by Eando Binder
I felt a certain exhilaration, using my full machine’s powers, after the days in the attic. I suppose it is something like a confined man feeling glad when he gets out and uses his muscles for a change. I raced along after the tail-light of Shane’s car, my internal mechanisms humming smoothly. Yet I am glad the pace did not keep up long. I hadn’t oiled and checked myself over for two weeks.
TWENTY minutes later Shane’s car slowed and turned down a rutty road that presently wound into an isolated woods. Finally it went down what was little more than a weed-grown trail, barely wide enough for the car. It stopped before an old shack, before which another car was parked. I crouched behind the trunk of a tree.
Figures came out with guns in hand, greeted Shane, and they went in. It was one minute to midnight. I did not look at my watch to tell that. I have a sense of absolute time. I know what time it is at any second of the day or night.
In one minute, a woman was to die!
I crept to the shack door, placing my head against the wood, to hear. I heard their voices.
“No word from Slick, our contact man?” Shane queried.
“Nope. The $50,000 didn’t come. What’s the Boss’ orders, Shane?”
He must have made a silent signal, perhaps with a little spark of pity for the woman who must be awake and listening. I heard the men grunt a little, and one muttered: “Half a minute to midnight!”
“Where’s my husband?” sounded a feminine voice, strained and half-hysterical. “You told me he’d be coming soon—”
That was all I had been waiting for—the sound of her voice. Rather, its position. She was in the rear of the one-room shack. She should be safe from what would happen.
Now was the moment.
Within me, my distributor clicked over little automatic relays that released a flood of electricity through my steely frame. With one blow of my fist I splintered the door in half. I sprang into the room.
Five startled men jerked around. One was in the corner, just picking up a metal angle-iron, ready to crash it down on the skull of the young woman lying bound on a rickety couch. Four pairs of eyes popped, for, with the exception of Shane, they had all seen me before. They were the four who had met at the warehouse.
“God Almighty!” gasped one. “It’s the dick we pumped full of lead—”
Their guns barked immediately. I walked straight into the hail of lead. I strode for the man with the bar, jerked it out of his hands, bent it into a loop. Somehow, I had to do that first. It was the instrument of murder which was to have pinned the deed on me.
Then I grabbed the man’s gun. He had just fired pointblank at my chest. I crushed it in my hand and flung the pieces at the others. I went for them, but they had stopped firing. They stood like frozen images, faces dead white. The fear in their souls shone from their bloodshot eyes. Who was this man who could not be killed?
I stood in the center of the room, defying them.
Shane deliberately raised his gun and aimed for my head. I dodged the bullet, moving my head a split-second before his finger squeezed the trigger. A shot in my eyes would do no damage. Shane shot again at my head. Again it thudded into the wall beyond. It was like an act in a strange drama. Shane shot at my chest, still with that slow, paralyzed incredulity. The slug spanked metallicly. A dawning look came into his face.
“Cripes!” he whispered. “It’s Adam Link!”
With shrieks, they scrambled for the door, clawing at each other to get out. I let them get into their car, outside, then grasped the bumper and overturned it. They piled into Shane’s car and I overturned that, spilling them out. They ran for the woods.
I LET them go. I had no wish to harm them. Poor misguided wretches, they were only pawns in the horrible game played by Harvey Brigg. He was the man my slow anger was directed against.
I went into the shack. The woman, who had fainted during the battle, was just opening her eyes. She did not seem any too reassured now, though I had routed her abductors.
“Who are you?” she quavered.
“A detective,” I said. If I had said Adam Link, her already strained, haggard mind might have snapped completely. As it was, when I snapped her cords apart like flimsy cotton and picked her up with the ease of a little doll, she gasped. I carried her to Shane’s car, which I had previously righted, and drove off.
“Where do you live?” I asked, as I turned on the highway.
She gave me the address. “You’ll be home, safe, in nineteen minutes,” I told her.
