Cemetery World Read Online Free Page B

than that, it is far from finished yet. It is still in the process of development and there is no end to the ways that one can go. I see you looking at these hands and wondering how I can do the kind of work a compositor requires. The answer is that I have other hands, very special kinds of hands. I screw off my everyday hands and screw on whatever other kind is needed. You have heard of this, of course?”
    I nodded. “Yes. And specialized eyes, I suppose you have those as well.”
    “Oh, yes, indeed,” said Elmer.
    “You find a compositor a challenge to your mechanical ability?”
    “Not a challenge,” said Elmer. “That’s a foolish word to use. I find satisfaction in working with complicated mechanisms. It makes me more alive. It makes me feel worthwhile. And you asked how I heard about you. Well, just a passing remark, I guess that you were building a compositor and planned to go back to Earth. So I inquired around. I found out you had studied at the university, so I went there and talked to people. There was one professor who told me he had great faith in you. He said you had the soul for greatness, he said you had the touch. His name, I think, was Adams.”
    “Dr. Adams,” I said, “is old now and forgetful and a very kindly man.”
    I chuckled, thinking of it—of this great, bumbling, earnest Elmer clumping across the fairy campus and stumbling down the venerated, almost sacred halls, hunting out professors from their academic lairs to ask them insistent, silly questions about a long-gone student that many of them, no doubt, had trouble in recalling.
    “There was yet another professor,” said Elmer, “who impressed me greatly and I had a long talk with him. He was not in the arts, but in archaeology. He said he knew you well.”
    “That would be Thorndyke. He is an old and trusted friend.”
    “That’s the name,” said Elmer.
    I was a bit amused, but somewhat resentful, too. What business did this blundering robot have to be checking up on me?
    “And you are now convinced,” I asked, “that I am fully capable of building a compositor?”
    “Oh, most assuredly,” he said.
    “If you have come with the hope of being hired, you have wasted your time,” I said. “Not that I don’t need the help. Not that I wouldn’t like to have you. But I’ve run out of money.”
    “It wasn’t that entirely, sir. I would, of course, be delighted to work on it with you. But my real reason was I want to go back to Earth. I was born there, you see; I was fabricated there.”
    “You were what?” I yelled.
    “I was forged on Earth,” said Elmer. “I’m a native of the Earth. I would like to see the planet once again. And I thought that if you were going …”
    “Once again,” I said, “and slow. Do you really mean that you were forged on Earth? In the olden days?”
    “I saw the last of Earth,” said Elmer. “I worked on the last of the war machines. I was a project manager.”
    “But you would have worn out,” I said. “You would be worn out by now. A robot can be long-lived, of course, but …”
    “I was very valuable,” Elmer pointed out. “Ship room was found for me when men began going to the stars. I was not just a robot. I was a mechanic, an engineer. Humans needed robots such as I to help establish their new homes far in space. They took good care of me. Worn parts were replaced, I was kept in good repair. And since I gained my freedom I have taken good care of myself. I have never bothered with the external body. I have never changed it. I have kept it free of rust and plated, but that is all. The body does not count, only the internal working parts. Although now it is impossible to get shelf replacements. They are no longer in stock, but must be placed on special order.”
    What he said had the ring of truth to it. In that long-gone moving day when, in a century or so, men had fled the Earth, a wrecked and ruined planet, because there was nothing left to keep them there, they would