by Earl
I unwittingly caused another car to run off the road once, though no one was hurt. The driver glanced casually at me while I was passing. Startled and unnerved at seeing an unhuman creature driving, he lost control. After that, I rode with curtains on the side windows, and confined my sight-seeing to the front windshield.
CHAPTER IV
Kay Makes a Confession
I SEE that I have been digressing again. I know why I am doing it. It is because I am almost afraid to finish what I started to write. But I must get to it, or this account will ramble evasively without end.
I must get back to Kay Temple and Jack Hall.
Not very long ago, we three as usual went out together, to a movie. I forget the movie. I forget everything except that for the first time, Jack seemed annoyed at my presence. I had seen his hand, in the dark theatre, steal toward hers, grasp it. She glanced quickly at me, then at Jack, slightly shaking her head, and withdrawing her hand. It was my presence that prompted her, not wishing to isolate me from a three-way companionship. Kay Temple is that thoroughbred sort. She wouldn’t hurt the feelings of anyone—even a metal man’s.
That night I spoke to Jack. We had dropped Kay off at her place. Jack and I, I might mention, had had rooms together all this time. He had insisted on it.
“Jack,” I began, and for once my words came haltingly. I didn’t know how much to intrude on his privacy. “About you and Kay—”
It was as though I had touched off a fuse.
“Never mind about that!” Jack snapped back, almost explosively. “Keep your damned tin nose out of—”
And then he changed, just as quickly. “Forgive me, Adam, old boy,” he apologized. “My nerves. Overwork, I guess.”
I watched him while he sat at the edge of his bed, dangling a sock in his hand. He was miserable. Suddenly he looked up.
“Adam, you’re my friend. Why should I hide it from you? I love Kay. I met her in a restaurant. Waitress. I set my cap for her, day after day. At last I got a date. I thought—well, never mind, but first thing I knew . . . bang! My swelled head changed to a swelled heart. That was over a year ago. I heard her story, admired her all the more, wanted to help her. She refused, of course, that way, though I wouldn’t have taken advantage.”
The words rushed out now, welling from within, and it hardly seemed the same debonair, cheerful, semi-cynical Jack I had known.
“I kept seeing her. I wanted to marry her. I proposed. She told me to wait, till we were both sure. And that’s what has kept me on edge, Adam. I think she cares for me, but I’m not sure. I’m just not sure. That’s the way it is right now, with me still waiting—and wondering. She, holding off for some reason. It’s not another man. She would tell me instantly if it were that.”
He was looking at me, then, with a half-smile.
“But I guess you don’t understand things like that, Adam. You don’t know how lucky you are, old boy, not to know the pangs of love and all that goes with it. At least when it turns out wrong. Damn, I wish I was a robot!”
He said such things disarmingly, without offense. But still he stirred a vague unrest in me. I had known most of the emotions you humans have anger, fear, dismay, sorrow, quiet joys. But what about this mighty, mysterious thing called “love” ? Love, more than anything, as I knew technically, was tied with strong bonds to the biological body. I had no biological body. Therefore I could never know love. Man I might be in all things save that. In that I was neuter. It was a world barred from me.
I tried to grasp how Jack must feel. Just what sort of emotional pain did he feel? But I couldn’t know. I could only judge, from the smoldering ache deep in his eyes, that he was suffering in some strange, sweet-sad way.
Jack laughed suddenly, still looking at me.
“Say, Adam, you’d have it easy. Just make another robot, give it the feminine viewpoint, and she’d have to take you, with no other choice!”
He laughed a little wildly, and slipped into bed.
I went to my room where, as usual, I prepared to spend the night reading. For a few minutes, I heard smothered chucklings from behind Jack’s closed door. I felt glad that his sense of humor had rescued him from his downcast mood. But somehow, what he had said wasn’t at all humorous for me. I did less reading that night than thinking—and queer thinking it was!
A FEW days later, it happened.
