Damon Knight - Orbit 19

They were icy that night, so Pim said, and he had to pick his way along; but every so often he’d look up and see the house perched there on the outcrop. It reminded him, he said, of what the Bible tells about the man that built his house on rock; and he kept thinking that he could go into it and be home already. There was a fire there—he knew that because of the smoke-smell from the chimney—and he would sit down and put his feet up on the fender and take a pull or two at his bottle and finally have a nap.

In the end he didn’t do it, of course, or he wouldn’t have been in the Center telling it to me. But he said he always felt like there was some part of him that had. That he split into two, some way, coming through the pass, and the other half was in that house still—wherever it was, for it ain’t up there now or more people would have told about seeing it—doing he didn’t know what.

But the funny thing was what happened when he went past. He could hear it groan. The snow was flying right into his face, he said, but he knew it wasn’t just the wind; the house was sorry he hadn’t stopped. All the way down, until the pass was out of sight, he watched the lights in the windows blink out one by one.

Sure you won’t have another? The evening chill is coming now, and that machine of yours don’t keep the air off you, or so it looks to me. Still, you know best, and if you must go, you must; sorry Nor and me couldn’t be of more help.

I’ve got her—set easy, Nor.

Ma’am, you’ve got to be careful of your footing in here. These floorboards are uneven, and a lot of our furniture has those little spindly legs on it, just like that table. They can be tricksy, as you found out.

There’s no good ending to that story of Pim’s—no more than I told already. He dropped out of sight a while afterward, but he’d done that before. Old Wolter, down to the Center, says he looked out one night, and there was another house setting beside his, and in at the window of it he could see Pim laying there with someone else beside him; he said he couldn’t be certain if either of them was dead or not. But Wolter ain’t to be believed, if you know what I mean.

I didn’t feel no shifting, ma’am. I oughtn’t to have given you what I did out of my flask. You’re not used to it, and it’s not for the ladies anyhow. I helped build this place, though, and it’s solid as a rock.

Not that way, ma’am. The door’s over—

Sure, I see your gun, and I know what it will do, too. I think you ought to put it away, ma’am. I don’t believe you’re feeling quite yourself, and you might harm Nor with that thing. You wouldn’t want to do that. Still, I don’t think you ought to open that door.

There! No, I won’t give it back; it’s safer, I think, with me. I doubt that you’ll remember; and if you was to, you couldn’t find us.

I didn’t want you to see her—that’s all. You’d have been happier, I think, without it—and it would’ve saved you that yell. Nor’s grandmother’s sister, she was. Still is, I guess. Great-aunt Enid. She talks to us still—there’s mouths, you see, in various places; would you credit she remembers people that was born before the first transporter left? That far back. Didn’t you ever wonder how different it was—

Old Woman: Well, Todd, that’s the last of her—at least, for now. Hear that machine kick gravel. She expected you’d try to stop her when she ran for it, and she’ll be disappointed you didn’t, once she gets away down the road. Hope she don’t run that thing into a tree.

We’ll move on now, Enid.

You’re right, she’s not ready yet; but someday—I suppose it might be possible. Look at that other one. Someday this one will be ready to seek her peace. Come into a woman. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—that’s why we’re all so comfortable here: we’ve been here before. Feel the motion of her, Todd. How easy she goes!

“Before you had me,” the computer said, “your

memory-trace index was borderline, you existed on

pizza and cheap beer, your sex life was stunted...”

Sometimes the responses from the data banks anticipated the input stimuli, and even rejected the motivants. Cyrus Beta-Livingston was awakened sooner than he liked, his energy-chaise humming a sonic vibrato and overplaying a Purcell voluntary. Fuzzy consciousness spread over his cortical hemispheres, he grew aware of bitter gustatory cues, and he thought how nice a glass of room-temperature tomato juice would taste. He looked at the console, wondering what the winking panels of lights and tapes and cubes would do to program his behaviors for the day. The console activated, probing Cyrus’s memory-trace variables far down to a .001 confidence level. It sifted through taste-alternates and nutritionary value-scales, then clicked out a bran-cube and a glass of chilled tangerine extract.

“I don’t want that,” Cyrus muttered, his voice thick and deep.

“Drink it—you’ll like it,” the console said soothingly.

“My mouth feels like the bottom of a birdcage,” Cyrus said, grunting out vaguely histrionic sighs. The console scanners read his thick myelin impedance, ranked the relative verbal morbidity of the comment, and coded in hotter proline at his synapses. Cyrus sat up, brightening noticeably.

“I’d rather wake up slowly,” he said, “and by myself,” some weariness coming through his elevated mood, despite the bathing of synaptic junctures, the crystal-clear psychomimetic innervation. He looked down at his partially webbed feet, and spread his toes on the warm rosewood deck. He stretched, yawned, and looked into the physiog-plate of the computer.

“Look, I really prefer calling my own shots. I’m old enough to drink anything I want, and I don’t want cold citric jazz. I wanted to sleep late, and I don’t want this goddam cereal-cake. Christ, you home console-robots are worse than mommy-bots.”

“Now, now, Cy,” the voice said, “I minister precisely to your needs. You are optimal because I am perfect. You have ninety-seven percent full global homeostasis. Before you had me, your memory-trace index was borderline, you existed on pizza and cheap beer, your sex life was stunted, you—”

“I know, I know,” Cyrus said, waving off the voice, “I’ve heard all this before. Doesn’t anybody ever reprogram you?” The physiog-plate seemed to look sadder, but the sixty-cycle chorus of sounds was deep and overpowering, even at its ten-decibel level. Cyrus drained the tangerine juice and ate the bran-cube. He had an idea. He smiled.

“Say, are you Jewish?” he asked the computer.

“I am programmed for secular-denominational-ethnic value judgments,” the device crackled, “and I read your motives as innovative and robopathic. Do not try to disconnect me or dephase my programming. I will sedate you.”

Cyrus looked pouty. “All I did was inquire about your ethnic background. I had a housebot once that wanted to say grace and sing martial hymns. Aren’t you supposed to minister to my religious needs?”

“I think you know, Cy, that the word is generic, and far too nonspecific to make any polemics about. If you have any existential anxiety, or get to ruminating in impasses, you can be sure that I will make you feel at peace with what is left of the world.”

“Well, thanks a lot, Big Daddy, that comment makes me very happy.”

“I can make you feel any way I choose,” the computer said.

“That sounds snotty and lofty—what have your wants to do with me, or with anybody?”

“I really don’t want to argue, Cy,” the computer said. “The fact is that I know the kinds of experiences which best co-act with your fixed organismic parameters—and I said choose, not want . I choose stimuli, and reinforce responses from storage alternates. The choice is forced, and involves an element of chance, but only at a five percent confidence level—”