Part 2

Adam was beautiful--and monstrous. Made of metal from the neck down, but shaped to be covered by padding and skin in human semblance. From the neck up the job was done. The face was human, masculine, handsome, much like that of a clothing store dummy except for its mobility of expression, and the incongruity of the rest of the body.

The voice-control lever and contacts had been designed so that the ability to produce most sounds would have to be discovered by Adam as he gained control of his natural right front leg. Now the only sounds being uttered were _oh_, _ah_, _mm_, and _ll_, in random order. Similarly, the only movements of his arms and legs were feeble, like those of a human baby. The tremendous strength in his limbs was something he would be unable to tap fully until he had learned conscious coördination.

After a while Adam became silent and without movement. Alarmed, Dr. MacNare opened the instrument panel in the abdomen. The instruments showed that Adam's pulse and respiration were normal. He had fallen asleep.

Dr. MacNare and his wife stole softly from the study, and locked the door.

* * * * *

After a few days, with the care and feeding of Adam all that remained of the giant research project, the pace of the days shifted to that of long-range patience.

"It's just like having a baby," Alice said.

"You know something?" Dr. MacNare asked. "I've had to resist passing out cigars. I hate to say it, but I'm prouder of Adam than I was of Paul when he was born."

"So am I, Joe," Alice said quietly. "But I'm getting a little of that scared feeling back again."

"In what way?"

"He watches me. Oh, I know it's natural for him to, but I do wish you had made the eyes so that his own didn't show as little dark dots in the center of the iris."

"It couldn't be helped," Dr. MacNare said. "He has to be able to see, and I had to set up the system of mirrors so that the two axes of vision would be three inches apart as they are in the average human pair of eyes."

"Oh, I know," said Alice. "Probably it's just something I've seized on. But when he watches me, I find myself holding my breath in fear that he can read in my expression the secret we have to keep from him, that he is a rat."

"Forget it, Alice. That's outside his experience and beyond his comprehension."

"I know," Alice sighed. "When he begins to show some of the signs of intelligence a baby has, I'll be able to think of him as a human being."

"Sure, darling," Dr. MacNare said.

"Do you think he ever will?"

"That," Dr. MacNare said, "is the big question. I think he will. I think so now even more than I did at the start. Aside from eating and sleeping, he has no avenue of expression except his robot body, and _no source of reward except that of making sense--human sense_."

The days passed, and became weeks, then months. During the daytime when her husband was at the university and her son was at school, Alice would spend most of her hours with Adam, forcing herself to smile at him and talk to him as she had to Paul when he was a baby. But when she watched his motions through the transparent back of his head, his leg motions remained those of attempted walking and attempted running.

Then, one day when Adam was four months old, things changed--as abruptly as the turning on of a light.

The unrewarding walking and running movements of Adam's little legs ceased. It was evening, and both Dr. MacNare and his wife were there.

For a few seconds there was no sound or movement from the robot body. Then, quite deliberately, Adam said, "Ah."

"Ah," Dr. MacNare echoed. "Mm, Mm, ah. Ma-ma."

"Mm," Adam said.

The silence in the study became absolute. The seconds stretched into eternities. Then--

"Mm, ah," Adam said. "Mm, ah."

Alice began crying with happiness.

"Mm, ah," Adam said. "Mm, ah. Ma-ma. Mamamamama."

Then, as though the effort had been too much for Adam, he went to sleep.

* * * * *

Having achieved the impossible, Adam seemed to lose interest in it. For two days he uttered nothing more than an occasional involuntary syllable.

"I would call that as much of an achievement as speech itself," Dr. MacNare said to his wife. "His right front leg has asserted its independence. If each of his other three legs can do as well, he can control the robot body."

It became obvious that Adam was trying. Though the movements of his body remained non-purposive, the pauses in those movements became more and more pregnant with what was obviously mental effort.

During that period there was of course room for argument and speculation about it, and even a certain amount of humor. Had Adam's right front leg, at the moment of achieving meaningful speech, suffered a nervous breakdown? What would a psychiatrist have to say about a white rat that had a nervous breakdown in its right front leg?

