Special Deliverance

9

Dammit,“ said Mary, ”there’s that broken ratchet, or I’d guess it’s a ratchet. If only we had a replacement, he’d be as good as new.”

“I sorrow to tell you,” Jurgens said, “I do not carry such a part. A few ordinary parts, of course, but nothing like that. I cannot carry every part I possibly could need. I thank you, lady, for the job you’ve done on me. I would have been hard pressed to do it for myself.”

“The leg is stiff,” said Lansing. “He cannot bend the knee, and even with the repair the hip does not work too smoothly.”

“I can move,” said Jurgens, “but with no sprightliness. I’ll be slow at best. I will hold up the march.”

“I’ll fix you a crutch,” said Lansing. “It may take you a while to learn to use it, but once you get the hang of it, it will be of help.”

“To continue this journey with you,“ Jurgens said, ”I’d crawl on hands and knees.”

“Here are your tools,” said Mary. “I put them back into the case. You’d better lock them up again.”

“Thank you,” said Jurgens. He took the small case of tools, opened the door into his chest cavity, stored the case there and shut the door. He slapped his chest to make sure the door was closed.

“I think the coffee’s ready,” said Mary. “Maybe not the food, but I can smell the coffee and I want a cup. Edward, do you want to join me?”

“In a moment,” Lansing said.

Squatting beside Jurgens, he watched her walk toward the fire.

“Go and get your coffee,” Jurgens said. “No need to stay with me.”

“Coffee can wait a while,” said Lansing. “There was something that you said. That you would crawl on your hands and knees to go along with us. Jurgens, what’s going on? Do you know something that we don’t?”

“I know not a thing. I just want to be along.”

“But why? We’re a bunch of refugees. We’ve been hurled out of our worlds and our cultures and we don’t know why we’re here…”

“Lansing, what do you know of freedom?”

“Why, I suppose not too much. One doesn’t think of freedom until he doesn’t have it. Back where I came from, we had it. We didn’t have to strive for it. We took it for granted. It seldom crossed our minds. Don’t tell me that you—”

“Not in the way you think. In no way were the robots on my world repressed. In a way, I suppose, we were free. But we carried a burden, a responsibility. Let me try to tell you.”

“Please do,” said Lansing. “You said back at the inn that you took care of your humans, which was a strange way to say it. You said there were few humans left and you took care of them.”

“Before I say anything,” said Jurgens, “tell me one thing. You spoke of what your friend had said — I believe you said he babbled. About alternate worlds, alternate earths splitting off from one another at certain crisis points. I believe you said that was what may have happened.”

“Yes, I did. For all its madness…”

“And those alternate worlds each would follow its own world line. They’d exist simultaneously through time and space. Would that mean, if we indeed are from different alternate worlds, that all of us would come from the same time frame?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Lansing, “and I don’t really know. You understand that this all is supposition. But if the alternate world theory should be true and we do come from such worlds, I see no reason to believe we’d all have to be from the same time frame. Any agency that could put us here probably could be rather arbitrary about time as well.”

“I am glad to hear you say that, for it has bothered me. I must come from a frame much later in time than the rest of you. You see, I existed in a world that had been deserted by the human race.” “Deserted?”

“Yes, everyone gone to other worlds circling other stars. Deep into space, I have no idea how far. The Earth, my Earth, was worn out. The environment had been ruined and natural resources gone. The last of the resources were used to build the ships that took the humans into space. They left it stripped and gutted…” “But there were humans left. Only a few of them, you said.”

“There were humans left — the ne’er-do-wells, the utterly incompetent, the persistent fumblers, the idiots. The ones who were not worth the ship space they would have taken. There were robots left as well — the hopelessly obsolete, the outdated, those who had somehow escaped the scrap heap. The incompetents were left behind, both human and robot, while the others, the bright and normal humans, the sophisticated robots, went beyond the Earth to seek a brave new life. We, the rejects of thousands of years of evolution, were left behind to make our way as best we could. And we robots, the ones who were abandoned, have tried for centuries to do what we could for the humans who were left. We failed — for centuries we failed. The descendents of those pitiful humans who were left behind have not improved in mental or moral quality through the years. At times there would be a spark or two of hope, two or three in a single generation might show some promise, but the promise always lost in the morass of the gene pool, I finally admitted to myself that the humans were breeding down, not up, that there was no hope for them. Each generation they grew more foul, more cruel, more worthless.”

“So you were trapped,” said Lansing. “Trapped by your commitment to your humans.”

“You say it well,” said Jurgens. “You do understand. We were trapped, indeed. Still we felt we must stay on, for we owed those degenerating creatures the best that we could give them, which was never enough.”

“Now that you have broken out of your circumstance, you feel free.”

“Yes, free. More free than I have ever felt. Finally my own man, my own robot. Is this wrong of me?”

“I don’t think it’s wrong. A bad job come to an end.”

“Here, as you say,” said Jurgens, “we don’t know where we are nor what we are supposed to do. But at least a clean slate, a starting over.”

“And among people who are glad to have you.”

“I’m not sure of that. The Parson does not care for me.”

“Screw the Parson,” Lansing said. “I’m glad that you are here. With the possible exception of the Parson, we’re all glad you are here. You must remember that it was the Parson who came in and carried you out when you were injured. But the fact remains that he is a bigot.”

“I’ll prove myself,” said Jurgens. “Even the Parson will come to accept me.”

“Was that what you were doing when you rushed up to the wall? Trying to prove yourself?”

“I didn’t think so at the time. I only thought there was something that needed to be done and I set out to do it. But I suppose I was trying to prove—”

“Jurgens, it was a stupid thing to do. Promise me, no more stupidity.”

“I’ll try. Tell me when I’m stupid.”

“Next time,” said Lansing, “I’ll clobber you with whatever comes to hand.”

The Brigadier shouted at Lansing. “Come in. Supper’s ready.”

Lansing rose. “Won’t you come with me, join the others? You can lean on me. I’ll get you there.”

“I think not,” said Jurgens. “I have thinking that must be done.”