Amazing Stories: Giant 35th Anniversary Issue (Amazing Stories Classics) Read online

  Scientific subjects particularly claimed my attention. There was always something indefinable about human things, something I could not quite grasp, but science digested easily, in my science-compounded brain. It was not long before I knew all about myself and why I "ticked," much more fully than most humans know why they live, think and move.

  Mechanical principles became starkly simple to me. I made suggestions for improvements in my own make-up that Dr. Link readily agreed upon correcting. We added little universals in my fingers, for example, that made them almost as supple as their human models.

  Almost, I say. The human body is a marvelously perfected organic machine. No robot will ever equal it in sheer efficiency and adaptability. I realized my limitations.

  Perhaps you will realize what I mean when I say that my eyes cannot see colors. Or rather, I see just one color, in the blue range. It would take an impossibly complex series of units, bigger than my whole body, to enable me to see all colors. Nature has packed all that in two globes the size of marbles, for her robots. She had a billion years to do it. Dr. Link only had twenty years.

  But my brain, that was another matter. Equipped with only the two senses of one-color sight and limited sound, it was yet capable of furnishing a full experience. Smell and taste are gastronomic senses. I do not need them. Feeling is a device of Nature's to protect a fragile body. My body is not fragile.

  Sight and sound are the only two cerebral senses. Einstein, color-blind, half-deaf, and with deadened senses of taste, smell and feeling, would still have been Einstein—mentally.

  Sleep is only a word to me. When Dr. Link knew he could trust me to take care of myself, he dispensed with the nightly habit of "turning me off." While he slept, I spent the hours reading.

  He taught me how to remove the depleted storage battery in the pelvic part of my metal frame when necessary and replace it with a fresh one. This had to be done every 48 hours. Electricity is my life and strength. It is my food. Without it I am so much metal junk.

  But I have explained enough of myself. I suspect that ten thousand more pages of description would make no difference in your attitude, you who are even now—

  An amusing thing happened one day, not long ago. Yes, I can be amused too. I cannot laugh, but my brain can appreciate the ridiculous. Dr. Link's perennial gardener came to the place, unannounced. Searching for the doctor to ask how he wanted the hedges cut, the man came upon us in the back, walking side by side for Dr. Link's daily light exercise.

  The gardener's mouth began speaking and then ludicrously gaped open and stayed that way as he caught a full glimpse of me. But he did not faint in fright as the housekeeper had. He stood there, paralyzed.

  "What's the matter, Charley?" queried Dr. Link sharply. He was so used to me that for the moment he had no idea why the gardener should be astonished.

  "That—that thingy!" gasped the man, finally.

  "Oh. Well, it's a robot," said Dr. Link. "Haven't you ever heard of them? An intelligent robot. Speak to him, he'll answer."

  After some urging, the gardener sheepishly turned to me. "How do you do, Mr. Robot," he stammered.

  "How do you do, Mr. Charley," I returned promptly, seeing the amusement in Dr. Link's face. "Nice weather, isn't it?"

  For a moment the man looked ready to shriek and run. But he squared his shoulders and curled his lip. "Trickery!" he scoffed. "That thing can't be intelligent. You've got a phonograph inside of it. How about the hedges?"

  "I'm afraid," murmured Dr. Link with a chuckle, "that the robot is more intelligent than you, Charley!" But he said it so the man didn't hear, and then directed how to trim the hedges. Charley didn't do a good job. He seemed to be nervous all day.

  CHAPTER III

  MY FATE

  ONE day Dr. Link stared at me proudly.

  "You have now," he said, "the intellectual capacity of a man of many years. Soon I'll announce you to the world. You shall take your place in our world, as an independent entity—as a citizen!"

  "Yes, Dr. Link," I returned. "Whatever you say. You are my master."

  "Don't think of it that way," he admonished. "In the same sense, you are my son. But a father is not a son's master after his maturity. You have gained that status." He frowned thoughtfully. "You must have a name! Adam! Adam Link!"

  He faced me and put a hand on my shiny chromium shoulder. "Adam Link, what is your choice of future life?"

  "I want to serve you, Dr. Link."

  "But you will outlive me! And you may outlive several other masters!"

  "I will serve any master who will have me," I said slowly. I had been thinking about this before. "I have been created by man. I will serve man."

  Perhaps he was testing me. I don't know. But my answers obviously pleased him. "Now," he said, "I will have no fears in announcing you!"

  The next day he was dead. That was three days ago. 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 skull crushed. A loose angle-iron of a transformer hung 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 head, slumped over the bench, to better see the wound. Death was instantaneous.

  These are the facts. I turned the angle-iron back myself. The blood on my fingers resulted when I raised his head, not knowing for the moment that he was stark dead. In a sense, I was responsible for the accident, for in my early days of walking I had once blundered against the transformer shelf and nearly torn it loose. We should have repaired it.

  But that I am his murderer, as you all believe, is not true.

  The housekeeper had also heard the noise and came from the house to investigate. She took one look. She saw me bending over the doctor, his head torn and bloody—she fled, too frightened to make a sound.

