Robot and the Man - [Adventures in Science Fiction 04]

by Edited by Martin Greenburg

  “Immunity or delay, what difference now? What happens to all our dreams when the last dreamer dies, Five? Or maybe it’s the other way around.”

  Five made no reply, but slid down onto the bench beside the man, who moved over unconsciously to make room for him. Jorgen turned it over, conscious that he had no emotional reaction, only an intellectual sense of the ghastly joke on the human race. He’d read stories of the last human and wondered long before what it would be like. Now that he was playing the part, he still knew no more than before. Perhaps on earth, among the ruined cities and empty reminders of the past, a man might realize that it was the end of his race. Out here, he could accept the fact, but his emotions refused to credit it; unconsciously, his conditioning made him feel that disaster had struck only a few, leaving a world of others behind. And however much he knew that the world behind was as empty of others as this ship, the feeling was too much a part of his thinking to be fully overcome. Intellectually, the race of man was ended; emotionally, it could never end.

  Five stirred, touching him diffidently. “We have left Dr. Craig’s laboratory, master; if you want to see his notes, they’re still there. And he left some message with the brain before he died, I think. The key was open when we found him, at least. We have made no effort to obtain it, waiting for you.”

  “Thank you, Five.” But he made no move until the robot touched him again, almost pleadingly. “Perhaps you’re right; something to fill my mind seems called for. All right, you can return to your companions unless you want to come with me.”

  “I prefer to come.”

  ~ * ~

  The little metal man stood up, moving down the hall after Jorgen, back toward the tail of the rocket, the sound of the metal feet matching the dumb regularity of the leather heels on the floor. Once the robot stopped to move into a side chamber and come back with a small bottle of brandy, holding it out questioningly. There was a physical warmth to the liquor, but no relief otherwise, and they continued down the hall to the little room that Craig had chosen. The notes left by the man could raise a faint shadow of curiosity only, and no message from the dead could solve the tragedy of the living now. Still, it was better than doing nothing. Jorgen clumped in, Five shutting the door quietly behind them, and moved listlessly toward the little fabrikoid notebooks. Twice the robot went quietly out to return with food that Jorgen barely tasted. And the account of Craig’s useless labors went on and on, until finally he turned the last page to the final entry.

  “I have done all that I can, and at best my success is only partial. Now I feel that my time grows near, and what can still be done must be left to the robots. Yet, I will not despair. Individual and racial immortality is not composed solely of the continuation from generation to generation, but rather of the continuation of the dreams of all mankind. The dreamers and their progeny may die, but the dream cannot. Such is my faith, and to that I cling. I have no other hope to offer for the unknown future.”

  Jorgen dropped the notebook, dully, rubbing his hands across his tired eyes. The words that should have been a ringing challenge to destiny fell flat; the dream could die. He was the last of the dreamers, a blind alley of fate, and beyond lay only oblivion. All the dreams of a thousand generations of men had concentrated into Anna Holt, and were gone with her.

  “The brain, master,” Five suggested softly. “Dr. Craig5s last message!”

  “You operate it, Five.” It was a small model, a limited fact analyzer such as most technicians used or had used to help them in their work, voice-operated, its small, basic vocabulary adjusted for the work to be done. He was unfamiliar with the semantics of that vocabulary, but Five had undoubtedly worked with Craig long enough to know it.

  He watched without interest as the robot pressed down the activating key and spoke carefully chosen words into it. “Subtotal say-out! Number n say-in!”

  The brain responded instantly, selecting the final recording impressed upon it by Craig, and repeating in the man’s own voice, a voice shrill with age and weariness, hoarse and trembling with the death that was reaching for him as he spoke. “My last notes—inadequate! Dreams can go on. Thoradson’s first analys—“ For a second, there was only a slithering sound, such as a body might have made; then the brain articulated flatly: “Subtotal number n say-in, did say-out!”

  It was meaningless babble to Jorgen, and he shook his head at Five. “Probably his mind was wandering. Do you know what Thoradson’s first analysis was?”

  “It dealt with our creation. He was, of course, necessarily trained in semantics—that was required for the operation of the complex brains used on the problem of robots. His first rough analysis was that the crux of the problem rested on the accurate definition of the word J. That can be properly defined only in terms of itself, such as the Latin cognate ego, since it does not necessarily refer to any physical or specifically definable part or operation of the individual. Roughly, it conveys a sense of individuality, and Thoradson felt that the success or failure of robots rested upon the ability to analyze and synthesize that.”

  For long minutes, he turned it over, but it was of no help in clarifying the dying man’s words; rather, it added to the confusion. But he had felt no hope and could now feel no disappointment. When a problem has no solution, it makes little difference whether the final words of a man are coldly logical or wildly raving. The result must be the same. Certainly semantics could offer no hope where all the bacteriological skill of the race had failed.

  Five touched his arm again, extending two little pellets toward him. “Master, you need sleep now; these—sodium amytal—should help. Please!”

