The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories

“Yes, of course!”

“And they were not alone in the ground car, either. In one of his calls, Madarian said, ‘We were chauffeured from the airport to the main administration building,’ and I suppose I am right in concluding that if he was chauffeured, then that was because there was a chauffeur, a human driver, in the car.”

“Good God!”

“The trouble with you, Peter, is that when you think of a witness to a planetological statement, you think of planetologists. You divide up human beings into categories, and despise and dismiss most. A robot cannot do that. The First Law says, ‘A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’ Any human being. That is the essence of the robotic view of life. A robot makes no distinction. To a robot, all men are truly equal, and to a robopsychologist who must perforce deal with men at the robotic level, all men are truly equal, too.

“It would not occur to Madarian to say a truck driver had heard the statement. To you a truck driver is not a scientist but is a mere animate adjunct of a truck, but to Madarian he was a man and a witness. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

Bogert shook his head in disbelief. “But you are sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. How else can you explain the other point; Madarian’s remark about the startling of the witness? Jane was crated, wasn’t she? But she was not deactivated. According to the records, Madarian was always adamant against ever deactivating an intuitive robot. Moreover, Jane-5, like any of the Janes, was extremely non-talkative. Probably it never occurred to Madarian to order her to remain quiet within the crate; and it was within the crate that the pattern finally fell into place. Naturally she began to talk. A beautiful contralto voice suddenly sounded from inside the crate. If you were the truck driver, what would you do at that point? Surely you’d be startled. It’s a wonder he didn’t crash.”

“But if the truck driver was the witness, why didn’t he come forward—”

“Why? Can he possibly know that anything crucial had happened, that what he heard was important? Besides, don’t you suppose Madarian tipped him well and asked him not to say anything? Would you want the news to spread that an activated robot was being transported illegally over the Earth’s surface?”

“Well, will he remember what was said?”

“Why not? It might seem to you, Peter, that a truck driver, one step above an ape in your view, can’t remember. But truck drivers can have brains, too. The statements were most remarkable and the driver may well have remembered some. Even if he gets some of the letters and numbers wrong, we’re dealing with a finite set, you know, the fifty-five hundred stars or star systems within eighty light-years or so—I haven’t looked up the exact number. You can make the correct choices. And if needed, you will have every excuse to use the Psycho-probe —”

The two men stared at her. Finally Bogert, afraid to believe, whispered, “But how can you be sure?”

For a moment, Susan was on the point of saying: Because I’ve called Flagstaff, you fool, and because I spoke to the truck driver, and because he told me what he had heard, and because I’ve checked with the computer at Flagstaff and got the only three stars that fit the information, and because I have those names in my pocket.

But she didn’t. Let him go through it all himself. Carefully, she rose to her feet, and said sardonically, “How can I be sure? . . . Call it feminine intuition.”

***

Do not fear, Gentle Readers, that my misunderstanding of Judy-Lynn’s intentions destroyed a friendship. The Asimovs and the del Reys live less than a mile apart, and frequent each other often. Although Judy- Lynn never hesitates to bounce me off the nearest wall, we all are, have been, and will remain, the very best of friends.

Sometime in mid-1969, Doubleday called me up to ask if I would write a science fiction story that could serve as the basis of a movie. I didn’t want to, because I don’t like to get tangled up with the visual media directly. They’ve got money, but that’s all they’ve got. But Doubleday pressed me and I don’t like to refuse Doubleday. I agreed.

Then eventually I had dinner with a very pleasant gentleman who was involved with the motion picture company and who wanted to discuss the story with me.

He told me he wanted an undersea setting and that suited me. He then went on to describe with considerable enthusiasm the nature of the characters he wanted in the story, and the events he thought would be necessary. As he spoke, my spirits sank. The fact was that I didn’t want the hero he described; I didn’t want, with even greater intensity, the heroine he described; and most of all, I didn’t want the events he described.

I have always found myself unable, however, to express a negative reaction to people, especially face to face. I did my best to smile and act interested.

The next day I called up Doubleday. It might not be too late. I asked if the contract had been signed. Yes, indeed, it had, and a large advance had been paid over, of which most was to be turned over to me.

I didn’t think there was room for my spirits to sink lower, but they did. I had to write the story.

“Well, then,” I said, “if what I write is not acceptable, would you return the advance?”

“We don’t have to,” I was told. “The advance is unconditional. If they don’t like your story, we still keep the advance.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t want it that way. If what I do is unacceptable, I want the entire advance returned. Take your share of it out of my royalties.”

Doubleday doesn’t like to refuse me anything either, so they agreed, although they made it plain they would return their share and not take anything out of my royalties.

That meant I was under no obligation to do anything but my best, as I conceived that best to be. On September 1, 1969, I began to write WATERCLAP and I did it my way. I knew exactly what the movie people wanted and I didn’t give it to them. Naturally, they rejected it when it was done and every cent they had advanced was returned to them.

This was a huge relief to me, you can well imagine.

And there is a world outside Hollywood, too. Ejler Jakobsson of Galaxy liked the story as I had written it, so it appeared in the May 1970 issue of that magazine. He paid me far less than the movie people would have, but then, all he bought was the story.

Waterclap

Stephen Demerest looked at the textured sky. He kept looking at it and found the blue opaque and revolting.

Unwarily, he had looked at the Sun, for there was nothing to blank it out automatically, and then he had snatched his eyes away in panic. He wasn’t blinded; just a few afterimages. Even the Sun was washed out.

Involuntarily, he thought of Ajax’s prayer in Homer’s Iliad. They were fighting over the body of Patroclus in the mist and Ajax said, “O Father Zeus, save the Achaeans out of this mist! Make the sky clean, grant us to see with our eyes! Kill us in the light, since it is thy pleasure to kill us!”

Demerest thought: Kill us in the light—

Kill us in the clear light on the Moon, where the sky is black and soft, where the stars shine brightly, where the cleanliness and purity of vacuum make all things sharp.

—Not in this low-clinging, fuzzy blue.

He shuddered. It was an actual physical shudder that shook his lanky body, and he was annoyed. He was going to die. He was sure of it. And it wouldn’t be under the blue, either, come to think of it, but under the black— but a different black.

It was as though in answer to that thought that the ferry pilot, short, swarthy, crisp-haired, came up to him