Adam Link: The Complete Adventures

by Eando Binder

  I could picture them grinning at one another triumphantly. But I was grinning—in my mind—more than they, and for better reason.

  “Wonder if that Adam Link put him on the job?” mused Harvey Brigg’s voice. “Adam Link is supposed to be a mental wizard, robot or not—” There was just a shade of apprehension in his tone.

  “But he don’t compare with you, Boss,” Shane responded. “You’ve got twice the brains he has.”

  “I think you’re right, Shane,” Harvey Brigg agreed readily. “Four days from now his partner robot goes to trial. A little planning to pin it on the robot, and three men I had on the Black List were rubbed out. And who gets blamed? Who will take the rap? Not Joe and Lefty.”

  There was loud laughter for a moment. Then Brigg’s voice came again. “Eve Link, the Frankenstein robot, takes the rap. Read that book sometime, Shane. You’ll know why then, at the trial, the jury will slap a guilty verdict on the robot faster than greased lightning. Evidence pro or con won’t matter. It’ll be just that they’ll be ready to believe the robot did it. I had that all figured out, you see.”

  I had listened with riveted attention. Two things were clear: Harvey Brigg was a megalomaniac and second, he was dead right about the trial—or had been. I don’t know which burned in me stronger at that moment. Anger at his cold, deadly plan in involving Eve. Or singing triumph that his own voice on tape would betray him.

  The master-mind who had twice the brains of Adam Link spoke again. “Shane, you’re a smart boy yourself. But now about the kidnapping. Give me all the details.”

  Shane went into a recital of the kidnapping. It had been an efficient, cold-blooded job, taking a young woman away from her well-to-do husband. Then their discussion went into other channels—store robbery, protection fees, even the sale of drugs. Shane, I gathered as I listened, was the sole go-between for Brigg and his widespread “gang”. Brigg outlined certain methods of procedure, with a calm efficiency.

  As the minutes slipped by, I was amazed at the ramifications of his ring. I began to doubt he could be a human being. He must be a frightful monster, human in name only.

  The visitor left after two hours. I heard Brigg get into bed. I sat thinking. My mission was over. Eve was safe. But I thought of more than Eve. I thought of a city of humans preyed upon by this spider and his minions.

  There were four days left before the trial. I stayed for three in the attic of Harvey Brigg’s home. I did not need food or water. I did not get cramped muscles, sitting for long hours. I signaled Eve once and told her to tell Kay of my decision to stay, so they wouldn’t worry about me.

  No one disturbed me—except once. A servant was suddenly climbing the attic stairs. I had no chance to run for any item of furniture large enough to hide me. I was exposed to plain view, twenty feet from the stairwell. What could I do? I sat utterly still.

  It was a woman. She came up and glanced around, looking for something. Her face turned my way. I froze into complete immobility. Her eyes flicked past me, safely.

  I can offer a non-miraculous explanation. The light was dim. My absolute stillness must have deceived her into taking me for an inanimate object—perhaps a bundle of rags. No human being could have escaped. For no human can duplicate the rigidity of something non-living and non-breathing, as I can.

  As for not hearing me—my internal hum and jingling seemed loud in the confined attic—I knew she was hard of hearing. Brigg had revealed once, in the course of his conversations, that he picked his servants for their poor hearing, thus safeguarding himself from any eavesdropping by them.

  She went to a trunk, rummaged within, and left. I began to breathe again—no, sometimes I forget I am not human. I felt relieved, however.

  No other disturbance came, and I went on with my recording. During the day, Brigg was out much of the time. But often he was in, and would closet himself with Shane, discussing their sinister activities in business-like tones. All of this poured into the super-ear of my instrument, and from that device invisibly to the tape-recorder in Jack’s apartment. I had enough, in three days, to damn Brigg in the eyes of any court.

  On the third night, something significant came from below.

  Shane was there again. It was near midnight. They were discussing the kidnapping.

