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Robert Shekley

Part one

NOTICE

The rules of normalcy will be temporarily suspended while new rules are being drawn.

The new rules may not be the same as the old rules. No hints can be given concerning

the new rules.

The best thing to do might be to avoid conflict situations, spend the rest of the day in

bed, cool out.

Or, if that sounds boring, I could take you for a ride.

1. Use of ‘Simple Premises’ Termed Misleading

Tom Mishkin was tooling along through the Lesser Magellanic Cloud at a low multiple

of the speed of light, moving along smartly but not really pushing it. His ship, the

Intrepid III, was loaded with frozen South African lobster tails, tennis shoes, air

conditioners, malted milk makers, and other general stores, bound for the settlement on

Dora V. Mishkin was catnapping in a big command chair, lulled by the light patterns

rippling across the control board and by the quiet snap and crackle of the circuit

breakers. He was thinking of a new apartment he planned to buy in the town of Perth

Amboy-bas-mer, ten miles due east of Sandy Hook. You could get a little peace and quiet

in the suburbs, although the problem of commuting by submarine...

One of the snaps turned into a clank.

Mishkin sat upright, his pilot’s ear always attuned for the Malfunction That Could Not

Happen but frequently did.

Clank, clank, clank, crunch.

Yes. It had happened.

Mishkin groaned—that special pilot’s groan compounded of foreknowledge, fatalism,

and heartburn. He could hear bad things happening deep in the guts of the ship. The

Malfunction Telltale (supposedly for external impingement only) went violet, then red,

then purple, then black. The ship’s computer awoke from its dogmatic slumber long

enough to growl, ‘Malfunction, malfunction, malfunction.’

‘Thanks, I already got the idea,’ Mishkin said. ‘Where is it and what is it?’

‘Malfunction in Part L-1223A. Catalogue name: Port Side Crossover Lock Valve

Assembly and Retainer Ring. Proximate cause of malfunction: 8 (eight) sheered bolts

plus spiral fracture in retainer ring housing. Intermediate cause: angular pressure on

aforesaid parts resulted in molecular changes in metal composition of aforementioned

parts, resulting in the condition known as metal fatigue.’

‘Yeah. But why?’ Mishkin asked.

‘Conjecture as to primary cause: various bolts in said assembly torqued to

unacceptable pressures, thus reducing the assembly’s life to 84.3 hours rather than the

195.441 working years called for in the specifications.’

‘Very nice,’ Mishkin said. ‘What’s happening now?’

‘I have cut out the unit and shut down the main drive.’

‘Up space creek without a paddle,’ Mishkin commented. ‘Can I use the main drive at

all, just long enough to get to the nearest Ship Service Centre?’

‘Negative. Use of aforementioned malfunctioned Part would cause immediate and

cumulative distortions in other parts of Main Drive, resulting in total disablement,

implosion, and death, and a permanent black mark on your service record. You would

also be billed for a new spaceship.’

‘Well, I certainly don’t want any black marks on my record,’ Mishkin said. ‘What should

I do?’

‘Your only feasible option is to remove and replace the malfunctioned Part. Caches of

spare parts have been established on various uninhabited planets to cover such a

necessity. The planet nearest to your present coordinates is Harmonia II, 68 hours from

here by secondary drive.’

‘That sounds simple enough,’ Mishkin said.

‘It is, theoretically.’

‘But practically?’

‘There are always complications.’

‘Such as?’

‘If we knew that,’ the computer told him, ‘the complications wouldn’t be very

complicated, would they?’

‘I suppose not,’ Mishkin said. ‘All right, cut a course and let’s get going,’

‘To hear is to obey,’ the computer said.

USE OF ‘MULTIPLE PREMISES’ TERMED CONFUSING

In an exclusive press interview yesterday, Professor David Hume of Harvard declared

that sequence did not imply causality. When asked to amplify, he pointed out that

sequence is merely additive, not generative.

We asked Dr Emmanuel Kant for his opinion on this statement. Professor Kant, in his

Cal Tech study, looked badly shaken. ‘This,’ he said, ‘has awakened me from my

dogmatic slumber.’

2. The Mad Synaesthesiast Strikes

Mishkin leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. That was bad: derangement of

various sense ratios, ideas of reference, hot flashes. He opened his eyes. That was not so

good either. He reached for the Turn-off Bottle. It had a label that read, IF THE TRIP

GOES BAD, DRINK THIS. He drank it, then noticed a label on the other side of the bottle

that read, IF THE TRIP GOES BAD, DO NOT DRINK THIS.

