The Metallic Muse (22 page)

“Why the Bible,” Effro mused, “when each hostel has a fairly comprehensive library?”

There was no accounting for individual taste. The real question was why the predicant had stayed marooned. He had only to break a seal and pull a handle, and the station would have broadcast a distress signal until rescue came—in days, weeks, or months. No one would hurry because, paradoxically, a distress signal from an emergency space station did not signify an emergency. The full passenger contingent of a star-class liner could be accommodated there for a year or more with no risk except boredom. Sooner or later, but probably sooner, rescue would have come.

Effro had found the seal unbroken. The man must have been there since the last inspection ship called fourteen years before, and in all that time he had not performed the one simple act that would have brought rescue. It made so little sense that Effro uneasily returned to the communication shed; but the oscillating distress signal was still ornamenting the steady beeps of the rescue beacon.

“So the guy is star crazy,” Effro told himself. “And no wonder. If I stayed here that long maybe I’d start preaching sermons to robots, too.”

One of the hostel’s lounges supplied another clue: it was decorated with religious paintings, several of them showing priests in ceremonial regalia—undoubtedly the inspiration for the predicant’s costume. The poor, lonely fanatic!

Effro browsed through the library, wincing when he found a shelf of books on theology. He inspected the music room and read the repertory of a theater that offered him his choice of a hundred films. There were robots everywhere. The hostel had accommodations and service for perhaps fifty, and all of the service automatically concentrated on Effro. Every time he turned around he stumbled over a robot.

He went to the dining room, summoned a serving robot with the touch of a button, and punched out his order for dinner. The robot rolled away; another button brought a beverage robot to his side, and he dazedly contemplated controls that offered mixed drinks in a thousand combinations. He ordered a large one, straight, and the robot served it in a plastic tumbler. A cleaning robot hovered nearby—like a house pet, Effro thought, waiting for him to drop something.

The serving robot brought his food. After the lifeboat’s concentrated rations it tasted delicious, but those same rations had caused Effro’s stomach to shrink. He ate what he could, pushed the remainder onto the floor to give the cleaning robot something to do, and ordered another drink.

When the predicant entered some time later, Effro was feeling at peace with himself and the universe: bath and massage, clean clothing, an excellent meal, and now he was nursing his fifth drink.

He gave the predicant a friendly wave and called, “Join me. Have a drink.”

The predicant abashed him by sinking to the floor at his feet. “Instruct me, Excellency,” he pleaded.

“I’m out of uniform,” Effro said, not unkindly because he felt sorry for the man. “I wasn’t an ‘excellency’ to begin with. I was purser on the Cherbilius, and the day before it blew up I was found guilty of insubordination, intoxication while on duty, impertinence to passengers, larceny from the ship’s liquor stores, and spitting into the ventilation system. I was ordered confined to quarters under arrest. I stole another bottle of the best Donardian brandy—with a record like that one more bottle was of very small consequence—and after drinking it I climbed into a lifeboat in the hope of sleeping it off without the interruption of further recriminations. When I woke up the lifeboat was adrift in space surrounded by debris that included an uncountable number of charred corpses in various stages of dismemberment. So here I am, maybe the, only survivor, and I wouldn’t be competent to hand out religious instruction even if I knew any, which I don’t. What’s your excuse?”

The predicant regarded him blankly.

“Where do you come from?” Effro persisted.

“I was reborn here. The time before rebirth has no meaning.”

“You probably jumped ship here,” Effro said. “That last inspection ship. At a guess, you were also a stowaway and a fugitive from justice, and this looked like an ideal place to hole up. Eventually you went star crazy. Call it being reborn if you want to.”

He aimed his plastic tumbler at the cleaning robot and missed; the robot snuffed after it and gathered it up. Effro punched the beverage robot and accepted another drink. “Cheers,” he said. “Your ‘flock’ is taking good care of me.”

“They bear another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

Effro chuckled drunkenly. “They’re stinking machines and you know it.”

“All of us are laborers together with God.”

“All of us? We’re men and they’re machines.”

