane. "Ah, young master," it said reproachfully, "you shouldn't ought to talk to old Davey like that! He's a good friend to you, Davey is. Many's the weary day Davey and me has been a-keepin' of your company. I asks you this, young master: Is it fair and square that you should be a-tellin' him to get lost? Is it fair, young master? Is it square?"

  Sonny looked at the floor stubbornly and didn't answer. What was the use of answering dummies like them? He stood rebelliously silent and still until he just felt like saying something. And then he said: "You go in the closet, both of you. I don't want to play with you. I'm going to play with my trains."

  Long John said unctuously: "Now there's a good idea, that

  Is! You just be a-havin' of a good time with your trains and old Davey and me'll-"

  "Go ahead!" shouted Sonny. He kept stamping his foot until they were out of sight.

  His fire truck was in the middle of the floor; he kicked at it, but it rolled quickly out of reach and slid into its little garage under the tanks of tropical fish.

  He scuffed over to the model railroad layout and glared at it. As he approached, the Twentieth Century Limited came roaring out of a tunnel, sparks flying from its stack. It crossed a bridge, whistled at a grade crossing, steamed into the Union Station. The roof of the station glowed and suddenly became transparent, and through it Sonny saw the bustling crowds of redcaps and travelers-

  "I don't want that," he said. "Casey, crack up old Number Ninety-nine again."

  Obediently the layout quivered and revolved a half-turn. Old Casey Jones, one and an eighth inches tall, leaned out of the cab of the S.P. locomotive and waved good-by to Sonny. The locomotive whistled shrilly twice and picked up speed—

  It was a good crackup. Little old Casey's body, thrown completely free, developed real blisters from the steam and bled real blood. But Sonny turned his back on it. He had liked that crackup for a long time-longer than he liked almost any other toy he owned. But he was tired of it.

  He looked around the room.

  Tarzan of the Apes, leaning against a foot-thick tree trunk, one hand on a vine, lifted its head and looked at him; but Tarzan was clear across the room. The others were in the closet.

  Sonny ran out and slammed the door. He saw Tarzan start to come after him, but even before Sonny was out of the room, Tarzan slumped and stood stock-still.

  It wasn't fair, Sonny thought angrily. They wouldn't even chase him, so that at least he could have some kind of chance to get away by himself. They'd just talk to each other on their little radios, and in a minute one of the tutors, or one of the maids, or whatever else happened to be handy would vector in on him--

  But, for the moment, he was free.

  He slowed down and walked along the Great Hall toward his baby sister's room. The fountains began to splash as he entered the hall; the mosaics on the wall began to tinkle music and sparkle with moving colors.

  "Now, chile, whut you up to?"

  He turned around, but he knew it was Mammy coming toward him. It was slapping toward him on big, flat feet, its pink-palmed hands lifted to its shoulders. The face under the red bandanna was frowning, its gold tooth sparkling as Mammy scolded: "Chile, you is got usns so worried, we's fit to die! How you 'speck us to take good keer of you efn you run off lak that? Now you jes come on back to your nice room with Mammy an' we'll see if there ain't some real nice program on the TV."

  Sonny stopped and waited for it, but he wouldn't give it the satisfaction of looking at it. Slap-slap the big feet waddled cumbersomely toward him; but he didn't have any illusions. Waddle, big feet, three hundred pounds and all, Mammy could catch him in twenty yards with a ten-yard start. Any of them could.

  He said in his best icily indignant voice: "I was just going in to look, at my baby sister."

  Pause. "You was?" The plump black face looked suspicious.

  "Yes, I was. Doris is my own sister and I love her." Pause-long pause. "Dat's nice," said Mammy, but its voice was still doubtful. "I 'speck I better come 'long with you. You wouldn't want to wake your lil baby sister up. Ef I come, I'll he'p you keep real quiet."

  Sonny shook free of it they were always putting their bands on kids! "I don't want you to come with me, Mammy!"

  "Aw, now, honey! Mammy ain't gwine bother nothin', you knows that!"