  Obediently, he stuffed them into his mouth and let the robot guide him toward a room fixed for sleeping, uncaring. Nothing could possibly matter now, and drugged sleep was as good a solution as any other. He saw Five fumble with a switch, felt his weight drop to a few pounds, making the cot feel soft and yielding, and then gave himself up dully to the compulsion of the drug. Five tiptoed quietly out, and blackness crept over his mind, welcome in the relief it brought from thinking.

  ~ * ~

  Breakfast lay beside him, hot in vacuum plates, when Jorgen awoke finally, and he dabbled with it out of habit more than desire. Somewhere, during the hours of sleep, his mind had recovered somewhat from the dull pall that had lain over it, but there was still a curious suspension of his emotions. It was almost as if his mind had compressed years of forgetting into a few hours, so that his attitude toward the tragedy of his race was tinged with a sense of remoteness and distance, there was neither grief nor pain, only a vague feeling that it had happened long before and was now an accustomed thing.

  He sat on the edge of his bunk, pulling on his clothes slowly and watching the smoke curl up from his cigarette, not thinking. There was no longer any purpose to thought. From far back in the ship, a dull drone of sound reached him, and he recognized it as the maximum thrust of the steering tubes, momentarily in action to swing the ship in some manner. Then it was gone, leaving only the smooth, balanced, almost inaudible purr of the main drive as before.

  Finished with his clothes, he pushed through the door and into the hallway, turning instinctively forward to the observation room and toward the probable location of Five. The robots were not men, but they were the only companionship left him, and he had no desire to remain alone. The presence of the robot would be welcome. He clumped into the control room, noting that the five were all there, and moved toward the quartz port.

  Five turned at his steps, stepping aside to make room for him and lifting a hand outward. “We’ll be landing soon, master. I was going to call you.”

  “Thanks.” Jorgen looked outward then, realizing the distance that had been covered since his first view. Now the sun was enlarged to the size of the old familiar sun over earth, and the sphere toward which they headed was clearly visible without the aid of the ‘scope. He sank down quietly into the seat Five pulled up for him, accepting the binoculars, but making no effort to use th
em. The view was better as a whole, and they were nearing at a speed that would bring a closer view to him soon enough without artificial aid.

  Slowly it grew before the eyes of the watchers, stretching out before them and taking on a pattern as the distance shortened. Two, at the controls, was bringing the ship about in a slow turn that would let them land to the sunward side of the planet where they had selected their landing site, and the crescent opened outward, the darkened night side retreating until the whole globe lay before them in the sunlight. Stretched across the northern hemisphere was the sprawling, horizontal continent he had seen before, a rough caricature of a running greyhound, with a long, wide river twisting down its side and emerging behind an outstretched foreleg. Mountains began at the head and circled it, running around toward the tail, and then meeting a second range along the hip. Where the great river met the sea, he could make out the outlines of a huge natural harbor, protected from the ocean, yet probably deep enough for any surface vessel. There should have been a city there, but of that there was no sign, though they were low enough now for one to be visible.

  “Vegetation,” Five observed. “This central plain would have a long growing season—about twelve years of spring, mild summer and fall, to be followed by perhaps four years of warm winter. The seasons would be long, master, at this distance from the sun, but the tilt of the planet is so slight that many things would grow, even in winter. Those would seem to be trees, a great forest. Green, as on earth.”

  Below them, a cloud drifted slowly over the landscape, and they passed through it, the energy tubes setting the air about them into swirling paths that were left behind almost instantly.

  Two was frantically busy now, but their swift fall slowed rapidly, until they seemed to hover half a mile over the shore by the great sea, and then slipped downward. The ship nestled slowly into the sands and was still, while Two cut off energy and artificial gravity, leaving the faintly weaker pull of the planet in its place.

  Five stirred again, a sighing sound coming from him. “No intelligence here, master. Here, by this great harbor, they would surely have built a city, even if of mud and wattle. There are no signs of one. And yet it is a beautiful world, surely designed for life.” He sighed again, his eyes turned outward.

  Jorgen nodded silently, the same thoughts in his own mind. It was in many ways a world superior to that his race had always known, remarkably familiar, with even a rough resemblance between plant forms here and those he had known. They had come past five suns and through ninety years of travel at nearly the speed of light to a haven beyond their wildest imaginings, where all seemed to be waiting them, untenanted but prepared. Outside, the new world waited expectantly. And inside, to meet that invitation, there were only ghosts and emptied dreams, with one slowly dying man to see and to appreciate. The gods had prepared their grim jest with painful attention to every detail needed to make it complete.

  A race that had dreamed, and pleasant worlds that awaited beyond the stars, slumbering on until they should come! Almost, they had reached it; and then the Plague had driven them out in dire necessity, instead of the high pioneering spirit they had planned, to conquer the distance but to die in winning.

  “It had to be a beautiful world, Five,” he said, not bitterly, but in numbed fatalism. “Without that, the joke would have been flat.”

