Return to Otherness (1962) SSC

by Henry Kuttner

  This was guesswork, of course. He couldn’t be sure the android mechanisms would respond to drugs meant for the human blood stream. But the chances were they would, at least temporarily. The android was keyed to as close a likeness to humanity as possible. Its reflexes were patterned upon the human. Cut it and it bled. Decapitate it and respiration ceased, circulation stopped. Very well, then, drug it and for a while it should sleep …

  Court slept.

  Only a body made of metal under the flesh could have stumbled in the semblance of a walk, half carried, half conscious, with that heavy a shot of sedative in its synthetic veins. Bradley guided the creature up the steps to the Wallinger house. He was not wearing his mask now. Everything must stand or fall by this single trial. If he failed now, hiding his identity would be of no use to him.

  The small girl answered the door.

  “Daddy’s next door,” she said, looking at the drugged and stumbling Court with interest and no alarm. “He’ll be back in a minute. Won’t you come in?” She issued the invitation with all the aplomb of one newly learned in the social graces, but it was clear that curiosity and not hospitality had prompted the words. It was clear, too, that she was so unacquainted with danger that a situation like this roused no fear in her mind.

  Bradley guided his burden down the hall and into the library. On the sofa against the wall the kitten lay bonelessly asleep. Bradley eased the drugged android down onto the cushions, gently tipping the cat off to the floor. Such is the complexity of the mind that even in this intent moment it occurred to him that in a machine world the cat and the cushion would probably be indistinguishable, one from another. Only a human, and a truly mature human, would be incapable of handling any small living thing roughly. The cat yawned, woke, found itself on the floor and in the presence of two strangers, and instantly streaked for the door. Its interested ears presently reappeared around the corner.

  Above them, after a moment, was seen the shy but curious face of the smallest Wallinger. Bradley made an effort and remembered his name.

  “Hello, Jerry,” he called, settling Court on the sofa. “Is your father back yet?”

  There was no reply from the child, but the little girl came in an instant later, soon enough to answer the question. She was pushing her reluctant brother before her.

  “I called Daddy,” she volunteered. “He’ll be right over. What’s the matter with - him?”

  “He had a - a little accident. He’ll be all right.”

  She considered Court with unself-conscious intentness. Court was emerging from the drug. He turned his head restlessly on the cushions, murmuring thickly. The boy, the girl and the kitten regarded him from the door, an almost terrifying remoteness in their gaze. It was obvious that to none of the three did real sympathy mean a thing yet. They could not identify themselves with adults or with suffering. All three had the cold curiosity of young animals in their eyes.

  And why should they identify themselves with an android? Bradley felt the question click into place in his mind and a flash of memory illumined the thought. Children. Children, who see too clearly to be deceived by an android race. Children, without perspective and therefore without the preconceived prejudices that had blinded adults to this terrifying intrusion upon the world of humans.

  Children should know the truth.

  “Sue - isn’t your name Sue? Listen. I want you to tell me something very important. I - I want your opinion.” Bradley groped desperately among his memories of the seven-year-old mentality. Self-centered, scatterbrained, eager for praise, interested only in their own activities except for the briefest of excursions into the outer world. If he could only flatter her enough to hold her interest …

  “Sue, this is something nobody but you could tell me. I want to see how much you know about - about -” He paused again. “Well, now, look. You know there are -” How could he put it? How could he ask her if she had noticed the androids among the adults whom she knew?

  Had she, indeed, ever seen one before? On her answer very much would depend, then, for if she did know the truth, then there must be many more of them than Bradley had guessed. If even a sheltered child knew …

  “Sue, you know about people like - him?” He gestured toward the restless android. “You know there are - two kinds of men in the world?” He held his breath, waiting for her answer.

  Wariness came into her eyes. You could never tell when an adult was making fun of you, her look said.

  “No, I’m serious. I don’t suppose - I just want to know if you know. Not all children can tell the difference, and I -”

  “Oh, all the kids know that.” Contempt was in her voice.

