by Isaac Asimov
She was still rocking him when Jay came back from the gardens with Helen.
Bursting through the doorway, Helen yelled excitedly, “Look what I’ve got. A flower! A real flower!”
“Sh-sh,” said Em in a whisper like a steam valve going off.
“Oh,” said Helen, “can’t I wake him to show him my flower?” She held the sickly yellowish bloom in front of her face.
“No,” said Em, “he’s tired. I shouldn’t have given him an extra lesson.” She turned to Jay. “What is this flower?”
“It just grew, Em,” said Jay. “I found it in the beds along with the plants.”
“Jay, is that the truth?”
It wasn’t conscience that made Jay shake his head, but knowing that Em knew the truth. “Z—I planted a couple of seeds. One of the seed bags in the stores was split open and I found the seeds on the floor. It won’t do any harm, Em.”
“I thought we agreed that nothing like that must be touched. We don’t know what might happen.”
“Don’t worry about it, Em. I read all about it in a book before I planted them. I thought the children ought to have something. They get so little—”
“Don’t you think it’s time to put the children to bed?” said Em warningly. She noticed that Helen had hidden the pitiful flower behind her back.
“Sure, sure,” said Jay. “But about these seeds, Em.
I thought perhaps we could ...”
He faltered. Neither robot had anything like facial muscles with which to express a meaning without words, but the way Em was looking at him now—head lowered, shining eyes leveled at him from beneath her rounded brow—was warning enough.
“All right, Em. Let me have the boy. Come along, Helen. Bedtime.”
But Helen did not turn. She looked up at Em. “I may keep the flower, Em, mayn’t I?”
“Of course, Helen,” said Em after only a moment’s hesitation. If any harm had been done, it was done by now. “I’ll put some water in a glass and you can have it near your bed. How’s that?”
“Oh, thank you, Em, thank you!” She rushed over and clasped Em about the legs. Em lifted her gently up, but held her at arm’s length. Otherwise, she knew, the child would kiss her, for she was more demonstrative than the boy. And the thought that she was all in the nature of a mother the child had to kiss— only cold unyielding metal—made Em feel inadequate. And whether she was supposed to be able to feel that or not, she did—and too often.
As she set Helen down, Em noticed the disappointed expression that always came when she had to frustrate her childlike impulses. But the look she gave Em before she turned to follow Jay was somehow different from any Em had noticed before.
Em stood there looking after her for quite a long time. In fact, she was still looking after her, standing in the same awkward, unhuman stance, when Jay returned. As he sat down, she sat down in the chair facing him. Sitting was another habit they’d long ago acquired from humans and not relinquished when the humans had died.
Jay stirred. “Helen didn’t want to hear a story tonight,” he said.
“Oh?” she said. There was a long pause.
“Em,” he said at last. “You’re not really mad at me, are you? About the flowers, I mean.”
“I think you’re a fool, that’s all,” she said. “We can’t afford to take risks like that. Germs, spores—we just don’t know what might come from something new.”
“But we inoculated them against everything, didn’t we? Don’t you remember, Em? Didn’t I hold them when you put the needle in?”
“Oh, stop it,” she said crossly. Of course she remembered. How could she forget? Those first years when there had been so many things to remember from the last hurried instructions. How to change and bathe babies with hands that had never been made for it. How to nurse them through the childhood ailments that came in spite of all the inoculations. How to teach things that had never been taught to oneself, because they’d either been unnecessary or built in.
Nervous breakdown couldn’t happen to a robot, because a robot’s system wasn’t like a human’s. But bringing up a human baby was an almost hopeless task for a robot, Em thought. One mental image had become a recurring and fearful one—the fantastic image of herself exploding under the strain, of cogs and springs and synthetic brain-cells flying in all directions.
That was the image that came back now to frighten and confound her.
It was different with Jay. She looked at him as he sat there, silent after the sharpness of her admonition. Her mind went back to the first days, the very first days before this great burden of responsibility had been laid upon them.
How carefree it had been then! The way, for instance, the humans had come to treat her and Jay like male and female. It was only coincidence that Jay’s prefix made a man’s name and hers a woman’s. Being an earlier model, which accounted for the alphabetical precedence, he was clumsier, bulkier, squarer, while she was neater, smaller, more agile and more smoothly shaped. More delicate of voice, too. But besides, she had a quicker intuition than his, a more gentle manner and certainly a greater tendency to worry. It had been he who had joined in the jokes of the men, trying to understand them, dancing clumsy dances to amuse everyone when spirits were low. Meanwhile, she had learned to cook, although it was no more part of her job than dancing was his.
In human company they had gradually assumed the positions of man and wife—he boasting sometimes of being older and more experienced, she slyly pointing out that that didn’t make him necessarily wiser. He, since the last human grown-ups had all gone, thinking more of making the children happy—she of keeping them safe.
And, like a wife who knows she is more intelligent than her husband, she tried to use it by not demonstrating it too often. But now she felt she had to speak.
