And he’d have a word with his computer too, when he got back to the ship. That was very peculiar behavior, giving out the access-code number. Sure, it was for his own protection, but was it, really? Might not his own computer have been reprogrammed by the antisocial elements of this planet of Newstart? And for that matter, what about the humans of Newstart? Had the robots spared some of them? What part did they play in all this?
Hellman considered these things while the flames roared around him. He had quite forgotten where he was. Thus the mind protects itself when faced with an intolerable situation. Now he noticed that the flames were dying down. As the glare faded, he saw Harry, the robot who was rescuing him, standing nearby.
“Why do you wear glasses?” Hellman asked.
“My God! Is that the only thing you can think to ask at a time like this?”
“Why do you robots talk about God so much?” Hellman asked. “Do you know something I don’t know?”
“Your computer was right,” Harry said. “You are fun to be around. One never knows what you’ll say next. Come on, let’s get out of this furnace. I’ll bet you’re hungry too, and thirsty, and perhaps sleepy, as well?”
“Yes, all of the above,” Hellman said.
“How nice it must be to have such urgent conditioning. We robots have been trying to simulate appetite for a long time. It’s easy enough to model human drives, but difficult to put any real urgency into it.”
“But why would you want to have that stuff anyhow?” Hellman asked. “Drives and emotions get you into plenty of trouble. Sometimes they kill you. “
“Yes,” said Harry, “but what a way to go.”
Hellman thought about Lana. “Don’t you ever get the urge to, like for example, mate with someone you know will be bad for you but to hell with that, you want to do it anyway?”
“Not really,” Harry said. “We’ve learned to simulate perversity, of course, that’s not difficult. But the real article…Well, that’s tough. But we have begun a program by means of which we can experiment with it all.”
“All what?”
“All the human moods, nuances, feelings. We’re experimenting also with simulating every aspect of nature’s creative side. But more of that later. We’d better get out of here. “
They were both out of the furnace now. Standing outside it, Hellman saw that it was not a furnace at all. Not now. Maybe it had been earlier. Somehow he had gotten somewhere else. He had stepped out of a small cellar door. He seemed to be in a very pretty pastoral place with bushy trees and green hedges and wild flowers.
“Like it?” Harry asked.
“Very nice. Yours?”
“Yes. I like to come here when I can. The whole thing, is simulated, by the way, down to the last blade of grass.”
“Why didn’t you just plant a garden?”
“We need to express ourselves,” Harry said. “Come on, I’ve got a little place down here. I’m sure we can get you a drink and some lunch. Then you’ll need a nap and after that we can get on with it.”
“Get on with what?”
“The next step. Afraid it’s not going to be quite so easy as what’s happened so far.”
Harry told Hellman he lived in the Gollag Gardens section of Robotsville, quite near the south bridge that crossed the River Visp. He was a dress designer by occupation. Hellman expressed surprise at this, because he had been used to robots only in industrial roles.
“That was in the old days,” Harry said, “when robots were disadvantaged by the racist laws of Earth. All this talk about a robot not being truly creative! As if they had a clue! I can assure you, I do my job better than most designers on Earth. “
“But who do you design dresses for?” Hellman asked.
“For the other robots, of course.”
“I don’t understand. I never heard of a robot wearing clothes before. “
“Yes, I’ve seen the literature on the subject. Humans were really naive in the old days. They expected great things from their robots, but kept them naked. What creature with an ounce of self-respect and the slightest claim to civilization is going to do his best naked?
“The news of your spaceship was received in the city like a bombshell. All of us have been theorizing for a very long time about what humans are really like.”
“You have some here on this planet, don’t you?”
“They don’t count. They’ve been away too long. They’re quite out of touch. They look to us for guidance.”
“Oh. I see what you mean.”
“We want to know what human is like from the horse’s mouth, a genuine human from the planet Earth.”
It was only later that Hellman appreciated the strength of the robot’s drive to be seen as creative and nice.
Harry had taken him through a bypass to a place outside Robotsville. He had a route planned out after they left his house. They would proceed on foot and with caution. There were political elements even in Robotsville, waiting to exploit the inevitable confusion that would ensue when Hellman arrived.
Hellman’s first sight of Robotsville was not reassuring. The outskirts looked like a junkyard several stories high and stretching for a mile or so in either direction. Although it looked haphazard, the open-work structures were firmly welded into place. There were buildings and verandas and structures of all sorts, most of them lying at odd angles to each other, since robots have no bias in favor of right angles. Although there were ground-level roadways, most of the robots used elevated pathways to get from place to place.
“I hadn’t expected it to be like this,” Hellman said.
“It’s more convenient for a robot to travel monkey-fashion, using a number of lines, than to walk on the ground like men,” Harry explained.
“But I notice that all of them have feet.”
“Of course. Having feet is a mark of being civilized.”
Civilized or not, Hellman saw that most of the robots in this part of Robotsville had small round bodies like squids, with six or eight tentacular limbs with differently shaped grasping members at their ends. As well as the legs, of course, which just dangled appendage-wise as the robots swung through the maze like chimpanzees. Soon they passed this suburban clutter and were in the middle of another district. This one was composed of five- or six-story buildings, some made of masonry, others constructed from what looked like wrought iron. As they walked they passed many robots, who were careful not to stare, even though most of them had never seen a human before. Politeness, Harry explained, seems to be ingrained in the robot psyche.
Harry pointed out the Museum of Modem Art, the Sculpture Garden, the Opera House, and Symphony Hall.
“There’s a concert later tonight,” Harry said. “Perhaps you will attend if you’re not too tired. “
“What are they playing?”
“It’s all modem robot composers. You wouldn’t have heard of them. But we’d be grateful for your opinion. It isn’t often we get a human to hear our efforts. And the painters and sculptors are quite excited, too.”
“That’ll be nice,” Hellman said, doubting it.
“Our efforts will seem provincial to you, no doubt,” Harry said. “But perhaps not entirely without merit. But for now, I’m going to take you to my club, the Athenaeum. You’ll meet some of my friends; we have prepared a light repast, and there will be suitable libations.”
“That sounds fine,” Hellman said. “When do I get to go back to my spaceship?”
“Soon, soon,” Harry promised.
The Athenaeum was an imposing building of white marble, with Corinthian columns in the front. Harry led the way. A tall, thin robot dressed in a black frock coat like a butler or possibly a footman opened the door for them.
“Good afternoon, Lord Synapse,” the butler said. “This is the friend you mentioned earlier?”
“Yes, this is Mr. Hellman, the Earthman,” Harry said. “ Any of the other members about?”
“Lord Wheel and His Holiness the Bishop of Transverse Province are in the billiards room. The Right Honorable Edward Blisk is in the members’ room reading the back issues of the Zeitung Tageblatt.”
“Well then, that’s all right,” Harry said. “Come with me, Hellman.”
As they walked through the carpeted hall, down the long line of oil paintings of robots on the walls, some of them wearing frock coats and wigs, Hellman said, “I didn’t know you had a title.”
“Oh, that,” Harry said. “It’s not the sort of thing one talks about, is it?”
The members’ room was large and comfortable, with deep bay windows and a purple rug. Several robots were sitting in armchairs reading newspapers which were attached to sticks. They all wore formal clothing complete with regimental neckties and highly polished brogans.
“Ah, there’s Viscount Baseline!” Harry said, indicating a portly robot in a tweed shooting jacket reading a newspaper. “Basil! I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Mr. Thomas Hellman. “