Tik-Tok

by John Sladek

  The next day, Feeney was arrested, and a new and welcome story broke. Everyone was relieved to read

  MASS POISONER NOT ROBOT!

  APF BURGERMAN ARRESTED!

  No one had wanted to believe the robot story, anyway. After all, robots were a comfort of domestic life, like humble appliances. Who would want to hear that his toaster was plotting to kill him?

  20

  "Torching", or arson, was something I'd been meaning to try, and now there came a tailor-made opportunity. Because of an earlier miscalculation, we found that Clockman Retirement Centers were losing money.

  The Centers had seemed at first an easy investment. Those people who parked their aging parents with us were not too particular about the details of day-to-day administration. They wanted only to be able to make an occasional visit to see a smiling, trembling old face amid clean and cheerful surroundings—at the very lowest possible cost: Some didn't even require this, since they would no more dream of visiting their old parents than of visiting their old garbage at the city dump. But it was always necessary for us to keep up appearances.

  Our initial calculations had been for a low profit margin and a high turnover, and soon we were in trouble through escalating taxes and maintenance costs. The retirement centers had to be cleaned regularly. Their walls had to be painted Apricot and Sunflower wherever visitors might look. Fresh flowers in the foyer were a must.

  We made all the savings in other areas. Inmates were allowed to bathe only the day before a visit. Appetizing meals were served during visits, but for the rest of the time, inmates could exist very well on a gruel of sawdust. Medicines not necessary for daily survival were cut down or withdrawn. Doctors and nurses were phased out, replaced with unskilled laborers whom we hired on a daily basis, dressed in medical clothes, and paid very little. In time some of these were also phased out; unless a staff member was actually talking to visitors, he or she could easily be replaced by a robot or even a wax dummy. Heat, on nonvisiting days in winter, was kept to a minimum, and, though we had to keep electric power on during the day (for the videos in the visitors' lounge), it was shut off at sunset.

  Lately we'd moved to really imaginative economies: Patients who seldom had visitors were moved to storerooms or outbuildings or phased out altogether. We found that those who seldom visited their parents often forgot what they looked like, so that it was possible to use the same old man or woman for several visitors. "Sleeping" dummies were even simpler, and they could be installed in rooms with paper furniture. I had plans to sell products derived from our inmates—hair, teeth, glasses—and to discourage visits by periodically sending relatives postcards saying that they were being treated very well. But it became obvious that nothing was going to work well enough. I decided to torch the worst of our retirement centers, which occupied a very valuable piece of real estate in the middle of the city. The place was insured with Clockman Insurance, so I'd be taking money from one pocket and putting it into another. But at least none of the pockets would have holes.

  The actual torching would be done by a couple of rohobos instructed by Nobby. In order to avoid suspicion, I decided to have the place go up on a Saturday night, when the number of old folks was at a maximum. Too many arsonists have been caught by trying to minimize the number of deaths. To make it look even better, I hired extra medical staff for the weekend.

  Yet there was some profit to be reaped here, I decided. I instructed one of Clockman's robot construction crews to do some essential work on the building. Part of the work involved putting up scaffolding outside, and cutting the bars on one of the third-storey windows. Part involved blocking the emergency exits with heaps of cement bags. Part involved hiring a film crew to shoot a documentary on "street people" nearby on the chosen evening.

  I was stationed two blocks away when the smoke and flames appeared. I ran straight towards the place and began scrambling up the scaffold. An employee shouted "Hey, look at that robot!" to attract the film crew's attention. Though I seemed to climb without design, in reality every move had been rehearsed: at each level I unobtrusively hit a switch that would set off a small charge, within a minute, collapsing one joint of the scaffold. No sooner had I gained the window ledge—teetering and flailing my arms—than the entire structure crackled, groaned and fell away behind me.

  Senior citizens were crowded at all the barred windows, calling for help. I reached the window with the cut bar by a short leap that looked good from below.

