CROW headed out of the Terran Security Building and along the street. Around him robots streamed, bright hulls of metal and plastic and dn fluid. Except for body servants, humans never came to this area. This was the managerial section of the city, the core, the nucleus, where the planning and organization went on. From this area the life of the city was controlled. Robots were everywhere. In the surface cars, on the moving ramps, the balconies, entering buildings, streaming out, standing in pale glowing knots here and there like Roman Senators, talking and discussing business.
A few greeted him, faintly, formally, with a nod of their metal heads. And then turned their backs. Most robots ignored him or pulled aside to avoid contact. Sometimes a clump of talking robots would become abruptly silent, 'as Crow pushed past. Robot eye lenses fixed on him, solemn and half astonished. They noticed his arm color, Class Two. Surprise and indignation. And after he had passed, a quick angry buzz of resentment. Backward glances at him as he threaded his way toward the human quarter.
A pair of humans stood in front of the Domestic Control Offices, armed with pruning shears and rakes. Gardeners, weeding and watering the lawns of the big public building. They watched Crow pass with excited stares. One waved nervously at him, feverish and hopeful. A menial human waving at the only human ever to reach classification.
Crow waved back briefly.
The two humans’ eyes grew wide with awe and reverence. They were still looking after him when he turned the comer at the main intersection and mixed with the business crowds shopping at the trans-planet marts.
Goods from the wealthy colonies of Venus and Mars and Ganymede filled the open- air marts. Robots drifted in swarms, sampling and pricing and discussing and gossiping. A few humans were visible, mostly household servants in charge of maintenance, stocking up on supplies. Crow edged his way through and beyond the marts. He was approaching the human quarter of the city. He could smell it already. The faint pungent scent of humans.
The robots, of course, were odorless. In a world of odorless machines the human scent stood out in bold relief. The human quarter was a section of the city once prosperous. Humans had moved in and property values had dropped. Gradually the houses had been abandoned by robots and now humans exclusively lived there. Crow, in spite of his position, was obliged to live in the human quarter. His house, a uniform five-room dwelling, identical with all the others, was located to the rear of the quarter. One house of many.
He held his hand up to the front door and the door melted. Grow entered quickly and the door reformed. He glanced at his watch. Plenty of time. An hour before he was due back at his desk.
He rubbed his hands. It was always a thrilling moment to come here, to his personal quarters, where he had grown up, lived as an ordinary unclassified human being—before he had come across it and begun his meteoric ascent into the upper- class regions.
CROW passed through the small silent house, to the work shed in back. He unlocked the bolted doors and slid them aside. The shed was hot and dry. He clicked off the alarm system. Complex tangles of bells and wires that were really unnecessary: robots never entered the human section, and humans seldom stole from each other.
Locking the doors behind him, Crow seated himself before a bank of machinery assembled in the center of the shed. He snapped on the power and the machinery hummed into life. Dials and meters swung into activity. Lights glowed.
Before him, a square window of gray faded to light pink and shimmered slightly. The Window. Crow’s pulse throbbed painfully. He flicked a key. The Window clouded and showed a scene. He slid a tape scanner before the Window and activated it. The scanner clicked as the Window gained shape. Forms moved, dim forms that wavered and hesitated. He steadied the picture.
Two robots were standing behind a table. They moved quickly, jerkily. He slowed them down. The two robots were handling something. Crow increased the power of the image and the objects bloated up, to be caught by the scanning lens and preserved on tape.
The robots were sorting Lists. Class One Lists. Grading and dividing them into groups. Several hundred packets of questions and answers. Before the table a restless crowd waited, eager robots waiting to hear their scores. Crow speeded the image up. The two robots leaped into activity, tossing and arranging Lists in a blur of energy. Then the master Class One List was held up—
The List, Crow caught it in the Window, dropping the velocity to zero. The List was held, fixed tight like a specimen on a slide. The tape scanner hummed away, recording the questions and answers.
He felt no guilt. No sting of conscience at using a Time Window to see the results of future Lists. He had been doing it ten years, all the way up from the bottom, from unclassified up to the top List, to Class One. He had never kidded himself. Without advance sight of the answers he could never have passed. He would still be unclassified, at the bottom of the pile, along with the great undifferentiated mass of humans.
The Lists were geared to robot minds. Made up by robots, phased to a robot culture. A culture which was alien to humans, to which humans had to make difficult adjustment. No wonder only robots passed their Lists.
Crow wiped the scene from the Window and threw the scanner aside. He sent the Window back into time, spinning back through the centuries into the past. He never tired of seeing the early days, the days before the Total War wrecked human society and destroyed all human tradition. The days when man lived without robots.
He fiddled with the dials, capturing a moment. The Window showed robots building up their post-war society, swarming over the ruined planet, erecting vast cities and buildings, clearing away the debris. With humans as slaves. Second-class servant citizens.
He saw the Total War, the rain of death from the sky. The blossoming pale funnels of destruction. He saw man’s society dissolve into radioactive particles. All human knowledge and culture lost in the chaos.
And once again, he caught his favorite of *11 scenes. A scene he had examined repeatedly, enjoying with acute satisfaction this unique sight. A scene of human beings in an undersurface lab, in the early days of the war. Designing and building the first robots, the original A Type robots, four centuries before.
ED PARKS walked home slowly, holding his son’s hand. Donnie gazed down at the ground. He said nothing. His eyes were red and puffy. He was pale with misery.
"I’m sorry, Dad,” he muttered.
Ed's grip tightened. "It's okay, kid. You did your best. Don’t worry about it. Maybe next time. We’ll get started practicing sooner.” He cursed under his breath. "Those lousy metal tubs. Damn soul-less heaps of tin!”
It was evening. The sun was setting. The two of them climbed the porch steps slowly and entered the house. Grace met them at the door. "No luck?” She studied their faces. "I can see. Same old story.”
"Same old story,” Ed said bitterly. “He didn’t have a chance. Hopeless.”
From the dining room came a murmur of sound. Voices, men and women.
"Who’s in there?” Ed demanded irritably. "Do we have to have company? For God’s sake, today of all days—” *
“Come on.” Grace pulled him toward the kitchen. “Some news. Maybe it’ll make you feel better. Come along, Donnie. This will interest you, too.”
Ed and Donnie entered the kitchen. It was full of people. Bob McIntyre and his wife Pat. John Hollister and his wife Joan and their two daughters. Pete Klein and Rose Klein. Neighbors, Nat Johnson and
Tim Davis and Barbara Stanley. An eager murmur buzzed through the room. Everybody was grouped around the table, excited and nervous. Sandwiches and beer bottles were piled up in heaps. The men and women were laughing and grinning hap- eyes bright with agitation.