by Eando Binder
“Eve!” I tried to plead. “Eve, don’t betray me now. Don’t do just what I’ve warned against from the start. Don’t prove the robot is just what the world is too readily to believe—a Frankenstein monster! Eve—please—don’t!”
But I couldn’t make a sound. My mental agony at that moment was far greater than the heat-torture had been.
Eve was within reach of the men. They were clawing at one another to get out of the way. They too were silent, with fear strangling them. Eve’s merciless hands stretched out, for the first victim—
A siren wailed, somewhere outside, moaning to high crescendo. Eve had caught one man, trying to slip past her, and hurled him back in the group, as though intent on making them suffer the suspense of death as well as death itself. She seemed to tense herself for sudden activity, her internal hum deepening. She was about to commit wholesale massacre . . .
Then blue-clad men were swarming into the room—police! I shrieked and cursed, within myself. She would rend them apart too! She whirled on the police, as they shouted—
At that moment I found my voice. My heated metal had cooled enough for parts to slip into place. It was only a croak, my voice:
“Eve! Stop! Submit to the police. Don’t touch the men!”
She stood in the center of the room, looking from the police to the men, and then down at me—or what was left of me. She made no move against any of them.
The gangsters found their voices. Babbling, they begged the police to protect them from the metal monster.
“Make them confess!” I yelled out, my voice stronger now. “Make Harvey Brigg confess to the murders Eve is accused of, and all his other criminal activities!”
Eve looked around at Harvey Brigg. “I’ll confess,” he cried eagerly, frantically. “I’ll confess everything. Only don’t let that robot touch me!”
I have only one more thing to record. We were in our mountain cabin, with Jack, Kay and Tom, court procedure over. I had a new body, and Eve was in her first one, human proportioned.
“We won all, but we nearly lost,” I said. “If the police hadn’t come in time—” I shuddered mentally. “Eve, you must never—”
“I wasn’t going to harm the men,” Eve said. “I kept my head. I knew about the ring. I knew if I frightened them enough they would confess. I knew the police were coming. What’s more, Adam Link, detective—I knew you were alive all the time. One of your broken cables twitched slightly. I saw that right away!” I knew she was laughing a little then. “Poor dear, did you really think I had gone berserk?” Paradoxically, I was nettled. “You mean you weren’t ready to—well, avenge me, if I had been dead?”
“Now, dear, that’s just what you wouldn’t have wanted—”
One word began to lead to another. Our three friends arose to leave. “Your first quarrel!” Jack grinned. “Come on, Kay and Tom. We’re excess baggage. And if Eve starts throwing things—”
THE END
[*] AMAZING STORIES, February, 1940
“I WANT to file citizenship papers,” I said. “I am Adam Link, the robot.”
The official, Dahlgren by name, stared at me. I suppose it is strange to hear a metal being talk. To be confronted by a manlike creation—alloy legs and body, featureless face of metal, jingling internal hum, and all—and realize it has a mind of its own. That it is living!
Jack Hall and Tom Link, my friends, stood beside me. Also Eve, my companion robot and my mental mate. We had decided, after long discussion, to try this. I had the complete papers drawn up, with Tom’s help, for both Eve and myself. Our first “naturalization” papers.
“Impossible!” snapped the official finally. His face reddened. He felt we were making a fool of him. “Citizenship is granted only to—uh—human beings.”
Tom spoke up sharply.
“Can you show me that statement, in black and white? The laws read that any person, regardless of race, color, creed or nationality, may apply for citizenship.”
Dahlgren was taken aback. I was a little amused. Regardless of race, the laws say. Even beings from another world would be eligible by that loose term. Ridiculous thought. But still, I’m afraid you humans have been too smugly assured that in all the universe there can only be intelligent beings like yourself.
“Person!” scoffed Dahlgren. “Is he a person?”
