“Jasper Wilkins,” he says.
“Jasper Wilkins!” says the Professor, as though that was the finest name he’d ever heard. “Now, Jasper, are you sure you want to go two rounds with Battling Bolto?”
“He’s the country champion!” yelled his backers.
“Yep. Guess I do,” said Jasper. And they began to make a ring for us.
Well, I was just coming to life. All of a sudden I was suspicious that the Professor wasn’t going to tell anybody about my not being a robot. And I figured that going up against this Jasper Wilkins was pretty unfair. He was bigger’n me but I was wearing plysteel, thirty proof, and I had on gloves that would have gone through a hull. And I was trying to figure out what would happen if I called the Professor down when I felt somebody putting a great big pair of boxing gloves on me. And somebody else was shoving me from behind. And the Professor says sternly, in a monotonous voice, “Bolto, go in and fight, young man. Ugh.”
Right about then I started to say my piece, but this young Jasper Wilkins was eager. He let me have one that almost broke my neck and after that things got blurred.
The crowd kept screaming and the face of young Wilkins kept getting in the way of my punches and the ground shook and then there he was, down for the count before the first round was done.
His friends picked him up and the Professor started his talk. I was to hear that talk pretty often.
“Here’s five hundred dollars for the young man because of his pluck. Nobody can beat Battling Bolto. But Battling Bolto is only an oversize example of our wares. They are all reliable. They are all deadly. They do your work and fight your battles and slave for you twenty-four hours a day. Unless you have their code, they will not work for you nor move. Now step right up. . . .”
Well, he sold thirty robots. “There’s the directions. Take them into a field and practice pitching your voice and finally you will have them all at your command. First, set their receivers to respond and then master their actions. Don’t experiment near a crowd because they may go berserk until you know their management. There you are, sir. Cart away the box.”
The humanoids nailed on the lids and handed them out and then we were in the air again.
I waited in the passage behind the control room until the Professor came out.
“I quit,” I said. “Take me back where I came from or I’ll beat in your skull. I don’t play that way and I won’t ever again. Now do we understand each other or shall I argue it out in my own way?”
It would have been pretty simple to drive him through the floor with one blow on the top of his head. I wish I had.
“My valiant friend,” he said, “look before you leap—or I should say, beware of whom you seek to destroy. I am very much afraid that you were slow in understanding my explanations of your job. I told you all about it and it’s in your contract plain as day.”
“Just so, put me down where I can get passage home,” I said. “You’ve got plenty of robots. Fix one of them so it can box.”
“Alas,” said the Professor, “robots are not sufficiently well balanced to follow that manly art.”
“But you told those people back there— The robots you sold them are supposed—”
“Alas again, my handy smith, not only do those robots know nothing of boxing, they are woefully ignorant of other things as well.”
“But you said—”
“Friend, what I say does not alter the fact that we have just sold thirty empty shells. They do not work, neither do they spin. You made all there is to them. You should know.”
“Hey! The Galactic Police will hear of that!”
“In the years to come. But space is wide, smith, space is wide.”
A horrible thought hit me. “Those robots you sold on my own planet . . . were they . . .”
“Alas, ’tis true. They were but empty shells. And I fear, smith, that you delivered several yourself just before we left. So I shouldn’t think about going home just now.”
I was getting hotter than the tin suit made me. “How many did you sell back there?”
“Eighteen, my friend.”
“Give me the eighteen thousand and set me down so that I can go home and repay my friends!”
He thought about this for a while and then his face got bright. “Tell you what, smith. If you’ll just fight eighteen fights for me, I’ll pay you a bonus of a thousand dollars for every fight. Then you can have your wages and go. No one will have seen you. Only your home planet will suspect you and with their money refunded they will think you are at least a hero who has saved the day. That will give you ten thousand in wages, eighteen thousand in—”
“It would take me two years to earn that much in wages,” I said. “I won’t stay.”
“Ah, no. Your wages have just been raised. Now will you go back to your shop and let me to my own work?”
He left me. After a while I went back, took off the robot suit and picked up my hammer. He’d come over me again.
Well, I hate to tell of the next few months. We were in a close pack of stars and we could make a lot of stops and I sweated in the shop to keep up with the demand. I was ashamed of myself every blow I struck with my hammer, but what else could I do? I wasn’t going to be an exile forever and a smith that could make eighteen thousand on our planet in half a lifetime hasn’t been born, what with the galactic taxes and the tithe to the lord that owns the atomic launching site there. So I squirmed but I worked. And I cussed myself but I fought.
I could weep when I think of the poor country lads I messed up in the next few months. Having metal doesn’t completely protect you. You rattle around in it. And it’s sometimes so golblamed hot you could cry. So now and then I’d get jolted so hard I’d get mad and then they’d be a week bringing some kid around.
But I stuck it. I had myself kidded then that I desperately adored this Aimee and I was homesick for my own forge. And I battered away at the fake robots. And the Professor ballyhooed away at the hicks. And I pummeled all comers. And then we hit Mondyke.
