by Eando Binder
When that had been done, Tom heaved a sigh and winked toward me. I knew what the wink meant. Again a trap had been laid, and sprung. Once my name was down in the court record, I was accorded all the rights and privileges of the machinery of justice. As I know now, if Sheriff Barclay had gone to the governor of the state instead, he could have obtained a state order to demolish me as an unlawful weapon! For I was a mechanical contrivance that (circumstantially) had taken a life.
Tom could not have squirmed out of that charge. But Sheriff Barclay had missed that loophole. With my name down, I was a defendant—and had human status.
Two newspaper reporters were present. One of them was staring at me closely, wonderingly. He came as near as he could, unafraid. Unafraid! The only one in the room, besides Tom, who did not fear me instinctively. He, too, could be my friend.
I saw the question in his eager young face. “Yes, I am intelligent,” I said, achieving a hissing whisper, so no one else would hear.
He started, then grinned pleasantly. “Okay!” he said and I know he believed. He began scribbling furiously in a notebook.
The formal indictment over, the bailiff led me to my cell and locked me in. Tom smiled reassurance, but when he left, I felt suddenly alone, hemmed in by enemies. You humans can never have quite that feeling. Unless, perhaps, you are a spy caught by an enemy nation. But even then you know you are dying for a cause, a reason. But I was being doomed—exterminated—for little else than not being understood.
Tom appeared again an hour later, waving a paper. The court officials were with him, arguing loudly. He turned.
“Habeas Corpus!” he kept saying, calmly. “You’ve indicted Adam Link, whether he has the body of a robot or an elephant. This writ of Habeas Corpus frees the person of Adam Link, till the trial is called. I know the law. Release him.”
The bailiff argued hotly. I digested what I had heard, slowly and carefully. That is, slowly for me. It wasn’t more than a second later that I grasped the bars of my cell-door and with one concerted tug, jerked it open. There was a terrific grind of metal. The broken lock clattered to the stone floor. I strode out.
“I do not like being in a cage,” I said. “Can we go, Tom?”
I am afraid my impulsive act was a mistake. I saw that by Tom’s face. I had displayed my great strength, the strength of a powerful machine. It could only add fuel to their fear of me. The officials all turned pale and stumbled back, perhaps visioning how easy it would be for me to crush their skulls with single blows of my steel hands.
And that was precisely the last thing they must think of me. They must come to appreciate my mind, and my ability to serve humanity. For that purpose, Dr. Link had created me. And for that purpose I had dedicated myself, independently, months before. Once accepted as a fellow mind—a monster only in appearance—I could show my true worth. I, Adam Link, was the first of intelligent robots. I could serve civilization in the combined capacity of mind and machine.
Yes, it was a foolish mistake. The writ of Habeas Corpus would have freed me anyway, if I had given Tom a little time. As I realize now, I was bewildered and impatient. I cannot understand the strange tortuous ways you humans have of doing things. I have much to learn of civilization. Much.
Tom did not reprimand me, however. Grasping my hand, he led me out of the jail. The officials stared dumfoundedly. Tom had also paid bail, and procured a paper placing me in his custody.
Thereafter, in the time before the trial, I went with Tom around the city. He made frequent visits to the bank that was settling the estate of Dr. Link. He took me to the public library when he sought reference in weighty law books. Often he would just parade me down a street. We watched the reaction of the crowds narrowly. As Tom had put it—could we get public opinion to swing our way, in the coming battle for my status in human society?
Fear! It rose in overwhelming tides about me. Blind fear that sent people scurrying away without dignity. Sometimes cars, in the traffic, bumped one another as their drivers caught their first glimpse of my shiny, metal form, so manlike and yet so alien. I felt depressed. Must I always inspire fear?
Children, however, proved more quickly adaptable. They had more curiosity. In fact, a group of street gamins took to following me, tossing pebbles to hear them clink against my metal body. And a chant arose among them: “You’re nothing but a tin can! You’re nothing but a tin can!”
