I, Robot - Isaac Asimov [6]
In a minute she had returned, a frightened little girl. “Mamma, Robbie isn’t in his room. Where is he?” There was no answer and George Weston coughed and was suddenly extremely interested in an aimlessly drifting cloud. Gloria’s voice quavered on the verge of tears, “Where’s Robbie, Mamma?”
Mrs. Weston sat down and drew her daughter gently to her, “Don’t feel bad, Gloria. Robbie has gone away, I think.”
“Gone away? Where? Where’s he gone away, Mamma?”
“No one knows, darling. He just walked away. We’ve looked and we’ve looked and we’ve looked for him, but we can’t find him.”
“You mean he’ll never come back again?” Her eyes were round with horror.
“We may find him soon. We’ll keep looking for him. And meanwhile you can play with your nice new doggie. Look at him! His name is Lightning and he can—”
But Gloria’s eyelids had overflown, “I don’t want the nasty dog—I want Robbie. I want you to find me Robbie.” Her feelings became too deep for words, and she spluttered into a shrill wail.
Mrs. Weston glanced at her husband for help, but he merely shuffled his feet morosely and did not withdraw his ardent stare from the heavens, so she bent to the task of consolation, “Why do you cry, Gloria? Robbie was only a machine, just a nasty old machine. He wasn’t alive at all.”
“He was not no machine!” screamed Gloria, fiercely and ungrammatically. “He was a person just like you and me and he was my friend. I want him back. Oh, Mamma, I want him back.”
Her mother groaned in defeat and left Gloria to her sorrow.
“Let her have her cry out,” she told her husband. “Childish griefs are never lasting. In a few days, she’ll forget that awful robot ever existed.”
But time proved Mrs. Weston a bit too optimistic. To be sure, Gloria ceased crying, but she ceased smiling, too, and the passing days found her ever more silent and shadowy. Gradually, her attitude of passive unhappiness wore Mrs. Weston down and all that kept her from yielding was the impossibility of admitting defeat to her husband.
Then, one evening, she flounced into the living room, sat down, folded her arms and looked boiling mad.
Her husband stretched his neck in order to see her over his newspaper, “What now, Grace?”
“It’s that child, George. I’ve had to send back the dog today. Gloria positively couldn’t stand the sight of him, she said. She’s driving me into a nervous breakdown.”
Weston laid down the paper and a hopeful gleam entered his eye, “Maybe— Maybe we ought to get Robbie back. It might be done, you know. I can get in touch with—”
“No!” she replied, grimly. “I won’t hear of it. We’re not giving up that easily. My child shall not be brought up by a robot if it takes years to break her of it.”
Weston picked up his paper again with a disappointed air. “A year of this will have me prematurely gray.”
“You’re a big help, George,” was the frigid answer. “What Gloria needs is a change of environment. Of course she can’t forget Robbie here. How can she when every tree and rock reminds her of him? It is really the silliest situation I have ever heard of. Imagine a child pining away for the loss of a robot.”
“Well, stick to the point. What’s the change in environment you’re planning?”
“We’re going to take her to New York.”
“The city! In August! Say, do you know what New York is like in August? It’s unbearable.”
“Millions do bear it.”
“They don’t have a place like this to go to. If they didn’t have to stay in New York, they wouldn’t.”
“Well, we have to. I say we’re leaving now—or as soon as we can make the arrangements. In the city, Gloria will find sufficient interests and sufficient friends to perk her up and make her forget that machine.”
“Oh, Lord,” groaned the lesser half, “those frying pavements!”
“We have to,” was the unshaken response. “Gloria has lost five pounds in the last month and my little girl’s health is more important to me than your comfort.”
“It’s a pity you didn’t think of your little girl’s health before you deprived her of her pet robot,