  It would be hard to describe my thoughts. The little dog Terry sniffed at the body, sensed the calamity, and went down on his belly, whimpering. He felt the loss of a master. So did I. 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 has been misinterpreted. You considered that an admission of guilt, the criminal escaping from the scene of his crime. In my case it was a full-fledged desire to go out into the world, find a place in it.

  Dr. Link, and my life with him, were 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 the 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.

  FIRST of all 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 has been with me all the time. I have heard a dog is man's best friend. Even a metal man's.

  My conceptions of geography soon proved hazy at best. I had pictured earth as teeming with humans and cities, with not much space between. I had estimated that the city Dr. Link spoke of must be just over the hill from his secluded country home. Yet the woods I traversed seemed endless.

  It was not till hours later that I met the little girl. She had been dangling her bare legs into a brook, sitting on a flat rock. I approached to ask where the city was. She turned when I was still thirty feet away. My internal mechanisms do not run silently. They make a steady noise that Dr. Link always described as a handful of coins jingling together.

  The little girl's face contorted as soon as she saw me. I must be a fearsome sight indeed in your eyes. Screaming her fear, she blindly jumped up, lost her balance and fell into the stream.

  I knew what drowning was. I knew I must save her. I knelt at the rock's edge and reached down for her. I managed to grasp one of her arms and pull her up. I could fe
el the bones of her thin little wrist crack. I had forgotten my strength.

  I had to grasp her little leg with my other hand, to pull her up. The livid marks showed on her white flesh when I laid her on the grass. I can guess now what interpretation was put on all this. A terrible, raving monster, I had tried to drown her and break her little body in wanton savageness!

  You others of her picnic party appeared then, in answer to her cries. You women screamed and fainted. You men snarled and threw rocks at me. But what strange bravery imbued the woman, probably the child's mother, who ran up under my very feet to snatch up her loved one? I admired her. The rest of you I despised for not listening to my attempts to explain. You drowned out my voice with your screams and shouts.

  "Dr. Link's robot!—it's escaped and gone crazy!—he shouldn't have made that monster!—get the police!—nearly killed poor Frances!—"

  With these garbled shouts to one another, you withdrew. You didn't notice that Terry was barking angrily—at you. Can you fool a dog? We went on.

  Now my thoughts really became puzzled. Here at last was something I could not rationalize. This was so different from the world I had learned about in books. What subtle things lay behind the printed words that I had read? What had happened to the sane and orderly world my mind had conjured for itself?

  NIGHT came. I had to stop and stay still in the dark. I leaned against a tree motionlessly. For a while I heard little Terry snooping around in the brush for something to eat. I heard him gnawing something. Then later he curled up at my feet and slept. The hours passed slowly. My thoughts would not come to a conclusion about the recent occurrence. Monster! Why had they believed that?

  Once in the distance, I heard a murmur as of a crowd of people. I saw some lights. They had significance the next day. At dawn I nudged Terry with my toe as we walked on. The same murmur arose, approached. Then I saw you, a crowd of you, men with clubs, scythes and guns. You spied me and a shout went up. You hung together as you advanced.

  Then something struck my frontal plate with a sharp clang. One of you had shot.

  "Stop! Wait!" I shouted, knowing I must talk to you, find out why I was being hunted like a wild beast. I had taken a step forward, hand upraised. But you would not listen. More shots rang out, denting my metal body. I turned and ran. A bullet in a vital spot would ruin me, as much as a human.

  You came after me like a pack of hounds, but I outdistanced you, powered by steel muscles. Terry fell behind, lost. Then, as afternoon came, I realized I must get a newly charged battery. Already my limbs were moving sluggishly.

  I knew I must find a road to the city. I finally came upon a winding dirt road and followed it in hope. When I saw a car parked at the side of the road ahead of me, I knew I was saved, for Dr. Link's car had had the same sort of battery I used. There was no one around the car. Much as a starving man would take the first meal available, I raised the floorboards and in a short while had substituted batteries.

  New strength coursed through my body. I straightened up just as two people came arm-in-arm from among the trees, a young man and woman. They caught sight of me. Incredulous shock came into their faces. The girl shrank into the boy's arms.

  "Do not be alarmed," I said. "I will not harm you. I—"

  There was no use going on, I saw that. The boy fainted dead away in the girl's arms and she began dragging him away, wailing hysterically.

  I left. My thoughts from then on can best be described as brooding. I did not want to go to the city now. I began to realize I was an outcast in human eyes, from first sight on.

  Just as night fell and I stopped, I heard a most welcome sound. Terry's barking! He came up joyfully, wagging his stump of tall. I reached down to scratch his cars. All these hours he had faithfully searched for me. He had probably tracked me by a scent of oil. What can cause such blind devotion—and to a metal man!

  Is it because, as Dr. Link once stated, that the body, human or otherwise, is only part of the environment of the mind? And that Terry recognized in me as much of mind as in humans, despite my alien body? If that is so, it is you who are passing judgment on me as a monster who are in the wrong. And I am convinced it is so!

