by John Sladek
Father Warren banged a slim fist on the desk. ‘Assume robots can tell people from robots, assume that. Then the Three Laws are perfectly logical, right?’
‘No but I mean that’s just a start, the robot’s gotta figure out what harm and injury mean, more legal stuff see, it’s right back to court again with the Districk –’
‘Assume we’ve got that worked out too. Then do you see how logical –?’
‘Wait, no, soom sure, soom all that stuff for just the first law, just the first part of the first law. I didn’t even mention how’s a robot surgeon gonna operate without cutting into anybody, how’s a robot cop gonna arrest anybody, how’s a robot soldier gonna kill anybody – okay so soom we don’t have robots doing any jobs like that, we still got the second part, he can’t let anybody come to harm by inaction that’s not doing nothing, just like not even existing, only how does that tie in with that clause 3 there I mean the third law?’
‘Afraid I don’t follow you. What – just a minute.’ Father Warren took a handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose. Then he went to the window and stared out at the black-and-white garden. ‘Getting dark.’ He went around the room, turning on lights. ‘I think I see what you’re driving at. If the robot doesn’t protect its own existence first and foremost, how can it be around later to prevent some human coming to harm?’
‘Yeah, Father, that’s it. Because there’s no time in these laws, it’s always something right away like somebody tries to shoot a guy and the robot gets in between. But take a robot farmer, he knows somebody might starve if he stopped work so he’s really gotta perteck himself, for ever. But in these other laws it says that if some kid just comes along and tells him to go jump off the highest building in the world he’s gotta go and do it. Is that logical?’
‘Maybe not, Roderick. Maybe not. But –’
‘Anyway take this zillionaire, he spends a zillion dollars on this custom-made robot, you think he’s gonna let some kid come along and tell it to jump off a building? No he’s gonna program it to perteck itself, like program in martial arts and everything.’
The hands washed each other, folded for prayer, subsided on the desk blotter. ‘I see you’ve really gone in to this, Roderick. Can’t say I’ve – but I am sure of one thing: robots in fiction – and in real life when the day comes – will be completely programmed. They won’t have free will like the rest of us. That was what I really hoped you’d see in this story. What being a robot is really like. No free will. No choice. Tell me. Is it really worth it?’
‘Is what worth what?’
‘Is it worth giving up your humanity to be a “robot”? Isn’t it really better to be a human being, made in –’ His gaze fell on Roderick, slipped over the surfaces of steel and plastic, ‘– made in, ahm, God’s image? Is it worth giving that up to be just a – a glorified adding-machine?’
Roderick sat up straight. ‘Is that it? I can’t go to Communion because I’m just an adding machine? Because who says robots are just adding – boy, I’m not an adding-machine, boy, I’m as good as anybody …’
After a pause, Father Warren smiled. ‘Exactly. You’re as good as anybody because you have an immortal soul. You’re human, right?’
‘I – guess so, Father.’
‘And not a robot?’
‘No I’m still a robot only I’m a human rob –’
‘You’re impossible, that’s what you are! I give up – no I don’t, I’ll see you back here after the holidays. God’s peace be with you.’
But it was Father Warren who could find no peace. Long after the little machine-boy had rattled and bumped his way out of the room, he sat contemplating his own hands, listening to the furious gunfire from the basement. Finally he got up and looked for a book. His hand, the colour of beeswax, passed over religious volumes and came to the science fiction. At last he took down Screwtape Letters and read:
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive or unhealthy interest in them.
The pin-scratch began to itch.
XVII
The lights were on at Holy Trinity School, and a procession of cars led past the sign TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED to discharge their peculiar passengers at the back door: bearded little boys, girls with wings, a miniature Roman soldier bearing a golden kazoo, adults toting bales of straw, tinsel ropes and foolish grins. Sister Filomena, the principal, stood in the hall like a traffic cop, directing boys to one room, girls to another, adults to a pile of folding chairs and on into the gymnasium.
