I, Robot

With unvarying regularity, seconds were ticked off, and at the hundredth, up went the eyelids, and the glowing red of Robbie’s eyes swept the prospect. They rested for a moment on a bit of colorful gingham that protruded from behind a boulder. He advanced a few steps and convinced himself that it was Gloria who squatted behind it.

Slowly, remaining always between Gloria and home-tree, he advanced on the hiding place, and when Gloria was plainly in sight and could no longer even theorize to herself that she was not seen, he extended one arm toward her, slapping the other against his leg so that it rang again. Gloria emerged sulkily.

‘You peeked!’ she exclaimed, with gross unfairness. ‘Besides I’m tired of playing hide-and-seek. I want a ride.’

But Robbie was hurt at the unjust accusation, so he seated himself carefully and shook his head ponderously from side to side.

Gloria changed her tone to one of gentle coaxing immediately, ‘Come on, Robbie. I didn’t mean it about the peeking. Give me a ride.’

Robbie was not to be won over so easily, though. He gazed stubbornly at the sky, and shook his head even more emphatically.

‘Please, Robbie, please give me a ride.’ She encircled his neck with rosy arms and hugged tightly. Then, changing moods in a moment, she moved away. ‘If you don’t, I’m going to cry,’ and her face twisted appallingly in preparation.

Hard-hearted Robbie paid scant attention to this dreadful possibility, and shook his head a third time. Gloria found it necessary to play her trump card.

‘If you don’t,’ she exclaimed warmly, ‘I won’t tell you any more stories, that’s all. Not one—’

Robbie gave in immediately and unconditionally before this ultimatum, nodding his head vigorously until the metal of his neck hummed. Carefully, he raised the little girl and place her on his broad, flat shoulders.

Gloria’s threatened tears vanished immediately and she crowed with delight. Robbie’s metal skin, kept at a constant temperature of seventy by the high resistance coils within, felt nice and comfortable, while the beautifully loud sound her heels made as they bumped rhythmically against his chest was enchanting.

‘You’re an air-coaster, Robbie, you’re a big, silver air-coaster. Hold out your arms straight. —You got to, Robbie, if you’re going to be an air-coaster.’

The logic was irrefutable. Robbie’s arms were wings catching the air currents and he was a silver ’coaster.

Gloria twisted the robot’s head and leaned to the right. He banked sharply. Gloria equipped the ’coaster with a motor that went ‘Br-r-r’ and then with weapons that went ‘Powie’ and ‘Sh-sh-shshsh.’ Pirates were giving chase and the ship’s blasters were coming into play. The pirates dropped in a steady rain.

‘Got another one. —Two more!’ she cried.

Then ‘Faster, men,’ Gloria said pompously, ‘we’re running out of ammunition.’ She aimed over her shoulder with undaunted courage and Robbie was a blunt-nosed spaceship zooming through the void at maximum acceleration.

Clear across the field he sped, to the patch of tall grass on the other side, where he stopped with a suddenness that evoked a shriek from his flushed rider, and then tumbled her on to the soft, green carpet.

Gloria gasped and panted, and gave voice to intermittent whispered exclamations of ‘That was nice!’

Robbie waited until she had caught her breath and then pulled gently at a lock of hair.

‘You want something?’ said Gloria, eyes wide in an apparently artless complexity that fooled her huge ‘nursemaid’ not at all. He pulled the curl harder.

‘Oh, I know. You want a story.’

Robbie nodded rapidly.

‘Which one?’

Robbie made a semi-circle in the air with one finger.

The little girl protested, ‘Again? I’ve told you Cinderella a million times. Aren’t you tired of it? —It’s for babies.’

Another semi-circle.

‘Oh, hell,’ Gloria composed herself, ran over the details of the tale in her mind (together with her own elaborations, of which she had several) and began:

‘Are you ready? Well – once upon a time there was a beautiful little girl whose name was Ella. And she had a terribly cruel step-mother and two very ugly and very cruel step-sisters and—’

Gloria was reaching the very climax of the tale – midnight was striking and everything was changing back to the shabby originals lickety-split, while Robbie listened tensely with burning eyes – when the interruption came.

‘Gloria!’

It was the high-pitched sound of a woman who has been calling not once, but several times; and had the nervous tone of one in whom anxiety was beginning to overcome impatience.

‘Mamma’s calling me,’ said Gloria, not quite happily. ‘You’d better carry me back to the house, Robbie.’

Robbie obeyed with alacrity for somehow there was that in him which judged it best to obey Mrs Weston, without as much as a scrap of hesitation. Gloria’s father was rarely home in the daytime except on Sunday – today, for instance – and when he was, he proved a genial and understanding person. Gloria’s mother, however, was a source of uneasiness to Robbie and there was always the impulse to sneak away from her sight.

Mrs Weston caught sight of them the minute they rose above the masking tufts of long grass and retired inside the house to wait.

‘I’ve shouted myself hoarse, Gloria,’ she said, severely. ‘Where were you?’

‘I was with Robbie,’ quavered Gloria. ‘I was telling him Cinderella, and I forgot it was dinner-time.’

‘Well, it’s a pity Robbie forgot, too.’ Then, as if that reminded her of the robot’s presence, she whirled upon him. ‘You may go, Robbie. She doesn’t need you now.’ Then, brutally, ‘And don’t come back till I call you.’

Robbie turned to go, but hesitated as Gloria cried out in his defense, ‘Wait, Mamma, you got to let him stay. I didn’t finish Cinderella for him. I said I would tell him Cinderella and I’m not finished.’

‘Gloria!’

‘Honest and truly, Mamma, he’ll stay so quiet, you won’t even know he’s here. He can sit on the chair in the corner, and he won’t say a word – I mean he won’t do anything. Will you, Robbie?’

Robbie, appealed to, nodded his massive head up and down once.

‘Gloria, if you don’t stop this at once, you shan’t see Robbie for a whole week.’

The girl’s eyes fell, ‘All right! But Cinderella is his favorite story and I didn’t finish it. —And he likes it so much.’

The robot left with a disconsolate step and Gloria choked back a sob.

George Weston was comfortable. It was a habit of his to be comfortable on Sunday afternoons. A good, hearty dinner below the hatches; a nice, soft, dilapidated couch on which to sprawl; a copy of the Times; slippered feet and shirtless chest – how could anyone help but be comfortable?

He wasn’t pleased, therefore, when his wife walked in. After ten years of married life, he still was so unutterably foolish as to love her, and there was no question that he was always glad to see her – still Sunday afternoons just after dinner were sacred to him and his idea of solid comfort was to be left in utter solitude for two or three hours. Consequently, he fixed his eye firmly upon the latest reports of the Lefebre–Yoshida expedition to Mars (this one was to take off from Lunar Base and might actually succeed) and pretended she wasn’t there.

Mrs Weston waited patiently for two minutes, then impatiently for two more, and finally broke the silence.

‘George!’

‘Hmpph?’

‘George, I say! Will you put down that paper and look at me?’