Part 1

Chapter 14,342 wordsPublic domain

ONE FOR THE ROBOT--TWO FOR THE SAME

By ROG PHILLIPS

The ingredients were simple: one man for one robot. But the results were something else!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy October 1950 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I took an instinctive disliking to him from the very first. I don't know exactly what caused it. His appearance? He wore a well tailored gray plaid suit draped on what I would have sworn to be nothing but a skeleton. Blue-veined skin fitted over the exposed parts, such as his long slender hands, folded together on his lap, the stretch of bare leg below the cuffs of his perfectly pressed trousers and above his carelessly drooped sox, his turkey-like neck with its large Adam's apple threatened at any moment to wobble up and down while a gobble-gobble-gobble burst forth.

His face? It made me think of a broken handled cup inverted on a saucer, the edge of the saucer being his jaw line. If you were to wrap the cup and saucer in tightly stretched dull white plastic or rubber sheeting and paint eyes in the proper places you would have it down pat.

Maybe it was the eyes that made me dislike him. They were faded blue, but not the kind you would call characterless. It would be more accurate to call them emotionless. Not emotionless in a cold way, but in a dead way.

On either side of his head were cartilages shaped like ears, and over the top of his head faded and lifeless grey hair parted with artificial neatness.

Those were my impressions, though the hair was real enough, and I might have seen him through different eyes if I had been in a better mood.

He wore his suit like it didn't belong to him, or if it did he very seldom had one on. I looked closely at him, sitting near me on the park bench half turned toward where I was slouched, trying to imagine what type of clothes would be natural to him; all I could conjure up was a white frock and rubber gloves and a white face mask.

He had asked me, "Are you employed?", and I had swallowed an impulse to snap at him long enough to size him up.

So now I had sized him up. I didn't like anything about him. But a civil answer to his question might lead to the price of a badly needed meal. I forced a polite grin.

"Not at the moment," I said.

"I surmised as much," he said quickly, smirking. His voice had the quality of a high school chemistry teacher talking to an audience of sulphuric acid carboys.

I turned away, looking out across the expanse of lawn and trees and flower beds of the park to where the double decker busses bobbed along like water bugs above the carpet of cars flowing along the inner drive. The impatient honking of tired motorists on their way home after their day's work mingled with the contented quacking of ducks on the pond at my back.

"Would you like to earn some money?"

"Huh?" I said, jerking my attention back to him.

His smile was the kind a professor would give to a pupil who had just awakened from a sound sleep.

"I said, would you like to earn some money?"

"Uh, uh," I said. "I'm hungry. I'd mow your lawn on an empty stomach and get maybe fifty cents. That's one hamburger and two cups of coffee. I'd still be hungry."

Instead of answering, he reached one of his blue-veined hands inside his coat and drew out a new looking black leather billfold. I watched him while he pulled out a thick sheaf of currency.

He carefully counted out ten twenty dollar bills, dropping them one by one in a neat pile on the park bench. He stuck the rest back in his billfold and took out a white glossy card, dropping it on the pile of bills.

Then, smirking, he stood up and turned his back on me, slowly walking down the path that wound up onto a bridge over the duck pond, without looking back.

I waited until he was out of sight, then picked up the card and read the name printed on it in raised green lettering: Dr. Leopold Moriss.

* * * * *

I had a hamburger and two cups of coffee in a place where they'd never seen me before. It would have been too hard to explain a twenty dollar bill. Afterward I rented a room and soaked some of the accumulated dirt out of my pores.

Next morning I bought a new suit and the things that go with it. By noon I was wearing a hundred of that two hundred dollars. Most of the rest was in my pocket.

Everything was fine, except that Dr. Leopold Moriss' smirking bloodless lips and dead eyes, framed by his skin-covered jaw kept dancing before me, taunting me, daring me to use that money without eventually showing up to earn it.

I began to dislike him even more intensely. Instead of having lunch I went into a cocktail lounge and had a few Bourbons straight. When their warmth began to soak in Dr. Leopold's smirking face faded.

It came back, though, and with it came his classroom voice.

"_I don't know who you are_," it taunted. "_If you never show up I can't find you, can't do anything about it._" Its tones were laughing, knowing, goading. I drank. The face faded, the voice became inaudible.

Three days later, and God knows how many quarts, I took that drink every alcoholic dreads--the one you can't keep down.

I awoke a long time later and opened my eyes. Something vaguely like the desk clerk was hovering over me. A loud voice was pounding unmercifully against my tortured ears.

