Free Bugs by John Sladek Page B

somebody who tells you what time it is. What time is it, Fred?’
    ‘About a quarter to –’
    ‘Yes, but what time is it?’
A huge gecko hand slapped the table. ‘What time is it? I’ll tell you. It’s time for new hands. Think about that. Time for new – and just think, we say somebody’s an old hand, like Carl is an old China hand, he knows everything. China is clay, too, shaped by hands. Did the hand of the potter shake, Fred? Eh?’
    ‘Er, not sure –’
    ‘You help somebody by giving them a hand, or you applaud somebody with a big hand. We hand down our wisdom to our children, but poor kids wear goddam hand-me-downs, like I did! Hand over hand up the damned ladder to the top of the world, a show of hands, a hands-down win, handyman – I thought of calling our robot Handyman, you know? Because you need hands across the ocean, right? Hand-to-hand combat, right?
Mano a mano.’
    ‘Mm.’
    ‘Hands up, words of the thief, right? And two thieves put their hands up and were crucified with him, remember?’
    ‘H’m, yes.’
    ‘Of course cheiromancy, palm-reading, just a recognition that the opposable thumb is what it’s all about, our destiny is in the hand all right. Crime is red-handed, sinister is left-handed, red is left – all politicos need to th-th-think on that.’
    ‘Um.’ Fred glanced around the cafeteria. He did not want to meet the gaze of Pratt, whose Lincolnesque eyes were just now showing a great deal of white.
    ‘One good thief and one bad thief, one on his right hand, one on his left. And he went to sit on the right hand of the Father, you know?’
    Looking at the tablet, Fred saw that Pratt was drawing squares, nothing but neat empty squares.
    ‘Thieves thieves thieves thieves thieves. In Islamic countries they cut off the thief’s hand, if thy hand offends thee, cut it off. The Hands of Orlac, crawling, looking for vengeance. One good hand, one bad hand, fighting for dominance. War in the brain, hemisphere against hemisphere, it’s a war to the death, no wonder whales gave up their hands and returned to the ocean, right?’
    ‘You have a point there,’ said Fred.
    ‘But Christ’s name is almost an anagram of Cheiro, the Greek name for hand. Five wounds are the five fingers. Fourteen Stations of the Cross are the fourteen knuckles. Four fingers are the four gospels.’
    ‘And there are the nails,’ Fred was unable to keep from saying.
    Pratt did not seem to require contributions from others. ‘Christ,’ he intoned, ‘is Cheiro is Chi Rho. Just look at the map some time. Is it a coincidence that we have two great learning institutions named after hands? One is Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, the other is MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Duke and Mitt. Draw a line connecting them, and it passes through Cairo, Georgia. Cairo equals Cheiro equals Chi Rho, see?’
    He rambled on, speaking of cross-hand piano playing, overhand pitching, underhand dealing, golden gloves, helping hands, backhands, southpaws, hooks, fists, palms, grips.
    ‘An underlying pattern of thumb and four fingers, throughout history, throughout the universe. Magnetic lines of force follow the right-hand rule, the laws of Nature, DNA twists to the right or left, everything is twisted. The whole universe has an asymmetrical twist, right?’
    ‘Up to a point.’
    ‘Because fundamental particles, mesons or whatever, have right-hand spin or left-hand spin,
and there’s more of one kind than the other
. The whole universe is out of balance, and it has to be, to create man. Man and the son of man. And the son of the son. The Robot M.’
    Pratt sat back and relaxed, taking a deep breath. The glassiness seemed to pass from his gaze. ‘Anyway, I just wanted you to know how I got the name, Robot M.’
    Fred stood up quickly. ‘Where does the time go? Well, this has been fascinating, really fast –’
    ‘And one more thing, Fred. I have to let you go.’
    ‘Let me go?’
    ‘We’ve been having these