‘No, that way Mrs Grogan … well I’m very sorry Mary, but if you can’t keep track of your own halo … Christmas Mrs Roberts, yes, the Wise Men go on right after … nice to see you too, the … DANIEL GROGAN! Shepherds do not behave like… popcorn balls? How nice Mrs Goun, I’m sure after the perf … third on the right, see Sister Mary Olaf, Mary … Merry Chris … DANIEL! Will you stop that this minute or do we take your crook away … Ah here’s little Roger, hello Mr Wood Mrs Wood is that his costume?’
‘And the other box is a present,’ said Roderick. ‘For Sister –’
‘How nice, thoughtful only you’d better run along and change now …’
‘Ma made my costume, boy you oughta see –’
‘Yes fine, you just run along …’
She divided him from Ma and Pa, who went to squat in the dark gym with all the other parents, the men coughing and creaking their folding chairs, the women fanning themselves with programmes. Roderick left his costume in the boys’ dressing-room and went to find Sister Mary Martha.
The lower hall was full of action: two shepherds fencing with their crooks, a choirboy with a bloody nose trying to cure it at the drinking fountain, the front half of an ass trying to get through a door held shut by a fat angel, a halo being used for a Frisbee (which it was), someone wearing a giant foil-covered star trying to bite someone who was pinching someone who was trying to kick the doll from the arms of someone in blue…
But upstairs it was quiet and dark, except for the light shining out of Father O’Bride’s office door.
‘… yeah, yeah, look Andy don’t do me any more favours, I distinctly said candles on the phone today I get the invoice for a gross, what would I do with a gross of sandals? Think we got a discalced order here or what? No I didn’t say discount order, skip it, listen – listen will you? What I’m tryina do here is real big league stuff, I’m tryina put together a whole package look, forget about that Taiwan crap, this has gotta be up-market stuff, devotion – are you listening? Look it’s a kit. see, a complete home package of devotional uh products, not just the Mass kit but a whole host of, range of … that’s it, you got it. We figure the average family size is four, so that means four digital rosaries, you got that? Okay, four kneeling pads … sure that’s okay if they don’t look too Ay-rab … yeah okay … now, yeah you got the rest of it, the hologram portrait of Saint Ant – better make it Patrick, the market research newsletters all say Anthony’s downmarket this year …’
Roderick passed along, down the front stairs, and found Sister Mary Martha in her usual place, on all fours. In the gloom, Roderick could just make out her frail figure, the skinny hand gripping an electric hand-polisher that moved back and forth over the same old spot.
‘Hi Sister, gee it’s dark down here. How the heck can you see what you’re doing? Gee I hope you get it done in time to see the play. It’s neat, all about this metallic conception I guess and how the wise men and the sheep men get together to look at this star because they, because somebody didn’t count it in the census. Pa says about censuses what it is they figure if they can just count everybody once, they figure they got it made. He says what they want is to keep the population down to zero, everybody being just a big nothing. He says the whole point of science is people controlling birth and death. Only I guess in those days they didn’t have birth-control so they had to send out soldiers
with swords to cut up all these babies. I guess we don’t get to do that part.
‘Anyway I gotta go soon because I’m one of the wise men, I bring in the Frankenst – frankincense. So here’s a Christmas present for you. I made it myself. Should I open it for you? Here, see? It’s a rosary.’
The figure did not look up. Roderick sat on the step and held out the string of beads. ‘Ma says they got it all wrong about Our Lady giving the first rosary to St Dominic. She says really it was Lady Godiva gave it to the Benedictines. Ever hear that story? No?
‘Well see it was in England and they had this tax problem just like Caesar Augustus, you know? And this Lady Godiva’s husband was the tax collector and he was so mean she felt sorry for all the poor folks paying these taxes, so she did a strip in front of everybody. So her husband said he was sorry and he built this big monastary and then she gave them the first rosary. Only maybe that wasn’t the first one either even though it was a hundred years before Dominic, because Ma says the Hindus had rosaries a long time before that, 32 beads for Shiva and 64 beads for Vishnu, what do you think?’
