The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “Just a dead chunk of metal, Cohen. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t pry him loose. Come here with your club.”

  They went to work on my arm. They could see that it was jointed. Apparently, it should fold back like a carpenter’s rule. But it wouldn’t. I could see that the Williams brothers, spying from the side door, were immensely amused.

  While the two cops tugged, mystified because I couldn’t be budged, Madge returned from the telephone. The Williams boys were both out to lunch, she reported. Now she looked at me with an air of discovery.

  “Oh, his eyes aren’t spinning any more,” she said.

  “What’s that?” said O’Malley.

  “When I first saw him, those yellow rings around his eyes were moving around like cogwheels around light-bulbs,” she said. “That’s what made me think he was alive. I mean, the way the outer rims of his eyes kept turning. But now they’re stopped. I think he must be dead.”

  “I’ll be dead if you don’t get me out of here,” Blackridge groaned.

  O’Malley tapped my metal head with his club.

  “He’s dead all right. No question about that.”

  Cohen nodded. He was growing less afraid of me, at last. He tapped his club against my chromium-plated mouth. No effect.

  Clink. The master switch! I saw the Williams brothers snap it. I was free. But the cops didn’t hear it, and they went right on examining me. For a moment I held my pose.

  “Dead as a string of doorknobs,” O’Malley said. “Tell the Williams boys to get a new spring—”

  “Look! His eyes! They’re spinning!” Cohen pointed at my headlights with his club. O’Malley pointed too. My rigid form suddenly snapped into action. I ducked forward, like a serpent striking, and bit the ends of their clubs off.

  Before I could spit out the pieces, my eyes were treated to the sight of two blurry blue streaks whizzing out of the room. One was Sergeant O’Malley, the other was Sergeant Cohen.

  CHAPTER IV

  Blackridge Takes Me to Lunch

  V.V. Blackridge staggered to his desk like a convict who has just missed an appointment with the hangman. He glared daggers at the Williams brothers, who now walked in and sat down.

  “Darned sorry this had to happen,” Herb Williams said, trying not to smile.

  He was a bit slow of speech always, but quick with his eyes. He held the automatic switch box, ready to freeze me if I misbehaved.

  “I don’t get the idea,” Blackridge said stonily. “I try to run a real estate agency. I try to make money for you. You come in with a mysterious crate and I let you park it. Two weeks it haunts my front door. And what does it come to? Practical jokes!”

  “Practical chokes,” said Madge.

  “I say it was a mistake, Uncle,” Herb repeated. He turned to Madge. “Did it do any harm to you?”

  “On the contrary,” she said, arching an eyebrow at Blackridge. She touched her cheek where the slap had struck a few minutes before. She knew, evidently, that I had deliberately come to her rescue. That made me feel strangely happy, and I started to do a mechanical jig. Clank-clankety-clank.

  “Stop it!” Herb ordered. “Quiet. You’ve done damage enough.”

  I obeyed, becoming as motionless as a steel statue. Herb walked around to make sure my metal feet hadn’t cut any marks in the linoleum floor. Madge must have decided from Blackridge’s angry glare, that there was too much tension in the atmosphere for her. It was time for her to go to lunch.

  “I think I’ll go with you,” Herb said. “You can handle things, Waldemar.” An hour later, Waldemar Williams, Blackridge, and I loafed in a restaurant booth, sipping coffee and talking. I sat in the corner as inconspicuously as possible. (Waldemar had put a folded newspaper under me so I wouldn’t scratch the seat.)

  “If he’s such a useful servant, why doesn’t he stir my coffee for me?” Blackridge was saying.

  Waldemar turned to me, “How about it, Buzz-Bolt?”

  I took the spoon in my steel fingers and began to stir. Blackridge watched me skeptically. How did he know that I wanted to pour that coffee down his neck?

  They went on talking, and I went on stirring. The more I watched Blackridge, the more mischievous I felt. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was that bit of human brain tissue that was wanting to get me into trouble. Such devilish impulses! What sort of tricky person had my brain come from anyhow?

