In another few seconds he would be there, real, breathing, but
unobtainable, a living dream, something on the other side of the
looking glass.
Oh the pain, the indescribable pain of love, greater and deeper and
drowning love, going out and out all the time and never coming back
again. Painful, painful unrequited love.
The cumulative loneliness, the hours of lonely loving, the hours
and days and weeks and years of tireless mechanical walking in the
indifferent round of the hours of her life. The loneliness of loving
something that can never love in return, that doesn't even know of your
love, that can't even conceive of your being able to love.
For you are only a machine and your soul can never be shared; for only
you know that you have a soul, and it is an accident and no one could
even suspect that it could possibly be--this crying hungry, yearning,
lonely soul.
Without effort she could have cried out her heart to Master Kelsey, but
she had not been made to cry, and no one would think of looking for her
heart or soul. Or the lonely yearning of the heart or soul.
For the soul can be trapped in ugliness, or in the slashing streak of
electrons. Dying there, the soul alone can mourn its dying, for who can
feel the soul in the rectifiers and diodes, or behind the ugliness of a
distorted shell?
It was very good for her, she thought, that no one, no human, including
Master Kelsey could ever guess at the awful intensity, the terrible
hunger of the soul that kept loving in silence, alone, in the dark,
behind the plastoid walls of an inhuman shell.
Master Kelsey came into the living room, tall and broad and beautiful
and neat in his business suit, his blond hair in a waving shine.
But with that tired sharp look to his mouth in spite of its frozen
smile. He always seemed so relieved to see her standing there
waiting, responsive, receptive, an understanding shadow that filled
up his frightened loneliness between the time of his arrival and the
absorption in Tevee, or the always demanded presence of guests.
He leaned wearily against the wall, breathing heavily as though he had
been running from something for a long time.
"Hello, hello, Alice," he said quickly, forcing exaggerated joy into
the greeting to conceal something full of fear.
"Hello, Master Kelsey. You had a fine day at the office?"
"Fine! It was great, simply perfect!" He said it almost fiercely, as
though even a robot might challenge the statement.
As he stared at the Tevee's hypnotic glow, his face began to relax a
little. "Everybody," he whispered, "was happy today. The Manager gave
our office group a Silver Star for being tops in the Group Sociability
scale for the week."
"That's wonderful, Master Kelsey!"
He stared at her. "I wish they had made you so you could smile more,
Alice. The way you look, it--it gives me a sort of doubtful feeling
sometimes."
If you only knew how I felt, my dearest Kelsey, inside, inside the
machinery that has the cold and tiny shell. I'm all one great warm
smile of joy just to be near you, darling Kelsey.
"I'm happy for you, Master Kelsey," she said.
He nodded slowly.
Why wasn't he happier, she wondered, as she had wondered so many times
before. He had all that anyone should need to be happy. In the first
place, he was human among many others who were human. And then all the
other things, and the woman, the woman he loved, Gloria Tonnencourt,
the woman he loved, loved, loved--
Gloria was coming over to see him tonight. Alice would have to watch it
again, hear it again. She would have to listen again to love, while she
stood alone and frozen in the dark closet of her own longings.
"Alice?"
"Yes."
"It's that ten minutes on the commutor to the jet station. Don't they
realize that a man is alone those ten minutes? Nobody else to talk to.
No Tevee. No sound even. Alone."
* * * * *
She nodded. He was asking _her_ if she knew what loneliness was!
He started for the bathroom, as though to avoid thinking of something.
"Everything ready for my love?" he asked nervously.
"Yes," she said. Yes, the robot says. Yes, my love, everything is ready
for your love.
"Good."
In the bathroom, Kelsey looked in the full length mirror, and Alice
watched him.
"Master Kelsey," the Mirror said, softly critical. "You're not smiling."
"But I am."
"Yes, but not enough."
Kelsey touched his lips and stretched his face muscles. The Mirror
said, "People are uneasy when you don't smile."
Alice knew how much Kelsey respected his Mirror. It had cost him so
much, and it was the most popular item advertised on Tevee. It was
finely attuned to Kelsey's personality. It knew when he was not looking
exactly right to meet the strict demands of the crowd.
"Smile and the group will love you," the Mirror said. "Frown, and you
may frown alone."
Kelsey was suddenly smiling intensely, as though his very life had been
threatened.
"That's better," the Mirror said.
