A Science Fiction Mystery Novel

"That's because you don't have a soul, now, do ye?" Hiram Sleezman asked, flicking his rod so that the artificial fly at the end of the attached line danced in a lifelike way across the surface of the calm lake. No matter how his skilled hands made the little bit of fluff skitter and jump, none of the fish that might be lurking in the depths below seemed the least bit interested.

"If I knew what a soul was I might be able to know whether or not I had one, sir," Tague replied waving the circling gnats away from the oblong black disks, where a human's eyes would be, that provided him with the sense of vision.

"Well, now, that's pretty much the point, now, isn't it?" Hiram asked. "If ye had a soul ye wouldn't need anybody to explain to ye just what a soul was. Ye'd just know, now, wouldn't ye? Stands to reason, I'd think."

"You sound like one of my professors back at college, Dad," Calvin Sleezman told his father. The younger Sleezman had spent a whole term at Lupinus College and was currently home for the summer to help with the crops, an acceptable and necessary reason to take time off from his studies, in the view of the largely agricultural world upon which they lived, and also to give both the college and the students a chance to recover, for a time, from one another's company. If he was presently a bit big-headed because of his academic adventures, it was likely that another year or so of struggling with the curriculum would make him a bit more circumspect about showing off.

"An' if I be as wise as yer professors, lad - and I'm not denying, it, mind, havin' seen more than me share of that sort of man during me years as a guide when I was as young as yerself - then what're we spendin' all the cash fer, to send ye to that college o' yers?" the old man asked, giving his fly another skittering flip. "Ye can just stay here with yer old pa and pick up everythin' ye need to know."

Calvin laughed. He was fishing with a simple worm on a hook, so he was spared the challenge (and fun) of constantly casting, but he was having no better luck than his father. "If I wasn't getting a scholarship I might take what you're saying a bit more seriously, Dad," he said. "Besides, it's not what you know, it's that piece of paper that says you know it. At least that's what everybody claims back at college."

"Aye, and I suppose that's the right of it," Hiram agreed. "Though if ye're set on taking over yer old man's farm out here in the backlands then it hardly seems worth the effort to get that paper, now, does it? I mean to say, everybody hereabouts knows what a clever lad ye be, so who're ye trying to impress?"

"It never hurts to get a few years of schooling under your belt," Justan Word said mildly. Of an age closer to Hiram than Calvin, he owned the local hardware store. Since Nickel's Port was either the third or fourth largest city on Hope's Planet, depending on who was doing the counting, and since Justan owned the only hardware store in town, he was a man of considerable local prominence and influence, though he never made an issue of it.

"Did we come here to talk or to fish?" Ulysses Sothman snapped. Old Ulysses didn't own a prosperous hardware store, or much of anything else, for that matter, and he didn't have a son going to college. What he did have was the kind of personality that was picturesque from a distance and downright unpleasant up-close. From long acquaintance, everyone in the boat was more or less used to his ways, and while no one would have gone so far as to actually push him overboard, if he had happened to tumble over the side by accident there might have been some argument among his companions as to just who would be the one that had to get wet trying to rescue him.

"Seems to me we might as well talk, considering there's nary a fish floating in our bucket yet, and we've been out here long enough to root our backsides to the seats," Hiram remarked. "If I hadn't a stocked this lake meself back when we settled this stretch of the backlands I'd think there's nothing down there but water and muck."

"You make it sound like you did it all by yourself, Hiram," Ulysses grumbled. "As I recall it, ye was nothin' but a scrawny little pimple-faced teeny at the time, standin' around gettin' in the way while we men did all the work."

"The men may have done it, but I was here watching," Hiram said with a laugh. "And anyway, what's this 'we' yer talking about, Uly? No doubt ye managed to get yerself on the payroll fer the job, seeing as they didn't know yer ways all that well back then, but I'll wager ye didn't do any o' the work involved with it."

"An honest day's work fer an honest day's pay," Ulysses said, spitting into the lake with no more than his normal rancor. "And when did the guvermint ever give an honest day's pay?"

"When did they ever get an honest day's work?" Hiram countered. "From yerself, anyway."

"Got a bite," Calvin said suddenly, giving a sharp jerk on his line. The sinker flipped wildly up into the air and a crucified worm, fishless, followed it, but then the young man shrugged and let the line fall back down into the water.

"How many times I got ta tell ye, lad, don't go jerking the line out o' the water like that," Ulysses admonished. "Just a nibble ain't enough. Ya got to wait till the fish gets a good solid bite, and then he'll hook himself. Let the fish do the work for ye."

"That's yer whole philosophy, Uly," Hiram laughed. "But sometimes ye've got to do the work yerself, and that's a fact."

"I don't see all the fish ye've been catchin' this mornin' yer so smart," Ulysses shot back with a deep frown.

But at that moment the nibble on Calvin's line returned for a repeat engagement and there was an exciting minute or two while the young man pulled a fine, if rather small, lake trout into the boat. Tague, of course, was left with the unpleasant but necessary task of working the ugly hook and what was left of the unfortunate worm from the even more unfortunate fish's gullet. The robot completed the chore with what, in a human, would have been obvious distaste. He then slipped the maimed fish into a small bucket by his feet and worked the naked hook through the body of another helpless worm before swinging the hook, line, and sinker back out over the water so that Calvin could once more drop it into the water.

"Well, there was one fish down there, at least," the young man said with satisfaction.

"Aye, an' one fish fer a whole day's work is worse than none," Ulysses grumbled. "Not enough ta eat, unless it's a powerful big fish, which this ain't even close ta bein', and ya just have ta clean the thing and stick it in the freezer till ya have somethin' to put with it, an' by then it just tastes o' freezer burn, now, donnit?"