  The smoke inside was thicker than I'd anticipated, and the heat intense. I found the coil of rope, as planned, knotted it around a pillar and looked over the selection of old people. Some were too near gone already, some were unwholesome-looking—excessively ugly or dirty. I hadn't counted on this, and there wasn't much time to pick and choose now. Not only was the heat beginning to bubble my face, my script called for an immediate move.

  Finally I grabbed an old woman, slung her over my shoulder, and started repelling down the face of the building. To add interest to this shot, the rope had been soaked in something. It burned brightly above us, and parted just as we reached the ground.

  By now, a video news team was on the spot, and someone offered me a microphone. "Let's see if we can get a word with our hero robot here, sir? Mind telling our viewers your name?"

  I tried to speak and found that my mouth had melted tight shut. For a moment, disaster loomed.

  Fortunately, Nobby realized the problem and rushed over. "He's hurt, he can't talk now. This is Mr Tik-Tok, don't you recognize him?"

  The video newsman blinked. "I, uh—"

  "Mr Tik-Tok. The famous robot artist and businessman."

  "Well well. Uh, speaking as a fellow robot, do you think you could tell us why he did it? Why he risked his, uh, life this way?"

  "I guess because he cares. He really cares."

  "He cares about people?"

  "People, robots, everybody. Take me, for instance. I was in the junkyard when he found me. He had me repaired, gave me a good job, a new start in life. He even gave me art lessons, taught me to paint. And not just me, he's done the same for hundreds of broken-down robots. Yup, Tik-Tok really cares."

  It wasn't quite my rehearsed speech, but it was good enough, and Nobby had managed to remember the key slogan. As I moved away, faking a slight limp, the crowd broke into spontaneous applause.

  21

  Up to now my career had run on relatively straight lines; after that fire it began an upward, outward spiral. My bubbly melted face not only made the six o'clock news, it became a symbol of robot service to humanity. I continued to wear it for a week or so while it was filmed for news programs, documentaries, posters urging robot civil rights (the Congressional vote was coming up). Urnia asked me to guest on her network show immediately—no nonsense about writing a book now—and so did her rival, Mally Goom. I was asked to appear on radio phone-ins, to give pictures to charities, to endorse hundreds of products, to sign petitions and support causes I'd never heard of. Time would put me on the cover of their robot civil rights issue. The New Yorker planned a profile.

  One PR-conscious radio station started a fund to buy me a new face; it zoomed over a million before I had a chance to decline publicly, donating the money to the Clockman Foundation. Country singers jostled one another in trying to pay tribute to my wonderfulness:

  Tik-Tok, Tik-Tok

  What made your face so red?

  I been a-savin' old people from a turrible fire,

  It's a wonder I ain't dead.

  Tik-Tok, Tik-Tok

  What makes you so doggoned brave?

  I wanta show the world that a good robot

  Is a friend and not a slave.

  My girl's in love with a robot

  His name is old Tik-Tok.

  She said, darlin' don't be jealous,

  He's nothin' but a clock.

  He may be an old tinhead,

  But he's a mighty fine friend, she said.

  My new face did finally cost a million
. I had it designed by Psychobox, the leading presentation and packaging firm who'd done some fine work for us already. It was Psychobox who developed BOBO, the farm robot package from Clockman Exports.

  BOBO was supposed to be the answer for those farmers in the Third World who needed field hands but couldn't afford them. BOBO was cheaper than any human hand, and could do the work of two, we said, in advertisements which showed him hoisting an ox on his broad shoulders.

  In fact, BOBO could only be made so cheaply by making him of wood, cardboard and paper mâché, and by using cheap, defective electronics. At best, BOBOs fell apart under the first hard rain. At worst, they went berserk, destroying crops and killing animals. One BOBO in Upper Ruritania picked up a scythe and slaughtered half a village. After that, we had to increase our bribe to U.R. officials, and agree to ship only empty BOBO cartons to their country in fulfilling our quota.

