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  THE

  FORGETFUL

  ROBOT

  by Paul W. Fairman

  How do humans appear to a robot? You’ll get some idea by reading this science fiction adventure told by a highly sophisticated, programmed robot named Barney. Author Paul Fairman uses this clever device to tell a very exciting story with some poignant and unexpected observations on human behavior as well.

  Found in a junkyard by two teenagers, Barney is reactivated. But, alas, his memory box is still on the blink, and he can’t quite recall his past life on Mars. As coincidence would have it, the two young people and their actor grandfather are planning an interplanetary Shakespearean goodwill trip to Mars. Before Barney can warn them of danger (robots, remember, can only answer questions—they have to be asked first!) the foursome is hijacked to the forbidden part of Mars where they come face-to-face with the power-hungry leader of the Shadow People. How Barney foils the plot of the madman and saves the day for his new friends—and the Shadow People themselves—makes a smashing climax to this fast-paced tale.

  THE FORGETFUL ROBOT

  Copyright © 1968 by Paul W. Fairman.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce

  this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Flak, Rinehart

  and Winston of Canada, Limited.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-24762

  Printed in the United States of America

  9724204

  First Edition

  Contents

  1 Lost in a Junkyard

  2 Those Remarkable Ravencrafts

  3 The Space Museum

  4 The Gallant Lady

  5 Long Hop

  6 The Brown Package

  7 Phantoms of Zark

  8 Mastermind of Zark

  9 The Mine Field

  10 The Pit

  11 Robots Should Stick Together

  12 Interlude in the Desert

  13 Delenda Est Carthago

  14 Not Born to Greatness

  15 Culture for the Planets

  THE FORGETFUL ROBOT

  1.

  Lost in a Junkyard

  My batteries were almost dead. I hardly had power enough to move my legs as I crossed the junkyard. My memory bank was still working a little, though, and I could recall two things.

  My name was Barney and I’d been sent on an errand.

  My errand had been across the city and I was on my way there. I’d been told to take the most direct route. That was through the junkyard at the edge of the industrial section on the other side of the river from where the residential plaza was.

  I’d come to the edge of the junkyard when I couldn’t make my legs work anymore. They folded because of the power drain and I sat down. After a while, somebody would see me and do something about it, because I am a very valuable robot. I am a 69S Model, made by Wellington Electronics, and I’d cost someone a lot of money. But I could not remember whom. So I sat there waiting.

  But things did not work out as my logic component said they would. A big truck came along. If the driver had been in front, he could have seen me. But he backed down the ramp. Then the truck lifts went up and he dumped several tons of junk right on top of me.

  That was very unfortunate. Hidden under that pile of junk, I doubted whether anybody would find me and charge my batteries.

  I worried. When I say that, I don’t mean I worried as humans do. That is impossible for robots. They do not have emotions. They only have reactionary responses produced through electronic phenomena patterned to their self-preservation components. The manual says so.

  I didn’t really know how a human would feel in that same situation. I only knew how I felt, and it was not good. But I could not do anything but sit there.

  My timer was still working, so I knew that I sat there in the junkyard for three days, five hours, and seventeen seconds before the junk began moving and I faintly heard voices. But I could not see who had come after me because my optube had gone out.

  I knew it was a boy and a girl because I can tell the difference in human voices. No two voices are ever exactly alike, and there are also differences caused by age. Boy, girl, man, woman—even baby. I can tell because of my advanced programming. Some robots are so simply programmed that this isn’t possible. Some do not even know they are robots.

  The boy sounded excited. He said, “Didn’t I tell you that foot belonged to a 69S Wellington All-Purpose?” The girl was quieter, with an amused tone. “Okay. So you’ve read some books on robots.”

  “I’m going to design and build them someday.”

  “Larry! You’re dreaming. You know what you’re really going to do. Travel with Granddad.”

  “So—?”

  “So there aren’t any engineering schools on the planets or the asteroids. There aren’t even any on Mars.”

  “The trip won’t last forever. After it’s over I’ll go to college. There’ll be plenty of time.”

  The girl said, “I wonder who would leave a valuable robot in a junkyard?”

  The boy had pulled off all the junk now, and he was even more excited. “Beats me. It isn’t damaged in the least. We’ll have to find out who owns it.”

  “We found it, didn’t we?”

  “But, Janet—”

  “This is a junkyard, Larry—remember? In here, it’s finders-keepers.”

  “Well, maybe. But what will we do with it?”

  “Take it home with us, I guess. Can you activate it?” I heard my control box snap open. “The switch is on,” the boy said.

  “Then its batteries must be dead.”

  “We’ll have to get them charged, then. A whole robot is too heavy to carry.”

  The boy went around behind me and opened the compartment. “There’s a spare set. I’ll hook them up.”

  When he disconnected my old batteries completely,

  I had what maybe humans have when they talk about dreams—experiences while sleeping. With robots, they are called vague functional images from a residue of power leaking into the command unit. But dream is a shorter, easier word.

