Time and Again

XXVII

Herkimer lay on his bed and tried to sleep, but sleep was long in coming. And he wondered that he should sleep…that he should sleep and eat and drink as Man. For he was not a man, although he was as close to one as the human mind and human skill could come.

His origin was chemical and Man's was biological. He was the imitation and Man was reality. It is the method, he told himself, the method and terminology, that keeps me from being Man, for in all things else we are the same.

The method and the words and the tattoo mark I wear upon my brow.

I am as good as Man and almost as smart as Man, for all I act the clown, and would be as treacherous as Man if I had the chance. Except I wear a tattoo mark and I am owned and I have no soul…although sometimes I doubt that.

Herkimer lay very quiet and gazed at the ceiling and tried to remember certain things, but the memories would not come.

First there was the tool and then the machine, which was no more than a complicated tool, and both machine and tool were no more than the extension of a hand.

Man's hand, of course.

Then came the robot and a robot was a machine that walked like a man. That walked and looked and talked like a man and did the things Man wished, but it was a caricature. No matter how sleekly machined, no matter how cleverly designed, there never was a danger that it be mistaken for a man.

And after the robot?

We are not robots, Herkimer told himself, and we are not men. We are not machines and we are not flesh and blood. We are chemicals made into the shapes of our creators and assigned a chemical life so close to the life of our makers that someday one of them will find, to his astonishment, that there is no difference.

Made in the shape of men…and the resemblance is so close that we wear a tattoo mark so that men may know their own.

So close to Man and yet not Man.

Although there is hope. If we can keep the Cradle secret, if we can keep it hidden from the eyes of Man. Someday there will be no difference. Someday a man will talk to an android and think he's talking to a fellow man.

Herkimer stretched his arms and folded them over his head.

He tried to examine his mind, to arrive at motives and evaluations, but it was hard to do. No rancor, certainly. No jealousy. No bitterness. But a nagging feeling of inadequacy, of almost having reached the goal and falling short.

But there was comfort, he thought. There was comfort if there was nothing else.

And that comfort must be kept. Kept for the little ones, for the ones that were less than Man.

He lay for a long time, thinking about comfort watching the dark square of the window with the rime of frost upon it and the stars shining through the frost, listening to the thin whine of the feeble, vicious weasel-wind as it knifed across the roof.

Sleep did not come and he got up at last and turned on the light. Shivering, he got into his clothes and pulled a book out of his pocket. Huddling close to the lamp, he turned the pages to a passage worn thin with reading.

He closed the book and held it clasped between the palms of his two hands.

"…how born or how conceived or made…"

Made.

All that mattered was the pulse of life.

Comfort.

And it must be kept.

I did my duty, he told himself. My willing, almost eager, duty. I still am doing it.

I acted the part, he told himself, and I think I acted well. I acted a part when I carried the challenge to Asher Sutton's room. I acted a part when I came to him as a part of the estate duello…the saucy, flippant part of any common android.

I did my duty for him…and yet not for him, but comfort, for the privilege of knowing and believing that neither I nor any other living thing, no matter how lowly it may be, will ever be alone.

I hit him. I hit him on the button and I knocked him out and I lifted him in my arms and carried him.

He was angry at me, but that does not matter. For his anger cannot wash away a single word of the thing he gave me.

Thunder shook the house, and the window, for a moment, flared with sudden crimson.

Herkimer came to his feet and ran to the window and stood there, gripping the ledge, watching the red twinkle of dwindling rocket tubes.

Fear hit him in the stomach and he raced out of the door and down the hall, to Sutton's room.

He did not knock nor did he turn the knob. He hit the door and it shattered open, with a wrecked and twisted lock dangling by its screws.

The bed was empty and there was no one in the room.