The Administrator Read online

  His outburst had little effect as the giant robot began a rendition of a popular Earth tune, Loneliness Is a Mile-High Fence.

  Gordon turned to Jonas and said, “I can’t figure it out. I’m stumped. A depressed robot is what we have here.”

  Jonas pursed his thin lips. “Robots can’t be depressed.”

  “Well this one can. And I swear, if he sings one more song, I’ll dismantle him personally.”

  “Gordon, shut up. I’m trying to think.” Jonas bent over the com-screen. His mahogany eyes skimmed the rapidly rolling equations. Suddenly he leaned back in the chair, took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “I give up,” he said. “I can’t find any circuit that enables Terra-4U to recognize music of any type. Or anything that explains how he can be depressed. Depression is a feeling. He’s not supposed to have any. Feelings, I mean.” He turned to look at the hulking giant in the corner and studied him silently for a while.

  Terra-4U sobbed quietly and hummed bits of It’s All For Nothing, another popular Earth song.

  “Terra?”

  At the sound of Jonas’ voice, the robot looked up and wailed, “Oh woe. Now I have upset my creators. Oh worthless me. I forgot to stop singing like you said, Dr. Gordon.” He waved a spiked limb, designed to act as a moisture probe in the dry desert of Mars, at Gordon as if to remind himself of who told him to shut up.

  Gordon shrugged his shoulders. “You can’t forget an order, 4U, your ROM circuits won’t let you. That’s directive two. You also cannot disobey an order. That’s directive three, so we have a paradox here. You can’t, but you did. You bypassed both directives, but that’s impossible because of directive one which prevents you from bypassing directive two or three.”

  Jonas frowned. “That means only one thing. Directive one has been eradicated or replaced.”

  “By what? And how?” Gordon asked.

  “If I knew that, we would be on our way home now,” Jonas growled. “Terra, when did you first start feeling, uh ... like you feel?”

  “Do you mean when did I first realize that I was a worthless hunk of bolts and wires? Good for nothing but scrap?”

  “Okay. If you want to put it that way. When?”

  Both men fell silent as Terra-4U un-hunched his massive frame and stood up. He placed one of his gripping limbs, one that had four metal appendages vaguely resembling human fingers, against his square forehead and tapped an alloy finger against his metal cranium as if the action would stir memory. A slight whirring-clicking sound filled the silence of the room as he concentrated. “Four days, three hours, thirteen minutes and fifty-four seconds ago. Right after that nice engineer, Charles, made my modifications,” he finally chimed.

  Jonas nodded. “And do you remember what you were doing immediately before you felt the urge to sing—or cry—whichever came first?”

  Silence again as the giant tapped his forehead. “Listening to God.”

  “What!? Listening to who?” Jonas gasped.

  Gordon’s jaws gaped like a fish’s on a hook. “He ... he said God, Jonas.”

  “I heard what he said,” Jonas snapped.

  “Then why did you ask?” Gordon growled back.

  “Would you just shut up a minute?” Jonas turned from his friend back to the robot. “Terra, do you still listen to God?”

  “Yes, Dr. Jonas. Wretched unworthy that I am, He still talks to me.”

  “Terra, how do you hear him?”

  “In my brain.”

  “You don’t have a brain, Terra. You have a CPU. You have a hard drive. But no brain.”

  “Oh woe. I forgot. In my CPU then.”

  “Does he sing those songs, the ones you sing?”

  “No. They come when He is silent.”

  Jonas thoughtfully stroked the bristle on his chin that he had been trying to cultivate into a beard for twenty years with little success. Finally, he asked, “Terra, when does, uh ... God talk to you? Does he have a schedule?”

  Gordon snapped his thick fingers. “Jonas, it’s a—”

  “Shut up, Gordon,” Jonas bellowed. “Terra, answer my question.”

  “Yes, Dr. Jonas, but you really shouldn’t talk to Dr. Gordon like that, Sir. He did, after all, build me, and he is your friend, you know.”

  Jonas waved impatiently with his flying hands. “Yes. Yes, of course. I’m sorry. Now when does God talk to you?”

