“I don’t agree,” Ralph said, trying to keep his voice steady. He knew he was fighting for his life now.
“Why not?” Stanley Lang’s grey eyes glinted at being contradicted.
“Because a human brain, even detached from the body, has the power to reason. Give it an indestructible housing, like that of the robot, and it will master the world!”
Stanley Lang smiled. “You’re right, of course; but I forgot to mention a point. If a capsule of negative energy—or insulation if you prefer it—be imbedded in a certain area of the brain the power to reason is destroyed! There remains only blind, implicit obedience with all initiative gone for ever, or at least until the capsule is removed.”
“But good God, man, you wouldn’t dare to—”
“I’ll dare anything to succeed, Ralph—understand that! I’ll dare anything to show meddlers what it costs to balk me!”
“But—supposing you did get away with it,” Ralph went on urgently; “it would only be for one robot. You couldn’t supply them by the thousand with human brain units.”
Stanley Lang was silent, staring pensively at the robot.
“That,” he said slowly, “is a problem for the future, and I have no doubt of my ability to solve it.” He turned back to the table suddenly. “But you see what I propose doing to you, don’t you?” He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. “Think of it, Ralph! Your brain inside this robot, and nobody knowing it except me! The first of the robots—Ralph Marson! Isn’t that good, eh? Isn’t it? And your worthless body destroyed by electricity down to the last shard of bone! And me with your signed legal exoneration of all blame. And Enid…”
Stanley Lang dwelt on her name thoughtfully, grinned as he saw Ralph’s powerful arms strain uselessly against the straps.
“Stan, for God’s sake, come to your senses! You’ve gone stark mad!”
“Mad? No. I’m simply achieving an end, and using the man who called himself my friend for the purpose.”
“But, Stan—”
Ralph’s words were cut short as an anaesthetic cone was rammed down over his face. Stanley Lang waited, watching, no sound in the pin-quiet laboratory save his own harsh breathing and the rasping sighs of Ralph as he relaxed into unconsciousness.
* * * *
Ralph Marson stirred dully, as though rising from a deep and nightmarish sleep. He moved his legs—or at least he intended to do so—but instead it seemed to him that his limbs were encased in plaster-of-paris. They moved certainly but with laborious effort. And what had gone wrong with his eyes? Everything was savagely, glaringly sharp, the clear-cut detail only possible to faultlessly ground lenses. And his ears! How noisy everything seemed—
“Stand up!” commanded a harsh voice.
Ralph obeyed, with immense effort, and stood motionless. Only dimly, because the brain capsule was rapidly destroying the powers of memory and initiative, could he remember what had happened. Something about a robot, hadn’t it been? Ah! Even that slipped from his grasp as he thought of it.
He started to ask a question, but the words simply would not form. Dumbly he stood at attention, staring at the strong, resolute face directed towards him. He seemed to recall having seen it before somewhere.
“You will take your orders from me. Understand?”
“I understand,” Ralph said, wondering why he should be able to speak when ordered to do so, yet not of his own volition.
“You are marvellous!” Stanley Lang breathed, studying him. “The masterpiece of the age! And I made you…!”
He broke off and looked up sharply as the door opened. His face lighted in grim pleasure as a slender girl in a brown costume, with chestnut-brown hair poking under her saucy hat, came in.
“Any admittance?” she asked uncertainly. “Clements let me in and said it would be—”
“Yes, yes, it’s all right,” Stanley Lang nodded. “But Clements takes too much upon himself. Had you come a little earlier you might have been in danger, might have upset a vital experiment.”
Then as Enid Massey looked awkward, Stanley Lang added decisively, “I shall get rid of Clements, and that nosy old housekeeper. I shall replace the pair of them with—it!”
He nodded to the robot and Enid looked at it earnestly, then back to Stanley Lang’s openly gloating face.
“But, Stan, it doesn’t work! You admit that yourself— And anyway, I’m not very much interested in it. I only dropped in to see if you know where Ralph is.”
