Asimov's Future History Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  Another semi-circle.

  “Oh, well,” Gloria composed herself, ran over the details of the tale in her mind (together with her own elaborations, of which she had several) and began:

  “Are you ready? Well – once upon a time there was a beautiful little girl whose name was Ella. And she had a terribly cruel step-mother and two very ugly and very cruel step-sisters and-”

  Gloria was reaching the very climax of the tale – midnight was striking and everything was changing back to the shabby originals lickety-split, while Robbie listened tensely with burning eyes – when the interruption came.

  “Gloria!”

  It was the high-pitched sound of a woman who has been calling not once, but several times; and had the nervous tone of one in whom anxiety was beginning to overcome impatience.

  “Mamma’s calling me,” said Gloria, not quite happily. “You’d better carry me back to the house, Robbie.”

  Robbie obeyed with alacrity for somehow there was that in him which judged it best to obey Mrs. Weston, without as much as a scrap of hesitation. Gloria’s father was rarely home in the daytime except on Sunday – today, for instance – and when he was, he proved a genial and understanding person. Gloria’s mother, however, was a source of uneasiness to Robbie and there was always the impulse to sneak away from her sight.

  Mrs. Weston caught sight of them the minute they rose above the masking tufts of long grass and retired inside the house to wait.

  “I’ve shouted myself hoarse, Gloria,” she said, severely. “Where were you?”

  “I was with Robbie,” quavered Gloria. “I was telling him Cinderella, and I forgot it was dinner-time.”

  “Well, it’s a pity Robbie forgot, too.” Then, as if that reminded her of the robot’s presence, she whirled upon him. “You may go, Robbie. She doesn’t need you now.” Then, brutally, “And don’t come back till I call you.”

  Robbie turned to go, but hesitated as Gloria cried out in his defense, “Wait, Mamma, you got to let him stay. I didn’t finish Cinderella for him. I said I would tell him Cinderella and I’m not finished.”

  “Gloria!”

  “Honest and truly, Mamma, he’ll stay so quiet, you won’t even know he’s here. He can sit on the chair in the corner, and he won’t say a word, I mean he won’t do anything. Will you, Robbie?”

  Robbie, appealed to, nodded his massive head up and down once.

  “Gloria, if you don’t stop this at once, you shan’t see Robbie for a whole week.”

  The girl’s eyes fell, “All right! But Cinderella is his favorite story and I didn’t finish it. – And he likes it so much.”

  The robot left with a disconsolate step and Gloria choked back a sob.

  George Weston was comfortable. It was a habit of his to be comfortable on Sunday afternoons. A good, hearty dinner below the hatches; a nice, soft, dilapidated couch on which to sprawl; a copy of the Times; slippered feet and shirtless chest; how could anyone help but be comfortable?

  He wasn’t pleased, therefore, when his wife walked in. After ten years of married life, be still was so unutterably foolish as to love her, and there was no question that he was always glad to see her – still Sunday afternoons just after dinner were sacred to him and his idea of solid comfort was to be left in utter solitude for two or three hours. Consequently, he fixed his eye firmly upon the latest reports of the Lefebre-Yoshida expedition to Mars (this one was to take off from Lunar Base and might actually succeed) and pretended she wasn’t there.

  Mrs. Weston waited patiently for two minutes, then impatiently for two more, and finally broke the silence.

  “George!”

  “Hmpph?”

  “George, I say! Will you put down that paper and look at me?”

  The paper rustled to the floor and Weston turned a weary face toward his wife, “What is it, dear?”

  “You know what it is, George. It’s Gloria and that terrible machine.”

  “What terrible machine?”

  “Now don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s that robot Gloria calls Robbie. He doesn’t leave her for a moment.”

  “Well, why should he? He’s not supposed to. And he certainly isn’t a terrible machine. He’s the best darn robot money can buy and I’m damned sure he set me back half a year’s income. He’s worth it, though – darn sight cleverer than half my office staff.”

  He made a move to pick up the paper again, but his wife was quicker and snatched it away.