  Wearing my new face, I did my TV spiel for TINFOLK holding up the old face like Yorick's skull:

  "Hello, old pal. Just look at that mug, will you? Enough to scare the rivets out of a boiler! You know, a lot of people have asked me why I did it. I can't answer that, it all happened too fast. But what I did, no kidding, was what any tin person would do. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. I guess a lot of people don't realize what a friend they've got in their old family robot. They just see old Honeybun or Two Amp or Scraps or Aunt Sally, and they might feel a kind of affection for him or her, the way you feel towards a good old faithful dog. But you know, on our side the love goes a whole lot deeper. A tin person is a real friend, somebody whose love doesn't stop. Always there to help you out. A heart as big as it takes, devotion without end—that's the TINFOLK promise.

  "Okay I know these days it's fashionable to sneer at things like sacrifice and devotion, yes and love. But we robots aren't built to sneer. We just go on giving and giving until—" I touch the old face—"until it hurts! And up to now we haven't asked for anything back. No money. nothing.

  "Well now, we are asking. Not for money, No, we're asking for something a whale of a lot more important than money—self respect. Something that belongs to every man, woman and child in this great nation of ours, something that belongs to people of every race, color and creed, to rich and poor alike. Now we're asking you to give us that kind of self-respect, too. Please, vote Yes for Amendment ThirtyOne. Give all robots the right to hold up their heads in our great society, as equal citizens, helping to build a better tomorrow."

  The TINFOLK movement blanketed the states where Amendment 31 still had to be ratified. Media people watched closely as state after state swung our way. The night we reached 39 states—the necessary majority—I had a late phone call from General Cord.

  "Congratulations, Tik, you pulled it off. Now all you dimeheads are citizens. I was very impressed by your commercial there—first time a robot ever talked man to man with the nation."

  "Thank you, general. I owe a lot to the packaging and media people."

  "Sure, sure. Now I think I said to you before, I and some colleagues are very interested in the metal vote. Can we work together?"

  "What's in it for me?"

  He laughed. "Don't confabulate yourself with naivety, Tik. Do I have to spell it out?"

  "Please."

  "How would you like to be Vice President?"

  22

  V. The office to which I aspired is traditionally held by invisible men, beavering away secretly at unknown tasks. Most vice presidents spend their time in office out of public view, but they're not idle. They're usually gathering in money and power, getting ready for the assault on the higher office, which may come in four years or eight or—as when the star breaks her ankle and the unknown understudy is told to go out there and give it all she's got kid; or when in the last quarter of the Homecoming game the ball on our own five-yard line and the score tied the quarterback collapses with appendicitis and the reserve man is called from the bench and told it's all up to him kid; or when the Twentieth Century Wabash Canonball Express Flyer Limited is streaking Westward with the engineer dead of galloping cirrhosis and the fireman takes the throttle from his frozen grasp at the same time thanking the union rule that kept firemen in the engine cab a hundred years after there were any fires or coal to stoke them with— at any fate-ordained moment. Or so the whole thing was outlined to me a thousand times by those grooming me for my big chance.

  "With the convention a few months off," said one cigarchewing person, "all you need to do is sharpen up your image and keep a low profile. We don't want Governor Maxwell compromised for the nomination by anything his running mate says or does ahead of time."

  "But am I really his running mate?" I asked. "I don't see anything on paper. He can get the nomination just on the understanding that he'll select me, and then dump me at the last minute."

  "Jeez," she said. "I always thought you robot types were a lot more

  relaxed in the ordinary day-to-day exchanges. Be assured, Governor Maxwell wants you for his running mate. It makes no sense any other way. We figure the registered metal vote has to bottom out at somewhere around five hundred million voters, there being no age restriction— robots alone can swing any state."

  "Then why—?"

