Partners in Wonder

by Harlan Ellison

  “You see, Officer Polchik,” Brillo said, “false arrest would make us both liable for serious—” But Polchik was already walking away, his shoulders slumped, the weight of his bandolier and five years on the force too much for him.

  The robot (making the sort of sound an electric watch makes) hummed after him, keeping stern vigil on the darkened neighborhood in the encroaching dawn. He could not compute despair. But he had been built to serve. He was programmed to protect, and he did it, all the way back to the precinct house.

  Polchik was sitting at a scarred desk in the squad room, laboriously typing out his report on a weary IBM Selectric afflicted with grand mal. Across the room Reardon poked at the now-inert metal bulk of Brillo, using some sort of power tool with a teardrop-shaped lamp on top of it. The Mayor’s whiz kid definitely looked sandbagged. He don’t go without sleep very often, Polchik thought with grim satisfaction.

  The door to Captain Summit’s office opened, and the Captain, looking oceanic and faraway, waved him in.

  “Here it comes,” Polchik whispered to himself.

  Summit let Polchik pass him in the doorway. He closed the door and indicated the worn plastic chair in front of the desk. Polchik sat down. “I’m not done typin’ the beat report yet, Capt’n.”

  Summit ignored the comment. He moved over to the desk, picked up a yellow printout flimsy, and stood silently for a moment in front of Polchik, considering it.

  “Accident report out of the 86th precinct uptown. Six kids in a Ford Electric convertible went out of control, smashed down a pedestrian and totaled against the bridge abutment. Three dead, three critical—not expected to live. Fifteen minutes after you let them go.”

  Dust.

  Dried out.

  Ashes.

  Gray. Final.

  Polchik couldn’t think. Tired. Confused. Sick. Six kids. Now they were kids, just kids, nothing else made out of old bad memories.

  “One of the girls went through the windshield. D.O.A. Driver got the steering column punched out through his back. Another girl with a snapped neck. Another girl—”

  He couldn’t hear him. He was somewhere else, faraway. Kids. Laughing, smartmouth kids having a good time. Benjy would be that age some day. The carpets were all wet.

  “Mike!”

  He didn’t hear.

  “Mike! Polchik!”

  He looked up. There was a stranger standing in front of him holding a yellow flimsy.

  “Well, don’t just sit there, Polchik. You had them! Why’d you let them go?”

  “The…lizard…”

  “That’s right, that’s what five of them were using. Three beakers of it in the car. And a dead cat on the floor and all the makings wrapped in foam-bead bags. You’d have had to be blind to miss it all!”

  “The robot…”

  Summit turned away with disgust, slamming the report onto the desk top. He thumbed the call-button. When Desk Sergeant Loyo came in, he said, “Take him upstairs and give him a breather of straightener, let him lie down for half an hour, then bring him back to me.”

  Loyo got Polchik under the arms and took him out.

  Then the Captain turned off the office lights and sat silently in his desk chair, watching the night die just beyond the filthy windows.

  “Feel better?”

  “Yeah; thank you, Capt’n. I’m fine.”

  “You’re back with me all the way? You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, sure, I’m just fine, sir. It was just…those kids…I felt.”

  “So why’d you let them go? I’ve got no time to baby you, Polchik. You’re five years a cop and I’ve got all the brass in town outside that door waiting. So get right.”

  “I’m right, Capt’n. I let them go because the robot took the stuff the girl was carrying, and he dumped it in his thing there, and told me it was nosedrops.”

  “Not good enough, Mike.”

  “What can I say besides that?”

  “Well, dammit Officer Polchik, you damned well better say something besides that. You know they run that stuff right into the skull, you’ve been a cop long enough to see it, to hear it the way they talk! Why’d you let them custer you?”

  “What was I going to run them in for? Carrying nosedrops? With that motherin’ robot reciting civil rights chapter-an’-verse at me every step of the way? Okay, so I tell the robot to go screw off, and I bust ’em and bring ’em in. In an hour they’re out again and I’ve got a false arrest lug dropped on me. Even if it ain’t nosedrops. And they can use the robot’s goddam tapes to hang me up by the thumbs!”

  Summit dropped back into his chair, sack weight. His face was a burned-out building. “So we’ve got three, maybe six kids dead. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” He shook his head.

