He had talked with stupid men, he had talked with lazy men, he had talked with clever and angry men. But he had not talked with any man who responded to his unobtrusive signs, any man to whom he would dare ask a question containing the name of Aquin.
“Any luck,” said the robass, and added “question mark.”
“I wonder if you ought to talk to me in public,” said Thomas a little irritably. “I doubt if these villagers know about talking robots.”
“It is time that they learned then. But if it embarrasses you you may order me to stop.”
“I’m tired,” said Thomas. “Tired beyond embarrassment. And to answer your question mark, no. No luck at all. Exclamation point.”
“We will go back tonight then,” said the robass.
“I hope you meant that with a question mark. The answer,” said Thomas hesitantly, “is no. I think we ought to stay overnight anyway. People always gather at the inn of an evening. There’s a chance of picking up something.”
“Ha ha,” said the robass.
“That is a laugh?” Thomas inquired.
“I wished to express the fact that I had recognized the humor in your pun.”
“My pun?”
“I was thinking the same thing myself. The waitress is by humanoid standards very attractive, well worth picking up.”
“Now look. You know I meant nothing of the kind. You know that I’m a—” He broke off. It was hardly wise to utter the word priest aloud.
“And you know very well that the celibacy of the clergy is a matter of discipline and not of doctrine. Under your own Pope priests of other rites such as the Byzantine and the Anglican are free of vows of celibacy. And even within the Roman rite to which you belong there have been eras in history when that vow was not taken seriously even on the highest levels of the priesthood. You are tired you need refreshment both in body and in spirit you need comfort and warmth. For is it not written in the book of the prophet Isaiah Rejoice for joy with her that ye may be satisfied with the breasts of her consolation and is it—”
“Hell!” Thomas exploded suddenly. “Stop it before you begin quoting the Song of Solomon. Which is strictly an allegory concerning the love of Christ for His Church, or so they kept telling me in seminary.”
“You see how fragile and human you are,” said the robass. “I a robot have caused you to swear.”
“Distinguo, ’’said Thomas smugly. “I said Hell, which is certainly not taking the name of my Lord in vain.” He walked into the inn feeling momentarily satisfied with himself. . . and markedly puzzled as to the extent and variety of data that seemed to have been “fed into” the robass.
Never afterward was Thomas able to reconstruct that evening in absolute clarity.
It was undoubtedly because he was irritated—with the robass, with his mission, and with himself—that he drank at all of the crude local wine. It was undoubtedly because he was so physically exhausted that it affected him so promptly and unexpectedly.
He had flashes of memory. A moment of spilling a glass over himself and thinking, “How fortunate that clerical garments are forbidden so that no one can recognize the disgrace of a man of the cloth!” A moment of listening to a bawdy set of verses of A Space-suit Built for Two, and another moment of his interrupting the singing with a sonorous declamation of passages from the Song of Songs in Latin.
He was never sure whether one remembered moment was real or imaginary. He could taste a warm mouth and feel the tingling of his fingers at the touch of Martian-American flesh; but he was never certain whether this was true memory or part of the Ashtaroth-begotten dream that had begun to ride him.
Nor was he ever certain which of his symbols, or to whom, was so blatantly and clumsily executed as to bring forth a gleeful shout of “God-damned Christian dog!” He did remember marveling that those who most resolutely disbelieved in God still needed Him to blaspheme by. And then the torment began.
He never knew whether or not a mouth had touched his lips, but there was no question that many solid fists had found them. He never knew whether his fingers had touched breasts, but they had certainly been trampled by heavy heels. He remembered a face that laughed aloud while its owner swung the chair that broke two ribs. He remembered another face with red wine dripping over it from an upheld bottle, and he remembered the gleam of the candlelight on the bottle as it swung down.
The next he remembered was the ditch and the morning and the cold. It was particularly cold because all of his clothes were gone, along with much of his skin. He could not move. He could only lie there and look.
He saw them walk by, the ones he had spoken with yesterday, the ones who had been friendly. He saw them glance at him and turn their eyes quickly away. He saw the waitress pass by. She did not even glance; she knew what was in the ditch.
The robass was nowhere in sight. He tried to project his thoughts, tried desperately to hope in the psi factor.
A man whom Thomas had not seen before was coming along fingering the buttons of his coat. There were ten small buttons and one large one and the man’s lips were moving silently.
This man looked into the ditch. He paused a moment and looked around him. There was a shout of loud laughter somewhere in the near distance.
The Christian hastily walked on down the pathway, devoutly saying his button-rosary.
Thomas closed his eyes.
He opened them on a small neat room. They moved from the rough wooden walls to the rough but clean and warm blankets that covered him. Then they moved
