The Critique of Impure Reason

The Critique of Impure Reason

By Poul Anderson

The robot entered so quietly, for all his bulk, that Felix Tunny didn't hear. Bent over his desk, the man was first aware of the intruder when a shadow came between him and the fluoreceil. Then a last footfall quivered the floor, a vibration that went through Tunny's chair and into his bones. He whirled, choking on a breath, and saw the blueblack shape like a cliff above him. Eight feet up, the robot's eyes glowed angry crimson in a faceless helmet of a head.

A voice like a great gong reverberated through the office: “My, but you look silly.”

“What the devil are you doing?” Tunny yelped.

“Wandering about,” said Robot IZK-99 airily. “Hither and yon, yon and hither. Observing life. How deliciously right Brochet is!”

“Huh?” said Tunny. The fog of data, estimates, and increasingly frantic calculations was only slowly clearing from his head.

IZK-99 extended an enormous hand to exhibit a book.

Tunny read “The Straw and the Bean: a Novel of Modern Youth by Truman Brochet on the front. The back of the dust jacket was occupied by a coloripic of the author, who had bangs and delicate lips. Deftly, the robot flipped the book open and read aloud:

“Worms”, she said. “That's what they are, worms, that's what we-uns all are, Billy Chile, worms that grew a spine an' a brain way back in the Obscene or the Messyzoic or whenever it was.” Even in her sadness Ella Mae must always make her sad little jokes, which saddened me still more on this day of said rain and dying, magnolia blossoms. “We don't want them”, she said. “Backbones and brains, I mean, honey. They make us stiff and topheavy, so we can't lie down no more and be just nothing ay-tall but worms.”

“Take off your clothes,” I yawned.

“What has that got to do with anything?” Tunny asked.

“If you do not understand,” said IZK-99 coldly, “there is no use in discussing it with you. I recommend that you read Arnold Roach's penetrating critical essay on this book. It appeared in the last issue of  “Pierce, Arrow!” The Magazine of Penetrating Criticism. He devotes four pages to analyzing the various levels of meaning in that exchange between Ella Mae and Billy Chile.”  

“Ooh,” Tunny moaned. “Isn't it enough I've got a hangover, a job collapsing under me because of you, and a fight with my girl, but you have to mention that rag?”

“How vulgar you are. It comes from watching stereovision.” The robot sat down in a chair, which creaked alarmingly under his weight, crossed his legs and leafed through his book. The other hand lifted a rose to his chemosensor. “Exquisite,” he murmured.

“You don't imagine I”d sink to reading what the call fiction these days, do you?” Tunny sneered, with a feeble hope of humiliating him into going to work. “Piddling little experiments in the technique of describing more and more complicated ways to feel sorry for yourself – what kind of entertainment is that for a man?”

The race needs love, to be sure. Illustration by Elena.