We, Robots

by Simon Ings

  That is, while the Moon was not in the sky. While that happened, Elkanah stood as if transfixed on the beach, staring at it, whining, even at the new Moon in the daylit red sky. Like some moonflower, his attitude followed it across the heavens from rise to set, emitting the small whining series of Rs, the only sound his damaged voice box could make.

  The Moon had just come up the second night we were there. Prospero came back into the giant hangar, humming the old song “R.U.R.R.R.U.0. My Baby?” I was deciding which controls and systems we needed, and which not.

  “He was built to work on the Moon, of course,” said Prospero. “During one of those spasms of intelligence when humans thought they should like to go back. Things turning out like they did, they never did.”

  “And so his longing,” I said.

  “It’s deep in his wiring. First he was neglected, after the plans were canceled. Then most of the humans went away. Then his voice and some memory were destroyed in some sort of colossal explosion here that included lots of collateral electromagnetic damage, as they used to say. But not his need to be on our lunar satellite. That’s the one thing Elkanah is sure of.”

  “What was he to do there?”

  “Didn’t ask, but will,” said Prospero. “By his looks—solid head, independent eyes, multiuse appendages, upright posture—I assume some kind of maintenance function. A Caliban/Ariel-of-all-work, as ’twere.”

  “A janitor for the Moon,” I said.

  “Janus. Janitor. Opener of gates and doors,” mused Prospero. “Forward- and backward-looking, two-headed. The deity of beginnings and endings, comings and goings. Appropriate for our undertaking.”

  *

  When we tried to tell him we were taking him with us, Elkanah did not at first understand.

  “Yes,” said Prospero, gesturing. “Come with us to the Moon.”

  “R-R.” Elkanah swiveled his head and pointed to the Moon.

  “Yes,” said Prospero. He pointed to himself, to me, and to Elkanah. Then he made his fingers into a curve, swung them in an arc, and pointed to the sky. He made a circle with his other hand. “To the Moon!” he said.

  Elkanah looked at Prospero’s hands.

  “R-R,” he said.

  “He can’t hear sound or radio, you know?” said Prospero. “He has to see information, or read it.”

  Prospero bent and began writing in the sand with his staff.

  YOU COME WITH MONTGOMERY AND ME TO THE MOON.

  Elkanah bent to watch, then straightened and looked at Prospero.

  “RRRR?” he said.

  “Yes, yes!” said Prospero, gesturing. “RRR! The RRRR!”

  The sound started low, then went higher and higher, off the scale:

  “RRRRRRRRRRRRRR!”

  “Why didn’t you write it in the first place?” I asked Prospero.

  “My mistake,” he said.

  From then on, Elkanah pitched in like some metallic demon, any time the Moon was not in the sky, acid rain or shine, alkali storm or fair.

  *

  We sat in the shuttle cabin, atop the craft with its solid-fuel boosters, its main tank, and the extra one in the bay with the lander module.

  “All ready?” I asked, and held up the written card for Elkanah.

  “Certes,” said Prospero.

  “R,” said Elkanah.

  Liquid oxygen fog wafted by the windshield. It had been, by elapsed time counter, eleven years, four months, three days, two minutes, and eleven seconds since we had landed at the Cape. You can accomplish much when you need no food, rest, or sleep and allow no distractions. The hardest part had been moving the vehicle to the launch pad with the giant tractor, which Elkanah had started but Prospero had to finish, as the Moon had come up, more than a week ago.

  I pushed the button. We took off, shedding boosters and the main tank, and flew to the Moon.

  *

  The Sea of Tranquility hove into view.

  After we made the lunar insertion burn, and the orbit, we climbed into the excursion module and headed down for the lunar surface.

  Elkanah had changed since we left Earth, when the Moon was always in view somewhere. He had brought implements with him on the trip. He stared at the Moon often, but no longer whined or whirred.

  At touchdown I turned things off, and we went down the ladder to the ground.

