Adam Link: The Complete Adventures

by Eando Binder

  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 them, 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—equal to 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 down. “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, transfering 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 tomorrow.

  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.

  A man called later, an older lawyer acquaintance of Tom’s. I was not supposed to hear, being in the next room reading, but my microphonic tymanums are extremely sensitive to sound. Behind closed doors I heard the elderly man say:

  “Tom, as a friend of your dead father, and for your own sake, I must advise you to give up this preposterous case. Maybe the robot is intelligent, and innocent of the crime of which he is accused. But you can never prove it. You will lose, if my professional opinion means anything at all. Your own professional career will be blasted. You will be ruined, Tom! Is a robot—a mere mechanical contrivance—worth such sacrifice?”

  The last few words were tinged with scorn, but Tom’s answer came swiftly, though in a low voice. “Yes! And I’m going through with it!” The other man left, realizing Tom’s utter determination.

  CHAPTER IV

  On Trial for My Life

  THE day of the trial.

  I will not go into great detail. So much has been written of the event. I will give 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 counsellor. The prosecutor was the city’s most prominent attorney, requisitioned by Sheriff Barclay in his determination to rid the county 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. Besides, I had taken the oath to speak the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the 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 lette
rs 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 through from beginning to end. My photographic memory supplied 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 prophecying 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 up.

  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!”

  I looked at the jury, at the audience, at the court officials. Tom was talking to a blank wall. I searched for one ray of sympathy, understanding, but found none. Yes, one—the reporter who had braved opinion before. But he was only one out of hundreds facing me. I felt at that moment, a bottomless despair. I had felt that way once before—looking down at the dead body of Dr. Link and realizing I must face the future without his friendship and guidance.

  The jury filed out to decide my fate.

  COURT was adjourned, and I was taken under guard to the jail, to await recall. The way led around the front of the courthouse, to the neighboring jail building. Something of a crowd, unable to get into the court, had collected outside. Tom walked beside me, haggard and hopeless.

  Suddenly he was whispering in my ear. “I’ve failed you, Adam! We’ve lost, I know. Adam”—he looked around—“make a break for it! Run away, now! It’s your best chance. Perhaps somewhere you can hide, find a way to live. Run, Adam!”

  He pushed at me. I think he was nearly out of his mind, from the strain of the past few days. I gripped his shoulder and steadied him. “No, Tom!” I said. “There is no place for me in your world. I will accept—”

  And then I suddenly did leap away. I am afraid I bowled over two of the police escorting me. I had gone twenty yards before the gasp of the nearby crowd indicated that they had seen what I had seen.

  I had seen and comprehended, seconds before anyone else, the tragedy impending, out in the street. A little boy on roller skates had lost balance. I saw the first twist of his little body, that told me he would fall. Also the car. It was coming at a fair rate of speed down the street. Its driver was carelessly viewing the crowd on the sidewalk.

  All things relating to distances, measures, and numbers integrate instantaneously in my brain, itself a mathematical instrument. I can explain it no more simply. I knew the boy on roller skates was going to sprawl in front of that car. I knew the driver, with his slow human reflexes, would perceive this and jam on his brakes seconds too late. I even knew that the right front wheel would pass over the child’s chest, and the car would roll from 3 to 5 feet further before it stopped. The boy would be dead.

  A fraction of a second to note all this. Another few seconds running, at a speed that is impossible to humans. And then I was in front of the sprawling boy, between him and the careening car. There was no time to snatch him up, with my hard metal hands, without bruising him terribly. But the car could be stopped!

  I braced myself at the proper angle, right shoulder forward, crouching. There was the loud impact of metal on metal. The car’s radiator struck my shoulder as I had planned. For a moment it was machine fighting machine, with a life at stake. The car, with its greater weight, pushed me back five feet—six—seven—ten! My feet—flat plates of tough metal,—dug into the asphalt of the paving, gouging out two deep trenches.

