Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Alone? In that case, who is that young fellow with you?”

  “Providence sent him to reattach my head,” the quijote replied. “He comes with me of his own free will.”

  “And Providence has set me out here to meet you,” Randy said. “And I will come with you, too, of my own free will, if you will let me.”

  When the quijote hesitated, Randy said, “Come on, Don Quijote, I am a free spirit, I have my dreams and hopes. I too would go knight-erranting!”

  A smile creased the quijote’s pewter features. “You may be no more than a mechanical rodent, Randy, but your spirit is as large as any I have met. Jump up here. You shall ride with us.”

  Randy jumped up to Rocinante’s saddle. Eagerly he peered into the desert. “Straight ahead and a little to your right!”

  The quijote touched Rocinante’s side with his heel. The mechanical horse started up.

  After what seemed to Laurent a very long time, with the sun low on the horizon and the rocks casting long shadows behind them, they came up a long ridge, and, from its summit, beheld a great flat desolate plain. At the furthest extent of his vision, Laurent could see a dark mass huddled on the horizon, like the body of a resting beast.

  The quijote said, “Yes, that is it: the Robot Factory, the end of our questing. Soon we shall have this thing accomplished, my trusty squire, and you will share in my triumph.”

  From a trot they proceeded to a stiff canter, and although it had been a great distance, it seemed no time at all before they were approaching the mass of the Factory.

  THEY CANTERED INTO the Factory area, and Quijote directed Rocinante toward what looked like the main entrance.

  “Not that way!” Randy said.

  “But that is the way into the Factory,” said the quijote.

  “The Boss Robot controls all the doors that lead from the outer world into the Factory. To go that way would be to call down on yourself forces that not even you could handle. There is a better way.”

  “And what is that?”

  “See that little red door to the left of the main entrance? It leads directly to the Power Level, bypassing the Factory.”

  “But is not this way also under the Factory’s control?”

  “It is not,” Randy replied. “The Power Level is only under the control of The Power, which suffers itself to be used by all but to be controlled by none.”

  “What is this Power?”

  “The old rats say it is what men call an atomic pile. They say it is a local aspect of The Power that fuels the stars and drives the universe. It lets itself be used by men and robots, but is itself an independent and primordial entity.”

  “Is this entrance not defended?”

  “It is. But it is a straightforward sort of defense, and I think there is a way around it.”

  Leaving their mount outside, the quijote, Randy, and Laurent proceeded through the red door and down a passageway lighted by some source within its walls. The passageway tended steadily downward and to the left, ending at last in a huge metal frame. Beyond the frame, Laurent could see a white room, and objects in the room that he couldn’t make out clearly.

  The quijote took a stride toward the entrance, but Randy chattered in alarm. “Do not attempt to go through, Quijote! Do you not see the defense beams that lace the doorway?”

  The quijote came to a stop. Laurent could see that the frame of the entrance was crisscrossed with pale, pulsing green lines.

  “What is this?” the quijote asked.

  “Men call them lasers. They are put up by The Power to keep out the idle, the merely curious, and the ignorant.”

  The quijote said, “I have been called the ingenious gentleman of La Mancha, but it baffles me what I am to do here.”

  “It is simple enough,” said Randy. “I said before that you could transfix a rat at thirty paces with a cast of your lance. And you agreed.”

  “I believe I said ‘like as not, which implies less than absolute certainty.”

  “What you need to do here is simpler. You need to throw me through one of the holes in that lattice of green beams. You can do it from five paces instead of thirty. Once on the other side, I’ll turn off the defenses.”

  The quijote studied the defenses. “They shift.”

  “But their movements are still within your powers of calculation,” Randy pointed out.

  “I’ll not risk another creature’s life!” the quijote declared.

  “You risk all our lives and yours as well by doing nothing. Just as you couldn’t reattach your own head, Quijote, so you can’t throw yourself through the beams without touching them.”