One of the radios was moaning softly to itself, ‘Oh, God, I’ll be killed. I just know I’ll

be killed. Why did I ever go on this crazy trip? It wasn’t good enough for me to just sit in

the window at the Hallicrafters and dig the scene. No, I had to get active about it and

where in hell am I now?’

Mishkin had no time for the radio. He had problems of his own. At least he assumed

that they were his own. It was difficult to be sure.

He found that he had only imagined opening his eyes. Therefore he opened his eyes.

But had he really? He considered opening his eyes again, in case he had only imagined it

again, but stopped himself, thus avoiding a really nasty form of infinite regression.

The radio was babbling again: ‘God, I don’t know where I’m going. But if I knew

where I was going I wouldn’t go there. But not knowing where I’m going, I don’t know

how not to go there because I don’t know where I’m going. Damn it, this isn’t the way

it’s supposed to be. They told me it would be fun.’

Mishkin quickly drank the contents of the Turn-off Bottle. It couldn’t get much worse

he decided, which showed how much he knew.

Firmness seemed called for. Mishkin sat up straight in his chair. He said, ‘Now hear

this. We will proceed to act on the premise that we all are what we seem to be at this

moment and that we will remain this way indefinitely. That is an order. Is it understood?’

The turntable said, ‘Everything’s going to goddamn hell and he’s giving orders, yet.

What’s with you, Jack, you think this is a goddamned submarine or something?’

‘We must all pull together,’ Mishkin said, ‘else we shall all be pulled apart.’

‘Platitudes, yet,’ the armchair said. ‘We could all be killed and he’s spouting

platitudes.’

Mishkin shuddered and drank the contents of the Turn-on Bottle, then put it down

quickly before the bottle had a chance to drink him. Bottles had been known to do that;

you could never tell when it was role-reversal time.

‘Now I shall land this ship,’ Mishkin said.

‘It’s a dreary premise,’ the control board said. ‘But go ahead and play games if you

want to.’

‘Shut up,’ Mishkin said. ‘You’re a control board.’

‘What would you say if I told you that I am a middle-aged psychiatrist from New York

City and that your act of labelling me a control board—by which you mean a to-be-

controlled board -or bored - shows where your head is at, powerstrugglewise?’

Mishkin decided to drink the contents of the Turn-on Bottle. He was in enough trouble

as it was. With an enormous effort he blew his nose. Lights flashed.

A man in a blue uniform came through the baggage room and said, ‘All tickets,

please.’ Mishkin gave him his ticket, which the man punched.

Mishkin punched a button, which took it like a man. There were groans and squeaks.

Was he coming down?

3. New ‘Plausibility Generator’ said to Cure Schizophrenia

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.

4. Chicken Little Claims Personification most Common Sign of Impaired Sense Ratios

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.

‘It’s coming,’ the robot said grimly, twirling the blasters by their trigger guards.

The drone increased in volume and amplitude. Then Mishkin saw something that

looked like a butterfly with a six-foot wingspan come fluttering past, droning merrily. It

ignored them and went off stage left.

‘What was that?’ Mishkin asked.

‘It sure as hell looked like a butterfly with a six-foot wingspan,’ the robot said.

‘That’s what I thought. But you said...’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ the robot said testily. ‘It’s obvious enough what happened. That

butterfly critter has learned how to imitate the mating cry of the proto-B. Mimicry is a

commonplace phenomenon throughout the galaxy.’

‘Commonplace? It took you by surprise.’

‘What’s so surprising about that? It was the first time I ever encountered that butterfly

critter.’

‘You should have known about it,’ Mishkin said.

‘Wrong. I’m programmed only to detect and cope with situations and things that’ll be

dangerous to humans. That big old flapper couldn’t hurt you unless you tried to swallow

it, so naturally enough I’ve got nothing on it in my memory files. You gotta realize that

I’m not a goddamned encyclopedia. I deal strictly with dangerous stuff, not with every

damned thing that walks or swims or flies or crawls or burrows or however it happens to

get around. You get my meaning, son?’

‘I get it,’ Mishkin said. ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing.’

‘That’s what I happen to have been built for,’ the robot said. ‘C’mon, let’s get on with

this promenade.’

5. The Prepared Statement

‘I have been having mental difficulties for some time now. I get these ideas, these

images. But I don’t know what is real and what is not. Sometimes I think that I’ve eaten

and then I find that I have not. Sometimes I think that I have lived and then I find that I

have not. I cannot remember why I am here or what crime I stand accused of. Whatever

it is, I am sure that I am innocent. I am sure that I am innocent, no matter what I have

done.’