“Ralph?” Stanley Lang looked at her sharply. “Why should I?”
“Well, he rang me up this evening to say you had something important to talk over with him—had just rung for him to come over. So naturally I came on here as the time had got on. You see, he was going to keep a supper date with me.”
“Oh, he was?” Stanley Lang looked thoughtfully at the girl as he saw her questioning eyes upon him.
“Has he left, or what?” she asked finally.
Stanley Lang’s eyes turned to the robot. He spoke in a voice that was half to himself.
“I rather think, Enid that Ralph has kept his last supper date with you, and spoken with me for the last time. It’s a horrible, deadly business is science…”
Enid stared at him. “But—but what on earth are you talking about, Stan?” She suddenly gripped his arm fiercely. “Stan, what do you mean? Where is Ralph?”
Stanley Lang turned to face her. She read nothing of the deceit and treachery in his grey eyes.
“When you arrived I mentioned a dangerous experiment, Enid. I said it had just been completed. I meant it. I called Ralph here tonight to help me with the final details—”
“Well?” Enid demanded, as he stopped. “Go on!”
“His body was—disintegrated—”
The girl turned away in dumb anguish, groping for a chair.
“I—I remember Ralph telling me something about an experiment,” she whispered. “But I never for a moment thought it—it would—”
“No more than I,” Stanley Lang said quietly. “I insisted that he wrote a letter before the experiment, exonerating me in case of an accident. I’ll need it when I’ve notified the authorities…”
Ralph, hearing all this, had a mental struggle to reconcile it with himself. Also he was trying to fathom what this distracted girl meant to him. Somewhere—somehow—he had known her…
Then at last the girl put away her handkerchief and looked up with tragic eyes.
“What—what are you going to do now, Stan? What are we going to do?”
He shrugged and rested a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“You know I’ve always loved you, Enid: doesn’t this seem as good a time as any to admit that the rivalry between Ralph and me has been solved for us by this unhappy accident? After all, there was only him or me for it, and since circumstances have—er—eliminated him…”
Enid was silent, staring at the robot absently. After a while Stanley Lang glanced in its direction.
“In the general excitement, Enid, I forgot to mention that I have perfected my robot at last. Look!” He gave a few orders, and of course Ralph was forced to obey them. Enid’s surprised eyes shifted back to Stanley Lang’s face. Aware of it, he took good care no sign of gloating triumph appeared upon it.
“Good, eh?” he asked laconically.
“Why, Stan, it’s wonderful! How did you ever manage to—?”
“This is no time to talk of deeply scientific matters,” he said gently. “I merely show it to you so you may realise what I can offer you if you’ll only marry me. Don’t you understand? The Lang service-robots, like this one, can turn in millions! Millions which I want to share with you…”
Enid hesitated a moment, breathing a little faster as she thought of the vistas Stanley Lang could open for her. Even so she still demurred a little. Finally she looked up at him again.
“You’ll give me a little time to think about it, Stanley? At least until tomorrow?”
�
��Of course,” he answered, smiling. He knew he had won.
* * * *
Stanley Lang was right. Within a month he and Enid Massey were married. It had been a period in which Stanley Lang had been eager to gratify her every little wish. Until at last she was installed in his magnificent home and he knew that it didn’t matter now how soon he let his mask drop. With Enid now firmly in his grip for lighter moments he could attend to pressing matters of scientific achievement.
For Ralph it had been a month of unsupportable anguish. His brain had been, and still was, besieged by a multitude of inexplicable thoughts. These, and a dim, desperate yearning to attain unity with a flesh and blood framework, had created an agony such as he had never known—mental, not physical.
And this girl about the house? As he paraded the great rooms, sleepless, obeying every order day and night, his isolated brain constantly fed by electric currents, he would notice her vaguely puzzled eyes watching him. It was as though she were trying to recall something, even as he was…
Then there was the mocking, sardonic face of Stanley Lang. Who were they, these people? What did they mean…?
