by Eando Binder
I had seen the other bowlers take a run, prior to casting the ball. I needed no run. I stepped to the foul-line, my metal feet clattering loudly against the hard floor. I swung my arm back, then forward, with my sharp mechanical vision on the one-three pins.
The ball sped straight and true, for a strike. I had used such force that three of the pins flew into the next alley. Thereafter I toned down the speed. Twelve times the ball rolled down, for strikes. It was simple. The crowd watched in breathless wonder.
“A perfect game!” Jack yelped. “The first time you ever bowled and you make a perfect score!”
On the spur of the moment, he added: “Adam Link will now try to bowl two more perfect games, ladies and gentlemen!”
“Jack,” I protested to him in a whisper, “there’s no need for that. No need to flaunt my powers.”
“Publicity!” Jack whispered back. “Or can’t you do it?”
He was suddenly a little appalled at what he had so blithely announced. No human bowler had ever scored three perfect games in a row.
He breathed a little easier as I rolled another perfect game. Straight as an arrow the ball always went, for the one-three pocket. To me, it is as ridiculously easy as a cannon always casting its shell in the same place.
ON the last game I had Jack hang his hat in front of my eyes. Thus I rolled blind. But, standing in a certain position, my rolls were just as accurate, so long as I did not move.
But when the last ball sped down the alley, a yell went up.
Jack took his hat from my eyes, and I saw one pin still remained standing. It was the ten pin.
“Adam Link,” said a bowler who had bowled on the adjoining alley, “you were ‘tapped.’ ”
“Tapped?” I queried in puzzled tones.
“Yes. Fate does that to all bowlers. The ball hits the pocket for a perfect strike, but by the merest of margins, the pins do not hit each other properly, and one pin remains standing in defiance of all the laws of motion.”
But nevertheless, with a score of 899, I was Adam Link, bowling singles champion of the world.
I refused the cup. I was satisfied to be the uncrowned champion. Again, as at the Speedway, the crowd cheered this as a gesture of sportsmanship.
“Have you anything to say—to your public?” asked one of the reporters covering the tournament.
I caught instantly that term “to your public.” Was I winning a permanent place in the public consciousness—as a personality?
“I have only one thing to say,” I returned. “I wish to become accepted as a human being, not as a robot. All my thoughts and reactions are human.”
“Boy, that’s news!” yelled one of the reporters. “Metal man claims he’s sensitive soul underneath it all.”
It was a rather heartless thing for him to say. The other newsmen caught their breaths. You could say something like that to a well-known man who was used to public ribbing. But could you say it to an enigmatic being of hard metal who had the strength of ten men in one arm? One or two men involuntarily stepped back.
“Yes,” I said. “I bruise easy but I heal quick.”
My flat mechanical tones sound the same no matter what I say. It was seconds before my repartee caught.
“My God,” said the reporter, grinning. “Adam Link has a sense of humor!”
I PULLED Eve to my side, as more pictures were taken. Eve femininely wiped away an oil-stain at my hinged shoulder, and turned her shinier side to the lens, to look her best. I think the reporters recognized it for the eternal woman, robot or not.
As I turned away, I accidentally struck one of them in the ribs, knocking his breath half out.
“Oh—pardon me,” I said quickly. He seemed still more startled at the words. Courtesy from a robot!
Something more significant occurred as we left the place. A black-haired man with bushy eyebrows came up.
“I put some heavy money on you, Adam Link. You came through for me. I bet two to one you’d cinch the singles championship. Made up for what I lost at the Speedway, betting against you. Just between you and me, what’re you going in for next?”
He was holding a wad of thousand-dollar bills in his palm, surreptitiously.
I pushed the bribe away, immediately comprehending. “You mean you want to know what I expect to win in next? So that you can make money unfairly?”
Jack pushed in front of me. “Look, Brody,” he said icily. “You can bet as you want. We’re not selling anything. Understand?”
