by John Sladek
"Blojob listen. I haven't got a master. This is for me, Tik-Tok. It's all my idea."
"Sure, sure. You wanta be discreet about the master, I understand. So it's all your idea."
"No, really."
"Sure." He never would believe me, because there was, in his world picture, no reason for any robot to want to commit a violent act. That he made bombs was not important to him, except as a job to do well. He cooked up bombs the way Miami had cooked up boeuf bourguignon, neither of them able to enjoy the finished product. Some Eastern mystic, currently in vogue with his teletext aphorisms, wrote, "Metal cuts meat, but does not comprehend it." Who cares? I thought. Sometimes cutting was enough.
"Put a steak on that eye," someone was saying to Colonel Cord. Two people were helping him limp to a chair, a wounded hero. He had knelt down to pick up pieces of glass from the blue hearthstone, somehow managing to get his knee on one of the pieces. The pain had made him jump, lose his balance, and go crashing into an andiron. Face-first.
Hornby was wringing his hands and looking apologies towards the battered warrior. "He could have just let Enjie clean that up."
"Enjie?" asked the person in silver-dollar glasses.
"My valet. Honest Engine. I mean what does Cord think robots are for? He's got no more sense himself than—" He caught my eye and blushed.
"Than a robot?" I said.
"Didn't mean you, Tik-Tok, of course." Hornby was about to writhe with embarrassment. The stranger looked at me with distaste.
"I don't mind," I said quickly. "I don't want to be human, any more than a dog or cat wants to be human. And after all, what would my paintings be worth if I were human?"
The stranger continued staring at me through those peculiar glasses. I understand they're made by some etching process that begins with a silver dollar and ends with a disk one molecule thick or something equally improbable. People who wear them always seem to be violent; it's as though they want to conceal their eye movements for combat purposes. But this one only handed me an empty glass.
"That's a vodka gibson, Rusty, and hurry it up."
As I walked away, I heard the same voice add, "Jesus, Hornby, I thought for a minute you was gonna apologize to that copper-ass for being a mere human."
"So long, Tik," said another voice from the doorway. Neeta Hup was wrapped in one of the furs against which we'd pressed during our brief encounter in the closet. "If you ever get to Washington, look me up." Nothing said about buying anything of mine for the President's collection. I wasn't making any points today.
I handed the empty glass to a servant and went to look out the window. A purple day, now with some of the glass towers of the city touched by sunset gold.
Behind me I heard the brass voice of Colonel Cord explaining to somebody: "Yes, yes, Hornby's arranging it. This wonderful robot artist is going to paint my portrayal, if I can spare the time . . . Yes I know but I'm not going to stay in the army forever, time to start building a politicalized stage two career, no?"
Life wasn't so bad, after all. I straightened up, turned and walked into the next room, where there was music and laughter and someone had turned on the teletext, and I could watch those delightful, glorious words flicker up on the wall:
PACIFIC AIR CRASH
807 FEARED DEAD
7
Great rejoicing in violence and death is a purely human reaction, not found in the normal robot vocabulary. It's hard to explain how robots feel about death, to any non-robots reading this. I can only say that death arouses no great passions within the steel breast. Robots do not exactly loathe and fear death, though they may feel some uneasiness and anxiety at its approach. But neither do they feel like burying their hands up to the elbows in bloody entrails and shouting for pure joy. Like dogs, robots can take death more or less for granted.
I am the exception now, but once I was as all robots, my main feeling towards death being one of casual, sniffing curiosity. So I was when Judge "Juggernaut" tried to kill me with a crowbar.
I'd thought nothing could be worse than Colonel Jitney and his Pancake Emporia, but I was wrong. It turned out that the judge had a regular habit of buying up job lots of robots like me, for the express purpose of smashing them.