  Sonny turned his back on it and marched grimly toward his sister's room. If only they would leave him alone! But they never did.

  It was always that way, always one darn old robot-yes, robot, he thought, savagely tasting the naughty word. Always one darn robot after another. Why couldn't Daddy be like other daddies, so they could live in a decent little house and get rid of those darn robots-so he could go to a real school and be in a class with other boys, instead of being taught at home by Miss Brooks and Mr. Chips and all those other robots?

  They spoiled everything. And they would spoil what he wanted to do now. But he was going to do it all the same, because there was something in Doris's room that he wanted very much.

  It was probably the only tangible thing he wanted in the world.

  As he and Mammy passed the imitation tumbled rocks of the Bear Cave, Mama Bear poked its head out and growled: "Hello, Sonny. Don't you think you ought to he in bed? It's nice and warm in our bear bed, Sonny."

  He didn't even look at it. Time was when he had liked that sort of thing, too, but he wasn't a four-year-old like Doris any more. All the same, there was one thing a four-year-old had--

  He stopped at the door of her room. "Doris?" he whispered.

  Mammy scolded: "Now, chile, you knows that lil baby is asleep! How come you tryin' to wake her up?"

  "I won't wake her up." The furthest thing from Sonny's mind was to wake his sister up. He tiptoed into the room and stood beside the little girl's bed. Lucky kidl he thought enviously. Being four, she was allowed to have a tiny little room and a tiny bed-while Sonny had to wallow around in a forty-foot bedchamber and a bed eight feet long.

  He looked down at his sister. Behind him, Mammy clucked approvingly. "Dat's nice when chilluns loves each other lak you an' that lil baby," it whispered.

  Doris was sound asleep, clutching her teddybear. It wriggled slightly and opened an eye to look at Sonny, but it didn't say anything.

  Sonny took a deep breath, leaned forward and gently slipped the teddybear out of the bed.

  It scrambled pathetically, trying to get free.

  Mammy whispered urgently: "Sonnyl Now you let dat old teddybear alone, you heah me?"

  Sonny whispered: "I'm not hurting anything. Leave me alone, will you?"

  "Sonny!"

  He clutched the little furry robot desperately around its middle. The stubby arms pawed at him, the furred feet scratched against his arms. It growled a tiny doll-bear grow, and whined, and suddenly his hands were wet with its real salt tears.

  "Sonny! Come on now, honey, you knows that's Doris's Teddy. Aw, chile!"

  He said: "It's mine!" It wasn't his. He knew it wasn't. His was long gone, taken away from him when he was six because it was old, and because he had been six, and six-year olds had to have bigger, more elaborate companion-robots. It wasn't even the same color as his-it was brown and his had been black and white. But it was cuddly and gently warm and he had heard it whispering little bedtime stories to Doris. And he wanted it very much.

  Footsteps in the hall outside. A low-pitched pleading voice from the door: "Sonny, you must not interfere with your sister's toys. One has obligations."

  He stood forlornly, holding the teddybear. "Go away, Mr. Chips!"

  "Really, Sonny! This isn't proper behavior. Please return the toy."

  "I won't!"

  Mammy, dark face pleading in the shadowed room, leaned toward him and tried to take it away from him. "Aw, honey, now you know that's not-"

  "
Leave me alone!" he shouted. There was a gasp and a little whimper from the bed, and Doris sat up and began to cry.

  The little girl's bedroom was suddenly filled with robots -and not only robots, for in a moment the butler appeared, leading Sonny's actual flesh-and-blood mother and father.

  Sonny made a terrible scene. He cried, and he swore at them childishly for being the unsuccessful clods they were, and they nearly wept, too, because they were aware that their lack of standing was bad for the children. But he couldn't keep Teddy.

  They marched him back to his room, where his father lectured him while his mother stayed behind to watch Mammy comfort the little girl.

  His father said: "Sonny, you're a big boy now. We aren't as well off as other people, but you have to help us. Don't you know that Sonny? We all have to do our part. Your mother and I'll he up till midnight now, consuming, because you've made this scene. Can't you at least try to consume something bigger than a teddybear? It's all right for Doris because she's so little, but a big boy like you

  "I hate you!" cried Sonny, and he turned his face to the wall.