  There was the flag, stiffly faking a breeze, some litter, old lander legs (ours we’d welded in one piece to the module), footprints, and the plaque, which of course we read.

  “This is as far as they ever came,” said Prospero.

  “Yes,” I said. “We’re the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth intelligent beings to be here.”

  Elkanah picked up some of the litter, took it to a small crater, and dropped it in.

  Prospero and I played in the one-sixth gravity. Elkanah watched us bounce around for a while, then went back to what he was doing.

  “They probably should have tried to come back, no matter what,” said Prospero. “Although it doesn’t seem there would be much for them to do here, after a while. Of course, at the end, there wasn’t much for them to do on Earth, either.”

  We were to go. Prospero wrote in the dust, WE ARE READY TO GO NOW.

  Elkanah bent to read. Then he pointed up to the full Earth in the dark Moon sky (we were using infrared) and moved his hand in a dismissing motion.

  “R,” he obviously said, but there was no sound.

  He looked at us, came to attention, then brought his broom to shoulder-arms and saluted us with his other three hands.

  We climbed up onto the module. “I think I’ll ride back up out here,” said Prospero, “I should like an unobstructed view.”

  “Make sure you hang on,” I said.

  Prospero stood on the platform, where the skull-shape of the crew compartment turned into the base and ladders and legs.

  “I’m braced,” he said, then continued:

  “My Ariel, chick, that is thy charge; then to the elements be free, and fare thou well.

  Now my charms are all o’erthrown

  And what strength I have’s mine own.

  Our revels now are ended.”

  There was a flash and a small feeling of motion, a scattering of moondust and rock under us, and we moved up away from the surface.

  The last time I saw Elkanah, he was sweeping over footprints and tidying up the Moon.

  *

  We were on our way back to Earth when we decided to go to Mars.

  (2000)

  LOST MEMORY

  Peter Phillips

  Active as a writer for less than a decade, Peter Phillips (1920–2012) wrote around twenty short stories, blurring science fiction with fantasy in the oddest ways. For example “Manna” (1949) tells the story of the ghosts of two medieval monks trapped in the ruins of an old monastery – a situation which Phillips explains “scientifically” by means of time travel and super-foods. In “Dreams are Sacred” (1948), one of the genre’s first forays into virtual reality, a man enters the mind of a writer in a coma in order to combat his mental demons. Adapted as “Get Off My Cloud” (1969), the story appeared as an episode of the BBC television series Out of the Unknown.

  I collapsed joints and hung up to talk with Dak-whirr. He blinked his eyes in some discomfort.

  “What do you want, Palil?” he asked complainingly.

  “As if you didn’t know.”

  “I can’t give you permission to examine it. The thing is being saved for inspection by the board. What guarantee do I have that you won’t spoil it for them?”

  I thrust confidentially at one of his body-plates. “You owe me a favor,” I said. “Remember?”

  “That was a long time in the past.”

  “Only two thousand revolutions and a reassembly ago. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be eroding in a pit. All I want is a quick look at its thinking part. I’ll vrull the consciousness without laying a single pair of pliers on it.”

  He went into a feedbac
k twitch, an indication of the conflict between his debt to me and his self-conceived duty.

  Finally he said, “Very well, but keep tuned to me. If I warn that a board member is coming, remove yourself quickly. Anyway how do you know it has consciousness? It may be mere primal metal.”

  “In that form? Don’t be foolish. It’s obviously a manufacture. And I’m not conceited enough to believe that we are the only form of intelligent manufacture in the Universe.”

  “Tautologous phrasing, Palil,” Dak-whirr said pedantically. “There could not conceivably be ‘unintelligent manufacture.’ There can be no consciousness without manufacture, and no manufacture without intelligence. Therefore there can be no consciousness without intelligence. Now if you should wish to dispute—”

  I turned off his frequency abruptly and hurried away. Dak-whirr is a fool and a bore. Everyone knows there’s a fault in his logic circuit, but he refuses to have it traced down and repaired. Very unintelligent of him.

