by Eando Binder
“I see,” I said, admiring his penetrating glance into the future. “If we robots are honored citizens, alongside humans, we will then work wholeheartedly in cooperation.”
“Exactly,” Dr. Link continued, his eyes shining with a visionary light. “Think of robot police! And robot firemen, robot scientists, robot lawyers, and so on down the line. The ultimate machine, with human intelligence, boosting civilization to greater heights!”
He shook himself. “Slowly, slowly. Rome was not built in a day. First and foremost, before I can make my dream come true, we must gain our first goal, Adam Link. We must make you a citizen. It may be difficult.”
Difficult? Neither Dr. Link nor I could foresee, that day five years ago, what lay ahead.
“But we’ll do it,” Dr. Link said with a firm smile. “We’ll see the day when you are—Adam Link, United States Citizen! We’ll start on the matter tomorrow.”
The next day he was dead.
It was horribly brief. I was in the storeroom, reading—it was housekeeper’s day. I heard the noise. I ran up the steps into the laboratory. Dr. Link lay with his skull crushed. A loose angle-iron of a transformer, hanging on an insulated platform on the wall, had slipped and crashed down on his head while he sat there before his workbench. I raised his slumped head to examine the wound.
Death had been instantaneous.
Those were the facts. I turned the angle-iron back myself. Blood streaked my fingers when I raised his head, not knowing for the moment that he was surely dead.
But of course, I was taken for his murderer.
The housekeeper had also heard the noise and came from the house to investigate. She took one look. She saw me bending over the body, its head torn and bloody. She fled, too frightened to make a sound.
I am not sure what your emotion of sorrow is. Perhaps I cannot feel that deeply. But I do know that the sunlight seemed suddenly faded to me.
My thoughts are rapid. I stood there only a minute, but in that time I made up my mind to leave. This again was misinterpreted. It was considered an admission of guilt. The criminal escaping from the scene of his crime. I did not realize the web I was weaving around myself.
My abrupt departure was just a desire and determination to carry out Dr. Link’s plans for me. To go out in the world and find my place in it.
To become a citizen!
Dr. Link, and my life with him, was a closed book. No use now to stay and watch ceremonials. He had launched my life. He was gone. My place now must be somewhere out in a world I had never seen. No thought entered my mind of what you humans would decide about me. I thought all men were like Dr. Link, kind and wise.
I took a fresh battery, replacing my half-depleted one. I would need another in 48 hours, but I was sure this would be taken care of by anyone to whom I made the request.
I left. Terry followed me. He was with me all the time in the events that followed. I have heard a dog is man’s best friend. Even a metal man’s.
My conceptions of geography soon proved hazy. I had pictured earth as teeming with humans and cities, leaving not much space in between, I had estimated that the city Dr. Link had spoken of must be just over the hill from his secluded country home. Yet the woods I traversed seemed endless.
Night came. I had to stop and stay still in the dark. I leaned against a tree motionlessly. Terry curled at my feet and slept. The hours passed slowly. I do not “sleep.”
“Adam Link, American citizen!” I thought to myself, wondering when that day would come.
Then at dawn they appeared—the mob. Men armed with clubs, scythes and guns. They spied me and garbled shouts went up. “Dr. Link’s robot!—the monster!—killer!” Then something struck my frontal plate with a clang. A bullet.
“Stop—wait!” I shouted, bewildered. Why was I being hunted like a wild beast? I had taken a step forward, hand upraised. But they would not listen, or explain. More shots rang out, denting my metal body. I turned and ran. Bullets might harm me, in time, if they shattered my eyes or other delicate mechanisms. Terry followed me faithfully, barking back at them.
My thoughts were puzzled. Here was something I could not rationalize or understand. This was so different from the world I had learned about in books. What had happened to the sane and orderly world my mind had conjured for itself? What was wrong?
All that day it was the same, as I ran. The party, swelled by added recruits, split into groups that tried to ring me in. They tracked me by my heavy footprints. My speed saved me each time. Yet some of those bullets damaged me. One struck the joint of my right knee, so that my leg twisted as I ran. One smashed into my head and shattered the right tympanum, making me deaf on that side.
