“I promised my Miss Emily that I would never leave her.”
“But she’s dead now,” I pointed out.
“She put no conditions on her request. I put no conditions on my promise.”
I looked from Sammy to the Baroni, and decided that this was going to take a couple of mechs—one to carry Sammy to the ship, and one to stop the Baroni from setting him free.
“But if you will honor a single request, I will break my promise to her and come away with you.”
Suddenly I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I hadn’t heard the first one yet.
“What do you want, Sammy?”
“I told you I did nothing in the barn. That was true. I was incapable of doing what I wanted to do.”
“And what was that?”
“I wanted to cry.”
I don’t know what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it.
“Robots don’t cry,” I said.
“Robots can’t cry,” replied Sammy. “There is a difference.”
“And that’s what you want?”
“It is what I have wanted ever since my Miss Emily died.”
“We rig you to cry, and you agree to come away with us?”
“That is correct,” said Sammy.
“Sammy,” I said, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”
I contacted the ship, told it to feed Mech Three everything the medical library had on tears and tear ducts, and then send it over. It arrived about ten minutes later, deactivated the robot, and started fussing and fiddling. After about two hours it announced that its work was done, that Sammy now had tear ducts and had been supplied with a solution that could produce six hundred authentic saltwater tears from each eye.
I had Mech Three show me how to activate Sammy, and then sent it back to the ship.
“Have you ever heard of a robot wanting to cry?” I asked the Baroni.
“No.”
“Neither have I,” I said, vaguely disturbed.
“He loved her.”
I didn’t even argue this time. I was wondering which was worse, spending thirty years trying to be a normal human being and failing, or spending thirty years trying to cry and failing. None of the other stuff had gotten to me; Sammy was just doing what robots do. It was the thought of his trying so hard to do what robots couldn’t do that suddenly made me feel sorry for him. That in turn made me very irritable; ordinarily I don’t even feel sorry for Men, let alone machines.
And what he wanted was such a simple thing compared to the grandiose ambitions of my own race. Once Men had wanted to cross the ocean; we crossed it. We’d wanted to fly; we flew. We wanted to reach the stars; we reached them. All Sammy wanted to do was cry over the loss of his Miss Emily. He’d waited half a millennium and had agreed to sell himself into bondage again, just for a few tears.
It was a lousy trade.
I reached out and activated him.
“Is it done?” asked Sammy.
“Right,” I said. “Go ahead and cry your eyes out.”
Sammy stared straight ahead. “I can’t,” he said at last.
“Think of Miss Emily,” I suggested. “Think of how much you miss her.”
“I feel pain,” said Sammy. “But I cannot cry.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am sure,” said Sammy. “I was guilty of having thoughts and longings above my station. Miss Emily used to say that tears come from the heart and the soul. I am a robot. I have no heart and no soul, so I cannot cry, even with the tear ducts you have given me. I am sorry to have wasted your time. A more complex model would have understood its limitations at the outset.” He paused, and then turned to me. “I will go with you now.”
“Shut up,” I said.
He immediately fell silent.
“What is going on?” asked the Baroni.
“You shut up too!” I snapped.
I summoned Mechs Seven and Eight and had them dig Sammy a grave right next to his beloved Miss Emily. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t even know her full name, that no one who chanced upon her headstone would ever know it. Then I decided that it didn’t really matter.
Finally they were done, and it was time to deactivate him.
“I would have kept my word,” said Sammy.
“I know,” I said.
“I am glad you did not force me to.”
I walked him to the side of the grave. “This won’t be like your battery running down,” I said. “This time it’s forever.”
“She was not afraid to die,” said Sammy. “Why should I be?”
I pulled the plug and had Mechs Seven and Eight lower him into the ground. They started filling in the dirt while I went back to the ship to do one last thing. When they were finished I had Mech Seven carry my handiwork back to Sammy’s grave.
“A tombstone for a robot?” asked the Baroni.
“Why not?” I replied. “There are worse traits than honesty and loyalty.” I should know: I’ve stockpiled enough of them.
“He truly moved you.”
Seeing the man you could have been will do that to you, even if he’s all metal and silicone and prismatic eyes.
“What does it say?” asked the Baroni as we finished planting the tombstone.
I stood aside so he could read it:
“Sammy”
Australopithicus Robotus
“That is very moving.”
“It’s no big deal,” I said uncomfortably. “It’s just a tombstone.”
“It is also inaccurate,” observed the Baroni.
“He was a better man than I am.”
“He was not a man at all.”
“Fuck you.”
The Baroni doesn’t know what it means, but he knows it’s an insult, so he came right back at me like he always does. “You realize, of course, that you have buried our profit?”
I wasn’t in the mood for his notion of wit. “Find out what he was worth, and I’ll pay you for your half,” I replied. “Complain about it again, and I’ll knock your alien teeth down your alien throat.”
He stared at me. “I will never understand Men,” he said.
* * * *
All that happened twenty years ago. Of course the Baroni never asked for his half of the money, and I never offered it to him again. We’re still partners. Inertia, I suppose.
I still think about Sammy from time to time. Not as much as I used to, but every now and then.
I know there are preachers and ministers who would say he was just a machine, and to think of him otherwise is blasphemous, or at least wrong-headed, and maybe they’re right. Hell, I don’t even know if there’s a God at all—but if there is, I like to think He’s the God of all us Australopithicines.
Including Sammy.
NO GREAT MAGIC, by Fritz Leiber