“Both are houses of clay, whose foundation is the dust.”

“Touche,” Effro said agreeably. He considered himself a reasonable man, and if this character wanted to elevate machines to the status of angels that was nothing to him. “Man evolved from a glob of slime, they say, and is still evolving. Machines have evolved, too, and they’re getting more human all the time. These old-fashioned robots still look like machines, but some of them are disgustingly human in their actions—which I suppose makes them morally suspect. There’s no profit in arguing theology with a preacher, self-ordained or otherwise, but it does seem to me that everything you’ve said about machines could be said about animals, too, and animals are God’s creatures—or so I was told when I was young enough to listen to such nonsense. And they’re flesh and blood. Machines are metal and plastic and electricity. Maybe God created animals and men, but you’ll have to admit that man created the machines. If they have anything of God in them they came by it second hand.”

“Man creates only as God ordains,” the predicant said. Metal and plastic are as one with flesh and blood, for neither can inherit the Kingdom of God. On the Day of Reckoning all will be equal, machines and men. Then shall the dust return to the Earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”

Effro shrugged and drained his tumbler. “So?”

“The spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” The predicant fixed Effro in a gaze of terrible intensity. “The spirit is God’s gift to man. If in His wisdom He chooses to do so, can He not bestow the same gift on the machine?”

“I suppose he can,” Effro said, still being reasonable.

“I pray that He will do so,” the predicant said simply. “So that these, who are the very least, can praise Him— for they are fearfully and wonderfully made. If God can bless sinful man, Excellency, can He not bless these, who are without sin?”

Effro muttered inarticulately.

“I did not understand, Excellency.”

“I said,” Effro growled, “that if I wasn’t drunk I wouldn’t have got into this discussion in the first place. You want to fill heaven—whatever that is—with machines? I couldn’t care less. I’m one of the least myself, and a sinner as well, and if there is a heaven I won’t be seeing it. All I ask is that you stop calling me ‘excellency.’”

The predicant scrambled to his feet. He was of less than average height, but he towered over the seated Effro. “You—are a sinner?”

Effro flung an empty tumbler aside and punched for another drink. “In a mediocre sort of way. Didn’t I just get through telling you I’m a drunken thief?”

“We must hold a special service and pray for you. Will you come?”

“A service? You and your machines?”

“My flock and I.”

Effro guffawed. “I’ve been prayed over by experts without any noticeable result, but if you don’t mind working or practice, hop to it.”

“Will you attend our service?”

“No,” Effro said, still being reasonable but wanting to make it clear that there were limits. “Don’t let that stop you, though. If your prayers have any kick to them they’ll work whether I’m there or not.”

The predicant took a step backward. His right arm pointed at the ceiling; his bent left arm curved protectingly over his head as though to ward off the rage of an offended deity. He said incredulously, “You don’t believe, in God!”

“No, I don’t. And if such a creature exists I have no use for him. The Cherbilius had a passenger list of three hundred and seventy-two and a crew of forty. It also had an illegal cargo. Nitrates, I think. The crew received hefty bribes to look the other way while it was loaded. We accepted the money and the risk. The passengers received nothing but the usual spiel about how safe space travel is. Now all of them are dead except me, and the owners are gleefully collecting insurance on forged bills of lading. The greedy bastards. If I was to go back and file a complaint, they’d have me prosecuted for failing to inform them before the voyage of a condition tending to threaten the ship’s safety. If you can fit your God into that, let me know.”

He raised his tumbler in a mock toast to the predicant’s retreating back.

He downed four more drinks, tossing the tumblers to the points of the compass and watching the cleaning robots chase after them, and finally he staggered to bed. He was not too drunk to remember to secure his door, but twice he awoke abruptly from a sound sleep and got up to make certain that it was locked.

On the third day he became convinced that the machines were watching him. A cleaning robot would snuff at his heels the entire length of a corridor, but the moment he turned it would scurry off as if to report. He locked one cleaning robot in a cabinet, to be let out whenever enough mess accumulated to keep it busy, and the others he dumped outside the hostel one by one as he was able to corner them. They could not negotiate the air lock without help, and to make certain that the predicant didn’t help them he smashed the latch release. The predicant couldn’t get in; he couldn’t get out, but he’d worry about that when he wanted out.