I wasn’t annoyed, nor was I particularly amused. Some of the adults we passed tittered. People cannot laugh and fear at the same time. The gamins with their simple little song had proved a blessing in disguise. Even Tom—though he tried to hide it—had a lurking grin twitching at his lips. I began to have hope that the fear of me would die down, eventually.
But it was a forlorn hope. My first venture into the public library was disquieting—both to myself and others. People edged away from me hurriedly. The library officials tried to prevent my going around to seek books, but Tom calmly and stubbornly proved to them that they couldn’t eject me on any count short of violation of civil liberties. The librarians gave in, but summoned the police for guard. Undoubtedly everyone had heard of me as the murderer of a man. Everyone was certain that at any moment I would wantonly kill another. I felt that, and it saddened me.
But again there was an amusing quality in it. I eased my weight into a chair in the reading room and began reading scientific books Tom had procured for me at the call-desk. I scanned a page at a time.
An elderly man opposite me at the reading table had not looked up. Absorbed in his reading, he had ignored the noise I could not avoid making as my metal form contacted the chair. But in the following quiet, the steady hum of my internal mechanism must have penetrated his deep study. He looked up suddenly, flashed a glance of annoyance at me, and looked down again. Ten seconds passed before he looked up again, realizing what he had seen. This time he was startled. He closed his eyes, snapped them open again. After another long look at me, he quietly arose, as though recalling another engagement, and left. His face was pale.
The newspapers were particularly unkind to me. Daily editorials were written, denouncing the laxity of the law and police. They were allowing, it was said, a dangerous engine of destruction to walk about. I was the Frankenstein product of a mad genius, a twisted travesty of the human form. The Machine had finally arisen, as had been foretold in imaginative literature, threatening Mankind. I was the forerunner, the spy perhaps, of a secret horde of metal demons, waiting to descend crushingly upon humanity.
One editorial writer, however, denounced the denouncers. He took my part, insisting there was not a shred of proof as yet that Dr. Link’s amazing robot was a menace of any kind. I know he must be the young reporter I had seen at the court. I had an unexpected friend, two now, with Tom.
Two—out of the 50,000 in that city. Or out of the millions elsewhere who had read of me and promptly were my enemies.
CHAPTER 4
People vs. Robot
There was one other thing that happened during those two weeks. The fire. Tom and I were walking down the street when we heard the shriek of sirens. Then we saw it ahead—smoke pouring from the windows of a ten-story tenement. In the excitement of that, even I became of secondary importance. People crowded at my very side, staring at the flaming building, hardly aware of me.
Suddenly, after it was thought that all had been rescued, two screaming faces appeared at the seventh story. Smoke gushed from behind them.
A hideous wail went up from the crowd. They were doomed, those two! The ladders were threatened by flame and had to be withdrawn. No fireman dared plunge into the raging inferno of the interior. Jumping nets were in readiness, but the two screaming voices choked off and the two faces vanished from the window. Smoke had suffocated them into insensibility. In a matter of seconds, their fate would be sealed.…
My reactions are instantaneous, being those of a machine. I moved away from Tom, toward the building. He was unaware, staring up with a look of hypnotic horror, as
were all the crowd. They were in my way. I had to get through quickly.
I raised my voice in a hoarse bellow that was easily heard over the roaring of the flames. The crowd, suddenly turning its attention to me and as quickly panic-stricken in the fear that I was going berserk, melted away. I dashed into the curtain of smoke that wreathed the burning building.
Hissing flames were all about me. I dashed through them, my metal body knowing no hurt or pain, and having no lungs to be seared. But it was a task even for my sharp, mechanical vision to see the stairs through the rolling clouds of black smoke. Fortunately, the stairs were of metal. I raced up them with all the speed and power I could command from my mechanical body. I reached the seventh floor just in time. The stairs behind me collapsed, melted through. I could never go back that way.
I found the two still figures, a young man and woman, on the floor, in their smoke-filled room. Roughly, since there wasn’t much time, I threw them one over each shoulder.