  “Know - what?”

  “About them.”

  Bradley drew a deep breath. All the kids know about them …

  “Does your father know?” His voice sounded thin in his own ears.

  She gave him another of those wary glances that watched to see if he were deriding her. Evidently reassured, she laughed shortly.

  “Well, I guess he does. Doesn’t everybody?”

  The room swam a little before Bradley’s eyes. So many of them, so many more than he had ever dreamed …

  “But the other kind,” he heard himself saying almost pleadingly. “The other kind of men! How many -”

  There were voices in the hall. Wallinger’s, and another’s, deep and heavy.

  “In here, Officer,” Wallinger was saying. “Right in here! Hurry!”

  “How many in the world?” Sue finished Bradley’s question for him. And she laughed. “We learned it in school, but I don’t remember. I can tell you how many of the real kind of men in this room, though. One! One!”

  “Will you tell your father that?” Bradley demanded in an agony of haste. “When he comes in, will you tell him there’s only one of the real kind of man in here? Sue, will you -”

  “Susan, get back!” Wallinger was in the doorway. That grey look made his face old as he scanned the children for signs of visible harm. Behind him a uniformed man loomed, red-faced, looking into the room with grim alertness, ready for anything.

  There was a little silence.

  Then Court, on the sofa, groaned softly and struggled to sit up. Wallinger hurried across the room to help.

  “What have you done to him?” he demanded of Bradley. “You crazy fool, how far have you gone?”

  “He’s all right,” Bradley stammered. “He’s - you can’t hurt them!”

  Wallinger regarded him above Court’s head.

  “So that’s what you look like,” he said. “I knew you from across the street, even without your mask, but your face, of course - Will you tell us your name?”

  “Bradley.” He said it defiantly. “James Philips Bradley.” The time for anonymity had passed. He hadn’t expected the policeman to be here - it would be harder to explain in that large, disbelieving presence - but if Sue repeated what she had just told him, maybe he could convince them yet.

  “Ask your daughter about them,” he said urgently. “She knows. Wallinger, I tell you, she knows! Remember, I warned you about the children? I said they couldn’t hope to deceive children? Sue says all of them know -”

  “I’d better warn you, Bradley, Sue’s got a wild imagination. I don’t know what fables she’s been telling you, but - Officer, hadn’t you better -”

  “Wait!” This wasn’t going as he had planned at all. He threw all the persuasion he could summon up into his voice. “You promised to give me a hearing, Wallinger. Don’t you remember, you promised? I know I had a gun then, but please - give me just a minute to tell you what I know. This man’s one of them.” He paused, running his tongue across dry lips. Wallinger looked so disbelieving. … “He isn’t hurt. I told you I’d bring proof, and there it is. This man. I had to get him here the only way I could. I tell you, you can’t hurt them! Under the skin he’s nothing but wires and metal. I can prove it! I -”

  He broke off, feeling the policeman’s hands laid on his arms lightly, hol
ding them down. Wallinger’s face showed pity and horror. It was no use. He should have managed to make some incision in Court’s synthetic skin before they came. Of course they wouldn’t let him do it now. To them he was a madman, raving, eager to slash an innocent victim in proof of a madman’s dream.

  “Now, you just calm down, young man,” the policeman rumbled soothingly behind him. “We’ll take a little walk in the fresh air, and -”

  “No! Wait!” Bradley’s voice sounded wild even to himself. He choked back the protest, gathering himself for one tremendous last effort at the proof he had come so near to reaching.

  Court watched him, lens-eyed, under lowered brows. Somewhere in that cold, inhuman body the cold inhuman brain ticked on remorselessly, not even amused at his defeat, for how could a machine know what it was like to laugh?

  A machine - and so near, so near! Only a few feet of space separated them, and a fraction of an inch of synthetic skin hiding the mechanisms of the android body.

