Adam Link: The Complete Adventures

by Eando Binder

  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, I 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 bums 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 threaten
ing 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 I 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 underderstanding—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 halftruths. 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 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 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.”

  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 court-house, 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 and 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.