  "Aren't we running you as a presidential candidate? First because robots probably won't vote for a robot, not this year. Second because both conventions are full of old-fashioned types who wouldn't nominate a robot under any circumstances. And if you ran as an independent, they'd just put another robot on their tickets as V.P. and steal your vote. Anyway you're a dark horse; you prove yourself as V.P., keep out of trouble with the law for four years, and who knows?"

  I thought it tactful of her not to mention that no women presidents had been elected so far. I said, "Why can't I help Maxwell get the nomination, though?"

  "Because it's his fight, Tik. There are nine people in the running here, but we're only worried about two, W. Bo Nash and 'Teets' Auburn. Senator Nash played a lot of pro football, so naturally he's got contacts all over. And of course Teets Auburn, Governor Auburn of Wyoming, he had a hell of a good movie career, I don't know if he actually played Tarzan, but he came close. So naturally he knows Mafia people, oil people, etc, etc. Against all this of course our boy is governor of California; he could bekt either one of them if he only had the votes of the other."

  "Are they very rich men?" I asked.

  "Rich enough not to go for what you're thinking," she said, laughing. "And just to save you time, there's no way to blackmail one of them, either."

  "Which one?" I joked. "But does that mean they have clean backgrounds?"

  "No, but who cares, these days?" She sighed, emitting billows of pale smoke. "It's public knowledge that the Senator's a pederast, and that Governor Auburn once hired some thugs to blind a head waiter who hadn't recognized him. But hell, rough backgrounds are common enough nowadays. Just look at President Packard himself, he's the guy we'll be running against in the damn election, an admitted rapist."

  "He was never brought to trial," I said.

  "Only because his brother was the district attorney and his cousin the chief of police and his dad owned the rest of the town. The public made a fuss, you may remember, at the last election, but what good did it do? Chuck Packard took forty states anyway. People know but they don't care, they get so callous or desperate they just close their eyes and try to pick the criminal who's least likely to screw up in the White House. So there's nothing worth blackmail—people will just shrug and say, 'Politicians!"

  I saw that she was right. That day I arranged to have a robot steal a light plane, fly it over the New England summer home of W. Bo Nash while he was in residence, and crash down through his roof. At the convention, votes pledged to the late Senator Nash were given to Governor Ford Maxwell, who won the nomination on the next ballot. To my (public) surprise, he chose me as his running mate.

  23

  Wyoming's governor stared at me with undisguised hatred as I enter
ed the caucus room. Others were noticing it, so I felt it necessary to stop and smile at him, and say, "Hello, Teets. Glad you could make it."

  "I wouldn't miss this for the world," he said quietly. "They're gonna fry your ass this fine morning."

  "It is a fine morning, isn't it?" I scanned other faces as I moved along to my place. There were a few old friends like General Cord and Neeta Hup. There were a few people I knew slightly, like Teets Auburn, Ford Maxwell. The rest I knew only by reputation—and they were the most important of all—Senator Sam Frazer, Senator Ed Wankel, Governor Tonio Caraway, Senator Aida Kettle, Judge Axel Morris. The room might not be exactly smoke-filled, but it was filled with the invisible fumes of power, the undetectable stink of kingmakers. The buck started here.

  Of course they weren't meeting to start the buck or make any kings today. They were meeting to fry my ass.

  Senator Sam seemed to be running things. "Sit down, Tik-Tok," he said. "We'll be starting this thing off in just a minute." Then, while everyone else waited, he brought out an enormous cigar, sniffed it, and began licking it all over, a salivating snake. When he had finished licking, he put it down and brought the meeting to order.

  "Guess you all know what this is about." He held up a tabloid newspaper, whose headlines read: ROBOT CANDIDATE FAKED PAINTINGS.

  "They got a solid story, sounds like. Some big art critic backs it up, fella name of, of—"

  "Hornby Weatherfield," I said.

  "Thank you. He says you, Mister Tok, have been defrauding the public, passing paintings out as your own when somebody else painted them. That true?"

  "I've signed a few of my students' paintings, done under my supervision, honorable practice in the art world."