“Do you want a bed pan?” the robot asked again, obviously bewildered. It was programmed to answer seven hundred different questions: May I have a bed pan, may I have more paper, what’s for dinner, I have a pain. But nothing in its tape banks was designed to cope with this particular problem.
Then Gabe did do it. He pulled back one powerful hand and let go. Of course the blow never connected. One thing the metal nurse was programmed to do was fend off insane and angry patients. With one jolt from its swiftly extended, double-pronged shocker, the machine knocked him flat on the floor, colder than yesterday’s pancakes. And believe me, in here, yesterday’s pancakes were cold enough yesterday.
We helped him into bed, Libby and I, and put cold compresses composed of worn out undershirts on his forehead.
“Where—”
Kyu started to explain all over again, but he was hushed.
“Never argue with a robotnurse. You can’t win,” Libby said. He knew from experience, from his early years in the ward.
Gabe forced himself to a sitting position. His chin was bruised where he had fallen on it, and it was beginning to blue his face like a dull beard. It certainly wasn’t pretty.
“You okay?” Kyu asked.
I kept quiet, for I never have been one to say much about anything at any time. Which reminds me of something Libby always used to say when I wrote my short stories (which the robots burned methodically). He would pucker up his scarred lips, open his wrinkled mouth very, very wide, and say, “Boys, old Sam doesn’t say much, but he’s going to be our Boswell. And he’ll do a better job with our collective biographies than that old-time runt ever did for Johnson’s!”
Well, maybe Libby was right. Maybe I will chronicle it all. Maybe I have enough time left that I can go back from this last chapter and write all the ones that come before. That is all that is left for me now with everyone gone and the ward cold. Silence prevails, and I cannot stand the silence.
Anyway, for weeks after that, Gabe seemed older than the rest of us, almost like one of the walking dead. He explained to us all about the old man who lived next door to him who had been due to go that night, and how the robots must have gotten the wrong address. We explained there was no grievance board of human beings to take the problem to, that we had never seen a human other than patients since we came into the ward. He pounded on the door, took more pokes at more robots and learned the hard way. With the truth creeping in on him, that he would never go free being a thought constantly in his mind, his spirit faded. He was more depressed than we were. Yet he tried not to let it show, he turned outward with his misfortune and directed his vigor at us, trying to cheer and pep. He was always sympathetic, more so the longer he lived with us. I remember once:
“Goddamn it you took them! I know you took them! You mamza pig! Thief!”
Hanlin, a new face, was so red that his nose was a mighty volcano preparing to burst, his lips already sputtering white lava. “Brookman, you’re a liar. What do you want me to say? What would I want with them, hah? What for would I want your silly toys?”
“I’ll carve you up when they bring the knives with to eat! Little mother pieces. Blood all over your lousy face!”
Everyone had turned from his bed to watch the drama unfold. But the fact that Brookman and Hanlin were supposed to be friends kept the significance of the scene from weighing on us immediately.
Gabe was quicker. He vaulted a bed—actually leaped right over it—which proved a great pleasure to the bedridden among us who had too long been confined with doddering old men and had forgotten the agility of youth. He vaulted the damn bed and picked Hanlin and Brookman completely off the floor, one wrinkled old skeleton in each hand. “Shut up, you two! You want some robot comin’ in here and shocking you both to death?”