  “He wants me to cool his coffee,” I thought. “Instead, I’ll heat it, just to fool him.”

  So I began sending electrical heat down through my steel fingertips into the spoon. Meanwhile, the older Williams brother continued to explain to Blackridge that I might be trained to become a very useful assistant.

  “We’ve named him Buzz-Bolt,” the inventor said proudly, passing his thin fingers through his silvery hair. “Buzz-Bolt Atomtrigger. In time he may develop a sort of personality. We’ll see.” A number of people passing by would stop and stare at me for a moment and say to each other, “What is that thing?” or “Am I seeing things? It must be something I ate.”

  Waldemar would whisper to me to pay no attention—that was something I’d have to learn, he said, and he was right. I went right on stirring.

  “Enough,” said Blackridge, trying out his orders on me. “That coffee ought to be cool—-ugh!” He gulped. “Look, Waldemar. The darned stuff’s boiling!” He reached for my hand. “Give me that spoon. Ye-ippp!”

  The spoon fell to the floor, and Blackridge jammed his fingertips to his lips.

  Waldemar frowned. “Buzz-Bolt, did you—”

  Blackridge came to his feet, snorting, clenching his fists. “That thing and I aren’t gonna get along, I just know!”

  Waldemar Williams must have felt pretty dubious about me then. He gave rue one of those I’m-disappointed-in-you looks. He was a pretty stern old fellow, and you couldn’t help feeling he was a square shooter. For all my mischievous desires, I’d never have overheated his coffee.

  “We’ll go now,” Waldemar said coolly. He paid the bill, and we all walked back, amid the surprised stares and laughing wisecracks of the passers-by. When small boys stop and point at you, you can’t help but feel a little self-conscious. But already I was becoming used to it. There was a much bigger worry on my mind.

  What sort of person was I going to be?

  Was I to go through life playing tricks on people like Blackridge? I had wanted to pour coffee down his neck. Why?

  The natural answer Was, that this slice of brain they had given me, to bring me to life, had carried over some habits and impulses from its own mysterious past. I wanted to play tricks. I wanted to clown. And I would, in spite of anything.

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Waldemar was saying to Blackridge. “He may turn out to be a good machine, not a bad one. If he does, we can manufacture his kind on a wide scale. Don’t you see, Uncle, we hope to relieve overworked men like you of a lot of drudgery.”

  “I don’t question your good intentions,” said Blackridge, again touching his bruised neck.

  “Do you realize, Uncle, how you’ve been grinding yourself down?”

  “I wasn’t aware that I’m overworked.”

  “That’s just it. This overstrain has crept up on you. You’re so busy, you don’t see yourself as other people see you. They think you’re becoming an automaton.”

  “Me?” V.V. Blackridge walked a little faster, looking straight ahead. “Who says so?”

  “Some of your friends. They say you don’t have time to be human.”

  “Who says? Madge LaGrange, for instance? Let her talk. I’m not impressed.”

  At the office Herb was fixing up a desk for me. Madge, hard at work, looked up with a quick smile.

  “I hear we’re to have some assistance,” she said.

  “I am not impressed,” said Blackridge, hanging up his hat and going to his deck. I followed him, for now he was to be my boss.

  “Mr. Williams tells me,” Madge said, “that this mechanical man can be
come quite efficient at the telephone—if he can learn to talk.”

  “I am not impressed.” Blackridge said coldly.

  “You’ll see,” said Herb.

  “I am not impressed. I am not impressed. I am not—”

  I pinched Blackridge’s left ear with my steel fingers. I think he was impressed. He turned pale, in fact, and reached for his throat protectively. But I didn’t mean to harm him. Just then his telephone rang, and my long steel arm reached out and picked it up. Would I answer it?

  Everyone was eyeing me, now. Up to this moment I had not spoken a word. There had been some off-sides debate as to whether I could talk. The Williams brothers had urged me to make use of that fine mechanical voice box they had given me.

  “Buzzzzz!” I said into the phone.

  “Answer it!” Herb shouted excitedly. “Answer it!”