He looked me up and down with a stiff smile. “It’s quite obvious that he’s nothing more than a clever, mechanical apparatus. A robot that walks and talks. A machine. You can’t label that a ‘person’. What you want is a patent!”
He did not mean to be insulting. He simply failed to realize I had a brain.
Eve and I looked at each other. What of our minds? You don’t patent a mind.
Tom tried pleading.
“Don’t look at it that way,” he cried. “They have personality and character of their own, like any of us. They have minds. They think, reason, know the difference between right and wrong. They want to live in our world, as full-fledged members. They’ve done good already. You know their story——”
He went on briefly, in summary.
For two years I had passed through a quiet human period of adjustment to life since my creation. I had been hounded as a Frankenstein slayer of my creator, sat patiently through a court trial, and won freedom—and legal human status. I had conducted a consultant business, and rebuilt slums with the money gained. I had strangely stirred the heart of a human girl. I had created a robot mate for myself, to live as humans live normally, in pairs. With Eve, I had broken up a criminal ring in this midwestern city.
Now, all those tumultuous events behind me, I felt I had a place in human society. I wanted to become a citizen, and the forerunner of others of my kind. We could do civilization much good.
TOM stressed that, in conclusion.
“You know how they broke up this city’s biggest crime ring. Could any human have done better—or as much?”
Dahlgren gave Eve and me a grudging look of admiration, for that. But he shook his head stubbornly.
“Still, they aren’t human beings—legally.”
Tom smiled triumphantly, having maneuvered the discussion to that angle. “Adam Link is a human being, legally. You read about his trial. He was duly entered in the civil court records. I can furnish them. Also Eve, through her trial, is legally a human being!”
Dahlgren looked as though he had been driven into a corner.
“Technically,” he floundered.
“Perhaps,” Tom shot back. “But I think it’s up to you to prove he isn’t human—legally. You can’t ignore court records. Do you know what Adam Link can do if you refuse to take up this matter? He can sue you!”
Dahlgren pondered that, half angrily, half worriedly.
“I’ll send the papers to Washington, to higher authorities,” he acceded. “I won’t take the responsibility myself.” He went on, almost spitefully. “I guarantee you they won’t accept it. They’ll throw it out on technicalities. Where was Adam Link born? Who were his parents? Things like that—”
His eyes narrowed shrewdly then.
“There’s more to this than just awarding Adam and Eve Link citizenship, for their good deeds. The question is, do we want more robots to follow, parading up and down our streets as full-fledged citizens, accorded all the privileges of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?”
“What do you mean?” I demanded, and I think my mechanical voice was rather stentorian. “That you think robots might become a menace?”
It was that, of course. Yet I couldn’t blame him for the stand he took. It was, after all, a situation no man had ever faced before, in all human history. Not even Solomon would have seen a clear answer.
I knew the thoughts streaming vaguely through his mind. He was being asked to make room, in human society, for alien beings. For the first of the future robot race. How could he take the tremendous responsibility of that step? How could he be sure some frightful catastrophe might not result?
Fran
kenstein! A robot race gone Frankenstein! If that happened, he would be blamed. And every official in Washington would feel the same, and shy from the decision.
I HAD taken a step forward, involuntarily. Dahlgren had paled, perhaps visioning me going berserk. Jack’s hand pulled me back.
“No use arguing, Adam,” he murmured. “I knew this wouldn’t work.”
Dahlgren stood up from his desk. His instinctive fear over, he spoke directly to me, almost in a friendly fashion.
“I knew you were coming eventually, Adam Link. I’ve been prepared for this. Do you know what is against you mainly? Public opinion! I’ve watched the papers. Look at what this commentator says.”
He handed me a newspaper, with a syndicated column that reached the homes and minds of millions. I read the item at a glance, with my television scanning.
“Adam Link, the intelligent robot, is definitely a national figure today. As a startling, almost fantastic novelty out of some lurid thriller, he captures the imagination. But the novelty has worn off. Even most of the jokes about him have died down.
