Untouched by Human Hands

by Robert Sheckley

  The god was angry. He shouted, and pointed at the offending jug. Then he pointed at the other god, still lying on his face in heavenly ecstasy. He pointed at his throat, his dry, cracked mouth, and at the water jug again. He took two off-balance steps and fell down. The god began to sob.

  “Quick!” Younger Singer shouted. “Start the Dance of Reciprocal Trade Agreement!”

  Only his quick thinking saved the day. The Dancers lighted the sacred boughs and waved them at the gods. The gods began to cough and choke their approval.

  “Quick thinking,” Elder Singer said grudgingly. “What made you think of that dance?”

  “It had the most impressive name,” Glat said. “I knew we needed something strong.”

  “Well—well done,” Elder Singer said, and returned to the dance.

  Glat smiled, and wrapped his tail around his waist. This was an important step for him.

  Now he had to plan how he would put Alhona’s ceremonies into effect.

  The gods lay on the ground, coughing and gasping like men in agony. Younger Singer decided to wait until the right moment.

  All that day the Dance of Reciprocal Trade Agreement was danced, and the gods did their part. Men from distant villages came to worship, and the gods choked their approval.

  At the end of the dance, one of the gods got up, very slowly. He sank to his knees, exaggerating his movements like a desperately weak man.

  “A message,” Elder Singer whispered, and everyone was silent.

  The god threw out both arms. Elder Singer nodded.

  “He promises us good crops,” Elder Singer said.

  The god balled his fists, then dropped them as a fit of coughing seized him.

  “He sympathizes with our thirst and poverty,” Elder Singer pointed out

  The god pointed down his throat again, with a gesture so sad that several villagers began to weep.

  “He wants us to begin the dances over,” Elder Singer said. “Come, form the first figure.”

  “It means no such thing,” Glat said boldly, deciding that this was his moment.

  Everyone stared at him in shocked silence.

  “The god desires the Water Ceremony,” Glat said.

  A low gasp went up from the dancers. The Water Ceremony was part of the Alhona heresy, which Elder Singer profaned vigorously. But then, Elder Singer was old. Perhaps, Glat, the Younger Singer—

  “I will not allow it!” Elder Singer screamed. “The Water Ceremony comes after the feast, which comes after all the dances. Only in this way can we be rid of the Avoidance!”

  “The gods must be offered water!” Younger Singer shouted.

  Both looked for a sign from the gods, but the gods were watching them silently, with tired, bloodshot eyes.

  Then one of the gods coughed.

  “A sign!” Glat shouted, before Elder Singer could claim it for his own.

  Elder Singer argued, but to no avail. The villagers had heard.

  Water was brought in purified, painted jugs, and the dancers took their positions for the ceremony. The gods watched, croaking softly in their own language.

  “Now!” Younger Singer said. A water jug was brought forward. One of the gods reached for it. Then the other pushed him back and reached for it himself.

  The people murmured nervously.

  The first struck the other god feebly, and seized the water. The other took it back, and began raising it to his mouth. Then the first made a lunge, and the water jug was knocked off the mound.

  “I warned you!” Elder Singer screamed. “They rejected the water, as naturally they would. Take it away quickly, before we are doomed!”

  Two men snatched the water jugs and galloped away. The gods bellowed, then lay still.

  The Dance of Custom Inspection was begun at once, under Elder Singer’s orders. Again the sacred boughs were lighted, and waved at the gods. Feebly the gods coughed their approval. One tried to crawl off the mound, but fell on his face. The other lay, motionless.

  For a long time the gods lay, and made no sign.

  Younger Singer stood on the edge of the dancing. Why, he asked himself, had the gods deserted him?

  Could Alhona be wrong?

  The gods had rejected the water.

  Alhona had stated clearly that the only way to remove the mysterious Avoidance was to offer food and water at once. Had they waited too long?

  The ways of the gods were unknowable, Glat told himself sadly. Now his chance was gone forever. He might as well give his allegiance to Elder Singer.

  Slowly, he trotted back to the dance.

  Elder Singer decreed that the dances would begin again, and be danced for the full four days and nights. Then, if the gods approved, they would be offered the feast

  The gods made no sign. They lay at full length on the Sacred Mound, their limbs occasionally twitching, imitating men in the last stages of exhaustion and thirst.

  Clearly they were important gods. How else could they imitate so well?

  By morning, something happened. Even though Elder Singer had cancelled the Good Weather Dance, clouds began to form overhead. Great black ones they were, hiding the morning sun.

  “It will go away,” said Elder Singer, dancing the Rejection of Rain Dance.

  But the clouds opened, and rain began to fall.

