He looked down at his sister. Behind him Mammy clucked approvingly. That’s nice when chilluns loves each other lak you an’ that lil baby,’ it whispered.
Doris was sound asleep, clutching her teddy-bear. It wriggled slightly and opened an eye to look at Sonny, but it didn’t say anything.
Sonny took a deep breath, leaned forwards and gently slipped the teddy-bear out of the bed.
It scrambled pathetically, trying to get free. Behind him Mammy whispered urgently: ‘Sonny! Now you let dat ole teddy-bear alone, you heah me?’
Sonny whispered, ‘I’m not hurting anything. Leave me alone, will you?’
‘Sonny!’
He clutched the little furry robot desperately around its middle. The stubby arms pawed at him, the furred feet scratched against his arms. It growled a tiny doll-bear growl, and whined, and suddenly his hands were wet with its real salt tears.
‘Sonny! Come on now, honey, you knows that’s Doris’s teddy. Aw, chile!’
He said, ‘It’s mine!’ It wasn’t his. He knew it wasn’t his. His was long gone, taken away from him when he was six because it was old, and because he had been six and six-year-olds had to have bigger, more elaborate companion-robots. It wasn’t even the same colour as his - it was brown, where his had been black and white. But it was cuddly and gently warm; and he had heard it whispering little make-believe stories to Doris. And he wanted it, very much.
Footsteps in the hall outside. A low-pitched pleading voice from the door: ‘Sonny, you must not interfere with your sister’s toys. One has obligations.’
He stood forlornly, holding the teddy-bear. ‘Go away, Mr. Chips!’
‘Really, Sonny! This isn’t proper behaviour. Please return the toy.’
He cried: ‘I won’t!’
Mammy, dark face pleading in the shadowed room, leaned towards him and tried to take it away from him. ‘Aw, honey, now you knows dat’s not -’
‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted. There was a gasp and a little cry from the bed, and Doris sat up and began to weep.
Well, they had their way. The little girl’s bedroom was suddenly filled with robots - and not only robots, for in a moment the butler robot appeared, its face stern and sorrowful, leading Sonny’s actual flesh-and-blood mother and father. Sonny made a terrible scene. He cried, and he swore at them childishly for being the unsuccessful clods they were; and they nearly wept too, because they were aware that their lack of standing was bad for the children.
But he couldn’t keep the teddy.
They got it away from him and marched him back to his room, where his father lectured him while his mother stayed behind to watch Mammy comfort the little girl. His father said: ‘Sonny, you’re a big boy now. We aren’t as well off as other people, but you have to help us. Don’t you know that, Sonny? We all have to do our part. Your mother and I’ll be up till midnight now, consuming, because you’ve interrupted us with this scene. Can’t you at least try to consume something bigger than a teddy-bear? It’s all right for Doris because she’s so little, but a big boy like you-’
‘I hate you!’ cried Sonny, and he turned his face to the wall.
They punished him, naturally. The first punishment was that they gave him an extra birthday party the week following.
The second punishment was even worse.
2
Later - much, much later, nearly a score of years - a man named Roger Garrick in a place named Fisherman’s Island walked into his hotel room.
The light didn’t go on.
The bellhop apologized. ‘We’re sorry, sir. We’ll have it attended to, if possible.’
‘If possible?’ Garrick’s eyebrows went up. The bellhop made putting in a new light tube sound like a major industrial operation. ‘All right.’ He waved the bellhop out of the room. It bowed and closed the door.
Garrick looked around him, frowning. One light tube more or less didn’t make an awful lot of difference; there was still the light from the sconces at the walls, from the reading lamps at the chairs and chaise longue and from the photomural on the long side of the room - to say nothing of the fact that it was broad, hot daylight outside and light poured through the windows. All the same, it was a new sensation to be in a room where the central lighting wasn’t on. He didn’t like it. It was - creepy.
A rap on the door. A girl was standing there, young, attractive, rather small. But a woman grown, it was apparent. ‘Mr. Garrick? Mr. Roosenburg is expecting you on the sun deck.’
‘All right.’ He rummaged around in the pile of luggage, looking for his briefcase. It wasn’t even sorted out! The bellhop had merely dumped the lot and left.
The girl said, ‘Is that what you’re looking for?’ He looked where she was pointing; it was his briefcase, behind another bag. ‘You’ll get used to that around here. Nothing in the right place, nothing working right. We’ve all got used to it.’
We. He looked at her sharply, but she was no robot; there was life, not the glow of electronic tubes, in her eyes. ‘Pretty bad, is it?’
She shrugged. ‘Let’s go see Mr. Roosenburg. I’m Kathryn Pender, by the way. I’m his statistician.’
He followed her out into the hall. ‘Statistician?’
She turned and smiled - a tight, grim smile of annoyance. ‘That’s right. Surprised?’
Garrick said slowly, ‘Well, it’s more a robot job. Of course, I’m not familiar with the practice in this sector…’
“You will be,’ she said shortly. ‘No, we aren’t taking the elevator. Mr. Roosenburg’s in a hurry to see you.’
‘But-’
She turned and glared at him. ‘Don’t you understand? Day before yesterday I took the elevator, and I was hung up between floors for an hour and a half. Something was going on at North Guardian, and it took all the power in the lines. Would it happen again today? I don’t know. But, believe me, an hour and a half is a long time to be hanging in an elevator.’ She turned and led him to the fire stairs. Over her shoulder she said: ‘Get it straight once and for all, Mr. Garrick. You’re in a disaster area here…Anyway, it’s only ten more flights.’
Ten flights.
Nobody climbed ten flights of stairs any more! Garrick was huffing and puffing before they were halfway, but the girl kept on ahead, light as a gazelle. Her skirt cut midway between hip and knees, and Garrick had plenty of opportunity to observe that her legs were attractively tanned. Even so, he couldn’t help looking around him. It was a robot’s-eye view of the hotel that he was getting; this was the bare wire armature that held up the confectionery suites and halls where the humans went. Garrick knew, as everyone absent-mindedly knew, that there were places like this behind the scenes everywhere. Belowstairs the robots worked; behind scenes, they moved about their errands and did their jobs. But nobody went there. It was funny about the backs of this girl’s knees; they were paler than the rest of the leg -
Garrick wrenched his mind back to his surroundings. Take the guard rail along the steps, for instance. It was wire-thin, frail-looking. No doubt it could bear any weight it was required to, but why couldn’t it look that way? The answer, obviously, was that robots did not have humanity’s built-in concepts of how strong a rail should look before they could believe it really was strong. If a robot should be in any doubt - and how improbable, that a robot should be in doubt! - it would perhaps reach out a sculptured hand and test it. Once. And then it would remember, and never doubt again; and it wouldn’t be continually edging towards the wall, away from the spider-strand between him and the vertical drop -