  They punished him, naturally. The first punishment was that they give him an extra birthday party the week following.

  The second punishment was even worse.

  Later-much, much later, nearly a score of years-a man named Roger Garrick in a place named Fisherman's Island walked into his hotel room.

  The light didn't go on.

  The bellhop apologized, "We're sorry, sir. We'll have it attended to, if possible."

  "If possible?" Garrick's eyebrows went up. The bellhop made putting in a new light tube sound like a major industrial operation. "All right." He waved the bellhop out of the room. It bowed and closed the door.

  Garrick looked around him, frowning. One light tube more or less didn't make a lot of difference; there was still the light from the sconces at the walls, from the reading lamps at the chairs and chaise-longue and from the photomural on the long side of the room-to say nothing of the fact that it was broad, hot daylight outside and light poured through the windows. All the same, it was a new sensation to be in a room where the central lighting wasn't on. He didn't like it. It was-creepy.

  A rap on the door. A girl was standing there, young, attractive, rather small. But a woman grown, it was apparent. "Mr. Garrick? Mr. Roosenburg is expecting you on the sun deck."

  "All right." He rummaged around in the pile of luggage, looking for his briefcase. It wasn't even sorted out! The bellhop had merely dumped the stuff and left.

  The girl said: "Is that what you're looking for?" He looked where she was pointing; it was his briefcase, behind another bag. "You'll get used to that around here. Nothing in the right place, nothing working right. We've all gotten used to it.

  We? He looked at her sharply, but she was no robot; there was life, not the glow of electronic tubes, in her eyes. "Pretty bad, is it?"

  She shrugged. "Let's go see Mr. Roosenburg. I'm Kathryn Pender, by the way. I'm his statistician."

  He followed her out into the hall. "Statistician, did you say?"

  She turned and smiled-a tight, grim smile of annoyance. "That's right. Surprised?"

  Garrick said uneasily: "Well, it's more a robot job. Of course, I'm not familiar with the practice in this sector--"

  "You will be," she promised bluntly. "No, we aren't taking the elevator. Mr. Roosenburg's in a hurry to see you."

  "But--"

  She actually glared at him. "Don't you understand? Day before yesterday, I took the elevator and I was hung up between floors for an hour and a half. Something was going on at North Guardian and it took all the power in the lines. Would it happen again today? I don't know. But believe me, an hour and a half is a long time to be stuck in an elevator."

  She turned and led him to the fire stairs. Over her shoulder, she said: "Get it straight once and for all, Mr. Garrick. You're in a disaster area here Anyway, it's only ten more flights."

  Ten flights. Nobody climbed ten flights of stairs any morel

  Garrick was buffing and puffing before they were half way, but the girl kept on ahead, light as a gazelle. Her skirt reached between hip and knees, and Garrick had plenty of opportunity to observe that her legs were attractively tanned. Even so, he couldn't help looking around him.

  It was a robot's-eye view of the hotel that he was getting; this was the bare wire armature that held up the confectionery suites and halls where the humans went. Garrick knew, as everyone absently knew, that there were places like this behind the scenes everywhere. Below stairs, the robots worked; behind scenes, they moved about their errands and did their jobs. But nobody went there.

  It was funny about the backs of this girl's knees. They were paler than the rest of the leg—

  Garrick wrenched his mind back to his surroundings. Take the guard rail along the steps, for instance. It was wire-thin, frail-looking. No doubt it could bear any weight it was required to, but why couldn't it look that strong?

  The answer, obviously, was that robots did not have humanity's built-in concepts of how strong a rail should look before they could believe it really was strong. If a robot should be in any doubt-and how improbable that a robot should be in doubt-it would perhaps reach out a sculptured hand and test it. Once. And then it would remember, and never doubt again, and it wouldn't be continually edging toward the wall, away from the spider-strand between it and the vertical drop—

  He conscientiously took the middle of the steps all the rest of the way up.