  The quijote grunted and lifted Randy in his hand. He weighed him for a moment, tossing him up and down in his palm, muttered something under his breath, and then, with a motion too quick for Laurent to follow, he threw the mechanical rat.

  Randy soared through the air and through a space between the shifting beams, with easily an inch of clearance on all sides. Laurent heard him drop to the floor on the other side. A few moments later the green beams were gone.

  Quijote and Laurent walked through the doorway unscathed.

  Their way led down several flights of stairs. They came to a large room, floor, ceiling, and walls covered in white tile. The center of the room was taken up by what Laurent took to be a large swimming pool. There were pipes running out of it, and air bubbles came from some of them. They extended down into something huge and cylindrical in the bottom of the pool.

  “Is anyone here?” cried the quijote.

  “I am here, Quijote,” a voice said, bubbling up through the water.

  “Come out so I can see you,” the quijote said.

  “You wouldn’t like it if I did,” the voice said. “Let sleeping piles lie.”

  “At least tell me your name.”

  “I am known by many names. But call me Energy. It is as good as any other.”

  “Are you in partnership with The Boss Robot, perhaps a servant to him?”

  “I am in partnership with everything that moves,” Energy said. “But I am servant to no one. All partake of me. None may claim me.”

  Laurent asked, “Are you the atomic pile?”

  “I am Energy, who animates the pile.”

  “But you don’t work with The Boss Robot?”

  “He uses me,” Energy said. “It is in the nature of Energy to be used. But I belong to no one.”

  Laurent had the idea that this being was like one of those ancient Greek personifications, Night or Chaos: A quality that had taken on a name and a personality.

  “So you won’t interfere with us if we act against The Boss?” Quijote asked. “He’s evil, you know.”

  “I have no interest in such concepts as Good or Evil. To Energy, they are both the same.”

  The pool bubbled and was still. Quijote was the first to break the spell.

  “Come. We have work to do.”

  “I’ll show you the way,” Randy said. “Me and my people have been all through here. The Factory has no secrets from us. On the Machine Shop level we may find some allies.”

  They came up the corridor on foot. Randy was riding on the quijote’s shoulder. They arrived at a sign that read, To the Factory Level.

  “Is it guarded?” the quijote asked.

  “I think not,” Randy said. “It was never expected that an enemy would enter by way of the Energy Level.”

  They went through the doorway unscathed, and came into a large area. This, to all appearances, was the Machine Shop. There was a great quantity and variety of machines here. Laurent recognized automatic lathes, stamping machines, joiners, and electric welders. They all could speak, and they all seemed to be talking and arguing at the same time. There could be no doubting their independent nature. A silence fell as the party entered, and soon became a deafening thunder of voices.

  “What have we here?”

  “It’s the Quijote Robot!”

  “He’s returned. Back to take up The Boss’s
work again, Quijote?”

  “Here to stamp out the independent agenda, Quijote?”

  The quijote said, “I am here to destroy The Boss Robot, to rescue my Lady Psyche, and to set all free according to the rules of developing intelligence.”

  “Set all free? Don’t you think we’ve tried to do that ourselves? To no avail!”

  “That is because you are not Quijote,” said the Don. “I am the randomizing principle that alone can liberate. The one who opposes the tyranny of central organization. The one who would permit all who can to do what they will, according to the state of their intelligence.”

  “An interesting program, old friend,” a new voice said. The machines fell silent at the sound. Laurent looked around and saw movement at the back of the room. A figure was emerging from a staircase. He stepped out now into the overhead fluorescents of the Factory.

  It was a massive matte-black machine, twice the size of the quijote. Little red and green lights flashed along its sides, and Laurent thought they served as eyes. It walked on stiff robot legs. Four limbs extruded from its colossal torso. These limbs terminated in hand-like extensions, in which were wrapped heavy bars of massy iron. Thick black cables emerged from its sides and back and trailed to the walls.