  Then the car stopped, its engine dying with a strangled gasp. My heel plates were five inches from the fallen child’s body. Close enough. I congratulated myself. I had figured it would be seven inches.

  WHEN I straightened up, my right arm dangled uselessly, as I had expected. My right shoulder plate was a crumpled mass. The heavy frontal plate of my chest bore a frayed dent five inches deep. Another half-inch would have shattered an electrical distributor within, rendered me helpless prey to the rolling car, along with the child. But I had allowed for that five-inch dent also, when fixing my body in position before the impact.

  A dead silence seemed to hang over the scene as I looked around. No one moved. Hundreds of pairs of eyes stared as though in a trance. The little boy on roller skates struggled up, whimpering with fright—mostly at seeing me. Then a woman rushed to him from the crowd, taking him in her arms.

  At that moment, a court official hurried from the courtroom, telling the police guard to bring back the prisoner. The jury had already made up its verdict, in a short minute!

  Back in the courtroom, the foreman of the jury arose. Everyone knew what the verdict would be:

  “We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of the murder of Dr. Link, in the first degree!”

  Tom looked sadly at me. A hush came over the crowd. All eyes were on me, wondering what the machine with a mind would do or say. I did and said nothing. I had told Tom I would accept my fate.

  The judge pronounced sentence:

  Death in the electric chair, three days later. Electricity will burn out my brain, of course, as readily as that of a human being.

  I AM writing this now, in my cell.

  Heavy chains that even I cannot break bind me to the wall. They are not necessary. I would not try to escape. I would not want to live in a world that does not want me.

  One thing has given me satisfaction, or else I would pass from the scene with deep regrets. Tom visited me an hour ago, accompanied by a grave, distinguished man. He is one of the world’s greatest legal men. Seeing the brilliance of Tom, through the trial, against insuperable odds, he has offered Tom a position in his office. Thus Tom’s future has not been blasted by his unselfish labors in my hopeless cause.

  I must mention, too, the visit of the young reporter I have mentioned several times. I do not even know his name. But he told me he was convinced that he had seen justice go wrong, once again. At the last he made a gesture I fully realize has great significance. He shook hands with me! Tears are foreign to me, but something blurred my vision as he strode away.

  It is amusing in a way, the last thing I have to write. I have told them how simple it is. They would just have to turn the master switch on my chest and smash my inanimate body. But they insist on the electric chair. It is the la
w. I will give them full satisfaction.

  It is best, I think, that I pass into the non-existence from which Dr. Link summoned me seven months ago. My short sojourn in this world has been confusion for the most part. I would never understand, or be understood.

  One curious thought. What will my epitaph in history be, that of—monster or man?

  CHAPTER I

  Pardon . . . Or Death?

  I AM a robot, a contrivance of wheels and wires, but I have also that human attribute of “emotion.” This is proven—to me at least—by one thing.

  When my reprieve came, I fainted. I had been marching down the jail hall in that “last, long mile,” between guards. Ahead of me waited the electric chair, for the “murder” of my creator, Dr. Link. I saw, through the open door, the solemn group of witnesses, and the electrical machine in which I would sit, in another moment, and have my brain burned to blankness by surging, searing energy. My metal face shows no emotion. But within, my thoughts were sad, bitter. I had been ordered by man to get out of his world.

  And then, suddenly, shouts in back. People running up. A court official in the lead was yelling for the governor, who had come from the state capital to witness this unprecedented execution of a created being, an intelligent robot.

  And then I saw a face I knew—that of the young reporter who had defended me in his editorials, and shaken hands with me after my sentence, in sympathy. He was flushed, panting. My gaze swerved and I was startled to see several other faces I knew.

  The governor came hurrying out of the death-chamber.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  The young reporter stepped forward boldly. “I’m Jack Hall, sir, of the Evening Post,” he said clearly, in the hushed silence. “The state has convicted an innocent—man! Adam Link is not the murderer of Dr. Charles Link. I demand that you listen to me!”