“I don’t know,” I said. “I have an agreement with the university. I’m not sure…”
Suddenly her face changed. It became frighteningly twisted in anger—anger as great as on the faces of some of the actors in the films. “I thought you were different.” Her voice was trembling, but controlled. “I thought you didn’t care about making Mistakes. About Rules.”
Her anger was very upsetting. Showing anger in public—and this was, in a sense, a public thing—was one of the worst of Mistakes itself. Almost as bad as my crying outside the Burger Chef had been. And then I thought of myself, of my crying, and I did not know what to say.
She must have interpreted my silence as disapproval, or as the beginning of a Retreat into Privacy, because suddenly she said, “Wait.”
She walked quickly out of the House of Reptiles as I stood there, not knowing what else to do. In a moment she returned. She was carrying a rock as big as her hand. She must have taken it from one of the flower borders outside. I watched her, fascinated.
“Let me show you about Mistakes and Rules of Behavior,” she said. She drew back and hurtled the rock right into the glass front of the python’s case. It was astonishing. There was first a loud noise and the front of the case caved in. A large triangle of glass crashed to the floor at my feet and broke. While I stood there horrified, she walked up to the case, reached in with both hands, and pulled out the python. I shuddered; her confidence was overwhelming. What if the snake were not a robot?
She dragged the creature over headfirst, pulling open its mouth as she did so and bending to peer down into it. Then she held the head out toward me, with the broad, evil-looking mouth gaping wide. We had been right. About a foot or so down the throat was the unmistakable nuclear battery pack of a Class D robot.
I was too horrified by what she had done to be able to say anything.
And as we stood there in what must have looked like a “tableau” in the old movies, she triumphantly holding the serpent and I watching in horror at the magnitude of what she had just done, there was a sudden noise behind me and I turned just as the door between two of the reptile cases in the wall opened and a tall, fierce Security robot came striding out. As he came toward us his voice boomed: “You are under arrest. You have a right to remain silent, you may…”
The woman had been looking up coolly at the robot, who towered over her. And then she interrupted him sharply. “Bug off, robot,” she said. “Bug off and shut up.”
The robot stopped talking. He was immobile.
“Robot,” she said. “Take this damn snake and get it fixed.”
And the robot reached out, took the snake from her into its arms, and quietly walked out of the room into the night.
I hardly knew what I felt, seeing it all. It was a little like watching those violent scenes in some of the films, like the one in Intolerance where the great stone buildings came crashing down. You just stare at it all and feel nothing.
But then I began to think, and I said, “The Detectors…”
She looked at me. Her face was surprisingly calm. “You have to handle robots like that. They were made to serve people, and nobody knows it anymore.”
To serve people? It sounded as though it might be true. “But what about the Detectors?”
“The Detectors don’t detect anymore,” she said. “Look at me. They haven’t detected me. For stealing sandwiches. For sleeping in a Public Place. For leaving the Drop-out Reservation without Re-entry.”
I said nothing, but the shock must have shown on my face.
“The Detectors don’t detect anything,” she said. “Maybe they never did. They don’t have to. Everybody is so conditioned from childhood that nobody ever does anything.”
“People burn themselves to death,” I said. “Often.”
“And do the Detectors stop that?” she said. “Why don’t the Detectors know that people are thinking unbalanced, suicidal thoughts, and restrain them?”
I could only nod. She had to be right, of course.
I looked at the broken glass on the floor and then at the broken case with the plastic tree in it, now empty of movement. Then I looked at her, standing there in the House of Reptiles in the bright artificial light, calm, undrugged, and—I was afraid—totally out of her head.
She was looking toward the python’s case. From one of the higher branches of the tree inside there was hanging some sort of fruit. Abruptly, she reached her arm inside the cage and stretched up toward the fruit, clearly intending to pick it.
I stared at her. The branch was quite high, and she had to stand tiptoed and reach as far up as she could reach, just to catch the bottom of the fruit with her fingertips. With the strong light from the inside of the case coming through her dress her body was outlined clearly; it was beautiful.
She plucked the fruit, and stood there poised like a dancer with it for a moment. Then she brought it down level with her breasts and, turning it over in her hand, looked at it. It was hard to tell what kind of fruit it was; it seemed to be some kind of mango. For a moment I thought she was going to try to eat it, even though I was certain it was plastic, but then she stretched her arm out and handed the thing to me. “This certainly can’t be eaten,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly calm, resigned.
I took it from her. “Why did you pick it?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It seemed to be the thing to do.”
I looked at her for a long time, saying nothing. Despite the age lines and the sleep lines in her face, and despite the uncombed look of her hair, she was very beautiful. And yet I felt no desire for her—only a kind of awe. And a slight sense of fear.
Then I stuffed the plastic fruit into my pocket and said, “I’m going back to the library and take some sopors.”
She turned away, looking back toward the empty case. “Okay,” she said. “Good night.”
When I got back I put the fruit on top of Dictionary that sat on my bed-and-desk. Then I took three sopors. And slept until noon today.
The fruit is still sitting there. I want it to mean something; but it doesn’t.
DAY THIRTY-SEVEN
Four days without pills. And only two joints a day—one after supper and one before going to bed. It is all very strange. I feel tense and, somehow, excited.
I am often restless and must have taken to walking up and down in the halls outside my room in the library basement. The halls are endless, labyrinthine, mossy and gently damp. I pass doorways and, occasionally, open a door and look in, remembering when I found Dictionary, apprehensive, almost, that I may find something. I’m not certain that I want to find anything. I have had enough new things since I came to this place.
But there is never anything in the rooms. Some have shelves in them, from floor to ceiling, but there is never anything on the shelves. I look around, then close the door and continue down the hall. The halls always smell musty.
The doors of the rooms are of different colors, so that you may tell them apart. My room has a lavender door, to match the carpet inside.
When I first moved in here, the feeling of walking about in this vast, empty building was frightening. But now I derive a kind of comfort from it.
I no longer take naps, as I once did.
DAY FORTY
Forty days. It is all written out and on my desk in front of me, on seventy-two pages of art paper. All of it printed by me.
It is the greatest achievement of my life. Yes, I have used that word: a great achievement. My learning to read was an achievement. Nobody knows that but me. Spofforth doesn’t know it. But then Spofforth is a robot; and a robot might just know anything. But robots can achieve nothing; they have been constructed to do what they do, and cannot change.