For the Garsonians were a shiftless tribe at best and it had been with some initial difficulty that the second team had been able to explain to them the mechanics and desirability of interstellar trade. Although, in fairness, it might be said of them that, once they understood it, they had been able to develop a creditable amount of eagerness to do business.
Podars had taken to the soil of Earth with commendable adaptiveness. They had grown bigger and better than they’d ever grown on their native planet. This was not surprising when one took into account the slap-dash brand of agriculture practiced by the Garsonians.
Using the tubers brought back by the second expedition for the initial crop, it required several years of growing before a sufficient supply of seed podars were harvested to justify commercial growing.
But finally that had come about and the first limited supply of the wonder drug had been processed and put on sale with wide advertising fanfare and an accompanying high price.
And all seemed well, indeed.
Once again the farmers of the Earth had gained a new cash crop from an alien planet. Finally Man had the tranquillizer which he’d sought for years.
But as the years went by, some of the enthusiasm dimmed. For the drug made from the podars appeared to lose its potency. Either it had not been as good as first believed or there was some factor lacking in its cultivation on Earth.
The laboratories worked feverishly on the problem. The podars were planted in experimental plots on other planets in the hope that the soil or air or general characteristics there might supply the needed element—if missing element it were.
And Central Trading, in its ponderous, bureaucratic fashion, began preliminary plans for importation of the tubers, remembering belatedly, perhaps, the trade agreement signed many years before. But the plans were not pushed too rapidly, for any day, it was believed, the answer might be found that would save the crop for Earth.
But when the answer came, it ruled out Earth entirely; it ruled out, in fact, every place but the podar’s native planet. For, the laboratories found, the continued potency of the drug relied to a large extent upon the chemical reaction of a protozoan which the podar plants nourished in their roots. And the protozoan flourished, apparently, on Garson IV alone.
So finally, after more than fifteen years, the third expedition had started out for Garson IV. And had landed and brought the cargo down and now was ready, in the morning, to start trading for the podars.
Sheridan flipped idly through the sheets from the portfolio. There was, he thought, actually no need to look at all the data once again. He knew it all by heart.
The canvas rustled and Hezekiah stepped into the tent.
Sheridan looked up. “Good,” he said, “you’re back. Did you get Max fixed up?”
“We found a body, sir, that proved acceptable.”
Sheridan pushed the pile of reports aside. “Hezekiah, what are your impressions?”
“Of the planet, sir?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, it’s those barns, sir. You saw them, sir, when we were coming down. I believe I mentioned them to you.”
Sheridan nodded. “The second expedition taught the natives how to build them. To store the podars in.”
“All of them painted red,” the robot said. “Just like the barns we have on Christmas cards.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“They look a little weird, sir.”
Sheridan laughed. “Weird or not, those barns will be the making of us. They must be crammed with podars. For fifteen years, the natives have been piling up their podars, more than likely wondering when we’d come to trade …”
“There were all those tiny villages,” Hezekiah said, “and those big red barns in the village square. It looked, if you will pardon the observation, sir, like a combination of New England and Lower Slobbovia.”
“Well, not quite Lower Slobbovia. Our Garsonian friends are not as bad as that. They may be somewhat shiftless and considerably scatterbrained, but they keep their villages neat and their houses spic and span.”
He pulled a photograph from a pile of data records. “Here, take a look at this.”
The photograph showed a village street, neat and orderly and quiet, with its rows of well-kept houses huddled underneath the shade trees. There were rows of gay flowers running along the roadway and there were people—little, happy, gnomelike people—walking in the road.
Hezekiah picked it up. “I will admit, sir, that they look fairly happy. Although, perhaps, not very smart.”
Sheridan got to his feet. “I think I’ll go out and check around and see how things are going.”
“Everything is all right, sir,” said Hezekiah. “The boys have the wreckage cleared up. I’m sorry to have to tell you, sir, that not much of the cargo could be saved.”
“From the looks of it, I’m surprised we could salvage any of it.”
“Don’t stay out too long,” Hezekiah warned him. “You’ll need a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day and you’ll be out at the crack of dawn.”
“I’ll be right back,” Sheridan promised and ducked out of the tent.
Batteries of camp lights had been erected and now held back the blackness of the night. The sound of hammering came from the chewed-up area where the floater had come down. There was no sign of the floater now and a gang of spacehand robots were busily going about the building of another radio shack. Another gang was erecting a pavilion tent above the conference table, where Abraham and his fellow roboticists still worked on Lemuel and Maximilian. And in front of the cook shack, Napoleon and Gideon were squatted down, busily shooting craps.
Sheridan saw that Napoleon had set up his outdoors stove again.
He walked over to them and they turned their heads and greeted him, then went back to their game.
Sheridan watched them for a while and then walked slowly on.
He shook his head in some bewilderment—a continuing bewilderment over this robotic fascination with all the games of chance. It was, he supposed, just one of the many things that a human being—any human being—would never understand.
For gambling seemed entirely pointless from a robotic point of view. They had no property, no money, no possessions. They had no need of any and they had no wish for any—and yet they gambled madly.
It might be, he told himself, no more than an aping of their fellow humans. By his very nature, a robot was barred effectively from participating in most of the human vices. But gambling was something that he could do as easily and perhaps more efficiently than any human could.
But what in the world, he wondered, did they get out of it? No gain, no profit, for there were no such things as gain or profit so far as a robot was concerned. Excitement, perhaps? An outlet for aggressiveness?
Or did they keep a phantom score within their mind—mentally chalking up their gains and loss—and did a heavy winner at a game of chance win a certain prestige that was not visible to Man, that might, in fact, be carefully hidden from a man?
A man, he thought, could never know his robots in their entirety and that might be as well—it would be an unfair act to strip the final shreds of individuality from a robot.
For if the robots owed much to Man—their conception and their manufacture and their life—by the same token Man owed as much, or even more, to robots.