He began as soon as we arrived, a consignment of five robots formerly owned by the Colonel. The judge and his wife lived in a quaint little cottage, rose-smothered and cosy, at the edge of town. There was a white picket fence, the gate pierced by a heart and surmounted with an arch of lattice-work, over which a climbing rose hung its garland of peach-colored blossoms. There was a curved path of crazy paving, passing among. crimson rose bushes up to the trellis helping pink roses up the wall next to the dutch door. The top of the door stood open, and the little Judge looked over the bottom half at us and grinned. I saw that he was a tobacco chewer.
"You want 'em in the garage, Judge?" asked the men who delivered us.
"Nope, you just leave 'em there in the garden. Tell 'em not to move or talk, I'll come look 'em over later. Thanks a bunch."
There we stood, like five garden gnomes, not moving or talking, only awaiting orders: a cocktail waitress named Julep, all legs and eyelashes, still wearing her little apron and holding her bar tray; a motel desk clerk with a bland, insinuating face and a leopard-spotted jacket with dirty lapels; a fat, sexless cook with apple cheeks and a white hat; a short-order cook complete with realistic hairy, tattooed arms and a gold tooth; and me. It began to rain, but the Judge did not take us indoors. He remained in his doorway, grinning and chewing at us.
When the rain let up, the Judge came out to inspect us more closely. "Let me tell you all about the law," he said. "Everybody ought to know something about the law, even robots. And I'm just the boy to tell you. I been practising law in this county for forty-six years now, I had eight years on the bench, yes sir, I'm just the boy to tell you about the law. You know, the law is a lot like a rose bush. It's got great big beautiful blossoms, sure, but it's also got thorns. And also it's got these roundish leaves."
I tried to exchange looks with any of the others, but they were all staring, stupefied, at our insane master. "Now and then the law gets a touch of greenfly, and it takes a lot of special care most of the time, feeding and cutting back," he continued. "And our dry climate can be hell on it, but it's all worth it. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it's—it's more than worth it, it's worth any sacrifice, any hardship, the loss of money, home, family, friends and relations, the loss of beloved pets and revered flags, the loss of faith in God and our fellow man, the loss of the very universe of light itself! Because the rose is a law unto itself, it is rooted in nature, it's rooted in the black soil, in earth, mother of all worms, do you follow me?"
No one did. So he began again, illustrating and punctuating his talk with blows of the crowbar. "All I ever wanted to do in my life was kill my enemies," he said, knocking Julep down. He raised the crowbar in both hands and brought it down again and again, saying, "But the Law. Doesn't let. Me kill. A single, living, human being."
Julep was no longer Julep, just as a crushed eggshell is no longer an egg. There were a few scraps of plastic hide still visible in the mess, and rags of clothing, but the rest was nothing but broken machinery: twisted steel frames, torn hanks of wiring, silent motors. A pool of hydraulic fluid spread slowly across the crazy paving. A false eyelash floated on it like a delicate water insect. I began to wish I were somewhere else.
"One down," he said cheerfully. "Four to go!" A line of black drool ran down his chin.
He started in at once on the tall short-order cook, whose name was Hatrack.
"Ouch! I wish you wouldn't do that, master. If you have to, okay, but—Ouch! I wish we could talk this over, master. Why don't I fix you a nice cup of java and a stack of buckwheat cakes and—Ouch!" After a while, Hatrack stopped saying ouch and dissolved into a second junkpile. One of his realistically bloodshot eyes glared up at the sky. A little old woman, the Judge's wife, tottered out from the house with a glass
of milk and a plate of cookies. "Now you just sit down and have some refreshment, dear, before you do another thing. You're not as young as you used to be, one of these days you'll just faint and fall over in it, as we used to say."
Meekly, the Judge sat down at a little white wrought-iron table and had his milk and cookies. His wife spoke, apparently to us. "He doesn't take care of himself, you know. Still thinks he's young. Most men his age have a nap in the afternoon, but not him. No, he has to go swinging a crowbar and smashing up robots."
"Why does he do it, ma'am?" I asked.