But the bullet that hurt me most was the one that killed Terry. The posse had shot my little friend accidentally.
I was hopelessly lost now. I went in circles through the endless woods. At dusk I saw something familiar—Dr. Link’s laboratory. Blindly, numbly, I crept in. It was deserted. Dr. Link’s body was gone.
My birthplace! My six months of life here whirled through my mind. I felt sad. My two friends were gone, Dr. Link, and Terry. The shadows around me seemed to dance like little Terry had danced.
Then I found the book—Frankenstein—lying on the desk whose drawers had been emptied untidily. Dr. Link’s private desk. He had kept this one book from me. Why? I read it now, in a half hour, by my page-at-a-time scanning.
And then I understood. They thought I had “turned Frankenstein” and had killed Dr. Link, my creator. They had only one thought in mind, that I was a created monster of metal who had gone “berserk,” lacking a soul.
Adam Link, American citizen? No, it was Adam Link, Frankenstein monster.
That, I saw, was my epitaph.
Soon it was close to dawn. I knew there was no hope for me. They had me surrounded, cut off. I had not been so badly damaged that I could not still summon power enough to run through their lines and escape. But it would only be at the cost of several of their lives. And that was the reason I stayed my hand against them, as the yelling mob stormed in.
Clubs and guns were raised against me. Hate was in their faces. I closed my eyes, to shut out the sight. It was the end, my thoughts said, of Adam Link, the first of intelligent robots—and the last.
CHAPTER 3
My Arrest
I opened my eyes, astonished, a moment later. I looked around and saw the group of men who had hunted me down. But they had stopped. Why hadn’t they smashed and pounded me to broken wheels and scattered mechanical parts?
Then I saw the blazing-eyed young man facing them. The armed party was muttering and waving their weapons at me, but my unexpected champion had evidently halted them.
He turned to me now. He was young, firm-jawed, and vaguely familiar in some way. He had grey intelligent eyes. I liked him instantly. Though I am a robot, I form likes and dislikes among the humans I meet.
“Are you all right—Adam Link?” he asked. He added the name given me by Dr. Link with some hesitation, but clearly. He was addressing me as one living entity to another. To use a more appropriate expression—as man to man. Only one other had ever done that—Dr. Link.
I arose from my sitting posture, in which I had been since I had turned myself off. I nearly toppled over. One of my legs was badly twisted. I took swift appraisal and noticed the dents on my metal-wrought shoulders and chest. The top of my skull-plate too, was dented, pressing down slightly on the electrical brain within. From that, for lack of a better term, I had a headache.
Obviously, I had been saved just in time. The enraged, vengeful posse had begun to smash me. But no vital harm had been done.
“I can be repaired,” I replied. The armed men fell back uneasily at the sound of my microphonic voice. Why are humans so afraid of that which they cannot understand? Then I looked, at the young man, wishing I could show gratitude.
“Thank you for what you have done,” I said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Thomas Link, Dr.
Link’s nephew, and his closest living relative,” he said. Instantly I saw the family resemblance, and knew why he had seemed so familiar, though I had never seen him before.
He went on, speaking to the others as much as myself. “I have been practicing law, in San Francisco. I hurried here when I heard of my uncle’s death. He has left everything to me. I see I have come just in time to prevent the destruction—the wanton murder, gentlemen—of Adam Link, my uncle’s intelligent robot.”
“Huh—murder,” said the leader of the men, scoffingly. He was the county sheriff and carried a high-powered rifle under his arm. “This—this thing isn’t a man. It’s a machine. A clever diabolical machine that killed your uncle in cold blood.”
“I don’t believe it,” snapped young Tom Link quickly. “My uncle wrote me many letters about this robot. He said it was as rational as any human being. Perhaps more so than you, sheriff. And not in the least dangerous, in any remote Frankenstein way. My uncle was a clear-headed thinker and scientist. What he said, I accept. You will not destroy this robot.”