  The gods stirred slowly, and turned their faces to the sky.

  “Bring wood!” Elder Singer shouted. “Bring thatch! The gods will curse the rain, which must not touch them until the ceremonies are over!”

  Glat, seeing another chance, said, “No! The gods themselves have commanded the rain!”

  “Take away the young heretic!” Elder Singer screamed. “Bring the thatch over here!”

  The men pulled Glat away, and began to build a hut around the gods, to protect them from the rain. Elder Singer himself began to thatch the roof, working quickly and reverently.

  The gods had been lying with their mouths open in the sudden, intense outburst. When they saw Elder Singer thatching a roof over them, they tried to stand up.

  Elder Singer worked faster, aware that he was profaning the Sacred Mound with his presence.

  The two gods looked at each other. Then one got slowly to his knees. The other placed both hands on him, and helped him up.

  The god stood, swaying drunkenly, gripping the hand of the reclining god. He pushed both hands against Elder Singer’s chest, suddenly and violently.

  Caught off balance, Elder Singer fell from the Sacred Mound, his legs kicking ludicrously. The god ripped the thatch from the roof, and helped the other god to his feet.

  “A sign!” Younger Singer screamed, struggling with the villagers. “A sign!”

  There was no denying it. Both gods were on their feet now, standing with their heads tilted back, mouths open to the rain.

  “Bring on the feast!” Glat shouted. “It is the command of the gods!”

  The villagers hesitated. Embracing the Alhona heresy was a serious step, and one that should be carefully thought out.

  But with Younger Singer now in command they had to risk it.

  And it seemed that Alhona was right. The gods showed their approval in a truly godly manner, stuffing huge amounts of food in their mouths in marvelous imitation of men, and guzzling beverages as though they were actually dying of thirst.

  Glat only wished he could speak their tongue, for he wanted to know why there had been an Avoidance in the first place.

  BESIDE STILL WATERS

  Mark Rogers was a prospector, and he went to the asteroid belt looking for radioactives and rare metals. He searched for years, never finding much, hopping from fragment to fragment. After a time he settled on a slab of rock half a mile thick.

  Rogers had been born old, and he didn’t age much past a point. His face was white with the pallor of space, and his hands shook a little. He called his slab of rock Martha, after no girl he had ever known.

  He made a little strike, enough to equip Martha with an air pump and
a shack, a few tons of dirt and some water tanks, and a robot. Then he settled back and watched the stars.

  The robot he bought was a standard-model all-around worker, with built-in memory and a thirty-word vocabulary. Mark added to that, bit by bit. He was something of a tinkerer, and he enjoyed adapting his environment to himself.

  At first, all the robot could say was “Yes sir,” and “No sir.” He could state simple problems: “The air pump is laboring, sir.” “The com is budding, sir.” He could perform a satisfactory greeting: “Good morning, sir.”

  Mark changed that He eliminated the “sirs” from the robot’s vocabulary; equality was the rule on Mark’s hunk of rock. Then he dubbed the robot Charles, after a father he had never known.

  As the years passed, the air pump began to labor a little as it converted the oxygen in the planetoid’s rock into a breathable atmosphere. The air seeped into space, and the pump worked a little harder, supplying more.

  The crops continued to grow on the tamed black dirt of the planetoid. Looking up, Mark could see the sheer blackness of the river of space, the floating points of the stars. Around him, under him, overhead, masses of rock drifted, and sometimes the starlight glinted from their black sides. Occasionally, Mark caught a glimpse of Mars or Jupiter. Once he thought he saw Earth.

  Mark began to tape new responses into Charles. He added simple responses to cue words. When he said, “How does it look!” Charles would answer, “Oh, pretty good, I guess.”

  At first the answers were what Mark had been answering himself, in the long dialogue held over the years. But, slowly, he began to build a new personality into Charles.

  Mark had always been suspicious and scornful of women. But for some reason he didn’t tape the same suspicion into Charles. Charles’ outlook was quite different.

  “What do you think of girls?” Mark would ask, sitting on a packing case outside the shack, after the chores were done.

  “Oh, I don’t know. You have to find the right one,” the robot would reply dutifully, repeating what had been put on its tape.

  “I never saw a good one yet,” Mark would say.

  “Well, that’s not fair. Perhaps you didn’t look long enough. There’s a girl in the world for every man.”

  “You’re a romantic!” Mark would say scornfully. The robot would pause—a built-in pause—and chuckle a carefully constructed chuckle.

  “I dreamed of a girl named Martha once,” Charles would say. “Maybe if I’d looked, I would have found her.”

