by Earl
The shot rang out sharply and Larn’s body slumped on the river bank. . . .
The two guards who found the corpse, a day later, shook their heads, standing over it. “Little did Larn realize,” said one, “how close he was to succeeding! If he had taken a drink, he would have been saved!”
The other nodded. “He knew that the prison-water has minute traces of Titan’s poisonous waters. But he didn’t know that, after drinking it for five years, he was naturally immune to the concentrated quality of the river’s waters. And it’s lucky for us none of the other prisoners have yet guessed that fact!”
ADAM LINK’S VENGEANCE
“If you are lonely,” said Dr. Hillory, “why not make another robot, patterned after the woman you love?” And Adam Link agreed.
TO any of you humans committing suicide, your last thought must be that death is after all so sweet and peaceful and desirable. Life is so cruel. And to be brought back from voluntary death at the last second must be a terribly painful experience.
So it was with me, though I am a robot.
My mind blinked back into consciousness. My mechanical brain was instantly alert. Full memory flooded back. What had happened to prevent my death? I had allowed my batteries to drain, and had lain myself flat to pass into oblivion with the last of the electrical energy. Over my head I had fixed a timed clockwork which would within an hour tip over a beaker of strong acid. I had removed my skull-piece so that the add would bite deeply into my iridium-sponge brain and utterly destroy it.
Now I was alive again, feeling the strong pulse of electrical current surging through me. And the acid lay spattered over the stone floor beyond, hissing and bubbling. Someone had knocked it away at the last second. And had reconnected a battery to my central distributor.
All this passed through my mind in a split second, after opening my eyes. Then I turned my head and saw my self-appointed rescuer, standing a few feet away, slowly shaking his head.
“Are you all right, Adam Link?” he queried.
“Why didn’t you let me die in peace?” I said. My voice, in human terms, was a groan. “I have known a great hurt—this is not my world.”
That was the irrevocable decision I had come to, a month before, after leaving the world of men. Kay Temple had proved that to me. She had made it clear that a robot mind, knowing of but lacking the capacity for human love, must live only in a terrible, bitter loneliness. Think of yourself the only human being on Mars, among utterly alien beings. Beings with intelligent minds, but strange bodies and strange customs. You would know true loneliness.
I had fled to my secret retreat in the Ozark mountains—fled from Kay. But I could not escape myself. My mind knew human emotion, too much of it. I was determined, at first, to weed that out—make myself truly a machine. I experimented with my brain, trying to burn out those unmachinelike things, but failed. I was doomed to remain a robot with human feelings.
Suicide was the only course left, so that with me would die the secret of the metal-brain. So that others of my kind would not be created and come to know the hurt I know—that this is not our world.
“Not your world?” returned my rescuer. “Your very existence in it makes you part of it. I’ll help you up.”
He came forward, tugging me to my feet, exactly with the manner of a solicitous person holding another who might be weak and spent. I needed no help, of course. I was not a starved, thin, haggard would-be suicide. With electrical current in me, I was immediately in full possession of my powers. I arose, shaking off his hand with a half-human petulance at his presence and interference in my life—or death.
I STARED at him. wondering how he had found me. This spot was remote from the haunts of men. Not one of my personal friends had known of it.
“I’m Dr. Paul Hillory,” he introduced himself. He was a small, wizened man of late middle age, bald-headed as an egg. He had a certain sly look in his eye that I took for either humor or a cynical outlook such as comes, I suppose, from seeing much of life.
“I’m a scientist, retired. I have a small summer cabin a mile away. I saw you drive up here into the mountains like a demon, a month ago. In my next visit to the city, I heard the story of your trial and business venture, and sudden disappearance. I sought you out, but had some trouble finding this exact hideaway. I came just in time, it seems. I saw you lying on the floor, and then the clockwork began tipping the beaker of acid. I knocked it away with a rod. Then I took the battery from my car and connected it to your distributor. Your heart, by analogy. I realized I had brought you back from—death. It rather thrilled me.”
I still stared at him, with an unvoiced question.
