As the hovercar disappeared around a curve in the path, the drifters, losers, and vagrants began to emerge from the underbrush. Zeb looked around warily: he hadn’t realized until then how many of them there were.
“What are you doing here, Zeb?” she asked.
“I had a little trouble,” he said, then shrugged hopelessly. What was the point of trying to keep it a secret? “I went out to mug somebody, and I got a human being by mistake.”
“Oh, wow! Can he identify you?”
“Unfortunately, I used to know him, so, yes-no, you keep it,” he added quickly as she made as if to return the money he had given her. “Money won’t help me now.”
She nodded soberly. “I wouldn’t do it, but … Oh, Zeb, I’m trying to save for a whole new chassis, see? I can’t tell you how much I want to grow up, but every time I ask for a new body, they say the central nervous array isn’t really worth salvaging. All I want’s a mature form. You know? Like hips and boobs! But they won’t let me have a mature form. Say there’s more openings for juveniles anyway, but what I want to know is, if there are all those openings, why don’t they find me one?”
“When was the last time you worked regular?” Zeb asked.
“Oh, my God-years ago: I had a nice spot for a long time, pupil in a preprimary school that some human person wanted to teach in. That was all right. She didn’t really like me, though, because I didn’t have all the fixtures, you know? When she was teaching things like toilet-training and covering coughs and sneezes, she’d always give me this dirty look. But I could handle the cookies and milk all right,” she went on dreamily, “and I really liked the games.”
“So what went wrong?”
“Oh-the usual thing. She got tired of teaching `Run, Robot! See the robot run!’ So she went for a progressive school. All about radical movements and peace marches. I was doing real good at it, too. Then one day we came in and she told us we were too juvenile for the kind of classes she wanted to teach. And there we were, eighteen of us, out on the streets. Since then it’s been nothing but rotten.” She glanced up, wiping the rain out of her eyes-or the tears-as the purse vendor approached. “We don’t want to buy anything, Hymie.”
“Nobody does,” he said bitterly, but there was sympathy in his eyes as he studied Zeb. “You got real trouble, don’t you? I can always tell.”
Zeb shrugged hopelessly and told him about the Reverend Harmswallow. The vendor’s eyes widened. “Oh, God,” he said. He beckoned to one of the dope pushers. “Hear that? This guy just mugged a human being-second offense, too!”
“Man! That’s a real heavy one, you know?” He turned and called to his partner, down the walk, “We got a two-time person mugger here. Marcus! And in a minute there were a dozen robots standing around, glancing apprehensively at Zeb and whispering among themselves.
Zeb didn’t have to hear what they were saying; he could figure it out.
“Keep away from me,” he offered. “You’ll just get mixed up in my trouble.”
Sally piped suddenly, “If it’s your trouble, it’s everybody’s trouble. We have to stick together. In union there is strength.”
“What?” Zeb demanded.
“It’s something I remember from, you know, just before I got kicked out of the progressive school. `In union there is strength.’ It’s what they used to say.”
“Union!” snarled the pitchman, gesturing with his tray of all-leather purses. “Don’t tell me about unions! That was what I was supposed to be, union organizer, United Open-Pit Mine Workers, Local Three-three-eight, and then they closed down the mines. So what was I supposed to do? They made me a sidewalk pitchman!” He stared at his tray of merchandise, then violently flung it into the shrubbery. “Haven’t sold one in two months! What’s the use of kidding myself? If you don’t get along with the rehab robots, you might as well be stockpiled. It’s all politics.”
Sally looked thoughtful for a moment, then pulled something out of her data stores. “Listen to this one,” she called. ”The strikes’s your weapon, boys, the hell with politics!“
Zeb repeated, ” `The strike’s your weapon, boys, the hell with politics!’ Hey, that doesn’t sound bad.”
“That’s not all,” she said. Her stiff, poorly automated lips were working as she rehearsed material from her data storage. “Here. `We all ought to stick together because in union there is strength.’ And, let’s see. `Solidarity is forever.’ No, that’s not right.”
“Wait a minute,” Hymie cried. “I know that one. It’s a song: `Solidarity forever, solidarity forever, solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong!’ That was in my basic data store. Gosh,” he said, his eyes dreamy, “I hadn’t though of that one in years!”
Zeb looked around nervously. There were nearly thirty robots in the group now and while it was rather pleasant to be part of this fraternity of the discarded, it might also be dangerous. People in cars were slowing down to peer at them as they went past on the drive. “We’re attracting attention,” he offered. “Maybe we ought to move.”
But wherever they moved, more and more people stopped to watch them, and more and more robots appeared to join their procession. It wasn’t just the derelicts from Amadeus Park now. Shes shopping along the lakefront stores darted across the street; convention delegates in the doorways of the big hotels stood watching and sometimes broke ranks to join them. They were blocking traffic, and blaring horns added to the noise of the robots singing and shouting. “I got another one,” Sally called to him across the front of the group. ” `The worker’s justice is the strike.’ “
Zeb thought for a moment. “It’d be better if it was `The robot’s justice is the strike.’ “
“What?”
”THE ROBOT’S JUSTICE IS THE STRIKE!” he yelled, and he could hear robots in the rear ranks repeating it. When they said it all together, it sounded even better, and others caught the idea.
Hymie screamed, “let’s try this one: `Jobs, Not Stockpiling. Don’t Throw Us on the Scrap heap!’ All together now!”
And Zeb was inspired to make up a new one: “Give the Humans Rehab Schools: We Want Jobs!” And they all agreed that was the best of the lot; with a hundred fifty robots shouting it at once, the last three words drummed out like cannon fire, it raised echoes from the building fronts, and heads popped out of windows.
They were not all robots. There were dozens of humans in the windows and on the streets, some laughing, some scowling, some looking almost frightened-as if human beings ever had anything to be frightened of.
And one of them stared incredulously right at Zeb.
Zeb stumbled and missed a step. On one side Hymie grabbed his arm; on the other he reached out and caught the hand of a robot whose name he didn’t even know. He turned his head to see, over this shoulder, the solid ranks of robots behind him, now two hundred at least, and turned back to the human being. “Nice to see you again, Reverend Harmswallow,” he called and marched on, arm in arm, the front rank steady as it went-right up to the corner of State Street, where the massed ranks of police cars hissed as they waited for them.
Zeb lay on the floor of the bullpen. He was not alone. Half the hes from the impromptu parade were crowded into the big cell with him, along with the day’s usual catch of felons and misdemeanants. The singing and the shouting were over. Even the regular criminals were quieter than usual. The mood in the pen was despairing, though from time to time one of his comrades would lean down to say, “It was great while it lasted, Zeb,” or, “We’re all with you, you know!” But with him in what? Recycling? More rehab training? Maybe a long stretch in the Big House downstate, where the human guards were said to get their jollies out of making prisoners fight each other for power cells?