The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “How’s your friend Blackridge?” Herb would say to her casually whenever he’d drop around at lunch time. “No change,” Madge would say. “At least none for the better.”

  “I’d hoped that Buzz-Bolt would take enough weight off the old boy’s shoulders that he’d have time to be human. Hasn’t he taken up golf or bowling, or gone to the movies, or read any books, or attended any baseball games? . . . No? . . . Has he cracked any jokes?”

  “Blackridge couldn’t crack a joke with a sledge hammer,” Madge would say. “I wish Buzz-Bolt could talk. I’ll bet he’d crack jokes. That smile of his—” She stopped, and I’m sure she didn’t guess what a compliment she was paying to Herb.

  “It’s all tin,” said Herb.

  “Anyway the customers like it.”

  “Just a mechanical trick,” said Herb. “You know, everyone smiles when they first see Buzz-Bolt. And what happens? His electric eyes gauge their smile and he automatically matches it with his own. If they smile wide and handsome, so does he.”

  “I like it,” said Madge.

  I was smiling broadly then, the same as Madge. It must have been contagious, for Herb was smiling too, just a little. Madge added, “I wonder if he would be bashful if he could talk. It’s a sort of bashful smile, don’t you think?”

  Then, for some reason, she and Herb were looking at each other and they both grew quite red in the face. Whatever it was about, their embarrassment was contagious too, for my tail light came on with a doubly bright red glow. Thank goodness, the telephone rang at that moment. I got back to work.

  CHAPTER VI

  Night Visitors

  They had me give a demonstration in one of the display rooms in the city’s finest office building. Two hundred and seventy-five business men looked me over and discussed my merits. Would mechanical men be a good investment as a substitute for their present employees?

  They put me through the paces. They had me add and subtract, do bookkeeping, answer phone calls, deal with customers.

  And while they sized me up, and marveled at my abilities, I was thinking to myself, “What a serious gang of men! Why don’t I cut up a little, to liven up the party?”

  “How much does he cost to operate?”

  “Can parts be replaced?”

  “Can you depend upon him to obey orders?”

  “Does he have to sleep at nights, or will he keep right on running?”

  “Do you have to have a boss over him?”

  The Williams brothers did their best to answer all questions. It looked to me as though they might make a fortune, if I didn’t make some break and spoil everything.

  “Can he sweep the floors? Can he scrub? Can he polish all the office furnishings, including himself?”

  I swept for them. I scrubbed for them. Everytime they put a broom or a mop in my hands, I wanted to take a swing at someone, just for pure mischief. But I refrained. Madge was there, and she and the Williams brothers were very proud of the way I was conducting myself.

  “Can he wash windows?” someone asked.

  They gave me a sponge and a dryer, and I went to work on a patch of plate glass. Then—trouble.

  I swear it wasn’t mischief. It was that reflection I saw in the glass. The waiter. He was moving through the crowd, serving drinks. But mostly, he was watching me.

  It was Joe Moberly.

  He moved close, and I saw that he held a small camera under the tray. I didn’t see the flash, but I heard the click. He had caught a shot—maybe an infra-red—of my inside workings.

  Click—then—crash! I pushed with too much force against the plate glass and, darnest luck! the window went out.

  Pandemonium! A whole swarm of officials of this swanky display room pushed up through the spectators and demanded to know what on earth was going on, and what kind of a stunt was this. There’d be damages aplenty!

  They were pretty angry with Herb Williams, even though my break hadn’t actually hurt anyone. If the glass had fallen over the street, it might have been bad. But it fell on a roof. Nothing serious.

  “If you can’t handle your iron monster, Mr. Williams,” the dress-suited manager said severely, “we’ll have the police help you.”

  That insult was uncalled for, in my estimation, and I picked up the surly fellow in the dress suit, turned him upside down, and stuck his head in the handiest wastebasket. The crowd made way for me, and I reached for another official in a dress suit.

  Click!