  “You listen to me, George. I won’t have my daughter entrusted to a machine – and I don’t care how clever it is. It has no soul, and no one knows what it may be thinking. A child just isn’t made to be guarded by a thing of metal.”

  Weston frowned, “When did you decide this? He’s been with Gloria two years now and I haven’t seen you worry till now.”

  “It was different at first. It was a novelty; it took a load off me, and – and it was a fashionable thing to do. But now I don’t know. The neighbors-”

  “Well, what have the neighbors to do with it? Now, look. A robot is infinitely more to be trusted than a human nursemaid. Robbie was constructed for only one purpose really – to be the companion of a little child. His entire ‘mentality’ has been created for the purpose. He just can’t help being faithful and loving and kind. He’s a machine-made so. That’s more than you can say for humans.”

  “But something might go wrong. Some-some-” Mrs. Weston was a bit hazy about the insides of a robot, “some little jigger will come loose and the awful thing will go berserk and-and-” She couldn’t bring herself to complete the quite obvious thought.

  “Nonsense,” Weston denied, with an involuntary nervous shiver. “That’s completely ridiculous. We had a long discussion at the time we bought Robbie about the First Law of Robotics. You know that it is impossible for a robot to harm a human being; that long before enough can go wrong to alter that First Law, a robot would be completely inoperable. It’s a mathematical impossibility. Besides I have an engineer from U. S. Robots here twice a year to give the poor gadget a complete overhaul. Why, there’s no more chance of any thing at all going wrong with Robbie than there is of you or I suddenly going loony – considerably less, in fact. Besides, how are you going to take him away from Gloria?”

  He made another futile stab at the paper and his wife tossed it angrily into the next room.

  “That’s just it, George! She won’t play with anyone else. There are dozens of little boys and girls that she should make friends with, but she won’t. She won’t go near them unless I make her. That’s no way for a little girl to grow up. You want her to be normal, don’t you? You want her to be able to take her part in society.”

  “You’re jumping at shadows, Grace. Pretend Robbie’s a dog. I’ve seen hundreds of children who would rather have their dog than their father.”

  “A dog is different, George. We must get rid of that horrible thing. You can sell it back to the company. I’ve asked, and you can.”

  “You’ve asked? Now look here, Grace, let’s not go off the deep end. We’re keeping the robot until Gloria is older and I don’t want the subject brought up again.” And with that he walked out of the room in a huff.

  Mrs. Weston met her husband at the door two evenings later. “You’ll have to listen to this, George. There’s bad feeling in the village.”

  “About what?” asked Weston? He stepped into the washroom and drowned out any possible answer by the splash of water.

  Mrs. Weston waited. She said, “About Robbie.”

  Weston stepped out, towel in hand, face red and angry, “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, it’s been building up and building up. I’ve tried to close my eyes to it, but I’m not going to any more. Most of the villagers consider Robbie dangerous. Children aren’t allowed to go near our place in the evenings.”

  “We trust our child with the thing.”

  “Well, people aren’t reasonable about these things.”


  “Then to hell with them.”

  “Saying that doesn’t solve the problem. I’ve got to do my shopping down there. I’ve got to meet them every day. And it’s even worse in the city these days when it comes to robots. New York has just passed an ordinance keeping all robots off the streets between sunset and sunrise.”

  “All right, but they can’t stop us from keeping a robot in our home. Grace, this is one of your campaigns. I recognize it. But it’s no use. The answer is still, no! We’re keeping Robbie!”

  And yet he loved his wife – and what was worse, his wife knew it. George Weston, after all, was only a man – poor thing – and his wife made full use of every device which a clumsier and more scrupulous sex has learned, with reason and futility, to fear.

  Ten times in the ensuing week, he cried, “Robbie stays, and that’s final!” and each time it was weaker and accompanied by a louder and more agonized groan.

  Came the day at last, when Weston approached his daughter guiltily and suggested a “beautiful” visivox show in the village.

  Gloria clapped her hands happily, “Can Robbie go?”

  “No, dear,” he said, and winced at the sound of his voice, “they won’t allow robots at the visivox – but you can tell him all about it when you get home.” He stumbled all over the last few words and looked away.