“Science has created metal-life. We can accept that. But we must not blind ourselves to its deeper significance. Adam Link will want to be accepted as a human being. He may have legal status, but so has a dog. A dog may inherit money, and be tried for a crime. And despite his laudable actions so far, and his own protestations that he is human in all but body—is he human? I maintain he is inferior to humans in all mental respects. His so-called emotional reactions are all pseudo-human, mechanical, not real. Personally, I doubt if they exist at all!”
The commentator, signing himself Bart Oliver, left that damning indictment echoing like a challenge.
“You see?” said the official softly. “A government like ours must never run against public opinion. Washington won’t grant you citizenship.” Then he waved impatiently. “I’m a busy man. Good day, gentlemen.”
He should have added “—and Mrs. Link.” He had completely ignored the fact that she was a lady. A woman, a girl, as human as any housed in flesh instead of metal, because her mind had been patterned to a feminine scheme.
CHAPTER II
A Great Idea
BACK at his apartment, Jack shook his head again.
“No, I knew it wouldn’t work. Not that easily. In Washington, they’ll wrangle a while and then reject the application. They won’t want to set a precedent, or buck the public. Right, Tom?”
Tom nodded wordlessly, and there was silence in the room.
Wasn’t there some way, my thoughts asked? We two, the Adam and Eve of intelligent robots, were ready to become citizens. I was sure of that myself. Dr. Link, my creator, had set his heart on that the day he saw I was not merely a clever machine, but a thinking being.
Tom broke the silence. “Maybe we should take out the—” he hesitated, glancing at me—“well, the patent!”
“No.” My microphonic voice was firm. “The secret of the metal-brain is locked in my mind. I would trust no one else with it.”
Jack was suddenly fuming.
“That commentator, Bart Oliver! He doesn’t represent public opinion.
He just poisons it. Adam Link is inferior to humans, he says like a lordly judge—”
“Perhaps I am,” I said. “After all, I’m just wires and wheels. Metal junk strung together. Perhaps—”
But something had struck Jack, forcibly.
“Perhaps, nothing!” he interrupted. “There’s a way, by God. If we can get a tide of public opinion in your favor, Adam, we’d have a wedge in Washington.” He looked at me a moment. “Will you let us put you in the public eye?”
Jack went on eagerly. “Sports is what I mean. We’ll display your strength and skill in sports. And with it sportsmanship, determination, and what they call ‘heart’. All those human qualities are best brought out in sport activities. Adam, old boy, you’re going to make the headlines in a new way. What’s today—hah! The Indianapolis Memorial Day Race is next month. I have connections. I’ll get you in as an entry if I have to commit murder!”
Irrepressibly Jack made plans. His idea was sound. I would that way win human will and sympathy first, then official recognition.
THE Indianapolis racing classic took place.
The jam-packed stands blurred by, hour after hour, as I drove my special car around the oval track. Eve was at my side, as my mechanic, pumping oil by hand to the laboring engine.
We felt supreme confidence in ourselves. In my private car, a powerful one, I had often driven over a hundred miles an hour. I hit 160 here on the straight stretches, and not much less on the curves. I had no worry over a tire going and losing control. Electrons and electricity motivate my brain and body, give me speed and power of a superhuman degree.
There wasn’t any competition. I led the field. There wasn’t even danger, except twice when I overtook the racers so far behind, gaining laps. I swung past them one after another, timing the dangerous moments with hairline accuracy. I am a machine myself. Driving another machine is sheer child’s play.
“We will win, Eve,” I sang above the grinding roar of our motor. “They are so slow and weak, these humans.”
“Not all of them,” Eve said. “The man in car five—Bronson is his name, I think—has been taking curves faster right along, in the attempt to catch us.”
A great moment of danger came. One car skidded on a curve, cracking into another sideways, and both rolled over and over across my path. I was just passing the field again.
There was only a split-second of time. No human could have avoided crashing into them. Tires squealing, our car swerved for the only opening in the jam.
