Stanislaw Lem - Return from the Stars

“Pleash… shir… haff… “

I stood rooted to the spot. The stifling air tasted of iron. The whisper came from below.

“Pleash… haff… look ar-round… pleash…”

It was joined by a second, monotonous voice, steadily reciting: “O anomaly eccentric… O asymptote spherical… O pole in infinity… O protosystem linear… O system holonomic… O space semimetrical… O space spherical… O space dielectrical…”

“Pleash… shir… yershervet… pleash…”

The darkness teemed with husky whisperings, out of which boomed:

“The planetary bioplasm, its decaying mud, is the dawn of existence, the initial phase, and lot from the bloody, dough-brained cometh copper…”

“Brek — break — brabzel — be… bre… veryscope…”

“O class imaginary… O class powerful… O class empty… O class of classes…”

“Pleash… haff… look ar-round… shir…”

“Hush-sh…”

“You…”

“Sh-sh.”

“Hear me…”

“I hear…”

“Can you touch… ?”

“Brek — break — brabzel…”

“No arms…”

“Sh-shame… you… you would see what a shiny and cold I am…”

“L-let them re… turn my armor, my golden sword… my inheri… tance… dis… possessed… night…”

“Behold the last efforts of the strutting croaking master of quartering and incarceration, for yea it riseth, thrice riseth the coming kingdom of the nonliving…”

“I’m new… quite new… I never had a short in the skeleton… I am still able… please…”

“Pleash…”

I did not know which way to look, asphyxiated by the merciless heat and those voices. They came from all sides. From the floor to the window slots below the ceiling rose heaps of twisted and tangled bodies; the little light that filtered in was reflected weakly in their dented metal.

“I had a temp, a temporary defect, but now I am all, am all right, I can see…”

“What do you see… it is dark…”

“Listen, please. I am invaluable, I am expensive. I indicate every power leak, I locate every stray current, every overload, just test me, please… This… this shaking is temporary… It has nothing in common with… please…”

“Pleash… shir…”

“And the dough-headed took their acid fermentation for a soul, the stabbing of meat for history, the means of postponing their decay for civilization…”

“Please, me… only me… it is a mistake…”

“Pleash… shir… haff…”

“I will save you…”

“Who is that…”

“What…”

“Who saves?”

“Repeat after me: the fire will not consume me utterly, and the water will not turn me all to rust, both elements will be a gate unto me, and I shall enter…”

“Hush-sh-sh!”

“The contemplation of the cathode —”

“Cathodoplation —”

“I am here by mistake… I think… I think, after all…”

“I am the mirror of betrayal…”

“Pleash… shir… yer shervet… haff a look ar-round…”

“O flight of the transfinite, O flight of the nebulae… O flight of the stars…”

“He is here!!!” something cried; and a sudden silence fell, a silence almost as penetrating in its terrible tension as the many-voiced chorus that had preceded it.

“Sir!!!” said something; I do not know why I was so sure, but I felt that these words were directed to me, I did not respond.

“Sir, please… a moment of your time. Sir, I — am different. I am here by mistake.”

There was a stir.

“Silence! I am living!” This outshouted the rest. “Yes, I was thrown in here, they dressed me in metal on purpose, so no one would know, but please, only put your ear to me and you will hear a pulse!”

“I also!” came a second voice over the first. “I also! Sir! I was ill; during my illness I imagined that I was a machine, that was my madness, but now I am well! Hallister, Mr. Hallister can vouch for me, please ask him, please get me out of here!”

“Pleash… pleash, shir…”

“Brek… break…”

“Your servant…”

The barracks buzzed and roared with rusty voices, at one point it was filled with a breathless scream, I began to retreat and stumbled backward into the sunlight, blinded, squinting; I stood awhile, shielding my eyes with my hand; behind me was a drawn-out grating sound; the robot had shut the door and bolted it.

“Sirrrr…” This still reached me through the wave of muffled voices from behind the wall. “Pleash… service… a mistake…”

I passed the glass annex. I did not know where I was going — I only wanted to get away from those voices, not to hear them; I jumped when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Marger, fair-haired, handsome, smiling.

“I do apologize, Mr. Bregg. It took forever…”

“What will happen to them… ?” I interrupted, almost rudely, indicating the solitary barracks with my hand.

“I beg your pardon?” he blinked. “To whom?”

Suddenly he understood and was surprised:

“Ah, you went there? There was no need…”

“Why no need?”

“That’s scrap.”

“How do you mean?”

“Scrap for recasting, after selection. Shall we go? We have to sign the official record.”

“In a minute. Who conducts this selection?”

“Who? The robots.”

“What? They do it themselves?”

“Certainly.”

He fell silent under my gaze.

“Why aren’t they repaired?”

“It wouldn’t pay,” he said slowly, with surprise.

“And what happens to them?”

“To the scrap? It goes there,” he pointed at the thin, solitary column of the furnace.

In the office the forms were ready, spread out on the desk — the official record of the inspection, some other slips of paper — and Marger filled in the blanks in order, signed, and gave me the pen. I turned it over in my fingers.

“And is there no possibility of error?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There, in that… scrap, as you call it, can they wind up there… even when they are still efficient, in working order — what do you think?”

He looked at me as if he did not understand what I was saying.

“That was the impression I got,” I finished slowly.

“But that is not our concern,” he replied.

“Then whose concern is it?”

“The robots’.”

“But it is we who make the inspection.”

“Ah, no,” he smiled with relief at finally perceiving the source of my error. “The one has nothing to do with the other. We inspect the synchronization of processes, their tempo and efficiency, but we do not go into such details as selection. That is not our province. Apart from the fact that it is unnecessary, it also would be quite impossible, because today there are about eighteen automata for every living person; of these, five end their cycle daily and become scrap. That amounts to something on the order of two billion tons a day. You can see for yourself that we would be unable to keep track of this, and in any case the structure of our system is based on precisely the opposite relationship: the automata serve us, not we them…”

I could not dispute what he said. Without another word I signed the papers. We were about to part when I surprised myself by asking him if humanoid robots were also produced.

“Not really,” he said, and added reluctantly, “In their day they caused a bit of trouble…”

“How so?”

“Well, you know engineers! They reached such a level of perfection in their simulations that certain models could not be distinguished from live human beings. Some people could not tolerate that…”

Suddenly I remembered the stewardess on the ship that I had taken from Luna.