The visorphone screen clouded over, and Tim turned heavily toward the living room to retrieve his daughter.
He had to agree his father-in-law had a point. Stephen Byerley had managed to get elected to public office a month ago. It was the beginning of the end of uncontested human superiority, despite the much-vaunted three laws. For one thing, Mayor Byerley might start thinking his “brothers” in space, those who toiled under horrifying conditions on blistering planets for industrialists like Howard Rathbone III, deserved better conditions. Byerley might even decide they were being treated like slaves and use the weight of his office to start a campaign for their emancipation. It was ludicrous, of course, but Tim understood that once you set the precedent of one robot being “human “ enough to hold human office, then you were going to have a hard time denying the same rights and protections to all the others.
It wasn’t that he had much sympathy with the metal men. They were, after all, only machines. Nobody was more convinced of that than he! He’d had a long, intimate association with one of them going all the way back to 2009, right here in this house.
“You wanted a father, Tirilmy,” Karin Garroway said brightly. “Well, I’ve brought you PAPPI.”
Timmy stared at the gray metal box on wheels squatting in the precise middle of the living room rug. At first glance, he’d thought it was an old-fashioned canister vacuum cleaner minus the hose. Four skinny appendages protruded from its sides, ending in a collection of hooks and pincers like some grim skeletal joke. An upside-down bowl-shaped turret housed a camera lens and other things he didn’t recognize right away.
Timmy touched a wheel housing with one toe.
“Treat it with care.” Motherly chores satisfied now, Karin gathered up papers and laptop computer and stuffed them all in her briefcase.
“What is it?”
“PAPPI-Paternal Alternative Program: Prototype I.”
“Looks pretty stupid,” Timmy said.
“Never mind how it looks!” His mother glanced at him. “It’ll do everything a real father can do. PAPPI can pitch baseballs, and sort your stamp collection-all sorts of things.”
“Can it do my homework?”
“It has programs to coach you in math and reading, Timmy. PAPPI has tapes of bedtime stories selected for eight-year-old boys, too. And we’ll update them as you grow.”
“Sometimes I want to talk about man things….”
“Don’t be difficult.” Karin snapped her briefcase crisply shut. “I’ll work on some of the refinements as I get time. You could think of this as an experiment in robotics that we’re doing together.”
Karin was always trying to get him interested in her work at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. She put the briefcase down on the sofa, hunkered down in front of her son so her eyes were level with his and held him by the shoulders. Her face had that soft, gentle haze Timmy saw on it sometimes when she looked at kittens or butterflies. He stared back at her, his mouth drawn tightly down.
“I know it’s hard on you, the way we live.”
“We could do it the way other people do!” he said sullenly.
“That just won’t work for me,” she said. “I thought you understood that. Look, you keep saying you want a father-”
“A real one. Not a dumb robot.”
Her face closed over. “I’ve explained to you that we don’t have time for a man in our lives. “
Timmy didn’t know anything about his real father. Karin had told him some stuff once about a place where they sold sperm from fathers for people who wanted to be mothers without all the fuss. But Timmy told everybody his dad had died; it was easier to explain. Maybe Karin didn’t like men very much; she never brought one home, unlike his best friend Joey’s mother, who had lots of boyfriends. Sometimes Timmy wondered if Karin wouldn’t like him when he grew up, too.
“Timmy?”
“All right,” he said reluctantly. “But you promised me we’d go to the zoo today, Karin.”
She chewed her lip. “I know it’s Sunday, but the project’s so urgent.”
He shook his head. “Today’s special. It’s-”
“You can play with PAPPI in the yard. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? PAPPI’s easy to use, I made sure of that.”
He looked past her at the robot. “What can you play with a thing like that?”
“You’ll think of something!” She gave him a kiss on the cheek which he wasn’t quick enough to duck. “Now I’ve got to run. The lab’s aircar is waiting for me. I promise I won’t be too long.”