We had enlarged our offices, and Kay now had a separate office in which to work. We also had a boy for the filing. I had just taken care of one client, that day, sending him to Kay for a bill, and was interviewing another.
“Here are the data, Mr. Link,” said this man, technology manager of a food-products cannery. “Is there any way we can speed up our photo-electric process, which spots and takes out bad peas? We want faster production. The photo-electric people say it can’t be done. But I thought perhaps you—”
I looked at the pages of data, diagrams, complete mechanical outlay of highly-complicated devices. I absorbed it all within ten minutes. I took a scratch pad and scrawled figures, formulae, for another five minutes. I wrote a final formula on a separate sheet and handed it to him.
“Here it is,” I said. “You can increase the rate 25 per cent by using a piezo-electric crystal in the secondary transformer circuit.”
The man was amazed. The solution I had given clicked in his trained mind. “By God, that’s it!” he exclaimed. He looked at me wonderingly. “You’ve given me in fifteen minutes, by proxy, what might have taken months of experiment and research. Adam Link—” I cut off his enthusiastic eulogies. I had had so much of it from others. Besides, for the past eleven minutes, only half my mind had been on that problem. The other half had been on what I faintly heard going on in Kay’s office.
The previous client was still there, though he must have his bill by now. Like many another man, he had lingered, attracted by Kay’s loveliness. I barely made out some words of his. He was pressing her for a date which she had politely and patiently refused six times already.
I urged my own visitor out, told my office boy to keep the door to the outer waiting room closed for the time being, and stepped into Kay’s office.
The man, a big, broad-shouldered, moneyed executive, was leaning over her desk. He was handsome, and had probably succeeded with many a girl by refusing to be rebuffed at the first try.
“Now look here, gorgeous,” he was saying, in a half-wheedling, half-arrogant way, “you don’t know who you’re turning down—”
“I think she does,” I said, moving close. “And she could turn down a dozen like you, without any loss. May I ask you to leave—immediately?”
He left—immediately—for the simple reason that my hand on his shoulder was propelling him out of the door. I gave him an extra squeeze at the last, cutting off his shouted threats to sue me for assault.
I WENT back to Kay. “I’m sorry you were annoyed,” I said. “I should have come sooner.” Then, to lighten the moment, I added, “I really can’t blame the man, though, with a girl like you—”
“Adam!”
She just said the one word, staring at me in a strange way. It was the way she had been staring at me, watching me, surreptitiously, for long months.
But now her gaze was open, revealed. And I was suddenly frightened at what I saw in her eyes. I strode out.
But Kay followed me to my desk. “Adam,” she said, “I must tell you. I—”
I have no lungs or human-like throat with which to cough. But at times, a slight static charge issues from my interior, very much like a cough. I conjured one up now, with a swift mental order to my electrical distributor. It interrupted her.
“Kay,” I returned rapidly. “You’re a bit upset, I think. Don’t you want to take the afternoon off?”
“No, I want to talk to you. I must!”
“Then remember,” I returned rather gruffly, “that I’m a robot. A metal being, not a man of flesh and blood.” I looked at her for a moment. “Kay, let’s talk about Jack. He’s a fine
, young man, Kay. He has character. He—” This time she interrupted me.
“So do you have character, Adam. I described you once—big and strong, grave boyish face, and gentle, tenderhearted. Yes, you have more heart than many men I’ve known. It is a person’s mind that counts, not his physical body. Your mind, Adam, is that of a great man, and a good man. I love you!”
She said it quite naturally, quite calmly. She wasn’t hysterical, or wrought-up. She was in perfect command of herself. Her eyes were steady, but there was also a glow in them. A glow that seemed like a blinding light to me, and I had to turn my eyes away. “Kay, this is sheer nonsense—”
“No.” Her voice was clear, soft. She came close to me, placed a hand on my shiny chromium shoulder. “No, Adam. That’s the way it is. I feel more strongly for you than for any man I’ve ever met, even poor Jack—” What mad, incredible scene was this? I was confused, stunned, though I had been vaguely prepared. My mirrored eyes turned back to Kay Temple, drank in her beauty.