If there was time!
The only way led up, to the roof. Another curtain of flame had to be traversed. Summoning all my powers, I dashed through, my metal legs pounding. The clothing of the two limp forms I carried did not catch fire. Nor, I hoped, had their skins felt more than a momentary withering blast. Yet for all I knew, they were already dead.
Escape from the roof resolved itself into one uncertain chance—leaping across to the next building. The distance, I automatically knew when I looked, was thirty feet. To make it worse, the next rampart was on a higher level. I would have to leap thirty feet across, five feet upward, carrying almost three hundred pounds—plus five hundred pounds of my own weight—of inert load. If I failed—a drop of more than a hundred feet to the hard concrete of a courtyard.
Yes, I knew fear. Or at least, something within my brain that sickened at the thought of three broken bodies, two of them human pulp, lying down there.
There was no time to waste, or think. I was alone up here, and the decision was mine to make. I took a long run, leaped—and made it.
It is simple to say it, though the bare words leave much unsaid. At the moment of leaping, I flexed my metal legs with such force that the stone eave beneath them cracked. I would have been a strange sight, I suppose, had anyone seen—a metal Tarzan flying through the air, with two limp human forms slung over its shoulders. Thirty feet across and five upward! Only the tremendous powers inherent in my motorized body made it possible. And even their limit was taxed. I landed with one foot on the other rampart and teetered for a moment, at the brink of disaster.
I had just time to shove the bodies forward onto the roof safely, as my other foot clawed vainly for purchase. At least they had been saved. Then I slipped backward and wondered how it would “feel” to smash against the hard concrete a hundred feet below. My clawing foot met something—the jutting edge of a window frame. It saved me. A moment later I was standing over the two bodies, looking back at the roof we had left. It was cracking and fingers of flame shot up from the hell below.
I picked up the two forms and clattered down this building’s outside fire-escape, laying the two figures in the courtyard. They were breathing and moaning. They were alive. Their clothing was singed and blackened where it had pressed against my heated metal shoulders. Some few burns and blisters were on their faces and hands. But they would survive.
I waited till my metal body had cooled completely before I left the courtyard to bring others. As soon as I stepped out into the street, people, with their nerves already tense, shrieked and ran from me. I tried to speak but no one listened.
Tom came running up. “Good God, Adam!” he panted. “Where have you been?” He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward his car, parked some blocks away. “When you bellowed and leaped away so suddenly before,” he continued, “everyone thought you had gone wild. The crowd has been murmuring against you. Hurry. A mob will do anything. Hurry!”
Half the crowd had surged after us, transferring their blind, helpless rage at the fire to me. I picked up Tom in my arms and raced for our car, outstripping any pursuers. I drove the car myself, away from the threatening people and out of the city.
It was not till we had gone several miles, and no pursuit appeared, that Tom became calmer and looked at me. He looked over my body, his eyes suddenly wide and comprehending. “Adam! Those soot-streaks—you look like you’d been in the fire—?”
I told my story. Tom sat silently for a while, just staring at me. “You risked your own—life,” he murmured finally. “And no one saw you do it?”
“No one,” I told him.
“The irony of it,” Tom said with a groan. “If there had been one witness, the story would have made you a hero. Now, you’d never be believed. The rescued pair will probably believe they escaped themselves, somehow. And I’m just afraid—” He went on frankly, his voice a little hollow. “I’m not as confident in winning for you, as I was at first. Public opinion—and that will mean the jury—is stupidly against you from the start. Adam, we may lose…”
The trial was the next day.
That evening, I noticed the change in my young friend. Up to this time he had been eager, jubilant, accepting the unprecedented defense of a metal intelligence as a most unique chance to match his legal wits against the ponderous machinery of law. Now he was worried, depressed, as the hour drew near.
So much has been written of the trial that I will give you only my own reactions, thoughts, observations. I was placed in custody of the court early in the morning. The first day of the trial began at noon, before a packed audience.
