Uncanny Tales

by Robert Sheckley

  Tantulus quickly got into the spirit of connoisseurship that his work required. He knew he was an important cultural artifact. It was not small potatoes to realize that all temptation was to be judged by the effect it had on him. He was like the Smirnoff Man of the ancient world. He grew captious and difficult to please. With the succession of feasts that were put in front of him day after day, he became very knowledgeable in the preparation of foods. He didn’t have to taste to know good from bad. He would complain bitterly when he detected by some means known only to himself that a spice was missing. “This turbot is entirely too peppery. This lamb, too bland by half, and adorned with the wrong kind of honey. This sauce, it has a bitter taste underneath it.”

  The cooks used to grow very angry at Tantulus. How, they asked, could he judge the food without tasting it? For of course the hellish mechanism made sure he never tasted anything. And Tantulus told them he did it first of all by the aroma, which he made sure to sniff, and secondly by the sheer powers of discrimination which had developed in his mind. “For look you, gentlemen, actually tasting these foods dulls the senses. I wouldn’t taste your food if I were able to! But what I’m here for is to judge it, and I have to tell you that this meal was not up to snuff.”

  And that was the end of Persephone’s reply to Hades, and she got back into the bullock wagon and let Demeter carry her back to the upper world. No eyewitnesses exist who can tell us what happened to the pomegranate seed she had had in her hand. But it is a fact that she returned to hell and to her spouse, Hades, every fall, just as the world was turning dark and cold. Winter with tiny snowflakes came and went and soon the hounds of spring appeared in the upper valleys. I sat on my throne in hell and had dinners with Achilles and Helen and waited for Persephone to return. What was she doing, I wondered. What about that pomegranate seed? And just before she came back, at the very last possible instant, when I had used up all my hope and I had grown tired of thinking about the inhabitants of hell, I thought to myself, what I want is my Persephone. It’s the beginning of winter now, and as I sit there on my iron throne, the taste of ashes in my mouth, I hear the faint sound of bells. And I know it heralds a blessed event, the arrival of my beloved, though you can never be sure.

  The Quijote Robot

  I have a special feeling for the Quijote robot. He gave me a chance to write a little tribute to Cervantes and Don Quixote de la Mancha, that ingenious gentleman. My Quixote has his problems, too, and so does his sidekick, Laurent, who stands in for the missing Sancho Panza. Follow them as they face the evil giant Macadam, then venture into the country of the hybrid and non-protoplasmic creations, on their way to fight The Robot Factory itself.

  The quijote robot was riding through the forest. His mechanical steed, Rocinante, was complaining already, in her own way. It had been a long day, and the quijote had pressed her on without pity. Although she was as robotic as quijote, she nevertheless had her limits, as he had his. You could see lubrication leaking out from between the overlapping plates that made up her hide, where the rivets had loosened.

  The quijote was a tall, very skinny robot, made of various bright metals—coppery red, yellow brass, etc. His head was modeled with a human face—a long, melancholy face, done in a dull, gray, pewter-like metal. Below his nose he had two black appendages that stuck out on either side; antennae, of course, but they looked uncannily like moustaches. He had a radar indicator as well, disguised as a little black goatee.

  What was unusual was not that he was a robot; there were many of them in the world at this time, some free-standing and self-determined. What was unusual was that the quijote was carrying his head under his arm. The head was still encased in a helmet of bright brass.

  The quijote had lost his head a few days ago. A blow by the giant Macadam, who posed as an itinerant robot road-maker, shrewdly delivered with a tar-covered lance, had caught the quijote square on the forehead, bent his head back, and caused the screw that held his head to his neck to pop off. And with that screw gone, his head had come off.

  The quijote had not lost his calm during this emergency. Catching his head in one hand, he had dropped his lance and, drawing his sword, had spurred back into combat. And beaten Macadam, leaving him a smoking ruin.

  But now the fight was over, and the quijote was feeling sorry for himself: just an old robot who can’t do something as simple as help himself. He had been constructed by the famous Madigan himself, who had somehow left the quijote unable to reach the back of his own neck. This was an irksome restriction which the quijote accepted willingly, because he believed, as had Madigan, that robots needed built- in limitations, and, since nature hadn’t provided them with a way to die, man had to. The inability to fix himself was his bond with humanity, which he served. He thought his greatest enemy, The Robot Factory, had to have restrictions, too, though he didn’t know what they were, and The Robot Factory had to have a way to die, though the quijote didn’t know what that was, either.

  To date, The Robot Factory had been unstoppable. The quijote had set himself the task of ridding the world of this evil creature, evil if for no other reason than its apparent lack of restrictions. Yes, he was going to kill The Robot Factory, and free the beautiful princess, Psyche, Madigan’s daughter, who had been left behind and without a champion when her father had been killed during the recent great robot rebellion.

  The quijote stopped in a little glade, with his head under his arm. With Rocinante, his mechanical horse, standing patiently nearby, the quijote tried to re-attach his head, which still fit snugly on the metallic stalk that came up through his neck. He just needed to thread a screw to hold it in place. He even found a superfluous screw from his shoulder joint; a screw which he was sure would fit the small spirally grooved stud and hold his head in place. The trouble was, his arms were not long enough or sufficiently jointed to permit him to position his head with one hand and reach around and slip on and tighten the screw with the other.

