I have quartered my sector, and I have eliminated three of these areas. What is left is not large: there are many of us in the city, having moved here from other cities as they became empty of humans, so each of us has a sector that is small to begin with.

  (Few of the others are as beautiful as I. Most were built as street sweepers or industrial workers, not as wide-purpose wardens such as I. The older types—pubcomp designates them “classics”—have been redesigned and retooled for perception, and they search too. But they are not beautiful, and I hope that when the human is found it will be by me or at least someone as beautiful. Would the human want to be rescued by a sanitation burner?)

  The area I have left to search consists of one street three blocks long. Most of the buildings are low, five stories or less, but one extends to the dome. There used to be luxury living quarters there, but of course we haven’t been able to keep them up; the classics that used to service them were repurposed as wardens like the rest of us. Why upkeep living quarters when there are no humans to live in them?

  Still, I am thinking about that building. I believe I understand humans better than others of us do; I think about them a great deal. I try to think like a man. I am looking at that building now, thinking like a man, and it appeals to me. I think I like heights.

  I am going in. The lobby’s carpet is dark from oxidation, and I note that the air circulation no longer works. Will that matter to a human? No—why should he care whether unbreathable air is regularly replaced by other unbreathable air?

  One bank of elevators registers non-function, but the other is in working order. Is there any way of knowing if these have been used recently? Pubcomp says no data. Doors open smoothly before me, thought there is a slight rasping of metal on metal. No serious malfunction; the elevators are safe to ride.

  I step inside one of them and look at the bank of buttons; the numbers go up only to 25. I punch 25, but nothing happens. I press the button again, and then press 24, 23, 18, 2. The elevator is motionless.

  Pubcomp says the buttons are operable by human body-heat. I feed current through one of my metal fingers till it is 70°, and again I touch the 25 button. It lights up, the doors close, the elevator begins to rise.

  I look around the elevator cubicle. Some of the lights in the ceiling have gone out; plastic handrails are corroded from exposure to the air. The rug is darkened, like that in the building’s lobby, but in the uneven light I see markings that look like footprints.

  I bend to look closely. They are footprints—shoe prints.

  Was it my human? How old are these prints? I compare them to the marks made by my own feet, and see little difference. My prints are more deeply imbedded because of my greater weight. There is another difference: the human’s prints are linked by dragmarks. Is he weak, sick? (Of course he is; it is a wonder he remains alive at all.) The prints move back from the panel of buttons, uneven prints (staggering?), and I believe he fell against the plastic handrail to hold himself up. (78% chance.)

  The elevator stops, the doors open. I exit, looking for the elevators going to floor 50. There they are, to the right. On this floor’s elevator lobby is a barber shop whose striped pole still revolves, a Bew-tee Parlour with lettering flaked and peeling from the window, a candy and gum machine: the glass of its front has been smashed.

  I look for shoe prints leading from the elevator I have just left to the elevators leading higher. But there are no shoe prints, no marks at all on the carpet.

  I pause, studying the question. The carpet is a richer red than those I saw in the elevator or the lobby downstairs. I look again at the glass front of the Bew-tee Parlour, the barbershop: the glass is almost clear, untainted by the air here.

  The building was totally air-conditioned, says pubcomp. But that system has broken down, as I have already discovered. Conclusion: since the breakdown, no air has been pumped in from outside; the air here is twenty, forty, fifty years old.

  If I were a man, if I breathed, the air would smell “musty,” “stale.” But it would be far more breathable than the air outside.

  I am sure now that my human is here, in this building. But with no shoe prints to guide me, how shall I find him?

  I think like a man again. I believe he has continued to go up in the elevators. Probably to the top, to the dome itself. Humans are drawn to heights; that is what makes them human.

  I follow my human upward. I step into the next elevator, heat a finger, press 50. The doors close, the elevator and I rise.

