Cemetery World

Chapter 3

It had been early evening and I'd been in the garden watching the purple cloud that hung above the pink horizon (for Alden was a pink world), listening to the evensong of the temple birds that had gathered in the little grove of trees at the garden's foot. I was listening with some pleasure, when trampling down the dusty path that led across the pink and sandy plain came this great eight-foot monstrosity, lurching along with his awkward stride like a drunken behemoth. Watching him, I hoped that he would pass by and leave me with the evening and the birds, for I was in no mood for strangers. I was considerably depressed and there was nothing I wanted quite so much as to be left alone so I'd have a chance to heal. For this had been the day when I'd finally come face-to-face with hard reality and had known that the dream of Earth was dead unless I could get more money. I knew how little chance I had of getting money. I had scraped up all I could and borrowed all I could and would have stolen if there'd been any chance of stealing. I'd had a hard look at it all and knew" wasn't going to be able to build the kind of compositor wanted and the sooner I got reconciled to all of this, better it would be.

I sat in the garden and watched this great monstrosity lurching down the path and I tried to tell myself that he was headed elsewhere and would not stop. But that was purely wishful thinking, for my garden was the only place he could be heading for.

He looked like a worker robot, perhaps a heavy construction robot, although what a heavy construction robot would be doing on a planet such as Alden I could not imagine. Heavy construction is just one of the many things that are not done on Alden.

He came lurching up and stopped beside the gate. "With your permission, sir," he said.

"Welcome to my home," I told him, through my teeth.

He unlatched the gate and came through, stopping to make sure it was latched again before coming on. He came over to me and hunkered down as gently as he could and hissed a little at me as a matter of politeness. Have you ever heard a three-ton robot hiss? I tell you, it's uncanny.

"The birds are doing nicely," said this hunk of metal, squatting there beside me.

"They do very well," I said.

"Allow me," said the robot, "to introduce myself."

"If you would please," I said.

"My name is Elmer," said the robot. "I am a free machine. I was given freedom papers many centuries ago. I have been my own man ever since."

"Well," I said, "congratulations. How are you making out?"

"Very well," said Elmer. "I just sort of wander, going here and there."

I nodded, believing him. You saw them now and then, these free and wandering robots who had gained, technically, the status of a human after many years of servitude.

"I have heard," said Elmer, "that you're going back to Earth."

Not to the Earth, but back to Earth-that was the way of it. After more than ten millennia, one still went back to Earth. As if the human race had left it only yesterday.

"You have been misinformed," I said.

"But you have a compositor…"

"A basic instrument," I told him, "that needs a million things to do the kind of job that should be done. It would be pitiful to go to Earth with such a pile of junk."

"Too bad," said Elmer. "There is a glorious composition waiting on the Earth. There is only one thing, sir…"

He stuttered to a halt, embarrassed for some reason I could not detect. I waited, not wishing to further embarrass him by saying anything.

"What I meant to say, sir-and it may not be in my province to say anything at all-is that you must not allow yourself to be trapped by the Cemetery. The Cemetery is no part of the Earth. It is something that has been grafted on the Earth. Grafted, if I may say so, with a colossal cynicism."

I pricked up my ears at that. Here, I told myself with more surprise than I would admit, was someone who was in agreement with me. I took a closer look at him in the gathering dusk. He wasn't much to look at. His body was old-fashioned, at least by Alden standards, a clumsy thing, all brawn, an unsoftened lusty body, and his head piece was one upon which no effort, had been expended to make it sympathetic. But rough and tough as he might seem, his speech was not the kind of language one would expect from a hulking, outdated labor robot.

"I am somewhat surprised," I told him, "and at the same time gratified, to find a robot who has an interest in the arts, especially in an art so complicated."

"I have tried," said Elmer, "to make myself a whole man. Not being a man, I suppose, might explain why I tried so hard. Once I got my freedom papers and was given in the process the status of a human, I felt it incumbent on myself to try to be a human. It's not possible, of course. There is a great deal of machine still left in me…"

"But composition work," I said, "and myself-how did you know I was at work on an instrument?"

"I am a mechanic, see," said Elmer. "I've been a mechanic all my life, by nature. I look at a thing and I know instinctively how it works or what is wrong with it. Tell me what kind of machine you want built and the chances are that I can build it for you. And when you come right down I to it, a compositor is about as complicated a piece of mechanism as one can happen on and, more than that, it is far from finished yet. It is still in the process of development and there is no end to the ways that one can go. I see you looking at these hands and wondering how I can do the kind of work a compositor requires. The answer is that I have other hands, very special kinds of hands. I screw off my everyday hands and screw on whatever other kind is needed. You have heard of this, of course?"

I nodded. "Yes. And specialized eyes, I suppose you have those as well."

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Elmer.

"You find a compositor a challenge to your mechanical ability?"