  And then it would be bedtime. Or perhaps Mark would want more conversation. “What do you think of girls?” he would ask again, and the discussion would follow its same course.

  Charles grew old. His limbs lost their flexibility, and some of his wiring started to corrode. Mark would spend hours keeping the robot in repair.

  “You’re getting rusty,” he would cackle.

  “You’re not so young yourself,” Charles would reply. He had an answer for almost everything. Nothing elaborate, but an answer.

  It was always night on Martha, but Mark broke up his time into mornings, afternoons, and evenings. Their life followed a simple routine. Breakfast, from vegetables and Mark’s canned store. Then the robot would work in the fields, and the plants grew used to his touch. Mark would repair the pump, check the water supply, and straighten up the immaculate shack. Lunch, and the robot’s chores were usually finished.

  The two would sit on the packing case and watch the stars. They would talk until supper, and sometimes late into the endless night.

  In time, Mark built more complicated conversations into Charles. He couldn’t give the robot free choice, of course, but he managed a pretty close approximation of it. Slowly, Charles’ personality emerged. But it was strikingly different from Mark’s.

  Where Mark was querulous, Charles was calm. Mark was sardonic, Charles was naive. Mark was a cynic, Charles was an idealist. Mark was often sad; Charles was forever content.

  And in time, Mark forgot he had built the answers into Charles. He accepted the robot as a friend, of about his own age. A friend of long years standing.

  “The thing I don’t understand,” Mark would say, “is why a man like you wants to live here. I mean, it’s all right for me. No one cares about me, and I never gave much of a damn about anyone. But why you?”

  “Here I have a whole world,” Charles would reply, “where on Earth I had to share with billions. I have the stars, bigger and brighter than on Earth. I have all space around me, close, like still waters. And I have you, Mark.”

  “Now, don’t go getting sentimental on me—”

  “I’m not. Friendship counts. Love was lost long ago, Mark. The love of a girl named Martha, whom neither of us ever met. And that’s a pity. But friendship remains, and the eternal night.”

  “You’re a bloody poet,” Mark would say, half admiringly.

  “A poor poet.”

  Time passed unnoticed by the stars, and the air pump hissed and clanked and leaked. Mark was fixing it constantly, but the air of Martha became increasingly rare. Although Charles labored in the fields, the crops, deprived of sufficient air, died.

  Mark was tired now, and barely able to crawl around, even without the grip of gravity. He stayed in his bunk most of the time. Charles fed him as best as he could, moving on rusty, creaky limbs.

  “What do you think of girls?”

  “I never saw a good one yet.”

  “Well, that’s not fair.”

  Mark was too tired to see the end coming, and Charles wasn’t interested. But the end was on its way. The air pump threatened to give out momentarily. There hadn’t been any food for days.

  “But why you?”

  “Here I have a whole world—”

  “Don’t get sentimental—”

  “And the love of a girl named Martha.”

  From his bunk Mark saw the stars for the last time. Big, bigger than ever, endlessly floating in the still waters of space.

  “The stars...” Mark said.

  “Yes?”

  “The sun?”

  “—shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore.”

  “A bloody poet.”

  “A poor poet”

  “And girls?”

  “I dreamed of a girl named Martha once. Maybe if—”

  “What do you think of girls? And stars? And Earth?” And it was bedtime, this time forever.

  Charles stood beside the body of his friend. He felt for a pulse once, and allowed the withered hand to fall. He walked to a corner of the shack and turned off the tired air pump.

  The tape that Mark had prepared had a few cracked inches left to run. “I hope he finds his Martha,” the robot croaked.

  Then the tape broke.

  His rusted limbs would not bend, and he stood frozen, staring back at the naked stars. Then he bowed his head.

  “The Lord is my shepherd,” Charles said. “I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me...”

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  “The Monsters” copyright © 1953 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

  “Cost of Living” copyright © 1952 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine.

  “The Altar” copyright © 1953 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Fantastic.

  “Shape” copyright © 1953 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine under the title “Keep Your Shape.”

  “T
he Impacted Man” copyright © 1952 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction.

  “Untouched by Human Hands” copyright © 1953 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine under the title “One Man’s Poison.”

  “The King’s Wishes” copyright © 1953 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

  “Warm” copyright © 1953 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine.

  “The Demons” copyright © 1953 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Fantasy Magazine.

  “Specialist” copyright © 1953 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine.

  “Seventh Victim” copyright © 1953 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine.

  “Ritual” copyright © 1953 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Climax.

  “Beside Still Waters” copyright © 1953 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Amazing Stories.

  Copyright © 1954 by Robert Sheckley

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-4988-0

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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