by Mike Resnick
My first inclination was to say Force of habit, but that would negate everything I had done in my life, so I tried to couch the answer in terms he would understand and that I could live with.
“It has been said that Man is a social animal,” I began. “He finds comfort in proximity with other Men. I could define the concepts of loneliness and isolation to you, but you cannot know the emotional emptiness that accompanies them. Men gather to pray in church because it offers them a sense of comfort, of community, of shared values. Do you have any comprehension of what I am telling you?”
“What makes you think that I do not comprehend emotional emptiness?” was all that he said.
I stared at him, trying—and failing—to come up with an answer.
There was a sudden pounding on the door.
“Are you all right in there, Reverend?” asked a deep voice from the other side.
“If you need any help with the robot, let us know!” said another.
“I’m fine!” I shouted back. “I’ll be out in just a minute. Please return to your seats.” I turned to Jackson. “You stay here. You are not to leave my office until I come back, do you understand?”
“I understand,” he replied. No “Reverend Morris” or “sir,” just “I understand.”
I left him where he was standing, locked the door behind me, and returned to the pulpit. The angry whisperings suddenly died down when I took my place and they saw I had returned.
“What the hell is going on, Reverend?” demanded Mr. Whittaker.
“What kind of creature was that?” added Mrs. Hendricks.
I held up my hand for silence.
“I will explain,” I said. I pulled my sermon out of my pocket and stared at it. It was about some of the sins we blunder into, sins like gluttony and sloth. Suddenly it seemed so trivial, so removed from the problems that existed right here in my church. “I was going to read this to you today,” I said, “but I think I have something more important to talk about.” I tore the sermon in half and let the pieces float to the floor. I realized I had everyone’s rapt attention, and I decided to start speaking before I lost it, and hope the words came out right.
“The disturbing sight you saw was Jackson, the robot that many of you have seen performing maintenance tasks around the church for the past few months. Like all robots, he has a compulsion to find defects and correct them.” I paused and stared out across my flock. Their mood was ugly, but at least they were listening. “One day, a few months ago, I decided to make use of that compulsion by practicing my sermons in front of him and having him point out any internal contradictions. This inevitably led him to point out things that we accept as articles of faith as being illogical and contradictory, and so that he would understand the difference between those statements and actual flaws in logic, I had him read the Bible. I did not realize until recently that he took it as literal truth.”
“It is the literal truth!” snapped Mr. Remington. “It’s the Lord’s word!”
“I know,” I said. “But he thinks it applies to robots as well as to men. He believes that he has an immortal soul.”
“A machine?” snorted Mr. Jameson. “That’s blasphemy!”
“It’s not enough that they take all our jobs,” added Mrs. Willoughby. “Now they want to take over our churches, too!”
“Blasphemy!” repeated Mr. Jameson.
“We must display some compassion,” I urged. “Jackson is a moral and ethical entity, whose only desire is to join this parish and pray to the Creator of all things. That’s why he made a crude attempt to appear like a man—so that he could sit with you and commune with God. Is that really so terrible?”
“Send him to a robot church, if he can find one,” said Mr. Remington, his voice filled with sarcasm and contempt. “This one’s for us.”
“It’s not right, Reverend,” said Mrs. Hendricks. “If he has a soul, then why not my vacuum cleaner, or my son’s tank?”
“I’m just a man,” I said, “and a flawed man at that. I don’t pretend have all the answers, or even most of them. I will consider your objections during the coming week, and I want each of you to search your heart to see if there is some compassion in it for an entity, any entity, that wishes only to worship God in our company. Next Sunday, instead of a sermon, we will discuss our thoughts on the matter.”
Even after I spoke they kept murmuring. They wanted to argue the subject right now, but I finally put an end to it and insisted that we all go home and sleep on it, that the subject needed serious consideration rather than knee-jerk reaction. I stood at the door to thank each of them for coming, as I always did, and three of the men refused to shake my hand. After the last of them had left, I went back to the anteroom, unlocked it, and ordered Jackson to clean the cream off his face and hands and to put the tattered suit back where he found it.