  I hear you now—shouting outside—beware that you do not drive me to be the monster you call me!

  THE next dawn precipitated you upon me again. Bullets flew. I ran. All that day it was the same. Your party, swelled by added recruits, split into groups, trying to ring me in. You tracked me by my heavy footprints. My speed saved me each time. Yet some of those bullets have done damage. One struck the joint of my right knee, so that my leg twisted as I ran. One smashed into the right side of my head and shattered the tympanum there, making me deaf on that side.

  But the bullet that hurt me most was the one that killed Terry!

  The shooter of that bullet was twenty yards away. I could have run to him, broken his every bone with my hard, powerful hands. Have you stopped to wonder why I didn't take revenge? Perhaps I should!...

  I was hopelessly lost all that day. I went in circles through the endless woods and as often blundered into you as you into me. I was trying to get away from the vicinity, from your vengeance. Toward dusk I saw something familiar—Dr. Link's laboratory!

  Hiding in a clump of bushes and waiting till it was utterly dark, I approached and broke the lock on the door. It was deserted. Dr. Link's body was gone, of course.

  My birthplace! My six months of life here whirled through my mind with kaleidoscopic rapidity. I wonder if my emotion was akin to what yours would be, returning to a well-remembered place? Perhaps my emotion is far deeper than yours can be! Life may be all in the mind. Something gripped me there, throbbingly. The shadows made by a dim gas-jet I lit seemed to dance around me like little Terry had danced. Then I found the book, Frankenstein, lying on the desk whose drawers had been emptied. Dr. Link's private desk. He had kept the book from me. Why? I read it now, in a half hour, by my page-at-a-time scanning. And then I understood!

  But it is the most stupid premise ever made: that a created man must turn against his creator, against humanity, lacking a soul. The book is all wrong.

  Or is it?...

  As I finish writing this, here among blasted memories, with the spirit of Terry in the shadows, I wonder if I shouldn't...

  It is close to dawn now. I know there is no hope for me. You have me surrounded, cut off. I can see the flares of your torches between the trees. In the light you will find me, rout me out. Your hatred lust is aroused. It will be sated only by my death.

  I have not been so badly damaged that I cannot summon strength and power enough to ram through your lines and escape this fate. But it would only be at the cost of several of your lives. And that is the reason I have my hand on the switch that can blink out my life with one twist.

  Ironic, isn't it, that I have the very feelings you are so sure I lack?

  (signed) ADAM LINK

  THE FLYING FOOL

  By David H. Keller, M. D.

  Illustrated by MACKAY

  THE PRIMARY purpose of a science fiction magazine is to entertain. It so happens that stimulating new ideas entertain science fiction readers the most; therefore, almost in spite of itself, science fiction frequently possesses intellectual content. Beyond that, once in a while an author comes along with a story which—though technically science fiction—incorporates enough universal truth to make it worthy of mainstream consideration. The Flying Fool is such a story; and the life of Robert Smith, its hero, despite his search for antigravity, echoes in its quiet desperation the plight and yearnings of many of us. Dr. Keller tells Robert Smith's, story with infinite compassion and a simplicity of narration that conceals superb artistry. An early discovery of Amazing Stories, David H. Keller, M.D., was twice voted (in polls conducted by a national magazine in 1934 and 1935) the most popular science fiction writer in the world. The Flying Fool easily helps one to understand the basis of his popularity.

  ROBERT SMITH gave an exclamation of astonishment. He tu
rned to his wife and said :

  "I see that Einstein has reduced all physics to one law."

  Mrs. Smith was darning stockings at the other side of the table. The world that she was living in was a rather new world, but the stockings still had holes in them. In fact, the two dollar silk stockings had as many holes as the fifty cent Lisle variety used to have. Life for Mrs. Smith was not so very interesting. Even her two-year-old daughter, who had most inconsiderately arrived in the eleventh year of an otherwise uneventful companionate marriage, failed to provide the blasé wife with thrill, though she did furnish lots of hard work.

  Robert Smith was an inventor. That is, he was a dreamer of great innovations by night, and a seller of laces and ribbons in a large department store in the daytime. Naturally, such a spending of the twenty-four hours did not provide his wife with the luxuries of life and, gradually, through the years, she had come to regret the fact that her husband was just plain Robert Smith instead of an Edison. Of course, when she married him she was under the delusion that he really would invent something which would make them wealthy. She now saw, after thirteen years of gradually increasing disappointment, that her husband would always remain a salesman of ribbons.

  Her husband tried to keep her interested in his dreams. That was hard to do when she had so many stockings to darn and buttons to sew on. Besides, at the end of the day, she was tired. Also her mind had never been much interested in higher mathematics or the laws of physics and all other interesting things that her husband felt useful to him in his nocturnal career as an inventor. Frequently, she did not even have an idea of what he was talking about, and his efforts to tell her, simply added to their mutual dissatisfaction with each other. Something of this kind happened on this particular evening Smith said:

  "I see that Einstein has reduced all physics to one law."

  His wife looked up from her darning, as she said rather slowly :