“Fine.” I dug into pouch, found print-roll of one hundred “funny” stories. “Read. Tell me which are funny, which are not–and which get a giggle first time but are cold pancakes without honey to hear twice.”
“Manuel, you may be. the oddest man I’ve ever met.” She took that print-out. “Say, is this computer paper?”
“Yes. Met a computer with a sense of humor.”
“So? Well, it was bound to come some day. Everything else has been mechanized.”
I gave proper response and added “Everything?”
She looked up. “Please. Don’t whistle while I’m reading.”
4
Heard her giggle a few times while I rigged out bed and made it. Then sat down by her, took end she was through with and started reading. Chuckled a time or two but a joke isn’t too funny to me if read cold, even when I see it could be fission job at proper time. I got more interested in how Wyoh rated them.
She was marking “plus,” “minus,” and sometimes question mark, and plus stories were marked “once” or “always”–few were marked “always.” I put my ratings under hers. Didn’t disagree too often.
By time I was near end she was looking over my judgments. We finished together. “Well?” I said. “What do you think?”
“I think you have a crude, rude mind and it’s a wonder your wives put up with you.”
“Mum often says so. But how about yourself, Wyoh? You marked plusses on some that would make a slot-machine girl blush.”
She grinned. “Da. Don’t tell anybody; publicly I’m a dedicated party organizer above such things. Have you decided that I have a sense of humor?”
“Not sure. Why a minus on number seventeen?”
“Which one is that?” She reversed roll and found it. “Why, any woman would have done the same! It’s not funny, it’s simply necessary.”
“Yes, but think how silly she looked.”
“Nothing silly about it. Just sad. And look here. You thought this one was not funny. Number fifty-one.”
Neither reversed any judgments but I saw a pattern: Disagreements were over stories concerning oldest funny subject. Told her so. She nodded. “Of course. I saw that. Never mind, Mannie dear; I long ago quit being disappointed in men for what they are not and never can be.”
I decided to drop it. Instead told her about Mike.
Soon she said, “Mannie, you’re telling me that this computer is alive?”
“What do you mean?’ I answered. “He doesn’t sweat, or go to W.C. But can think and talk and he’s aware of himself. Is he ‘alive’?”
“I’m not sure what I mean by ‘alive,'” she admitted. “There’s a scientific definition, isn’t there? Irritability, or some such. And reproduction.”
“Mike is irritable and can be irritating. As for reproducing, not designed for it but–yes, given time and materials and very special help, Mike could reproduce himself.”
“I need very special help, too,” Wyoh answered, “since I’m sterile. And it takes me ten whole lunars and many kilograms of the best materials. But I make good babies. Mannie, why shouldn’t a machine be alive? I’ve always felt they were. Some of them wait for a chance to savage you in a tender spot.”
“Mike wouldn’t do that. Not on purpose, no meanness in him. But he likes to play jokes and one might go wrong–like a puppy who doesn’t know he’s biting. He’s ignorant No, not ignorant, he knows enormously more than I, or you, or any man who ever lived. Yet he doesn’t know anything.”
“Better repeat that. I missed something.”
I tried to explain. How Mike knew almost every book in Luna, could read at least a thousand times as fast as we could and never forget anything unless he chose to erase, how he could reason with perfect logic, or make shrewd guesses from insufficient data. . . and yet not know anything about how to be “alive.” She interrupted. “I scan it. You’re saying he’s smart and knows a lot but is not sophisticated. Like a new chum when he grounds on The Rock. Back Eartbside he might be a professor with a string of degrees. . . but here he’s a baby.”
“That’s it. Mike is a baby with a long string of degrees. Ask how much water and what chemicals and how much photoflux it takes to crop fifty thousand tonnes of wheat and he’ll tell you without stopping for breath. But can’t tell if a joke is funny,”