“What about him?”
“Do you think you can find out what Dome wants you to?”
“I don’t know.” Noting her look of puzzlement, he explained, “I still don’t know what to say to him.” He rummaged through his briefcase. “Here, read this.” He handed her HARLIE’s last printout.
When she had finished, she lowered it and looked at him thoughtfully. “That’s quite a question,” she said.
“Uh huh. I wish I knew how to answer it.”
Miss Stimson smiled at him. “My father’s a rabbi. He’s been one for twenty-seven years. And he’s still not sure of the answer.”
“Maybe that’s the answer.”
“What is?”
“That our purpose is to find out what our purpose is.”
“And what happens when we do?”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll have completed our task.”
“And then we get reprogrammed?” she mused.
“Or dismantled. Maybe there’s a Cosmic Elzer just waiting for the opportunity.”
She giggled at that. “Then we’re in trouble already, Mr. Auberson.” The way she said his name was not the way of a secretary to a boss, but that of a woman to a man. “Because if that’s true, then your realization of what our purpose is completes the task of finding out. Maybe someone up there — or out there — is listening to us right now, trying to decide whether or not to dismantle us.”
He considered it. “Hm.”
“Whatever our purpose, we probably aren’t fulfilling it. We’re not functioning as we should.”
He shrugged at her. “How should we function?”
“Like human beings.” She said it righteously.
“Isn’t that what the human race is already doing? Functioning like human beings — squabbling with each other, killing each other, hating…?”
“That’s not human.”
“Oh, but it is. It’s very human.”
“Well, it’s not what human should be.”
“Now that’s a different story. You’re not talking about what people are, but what you want them to be.”
“Well, maybe we should be what we aren’t because what we are now isn’t good enough. Maybe we should be dismantled.”
“I don’t think we have to worry too much about somebody up there doing it — we’re doing it ourselves.”
“That’s the best reason of all why we should be better than we are.”
“Okay,” he said. “I agree with you. Now, how do we do it? How do we make people better?”
She didn’t answer. After a moment she broke into a smile too. “That’s the same kind of question HARLIE asked. It can’t be answered.”
“No,” he corrected. “It can’t be answered easily.”
She sipped thoughtfully at the rest of her Coke until the straw made a noise at the bottom of the glass. “Mm, how are you going to answer it — HARLIE’s question, I mean.”
Auberson shook his head. “Haven’t got the slightest.”
“Can I offer a suggestion?”
“Why not? Everybody else has.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean—”
“No, I’m sorry. Go ahead. Maybe you can add something new.”
“You’re that desperate?”
He half-grinned, but it wasn’t a joke. “I’m that desperate.”
“Well, okay. You said that HARLIE was a child, didn’t you? Why not treat him as such?”
“Huh? I follow you and I don’t follow you.”
“It’s not only the problem,” she said. “It’s also the answer. Look — suppose you had a son about eight years old and, uh, suppose he was advanced for his age. I mean, suppose he was doing twelfth-grade work and so on.”
“Okay. I’m supposing.”
“Good. Now suppose one day you find out he’s got an incurable disease — say, leukemia — one of the rarer forms they still haven’t licked. What are you going to say to him when he asks you what it’s like to die?”
“Um,” said Auberson.
“No copping out now. He’s smart enough to know what the situation is—”
“—But emotionally, he’s only eight years old.”
“Right.”
“I’m beginning to see your point.” He looked at her. “If he was your son, what would you tell him?”
“The truth,” she said.
“Sure! But what is the truth? That’s the whole problem with HARLIE’s question. We don’t know.”