  “Wait!” he said again, and he twisted around to Wallinger, trying with every ounce of energy that remained in him to project his own conviction past the barrier of prejudice that blinded the adults in this room. “Wallinger, listen! After I’ve gone, will you talk to your little girl? Will you give me that much chance to prove myself? She knows! It isn’t imagination! All the children know. Do you think you’re safe, once Court gets out of here? They won’t trust you. They can’t. They’ll be afraid you might wake in the night and suddenly realize the truth. Think of your daughter, Wallinger! Court’s listening. He knows she recognized him. Can you take the chance with her life, Wallinger? Risk your own if you want to, but think of Sue!”

  A flicker of the first uneasiness Bradley had seen moved across Wallinger’s face. The policeman’s hands were a little slack on Bradley’s arms. He shrugged impatiently, and the momentary doubt on the physicist’s face must have conveyed something to the officer, or perhaps it was the desperate conviction in Bradley’s voice. He made the most of his moment.

  “Think of Sue!” he went on. “Court won’t dare make a move - but you don’t know how many others there are. You don’t know! You can’t even guess! Maybe the ones like Court are the real failures - the ones so imperfect they give themselves away. I think they’ve made others, so nearly human you’d never guess. Those are the dangerous ones, Wallinger! If there’s even one of them, it will know it can’t be safe until you’re dead. I’ve told you too much to -”

  “All right, Officer,” Wallinger said, with a little sigh. “I’m sorry, Bradley, but you see how it is.”

  Bradley’s eyes went back to Court. The android sat motionless on the sofa, a thing of wheels and wiring as safe behind its make-believe flesh as if it wore a coat of mail. All human laws safeguarded human flesh. They held it so sacrosanct that now they were betraying it into the iron fingers of the enemy. If only these men would let him slash once with a knife at that soft, deceptive covering which was not flesh at all … Suddenly Bradley laughed.

  Even the robot started a little at the sound, and the policeman made a growling noise in his throat, clearly thinking this the first ravings of a maniacal fit. But Bradley had his answer. He knew at last how he could convince even Wallinger.

  “That automobile accident!” The car had been like a bludgeon in his hands. He knew - he remembered. A man can tell whether his blow has grazed the enemy or gone home. Until now it hadn’t mattered. There had been too much else to deal with. But Court, pinned between car and truck wall, had not escaped unscathed. He fell as a man would fall, but he sat now as no man could possibly sit, upright, breathing easily …

  Bradley remembered very clearly the feel of rib-structure giving, the sound of metal bending harshly where there should have been no metal. No man could sit like that, once a car had ground him against the wall as Bradley’s car had ground Arthur Court.

  He moved so suddenly the policeman’s hands slipped from his arms. He was across the room in one leap, and tearing at Court’s jacket before even the android had guessed what he intended.

  The officer groaned and was upon him in a ponderous bound so fast that the heavy blue-coated body hurled Bradley aside with scarcely a half-second to spare. But Bradley had won his second. His hands were clenched in coat and shirt when the policeman’s weight carried them both sidewise, and the cloth ripped in his grasp.

  Court’s short cape flared wide with the sudden defensive motion he made. The jacket and the shirt beneath opened and for one timeless moment there was no sound in the room, not even the drawing of breath. It seemed to Bradley that his heart itself paused with his breathing, for until this instant of the final test, he could not have been sure….

  There was the tanned chest, smooth with android skin. But the mark of the car-grille was upon it, smashing in the android ribs. Bradley had heard the metal scream as it gave before his blow. Now he saw it. Now he saw the gleaming framework of steel where no human chest ever bore steel, and within it a jumble of interlacing wires, and small, transparent tubes through which red fluid coursed …

  He saw the android brain.

  Deep inside, behind walls of bent steel ribbing, a small, bright, pulsing thing lay. A continuous twinkling beat outward from it, uncannily illuminating the chest-cavern of the robot from within, so that the bright steel ribs caught points of light from that illumination, and wherever the transparent veins crossed before it the light turned glowing crimson as it shone through the blood. The fluid ran faster where the brilliance touched it, bubbles racing through the tubes. The thing might be heart and brain alike, an inward lamp burning in the broken shelter of the android chest.