Maybe you’ve heard of Mondyke. It’s a big planet, covered with grassland and lakes and no seas, and the corn grows about ninety feet high, more or less, and they’ve got a monopoly on yeastfood stocks over about five systems. They don’t grow any place but Mondyke and they swell up to a ton of food from a two-pound chunk, given water. Well, anyway, that’s what they told me.
So we landed there because the Professor figured this was a big haul. It was my seventeenth trip but he said that if we sold a hundred robots he’d call it square and I could drop off at the next stop beyond. Well, this suited me fine. I was all set to get back to Aimee and my forge and sextet horseshoes and I was really glad to land and see the initial spiel come off.
The Professor, he really laid the thing on. He let ’em have both barrels. He showed them a lot of electronic tricks and “robot parts” and then he come down to me, Battling Bolto.
Well, I’d never seen him come on it so heavy before. He let loose on the big mob that came out from the town like he was running for galactic tax collector. He promised them everything except heaven. And then he wound it up grand.
It was a beautiful day, the grass all green and a lot of fleecy clouds up above just like our planet, and women with picnic baskets and kids running around raising the dickens and men looking wise and explaining electronics to each other in terms that would sure surprise an engineer, and the Professor coming down hard about me. I can see it all like it was yesterday.
He had the humanoids in robot skins now and they were passing out literature.
“And Battling Bolto, ladies and gentlemen, is the supreme combat champion in all forms of warfare over anything which may be met in the entire universe!” He was safe there. The biggest animal they had on Mondyke was a stork. “And as a gratis demon
stration of his skill, ladies and gentlemen, Battling Bolto will guarantee to go two rounds with anything you can bring before him. Anything, ladies and gentlemen. Now, if there is some young man in the crowd who believes himself a master of robots and a terror to mere machines, let him step fearlessly forward now and challenge the title holder of the Universe in all forms of physical combat!”
A couple young bucks began to edge up, husky kids, one of them bigger than me, plenty strong from throwing tractors around. I figured it was going to be an easy fight. And then an old geezer in a straw hat comes up and holds a consultation with the Professor.
“I can’t wait long!” said the Professor in a loud voice.
“It won’t be long!” said the old geezer. And he goes back to his friends and they roar off in a truck. The Professor had no more’n started to fill in the breach when back they come.
The truck springs give a little and the next thing I knew comes a robot, walking heavy. He was about my height, but he had a lot more beam and head. He was a farm robot and as tough as space beef.
I started to protest but I caught the Professor’s eye. This was my chance. And around comes this here robot, walking slow. He give me the creeps and I all of a sudden saw how a lot of other guys had felt.
“This here,” said the old geezer for the crowd, “is a thirty-five-thousand-dollar utility Workster. He can wrastle horses if any durn fool’d let him. And I got me ten thousand dollars on the side that he can lick your chunk of scrap metal hands down in two rounds.”
“He has the offered prize,” said the Professor, sizing up this Workster. It was a new model, a kind that hadn’t been in circulation before. And it sure looked like it had good balance.
“Sir,” said the Professor, “the side bet is made. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the terror of the Universe, Battling Bolto, will meet his opponent fair and square and no holds barred. And we take no responsibility for damage to anything. So stand clear and make a ring and let the CHAMPEEEEEEN OF THE UNIVERSE swing!”
I sure didn’t like the looks of this but I stepped in anyway. What else could I do? This was going to be my last fight.
The Workster’s eyes kept flashing up and glowing and he creaked and clanked as he got his hinges automatically oiled. He looked pretty awesome, standing there, no soft spot anywhere to be seen. And then the Professor came down with the gloves.
“No you don’t,” said the old geezer. “This is a barehanded scrap and my robot needs everything he can get. Let’s go!”
The crowd backed him and the Professor gave me my phony command and I stepped up, looking cagey, trying to figure out how this here robot would go to it. And then, WHAM! I sailed backwards about twenty feet and hit hard enough to knock my teeth loose.
I got up groggy, listening to the crowd jeer. And this confounded robot was right on top of me, kicking!
I got up and I went down. I got up again, took a couple hard ones that dented my chest and stayed up. I spit out some blood and began to use footwork. And in about two minutes I found that this robot could do everything but dance. He couldn’t do that. And it cost him the fight. I could get back of him quicker than he could turn and I hit him until my arms were numb to my neck. And then his head came off.
I hit him until my arms were numb to my neck. And then his head came off.
It made a tinkly sound. Springs whirred out straight. Tubes popped as they blew. And there was an arc and a spiral of blue smoke out of his joints. He stood there, teetering. And then he went down like a pile of scrap metal falling from fifty feet.
“My robot!” wailed the old geezer. “It’ll cost ten thousand to put him together.”
If he ever finds the parts, I growled, mad.
“Now that this little exhibition has established the superiority of my robots—” began the Professor.
“Wait, wait!” said somebody on the edge of the crowd. And a big truck went off in a tear while a young guy came up and argued with the old geezer. Finally the old guy seemed to agree and they approached the Professor.