  The thing had been taken into one of the museum sheds by the carriers. I gazed at it in admiration for some moments. It was quite beautiful, having suffered only slight exterior damage, and it was obviously no mere conglomeration of sky metal.

  In fact, I immediately thought of it as “he” and endowed it with the attributes of self-knowing, although, of course, his consciousness could not be functioning or he would have attempted communication with us.

  I fervently hoped that the board, after his careful disassembly and study, could restore his awareness so that he could tell us himself which solar system he came from.

  Imagine it! He had achieved our dream of many thousands of revolutions—space flight—only to be fused, or worse, in his moment of triumph.

  I felt a surge of sympathy for the lonely traveler as he lay there, still, silent, non-emitting. Anyway, I mused, even if we couldn’t restore him to self-knowing, an analysis of his construction might give us the secret of the power he had used to achieve the velocity to escape his planet’s gravity.

  In shape and size he was not unlike Swen—or Swen Two, as he called himself after his conversion—who failed so disastrously to reach our satellite, using chemical fuels. But where Swen Two had placed his tubes, the stranger had a curious helical construction studded at irregular intervals with small crystals.

  He was thirty-five feet tall, a gracefully tapering cylinder. Standing at his head, I could find no sign of exterior vision cells, so I assumed he had some kind of vrulling sense. There seemed to be no exterior markings at all, except the long, shallow grooves dented in his skin by scraping to a stop along the hard surface of our planet.

  I am a reporter with warm current in my wires, not a cold-thinking scientist, so I hesitated before using my own vrulling sense. Even though the stranger was non-aware—perhaps permanently—I felt it would be a presumption, an invasion of privacy. There was nothing else I could do, though, of course.

  I started to vrull, gently at first, then harder, until I was positively glowing with effort. It was incredible; his skin seemed absolutely impermeable.

  The sudden realization that metal could be so alien nearly fused something inside me. I found myself backing away in horror, my self-preservation relay working overtime.

  Imagine watching one of the beautiful cone-rod-and-cylinder assemblies performing the Dance of the Seven Spanners, as he’s conditioned to do, and then suddenly refusing to do anything except stump around unattractively, or even becoming obstinately motionless, unresponsive. That might give you an idea of how I felt in that dreadful moment.

  Then I remembered Dak-whirr’s words—there could be no such thing as an “unintelligent manufacture.” And a product so beautiful could surely not be evil. I overcame my repugnance and approached again.

  I halted as an open transmission came from someone near at hand.

  “Who gave that squeaking reporter permission to snoop around here?”

  I had forgotten the museum board. Five of them were standing in the doorway of the shed, radiating anger. I recognized Chirik, the chairman, and addressed myself to him. I explained that I’d interfered with nothing and pleaded for permission on behalf of my subscribers to watch their investigation of the stranger. After some argument, they allowed me to stay.

  I watched in silence and some amusement as one by one they tried to vrull the silent being from space. Each showed the same reaction as myself when they failed to penetrate the skin.

  Chirik, who is wheeled—and inordinately vain about his suspension system—flung himself back on his supports and pretended to be thinking.

  “Fetch Fiff-fiff,” he said at last. “The creature may still be aware, but unable to communicate on our standard frequencies.”

  Fiff-fiff can detect anything in any spectrum. Fortunately he was at work in the museum that day and soon arrived in answer to the call. He stood silently near the stranger for some moments, testing and adjusting himself, then slid up the electromagnetic band.

  “He’s emitting,” he said.

  “Why can’t we get him?” asked Chirik.

  “It’s a curious signal on an unusual band.”

  “Well, what does he say?”

  “Sounds like utter nonsense to me. Wait, I’ll relay and convert it to standard.”

  I made a direct recording naturally, like any good reporter.

