by Jack Dann
"What is that?" I asked, forcing myself not to look away.
"It is a fungus disease," answered Sammy as the girl tried unsuccessfully with cream and powder to cover the ugly blemishes that had spread across her face.
"Is it native to this world?"
"Yes," said Sammy.
"You must have had some pretty ugly people walking around," I said.
"It did not affect most of the colonists. But Miss Emily's immune system was weakened by her other diseases."
"What other diseases?"
Sammy rattled off three or four that I'd never heard of. "And no one else in her family suffered from them?" "No, sir."
"It happens in my race too," offered the Baroni. "Every now and then a genetically inferior specimen is born and grows to maturity."
"She was not genetically inferior," said Sammy. "Oh?" I said, surprised. It's rare for a robot to contradict a living being, even an alien. "What was she?" Sammy considered his answer for a moment. "Perfect," he said at last.
"I'll bet the other kids didn't think so," I said.
"What do they know?" replied Sammy.
And instantly he projected another scene. Now the girl was fully grown, probably about twenty. She kept most of her skin covered, but we could see the ravaging effect her various diseases had had upon her hands and face.
Tears were running down from these beautiful blue eyes over bony, parchment-like cheeks. Her emaciated body was wracked by sobs.
A holograph of a robot's hand popped into existence, and touched her gently on the shoulder.
"Oh, Sammy!" she cried. "I really thought he liked me! He was always so nice to me." She paused for breath as the tears continued unabated. "But I saw his face when I reached out to take his hand, and I felt him shudder when I touched it. All he really felt for me was pity. That's all any of them ever feel!"
"What do they know?" said Sammy's voice, the same words and the same inflections he had just used a moment ago.
"It's not just him," she said. "Even the farm animals run away when I approach them. I don't know how anyone can stand being in the same room with me." She stared at where the robot was standing. "You're all I've got, Sammy. You're my only friend in the whole world. Please don't ever leave me."
"I will never leave you, Miss Emily," said Sammy's voice.
"Promise me."
"I promise," said Sammy.
And then the holograph vanished and Sammy stood mute and motionless again.
"He really cared for her," said the Baroni.
"The boy?" I said. "If he did, he had a funny way of showing it."
"No, of course not the boy. The robot."
"Come off it," I said. "Robots don't have any feelings." "You heard him," said the Baroni.
"Those were programmed responses," I said. "He probably has three million to choose from."
"Those are emotions," insisted the Baroni.
"Don't you go getting all soft on me," I said. "Any minute now you'll be telling me he's too human to sell."
"You are the human," said the Baroni. "He is the one with compassion."
"I've got more compassion than her parents did, letting her grow up like that," I said irritably. I confronted the robot again. "Sammy, why didn't the doctors do anything for her?"
"This was a farming colony," answered Sammy. "There were only 387 families on the entire world. The Democracy sent a doctor once a year at the beginning, and then, when there were less than 100 families left, he stopped coming. The last time Miss Emily saw a doctor was when she was fourteen."
"What about an offworld hospital?" asked the Baroni.
"They had no ship and no money. They moved here in the second year of a seven-year drought. Then various catastrophes wiped out their next six crops. They spent what savings they had on mutated cattle, but the cattle died before they could produce young or milk. One by one all the families began leaving the planet as impoverished wards of the Democracy."
"Including Miss Emily's family?" I asked.
"No. Mother died when Miss Emily was nineteen, and Father died two years later."
Then it was time for me to ask the Baroni's question. "So when did Miss Emily leave the planet, and why did she leave you behind?"
"She did not leave."
I frowned. "She couldn't have run the farm—not in her condition."
"There was no farm left to run," answered Sammy. "All the crops had died, and without Father there was no one to keep the machines working."
"But she stayed. Why?"
Sammy stared at me for a long moment. It's just as well his face was incapable of expression, because I got the distinct feeling that he thought the question was too simplistic or too stupid to merit an answer. Finally he projected another scene. This time the girl, now a woman approaching thirty, hideous open pustules on her face and neck, was sitting in a crudely crafted hoverchair, obviously too weak to stand anymore.
"No!" she rasped bitterly.
"They are your relatives," said Sammy's voice. "And they have a room for you."
"All the more reason to be considerate of them. No one should be forced to associate with me—especially not people who are decent enough to make the offer. We will stay here, by ourselves, on this world, until the end."
"Yes, Miss Emily"
She turned and stared at where Sammy stood. "You want to tell me to leave, don't you? That if we go to Jefferson ÌV I will receive medical attention and they will make me well—but you are compelled by your programming not to disobey me. Am I correct?"
"Yes, Miss Emily." .
The hint of a smile crossed her ravaged face. "Now you know what pain is."
"It is ... uncomfortable, Miss Emily."
"You'll learn to live with it," she said. She reached out and patted the robot's leg fondly. "If it's any comfort, I don't know if the medical specialists could have helped me even when I was young. They certainly can't help me now."
"You are still young, Miss Emily."