  Polchik wanted to make him feel better. But how did you do that? “Listen, Capt’n, you know I would of had those kids in here so fast it’d’of made their heads swim…if I’d’ve been on my own. That damned robot…well, it just didn’t work out. Capt’n, I’m not trying to alibi, it was godawful out there, but you were a beat cop…you know a cop ain’t a set of rules and a pile of wires. Guys like me just can’t work with things like that Brillo. It won’t work, Capt’n. A guy’s gotta be free to use his judgment, to feel like he’s worth somethin’, not just a piece of sh—”

  Summit’s head came up sharply. “Judgment?!” He looked as though he wanted to vomit. “What kind of judgment are you showing with that Rico over at the Amsterdam Inn? And all of it on the tapes, sound, pictures, everything?!”

  “Oh. That.”

  “Yes, that. You’re damned lucky I insisted those tapes get held strictly private, for the use of the Force only. I had to invoke privileged data. Do you have any idea how many strings that puts on me, on this office now, with the Chief, with the Commissioner, with the goddam Mayor? Do you have any idea, Polchik?”

  “No, sir. I’m sorry.” Chagrin.

  “Sorry doesn’t buy it, goddamit! I don’t want you taking any juice from anywhere. No bottles, no gifts, no nothing, not from anybody. Have you got that?”

  “Yessir.”

  Wearily, Summit persisted. “It’s tough enough to do a job here without having special graft investigations and the D.A.’s squad sniffing all ever the precinct. Jesus, Polchik, do you have any idea…!” He stopped, looked levelly at the patrolman and said, “One more time and you’re out on your ass. Not set down, not reprimanded, not docked—out. All the way out. Kapish?”

  Polchik nodded; his back was broken.

  “I’ve got to set it right.”

  “What, sir?”

  “You, that’s what.”

  Polchik waited. A pendulum was swinging.

  “I’ll have to think about it. But if it hadn’t been for the five good years you’ve given me here, Polchik…well, you’ll be getting punishment, but I don’t know just what yet.”

  “Uh, what’s gonna happen with the robot?”

  Summit got to his feet slowly; mooring a dirigible. “Come on outside and you’ll see.”

  Polchik followed him to the door, where the Captain paused. He looked closely into Polchik’s face and said, “Tonight has been an education, Mike.”

  There was no answer to that one.

  They went into the front desk room. Reardon still had his head stuck into Brillo’s open torso cavity, and the whiz kid was standing tiptoed behind him, peering over the engineer’s shoulder. As they entered the ready room, Reardon straightened and clicked off the lamp on the power tool. He watched Summit and Polchik as they walked over to Chief Santorini. Summit murmured to the Chief for a moment, then Santorini nodded and said, “We’ll talk tomorrow, then.”

  He started toward the front door, stopped and said, “Good night, gentlemen. It’s been a long night. I’ll be in touch with your offices tomorrow.” He didn’t wait for acknowledgment; he simply went.

  Reardon turned around to face Summit. He was waiting for words. Even the whiz kid was starting to come alive again. Th
e silent FBI man rose from the bench (as far as Polchik could tell, he hadn’t changed position all the time they’d been gone on patrol) and walked toward the group.

  Reardon said, “Well…” His voice trailed off.

  The pendulum was swinging.

  “Gentlemen,” said the Captain, “I’ve advised Chief Santorini I’ll be writing out a full report to be sent downtown. My recommendations will more than likely decide whether or not these robots will be added to our Force.”

  “Grass roots level opinion, very good, Captain, very good,” said the whiz kid. Summit ignored him.

  “But I suppose I ought to tell you right now my recommendations will be negative. As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Reardon, you still have a long way to go with your machine.”

  “But, I thought—”

  “It did very well,’” Summit said, “don’t get me wrong. But I think it’s going to need a lot more flexibility and more knowledge of the police officer’s duties before it can be of any real aid in our work.”

  Reardon was angry, but trying to control it. “I programmed the entire patrolman’s manual, and all the City codes, and the Supreme Court—”

  Summit stopped him with a raised hand. “Mr. Reardon, that’s the least of a police officer’s knowledge. Anybody can read a rule book. But how to use those rules, how to make those rules work in the street, that takes more than programming. It takes, well, it takes training. And experience. It doesn’t come easily. A cop isn’t a set of rules and a pile of wires.”