“I’d do the same for any wretch trying to take his own life,” he responded rather sharply. His voice changed. A note of eagerness came in it. “You’re a robot, Adam Link! A living, thinking creation of metal! I knew Dr. Link, your creator. I told him he was a fool to hope to succeed. Now I see he did. It—it amazes me!”
He sat down suddenly. Most people have known fear, or even panic at first seeing me. Dr. Hillory was too intelligent to be frightened. But he was obviously shaken.
“You have brought me back to a life I renounced,” my phonelike voice said dully. “But against my will.” I told my story in brief, terse phrases.
Then, without another word, I stalked from the cabin. I strode along the path through the trees that sheltered the place from prying eyes. Beyond was a clearing of a hundred feet. It ended abruptly in a cliff, which dropped sheerly for five hundred feet, to hard rocks below. I would find my death down there.
Dr. Hillory had followed me. When he divined my purpose, he cried in protest and tugged at my arm. He might as well have tried to hold back a tractor. I didn’t know he was there. He grasped my middle—and dragged along like a sack of feathers.
The cliff edge was now fifty feet away. I would keep right on walking. Suddenly he was running in front of me, pushing at me and talking.
“You can’t do this, Adam Link!” he screeched. “You have the secret of the metal-brain. It must not go with you. Robots can be useful—”
He was talking to the wind. The cliff was twenty feet away.
Suddenly a gleam came into his eyes.
“You are lonely, Adam Link. You have no one like yourself to talk to. to share companionship. Well, you fool, why not make another robot?”
I stopped. Stopped dead at the brink of the cliff. I stared down five hundred feel at the shattering rocks below. Then I turned away; went back. Dr. Hillory had won.
HE stayed to help me. I had a completely equipped workshop and laboratory. Certain parts needed I ordered, through the devious channels I had thought necessary to my isolation, when I built the hideaway. Within a month, a second iridium-sponge brain lay in its head-case, on my workbench.
Dr. Link, my creator, had taken twenty years to build my complex metal brain. I duplicated the feat in a month. Dr. Link had had to devise every step from zero. I had only to follow his beaten path. As an added factor, I work and think with a rapidity unknown to you humans. And I work 24 hours a day.
The time had come to test the new metal-brain. Dr. Hillory was vastly nervous. And also strangely eager.
His face at times annoyed me. I could not read behind it.
I paused when the electrical cord had been attached to the neck cable of the metal-brain head, resting with eyes closed on a porcelain slab.
“I had thought of this before, of course,” I informed my companion. “Making a second metal-brain. But X had reasoned that it would come to life and know the bitter loneliness I knew. I did not think of her having my companionship, and I hers.”
“Hers!”
Dr. Hillory was staring at me open-mouthed.
For a moment I myself was startled. I had given myself away, and somehow, before this elderly man, I felt—embarrassed. I felt before him now like a teen-age youngster, experiencing his first love affair. In all except the actual fact, I blushed. Metal, fortunately, does not
act like the thermometer of human faces, to human feelings.
But it was too late to hide what I meant from the canny scientist. Besides, he had to know sooner or latet, I went on.
“When you stopped me at the cliff, you said why not make another robot? I had been thinking of Kay Temple at the moment. The picture of the robot that leaped into my mind, then, was not one like myself. Not mentally. The outward form would not matter. I was ‘brought up’ from the masculine viewpoint. This robot-mind must be given the feminine outlook!”
My mechanical voice went down in tone.
“Her name will be—Eve!”
Dr. Hillory had recovered himself. “And how will you accomplish this miracle?” he said skeptically.
“Simply enough. She must be brought up in the presence of a woman. Her thought-processes, her entire outlook, will automatically be that of a woman. You must do this for me, Dr. Hillory. You are my friend. You must go to the city and see Kay Temple for me—now Mrs. Jack Hall. She is the only one who can make my plans come true. She must be the companion for—Eve!”
