Clifford D. Simak
All the Traps of Earth
The inventory list was long. On its many pages, in his small and precise script, he had listed furniture, paintings, china, silverware and all the rest of it — all the personal belongings that had been accumulated by the Barringtons through a long family history.
And now that he had reached the end of it, he noted down himself, the last item of them all:
One domestic robot, Richard Daniel, antiquated but in good repair.
He laid the pen aside and shuffled all the inventory sheets together and stacked them in good order, putting a paper weight upon them — the little exquisitely carved ivory paper weight that aunt Hortense had picked up that last visit she had made to Peking.
And having done that, his job came to an end.
He shoved back the chair and rose from the desk and slowly walked across the living room, with all its clutter of possessions from the family's past. There, above the mantel, hung the sword that ancient Jonathon had worn in the War Between the States, and below it, on the mantelpiece itself, the cup the Commodore had won with his valiant yacht, and the jar of moon-dust that Tony had brought back from Man's fifth landing on the Moon, and the old chronometer that had come from the long-scrapped family spacecraft that had plied the asteroids.
And all around the room, almost cheek by jowl, hung the family portraits, with the old dead faces staring out into the world that they had helped to fashion.
And not a one of them from the last six hundred years, thought Richard Daniel, staring at them one by one, that he had not known.
There, to the right of the fireplace, old Rufus Andrew Barrington, who had been a judge some two hundred years ago. And to the right of Rufus, Johnson Joseph Barrington, who had headed up that old lost dream of mankind, the Bureau of Paranormal Research. There, beyond the door that led out to the porch, was the scowling pirate face of Danley Barrington, who had first built the family fortune.
And many others — administrator, adventurer, corporation chief. All good men and true.
But this was at an end. The family had run out.
Slowly Richard Daniel began his last tour of the house — the family room with its cluttered living space, the den with its old mementos, the library and its rows of ancient books, the dining hall in which the crystal and the china shone and sparkled, the kitchen gleaming with the copper and aluminum and the stainless steel, and the bedrooms on the second floor, each of them with its landmarks of former occupants. And finally, the bedroom where old Aunt Hortense had finally died, at long last closing out the line of Barringtons.
The empty dwelling held a not-quite-haunted quality, the aura of a house that waited for the old gay life to take up once again. But it was a false aura. All the portraits, all the china and the silverware, everything within the house would be sold at public auction to satisfy the debts. The rooms would be stripped and the possessions would be scattered and, as a last indignity, the house itself be sold.
Even he, himself, Richard Daniel thought, for he was chattel, too. He was there with all the rest of it, the final item on the inventory.
Except that what they planned to do with him was worse than simple sale. For he would be changed before he was offered up for sale. No one would be interested in putting up good money for him as he stood. And, besides, there was the law — the law that said no robot could legally have continuation of a single life greater than a hundred years.
And he had lived in a single life six times a hundred years. He had gone to see a lawyer and the lawyer had been sympathetic, but had held forth no hope.
'Technically,' he had told Richard Daniel in his short, clipped lawyer voice, 'you are at this moment much in violation of the statute. I completely fail to see how your family got away with it.'
'They liked old things,' said Richard Daniel. 'And, besides, I was very seldom seen. I stayed mostly in the house. I seldom ventured out.'
'Even so,' the lawyer said, 'there are such things as records. There must be a file on you…'
'The family,' explained Richard Daniel, 'in the past had many influential friends. You must understand, sir, that the Barringtons, before they fell upon hard times, were quite prominent in politics and in many other matters.'
The lawyer grunted knowingly.
'What I can't quite understand,' he said, 'is why you should object so bitterly. You'll not be changed entirely. You'll still be Richard Daniel.'
'I would lose my memories, would I not?'
'Yes, of course you would. But memories are not too important. And you'd collect another set.'
'My memories are dear to me,' Richard Daniel told him.
'They are all I have. After some six hundred years, they are my sole worthwhile possession. Can you imagine, counselor, what it means to spend six centuries with one family?'
'Yes, I think I can,' agreed the lawyer. 'But now, with the family gone, isn't it just possible the memories may prove painful?'
'They're a comfort. A sustaining comfort. They make me feel important. They give me perspective and a niche.'
'But don't you understand? You'll need no comfort, no importance once you're reoriented. You'll be brand new. All that you'll retain is a certain sense of basic identity — that they cannot take away from you even if they wished. There'll be nothing to regret. There'll be no leftover guilts, no frustrated aspirations, no old loyalties to hound you.'
'I must be myself,' Richard Daniel insisted stubbornly. 'I've found a depth of living, a background against which my living has some meaning. I could not face being anybody else.'
'You'd be far better off,' the lawyer said wearily. 'You'd have a better body. You'd have better mental tools. You'd be more intelligent.'
Richard Daniel got up from the chair. He saw it was no use.
'You'll not inform on me?' he asked.
'Certainly not,' the lawyer said. 'So far as I'm concerned, you aren't even here.'
'Thank you,' said Richard Daniel. 'How much do I owe you?'
'Not a thing,' the lawyer told him. 'I never make a charge to anyone who is older than five hundred.'
He had meant it as a joke, but Richard Daniel did not smile. He had not felt like smiling.
At the door he turned around.
'Why?' he was going to ask. 'Why this silly law.'
But he did not have to ask — it was not hard to see.
Human vanity, he knew. No human being lived much longer than a hundred years, so neither could a robot. But a robot, on the other hand, was too valuable simply to be junked at the end of a hundred years of service, so there was this law providing for the periodic breakup of the continuity of each robot's life. And thus no human need undergo the psychological indignity of knowing that his faithful serving man might manage to outlive him by several thousand years.
It was illogical, but humans were illogical.
Illogical, but kind. Kind in many different ways.
Kind, sometimes, as the Barringtons had been kind, thought Richard Daniel. Six hundred years of kindness. It was a prideful thing to think about. They had even given him a double name. There weren't many robots nowadays who had double names. It was a special mark of affection and respect.
The lawyer having failed him, Richard Daniel had sought another source of help. Now, thinking back on it, standing in the room where Hortense Barrington had died, he was sorry that he'd done it. For he had embarrassed the religico almost unendurably. It had been easy for the lawyer to tell him what he had. Lawyers had the statutes to determine their behavior, and thus suffered little from agonies of personal decision.
But a man of the cloth is kind if he is worth his salt. And this one had been kind instinctively as well as professionally, and that had made it worse.
