"What's going on here?" Remo asked.
The professor's hand slipped over the crumpled
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wad of paper bearing the garbageman's footprint and held it closely. "Nothing," she squeaked.
"What are you talking about?" Dickey shrieked from across the room, still afraid to move. "He's from Washington. He's here to.help us find the LC-111."
"He's a friend of mine," the professor piped quickly. Dickey sucked in a gulp of air in surprise.
"Professor—"
"Shut up! Go to one of the other labs. Leave us alone."
"But I was only trying—"
"Get out of here, Dickey. Now!"
The assistant slinked out of the lab, his face a mask of bewilderment.
"Look, whoever you are . . ." the woman said.
"Remo. Call me Remo."
"Hi, Remo," the garbageman said happily. "Did you like that?" he asked.
Remo winced. Something was stirring in his memory, something long forgotten except for a faint twinge of an emotion something like . . . He searched his mind for what it was, but it had escaped him. Still, there was something familiar about the man in the garbageman's clothes. Familiar and ... dreadful.
"Your voice sounds familiar," Remo mused aloud.
"I feel I know you, as well," the garbageman said, his eyes riveting on Remo's. His voice sounded strangely flat.
"Listen, Remo," said Dr. Payton-Holmes. "If you want to find that LC-111, you talk to that
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goddamn faggot, Dickey. He didn't have his entry pass when he showed up today. He probably gave it to some other fag in a leather bar, and they sneaked in here to take my computer and do unspeakable things to it." She lowered her voice. "The little pansy's a fellow traveler. Find out whose toes he was sucking last night and you'll find my LC-111. Hurry. Before he escapes."
"Okay," Remo said. He walked to the door. Outside in the hallway, Ralph Dickey was waiting for him.
"Something fishy is going on here," Dickey said.
"I had the same idea," Remo said.
"Look, let's go someplace and talk," Dickey said.
"Sweet," said Remo.
Dickey took Remo to the university cafeteria. Shouting above the din of rock music, clanking plates, and a food fight at the next table, he told Remo that he didn't trast the professor and he didn't trust that garbageman.
"And another thing. The garbage is always picked up around here on Wednesday. That's today. But somebody took it last night."
"Where's it go?" Remo asked. "The city dump?"
"No. We've got a private service. The Hollywood Disposal Service."
"Like that guy in the lab?" Remo said.
"Right."
Dickey's manicured fingers were twirling the hair on Remo's wrists. "I think we ought to talk this over a lot," he said.
"What happened to your entrance card?" Remo said.
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"I lost it last night. I'll take you to a place with quiet nv'Sic and paper lanterns."
"I think I'm going to be busy being heterosexual," Remo said.
"I was only trying to be friendly," Dickey said. .
"I've got too many friends as it is," Remo said.
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Í
CHAPTER SIX
"I am Mr. Gordons. I am an android. I was created four years ago by a woman scientist. I am a survival machine."
"You're a bullshit artist," said Dr. Frances Pay-ton-Holmes. "But you're cute. I'll admit that. Got a drink on you, Gordons?"
"I do not drink beverages. They are harmful to my components. But I understand your craving for alcohol. My creator was also an alcoholic; I seem always to be involved with females who are alcoholics. My creator named me for her favorite libation. My predecessors, Messrs. Seagrams and Gilbeys, were less perfect mechanisms than me," he said proudly.
"Must be great to be so wonderful," the professor muttered.
"I must have been programmed to be wonderful," Mr. Gordons mused. "Otherwise I wouldn't
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be. You see, I can only perform what I was programmed to do."
"Yeah, yeah," she said. "See here. I don't know about this android stuff, but I want to know about that writing on your foot."
"I am troubled," Mr. Gordons said.
"Join the club."
"The man who was just here, the one in the black T-shirt," he began.
"What about him?"
"I know him from somewhere, but I cannot recall where."
"Oh, to hell with him. Where's the frigging LC-111?"
"Let me explain from the beginning," Mr. Gordons said. "I was somehow disassembled at a point in time I no longer recall, due to certain damaged mechanisms in my memory banks."
The professor looked ceilingward.
"I was deposited in a repository for unusable artifacts." He glanced down at Verbanic's uniform and picked at the Hollywood Disposal Service emblem on its pocket. "This one."
"The dump? You were living in a dump?"
"I was disassembled, and my necessary components destroyed. Not until your computer was placed in the same location could I amalgamate its parts and become functional again. You see, I am an assimilator."
"A what?"
"An assimilator. As long as one of my components remains intact, I have the capability to reassemble myself. My creator programmed this
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capability into me. As I've said before, I am a survival machine."
The professor was stunned. "The LC-111 is part of you?"
He nodded. "I assimilated it."
The professor shrieked. "My baby! My darling LC-111 in a garbage dump!"
"Fortunately, your computer was in excellent repair, and I was able to use all its parts."
She looked at him askance. "Do you expect me to believe that you're really a robot?"
"An android. I have human features."
"And what do you know about the LC-111?" she asked suspiciously.
"I know everything about it."
"Liar. No one knows everything about that computer. Not even me, and I built it."
"I do. For example, I know that the fourth cathode in the laser transmission is faulty, which accounts for a 1/250-per-second lapse. Unaware of the cause of this problem, you undoubtedly corrected for it by connecting an entire new terminal." He pointed at one of the three remaining computers on the table. "That one, most likely."
The professor was incredulous. "The fourth cathode? How could that be?"
"Moisture absorption through a hairline crack at the base."
"Of course!" she exulted. "That could have done it. It took two years of work on that booster terminal—hey, why am I telling you this? How did you know about the frigging fourth cathode?"
Mr. Gordons stared at her blankly. "I have already told you. I am the LC-111."
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She clasped the back of her chair. "You can't be. You've got to be some kind of Commie. . . ." She tested him. "What is the binomial sequence of the tape labeled 23-1002?" she asked slyly.
He cocked his head to the side.
"See? A fake. I knew it—"
"01, 0110, 0001, 1100, 010, 001001, 100, 11 ..."
The professor's gasp swallowed up the silence in the room. "How could you? How could you know that?"
"000,1010, 0110,00110," he said.
She threw her arms around him. "Darling, you've come home!"
A glimmer formed in Mr. Gordons's depthless eyes. "You understand. No one since my creator has been able to understand me."
"I understand, baby. Listen—01, 11001, 01111."
"Please," Mr. Gordons said, blushing. "No one's ever said that to me before."
"Don't be silly. I'm your mother. I changed your transistors when you were just a little batch of wires. 10010,00110-"
"Oh, Motherl"
"There, there," she said, patting his hair. "No one will ever take you from me again."
"Can you fix my memory data transceivers?"
"Of course, baby. Mothers can do everything."