“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 each 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. “
“What, exactly, did the Great Fabricator do to them?” Hellman demanded.
“He taught them to like killing,” Jorge said.
“Hang on,” Wayne said. “Up them cliffs is the only way out of here.”
“Can you climb a gradient like that?” Hellman asked. “Going to find out,” said Wayne.
“But you kill things, too,” Hellman said.
“Sure. But only lawful animals. The Deltoids like to kill other intelligent beings.”
He started picking his way up the rock face. Behind, a group of big machines in camouflage colors had collected and was watching them.
Three times Wayne tried to bull his way up the cliffside, and each time lost traction a third of the way from the top. Only the most skillful weight shifting and double clutching prevented the carhunter from turning over as it slid down to its starting point. The Deltoids seemed in no hurry to attack them, something which was incomprehensible to Wayne at the time, but which had a simple explanation that was supplied later, when they were safe for the moment in Poictesme.
But that was later; for now, it looked a desperate situation, and Wayne turned, ready to charge head-on into the machines and take his chances. Hellman and Jorge had no say in the matter. This was Wayne’s decision and his alone to make. But it was taken out of his hands when the ground suddenly began to collapse beneath his feet. The Deltoids noticed this and noisily started motors, eager to get away from the treacherous ground. But now they were caught in it too, and the entire plain seemed to be collapsing under them. Hellman and Jorge could do nothing but hang on as Wayne slipped and slithered and fought for traction. But there was nothing to be done, and Hellman felt himself battered by flying dirt and sand as the bottom dropped out from under them.
It was the alarm clock that woke him.
Alarm clock?
Hellman opened his eyes. He was in a large bed under a pink and blue quilt. He was propped up nicely on down cushions. There was an alarm clock on the nightstand next to him. It was ringing.
Hellman turned it off.
“Feeling all right?” a voice asked him.
Hellman looked around. To his right, sitting in an overstuffed chair, there was a woman. A young woman. A good-looking young woman. She wore a yellow and tangerine hostess gown. She had crisp blond hair and gray eyes. She looked at Hellman with an air of boldness and self-possession.
“Yeah, I’m all right,” Hellman said. “But who are you?”
“I’m Lana,” the young woman said.
“Are you a prisoner?”
She laughed. “My goodness, no! I work for these people. You’re in Poictesme.”
“The last thing I remember is the ground giving way. “
“Yes. You fell into Poictesme.”
“What about the Deltoids?”
“There is no love lost between Deltoids and the robots of Poictesme. The robots rebuked them for trespassing and sent them away chagrined. The Deltoids had to take it because they were in the wrong. It amused the Poictesmeans very much to see the usually arrogant and self-assured Deltoids slink off with their tails dragging. “
“Tails?”
“Yes, the Deltoids have tails. “
“I didn’t get close enough to see the tails,” Hellman said.
“Believe me, they have tails. There is an albino tailless model, but they only occur in Lemurton Valley which is over eight hundred varsks from here.”
“How much is a varsk?”
“It is roughly equal to the Terran mile, equal to five thousand two hundred and eighty yups. “
“Feet?”
“Approximately, yes.”
“How did they happen to fall into Poictesme? Didn’t they know it was there?”
“How could they? Poictesme is one of the burrowing cities.”
“Oh, how stupid of me,” Hellman said. “A burrowing city! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You’re making fun of me,” the young woman said.
“Well, maybe just a little. So Poictesme was burrowing past where all these Deltoids had assembled to capture or kill the carhunter?”
“That’s it, exactly. The crust of the earth was thin at that point, and they shouldn’t have been here anyway, because this entire region was given to the Poictesmeans to live in or under as they pleased.”
“Well, maybe I get it,” Hellman said. “Where are the Poictesmeans, anyhow?”
“Right here. You’re in Poictesme,” Lana said.
Hellman looked around. He didn’t get it. Then he got it.
“You mean this room-?”
“No, the house itself. The Poictesmeans are housemaking robots.”
Hellman learned how the Poictesmeans began life as tiny metal spheres within which were infinitesimal moving parts, as well as a miniature chemical factory. The Poictesmeans started as little robots, hardly more than DNA and parts. From this their plan unfolded. They slowly began to build a house around them. They were equally skilled at working in wood or stone. By puberty they could make bricks in their own in-built kiln. Most Poictesmeans made six- to eight-room houses. These houses were not for their own use. It was obvious that the Poictesmeans didn’t need the elaborate structure, with its bay windows and carports, that they carried around with them, adding to bit by bit and painting once a year. But their instruction tapes, plus their racial steering factor (RSF) combined to make them produce finer and finer houses. They lived in neat suburbs, each Poictesmean occupying his allotted quarter acre of land. At night, in accordance with ancient ordinance, street lamps and house lights came on. The Poictesmeans also had a few communal projects. A theater and motion-picture house. But no pictures were ever shown, because the Poictesmeans had never mastered the art of moviemaking. And anyhow, who would there be to occupy their theaters? The Poictesmeans were a symbiotic race, but they didn’t have any symbiotes to share stuff with.