The Complete Roderick (33 page)

‘No, listen –’

‘I mean like nobody ever pays attention to the laws except like cops and Sheriff Benson and maybe lawyers like Perry Ma – What was
that?’
He referred to a series of rapid explosions that seemed to come from the floor.

‘Nothing, just Father O’Bride getting in some target practice, he’s got a little gallery rigged up in the base, but wait, listen, the point is,
in real life there are no robots,
not real thinking, humanoid creatures. They’re all in stories. And in these stories, they have to obey the Three Laws. Right?’

‘Maybe, but even in stories they have to have big arguments about laws, look at Perry Mason, holy cow they argue all the time about whether somebody did or didn’t break this here law, holy cow Mr Swann makes all his money just telling people how to get around the law.’

‘Roderick, let me explain: there are two kinds of law. You’re talking about legal statutes, yes of course people can break those. Just as they can break moral laws like the Ten Commandments. But there’s also another kind of law, natural law. That includes things like the law of gravity, or the law that says 2 + 2 = 4, or the law that says if Tom is taller than Dick and Dick is taller than Harry, then Tom must be taller than Harry. And you see, nobody
on earth can break laws like those. And so robots are programmed in such a way that the Three Laws are their natural laws. They can’t be broken.’

‘Yeah but how? How can they program a robot to obey some dumb law he can’t even understand? Like first thing he needs to know who’s a human being and who ain’t. Like I heard this old guy by the post office saying the president was a son of a bitch and somebody ought to shoot him. I’m just saying what he said, Father. But with these dumb laws a robot could hear that and get a gun and go shoot the president because he’s only a dog so it’s okay.’

‘Now you’re just being silly. Everybody knows the president is human.’

‘Yeah, but the Robotic Law don’t say how a robot’s supposed to find out who’s human and who’s robots, like what’s he supposed to do, go see Mr Swann every time he wants to stick a pin in a doll or –’

‘Excuse me for a minute …’ The priest hurried out, lifting his skirts as he thumped down the basement stairs into the dark gallery.

Father O’Bride was a shadowy alien, with a pair of bright orange ear-protectors standing out from the sides of his head like insect eyes. And wasn’t that a picture of the Pope he was shooting at?

‘What? Whatsa matter?’ O’Bride took off the ear-protectors and automatically kissed their strap before putting them down. ‘You still crapping around tryina convert that Wood brat?’

‘He … gets on my nerves sometimes.’

‘Little smart-ass, needs fifty laps, that’s what he needs.’

‘… tried everything, I’ve tried talking to him about Space-ship Earth even, how if he were an alien landing here –’

‘Excuse me while I throw up. I can’t stand all that space crap, can’t stand that kid either. You know what?’

‘– how the alien would wonder Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?’

‘Yeah but you know what?’

‘But listen, I told him we came from the mind of God, and he – he just said, “Pa thinks we’re all apes who got tired of picking fleas and grunting” not even seven years old and he –’

‘Yeah but you know what I think?’

‘Where are we going, to the destiny God prepared for us, he came right out with how his mother says when people die they turn into ether and rise up through seven astral planes –’

‘You know what I think? I think the kid
is
a darn robot.’

Bzzt bzz-bzzz bzzzt bzz?
said the telephone on the desk. Phones that were still cradled shouldn’t be saying anything. Roderick crept closer and listened.

‘… sure this thing’s on? I can’t hear a fucking …’

‘Look, I know my stuff, not like that hick O’Smith … hire a fucking amateur and then wonder what went wrong, man they never learn …’

‘… ill don’t see why we don’t just trash him now, hot trail gets cold while you wait for them motherfucking tankthinkers to make up their fu … ders is orders I guess … Hey I still can’t …’

‘… some kinda bionic boy or what? Hey Pete? What …?’

‘Bionic my ass, all a cover for something … unny thing you know the first real bionic man wasn’t even scratched in that plane crash, you know? Like he was just … in the hospital … started picking up infections … everything going wrong, one part after another … next thing you know … Hey I can’t hear a damn thing on this …’

‘… short of agents anyway, too much of this crap going on … tired of freezing my ass off in panel trucks … extra help on that whatsit, Kratt … in that thermos?’

Roderick looked out of the window. There was a panel truck parked across the road. The sign said
O’Bannion Flowers
but there wasn’t any O’Bannion Flowers in town. Okay, so G-men or something watching him, and they wanted to trash him or something, put him in the hospital where he could pick up infections like the six million –

‘… with priests you gotta go careful, see? Priests get headlines … Anyway they want we should surveil to pick up all the contacts … maybe I got the wires crossed or … was that a shot?’

Down the street, the wretched pick-up of Mr Ogilvy back-fired again. As usual, it was wobbling and going too fast, cutting a sine-wave pattern along the route from the public school to Mr O.’s favourite bar. People liked to pretend that it was the old pick-up
that knew the way, that Mr O. just put his foot down and went to sleep.

The crash and the flaming explosion weren’t quite as good as on TV. There was hardly any noise at all.

By the time Father Warren came back, the fire trucks and tow trucks were just leaving.

‘I’m sorry I took so long,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t resist trying a couple of shots with Father O’Bride’s handgun. Not much good, I guess, but – now where were we? I was about to say, robots will be programmed to recognize people. After all, people recognize each other, don’t they?’

‘Only you don’t recognize that I’m a robot,’ said Roderick. ‘Sometimes, boy, I don’t even know myself what I am, Mr Swann says it’ll take a lot of money to even find out if I’m a person in law – or just one of these legal statues like you said – or if I’m a dog or a knife or what – but look, even to work these laws you gotta have some way of telling robots from people. You gotta have these other unnatural laws and Mr Swann and Perry Mason to work them out, boy, there goes your logic. I mean if a robot hurts somebody and says I thought he was just a robot, boy, old Perry could really get the District Attorney hung up, holy –’

Father Warren banged a slim fist on the desk.
‘Assume
robots can tell people from robots,
assume
that. Then the Three Laws are perfectly logical, right?’

‘No but I mean that’s just a start, the robot’s gotta figure out what harm and injury mean, more legal stuff see, it’s right back to court again with the Districk –’

‘Assume
we’ve got that worked out too.
Then
do you see how logical –?’

‘Wait, no, soom sure, soom all that stuff for just the first law, just the first part of the first law. I didn’t even mention how’s a robot surgeon gonna operate without cutting into anybody, how’s a robot cop gonna arrest anybody, how’s a robot soldier gonna kill anybody – okay so soom we don’t have robots doing any jobs like that, we still got the second part, he can’t let anybody come to harm by inaction that’s not doing nothing, just like not even existing, only how does that tie in with that clause 3 there I mean the third law?’

‘Afraid I don’t follow you. What – just a minute.’ Father Warren took a handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose. Then he went to the window and stared out at the black-and-white garden. ‘Getting dark.’ He went around the room, turning on lights. ‘I think I see what you’re driving at. If the robot doesn’t protect its own existence first and foremost, how can it be around later to prevent some human coming to harm?’

‘Yeah, Father, that’s it. Because there’s no time in these laws, it’s always something right away like somebody tries to shoot a guy and the robot gets in between. But take a robot farmer, he knows somebody might starve if he stopped work so he’s
really
gotta perteck himself, for ever. But in these other laws it says that if some kid just comes along and tells him to go jump off the highest building in the world he’s gotta go and do it. Is that logical?’

‘Maybe not, Roderick. Maybe not. But –’

‘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.

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.