of its temporary integration.
I had kissed Emily more than once, but I had never experienced anything remotely like the kiss of the Mother Superior. Modesty forbids me to give a more detailed description, but it is only appropriate for me to report that the experience changed my life, and showed me what the true value of emotion is, to an intellect capable of its wise control.
I was taken away from the Mother Superior’s quarters by the same guide that had brought me. Mary led me up through the bowels of the hill, back to the surface of the Earth and the interior of the near-perpetual cloud that sat atop Arnlea Moor, which was now dark grey in the gathering twilight. Indeed, she led me further than that, taking me down the slope until we were completely clear of the mist, and accompanying me almost to the bounds of Haughtonlin.
“You had best make your own way from here,” she said. “It will soon be dark, but I think you can find your way back to Stonecroft without difficulty. The moon is three-quarters full and untroubled by clouds at present.”
“I can find my way, now that I’ve a path to guide me,” I assured her. “Shall I see you again?”
“Of course you will,” she said. “You must visit me at Raggandale very soon, so that we might become good friends.”
I was glad, at the time, to hear that we were to become good friends, although I realized almost immediately that it was a necessary provision, to protect both of us from the hazards of loneliness. My gladness was slightly compromised, however, by the anxiety that any new friendship might be seen as a betrayal of Emily’s love and Emily’s memory.
I felt compelled, in consequence, to go directly to Emily’s grave and kneel beside it, in order to offer her an apology and an explanation.
“I am not the man that I used to be, Emily,” I told her. “I have grown, and it is time for me to move on. I’m a foster-father now, and I have new responsibilities. I want to know, though, that I have not forgotten you and never will. I am capable, still, of every emotion in the human spectrum, and I shall treasure my grief as I shall treasure my love for you, which will never be emulated or replaced. In time, I suppose, Mary and I might marry. Perhaps we shall take the Grand Tour together. We might even range much further, in time, although it will doubtless be prudent to wait until more nests have been established in Africa and the Far East, before we take the slightest risk with the welfare of the infant. I always yearned to be an explorer, as you know, and now I shall be able to take my explorations further than I ever dreamed.”
I hesitated momentarily after pronouncing that word, which produced a faint echo of doubt in my mind—but the echo was immediately overridden by my newly-sanitized intellect. “No, Emily,” I continued, “what happened on the moor today was no dream. There will be no idle dreaming for me, from now on; all my dreams will be ordered and constructive. I shall have a great deal of work to do, in furthering the cause of my adoptive folk by every means available to me, including my pen, although my first and foremost duty will be to the child whose primary education is my current mission in life. I shall love and cherish the Mother Superior’s child, Emily, and I shall be loved and cherished in my turn. I still have a duty, of course, to the ephemerae of our own kind, towards whose permanent liberation from the frailties of primitive flesh I shall work tirelessly, through centuries to come. The work will be slow, and it will be painstaking, but in the end, it will all be worthwhile. In the fullness of time, the entire evolutionary legacy of Earth’s biosphere will be incorporated into the flesh and spirit of our adoptive cousins, ready for exportation to the worlds of other stars. Everyone, then, will have the best of both our worlds.”
Emily could make no reply, of course, but I had known her well, and I was certain that she would have judged what I had told her to be a wonderful prospect. She would have understood, and would have given me her blessing.
“I shall make a permanent record of what has happened to me, Emily,” I told her, “in order that our secret will have an objective existence of its own. In two or three hundred years time, if the Mother Superior permits, it might become possible to publish it, or at least to show it to my children…which is to say, my foster-children. I doubt that you have any cause to be jealous of Mary, in that regard.”
I had a sudden vision, then, of looking into Emily’s tender blue eyes, and my eyes filled with tears. I did not blink the tears away immediately, but savored their implications to the full. Then, by a voluntary effort, I supplemented the vision with another, of looking into Mary’s much darker eyes.
Mary’s pupils seemed so utterly black as to be windows into the infinity of interstellar space.
“Tomorrow, or the next day,” I told my dead beloved, “I’ll ride to Raggandale to pay my formal respects.”
Emily smiled, at least in my imagination, and again I savored the tingle of emotion, which was followed by a faint but distinct echo in the other soul that now dwelt within me, in blissful harmony with my own.
At last, I thought, I have begun not merely to perceive but to comprehend the Divine Plan, in all its richness, promise and beauty. Father would be proud of me—and Mother too.
THE HIGHWAY CODE
Tom Haste had no memory of his emergence from the production line, but the Company made a photographic record of the occasion and stored it in his archive for later reference. He rarely reflected upon it, though; the assembly robots and their human supervisors celebrated, each after their own fashion, but there were no other RTs in sight, except for as-yet-incomplete ones in embryo in the distant background. Not that Tom was any kind of xenophobe, of course—he liked everyone, meat or metal, big or small—but he was what he was, which was a long-hauler. His life was dedicated to intercontinental transport and the Robot Brotherhood of the Road.
Tom’s self-awareness developed gradually while he was in the Test Program, and his first true memories were concerned with the artistry of cornering. Cornering was always a central concern with artics, especially giants like Tom, who had a dozen containers and no less than fifty-six wheels. Tom put a lot of effort into the difficult business of mastering ninety-degree turns, skid control and zigzag management, and he was as proud of his achievements as only a nascent intelligence can be. He was proud of being a giant, too, and couldn’t understand why humans and other RTs were always making jokes about it.
In particular, Tom couldn’t understand why the Company humans were so fond of calling him “the steel centipede” or “the sea serpent”, since he was mostly constructed of artificial organic compounds, didn’t have any legs at all, wouldn’t have a hundred of them even if his wheels were counted as legs, and would undoubtedly spend his entire career on land. He didn’t understand the explanations the humans gave him if he asked—which included such observations as the fact that actual centipedes didn’t have a hundred legs either, and that there was actually no such thing as a sea serpent—but he learned soon enough that humans took a certain delight in giving robots explanations that weren’t, precisely because robots found it difficult to fathom them. Tom soon gave up trying, content to leave such mysteries to the many unfortunates who had to deal with humans on a face-to-face basis every day, such as ATMs and desktop PCs.
Tom didn’t stay long in the Test Program, which was more for the Company’s benefit than his. Once his self-awareness had reached full fruition he could access all his pre-loaded software consciously without the slightest difficulty, and there were no detectable glitches in his cognitive processing. So far as he was concerned, life was simple and life was good—or would be, once he could get out on the road.
While the Test Program was running Tom’s immediate neighbor in the night-garage was an identical model named Harry Fleet, who had emerged from the factory eight days before and therefore thought of himself