“If anything ever happens to them we’ll be alone. I don’t think you properly realize just how delicate human beings are.”
“Of course I do, Em.”
“And not only in their bodies,” she went on, as if she hadn’t heard him. “You’ll have to be more careful what you read to them.”
“Now what have I done?”
“Don’t read them any stories about children having things they can’t have. Stick to fairy stories.”
“But there aren’t many fairy stories. They know them all by heart now. Anyway, humans wouldn’t have had these books for the children if they were bad for them, would they?”
“Oh, oh, oh! Sometimes I wonder what goes on inside that big square head of yours. Don’t you see that it wouldn’t matter if they had their own mothers and fathers to tell them?”
“Of course I see. I just didn’t think that—”
“Well, think, then,” she said sharply.
He lowered his gaze. “I do think,” he said after a pause. Then he looked up and said, “I think, for instance, that before long we’ll just have to tell them. The truth, I mean.”
“Why do you say that now?” she said, suddenly fearful.
“Oh, just things they say sometimes. The way they ask about the big door, the way their eyes stray toward it. Little things like that.”
“I know,” Em said at length, “but I’m frightened. Frightened about how they’ll take it, about what knowing will do to them.”
They were silent for long minutes. Then Jay said, “Can’t we invent a fairy story? One big fairy story about everything, so that we never have to tell them the truth.”
Em laid her metal hand on his. “Dear Jay. Can you invent even a little fairy story?”
He shook his head dumbly.
“And neither can I,” said Em. “Even if we could, it wouldn’t last long. It would only be one long evasion, instead of the little evasions we make now. And anyhow, in two or three years they’ll have the strength to open the big door themselves. And we won’t be able to stop them. They’ve got to learn by then. They should understand enough of the little truths so that the big truth won’t be too great a shock to them.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” she said and her tone was sharp again. Because she knew that, in his simple, direct way, he had come closer to the truth than she cared to admit. “It’s a question of developing their minds. Disciplining them. Preparing them.”
“It was only a thought,” said Jay hastily. “You know best, Em. You always do.”
But it became evident to Em before very long that one couldn’t teach the small truths if one kept dodging the big one all the time. For the children’s growing puzzlement blocked their will to learn.
They were still struggling through the first-year lessons of a five-year-old. Em studied the teaching manuals through the long hours while the children were asleep, trying to perfect herself as a teacher, trying to find out where she had gone wrong.
Their minds were keen enough. Their questions didn’t abate. They became more subtle, more suddenly sprung in the attempt to get past the tightening mesh of their guardians’ evasions. And it became increasingly clear to Em that each evasion was a step backward.
She tried answering their questions in meaningless polysyllables and, when they pressed for explanations, telling them that there was no easier way of putting it, that only by learning would they be able to understand. That device she gave up for they soon came to see through it. She could tell by the look that came into their faces—the by now familiar look of hurt mistrust.
The crux came when Paul asked a question she just couldn’t avoid answering. It was a question that every child asks his mother sooner or later, but Em didn’t know that. Her awkwardness when he suddenly asked her in the middle of a tediously slow arithmetic lesson, “Em, where did I come from?” was not of the same kind that an ill-prepared mother might feel. But it was awkward, none the less.
Her first impulse was to hedge, telling him not to ask general questions during class. But one look at his anxious little face stopped her. She was also aware of Helen’s gaze upon her, a half-smile on her lips, but the rest of her face set, obdurate—and yes, accusing.
“Why,” she said, “well ...”
Jay was there and she looked at him for help, even knowing that he could not give it. The helpless gesture he made with his hands was unnecessary.
“Helen says,” said Paul, “that a big machine made us. She says that sometimes she can hear it throbbing. She says that when it’s throbbing it’s making babies.”
Oh, no, thought Em, not this! This wasn’t right at all. They couldn’t be allowed to think like that. Machines were not the masters. Men made machines. A machine could never make men. But how else could they be expected to think? Wasn’t it natural when they knew no other humans, when two machines controlled their lives?
“Do you believe that, Helen?” she asked. But Helen only dropped her eyes.
“And you, Paul, do you believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“Have you ever heard machines, Paul?”
Helen broke in. “I don’t hear them, I feel them. I feel them throb, throb, throbbing.” She stopped abruptly, dropping her gaze again.
“But you both know that they’re just the machines that give us our air and light and everything. They’re buried down and down. They just go on working away like all good machines.”
“Then, if machines didn’t make us,” said Paul, “where did we come from? We must have come from somewhere. Somewhere where there’s trees and cats and— and other boys and girls.” His shrill little voice mounted. “Why do you keep us locked away from them?”
“What?” said Em, startled. How could she begin to tell them the truth, if that was what they thought?