  Bradley did not even pause to reason. What he did was pure reflex. The incredible sight paralyzed the policeman for that one crucial second, but it galvanized Bradley to action.

  He lunged forward, hands outstretched, and with one circling smash of his fist he struck the shining thing from its cradle.

  There was an unbelievable instant when he saw his own hand deep in the hollow chest of the machine, saw the reflections of his blow moving in miniature in the polished ribs, saw his knuckles bathed in the tiny crimson glow of that inner light shining through transparent veins.

  And then the light went out.

  There was a crackle like crystal shattering. There was a sound more felt along the nerves than heard, of high, rapid humming that droned and ceased. And Arthur Court was no longer either man or android. He was not even machine.

  The man-shaped thing in man’s clothing pitched forward all in one piece, like metal moving, and fell solidly to the carpet, an effigy that could never conceivably have breathed or lived or spoken …

  Bradley got shakily to his feet. The policeman still sprawled on the floor, Staring, making no move to rise. The face that had been so ruddy was grey-white, and the colorless mouth opened and closed soundlessly, trying in vain to put the incredible into words. Bradley wanted insanely to laugh. Not even the pure human organism, he thought, functioned very efficiently in the face of shock like fids.

  It was Wallinger who moved first. Bradley had one glimpse of the physicist’s face, drained of all color, lined and rigid with horror. But the man was moving capably enough. At least, his limbs obeyed him. He circled Bradley with scarcely a glance, skirted the collapsed metal thing on the floor, and bent above the policeman …

  He lifted one arm sharply, bent at the elbow, and struck the officer a hard, expert blow with the edge of his palm. The man collapsed without a sound.

  Above him, Wallinger stared into Bradley’s eyes.

  “You’re - on their side?” Bradley forced the words out painfully, wondering why they came in a whisper. He did not dare take his eyes from Wallinger’s, but his mind had stopped functioning altogether and he scarcely knew why he stared, or why this thundering of sudden terror in his chest made breathing so hard. “You’re working with - them?”

  Wallinger straightened slowly, letting the blue-coated body slide to the floor. His gaze broke from B
radley’s and he looked across the room toward the hall door. With a great effort Bradley followed the look.

  The children still watched. Without alarm, interested, not comprehending, they watched as they might have watched a film at the neighborhood movie.

  “Sue - Jerry - upstairs!” Wallinger’s voice was firm, almost normal. “Move! And shut the door behind you.”

  The sound of its closing seemed to release some of the tension in the man, for he let his breath out a little and his shoulders sagged. He met Bradley’s eyes, grimaced, started to speak, and then thought better of it.

  “Tell me!” Bradley’s voice was stronger, insistence growing in it now. “Which side are you on?”

  Wallinger did not want to answer. When he spoke, it was indirectly.

  “It’s not on record, Bradley,” he said, almost with diffidence, “but I think you ought to know - the children aren’t mine.” “Not -”

  “I adopted them.”

  “But - but then -” There was no need to finish the protest. Bradley had chosen this man for his confidences from the first, chiefly because he could be sure that here was one influential person of proved humanity - the father of other humans. No sterile machine.

  Wallinger shrugged gently. He glanced down at the heavily breathing man at his feet.

  “I had to do that,” he said. “Now I’ll have to think of some way to make him believe he dreamed all this. I hate to do it, but I can’t think of any other way right now except -” He glanced at his desk. “Maybe this.”

  There was a bottle of whiskey in the top drawer. Moving with deliberate haste, he opened it, poured two generous portions into little metal cups from the same drawer, and then deliberately upended the bottle above the groaning policeman’s chest.

  Bradley reached for a cup, holding it in both hands to steady his shaking. The strong, burning liquid stuck in his throat for a moment, then spread downward with a grateful, soothing warmth.

  “The story mustn’t get out, you know,” Wallinger said above his own cup.