Mishkin looked up hopefully but found that the jury had recessed, the judge had

recessed, the world had recessed, and a bored guard was thumbing through an old issue

of Rolling Stone.

Mishkin came to a sudden stop.

‘What is it?’ the robot asked.

‘I see something up ahead.’

‘Big deal,’ the robot sneered. ‘I see plenty of things up ahead. I always see plenty of

things up ahead. Christ, everybody always sees plenty of things up ahead.’

‘This thing up ahead seems to be an animal.’

‘What’s so impressive about that?’

The thing that Mishkin saw up ahead was roughly the size and shape of a tiger but

with a shorter tail and bigger feet. It was coloured a dappled chocolate with brilliant

orange stripes. It looked like a mean, hungry, and unscrupulous hallucination.

‘It looks dangerous,’ Mishkin said.

‘That shows how much you know about it,’ the robot told him. ‘That there critter is a

pachynert, which is an herbivorous beast with a disposition like a cow’s, only more timid.’

‘But the teeth.’

‘Don’t let the teeth fake you out.’

‘Mimicry?’

‘That’s it, ace. Now git ahold of yourself and let’s move out.’

They continued across the purple plain. The robot, not even bothering to draw his

blasters, was whistling ‘Elmer’s Tune’. Mishkin, walking two steps behind him, was

humming ‘Valse Triste’.

The pachynert turned towards them and stared with eyes the colour of coagulated

yak’s blood. He yawned, revealing incisors like Turkish scimitars. He stretched, showing a

smooth ripple of muscle down either flank like sluggish octopi grappling beneath a thin

sheet of plastic.

‘You’re sure he’s herbivorous?’ Mishkin asked.

‘Nothing but grass and dandelions,’ the robot said. ‘Although they do appreciate an

occasional turnip.’

‘He looks pretty mean.’

‘Nature is capable of myriad disguises.’

Man and robot came closer to the beast. The pachynert laid back his ears. His tail

stood out stiff and straight and high, like the indicator of a dial calibrated for trouble. He

stretched out claws like the cruel, curved tines of the devil’s pitchfork. He snarled—a

sound that prompted several peripatetic trees to close down their branches, pull up their

roots, and make for quieter territory on the north forty.

‘Nature is overdoing it,’ Mishkin said. ‘I could swear that that critter is about to attack

us.’

‘Nature exaggerates,’ the robot said. ‘That is the nature of nature.’

They were within ten yards of the pachynert, which stood utterly still and gave an

excellent imitation of a deadly animal about to charge in a berserk manner and maim and

kill any human in sight—and maybe a robot and a couple of trees, too, just for the hell of

it. Mishkin stopped. ‘Now, look,’ he said, ‘there’s something wrong about all this. I

think...’

‘You think too much,’ the robot said, in a tight, hard voice. ‘For God’s sake, get hold of

yourself, man. I am a SPER robot especially trained for this work, and I give you my

word that that pitiful cow in tiger’s clothing...’

Just then the pachynert charged. One moment it was standing still, the next moment

it had burst into a furious rush, claws and teeth gleaming golden in the afternoon glare of

the saffron Harmonia sun and its dull, mysterious, little red companion. The beast came

with a maximum of verisimilitude, just like a hungry, feral, omnivorous beast who

doesn’t care what it goes up against, especially if the target is of a manageable size and

hasn’t got much in the way of claws and teeth.

‘Shoo, pachynert, shoo!’ the robot called out in an unconvincing voice.

‘Hit the deck!’ shouted Mishkin.

‘Aaaaagggrrrh!’ roared the pachynert.

‘Tom, are you all right?’

Mishkin blinked. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look fine.’

Mishkin giggled: that was a very funny remark.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You’re funny. I can’t even see you, and that’s funny.’

‘Drink this.’

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Just drink it.’

‘Drink nothing and you turn into nothing!’ Mishkin roared. With a supreme effort he

opened his eyes. He couldn’t see anything. He forced himself to see things. Now what?

What was the rule? Yes! Reality is achieved by the indefinite enumeration of objects.

Therefore: bed table, fluorescent light, incandescent light, stove, chest, bookcase,

typewriter, window, tiles, glass, bottle of milk, coffee mug, guitar, ice bucket, friend,

garbage bag... et cetera.

‘I have achieved reality,’ Mishkin said, with quiet pride. ‘I’m going to be all right now.’

‘What is reality?’

