Wednesday morning. She had time to think about things, and a wonderful calm came over her, and she knew she didn't care what happened to her now. She was strong enough to live alone, and take whatever was coming to her without fear.

When she shook Kelsey awake Wednesday morning and told him she was Alice, he laughed, shocked and incredulous, trying to appear amused. But she told him about the order blank, and convinced him she really was Alice and Anita Starre did not exist.

He ran and called a robot repair clinic. He was almost incoherent, trying to tell the clinic what had happened, but they finally understood and said they would be right out to take the domestic away.

He seemed frightened as he looked at her.

"I don't understand," he said several times. "No one told you to do such a thing. How could a robot just up and do such a thing?"

She started to answer, but didn't. There was nothing to say.

"Robots can become inefficient," Kelsey said. "They can wear down a little and have to be repaired. But how could a robot just up and do a thing like this?"

Because of loneliness and the need for love? She smiled. She could smile now. It would have been funny for her to have said such a thing as that.

She didn't care. She heard the jet-truck drop down by the curb outside Kelsey's house. She heard the footsteps coming up the walk, onto the porch. But she didn't care. She was strong enough not to care at all.

She cared not at all for any of them, Master Kelsey included. She cared a little for Julian, for he had understood a little. But she didn't care about any of the others now. They hardly existed! They had nothing! In them, everything had been frozen forever and nothing really moved inside.

They were empty, they were nothing, they didn't exist!

You saw the bright surfaces and the smiles as they walked and talked on the street, and for a while you wanted to believe they existed, that they were there. But they weren't really there at all.

She smiled and stood still and waited for them to move toward her. They seemed afraid of her.

There's nothing to be afraid of, not here, not in me, she wanted to say. It's in you that the fear is, for what is more 

 Prev. P 25/26 next