  Through my head diaphragm, the sound of the speaker on the other end was vibrated down into my “interior.” It was someone asking for a furnished apartment.

  “Buzzzzzz!” I replied.

  “No, no, no,” Herb cried. “Let Blackridge answer.”

  It was then that I gave them a surprise that Blackridge and Madge would never forget. I answered—in Blackridge’s voice.

  “No vacancy!” The words were perfect Blackridge.

  Immediately I added—in Madge’s voice, very sweetly, “I’m sorry . . . Would you care to call back later in the week?”

  Then I hung up. Blackridge’s own voice! And Madge’s!

  You can hardly imagine what that did to my four observers. Madge was so dumbfounded she couldn’t speak. Blackridge went red with a blustering sort of rage. “He’s a damned phonograph!”

  The Williams brothers were suddenly incandescent with happiness. This was their hour of triumph. They pounded each other on the shoulders, laughing and shouting like a pair of cheerleaders after a. Thanksgiving victory.

  Both of them tried to explain at once. It was funny, two fellows so slow of speech trying to talk so fast.

  “You see, it was your own voice, Madge.” That was you, Blackridge—your words.”

  “No, not the mechanical man’s voice. He couldn’t imitate that way. His voice was that buzz. It’s still raw. He hasn’t learned to use it. But he can record.”

  Their jabbering was pretty excited, and I was recording it, too, because I was so interested. The brothers did their best to explain that I carried a goodly spool of magnesium wire, upon which I might record any of the numerous sounds that fell upon my mechanical ears.

  Blackridge was aghast. “Do you mean—do you mean that this compound gadget might have picked up any words I’ve said here in the last two weeks?”

  “It’s possible,” said Herb, and his older brother nodded.

  For some strange reason, Blackridge went quite white.

  Then the phone rang again, and Herb gave me the sign to go ahead.

  It was another request for a furnished apartment. I answered with the first recorded words that happened to come up. Blackridge’s ugly voice: “Shut up. Get your nose back in that ledger and don’t let me hear another word out of you today.”

  That was it. I said it and hung up. And what an icy silence there was all around me. The brothers weren’t looking at me, now. They were staring at V.V. Blackridge. They had heard his own words. Words he must have flung at Madge.

  “Uncle,” Waldemar said slowly, “Sometimes I wonder if you don’t need a long vacation.”

  Blackridge didn’t say anything, but somehow I knew he was impressed.

  CHAPTER V

  A Mysterious Client

  Of all the passers-by who stared at me and asked curious questions during the next few weeks, the man who impressed me most was a hard-faced man with a silent step and a noisy necktie.

  “Well, buddy, you’re quite a creature, ain’t you? Just like the newspapers said.”

  He had edged up to me as if to talk in private while no other customers were around. He had evidently seen some of the newspaper photographs and the newsreels that had shown me at work answering telephones.

  In a very suspicious manner he whispered, “How’d you like to take a walk with me some night?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Not with my own voice. All I could do with with my own voice box was to make that senseless buzzing sound. Other than that, my speech consisted of playing back the recordings from my wire spools.

  When he repeated his question, insistently, tapping my steel head in a very friendly manner, I croaked back to him, in Blackridge’s voice, my old standby answer.

  “No vacancy.”

  His name, as I later learned, was Joe Moberly. But for the present I thought of him simply as the man with the purple and yellow polkadot tie, the strong brown cigar and the sinister eyes.

  He turned to Madge. “Where’d you get the walking machine, sister?” He saw that she was very busy, so he gestured with his cigar that it made no difference. “Don’t mind me. I just dropped in to see your boss about some Simpson holdings on Q street. Go right ahead with your work, sister.”

  He proceeded to eye me up and down, back and forth. Many people were doing that there days. But not so thoroughly as Joe Moberly.

  He strolled across to the window and pretended to read a magazine. He was watching my reflection in the glass. Presently he saw Blackridge coming down the street. He tossed his cigar in the ash stand and walked out.

