Robert Sheckley - Carhunters of the Concrete Prairie

“One of our scouts tried to talk to him “ Car Eater said. “He told us we did not have the proper access code. He would not explain what he meant by that.”

“The access code is a nine-number combination. It is used to prevent unauthorized spying on the computer’s memory banks.”

“But couldn’t the computer make up his own mind about that?” Car Eater asked.

“Perhaps he could,” Hellman said. “But it is not the way we do things on Earth.”

The robots held a whispered conference. Then Car Eater said, “It has been many years since a human visited these parts. This part of the planet belongs to us, the carhunters. We stay out of other people’s territory and expect people to stay out of ours. This is how it has been for a very long time, ever since the Great Fabricator divided the species of intelligence and told each to be fruitful and multiply according to his basic plan. Some of the carhunters wanted to kill you, and that other stray too, the librarian who calls himself Jorge. Sounds like a sissy name to me. That’s the sort of name they give themselves in Robotsville, where they think they’re better than anyone else. But we Elders decided against taking violent action. The Compact which rules this planet abhors destruction except in lawful ways. Hellman, you may go. You and Jorge, too. I advise you to be out of our territory by sundown. Otherwise a hyenoid might get you. “

“Where am I supposed to go? I can’t get back to my spaceship on my own. “

“Since Wayne 1332A brought you here,” Car Eater said, “he can also take you back. Right, Wayne?”

A loud sound of backfires came from the assembled carhunters. It took Hellman a moment to realize it was laughter.

“Sorry about this, Wayne,” Hellman said. He and Jorge had mounted and were clinging to the carhunter’s back plates.

“Hell, it don’t make no never mind,” Wayne said. “I don’t sit around a whole lot fretting about how I pass my time. Sometimes it’s more convenient for us carhunters to turn onto emergency mode, which of course is timebound. But most of the time life just goes along here on the concrete prairie much as it has ever done.”

Hellman learned from Wayne that the carhunters had lived in this region, the badlands of Northwest Mountain and Concrete Prairie, for as long as anyone could remember. Jorge broke in and said that this was a lie, or at least an untruth: the carhunters had been around only a hundred years or so, just like everyone else. Wayne said he didn’t want to argue, but he did point out that there was one hell of a lot city robots didn’t know. Hellman himself was interested in what it was like to be a city robot.

“Aren’t there any people in your city?” Hellman asked Jorge.

“I told you, all of us are people.”

“Well, I mean people like me. Humans. Flesh-and-blood sort of people. You know what I mean?”

“If you mean natural human beings, no. There are none in Robotsville. We separated from them. It was for the good of everyone. Just didn’t get along. We tried producing flesh-and-blood androids for a while—robots with protoplasmic bodies. But it was aesthetically unpleasing.”

“I didn’t know aesthetics was a concern,” Hellman said.

“It’s the only real issue,” Jorge told him, “once you’ve solved the problems of maintenance and upkeep and part replacement.”

“Yeah, I guess it would be,” Hellman said. “Do you know how your people got to this planet?”

“Of course. The Great Fabricator put us here, back when he divided the intelligent species and gave ach a portion of the land and of the good things thereof.”

“How long ago was that?” Hellman asked.

“A long time ago. Before the beginning of time.”

Jorge told Hellman the Creation Story, which, in slightly altered versions, was known to every being on the planet Newstart. How the Great Fabricator, a being made up equally of flesh, metal, and spirit, had produced all the races and watched them go to war with each other. How he decided that this was wrong. The Great Fabricator tried various plans. He tried putting the humans in charge of everyone. That didn’t work. He tried letting the robots rule, and that didn’t work, either. Finally he divided the planet of Newstart into equal portions. “Each of you has a place now,” the Great Fabricator said. “Go down there now and access information. “

And so they went down, all the species, and each picked his lot and his fortune. The humans found green places where they could grow things. The robots split into various groups. One of those groups was the carhunters. They didn’t want to live in cities. They denied that the purpose of a robot was to further technology. They insisted that just living was enough purpose for anyone. This was at the time of the choosing of modalities. The carhunters selected bodies for themselves that were swift and long-enduring. They programmed themselves with a love of desolate places. And the Great Fabricator put at their disposal a race of automobiles, direct descendants of the autos of Earth. The cars were belligerent herd animals, and it was all right to kill them because they weren’t intelligent enough to mind. The carhunters had been programmed so that they found car innards delicious. It was a deliberately studied-out ethic, because at the beginning each of the groups had its own choice of an ethic. They worked from ancient models, of course, old-time human models, since intelligence is the ability to choose your programming. It was a good life, but in the view of the other robots, those who had chosen to live in cities, it was a blind alley in the life game of machine evolution. The nomadic model was satisfying, but limiting.

“You see,” Jorge said, as they bounced along on Wayne’s back, “some of us believe that life is an art that must be learned. We believe that we must learn what we are to do. We devote our lives to taking the next step.”

Wayne was bored by this sort of talk. The librarian was obviously crazy. What could be better than careening around the landscape, killing things? He pointed out that there was no moral problem, since the things they killed weren’t intelligent enough to know what was being done to them. Also, they weren’t given pain circuits.

They were coming through a long narrow pass, with towering peaks on either side. Suddenly Wayne came to a stop and extruded his antennae. He swiveled them back and forth in a purposeful manner, and a little instrument deep inside his armoring began a quiet, urgent tick-tick.

“What is it?” Hellman asked.

“Believe we got trouble ahead,” Wayne said. He swung around and started back the way he had come. In fifty yards, he stopped again.

“What is it this time?” Hellman asked.

“They’re on both sides of us. “

“Who is on either side of us? Is it those hyenoids again?”

“They’re no real trouble,” Wayne said. “No, this is a little more serious than that. “

“What is it?” Jorge asked.

“I think it’s a group of Deltoids.”

“How could that be?” Jorge asked. “The Deltoids live far to the south, in Mechanicsville and Gasketoon.”

“I don’t know what they’re doing here,” Wayne said. “Maybe you can ask them yourself. They seem to be on all sides of us.”

Jorge’s mobile face took on a look of alarm. “May the Great Fabricator preserve us!”

“What is it?” Hellman asked. “What’s he so upset about?”

The Deltoids are not like the rest of us,” Wayne told him.

“Not robots?”

“Oh, they’re robots all right. But something went wrong with their conditioning back when the race was first laid down by the Great Fabricator. Unless he did it on purpose, which is what the Deltoid Church of the Black Star maintains. “