And at that moment, I hated my mechanical body. I never had before. I longed to take Kay in arms of flesh and blood and know the secret joys of human love. I hated my metal body now, despite all its strength and power, and lack of sickness, weariness and the other human ailments. I was only living half a life. I could only stand at the portal of greater things and glance within, never to enter. I could, in time, have the greatest minds of Earth look up to me, fawn on me as a giant of intellect. But I could never have a woman, not the poorest and meanest, look on me with eyes of love—
And yet, what about Kay Temple!
My mind staggered. This was madness. I arose, shaking off her hand, and stood at the window, with my back to her. I was actually afraid my metal face would show emotions I felt!
“Jack is waiting for you, Kay.”
I said it expressionlessly. I meant it for a rebuff. Almost as a gentle insult, scorning what she had revealed, not even thanking her.
She seemed not to take it that way. “I cared for Jack, still do. I might have married him, but for you.” Her voice was still clear, rational.
Poor Jack! It was I, then, who unwittingly stood between him and his happiness. He had saved me from extinction, solely out of goodness. And now I, in return, stood on his heart with two feet of cold, brutal metal.
What could I say? What could I do? And then it was so ridiculously simple that I laughed within myself. Almost, I had forgotten that I was a robot, not a man.
“But Kay,” I said, “granting all that you have said, what more is there to say or do? I am still a creation of wheels and wires, not the boyish-faced human you picture me as. I’m still metal, not flesh!”
Again I felt her hand on my shoulder, a sixth sense serving in place of feeling, for I have no sense of touch.
“Adam,” she whispered in my ear, “it is only the mind that counts, not the body. I want to be with you, always. I want to—”
“Kay,” I said slowly, and I knew then that if it had been possible for my metal and string throat to sob, I would have sobbed—“Kay, I’ve got to go now. I’ve an appointment—” The lie was absurd, and I knew that she knew it. Kay made all my appointments for me. She had looked after me like a mother . . . or—the thought swept me with a new wave of anguish—like a sweetheart.
But I turned and left. Left her sitting there looking after me with her hands folded limply on the desk. I knew without having to turn that she watched me leave, and there were tears in her eyes. They were tears that I should have been able to shed instead.
Then I got into my car and drove out to the quiet of the country, where I could think. For once even the metal meshed gears of Adam Link, Robot, felt the necessity of solitude . . .
HOURS have passed since I wrote this account. My mind is made up, though I know that it was made up long ago. There are some things that I realize are as inevitable for me as death is to humans. I know what I must do, and I am doing it.
Here on the dark teakwood table of my sitting room lie two letters and a telegram which will go before I do.
The telegram is to my cousin Tom:
Dear Tom: Tomorrow’s mail will bring you an accounting of all my money and holdings. I am going away somewhere alone—where not even you must know—and I may not come back. I want you to take this money and put it into a trust fund for Kay and Jack. For the rest I trust your judgment. I am grateful for everything you’ve done for me, and I hope that circumstances may some day allow us to meet again. Good-by—
The first letter—
Dear Jack: Perhaps Kay is near you as you read this letter. Wherever she is, go to her immediately, take her to City Hall. Marry her! Do that if you have to gag and bind her. Deep down in her heart there can be no other man for her but you. And to both of you, my deepest . . . love.
The other letter goes into my diary, together with this account, locked in vaults that are not to be opened for a year after my “death or destruction.”
It reads: These may be the last recorded thoughts of Adam Link. I am going away to a place that I have owned secretly for some time, a place that I have never mentioned and will not now. I may return, but whether in a year or twenty I cannot say. To that end I have arranged for all the supplies necessary to my existence to be brought, by devious and circumspect methods, to what will be my hermitage until I know better what I must do.