Enid, as a matter of fact, had noticed something—and it had obviously escaped Stanley Lang. This something was the robot’s curious habit, ever and again, of raising his pincer fingers to a point just below his metal chin. It was a purely reflex movement, some relic of a personal flesh and blood mannerism which had not been entirely eradicated by Stanley Lang’s magnificent surgical work.
But it impressed Enid for a very vital reason—for Ralph Marson, she remembered, had had the trick of pulling his tie nervously in moments of excitement or indecision. Surely to God it was not possible that Ralph—
“What’s the matter?” demanded Stanley Lang abruptly, as he caught Enid’s fascinated gaze on the robot one evening at dinner, just as he had performed the little action.
“Matter?” Enid caught a grip on herself. “Why, nothing. What should there be?”
“You were staring at my robot as though it reminded you of something. That right?”
“You’re getting imaginative, Stan,” Enid said briefly, determined not to express the horrified suspicion that was in her mind until she was absolutely certain. Just the same, the mysterious disappearance and supposed death of Ralph Marson could stand a little investigation…
“Marvellous, isn’t he?” Stanley Lang muttered, staring at Ralph’s lensed eyes. “The slave of my will, Enid—the first of the robots. Forced to do every little thing I tell him…”
“Him?” Enid repeated. “I thought a robot was sexless—neuter?”
“Purely a figure of speech,” Stanley Lang said, but for a moment his face darkened angrily. Then turning to Ralph he snapped out a sharp dismissal order.
So Ralph went—silently, rhythmically, with all the oiled precision of his mechanical joints, and as usual he retired to the laboratory, his usual rendezvous between periods of service.
* * * *
It ws just after midnight, an hour after Stanley Lang’s departure on a business trip, when Enid silently entered the laboratory. She paused for a moment, listening to the drone of power, then she gave a little start of surprise as she beheld the robot gripping the main power wire and apparently concentrating. He stopped his activities suddenly as he caught sight of her.
As she advanced he slowly stood up. Her dark eyes searched his inscrutable metallic face earnestly.
“Can you—speak?” she asked slowly. “I mean, can you do anything except repeat orders?”
“I can tell you how deeply I love you, Enid, and how much I am aching for vengeance for the ghastly thing Stanley did to me!”
“Ralph!” Enid’s voice was a horrified whisper. “Then—then my guess was right! There wasn’t an experiment! You were not killed—”
“Is that what he told you? No, Enid; he took my brain and turned me into a robot, purely to gratify his fiendish jealousy and to stop me getting you. He imagined he destroyed my power to reason, my initiative. But there he was wrong. Let me tell what has happened to me—what has still to happen…”
He drew up a chair for the girl, then as she sat down he went on.
“Turning me into a robot enabled me to make discoveries only possible to a robot. I have found out, for instance, that Mars has been trying for untold ages to communicate with us on Earth here by electric telepathic influence, appreciable only to the electrically stimulated brain of a robot. That is why human beings have never sensed Martian signals, beyond interpreting them as static, that is. I, with my electrically stimulated brain, the keenness of which I can increase by letting direct voltage flow through my body, understand everything they have communicated.
“You see, the Martians are robots. Long ago, their world being more or less useless for supporting a physical structure, they took to robot bodies, housing their brains much as mine is now housed. Naturally they are master scientists. The first thing they did, once in touch with me, was to ask for all possible details regarding Earth. I gave them, and what I told them convinced them that we are too underdeveloped for it to be worth their while visiting us, a fact they had already suspected, hence they have never come here. Naturally they have conquered space travel, but it is a hazardous, difficult business—far too much so for a useless trip to be attempted…
“In return for my information they showed me how, by using the apparatus at my command in this laboratory, I could affect the total neutralisation of the capsule in my brain. This I did. For over a month now I have had my normal reasoning power… I have seen and learned much. Much that is grim—deadly.”