  In the dream, I saw Larch and Slezak. I knew their names but I didn’t know who they were or what they had to do with me. We were near the forbidden cities on Old Mars, in the dangerous country where no one is allowed to go without a permit from the Space Authority.

  Then, still in the dream, I heard a man’s voice calling, “Barney—Barney! Where are you?” I knew the man was Professor Dixon, but again, I didn’t know who he was or what he was doing near a forbidden city on Old Mars. It was all very confusing.

  I knew that at some time I’d been there, though, because a robot with no subconscious or imagination cannot have functional images about something it has not experienced.

  Then the leak ended, because the boy, Larry, connected my spare batteries and I had full power again.

  I could see them now. Janet, the girl, wore a pair of faded slacks and a green sweater. I knew it was green because I have a color component in my optube, something very few robots have. She’d gotten a big smudge on her nose and she had curly blond hair.

  They both looked young in Earth years—the boy around fifteen, I thought, and the girl even younger. Their features indicated they both came from the same family. The main differences were that Larry had black hair and a very serious face, while Janet had lighter hair and laugh wrinkles. They both had blue eyes, but Janet’s smile seemed to make hers brighter.

  Larry straightened up and looked at me doubtfully. He asked, “What’s your name, robot?”

  “Barney,” I said.

  Janet grinned. “What a crazy name for a robot.”

  “Well, at least we can call it him. Calling him it is clumsy.”

  “Let’s change his name to Henrietta and call him her. It makes just as much sense.” But she laughed the way humans do when they don’t mean what they say.

  Larry said, “Get up, Barney,” and I got to my feet.

  This made Janet suspicious. “I thought robots didn’t give out their names and obey orders from just anybody.”

  That was true. Robots are keyed to whoever owns them. But I didn’t know who owned me. Also, my batteries had run down, and that, with the power-leak image, had confused me.

  There could have been other reasons too. I already knew there was something wrong with my memory bank—maybe from having the junk dropped on me. So maybe my recognition circuit had been damaged also.

  Larry said, “Barney is the very latest thing in robots. Maybe he’s got some kind of a new circuit.”

  “Ask him how come he got lost in this junkyard.”

  “That can come later. Let’s find out if he’ll follow us.”

  Janet laughed. “What do you think Granddad will say if we walk in with a robot? You know how he feels about the Electronic Age.”

  “You worry too much. Come on, Barney. Follow me.”

  We went out of the junkyard and across the industrial section. I thought we would cross the river, where I’d been going in the first place. But we didn’t. We stopped on one of the slum streets on the near side and went into an old theater.

  It hadn’t been used for a long time. The marquee had fallen down and the lobby was thick with dirt and du
st.

  I knew about theaters and quite a few other things few robots learn about because I am programmed to feed my memory bank visually as well as audibly. I could read. I have read a great many human books and listened to lots of tapes, and naturally I transferred all that into my memory bank. A robot never forgets anything—if his memory bank is working right—where human memory banks are seldom completely reliable.

  But that is what robots are for—to do the things humans find difficult or boring. That was why they made robots in the first place.

  We went through the theater and across the stage to a stairway that led up to the room where the actors dressed and got ready for their performances. Larry opened a door with a big silver star on it and we went inside.

  This seemed a strange place for people to live, but that was how it appeared to be. Doors opened on two other rooms, and this looked to be home for Larry and Janet.

  Also for the old gentleman who stood in front of a mirror waving a sword. He turned to face us. “What ho, varlets!” he cried. “Name your mischief or I’ll run ye through!”

  I waited to see what would happen… .

  2.

  Those Remarkable Ravencrafts

  That was how I met Dudley Farthington Ravencraft. He was a very nice old gentleman even though he was a little eccentric.

  Some of this I didn’t learn until later, but I got one idea right there on the spot. The Ravencrafts were remarkable people. They waved old swords and lived in an abandoned theater and should have been unhappy. But they were not.

  Humans who do not live in fine homes and do not have enough money to buy all the things that are for sale in the big markets are supposed to be unhappy because they are not as well off as more fortunate humans. But the Ravencrafts didn’t seem to realize this. Dudley Farthington Ravencraft was a lot of name for one person to have. But he answered to Granddad, and that made it easier.

  He was tall and slim and had thick white hair and the lines in his face that humans get when they have lived a long time. His eyes were like Janet’s—bright blue and piercing and young-looking.

  He didn’t stab anyone when we entered the room. He’d only been rehearsing. As soon as he saw me, he lowered his sword and stared.

  “Where in the name of Edwin Booth did you get that?”

  “It’s a robot, Granddad,” Larry said.

  “I know what it is, young man. Do you think I’ve lost my faculties? I asked you where you got it.”

  “In the junkyard,” Janet told him.

  “Well, take it back!”

