The Seeds of Time
- Автор: Уиндем Джон Паркс Лукас Бейнон Харрис
- Язык: английский
- Год: Michael Joseph
- ISBN: 0-7181-0362-9
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Seeds of Time». Краткое содержание книги:
‘Good day, madam,’ it said. ‘Good day, sir. I shall be happy to serve you.’
‘Thank you, Hester,’ Janet said, as she leaned back against the cushion placed behind her. Not that it was necessary to thank a robot, but she had a theory that if you did not practise politeness with robots you soon forgot it with other people.
And, anyway, Hester was no ordinary robot. She was not even dressed as a parlourmaid any more. In four months she had become a friend, a tireless, attentive friend. From the first Janet had found it difficult to believe that she was only a mechanism, and as the days passed she had become more and more of a person. The fact that she consumed electricity instead of food came to seem little more than a foible. The time she couldn’t stop walking in a circle, and the other time when something went wrong with her vision so that she did everything a foot to the right of where she ought to have been doing it, these things were just indispositions such as anyone might have, and the robot-mechanic who came to adjust her paid his call much like any other doctor. Hester was not only a person; she was preferable company to many.
‘I suppose,’ said Janet, settling back in her chair, ‘that you must think me a poor, weak thing?’
What one must not expect from Hester was euphemism.
‘Yes,’ she said, directly. But then she added: ‘I think all humans are poor, weak things. It is the way they are made. One must be sorry for them.’
Janet had long ago given up thinking things like: “That’ll be the compassion circuit speaking,’ or trying to imagine the computing, selecting, associating, and shunting that must be going on to produce such a remark. She took it as she might from-well, say, a foreigner. She said:
‘Compared with robots we must seem so, I suppose. You are so strong and untiring, Hester. If you knew how I envy you that ‘
Hester said, matter of factly:
‘We were designed: you were just accidental. It is your misfortune, not your fault.’
‘You’d rather be you than me?’ asked Janet.
‘Certainly,’ Hester told her. ‘We are stronger. We don’t have to have frequent sleep to recuperate. We don’t have to carry an unreliable chemical factory inside us. We don’t have to grow old and deteriorate. Human beings are so clumsy and fragile and so often unwell because something is not working properly. If anything goes wrong with us, or is broken, it doesn’t hurt and is easily replaced. And you have all kinds of words like pain, and suffering, and unhappiness, and weariness that we have to be taught to understand, and they don’t seem to us to be useful things to have. I feel very sorry that you must have these things and be so uncertain and so fragile. It disturbs my compassion circuit.’
‘Uncertain and fragile,’ Janet repeated. ‘Yes, that’s how I feel.’
‘Humans have to live so precariously,’ Hester went on. ‘If my arm or leg should be crushed I can have a new one in a few minutes, but a human would have agony for a long time, and not even a new limb at the end of it-just a faulty one, if he is lucky. That isn’t as bad as it used to be because in designing us you learned how to make good arms and legs, much stronger and better than the old ones, People would be much more sensible to have a weak arm or leg replaced at once, but they don’t seem to want to if they can possibly keep the old ones.’
‘You mean they can be grafted on? I didn’t know that,’
Janet said. ‘I wish it were only arms or legs that’s wrong with me. I don’t think I should hesitate….’ She sighed. ‘The doctor wasn’t encouraging this morning, Hester. You heard what he said? I’ve been losing ground: must rest more. I don’t believe he does expect me to get any stronger. He was just trying to cheer me up before…. He had a funny sort of look after he’d examined me…. But all he said was rest. What’s the good of being alive if it’s only rest-rest-rest… ? And there’s poor George. What sort of a life is it for him, and he’s so patient with me, so sweet…. I’d rather anything than go on feebly like this. I’d sooner die….’
Janet went on talking, more to herself than to the patient Hester standing by. She talked herself into tears. Then, presently, she looked up.
‘Oh, Hester, if you were human I couldn’t bear it; I think I’d hate you for being so strong and so well-but I don’t, Hester. You’re so kind and so patient when I’m silly, like this. I believe you’d cry with me to keep me company if you could.’
‘I would if I could,’ the robot agreed. ‘My compassion circuit ‘
‘Oh, no!’ Janet protested. ‘It can’t be just that. You’ve a heart somewhere, Hester. You must have.’
‘I expect it is more reliable than a heart,’ said Hester.
She stepped a little closer, stooped down, and lifted Janet up as if she weighed nothing at all.
‘You’ve tired yourself out, Janet, dear,’ she told her. ‘I’ll take you upstairs; you’ll be able to sleep a little before he gets back.’
Janet could feel the robot’s arms cold through her dress, but the coldness did not trouble her any more, she was aware only that they were strong, protecting arms around her. She said:
‘Oh, Hester, you are such a comfort, you know what I ought to do.’ She paused, then she added miserably: ‘I know what he thinks-the doctor, I mean. I could see it. He just thinks I’m going to go on getting weaker and weaker until one day I’ll fade away and die…. I said I’d sooner die … but I wouldn’t, Hester. I don’t want to die….’
The robot rocked her a little, as if she were a child.
‘There, there, dear. It’s not as bad as that-nothing like,’ she told her. ‘You mustn’t think about dying. And you mustn’t cry any more, it’s not good for you, you know. Besides, you don’t want him to see you’ve been crying.’
‘I’ll try not to,’ agreed Janet obediently, as Hester carried her out of the room and up the stairs.
The hospital reception-robot looked up from the desk.
‘My wife,’ George said, ‘I rang you up about an hour ago.’
The robot’s face took on an impeccable expression of professional sympathy.
‘Yes, Mr Shand. I’m afraid it has been a shock for you, but as I told you, your house-robot did quite the right thing to send her here at once.’
‘I’ve tried to get on to her own doctor, but he’s away,’ George told her.
‘You don’t need to worry about that, Mr Shand. She has been examined, and we have had all her records sent over from the hospital she was in before. The operation has been provisionally fixed for tomorrow, but of course we shall need your consent.’
George hesitated. ‘May I see the doctor in charge of her?’
‘He isn’t in the hospital at the moment, I’m afraid.’
‘Is it-absolutely necessary?’ George asked, after a pause.
The robot looked at him steadily, and nodded.
‘She must have been growing steadily weaker for some months now,’ she said.
George nodded.
‘The only alternative is that she will grow weaker still, and have more pain before the end,’ she told him.
George stared at the wall blankly for some seconds.
‘I see,’ he said bleakly.
He picked up a pen in a shaky hand and signed the form that she put before him. He gazed at it awhile without seeing it.
‘She-she’ll have-a good chance?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ the robot told him. ‘There is never complete absence of risk, of course, but she has a better than seventy-per-cent likelihood of complete success.’
George sighed, and nodded.
‘I’d like to see her,’ he said.
The robot pressed a bell-push.
‘You may see her,’ she said. ‘But I must ask you not to disturb her. She’s asleep now, and it’s better for her not to be woken.’