I know at last my full capabilities—and my weaknesses. The capacity for emotion, rooted in me by my creator, has again betrayed me, and this time with me it has added another victim. I fervently and devoutly hope that everything will turn out for the best. Unless I can return to life among humans without running the dangers of hurting them, perhaps it is best for me never to return.
Even now, you can see how humanly machine parts of me function. For there are implications here of suicide—and I admit them. I have thought of it. The cliffs and treacherous mountain passes have beckoned me before, promising me peace and tranquility if I would yield and jump into their embrace. But I don’t know. I don’t know. There is so much good that I can do. The harm must never happen again. I must never tell another half truth like the one in which I told Jack that there can never be another man for Kay but him. Not a man . . .
I am going away then, and I will not come back until Adam Link, the Robot, the machine—is truly a machine again.
VIA PYRAMID
Follow the Startling Chronicle of the Daring Men Who Map the Skies of Tomorrow!
BARONKHEE, Earth!
“Baronkhee” is the Venusian word of greeting, as nearly as we can render it in English.
Venus Expedition Number One resuming contact with Earth, via etherline radio. Operator Gillway at the keys. Your code contact was picked up clearly yesterday, so I assume this message will reach you, in turn. My ion-charger is still working, and half the batteries are at peak load.
You will probably never know how welcome your code-words were, after thirteen months of just the click signal, with the sun between our two planets. We had the same experience on Mars—Atwell, Greaves, Parletti, Markers and I—when we reestablished communication after a long Martian year. It is like breaking out of a grave. It is good to know that a whole world of our fellow men are thinking of us, hoping for us, cheering us on.
But Greaves is not at our side this time. He is dead, gone from us.
Well, the first thing you will want to know is what we think our chances are of getting back to Earth—the remaining eight of us. Secondly, how we survived these past thirteen months. My last message painted a pretty dark picture.
The circumstances thirteen months ago were as follows.
The highly-oxygenated air and saturated humidity had combined to eat through many of our sealed food containers. The swift-acting food mold, entering, had ruined these supplies. Two-thirds of our food stores were gone, at a stroke! And the other third under constant threat.
Second, the Venusian natives, at first friendly, had suddenly attacked, and very nearly dragged our ship over a c
liff to maroon us without hope. Only Domberg’s magnificent sacrifice of his life—dying on top our space ship and driving the natives away with the death-mold—had saved us from that extremity.
Third, when we tried the ship’s engine, we found the fuel so contaminated with water that it was useless in that form. We were marooned, for the time being, and faced with the double menace of the unfriendly natives and starvation.
Now, thirteen months later, the natives and the food problem have been solved, and we have high hopes of dehydrating our fuel. Thus the picture is considerably brighter. I will explain more fully tomorrow.
We are all in good shape, though this hothouse planet is not the best of climates. We are all lean and paleskinned, from lack of sunlight, and at times we’re quite irritable from the constant sticky humidity. Our skins have learned to sweat profusely, which helps some, but one and all we look forward to being back on Earth. Karsen’s stump, from the amputation of his hand by Parletti, is perfectly healed. He hardly misses it, he says. We all admire him for his cheerful acceptance of his handicap.
Venus, in a month, will again be at its closest to Earth. We hope to make a start before then. As on the Mars expedition, one of the things we miss more than we can say is music. Can you send us some? Even a dirge of practice-scales on the piano would sound heavenly to us.
FOUR Hundred Fifty-Eighth Day.
About the natives. You will note that I used their greeting—“Baronkhee.” They are friendly again. It happened this way.
After their unsuccessful attempt to wreck our ship, they left us alone, though their sailing vessels hovered offshore. Then, one day, a larger ship landed at our beach. A finned Venusian with a retinue approached our camp. He had a certain regal air, and was obviously their leader or king, come to see these strange creatures from the “sky world.”