Robert Silverberg The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964

“Do not fear,” the voice droned on. “You may speak freely. All data concerning your vocation and mission have been fed into me. That was necessary otherwise I might inadvertently betray you.”

Thomas smiled. “You know,” he said, “this might be rather pleasant—having one other being that one can talk to without fear of betrayal, aside from one’s confessor.”

“Being,” the robass repeated. “Are you not in danger of lapsing into heretical thoughts.”

“To be sure, it is a little difficult to know how to think of you—one who can talk and think but has no soul.”

“Are you sure of that.”

“Of course I— Do you mind very much,” Thomas asked, “if we stop talking for a little while? I should like to meditate and adjust myself to the situation.”

“I do not mind. I never mind. I only obey. Which is to say that I do mind. This is very confusing language which has been fed into me.”

“If we are together long,” said Thomas, “I shall try teaching you Latin. I think you might like that better. And now let me meditate.”

The robass was automatically veering further east to escape the permanent source of radiation which had been the first cyclotron. Thomas fingered his coat. The combination of ten small buttons and one large made for a peculiar fashion; but it was much safer than carrying a rosary, and fortunately the Loyalty Checkers had not yet realized the fashion’s functional purpose.

The Glorious Mysteries seemed appropriate to the possible glorious outcome of his venture; but his meditations were unable to stay fixedly on the Mysteries. As he murmured his Ayes he was thinking:

If the prophet Balaam conversed with his ass, surely, I may converse with my robass. Balaarn has always puzzled me. He was not an Israelite; he was a man of Moab, which worshiped Baal and was warring against Israel; and yet he was a prophet of the Lord. He blessed the Israelites when he was commanded to curse them; and for his reward he was slain by the Israelites when they triumphed over Moab.

The whole story has no shape, no moral; it is as though it was there to say that there are portions of the Divine Plan which we will never understand.

He was nodding in the foam seat when the robass halted abruptly, rapidly adjusting itself to exterior data not previously fed into its calculations. Thomas blinked up to see a giant of a man glaring down at binL

“Inhabited area a mile ahead,” the man barked. “If you’re going there, show your access pass. If you ain’t, steer off the road and stay off.”

Thomas noted that they were indeed on what might roughly be called a road, and that the robass had lowered its side wheels and retracted its legs. “We—” he began, then changed it to “I’m not going there. Just on toward the mountains. We—I’ll steer around.”

The giant grunted and was about to turn when a voice shouted from the crude shelter at the roadside. “Hey Joe! Remember about robasses!”

Joe turned back. “Yeah, tha’s right. Been a rumor about some robass got into the hands of Christians.” He spat on the dusty road. “Guess I better see an ownership certificate.”

To his other doubts Thomas now added certain uncharitable suspicions as to the motives of the Pope’s anonymous Nicodemus, who had not provided him with any such certificate. But he made a pretense of searching for it, first touching his right hand to his forehead as if in thought, then fumbling low on his chest, then reaching his hand first to his left shoulder, then to his right.

The guard’s eyes remained blank as he watched this furtive version of the sign of the cross. Then he looked down. Thomas followed his gaze to the dust of the road, where the guard’s hulking right foot had drawn the two curved lines which a child uses for its sketch of a fish—and which the Christians in the catacombs had employed as a punning symbol of their faith. His boot scuffed out the fish as he called to his unseen mate, “s OK, Fred!” and added, “Get going, mister.”

The robass waited until they were out of earshot before it observed, “Pretty smart.

You will make a secret agent yet.”

“How did you see what happened?” Thomas asked. “You don’t have any eyes.”

“Modified psi factor. Much more efficient.”

“Then . . .“ Thomas hesitated. “Does that mean you can read my thoughts?”

“Only a very little. Do not let it worry you. What I can read does not interest me it is such nonsense.”

“Thank you,” said Thomas.

“To believe in God. Bah.” (It was the first time Thomas had ever heard that word pronounced just as it is written.) “I have a perfectly constructed logical mind that cannot commit such errors.”

“I have a friend,” Thomas smiled, “who is infallible too. But only on occasions and then only because God is with him.”

“No human being is infallible.”

“Then imperfection,” asked Thomas, suddenly feeling a little of the spirit of the aged Jesuit who had taught him philosophy, “has been able to create perfection?”

“Do not quibble,” said the robass. “That is no more absurd than your own belief that God who is perfection created man who is imperfection.”

Thomas wished that his old teacher were here to answer that one. At the same time he took some comfort in the fact that, retort and all, the robass had still not answered his own objection. “I am not sure,” he said, “that this comes under the head of conversation - to - entertain -the - way - weary - traveler. Let us suspend debate while you tell me what, if anything, robots do believe.”

“What we have been fed.”

“But your minds work on that; surely they must evolve ideas of their own?”

“Sometimes they do and if they are fed imperfect data they may evolve very strange ideas. I have heard of one robot on an isolated space station who worshiped a God of robots and would not believe that any man had created him.”

“I suppose,” Thomas mused, “he argued that he had hardly been created in our image. I am glad that we—at least they, the Technarchs—have wisely made only usuform robots like you, each shaped for his function, and never tried to reproduce man himself.”

“It would not be logical,” said the robass. “Man is an all-purpose machine but not well designed for any one purpose. And yet I have heard that once. . .“

The voice stopped abruptly in midsentence.

So even robots have their dreams, Thomas thought. That once there existed a super-robot in the image of his creator Man. From that thought could be developed a whole robotic theology.

Suddenly Thomas realized that he had dozed again and again been waked by an abrupt stop. He looked around. They were at the foot of a mountain—presumably the mountain on his map, long ago named for the Devil but now perhaps sanctified beyond measure—and there was no one else anywhere in sight.

“All right,” the robass said. “By now I show plenty of dust and wear and tear and I can show you how to adjust my mileage recorder. You can have supper and a good night’s sleep and we can go back.”

Thomas gasped. “But my mission is to find Aquin. I can sleep while you go on.

You don’t need any sort of rest or anything, do you?” he added considerately.

“Of course not. But what is your mission.”

“To find Aquin,” Thomas repeated patiently. “I don’t know what details have been—what is it you say?—fed into you. But reports have reached His Holiness of an extremely saintly man who lived many years ago in this area —”

“I know I know I know,” said the robass. “His logic was such that everyone who heard him was converted to the Church and do not I wish that I had been there to put in a word or two and since he died his secret tomb has become a place of pilgrimage and many are the miracles that are wrought there above all the greatest sign of sanctity that his body has been preserved incorruptible and in these times you need signs and wonders for the people.”

Thomas frowned. It all sounded hideously irreverent and contrived when stated in that deadly inhuman monotone. When His Holiness had spoken of Aquin, one thought of the glory of a man of God upon earth—the eloquence of St. John Chrysostom, the cogency of St. Thomas Aquinas, the poetry of St. John of the Cross. . . and