The figure did not look up. ‘Well, Pa doesn’t like religion much, he always says the collection’s the most important part of it, you know? He sounds a lot like this other guy I heard once, who said religion’s all just counting and numbers, telling the beads like a bank teller. Number magic he said. Number magic. He said if you want to go to Heaven get a big goddarn computer. Sister?’
He leaned over closer. ‘Sister, if religion and arithmetic are just the same thing, why don’t we just put ’em together? Like the Protestants, see one time I went into this Protestant church and they didn’t have no crucifix or statues or nothing, just this big board up on the wall with a bunch of numbers on it – is that, is that the answer? Is that the right answer, Sister?
‘Well then look, why don’t we just, when we say prayers and get days of indulgence and stuff, why don’t we keep it all in a bank somewhere? And have like credit cards? Sister?’
The electric hand-polisher stalled, turned over and skidded out from under the wrinkled hand. Roderick made a move to fetch it, but stopped. Sister Mary Martha rolled over sideways and lay still and stiff, her withered cheek pressed to another withered cheek in the gleaming floor. Roderick stared, and four colourless eyes stared back at him.
‘… Holy Family Kit hits the Chicago dealers just make sure your boys are on the ball there, work out some kinda sales slogan, not just the old family that prays together routine neither, something peppy like Go! Go! Go for God! maybe or no, okay something like Say One For Yourself, Too. Well I don’t know Frank, you’re the adman … hang on a minute … what is it?’
‘Father, there’s a stiff downstairs. You wanta call the cops?’
‘Oh very funny, now go away stop bothering –’
‘But Father it’s S –’
‘Go away. You still there Frank? Nothing just … talking what? Ha ha, host, aw come on! Never get a dispensation in a million … need their head examined if they think … Ha ha, try that out on Jack, Father Warren here, he’s the science fiction nut around here …’
Chairs creaked, programmes fluttered, as a shrill voice finished flattening the notes of Bless This House. The man next to Pa wondered why they couldn’t turn off the heat when they had a mob like this, and the woman next to him wondered why they didn’t just run it all through closed circuit TV like they did over at the public. Pa said he didn’t mind, but then he was non-Catholic. Ma tried to nudge him but he went on, ‘Yep, getting ready for the eternal flames,’ he said. ‘Wanna see me weep? Gnash my – ouch!’
‘Oh you’re Mr Wood, aren’t you? I don’t suppose your little boy’s in the play – you know our little Traysee is playing Our Lady herself?’
‘Our Lady?’
‘The Blessed, you know. Mary. I don’t suppose your –’
‘Playing one of the wise men. Not sure just which one, Baal-hazar maybe.’
‘Oh yes he’s the little crip – handicapped boy isn’t he?’ The woman smiled a V-shaped smile. ‘You know I always think it’s best to keep them in a home. After all, if God –’
We do keep him in a home. Ours,’ Pa stage-whispered as the curtain rose on a centurion. A shrill voice began:
‘At thattime therewentforth a disease, a decree …’
*
The show, Roderick thought, must go on. Besides, nobody wanted to listen when he tried telling them, not Father O’Bride upstairs on his exercycle watching his own muscles ripple underneath his Sham Rocks t-shirt. Not Sister Olaf backstage here either, she was so busy keeping everybody quiet and trying to keep the choirboy from wiping his bloody nose on his surplice, and heck she didn’t even see anybody, didn’t even say she liked his costume it was just, ‘Okay get ready Wise Man Number Three’, as if he was jumping out of a plane or something, already the numbers one and two were moving forward (‘Little steps, little steps’) and the choir hummed We Three Kings of Orient Are. Then suddenly he was onstage in the blazing light …
The choir stopped humming. The audience stopped coughing and creaking.
Ma had taken a lot of trouble with the costume, saying that a sorcerer ought to look like a sorcerer. And since no one had made it clear which Wise Man Roderick was to play, she’d fixed up a kind of all-purpose outfit. She might have got away with the lunar bull-horns and the solar mask (even though its crazy blood-red grin would disturb children’s dreams for some time to come). Even when Roderick opened his giant wings to speak, the audience was less shocked by the fixed stare of some 500 dolls’ eyes, than by the revealed body draped in yellow, and bearing unmistakable appendages on the chest. 500 or more eyes stared back at him, at them, those lumps of painted wood which (Ma said) sorcerer-kings of old had worn to distract the gods. And between these great breasts nestled the sacred heart of Osiris, bright red, pulsing realistically, and gushing butane fire. With a bang, it went out.