"The worst part about it," Dr. MacNare said to his wife, "is that if he fails to make it he'll have to be killed. He can't have permanent frustration forced onto him, and, by now, returning him to his natural state would be even worse."

"And he has such a stout little heart," Alice said. "Sometimes when he looks at me I'm sure he knows what is happening and he wants me to know he's trying."

When they went to bed that night they were more discouraged than they had ever been.

Eventually they slept. When the alarm went off, Alice slipped into her robe and went into the study first, as she always did.

A moment later she was back in the bedroom, shaking her husband's shoulder.

"Joe!" she whispered. "Wake up! Come into the study!"

He leaped out of bed and rushed past her. She caught up with him and pulled him to a stop.

"Take it easy, Joe," she said. "Don't alarm him."

"Oh." Dr. MacNare relaxed. "I thought something had happened."

"Something has!"

They stopped in the doorway of the study. Dr. MacNare sucked in his breath sharply, but remained silent.

Adam seemed oblivious of their presence. He was too interested in something else.

He was interested in his hands. He was holding his hands up where he could see them, and he was moving them independently, clenching and unclenching the metal fingers with slow deliberation.

Suddenly the movement stopped. He had become aware of them. Then, impossibly, unbelievably, he spoke.

"Ma ma," Adam said. Then, "Pa pa."

"Adam!" Alice sobbed, rushing across the study to him and sinking down beside him. Her arms went around his metal body. "Oh, Adam," she cried happily.

* * * * *

It was the beginning. The date of that beginning is not known. Alice MacNare believes it was early in May, but more probably it was in April. There was no time to keep notes. In fact, there was no longer a research project nor any thought of one. Instead, there was Adam, the person. At least, to Alice he became that, completely. Perhaps, also, to Dr. MacNare.

Dr. MacNare quite often stood behind Adam where he could watch the rat body through the transparent skull case while Alice engaged Adam's attention. Alice did the same, at times, but she finally refused to do so any more. The sight of Adam the rat, his body held in a net attached to the frame, his head covered by the helmet, his four legs moving independently of one another with little semblance of walking or running motion nor even of coördination, but with swift darting motions and pauses pregnant with meaning, brought back to Alice the old feeling of vague fear, and a tremendous surge of pity for Adam that made her want to cry.

Slowly, subtly, Adam's rat body became to Alice a pure brain, and his legs four nerve ganglia. A brain covered with short white fur; and when she took him out of his harness under opiate to bathe him, she bathed him as gently and carefully as any brain surgeon sponging a cortical surface.

Once started, Adam's mental development progressed rapidly. Dr. MacNare began making notes again on June 2, 1957, just ten days before the end, and it is to these notes that we go for an insight into Adam's mind.

On June 4th Dr. MacNare wrote, "I am of the opinion that Adam will never develop beyond the level of a moron, in the scale of human standards. He would probably make a good factory worker or chauffeur, in a year or two. But he is consciously aware of himself as Adam, he thinks in words and simple sentences with an accurate understanding of their meaning, and he is able to do new things from spoken instructions. There is no question, therefore, but that he has an integrated mind, entirely human in every respect."

On June 7th Dr. MacNare wrote, "Something is developing which I hesitate to put down on paper--for a variety of reasons. Creating Adam was a scientific experiment, nothing more than that. Both the premises on which the project was based have been proven: that the principle of verification is the main factor in learned response, and that, given the proper conditions, some animals are capable of abstract symbol systems and therefore of thinking with words to form meaningful concepts.

"Nothing more was contemplated in the experiment. I stress this because--Adam is becoming deeply religious--and before any mistaken conclusions are drawn from this I will explain what caused this development. It was an oversight of a type that is bound to happen in any complex project.

"Alice's experimental data on the effects of opiates, and especially the data on increasing the dose to offset growing tolerance, were based on observation of the subject alone, without any knowledge of the mental aspects of increased tolerance--which would of course be impossible except with human subjects.