  I exit at 50. Here there are ice machines, a gum-ball dispenser, a shoeshine machine, the entrance to a gymnasium. The globe of the gum-ball dispenser has long since been smashed and emptied; plastic shards are scattered on the carpet. The ice machine still works, though its interior is frozen solid. The shoe-shine machine has been recently used.

  I look at the machine, at a spray of crusted shoe polish that was thrown out onto the carpet from the buffers and rollers as they turned for the first time in decades. I touch a roller with a finger and dry but not powdery polish comes off onto my metal. I send current to the finger and the brown coating blackens and drops away.

  I look around the lobby of this floor. There are between five and eight apartments on each floor of this building; my human could be in any of them. Odds 657 to 1 against any individual apartment (first 24 floors eliminated).

  I do not believe he is in any of the apartments here. I believe he has gone on upward.

  I enter the next elevator, go to 75. A self-service supermart is here, its doors wide open, its shelves long empty. I hardly pause; I go on to floor 100. The Century Note nightclub stands dark and empty; someone has scratched out “Century” and written above it “Helluva.” I go to the next elevator, to floor 120.

  There are no shops or services on this floor except for another ice machine; the floor is occupied only by apartments. I enter the last elevator, press 130 and am taken to the top floor of the building.

  Here is the Top o’ the World Bar & Lounge, very famous. The view was spectacular when the air was clear. In latter years its tourist business declined, but the residents of the building continued to come up here. They were humans; they were drawn to height, even if only metaphorical, with a view of grayness outside and below.

  Metal stairs at the end of a corridor lead up to the city dome, where there is an exit to the empty outside. That is where my human will be, and I hurry upward, worried now when I think of human lungs trying to breathe the air of the sky. How much worse is it than the air inside the dome? (Only 27% more pollutants, says pubcomb, 6% of them toxic. Not as bad as I feared, but I hurry anyway.)

  The port is round; I press the button that slides it back into the dome, and I step outside.

  There is no one here. I stand outside a bubble atop the huge dome of the city, and it is empty. Did my human step out here, try to breathe the air, collapse and slide down onto the dome proper? I search the metal expanse of the dome on all sides of the bubble, but there is no sign of any human figure. I was wrong; he did not come up here after all.

  (What was the probability to begin with?—I never thought to consider it. 2.1%, says pubcomp. I would feel like a fool, but pubcomp does not think like a human. I believe the chance was greater.)

  There is nothing up here. The sky of early afternoon is red shading into brown. The moon, swollen with proximity to Earth, dominates the horizon, clearly visible in the dark day sky. Its color appears yellow seen through Earth’s waste-laden air; its mares and mountains are indistinct.

  Once men walked on that world—over three hundred years ago. On the planet Mars, also. The exhaust of their rockets is still carried in the air.

  Closer to the city, mountain sculptures stretch for the sky. They are not real mountains; this is a desert area. They are constructed of metal and plastic and they angle into the sky purely for the sake of beauty. Men built them. Most have turned dark from chemical reactions with the air, but there is still one that retains its original bright colors.

  I stare at them all, the bright and dark ones alike. Men built them for beauty alone, those huge jagged cliffs and colors. I have never seen them before, only televised images in my head. I think if I were a human I would be moved; as it is, I stare and wonder. Are they still beautiful, even marked by the corrosion of time? I think so, but would a man think so?

  I must find my human; he can tell me. I turn and go back down the ramp, closing the port behind me.

  Standing in the lobby of floor 130, I recalculate plans. Odds 657 to 1 against his being in any individual apartment of this building; chances much greater that he is near the top of the building. I shall continue to think this way.

  I hear a noise.

  Instantly I am analyzing and triangulating the sound. It was something falling in the Top o’ the World Bar & Lounge. It could have been anything: a piece of a table falling away, plastic from the ceiling, anything. Never mind; I feel a certainty.

  I enter the Top o’ the World. There is darkness to my right: a coat room. The lounge itself is dim, many of the lights no longer working, some actually smashed. There is a long bar to my left, and there all the lights are on.

