The Compassion Circuit by John Wyndham Read Free Book Online Page B

quite enviable—although one knew that it was probably threads of plastic with waves that would never come out. The skin—another kind of plastic covering the carefully built-up contours—was distinguishable from real skin only by its perfection.
    Janet knelt down beside the box, and ventured with a forefinger to touch the flawless complexion. It was quite, quite cold.
    She sat back on her heels, looking at it. Just a big doll, she told herself—a contraption. A very wonderful contraption of metal, plastics, and electronic circuits, but still a contraption, and made to look as it did only because people would find it harsh or grotesque if it should look any other way.
    And yet, to have it looking as it did was a bit disturbing, too. For one thing, you couldn’t go on thinking of it as “it” any more. Whether you liked it or not, your mind thought of it as “her.” As “her” it would have to have a name; and, with a name, it would become still more of a person.
    “ ‘A battery-driven model,’ ” George read out, “ ‘will normally require to be fitted with a new battery every four days. Other models, however, are designed to conduct their own regeneration from the mains as and when necessary.’ Let’s have her out.”
    He put his hands under the robot’s shoulders, and tried to lift it.
    “Phew!” he said. “Must be about three times my weight.” He had another try. “Hell,” he said, and referred to the book again.
    His brow furrowed.
    “The control switches are situated at the back, slightly above the waistline. All right, maybe we can roll her over.”
    With an effort he succeeded in getting the figure on to its side and began to undo the buttons at the back of her dress. Janet suddenly felt that to be an indelicacy.
    “I’ll do it,” she said. Her husband glanced at her. “All right. It’s yours,” he told her.
    “She can’t be just ‘it.’ I’m going to call her Hester.”
    “All right, again,” he agreed.
    Janet undid the buttons and fumbled about inside the dress. “I can’t find a knob, or anything,” she said.
    “Apparently there’s a small panel that opens,” he told her.
    “Oh, no!” she said, in a slightly shocked tone.
    He regarded her again. “Darling, she’s just a robot—a mechanism.”
    “I know,” said Janet, shortly. She felt about again, discovered the panel, and opened it.
    “You give the upper knob a half-turn to the right and then close the panel to complete the circuit,”
    instructed George from the book.
    Janet did so, and then sat swiftly back on her heels again, watching.
    The robot stirred and turned. It sat up, then it got to its feet. It stood before them, looking the very pattern of a stage parlormaid.
    “Good day, madam,” it said. “Good day, sir. I shall be happy to serve you…”
    “Thank you, Hester,” Janet said, as she leaned back against the cushion placed behind her. Not that it was necessary to thank a robot, but she had a theory that if you did not practice politeness with robots you soon forgot it with other people.
    And, anyway, Hester was no ordinary robot. She was not even dressed as a parlormaid any more. In four months she had become a friend, a tireless, attentive friend. From the first Janet had found it difficult to believe that she was only a mechanism, and as the days passed she had become more and more of a person.
    The fact that she consumed electricity instead of food came to seem little more than a foible. The time she couldn’t stop walking in a circle, and the other time when something went wrong with her vision so that she did everything a foot to the right of where she ought to have been doing it. These things, certainly, were just indispositions such as anyone might have, and the robot-mechanic who came to adjust her paid his call much like any other doctor. Hester was not only a person; she was preferable company to many.
    “I suppose,” said Janet, settling back in the chair, “that you must think