Silver Shoes for a Princess Page 2

  “So the machines can see the radio stars, and you can talk to the machines so fast that you can see what they see. Is it like that?"

  “That's near enough,” Kort said. “Anyway, I'm home now.” The screen showed the door that led into the rooms where Taya lived starting to open. At the same time, she heard a whine from the room beyond the screen room. A moment later, Kort's towering figure appeared in the doorway, highlights glinting from the metal curves of his head and shoulders. As he tilted his head down toward her, she caught a glimpse of herself on the screen, turning in the chair and starting to get up. Two powerful arms lifted her from the floor, and she found herself looking into the black, ovoid, compound-lens matrixes that formed Kort's eyes. Taya hugged the metal head fondly and ran her fingers across the grille of his mouth.

  “So you've finished your new blue dress,” Kort observed. “It looks pretty."

  “You're just saying that,” Taya reproached. “See if you can tell me what there is that makes it pretty. I bet you don't know."

  Kort lowered her to the floor and stepped a pace back. Taya lifted her arms and twirled through a circle while the robot watched dutifully. “Well...” Kort rubbed his chin with a steel finger, “it has a belt around the middle that divides it into two parts. The ratio between the lengths of the top part and the bottom part is exactly zero point six-six. That's a pretty ratio."

  “See, your just guessing! You really don't know, do you?

  “Do you like it?” Kort asked.

  “Of course. If I didn't, I wouldn't be wearing it. I'd be altering it."

  “Then that's all that matters."

  “Rassie likes hers, too. Come and see.” Taya clasped Kort's hand and led him through her workroom to the window room, where the doll was still keeping its silent vigil. Taya picked the doll up to show. “See, Kort—it's just like mine."

  “Pretty,” Kort obliged.

  Taya turned to place the doll back on the sill. As she did so, her eyes strayed upward to take in again the panorama of the distant stars. She fell silent for a while. When she spoke, she didn't turn her head. Her voice sounded far away. “Kort ... I was wondering something while you were gone. Why is everything outside Merkon so different from everything inside?"

  “You've asked me that before,” the robot said. “It is just the way things have always been."

  “But why? There has to be a reason. You told me once that everything has to have a reason."

  “I did. There must be a reason.... But I don't know what it is."

  Taya continued to stare out of the window. Perhaps the stars were windows in other Merkons, she thought to herself—maybe with other Taya's looking out of them.... But no, that couldn't be right. If they were as far away as Kort said they were, the windows would be too small to see at all. Anyhow, Kort had told her what the stars were made of, and they didn't sound anything like Merkon.

  “Merkon is the way it is because the machines made it the way it is. That's the reason it is like it is, isn't it?” she said at last.

  “Yes,” Kort replied.

  “And the machines were made by other machines that were made by other machines that were made by other machines."

  “It has always been so."

  Taya turned away from the window and spread her hands appealingly. “But there must have been a first machine, mustn't there? What made the first machine, before there were other machines to make it?"

  Kort hesitated for an unusually long time before he answered. “I don't know,” was all he said.

  “Something must have made it,” Taya insisted. “I am being logical, aren't I?"

  “You are,” Kort agreed. “Something must have. But nobody in Merkon knows what did."

  Taya found his choice of words strange. She slipped onto the chair by the table near the window and looked at him quizzically. “Why did you say ‘nobody'?” she asked. “I don't know, because I asked the question. You've already said you don't know ... and I'm sure you don't mean Rassie. Who else is there?"

  “There are the machines,” Kort said.

  “Do they wonder about things like that too?"

  “Why shouldn't they? For them it's a very important question."

  Taya drew an imaginary shape on the table with her finger. “Oh, I don't know.... I suppose it was when you said ‘nobody.’ I never really think of them as people.” She looked up. “Well they're not, are they, Kort? They're not people like you and me ... with arms and legs, that move around and do things that people do.... Well, I suppose some of them do move around, but it's still not the same as being people."

  * * * *

  For a small fraction of the time that Taya was speaking, the entity that formed Kort's thinking parts communicated to the other entities that coexisted with him in the network. “She changes more rapidly as the days go by. Her mind grows stronger. There can be no doubt now. The experiment may be resumed without risk. I propose that we continue."

  The other entities in the network debated the matter at some length. Fully two seconds passed before their consensus poured back into the circuits that held Kort's mind. “We agree. Resuscitation is therefore being commenced."

  “Taya should know,” Kort sent back.

  “Would that be wise?” Came the reply. “She changes, but her mind still has much to comprehend. She needs more time."

  “Her questions tell me that the time is now. I have lived with her. I know her better. You have trusted my judgment before."

  Another half second went by. “Very well. But be careful with her."

  * * * *

  Kort squatted down and looked at Taya's face. “You say we are the same,” he said. His tone sounded unusually serious.

  Taya's brow furrowed. She straightened up in the chair. “Of course we are.... Well, you know what I mean—we're not exactly the same, but then you're a lot older.... “She cocked her head to one side as a new thought struck her. “Were you ever as small as me ... and pink and bendy like me?” For once Kort ignored her question, but remained staring at her for what seemed like a long time. “Is something the matter?” Taya asked.

