"He Who Served" by Ray Cummings is the story of Model 2 RY, a sophisticated robot named Toory, who is manufactured by the James Erg factory and sold to Robert Doret for the purpose of serving as a guide and companion to Doret's blind eighteen-year-old daughter, Babs. Toory is the most advanced and expensive robot of his kind, standing nearly seven feet tall with burnished copper and silver plating, faceted eyes that emit faint red beams, and a soft, pleasingly modulated voice capable of several emotional gradations. Over a two-year training period at the Erg factory, he is carefully taught domestic tasks, traffic navigation, and the critical permanent-order to protect Miss Babs from any danger. Once installed in the Doret country home outside New York, Toory settles into a steady routine of leading Babs on daily walks, accompanying her on shopping trips and social visits, and standing under wait-command in the foyer when not needed. The household also includes several human servants: the steward Gil Higgins and his wife Mary, parlor maid Annie, chauffeur Tom, Babs's personal maid Nerina, and gardener Jacques. Mrs. Higgins alone remains persistently hostile toward Toory, unsettled by his alien presence. The plot's conflict begins when Toory silently observes Higgins opening the household strongbox and pocketing Babs's valuable diamond necklace. Toory records the event on his memory tapes but takes no independent action, as he has received no order to do so. Later that night, while on guard-command with his hearing magnified to its highest sensitivity, Toory listens to a whispered conversation between Higgins and his wife in a distant wing of the house. He overhears Higgins boasting that he has stolen a necklace worth thirty thousand pounds sterling, hidden it in the woods, and plans to sell it piece by piece in England after waiting two years. More dangerously for Toory, Higgins realizes the robot witnessed the theft and, knowing a machine cannot lie and possesses an incorruptible memory record, decides Toory must be destroyed before Babs discovers the necklace is missing and questions him. Higgins plans to lure Toory across a condemned and structurally unsound catwalk swing-bridge over a deep gorge, calculating that the robot's great weight will cause the bridge to collapse and send him crashing two hundred feet to the rocks below, obliterating his memory tapes forever. The following afternoon, Higgins stages an apparently casual encounter during one of Toory and Babs's walks by the stream, persuading Babs to allow him to practice giving Toory simple new orders. This establishes a precedent of obedience that Higgins intends to exploit. That same night, Higgins dresses and descends to the foyer in darkness, ordering Toory in a low voice to come outside with him quietly. Toory, caught in a deepening internal confusion as scattered pieces of knowledge he cannot fully interpret jostle within him, nonetheless complies, because Babs earlier permitted Higgins to give him orders. The plan unravels when Babs, wakened by the noise of the opening front door, comes outside calling for Toory. Higgins orders Toory to remain silent and hidden, but when Babs issues a direct command asking where he is and who ordered him out, Toory answers truthfully, identifying Higgins. Higgins panics and physically seizes Babs to silence her. At this moment Toory crosses a threshold that the narrative presents as something no robot was built to cross: confronted with a direct conflict between Higgins's standing orders and his permanent-order to protect Miss Babs, Toory acts on his own initiative without waiting for a command, declaring he will carry Babs home and explicitly refusing direct orders to stop. When Higgins flees, Toory pursues him, catches him, and crushes him to death against his massive chest. Toory then finds himself standing on the road holding Higgins's body, caught in the headlights of passing cars. Police arrive, shots are fired at him, and he flees up into the rocky cliffs above the estate in a state of fear, which the Erg experts observe with astonishment, since fear is not a designed function of any robot. As dawn approaches, the scene below assembles: police, Erg technicians, Robert Doret, and Babs herself. Mary Higgins has confessed the theft and revealed where the necklace is hidden. Babs calls to Toory, and he responds. Following her gentle, patient instructions that echo his original training, he stands up, turns around, and lies face down on the rock while she tells him an Erg man is coming to remove his fuse. Toory, terrified but obedient to the voice he trusts above all others, holds still. Babs says goodbye to him, her voice carrying something he recognizes as the tone humans use only toward one another. The fuse is removed, and the light in Toory's eyes goes permanently dark.
By Ray Cummings · First published 1926 · Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Dystopian Fiction