Filer’s manner in his new personality was all that might be expected of a superior robot who has studied a role to perfection. He swept up the stairs to the hall three at a time, and tendered his invitation with a flourish. Once inside he headed straight for the bar and threw down three glasses of champagne, right through a plastic tube to a tank in his thorax. Only then did he let his eye roam over the assembled beauties. It was a night for love.
And of all the women in the room, there was only one he had eyes for. Filer could see instantly that she was the belle of the ball and the one he must approach. Could he do anything else in memory of the 50,000 heroes of those longforgotten books? Carol Ann van Damm was bored as usual. Her face was disguised, but no mask could hide the generous contours of her bosom and flanks. All her usual suitors were there, dancing attendance behind their dominoes, lusting after her youth and her father’s money. It was all too familiar and she had trouble holding back her yawns.
Until the pack was courteously but irrevocably pushed aside by the wide shoulders of the stranger. He was a lion among wolves as he swept through them and headed towards her.
“This is our dance,” he said, in a deep voice rich with meaning. Almost automatically she took the proferred hand, unable to resist this man with the strange gleam in his eyes. In a moment they were waltzing and it was heaven. His muscles were like steel yet he was light and graceful as a god.
“Who are you,” she whispered.
“Your prince, come to take you away from all this,” he murmured in her ear.
“You talk like a fairy tale,” she laughed.
“This is a fairy tale, and you are the heroine.”
His words struck fire in her brain and she felt the thrill of an electric current sweep through her. It had, but it was just a temporary short circuit. While his lips murmured the words she had wanted to hear all her life into her ear, his magic feet led her through the great doors and onto the balcony. Once there words blended with action and hot lips burned against hers. 102 degrees to be exact, that was what the thermostat was set at.
“Please,” she breathed, weak with this new passion, “I must sit down.”
He sat next to her, her hands in his soft yet vise-like grip. They talked the words that only lovers know until a burst of music drew her attention.
“Midnight,” she breathed. “Time to unmask, my love.”
Her mask dropped off, but he of course did nothing. “Come, come,” she said. “You must take your mask off too.”
It was a command and of course as a robot he had to obey. With a flourish he pulled off his face.
Carol Ann screamed first, then instantly burned with anger.
“What sort of scheme is this, you animated tin can? Answer.”
“It was love, dear one. Love that brought me here tonight and sent me to your arms.”
The answer was true enough, though Filer couched it in the terms of his disguise.
When the soft words of her darling came out of the harsh mouth of the electronic speaker Carol Ann screamed again. She knew she had been made a fool of.
“Who sent you here like this, answer. What is the meaning of this disguise, answer, ANSWER! ANSWER! you articulated pile of cams and rods!”
Filer tried to sort out the questions and answer them one at a time, but she gave him no time to speak.
“It’s the filthiest trick of all time, sending you here disguised as a man. You’re a robot. A nothing. A two-legged IBM machine with a victrola attached. Making believe you’re man when you’re nothing but a robot.”
Suddenly Filer was on his feet, the words crackling mechanically from his speaker.
“I am a robot.”
The gentle voice of love was gone and replaced by one of mechanical despair. Thought chased thought through the whirling electronic circuits of his brain and they were all the same thought.
I’m a robot — a robot — I must have forgotten I was a robot. What can a robot be doing here with a woman — a robot cannot kiss a woman — a woman cannot love a robot yet she said she loved me — yet I’m a robot-a robot ….
With a mechanical shudder he turned his back on the girl and clanked away. With each step his steel fingers plucked at clothes and plastic flesh until they tore free in shards and pieces. Fragments of cloth marked his trail away from the woman, and within a hundred paces he was as steel naked as the day he was built. Through the garden down to the street he went, the thoughts in his head going in ever tighter circles.
It was uncontrolled feedback and soon his body followed his brain. His legs went faster, his motors whirled more rapidly, and the central lubrication pump in his thorax churned like a mad thing.
Then, with a single metallic screech, he raised both arms and plunged forward. His head hit a corner of a stair and the granite point thrust into the thin casing. Metal ground to metal and all the complex circuits that made up his were instantly discharged. Robot Filer 13B-445-K was quite dead.
That was how the report read that the mechanic sent in the following day. Not dead, but permanently impaired, unrepairable, to be disposed of. Yet, strangely enough, that wasn’t what this same man had said when he examined the metallic corpse.
A second mechanic had helped in the examination. It was he who had spun off the bolts and pulled out the damaged lubrication pump.
“Here’s the trouble,” he had announced. “Malfunction in the pump. Piston broke, jammed the pump, the knees locked from lack of oil — then the robot fell and shorted out its brains.”
The first mechanic wiped grease off his hands and examined the faulty pump. Then looked from it to the gaping hole in the chest.
“You could almost say he died of a broken heart.”
They both laughed and he threw the pump into the corner with all the other cracked, dirty, broken and discarded machinery.
BILL THE GALACTIC HERO’S HAPPY HOLIDAY
It was a big bribe, a full bottle of DrainO-the Drunkard’s Delight, 180 proof and strong enough to etch glass. But knowing this man’s Army — or any Man’s Army — Bill did not slip it to the Duty Sergeant until he had actually seen his name posted on the leave roster.
This was it! His first R&R ever. His lips lifted in an unaccustomed smile, a drop of saliva on each fang, as he read his orders.
Now hear this. At 0324 hours you will be taken in the company of other R&Rs to the luxurious Holiday Island of Anthrax where you will Enjoy sun, sand, etc. Not enjoying is punishable by death ….
His eyes were so misted with simple pleasure that he could read no further. He would enjoy the sun and sand-and even learn to like the etc.
Promptly at 0324 the following morning nothing happened, for this was the military way. Bill, and the other lucky Troopers sat buckled into their knobbed-steel seats in the hover-jumper for over two hours until, prompted by some secret signal, the pilot started the engines and the hovercraft, lifted by its mighty fans, floated across the beach to the ocean beyond.
And hurtled a hundred feet into the air — and crashed back to the sea.
“Accident! We’re doomed!” Bill shouted as his teeth clashed together and his head was slammed down onto his spine.
“Shut your gob, bowbhead,” grated the Sergeant in the seat next to him-just as there was another horrendous collision. “Civilian hovercraft hover. This is the military version that jumps as well. To dodge enemy fire.”
“And crush everyone inside at the same time?”
“That’s right, bowb-boy. You’re learning.”
After a lifetime of soaring and crashing there was a sudden stillness. Broken only by the moans of the castrated, crunched and crumbled Troopers.