  Gloria came back from town bubbling over with enthusiasm, for the visivox had been a gorgeous spectacle indeed.

  She waited for her father to maneuver the jet-car into the sunken garage, “Wait till I tell Robbie, Daddy. He would have liked it like anything. Especially when Francis Fran was backing away so-o-o quietly, and backed right into one of the Leopard-Men and had to run.” She laughed again, “Daddy, are there really Leopard-Men on the Moon?”

  “Probably not,” said Weston absently. “It’s just funny make-believe.” He couldn’t take much longer with the car. He’d have to face it.

  Gloria ran across the lawn. “Robbie. – Robbie!”

  Then she stopped suddenly at the sight of a beautiful collie which regarded her out of serious brown eyes as it wagged its tail on the porch.

  “Oh, what a nice dog!” Gloria climbed the steps, approached cautiously and patted it. “Is it for me, Daddy?”

  Her mother had joined them. “Yes, it is, Gloria. Isn’t it nice – soft and furry? It’s very gentle. It likes little girls.”

  “Can he play games?”

  “Surely. He can do any number of tricks. Would you like to see some?”

  “Right away. I want Robbie to see him, too. Robbie!” She stopped, uncertainly, and frowned, “I’ll bet he’s just staying in his room because he’s mad at me for not taking him to the visivox. You’ll have to explain to him, Daddy. He might not believe me, but he knows if you say it, it’s so.”

  Weston’s lip grew tighter. He looked toward his wife but could not catch her eye.

  Gloria turned precipitously and ran down the basement steps, shouting as she went, “Robbie – Come and see what Daddy and Mamma brought me. They brought me a dog, Robbie.”

  In a minute she had returned, a frightened little girl. “Mamma, Robbie isn’t in his room. Where is he?” There was no answer and George Weston coughed and was suddenly extremely interested in an aimlessly drifting cloud. Gloria’s voice quavered on the verge of tears, “Where’s Robbie, Mamma?”

  Mrs. Weston sat down and drew her daughter gently to her, “Don’t feel bad, Gloria. Robbie has gone away, I think.”

  “Gone away? Where? Where’s he gone away, Mamma?”

  “No one knows, darling. He just walked away. We’ve looked and we’ve looked and we’ve looked for him, but we can’t find him.”

  “You mean he’ll never come back again?” Her eyes were round with horror.

  “We may find him soon. We’ll keep looking for him. And meanwhile you can play with your nice new doggie. Look at him! His name is Lightning and he can-”

  But Gloria’s eyelids had overflown, “I don’t want the nasty dog – I want Robbie. I want you to find me Robbie.” Her feelings became too deep for words, and she spluttered into a shrill wail.

  Mrs. Weston glanced at her husband for help, but he merely shuffled his feet morosely and did not withdraw his ardent stare from the heavens, so she bent to the task of consolation, “Why do you cry, Gloria? Robbie was only a machine, just a nasty old machine. He wasn’t alive at all.”

  “He was not no machine!” screamed Gloria, fiercely and ungrammatically. “He was a person just like you and me and he was my friend. I want him back. Oh, Mamma, I want him back.”

  Her mother groaned in defeat and left Gloria to her sorrow.

  “Let her have her cry out,” she told her husband. “Childish griefs are never lasting. In a few days, she’ll forget that awful robot ever existed.”

  But time proved Mrs. Weston a bit too optimistic. To be sure, Gloria ceased crying, but she ceased smiling, too, and the passing days found her ever more silent and shadowy. Gradually, her attitude of passive unhappiness wore Mrs. Weston down and all that kept her from yielding was the impossibility of admitting defeat to her husband.

  Then, one evening, she flounced into the living room, sat down, folded her arms and looked boiling mad.

  Her husband stretched his neck in order to see her over his newspaper, “What now, Grace?”

  “It’s that child, George. I’ve had to send back the dog today. Gloria positively couldn’t stand the sight of him, she said. She’s driving me into a nervous breakdown.”