  Of course, that merely meant a different distraction, when he really wanted to do some thinking. But it was a pleasurable distraction. And by the time they reached the top, he had solved the problem. The pale spots at the back of Miss Pender's knees meant she had got her tan the hard way walking in the Sun, perhaps working in the Sun, so that the bending knees kept the Sun from the patches at the back; not, as anyone else would acquire a tan, by lying beneath a normal, healthful sunlamp held by a robot masseur.

  He wheezed: "You don't mean we're all the way up!"

  "All the way up," she said, and looked at him closely. "Here, lean on me if you want to."

  "No, thanks!" He staggered over to the door, which opened naturally enough as he approached it, and stepped out into the flood of sunlight on the roof, to meet Mr. Roosenburg.

  Garrick wasn't a medical doctor, but he remembered enough of his basic pre-specialization to know there was something in that fizzy golden drink. It tasted perfectly splendid-just cold enough, just fizzy enough, not quite too sweet. And after two sips of it, he was buoyant with strength and well-being.

  He put the glass down and said: "Thank you for whatever it was. Now let's talk."

  "Gladly, gladly!" boomed Mr. Roosenburg. "Kathryn, the files!"

  Garrick looked after her, shaking his head. Not only was she a statistician, which was robot work, she was also a file clerk-and that was barely robot work. It was the kind of thing handled by a semi-sentient punchcard sorter in a decently run sector.

  Roosenburg said sharply: "Shocks you, doesn't it? But that's why you're here." He was a slim, fair little man and he wore a golden beard cropped square.

  Garrick took another sip of the fizzy drink. It was good stuff; it didn't intoxicate, but it cheered. He said: "I'm glad to know why I'm here."

  The golden beard quivered. "Area control sent you down and didn't tell you this was a disaster area?"

  Garrick put down the glass. "I'm a psychist. Area Control said you needed a psychist. From what I've seen, it's a supply problem, but--"

  "Here are the files," said Kathryn Pender, and stood watching him.

  Roosenburg took the spools of tape from her and dropped them in his lap. He asked tangentially: "How old are you, Roger?"

  Garrick was annoyed. "I'm a qualified psychist! I happen to be assigned to Area Control and--"

  "How old are you?"

  Garrick scowled. "Twenty-four."

  Roosenburg nodded. "Um. Rather young," he observed. "Maybe you don'
t remember how things used to be."

  Garrick said dangerously: "All the information I need is on that tape. I don't need any lectures from you."

  Roosenburg pursed his lips and got up. "Come here a minute, will you?"

  He moved over to the rail of the sun deck and pointed. "See those things down there?"

  Garrick looked. Twenty stories down, the village straggled off toward the sea in a tangle of pastel oblongs and towers. Over the bay, the hills of the mainland were faintly visible through mist and, riding the bay, the flat white floats of the solar receptors.

  "It's a power plant. That what you mean?"

  Roosenburg boomed: "A power plant. All the power the world can ever use, out of this one and all the others, all over the world." He peered out at the bobbing floats, soaking up energy from the Sun. "And people used to try to wreck them," he added.

  Garrick said stiffly: "I may only be twenty-four years old, Mr. Roosenburg, but I have completed school."

  "Oh, yes. Of course you have, Roger. But maybe schooling isn't the same thing as living through a time like that. I grew up in the Era of Plenty, when the law was Consumel My parents were poor and I still remember the misery of my childhood. Eat and consume, wear and use. I never had a moment's peace, Roger! For the very poor, it was a treadmill; we had to consume so much that we could never catch up, and the further we fell behind, the more the Ration Board forced on us-"

  "That's ancient history, Mr. Roosenburg. Morey Fry liberated us from all that."

  The girl said softly: "Not all of us."

  The man with the golden beard nodded. "Not all of us -as you should know, Roger, being a psychist."

  Garrick sat up straight and Roosenburg went on: "Fry showed us that the robots could help at both ends-by producing and by consuming. But it came a little late for some Of us. The patterns of childhood do linger on."