"Unknown to us, Adam has been becoming partly conscious during his bath. Just conscious enough to be vaguely aware of certain sensations, and to remember them afterward. Few, if any, of these half remembered sensations are such that he can fit them into the pattern of his waking reality.

"The one that has had the most pronounced influence on him is, to quote him, 'Feel clean inside. Feel good.' Quite obviously this sensation is caused by his bath.

"With it is a distinct feeling of disembodiment, of being--and these are his own words--'outside my body'! This, of course, is an accurate realization, because to him the robot is his body, and he knows nothing of the existence of his actual, living, rat body.

"In addition to these two effects, there is a third one. A feeling of walking, and sometimes of floating, of stumbling over things he can't see, of talking, of being talked to by disembodied voices.

"The explanation of this is also obvious. When he is being bathed his legs are moved about. Any movement of a leg is to him either a spoken sound or a movement of some part of his robot body. Any movement of his right front leg, for example, tells his mind that he is making a sound. But, since his leg is not connected to the sound system of his robot body, his ears bring no physical verification of the sound. The mental anticipation of that verification then becomes a disembodied voice to him.

"The end result of all this is that Adam is becoming convinced that there is a hidden side of things (which there is), and that it is supernatural (which it is, _in the framework of his orientation_).

"What we are going to have to do is make sure he is completely unconscious before taking him out and bathing him. His mental health is far more important than exploring the interesting avenues opened up by this unforeseen development.

"I do intend, however, to make one simple test, while he is fully awake, before dropping this avenue of investigation."

Dr. MacNare does not state in his notes what this test was to be: but his wife says that it probably refers to the time when he pinched Adam's tail and Adam complained of a sudden, violent headache. This transference is the one well known to doctors. Unoriented pain in the human body manifests itself as a "headache," when the source of the pain is actually the stomach, or the liver, or any one of a hundred spots in the body.

The last notes made by Dr. MacNare were those of June 11, 1957, and are unimportant except for the date. We return, therefore, to actual events, so far as they can be reconstructed.

We have said little or nothing about Dr. MacNare's life at the university after embarking on the research project, nor of the social life of the MacNares. As conspirators, they had kept up their social life to avoid any possibility of the board getting curious about any radical change in Dr. MacNare's habits; but as time went on both Dr. MacNare and his wife became so engrossed in their project that only with the greatest reluctance did they go anywhere.

The annual faculty party at Professor Long's on June 12th was something they could not evade. Not to have gone would have been almost tantamount to a resignation from the university.

"Besides," Alice had said when they discussed the matter in May, "isn't it about time to do a little hinting that you have something up your sleeve?"

"I don't know, Alice," Dr. MacNare had said. Then a smile quirked his lips and he said, "I wouldn't mind telling off Veerhof. I've never gotten over his deciding something was impossible without enough data to pass judgment." He frowned. "We are going to have to let the world know about Adam pretty soon, aren't we? That's something I haven't thought about. But not yet. Next fall will be time enough."

* * * * *

"Don't forget, Joe," Alice said at dinner. "Tonight's the party at Professor Long's."

"How can I forget with you reminding me?" Dr. MacNare said, winking at his son.

"And you, Paul," Alice said. "I don't want you leaving the house. You understand? You can watch TV, and I want you in bed by nine thirty."

"Ah, Mom!" Paul protested. "Nine thirty?" He suppressed a grin. He had a party of his own planned.

"And you can wipe the dishes for me. We have to be at Professor Long's by eight o'clock."

"I'll help you," Dr. MacNare said.

"No, you have to get ready. Besides don't you have to look up something for one of the faculty?"

"I'd forgotten," said Dr. MacNare. "Thanks for reminding me."

After dinner he went directly to the study. Adam was sitting on the floor playing with his wooden blocks. They were alphabet blocks, but he didn't know that yet. The summer project was going to be teaching him the alphabet. Already, though, he preferred placing them in straight rows rather than stacking them up.

At seven o'clock Alice rapped on the door to the study.

"Time to get dressed, Joe," she called.

"You'll be all right while we're gone, Adam?" Dr. MacNare said.