  Waldemar Williams had his little switch box ready, and he suddenly put the automatic freeze on me. That did it. I was as paralyzed and motionless as any cornerstone, and so I remained until the crowd went home.

  The last man to take his eyes off me, that night, was, as you might imagine, Joe Moberly. He had kept out of Madge’s path, so that no one recognized him. But this I knew. He hadn’t missed one important bit of information from the Williams brothers’ sales talk. And he hadn’t missed much of the dressing down the brothers gave me after my break . . .

  It was to happen just three nights later.

  Somehow I felt it coming, though there were no very definite indications.

  The office work was clacking along as usual. New clients came, always to be disappointed because of the general shortage of available apartments. Old clients came in to collect their rent, to buy, to sell, to discuss their problems. Occasionally someone would tell of making several hundred thousand dollars, and Blackridge’s dark and gloomy mood would brighten for a few moments.

  Then the mood would pass, and he would scowl deeper than ever.

  The exterminator came, and Blackridge had him spray the inside of my chest, along with the other dark corners of the room. Just one of the boss’s reminders that I was no more important than a filing cabinet.

  Herb Williams came in on some pretext, and decided that he and Madge had just as well have dinner together. When they returned to the office, I learned that they had decided to make an evening of it and go to the movie.

  “Sorry we can’t take you along, Buzz-Bolt,” Madge said, but I don’t think she meant it.

  They went, and I was left to the silence of the night, as usual. Those long nights with nothing to do! The worst of it was, they made a habit of locking my feet to the floor every evening after work hours, just to be sure I wouldn’t go off on a spree. It was a wise thing to do. They knew it, too, because I had shown a tendency to climb the chandeliers and juggle the furniture and dance all night to the radio during my first unguarded nights. If I had been left completely to my own devices, I’d certainly have taken a streetcar for

  a ride on some lonely night.

  This was a lonely night until the office clock struck three.

  The night’s traffic had spent itself. Most of the neons had blacked out. Everything was quiet.

  A truck drove along the alley and stopped at the rear door. Its quiet purr choked off. Who could that be? And why?

  Presently a key turned in the lock and the rear door opened softly. Two shadowy figures moved into the front office—two men, whispering.

  “You sure he’s locked?” one of them said.

  I had never been more resentful of my paralysis.

  “Don’t worry, Steve. They freeze him every night. I’ve checked on that.”

  I knew that low, guttural voice. It was Joe Moberly’s!

  CHAPTER VII

  Presence of Mind, Absence of Body

  Moberly moved in a wide circle around me. A shaft from the street light passed over his strong face, revealed his unlighted cigar and his polkadot tie. He was chewing the cigar nervously.

  “We’ve got it all our own way, Steve.” He was managing to be pretty cocky and self-confident.

  “If somebody don’t bust in on us.”

  There was an apprehensive whine in Steve’s voice. From his slight stoop, I guessed him to be one of the waiters I had observed at the demonstration a few nights before. He was skinny, yet strongly muscled. His face was pointed and toothy like a rat’
s.

  The two men paused in the dim light for a moment. Moberly moved close to me, tapped my arm, and satisfied himself that I was helpless. Then he gave some crisp instructions.

  They returned to the truck at the rear door. I could hear them unloading a heavy weight. Soon they wheeled it into the front room—a blanketed something as large as a man. When they unwrapped it and inspected it by flashlight, it was revealed to be another mechanical man.

  It might have been my twin brother.

  “I can just see old Blackridge when he tries to make this hunk of steel behave,” Moberly said. “He’ll have apoplexy.”

  The skinny fellow looked from me to the substitute and breathed a satisfied, “Gee!”

  “Not bad, huh?”

  “Spittin’ image. You’re a genius, Mobe.”

  They had trouble moving me out of my place at the desk. You see, the power was off, and I was paralyzed. The wheels in my feet wouldn’t even turn.