A man snickered.
‘Jesus,’ began Roderick.
A woman gasped.
‘I mean here’s frankenst – Jesus, here’s –’
An angel screamed. A whispered command came from backstage and some of the larger choirboys moved to seize him. And then suddenly he was all over the stage at once, rolling, kicking, flapping his wings, disappearing under a heap of lace vestments to re-emerge minus a breast, dodging the black arm of a nun, crashing into the stable and emerging in a blizzard of straw – – until finally he was pinned down as the curtain descended, so that the last thing seen by the audience was his Satanic grin.
That was how they would think of it later, Satanic. One or two in the audience went so far as to imagine they had heard him uttering curses and incantations, that they had seen a forked tail which coiled around him to make the Sign of the Cross in reverse … Others had more practical reasons for being upset. Mrs Roberts, whose little girl had not yet made her entrance (‘Fly! Fly to Egypt! King Herod …’), made her way backstage to deliver a slap that left her hand stinging, Roderick’s metal singing.
‘It was like seeing a peacock hunted down and plucked,’ said Ma as the three of them walked home.
‘Phyllis Teens,’ Pa muttered.
‘Except that it used to be a wren, didn’t it? At Christmas all the English villagers would go out in a big pack and hunt down a wren. Men of good will …’
‘Why?’ Roderick asked.
‘Now don’t get all upset, either one of you,’ Pa said. ‘The disguise was beautiful whatever they say. And you done just fine in the play, son. Anyway remember, Christmas is just another Julian day. Day two million, four hundred forty thousand –’
‘Men of good will! Industrial England it was, so of course they had all kinds of funny notions, they, they thought the machines wanted them to do it. Yes so they killed the little bird and crucified it and carried it around the village singing
We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin
We hunted the wren for Jack the Can
We –’<
br />
‘Yeah but why would they do that?’
‘Because, I don’t know why, because they were horrible Manxmen, maybe. People with so little imagination they call their home the Isle of Man –’
‘And,’ Pa said, ‘they couldn’t even put a cat together properly, left the tail inside. Sorry son.’
Roderick did not like jokes about body parts coming apart. Hearing one made him suddenly imagine he could feel the iron rods in his legs. He felt them now, even as he smiled. ‘That’s okay.’
‘That was a very strange play,’ said Ma. ‘All that business about the Virgin Mary, as if the infant didn’t count at all. She’s the big star, and he’s just a silly doll. Reminds me of the Egyptian priests, at the winter solstice they’d all gather in the temple and at midnight they’d come running out with this wooden doll, telling everybody the Virgin had given birth to this new sun, S-U-N I mean –’
‘Another yard of Frazer,’ said Pa. ‘Son, I get this every damn Chris …’
They had to stop to wait for Pa to finish coughing. Roderick looked at the stars. Damn Christmas, Christmas of the damned, dead souls. Burning like candles on a tree. If everyone lit one little candle, Pa always said, we’d have a candle shortage overnight. Pa coughing out his soul in a cloud right here on earth. Spitting in the snow to leave a wren-mark. For Robbie the Bobbin. Hunted by a hawk, up it comes, somebody marking its fall. Souls escaping on a sigh.
Ma always said that souls were only held to Earth by the weight of sin, they rose up to Heaven by dropping it: giving all your pride to the Sun, all your love of money to Mercury, all your lust to Venus, all your gluttony to the Moon, all your anger to Mars, all your envy to Jupiter and all your laziness to Saturn, finally entering the astral sphere to become a pure flame, a star. Which one would be Sister Mary Martha? If Roderick had his way, she’d be the brightest, nightbright as she had been dayplain, the almost invisible virgin now crawling up the stairs of the sky (cleaning each one) to her jewelled crown.
