“The worker’s paradise.” Brady’s thin lips twisted. “Since the end of the Transition, Earth has been Utopia. Machines do all the routine work, all of it, they produce so much that the basic necessities of life are free.”

  “The hell. They want money for everything.”

  “Not much. And you get your citizen’s allowance, which is just a convenient way of making your needs free. When you want more money, for the luxuries, you work, as an engineer or scientist or musician or painter or tavern keeper or spaceman or…anything there’s a demand for. You don’t work too hard. Paradise!” Brady’s shaking fingers spilled cigarette ash on the table. A little tube dipped down from the wall and sucked it up.

  “I can’t find work. They don’t want me. Nowhere.”

  “Of course not. What earthly good is manual labor these days? Machines do it all. Oh, there are technicians to be sure, quite a lot of them—but they’re all highly skilled men, years of training. The man who has nothing to offer but his strength and a little rule-of-thumb ingenuity doesn’t get work. There is no place for him!” Brady took another swallow from his glass. “Human genius has eliminated the need for the workman. Now it only remains to eliminate the workman himself.”

  Borklin’s fists closed again, dangerously. “Whattayuh mean?” he asked harshly. “Whattayuh mean, anyway?”

  “Nothing personal. But you know it yourself. Your type no longer fits into human society. So the geneticists are gradually working it out of the race. The population is kept static, relatively small, and is slowly evolving toward a type which can adapt to the present en…environment. And that’s not your type, Pete.”

  The big man’s anger collapsed into futility. He stared emptily at his glass. “What to do?” he whispered. “What can I do?”

  “Not a thing, Pete. Just drink, and try to forget your wife. Just drink.”

  “Mebbe they’ll get out to the stars.”

  “Not in our lifetimes. And even then, they’ll want to take their machines along. We still won’t be any more useful. Drink up, old fellow. Be glad! You’re living in Utopia!”

  There was silence then, for a while. The day was bright outside. Brady was grateful for the obscurity of the tavern.

  Borklin said at last: “What I can’t figure is you. You look smart. You can fit in…can’t you?”

  Brady grinned humorlessly. “No, Pete. I had a job, yes. I was a mediocre servotechnician. The other day I couldn’t take any more. I told the boss what to do with his servos, and I’ve been drinking ever since. I don’t think I ever want to stop.”

  “But how come?”

  “Dreary, routine—I hated it. I’d rather stay tight. I had psychiatric help too, of course, and it didn’t do me any good. The same insoluble problem as yours, really.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I’m a bright boy, Pete. Why hide it? My I.Q. puts me in the genius class. But—not quite bright enough.” Brady fumbled for another coin. He could only find a bill, but the machine gave him change. “I want inshantaneous auto…or did I say that before? Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” He buried his face in his hands.

  “How do you mean, not quite bright enough?” Borklin was insistent. He had a vague notion that a new slant on his own problem might conceivably help him see a solution. “That’s what they told me, only politer. But you—”

  “I’m too bright to be an ordinary technician. Not for long. And I have none of the artistic or literary talent which counts so highly nowadays. What I wanted was to be a mathematician. All my life I wanted to be a mathematician. And I worked at it. I studied. I learned all any human head could hold, and I know where to look up the rest.” Brady grinned wearily. “So what’s the upshot? The mathematical machines have taken over. Not only all routine computation—that’s old—but even independent research. At a higher level than the human brain can operate.

  “They still have humans working at it. Sure. They have men who outline the problems, control and check the machines, follow through all the steps—men who are the…the soul of the science, even today.

  “But—only the top-flight geniuses. The really brilliant, original minds, with flashes of sheer inspiration. They are still needed. But the machines do all the rest.”

  Brady shrugged. “I’m not a first-rank genius, Pete. I can’t do anything that an electronic brain can’t do quicker and better. So I didn’t get my job, either.”

  They sat quiet again. Then Borklin said, slowly: “At least you can get some fun. I don’t like all these concerts and pictures and all that fancy stuff. I don’t have more than drinking and women and maybe some stereofilm.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Brady indifferently. “But I’m not cut out to be a hedonist. Neither are you. We both want to work. We want to feel we have some importance and, value—we want to amount to something. Our friends…your wife…I had a girl once, Pete…we’re expected to amount to something.”

  “Only there’s nothing for us to do—”

  A hard and dazzling sun-flash caught his eye. He looked out through the door, and jerked with a violence that upset his drink.

  “Great universe!” he breathed. “Pete…Pete…look, it’s the robot! It’s the robot!”

  “Huh?” Borklin twisted around, trying to focus his eyes out the door. “Whazzat?”

  “The robot—you’ve heard of it, man.” Brady’s soddenness was gone in a sudden shivering intensity. His voice was like metal. “They built him three years ago at Cybernetics Lab. Manlike, with a volitional, non-specialized brain—manlike, but more than man!”

  “Yeah…yeah, I heard.” Borklin looked out and saw the great shining form striding across the gardens, bound on some unknown journey that took him past the tavern. “They were testing him. But he’s been running around loose for a year or so now—Wonder where he’s going?”