  “But he claims, Boss,” Shane was saying, “that he can’t raise more than $40,000 by midnight. He wants more time.” Harvey Brigg’s voice was adamant. “Fifty thousand dollars by midnight was our stipulation. Since he can’t, or won’t pay, his wife dies at midnight. Go to the shack now, Shane. At midnight sharp—unless our contact man comes with the money—tell the boys to bash in her skull with the metal bar.”

  I could sense that even Shane shuddered at Brigg’s utterly merciless tone. “But hell. Boss—”

  “That’s an order, you fool. Don’t you understand? This kidnapping doesn’t count so much. The killing will be pinned on Adam Link, the robot. When we pull other kidnappings, they’ll pay up promptly, thinking it’s the cold-blooded, ruthless robot from whom they can expect no mercy.”

  And not knowing—the thought drummed in my brain—that it was the cold-blooded, ruthless Harvey Brigg from whom they could expect no mercy.

  “I get it, Boss. It’ll make the other kidnappings a cinch.”

  “Get going,” snapped Brigg. “At midnight, remember.”

  At midnight, a woman was to die. I was the only one who knew of it. I couldn’t let it happen particularly since I would be blamed. I left the attic, where I had been for three days and nights. I moved as swiftly and quietly as I could, leaped from the porch to soft grass, and scurried behind a hedge. Shane’s car backed out of the drive and roared away with a clash of gears.

  I followed, with an equal clash of gears. For the first time in my two weeks of sleuthing, I let out my full running powers. I passed one late pedestrian. The man stopped stock-still, whirled to watch me, and then staggered to the curb and sat down, apparently sick. I saw that briefly over my shoulder. I might have been amused, except that my mission was so grim.

  I pounded after Shane’s car as it left the outskirts of the town where Brigg lived. Traffic was sparse as he passed into the countryside. Shane hit up a good speed. I ran along the concrete road’s shoulder, about a block behind Shane’s car, so that he wouldn’t glimpse me in his rear-vision mirror. Auto headlights momentarily lit me up—a human figure racing at better than 70 miles an hour. I don’t think the oncoming cars realized my speed. But the two or three I passed, going my way, must have. I can only surmise, as you can. what the drivers thought as what seemed a man over-hauled and shot past them, though their motors were roaring.

  I felt a certain exhilaration, using my full machine powers, after the days in the attic. I suppose it is something like a confined man feeling glad when he gets out and uses his muscles for a change. I raced along after the tail-light of Shane’s car, my internal mechanisms humming smoothly. Yet I am glad the pace did not keep up long. I hadn’t oiled and checked myself over for two weeks.

  Twenty minutes later Shane’s car slowed and turned down a rutty road that presently wound into an isolated woods. Finally it went down what was little more than a weed-grown trail, barely wide enough for the car. It stopped near an old shack, before which another car was parked. I crouched behind the trunk of a tree.

  Figures came out with guns in hand, greeted Shane, and they went in. It was one minute to midnight. I did not look at my watch to tell that. I have a sense of absolute time. I know what time it is at any second of the day or night.

  In one minute, a woman was to die.

  I crept to the shack door, placing my head against the wood to hear. I heard their voices.

  “No word from Slick, our contact man?” Shane queried.

  “Nope. The $50,000 didn’t come. What’s the boss’s orders, Shane?”

  He must have made a silent signal, perhaps with a little spark of pity for the woman who must be awake and listening. I heard the men grunt a little, and o
ne muttered, “Half a minute to midnight.”

  “Where’s my husband?” sounded a feminine voice, strained and half-hysterical. “You told me he’d be coming soon—”

  That was all I had been waiting for—the sound of her voice. Rather, its position. She was in the rear of the one-room shack. She should be safe from what would happen.

  Now was the moment.

  Within me, my distributor clicked over little automatic relays that released a flood of electricity through my steely frame. With one blow of my fist I splintered the door in half. I sprang into the room.

  Five startled men jerked around. One was in the corner, just picking up a metal angle-iron, ready to crash it down on the skull of the young woman lying bound on a rickety couch. Four pairs of eyes popped, for, with the exception of Shane, they had all seen me before. They were the four who had met at the warehouse.