  Polchik was startled to hear his words. He knew it would be okay. Not as good as before, but at least okay.

  Reardon was furious now. And he refused to be convinced. Or perhaps he refused to allow the Mayor’s whiz kid and the FBI man to be so easily convinced. He had worked too long and at too much personal cost to his career to let it go that easily. He hung onto it. “But merely training shouldn’t put you off the X-44 completely!”

  The Captain’s face tensed around the mouth. “Look, Mr. Reardon, I’m not very good at being politic—which is why I’m still a Captain, I suppose—” The whiz kid gave him a be-careful look, but the Captain went on. “But it isn’t merely training. This officer is a good one. He’s bright, he’s on his toes, he maybe isn’t Sherlock Holmes but he knows the feel of a neighborhood, the smell of it, the heat level. He knows every August we’re going to get the leapers and the riots and some woman’s head cut off and dumped in a mailbox mailed C.O.D. to Columbus, Ohio. He knows when there’s racial tension in our streets. He knows when those poor slobs in the tenements have just had it. He knows when some new kind of vice has moved in. But he made more mistakes out there tonight than a rookie. Five years walking and riding that beat, he’s never foulballed the way he did tonight. Why? I’ve got to ask why? The only thing different was that machine of yours. Why? Why did Mike Polchik foulball so bad? He knew those kids in that car should have been run in for b&b or naline tests. So why, Mr. Reardon…why?”

  Polchik felt lousy. The Captain was more worked up than he’d ever seen him. But Polchik stood silently, listening; standing beside the silent, listening FBI man.

  Brillo merely stood silently. Turned off.

  Then why did he still hear that robot buzzing?

  “It isn’t rules and regs, Mr. Reardon.” The Captain seemed to have a lot more to come. “A moron can learn those. But how do you evaluate the look on a man’s face that tells you he needs a fix? How do you gauge the cultural change in words like ‘custer’ or ‘grass’ or ‘high’ or ‘pig’? How do you know when not to bust a bunch of kids who’ve popped a hydrant so they can cool off? How do you program all of that into a robot…and know that it’s going to change from hour to hour?”

  “We can do it! It’ll take time, but we can do it.”

  The Captain nodded slowly. “Maybe you can.”

  “I know we can.”

  “Okay, I’ll even go for that. Let’s say you can. Let’s say you can get a robot that’ll act like a human being and still be a robot…because that’s what we’re talking about here. There’s still something else.”

  “Which is?”

  “People, Mr. Reardon. People like Polchik here. I asked you why Polchik foulballed, why he made such a bum patrol tonight that I’m going to have to take disciplinary action against him for the first time in five years…so I’ll tell you why, Mr. Reardon, about people like Polchik here. They’re still afraid of machines, you know. We’ve pushed them and shoved them and lumbered them with machines till they’re afraid the next clanking item down the pike is going to put them on the bread line. So they don’t want to cooperate. They don’t do it on purpose. They may not even know they’re doing it, hell, I don’t think Polchik knew what was happening, why he was falling over his feet tonight. You can get a robot to act like a human being, Mr. Reardon. Maybe you’re right and you can do it, just like you said. But how the hell are you going to get humans to act like robots and not be afraid of machines?”

  Reardon looked as whipped as Polchik felt.

  “May I leave Brillo here till morning? I’ll have a crew come over from the labs and pick him up.”

  “Sure,” the Captain said, “he’ll be fine right there against the wall. The Desk Sergeant’ll keep an eye on him.” To Loyo he said, “Sergeant, instruct your relief.”

  Loyo smiled and said, “Yessir.”

  Summit looked back at Reardon and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Reardon smiled wanly, and walked out. The whiz kid wanted to say something, but too much had already been said, and the Captain looked through him. “I’m pretty tired, Mr. Kenzie. How about we discuss it tomorrow after I’ve seen the Chief?”

  The whiz kid scowled, turned and stalked out.

  The Captain sighed heavily. “Mike, go get signed out and go home. Come see me tomorrow. Late.” He nodded to the FBI man, who still had not spoken; then he went away.

  The robot stood where Reardon had left him. Silent.

  Polchik went upstairs to the locker room to change.

  Something was bothering him. But he couldn’t nail it down.