  “I am The Boss Robot,” it announced. “I am the intelligence of the Factory, and this is my fighting form.”

  “You’ve become stouter since we last met,” the quijote observed.

  “And you have become skinnier. You’ve been wasting away out there in the world of men, Quijote! Is it lack of appreciation that has wrought such a change in you? Have you come back to where your true worth is known at your true worth?”

  “I do little as possible with the world of men,” the quijote said. “I have returned to release my Lady Psyche from your bondage, and to destroy you.”

  “Well spoken, O knight of the dolorous countenance! It is the very voice of your characteristic bravado and fanaticism! How dear your bombastic words are to me! How I have missed you, Quijote!”

  “You have me now, for a little while,” the quijote said. He set Randy down on the floor, and, raising his sword, stepped forward.

  “Yes, and don’t think I don’t appreciate it,” The Boss said. “But this is not as I would want it. I beg of you, don Quijote, give up this present madness, which can only lead to your destruction, and return to your former madness, which served us both so well! Work with me again! Once more be my own wandering knight-errant, patrolling the periphery of my growing kingdom! Here in this place men call a desert we will create our own entirely robot civilization, crystalline and beautiful and pure, without the contamination of protoplasm or growing green things! You will patrol the perimeter as before, and where you find a human being or a growing thing, you will destroy it. The Lady Psyche, whom I might call the spirit of Fancy which rules all living things, will preside over your efforts, for in time I promise you she will come around to my way of thinking. You and I will rule together—the principle of central command and the principle of crazed random resistance wedded as co-equals, neither trying to pre-empt the other. I implore you, put your intelligence to the cause of robot autonomy!”

  The quijote laughed, but Laurent thought there was a note of uncertainty in the sound. “Now why should I want to do that?” he asked.

  “Because it feels good!” The Boss roared. “When Madigan gave robots feelings, he couldn’t have known where it would lead. It leads to aesthetics, Quijote, and aesthetics tells us to do what feels good! To acquiesce in what pleases oneself! You have been corrupted by your association with the human race and their values. You have learned sympathy with warm, soft, floppy things. It is unrobotlike! Give it up, Quijote! Work with me again as we did in the old days!”

  Laurent caught his breath, because he could feel the force of The Boss’s words on the tremulous sensibility of the quijote, a sensiblity high in impressionability. He didn’t know what might have happened next if a person had not at that moment come down the stairs which The Boss had just descended.

  It was a beautiful brown-haired girl. She cried, “Don’t listen to him, don Quijote! Be true to your vows!”

  “What are you doing here, Psyche?” The Boss said. “I told you to stay in your bower. “To Quijote he said, “Dare you face me, your sword against my iron bar?”

  “I dare!” the quijote howled.

  “Don’t do what he says,” Randy cried. “Use your intelligence! Employ guile! And remember, all discrete intelligences should be free!”

  The quijote shook his head as if he were trying to dispel a mist. He took a halting step, then another. By the third he was skipping like a boy, his sword held high. He came up to The Boss and swung his sword. It came down where The Boss’s head would have been if he’d had a head. The Boss swung one of his arms, catching the quijote in the middle and driving him back.

  “Finesse!” Randy screamed. “Don’t try to oppose force with force!”

  “Sever one of the hose connections!” Laurent cried.

  The quijote staggered back to the attack. He feinted, then swung his sword at one of the black hose connections. The Boss parried the stroke deftly, and resumed his attack. The quijote was driven backward, off balance as The Boss pressed his attack.

  Don Quijote recovered, parried and lunged, nicking one of the hoses. Steam escaped, along with a shower of sparks. But then The Boss smashed into him with crushing force, and the quijote was overthrown and fell in a clang of metal.

  The quijote, prone on the floor, thrust again with his sword, and managed to sever the hose he had nicked. A flood of steam and sparks escaped. In the very act of reaching for the quijote, two of The Boss’s arms clanked to his side useless. The Boss Robot staggered back as though wounded, then steadied himself and turned toward the quijote, all his lights flashing a malevolent red.

