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He had a good vocabulary, too, and he was very polite. Josie was just delighted. She said, “I can use him in the house. He can help out.”
I said, “No, you don’t. You got him for Charlie, and that means he’s Charlie’s. Don’t you go taking him away.”
I was thinking if Josie got him, and made him into a slavey, she’d never let go of him. Charlie, on the other hand, might not like him or might get tired after a little while, and then we could get rid of him.
Charlie fooled me, though. He liked Kid fine.
But you know, it made sense after a while. Kid was designed to be a kid brother, so he was just right for Charlie. He let Charlie take the lead, like an older brother should. He had those three Laws. I can’t quote them, but you know what they are. There was no way he could hurt Charlie, and he had to do whatever Charlie said, so after a while I began to think it was a good deal.
I mean, when they played games Charlie always won. He was supposed to. And the Kid never got mad. He couldn’t. He was made to lose. And sometimes Charlie kicked the Kid around, the way children do, you know. A child gets mad about something, he takes it out on some other child. Children always do that. Naturally, that gets the parents of the other child mad and I had to tell Charlie now and then not to do that and that sort of cramps him. It squeezes him in. He can’t express himself.
Well, he could with the Kid. And why not? You can’t hurt the Kid. He’s made out of plastic and metal and who knows what else. For all he looked nearly like a human being, he wasn’t alive; he couldn’t feel pain.
In fact, I felt the best thing the Kid did was to be something on which Charlie could bleed off his excess energy so that it wouldn’t accumulate in him and fester. And the Kid never minded. They’d play judo and the Kid would be thrown, and even stamped on, but he would just get up and say, “That was good, Charlie. Let’s try it again. “ Listen, you could throw him off the top of a building and he wouldn’t be hurt.
He was always polite to us. He called me Dad. He called Josie Mom. He asked after our health. He would help Josie out of her chair when she wanted to stand up. That sort of stuff.
He was designed that way. He had to act affectionate. It was all automatic. He was programmed for it. It didn’t mean a thing, but Josie liked it. Listen, I’ve always been busy, hard-working. I have this plant I had to help run, interlocking machinery to oversee. One thing goes wrong and the whole shebang ties itself up. I have no time to bring flowers and go mucking around pulling out her chairs or something.
We’d been married nearly twenty years and how long does that sort of thing keep up anyway?
And Charlie-Well, he stood up to his mother the way any decent boy should. And I figured the
Kid helped there. When Charlie made himself boss over the Kid one minute, he wasn’t going to run around saying, “Mommie, Mommie,” the next minute. He was no t a mamma’s boy, and he didn’t let Josie run him, and I was proud of him for that. He was going to be a man. Of course, he listened to what I said to him. A boy’s got to listen to his father.
So maybe it was good that the Kid was designed to be a sort of mamma’s boy. It gave Josie the feeling that there was one of those nerds about the house and it bothered her less that Charlie always thought for himself.
Of course you could count on Josie to do her best to spoil it. She was forever worrying about her pet nerd being hurt. She was always coming out with, “Now, Charlie, why don’t you be nicer to your kid brother?”
It was ridiculous. I could never get it through her head that the Kid wasn’t hurt; that he was designed to be a loser; that it was all good for Charlie.
Of course, Charlie never listened to her. He played with the Kid the way he wanted to.
— Do you mind if I rest a little. I don’t really like talking about all this. Just let me rest a while.
— Okay, I’m better now. I can go on.
After the year was up, I felt that it was enough. We could return the Kid to U.S. Robots. After all, he had served his purpose.
But Josie was against that. Dead set against that.
I said, “But we’d have to buy him outright now.”
And she said, she would pay the down payment, so I went along with her.
One of the things she said was that we couldn’t take away Charlie’s brother. Charlie would be lonely.
And I did think, well, maybe she’s right. I tell you it’s deadly when you start thinking your wife might be right. It leads you into nothing but trouble.
Charlie did ease up on the Kid a little as he grew older. He got to be just as tall as the Kid, for one thing, so maybe he didn’t think he had to knock him around as much.
Also, he became interested in things besides rough and tumble. Basketball, for instance; he played one-on-one with the Kid and Charlie was good. He always outmaneuvered the Kid and hardly ever missed a basket. Well, maybe the Kid let himself be outmaneuvered and maybe he didn’t ever block a basket-shot efficiently, but how do you account for getting the ball into the basket? The Kid couldn’t fake that, could he ?