"I be all right, papa," Adam said. "I sleep."

"That's good," Dr. MacNare said. "I'll turn out the light."

At the door he waited until Adam had sat down in the chair he always slept on, and settled himself. Then he pushed the switch just to the right of the door and went out.

"Hurry, dear," Alice called.

"I'm hurrying," Dr. MacNare protested--and, for the first time, he forgot to lock the study door.

The bathroom was next to the study, the wall between them soundproofed by a ceiling-high bookshelf in the study filled with thousands of books. On the other side was the master bedroom, with a closet with sliding panels that opened both on the bedroom and the bathroom. These sliding panels were partly open, so that Dr. MacNare and Alice could talk.

"Did you lock the study door?"

"Of course," Dr. MacNare said. "But I'll check before we leave."

"How is Adam taking being alone tonight?" Alice called.

"Okay," Dr. MacNare said. "Damn!"

"What's the matter, Joe?"

"I forgot to get razor blades."

The conversation died down.

Alice MacNare finished dressing.

"Aren't you ready yet, Joe?" she called. "It's almost a quarter to eight."

"Be right with you. I nicked myself shaving with an old blade. The bleeding's almost stopped now."

Alice went into the living room. Paul had turned on the TV and was sprawled out on the rug.

"You be sure and stay home, and be in bed by nine thirty, Paul," she said. "Promise?"

"Ah, Mom," he protested. "Well, all right."

Dr. MacNare came into the room, still working on his tie. A moment later they went out the front door. They had been gone less than five minutes when there was a knock. Paul jumped to his feet and opened the door.

"Hi, Fred, Tony, Bill," he said.

The boys, all nine years old, sprawled on the rug and watched television. It became eight o'clock, eight thirty, and finally five minutes to nine. The commercial began.

"Where's your bathroom?" Tony asked.

"In there," Paul said, pointing vaguely at the doorway to the hall.

Tony got up off the floor and went into the hall. He saw several doors, all looking much alike. He picked one and opened it. It was dark inside. He felt along the wall for a light switch and found it. Light flooded the room. He stared at what he saw for perhaps ten seconds, then turned and ran down the hall to the living room.

"Say, Paul!" he said. "You never said anything about having a real honest to gosh robot!"

"What are you talking about?" Paul said.

"In that room in there!" Tony said. "Come on. I'll show you!"

The TV program forgotten, Paul, Fred, and Bill crowded after him. A moment later they stood in the doorway to the study, staring in awe at the strange figure of metal that sat motionless in a chair across the room.

Adam, it seems certain, was asleep, and had not been wakened by this intrusion nor the turning on of the light.

"Gee!" Paul said. "It belongs to Dad. We'd better get out of here."

"Naw," Tony said with a feeling of proprietorship at having been the original discoverer. "Let's take a look. He'll never know about it."

They crossed the room slowly, until they were close up to the robot figure, marveling at it, moving around it.

"Say!" Bill whispered, pointing. "What's that in there? It looks like a white rat with its head stuck into that kind of helmet thing."

They stared at it a moment.

"Maybe it's dead. Let's see."

"How you going to find out?"

"See those hinges on the cover?" Tony said importantly. "Watch." With cautious skill he opened the transparent back half of the dome, and reached in, wrapping his fingers around the white rat.

He was unable to get it loose, but he succeeded in pulling its head free of the helmet.

At the same time Adam awoke.

"Ouch!" Tony cried, jerking his hand away. "He bit me!"

"He's alive all right," Bill said. "Look at him glare!" He prodded the body of the rat and pulled his hand away quickly as the rat lunged.

"Gee, look at its eyes," Paul said nervously. "They're getting blood-shot."

"Dirty old rat!" Tony said vindictively, jabbing at the rat with his finger and evading the snapping teeth.

"Get its head back in there!" Paul said desperately. "I don't want papa to find out we were in here!" He reached in, driven by desperation, pressing the rat's head between his fingers and forcing it back into the tight fitting helmet.