  “There's something you should see,” Kort said, straightening up.

  “Something new that you've made?"

  “No, nothing like that. It's far away in another part of Merkon. We have to go on a journey."

  “Oh good!” Taya exclaimed, jumping up from the chair. “Will we walk there or can we go in a capsule?"

  “We'll have to go in a capsule,” Kort said. “It's a long way. The floor might be cold there, and the air is cool. You should put on some shoes and take a warm cloak."

  “I'll be all right."

  “I'll take them anyway.” Kort went through to her sleeping room and took a pair of shoes and her red cloak from a closet. Then he came back out, stooped, and extended a forearm. Taya perched herself on it and slipped an arm around the robot's neck as he straightened up. He carried her through the room beyond the screen room, and out into the long corridor.

  “Which place are we going to?” Taya asked him as he began walking.

  “None of the ones you've been to before. This is a new place."

  Taya looked surprised. “I didn't think there were any more places I could go in than the ones I've already been to,” she said.

  “The machines have been changing more places so that you can go into them. There was a time, once, when you couldn't go anywhere and had to stay in those rooms back there all the time."

  “Didn't I get bored?"

  “When you were smaller, you didn't need to be doing things all the time."

  At the far end of the long corridor, a capsule was already waiting for them behind an open door. They entered, and the door closed silently behind them. Taya felt the capsule starting to move. “What are we going to see?” she asked in Kort's ear.

  “If I tell you, it won't be a surprise,” the robot answered.

  “Give me a clue, then. Is it the eyes that can see the radio stars?"

&
nbsp; “No. I'm going to show you where I live."

  “But that's silly, Kort. You live in the same place I do. This is a riddle, isn't it?"

  “No, it's not a riddle. It's something you ought to know, now that your bigger. You wouldn't have understood it before, but I think you can now."

  “Tell me."

  “Patience. We'll soon be there."

  When the capsule stopped, they emerged into a glass-walled tunnel with a narrow metal floor. Outside the tunnel was a vast space spanned by metal girders and pipes, and filled with strange constructions. All around them, over their heads and below their feet, openings led through to other spaces. The openings were too large and at the wrong angles to be “doors"; and words like “wall” and “floor” didn't seem to fit the forms that vaguely enclosed the space they were moving through, but they were the nearest that Taya could think of. It was all like the inside of a machine, only bigger. This was definitely a “machine place."

  They came to another glass tunnel, this time going straight up. Kort stepped onto the circular platform that formed its floor, and the platform began moving, carrying them through level after level of more “machine places.” The platform stopped at a hole in the glass wall, which opened into another tunnel that seemed to be hanging in the middle of nothing, with huge machines on every side and vanishing into the shadows below. Eventually they arrived at a door that did look more like a door, and went through it into a corridor that did look like a corridor. This brought them to a room that did look like a room, but there wasn't anything very interesting inside—just rows of gray cubicles, all the same, standing in straight lines, with a set of rails coming down to each from holes in the ceiling. The screen room where Taya lived was the only place she'd seen where the electronics had consoles with buttons to press and screens to look at—which at least made it more interesting.

  There wasn't much room, and Kort could just squeeze between the cubicles. He moved a short distance along the row and spread Taya's cloak on the top of one of the cubicles. She slid off his arm and turned to sit facing him with her legs dangling over the edge. A whirring sound came from above, and a mobile maintenance pod, bristling with tools, claws, probes, and manipulators, slid down the rails to the cubicle next to the one that Taya was sitting on. It unfastened the top cover and slid it aside, then swung out the uppermost rack of the exposed electronics and photonics assemblies inside. The cubicles hadn't been made to be opened by Kort's fingers, but needed the pods specialized tools. Taya stared at the arrays of tightly packed crystal cubes and connecting fibers, then turned her face back toward Kort. “It's just a machine,” she said, shrugging. “Why did we come all this way to see it? It looks just like lots of other machines that would have been much nearer."

  “Yes, but this one is special,” Kort told her. “You see, this is the one that I live in ... at least, it's one of them. Parts of me are in others as well."

  The words were so strange that for a moment Taya was unable to draw any meaning from them. She merely stared blankly back at the face that the words were coming from.

  “You don't understand?” Kort said. Taya barely moved her head from side to side. “I'll put it another way. Do you remember what we meant when we said that you had a ‘mind'? It's all the things that you feel, and think, and imagine.” Taya nodded. Kort went on, “And your mind is in your brain that you have inside your head. Well, I don't have a brain—at least, not one like yours.” He pointed at the rows of plates carrying electronic chips and optical crystals. “That's part of my brain. Some of my mind, even while I'm talking, is in there. It doesn't look like your brain, but it does the same things."

  Taya looked from his face to the opened cubicle, then back again, struggling to understand, yet at the same time not wanting to. A few more seconds passed before she regained a whisper of her voice. “But, Kort ... your mind is in your head, too, just as mine is in my head. It has to be because ... we're the same."