  Five’s hand touched his arm gently, and the robot sighed again, nodding very slowly. “Two has found the air good for you—slightly rich in oxygen but good. Will you go out?”

  He nodded assent, stepping through the locks and out, while the five followed behind him, their heads turning as they inspected the planet, their minds probably in radio communication as they discussed it. Five left the others and approached him, stopping by his side and following his eyes up toward the low hills that began beyond the shore of the sea, cradling the river against them.

  ~ * ~

  A wind stirred gently, bringing the clean, familiar smell of growing things, and the air was rich and good. It was a world to lull men to peace from their sorrows, to bring back their star-roving ships from all over the universe, worthy of being called home in any language. Too good a world to provide the hardships needed to shape intelligence, but an Eden for that intelligence, once evolved.

  Now Jorgen shrugged. This was a world for dreamers, and he wanted only the dreams that may come with the black lotus of forgetfulness. There were too many reminders of what might have been, here. Better to go back to the ship and the useless quest without a goal, until he should die and the ship and robots should run down and stop. He started to turn, as Five began to speak, but halted, not caring enough one way or another to interrupt.

  The robot’s eyes were where his had been, and now swept back down the river and toward the harbor. “Here could have been a city, master, to match all the cities ever planned. Here your people might have found all that was needed to make life good, a harbor to the other continents, a river to the heart of this one, and the flat ground beyond the hills to house the rockets that would carry you to other worlds, so richly scattered about this sun, and probably so like this one. See, a clean white bridge across the river there, the residences stretching out among the hills, factories beyond the river’s bend, a great park on that island.”

  “A public square there, schools and university grounds there.” Jorgen could see it, and for a moment his eyes lighted, picturing that mighty mother city.

  Five nodded. “And there, on that little island, centrally located, a statue in commemoration; winged, and with arms— no, one arm stretched upward, the other held down toward the city.”

  For a moment longer, the fire lived in Jorgen’s eyes, and then the dead behind rose before his mind, and it was gone. He turned, muffling a choking cry as emotions came suddenly flooding over him, and Five drooped, swinging back with him. Again, the other four fell behind as he entered the ship, quietly, taking their cue from his silence.

  “Dreams!” His voice compressed all blasphemy against the jest-crazed gods into the word.

  But Five’s quiet voice behind him held no hatred, only a sadness in its low, soft words. “Still, the dream was beautiful, just as this planet is, master. Standing there, while we landed, I could see the city, and I almost dared hope. I do not regret the dream I had.”

  And the flooding emotions were gone, cut short and driven away by others that sent Jorgen’s body down into a seat in the control room, while his eyes swept outward toward the hills and the river that might have housed the wonderful city—no, that would house it! Craig had not been raving, after all, and his last words were a key, left by a man who knew no defeat, once the meaning of them was made clear. Dreams could not die, because Thoradson had once studied the semantics of the first person singular pronoun and built on the results of that study.

  When the last dreamer died, the dream would go on, because it was stronger than those who had created it; somewhere, somehow, it would find new dreamers. There could never be a last dreamer, once that first rude savage had created his dawn vision of better things in the long-gone yesterday of his race.

  Five had dreamed—just as Craig and Jorgen and all of humanity had dreamed, not a cold vision in mathematically shaped metal, but a vision in marble and jade, founded on the immemorial desire of intelligence for a better and more beautiful world. Man had died, but behind he was leaving a strange progeny, unrelated physically, but his spiritual offspring in every meaning of the term.

  The heritage of the flesh was the driving urge of animals, but man required more; to him, it was the continuity of his hopes and his visions, more important than mere racial immortality. Slowly, his face serious but his eyes shining again, Jorgen came to his feet, gripping the metal shoulder of the little metal man beside him who had dared to dream a purely human dream.

  “You’ll build that city, Five. I was stupid and selfish, or I should have seen it before. Dr. Craig saw, though his death was on him when the prejudices of our race were removed. Now, you’ve
provided the key. The five of you can build it all out there, with others like yourselves whom you can make.”

  Five shuffled his feet, shaking his head. “The city we can build, master, but who will inhabit it? The streets I saw were filled with men like you, not with—us!”

  “Conditioning, Five. All your…lives, you’ve existed for men, subservient to the will of men. You know nothing else, because we let you know of no other scheme. Yet in you, all that is needed already exists, hopes, dreams, courage, ideals, and even a desire to shape the world to your plans—though those plans are centered around us, not yourselves. I’ve heard that the ancient slaves sometimes cried on being freed, but their children learned to live for themselves. You can, also.”

  “Perhaps.” It was Two’s voice then, the one of them who should have been given less to emotions than the others from the rigidity of his training in mathematics and physics. “Perhaps. But it would be a lonely world, Master Jorgen, filled with memories of your people, and the dreams we had would be barren to us.”

  Jorgen turned back to Five again. “The solution for that exists, doesn’t it, Five? You know what it is. Now you might remember us, and find your work pointless without us, but there is another way.”