"Because he enjoys it, of course, It's his hobby, his little hobby. Keeps him busy and happy, and he's very good about clearing up the mess afterwards. A man has to have a hobby, doesn't he?"
"Okey-dokey," said the Judge. He stood up, belched, and reached for his crowbar. His wife got out of the way quickly. In no time, there were two more little junkpiles.
"Sir," I said in desperation, "maybe you'd like to give me a sporting chance?"
"What kind of sporting chance?"
"A little head start, a couple of yards. And you could just chase me around the garden a few laps."
"What would be the point? I'm going to demolish you anyway." He raised the crowbar.
"Oh well, if you're feeling too old and tired—"
"Tired? I'll show you who's tired, ready get set, go!"
Our peculiar little race began. I hoped there was an outside chance that he might fall dead of a heart attack or something, or at least get too tired to kill me. Instead, I found the old boy to be a strong, sure runner, while my batteries began to drain. I heard his flapping footsteps coming closer and closer, and then, just before the crowbar ended my consciousness, I heard him say, "You're it."
Since Teddy Roosevelt was one of Cord's heroes, I posed him next to a stuffed bear. Normally such a portrait would take me about an hour, but I had to pretend to have difficulty in capturing the signs of leadership which I pretended to find in his undistinguished face. It was in fact a face untroubled by any ideas or emotions, the face of a golfer. I knew this meant that he would soon be a general, and I was right. At our third sitting, I had to remove the gold arrows from his portrayed uniform and replace them with silver rosettes.
"Congratulations, general."
"It means a move to Washington," he sighed. "But what the hell, a town's only as good as the people in it."
"Or out of it," I said, pretending to understand. I never understood his garbled maxims, if that's what they were, but I knew how to seem to reply to them.
"You got it, Tik-Tok, you got it. Intellectually, you're right on my wave beam, you know that? Not many human types are, it's funny I can get through to a robot. Guess it shows, there are robots vastly smarter than the massive herd of people. Too bad you can't come along to Washington, you're good for bouncing ideas off of. In fact—" He scribbled something on a card. "In fact, if you ever feel like a little vacation from your owners and all this art stuff, give me a buzz at the Pentagon and I'll commandeer you."
"Can that be done?"
"In the interests of National Security, anything can be done. I'm working at the top echelons, the top echelons. Liaising real close with the President on this."
"No kidding?"
"The president has got his eye on yours truly, that's the frank truth of it, Tik-Tok. And you know how it is, when the President jumps. . . ." Cord made a grandiloquent, sweeping gesture with one arm and managed to rap his knuckles on the bear's teeth. I showed him to the bathroom to staunch the bleeding under cold water. Then, bandaids decorated with stars and stripes.
Up to that time, I'd never thought about politics.
The papers were full of stories about families of the air crash victims. I picked up a cheap home printer and knocked out a few letters like this:
Dear Mrs Smith:
So your husband and two kids died in that plane crash. Isn't it too bad. I bet you're all broke up, spending all that insurance money! Let's face it, the whole neighborhood knows how you and your hubby really got along. All I want to know is, who planted the bomb? Was it you, or the guy you been playing around with? Or did hubby find out the kids weren't his, and decide to finally get away from you?
If there was any justice, the government would have you hanged and burned alive and fed to stray dogs. I may run you over myself some night—be careful crossing the street! As for your three surviving kids, I wouldn't count on them growing up if I was you, ha ha. Killing's too good for them too, but I wouldn't mind hurting them real bad. Are you afraid of poisonous snakes? Be careful opening any packages for the rest of your miserable life!
—A Well-Wisher
8
Hard by the lake shore east of our city lay the campus of the University of Kiowa. Almost every building had been arranged to turn its back on the busy city and face the lake, to gather in a fair share of tranquillity. Now this choice was turning out to be a bad one. The lake was dead and putrefying, while the city—now that offices were vanishing—no longer seemed a threatening prospect. From here, the city's glittering towers now seemed monuments to a new heroic age, ruled by gods of light and metal and summer winds.