She smiled then. Perhaps her feminine intuition told her I was a friend. A moment later I saw her head back against the cushion. She was sleeping as peacefully as a baby. Good thing, perhaps. I drove that nineteen-minute stretch to town at a wild pace that would have thrown her into hysteria again. Wild? My driving, at 90 an hour, is safer than that of any human at 20.
She was able to walk up the steps of her home, holding my arm. She fell into the arms of her husband, both choking in joy. I left. I wasn’t needed any more. In Shane’s car, I drove toward Jack’s apartment.
Everything had turned out splendidly. I congratulated myself. Tomorrow was Eve’s trial. In Jack’s apartment was the evidence that would free Eve and convict Harvey Brigg. His treacherous ring would be broken.
I called Eve on the radio-telepathy, telling her the wonderful news. I had not wanted to make any false promises till now, when I was sure of myself. She interrupted me, excitedly.
“Adam! Why haven’t you contacted me sooner? Jack and Tom have been hoping to get in touch with you, through me. Tom was just in my cell this evening again—”
“What’s wrong?” I snapped. “Didn’t the recording come through?” It was the only thing I could think of. Yet it couldn’t be that. I had made thorough tests before taking the apparatus to Brigg’s home. But fool, I told myself, why couldn’t I at least have checked with Jack? At times, you see, I have quite human failings and lack of reasoning.
“Yes, most of it,” Eve returned. “But the first part, three days ago, came through with lots of static. Tom says the voices are so distorted that it won’t hold in court.”
“The first part?” I went a little cold. “That was the part where Brigg revealed his three murders pinned on you! Eve, what else did Tom say?”
“Tom is worried. He says that although he has enough to indict Brigg on almost everything else, he won’t be able to clear me in time. Brigg will fight his case with powerful lawyers. In the meantime, my trial will have to go on and—well, Tom won’t say any more.”
I was stunned. I knew what it meant. Eve tried, convicted, and executed long before Harvey Brigg’s legal defenses could be battered down. Without that vital bit of dictaphone evidence, destroyed by static, I had gotten nowhere!
Her telepathy-voice came again. “Adam, I’m so lonesome for you. I want to come to you. There is no hope now anyway—”
“Eve, no!” My thoughts crackled. “Eve, you must stay there. Don’t despair, darling. There is still a way—”
CHAPTER VII
I Face a “Monster”
I CLICKED off. I wrenched the car around in the street on two wheels for a U-turn. I arrived at Brigg’s home in a few minutes. I strode up the front steps to the door, rang the bell boldly.
The servant who opened the door said, “Come in, Shane.” I had arrived in Shane’s car. But in the hall light, he started. “You’re not Shane! Who are you? What do you want?”
“I want to see Harvey Brigg,” I said.
“You can’t—”
I pushed him aside as though he were a rag dummy and strode for the room I knew to be Brigg’s den—or lair. I yanked open the door, walked in.
Brigg looked up from a desk. I was as startled as he. I had expected to see a depraved looking man. Instead he was tall, upright, with smiling features and straightforward blue eyes. No one would suspect him for a master criminal—as no one had.
He frowned. “Haven’t I told you men you must never come to see me personally? Only Sh
ane is allowed—”
“I’m not one of your men, Harvey Brigg,” I interposed. “I’m your enemy. I know you for the utter scoundrel you are. You gave the orders that murdered Deering, Pucelli and Unger. Write out and sign a confession to that effect immediately, absolving Eve Link!”
Brigg’s blue eyes had narrowed.
“So Adam Link’s detectives figured it all out? But how foolish to come here for my confession! You don’t think I can be intimidated like a schoolboy?” An amused smile hovered over his full lips.
“You will sign that confession or—” My dry mechanical tones hid the deadly hiss in my meaning. I took a step forward.
“It would interest you to know that my servant—or bodyguard—has you covered!” Brigg nonchalantly waved in back of me.
I looked. The servant-bodyguard I had swept past was calmly leaning in the doorway, with a gun pointing at me.
Just as calmly, I spoke. “At your shack, a half-hour ago, your kidnapers emptied their guns at me. If you look close, you can see the holes in my suit.”