“Why can’t we ever join them and play in the trees with them? Why do you keep the big door locked all the time?” His eyes filled with tears, but he did not cry aloud. It was that fact, that he did not cry, that decided Em more than anything else.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. She took one look at Jay. He nodded once, slowly. Even Jay saw there was no avoiding it this time.
The children’s eyes widened. They looked at each other and back to Em.
“Before I begin,” said Em, “you must promise to be brave. You will hear things you did not expect. You were each made by a mother and a father. Jay and I are only here to see that you grow up well and strong and clever. Your father and mother, Paul, and yours, Helen, are dead. Once there were twenty people here and they are all dead now.”
“We know what that means,” said Helen. “Not alive— like the mat and the chair. But where are they? Why aren’t they here, even if they are dead?”
Em realized with something like relief that they had no real conception of death. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so difficult, after all. That could be explained later, when it had been revealed to them why it was so important to be alive. Or would they think it important after she told them what she had to tell them?
“Because the dead have no place with the living. That is, except in their thoughts. Jay and I often think of your parents and the others with them. Don’t we, Jay?”
“Eh? Oh, yes, yes.”
“Because they made us, too,” went on Em. “Well, not your actual mothers and fathers, but other clever people like them. We’re grateful and happy that they made us. That’s why we’re happy to look after you. And that’s why you must try to be as clever as they were.”
The children looked puzzled.
“You mean,” piped Paul, “so that we can make people like you?”
“I didn’t mean that,” said Em. “You will have to make others like yourselves.”
“But we couldn’t do that,” said Helen, aghast. ‘We’re not clever enough.”
“I don’t think,” said Em, “that you’ll need to be clever to do that when the time comes. There are other reasons for you to be clever.” She rose, crossing to the big door. “Come with me,” she said.
They stood looking after her for a moment, not believing their eyes. Then they rushed after her shouting excitedly.
“Em’s going to take us outside.”
“Can we climb the trees, Em?”
“Are there shops there?”
She turned, one metal hand on the bolt, looking down at them as they skipped about her legs.
“There aren’t any trees out there. Nor shops.”
They looked up at her in shocked surprise, suddenly motionless.
“Then—it is all lies in the books?” said Paul slowly.
“No, it’s not lies. It’s just that we haven’t got them. They’re in the past.”
“You mean like the fairy stories? Once upon a time? All once upon a time?”
And Helen said, “There’s just nothing?”
Em faced Jay as she said slowly, “I told you that you would hear things you did not expect. Are you really sure you want to go on?”
She looked from one to the other. She had expected them to be frightened. But she’d underestimated the effect on them of living all their lives in one confined space, their wonder at being able to step out of it at last.
“Yes. Please, Em,” said Helen.
“Yes, Em,” said Paul. “Please.”
As she slid the bolt back she had the same feeling as when the last humans had died. The feeling of inadequacy. The disquieting knowledge that when one was dealing with inanimate objects two and two made four and nothing else, but when one was dealing with humans, even little humans—especially little humans—the answer might be something entirely different.
She slid the door open. The dimly lit passages confronted them.
“Oh!” they cried, sounding disappointed.
“Come along,” she said quickly. She took their hands. Then she saw that Jay had not come to the door with them. He hung back, awkwardly. “Aren’t you coming, Jay?”
“Oh, sure, sure,” he said and lumbered after them.
“No
pranks, now,” said Em to the children. “Keep hold of my hands.”
As they walked down the corridor Helen said, “I feel it.”
“I feel it, too, now,” said Paul.
The slight vibration of the engines increased. They passed down a short flight of steps. “Now I hear it,” said Helen.
“Now you see it,” said Em as they turned a bend.
And there were the engines. The great engines, purring and purring, the lights winking over the panels.
“Oooh!” breathed the boy. “Look at that great wheel spinning.”
“That’s the one that supplies us with air,” said Em.
Paul took a deep breath. “It smells funny here.”
“That’s ozone,” Em said.
“What’s ozone?”
“I’m not sure,” said Em. “It’s some special kind of air. It’s all explained in the books. All about how to stop the machines and how to start them and how to make them go faster. You should see them when they’re really going. They’re only ticking over now. But, my, when they really cut loose it’s wonderful.”
“Why, what do they do then, Em?”
It was going right, she thought. They would understand, because now they would want to.
“Come along,” she said, “and I’ll show you.” She led them along the walk to the control room. But there she felt doubt return. Her hand hesitated on the switch. And then, because she knew there was no turning back now, she pressed it.
The children gasped and fell back a step, stumbling, fearing they would fall. Em laid her hands upon their shoulders. “There, it’s all right,” she said.
The screen seemed to curve above and beneath and all around them. It was as if they were suspended in the breathing heart of the Universe. But because the children had no notion of the word Universe, this being the first time they had even seen the stars, to them it was like floating in a great dream, a great and wonderful dream.
It was Paul who, after many moments, broke the silence. And then he only whispered the one word, “Stars!” and he was not speaking to Helen or Em or Jay—or even to himself. He was addressing them, the stars.