"Age is relative," she said. "I am so close to the grave I can almost taste the dirt." A metal hand appeared, and she held it in ten incredibly fragile fingers. "Don't feel sorry for me, Sammy. It hasn't been a life I'd wish on anyone else. I won't be sorry to see it end."
"I am a robot," replied Sammy. "I cannot feel sorrow." "You've no idea how fortunate you are."
I shot the Baroni a triumphant smile that said: See? Even Sammy admits he can't feel any emotions.
And he sent back a look that said: I didn't know until now that robots could lie, and I knew we still had a problem. The scene vanished.
"How soon after that did she die?" I asked Sammy. "Seven months, eighteen days, three hours, and four minutes, sir," was his answer.
"She was very bitter," noted the Baroni.
"She was bitter because she was born, sir," said Sammy. "Not because she was dying."
"Did she lapse into a coma, or was she cogent up to the end?" I asked out of morbid curiosity.
"She was in control of her senses until the moment she died," answered Sammy. "But she could not see for the last eighty-three days of her life. I functioned as her eyes."
"What did she need eyes for?" asked the Baroni. "She had a hoverchair, and it is a single-level house."
"When you are a recluse, you spend your life with books, sir," said Sammy, and I thought: The mechanical bastard is actually lecturing us!
With no further warning, he projected a fmal scene for us.
The woman, her eyes no longer blue, but clouded with cataracts and something else—disease, fungus, who knew?—lay on her bed, her breathing labored.
From Sammy's point of view, we could see not only her, but, much closer, a book of poetry and then we heard his voice: "Let me read something else, Miss Emily."
"But that is the poem I wish to hear," she whispered. "It is by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and she is my favorite."
"But it is about death," protested Sammy.
"All life is about death," she replied so sof
tly I could barely hear her. "Surely you know that I am dying, Sammy?"
"I know, Miss Emily," said Sammy.
"I find it comforting that my ugliness did not diminish the beauty around me, that it will remain after I am gone," she said. "Please read."
Sammy read:
."There will be rose and rhododendron
When you are dead and under ground;
Still will be heard from white syringas ..."
Suddenly the robot's voice fell silent. For a moment I thought there was a flaw in the projection. Then I saw that Miss Emily had died.
He stared at her for a long minute, which means that we did too, and then the scene evaporated.
"I buried her beneath her favorite tree," said Sammy. "But it is no longer there."
"Nothing lasts forever, even trees," said the Baroni. "And it's been five hundred years."
"It does not matter. I know where she is."
He walked us over to a barren spot about thirty yards from the ruin of a farmhouse. On the ground was a stone, and neatly carved into it was the following:
Miss Emily
2298-2331 G.E.
There will be rose and rhododendron
"That's lovely, Sammy," said the Baroni.
"It is what she requested."
What did you do after you buried her?" I asked.
"I went to the barn."
"For how long?"
"With Miss Emily dead, I had no need to stay in the house. I remained in the barn for many years, until my battery power ran out."
"Many years?" I repeated. "What the hell did you do there?"
"Nothing."
"You just stood there?"
"I just stood there."
"Doing nothing?"
"That is correct." He stared at me for a long moment, and I could have sworn he was studying me. Finally he spoke again. "I know that you intend to sell me."
"We'll find you a family with another Miss Emily," I said. If they're the highest bidder.
"I do not wish to serve another family. I wish to remain here."
"There's nothing here," I said. "The whole planet's deserted."
"I promised my Miss Emily that I would never leave her."
"But she's dead now," I pointed out.
"She put no conditions on her request. I put no conditions on my promise."
I looked from Sammy to the Baroni, and decided that this was going to take a couple of mechs—one to carry Sammy to the ship, and one to stop the Baroni from setting him free.
"But if you will honor a single request, I will break my promise to her and come away with you."
Suddenly I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I hadn't heard the first one yet.
"What do you want, Sammy?"
"I told you I did nothing in the barn. That was true. I was incapable of doing what I wanted to do."
"And what was that?"
"I wanted to cry."
I don't know what I was expecting, but that wasn't it.
"Robots don't cry," I said.
"Robots can't cry," replied Sammy. "There is a difference."
"And that's what you want?"
"It is what I have wanted ever since my Miss Emily died."
"We rig you to cry, and you agree to come away with us?"
"That is correct," said Sammy.
"Sammy," I said, "you've got yourself a deal."
I contacted the ship, told it to feed Mech Three everything the medical library had on tears and tear ducts, and then send it over. It arrived about ten minutes later, deactivated the robot, and started fussing and fiddling. After about two hours it announced that its work was done, that Sammy now had tear ducts and had been supplied with a solution that could produce six hundred authentic saltwater tears from each eye.
I had Mech Three show me how to activate Sammy, and then sent it back to the ship.
"Have you ever heard of a robot wanting to cry?" I asked the Baroni.
"No."
"Neither have I," I said, vaguely disturbed.
"He loved her."
I didn't even argue this time. I was wondering which was worse, spending thirty years trying to be a normal human being and failing, or spending thirty years trying to cry and failing. None of the other stuff had gotten to me; Sammy was just doing what robots do. It was the thought of his trying so hard to do what robots couldn't do that suddenly made me feel sorry for him. That in turn made me very irritable; ordinarily I don't even feel sorry for Men, let alone machines.
