Robert Sheckley - Options

The cache on Harmonia was a large brightly lighted structure, all stainless steel and glass, looking irrevocably like a Miami Beach supermarket. Mishkin drove his spaceship in, turned off the engine, and put the key in his pocket. He walked down the gleaming aisles past shelves loaded with trays of transistors, six-pacs of silicones, vapour recovery systems, chuck roasts, freezer-pacs of glycol brine, baby spectrometers, spark plugs, coaxial loudspeakers, tuner modules, foil-sealed vitamin B6 capsules, and nearly everything else that the far-travelling tripper of inner/outer space might require.

He came to the central communications panel. There he asked for Part L-1223A.

He waited. Minutes passed.

"Hey!" Mishkin called out. "What happened? What's up?"

"Terribly sorry," the control panel replied. "I'm afraid I was woolgathering. I've been having rather a trying time of it."

"What's been the matter?" Mishkin asked.

"Difficulties, many difficulties," the panel said. "Really, you can have no idea. My head is positively swimming. I speak figuratively, of course."

"You talk funny for a control panel," Mishkin said, suspiciously.

"These days control panels come equipped with personalities. It makes us seem less inhuman, if you know what I mean."

"So what's been going wrong around here?" Mishkin asked.

"Well, I suppose a lot of it is me ," the control panel said. "You see, when you equip a computer with a personality, well, it's like giving him the ability to feel. And if we can feel then you can't expect us to do the old, soulless thing any more. I mean to say, my personality makes it impossible for me to do a robot-like job, even though essentially I am a robot and the job I have to do should be done in essentially a robot-like fashion.

But I can't do that, I'm absentminded, I have my bad days, my moods… Does that make any sense to you?"

"Of course it does," Mishkin said. "Now, what about that part?"

"It isn't inside here. It's outside."

"Where outside?"

"About fifteen miles away, or possibly twenty."

"But what is it doing outside?"

"Well, originally we had all the parts stockpiled here inside the cache. All very logical and convenient. Perhaps it was too simple for the human mind to endure, for all of a sudden some humans got to thinking, "What would happen if a disabled ship crashed right on top of the cache ?" That freaked everybody out, so the problem was fed to a computer, and the answer came up, "Decentralize!" The engineers and planners nodded and said, "Decentralize, of course, why didn't we think of that?" So orders were cut and work teams came out and stuck parts all over the area. And then everybody sat back and said, "Well, that's OK now." And then the trouble really began."

"What sort of trouble?" Mishkin asked.

"Well, humans had to leave the cache and go out on to the surface of Harmonia in order to get what they needed. And that meant danger. Alien planets are dangerous, you know, because alien things happen on them, and one does not know how to respond, and by the time one figures out what the situation is and how to deal with it, it has already come and gone and maybe killed you."

"What sort of alien things?" Mishkin asked.

"I am not allowed to mention specifics," the computer said. "If I did, it would all get much trickier."

"Why?"

"Successful adaptation to alien dangers requires the broad-spectrum ability to recognize what constitutes danger and what does not. If I were to mention only one or two possibilities you would become overconditioned — the so-called tunnel effect — thus limiting your perceptions of other risk situations. Besides, it isn't necessary."

"Why not?"

"Because provision has been made. You will be accompanied outside by a SPER robot.

If we have one in stock. There was a mix-up in the last shipment…"

The control panel became silent. Mishkin said, "What…"

"Please ," said the panel, "I'm checking the inventory."

Mishkin waited. In a few moments the panel said, "Yes, we do have a SPER robot in stock. It came in the last shipment. It would have been pretty gross if that had been missing, too."

"What is this robot?" Mishkin asked. "What is it supposed to do?"

"The initials stand for Special Purpose Environmental Response robot. These machines are programmed to respond to the conditions of a specific alien world. They detect whatever might constitute noxious stimuli to a human, warn him, defend him, and suggest appropriate counter-measures. With a SPER robot you'll be as safe as if you were back in New York."

"Thanks a lot," Mishkin said.

The SPER robot was short and rectangular. His lacquered, scarlet case was most attractive. He walked on four spindly limbs and had four more on the upper part of his control case. He resembled a tarantula disguised as a robot.

He said to Mishkin. "OK, sonny, let's get cracking."

"Will it be very dangerous?" Mishkin asked.

"Piece of cake. I could do it blindfolded."

"What should I watch out for?"

"I'll let you know."

Mishkin shrugged and followed the robot past the checkout counter and through the swinging doors out on to the surface of Harmonia. He figured that the robot knew what he was doing. But Mishkin was wrong. His lack of knowledge was monstrous, ineluctable, and strangely touching. Perhaps only a virgin mounted on a unicorn could have been quite so dumb as Mishkin.

(Of course, his robot buddy was not exactly the last word in smart, either. Add his ignorance to Mishkin's and you get a really big negative number equal to the cases of pleurisy since the beginning of the second Peloponnesian War.)

Jam, hot cross buns, fellatio, the colour of lips, these were on his mind as Mishkin stepped tumulously on to the dubious surface of Harmonia.

"How long do the hallucinations continue?" Mishkin asked.

"Why ask me?" said the kindly chef with the battered harmonica. "I, too, am an hallucination."

"How can I tell which things are real and which are not?"

"Try litmus paper," advised Chuang-tzu.

"The whole deal is this," said the robot. "You gotta do exactly like I say — otherwise you're real dead in a hurry. Got it?"

"Got it," said Mishkin. They were strolling a purple plain. The wind was from the east at five miles an hour, and one could hear the electronic sound of birds.

"When I tell you to git down," the robot went on, "you gotta hit the deck fast. There'll be no time for blinking and stumbling. I just hope that your reflexes are in good shape."

"I thought you said it wasn't dangerous here," Mishkin said.

"So, big deal, you've caught me in a contradiction," the robot sneered. "Maybe I had my reasons for lying to you."

"What were they?"

"Maybe I've got my reasons for not telling you," the robot said. "Just listen to what I say now. Hit it!"

Mishkin, too, had heard the faint, high-pitched drone. He threw himself on the grass, bruising his nose in his eagerness to comply. He could see the robot swivelling, two blasters in his metal hands.

"What is it?" Mishkin asked.

"Mating call of the six-legged proto-Brontostegosaurus. When the durned critters are in heat, they'll try to make it with anything."

"Can't they see that I am not an appropriate object for their affections?"

"Sure, but it takes a few minutes for the message to get through to their brains, since the proto-B is not exactly anyone's idea of bright. And in the meantime, you got twenty-three tons of inflamed critter squatting on your head."

"So where is it?" Mishkin asked.