I held out my palms, where the plastic had been worn off, exposing the telescoping joints of my metal fingers. I also deliberately clawed at the plastic of my face. The seeming flesh came away in rubbery shreds. There was no blood. The false face fell away to reveal my true one of featureless metal.
“I am Adam Link,” I said simply.
THE two men were thunderstruck.
Then the bodyguard’s gun hissed, with a silencer on it. Five slugs made five new holes in my suit. The sixth, aimed at my head, thudded into the wall beyond, as I dodged. The thug stared for a moment longer, then bolted with a womanlike shriek from a cowardly soul.
I banged the door shut and faced Harvey Brigg. He was trembling like a leaf.
I spoke at some length.
“Your career is over, Harvey Brigg. I have a dictaphone record of all you and Shane have said in the past three days. But to save Eve Link, my mental mate, I want your written confession for the three murders. The three murders for which, all through the city, they are yelling ‘Frankenstein’ at her.”
I glared at him. My flat phonic voice showed nothing of the emotion I felt as I went on.
“Eve a Frankenstein monster? You, Harvey Brigg, are the Frankenstein monster, created out of the rottenest of human thoughts and aims. And it is you who wear a mask, not I. I have more right to cover myself with humanlooking camouflage than you have to hide behind your screen of uprightness. You, Harvey Brigg, are more of a monster than I or my Eve could ever be!”
I leaned over his desk. I placed paper and a pen before him. “Write!” I commanded. “Write the words I dictate. ‘I, Harvey Brigg, confess to planning and ordering the murders of—’ ”
He made no move to comply, just sat there staring at me with staggered shock in his face. He grabbed for the telephone suddenly. I snatched it away, ripped out the wire. I reached over, grabbing his left wrist. “I am strong,” I said. “I am a machine. I have never before taken the life of a human. I am prepared to tonight, if only to rid the world of you.”
The wrist made a little snapping sound suddenly. I had not meant to do it. I had forgotten my powers.
Harvey Brigg made a gasping shriek of pain. He was mortally frightened now.
“Don’t!” he groaned. “Don’t kill me! I’ll write—”
He snatched up the pen with his right hand and began scratching away, fearful that I would tear him to little bits. His fear was not unfounded.
I heard the noise, but took no account of it. I was too wrapped up in watching the words spill down on paper that would free Eve the next day at the trial.
The door burst open. In it were framed the bodyguard, Shane, and the four kidnapers. The latter, obviously, had flagged or forced a car to stop, come back to town, and met the bodyguard outside with his story.
“Get out!” I roared, advancing on them and waving my arms. “You know your bullets are useless against me. Get out, you fools!”
But they weren’t fools. I had underestimated them. I didn’t notice till too late what one held in his hand—a bomb-grenade. He pulled the pin and tossed it at my feet. It exploded with a dull thunder.
I swayed, then toppled. The bomb had wrecked my legs. I crashed to the floor. My brain was stunned by the terrific concussion working through my metal body. Another bomb-grenade was raised to finish me off.
“Wait!” It was the voice of Harvey Brigg. He came up out of the splintered wreck of his desk, where he had dived. “Don’t throw it. He can’t move or run now. Wreck his arms with an axe, while he’s still stunned. Hurry! But I want him alive—his brain—for a while!”
The bodyguard returned with a fire-axe from the hall and hacked away at my arm-joints. I was still brain-numb, with no command over my mechanisms. The arms were severed soon, gears and muscle cables jingling loose. I was completely helpless, then, like an armless and legless man.
They stood over me pantingly. Harvey Brigg looked down at me. His formerly mild, guileless face was twisted in a leer of hate and triumph, as he nursed his broken wrist. He had given another low order to his bodyguard. He reappeared with a blow-torch.
“I can’t break your wrist and make you suffer,” Brigg said to me. “But we’ll try this—”
At his order, the blow-torch’s hissing flame was applied to my head-piece. All around evenly. The metal began to heat up.
“We’ll fry your clever metal brain in its case!” gloated the human monster named Harvey Brigg.