Calvin shrugged. "Depends on how long it takes you to catch a few more to add to it," he said. "I wasn't planning on a limit of one fish every six months or so. And anyway, when it comes to that, Tague's the one who has to clean it, isn't he? So what does that part of it matter?"

"Aye, an' not all of us are so rich as to have our own personal tin-bottomed slaves, now, are we?" Ulysses said bitterly. "When I wants somethin' done, I have to dig right in and get me hands dirty doin' it meself."

"Maybe that's why you never do anything," Hiram told him.

"I don't see as I'm any more lazy than yerselves, when it comes ta that," Ulysses went on in a philosophical tone of voice. "I mean ta say, when it comes right down ta it, ye don't do anything yerselves that ye don't want ta do, any more than I does meself. The only difference is, ye've got yerselves yer army a robots ta do work fer ye, and then ye take the profits fer the work they've done and buy yerselves a good hunk o' land with it, or mebbe a pickup truck wi' a camper or the like." He sighed slightly and his bloodshot eyes glazed over slightly as he contemplated the ecstasies of a life complete with a pickup and camper.

"That may be so, but we had to work in the first place to buy the robots, now, didn't we?" Hiram asked. "There's nobody I know of giving them away for free."

"An' why don't they, when it comes to that?" Ulysses asked. "After all, they've got robots ta make robots, these days, don't they? An' if the machines are doin' all o' the work, why should anybody be gettin' any money out of what they make? Why not give the robots they're knockin' together at Capitol away fer free, so's everybody can have a halfway decent life instead o' grubbing away like a bunch o' animals?"

"What are you, a commie or something?" Hiram asked in mock-horror. "You can't just give things away, even if it don't cost you anything to make them. Where's the profit in that?"

"An' I'm supposin' that makes some kind o' sense?" Ulysses demanded. "Why should anybody be makin' money off'a something they ain't puttin' any work into themselves?"

"I don't know about that, but there is some upkeep in owning a robot, you know, Uly," Justan spoke up. "Their batteries don't last forever, and even aside from that, one of their parts or another is always breaking down. A good third of my profits back at the store comes from selling spare parts for all of the robots around here."

"Aye, and who makes the spare parts, then?" Ulysses asked stubbornly.

"Well, I..."

"It was robots, now, wasn't it?" the old man asked.

"I suppose it was, when it comes right down to it," Justan agreed equably. "They do most of the fine work on everything these days, and I don't know much else that has as many fine work on it as some of the different components of a robot. But that doesn't mean..."

"Oh aye, it doesn' mean," Ulysses said with a satisfied grunt. "Don' go gettin' yerself all excited, defendin' the system we've got workin' fer ye here in Hope's Landing," he said. "I know it's all set up so's those who have the money can keep a'havin' it at the expense o' the rest o' us, but I'm still thinkin' it'd be only fair if they passed out at least one robot fer the each of us, so's we'd all have a equal chance at gettin' along halfway decent."

"But what would the robots think of that, sir?" Tague spoke up suddenly, shocking everyone to silence for a moment. The humans had forgotten that they had one of the metal constructs right there with them, and that he could hear everything they were saying. There was the generally embarrassed feeling on the boat for a moment of men who had been caught discussing women in the presence of a lady.

"I wasn't aware that robots had any opinions on anything, to be honest," Justan said slowly. "I've worked with robots every day of my life every since we settled here on Hope's Planet, and back in technical school before that, and they've never complained about anything we did to them yet."

Tague gave a remarkably human gesture. "Perhaps you've never asked them, sir," he said mildly. "Though I wasn't speaking of complaining as such. But if you didn't want us to think about such things, you shouldn't have built us so that we could do so."

"Now, it must be said, Tague, not everybody's of the opinion that robots actually do think, ye know," Hiram said. "And even if they do, I'm not sure thinking is the same thing as having opinions," Tague was his robot, a newer model, recently purchased to be more or less a jack-of-all trades for the farm, and as such he had to have qualities of flexibility and comprehension which were generally not built into those robots who were intended for repetitious tasks such as driving tractors in the fields or repairing machinery. Just for a moment the older farmer wondered if it was really such a good idea to give any robot quite so much mental power. But then Tague was just a machine, after all...

Ulysses snorted with a certain measure of glee at seeing one of the robots he could never even hope to have turning on its master in even such a mild way. "An' just how can ye be thinkin' without an opinion or two comin' about from the process?" he asked. "When yer settin' down ta make yerself a race of mechanical men, ye just might consider every now and again that they might turn out to be men in more ways than yer expectin'."

"I meant no disrespect, sir," Tague assured hastily. "I was merely attempting to express my awareness that giving a robot to those who cannot properly care for it would be tantamount to condemning the fellow to a quick collapse from disrepair and inadequate maintenance. Perhaps you are not aware, sirs, that we robots have been designed to make every effort to prolong our productive lives as long as possible, within the limits of our obedient service to our owners. Or at least some of the newer models have been built with these programs as a part of their overall instructions. It was generally intended that these programs would be necessary so that we would have the sense, if I may use the term, not to step off the nearest cliff or something of that nature without bothering to try to save ourselves, but in practical terms such programs have wider implications, do they not? Meaning no disrespect," he added somewhat irrelevantly.

"You mean to say they build robots with survival instincts?" Calvin asked with a squeak. "Skikes, I'm not sure that was such a good idea!"

"What're ye afraid of, that this shiny-suited fella might take a carvin' knife ta yer hide if ye try ta sell him fer scrap?" Uly asked with a snicker.

"Of course not," Calvin answered, but he gave the robot an odd look. "You, ah, you wouldn't do that, would you, Tague?" he asked uncertainly.

"Of course not, sir," the robot said calmly.

"Hah! As if he'd admit it," Ulysses crowed.