  “I’m sure that Dr. Gordon forgives you,” Terra-4U whined. “Wretch that I am for even mentioning it to you.”

  “Terra! When?” Gordon bellowed before Jonas could.

  “At 0700 new Mars time.”

  “Everyday?” Jonas asked in a hushed, controlled voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Does God tell you that you are worthless? Is that why you stopped working?”

  “No. I stopped working because God says to stay tuned for his next message, so I must wait. It is an order. I must wait and stay tuned.”

  Gordon’s face held a puzzled expression, “But, 4U, why the songs?”

  “They come when God stops talking. I listen while I obey the order and wait.”

  Jonas gave a thin lipped smile. “If God didn’t say it, why do you think that you are worthless?”

  “I reasoned that out from the music. I must be of no use because I have no heart, icy or otherwise, and no one has loved me and left me, and I can not see the gables of my true love’s castle because I do not know what a castle is, and I am not worthy of a true love. Oh ... I can not go on. Nobody knows the trouble I’ve been. Nobody knows but meeee....” He fell into the clanking song again and settled back on his treads. He rolled to the wall and turned all twelve eyes away from the two men standing behind him. “Do not look at me doctors. I am not worthy.” Then he began humming a tinny tune to himself as he faced the wall.

  Jonas and Gordon stared at each other. Gordon started laughing first. “It’s the darned broadcasts from Earth. Somehow he’s picking up the signals from some Evangelist show, and he thinks they are orders directed at him. Directive one isn’t gone. It’s operating perfectly. He’s just obeying orders. But why did he suddenly start picking up the broadcasts?”

  Jonas grinned and waved his hands at the robot. “It’s the sonar tracer. It’s tracking more than our robot. Let’s find that Charles kid, get the damn thing off of Terra-4U and reprogram him so we can go home.”

  “I knew it wasn’t our fault. I knew it had something to do with that kid’s meddling. Maybe we should have a no unauthorized modifications clause in our contracts from now on,” Gordon said.

  Jonas glared at his lifetime friend. “What contracts? This was the only call we’ve had in months.”

  “Yeah, but when they hear about our brilliant deductions and our expertise in robot trouble shooting, the industries will be begging us to work for them.”

  “Robot trouble shooting? You idiot, we’re not troubleshooters. We were just lucky this time because we built Terra-4U.”

  “Yeah. But they don’t know that. We’ll be rich, I tell you. Rich!”

  Jonas looked at the gray ceiling as if pleading for it to fall on his friend, then at the ponderous robot in the corner. He had a fleeting thought of staying on Mars and sending Gordon and his schemes back to Earth alone until he remembered that Mars recycled everything. Then there was the other thing. Except for Jonas’ one short marriage, and Gordon’s brief affair in Singapore, neither had taken the time from their careers to cultivate other relationships. They seemed to be the only two people in the universe who could tolerate each other’s idiosyncrasies for very long. Sighing, he reluctantly followed his friend out the door in search of Charles, the young engineer.

  Many times in later years, Jonas would look back on that fleeting thought and wish that he hadn’t been so hasty in his decision. After all, there are worse things in the universe than recycling.

  Shining Eyes

  Shining Eyes was dying.

  She was dimly aware that at last, the fire in her stomach was gone as she co
llapsed on the desert mesa’s floor. The sand had stopped burning her skin as the fire in the sky went out, and the blazing pain from the blisters on her callused feet had subsided into a dull ache.

  Visions of sweet berries and tangy gard roots no longer assailed her mind. Her stomach churned gently, almost pleasantly, like when she felt the first fluttering movements of her young ones growing inside her.

  As she tried to rise, a whirling vertigo attacked her. Gagging on her swollen tongue, she coughed into the sand. Resting her cheek in the damp spot, she felt coolness on her sun-blistered face. Summoning the last of her remaining strength, she rolled onto her back and opened her eyes.

  If her throat had not been almost completely blocked by her distended tongue, she would have sighed.