  The robot shook his head slowly. “I see and hear and speak through the body that you have always called Kort,” he said. “But it is just a tool that I control in the same way that I can control the pod next to you or the capsule we came here in. This body was made only after my mind had existed for a long time. The mind that is really Kort lives in there."

  Taya turned her eyes away from the familiar face and stared, this time almost fearfully, into the opened cubicle again. “But, Kort, that's just a ... machine.” She shook her head in protest. The robot watched silently. “It's the same as all the other machines in Merkon, the same as...” Her voice trailed away, and she swallowed. She had been about to say “everything.” Kort was the same as everything else in Merkon. Everything, except....

  She could see the toes of her bare foot hanging over the edge of the cubicle, and beyond it Kort's steel foot, planted on the floor. And as she looked, for the first time in her life something that she had always known but never thought to question suddenly assumed an overwhelming significance.

  Kort had no toes.

  She raised her eyes from the floor and took in the gleaming contours of his legs, the intricate, overlapping plates encasing his hips, the squared bulk of his torso, and the sharp angles of his chin, until she was again staring at the black, ovoid eyes. When she spoke, her voice was trembling with her final realization of the truth that could be avoided no longer. “Kort, we're not the same, are we?"

  “No,” the robot replied.

  Taya looked again at the precisely fitted parts that gave mobility to his shoulders, the system of sliding joints that formed his neck. He was made, just as everything else in Merkon was made, just as the whole of Merkon itself was made. Everything except....

  “You're a doll, just like Rassie,” Taya choked. “A doll that the machines made.” She shook her head and looked at him imploringly.

  * * * *

  Kort's sensors picked up the rapid rise in moisture level around her eyes, and thermal patterns across her face that correlated with increasing blood flow. Protests were already streaming into his mind from the network.

  “She is registering distress. It is too soon for this, Kort. Stop now."

  “We have gone too far to stop,” Kort returned. “If I leave her in this condition, the uncertainty will only increase her distress. Once she knows all, it will pass."

  “How can you be sure?"

  “I have been right before."

  A pause.

  “Agreed."

  * * * *

  The realization had come so suddenly that Taya was too shocked for tears. It took a long time for her to find any voice at all, but at last she managed falteringly, “I'm the only thing in the whole of Merkon that isn't made...” She paused to moisten her lips. “Why, Kort? Why am I different? Where ... where did I come from?"

  “You have accepted the truth,” Kort said. “That's good. You have to accept truth as it is before you can hope to learn anything new. But before I'll tell you any more, you'll have to look happier than that. Do you think I've changed in some way just because you know something now that you didn't know a few minutes ago?"

  “No,” Taya said. She didn't sound convinced.

  “I'll make a funny shape when we get home, and call it pretty,” Kort offered. Taya tried to force a grin, but it only flickered and wouldn't stay put.

  Kort stepped back and turned around to face away from her. Then he bent double, planted his hands on the floor, and straightened his legs up above his body until he was looking at her from between his arms. “Look,” he called. “I'm the upside-down man. I live in the upside-down room. It's got upside-down chairs and upside-down tables, and you can talk to upside-down screens with upside-down pictures.” He started making running motions in the air with his legs.

  Taya raised her head and looked at him sheepishly. “There isn't an upside-down room,” she mumbled.

  “Yes there is, if we imagine one.” The upside-down robot began doing push-ups on his arms, causing his body to bounce up and down in the
aisle between the cubicles.

  Taya's mouth twitched, and a wisp of a smile crept onto her face. “Has it got an upside-down bed in it, too?"

  “Of course. Everything upside down."

  “But that wouldn't be any good. I'd fall out of it."

  “No, you wouldn't. Everything happens upside-down, too. You'd fall toward the ceiling."

  Taya laughed. “Oh, Kort, you're still as silly as ever. You really haven't changed, have you?"

  “That's what I'm trying to tell you."

  “And besides, if everything happens upside-down, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. So how would you know it was the upside-down room anyway?"

  Kort swung his legs down to right himself and turned to face her. “Exactly! If you can't tell the difference, then there isn't any difference. Things don't change just because you see them a different way."

  * * * *

  “Kort,” the incoming signals said. “You are taking too many risks. There were no data to support the conjecture that assuming an inverted posture would relieve her distress. What reason had you to believe that it would succeed?"

  “Nine years of living with her cannot be expressed algorithmically,” Kort answered.

  * * * *

  “So when you talk, it's really the machines talking,” Taya said after reflecting for a while.

  Kort folded his arms on top of one of the unopened cubicles and rested his chin on them. He had discovered long ago that mimicking the postures that Taya tended to adopt made her feel at ease. “In a way, yes; in a way, no,” he said. “There are many machine minds in Merkon. But only I—Kort—ever control this body or talk through it. But since I talk to the other machine minds too, then yes, you could say that they talk to you as well."

  “Why don't they have bodies like yours, too?” Taya asked.

  “In a way, the whole of Merkon is their body,” Kort replied. “They control different parts of it at different times."

  “I am being happier now,” Taya reminded him, pushing his elbow with her foot—although Kort never needed reminding about anything. “You said that when I was happier you'd tell me why I'm different."