We, Robots

by Simon Ings

  All except the smell.

  And here the smell was all over again—the smell of meat-with-fire.

  Luci looked at him with wifely concern. She obviously thought he had cranched too much, and was about to haberman back. She tried to be cheerful: “You’d better rest, honey.”

  He whispered to her: “Cut—off—that—smell.”

  She did not question his word. She cut the transmitter. She even crossed the room and stepped up the room controls until a small breeze flitted across the floor and drove the smells up to the ceiling.

  He rose, tired and stiff. (His instruments were normal, except that heart was fast and nerves still hanging on the edge of Danger.) He spoke sadly:

  “Forgive me, Luci. I suppose I shouldn’t have cranched. Not so soon again. But darling, I have to get out from being a haberman. How can I ever be near you? How can I be a man—not hearing my own voice, not even feeling my own life as it goes through my veins? I love you, darling. Can’t I ever be near you?” Her pride was disciplined and automatic: “But you’re a scanner!”

  “I know I’m a scanner. But so what?”

  She went over the words, like a tale told a thousand times to reassure herself: “You are the bravest of the brave, the most skillful of the skilled. All mankind owes most honor to the scanner, who unites the Earths of mankind. Scanners are the protectors of the habermans. They are the judges in the up-and-out. They make men live in the place where men need desperately to die. They are the most honored of mankind, and even the chiefs of the Instrumentality are delighted to pay them homage!”

  With obstinate sorrow he demurred: “Luci, we’ve heard that all before. But does it pay us back—”

  “‘Scanners work for more than pay. They are the strong guards of mankind.’ Don’t you remember that?”

  “But our lives, Luci. What can you get out of being the wife of a scanner? Why did you marry me? I’m human only when I cranch. The rest of the time—you know what I am. A machine. A man turned into a machine. A man who has been killed and kept alive for duty. Don’t you realize what I miss?”

  “Of course, darling, of course—”

  He went on: “Don’t you think I remember my childhood? Don’t you think I remember what it is to be a man and not a haberman? To walk and feel my feet on the ground? To feel a decent clean pain instead of watching my body every minute to see if I’m alive? How will I know if I’m dead? Did you ever think of that, Luci? How will I know if I’m dead?”

  She ignored the unreasonableness of his outburst. Pacifyingly, she said: “Sit down, darling. Let me make you some kind of a drink. You’re overwrought.”

  Automatically, he scanned. “No I’m not! Listen to me. How do you think it feels to be in the up-and-out with the crew tied-for-space all around you? How do you think it feels to watch them sleep? How do you think I like scanning, scanning, scanning month after month, when I can feel the pain of space beating against every part of my body, trying to get past my haberman blocks? How do you think I like to wake the men when I have to, and have them hate me for it? Have you ever seen habermans fight—strong men fighting, and neither knowing pain, fighting until one touches Overload? Do you think about that, Luci?” Triumphantly he added: “Can you blame me if I cranch, and come back to being a man, just two days a month?”

  “I’m not blaming you, darling. Let’s enjoy your cranch. Sit down now, and have a drink.”

  He was sitting down, resting his face in his hands, while she fixed the drink, using natural fruits out of bottles in addition to the secure alkaloids. He watched her restlessly and pitied her for marrying a scanner; and then, though it was unjust, resented having to pity her.

  Just as she turned to hand him the drink, they both jumped a little as the phone rang. It should not have rung. They had turned it off. It rang again, obviously on the emergency circuit. Stepping ahead of Luci, Martel strode over to the phone and looked into it. Vomact was looking at him. The custom of scanners entitled him to be brusque, even with a senior scanner, on certain given occasions. This was one.

  Before Vomact could speak, Martel spoke two words into the plate, not caring whether the old man could read lips or not:

  “Cranching. Busy.”

  He cut the switch and went back to Luci.

  The phone rang again.

  Luci said, gently, “I can find out what it is, darling. Here, take your drink and sit down.”

  “Leave it alone,” said her husband. “No one has a right to call when I’m cranching. He knows that. He ought to know that.” The phone rang again. In a fury, Martel rose and went to the plate. He cut it back on. Vomact was on the screen. Before Martel could speak, Vomact held up his talking nail in line with his heartbox. Martel reverted to discipline:

  “Scanner Martel present and waiting, sir.”

  The lips moved solemnly: “Top emergency.”

  “Sir, I am under the wire.”

  “Top emergency.”

  “Sir, don’t you understand?” Martel mouthed his words, so he could be sure that Vomact followed. “I… am… under… the… wire. Unfit… for… Space!”

  Vomact repeated: “Top emergency. Report to Central Tie-in.”

  “But, sir, no emergency like this—”

  “Right, Martel. No emergency like this, ever before. Report to Tie-in.” With a faint glint of kindliness, Vomact added: “No need to decranch. Report as you are.”

  This time it was Martel whose phone was cut out. The screen went gray. He turned to Luci. The temper had gone out of his voice. She came to him. She kissed him, and rumpled his hair. All she could say was, “I’m sorry.”

