Strange Highways

years. Isn't it possible that occasionally the Agency loses bits and pieces, accidentally destroys some of its memory in the move?"
     "Impossible," Steffan said. "There are any number of safeguards taken against such an eventuality."
     Curanov, aware of many of the Central Agency's bungles over the past hundred years, was not so sure. He was intrigued by Tuttle's theory.
     Tuttle said, "If the Central Agency somehow lost most of its early stores of data, its knowledge of human beings might have vanished along with countless other bits and pieces."
     Steffan was disgusted. "Earlier, you ranted against the idea of Second Awareness - but now you can believe this. You amuse me, Tuttle. Your data vault must be a trove of silly information, contradictory beliefs, and useless theorizing. If you believe in these human beings - then do you also believe in all the attendant myths? Do you think they can only be killed with an instrument of wood? Do you think they sleep at night in dark rooms? Sleep like beasts? And do you think that, though they're made of flesh, they cannot be dispatched but that they pop up somewhere else in a new body?"
     Confronted with these obviously insupportable superstitions, Tuttle backed down from his entire point. He turned his amber visual receptors on the snow beyond the window. "I was only supposing. I was just spinning a little fantasy to help pass the time."
     Triumphant, Steffan said, "However, fantasy doesn't contribute to a maturation of one's data vault."
     "And I suppose that you're eager to mature enough to gain a promotion from the Agency," Tuttle said.
     "Of course," Steffan said. "We're only allotted two hundred years. And besides, what else is the purpose of life?"
     Perhaps to have an opportunity to mull over his strange theories, Tuttle soon retired to an inactivation nook in the wall beneath the metal shelf on which the guns lay. He slid in feet first and pulled the hatch shut behind his head, leaving the others to their own devices.
     Fifteen minutes later, Leeke said, "I believe I'll follow Tuttle's example. I need time to consider my responses to this afternoon's hunt."
     Curanov knew that Leeke was only making excuses to be gone. He was not a particularly gregarious robot and seemed most comfortable when he was ignored and left to himself.
     Alone with Steffan in the lodge, Curanov was in an unpleasantly delicate position. He felt that he, too, needed time to think inside a deactivation nook. However, he did not want to hurt Steffan's feelings, did not want to give him the impression that they were all anxious to be away from him. For the most part, Curanov liked the young robot; Steffan was fresh, energetic, obviously a first-line mentality. The only thing he found grating about the youth was his innocence, his undisciplined drive to be accepted and to achieve. Time, of course, would mellow Steffan and hone his mind, so he did not deserve to be hurt. How then to excuse oneself without slighting Steffan in any way?
     The younger robot solved the problem by suggesting that he, too, needed time in a nook. When Steffan was safely shut away, Curanov went to the fourth of the five wall slots, slid into it, pulled the hatch shut, and felt all of his senses drain away from him, so that he was only a mind, floating in darkness, contemplating the wealth of ideas in his data vault.
      Adrift in nothingness, Curanov considers the superstition that has begun to be the center of this adventure: the human being, the man:
Though of flesh, the man thinks and knows.
He sleeps by night, like an animal.
He devours other flesh, as does the beast.
He defecates.
He dies and rots, is susceptible to disease and corruption.
He spawns his young in a terrifyingly unmechanical way, and yet his young are also sentient.
He kills.
He can overpower a robot.
He dismantles robots, though none but other men know what he does with their parts.
He is the antithesis of the robot. If the robot represents the proper way of life, man is the improper.
Man stalks in safety, registering to the robot's senses, unless clearly seen, as only another harmless animal - until it is too late.
He can be permanently killed only with a wooden implement. Wood is the product of an organic lifeform, yet it lasts as metal does; halfway between flesh and metal, it can destroy human flesh.
If killed in any other way, by any