On the situation map behind it, the Pentagon—the building they were in—flared scarlet.
The Attorney General, nearest the door, leaped to its feet. "Mr. President, I hear him!"
And they could all hear now. Far off, down the long corridors, a crash. A faint explosion, and another crash, and a raging, querulous, high-pitched voice. A nearer crash, and a sustained, smashing, banging sound, coming toward them.
The oak-paneled doors flew open with a crash, splintering.
A tall, dark male figure in gray leather jacket, rocket-gun holsters swinging at its hips, stepped through the splintered doors and stood surveying the Council. Its hands hung just below the butts of the rocket guns.
It drawled: "Mistuh Anderson Trumie!"
It stepped aside. Another male figure—shorter, darker, hobbling with the aid of a stainless steel cane that concealed a ray-pencil, wearing the same gray leather jacket and the same rocket-gun holsters—entered, stood for a moment, and took position on the other side of the door.
Between them, Mr. Anderson Trumie shambled ponderously into the Council Chamber to call on his Council.
Sonny Trumie, come of age. He wasn't much more than five feet tall, but his weight was close to 400 pounds. He stood there in the door, leaning against the splintered oak, quivering jowls obliterating his neck, his eyes nearly swallowed in the fat that swamped his skull, his thick legs trembling as they tried to support him.
"You're all under arrest!" he screeched. "Traitors! Traitors!"
He panted ferociously, glowering at them. They waited with bowed heads. Beyond the ring of councilmen, the situation map slowly blotted out the patches of red as the repair robots worked feverishly to fix what Sonny Trumie had destroyed.
"Mr. Crockett!" Sonny cried shrilly. "Slay me these traitors!"
Wheep-wheep, and the guns whistled out of their holsters into the tall bodyguard's hands. Raia-lat-lat, and two by two, the 19 councilmen leaped, clutched at air and fell as the rocket pellets pierced them through.
"That one, tool" Mr. Trumie pointed at the sweet-faced blonde.
Bang. The sweet young face convulsed and froze; it fell, slumping across its little table.
On the wall, the situation map flared red again, but only faintly—for what were 20 robots?
Sonny gestured curtly to his other bodyguard. It leaped forward, tucking the stainless steel cane under one arm, putting the other around the larded shoulders of Sonny Trumie. "Ah, now, young master," it crooned. "You just get ahold o' Long John's arm now—"
"Get them fixed," Sonny ordered abruptly. He pushed the President of the Council out of its chair and, with the robot's help, sank into it himself. "Get them fixed right, you hear? I've had enough traitors! I want them to do what I tell them!"
"Sartin sure, young master. Long John'll be pleased to—•"
"Do it now! And you, Davey, I want my lunch!"
"Reckoned you would, Mistuh Trumie. It's right hyar." The Crockett robot kicked the fallen councilmen out of the way as a procession of waiters filed in from the corridor.
Sonny ate.
He ate until eating was pain, and then he sat there sobbing, his arms braced against the tabletop, until he could eat more.
The Crockett robot said worriedly: "Mistuh Trumie, moughtn't you rear back a mite? Old Doc Aeschylus, he don't hold with you eatin' too much, you know."
"I hate Doc!" Trumie said bitterly.
He pushed the plates off the table. They fell with a rattle and a clatter, and they went spinning away as he heaved himself up and lurched alone over to the window.
"I hate Doc!" he brayed again, sobbing, staring through tears out the window at his kingdom with its hurrying throngs and marching troops and roaring waterfront. The tallow shoulders tried to shake with pain. He felt as though hot cinderblocks were being thrust down his throat, the ragged edges cutting, the hot weight crushing.
"Take me back," he wept to the robots. "Take me away from these traitors. Take me to my Private Place!"
IV
"As you see," said Roosenburg, "he's dangerous."
Garrick looked out over the water, toward Nordi Guardian. "I'd better look at his tapes," he said.
The girl swiftly picked up the reels and began to thread them into the projector. Dangerous. This Trumie indeed was dangerous, Garrick conceded. Dangerous to the balanced, stable world, for it only took one Trumie to topple its stability. It had taken thousands and thousands of years for society to learn its delicate tightrope walk. It was a matter for a psychist, all right.
And Garrick was uncomfortably aware that he was only 24.
"Here you are," said the girl.
"Look them over," Roosenburg suggested. "Then, after you've studied the tapes on Trumie, we've got something else. One of his robots. But you'll need the tapes first."
"Let's go," said Garrick.
The girl flicked a switch and the life of Anderson Trumie appeared before them, in color, in three dimensions—in miniature.
Robots have eyes; and where the robots go, the eyes of Robot Central go with them. And the robots go everywhere. From the stored files of Robot Central came the spool of tape that was the frightful life story of Sonny Trumie.
The tapes played into the globe-shaped viewer, ten inches high, a crystal ball that looked back into the past. First, from the recording eyes of the robots in Sonny Trumie's nursery. The lonely little boy, 20 years before, lost in the enormous nursery.
"Disgusting!" breathed Kathryn Pender, wrinkling her nose. "How could people live like that?"
Garrick said: "Please, let me watch this. It's important."
In the gleaming globe, the little boy kicked at his toys, threw himself across his huge bed, sobbed. Garrick squinted, frowned, reached out, tried to make contact. It was hard. The tapes showed the objective facts, but for a psychist, it was the subjective reality behind the facts that mattered.
Kicking at his toys. Yes, but why? Because he was tired of them—and why was he tired? Because he feared them? Kicking at his toys. Because—because they were the wrong toys? Kicking—hate them! Don't want them! Want—
A bluish flare in the viewing globe. Garrick blinked and jumped, and that was the end of that section.
The colors flowed and suddenly jelled into bright life. Garrick recognized the scene after a moment—it was right there in Fisherman's Island, some pleasure spot overlooking the water. A bar, and at the end of it was Anderson Trumie at 20, staring somberly into an empty glass. The view was through the eyes of the robot bartender.
Anderson Trumie was weeping.
Once again, there was the objective fact—but the fact behind the fact, what was it? Trumie had been drinking, drinking. Why?
Drinking, drinking.
With a sudden sense of shock, Garrick saw what the drink was—the golden, fizzy liquor. Not intoxicating. Not habit-forming! Trumie had become no drunk. It was something else that kept him drinking, drinking, must drink, must keep on drinking, or eke—
And again the bluish flare.
There was more—Trumie feverishly collecting objects of art, Trumie decorating a palace, Trumie on a world tour, and Trumie returned to Fisherman's Island.
And then there was no more.
"That," said Roosenburg, "is the file. Of course, if you want the raw, unedited tapes, we can try to get them from Robot Central, but—"
"No." The way things were, it was best to stay away from Robot Central; there might be more breakdowns and there wasn't much time. Besides, something was beginning to suggest itself.