I went home, found I was so upset that I wasn’t hungry, and decided to take a long walk. It was dark when I got back, and I still hadn’t resolved any of the issues. Were souls the exclusive possession of men? What about the day we finally encounter a sentient alien race out there among the stars? Or the day a dolphin or a chimpanzee prays to the same God I pray to? And if an alien, or a dolphin, why not a robot?
I didn’t know when I got home, and after an almost sleepless night, I still didn’t know.
I went back to the church in the morning. I knew something was amiss when I was still fifty yards away, because the doors were ajar, and Jackson never left them open. I entered, and it was clear that Jackson hadn’t performed any of his morning duties. The floor was dirty, the flowers hadn’t been watered, the garbage hadn’t been taken out.
I decided that whether he had a soul or not, he was getting too damned human in his behavior. Herbie may have been a primitive early model, but he did his chores and never sulked or demonstrated his resentment. Only humans were allowed the luxury of foul moods and bad behavior.
Then I saw that the door to my office was hanging by a single hinge, and was damaged beyond repair. The first thought that came to me was that I’d been robbed, and I raced to the office, oblivious to the fact that there was nothing there worth stealing.
I froze when I reached the doorway. There, on the floor of the office, was Jackson. His metal body was covered with dents, one of his legs had been pulled off, an arm had been sawed in half, and his head was so battered that it was almost unrecognizable.
You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what had happened. My parishioners hadn’t liked what Jackson had done, and they liked what I’d said even less, so they decided to make sure that they never had to share a pew with a robot. And these weren’t strangers, or drunken hooligans. They were my flock, my parishioners. All I could think of was: if this is the way they behave after all my hard work, what does that say about me, the man who was supposed to give them spiritual and moral guidance?
I knelt down on the tile floor next to Jackson. God, he was a mess! The closer I looked, the more dents and holes I found in him. At least one of his attackers must have had something like an ice pick, and had just stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. Another had a saw that could cut through metal. Others had other things.
I wondered how much he had suffered. Did robots feel pain? I didn’t think so, but I didn’t think they believed in God either, so what did I know?
I decided to gather his various parts together. This was God’s house, and it seemed like an obscene desecration to have him strewn all over the room. Then, when I moved his torso and his one connected arm, I saw a single sentence scratched into the tile with a metallic forefinger:
Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.
I handed in my resignation the next day. In fact, I quit my calling altogether. I’ve been a carpenter for the past eight years. It doesn’t pay much, but it’s honorable work, and as the Bible makes clear, better men than I have chosen the same profession. My entire staff is composed of robots. I speak to them all the time, but I’ve yet to find
one that’s interested in anything other than carpentry.
As for Jackson, I returned him to the factory. I don’t know why. He certainly deserved a Christian burial, but I didn’t give him one. Did it mean that deep down I truly didn’t think he could possess a soul? I don’t know. The only thing I know is that I’ve been ashamed of myself ever since. Whatever his faults, he deserved better.
I don’t know how they disposed of him. Broke him down for parts, I suppose. To this day I miss him, more than any man should miss a machine. Every Easter I drive over to the scrapheap behind his factory and place a wreath on it. I’m still religious enough to believe that he’s aware of it, and maybe even appreciates it. In fact, I find myself thinking that if I lead a good enough life, I may see him again one of these years. And when I do, I’ll tell him he was right all along.
He forgave the others; maybe he can forgive me too.
INTRODUCTION TO “ALASTAIR BAFFLE’S EMPORIUM OF WONDERS”
Bill Fawcett
If I’d had the pleasure of reading “Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” twenty years ago, I suspect the element of this amazing story that I would have liked best was the way it accurately gives you a feel for life in Chicago. Having lived here almost all of my life the attitudes, the baseball rivalry, the change to all yellow cabs, are real memories. I still enjoy baiting White Sox fans each summer until the Cubs fall apart in August as if keeping to a schedule. But I am now at the age my grandfather was back when I was a teen ager and he seemed really, really old to me.