  There is another noise, and it is from the bar. From behind the bar. A scuffling noise, fabric on fabric. Clothing on carpet. My human is hiding behind the bar.

  I walk around the open end of the bar and look inside. He is there, lying on the floor.

  He looks at me coldly for seconds. His face is gray, traced with scarlet veins. He is breathing shallowly.

  He draws a full breath, and the sound of air passing into his lungs is thin. I don’t believe there should be any noticeable sound.

  “I broke my fucking ankle,” he says.

  I see this is true. He has it drawn up to where he can cradle it in his hands. His shoe lies beside him.

  “Bastard hurts,” he says. “It’s killing me, God damn it.”

  I move to him and bend down, but I do not touch him. “I am not a medical crewman,” I say. “But I am sending for help.” Simultaneously I have been radioing our position.

  “Fuck you,” he says. “Fuck your medicine, fuck your help. Inject me with high octane and let me alone.” He raises the bottle he has in his hand and drinks; then he chokes, and begins to cough. He does it wearily, with no surprise. When the spasm passes he drinks again.

  “It was my function to find you,” I explain. “Others will help. They can stop the pain of your ankle.”

  He drags himself back to lean against a glass cabinet, wincing. Without looking at me he says, “Can openers.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Fucking lawn mowers,” he says. He coughs again.

  Six minutes till the medical crew will arrive, says pubcomp.

  “I have nothing to do with lawns,” I say to the human. “I am a warden.”

  “You’re a drawbridge,” he mutters. “You’re a fucking drawbridge. No no, you’re a stapler. Stapler.” He laughs, wheezes, coughs. The spasms cause him to move his foot, and he groans in pain.

  I watch. There is nothing I can do for him. Five minutes thirty-seven seconds to go.

  He leans back against the glass cabinet and breathes carefully, getting it under control.

  “You can’t help me,” he says. He is still not looking at me. “Fucking stapler could help as much. Staple my foot. Staple my chest. Staple my fucking head.”

  “That would not help you,” I say. We are not talking about the same thing, however; I know it, but he is giving me no clue to what he is really trying to say.

  He does look up at me now. “Christ. You’re a vacuum cleaner.”

  “I was never tooled for maintenance,” I tell him. He is drinking again. He must be very drunk.

  “You’re all vacuum cleaners,” he says. “Vacuum cleaners.... Tanks. Bazookas. Fucking riveting guns. Garbage trucks. Walking typewriters.” He drinks till the bottle is empty. Coughing but not paying attention to it he swings the empty bottle against a glass cabinet next to him; the glass smashes and he reaches in to take a bottle of clear liquor. He begins to drink it, grimacing. His face, which was gray earlier, is nearly blue now.

  Four minutes seven seconds more.

  “I admire humans,” I say. “We all do. We try to help you.”

  “Fuck you. I’d rather have a dog.” He breathes, breathes again. “Jesus Christ, I’ve got a city full of putt-putts that want to take care of me.”

  “We truthfully do want to take care of you,” I say. “We can heal your ankle. We can give you an oxygen-rich environment.”

  “I know, I know,” he says wearily. He drinks.

  He stares dully at me. He coughs once, then doubles over and begins to vomit. It splashes against the glass and imitation walnut side of the bar. He breathes in gasps, coughs, chokes, vomits again. There is no expression on his face.

  It does not take long till he stops. He leans back weakly, getting his breath. Three minutes eighteen seconds more.

  Finally he says, “You admire humans, do you? You admire puke and everything?”

  I say, “Whatever humans do is necessary to being human.” Was that the right answer? It is true.

  “Oh shit, you’re a can opener. Quick, divide 3,468 by 2,125.”

  Pubcomp answers and I say, “1.06032. Exactly.”

  “Christ,” he says. “Do you care about that?”

  “Only because you wanted to know.”

  “I didn’t. I thought it might be funny to see you answer. You are like a dog. Do you shit on the grass?” He drinks. “No. Did you really want me to answer that?”

  “Jesus it stinks here. Pick me up and move me somewhere else.”