In the second year, the Kid sort of became a member of the family. He didn’t eat with us or anything like that, because he didn’t eat. And he didn’t sleep either, so he just stood in the corner of
Charlie’s bedroom at night.
But he watched the holoviews with us, and Josie would always explain things to him so that he got to know more and to seem more human. She took him shopping with her and wherever else she went, if Charlie didn’t need him. The Kid was always helpful, I suppose, and I guess he carried things for her and was always polite and attentive and that sort of thing.
And I’ll tell you, Josie was more easygoing, with the Kid around. More good-humored, more good-natured, less whining. It made for a more pleasant homelife, and I figured, well, the Kid is teaching Charlie to be more and more dominant, and he’s teaching Josie to smile more, so maybe it was a good thing it was there.
Then it happened.
— Listen, can you let me have something wet?
— Yeah, with alcohol. Just a little, just a little. Come on, what are you worrying about the rules for? I’ve got to get through this somehow.
Then it happened. One out of a million-or out of a billion. Microfusion units aren’t supposed to give trouble. You can read about it anywhere. They’re all fail-safe, no matter what. Except mine wasn’t. I don’t know why. Nobody knows why. At the start, no one even knew it was the microfusion. They’ve told me since that it was, and that I qualify for full restoration of the house and furniture.
Fat lot of good that would do me.
— Look, you’re treating me as though I were a homicidal maniac, but why me? Why aren’t you getting after the microfusion people for murder? Find out who made that unit, or who goofed up installing it.
Don’t you people know what real crimes are? There’s this thing, this microfusion-it doesn’t explode, it doesn’t make a noise, it just gets hotter and hotter and after a while the house is on fire. How come people can get away manufacturing
— Yes, I’ll get on with it. I’ll get on with it.
I was away that day. That one day in a whole year I was away. I run everything from my home, or from wherever I am with my family. I don't have to go anywhere, the computers do it all. It's not like your job, officer.
But the big boss wanted to see me in person. There's no sense to it; everything could have been done closed-circuit. He has some sort of idea, though, that he wants to check all his section heads every once in a while in person. He seems to think that you can't really judge a person unless you see him in three dimensions and smell him and feel him. It's just superstition left over from the Dark Age-which I wish would come back, before computers and robots, and when you could have all the children you wanted.
That was the day when the microfusion went.
I got the word right away. You always get the word. Wherever you are, even on the Moon or in a space settlement, bad news gets to you in seconds. Good news you might miss out on, but bad news never.
I was rushing back while the house was still burning. When I got there, the house was a total wreck, but Josie was out on the lawn, looking a complete mess, but alive. She had been out on the lawn when it happened, they told me.
When she saw the house become all in flame, and Charlie was inside, she rushed in at once, and I could see she must have brought him out because there he was lying to one side with people bending over him. It looked bad. I couldn't see him. I didn't dare go over there to see him. I had to find out from Josie first.
I could hardly speak. “How bad is he?” I asked Josie, and I didn't recognize my own voice. I think my mind was begi
She was saying, “I couldn't save them both. I couldn't save them both.”
Why should she want to save them both? I thought. I said, “Stop worrying about the Kid. He's just a device. There's insurance and compassion money and we can buy another Kid. “I think I tried to say all that, but I don't know if I managed. Maybe I just made hoarse, choking sounds. I don't know.
I don't know if she heard me, or if she even knew I was there. She just kept whispering, “I had to make a choice,” over and over.
So I had to go where Charlie was lying and I cleared my throat and I managed to say, “How's my boy? How badly is he hurt?”
And one of them said, “Maybe he can be fixed up,” then he looked up at me and said, “Your boy?”
I saw the Kid lying there, with one arm distorted and out of action. He was smiling as if nothing had happened, and he was saying, “Hello, Dad. Mom pulled me out of the fire. Where's Charlie?”
Josie had made her choice and she had saved the Kid.
I don’t know what happened after that. I remember nothing. You people say I killed her; that you couldn’t pull me off before I strangled her.
Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t remember. All I know is-she’s the killer. She killed-she killed-Char
She killed my boy and she saved a piece- A piece of-
Titanium.
The Nations In Space
As is well known, the nations of Gladovia and Saronin have been enemies for many centuries. In medieval times, each had ruled the other at different times, and each remembered, with bitterness, the other’s heavy-handed domination. Even in the twentieth century, the two nations had managed to be on opposite sides in the major wars that were then fought.