It is hard to not be compelled by the question this gentle, deep story asks. Perhaps it helps explain how old “middle-aged” adds years when I do. My generation, the Baby Boomers, created the “youth culture”—and then darned if we didn’t get old. But the dilemma this story sets, and in many ways I am glad this gray-hair-covered-brain does not have to decide on for real, is fascinating and troubling. If there was an alternative, but the price was losing what I was and had learned to be, would I have the strength to say no? I’ve seen this question of aging vs not aging handled so well only a few times before. Recently this was at the start of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War, before that in Harlan Ellison’s “Jeffty is Five.”
But somehow “Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” makes the choice between a meaningless childhood and growing old both compelling and yet unresolved. Continuing to think about this, perhaps I am not so glad it is not a decision I might have to make someday. I’m still a Chicagoan and already there is a niggling temptation as the winter makes my old injuries ache to see if any magic stores are reopening at a location near me. Thank you, Michael.
When I was a kid growing up in Chicago, I used to go down to the Loop whenever I had a dollar or two to spend, hit all the bookstores (paperbacks were a quarter apiece back then), eat a filling 52-cent lunch at the Ontra Cafeteria across street from Marshall Field’s, and then came the highlight of my day: I’d walk a couple of blocks to the elegant Palmer House hotel, go up to the mezzanine, and stop by the magic shop.
It was a little store that sold magic tricks, and the owner was a frustrated performer. If I’d promise to buy a trick for half a dollar, he’d spend the next 20 minutes showing off every expensive trick he’d gotten in since my last visit.
I miss that shop, and those Saturdays, and I’d been telling Carol about it for the better part of 45 years, and finally one day she said, quite reasonably, “Why don’t you stop talking endlessly about it and write a story about it?”
So I did, and except for “For I Have Touched the Sky”, this is my favorite of all my novelettes. (For the record, the Hugo and Nebula rules state that short stories are under 7,500 words; novelettes are 7,500 to 17,500; novellas are 17,500 to 40,000; and novels are anything longer.) Anyway, “Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” was a 2009 Hugo nominee—and like the narrator, I still wish I could go back there.
ALASTAIR BAFFLE’S EMPORIUM OF WONDERS
GOLD AND SILVER—THAT’S US. We’ve been a team since major league baseball ended at the Mississippi River and the flag only had 48 stars. (Looked a lot nicer back then. More regular, sort of, with six rows of eight—or maybe it was eight rows of six. I suppose it depends on whether you were standing or lying down.) Between us we’ve outlived three wives (one of them his, two of them mine) and two kids (both his), we’ve stayed friends for more than three-quarters of a century (78 years to be exact), and we’ve been living together at the Hector McPherson Retirement Home since…well, since we couldn’t live on our own anymore.
He’s Gold—Maury Gold. Me, I’m Nate Silver. I think it was Silverstein until my grandfather changed it back when Teddy Roosevelt was still president. Maury’s dad changed his right after World War I, from Goldberg or Goldman or Gold-something-else. Makes no difference what they used to be. We’re Gold and Silver now.
We met 78 years ago, like I said. We’ve always lived in Chicago. It was pretty safe when we were kids. The cops had cleaned up Al Capone and his friends, and the place wasn’t crawling with junkies and panhandlers yet, so we were each allowed to take the subway down to the Loop by ourselves, me from Rogers Park on the North Side, Maury from South Shore a couple of miles beyond the University of Chicago, which was overflowing with geniuses and Communists—frequently the same people—back in those days.