  I bend to do this.

  “Gently, God damn you! Fucking foot...”

  I am as gentle as possible as I move him around to the outside of the bar. When I put him down he is saying, “Shit shit shit shit shit shit,” quietly but intensely.

  One minute fifty-four seconds.

  He settles himself, wincing. “Bend your head down,” he says.

  I do as he says. He pats the top of my head, then begins to chuckle. He stops when it threatens to become a cough. He gets his breath and says, “Would you like me to scratch you behind the antenna?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Forget it.” He drinks. “ ‘We honestly want to take care of you,’ ” he says, trying to imitate the comparatively flat quality of my voice. “Why?”

  “We admire you. You made us. Humanity is a great race.”

  “Oh shit, who told you so? Humans.” He closes his eyes and I see he is resisting another coughing fit. “We made garbage trucks too. Made bombs and dum-dum bullets and puke gas. Killed each other, put a lot of shit in the air, killed ourselves. You looked at the air lately? Shit, even the domes didn’t help.”

  “We can give you enough oxygen to breathe.”

  “Swell,” he says. “While you’re at it, cure my emphysema.”

  “No, we cannot do that,” I say. Does he really have emphysema, or is he taunting me?

  “Then fuck you,” he says, and slumps back against the bar. “Staple my head,” he says vaguely. He lifts the bottle, judges how much is left in it, drinks three, four, five, six swallows. He almost chokes. “Fuck you, fuck you. Go mow a lawn.”

  The medical crew arrives. There are five of them. They surround him, because we have had some humans try to fight us.

  “His left ankle is broken,” I say. “Be very careful.”

  “We know about pain,” says the head of the crew.

  “Like hell you do,” the human says. Two of the crew lift him gently and put him on a rolling stretcher. One wipes vomit from his clothing.

  As they start to wheel him out he looks back to me and says urgently, “Hey, stapler, quick, gimme two bottles. Bourbon, scotch, anything.”

  The crewmen make no objection, so I do as he says. He takes one in each hand and smiles weakly. “Good boy, Spot.”

  They wheel him out. I tell the head of the crew that he may have emphysema. He acknowledges the information and leaves.

  I am alone in the Top o’ the World Bar & Lounge. I think about the human for minutes after they have gone down in the elevator. Does he know he is the last? Does he hate us, the machines? Does he hate his own kind? Does he hate himself?

  Pubcomp says insufficient data. But I have opinions.

  I leave the Top o’ the World and go to the stairs leading up to the outside of the city dome. Near the foot of the stairs are discarded parts from the mechanism of the port; I pick up several and take them with me as I climb.

  I pause at the top of the stairs to look at the mountain sculptures. They are many miles away and I will not be able to reach them before tomorrow. But I believe I can climb them. In places they are probably unsafe for my weight, but I believe I can judge this. I believe I can climb all the way to the top of one of them. That one, the one that retains its colors.

  I am going to make a marker from the parts I picked up below, and I will fasten it at the top.

  I ask pubcomp to plot a route for me down the maintenance stairs and ramps so that I can reach the desert, and pubcomp provides the information.

  Pubcomp adds that there is insufficient data to calculate my chance of reaching the top of the mountain sculpture I have chosen. I find that I am pleased.

  ALL PIECES OF A RIVER SHORE

  R. A. Lafferty

  It has justly been said of Lafferty that he writes like a stoned Mark Twain. Indeed he works within the great nineteenth-century American tradition of romantic exaggeration and robust whackiness, and the hearty exuberance of his work identifies him plainly as the literary descendant of the man who created Huck Finn and the Connecticut Yankee. But Lafferty’s sensibility is very much of the twentieth century (or the twenty-first, or the twenty-fifth) as well as of the nineteenth; the tricks he plays with time and space are his own, beyond doubt his own, and never were conceived before he came along. He chooses to cast his stories in the mode of science fiction, to our great gain; but one of these days the larger literary world will discover him, and he’ll soar like a rocket out of our little ghetto.