‘Anyway take this zillionaire, he spends a zillion dollars on this custom-made robot, you think he’s gonna let some kid come along and tell it to jump off a building? No he’s gonna program it to perteck itself, like program in martial arts and everything.’
The hands washed each other, folded for prayer, subsided on the desk blotter. ‘I see you’ve really gone in to this, Roderick. Can’t say I’ve — but I am sure of one thing: robots in fiction — and in real life when the day comes — will be completely programmed. They won’t have free will like the rest of us. That was what I really hoped you’d see in this story. What being a robot is really like. No free will. No choice. Tell me. Is it really worth it?’
‘Is what worth what?’
‘Is it worth giving up your humanity to be a “robot”? Isn’t it really better to be a human being, made in—’ His gaze fell on Roderick, slipped over the surfaces of steel and plastic, ‘—made in, ahm, God’s image? Is it worth giving that up to be just a — a glorified adding-machine?’
Roderick sat up straight. ‘Is that it? I can’t go to Communion because I’m just an adding machine? Because who says robots are just adding — boy, I’m not an adding-machine, boy, I’m as good as anybody…’
After a pause, Father Warren smiled. ‘Exactly. You’re as good as anybody because you have an immortal soul. You’re human, right?’
‘I — guess so, Father.’
‘And not a robot?’
‘No I’m still a robot only I’m a human rob—’
‘You’re impossible, that’s what you are! I give up — no I don’t, I’ll see you back here after the holidays. God’s peace be with you.’
But it was Father Warren who could find no peace. Long after the little machine-boy had rattled and bumped his way out of the room, he sat contemplating his own hands, listening to the furious gunfire from the basement. Finally he got up and looked for a book. His hand, the colour of beeswax, passed over religious volumes and came to the science fiction. At last he took down Screwtape Letters and read:
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive or unhealthy interest in them.
The pin-scratch began to itch.
XVII
The lights were on at Holy Trinity School, and a procession of cars led past the sign TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED to discharge their peculiar passengers at the back door: bearded little boys, girls with wings, a miniature Roman soldier bearing a golden kazoo, adults toting bales of straw, tinsel ropes and foolish grins. Sister Filomena, the principal, stood in the hall like a traffic cop, directing boys to one room, girls to another, adults to a pile of folding chairs and on into the gymnasium.
‘No, that way Mrs Grogan… well I’m very sorry Mary, but if you can’t keep track of your own halo… Christmas Mrs Roberts, yes, the Wise Men go on right after… nice to see you too, the… DANIEL GROGAN! Shepherds do not behave like… popcorn balls? How nice Mrs Goun, I’m sure after the perf… third on the right, see Sister Mary Olaf, Mary… Merry Chris… DANIEL! Will you stop that this minute or do we take your crook away… Ah here’s little Roger, hello Mr Wood Mrs Wood is that his costume?’
‘And the other box is a present,’ said Roderick. ‘For Sister—’
‘How nice, thoughtful only you’d better run along and change now…’
‘Ma made my costume, boy you oughta see—’
‘Yes fine, you just run along…’
She divided him from Ma and Pa, who went to squat in the dark gym with all the other parents, the men coughing and creaking their folding chairs, the women fanning themselves with programmes. Roderick left his costume in the boys’ dressing-room and went to find Sister Mary Martha.
The lower hall was full of action: two shepherds fencing with their crooks, a choirboy with a bloody nose trying to cure it at the drinking fountain, the front half of an ass trying to get through a door held shut by a fat angel, a halo being used for a Frisbee (which it was), someone wearing a giant foil-covered star trying to bite someone who was pinching someone who was trying to kick the doll from the arms of someone in blue…
But upstairs it was quiet and dark, except for the light shining out of Father O’Bride’s office door.
‘…yeah, yeah, look Andy don’t do me any more favours, I distinctly said candles on the phone today I get the invoice for a gross, what would I do with a gross of sandals? Think we got a discalced order here or what? No I didn’t say discount order, skip it, listen — listen will you? What I’m tryina do here is real big league stuff, I’m tryina put together a whole package look, forget about that Taiwan crap, this has gotta be up-market stuff, devotion — are you listening? Look it’s a kit. see, a complete home package of devotional uh products, not just the Mass kit but a whole host of, range of… that’s it, you got it. We figure the average family size is four, so that means four digital rosaries, you got that? Okay, four kneeling pads… sure that’s okay if they don’t look too Ay-rab… yeah okay… now, yeah you got the rest of it, the hologram portrait of Saint Ant — better make it Patrick, the market research newsletters all say Anthony’s downmarket this year…’
Roderick passed along, down the front stairs, and found Sister Mary Martha in her usual place, on all fours. In the gloom, Roderick could just make out her frail figure, the skinny hand gripping an electric hand-polisher that moved back and forth over the same old spot.
‘Hi Sister, gee it’s dark down here. How the heck can you see what you’re doing? Gee I hope you get it done in time to see the play. It’s neat, all about this metallic conception I guess and how the wise men and the sheep men get together to look at this star because they, because somebody didn’t count it in the census. Pa says about censuses what it is they figure if they can just count everybody once, they figure they got it made. He says what they want is to keep the population down to zero, everybody being just a big nothing. He says the whole point of science is people controlling birth and death. Only I guess in those days they didn’t have birth-control so they had to send out soldiers with swords to cut up all these babies. I guess we don’t get to do that part.
‘Anyway I gotta go soon because I’m one of the wise men, I bring in the Frankenst — frankincense. So here’s a Christmas present for you. I made it myself. Should I open it for you? Here, see? It’s a rosary.’
The figure did not look up. Roderick sat on the step and held out the string of beads. ‘Ma says they got it all wrong about Our Lady giving the first rosary to St Dominic. She says really it was Lady Godiva gave it to the Benedictines. Ever hear that story? No?
‘Well see it was in England and they had this tax problem just like Caesar Augustus, you know? And this Lady Godiva’s husband was the tax collector and he was so mean she felt sorry for all the poor folks paying these taxes, so she did a strip in front of everybody. So her husband said he was sorry and he built this big monastary and then she gave them the first rosary. Only maybe that wasn’t the first one either even though it was a hundred years before Dominic, because Ma says the Hindus had rosaries a long time before that, 32 beads for Shiva and 64 beads for Vishnu, what do you think?’
The figure did not look up. ‘Well, Pa doesn’t like religion much, he always says the collection’s the most important part of it, you know? He sounds a lot like this other guy I heard once, who said religion’s all just counting and numbers, telling the beads like a bank teller. Number magic he said. Number magic. He said if you want to go to Heaven get a big goddarn computer. Sister?’