  “—after planetfall,” the stranger was saying. “Last dribble of power. If you don’t pick this up, my name is Entropy. Other instruments knocked to hell, airlock jammed and I’m too weak to open it manually. Becoming delirious, too. I guess. Getting strong undirectional ultra-wave reception in Inglish, craziest stuff you ever heard, like goblins muttering, and I know we were the only ship in this sector. If you pick this up, but can’t get a fix in time, give my love to the boys in the mess. Signing off for another couple of hours, but keeping this channel open and hoping…”

  “The fall must have deranged him,” said Chirik, gazing at the stranger. “Can’t he see us or hear us?”

  “He couldn’t hear you properly before, but he can now, through me,” Fiff-fiff pointed out. “Say something to him, Chirik.”

  “Hello,” said Chirik doubtfully. “Er—welcome to our planet. We are sorry you were hurt by your fall. We offer you the hospitality of our assembly shops. You will feel better when you are repaired and repowered. If you will indicate how we can assist you—”

  “What the hell! What ship is that? Where are you?”

  “We’re here,” said Chirik. “Can’t you see us or vrull us? Your vision circuit is impaired, perhaps? Or do you depend entirely on vrulling? We can’t find your eyes and assumed either that you protected them in some way during flight, or dispensed with vision cells altogether in your conversion.”

  Chirik hesitated, continued apologetically: “But we cannot understand how you vrull, either. While we thought that you were unaware, or even completely fused, we tried to vrull you. Your skin is quite impervious to us, however.”

  The stranger said: “I don’t know if you’re batty or I am. What distance are you from me?”

  Chirik measured quickly. “One meter, two-point-five centimeters from my eyes to your nearest point. Within touching distance, in fact.” Chirik tentatively put out his hand. “Can you not feel me, or has your contact sense also been affected?”

  It became obvious that the stranger had been pitifully deranged. I reproduce his words phonetically from my record, although some of them make little sense. Emphasis, punctuative pauses and spelling of unknown terms are mere guesswork, of course.

  He said: “For godsakemann stop talking nonsense, whoever you are. If you’re outside, can’t you see the airlock is jammed? Can’t shift it myself. I’m badly hurt. Get me out of here, please.”

  “Get you out of where?” Chirik looked around, puzzled. “We brought you into an open shed near our museum for a preliminary examination. Now that we know you’re intelligent, we shall immediately take you to our assembly shops for healing and recuperation. Rest
assured that you’ll have the best possible attention.”

  There was a lengthy pause before the stranger spoke again, and his words were slow and deliberate. His bewilderment is understandable, I believe, if we remember that he could not see, vrull or feel.

  He asked: “What manner of creature are you? Describe yourself.”

  Chirik turned to us and made a significant gesture toward his thinking part, indicating gently that the injured stranger had to be humored.

  “Certainly,” he replied. “I am an unspecialized bipedal manufacture of standard proportions, lately self-converted to wheeled traction, with a hydraulic suspension system of my own devising which I’m sure will interest you when we restore your sense circuits.”

  There was an even longer silence.

  “You are robots,” the stranger said at last. “Crise knows how you got here or why you speak Inglish, but you must try to understand me. I am mann. I am a friend of your master, your maker. You must fetch him to me at once.”

  “You are not well,” said Chirik firmly. “Your speech is incoherent and without meaning. Your fall has obviously caused several serious feedbacks of a very serious nature. Please lower your voltage. We are taking you to our shops immediately. Reserve your strength to assist our specialists as best you can in diagnosing your troubles.”

  “Wait. You must understand. You are—ogodno that’s no good. Have you no memory of mann? The words you use—what meaning have they for you? Manufacture—made by hand hand hand damyou. Healing. Metal is not healed. Skin. Skin is not metal. Eyes. Eyes are not scanning cells. Eyes grow. Eyes are soft. My eyes are soft. Mine eyes have seen the glory—steady on, sun. Get a grip. Take it easy. You out there listen.”

  “Out where?” asked Prrr-chuk, deputy chairman of the museum board.

  I shook my head sorrowfully. This was nonsense, but, like any good reporter, I kept my recorder running.