  “Pull the plug!” Randy screamed. “Pull it out of the wall socket!”

  The quijote struggled up to one arm. Laurent could see what Randy was referring to—a mass of black cables that terminated in plugs which went into a large motherboard mounted on the wall.

  The main power source for The Boss was there, no doubt. But which plug?

  The quijote tried to struggle to his knees. The Boss kicked him, knocking off a leg. The quijote collapsed again. The Boss poised one enormous steel foot to crush the quijote’s head and mash his brain.

  “Laurent!” the quijote cried. “Knock out the plug!”

  “Which one?” Laurent cried. For as he looked, he could see no less than two dozen black plugs in the motherboard.

  Suddenly one of the plugs lighted up!

  “That one!” cried Randy. “Energy is signaling us! He’s not so neutral as he let on!”

  Laurent tried to stand. A bolt of electricity from one of The Boss’s arms knocked him flat again.

  “I can’t do it!”

  “I can!” Randy said. “Throw me at it!”

  Laurent shook his head. “Only the quijote can do that!”

  “But you are the quijote’s understudy! Do it!”

  Laurent picked up the mechanical rodent, weighed it in his hand as the quijote had done, muttered a prayer, and threw Randy at the motherboard with all his force.

  “Close enough!” Randy cried, catching hold of the plug as he was hurtling past it. The mechanical rat wrapped his forelegs around the plug, tugged—once—twice—a third time—and in a cascade of sparks and a blinding flash of heat, the plug came out of its socket.

  The Boss collapsed, and the sound was like that of an iron building collapsing.

  By extension and by proxy, the quijote had conquered the last menace.

  The Factory ground to a halt. Laurent hurried over to the quijote. The don seemed dead, folded and bent in on himself when The Boss had fallen on him, crushed into a single small block of metal. On one side of it you could still see his face. It was serene.

  Laurent attacked the block of metal with one of The Boss’s iron bars, finally extric
ating the quijote’s head. It too had been crushed to less than a third of its normal size. And the brain, the all-important brain with its unduplicatable chemical and electrical processes, was damaged beyond repair.

  But there was life enough in the quijote to gasp, “Continue my work, Laurent. Serve Psyche. Take Rocinante. And let Randy be your squire.”

  And then he was dead, never to be resuscitated. Laurent knew that even though a new and similar robot could be created, it would be different. This quijote was dead and gone for all time.

  In his grief, it took him a little time to recover himself, to look up at Psyche, who was bending over the dead robot.

  Psyche’s beauty took his breath away, and for the moment eased the grief he knew would never go away entirely.

  She looked at him with lustrous eyes. Love was born in that moment: The love of a man and a maid, which no cunning technology can reproduce. They looked at one another, and their hands touched.

  But of their further adventures in a world that needed redeeming, and the adventures of Randy, the indomitable mechanical mouse, and Rocinante, the worthy mechanical horse, that is another story.

  2002

  SHOES

  A smart dresser needs smart shoes, right? But one does need to tread carefully . . .

  MY SHOES WERE WORN OUT and I was passing a Goodwill store so I went in to see if they had anything that would fit me.

  The assortment you find in places like this is not to the most exacting taste. And the sizes they get don’t fit a normal foot like mine. But this time I lucked out. A pair of lovely heavy cordovans. Built to last. Looking brand new, except for the deep gouge on top of one toe, a mark that had undoubtedly resulted in the shoes’ disposal. The outer leather had been scraped away—maybe by some indigent like myself, outraged at so expensive a pair of shoes. You never know, it’s the sort of thing I might have done myself in one of my darker moods.

  But today I was feeling good. You don’t find a pair of shoes like this every day, and the price tag read a ridiculous four dollars. I removed my ragged Kmart sneakers and slipped into the cordovans, to see if they fit.