  She kissed him again, knowing his disappointment. “Take good care of yourself, darling. I’ll wait.”

  He scanned, and slipped into his transparent aircoat. At the window he paused, and waved. She called, “Good luck!”

  As the air flowed past him he said to himself, “This is the first time I’ve felt flight in—eleven years. Lord, but it’s easy to fly if you can feel yourself live!”

  Central Tie-in glowed white and austere far ahead. Martel peered. He saw no glare of incoming ships from the up-and-out, no shuddering flare of space-fire out of control. Everything was quiet, as it should be on an off-duty night. And yet Vomact had called. He had called an emergency higher than space. There was no such thing. But Vomact had called it.

  When Martel got there, he found about half the scanners present, two dozen or so of them. He lifted the talking finger. Most of the scanners were standing face to face, talking in pairs as they read lips. A few of the old, impatient ones were scribbling on their tablets and then thrusting the tablets into other people’s faces. All the faces wore the dull dead relaxed look of a haberman. When Martel entered the room, he knew that most of the others laughed in the deep isolated privacy of their own minds, each thinking things it would be useless to express in formal words. It had been a long time since a scanner showed up at a meeting cranched.

  Vomact was not there: probably, thought Martel, he was still on the phone calling others. The light of the phone flashed on and off; the bell rang. Martel felt odd when he realized that of all those present, he was the only one to hear that loud bell. It made him realize why ordinary people did not like to be around groups of habermans or scanners. Martel looked around for company.

  His friend Chang was there, busy explaining to some old and testy scanner that he did not know why Vomact had called. Martel looked farther and saw Parizianski. He walked over, threading his way past the others with a dexterity that showed he could feel his feet from the inside, and did not have to watch them. Several of the others stared at him with their dead faces, and tried to smile. But they lacked full muscular control and their faces twisted into horrid masks. (Scanners usually knew better than to show expression on faces which they could no longer govern. Martel added to himself, I swear I’ll never smile again unless I’m cranched.)

  Parizianski gave him the sign of the talking finger. Looking face to face, h
e spoke:

  “You come here cranched?”

  Parizianski could not hear his own voice, so the words roared like the words on a broken and screeching phone; Martel was startled, but knew that the inquiry was well meant. No one could be better-natured than the burly Pole.

  “Vomact called. Top emergency.”

  “You told him you were cranched?”

  “Yes.”

  “He still made you come?”

  “Then all this—it is not for Space? You could not go up-and-out? You are like ordinary men?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then why did he call us?” Some pre-haberman habit made Parizianski wave his arms in inquiry. The hand struck the back of the old man behind them. The slap could be heard throughout the room, but only Martel heard it. Instinctively, he scanned Parizianski and the old scanner, and they scanned him back. Only then did the old man ask why Martel had scanned him. When Martel explained that he was under the wire, the old man moved swiftly away to pass on the news that there was a cranched scanner present at the tie-in. Even this minor sensation could not keep the attention of most of the scanners from the worry about the top emergency. One young man, who had scanned his first transit just the year before, dramatically interposed himself between Parizianski and Martel. He dramatically flashed his tablet at them: Is Vmct mad?

  The older men shook their heads. Martel, remembering that it had not been too long that the young man had been haberman, mitigated the dead solemnity of the denial with a friendly smile. He spoke in a normal voice, saying:

  “Vomact is the senior of scanners. I am sure that he could not go mad. Would he not see it on his boxes first?”

  Martel had to repeat the question, speaking slowly and mouthing his words before the young scanner could understand the comment. The young man tried to make his face smile, and twisted it into a comic mask. But he took up his tablet and scribbled:

  Yr rght.

  Chang broke away from his friend and came over, his half-Chinese face gleaming in the warm evening. (It’s strange, thought Martel, that more Chinese don’t become scanners. Or not so strange perhaps, if you think that they never fill their quota of habermans. Chinese love good living too much. The ones who do scan are all good ones.) Chang saw that Martel was cranched, and spoke with voice:

  “You break precedents. Luci must be angry to lose you?”

  “She took it well. Chang, that’s strange. I’m cranched, and I can hear. Your voice sounds all right. How did you learn to talk like—like an ordinary person?”

  “I practiced with soundtracks. Funny you noticed it. I think I am the only scanner in or between the Earths who can pass for an ordinary man. Mirrors and soundtracks. I found out how to act.”

  “But you don’t…”

  “No. I don’t feel, or taste, or hear, or smell things, any more than you do. Talking doesn’t do me much good. But I notice that it cheers up the people around me.”

  “It would make a difference in the life of Luci.”

  Chang nodded sagely. “My father insisted on it. He said, ‘You may be proud of being a scanner. I am sorry you are not a man. Conceal your defects.’ So I tried. I wanted to tell the old boy about the up-and-out, and what we did there, but it did not matter. He said, ‘Airplanes were good enough for Confucius, and they are for me too.’ The old humbug! He tries so hard to be a Chinese when he can’t even read Old Chinese. But he’s got wonderful good sense, and for somebody going on two hundred he certainly gets around.”