  After half a day of trying, he was willing to admit defeat. He looked reproachfully at his horse Rocinante. She was a fine creature, and intelligent in her way, but her hooves were unsuited to threading screws.

  It had been days since he had last seen his squire, Sancho Panza. Now, when he needed him, the fellow was nowhere to be found.

  Had he made Sancho governor of his own island yet, as he had promised? The quijote couldn’t remember. In any case, Sancho was not here.

  Was there no one around he could call upon for this favor? It was so small a thing… But he was on the border of The Wasteland, a place populated by mechanical monsters, jointed giants, evil spirits of metal and silicon, and hallucinations and conjurors’ tricks. He’d find no help here.

  The quijote was a valiant warrior, and a staunch one. Good humor in the face of adversity was one of his best qualities. But even this was beginning to fail him now. It seemed to him that he had been most unfairly used. Here he was, in the wilderness, ready to face the dangers of this world and the next, and all for the sake of the lady, Psyche, daughter of Madigan, his creator, a woman whose preeminence in beauty, intelligence and virtue he was prepared to proclaim to the four corners of the Earth, and to prove on the bodies of any who disagreed. All this he was ready to do; but, lacking a head, he found himself unable to do so.

  Poor old quijote! He had to go knight-erranting with his head under his arm. He couldn’t pack away his head in his saddlepack, because he needed the eyes so that he could see what he faced, so that he could engage in that skill of arms at which he considered himself so proficient. He needed his head, not just for seeing, but for planning, too, because, with his head detached from his body, he could feel a vagueness creeping over his spirit, a vague aridity that threatened all too soon to pervade his entire being, so that he could foresee the time when he would no longer remember or care about who he was or what he was supposed to do, or even remember the name of the high-born lady whose beauty he was there to proclaim.

  Sensing that his faculties were fading
away with the detachment of his head, the quijote knew despair. How badly now he needed the services of Sancho, his good squire. But it had been a long time since he had seen his Sancho! Had Sancho ever existed? He couldn’t remember. Without his head attached to his body he was undone, bereft of that minimum of sense he needed to continue his work.

  Aware of the impending danger to his very being, the quijote brought his steed to a halt in a little glade. It was a joysome place, but it brought no pleasure to the quijote’s eyes. Dismounting, he thought, this will be as good a place to die as any ... to die, or receive a miracle.

  The quijote robot was not much for prayer. To serve his lady and to right the world’s wrongs, these made up his simple creed, and he had always found them sufficient. But now, sitting on the grass, with his head on a log beside him, he began to feel for the first time that what was required of him was beyond his powers. Rolling to his knees, he clasped his hands and prayed to the invisible God of living things, the unknown god beyond all religion, the God with no priesthood, no cult, no preference for one kind of being over another, the god of solitary knights-errant, whose religion was not to be found in the learned dissertations of priests or in the books of scholars.

  “Unknown entity,” he said aloud, “I have never before presumed to address you, feeling as I do that you have more on your mind than the needs of a humble robot. But I do address you now, because I am at a point where I am unable to continue. I am only a robot, Lord—probably you can tell that by the mechanical quality of my prayer. That I cannot help. Despite being a robot, I have spirit within me, and a sense that a time will come when my personality, such as it is, will merge with yours, and I will return to your mind, O great Mind of the universe. But it seems to me—that my end-time is not yet. If that is true, I ask a favor. Send me a squire, someone who can help me in this simple yet baffling matter of setting the screw that holds my head in place. Help me, O Lord, I most humbly beseech you to help me, because I can no longer help myself.”

  The quijote robot had no very strong feeling that anything was going to happen. But something did happen. High above him, he heard the leaves rustling in the tree below which he sat. But his motion sensors didn’t pick up any breeze to account for it. Lifting his head from his lap, he tilted it so that he could look at the treetop.

  Yes. There was someone up there in the tree. Thank you, Lord.

  “Hello, you up there in the tree! Can you hear me?”

  “Of course I can hear you,” the person in the tree said.

  “How long have you been up there?”

  “I really don’t know. In fact, I don’t even know how I got here.”

  The quijote robot knew, or thought he knew, but decided it was not the time to talk about that.

  “Why don’t you come down?” he asked.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s the next thing to do. Who are you?”

  “A friend. They call me the quijote robot. What is your name?”

  “Laurent. Some people call me Larry.”

  “I will call you Laurent,” the quijote robot said. “It’s too early for nicknames. Are you coming down?”

  “I am.” The quijote heard the sound of a body scraping along the tree. The tree shook. It wasn’t a very large tree. It was probably hard-pressed to support Laurent’s weight.

  Presently the man himself slid down the remaining few feet of the trunk and reached the ground. He wiped bark off himself, pushed back his hair, and took his first good look at the quijote robot.

  “Oh my God,” he said.

  “What is the matter?”

  “You. No insult intended, but I didn’t expect to meet a man dressed in armor.”