“Adam! The man—you’ll run over him!”
One of the unfortunate drivers had catapulted from his wrecked car in front of me. He might be alive or dead. If I hit him, he would certainly be dead.
The stalled car was in our way. I knew, in avoiding the man, I’d have to take my chances with this. I did what I could. When we struck, it was a glancing blow. Any human would have had the wheel ripped out of his hands. My alloy fingers tightened like a vice. The gears of my arms gave a screech of unyielding protest. I held firm. We went on, safely, except for two blown tires.
Stopping in the pit for a quick change of wheels, we went on to win the race, still far ahead. Bronson was second, breaking the track record himself in the magnificent attempt to catch us.
OIL-STAINED, grimy, so tired he could hardly stand, Bronson grinned at us. “Great race,” he said simply. “Better man than I am, Adam Link. You deserved it.”
Before the race he had scorned to consider us competition. Some of the other drivers, crowding around, muttered. Had the race been fair, since I won so easily?
“Shut up,” Bronson told them. “We had our laughs before we started, over Adam and Eve Link thinking they could win. A couple of tin monkeys, we called them. We got to take our medicine now. Besides, I saw him take a skid, to miss running over Henderson. Adam Link might have cracked himself up. He takes first money and no beefing.”
The crowd had taken the announcement of my victory in a dead, chilling silence. They were hostile. The announcer asked me to say something over the public-address system. I didn’t.
I handed Bronson the first-prize check. I didn’t need it; we had plenty of the money I had earned as a business consultant in the past.
Jack, on the judges’ stand beside me, nodded. “Take it, Bronson. You really won. There isn’t a driver on Earth could beat Adam Link.”
The crowd burst out in cheers, over this. I knew what it was called—sportsmanship. I had won a point, after all, in my campaign to prove I was worth human status!
Or had I?
That evening, the papers used 72-point headlines. ROBOT WINS CLASSIC. METAL MAN DEMON DRIVER. INCREDIBLE RECORD SET BY ADAM LINK. And more significantly—TIN MAN AND MATE STEAL SPEEDWAY CUP.
Under the latter heading, it said: “Why not run a man against a car? Adam Link was bound to win. It might h
ave been a fairer contest if Adam Link had gamboled around the track himself, machine against machine!”
More cutting was the column under Bart Oliver’s byline:
“Adam Link won the race, but not public acclaim. He tried to, by ‘magnanimously’ turning over the first-prize money to Bronson. Sportsmanship? I think we all see through it as a spurious act. He was told to do it, undoubtedly, by his manager. Adam Link himself would never have thought of such a human gesture in his cold, metallic mind!”
Bart Oliver had appointed himself my Nemesis. I could see that. He was ruthlessly determined to misinterpret everything I did, as so many others had since my creation. But now I had a truly formidable enemy, one who swayed large masses.
I wrote a rebuttal. “I, Adam Link, am a robot, but I have a human mind, not a cold, metallic one. Ever since my advent, certain yellow journals and their paid mouthpieces have dinned against me constantly. The latest is Bart Oliver. I wish to point out that he represents his own opinion, not everyone’s, if there is any fairness in human minds!”
It appeared in Oliver’s syndicated papers, under the heading: “Adam Link’s Manager Pens Rebuttal in Robot’s Name . . .”
CHAPTER III
Adam Link, Champion
STILL we went on with our planned course. Jack took me to Chicago, to the American Bowling Congress.
I entered the singles competition. As with the Speedway interests, the tourney officials eagerly accepted me. It helped their business. The place was packed. When my turn came, I picked up a ball. My metal hand is almost like its human counterpart, with articulate fingers and telescoping joints. I inserted my thumb and middle finger in the holes.
I stood for three seconds. In those three seconds, I had calculated mentally exactly how long the alley was. And how to make all the pins fall. A hit between the one-and-three or one-and-two pins would do it.