answer for himself.”
“I wish I could,” cried the distraught minister. “I truly wish I
could.”
“If it is any help,” said Richard Daniel, “I can tell you that
sometimes I suspect I have a soul.”
And that, he could see, had been most upsetting for this kindly human.
It had been, Richard Daniel told himself, unkind of him to say it. For it
must have been confusing, since coming from himself it was not opinion only,
but expert evidence.
So he had gone away from the minister’s study and come back to the
empty house to get on with his inventory work.
Now that the inventory was all finished and the papers stacked where
Dancourt, the estate administrator, could find them when be showed up in the
morning, Richard Daniel had done his final service for the Barringtons and
now must begin doing for himself.
He left the bedroom and closed the door behind him and went quietly
down the stairs and along the hallway to the little cubby, back of the
kitchen, that was his very own.
And that, he reminded himself with a rush of pride, was of a piece with
his double name and his six hundred years. There were not too many robots
who had a room, however small, that they might call their own.
He went into the cubby and turned on the light and closed the door
behind him.
And now, for the first time, he faced the grim reality of what he meant
to do.
The cloak and hat and trousers hung upon a hook and the galoshes were
placed precisely underneath them. His attachment kit lay in one corner of
the cubby and the money was cached underneath the floor board he had
loosened many years ago to provide a hiding place.
There was, he, told himself, no point in waiting. Every minute counted.
He had a long way to go and he must be at his destination before morning
light.
He knelt on the floor and pried up the loosened board, shoved in a hand
and brought out the stacks of bills, money hidden through the years against
a day of need.
There were three stacks of bills, neatly held together by elastic bands
– money given him throughout the years as tips and Christmas gifts, as
birthday presents and rewards for little jobs well done.
He opened the storage compartment located in his chest and stowed away
all the bills except for half a dozen which he stuffed into a pocket in one
hip.
He took the trousers off the hook and it was an awkward business, for
he’d never worn clothes before except when he’d tried on these very trousers
several days before. It was a lucky thing, he thought, that long-dead Uncle
Michael had been a portly man, for otherwise the trousers never would have
fit.
He got them on and zippered and belted into place, then forced his feet
into the overshoes. He was a little worried about the overshoes. No human
went out in the summer wearing overshoes. But it was the best that he could
do. None of the regular shoes he’d found in the house had been nearly large
enough.
He hoped no one would notice, but there was no way out of it. Somehow
or other, he had to cover up his feet, for if anyone should see them, they’d
be a giveaway.
He put on the cloak and it was a little short. He put on the hat and it
was slightly small, but he tugged it down until it gripped his metal skull
and that was all to the good, he told himself; no wind could blow it off.
He picked up his attachments – a whole bag full of them that he’d
almost never used. Maybe it was foolish to take them along, he thought, but
they were a part of him and by rights they should go with him. There was so
little that he really owned – just the money he had saved, a dollar at a
time, and this kit of his.
With the bag of attachments clutched underneath his arm, he closed the
cubby door and went down the hall.
At the big front door he hesitated and turned back toward the house,
but it was, at the moment, a simple darkened cave, empty of all that it once
had held. There was nothing here to stay for – nothing but the memories, and
the memories he took with him.
He opened the door and stepped out on the stoop and closed the door
behind him.
And now, he thought, with the door once shut behind him, he was on his
own. He was running off. He was wearing clothes. He was out at night,
without the permission of a master. And all of these were against the law.
Any officer could stop him, or any citizen. He had no rights at all.
And he had no one who would speak for him, now that the Barringtons were
gone.
He moved quietly down the walk and opened the gate and went slowly down
the street, and it seemed to him the house was calling for him to come back.
He wanted to go back, his mind said that he should go back, but his feet
kept going on, steadily down the street.
He was alone, he thought, and the aloneness now was real, no longer the
mere intellectual abstract he’d held in his mind for days. Here he was, a
vacant hulk, that for the moment had no purpose and no beginning and no end,
but was just an entity that stood naked in an endless reach of space and
time and held no meaning in itself.
But he walked on and with each block that he covered he slowly fumbled
back to the thing he was, the old robot in old clothes, the robot running
from a home that was a home no longer.
He wrapped the cloak about him tightly and moved on down the street and
now he hurried, for he had to hurry.
He met several people and they paid no attention to him. A few cars
passed, but no one bothered him.
He came to a shopping center that was brightly lighted and he stopped
and looked in terror at the wide expanse of open, brilliant space that lay
ahead of him. He could detour around it, but it would use up time and he
stood there, undecided, trying to screw up his courage to walk into the
light.
Finally he made up his mind and strode briskly out, with his cloak
wrapped tight about him and his hat pulled low.
Some of the shoppers turned and looked at him and he felt agitated
spiders running up and down his back. The galoshes suddenly seemed three
times as big as they really were and they made a plopping, squashy sound
that was most embarrassing.
He hurried on, with the end of the shopping area not more than a block
away.
A police whistle shrilled and Richard Daniel jumped in sudden fright
and ran. He ran in slobbering, mindless fright, with his cloak streaming out
behind him and his feet slapping on the pavement.
He plunged out of the lighted strip into the welcome darkness of a
residential section and he kept on running.
Far off he heard the siren and he leaped a hedge and tore across the
yard. He thundered down the driveway and across a garden in the back and a
dog came roaring out and engaged in noisy chase.
Richard Daniel crashed into a picket fence and went through it to the
accompaniment of snapping noises as the pickets and the rails gave way. The
dog kept on behind him and other dogs joined in.
He crossed another yard and gained the street and pounded down it. He
dodged into a driveway, crossed another yard, upset a birdbath and ran into
a clothesline, snapping it in his headlong rush.
Behind him lights were snapping on in the windows of the houses and
screen doors were banging as people hurried out to see what the ruckus was.
He ran on a few more blocks, crossed another yard and ducked into a
lilac thicket, stood still and listened. Some dogs were still baying in the
distance and there was some human shouting, but there was no siren.
He felt a thankfulness well up in him that there was no siren, and a
sheepishness, as well. For he had been panicked by himself, be knew; he had
run from shadows, he had fled from guilt.
But he’d thoroughly roused the neighborhood and even now, he knew,
calls must be going out and in a little while the place would be swarming
with police.
He’d raised a hornet’s nest and he needed distance, so he crept out of
the lilac thicket and went swiftly down the street, heading for the edge of