Into Thy Hands
Simon Ames was old, and his face was bitter as only that of a confirmed idealist can be. Now a queer mixture of emotions crossed it momentarily, as he watched the workmen begin pouring cement to fill the small opening of the domelike structure, but his eyes returned again to the barely visible robot within.
“The last Ames’ Model Ten,” he said ruefully to his son. “And even then I couldn’t put in full memory coils! Only the physical sciences here; biologicals hi the other male form, humanities in the female. I had to fall back on books and equipment to cover the rest. We’re already totally converted to soldier robots, and no more humanoid experiments…. Dan, is there no conceivable way war can be avoided?”
The young Rocket Force captain shrugged, and his mouth twitched unhappily. “None, Dad. They’ve fed thek people on the glories of carnage and loot so long they have to find some pretext to use their hordes of warrior robots.”
“Mmm… The stupid, blind idiots!” The old man shuddered. “Dan, it sounds like old wives’ fears, but this time it’s true; unless we somehow avoid or win this war quickly, there’ll be no one left to wage another. I’ve spent my life on robots; I know what they can do—and should never be made to do! Do you think I’d waste a fortune on these storehouses on a mere whim?”
“I’m not arguing, Dad. God knows, I feel the same!” Dan watched the workmen pour the last concrete, to leave no break in the twenty-foot thick walls. “Well, at least if anyone does survive, you’ve done all you can for them. Now it’s in the hands of God!”
Simon Ames nodded, but there was no satisfaction on his face as he turned back with his son. “All we could—and never enough! And God? I wouldn’t even know to pray for the survival of which of the three—science, life, or culture….” The words sighed into silence, and his eyes went back to the filled-in tunnel.
Behind them, the ugly dome hugged the ground while the rains of God and of man’s destruction washed over it. Snow covered it and melted, and other things built up that no summer sun could disperse, until the ground was level with its top. The forest crept forward, and the seasons flicked by in unchanging changes that pyramided decade upon century. Inside, the shining case of SA-10 waited immovably.
And at last the lightning struck, blasting through a tree, downward into the dome, to course through a cable, short-circuit a ruined timing switch, and spend itself on the ground below.
Above the robot, a cardinal burst into song, and he looked up, his stolid face somehow set in a look of wonder. For a moment, he listened, but the bird had flown away at the sight of his lumbering figure; With a tired little sigh, he went on, crashing through the brush of the forest until he came back near the entrance to his cave.
The sun was bright above, and he studied it thoughtfully; the word he knew, and even the complex carbon-chain atomic breakdown that went on within it. But he did not know how he knew, or why.
For a second longer he stood there silently, then opened his mouth for a long wailing cry. “Adam! Adam, come forth!” But there were doubts in the oft-repeated call now and the pose of his head as he waited. And again only the busy sounds of the forest came back to him.
“Or God? God, do You hear me?”
But the answer was the same. A field mouse slipped out from among the grass and a hawk soared over the woods. The wind rustled among the trees, but there was no sign from the Creator. With a lingering backward look, he turned slowly to the tunnel he had made and wriggled back down it into his cave.
Inside, light still came from a single unbroken bulb, and he let his eyes wander from the jagged breach in the thick wall across to where some ancient blast had tossed crumpled concrete against the opposite side. Between lay only ruin and dirt. Once, apparently, that half had been filled with books and films, but now there were only rotted fragments of bindings and scraps of useless plastic tape mixed with broken glass in the filth of the floor.
Only on the side where he had been was the ruin less than complete. There stood the instruments of a small laboratory, many still useful, and he named them one by one, from the purring atomic generator to the projector and screen set up on one table.
Here, in his mind, were order and logic, and the world above had conformed to an understandable pattern. He alone seemed to be without purpose. How had he come here, and why had he no memory of himself? If there was no purpose, why was he sentient at all? The questions held no discoverable answers.
There were only the cryptic words on the scrap of plastic tape preserved inside the projector. But what little of them was understandable was all he had; he snapped off the light and squatted down behind the projector, staring intently at the screen as he flicked the machine on.
There was a brief fragment of some dark swirling, and then dots and bright spheres, becoming suns and planets that spun out of nothing into a celestial pattern. “In the beginning,” said a voice quietly, “God created the heavens and the earth.” And the screen filled with that, and the beginnings of life.
“Symbolism?” the robot muttered. Geology and astronomy were part of his knowledge, at least; and yet, m a mystic beauty, this was true enough. Even the life forms above had fitted with those being created on the screen.
Then a new voice, not unlike his own in resonant power, filled the speaker. “Let Us go down and create man in Our Image!” And a shifting mist of light that symbolized God appeared, shaping man from the dust of the ground and breathing life into him. Adam grew lonely, and Eve was made from his rib, to be shown Eden and tempted by the serpentine mist of darkness; and she tempted the weak Adam, until God discovered their sin and banished them. But the banishment ended in a blur of ruined film as the speaker went dead.
The robot shut it off, trying to read its meaning. It must concern him, since he alone was here to see it. And how could that be unless he were one of its characters? Not Eve or Satan, but perhaps Adam; but then God should have answered him. On the other hand, if he were God, then perhaps the record was unfulfilled and Adam not yet formed, so that no answer could be given.
He nodded slowly to himself. Why should he not have rested here with this film to remind him of his plan, while the world readied itself for Adam? And now, awake again, he must go forth and create man in his own image! But first, the danger of which the film had warned must be removed.
He straightened, determination coming into his steps as he squirmed purposefully upward. Outside the sun was still shining, and he headed toward it into the grossly unkempt Eden forest. Now stealth came to him as he moved silently through the undergrowth, like a great metal wraith, with eyes that darted about and hands ready to snap forward at lightning speed.
And at last he saw it, curled up near a large rock. It was smaller than he had expected, a mere six feet of black, scaly suppleness, but the shape and forked tongue were unmistakable. He was on it with a blurr of motion and a cry of elation; and when he moved away, the lifeless object on the rock was forever past corrupting the most naive Eve.
The morning sun found the robot bent over what had once been a wild pig, a knife moving precisely in his hand. Delicately he opened the heart and manipulated it, studying the valve action. Life, he was deciding, was highly complex, and a momentary doubt struck him. It had seemed easy on the film! And at times he wondered why he should know the complex order of the heavens but nothing of this other creation of his.
But at last he buried the pig’s remains, and settled down among the varicolored clays he had collected, his’ fingers moving deftly as he rolled a white type into bones for the skeleton, followed by a red clay heart. The tiny nerves and blood vessels were beyond his means, but that could not be helped; and surely if he had created the gigantic sun from nothing, Adam could rise from the crudeness of his sculpturing.