  “God Almighty!” gasped one. “It’s the dick we pumped full of lead—”

  Their guns barked immediately. I walked straight into the hail of lead. I strode for the man with the bar, jerked it out of his hands, bent it into a loop. Somehow, I had to do that first. It was the instrument of murder which was to have pinned the deed on me.

  Then I grabbed the man’s gun. He had just fired pointblank at my chest. I crushed it in my hand and flung the pieces at the others. I went for them, but they had stopped firing. They stood like frozen images, faces dead white. The fear in their hearts shone from their blood shot eyes. Who was this man who could not be killed?

  I stood in the center of the room, defying them.

  Shane deliberately raised his gun and aimed for my head. I dodged the bullet, moving my head a split-second before his finger squeezed the trigger. A shot in my eyes would do damage. Shane shot again at my head. Again it thudded into the wall beyond. It was like an act in a strange drama. Shane shot at my chest, still with that slow, paralyzed incredulity. The slug spanked with a metallic clang. A dawning look came into his face.

  “Cripes,” he whispered. “It’s Adam Link.”

  With shrieks, they scrambled for the door, clawing at each other to get out. I let them get into their car, outside, then grasped the bumper and overturned it. They piled into Shane’s car and I overturned that, spilling them out. They ran for the woods.

  CHAPTER 14

  Human Monster

  I let them go. I had no wish to harm them. Poor misguided wretches, they were only pawns in the horrible game played by Harvey Brigg. He was the man my slow anger was directed against.

  I went into the shack. The woman, who had fainted during the battle, was just opening her eyes. She did not seem any too reassured now, though I had routed her abductors.

  “Who are you” she quavered.

  “A detective,” I said. If I had said Adam Link, her already strained, haggard mind might have snapped completely. As it was, when I snapped her cords apart like flimsy cotton and picked her up with the ease of a little doll, she gasped. I carried her to Shane’s car, retrieved it from the ditch, and drove off.

  “Where do you live?” I asked, as I turned on the highway.

  She gave me the address. “You’ll be home safe in nineteen minutes,” I told her.

  She smiled then. Perhaps her feminine intuition told her I was a friend. A moment later I saw her head back against the cushion. She was sleeping as peacefully as a baby, Good thing, perhaps. I drove that nineteen-minute stretch to town at a wild pace that would have thrown her into hysteria again. Wild? My driving, at ninety an hour, is safer than that of any human at twenty.

  She was able to walk up the steps of her home, holding my arm. She fell into the arms of her husband, both choking in joy. I left. I wasn’t needed any more. In Shane’s car, I drove toward Jack’s apartment.

  Everything had turned out splendidly. I congratulated myself. Tomorrow was Eve’s trial. In Jack’s apartment was the evidence that would free Eve and convict Harvey Brigg. His treacherous ring would be broken.

  I called Eve on the radio-telepathy, telling her the wonderful news. I had not wanted to make any false promises till now, when I was sure of myself. She interrupted me, excitedly.

  “Adam! Why haven’t you contacted me sooner? Jack and Tom have been hoping to get in touch with you, through me. Tom was just in my cell this evening again—”

  “What’s wrong?” I snapped. “Didn’t the recording come through?” It was the only thing I could think of. Yet it couldn’t be that. I had made thorough tests before taking the apparatus to Brigg’s home. But fool, I told myself, why couldn’t I at least have checked with Jack? At times, you see, I have quite human failings and lack of reasoning.

  “Yes, most of it,” Eve returned. “But the first part, three days ago, came through with lots of static. Tom says the voices are so distorted that it won’t hold in court.”

  “The first part?” I went a little cold. “That was the part where Brigg revealed his three murders pinned on you. Eve, what else did Tom say?”

  “Tom is worried. He says that although he has enough to indict Brigg on almost everything else, he won’t be able to clear me in time. Brigg will fight his case with powerful lawyers. In the meantime, my trial will have to go on and—well, Tom won’t say any more.”

  I was stunned. I knew what it meant. Eve tried, convicted, and executed long before Harvey Brigg’s legal defenses could be battered down. Without that vital bit of dictaphone evidence, destroyed by static, I had gotten nowhere.