‘One of the many possible illusions.’

Mishkin burst into tears. He had wanted an exclusive reality. This was terrible, this

was worse than before. Now anything...

‘This can’t be happening,’ he thought. But there was the pachynert, like a dubious

proof of its own reality, coming at him in an extremely plausible whirlwind of claws and

teeth. Mishkin accepted the gambit. He threw himself to one side and the beast swept

past him.

‘Shoot!’ Mishkin screamed, getting into the spirit of the thing.

‘I am not supposed to kill herbivorous animals,’ the robot said. But there was little

conviction in his voice.

The pachynert had wheeled around and was coming again, drooling. Mishkin jumped

to the right, then to the left. The pachynert followed like his shadow. The massive jaws

opened. Mishkin closed his eyes.

He felt a burst of heat on his face. He heard a snarl, a grunt, and the sound of

something heavy falling.

He opened his eyes. The robot had finally brought himself to fire and had dropped the

beast neatly at Mishkin’s feet.

‘Herbivorous,’ Mishkin said, bitterly.

‘There is such a thing as behavioural mimicry, you know. In actual cases the imitative

behaviour is carried to the point of living like the model predator, even to the point of

eating flesh; which, to a herbivore, is both repugnant and indigestible.’

‘Do you believe any of that?’

‘No,’ the robot said, miserably. ‘But I don’t understand how that creature could have

been left out of my memory files. This planet was under continual survey for ten years

before a cache was established here. Nothing the size of that beast could have escaped

the probes. It is no exaggeration to say that, dangerwise, Darbis IV is as well known as

Earth itself.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Mishkin said. ‘What planet did you say this was?’

‘Darbis IV, the planet for which I was programmed.’

‘This is not Darbis IV,’ Mishkin said. He felt sick, dull, doomed. ‘This planet is called

Harmonia. They sent you to the wrong planet.’

Tired of the flow? Sick of unity?

Then avail yourself of

DIAL-AN-INTERRUPTION SERVICE!

Choose from our full line of Pauses, Beats, Breaks, Blackouts.

The robot chuckled—an insincere sound. ‘I’m afraid you’re in a bit of a funk.

Temporary aphasic hysteria is my diagnosis, though God knows, I’m no doctor. The

strain, I suppose...’

Mishkin shook his head. ‘Figure it out for yourself. You’ve been wrong several times

about the dangers here. Grossly wrong. Impossibly wrong.’

‘It is odd,’ the robot said. ‘I can’t think of a ready explanation.’

‘I can. They’ve been screwing up the shipments ever since they established this cache.

They simply screwed up on you. You were supposed to go to Darbis IV. But they sent you

to Harmonia.’

‘I’m thinking,’ said the robot.

‘Do that,’ Mishkin said.

‘I have thought,’ the robot said. ‘We SPER robots are noted for the speed of our

synaptic responses.’

‘Bully for you,’ Mishkin said. ‘What conclusion have you reached?’

‘I think that, weighing all the available evidence, your hypothesis is the most

apparently probable. I do indeed seem to have been dispatched to the wrong planet. And

that, of course, presents us with a definite problem.’

‘And that means we have to do some hard thinking.’

‘Most assuredly. But let me point out that a creature of unknown disposition and

appetites is presently approaching us.’

Mishkin nodded absently. Events were moving along too fast, and he needed a plan.

To save his life he had to think, even if it cost him his life.

The robot was programmed for Darbis IV. Mishkin was programmed for Earth. And

here they both were on Harmonia like two blind men in a boiler room. The most

reasonable course of action for Mishkin was to go back to the cache. There he could relay

the information to Earth and wait until either a replacement part or a replacement robot,

or both, were shipped to Harmonia. That, however, could take months, or even years.

And the part he wanted was only a few miles away.

Still, turning back was the safest course of action.

But then Mishkin thought of the conquistadors in the New World, cutting their way

through endless jungle, meeting the unknown and subduing it. Was he so much less a

man than they? Had the unknown changed in any fundamental way since the Phoenicians

took their ships beyond the Pillars of Hercules?

He would never be able to face himself if he turned back now and acknowledged

himself less of a man than Hanno, Cortez, Pizarro, and all of the other nuts.

On the other hand, if he went on and failed he would have no self to acknowledge.

What he really wanted to do, he decided, was to go on and succeed but not if it meant

getting killed.

All in all, it was an interesting problem and one that a man might fruitfully

contemplate for quite some time. A few weeks’ thought might well bring him the correct

answer and spare him untold...