"Not a challenge," said Elmer. "That's a foolish word to use. I find satisfaction in working with complicated mechanisms. It makes me more alive. It makes me feel worthwhile. And you asked how I heard about you. Well, just a passing remark, I guess that you were building a compositor and planned to go back to Earth. So I inquired around. I found out you had studied at the university, so I went there and talked to people. There was one professor who told me he had great faith in you. He said you had the soul for greatness, he said you had the touch. His name, I think, was Adams."

"Dr. Adams," I said, "is old now and forgetful and a very kindly man."

I chuckled, thinking of it — of this great, bumbling, earnest Elmer clumping across the fairy campus and stumbling down the venerated, almost sacred halls, hunting out professors from their academic lairs to ask them insistent, silly questions about a long-gone student that many of them, no doubt, had trouble in recalling.

"There was yet another professor," said Elmer, "who impressed me greatly and I had a long talk with him. He was not in the arts, but in archaeology. He said he knew you well."

"That would be Thorndyke. He is an old and trusted friend."

"That's the name," said Elmer.

I was a bit amused, but somewhat resentful, too. What business did this blundering robot have to be checking up on me?

"And you are now convinced," I asked, "that I am fully capable of building a compositor?"

"Oh, most assuredly," he said.

"If you have come with the hope of being hired, you have wasted your time," I said. "Not that I don't need the help. Not that I wouldn't like to have you. But I've run out of money."

"It wasn't that entirely, sir. I would, of course, be delighted to work on it with you. But my real reason was I want to go back to Earth. I was born there, you see; I was fabricated there."

"You were what?" I yelled.

"I was forged on Earth," said Elmer. "I'm a native of the Earth. I would like to see the planet once again. And I thought that if you were going…"

"Once again," I said, "and slow. Do you really mean that you were forged on Earth? In the olden days?"

"I saw the last of Earth," said Elmer. "I worked on the last of the war machines. I was a project manager."

"But you would have worn out," I said. "You would be worn out by now. A robot can be long-lived, of course, but…"

"I was very valuable," Elmer pointed out. "Ship room was found for me when men began going to the stars. I was not just a robot. I was a mechanic, an engineer. Humans needed robots such as I to help establish their new homes far in space. They took good care of me. Worn parts were replaced, I was kept in good repair. And since I gained my freedom I have taken good care of myself. I have never bothered with the external body. I have never changed it. I have kept it free of rust and plated, but that is all. The body does not count, only the internal working parts. Although now it is impossible to get shelf replacements. They are no longer in stock, but must be placed on special order."

What he said had the ring of truth to it. In that long-gone moving day when, in a century or so, men had fled the Earth, a wrecked and ruined planet, because there was nothing left to keep them there, they would have needed robots such as Elmer. But it was not only this. Elmer had the sound of truth in him. This was no tall tale, I am sure, to impress the listener.

And here he sat beside me, after all the years, and if I would only ask him, he could tell me of the Earth. For it all would still be with him-all that he had ever seen or heard or known would be with him still, for robots do not forget as biologic creatures do. The memories of the ancient Earth would be waiting within his memory core, waiting to be tapped, as fresh as if they had been implanted only yesterday.

I found that I was shaking-not shaking outwardly, physically, but within myself. I had tried to study Earth for years and there was so little left to study. The records and the writings had been lost and scattered, and in those cases where they still existed it was often in only fragmentary form. In that ancient day when men had left the Earth, fleeing for the stars, they had gone out too fast to give much thought to the preservation of the heritage of the planet. On thousands of different planets some of that heritage might still remain, preserved because it had been forgotten, hidden in old trunks or packing boxes tucked beneath the eaves. But it would take many lifetimes for one to hunt it out and even could one find it, more than likely a good part of it would be disappointing-mere trivia that would have no actual bearing on the questions that bob-bled in one's mind.

But here sat a robot that had known the Earth and could tell of Earth-although perhaps not as much as one might hope, for those must have been desperate, busy days for him and with much of Earth already gone.

I tried to frame a question and there was nothing I could think of that it seemed that he could answer. One after another the questions came to mind and each one was rejected because it did not fit into the frame of reference of a robot engaged in building war machines.

And while I tried to form a proper question he said something that knocked the questions completely from my mind.

"For years," he said, "I have been wandering around from one job to another and the pay was always good. There's nothing, you understand, that a robot really needs, that he'd feel called to spend his money on. So it has just piled up. And here finally is something I'd like to spend it on. If you would not be offended, sir…"

"Offended about what?" I asked, not entirely catching the drift of all his talk.

"Why," he said, "I'd like to put my money into your compositor. I think I might have enough that we could finish it."

I suppose I should have got all happy, I should have leaped to my feet and shouted out my joy. I just sat cold and stiff, afraid to move, afraid that if I moved I might scare it all away.

I said, still stiff and cold, "It's not a good investment. I would not recommend it."

He almost pleaded with me. "Look, it is not just the money. I can offer more than that. I'm a good mechanic. Together, the two of us could put together an instrument that would be the best one ever made."