CHAPTER VIII
The Final Hour
PAIN came to me, or its equivalent in my robot sensations. The heat began to throw my delicate electron-currents off, creating static that hammered like a frightful headache. I groaned, but this time in reality, not like when matches had been applied to my chest plastic. Diabolically, Harvey Brigg had known this would be torture to me.
Through the pain I heard his voice.
“With you out of the way, Adam Link, your Eve Link goes to the chair for those murders. As for the dictaphone record your helpers have, I’ll fight it tooth and nail. Dictaphone evidence is never conclusive. I have a good chance of going scot-free, or maybe getting convicted on some minor count that won’t break up my ring.” He laughed derisively. “Adam Link, detective! This is your first and last case. Goodbye!”
I was going fast and he knew it. I felt a little surge of consolation as the man with the blow-torch, kneeling at my side, accidentally hooked his coat in the belt stud of my radio-telepathy unit, turning it on. It was still intact, within my chest space. They knew nothing of the silent telepathic call I sent to Eve.
“Goodbye, my Eve,” I called. I gave brief details. “Go through with the trial, as I did once. If you’re saved by a miracle, carry on what I have tried to do—show humans that intelligent robots have a place in human society. Goodbye, dearest!”
There was nothing more to say. I didn’t want to say that there was no hope, not even for a miracle. She would join me in non-existence soon. The advent of robot-life in the world would end with the epitaph—“Died in infancy.”
“Adam—”
That was the only word Eve said, in return. Or shrieked. It registered as that in my electronic thought currents. When I tried to contact her again, I failed. Some wire or connection had slipped, probably loosened by the bomb concussion before.
That would be my last word from her, I reflected through my agony. “Adam—” It had held a world of meaning. Anguish, loyalty, love. A love, though unbiologic, that equals the highest of your human loves. And in that I felt a calm peace. The peace before death.
In ten minutes my head-case had begun to glow dull red. The outer iridium-sponge cells of my brain were shriveling, melting, paper-thin as they were. I longed for death. But my consciousness clung to my life-current. I was amazed myself at the tenacity of “life” within me. The heat that would have burned a human brain away in seconds had still not conquered mine.
But it would. My thoughts began to
reel, plunging down into the pit of extinction. I was half-insane, so far gone that I suddenly imagined I saw Eve’s gigantic form standing in the doorway.
“Adam!” the image seemed to cry. “What are they doing to you? Are you still alive—”
Cold shock swept over me, as the blow-torch tumbled from cruel hands and all the men whirled as if shot.
Eve was really there!
BROKEN lengths of chain still hung from her wrists, ankles and neck. Chain that she had snapped like rotten cord, in one furious tug, after I contacted her. I could surmise the rest. She had wrenched the cell-door off its hinges, brushed screaming jail officials aside, and run out of the prison. She had come in ten minutes across town. She must have run at express-train speed. She must have sent more than one late pedestrian or motorist shrieking for cover, as her giant metal form careened through the night streets. She knew the address, through Tom. She had found the way by sheer instinct, or perhaps by clutching some luckless human in her mighty hands and demanding directions.
All that aside, she was here.
The men were frozen, eyes horrified. Harvey Brigg backed away to a wall and flattened himself against it as though to push through. For they all saw that the creature before them was berserk.
She was a jungle creature, come to save her mate. A metal woman, rescuing her Tarzan. She screamed—awfully. She advanced with slow, ponderous steps, shaking the floor. One man broke from his trance to hurl a chair at her. She caught it and crumbled it to matchwood in her alloy hands. She battered a table aside, splitting it in half with one blow of her fist.
Slowly and steadily she advanced on the seven men cowering in the corner. She thought I was dead, seeing me in a tangled ruin. She was fully intent on crushing those seven men to pulp.
I tried to call out, stop her. But my mechanical larynx was heat-warped to uselessness. I could not make the slightest move, to show I was alive. I could not even click shut my eye-shutters, to blank out the sight. I would see seven men ground to bloody shreds. More than that, I would see the robot once and for all banished from life in human society, for that act.
