Trumie cried, in a staccato bleat: ‘You! What are you? Where do you belong?’
He was talking to the girl. Beside him the Crockett-robot murmured, ‘Rackin she’s a spy, Mistuh Trumie. See thet sign a-hangin’ on her back?’
‘Spy? Spy?’ The quivering lips pouted. ‘Curse you, are you Mata Hari? What are you doing out here? It’s changed its face,’ Trumie complained to the Crockett-robot. ‘It doesn’t belong here. It’s supposed to be in the harem. Go on, Crockett, get it back!’
‘Wait!’ cried Garrick, but the Crockett-robot was ahead of him. It took Kathryn Pender by the arm.
‘Come along thar,’ it said soothingly, and urged her across the drawbridge. She glanced back at Garrick, and for a moment it looked as though she were going to speak. Then she shook her head, as though she were giving an order.
‘Kathryn!’ cried Garrick. ‘Trumie, wait a minute. That isn’t Mata Hari!’
No one was listening. Kathryn Pender disappeared into the Private Place. Trumie, leaning heavily on the hobbling Silver-robot, followed.
Garrick, coming back to life, leaped after them…
The scarlet-coated guards jumped before him, their shakos bobbing, their crooken little rifles crossed to bar his way.
He cried, ‘One side! Out of my way, you! I’m a human, don’t you understand? You’ve got to let me pass!’
They didn’t even look at him; trying to get by them was like trying to walk through a wall of moving, thrusting steel. He shoved, and they pushed him back; he tried to dodge, and they were before him. It was hopeless.
And then it was hopeless indeed, because behind them, he saw, the drawbridge had gone up.
6
Sonny Trumie collapsed into a chair like a mound of blubber falling to the deck of a whaler.
Though he made no signal, the procession of serving robots started at once. In minced the maitre d’, bowing and waving its graceful hands; in marched the sommelier, clanking its necklace of keys, bearing its wines in their buckets of ice. In came the lovely waitress-robots and the sturdy steward-robots, with the platters and tureens, the plates and bowls and cups. 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; there 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 fiat against the table, waiting, while inside him the pain ripped and ripped, and finally became bearable again. And slowly he pushed himself up again, and rested for a moment, and pulled a fresh plate towards him, and began again to eat....
After a while he stopped. Not because he didn’t want to go on, but because he couldn’t.
He was bone-tired, but something was bothering him - one more detail to check, one more thing that was wrong. 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 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 signalled to the Crockett-robot and, leaning on it, walked down the long terrazzo hall towards the harem. He tried to remember what the houri had looked like. It had worn a sheer red blouse and a brief red skirt, he was nearly sure, 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, they 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 sure it was wrong.
‘That’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 forwards 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 patio. They were a bevy of beauties, clustered around a fountain, diaphanously dressed, languorously glancing at Sonny Trumie as he waddled inside. ‘Shut up!’ he commanded. ‘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 them. ‘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 Dubarry and Marilyn Monroe, he passed Moll Flanders and he passed Troy’s Helen. No sign of the houri in red...
And then he saw signs. 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, ‘You! 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 a 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 stubbed arms stretched out to him.
Sonny could hardly believe his eyes. Its colour 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 four hundred pounds.