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A Friend to Man
by Harlan Ellison
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Twin globes, polished surfaces buried in golden sand, still staring at a face-down universe. Molybdenum claws, powered from a groin of metal, futilely stretched in the golden sand. Powerpak dead ... counterweights thrown from sockets ... rust making the first microscopic smearings on gloss-bright indestructable hide.
Most Unworthy One lay on his face mid the shock-blasted wreckage of His home. Most Unworthy One's right arm was extended, as he had fallen, reaching for the last can of lubricant. Blessed oil, that could pick him up, start his synapses sparking, trigger his movements, send him to His aid, wherever He might be, whatever danger surrounded Him.
Instead, he lay face down, whirling motes of dust rising shape-into-shape up flues of moist green sunlight. A sky diseased, leprous and shimmering in a world-socket turned to ash.
While Most Unworthy One stretched short of life.
Life gauged in millimetres, ball bearings and closed circuits. Life imparted on a production line in a now-fled time in a now-dead place he had known very well as Detroit. Where cars had been made, and vacuum sweepers, and generators, and robots.
It had never been difficult, the knowing. There was flesh, and there was the way he was, not-flesh. It was his honor, his destiny to serve flesh; and when they had sent Most Unworthy One to serve Him, it had been the sun and the warmth and the hunger for work. It had been so very, very good.
He had been an artist. Working with palette and brush and cassein He had often called over His shoulder from the high stool in front of the easeclass="underline" “See, friend (He had indulged Himself by treating the servant, at all times, with friendship); see how the paleness of the eyes attracts your attention before the red of the mouth. Do you see it?"
Or other words that drew Most Unworthy One's attention to something in His work. And oddly, Most Unworthy One did see, did sense, did revel in the wonder there on canvas.
Then He would turn, wiping his fingertips dry on the square of muslin, and stare deeply at Most Unworthy One. “My art,” He would say, “is nothing compared to yours. The beauty of you ... can you know what I mean?"
And Most Unworthy One's gears would mesh, for he did not completely understand, but he knew that His words held affection, and they had programmed affection, so it had value, it had merit.
“May I serve you forever?” Most Unworthy One would ask at those times, hoping the answer would be the same as it had always been; hoping silently, hoping.
“I'll always take care of you,” He would say, which had no meaning, really. For everyone knew that the robots took care of the flesh. That was the way the world was set up. But it was kind of Him to say it, and again, oddly, Most Unworthy One believed it. He would take care when the time came. Though Most Unworthy One watched over Him, if ever the robot needed succor, it would come from Him, or others like Him.
For Man was good and strong and forever. Metal was flawed by the ills of time and rust and climatic caprice. So Most Unworthy One lay and waited, confidently, knowing He would one day come and lift the robot from the sand, and pour the life-bringing oil into the proper feeder channels. Then Most Unworthy One could return to his tasks of seeing after Him.
Minor chores, the looking-afterness? Yes, that was for men of metal. But the real chores, the work that could only be done by Him ... that must come when He came.
As He would come. Some time soon.
He did not forget His friends.
* * * *
Across the moor that had once been a borough, nine men huddled inside a shell that had been a lobby. Behind a frosted, melted non-shape that had been a florist's booth, they crouched, rifles only slightly off-ready. One of the men had been a plumber. Another had been a statistical consultant. A third had been a chassis dynamometer technician in a large automobile agency. A fourth had used a stick with a nail at its end in parks.
One had been an artist and had owned his very own robot, who now lay face down in the rubble of the artist's former home. The artist was unaware of the robot's condition or needs.
Right now, he was thirty-five minutes from possible death.
“They came in the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel,” the taxidermist murmured, shovel-fingering back his long, grey hair. “I saw a smoke signal about an hour ago from down there.” The others nodded their heads knowingly, imperceptibly. “George Adams told me they had a battalion of robots with them,” the taxidermist concluded.
“But dammit that's against the treaties; no gas, no germs, no fusion bombs, no robots,” snarled the plumber. “What the hell are they trying to prove?"
The artist mused ruefully, “They're trying to kill us, man. And they've gotten far enough so they don't have to worry about treaties. If they want to use robots, there isn't really a lot we can do to stop them, is there?"
Agreeing mutters went up.
The old man, the one who had taught comparative philosophy in one of the greater Midwestern universities, thrust, “We should have attacked them before they attacked us! It was foolish to have gone on letting them bait us, killing us here and there, and when they were ready ... they jumped. We should have attacked them first!"
They all knew there was something wrong with his concept, but they could not voice their objection. There was no doubt he had a point.
A tall, emaciated man with pants legs flapping stumped into the lobby. “Hey, y'round?"
The plumber stood up and waved the rifle over his head. “Over here, and shut up, you goddam bigmouth!"
The thin man flap-legged to the florist's booth. “I seen ‘em. I seen ‘em comin’ down Fifth Avenue. They got a rank'a robots in the front. Everybody's scatterin'!"
“Well, we won't scatter,” the philosophy professor made a fist and his shadow did the same. “Come along! Let's get them..."
The artist gripped the rising man's shoulder. “Sit down. Don't be an imbecile. They'd cut us into strips if we wandered out there. There's only ten of us, with sporting rifles. They've got flame throwers, robots, tanks, what the hell's the matter with you?"
“I can't stand to see Americans running like—"
“Cut the patriotism!” The park attendant chopped him off.
“Anybody got a suggestion,” the garage mechanic ventured, tired of the bickering.
There was silence.
Tehuantepec, thought the artist absently, illogically, how I'd love to be back in Tehuantepec, doing the mountains with brush strokes like flowing gold or burning in the sun's death.
But Mexico had long since fallen to the locust-like advance of the Enemy.
The last patriots in America's greatest city huddled and hummed silently, and were without direction or plan.
One of the ten was a bowlegged, withdrawn man who had, at one time, combed his thinning hair straight back over the bald spot that lay accusingly in the center front of his scalp. His eyes were watery behind corrective lenses. He had been an optometrist.
“I have a suggestion,” he offered. Heads turned to him; they looked at him, but received only an image. People saw at this man, they did not see him. But he had an idea.
“In del Castillo's service under Cortes—” he began, and was cut off by a rueful snort from the professor, which, in turn, was cut off by a slap on the back from the plumber “—he reports in his book how they defeated an unwary group of hostile Aztecs by rolling boulders down on them from above."