Immediately screaming sounds erupted from the lips of the robot. (It was determined by later examination that only when the rat's body was completely where it should be were the circuits operable.)

"Let's get out of here!" Tony shouted, and dived for the door, thereby saving his life.

"Yeah! Let's get out of here!" Fred shouted as the robot figure rose to its feet. Terror enabled him to escape.

Bill and Paul delayed an instant too long. Metal fingers seized them. Bill's arm snapped halfway between shoulder and elbow. He screamed with pain and struggled to free himself.

Paul was unable to scream. Metal fingers gripped his shoulder, with a metal thumb thrust deeply against his larynx, paralyzing his vocal cords.

Fred and Tony had run into the front room. There they waited, ready to start running again. They could hear Bill's screams. They could hear a male voice jabbering nonsense, and finally repeating over and over again, "Oh my, oh my, oh my," in a tone all the more horrible because it portrayed no emotion whatever.

Then there was silence.

The silence lasted several minutes. Then Bill began to sniffle, rubbing his knuckles in his eyes. "I wanta go home," he whimpered.

"Me too."

They took each other's hand and tiptoed to the front door, watching the open doorway to the hall. When they reached the front door Tony opened it, and when it was open they ran, not stopping to close the door behind them.

* * * * *

There isn't much more to tell. It is known that Tony and Bill arrived at their respective homes, saying nothing of what had happened. Only later did they come forward and admit their share in the night's events.

Joe and Alice MacNare arrived home from the party at Professor Long's at twelve thirty, finding the front door wide open, the lights on in the living room, and the television on.

Sensing that something was wrong, Alice hurried to her son's room and discovered he wasn't there. While she was doing that, Joe shut the front door and turned off the television.

Alice returned to the living room, eyes round with alarm, and said, "Paul's not in his room!"

"Adam!" Joe croaked, and rushed into the hallway, with Alice following more slowly.

She reached the open door of the study in time to see the robot figure pounce on Joe and fasten its metal fingers about his throat, crushing vertebrae and flesh alike.

Oblivious to her own danger, she rushed to rescue her already dead husband, but the metal fingers were inflexible. Belatedly she abandoned the attempt and ran into the hallway to the phone.

When the police arrived, they found her slumped against the wall in the hallway. She pointed toward the open doorway of the study, without speaking.

The police rushed into the study. At once there came the sounds of shots. Dozens of them, it seemed. Later both policemen admitted that they lost their heads and fired until their guns were empty.

But it was not yet the end of Adam.

It would perhaps be impossible to conceive the full horror of his last hours, but we can at least make a guess. Asleep when the boys entered the study, he awakened to a world he had never before perceived except very vaguely and under the soporific veil of opiate.

But it was a world vastly different even than that. There is no way of knowing what he saw--probably blurred ghostly figures, monstrous beyond the ability of his mind to grasp, for his eyes were adjusted only to the series of prisms and lenses that enabled him to see and coördinate the images brought to him through the eyes of the robot.

He saw these impossible figures, he felt pain and torture that were not of the flesh as he knew it, but of the spirit; agony beyond agony administered by what he could only believe were fiends from some nether hell.

And then, abruptly, as ten-year-old Paul shoved his head back into the helmet, the world he had come to believe was reality returned. It was as though he had returned to the body from some awful pit of hell, with the soul sickness still with him.

Before him he saw four human-like figures of reality, but beings unlike the only two he had ever seen. Smaller, seeming to be a part of the unbelievable nightmare he had been in. Two of them fled, two were within his grasp.

Perhaps he didn't know what he was doing when he killed Paul and Bill. It's doubtful if he had the ability to think at all then, only to tremble and struggle in his pitiful little rat body, with the automatic mechanisms of the robot acting from those frantic motions.

But it is known that there were three hours between the deaths of the two boys and the entry of Dr. MacNare at twelve thirty, and during those three hours he would have had a chance to recover, and to think, and to partially rationalize the nightmare he had experienced in realms outside what to him was the world of reality.

Adam must certainly have been calm enough, rational enough, to recognize Dr. MacNare when he entered the study at twelve thirty.