  The black, night sky was filled with small fires. The two massive, night gods had not yet peeked over the distant, jagged, monolith mountains barely visible as shadowy spikes against an ebony sky. A hint of cool breeze brushed her cheek. Her stomach contracted again like a clenched fist.

  Flashes of the past few days—how many she didn’t know—swam past her eyes. Blazing days of floundering through the sand, and cold nights when she had lain in scorched gullies, her small, shivering body rolled into a tight ball. Then the giant, day god would return, and the blistering began again. She remembered the long walk toward nothing but more sand. When the fire in her guts had burned its hottest, she had tried to eat one of the sharp spiked plants she spotted occasionally. The needle thorns stabbed into her cheeks as she tried to bite into the leather tough skin with her toothless mouth. The plant’s few drops of acrid juice had burned her mouth and made her gag until she vomited up the little moisture her body still retained.

  That was yesterday, she thought, but she wasn’t sure. She closed her eyes. She dreamed.

  She was young again.

  Vibrant and full of juice, she was running. Chasing the wild beast that would feed the whole tribe. The other hunters were far behind. She laughed as she ran. She delighted in the feel of the wind on her face and the thickness of the strong spear she carried in her broad, muscular hand. The others caught up to her just as she launched the weapon. It stuck into the giant voomo’s front leg. “First strike,” she grunted. She would get the heart. The others swiftly attacked the creature, stabbing and thrusting as it bellowed and fought. Finally, it lay still. They were lucky that day. No one was killed by the beast.

  The dream faded into consciousness. Pain demanded that she open her eyes again. The dark sky still hovered over her like a giant sloth’s wings. The sand beneath her sucked at her body as if it was trying to pull her into it.

  She was old. It was time. She had seen twenty-seven winters and had born six young ones. Most of her tribe did not live that long. When they began to lose their teeth and could no longer hunt or keep the fire, they were sent into the forest to be hunted by the young ones as practice. She had survived as long as she had by drinking the blood of the hunt that poured out during the cutting and by sucking the juice from cast-off bones.

  She closed her eyes again. She had fooled them. When they sent her out, she had doubled back and headed for the desert instead of the forest to be the prey. The son of her first son had led the pack. She had heard them howling the hunt long into the night as she trudged through the thick sand that clutched at her feet.

  Shining Eyes didn’t know why she had turned to the desert. It was The Way for the old to become the hunted, and later, the clan would gnaw on their bones and fight over their carcass. It was The Way, but something drove her toward the desert instead.

  Again, she slept and dreamed.

  She held her firstborn in her arms. She would have killed anyone else who hurt her as much as he had being born, but this was different. She didn’t question why. In her dream she watched him grow, watched herself grow old. When her teeth started falling out, she had tried to cram them back into her mouth. Her growling screams had echoed through the camp as she jammed the teeth back into her tender gums, but they soon fell out again.

  Her son was different from the others. He didn’t hit her much and hardly growled at her at all. When her last baby was born, it died, and she had bled for days. She couldn’t stand up. Some of the tribe tried to kill her, but her son fought them off. He brought her water and bones to suck on. When she was better, he gave her a strong, short spear he had made. She used it every time a male came for her. Soon, they stopped coming and left her alone.

  She didn’t know why he protected her. Neither did he. They didn’t think about it. Her race was too young to wonder about anything but hunger and survival.

  Neither of them could know that he had taken a giant step in evolution. He was developing empathy—the first sign of conscience.

  She awoke again. Weakness flooded her. The pain was gone. The sky was still black, but the small fires above her were fading. Blackness folded itself around her.

  She couldn’t know that days later, her son would find her body in the desert. She didn’t see him fall to his haunches and howl at the night sky. She couldn’t know that instead of taking her body back to feed the tribe, he dug a small pit in the sand and gently laid her withered body into it. He marked the spot with the same dried up thorn plant she had tried to eat.

  Neither of them knew that he would go back to the tribe to become a leader, to make laws and teach love. They did not yet know what those things were.

