Beside Still Waters
by Robert Sheckley · English · Gutenberg #29446 · 27,813 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Beside Still Waters
Author: Robert Sheckley
Illustrator: Virgil Finlay
Release date: July 18, 2009 [eBook #29446]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29446
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BESIDE STILL WATERS ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
BESIDE
STILL
WATERS
BY ROBERT SHECKLEY
_When people talk about getting away from it all, they are usually
thinking about our great open spaces out west. But to science
fiction writers, that would be practically in the heart of Times
Square. When a man of the future wants solitude he picks a slab of
rock floating in space four light years east of Andromeda. Here is a
gentle little story about a man who sought the solitude of such a
location. And who did he take along for company? None other than
Charles the Robot._
Mark Rogers was a prospector, and he went to the asteroid belt looking
for radioactives and rare metals. He searched for years, never finding
much, hopping from fragment to fragment. After a time he settled on a
slab of rock half a mile thick.
Rogers had been born old, and he didn't age much past a point. His face
was white with the pallor of space, and his hands shook a little. He
called his slab of rock Martha, after no girl he had ever known.
He made a little strike, enough to equip Martha with an air pump and a
shack, a few tons of dirt and some water tanks, and a robot. Then he
settled back and watched the stars.
The robot he bought was a standard-model all-around worker, with
built-in memory and a thirty-word vocabulary. Mark added to that, bit
by bit. He was something of a tinkerer, and he enjoyed adapting his
environment to himself.
At first, all the robot could say was "Yes, sir," and "No, sir." He
could state simple problems: "The air pump is laboring, sir." "The corn
is budding, sir." He could perform a satisfactory salutation: "Good
morning, sir."
Mark changed that. He eliminated the "sirs" from the robot's vocabulary;
equality was the rule on Mark's hunk of rock. Then he dubbed the robot
Charles, after a father he had never known.
As the years passed, the air pump began to labor a little as it
converted the oxygen in the planetoid's rock into a breathable
atmosphere. The air seeped into space, and the pump worked a little
harder, supplying more.
The crops continued to grow on the tamed black dirt of the planetoid.
Looking up, Mark could see the sheer blackness of the river of space,
the floating points of the stars. Around him, under him, overhead,
masses of rock drifted, and sometimes the starlight glinted from their
black sides. Occasionally, Mark caught a glimpse of Mars or Jupiter.
Once he thought he saw Earth.
Mark began to tape new responses into Charles. He added simple responses
to cue words. When he said, "How does it look?" Charles would answer,
"Oh, pretty good, I guess."
At first the answers were what Mark had been answering himself, in the
long dialogue held over the years. But, slowly, he began to build a new
personality into Charles.
Mark had always been suspicious and scornful of women. But for some
reason he didn't tape the same suspicion into Charles. Charles' outlook
was quite different.
* * * * *
"What do you think of girls?" Mark would ask, sitting on a packing case
outside the shack, after the chores were done.
"Oh, I don't know. You have to find the right one." The robot would
reply dutifully, repeating what had been put on its tape.
"I never saw a good one yet," Mark would say.
"Well, that's not fair. Perhaps you didn't look long enough. There's a
girl in the world for every man."
"You're a romantic!" Mark would say scornfully. The robot would pause--a
built-in pause--and chuckle a carefully constructed chuckle.
"I dreamed of a girl named Martha once," Charles would say. "Maybe if I
would have looked, I would have found her."
And then it would be bedtime. Or perhaps Mark would want more
conversation. "What do you think of girls?" he would ask again, and
the discussion would follow its same course.
[Illustration]
Charles grew old. His limbs lost their flexibility, and some of his
wiring started to corrode. Mark would spend hours keeping the robot in
repair.
"You're getting rusty," he would cackle.
"You're not so young yourself," Charles would reply. He had an answer
for almost everything. Nothing involved, but an answer.
It was always night on Martha, but Mark broke up his time into mornings,
afternoons and evenings. Their life followed a simple routine.
Breakfast, from vegetables and Mark's canned store. Then the robot would
work in the fields, and the plants grew used to his touch. Mark would
repair the pump, check the water supply, and straighten up the
immaculate shack. Lunch, and the robot's chores were usually finished.
* * * * *
The two would sit on the packing case and watch the stars. They would
talk until supper, and sometimes late into the endless night.
In time, Mark built more complicated conversations into Charles. He
couldn't give the robot free choice, of course, but he managed a pretty
close approximation of it. Slowly, Charles' personality emerged. But it
was strikingly different from Mark's.
Where Mark was querulous, Charles was calm. Mark was sardonic, Charles
was naive. Mark was a cynic, Charles was an idealist. Mark was often
sad; Charles was forever content.
And in time, Mark forgot he had built the answers into Charles. He
accepted the robot as a friend, of about his own age. A friend of long
years' standing.
"The thing I don't understand," Mark would say, "is why a man like you
wants to live here. I mean, it's all right for me. No one cares about
me, and I never gave much of a damn about anyone. But why you?"
"Here I have a whole world," Charles would reply, "where on Earth I had
to share with billions. I have the stars, bigger and brighter than on
Earth. I have all space around me, close, like still waters. And I have
you, Mark."
"Now, don't go getting sentimental on me--"
"I'm not. Friendship counts. Love was lost long ago, Mark. The love of a
girl named Martha, whom neither of us ever met. And that's a pity. But
friendship remains, and the eternal night."
"You're a bloody poet," Mark would say, half admiringly. "A poor poet."
* * * * *
Time passed unnoticed by the stars, and the air pump hissed and clanked
and leaked. Mark was fixing it constantly, but the air of Martha became
increasingly rare. Although Charles labored in the fields, the crops,
deprived of sufficient air, died.
Mark was tired now, and barely able to crawl around, even without the
grip of gravity. He stayed in his bunk most of the time. Charles fed him
as best he could, moving on rusty, creaking limbs.
"What do you think of girls?"
"I never saw a good one yet."
"Well, that's not fair."
Mark was too tired to see the end coming, and Charles wasn't interested.
But the end was on its way. The air pump threatened to give out
momentarily. There hadn't been any food for days.
[Illustration]
"But why you?" Gasping in the escaping air. Strangling.
"Here I have a whole world--"
"Don't get sentimental--"
"And the love of a girl named Martha."
From his bunk Mark saw the stars for the last time. Big, bigger than
ever, endlessly floating in the still waters of space.
"The stars ..." Mark said.
"Yes?"
"The sun?"
"--shall shine as now."
"A bloody poet."
"A poor poet."
"And girls?"
"I dreamed of a girl named Martha once. Maybe if--"
"What do you think of girls? And stars? And Earth?" And it was bedtime,
this time forever.
Charles stood beside the body of his friend. He felt for a pulse once,
and allowed the withered hand to fall. He walked to a corner of the
shack and turned off the tired air pump.
The tape that Mark had prepared had a few cracked inches left to run. "I
hope he finds his Martha," the robot croaked, and then the tape broke.
His rusted limbs would not bend, and he stood frozen, staring back at
the naked stars. Then he bowed his head.
"The Lord is my shepherd," Charles said. "I shall not want. He maketh me
to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me ..."
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ Oct.-Nov. 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note.
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