When people talk about getting away
from it all, they are usually thinking about our
great open spaces out west. But to science fiction
writers, that would be practically in the heart of
Times Square. When a man of the future wants
solitude he picks a slab of rock floating in space
four light years east of Andromeda. Here is a
gentle little story about a man who sought the
solitude of such a location. And who did
he take along for company? None other than Charles
the Robot.
Mark Rogers was a prospector, and
he went to the asteroid belt looking for radioactives
and rare metals. He searched for years, never
finding much, hopping from fragment to fragment.
After a time he settled on a slab of rock half a mile
thick.
Rogers had been born old, and he didn’t
age much past a point. His face was white with
the pallor of space, and his hands shook a little.
He called his slab of rock Martha, after no girl he
had ever known.
He made a little strike, enough to
equip Martha with an air pump and a shack, a few tons
of dirt and some water tanks, and a robot. Then
he settled back and watched the stars.
The robot he bought was a standard-model
all-around worker, with built-in memory and a thirty-word
vocabulary. Mark added to that, bit by bit.
He was something of a tinkerer, and he enjoyed adapting
his environment to himself.
At first, all the robot could say
was “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir.”
He could state simple problems: “The air
pump is laboring, sir.” “The corn
is budding, sir.” He could perform a satisfactory
salutation: “Good morning, sir.”
Mark changed that. He eliminated
the “sirs” from the robot’s vocabulary;
equality was the rule on Mark’s hunk of rock.
Then he dubbed the robot Charles, after a father he
had never known.
As the years passed, the air pump
began to labor a little as it converted the oxygen
in the planetoid’s rock into a breathable atmosphere.
The air seeped into space, and the pump worked a little
harder, supplying more.
The crops continued to grow on the
tamed black dirt of the planetoid. Looking up,
Mark could see the sheer blackness of the river of
space, the floating points of the stars. Around
him, under him, overhead, masses of rock drifted,
and sometimes the starlight glinted from their black
sides. Occasionally, Mark caught a glimpse of
Mars or Jupiter. Once he thought he saw Earth.
Mark began to tape new responses into
Charles. He added simple responses to cue words.
When he said, “How does it look?” Charles
would answer, “Oh, pretty good, I guess.”
At first the answers were what Mark
had been answering himself, in the long dialogue held
over the years. But, slowly, he began to build
a new personality into Charles.
Mark had always been suspicious and
scornful of women. But for some reason he didn’t
tape the same suspicion into Charles. Charles’
outlook was quite different.
“What do you think of girls?”
Mark would ask, sitting on a packing case outside
the shack, after the chores were done.
“Oh, I don’t know.
You have to find the right one.” The robot
would reply dutifully, repeating what had been put
on its tape.
“I never saw a good one yet,” Mark would
say.
“Well, that’s not fair.
Perhaps you didn’t look long enough. There’s
a girl in the world for every man.”
“You’re a romantic!”
Mark would say scornfully. The robot would pause a
built-in pause and chuckle a carefully constructed
chuckle.
“I dreamed of a girl named Martha
once,” Charles would say. “Maybe if
I would have looked, I would have found her.”
And then it would be bedtime.
Or perhaps Mark would want more conversation.
“What do you think of girls?” he would
ask again, and the discussion would follow its same
course.
Charles grew old. His limbs lost
their flexibility, and some of his wiring started
to corrode. Mark would spend hours keeping the
robot in repair.
“You’re getting rusty,” he would
cackle.
“You’re not so young yourself,”
Charles would reply. He had an answer for almost
everything. Nothing involved, but an answer.
It was always night on Martha, but
Mark broke up his time into mornings, afternoons and
evenings. Their life followed a simple routine.
Breakfast, from vegetables and Mark’s canned
store. Then the robot would work in the fields,
and the plants grew used to his touch. Mark would
repair the pump, check the water supply, and straighten
up the immaculate shack. Lunch, and the robot’s
chores were usually finished.
The two would sit on the packing case
and watch the stars. They would talk until supper,
and sometimes late into the endless night.
In time, Mark built more complicated
conversations into Charles. He couldn’t
give the robot free choice, of course, but he managed
a pretty close approximation of it. Slowly, Charles’
personality emerged. But it was strikingly different
from Mark’s.
Where Mark was querulous, Charles
was calm. Mark was sardonic, Charles was naïve.
Mark was a cynic, Charles was an idealist. Mark
was often sad; Charles was forever content.
And in time, Mark forgot he had built
the answers into Charles. He accepted the robot
as a friend, of about his own age. A friend of
long years’ standing.
“The thing I don’t understand,”
Mark would say, “is why a man like you wants
to live here. I mean, it’s all right for
me. No one cares about me, and I never gave much
of a damn about anyone. But why you?”
“Here I have a whole world,”
Charles would reply, “where on Earth I had to
share with billions. I have the stars, bigger
and brighter than on Earth. I have all space
around me, close, like still waters. And I have
you, Mark.”
“Now, don’t go getting sentimental on
me ”
“I’m not. Friendship
counts. Love was lost long ago, Mark. The
love of a girl named Martha, whom neither of us ever
met. And that’s a pity. But friendship
remains, and the eternal night.”
“You’re a bloody poet,”
Mark would say, half admiringly. “A poor
poet.”
Time passed unnoticed by the stars,
and the air pump hissed and clanked and leaked.
Mark was fixing it constantly, but the air of Martha
became increasingly rare. Although Charles labored
in the fields, the crops, deprived of sufficient air,
died.
Mark was tired now, and barely able
to crawl around, even without the grip of gravity.
He stayed in his bunk most of the time. Charles
fed him as best he could, moving on rusty, creaking
limbs.
“What do you think of girls?”
“I never saw a good one yet.”
“Well, that’s not fair.”
Mark was too tired to see the end
coming, and Charles wasn’t interested.
But the end was on its way. The air pump threatened
to give out momentarily. There hadn’t been
any food for days.
“But why you?” Gasping in the escaping
air. Strangling.
“Here I have a whole world ”
“Don’t get sentimental ”
“And the love of a girl named Martha.”
From his bunk Mark saw the stars for
the last time. Big, bigger than ever, endlessly
floating in the still waters of space.
“The stars ...” Mark said.
“Yes?”
“The sun?”
“ shall shine as now.”
“A bloody poet.”
“A poor poet.”
“And girls?”
“I dreamed of a girl named Martha once.
Maybe if ”
“What do you think of girls?
And stars? And Earth?” And it was bedtime,
this time forever.
Charles stood beside the body of his
friend. He felt for a pulse once, and allowed
the withered hand to fall. He walked to a corner
of the shack and turned off the tired air pump.
The tape that Mark had prepared had
a few cracked inches left to run. “I hope
he finds his Martha,” the robot croaked, and
then the tape broke.
His rusted limbs would not bend, and
he stood frozen, staring back at the naked stars.
Then he bowed his head.
“The Lord is my shepherd,”
Charles said. “I shall not want. He
maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth
me ...”