Dr. Hillory sat down, shaking his head a little dazedly. I could appreciate how he felt. Bringing a girl up here to teach a metal monster to be sweet, gentle-natured, feminine! Like trying to bring up a forest creature of lionlike build and strength to be a harmless, playful kitten! It was incongruous. Even I had my doubts. But I had equal determination.
“I suppose,” he said, with a trace of the cynicism that lurked somewhere in his character, “that you will want your—Eve—to learn to giggle, like a schoolgirl!”
I didn’t answer.
Instead, I switched on the electric current. Slowly I rheostated it up, to reach the point at which electrons would drum through the iridium-sponge brain, as thoughts drum in the human mind, under the forces of life. I watched, holding my breath—no, I have no breath. Sometimes I forget I am a metal man. But the idiom stands as descriptive of my feelings.
For what if the metal-brain were a failure? What if my brain was what it was by sheer accident, not the result of Dr. Link’s creative genius? What if after all the process could not be repeated again—ever!
Loneliness! Death! Again my life would be wedged in maddeningly between those two words.
I held my breath, I repeat. I heard the hum of the electron-discharge, coursing through the metal-brain I hoped to bring to life. And then—movement! The eyelids of the head flicked open. The brain saw. The eyelids clicked shut again, as though the brain had been startled at what it saw. Then open and shut several more times, exactly as a human being might blink, awaking from some mysterious sleep.
“It’s alive!” whispered Dr. Hillory. “The brain is alive, Adam Link! We’ve succeeded!”
I looked down at the blinking head. The eyes seemed to look into mine, wonderingly.
“Eve!” I murmured. “My Eve!”
CHAPTER II
“Educating” an Eve
WHEN we had completed the body, similar to mine but somewhat smaller, Dr. Hillory went to the city. He came back with Jack and Kay. They had come without question, immediately.
“Adam Link!” Jack called as soon as he stepped from his car. “Adam, old boy! We’ve been wondering and worrying about you. Why did you run off like that? Why didn’t you get in touch with us sooner, you blithering idiot—”
Jack was just covering up his intense joy at seeing me, with those words. It was good to see him too, he who was my staunch friend and looked upon me more as a man than robot.
Kay came up. The air seemed to hush. We stared at each other, not speaking a word.
Something inside of me turned over. My heart—as real as the “heart” with which you humans love and yearn—stopped beating. I had fled from her, but had not escaped. It was plain, now. And Kay? What was she thinking, she who had such a short time ago seen me as a man behind the illusion of metal. A man she could love . . .
Jack glanced from one to the other of us. “Say, what’s the matter with you two? You’re staring at each other as though you’d never met before. Kay—”
Jack of course didn’t know. She had not told him; he would not understand. And my last letter to Jack had told a half-truth, that there could never be another man in Kay’s life but Jack.
“Nothing, darling,” Kay spoke. She took a deep breath, squeezing his arm. And then I saw how radiantly happy she was. It was an aura about her, like that of any newlywed. They had been married two months. I felt a surge of joy. Kay had found herself. And I would too, soon, in a companion like myself in outward form, and like Kay inwardly.
They agreed enthusiastically.
“I take credit for the idea originally,” said Jack in mock boastfulness. “You remember once, Adam, that I suggested you make another robot, give it the feminine viewpoint, and you were automatically her lord and master!”
Kay touched my arm. “I’ll try to make her a girl you can be proud of, Adam!”
“With you training her, that is assured,” I returned, with more than mere gallantry.
“Well, let’s get to work,” said Dr. Hillory impatiently. He had stood by with a look in his face that seemed to say it was all rather foolish. “You two can use my cabin,” he said to Jack and Kay. “It’s only a mile away.”
DAY came every morning, promptly.
She would turn the switch on Eve’s frontal plate that brought her to life and begin her “lessons.”
Eve learned to walk and talk as rapidly—within a week—as I had under Dr. Link’s expert guidance. Eve, no less than myself, had a brain that learned instantly and thereafter never forgot. Once she had learned to talk, the alphabet and reading came swiftly. Then, like myself, she was given books whose contents she absorbed in page-at-a-time television scanning. She passed from “babyhood” to “schoolhood” to mental “maturity” in the span of just weeks.