He cursed the twitch of fate that miraculously placed a companion on this lonely station and at the same time utterly deprived him of companionship. If the predicant hadn’t got hooked on religion, he and Effro might have staged some uproarious poker marathons. His remote presence only heightened Effro’s loneliness. Effro saw him occasionally at a distance, and once he found him looking through the air lock—trying to say something, he thought but he did not go close enough to find out what it was. He’d had enough sermons.

Effro ate and drank, he watched films, he tried to interest himself in books. Mostly he drank. Rescue might come on the morrow, or in a month, or in a year. It was best that he didn’t think about it, and he avoided thinking most successfully when he was drunk. Time passed, but whether it was days or hours he neither knew nor cared.

He woke abruptly from a drunken slumber and thought he heard a noise—the wind sighing, or something like that—but on this dead fragment of a world there was no wind. He went to the door of his sleeping room. As always, it opened onto monumental silence.

Silence and loneliness. Puzzled, he pulled on clothing with fumbling fingers and staggered to the dining room. He seated himself, and eventually his trembling hands cornered a button and pressed it.

There was no response. He jabbed at it a second time and a third, and finally he turned a bewildered stare on the long rack where the beverage and serving machines stood in orderly ranks when not in use. The rack was empty.

With a snarl of rage he lurched toward the air lock. It stood open, and the space between the hostels and the maintenance and storage sheds was filled with machines— beverage and serving robots stood in precise alignment like a row of squat idols, and there were massaging machines, valet machines, domestic robots, mammoth machines with specialized functions relating to forms of indigestion in the largest atomic engines, clothing dispensers, film projectors, ranks of cleaning robots, large machines, small machines, even rows of automatic clocks, all facing toward a make-shift pulpit of supply canisters where the predicant stood with his right arm upraised.

Effro shouted, “Bring them back, damn it! I want a drink!”

The predicant remained motionless. Suddenly Effro heard the sound that had awakened him: the predicant began to hum.

The sound vibrated softly, like the distant whir of a machine, and the gathered ranks of machines answered. The heavy maintenance apparatus emitted a deep grinding, robot cleaners added a shrill, chorusing whine, and as others joined in, the tumult swelled to a violent pulsation that shook the building. Effro shouted again and could not hear his own voice. He staggered forward angrily.

The predicant held his hands in front of him, palms facing. A blue spark leaped between them and hung there. Showers of brilliant sparks crackled around the huge maintenance machines, and dazzling flashes of light began to dart at random from machine to machine. The shuddering sound crescendoed until Effro clapped his hands to his ears and turned to flee. He was too late—he was already among the machines, and the leaping sparks formed a barricade about him. For a suspenseful moment they sizzled harmlessly, and then a tremendous flash impaled him. He hung paralyzed for an instant and dropped into darkness.

“Only one?” the captain exclaimed incredulously.

The mate nodded.

“That’s a forty-passenger lifeboat!”

“We’ve turned the station inside out, I tell you. There’s only one, and he’s star crazy.”

“He’s only been here two months.”

“Evidently two months is enough,” the mate said dryly.

“Bring him along, then. We’ve wasted enough time here.”

The mate turned, motioned, and two crewmen brought out Gorton Effro.

“Good God!” the captain exclaimed.

“He must have made the outfit himself,” the mate said. “One of the lounges has a collection of religious paintings. He’s copied a priest’s costume.”

Effro faced the captain blankly. His miter was slightly askew; his vestments were torn in several places. In his left hand he clutched a Society of St. Brock Bible.

“He keeps tripping over his robes and falling,” the mate said. “He doesn’t even seem to feel it. Know what he’s wearing on his feet? Metal sandals. I’m telling you, he’s as star-touched as they come.”

Suddenly Effro scurried forward and knelt at the captain’s feet. “Do you come to instruct me, Excellency?”