  “I am not a man dressed in armor. I am a robot, and what you take to be armor is my skin.”

  “I didn’t expect that, either,” Laurent said.

  The quijote remained very still, for he could tell that Laurent was frightened.

  “You’re a robot?” Laurent asked. “Are you sure there’s not some guy somewhere with a microphone, making you talk, and playing a poor joke on me?”

  “Quite sure. Come closer. You will see that I am a freestanding robot. I have no wires attaching me to something else. I am not controlled by anyone else. I can control myself very nicely, thank you.”

  “Well, this is the damndest thing I’ve ever heard of,” Laurent said. “I don’t even know where I am.”

  “I believe we are somewhere in America,” the quijote said. “In what is called the Southwest.”

  “Wow, that’s really weird,” Laurent said.

  “Why say you so?”

  “Because I was in Portland, Oregon, when all this began. I’m just going to forget we’re having this conversation. It’s much too weird.”

  “I agree,” the quijote said. “I can’t imagine why God or whoever brought you to me took you from another place, if that’s what happened.”

  “Do you happen to know how I got here?”

  “As to the discrete or efficient cause, I cannot say. As to the over-all cause, I asked for you. And so by the grace of unknown powers, you came.”

  “You say you sent for me?”

  “I didn’t ask for you specifically. I asked for someone to help me.”

  “I see. This is just about the maddest thing I ever heard. But just to go along with the gag, what do you need me for?”

  “You might have noticed,” the quijote robot said, “that I am holding my head in my hands.”

  “I was wondering about that,” Laurent said, “but I didn’t want to mention it.”

  “That’s all right. I’m not ashamed of it. It was one of those accidents that happen when you take up knight-errantry. It happened while I was fighting the giant Macadam—the evil road-maker of The Wasteland. I had him beaten—I’ve never yet seen the giant I couldn’t overcome—when, with a lucky stroke, the point of his tar lance hit me in the middle of the forehead. I believe there’s a dent.”

  Laurent examined the head. “A small one. If you were a man, you’d have a hell of a headache now.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a headache. But the fact is, that lance blow took my head off my shoulders. Luckily, Macadam was already dead. My head is all right—”

  “You’re talking with it right now.”

  “—but having to carry my head in one arm impedes me from my work of knight-errantry. I need both arms free and my head firmly in place to deal with the situations I come across. So I want you to refasten my head.”

  “I see,” Laurent said doubtfully.

  “It goes right on this stalk coming out of my neck. And then with this screw—” He opened his hand and showed the screw. “You make it fast. I am unable to do so myself. A defect in my design renders me unable to reach the back of my head to tighten the screw.”

  Laurent didn’t know what to say. But it seemed a simple enough request. Taking the quijote’s head in his hands, he set it on the stalk coming out of the neck. Then he made fast the screw. Not without some difficulty—he didn’t have a wrench with which to tighten up the nut. But the quijote, seeing the difficulty, made a wrench for him out of spare parts from Rocinante’s saddlebag, and the thing was done.

  The quijote tested out the repair, first by mildly twisting his head to and fro, then by some violent exercises with his sword, in which he attacked branches and stumps. He dashed back and forth against his imaginary foe, giving out loud cries and saying, “Yield, caitiff, and confess to the superior beauty of my lady Psyche to any who exist in the world today, or who ever existed in the past.”

  The head stayed firmly in place.

  This done, the two rested for a while in a mossy glen. The quijote was not fatigued, of course, but he liked to pretend to human limitations. Laurent was tired from just watching the quijote at his exertions.

  The quijote produced some food from his saddlepack. It was not for him: he did not eat human food, or indeed food of any sort. He had an internal energy source which would keep him supplied for years, fo
r centuries. The food was for Laurent, or whoever came along to act as his squire. The quijote had been carrying it just in case. He had half a ham, a loaf of rough bread, a flask of olive oil, a bottle of wine, and three apples. It was good-tasting peasant fare. Laurent enjoyed it very much, and ate his fill.

  After lunch, and a nap, Laurent fell asleep in the green forest. The quijote stood to his arms, leaning on his lance and thinking of his lady love in the manner of knights-errant in all times and places.

  Laurent awoke after an hour or so. He was more than a little surprised to still be in the forest, and to have the quijote robot still standing beside him. Laurent had half expected to wake up in his own time, in his own place.

  He got up, washed his face in a nearby brook. The quijote was deep in his meditations.

  Laurent waited a while, then said, “Excuse me…”

  “Yes?” said the quijote.

  “What happens now?” Laurent asked.

  “Now,” the quijote said, “I continue my travels looking for adventure and a chance to right the wrongs I encounter.”

  “I see,” Laurent said. “But what about me?”

  “I have been giving the matter some thought,” the quijote said. “My original supposition was that God or one of his messengers had sent you to me for the sole purpose of reattaching my head. I watched over you as you slept, because it seemed to me that, your task done, you might vanish from here, no doubt to return to the place you came from.”

  “That seems a reasonable supposition,” Laurent said.

  “But no such thing happened.”

  “So I have noticed.”

  “Therefore I come to the conclusion that, having fixed my head, you are here for some additional purpose.”