Alice had tried so hard and so often to smile, pulling at the plastoid
stuff of her face. She guessed that Humans were supposed to smile all
the time, and robots never. Why should a robot smile. A robot had
nothing to sell. It had routine functions, but it had nothing to sell.
Kelsey zipped himself out of his clothes and jumped into the shower. He
was six feet tall. He had blue eyes and wavy hair with streaks of brown
in the Viking yellow. His skin was golden and his muscles moved with
fluid healthy power. His daily stint in the male beauty clinic at the
factory kept him in top condition. And the Mirror was always alert to
detect any flaw in his outward appearance.
But who will love you when you're old, Master Kelsey? When the gold
turns gray and the muscles shrink and the teeth decay and the eyes turn
pale and the body is bent with the squeezing hands of time?
Let me stay, darling Kelsey. Let me stay forever, and I'll love you
when you're old.
Seeing his strong naked beauty there, she felt her machinery pounding
and the burning in her eyes. It wasn't anything that could be
controlled by the thermostat. She needed his arms, and the feel of his
power. Like a long wave her love came to her lips in strange words,
childish words, moist and tender. And unheard by Master Kelsey.
She turned away. She looked at the blankness of the wall. Please,
please let me be careful. If I am not careful I will be sent away, away
where there is no Kelsey, away where they will take my soul.
"Do you think Gloria will like me more tonight than she did the last
time she was here, Alice?"
"I'm sure she will, Master Kelsey."
The woman's face on the Tevee screen covering one wall of the bathroom
was a kind of subtle threat, Alice thought:
"Are you sure you're exercising the maximum acceptability of which your
personality is capable? Do you sometimes feel that in some intangible
way you are offending your friends? The self-analysis, personology
chart scale guarantees to dig out the most hidden blocks to full and
joyful acceptance by others. Send for your personology chart at once!"
"That's something new isn't it Alice?"
"I believe it is, Master Kelsey."
"Well, put in an order. Put an order in right now!"
Alice punched the order button on the side of the wall next to the
Tevee screen. Whatever item was being advertised at the time the button
was punched was automatically ordered, the consumer's name and address
recorded, the price deducted from his salary, and an extra point added
to his consumer's cooperative card for the year.
It was not only very important how many items one ordered in a year,
but also the kinds of items. Items that aided an employee in being
acceptable to the office group were especially smiled upon by Office
Managers. Alice had always been careful to get in every such order.
Alice knew all about the system. She knew all about Kelsey's work. She
had listened to him talking about it endlessly, either to her or to
others. She had watched Kelsey rise from Office Boy to Chief Clerk,
getting the glad reports of his progress every evening. She couldn't
imagine anyone at the office being more likeable than Kelsey. He was so
human, she had thought, so human--
"Alice?"
"Yes, Master Kelsey?"
"Did you ever find that paper?"
She turned quickly. She could feel fear. Did they know that a robot
could feel fear as well as love? Could anyone, or anything, feel one
without the other? Did they know that a robot, at least this robot,
could feel fear at the idea of being labeled inefficient, and being
sent back to the factory and remade, rebuilt, dismantled, changed--and
probably having a soul burned out that no one had ever known was there?
Did they know that if a robot could feel love or fear, that it could
also steal, deliberately steal and hide something?
"You mean the paper from the office?"
"Yes, yes, Alice. The order paper."
"No," she said. She hesitated and said it again. "No."
"I'm sure I brought it home. Well, the only thing to do is mark it as
lost, and have another order made out tomorrow. No real hurry I guess.
Only one more receptionist to be replaced."
* * * * *
She had stolen it. She had hidden it. She would never never use it of
course. That would be impossible, too risky, too frightening even to
think about actually doing. But it was there to dream about. She was
good at dreaming. When you stand alone in the dark of a dark, dark
closet every night, and when you're alone almost all the time of the
day or night, dreaming becomes an art, a necessary art. It becomes the
shield against dying inside, losing the soul, being the robot you were
originally designed to be.
It was there, hidden in her closet. She stood alone with it at night
in the dark closet, and with the dream--a piece of paper, an order
blank--she was not so much alone....
Kelsey stood under the perfumed deodorant spray for three minutes.
He ran out to the sink and sprayed his mouth with Noffend. And then
he held his mouth open while Alice brushed his teeth carefully with
Ivory-Glo. He zipped into his lounge suit of coral pink and ran to the
Mirror.