"Come on, get up and get out of here, you filthy bum," it was shouting. "We've got no rooms for the likes of you in this hotel."

I shook my head to clear away the fog over my eyes. The indignant face of a maid was staring at me.

"You ought to be ashamed," she said shrilly, "vomiting on the rug! Where do you think you are, in the park?"

"Get a wet towel and bring him to," the desk clerk ordered....

I reached the precarious footing of the sidewalk with a feeling that I had been rushed too much, and with the afternoon sun ejecting fiery red shafts of searing pain into my brain through my punctured eye-balls.

People were staring at me as they passed. In an attempt to appear casual I stuck my hands in my pockets. The fingers of my right hand encountered something stiff, with sharp corners.

Swaying to maintain my balance, and casually whistling snatches of some nameless tune, I pulled the thing out and held it up where I could focus my eyes on it. It was Dr. Leopold Moriss' card.

I managed an uncertain about face and thumbed my nose at the entrance to the hotel; only it was my ear, and my thumb bumped it so painfully that the pleasure I had anticipated at my insult was destroyed.

When my consciousness settled into enough stability to be aware of outside impressions once more, I was in a taxi, bumping along a cobblestone street. There were no springs on the cab, and the back of the driver's head sneered at me and dared me to open the door and jump to my death.

I wondered where I was being taken. Then my eyes caught the white rectangle still held in my fingers. The doctor's card. So I was on my way at last.

On my way? I was there! The taxi had swerved abruptly to the curb and stopped. I slid forward off the seat. When the driver came around and opened the door I managed to get up on my knees. That was all.

He opened the door and stood there patiently. I studied the sidewalk and tried to figure out how to make it from the position I was in. I gave up, and appealed to him with my eyes.

"Here we go," he said good naturedly, lifting me out and balancing me carefully on my feet. "The fare is a buck eighty-five."

"Help me up the steps," I said, stalling. I was trying to remember if I had any money left. I had a strong suspicion I hadn't.

His hands held me up and pushed me across the walk and up the steps while I fumbled in a fruitless search of my pockets.

At the top of the steps my fingers encountered the cool smoothness of a piece of paper in my coat pocket. I pulled it out and held it up to the driver. He steadied me against the frame of the door. Then he counted out change, closing my fingers over the money.

The sound of the taxi pulling away from the curb let me know I was on my own. It was a diminishing yellow spot far down the street.

The door frame was white set in brick. The door was stained oak. I reached out to lift the knocker and saw I had a fist full of money. I reached out with the other hand. It had the card in it. I hooked the little finger under the knocker and lifted it, letting it fall. It emitted a feeble tap.

After a while I saw the door moving inward. Pausing in my futile stabbing for my pockets, I lifted my eyes slowly, beginning with the shapely hips encased in spotlessly clean watermelon red, past the slim waist with its black belt, pausing at the firm lift of the breast, jumping to the smooth neck, and finally coming to the face with its smooth contours, red lips, blue eyes lit with questioning curiosity, and iridescent waves of spun brown hair.

Not daring to talk, I mutely held out the card.

* * * * *

Her graceful curves of eyebrows lifted just a trifle as she looked at the card. Then her eyes surveyed me again, quickly.

"Won't you please come in?" she asked, stepping backward invitingly.

I went past her with an attempt at dignity. The door closed behind me. Her feet tapped pertly on the foyer floor as she went past me and opened another door.

"Wait in here Mr. Stevens," she said, her voice rich in velvet overtones. "I'll tell my father you're here."

I ducked my head at her in acquiescence and went past her into the room, a luxurious library.

The door closed softly as I dropped into the soft enfoldment of a pillow-lined barrel chair. Abruptly I sat up, staring at the blank face of the closed door, my eyes large and round.

She had called me by name!

I was still staring at the door when it jerked open. Dr. Leopold Moriss strode in closing it after him, his steps and motions jerky and swift.

"Well, well, well," he said. "So you came after all."

"How did your daughter know my name?" I asked.

His shoulders arched back in a gesture of amusement.

"She should know," he said. "I've done nothing but talk about January Stevens this and January Stevens that for the past two months."

"Two months?" I echoed dumbly.

"The detective agency I put on the job of finding you did an almost impossible job," he went on, in high good humor. "They followed you from the time you moved out of your bachelor apartment three years ago, to Los Angeles, Seattle, through Kansas, and right back here to Chicago again. When they found you they came and got me, and pointed you out to me in the park."