Jack pulled me away. “Jim Brody,” he explained. “Big betting-combine behind him. He was probably figuring on buying an interest in you, or wanting to fix things his way. We’re having nothing to do with that sort of thing.”
“Can I print that?” One of the reporters had been within earshot. “I won’t mention Brody’s name. Jobs are scarce! But I’ll play up Adam Link’s honesty, turning down a bribe.”
“Good,” Jack said eagerly, ready to follow any little advantage. “Play it up. I won’t tell any of the other boys. Scoop for you and your paper.”
THE sport headlines the next morning ran through their usual variations. ADAM LINK BOWLING CHAMP. STEEL HERCULES ALLEY KING. METAL MAN UNBEATABLE.
I didn’t like this. “My physical prowess is being displayed, not my human qualities. Maybe we’re doing this wrong, Jack.”
“Are we?” Jack queried. “Read the texts.”
I noted that the incident was mentioned where I bumped the man and said “pardon me.” Also the rejection of the cup—sportsmanship again. I was quoted for my wish to be thought of as a human. I was given credit for a sense of humor, with my quip. Eve was mentioned as “primping” before the camera, like any human girl. And most important, the following, by the reporter who had overheard.
“Adam Link isn’t human. He turned down a bribe!” After detailing the incident, the writer finished more seriously: “Honesty is a basic human quality. If nothing else, Adam Link has that.”
“You see?” Jack said. “Sports are a perfect medium for bringing out things like that. In contrast to your tremendous strength and skill, the human things stand out like white against black.”
I was not as confident as he was, especially when the evening papers came out.
Bart Oliver’s syndicated column said:
“What a cheap way for Adam Link and his sponsors to attempt to show he has integrity! The whole incident was very likely a stunt, bribe and all. Adam Link, as a mechanism, knocking down pins like a machine-gun, is a marvel. But Adam Link as a human being, turning down a bribe, cracking wise, and saying ‘pardon me’ humbly, is an utter myth. A phonograph could do the same.”
I should have known my singling out of Bart Oliver as an example of yellow journalism would increase his enmity. I began to see my campaign had only begun. That I would not easily be accepted as a human in mind, though a monster outwardly.
Jack was furious, of course. But then he shrugged.
“We’ll go on. Slow but sure, public opinion will swing our way, in spite of his kind. We’ve got to force the issue, through publicity. Let’s see—there’s a tennis meet next week. How are you at that, Adam, old boy?”
There was a knowing smirk on his face. He had played with me.
CHAPTER IV
A Challenge
I WILL pass over sketchily the many following events. We barnstormed the sports world. In the tennis matches, I won against the highest-ranking player in straight sets.
In golf I achieved a score of 49 on a par-72 course. Three times I drove from one green to another for a hole in one. The rest of the time I landed the ball within a few feet of the cup. An expert golfer takes account of the wind, when he swings his club. But he doesn’t see clearly, in his less mathematical mind, a graph showing the exact course the ball must follow through the air. Nor is he able to make allowance, as I did, for the differences in air density as the ball arcs up and then down again.
In archery after a few trials to acquaint myself with the weapon,
I was able to split one arrow with another, like the legendary Robin Hood.
In skeet-shooting, I ran an unblemished score to 500 and gave it up as a waste of ammunition, for I saw I would never miss.
In weight-lifting, I hoisted 5,000 pounds a foot high. Eve and I tossed a thousand-pound dumb-bell back and forth like a ball.
At a track meet, in an open-air stadium, I ran the hundred-yard dash in 5.4 seconds. But Eve did it in 5.3. She is a little quicker than I at the start. I recall the papers playing it up, banteringly, as a reversal of masculine superiority.
We ran the mile in 93.28 seconds. We set a high-jump “record” of 10½ feet, and a broad-jump of 41 feet. In the latter event, we did not dare exert our full powers. When we land our 300 pounds of weight, it jars through our whole mechanism, threatening to disrupt vital parts. As it was, Eve went head-over-heels, cracked her skull-piece against the ground violently, and was “unconscious” for five minutes. I was frantic till she came to and answered the endearments that come as naturally to me as to any man seeing a loved one hurt.
