And while I tried to form a proper question he said something that knocked the questions completely from my mind.
“For years,” he said, “I have been wandering around from one job to another and the pay was always good. There’s nothing, you understand, that a robot really needs, that he’d feel called to spend his money on. So it has just piled up. And here finally is something I’d like to spend it on. If you would not be offended, sir . . .”
“Offended about what?” I asked, not entirely catching the drift of all his talk.
“Why,” he said, “I’d like to put my money into your compositor. I think I might have enough that we could Finish it.”
I suppose I should have got all happy, I should have leaped to my feet and shouted out my joy. I just sat cold and stiff, afraid to move, afraid that if I moved I might scare it all away.
I said, still stiff and cold, “It’s not a good investment. I would not recommend it.”
He almost pleaded with me. “Look, it is not just the money. I can offer more than that. I’m a good mechanic. Together, the two of us could put together an instrument that would be the best one ever made.”
Chapter 4
As I came down the steps, the woman sitting at the wheel of the pink car spoke to me.
“You are Fletcher Carson, are you not?”
“Yes,” I said, completely puzzled, “but how did you know that I was here? There is no way you could have known.”
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “I knew you’d be on the funeral ship, but it took so long to get here. My name is Cynthia Lansing and I must talk with you.”
“I haven’t too much time,” I said. “Perhaps a little later.”
She was not exactly beautiful, but there was, even at first sight, something engaging and extremely likeable about her. She had a face that fell just short of being heart-shaped, her eyes were quiet and calm, her black hair fell down to her shoulders; she wasn’t smiling with the lips, but her entire face was ready to break into a smile.
“You’re going out to the shed,” she said, “to uncrate Elmer and Bronco. I could drive you out there.”
“Is there anything,” I asked, “that you don’t know about me?”
She did smile then. “I knew that as soon as you got in you’d have to pay a courtesy call on Maxwell Peter Bell. How did you make out?”
“In Maxwell Peter’s book I achieved the rating of a heel.” *
“Then he didn’t take you over?”
I shook my head. I didn’t quite trust myself to speak.
How the hell, I wondered, could she know all she seemed to know? There was only one place she could have learned any of it at all-on Alden at the university. Those old friends of mine, I told myself, might have hearts of gold, but they were blabbermouths.
“Come on, get in,” she said. “We can talk on the way out to the shed. And I want to see this wondrous robot, Elmer.
I got into the car. There was an envelope lying in her lap and she handed it to me.
“For you,” she said.
It had my name scrawled across the face of it and there was no mistaking that misshapen scrawl. Thorney, I told myself. What the hell did Thorney have to do with Cynthia Lansing ambushing me as soon as I got to Earth?
She started up the car and headed down the driveway. I ripped the letter open. It was a sheet of official University of Alden stationery and in the upper left-hand corner was neatly printed: William J. Thorndyke, Ph.D., Department of Archaeology.
The letter itself was in the same scrawl as the name upon the envelope. It read:
Dear Fletch:
The bearer of this letter is Miss Cynthia Lansing and I would impress upon you that whatever she may tell you is the truth; I have examined the evidence and I would pledge my reputation that it is authentic. She will be wanting to accompany you on your trip and I would take it as the greatest favor you could do me if you should bear with her and supply her with all co-operation and assistance that is possible. She will be taking a Pilgrim ship to Earth and should be there and waiting for you when you arrive. I have placed some departmental funds at her disposal and you are to make use of them if there is any need. All that I need tell you is-that her presence on the Earth has to do with what we talked about that last time, when you came to see me just before you left.
I sat with the letter in my hand and I could see him as he had been on that last time I had seen him, in the fire-lit littered room that he called his study, with books shelved to the ceiling, with the shabby furniture, the dog curled upon the hearth rug, the cat upon its cushion. He had sat on a hassock and rolled the brandy glass between his palms, and he had said, “Fletch, I am certain I am right, that my theory’s right. The Anachronians were not galactic traders, as so many of my colleagues think. They were observers; they were cultural spies. It makes a deal of sense when you look at it. Let us say that a great civilization had the capacity to roam among the stars. Let us say that in some manner they could spot a planet where an intellectual culture was rising or about to rise. So they plant an observer on that planet and keep him there, alert to developments that might be of value. As we know, cultures vary greatly. This can be observed even among the human colonies that were planted from the Earth. Even a few centuries are enough to provide some variations. The variations are much greater, of course, among those planets that still have or at one time had alien cultures-alien as opposed to human. No two groups of intelligences ever go at anything in parallel manner. They may arrive, eventually, at the same result, or at an approximation of the same result, but they go about it differently, and in the process each develops some capability or some concept which the other does not have. Even a great galactic culture would have developed in this fashion, and because it did develop in this fashion there would be many approaches, many concepts, many abilities which it bypassed or missed along the way. It would seem, this being true, that it would have been worth the while of even our great galactic culture to learn about and have at hand for study those cultural developments it had missed, perhaps had never even thought of. Probably not more than one in ten of these missed developments would be applicable to their culture, but that one in ten might be most important. It might give a new dimension, might make them a more well-rounded and more solid culture. Let us say, which is not true, of course, that Earth had been the only culture that dreamed up the wheel. Even the great galactic culture had missed the wheel, had gone on to its greatness on some other principle that left the lack of the wheel unnoticed. Still, would it not seem likely that knowledge of the wheel, even at a much later date, might be of value? The wheel is such a handy thing to have.”
I came back to the present. I still clutched the letter in my hand. The car was nearing the shed. The funeral ship stood on its pad, but there was no sign of the vehicles that had been unloading the cargo. The work must all be done.
“Thorney says that you are expecting to go with us,” I said to Cynthia Lansing. “I don’t know if that’ll be possible. We’ll be roughing it. Camping out in all kinds of weather.”
“I can rough it. I can camp.”
I shook my head.
“Look,” she protested, “I gambled everything I had on this, to be here when you landed. I scratched up every credit that I had to pay the outrageous fare on a Pilgrim ship . . .”
“Thorney said something about some funds. A grant.”
“I didn’t have quite enough for the fare,” she said. “I used part of it for that. And I’ve been waiting for you to arrive, staying at the Pilgrim Inn, which isn’t cheap. There is very little left. Really, nothing left . . .”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “But you knew it was a gamble. You had no reason to believe . . .”
“But I did,” she said. “You are as broke as I am.”