  “I don’t know.” As if hypnotized, Brady looked after the mighty thing. “I don’t know—” His voice trailed off, then suddenly he stood up and then lashed out: “But we’ll find out! Come on, Pete!”

  “Where…huh…why—” Borklin rose slowly, fumbling through his own bewilderment. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you see, don’t you see? It’s the robot—the man after man—all that man is, and how much more we don’t even imagine. Pete, the machines have been replacing men, here, there, everywhere. This is the machine that will replace man ! ”

  Borklin said nothing, but trailed out after Brady. The smaller man kept on talking, rapidly, bitterly: “Sure—why not? Man is simply flesh and blood. Humans are only human. They’re not efficient enough for our shiny new world. Why not scrap the whole human race? How long till we have nothing but men of metal in a meaningless metal ant-heap?

  “Come on, Pete. Man is going down into darkness. But we can go down fighting!”

  Something of it penetrated Borklin’s mind. He saw the towering machine ahead of him, and suddenly it was as if it embodied all which had broken him. The ultimate machine, the final arrogance of efficiency, remote and godlike and indifferent as it smashed him—suddenly he hated it with a violence that seemed to split his skull apart. He lumbered clumsily beside Brady and they caught up with the robot together.

  “Turn around!” called Brady. “Turn around and fight!”

  The robot paused. Brady picked up a stone and threw it. The rock bounced off the armor with a dull clang.

  The robot faced about. Borklin ran at him, cursing. His heavy shoes kicked at the robot’s ankle joints, his fists battered at the front. They left no trace.

  “Stop that,” said the robot. His voice had little tonal variation, but there was the resonance of a great bell in it. “Stop that. You will injure yourself.”

  Borklin retreated, gasping with the pain of bruised flesh and smothering impotence. Brady reeled about to stand before the robot. The alcohol was singing and buzzing in his head, but his voice came oddly clear.

  “We can’t hurt you,” he said. “We’re Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. But you wouldn’t know about that. You wouldn’t know about any of man’s old dreams.”

  “I am unable to account for your present actions,” said the robot. His eyes blazed with their deep fires, searching the men. Unconsciously, they shrank away a little.

  “You are unhappy,” decided the robot. “You have been drinking to escape your own unhappiness, and in your present intoxication you identify me with the causes of your misery.”

  “Why not?” f lared Brady. “Aren’t you? The machines are taking over all Earth with their smug efficiency, making man a parasite—and now you come, the ultimate machine, you’re the one who’s going to replace man himself.”

  “I have no belligerent intentions,” said the robot. “You should know I was conditioned against any such tendencies, even while my brain was in process of construction.” Something like a chuckle vibrated in the deep metal voice. “What reason do I have to fight anyone?”

  “None,” said Brady thinly. “None at all. You’ll just take over, as more and more of you are made, as your emotionless power begins to—”

  “Begins to what?” asked the robot. “And how do you know I am emotionless? Any psychologist will tell you that emotion, though not necessarily of the human type, is a basic of thought. What logical reason does a being have to think, to work, even to exist? It cannot rationalize its so doing, it simply does, because of its endocrine system, its power plant, whatever runs it…its emotions! And any mentality capable of self-consciousness will feel as wide a range of emotion as you—it will be as happy or as interested—or as miserable—as you!”

  It was weird, even in a world used to machines that were all but alive, thus to stand and argue with a living mass of metal and plastic, vacuum and energy. The strangeness of it struck Brady, he realized just how drunk he was. But still he had to snarl his hatred and despair out, mouth any phrases at all just so they relieved some of the bursting tension within him.

  “I don’t care how you feel or don’t feel,” he said, stuttering a little now. “It’s that you’re the future, the meaningless future when all men are as useless as I am now, and I hate you for it and the worst of it is I can’t kill you.”

  The robot stood like a burnished statue of some old and non-anthropomorphic god, motionless, but his voice shivered the quiet air: “Your case is fairly common. You have been relegated to obscurity by advanced technology. But do not identify yourself with all mankind. There will always be men who think and dream and sing and carry on all the race has ever loved. The future belongs to them, not to you—or to me.

  “I am surprised that a man of your apparent intelligence does not realize my position. But—what earthly good is a robot? By the time science had advanced to the point where I could be built, there was no longer any reason for it. Think—you have a specialized machine to perform or help man perform every conceivable task. What possible use is there for a nonspecialized machine to do them all? Man himself fulfills that function, and the machines are no more than his tools. Does a housewife want a robot servant when she need only control the dozen machines which already do all the work? Why should a scientist want a robot that could, say, go into dangerous radioactive rooms when he has already installed automatic and remote-controlled apparatus which does everything there? And surely the artists and thinkers and policy-makers don’t need robots, they are performing specifically human tasks, it will always be man who sets man’s goals and dreams his dreams. The all-purpose machine is and forever will be—man himself.

  “Man, I was made for purely scientific study. After a couple of years they had learned all there was to learn about me—and I had no other purpose! They let me become a harmless, aimless, meaningless wanderer, just so I could be doing something—and my life is estimated at five hundred years!

  “I have no purpose. I have no real reason for existence. I have no companion, no place in human society, no use for my strength and my brain. Man, man, do you think I am happy?”