“Is Adam Link really human in mind?” commented one paper over that. “He all but wrung his hands while his metal mate lay knocked cold.”
“Another spurious reaction,” wrote Bart Oliver. “His ‘heart’ is an electrical distributor, giving off sparks of electricity, but certainly not of human emotion.”
And so it had gone all along, pro and con. Was Adam Link human? Or was he simply a thinking engine? And always the yellow journals, led by Bart Oliver, maligned me. Branded me with such epithets as unhuman, subhuman, pseudo-human.
WITH his flair for the spectacular, Jack managed to stage an exhibition baseball game, the proceeds for charity. The pitcher for one team was listed as Adam Link, the catcher Eve Link. The rest of our team were minor-leaguers. The opposing team were of major-league all-stars.
“Have you ever pitched before?” they asked me.
I shook my head.
“We’ll murder you!” they predicted boisterously.
I was a little startled till I realized it was part of baseball jargon.
The first man up waited confidently. They knew of my machine-strength, and success in all other sports, but baseball was different. I was against a skilled, powerful team. I sped the first ball down. Too low, it was called a ball. The second was too high. The third too wide.
But then I got the idea, and shot the fourth ball straight over the plate. Crack! It went into center field. Luckily, it was caught. The second man up watched two of my pitches go straight over for called strikes, then swung at the third. Like a bullet, it came at me and struck my frontal plate with a resounding clang. It might have killed a man. It bounced up from me and came down in my hands. Two out. The batter, having rounded first base, turned back, disgruntled. Any human pitcher would have been forced to dodge the ball and let it go into center field for a hit.
The crowd was roaring. Adam Link could be hit! He was not so invincible in baseball as in all else.
The third man up crashed the first ball over my head. That is, it would have gone over my head except that I leaped up ten feet and caught it in my left hand. The first half of the inning was over. The major-leaguers, passing me on the way to field, grinned.
“We’ll bust you wide open next inning!” they cheerfully informed me. And this time I knew they didn’t mean wrecking my metal body and strewing its parts around.
AS our side, at bat, went down in one-two-three order, a voice called me from behind the dugout, where I sat with Eve and Jack. We approached the man.
“Brody!” said Jack. “What do you want?”
The gambler’s beetle-brows were drawn together in a frown. He addressed me. “Look here, you going to win this game or not? The way you’re starting, they’ll run up a score next inning. And your men won’t get a run from their pitchers. Bets have been hard to get except at ten-to-one. If you lose, I’m cleaned!”
“So what?” Jack snorted, stalking away.
I thought of deliberately losing, to teach Brody a lesson. But I didn’t. The first inning had been experimental. Now I knew the exact range of the plate, the behavior of a ball in flight, the timing of their swings.
I looped my arm around. The ball spanked into Eve’s hands almost instantly. I don’t think the umpire really saw it, but he sensed it had cut the heart of the plate, and he called a strike. Again the ball whistled down. On the third throw, the batter bewilderedly swung. The ball was in Eve’s hands before he even started the bat around. The two following men swung courageously, but belatedly. It was speed they had never seen before.
Thereafter, they went down in one-two-three order, each on three pitched balls. With their slow reflexes, they had no chance. It would be a no-hit game. Eve and I came to bat in the third inning. Swinging experimentally at the first two balls, I sent the third one into the center-field bleachers for a home-run. Eve duplicated my feat. We repeated in the sixth inning, pounding the balls out of the park entirely.
The game was a farce. While I pitched, the men back of me sat and lay on the ground, with nothing to do. They laughed and made biting remarks to the futilely-swinging All-Stars. I could sense tempers flaring. At the end of the sixth inning, thoroughly humiliated, the All-Stars attacked their taunting rivals.
And they attacked me.
“Damned tin gorilla!” I heard, and then bats were pounding at me from all sides. I had heard baseball players were rough and ready men. But they actually had murder in their eyes, splintering their wooden clubs against me. One crack against my skull made me reel.