Ralph paused for a moment and Enid waited intently.
“Stanley has let his ambition get out of hand,” he went on presently. “Just as I always expected he would in the end. You know as well as I do that he has recently been engaged on a study of gases. But do you know why?”
“No. I tried to find out, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
“I’m not surprised! He has perfected a gas which can destroy the power of the body but not the brain, which can produce utter paralysis of the limbs and organs—if not their total destruction—while the brain remains unharmed.”
“But Ralph, why has he done such a horrible thing?”
“For one reason only. He believes that he has found the secret of the perfect robot; he knows he can make a fortune if he makes them by the thousand. But to do that he needs thousands of human brains, all subjected as he thinks mine is. This gas can give him those brains!”
Enid looked puzzled. “But I don’t see how—”
“Revolution! Crime on a gigantic scale!” Ralph said savagely. “He’s talked his plans over to himself in here often enough, and I’ve heard them. These men he has gone to see are the biggest men there are among America’s enemies, men who, given a sufficient guarantee, can start industrial havoc overnight. For an idea like these robots you can be pretty sure they’ll start something quickly.”
“You mean an attack with these gas bombs?”
“With the intention of overthrowing the Government. But—I think it can be stopped,” Ralph finished quietly.
“You—you do?” Enid cried, in sudden hope. “But how?”
“Mars! The moment I realised what Stanley was aiming at I communicated with the Martian scientists telepathically. If he starts anything—as I fully expect he will—he’ll get the shock of his life. It is over a week since I contacted Mars and got their promise of help. At the speed at which their spaceships move they must be somewhere near Earth—”
Ralph broke off and Enid watched his robot face intently. It was quite devoid of expression, but there was an urgency in his movements as he turned and picked up the power cable, held on to it tightly.
“They near!” he exclaimed at last. “Just inside Earth’s atmosphere, waiting for any signal I may give.”
“They are! But—but—” Enid got to her feet, suddenly confused. “But what can we do? If by any
chance Stanley finds out he’ll kill us—”
“You, yes but he can’t do anything to me. He made me pretty well invulnerable, and my strength is equal to that of ten human beings. But we’re both going to get out, though. I still have a hunting lodge near the Adirondacks: you go there immediately and wait until you hear from me. I’ve special work of my own to do. Go on—hurry off and get your bags packed…”
* * * *
Trouble began quickly enough. This was not a hurried scheme which Stanley Lang was putting into effect. For long enough he had been in contact with the powerful factions awaiting the chance to start a cataclysm with every chance of success.
So, within a few days of Stanley Lang’s departure from his home America became aware of the fact that an industrial disaster of first-class magnitude was hovering on the horizon.
And suddenly, without real reason or pretext the blow fell! From their various hidden bases there rolled forth the whole equipment of terror and destruction, ready to move to the indiscriminate shattering of all civilian morale at the chosen hour.
Stanley Lang, in charge of operations at his underground headquarters, stood surrounded by instruments, intelligence officers, and the three men who had made this heinous betrayal of a united people possible. Stanley Lang was smiling grimly.
“So we see what science can do for us, my friends,” he murmured, glancing at the resolute, harshly set faces of his collaborators. “Within twenty-four hours—less than that even—we will have all the bodies and brains we need. I have seen to it that picked squads have everything ready to rush the required number of paralysed people to our robot headquarters. At the same time we shall have accomplished a double stroke— The people will capitulate against the onslaught of this new gas. So we rule America, and by the use of our robots can, no doubt, in time rule the world itself!”
The others nodded slowly, studying him, just a trifle awed by the grandiose sweep of his baleful imagination. Then he turned away, his eyes on the electric clock, his hand ready to open the microphone in contact with all operational bases.
The second finger crept through the final segment. The hour was up. Stanley Lang opened the microphone.
The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack Page 60