  Her telepathy-voice came again. “Adam, I’m so lonesome for you. I want to come to you. There is no hope now anyway—”

  “Eve, no!” My thoughts crackled. “Eve, you must stay there. Don’t despair, darling. There is still a way—”

  I clicked off. I wrenched the car around in the street on two wheels for a U-tum. I arrived at Brigg’s home in a few minutes. I strode up the front steps to the door, rang the bell boldly.

  The servant who opened the door said, “Come in. Shane.” I had arrived in Shane’s car. But in the hall light, he started. “You’re not Shane. Who are you? What do you want?”

  “I want to see Harvey Brigg,” I said.

  “You can’t—”

  I pushed him aside as though he were a rag dummy and strode for the room I knew to be Brigg’s den—or lair. I yanked open the door, walked in.

  Brigg looked up from a desk. I was as startled as he. I had expected to see a depraved looking man. Instead he was tall, upright, with smiling features and straightforward blue eyes. No one would suspect him for a master criminal—as no one had.

  He frowned. “Haven’t I told you men you must never come to see me personally? Only Shane is allowed—”

  “I’m not one of your men, Harvey Brigg,” I interposed. “I’m your enemy. I know you for the utter scoundrel you are. You gave the orders that murdered Deering, Pucelli and Unger. Write out and sign a confession to that effect immediately, absolving Eve Link.”

  Brigg’s blue eyes had narrowed.

  “So Adam Link’s detectives figured it all out? But how foolish to come here for my confession. You don’t think I can be intimidated like a schoolboy?” An amused smile hovered over his full lips.

  “You will sign that confession or—” My dry mechanical tones hid the deadly hiss in my meaning. I took a step forward.

  “It would interest you to know that my servant—or bodyguard—has you covered.” Brigg nonchalantly waved in back of me.

  I looked. The servant-bodyguard I had swept past was calmly leaning in the doorway with a gun pointing at me.

  Just as calmly, I spoke. “At your shack, a half-hour ago, your kidnappers emptied their guns at me. If you look close, you can see the holes in my suit.”

  I held out my palms, where the plastic had been worn off, exposing the telescoping joints of my metal fingers. I also deliberately clawed at the plastic of my face. The seeming flesh came away in rubbery shreds. There was no blood. The false face fell away to reveal my true one of featureless metal.

  “
I am Adam Link,” I said simply.

  The two men recoiled as if an atomic bomb faced them. Then the bodyguard’s gun hissed, with a silencer on it. Five slugs made five new holes in my suit. The sixth, aimed at my head, thudded into the wall beyond, as I dodged. The thug stared for a moment longer, then bolted with a womanlike shriek from a cowardly soul.

  I banged the door shut and faced Harvey Brigg. He was trembling like a leaf.

  I spoke at some length.

  “Your career is over, Harvey Brigg. I have a dictaphone record of all you and Shane have said in the past three days. But to save Eve Link, my metal mate, I want your written confession for the three murders. The three murders for which, all through the city, they are yelling, ‘Frankenstein’ at her.”

  I glared at him. My flat phonic voice showed nothing of the emotion I felt as I went on.

  “Eve a Frankenstein monster? You, Harvey Brigg, are the Frankenstein monster, created out of the rottenest of human thoughts and aims. And it is you who wear a mask, not I. I have more right to cover myself with human-looking camouflage than you have to hide behind your screen of uprightness. You, Harvey Brigg, are more of a monster than I or my Eve could ever be.”

  I leaned over his desk. I placed paper and a pen before him. “Write,” I commanded. “Write the words I dictate. ‘I, Harvey Brigg, confess to planning and ordering the murders of—’ ”

  He made no move to comply, just sat there staring at me with staggered shock in his face. He grabbed for the telephone suddenly. I snatched it away, ripped out the wire. I reached over, grabbing his left wrist. “I am strong,” I said. “I am a machine. I have never before taken the life of a human. I am prepared to tonight, if only to rid the world of you.”

  The wrist made a little snapping sound suddenly. I had not meant to do it. I had forgotten my powers.