"I don't get it," I said, bewildered. "That kind of a search would cost plenty. After paying that kind of dough I can understand your willingness to throw two hundred after it in a--childish gesture. But why? Since you know me, you must know I was kicked out of the Bentley Research Laboratories because I refused to account for five thousand dollars of research funds."

"I know more than that," Dr. Leopold Moriss said, crisp sureness in his tones.

"What do you mean?" I asked woodenly.

"Let's just say for the present, January," he said, "that I know why you refused to account for those funds."

"Let's just say goodbye," I said, staggering to my feet. I started for the door.

"Sit down, you drunken bum," he said.

"Why you--" I snarled, turning toward him sober with rage, my fingers constricting.

He sat there, grinning at me, undisturbed by my threatening posture. As if to flaunt his unconcern in my face he took out a long cigar and lit it nonchalantly.

I stared into his lifeless eyes through the screen of freshly generated blue smoke and sat down slowly.

He looked back at me, his face expressionless behind the cigar. My rage subsided gradually.

"That's better," he said finally. From that moment I hated him.

Then the door opened. The girl in the watermelon red dress entered, wheeling a tray crowded with white sandwiches, green pickles and steaming black coffee.

I scowled at the dream from heaven pushing the service cart, a friendly smile on her red lips, feeling a sense of defeat, of being crowded into a corner.

"No thanks," I said harshly. "My stomach couldn't hold even the coffee right now." I jerked my eyes away from hers, past Dr. Leopold Moriss, to the curtains on the windows.

"Get him a big glass of half tomato juice half grapefruit juice," the doctor said. "He can hold that down. It'll make him feel better."

I continued to hold my eyes on the curtains, but I knew that I was licked. Whipped. Beaten into submission. When I heard the pert footsteps return and felt the cold roundness of the glass against my hand, I turned and looked up into her smiling, sympathetic eyes.

"Thanks," I said gruffly.

* * * * *

The cold liquid stayed down, soothing the raw walls of my stomach. I half closed my eyes, experiencing the first pleasant body sensation since the warm glow of that first drink three or four days before.

I watched shapely legs below the swishing dress as they went across the room to a desk. When they returned I looked up to see a cigarette between fingernails the same shade of red as the dress. I followed the slender fingers to the slim wrist, up the graceful, slightly tanned arm to the short sleeve, and from there my eyes jumped to her smiling red lips.

"I'm Paula, January," she said.

"Oh yes, January," Dr. Moriss' voice broke in. "This is my daughter, Paula. Her mother died many years ago. There's just the two of us, besides the handyman."

I took the cigarette from her fingers without taking my eyes away from her face. She snapped a lighter and lit it the same way. I inhaled deeply, letting the smoke out slowly.

"Glad to know you, Paula," I murmured.

"I think you'd better leave us now, Paula," Dr. Moriss broke in in his school teacher voice. "January Stevens and I have a lot to discuss."

"We can talk later, if at all," I turned on him angrily. "Two or three days from now, after my stomach will hold food down."

"We'll talk now," he said with maddening calmness. "Three days from now you'll have had time to think. You'll refuse to talk. Just like you let yourself be branded a thief rather than talk before."

I reached out and picked up a cup of coffee from the tray. With slow deliberation I poured the black liquid into the empty glass that had held my tomato and grapefruit juice. There was a large plate glass mirror on the wall across the room. I threw the empty cup at it without rising from my chair. The mirror shattered.

Dr. Moriss looked back and forth from me to the broken mirror, like a spectator at a tennis match, the same kind of interest portrayed on his face.

"Why did you do that?" Paula asked, her eyes flashing fire.

"He did it because he likes you, Paula," the doctor's maddeningly unperturbed voice said. "If he didn't like you he would have thrown it at me." He puffed mockingly at his cigar, his eyes squinting through the smoke.

"You _are_ expensive to know, January," Paula purred. The sound of her heels on the bare floor near the door jerked my eyes from Dr. Moriss' face.

"Don't leave," I said hastily.

"Why?" Paula asked, turning, her hand still on the knob.

"Because--" her father began.

"Shut up!" I snapped. "I'll tell her myself. Because if you do I might kill your father before I walk out of here."

Dr. Moriss nodded agreement, puffing contentedly, his features mocking me through the haze.