  Finally they decided the thing to do was lighten my load. They removed everything they could from my full chest—cards and files and shelves, tools and gadgets. Eventually they unhooked me—the inner me—the big watch-shaped brain case with my ten star-shaped eyes and four sensitive ears.

  This being the heaviest removable part, they placed it—that is, me—on the desk, and went on about their business. The outer part of me—my metal body—was now lightened sufficiently that they were able to struggle with it. Alter improvising some rollers, they moved it to the rear door and loaded it onto the truck.

  Next, they moved this new mechanical man into my place at the desk. They opened its plexiglas chest.

  “Darned if I remember how to pack this stuff back,” Steve said, looking over the scattering of equipment. He started with the files.

  “Wait, you dope,” Moberly said. “Give me the light. This thing goes in, whatever it is.”

  “A water cooler, maybe.” Steve gave me a shake.

  This new metal body was a very crude thing, really. It didn’t contain any of the necessary fixtures to fit around me. Of course it lacked the thousands of pin-point triggers through which my brain impulses operated. While Moberly held the flashlight, Steve took pains to wire me in place. They replaced my accessories and then stepped back to study the effect.

  “Perfect. Perfect.” This from Steve. “Nobody’d ever know the difference.”

  “The Williams brothers might know at a glance,” said Moberly. “But Blackridge won’t.”

  That completed their operations. A moment later I heard them drive away in the truck.

  There I hung—an encased brain with no workable body. I was hung up! I was as helpless as a turtle hung by the tail. More helpless. A turtle could at least wink his eyes and kick. All I could do was watch and listen. And wait . . .

  CHAPTER VIII

  Sit-Down Strike

  The theft of my metal body occurred at about three o’clock Sunday morning. I waited impatiently for Monday. It was a long wait, and if I could have talked aloud I would have said some bitter things. You can imagine that I felt pretty savage toward the whole world, even the Williams brothers, my makers.

  If they had only known!

  If they had only trusted me enough to leave me in possession of my powers through the night! What a proud victory it would have been for them if I could have grabbed a pair of thieves and walked them into the police station!

  Monday morning came at last.

  Blackridge entered in his usual humor. He barked an order at what he thought was me and went on back to the next room to hang up his coat and hat.

  Madge came in on the stroke of nine, looking very lovely in her pink dress and fresh pink cheeks.

  “Good morning, Buzz-Bolt.”

  I didn’t answer. She raised an eyebrow in my direction. Through this fake creature’s plexiglas shoulders I watched her.

  “Are you in a mood this morning, Buzz-Bolt?” she asked as she hung up her coat. “It’s a lovely morning—or doesn’t the weather make any difference to you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  She added, giving a little laugh, “I’ll bet you’d rust in the rain.”

  She kept on with her one-sided chatter while she watered the plants. Usually I would buzz some sort of response, or draw some appropriate words out of my store of recordings. Usually, too, I would make a few courteous gestures with my metal arms.

  Suddenly disturbed, she came over and faced me.

  “Buzz-Bolt! Your eyes aren’t turning. Has Herb Williams forgotten to turn you on this morning? Or are you ill?”

  She went to the phone and called. Her worry deepened. Evidently the Williams brothers insisted that they had turned me on.

  Blackridge came in on the last of her conversation. He turned his sullen eyes on me and gazed for several minutes.

  “Get to work, Buzz-Bolt,” he said.

  “What is this, a sit-down strike? Give us a buzz, there . . . You won’t, eh? Stubborn! Madge, get those inventors on the phone again. Let me—”

  He stopped abruptly, for someone had just walked in the door. It was Moberly. He sauntered up to my desk as brazenly as a counterfeit dollar.

  “Morning, neighbors. Fine morning. Oh, pardon me. Go right on with your telephoning.”

  Blackridge, momentarily disconcerted, turned his back on the newcomer and proceeded with his conversation.

  “Listen, Herb, this cursed compound gadget has gone on a strike. Now I don’t want the damned thing cluttering up my office if he won’t work . . . You’ll come over? Both of you? . . . Sure, the sooner the better . . .”