  When he came back down into the muster room, the FBI man was just racking the receiver on the desk blotter phone. “Leaving?” he asked. It was the first thing Polchik had heard him say. It was a warm brown voice.

  “Yeah. Gotta go home. I’m whacked out.”

  “Can’t say I blame you. I’m a little tired myself. Need a lift?”

  “No thanks,” Polchik said. “I take the subway. Two blocks from the house.” They walked out together. Polchik thought about the wet carpets waiting. They stood on the front steps for a minute, breathing in the chill morning air, and Polchik said, “I feel kinda sorry for that chunk of scrap now. He did a pretty good job.”

  “But not good enough,” the FBI man added.

  Polchik felt suddenly very protective about the inert form against the wall in the precinct house. “Oh, I dunno. He saved me from getting clobbered, you wanna know the truth. Tell me…you think they’ll ever build a robot that’ll cut it?”

  The FBI man lit a cigarette, blew smoke in a thin stream, and nodded. “Yeah. Probably. But it’ll have to be a lot more sophisticated than old Brillo in there.”

  Polchik looked back through the doorway. The robot stood alone, looking somehow helpless. Waiting for rust. Polchik thought of kids, all kinds of kids, and when he was a kid. It must be hell, he thought, being a robot. Getting turned off when they don’t need you no more.

  Then he realized he could still hear that faint electricical buzzing. The kind a watch makes. He cast a quick glance at the FBI man but, trailing cigarette smoke, he was already moving toward his car, parked directly in front of the precinct house. Polchik couldn’t tell if he was wearing a watch or not.

  He followed the government man.

  “The trouble with Brillo,” the FBI man said, “is that Reardon’s facilities were too limited. But I’m sure there are other agencies working on it. They’ll lick it one day.” He snapped
the cigarette into the gutter.

  “Yeah, sure,” Polchik said. The FBI man unlocked the car door and pulled it. It didn’t open.

  “Damn it!” he said. “Government pool issue. Damned door always sticks.” Bunching his muscles, he suddenly wrenched at it with enough force to pop it open. Polchik stared. Metal had ripped.

  “You take care of yourself now, y’hear?” the FBI man said, getting into the car. He flipped up the visor with its OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT BUSINESS card tacked to it, and slid behind the steering wheel.

  The car settled heavily on its springs, as though a ton of load had just been dumped on the front seat. He slammed the door. It was badly sprung.

  “Too bad we couldn’t use him,” the FBI man said, staring out of the car at Brillo, illuminated through the precinct house doorway. “But…too crude.”

  “Yeah, sure, I’ll take care of myself,” Polchik replied, one exchange too late. He felt his mouth hanging open.

  The FBI man grinned, started the car, and pulled away.

  Polchik stood in the street, for a while.

  Sometimes he stared down the early morning street in the direction the FBI man had taken.

  Sometimes he stared at the metal cop immobile in the muster room.

  And even as the sounds of the city’s new day rose around him, he was not at all certain he did not still hear the sound of an electric watch. Getting louder.

  INTRODUCTION

  Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison

  A TOY FOR JULIETTE THE PROWLER IN THE CITY AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

  What follows is, in the purest sense, the end result of literary feedback. Recently the story editor of a primetime television series, pressed for a script to shoot, sat down and wrote one himself rather than wait for the vagaries of a free-lance scenarist’s schedule and dalliance. When he had completed the script, which was to go before the cameras in a matter of days, he sent it as a matter of form to the legal department of the studio. For the clearance of names, etc. Later that day the legal department called him in a frenzy. Almost scene-for-scene and word-for-word (including the title), the non-sf story editor had copied a well-known science fiction short story. When it was pointed out to him, the story editor blanched and recalled he had indeed read that story, some fifteen years before. Hurriedly, the story rights were purchased from the well-known fantasy writer who had originally conceived the idea. I hasten to add that I accept the veracity of the story editor when he swears he had no conscious knowledge of imitating the story. I believe him because this sort of unconscious plagiarism is commonplace in the world of the writer. It is inevitable that much of the mass of reading a writer does will stick with him somehow, in vague concepts, snatches of scenes, snippets of characterization, and it will turn up later, in the writer’s own work; altered, transmogrified, but still a direct result of another writer’s work. It is by no means “plagiarism.” It is part of the answer to the question asked by idiots of authors at cocktail parties: “Where do you get your ideas?”