  “But, Granddad,” Larry protested. “It’s a 69S Wellington. One of the most advanced models made.”

  “It is an unholy mechanism. I see in it a symbol of how our time is out of joint! Remove the monstrosity!”

  “You don’t understand, Granddad. Barney is just what we’ll need on our trip to the planets. He can help us on the Gallant Lady, and when we get there, he can run errands and help move scenery.”

  “And even sell tickets,” Janet added.

  Granddad Ravencraft was surprised at what they said. His change in expression showed it as he looked at them. He’d stopped acting now and spoke quietly.

  “Did I hear you two correctly?”

  He had a fine, deep voice that came into my audio unit harmoniously, and he pronounced every word clearly and distinctly, something few humans do. Most of them run their words together, and they buzz against my diaphragms.

  Larry and Janet looked uncomfortable under his gaze. Janet said, “What do you mean, Granddad?”

  There was sadness in his voice. “Have I trained you so carelessly? Have you forgotten so quickly? Would you really appropriate another man’s property in so cavalier a manner?”

  The word cavalier wasn’t in my memory bank, but I decided what he meant was would they steal another man’s robot and take it to the planets.

  Janet said, “But it isn’t that way. He was in the junkyard, and anything a person uncovers there is finders-keepers.”

  “Someone threw him away,” Larry said.

  “Preposterous. The creature walks. It talks. People do not discard articles of such value. We will wait and see if the mechanism is claimed. If not, we’ll make some inquiries and try to locate the owner.”

  They stopped arguing, probably because their memory banks told them it was a waste of time.

  “We won’t have to go to that trouble,” Larry said. “We can just ask him where he belongs.”

  Janet said, “Who owns you, Barney?”

  My reply was truthful. A robot cannot lie. “I don’t know.”

  “What were you doing in the junkyard?”

  “I was running an errand. My batteries went dead. I sat down to wait.”

  “Whom were you waiting for?”

  “Someone to come and charge my batteries.”

  “See, Granddad. He doesn’t remember.”

  “So we’ll have to keep him,” Larry said. “We may never find out—”

  “We’ll talk about that after we’ve exhausted all efforts to locate his owner. In the meantime, I have a job for you two. I want you to take those costumes over to the space port and put them aboard the Gallant Lady. I have an appointment I must keep.”

  Larry protested. “But, Granddad, we’re not ready to go to the planets.”

  “We haven’t got the money,” Janet said, “and we haven’t the least idea where we’re going to get it, so why put the costumes aboard?”

  “If we fail to get the money—” Larry said.

  Granddad went into his act again. He struck a pose. “ ‘We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking-place,/And we’ll not fail.’ ”

  I said, “Act One, Scene Seven, from Macbeth.”

  I was as much surprised as the Ravencrafts. Not because I knew about Shakespeare, but because I’d responded to what Granddad had said. A robot doesn’t speak until he’s spoken to, but the quotation had activated a response circuit in my control unit. Somewhere, for some reason, I’d done it before.

  “A robot that knows Shakespeare,” Granddad said after he’d closed his mouth.

  I didn’t see that as too surprising. It only proved that something was definitely wrong with my memory bank. William Shakespeare was one of the early writers who’d written plays out of his own head before they started doing it with computers. I knew I’d read his books and put them in my memory bank. But when? Where? Why? I could not pinpoint the data. That meant some of my memory coils had been tampered with. Maybe they’d been jarred loose when the junk fell on me, but I didn’t think so. A robot’s memory bank is carefully insulated. It is the most valuable unit in his construction. Without it he is useless.

  Granddad was regarding me with a new look. It might even have been called respect. He said, “Barney, what else do you know about Macbeth?”

  “He wanted to be king of Scotland. But first he had to kill Duncan, who was already king. He was nervous about it, and his wife, Lady Macbeth, was trying to help him make up his mind.”

  “Where did you learn about Shakespeare?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fantastic. You are a Shakespearean scholar but you don’t know who owns you.”

  It was confusing—groping for something I should have known but didn’t.

  Janet laid her hand on my arm. “Poor Barney! He’s got amnesia.”

  I wondered what that was.

  Granddad was pacing the floor. “This changes things,” he said.

  Larry asked, “Do you mean we can keep Barney?”

  “On the contrary. It becomes even more imperative that we find his owner. The man is obviously a fine, sensitive person. How many do you find these days who appreciate Shakespeare? I must meet the gentleman. If he owns a robot like Barney, he must be very wealthy.”

  It wasn’t difficult, even for a robot, to figure out what Granddad was thinking; that a fine, sensitive gentleman might also be wealthy. He said, “Get about your chore, you two. Then we’ll meet back here for dinner.”

  “Can we take Barney with us?”

  “No. Leave him here.”

  Granddad left. From what Larry had said, he didn’t expect me to be around long, but Janet took the optimistic view. “Maybe it will still be all right. Maybe we’ll never find Barney’s owner.”