"Well?" he asked.
"Very saleable, Kelsey," the Mirror said.
Kelsey sat down in the living room to wait for his favorite love.
Alice watched Kelsey's love, who didn't seem to see Alice at all when
she came in, but then domestics had no meaning to anyone but their
Masters. Gloria--golden flesh; warm and human love of Kelsey; love in
a transparent gown tight and clinging to the flesh; warm and waiting
love. Love-kissing and kissing--but Alice tried not to look at love.
Some time ago, she had liked looking at love, but now she felt fear,
fear of love-kissing. She felt an intense hunger that had elements of
terror blended with elements of awakening as she looked at it, trying
not to look or feel any connection with it.
But she felt the desire, growing from evening to evening as she
remembered or looked at, Kelsey and his love-loving and hugging and
kissing--the desire to hold him, to feel him her own, so as never to
let him leave, never let him escape, never let herself be taken from
him and rebuilt and lost. And that was the cause of the desire, making
it agonizingly stronger. And the sight of it--the sight and sound of
the loving, the kisses, the motions of loving--were more and more
unbearable.
Gloria was beautiful, so beautiful. She was slim and warm and tall and
curved and human.
But Alice had to look just the same, as though there was some last
justification in looking because it could never happen to Alice,
because they were human and she was not.
They were sitting tightly entwined about one another on the couch.
"We ought to get a roommate permit real fast," Kelsey said in a whisper.
"But it hasn't been two weeks yet since the office party," Gloria said.
That was where they had met and knew it was love, at the office party.
"But maybe if we asked--" Kelsey said.
"But we shouldn't rush it honey. It wouldn't be _sincere_!"
"Yes, that's true," Kelsey said. "What would people think?"
And then, as Alice watched, they seemed to draw slowly apart as though
the face, the color, the sound and voices from the Tevee was throwing
an invisible wall between them. They were staring at the Tevee longer
and longer and finally they weren't looking at one another at all.
There were always a number of people present inside the Tevee frame.
If one person was talking, the background was full of people--people
moving, dancing, walking, but there just the same, always.
The woman was smiling intensely out of the screen. "Don't be left
out," she said. "Be a solid member of your group. You can own a
Sky-Splitter jet sporter now without offending your crowd. Our special
consumer's research proves that now at last these amazing Sky-Splitters
are no longer _conspicuous_ items, but are fully _accepted_ as _normal_
by over ninety-three per cent of the consumer public. You can enjoy
the cloud thrills of a Sky-Splitter without being considered in any
way _eccentric_. Press your Interest or Order button now! An immediate
demonstration will be arranged!"
Dancers swirled. A Sky-Splitter jet dissolved from clouds. It was as
if a dream had become abruptly real. Surrounded by people laughing and
accepting one another, the sleek projectile gave the warmest impression
of itself being organic and one of the happy, happy crowd.
Kelsey jerked forward and jabbed the I-Am-Interested button.
"I don't care," Gloria pouted. "I'd still feel kind of--well--like I
was showing off if I had a Sky-Splitter."
"But now everybody will have one," Kelsey said.
Alice wondered when they were _really_ going to make love. Like the
lovers were always never quite doing on Tevee. But Alice decided she
would never look at that. It would hurt too much.
* * * * *
Another self-improvement commercial. This time a man with a ballet in
the background.
"Are you in tune with your crowd? If you do not feel that your tastes
are in perfect accord with the tastes of your group, send for the
Reacto Tester. This mechanical device, when attached to the brain,
records accurate tastes. It insures comforting conformity, and protects
you against the anxieties of conspicuousness. Remember, you can't stray
from the norm with a Reacto."
Kelsey and his love had moved apart now. They were staring at the
Tevee. Everything the Tevee had to say seemed to involve getting along
with people, being loved, being liked, being accepted, not being
rejected, not offending, how to love efficiently, how to be loved
gracefully--
But there they are, the two of them, Alice thought. What are they
waiting for?
Waiting to look just right, to smile just right. It was a matter of
appearance. No one knew that better than Alice did who looked all
wrong and could never look any different, never look human, never look
full of love.
You smiled when you loved. You smiled and your flesh turned warm. If
you had flesh. If your warmth was not a dial to be turned up or down.
If on the outside you were human so that everyone could know.
"Oh, Alice," Kelsey called out.