‘The creature is approaching rather rapidly,’ the robot said.

‘Well? Shoot it.’

‘Maybe it’s harmless.’

‘Let’s shoot first and think about all of that later.’

‘Shooting is not an appropriate response to all dangerous situations,’ the robot said.

‘It is on Earth.’

‘It’s not on Darbis IV,’ the robot said. There, immobility is a much safer stratagem.’

‘The question is,’ Mishkin said, ‘whether this place is more like Earth or like Darbis.’

‘If we knew that,’ the robot said, ‘we’d really know something.’

The new menace appeared to be a worm some twenty feet long, coloured orange, with

black bands around each of its segments. The worm had five heads arranged in a cluster

at one end. Each head had a single multifaceted eye and a deep, toothless, moist green

mouth.

‘Anything that big has got to be dangerous,’ Mishkin said.

‘Not on Darbis,’ the robot told him. ‘There, the bigger they come, the nicer they are.

It’s the little bastards you have to watch out for.’

‘What do you suggest we do now?’ Mishkin asked.

‘Beats the hell out of me,’ the robot said.

The worm came to within ten feet of them. The mouths opened.

‘Shoot!’ Mishkin said.

The robot raised his blasters and fired directly at the worm’s uplifted thorax. Several

of the worm’s heads blinked and looked annoyed. No other change could be observed.

The robot lifted his blasters again, but Mishkin told him to stop.

‘That’s not going to do it,’ he said. ‘What else do you have in mind?’

‘Immobility.’

‘To hell with that, I think we should run like crazy.’

‘No time,’ the robot said. ‘Freeze!’

Mishkin forced himself to stand perfectly still as the worm’s heads approached him. He

shut his eyes tightly and listened to the following conversation:

‘Let’s eat him, huh, Vince?’

‘Shaddup, Eddie, we ate a whole ormitung last night, you wanna give us indigestion?’

‘I’m still hungry.’

‘So am I.’

‘Me too.’

Mishkin opened his eyes and saw that the worm’s five heads were talking to each

other. The one named Vince was in the middle and was noticeably larger than the other

heads. Vince was saying, ‘You guys make me sick, you and your eating! Just when I get

our body in shape after working out at the gym all month, you wanna go put a belly on

us and I say nix to that.’

One of the heads snivelled, ‘We can eat anything we want whenever we want. Our

Poppa, God rest his soul, said it was all of ours body and we was to share it equally.’

‘Poppa also said that I was to look after you kids,’ Vince said, ‘because between you

all you ain’t got enough brains to climb a tree. And besides, Poppa never ate strangers.’

‘That’s true.’ The head turned towards Mishkin. ‘I’m Eddie.’

The other heads also turned. ‘I’m Lucco.’

‘I’m Joe.’

‘I’m Chico. And that’s Vince. OK, Vince, we’re gonna eat him now ‘cause there’s four of

us and we’re tired of you always giving orders just because you’re oldest, and from now

on we’re going to do exactly what the hell we want to do and if you don’t like it you can

damned well lump it. OK, Vince?’

‘Shaddap!’ Vince bellowed. ‘If anyone does any eating around here it’s going to be

me.’

‘But how about us?’ Chico whined. ‘Poppa said...’

‘Anything I eat will be for all of you,’ Vince said.

‘But we won’t be able to taste anything unless we eat for ourselves,’ Eddie said.

‘Tough,’ Vince sneered. ‘I’ll do the tasting for all of us.’

Mishkin ventured to speak. ‘Excuse me, Vince...’

‘Mr Pagliotelli to you,’ Vince said.

‘I just wanted to point out that I am a form of intelligent life, and where I come from

one intelligent creature does not eat another intelligent creature except under really

exceptional circumstances.’

‘You trying to teach me manners?’ Vince said. ‘I gotta good mind to break your back

for making a remark like that. Besides, you attacked me first.’

‘That was before I knew you were intelligent.’

‘You trying to put me on?’ Vince said. ‘Me, intelligent? I never even finished high

school! Ever since Poppa died I’ve had to work twelve hours a day in the sheet metal

shop just to keep the kids in orlotans. But at least I’m smart enough to know that I ain’t

smart.’

‘You sound pretty smart to me,’ Mishkin said smarmily.

‘Oh, sure, I got a certain native shrewdness. I’m maybe as smart as any other

uneducated Wop worm. But education-wise...’

‘Formal education is frequently overrated,’ Mishkin pointed out.

‘Don’t I know it,’ Vince said. ‘But how else are you going to get along in the world?’