I, Adam Link, was the defendant. Thomas Link was my defense counselor. The prosecutor was the city’s most prominent attorney, requisitioned by Sheriff Barclay in his determination to rid the community of a “dangerous menace.” The jurors were twelve average citizens of the city. All of them watched me continuously with eyes that held no sympathy or understanding—only hostile fear and unreasoning hatred.
In all that courtroom, only one man was on my side—Tom himself. No, two. There was also the reporter who had been my editorial champion. He sat in the press box, and waved a greeting to me, which I returned. There were several other reporters, from big cities, who obviously looked upon the whole thing as some comic-opera hoax, or gigantic publicity stunt.
Of all the human institutions with which I have come in contact, your courtroom proceedings are to me the most confusing. It seems an endless turmoil of questions, evasions and half-truths. It is like hacking one’s way through the jungles I have read about, and going ever in circles.
The prosecution slowly proceeded to pin the murder of Dr. Link on me, by circumstantial evidence. To bolster his accusations, the prosecutor called me to the witness chair. The crowd sat up stiffly and the room became utterly silent. They were about to hear an allegedly intelligent creation of mineral matter talk. I suppose it is hard to believe.
“Adam Link, you are a machine? You are strong?” asked the attorney.
“Yes, to both questions,” I answered.
“You could kill any human being with your metal hands?”
“Yes.”
“You could, in fact, kill a dozen men with a dozen blows?”
“Yes.”
The prosecutor had fired the questions like a machine-gun. I had answered quickly, as I always do. Tom looked at me helplessly, having had no chance to object. I knew what he wanted of me—evasion, hedging. But I am a machine. I have not learned to smother truth.
You can guess how the rest went. The prosecutor led me through my story of the death of my creator, with leading questions that constantly highlighted my brute power.
Tom was sweating when he questioned me. He, in turn, attempted to bring to the fore my humanlike intelligence and thoughts. He quoted from his uncle’s letters concerning me. He had volunteer professors from the city’s college ask me scientific questions. I rather think I amazed them, for I had read Dr. Link’s extensive private library from beginning to end. My photographic memory s
upplied the answers to questions in biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and down the line. I added, multiplied, or took cube roots of any sets of complicated numbers instantly. Often they had to check for many minutes, with paper and pencil. Electrons move at the speed of light. Electrons motivate my brain.
Tom glowed with brief triumph. The air within the court had subtly changed. There was respect for me, if nothing else. The prosecutor then seized opportunity. He magnanimously admitted my intellect but—where was my soul?
The trial rapidly resolved itself into something a little more significant than the mere death of one man. By the second day—I spent a night in the hated jail—a stark issue arose.
Could I, an intelligent but alien being, be allowed to live and move in the world of men?
Two portions of the interminable proceedings stand clearly imprinted in my mind. First, the prosecutor’s most oratorical moment, when he shouted:
“Adam Link, as we have been forced to call him, is a thing without a soul. Without a spark of human feeling within his cold metallic body. He can know nothing of the emotions of kindliness, sympathy, mercy. If once he is given a place in human society, he will slay and destroy. He has no right to live. No thing that mocks the human body and its divine intellect has any place in our civilization. You men of the jury, remember that your decision will set a precedent. This is a grave responsibility. Science, long prophesying it, has finally produced the intelligent robot. And look what it has immediately become—a killer! A Frankenstein!”
Frankenstein! Again that hideous, twisted allusion. The word alone, in the popular mind, is a misconception, for Frankenstein’s monster was driven to his deeds.
The prosecutor pointed an accusing finger at me. All the crowd shrank a little, seeing me in the light he had conjured.
Tom’s closing speech was eloquent, but futile.
“Adam Link is a human being in all but body. His body is a machine and machines serve humanity. The mind of Adam Link thinks the way we do, perhaps even in a superior degree. Gentlemen of the jury, if you find the defendant guilty, you are sending an innocent man to death.”
