The Far Shore of Time

I did what I could. I answered every question, and tacked on a little question to each answer. Masturbation: didn’t the Horch masturbate? Hugging and kissing: I supposed the Horch had their equivalents. And didn’t some Horch get a charge out of hurting other Horch? Without exception, none of my questions got an answer. Mostly they were ignored. Sometimes Greenie cautioned me to stick to straight responses. Twice it gestured toward the porcelain box that held the helmet, which was enough.

And the questioning went on and on. When it stopped at last it was only long enough for me to relieve myself and cram down a few bites of food, and then it started again.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I don’t know how long the interrogation sessions went on. I tried to keep count of them, but there wasn’t much point to that. The number didn’t tell me much, because I had no good measure of how many hours each lasted, or how long I was allowed to sleep when I did. I didn’t know, either, whether it really mattered for me to keep on sounding the walls, trying to peer past the doors when they were opened, even, once, deliberately falling against one of the Christmas trees to see how they felt. (They didn’t feel like anything I had expected. No needle stabs, no feeling of chill glass spikes against my skin; the thing caught me and cradled me as though in an instantly created form-fitting basket of its twigs and set me back on my feet, and I had learned nothing at all.)

I wished for Dopey’s presence so I could ask him more questions. That didn’t happen often. We seemed to be on different schedules; once when Green-glass woke me up I caught a glimpse of him, sound asleep. But when I was allowed back in the biological-needs room he was gone.

And the questions didn’t stop. Sports: how were players selected for football teams, and why would any sentient being risk life and limb in so violent an activity? Currency: What determined how many Japanese yen were given for one American dollar? What caused “inflation”? Why did humans play board games? How was “ownership” of land areas determined? What was the role of the stock market?

And I was reaching the ragged edge of fatigue.

I wasn’t getting very far with trying to slip questions in, either. I was pretty sure that the robots were very familiar with that little stratagem, and I thought I knew why: they had dealt with Dan Dannermans before, and they knew our tricks.

Then I thought I saw an opening.

The questioning turned to religion. What was the nature of the religious experience? What evidence did the priests and preachers have for the existence of a “God” or a “Heaven”? Or, for that matter, of a “Hell,” or some other form of postlife reward or punishment for transgressions?

And all of a sudden, I saw what I had been waiting for. I had something to tell them that I was pretty sure would dislodge some data for me. “Excuse me,” I wheedled, the very model of a prisoner beaten down past the point of resistance, trying to curry favor with his captors, “but if you permit, I can tell you a story from my personal experience that might illuminate some of these questions for you.”

Green-glass paused, its needles stirring in silence, apparently thinking that over. Then it spoke.

“Do so,” it said.

What I wanted to tell the machine about was a memory of my grandmother, from when I was six or seven years old. That was when my parents began to make me spend a few weeks each summer at Uncle Cubby’s place on the Jersey shore.

Uncle Chubby was J. Cuthbert Dannerman, the one with the money. I didn’t specially want to be spending summers in his house. Uncle Cubby wanted it, because he liked having kids around now and then, possessing none of his own. And my father, who hadn’t done nearly as well with his career as his older brother, wanted me to be there, too, because he was well aware that when Uncle Chubby died there would be a considerable estate for someone to inherit.

Well, that part didn’t work out for me, for one reason or another, but those summers in New Jersey turned out not to be so bad. After I had cried myself to sleep for a week or so I began to enjoy myself. My cousin Pat came along most summers, for the same reasons. Unfortunately she was a girl, but at least she was someone to play with, and after a while her gender turned out to be an asset. That was when we discovered some interesting new games, like I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours.

The bad part of the summers was that Grandmother Dannerman was there, too.