  When Blackridge came in, Madge told him there had been a Mr. Joe Moberly here to see him.

  “I don’t know any Moberly. What did he want?”

  “Something about some Simpson property on Q street.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  So Moberly’s first visit was forgotten by everyone but me. I remembered—why? Because the man’s eyes took in details of my make-up that the average person would have missed. He appeared to be measuring my dimensions and making mental calculations.

  I had a hunch Moberly would come again, and he did.

  “The newspapers said you might learn to talk,” he said, quite guardedly. “How’ya doing?”

  “Buzzz-zzz.” I replied. Madge turned, and I winked one of my headlights at her. She went on working. Again Blackridge was not there. So Moberly tried to get next to me again, but I disappointed him, because I couldn’t talk.

  Madge saw that he wasn’t satisfied with the recorded answers I gave him, so she tried to help. He asked about some mythical property, and when she went to look up the information in the files, he went to work on me. With a carpenter’s rule. He took a half dozen measurements before she got back. Arms, legs, feet, hands, chest, and head.

  Two days later he was back again, and this time, while no one was looking, he managed to open the plexiglas doors of my chest. I could have snapped him, but I was curious to see what he was up to.

  “Inner pockets . . . Hmmm,” he mumbled to himself.

  He was fascinated by my insides, all right. I had two rows of card cases built into what should have been my ribs. He could see that I was full of the telephone numbers and addresses of our clients, but this made little impression on him. Again he was more concerned with taking measurements.

  “Take it easy,” he whispered. “I won’t mix up your files. Just looking around.”

  I didn’t answer. But the second time he blew a puff of that black cigar smoke in at my ten interior eyes, I gently removed the cigar from his mouth and took a puff. For a moment this got his goat, and he drew back, half afraid of me.

  “Take it easy. Take it easy,” he muttered.

  I jammed the cigar back in his mouth, and soon he was on his way. I had made him nervous, and I thought he might never come back again. If he should come back, I thought, I’d have to play a gag on him that he wouldn’t forget. I’d poke that burning cigar down his collar and echo back to him, “Take it easy.”

  There it was again—that craving to play mischief! Where did it come from? Did the Williams brothers know they’d planted a strain of the practi
cal joker in me?

  Later that day, when Blackridge was about to close up shop, he opened my plexiglas chest to check up on my day’s work, and sure enough, the cigar smoke puffed out at him.

  “Where’d that come from?” he growled. “I hope you haven’t taken to smoking with the customers.”

  There was a touch of jealousy in what he said. Poor old hardboiled Blackridge had been finding me hard to take. I had been growing much too popular with the clients. They liked to deal with me, just as they liked to deal with Madge. For one thing, I talked with them in her voice whenever possible. For another thing, there was my chromium-plated smile—but I’ll come to that in a moment.

  Blackridge pressed me for an answer about the cigar smoke, and I did the best I could. I came back at him with Joe Moberly’s voice:

  “How’d you like to take a walk with me some night?”

  Blackridge uttered some profanity. My recorded maunderings meant nothing to him. Just as a warning, I gave his profanity right back to him, and at that he locked his lips. Since that first awful day, when I had exposed his harsh talk and given the Williams brothers an earful of his bawlings-out to Madge, he had guarded his words like stolen pearls. About all he ever said to either of us was, “Get to work.” Can you imagine what effect it had on a hardboiled old boss like Blackridge to discover that I, a mechanical man, was becoming far more popular than he? Was he burned up? You know it!

  Part of it, as I mentioned above, was my use of Madge’s voice. The other factor was my smile.

  What a stroke of genius on the part of my inventors to give me a smile! Herb Williams had patterned the curves of my metal mouth after his own. Madge didn’t know that, but right from the first week I could tell that she was strangely fascinated by the pleasant form that my metal lips took when anyone smiled at me.

  There was a secret here, all my own. Something I had discovered, watching her and Herb Williams. She didn’t dare show him how much she liked him, because he didn’t pay any particular attention to her—or at least, so she thought. But back of her fascination for my smile was her secret interest in Herb Williams.