‘It’s tough,’ Mishkin admitted.

‘You’ll laugh at me when I tell you this, but what I really always wanted to do was

study the violin. Isn’t that funny?’

‘Not at all,’ Mishkin said.

‘Can you imagine me, big stupid Vince Pagliotelli, playing stuff from Aida on a

goddamned fiddle?’

‘Why not?’ Mishkin said. ‘I’m sure you have a talent.’

‘The way I see it,’ Vince said, ‘I had a dream. Then life came along full-freighted with

responsibilities, and I exchanged the insubstantial gossamer fabric of vision for the

coarse grey cloth of—of—’

‘Bread?’ Mishkin suggested.

‘Duty?’ asked Chico.

‘Responsibility?’ asked the robot.

‘Naw, none of them’s quite it,’ said Vince. ‘An uneducated dumbell like me oughtn’t to

fool around with parallel constructions.’

‘Perhaps you could change the key terms,’ the robot suggested. ‘Try "gossamer fabric

of poesy for the coarse grey cloth of the mundane".’

Vince glared at the robot, then asked Mishkin, ‘Who’s your wise-guy buddy?’

‘He’s a SPER robot,’ Mishkin said. ‘But he’s on the wrong planet.’

‘Well, tell him to watch his mouth. I don’t let no goddamned robot talk to me that

way.’

‘Sorry about that,’ the robot said briskly.

‘Forget it. I guess I ain’t going to eat either of you. But if you want some advice you’ll

watch your step around here. Not everyone is as basically distractable, good-hearted,

and childlike as I am. Other persons in this forest would as soon eat you as look at you.

They’d rather eat you, frankly, because you don’t neither of you look so good to look at.’

‘What sort of things should we look out for, specifically?’ Mishkin asked.

‘Everything, specifically,’ Vince replied.

Mishkin and the robot thanked the good-natured Wop worm and nodded politely to his

ill-mannered brothers. They moved on through the forest, for now there seemed no other

way to go. Slowly they marched, and then more rapidly, and each sensed at his footsteps

the sour breath and sodden cough of old mortality shuffling along behind them as usual.

The robot commented on this, but Mishkin was too preoccupied to answer.

They passed huge rough trees that peeked at them through amber eyes half-covered

by green shades. After they had passed, the trees whispered about it to each other.

‘A real bunch of weirdos,’ said a great elm.

‘I think it was maybe an optical illusion,’ said an oak. ‘Especially that metal thing.’

‘Oh, my head,’ said a weeping willow. ‘What a night! Let me tell you about it.’

Mishkin and the robot continued into the inner recesses of the deeper glooms where,

wraith-like, the dim, indistinct memories of past arboreal splendours still clung in a pale

miasma. (A kind of dying around the sacred shafts of vague luminescence that crept

broken-backed down the branches of lachrymose trees.)

‘It sure is gloomy in here,’ Mishkin said.

‘Stuff like that generally does not affect me,’ the robot said. ‘We robots tend to

unemotionality. Empathy is built into us, however, so we come to experience everything

vicariously, which is the same as experiencing it legitimately in the first place.’

‘Huh,’ said Mishkin.

‘Because of that, I am inclined to agree with you. It is gloomy in here. It is also

spooky.’

The robot was a good-hearted sort and not nearly as mechanical as his appearance

would lead one to believe. Years afterward, when he was quite red with rust and his

hands had the telltale cracks of metal fatigue, he would speak to the robot youngsters

about Mishkin. ‘He was a quiet man,’ the robot said, ‘and you might have thought he was

a little simpleminded. But there was a directness about him and a willingness to accept

his own condition that was endearing in the extreme. Taken all in all, he was a man; we

shall not see his like again.’

The robot children said, ‘Sure, Grandfather,’ and went away laughing behind his back.

They were smooth and sharp and bright, and they thought that they were the only ones

who had ever been modern, and it never occurred to them that others had been so

before them and that others would be so after them. And if they had been told that

someday they would be put back on the shelf with other pieces of discarded merchandise

they would have laughed all the harder. That is the way of the young robots and no

amount of programming seems able to change it

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OptionsRobertShekleyPartoneNOTICETherulesofnormalcywillbetemporarilysuspendedwhilenewrulesarebeingdrawn.Thenewrulesmaynotbethesameastheoldrules.Nohintscanbegivenconcerningthenewrules.Thebestthingtodomightbetoavoidconflictsituations,spendtherestofthedayinbed,coolout.Or,ifthatsoundsboring,Icouldtakeyo...

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