Clifford Simak - The Ghost of a Model T - And Other Stories

He reached the entrance to the room and stopped, shocked into immobility. His hands went out and grasped the door jamb on either side of him.

There was no one in the room. And not only that—the room itself was different. It was not simply the companions who were gone. Gone, as well, were the rich furnishings of the room, gone the comfort and the pride.

There were no rugs upon the floor, no hangings at the windows, no paintings on the wall. The fireplace was a naked thing of rough and jagged stone. The furniture—the little there was—was primitive, barely knocked together. A small trestle table stood before the fireplace, with a three-legged stool pulled up to a place that was set for one.

Winston-Kirby tried to call. The first time, the words gurgled in his throat and he could not get them out. He tried again and made it: “Job! Job, where are you?”

Job came running from somewhere in the house. “What’s the trouble, sir?”

“Where are the others? Where have they gone? They should be waiting for me.”

Job shook his head, just slightly, a quick move right and left. “Mister Kirby, sir, they were never here.”

“Never here! But they were here when I left this morning. They knew I’d be coming back.”

“You fail to understand, sir. There were never any others. There were just you and I and the other robots. And the embryos, of course.”

Winston-Kirby let go of the door and walked a few feet forward.

“Job,” he said, “you’re joking.” But he knew something was wrong—robots never joke.

“We let you keep them as long as we could,” said Job. “We hated to have to take them from you, sir. But we needed the equipment for the incubators.”

“But this room! The rugs, the furniture, the –”

“That was all part of it, sir. Part of the dimensino.”

Winston-Kirby walked slowly across the room, used one foot to hook the three-legged stool out from the table. He sat down heavily.

“The dimensino?” he asked.

“Surely you remember.”

He frowned to indicate he didn’t. But it was coming back to him, some of it, slowly and reluctantly, emerging vaguely after all the years of forgetfulness.

He fought against the remembering and the knowledge. He tried to push it back into that dark corner of his mind from which it came. It was sacrilege and treason—it was madness.

“The human embryos,” Job told him, “came through very well. Of the thousand of them, all but three are viable.”

Winston-Kirby shook his head, as if to clear away the mist that befogged his brain.

“We have the incubators all set up in the outbuildings, sir,” said Job. “We waited as long as we could before we took the dimensino equipment. We let you have it until the very last. It might have been easier, sir, if we could have done it gradually, but there is no provision for that. You either have dimensino or you haven’t got it.”

“Of course,” said Winston-Kirby, mumbling just a little. “It was considerate of you. I thank you very much.”

He stood up unsteadily and rubbed his hand across his eyes.

“It’s not possible,” he said. “It simply can’t be possible. I lived for a hundred years with them. They were as real as I am. They were flesh and blood, I tell you. They were…”

The room still was bare and empty, a mocking emptiness, an alien mockery.

“It is possible,” said Job gently. “It is just the way it should be. Everything has gone according to the book. You are here, still sane, thanks to the dimensino. The embryos came through better than expected. The equipment is intact. In eight months or so, the children will be coming from the incubators. By that time, we will have gardens and a crop on the way. The livestock embryos will also have emerged and the colony will be largely self-sustaining.”

Winston-Kirby strode to the table, picked up the plate that was laid at the single place. It was lightweight plastic.

“Tell me,” he said. “Have we any china? Have we any glassware or silver?”

Job looked as near to startled as a robot ever could. “Of course not, sir. We had no room for more than just the bare essentials this trip. The china and the silver and all the rest of it will have to wait until much later.”

“And I have been eating ship rations?”

“Naturally,” said Job. “There was so little room and so much we had to take…”

Winston-Kirby stood with the plate in his hand, tapping it gently on the table, remembering those other dinners—aboard the ship and since the ship had landed—the steaming soup in its satiny tureen, the pink and juicy prime ribs, the huge potatoes baked to a mealy turn, the crisp green lettuce, the shine of polished silver, the soft sheen of good china, the –

“Job,” he said.

“Sir?”

“It was all delusion, then?”

“I am afraid it was. I am sorry, sir.”

“And you robots?”

“All of us are fine, sir. It was different with us. We can face reality.”

“And humans can’t?”

“Sometimes it is better if they can be protected from it.”

“But not now?”

“Not any more,” said Job. “It must be faced now, sir.”

Winston-Kirby laid the plate down on the table and turned back to the robot. “I think I’ll go up to my room and change to other clothes, I presume dinner will be ready soon. Ship rations, doubtless?”

“A special treat tonight,” Job told him. “Hezekiah found some lichens and I’ve made a pot of soup.”

“Splendid!” Winston-Kirby said, trying not to gag.

He climbed the stairs to the door at the head of the stairs.

As he was about to go into the room, another robot came tramping down the hall.

“Good evening, sir,” it said.

“And who are you?”

“I’m Solomon,” said the robot. “I’m fixing up the nurseries.”

“Soundproofing them, I hope.”

“Oh, nothing like that. We haven’t the material or time.”

“Well, carry on,” said Winston-Kirby, and went into the room.

It was not his room at all. It was small and plain. There was a bunk instead of the great four-poster he had been sleeping in and there were no rugs, no full-length mirror, no easy chairs.

Delusion, he had said, not really believing it.

But here there was no delusion.

The room was cold with a dread reality—a reality, he knew, that had been long delayed. In the loneliness of this tiny room, he came face to face with it and felt the sick sense of loss. It was a reckoning that had been extended into the future as far as it might be—and extended not alone as a matter of mercy, of mere consideration, but because of a cold, hard necessity, a practical concession to human vulnerability.

For no man, no matter how well adjusted, no matter if immortal, could survive intact, in mind and body, a trip such as he had made. To survive a century under space conditions, there must be delusion and companionship to provide security and purpose from day to day. And that companionship must be more than human. For mere human companionship, however ideal, would give rise to countless irritations, would breed deadly cabin fever.

Dimensino companionship was the answer, then, providing an illusion of companionship flexible to every mood and need of the human subject. Providing, as well, a background to that companionship—a wish-fulfillment way of life that nailed down security such as humans under normal circumstances never could have known.

He sat down on the bunk and began to unlace his heavy walking shoes.

The practical human race, he thought—practical to the point of fooling itself to reach its destination, practical to the point of fabricating the dimensino equipment to specifications which could be utilized, upon arrival, in the incubators.