  Martel smiled at the thought: “In his airplane?”

  Chang smiled back. This discipline of his facial muscles was amazing; a bystander would not think that Chang was a haberman, controlling his eyes, cheeks, and lips by cold intellectual control. The expression had the spontaneity of life. Martel felt a flash of envy for Chang when he looked at the dead cold faces of Parizianski and the others. He knew that he himself looked fine: but why shouldn’t he? He was cranched. Turning to Parizianski he said, “Did you see what Chang said about his father? The old boy uses an airplane.” Parizianski made motions with his mouth, but the sounds meant nothing. He took up his tablet and showed it to Martel and Chang.

  Bzz bzz, Ha ha. Gd ol’ boy.

  At that moment, Martel heard steps out in the corridor. He could not help looking toward the door. Other eyes followed the direction of his glance. Vomact came in.

  The group shuffled to attention in four parallel lines. They scanned one another. Numerous hands reached across to adjust the electrochemical controls on chestboxes which had begun to load up. One scanner held out a broken finger which his counter-scanner had discovered, and submitted it for treatment and splinting.

  Vomact had taken out his staff of office. The cube at the top flashed red light through the room, the lines reformed, and all scanners gave the sign meaning, Present and ready!

  Vomact countered with the stance signifying, I am the senior and take command. Talking fingers rose in the counter-gesture, We concur and commit ourselves. Vomact raised his right arm, dropped the wrist as though it were broken, in a queer searching gesture, meaning: Any men around? Any habermans not tied? All clear for the scanners?

  Alone of all those present, the cranched Martel heard the queer rustle of feet as they all turned completely around without leaving position, looking sharply at one another and flashing their beltlights into the dark corners of the great room. When again they faced Vomact, he made a further sign:

  All clear. Follow my words.

  Martel noticed that he alone relaxed. The others could not know the meaning of relaxation with the minds blocked off up there in their skulls, connected only with the eyes, and the rest of the body connected with the mind only by controlling non-sensory nerves and the instrument boxes on their chests. Martel realized that, cranched as he was, he had expected to hear Vomact’s voice: the senior had been talking for some time. No sound escaped his lips. (Vomact never bothered with sound.)

  “… and when the first men to go up-and-out went to the moon, what did they find?”

  “Nothing,” responded the silent chorus of lips.

  “Therefore they went farther, to Mars and to Venus. The ships went out year by year, but they did not come back until the Year One of Space. Then did a ship come back with the first effect. Scanners, I ask you, what is the first effect?”

  “No one knows. No one knows.”

  “No one will ever know. Too many are the variables. By what do we know the first effect?”

  “By the great pain of space,” came the chorus.

  “And by what further sign?”

  “By the need, oh the need for death.”

  Vomact again: “And who stopped the need for death?”

  “Henry Haberman conquered the first effect, in the Year Eighty-three of Space.”

  “And, Scanners, I ask you, what did he do?”

  “He made the habermans.”

  “How, O Scanners, are habermans made?”

  “They are made with the cuts. The brain is cut from the heart, the lungs. The brain is cut from the ears, the nose. The brain is cut from the mouth, the belly. The brain is cut from desire, and pain. The brain is cut from the world. Save for the eyes. Save for the control of the living flesh.”

  “And how, O Scanners, is flesh controlled?”

  “By the boxes set in the flesh, the controls set in the chest, the signs made to rule the living body, the signs by which the body lives.”

  “How does a haberman live and live?”

  “The haberman lives by control of the boxes.”

  “Whence come the habermans?”

  Martel felt in the coming response a great roar of broken voices echoing through the room as the scanners, habermans themselves, put sound behind their mouthings:

  “Habermans are the scum of mankind. Habermans are the weak, the cruel, the credulous, and the unfit. Habermans are the sentenced-to-more-than-death. Habermans live in the mind alone. They are killed for space but they live for space. T
hey master the ships that connect the Earths. They live in the great pain while ordinary men sleep in the cold, cold sleep of the transit.”

  “Brothers and Scanners, I ask you now: are we habermans or are we not?”

  “We are habermans in the flesh. We are cut apart, brain and flesh. We are ready to go to the up-and-out. All of us have gone through the haberman device.”

  “We are habermans then?” Vomact’s eyes flashed and glittered as he asked the ritual question.

  Again the chorused answer was accompanied by a roar of voices heard only by Martel: “Habermans we are, and more, and more. We are the chosen who are habermans by our own free will. We are the agents of the Instrumentality of Mankind.”

  “What must the others say to us?”

  “They must say to us, ‘You are the bravest of the brave, the most skillful of the skilled. All mankind owes most honor to the scanner, who unites the Earths of mankind. Scanners are the protectors of the habermans. They are the judges in the up-and-out. They make men live in the place where men need desperately to die. They are the most honored of mankind, and even the chiefs of the Instrumentality are delighted to pay them homage!”