  When he finished and turned, Moberly was already going out the door. “Be back later,” he said.

  Blackridge shrugged. Strange clients were always changing their minds.

  There was not a thing in the world that I could do but hang in there and watch and listen and think.

  “What,” I thought to myself, “did that brazen thief mean by walking in here first thing this morning?” And right away I thought I had the answer. “Of course! He came back looking for the part he missed last night—me.”

  I could imagine their chagrin—his and Steve’s—upon discovering that the mechanical man they’d stolen wouldn’t work. What would they do?

  I wasn’t sure of all my answers, but I guessed, for one thing, that they had made a discovery. They had found that their stolen metal man contained a few thousand tiny triggers that needed to be touched off by some thinking mechanism before the metal man would perform.

  So Moberly must have concluded that I, the circular brass case they had discarded, was something more than a water cooler.

  But did he mean to steal me here in broad daylight? Or was he planning to come back tonight? Did he understand that the Williams brothers were on their way? Did he realize that they would take one look at this crude metal substitute and know there’d been monkey business?

  It was nearly noon, and Blackridge was fuming.

  “Why in heaven’s name don’t they come?” he sputtered. “Look at the work piled up on Buzz-Bolt’s desk. All because there’s a loose connection somewhere.”

  He and Madge tapped around on all corners of my substitute frame. Clank—clank—clank. Blackridge took a tack hammer to the metal head, and once he thought the eyes began to roll. Madge tapped the knees with a ruler.

  “That’s the trouble with these damned gadgets,” Blackridge said, passing his hand over his barren topknot of two pampered hairs, “A million dollars worth of experimenting and what do you get? A dead machine on your hands . . . ugh. What are you sniffling about?”

  Madge looked up With a curious tenderness in her pretty face. “Suppose he is dead. Really and truly, I mean. Poor guy, he’s been a real friend.”

  “Stop that sniveling. He’s just a chunk of metal.”

  “He was kind to me,” Madge said quietly, “He never acted cross.”

  To Blackridge her words evidently were a backhanded thrust. “Stop drooling. You were quite the chums
, weren’t you? If he’s dead, maybe it’s a good thing . . . Stop that sniveling.”

  But Madge wasn’t sniveling, she was just sniffing.

  “Do you think he smells all right, Mr. Blackridge?” she asked. “Well, I don’t. There’s something phoney. He doesn’t look quite like himself, today, and he doesn’t smell right.”

  The phone rang, and Madge took the message. She turned white and began to stammer. She hung up and turned to her boss. “Get me a taxi.”

  “What is it?” he demanded. “Accident. Someone crowded the Williams brothers into a ditch. It wrecked their car and they’re both in the hospital. Herb’s in a critical condition.”

  CHAPTER IX

  The instant I knew what had happened. What I couldn’t have done if I had been free! And here I was, stranded in a metal body as dead as a stovepipe.

  Madge taxied off to the hospital. Blackridge called a couple times, and his usual gloom deepened.

  Late that night the rear door opened again. I was not surprised. I had known it was coming. It was Moberly and Steve. They had come back for the rest of me.

  “Here it is,” Moberly said, holding the light on me. “We should have known this was the brains of the gadget.”

  “Hs-s-sh!” Steve whispered. “Someone’s at the door.”

  “Night watchman, probably.” Moberly sounded brave, but he ducked for the deep shadows, right along with Steve. For a long moment there was nothing but tense silence. The clock ticked off the seconds. Presently the night watchman went on his way. I knew his step.

  The two men, hiding near the desk beside me, whispered of their plans. What they hoped was that this morning’s accident would take my inventors out of circulation for several weeks—time enough for them to take me apart and learn all of the secrets of my construction.

  “There’s millions of dollars in this deal,” Moberly kept saying, “Millions—and all we have to do is beat those boys to the punch before they recover.”