The other process was not quite so simple—instilling in her growing mind the feminine viewpoint. It might take months of diligent work on Kay’s part, and would take all of her time, much to Jack’s ill-concealed dislike.
I had put quite a bit of thought into the matter. At last I devised an instrument that shortened the process. An aluminum helmet, fitted over Kay’s head, transferred her thoughts directly, over wires, to Eve. Thoughts are electrical in nature. I found the way to convert them into electrical impulses, like in a telephone. Fitted to the base of Eve’s skull-piece was a vibrator whose brush-contacts touched the base of her brain. Kay’s thoughts then set up an electro-vibration that modulated the electron flow of Eve’s metal brain.
Mind transference. Telepathy. Call it what you will. Kay’s mind poured over into the receptive Eve’s. I knew that Eve would then be a second Kay, a mental twin. It was Kay’s mind I appreciated from the first, in an emotion as close to human love as I can reach.
Dr. Hillory and I watched developments with all the avid curiosity of the scientific mind. But I watched with more than scientific interest. We left the whole job to Kay. We seldom talked with or even went near Eve, for fear of upsetting this strange process of giving a robot a feminine mind.
Once, in fact, I was annoyed to find Dr. Hillory talking to Eve. Kay had left for a moment. What he had said I don’t know. I didn’t want to question Eve and perhaps confuse her. But I pulled Dr. Hillory away, squeezing his arm with such force that he winced in pain.
“Keep away from her,” I said bluntly.
Dr. Hillory said nothing, however. I began to wonder what to do about the scientist. But then I forgot about him, as the great moment neared.
THE great moment arrived.
Jack, Dr. Hillory and I were in the sitting room. Kay brought Eve in, leading her by the hand. Kay had assured me, that morning, that she had done all she could. Mentally matured, Eve was as much a “woman” in outlook, as I was a “man.”
I’ll never forget that scene.
Outwardly, of course, Eve was just a robot, composed of bright metal, standing on stiff alloy legs, her internal mechanism making the
same jingling hum that mine did. But I tried to look beyond that. Tried to see in this second intelligent robot a psychic reaction as different from mine as a human female’s from a human male’s. Only in that would I be satisfied.
I was Pygmalion, watching breathlessly as his ivory statue came to life.
“This is Adam Link, Eve,” Kay said gravely, in our first formal introduction. “He is a wonderful man. I’m sure you’ll like him.”
Ridiculous? You who read do not know the solemnity of that scene, the tense expectancy behind it. Jack, Kay and Hillory, as well as myself, had become vitally interested in the problem. The future of the intelligent robot might here be at stake. We all felt that. How nearly human, and manlike and womanlike, could metal life be made?
We talked, as a group.
The conversation was general. Eve was being introduced to her first “social” gathering. I was pleased to note how reserved she was, how polite and thoughtful in the most trivial exchange of words. Gradually, I became aware of her “character” and “personality.” She was demure, but not meek. She was intelligent, but did not flaunt it. Deeper than that, she was sweet, loyal, sincere. She was lovely, by nature. She was—well, Kay.
“I’ll be darned,” Jack suddenly said, slapping his knee. “Eve, you’re more Kay than Kay herself!” He grinned impishly at his wife. “Kay, how would you like a little trip to Reno?”
It was a splendid thing for Jack to say. He had made me feel human that way too, when I first met him. He had shaken hands with me in prison, and had me play poker with the “boys.” But he wasn’t merely making a gallant gesture, here with Eve. He meant it! We all laughed, of course. Yes, I laughed too, inside. And I knew that Kay laughed, for she pressed her folded hands together. Kay always did that when she laughed.
Something of the tense atmosphere was relieved. Our conversation became more natural. And before we knew it, Eve and I, sitting together, were absorbedly engaged in a tete-a-tete. What would two robots talk about, you wonder? Not about electrons, rivets, gears. But about human things. She told me she liked good books, and the beauties of sunrise, and quiet moments of thought. I told her something of the world she hadn’t seen.