  Weston laid down the paper and a hopeful gleam entered his eye, “Maybe – Maybe we ought to get Robbie back. It might be done, you know. I can get in touch with-”

  “No!” she replied, grimly. “I won’t hear of it. We’re not giving up that easily. My child shall not be brought up by a robot if it takes years to break her of it.”

  Weston picked up his paper again with a disappointed air. “A year of this will have me prematurely gray.”

  “You’re a big help, George,” was the frigid answer. “What Gloria needs is a change of environment? Of course she can’t forget Robbie here. How can she when every tree and rock reminds her of him? It is really the silliest situation I have ever heard of. Imagine a child pining away for the loss of a robot.”

  “Well, stick to the point. What’s the change in environment you’re planning?”

  “We’re going to take her to New York.”

  “The city! In August! Say, do you know what New York is like in August? It’s unbearable.”

  “Millions do bear it.”

  “They don’t have a place like this to go to. If they didn’t have to stay in New York, they wouldn’t.”

  “Well, we have to. I say we’re leaving now – or as soon as we can make the arrangements. In the city, Gloria will find sufficient interests and sufficient friends to perk her up and make her forget that machine.”

  “Oh, Lord,” groaned the lesser half, “those frying pavements!”

  “We have to,” was the unshaken response. “Gloria has lost five pounds in the last month and my little girl’s health is more important to me than your comfort.”

  “It’s a pity you didn’t think of your little girl’s health before you deprived her of her pet robot,” he muttered – but to himself.

  Gloria displayed immediate signs of improvement when told of the impending trip to the city. She spoke little of it, but when she did, it was always with lively anticipation. Again, she began to smile and to eat with something of her former appetite.

  Mrs. Weston hugged herself for joy and lost no opportunity to triumph over her still skeptical husband.

  “You see, George, she helps with the packing like a little angel, and chatters away as if she hadn’t a care in the world. It’s just as I told you – all we need do is substitute other interests.”

  “Hmpph,” was the skeptical response, “I hope so.”

  Preliminaries were gone through quickly. Arrangements were made for the preparation of their city ho
me and a couple were engaged as housekeepers for the country home. When the day of the trip finally did come, Gloria was all but her old self again, and no mention of Robbie passed her lips at all.

  In high good-humor the family took a taxi-gyro to the airport (Weston would have preferred using his own private ‘gyro, but it was only a two-seater with no room for baggage) and entered the waiting liner.

  “Come, Gloria,” called Mrs. Weston. “I’ve saved you a seat near the window so you can watch the scenery.”

  Gloria trotted down the aisle cheerily, flattened her nose into a white oval against the thick clear glass, and watched with an intentness that increased as the sudden coughing of the motor drifted backward into the interior. She was too young to be frightened when the ground dropped away as if let through a trap door and she herself suddenly became twice her usual weight, but not too young to be mightily interested. It wasn’t until the ground had changed into a tiny patchwork quilt that she withdrew her nose, and faced her mother again.

  “Will we soon be in the city, Mamma?” she asked, rubbing her chilled nose, and watching with interest as the patch of moisture which her breath had formed on the pane shrank slowly and vanished.

  “In about half an hour, dear.” Then, with just the faintest trace of anxiety, “Aren’t you glad we’re going? Don’t you think you’ll be very happy in the city with all the buildings and people and things to see? We’ll go to the visivox every day and see shows and go to the circus and the beach and-”

  “Yes, Mamma,” was Gloria’s unenthusiastic rejoinder. The liner passed over a bank of clouds at the moment, and Gloria was instantly absorbed in the usual spectacle of clouds underneath one. Then they were over clear sky again, and she turned to her mother with a sudden mysterious air of secret knowledge.

  “I know why we’re going to the city, Mamma.”

  “Do you?” Mrs. Weston was puzzled. “Why, dear?”

  “You didn’t tell me because you wanted it to be a surprise, but I know.” For a moment, she was lost in admiration at her own acute penetration, and then she laughed gaily. “We’re going to New York so we can find Robbie, aren’t we? – With detectives.”