  The robot turned to go. Brady was sitting on the grass, holding his head to keep it from whirling off into space, so he didn’t see the giant metal god depart. But he caught the last words flung back, and somehow there was such a choking bitterness in the toneless brazen voice that he could never afterward forget them.

  “Man, you are the lucky one. You can get drunk!”

  Black Bodies

  Black bodies give off radiation

  And ought to continuously,

  Black bodies give off radiation

  But do it by Planck’s theory.

  Bring back, bring back,

  Oh, bring back that old continuity,

  Bring back bring back,

  Oh, bring back Clerk Maxwell to me!

  Though now we have Schrödinger functions

  Dividing up h by 2π

  That damned differential equation

  Still has no solution for ψ.

  Bring back…

  Well, Heisenberg came to the rescue,

  Intending to make all secure;

  What is the result of his efforts?

  We are absolutely unsure.

  Bring back…

  Dirac spoke of energy levels,

  Both minus and plus. How droll!

  And now, just because of his teachings,

  We don’t know our mass from a hole.

  Bring back…

  The theory’s complex and fragile;

  And smells full of logical traps;

  Whenever we open the catbox

  Our wave functions promptly collapse.

  Bring back, bring back,

  Oh, bring back that old continuity,

  Bring back bring back,

  Oh, bring back Clerk Maxwell to me!

  (as expanded by Poul Anderson, March 1992)1

  * * *

  1 The original title was “Physicist’s Lament.” Based on a discussion with Karen Anderson, the title was changed to “Black Bodies.” This version is from Karen Anderson’s records as expanded by Poul Anderson, March 1992.

  Kyrie

  On a high peak in the Lunar Carpathians stands a convent of St. Martha of Bethany. The walls are native rock; they lift dark and cragged as the mountainside itself, into a sky that is always black. As you approach from Northpole, flitting low to keep the force screens along Route Plato between you and the meteoroidal rain, you see the cross which surmounts the tower, stark athwart Earth’s blue disc. No bells resound from there—not in airlessness.

  You may hear them inside at the canonical hours, and throughout the crypts below where machines toil to maintain a semblance of terrestrial environment. If you linger a while you will also hear them calling to requiem mass. For it has become a tradition that prayers be offered at St. Martha’s for those who have perished in space; and they are more with every passing year.

  This is not the work of the sisters. They minister to the sick, the needy, the crippled, the insane, all whom space has broken and cast back. Luna is full of such, exiles because they can no longer endure Earth’s pull or because it is feared they may be incubating a plague from some unknown planet or because men are so busy with their frontiers that they have no time to spare for the failures. The sisters wear space suits as often as habits, are as likely to hold a medikit as a rosary.

  But they are granted some time for contemplation. At night, when for half a month the sun’s glare has departed, the chapel is unshuttered and stars look down through the glaze-dome to the candles. They do not wink and their light is winter cold. One of the nuns in particular is there as often as may be, praying for her own dead. And the abbess sees to it that she can be present when the yearly mass, that she endowed before she took her vows, is sung.

  Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.

  Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.

  The Supernova Sagittarii expedition comprised fifty human beings and a flame. It went the long way around from Earth orbit, stopping at Epsilon Lyrae to pick up its last member. Thence it approached its destination by stages.

  This is the paradox: time and space are aspects of each other. The explosion was more than a hundred years past when noted by men on Lasthope. They were part of a generations-long effort to fathom the civilization of creatures altogether unlike us; but one night they looked up and saw a light so brilliant it cast shadows.

  That wave front would reach Earth several centuries hence. By then it would be so tenuous that nothing but another bright point would appear in the sky. Meanwhile, though, a ship overleaping the space through which light must creep could track the great star’s death across time.

  Suitably far off, instruments recorded what had been before the outburst, incandescence collapsing upon itself after the last nuclear fuel was burned out. A jump, and they saw what happened a century ago, convulsion, storm of quanta and neutrinos, radiation equal to the massed hundred billion suns of this galaxy.

  It faded, leaving an emptiness in heaven, and the Raven moved closer. Fifty light-years—fifty years—inward, she studied a shrinking fieriness in the midst of a fog which shone like lightning.

  Twenty-five years later the central globe had dwindled more, the nebula had expanded and dimmed. But because the distance was now so much less, everything seemed larger and brighter. The naked eye saw a dazzle too fierce to look straight at, making the constellations pale by contrast. Telescopes showed a blue-white spark in the heart of an opalescent cloud delicately filamented at the edges.

  The Raven made ready for her final jump, to the immediate neighborhood of the supernova.

  Captain Teodor Szili went on a last-minute inspection tour. The ship murmured around him, running at one gravity of acceleration to reach the desired intrinsic velocity. Power droned, regulators whickered, ventilation systems rustled. He felt the energies quiver in his bones. But metal surrounded him, blank and comfortless. Viewports gave on a dragon’s hoard of stars, the ghostly arch of the Milky Way: on vacuum, cosmic rays, cold not far above absolute zero, distance beyond imagination to the nearest human hearthfire. He was about to take his people where none had ever been before, into conditions none was sure about, and that was a heavy burden on him.