They spread a meal—a dozen meals—before him, and he began to eat.
He ate as a penned pig eats, gobbling until it chokes, forcing the food down because there is nothing to do but eat. He ate, with a sighing accompaniment of moans and gasps, and some of the food was salted with the tears of pain he wept into it, and some of the wine was spilled by his shaking hand. But he ate. Not for the first time that day, and not for the tenth.
Sonny Trumie wept as he ate. He no longer even knew he was weeping. There was the gaping void inside him that he had to fill, had to fill; diere was the gaping world about him that he had to people and build and furnish . .. and use.
He moaned to himself. Four hundred pounds of meat and lard, and he had to lug it from end to end of his island, every hour of every day, never resting, never at peace! There should have been a place somewhere, there should have been a time, when he could rest. When he could sleep without dreaming, sleep without waking after a scant few hours with the goading drive to eat and to use, to use and to eat...
And it was all so wrong!
The robots didn't understand. They didn't try to understand; they didn't think for themselves. Let him take his eyes from any one of them for a single day and everything went wrong. It was necessary to keep after them, from end to end of the island, checking and overseeing and ordering—yes, and destroying to rebuild, over and over!
He moaned again and pushed the plate away.
He rested, with his tallow forehead flat against the table, waiting, while inside him the pain ripped and ripped, and finally became bearable again. And slowly he pushed himself up, and rested for a moment, and pulled a fresh plate toward him, and began again to eat.
After a while, he stopped. Not because he didn't want to
go on, but because he absolutely couldn't.
He was bone-tired, but something was bothering him—-one more detail to check, one more thing that was wrong. Mata Hari. The houri at the drawbridge. It shouldn't have been out of the Private Place. It should have been in the harem, of course. Not that it mattered, except to Sonny Trumie's never-resting sense of what was right.
Time was when the houris of the harem had their uses, but that time was long and long ago; now they were property, to be fussed over and made to be right, to be replaced if they were worn, destroyed if they were wrong. But only property, as all of North Guardian was property—as all of the world would be his property, if only he could manage it.
But property shouldn't be wrong.
He signaled to the Crockett robot and, leaning on it, walked down the long terrazzo hall toward the harem. He tried to remember what the houri had looked like. The face didn't matter; he was nearly sure it had changed it. It had worn a sheer red blouse and a brief red skirt, he was almost certain, but the face—
It had had a face, of course. But Sonny had lost the habit of faces. This one had been somehow different, but he couldn't remember just why. Still—the blouse and skirt were red, he was nearly sure. And it had been carrying something in a box. And that was odd, too.
He waddled a little faster, for now he was positive it was wrong.
"Thar's the harem, Mistuh Trumie," said the robot at his side. It disengaged itself gently, leaped forward and held the door to the harem for him.
"Wait for me," Sonny commanded, and waddled forward into the harem halls.
Once he had so arranged the harem that he needed no help inside it; the halls were railed, at a height where it was easy for a pudgy hand to grasp the rail; the distances were short, the rooms close together.
He paused and called over his shoulder: "Stay where you can hear me." It had occurred to him that if the houri robot was wrong, he would need Crockett's guns to make it right.
A chorus of female voices sprang into song as he entered the main palio. They were a bevy of beauties, clustered around a fountain, diaphanously dressed, languorously glancing at Sonny Trumie as he waddled inside.
"Shut up!" he shrieked. "Go back to your rooms!"
They bowed their heads and, one by one, slipped into the cubicles.
No sign of the red blouse and the red skirt. He began the rounds of the cubicles, panting, peering into diem.
"Hello, Sonny," whispered Theda Bara, lithe on a leopard rug, and he passed on. "I love you!" cried Nell Gwynn, and, "Come to me!" commanded Cleopatra, but he passed them by. He passed Du Barry and Marilyn Monroe, he passed Moll Flanders and he passed Troy's Helen. No sign of the houri in red—
Yes, there was. He didn't see the houri, but he saw the signs of the houri's presence: the red blouse and the red skirt, lying limp and empty on the floor.
Sonny gasped: "Where are you? Come out here where I can see you!"
Nobody answered Sonny.
"Come out!" he bawled.
And then he stopped. A door opened and someone came out; not an houri, not female; a figure without sex but loaded with love, a teddy bear figure, as tall as pudgy Sonny Trumie himself, waddling as he waddled, its stubby welcoming arms stretched out to him.
He could hardly believe his eyes. Its color was a little darker than Teddy. It was a good deal taller than Teddy. But unquestionably, undoubtedly, in everything that mattered, it was—
"Teddy," whispered Sonny Trumie, and let the furry arms go around his 400 pounds.
Twenty years disappeared. "They wouldn't let me have you," Sonny told the teddy bear.
It said, in a voice musical and warm: "It's all right, Sonny. You can have me now, Sonny. You can have everything, Sonny."
"They took you away," he whispered, remembering.
They took the teddy bear away; he had never forgotten. They took it away and Mother was wild and Father was furious. They raged at the little boy and scolded him and threatened him. Didn't he know they were poor, and Did he want to ruin them all, and What was wrong with him, anyway, that he wanted his little sister s silly stuffed robots when he was big enough to use nearly grown-up goods?
The night had been a terror, with the frowning, sad robots ringed around, and the little girl crying; and what had made it terror was not the scolding—he'd had scoldings—but the worry, the fear and almost the panic in his parents' voices. For what he did, he came to understand, was no longer a childish sin. It was a big sin, a failure to consume his quota—
And it had to be punished.
The first punishment was the extra birthday party.
The second was—shame.
Sonny Trumie, not quite 12, was made to feel shame and humiliation. Shame is only a little thing, but it makes the victim of it little, too.
Shame.
The robots were reset to scorn him. He woke to mockery and went to bed with contempt. Even his little sister lisped the catalog of his failures.
You aren't trying, Sonny, and You don't care, Sonny, and You're a terrible disappointment to us, Sonny.
And finally all the things were true, because Sonny at 12 was what his elders made him.
And they made him . . . "neurotic" is the term; a pretty-sounding word that means ugly things like fear and worry and endless self-reproach . ..
"Don't worry," whispered the Teddy. "Don't worry, Sonny. You can have me. You can have what you want. You don't have to have anything else."