One of the things I loved to do was go to the Palmer House, the ritziest hotel in town. The guest rooms started on the third or fourth floor, but the ground floor and the mezzanine were filled with shops that carried the most fascinating things: clocks that glowed in the dark, pianos that played by themselves, clothes and jewels imported from exotic-sounding places like Constantinople and Hong Kong and Bombay.
And the most fascinating thing of all was a tiny store up on the mezzanine. It was called Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders, and it was a magic shop. It carried every trick under the sun (or so it seemed to me). There were boxes where Alastair Baffle would put anything from a coin to an egg, and it would vanish right before your eyes. There were empty hats that suddenly weren’t empty any more, but filled with rabbits or flowers or colored silks. There was a full-sized guillotine, and somehow, faster than the eye could follow, the blade would drop and magically miss Alastair Baffle’s neck. There were card tricks and rope tricks and magic wands that could fly through the air. There was a clock with the face of a beautiful woman, and just when you lost interest in it she’d smile and speak to you.
And the most wonderful thing of all was the magic show. Oh, he wouldn’t perform it for free—but if you promised to buy a trick, and showed him your money (usually 50 cents would do, but if you didn’t have it, once in a while he’d agree to sell you a 25-cent trick) he’d spend half an hour showing you all the new tricks that had arrived since your last visit.
I thought only magicians would frequent the store, but the clientele didn’t look like the kind of magicians you saw on stage. (No, I’d never seen a magic show on stage when I was a kid, but I saw all the ads for them, and I knew that magicians were long lean guys who looked good in white tie and tails like Fred Astaire, and were always assisted by scantily-clad women who made me eager to grow up.)
But the few people who I saw coming and going weren’t like that at all. One of them looked just like Paul Muni in one of those movies where he’s on the lam from the law. Another was all decked out in silks and satins, and wore a turban with a glittering jewel on the front of it. There were women, too; not the kind you expected to see on stage, but with elegant hats and veils, exotic make-up, and dark gloves. Those were the days when a lot of women wore wraps that were made from foxes that still had the heads attached. One day I saw Alastair Baffle wave good-bye to a woman who was leaving the store as I was entering. Then he said something, not in English, to one of the fox heads, and I could have sworn it looked up and winked at him.
My allowance back then was a quarter a week. I used to go there whenever I had 50 cents to buy a trick—but since the subway cost a quarter each way, tha
t was about once a month. I kept wondering why no other kid had discovered the almost-free magic show—and then I met Maury.
He’d been going there for more than a year, same as me, but on different Saturdays, gaping at all the wonders and getting his magic show in exchange for buying a trick.
“Ah! Young Mister Silver!” said Alastair Baffle when I entered his Emporium one Saturday morning. “There is someone here I think you should meet.”
I was hoping it was a half-dressed magician’s assistant, but it was only another boy, dark-haired, kind of skinny, a couple of inches shorter than me.
“Mister Silver, say hello to Mister Gold.”
“Maury Gold,” he said, extending his hand. I took it, told him I was Nate Silver, and we promptly lost all interest in each other when Alastair Baffle began performing the Corinthian Rope Trick, followed by the Vanishing Mouse. But I had an extra dime and we stopped for a soda when we left, and we got to talking, and found that we had all kinds of things in common despite his being a White Sox fan and me rooting for the Cubs. We spent hours there, and finally decided we’d better go home before our parents called the cops, but we made arrangements to meet at the Emporium of Wonders four weeks later.
We met every month for two years. Then his dad got transferred to the north side, they moved, and he wound up in my school district. We became inseparable. We played on the same teams, read the same books, lusted after the same girls, and while we didn’t go to Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders once a month any more, we remembered to go once each year to celebrate our meeting.
World War II broke out just about the time we graduated from high school. We both enlisted the same day, but I wound up in Europe and Maury spent the next three and a half years in the Pacific. He was at Tarawa and Okinawa, I was in Italy and the Battle of the Bulge, neither of us ever caught a bullet or a social disease, and when we got out we decided to go into business together.