The sheriff’s face reddened. Tom had been rather tactless in comparing him and myself. “We will!” he shouted. “It’s a dangerous monster. As the representative of the law in this matter, it is my rightful duty to protect the community. If a tiger were loose in this county, I would destroy it.” He raised his rifle and the men behind him muttered with rising feelings.
I wonder if I have an emotion akin to your human anger? He had compared me to a tiger! I know what a tiger is, from my extensive reading. My electronic brain hummed, and I started to speak, but Tom Link motioned me silent.
“Stop, sheriff,” he said warningly. “The robot—if you choose to consider it that way—was part of my uncle’s property. Now it is my property. I am a lawyer. I know my rights. If you touch the robot, I’ll sue you in court for willful destruction of a piece of my property.”
The law officer gasped. “Well—uh—” He began again, lamely. “But this is different. This robot is a moving, li—no, not living—but anyway—uh—it’s a creature, and—” He was too muddled by the sudden change of concept to go on.
Tom Link smiled. I suddenly perceived that he was a very clever young man. He had planned this trap. “Right, sheriff,” he said quickly. “This robot is a creature. It is not an animal, for animals don’t talk. It is a manlike being. Therefore, like any other talking, thinking man, he is entitled to a court trial.” The sheriff tried to remonstrate, but Tom hustled him out, and the other men with him. “If you want to continue prosecution of Adam Link, the intelligent robot,” was Tom’s parting shot, “come back with a warrant of arrest.”
Tom turned to me when we were alone. “Whew!” He wiped his forehead. “That was close.” Then he grinned a little, thinking perhaps of the utterly confounded look on the sheriff’s face. I grinned, too, within myself. It is a feature of intelligence—whether in a human body or metal—to see humor in that which is ridiculous.
I was still, however, a little puzzled. “Tell me, Tom Link,” I queried, “why you have so completely taken my side? All others, except your uncle, hated and feared me from first sight.”
Instead of answering, Tom rummaged in his uncle’s private desk. At last he withdrew a document and let me read it. I did not quite grasp the complicated legal language, but I noticed the word “citizen” several times.
Tom explained. “My uncle, if he hadn’t died so unfortunately, was fully determined to make you a citizen, Adam Link, as you know. He had begun to take up the matters of legal records to prove your ‘birth’, education and rightful status. He corresponded with me on these details at some length. In another month, I was to have come here to complete the negotiations.”
I remembered Dr. Link’s repeated remarks that I was not just a robot, a metal man. I was life! I was a thinking being, as manlike as any clothed in flesh and blood. He had trained me, brought me up, with all the loving kindness, patience and true feeling of a father with his own child.
And now, with the thought of my creator, came a sadness, an ache within me. I felt as I had that day I discovered him dead, when the sunlight had seemed suddenly faded to me. You who read may smile cynically, but my “emotions,” I believe, are real and deep. Life is essentially in the mind. I have a mind.
“He was a good man,” I said. “And you, Tom, you are my friend.”
He smiled in his warm way, and put his hand on my shiny, hard shoulder. “I am your cousin,” he responded simply, “Blood is thicker than water, you know.”
No play of words was intended, I knew that. I can only say that I have never heard a nobler expression. In simple words, he showed me that he accepted me as a fellow man.
The rest of that day, Tom Link went through his uncle’s effects while he talked to me. I told him the full story of his uncle’s accidental death and the following events.
“We have a battle ahead of us,” he summed it up. “The battle to save you from a charge of manslaughter. After that, we will take up the matter of your—citizenship.”
He glanced at me just a little queerly. His eyes traveled from my mirrored eyes and expressionless metal face down to my stiff alloy legs. Perhaps for the first time, it occurred to him how strange this all was. He, a young lawyer, out to defend me, a conglomerate of wires and cogs, as though I were a human being, conceived by woman. For a moment, he may even have had doubts, now that the excitement was over and he had a chance to think about me.