“We want another fight,” said the old geezer, “and Barney here has got another robot. If you’d care to make the wager . . .”
Professor McGowan did. The truck came back and I looked up from where I had been sitting, trying to look like a robot and still catch my breath, to see the most confoundedly big piece of metal I’d seen this side of a war tank.
This robot was not just big. He was a walking horror. He had spikes all over him.
“What is this?” cried the Professor angrily.
“This is an INDESTRUCTO dam builder,” said the old geezer jumping about. “It works underwater against currents and it drives piles with its fists.” He was capering about waving his hat. “You said anything. And we forgot all about our engineer corps machines. You’ll have to fight it. You said you would.”
Well, I felt pretty gray. This thing was really a robot. It was a pile-driving tank which put logs in place with one hand and drove them in with the other. But it had eyes and was self-animated and had treads. So there we were.
I was about to pull a blown-out-fuse trick when I caught a glare from the Professor.
The young guy—and I saw now that he had an engineer uniform on—was pointing me out carefully to INDESTRUCTO.
“Log. You drive. Log. You drive,” he was saying.
“Robot, you fight,” the Professor said to me.
They made the ring again. The thing’s treads sank in the soft grass and he churned at me. He was used to battle currents. Nothing could knock him off his feet. I was already numb from the first fight. But I started in there anyway. What could I do?
Well, I took a swipe at him from the side and he wheeled. I went around and took another swipe and he wheeled again. One hand was pawing out with yard-long fingers, ready to wrap around my body, and the other was a natural fist, weighing a couple hundred pounds, ready to come down on me when the fingers connected.
I kept going around back and hitting. It was like trying to knock an anvil in half.
It was such a pleasant day. And the crowd was so pleased. And the hand kept reaching for me and the fist stayed poised.
I wondered how proof I’d made my own headpiece. I began to question my own forge work. And I kept circling, kept hitting futile blows. And the time for the two rounds sped along.
Finally I figured I had my chance. I saw where the skull turret joined the body and I saw that it had some folds of metal to let it go up and down. If I dared get in and up that close I might possibly make one hard blow count. It would be like putting my fist through a half-inch of steel, but my fist was steel shod too.
So I dived.
So it caught me.
So the fist came down!
The only thing which kept me alive was busting three of its fingers off. But the hammer hit me a glance on the chest and then I knew no more.
I must have been flung a long way. Something like a billiard ball. And I must have hit the hull of the ship because there was a dent in it. But where I was it was cool and pleasant, out of the sun, and there I was content to stay.
Nobody had come near me, and the crowd was wild. I thought they were silly cheering a robot until I got to my elbows and looked between some legs. And there I beheld the strangest sight I ever hope to see.
A ten-foot robot was dancing around INDESTRUCTO like a foosha native around a missionary. My brains were beginning to straighten out a bit now. I had been partly conscious, enough so to hear the clanging steps of something coming out of the ship above me.
Somebody was leaping around watching and holding a sheaf of bills which looked like a bet big enough to buy a star. The Professor was bellowing commands into a funny box and the battle royal was raging.
INDESTRUCTO kept wheeling but the ten-foot giant kept
dancing. And every now and then the Professor’s robot would dive in and twist another piece of metal out of the engineer machine. INDESTRUCTO began to look like he’d been machine-gunned.
Pieces of turf were flying through the air. The place was torn up like it had been plowed. And the whir of those machines was so quiet under the scream of the crowd that it gave me the creeps.
And then the engineer pile driver, the late, lamented INDESTRUCTO, the victor over BATTLING BOLTO, tilted over and went down. One tread spun for a moment and then the ten-foot giant tore it off and threw it away.
The Professor barked new commands. The robot turned and clanged up the ladder and into the ship. The humanoids in their suits began to pass out the boxes. The old geezer sat down and began to mourn about how he’d mortgaged the farm, and I lay there and blinked.
After a while I got up and went into the ship. I walked stiff and it wasn’t an act.
The last of the boxes were sold. And the Professor was giving his final caution about training the robots in an open field first and some of the purchasers were trying to pry off the lids they’d just seen nailed on, and all in all, brothers, it was time to go.
“Sorry I lost,” I said to the Professor.
“Why, as for that,” that gentleman said, “I expected you would sooner or later. But you gave me a wonderful scheme and I had to have time to build some real robot fighters that I wouldn’t be in any risk about. So, my valiant smith, we part.”
“Wait a minute,” I yelled. “You can’t gyp me!”
“Can’t I?” he said.
“Those people out there would kill me if they knew. Look here, ‘Professor’ McGowan, I know what you look like and the Galactic Police will be pretty interested in an accurate description of you and your ways. You can’t get away with this. I’ll make you known to every planet in the whole Universe. I’ll see that you’re hunted down. I’ll—”
“Oh, will you?” he said. And he reached up to his face and he throws a spring catch and there I am, staring into a set of wheels and tubes behind the lowered plate. It gave me a terrible turn.
The Scifi & Fantasy Collection Page 71