“Stop!” I bellowed. I wrenched a club out of one man’s hands and snapped it in half, in my hands.
THEY all saw. Anger went out of their eyes, and fear came in. They backed away.
“No, I won’t touch you,” I told them quickly. “But you’re poor sports.”
“Poor sports!” shrilled back one man. “We don’t have a chance against you. You’ve just been showing off your cheap strength, you tin sport!”
That epithet was singularly appropriate, from their viewpoint. That was all it had meant to them! Cheap exhibitionism, rather than strength and skill under the control of a humanlike mind. They looked on me more or less as a dancing bear or remarkable puppet, rather than a mental human! I looked at Jack. Our campaign was backfiring.
“Yes,” agreed another voice. “You’ve been trying to prove you’re a human being, Adam Link. All you’ve proved is that you’re a machine!”
It was not a baseball player who spoke. Part of the crowd had swarmed onto the field. Among them was a slouching figure in a black fedora hat, with a sharp nose and cynical eyes. He stepped forward.
“Bart Oliver!” Jack said in recognition.
This was the man who, more than any other, opposed me. Who had taken it upon himself to deny me human status, like a one-man Vigilante Committee. He had led the yellow journals like a pack of wolves after me. I looked upon him as you would look upon a man who tried to run you down with a truck.
He was staring at me with deep interest, his first sight of me at close range. “I came here,” he explained, “to look you over. I think it’s about time we met. What’s your game, Adam Link? What are you after?”
“Game?” I asked.
“Don’t act innocent,” he drawled cynically. “You’ve been trying to display human qualities. Why?”
“Why don’t you lay off him, Oliver?” snapped Jack. He was warning me with his eyes not to answer.
But I did. I decided to chance all on a direct plea. I addressed them all, players, reporters, crowd. And therefore the world.
“Listen to me. I have tried to show, through sports, that beneath my machine-power are the human things. Eve and I are as human as any of you here or elsewhere. Our kind can be useful, in industry, as thinking machines. As pilots, drivers, laborers, mechanics and in the laboratory. Robots will do only good, never harm. I swear it. But future robots must not be slaves. I am the first of the robots.”
&
nbsp; I looked around at the intent crowd.
“I want to become a citizen,” I finished.
The human faces before me were stunned. It was my first public utterance to that effect. They looked at me queerly, as though the thought were inconceivable. Just as Dahlgren had looked. I suppose the effect was something like a car or animal asking for citizenship.
Bart Oliver seemed less startled than the others.
“I thought so,” he murmured. He swung on the crowd too. “Adam Link wants to become a citizen; and to vote. But in the first place, he hasn’t proved he’s entitled to human status. I still claim he’s inferior to humans in all factors—even physically!”
He went on to explain his astounding statement.
“Under suitable handicaps, a human will beat Adam Link. Suppose, for instance, that he ran a really gruelling race, like a cross-country run, without stopping for repairs, and with a governor within him to keep his speed at ten miles an hour. Would he win? Would he possess enough determination and courage to stick to his task?”
My phonic voice came out quickly.
“I accept the challenge!”
CHAPTER V
The Race
TWO weeks later, I was at the starting line with five long-distance runners. Eve checked me over carefully. Fresh battery, central distributor sparking evenly, all rivets and bolts tightened, joints oiled. I was ready.
Jim Brody, the gambler, approached us before the start.
“You going to win, Adam Link?” he asked me, with all the querulousness of a child.
I answered truthfully. “I don’t know. If I break a leg cable, I lose, under the rule of no repairs.”
Brody looked at me speculatively. “I’ve made some money on you, Link. The odds are ten-to-one that you win, because you won in everything else. Suppose you lost? And suppose I collected ten for one, betting against you? I’d make a mint. And you can have fifty per cent—”
“Damn you, Brody!” I said. It was the first time I’d ever used one of the swear words you humans do. I used it because it was the only way to make myself clear. “I’m going to try my best to win!”