Might I not be a monster after all? Might Dr. Link not have been wrong in saying that I was the opposite of my fearsomely fabricated exterior? Who could know what weird thoughts coursed through my unhuman, unbiological brain? Might I not just be waiting for the chance to kill Tom, too, in some monstrous mood?
I could sense those thoughts crowding his mind. I don’t think it’s a telepathic phenomenon. It is just that my electron-activated brain works instantaneously. The chains of memory-association within me operate with lightning rapidity. The slightest twitch of his lip and inflection in his voice revealed to me the probable thought causing them.
I felt a little disturbed. Was my only friend to gradually turn against me? Was my cause hopeless? Was it a foregone conclusion that such an utterly alien being as myself could never be accepted in the world of man? I was like a Martian, suddenly descending upon Earth, with as little possibility of achieving friendly intercourse. You think the comparison irrelevant? I will guarantee that the first Martians, or other-world creatures, to land on Earth—if this event ever occurs—will be destroyed blindly. You humans do not know how strong and deep within you lies the jungle instincts of your animal past. That is, in the majority of you. And it is not necessarily those in high places who are more “civilized.” But I digress again.
While Tom was busy, I repaired myself. I am a machine, and know more about my workings than any physiologist knows of his own body. I straightened the knee-joint swivel mechanism, twisted by a bullet. Two of my fingers had broken “muscle” cables which I welded together. I took off my frontal chest plate and hammered out the dents. My removable skull-piece allowed me to release the pressure on my sponge-brain. My “headache” left.
Finally I oiled myself completely, and substituted a fresh battery in my driving unit. In a few hours I had gone through what would correspond in a human to surgical patchings, operations and convalescence that would have taken weeks. It is very convenient having a metal body.
Then I went out. I wandered in the woods and came back with little Terry’s half-decayed body. I buried him in the backyard, thinking of his joyous barks and the playful times we had had together.
“Adam! Adam Link!”
I started and turned. It was Tom behind me, watching. His face was self-reproachful.
“Forgive me,” he said softly. “I was doubting you, Adam Link, all afternoon. Doubting that you could be as nearly human as my uncle wrote you were. But I will never fail you again.” He was looking at Terry’s fresh grave.
As Tom had pre
dicted, Sheriff Barclay promptly appeared the next morning, with a warrant for my arrest. He was determined to have me destroyed. Since he couldn’t do so directly, without legally entangling himself in a suit, he had taken the other course.
“It will be a damned farce—holding a trial for a robot,” he admitted shamefacedly. “I feel like a fool. But it must be destroyed. You’re rather clever, young man, but you don’t think a jury of honest, level-headed men is going to exonerate your—uh—client?”
Tom said nothing, just set his jaw grimly.
Sheriff Barclay looked at me. “You’re—uh—I mean it’s under arrest. It must come with us, to jail.” He was speaking to Tom, although he watched me narrowly, expecting me, I suppose, to go berserk.
“I’m coming along,” nodded Tom. “Come, Adam.”
They had brought a truck for me—I am a 500-pound mass of metal—and drove me toward the nearby town. I had never been in one before, having lived in seclusion with Dr. Link at his country place. My first glimpse of the small city with its 50,000 inhabitants did not startle me. It was about what I had expected from my reading and the pictures I had seen—noisy, congested, ugly, badly arranged.
A curious crowd watched as I was paraded up the courthouse steps. The news had gone around. They watched silently, awestruck. And in every face, I saw lurking fear, instinctive hatred. I had the feeling then, as never before, that I was an outcast. And doomed.
The scene in the courtroom was, as the sheriff had predicted, a sort of solemn farce. The presiding judge coughed continuously. Only Tom Link was at his ease. He insisted on the full legal method. There had been an inquest of course before Dr. Link’s burial, in which it was established that a heavy instrument had caused death. Nothing could gainsay that my hard metal arm might have been the “instrument of death.”
I was indicted on a manslaughter charge for the death of Dr. Charles Link, and entered in the record as “Adam Link.”