deteriorates. He begins to break the things that you should be breaking, to form the wrong decisions you should be forming—”
“That isn’t fair!”
“Perceveral, you seem to feel that we’re running some kind of sanitorium or self-aid program for your benefit. Well, we’re not. We’re interested only in getting the job that we bought and paid for. The job, let me add, which you chose as an alternative to suicide.”
“All right!” Perceveral shouted. “I’m doing the job. But is there any rule that says I can’t dismantle that damned robot?”
“No rule at all,” Haskell said in a quieter voice, “if you can do it. But I earnestly advise you not to try. It’s too dangerous. The robot will not allow himself to be deactivated.”
“That’s for me to decide, not him,” Perceveral said, and signed off.
Spring passed on Theta, and Perceveral learned how to live with his robot. He ordered him to scout a distant mountain range, but the robot refused to leave him. He tried giving him no orders, but the black monster wouldn’t stay idle. If no work was assigned, the robot assigned work to himself, suddenly bursting into action and creating havoc in Perceveral’s field and sheds.
In self-defense, Perceveral gave him the most harmless task he could think of. He ordered the robot to dig a well, hoping he would bury himself in it. But, grimy and triumphant, the robot emerged every evening and entered the cabin, showering dirt into Perceveral’s food, transmitting allergies, and breaking dishes and windows.
Grimly, Perceveral accepted the status quo. The robot now seemed the embodiment of that other, darker side of himself, the inept and accident-prone Perceveral. Watching the robot on his destructive rounds, he felt as though he were watching a misshapen portion of himself, a sickness cast into solid, living form.
He tried to shake free of this fantasy. But more and more the robot came to represent his own destructive urges cut loose from the life impulse and allowed to run rampant.
Perceveral worked, and his neurosis stalked behind him, eternally destructive, yet—in the manner of neuroses—protective of itself. His self-perpetuating malady lived with him, watched him while he ate and stayed close while he slept.
Perceveral did his work and became increasingly competent at it. He took what enjoyment he could from the days, regretted the setting of the sun, and lived through the horror of the nights when the robot stood beside his bed and seemed to wonder if now were the time for a summing-up. And in the morning, still alive, Perceveral tried to think of ways of disposing of his staggering, lurching, destructive neurosis.
But the deadlock remained until a new factor appeared to complicate matters.
It had rained heavily for several days. When the weather cleared, Perceveral walked out to his fields. The robot lumbered behind him, carrying the farming tools.
Suddenly a crack appeared in the moist ground under his feet. It widened, and the whole section he was standing on collapsed. Perceveral leaped for firm ground. He made it to the slope, and the robot pulled him up the rest of the way, almost yanking his arm from his socket.
When he examined the collapsed section of field, he saw that a tunnel had run under it. Digging marks were still visible. One side was blocked by the fall. On the other side the tunnel continued deep into the ground.
Perceveral went back for his beamer and his flashlight. He climbed down one side of the hole and flashed his light into the tunnel. He saw a great furry shape retreat hastily around a bend. It looked like a giant mole.
At last he had met another species of life on Theta.
For the next few days he cautiously probed the tunnels. Several times he glimpsed gray molelike shapes, but they fled from him into a labyrinth of passageways.
He changed his tactics. He went only a few hundred feet into the main tunnel and left a gift of fruit. When he returned the next day, the fruit was gone. In its place were two lumps of lead.
The exchange of gifts continued for a week. Then, one day when Perceveral was bringing more fruit and berries, a giant mole appeared, approaching slowly and with evident nervousness. He motioned at Perceveral’s flashlight, and Perceveral covered the lens so that it wouldn’t hurt the mole’s eyes.
He waited. The mole advanced slowly on two legs, his nose wrinkling, his small wrinkled hands clasped to his chest. He stopped and looked at Perceveral with bulging eyes. Then he bent down and scratched a symbol in the dirt of the passageway.
Perceveral had no idea what the symbol meant. But the act itself implied language, intelligence and a grasp of abstractions. He scratched a symbol beside the mole’s, to imply the same things.
An act of communication between alien races had begun. The robot stood behind Perceveral, his eye cells glowing, watching while the man and the mole searched for something in common.
Contact meant more labor for Perceveral. The fields and gardens still had to be tended, the repairs on equipment made and the robot watched; in his spare time, Perceveral worked hard to learn the moles’ language. And the moles worked equally hard to teach him.
Perceveral and the moles slowly grew to understand each other, to enjoy each other’s company, to become friends. Perceveral learned about their daily lives, their abhorrence of the light, their journeys through the underground caverns, their quest for knowledge and enlightenment. And he taught them what he could about Man.
“But what is the metal thing?” the moles wanted to know.
“A servant of Man,” Perceveral told them.
“But it stands behind you and glares. It hates you, the metal thing. Do all metal things hate men?”
“Certainly not,” Perceveral said. “This is a special case.
“It frightens us. Do all metal things frighten?”
“Some do. Not all.”
“And it is hard to think when the metal thing stares at us, hard to understand you. Is it always like that with metal things?”
“Sometimes they do interfere,” Perceveral admitted. “But don’t worry, the robot won’t hurt you.”
The mole people weren’t so sure. Perceveral made what excuses he could for the heavy, lurching, boorish machine, spoke of machinery’s service to Man and the graciousness of life that it made possible. But the mole people weren’t convinced and shrank from the robot’s dismaying presence.
Nevertheless, after lengthy negotiations, Perceveral made a treaty with the mole people. In return for supplies of fresh fruits and berries, which the moles coveted but could rarely obtain, they agreed to locate metals for future colonists and find sources of water and oil. Furthermore, the colonists were granted possession of all the surface land of Theta and the moles were confirmed in their lordship of the underground.
This seemed an equitable distribution to both parties, and Perceveral and the mole chief signed the stone document with as much of a flourish as an incising tool would allow.
To seal the treaty, Perceveral gave a feast. He and the robot brought a great gift of assorted fruits and berries to the mole people. The gray-furred, soft-eyed moles clustered around, squeaking eagerly to each other.
The robot set down his baskets of fruit and stepped back. He slipped on a patch of smooth rock, flailed for balance, and came crashing down across one of the moles. Immediately he regained his balance and tried, with his clumsy iron hands, to help the mole up. But he had broken the creature’s back.
The rest of the moles fled, carrying their dead companion with them. And Perceveral and the robot were left alone in the tunnel, surrounded by great piles of fruit.
That night, Perceveral thought long and hard. He was able to see the damnable logic of the event. Minimum- survival contacts with aliens should have an element of uncertainty, distrust, misunderstanding, and even a few deaths. His dealings with the mole people had gone altogether too smoothly for minimum requirements.
The robot had simply corrected the situation and had performed the errors which Perceveral should have made on his own.
But although he understood the logic of the event, he couldn’t accept it. The mole people were his friends and he had betrayed them. There could be no more trust between them, no hope of co-operation for future colonists. Not while the robot clumped and stumbled down the tunnels.
Perceveral decided that the robot must be destroyed. Once and for all, he determined to test his painfully acquired skill against the destructive neurosis that walked continually beside him. And if it cost his life—well, Perceveral reminded himself, he had been willing to lose it less than a year ago, for much poorer reasons.