After she’d gone, Timmy watched the Tri-D for a while, but Karin had programmed it to show him historical films about the exploration of the solar system and educational stuff about astronomy. He turned the Tri-D off again and squatted down by the robot. He stared into its camera eye.
“You’re dopey looking!” he said. “Got a dopey name, too.”
A bird chirped outside in the big tree in the garden, but inside the house it was very quiet. Timmy suddenly felt lonely, which was strange because now that he wasn’t such a little kid any more Karin often left him alone when she had to work overtime or go in on weekends. The reason wasn’t too hard to find. It was Father’s Day. The Cub Scout Troop that Timmy and Joey belonged to was having a father-and-son hot-dog barbecue in Central Park, and absolutely everybody would be there with their dad. All Timmy’s friends had fathers, even if they weren’t the original ones. And Joey would have one of his mom’s boyfriends along.
But Timmy had known there was no point in telling Karin about it. Karin didn’t believe in men-only activities. It would’ve been just like her to consider going with him to a father-son barbecue. Much better to stay home with a robot than be embarrassed like that. Timmy scowled at the robot. Nothing else to do-he might as well turn it on. The switch was conveniently located near the top. Immediately, a small red light glowed on the dome, which swiveled to focus the camera eye on Timmy.
“Hello,” the tinny, uninflected voice said. “I am PAPPI, your Paternal Alternative. I am an experimental prototype.”
Surprised, Timmy settled himself cross-legged in front of the machine and stared at it. He’d seen robots before, of course, at the lab where Karin worked. But he knew a lot of people didn’t trust them and wouldn’t allow them in New York. The ones his mother built that talked were huge things to be sent out into space where they couldn’t frighten anybody.
“Well,” Timmy said cautiously. “What can you do?”
“I can tell you a story about animals. I can help you with your stamp collection. I can make model airplanes. I know baseball and basketball statistics for the last fifty years. I can tell you who scored the most home runs, who was the MVP, who-”
Timmy was astonished. Perhaps Karin understood more than he’d ever realized about what was important to him. “Can you help me light a fire in the backyard and barbecue hot dogs?”
“I do not think Karin would approve of you playing with fire.”
Timmy’s enthusiasm faded. “So you’re going to be another babysitter!”
“You are too old for babysitters, Timmy. I am your PAPPI, and Paternal Alternatives do not-”
“You’re not my dad!” Timmy snapped.
“Shall we go out into the yard and play baseball?” the robot suggested.
“Sure.” Timmy stuck his hands in his pockets.
Timmy found out right away that PAPPI was very good at pitching balls. The long metal arms grasped the ball neatly and swung it in an economical arc, releasing it at precisely the right moment to travel across to the exact spot on Timmy’s baseball bat for hitting. PAPPI gave him advice on how to hold the bat too, but it never yelled at him when he missed, and it wasn’t a sore loser like Joey when Timmy managed to hit a “home run.”
“Hey,” Timmy said after an hour of playing World Series. “Want to climb a tree?”
“I am not equipped to climb trees,” PAPPI replied. “But I will watch you. And I can identify the objects you encounter.”
Timmy threw down the baseball bat and shimmied up the trunk of the old maple by the garden wall. PAPPI trundled over to stand underneath, the dome swiveling so the camera eye could focus on Timmy’s ascent.
Halfway up to the crown, the main trunk forked. Here Timmy and Joey had once started to erect a fort. Then the weather got too hot for carpentry projects and they’d abandoned it. But it was still a fine place to sit and look at the jagged skyline of the city across the East River. The leaves overhead made liquid patterns of sunlight and shade on his bare arms, and their soft rustling was like a kind of secret language that only Timmy was meant to understand.
Timmy straddled one of the sun-warm planks.
“You look weird from up here!”
“Have you noticed the abandoned bird’s nest by your right hand?”
Timmy peered into the leaves. Sure enough, there was a jumble of twigs and mud stuck to the bark near the trunk. “There’s feathers in it.”