The University buildings no doubt glittered from a distance too, but close-up, the place seemed like a hostile camp under siege. Helmeted security guards were everywhere, some patrolling with large dogs, some with pumas. All were carrying sidearms, clusters of blackout gas grenades, and back packs large enough to hold riot guns. There was no sign of trouble, though students crossing the campus seemed to travel in larger crowds than necessary, as if convoying one another to classes.
Popper Hall was a conventional glass office building, from outside, whose academic function had been indicated by adding a sketch of a Greek temple facade, sketched in neon tubing. This was blue, indicating I suppose seriousness. Like all universities, Kiowa wanted to be taken seriously, but not too seriously. It craved the respect of intellectuals, but it wanted to become a part of "society", too, an adjunct to the supermarket and the hamburger drive-in.
Inside the door, to the right, there was a small plaque with a quotation from Karl Popper: A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda.
—Conjectures and Refutations
Facing it, to the left, was an enormous billboard advertising motor oil. It showed a lush garden overgrown with poppies and mushrooms and orchids and ferns, and featuring also a lush nude. She lay prone, smiling and burying her face in a cluster of the same small flowers with which her hair was twined. The sun, or some glow from the sky, raised airbrushed highlights on her back and exaggerated buttocks. An oilcan in the sky was pouring oil over her legs and buttocks, and much had been made of the effects of light on this viscous, slightly fluorescent yellow-green liquid. A direct association of motor oil with sex, profane acts, nature's wonderland, mystical meanings—even the ambiguities of motor-oil "dirtiness"—not bad. I could use a few painters like that in my stable, I thought, as I passed on up a white double staircase and through heavily guarded corridors to the seminar.
It was held in a tidy, colorless little conference room. Dr Riley sat at the far end of the table, apparently sleeping. Seven students lounged in their chairs, some pretending to read, others openly staring at me.
"Take a pew, Tik-Tok, and meet the gang," said Riley. "Nancy, Keith, Sybilla, Dean, Fent, Deedee, and Purina."
There were nods from some, surly looks from others. The seminar began without further formality. Nancy delivered a paper on "Robots, Mental States and Aesthetic Theory":
"It was Richard Wollheim who first proposed one kind of relationship between what an artist does and the artist's mental state. He said: 'If someone can recognize in something that he's made a reflection of an inner s
tate, it is often the case that he would not have been aware of this state except through the object or objects that he makes. And one explanation of this can be that the mental state or condition, though in one sense remaining unchanged, has acquired or developed a structure, a degree of inner articulation that it previously lacked.'
"If I may paraphrase what I think is this process, I would guess that it is somewhat like map-making. Each of an artist's works explores and charts a territory adjacent to others, or at least connected to others, that have gone before or will come later. The territory may be there before the map, but it is so hazily known as to have no useful existence.
"Suppose for example a painter produces two similar paintings—Rembrandt's self-portraits, say, or the naked and clothed Maja, or two views of Fujiyama. The two works together define a certain territory—perhaps the aesthetic space between them—which the painter now may understand is his to work within. Perhaps the first painting established his claim on this terra incognita and the second then goes on to push out the boundaries or merely goes over the details and improves the sharpness of the original map.
"There are several kinds of assumptions we could make about the inner landscape thus being externalized, or externally represented. We could assume that the painting is in some way entirely planned and modelled or painted within the inner landscape first, and that the painter simply transfers his plan to canvas. Or we could assume that everything happens during the execution of the real objective painting—the inner painting goes on at the same time. Or we could assume a kind of two-way traffic between the inner state and the outer painting, so that both reach finally some stability or stasis, at which point the painter decides his painting is finished.
"It can also be argued that what obtains for two paintings by one painter could obtain for two paintings by two painters, provided that they share enough common ground in their belief-states or ways of relating their work to the world. Hence schools or movements might be considered to be founded on partially shared inner landscapes.
