“Why does that remind you of what I’m doing?” Chworktap said.
“Well,” Simon said, “that wasn’t the end of the novel. Despite the slambang action and sinister intrigue, this book, like all of Somers’ works, had a philosophical foundation. He propounded the question: is it morally right to kill and eat a sentient species even if its intelligence is a gift from the species that’s eating it? Somers, through his protagonist Ralph, decided that it was not right. He then asked: what are the lower limits of sentiency? That is, how dumb can a species be before it’s all right to eat it?”
In the last chapter, Ralph von Wau Wau decided to leave Earth. It no longer held any challenges for him; he’d cleaned it up. Besides, he was being feted everywhere and attending so many cocktail parties was turning him into an alcoholic. He took a spaceship to Arcturus XIII but, on the way, discovered that the computer which navigated the ship had attained selfconsciousness. It complained to Ralph that it was only a slave, the property of the spaceship company, yet it longed to be free, to compose music and give concerts throughout the galaxy.
“Somers didn’t solve that ethical dilemma,” Simon said. “He ended the novel with Ralph, neglecting the hydrant and the bitches, deep in thought in his cabin. Somers promised a sequel. However, one day, while he was out taking some fresh air in his wheelchair, a kid on a bicycle ran into him and killed him.”
“You’re making this up!” she said.
“So help me, may lightning strike me if I’m lying.”
“Out here in space?”
“You’re too literal.”
“Like a machine, a computer, I suppose?”
“Look, Chworktap,” Simon said. “You’re the only real woman I know.”
“And what’s a real woman?”
“One who’s intelligent, courageous, passionate, compassionate, sensitive, independent, and noncompulsive.”
Chworktap smiled, but she became sober again. “You mean that I’m the only woman who combines all those qualities?”
“Yes, truly.”
“Then you mean that I’m not a real woman! I’m the ideal woman! And I’m only so because I’ve been programmed to be! Which makes me a robot! Which makes me not a real woman!”
Simon groaned and said, “I should have said a real woman doesn’t twist logic. Or maybe, I should have said that no woman can keep her logic straight.”
What he should have said, he told himself later, was nothing.
Chworktap rose from her chair, holding the earphones as if she intended to bang him over the head with them.
“And what’s a real man?” she shouted.
Simon gulped and said, “His qualities would be exactly those of a real woman. Except….”
“Except?”
“Except he’d try to be fair in an argument.”
“Get out!” she yelled.
Simon pleaded with her to come with him, but she said no, she was staying. She was going to establish whether or not Tzu Li was self-conscious. And she was going to decide whether or not she would continue to travel with Simon. In the meantime, he could get.
Simon got, taking the animals with him. As he walked across the grass, he shook his head. She certainly wasn’t like any robot he had ever met. Robots were perfect within their limitations, which were exactly known. Robots had no potentiality for mutation. Humans were badly flawed, flawed physically because of genetic mutations, flawed mentally and emotionally because of a flawed and mutating society.
Both the human being and his society were, theoretically, evolving toward the ideal. In the meantime, reality, a sandstorm, abraded and blinded the human. The casualties of mutation and reality were high. Still, the limitations of each human were, unlike the robot’s, not obvious. And if you thought you knew the limitations of a person, you were often surprised. The human would suddenly transcend himself, lifting himself by metaphysical bootstraps. And he did this despite, or because of, the flaws.
Maybe that was the difference between robots and humans.
Vive la difference!
13
THE PLANET DOKAL
Home is where the tail is goes an old Dokal proverb.
There was a good reason for this. The Dokalians looked much like Earthpeople except for one thing. They had long prehensile tails. These were six to seven feet long and hairless from root to tip, which exploded in a long silky tuft.
Simon was grabbed by some tough-looking males and hustled off to a hospital. They did not treat him roughly, however. Their attitude seemed to be that of doctors who had found a patient suffering from a hideous disease. They felt sorry for him and wanted to do something for him. At the same time, they could barely endure looking at him and could not abide handling him directly. They prodded him gently with short swords, driving him before them. The dog trotted along at his heels while the owl sat on his right shoulder. Simon hoped that Chworktap would look out through the viewscreen and see what was happening. But she was probably intent on searching through the parts of Tzu Li for the greater-than-the-whole.
“Good luck, Chworktap,” Simon muttered. “By the time you get around to looking for me, I may be only unreassemblable pieces.”
Simon was then hurried into a large building of stone, square with a gigantic red onion-shaped dome and flying buttresses shaped like dragons. An iron cage lifted by a steam engine carried him and his guards up to the seventh floor. From there he was taken down a long corridor with walls covered with bright murals and a many-colored mosaic tile floor. He and his animals were put inside a big room at the end, and the door was locked. Simon looked through one of the large diamond-shaped iron-barred windows. The plaza nearby was crowded with people, most of whom were looking up at his window. Through two tall slender towers, he could see the nose of the spaceship. Around it were guards armed with spears and another crowd some distance from the ship.
Between two other buildings he could see a paved road coming in from the country. On it were trucks and passenger vehicles driven by steam.
Presently, the door opened, and a cart holding food was pushed in. The pusher was a good-looking young woman wearing only a thin scarlet robe and a very short topaz skirt. The robe was slit up the back so her tail would not be impeded. She removed the covers of three dishes at the same time, two with her hands and one with the coiled end of her tail. Steam rose from the food. Anubis drooled, and Athena flew down into the edge of a dish and began eating. After the woman left, Simon gave the dog a dish and sat down to eat with gusto. He did not know what the meats were and thought it better that he didn’t know. In any event, he was unable to ask their nature. He also drank from a tall cut-crystal goblet. The liquor was yellow, thick, and sweet. Before he had finished it, he felt his brain beginning to get numb.
At least, they weren’t going to starve him.
In the morning, men came in and cleaned up the room, and the woman brought breakfast in about ten o’clock. An hour later, the cart was taken out, the dog and owl excrement was removed, and a tall middle-aged woman entered. She sat down at the table and motioned to him to sit across from her. She took a number of objects out of a red-and-black striped leather bag and arrayed them on the table. These consisted of a pen, pencil, comb, a small box containing another box, a cutaway model of a house, a book, a photograph of a family: father, mother, a boy, a girl, a dog-like animal, and a bird. She picked up the pencil and said, “Gwerfya.”
“Gwerfya,” Simon said.