And what he wanted was such a simple thing compared to the grandiose ambitions of my own race. Once Men had wanted to cross the ocean; we crossed it. We'd wanted to fly; we flew. We wanted to reach the stars; we reached them. All Sammy wanted to do was cry over the loss of his Miss Emily. He'd waited half a millennium and had agreed to sell himself into bondage again, just for a few tears.
It was a lousy trade.
I reached out and activated him.
"Is it done?" asked Sammy.
"Right," I said. "Go ahead and cry your eyes out." Sammy stared straight ahead. "I can't," he said at last. "Think of Miss Emily," I suggested. "Think of how much you miss her."
"I feel pain," said Sammy. "But I cannot cry."
"You're sure?"
"I am sure," said Sammy. "I was guilty of having thoughts and longings above my station. Miss Emily used to say that tears come from the heart and the soul. I am a robot. I have no heart and no soul, so I cannot cry, even with the tear ducts you have given me. I am sorry to have wasted your time. A more complex model would have understood its limitations at the outset." He paused, and then turned to me. "I will go with you now."
"Shut up," I said.
He immediately fell silent.
"What is going on?" asked the Baroni.
"You shut up too!" I snapped.
I summoned Mechs Seven and Eight and had them dig Sammy a grave right next to his beloved Miss Emily. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't even know her full name, that no one who chanced upon her headstone would ever know it. Then I decided that it didn't really matter.
Finally they were done, and it was time to deactivate him.
"I would have kept my word," said Sammy.
"I know," I said. "I am glad you did not force me to."
I walked him to the side of the grave. "This won't be like your battery running down," I said. "This time it's forever."
"She was not afraid to die," said Sammy "Why should I be?"
I pulled the plug and had Mechs Seven and Eight lower him into the ground. They started filling in the dirt while I went back to the ship to do one last thing. When they were finished I had Mech Seven carry my handiwork back to Sammy's grave.
"A tombstone for a robot?" asked the Baroni.
"Why not?" I replied. "There are worse traits than honesty and loyalty." I should know: I've stockpiled enough of them.
"He truly moved you."
Seeing the man you could have been will do that to you, even if he's all metal and silicone and prismatic eyes.
"What does it say?" asked the Baroni as we finished planting the tombstone.
I stood aside so he could read it:
"Sammy"
Australopithicus Robotos
"That is very moving."
"It's no big deal," I said uncomfortably. "It's just a tombstone."
"It is also inaccurate," observed the Baroni.
"He was a better man than I am."
"He was not a man at all."
"Fuck you."
The Baroni doesn't know what it means, but he knows it's an insult, so he came right back at me like he always does. "You realize, of course, that you have buried our profit?"
I wasn't in the mood for his notion of wit. "Find out what he was worth, and I'll pay you for your half," I replied. "Complain about it again, and I'll knock your alien teeth down your alien throat."
He stared at me. "I will never understand Men," he said.
All that ened tw
enty years ago. Of course the Baroni never askeor his half of the money, and I never offered it to him again. We're still partners. Inertia, I suppose.
I still think about Sammy from time to time. Not as much as I used to, but every now and then.
I know there are preachers and ministers who would say he was just a machine, and to think of him otherwise is blasphemous, or at least wrong-headed, and maybe they're right. Hell, I don't even know if there's a God at all—but if there is, I like to think He's the God of all us Australopithicines.
Including Sammy.
London, Paris, Banana
Howard Waldrop
Howard Waldrop is widely considered to be one of the best short-story writers in the business, and his famous story "The Ugly Chickens" won both the Nebula and the World Fantasy Awards in 1981. His work has been gathered in the collections: Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters Of The Recent Past: Neat Stories By Howard Waldrop, Night of the Cooters: More Neat Stories By Howard Waldrop, and Going Home Again. Waldrop is also the author of the novel The Texas-Israeli War: 1999, in collaboration with Jake Saunders, and of two solo novels, Them Bones and A Dozen Tough Jobs. He is at work on a new novel, tentatively titled The Moon World. His most recent books are the print version of his collection Dream Factories and Radio Pictures (formerly available only in downloadable form online), the chapbook A Better World's in Birth!, and a collection of his stories written in collaboration with various other authors, Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations. Having lived in Washington State for a number of years, Waldrop recently moved back to his former hometown of Austin, Texas, something which caused celebrations and loud hurrahs to rise up from the rest of the population.
Here he takes us to an uncomfortably likely future to demonstrate that a Man's Got To Do What a Man's Got To Do—even if the man is made out of metal.
Iwas on my way across the Pacific Ocean when I decided to go to the Moon.
But first I had to land to refuel this superannuated machine, with its internal combustion engines and twin airscrews. There was an answering beacon ahead that showed a storage of 6,170 metric tons of fuel. Whether I could obtain any of it I did not know. But, as they used to say, any dataport in an infostorm.