"He's afraid, Paula," he said abruptly. "It's the same fear that made him destroy his research and all the bills for materials and his notes, and let them smirch his name." He lifted on his elbows and leaned toward me. "The same fear that made you an alcoholic bum, January. But I'm going to get under that fear and find out what you discovered."

"You think so?" I sneered, my voice sounding reedy to my ears.

"Yes," he said. "You see, I've got to. I know everything you know--except what made you afraid."

"You think so?" I repeated monotonously.

"Yes," he matched my monotony. "Everything except that. I'll prove it to you. I know how you built the synthetic brain. I know how you built the robot body. I even know how you charged the brain. I even know that that Boston Bull Terrier pet you had at your feet while they questioned you, and which followed you out the door when you left, disgraced, _was not a living creature_!"

I lifted my hands and looked at them. They were trembling so much their outlines were blurred.

"Show him to his room," Dr. Leopold Moriss said suddenly. "Keep a generous supply of grapefruit and tomato juice near him."

"You heard what the man said." Paula soothed gently, tugging at the shoulder of my coat.

At the door I turned ponderously. Dr. Moriss was sitting there, his eyes on me, puffing at his cigar. Dully I turned away, following Paula into the hall. The door closed....

* * * * *

The bed was soft. The kind you sink down into, surrounded by billowing piles of shiny pink satin, fluffy orchid wool, white sheets, and an atmosphere of apple blossoms, with your head resting on down softer and warmer than your mother's breast.

The pajamas were new and my size, obviously bought in anticipation of my showing up.

I stood teetering in the middle of the bedroom, looking at them, the sound of water running into a tub coming from the adjoining bathroom. Tears forced themselves into my eyes. Hot scalding tears.

Paula stood less than three feet from me, an eager expression on her face, like a Spaniel wiggling in expectation of voiced approval.

I turned and staggered blindly toward the door. I wanted to get out. I felt strangled. I couldn't breathe, couldn't possibly get another breath of air until I got out of this house and felt my feet on God's pavement again. I fumbled for the knob, groaning in frantic desperation to escape.

My fingers settled around the knob. I jerked the door open and started out into the hall.

The placid face of a man twice my size, radiating peace and good will, blocked the doorway. I blinked at him blearily, backing away a step or two. He blinked back like a simpleton trying to understand geometry.

"Oh, January," Paula said behind me. "This is Carl Friedman, our Jack-of-all-work."

"Pleased to meet you, January," the giant said, sounding like an uncouth character concentrating on not saying pleeze t'meetcha.

My snarl was purely animal as I slammed the door on him and turned back into the room. I stood there, swaying and holding my head for a minute.

"All right," I gave up. "Get out. I'll take a nice warm bath and bury myself in apple blossoms. Then you can bring me some grapefruit juice and radiate at me like a harvest moon. Only get this straight. I hate your old man. I hate him more every minute."

"That's all right," Paula said, going to the door and opening it. "I hate him too--sometimes."

Carl backed away far enough for her to get out. She flashed me a sympathetic smile. The door closed. I was alone. With the smell of apple blossoms. And my hate.

I took off my clothes and climbed into the tub. The temperature was just right. I sighed in reluctant contentment, splashing around a little to help the warmth soak in.

"What made you afraid, January?" Dr. Moriss' voice came from the doorway.

I catapulted to my feet, water cascading off my body over the edge of the tub onto the floor. Glaring at him I carefully stepped out of the tub, my hands working in choking motions.

He watched me with that air of detached interest he would have used in observing the motions of a monkey in a zoo. I glared at him another moment, then turned my back on him, drying myself with the thick turkish towel.

"What made you afraid, January?" It was patient repetition, insistent and unemotional. A school teacher repeating a question to a stubborn pupil.

I ignored it. When I finished drying and turned to go out, he was gone.

There was a pitcher of bright red liquid with ice cubes floating in it on the table by the bed, and a glass of it already poured sitting beside it. I splashed it down my throat with loud swallows, struggled into the pajamas, and slid under the covers. It seemed only an instant later--

"What made you afraid, January?" When I opened my eyes the hand shaking my shoulder stopped. "What made you afraid, January?"

I stared without answering. Finally I closed my eyes to blot out that serene disinterested, hateful face. When I opened them again it was gone. I cursed with the vocabulary of the scum from New York to San Francisco. His psychological game was obvious, now. He hoped to wear me down, drive me to the point where I would tell him what I would never tell anyone, as the price of peace. He'd wake me again as soon as I fell asleep. He'd wake me again and again and again. And again....