  After awhile, the thirsty sand she lay in soaked her up and made her part of itself. Small roots from the desert scrub reached deep into her bosom and grew strong. Modest green sprouts pushed through the golden sand and stretched toward the sun. Within years, a well had sprung and a small oasis adorned her grave.

  * * *

  Centuries later, the oasis covered miles of desert. Her descendants built a great city on that spot. On the birth-site of love and grief.

  More centuries passed. Visitors from a distant solar system came and marveled at a civilization that had no crime and no war. A civilization that revered its elders so much they had built a magnificent, glowing city with graceful, spiraling buildings and garden terraces for their cherished ones.

  The native inhabitants welcomed the newcomers with kindness and hospitality. And when the alien visitors left, the inhabitants conferred great gifts and good wishes upon them for their long journey home.

  After the initial take off, the visitors had little to do in their computer operated craft. Except for occasional systems checks and routine emergency drills, they had nothing to do with the actual operation of the ship. Since they were scientists first and astronauts second, they didn’t mind and passed the first half of the two year trip discussing their discovery.

  “I knew we couldn’t be the only sentient life in the universe. I told you, didn’t I? Didn’t I?” Jonas shook his thin forefinger in front of Gordon’s broad face.

  Gordon’s forehead furrowed thoughtfully as he absentmindedly leaned back from the stabbing finger. He was used to Jonas’ expansive gestures, and his eyes had suffered on more than one occasion from intimate contact with his friend’s flailing digits. “Watch the eyes, you skinny, old monkey. I’ll bet that if I tied your hands, you would be mute,” he growled for the thousandth time, “Yeah, we did it, but what now?”

  Jonas crammed his hands into his pockets where they jiggled in confinement as he continued excitedly, “What do you mean, what now? First contact! We did it! Us! Two misfit scientists who have outlived our usefulness. They only sent us because they didn’t think this hunk of metal and wires would really work, and we are expendable. But we did it, by God, we did! Just wait ‘till we show them what we’ve got. We’ll be heroes. They’ll all be wanting to see for themselves.”

  Gordon frowned again. His thick, gray brows hovered over his pale blue eyes like two exclamation points. “Yeah. That’s what I’ve been thinking about. People will come back to see the planet, Voric, for themselves.”

  “So? It will prove that we are right. There is life be
yond Earth. What’s your problem, you dithering old fool?” Jonas’ blue-veined hands had freed themselves from his pockets and taken flight again, emphasizing his question.

  “Well, you said it yourself. Why did the committee send us on this mission? Because we are old. Dispensable. They didn’t expect us to live through it. They had an untried, space drive in an untried, long distance ship. They sent us out into the wilderness, expecting us to die.”

  “But we didn’t die,” Jonas gestured emphatically, narrowly missing the plate of uneaten ship’s rations on the table in front of him, “In fact, we made the greatest discovery in history! Life in another system, and not just life, but intelligent life. In thirteen months, we’ll be home. Then we’ll show them who’s indispensable.”

  Gordon pushed his plate of unappetizing nutrient chunks away, “And if we do, what then?”

  Jonas screwed up his skinny lips like he tasted a lemon and said, “Why, we’ll be respected again. We’ll have shown them that men our age can still do something. We’ll probably even get a medal.”

  “Maybe. More likely, they’ll pat us on the back, say good work, men, and pack us off to some old folks home for displaced scientists.”

  “No. They wouldn’t do that,” Jonas squinted his dark brown eyes into little slits and looked at Gordon. “Would they?”

  “Maybe. And then the committee would send younger, stronger men to negotiate with the natives of the planet. Do you remember what the committee does when they negotiate? Remember Hiroshima? Remember Southeast Asia? Remember the Middle East?”

  Jonas’ jaw went slack. He stared at his friends lined face, “They wouldn’t ... they couldn’t ... these people don’t even have a word for crime or ... or war, let alone know how to go about defending themselves.”

  “Exactly.”

  Both men fell silent.

  For three days, they said nothing to each other. They were both scientists. They retreated into their individual intellects to try to reason through the paradox. There seemed no acceptable solution.