He put the paper in his pocket and went around the lake, walking on the brand-new brick paths and over the unnecessary but eye-appealing bridges, past the pagoda and up the terraced, planted hillside to the house of Anson Lee.
Lee was in the kitchen, frying some eggs and bacon. He broke two more eggs and peeled off some extra bacon slices and found another plate and cup.
"I was wondering how long it would be before you showed up," he said. "I hope they haven't found anything that carries a death penalty."
Knight told him, sparing nothing, and Lee, wiping egg yolk off his lips, was not too encouraging.
"You'll have to file the declaration of estimated income even if you can't pay it," he said. "Then, technically, you haven't violated the law and all they can do is try to collect the amount you owe. They'll probably slap an attachment against you. Your salary is under the legal minimum for attachment, but they can tie up your bank account."
"My bank account is gone," said Knight.
"They can't attach your home. For a while, at least, they can't touch any of your property, so they can't hurt you much to start with. The personal property tax is another matter, but that won't come up until next spring. I'd say you should do your major worrying about the How-2 suit, unless, of course, you want to settle with them. I have a hunch they'd call it off if you gave the robots back. As an attorney, I must advise you that your case is pretty weak."
"Albert will testify that I made him," Knight offered hopefully.
"Albert can't testify," said Lee. "As a robot, he has no standing in court. Anyhow, you'd never make the court believe you could build a mechanical heresy like Albert."
"I'm handy with tools," protested Knight.
"How much electronics do you know? How competent are you as a biologist? Tell me, in a dozen sentences or less, the theory of robotics."
Knight sagged in defeat. "I guess you're right."
"Maybe you'd better give them back."
"But I can't! Don't you see? How-2 Kit doesn't want Albert for any use they can make of him. They'll melt him down and burn the blueprints and it might be a thousand years before the principle is rediscovered, if it ever is. I don't know if the Albert principle will prove good or bad in the long run, but you can say that about any invention. And I'm against melting down Albert."
"I see your point," said Lee, "and I think I like it. But I must warn you that I'm not too good a lawyer. I don't work hard enough at it."
"There's no one else I know who'll do it without a retainer."
Lee gave him a pitying look. "A retainer is the least part of it. The court costs are what count."
"Maybe if I talked to Albert and showed him how it was, he might let me sell enough robots to get me out of trouble temporarily."
Lee shook his head. "I looked that up. You have to have a license to sell them and, before you get a license, you have to file proof of ownership. You'd have to show you either bought or manufactured them. You can't show you bought them and, to manufacture them, you've got to have a manufacturer's permit. And before you get a permit, you have to file blueprints of your models, to say nothing of blueprints and specifications of your plant and a record of employment and a great many other details."
"They have me cold then, don't they?"
"I never saw a man," declared Lee, "in all my days of practice who ever managed to get himself so fouled up with so many people."
There was a knock upon the kitchen door. "Come in," Lee called.
The door opened and Albert entered. He stopped just inside the door and stood there, fidgeting.
"Abner told me that he saw the sheriff hand you something," he said to Knight, "and that you came here immediately. I started worrying. Was it How-2 Kits?"
Knight nodded. "Mr. Lee will take our case for us, Albert."
"I'll do the best I can," said Lee, "but I think it's just about hopeless."
"We robots want to help," Albert said. "After all, this is our fight as much as yours."
Lee shrugged. "There's not much you can do."
"I've been thinking," Albert said. "All the time I worked last night, I thought and thought about it. And I built a lawyer robot."
"A lawyer robot!"
"One with a far greater memory capacity than any of the others and with a brain-computer that operates on logic. That's what law is, isn't it-logic?"
"I suppose it is," said Lee. "At least it's supposed to be."
"I can make a lot of them."
Lee sighed. "It just wouldn't work. To practice law, you must be admitted to the bar. To be admitted to the bar, you must have a degree in law and pass an examination and, although there's never been an occasion to establish a precedent, I suspect the applicant must be human."
"Now let's not go too fast," said Knight. "Albert's robots couldn't practice law. But couldn't you use them as clerks or assistants? They might be helpful in preparing the case."
Lee considered. "I suppose it could be done. It's never been done, of course, but there's nothing in the law that says it can't be done."
"All they'd need to do would be read the books," said Albert. "Ten seconds to a page or so. Everything they read would be stored in their memory cells."
"I think it's a fine idea!" Knight exclaimed. "Law would be the only thing those robots would know. They'd exist solely for it. They'd have it at their fingertips-"
"But could they use it?" Lee asked. "Could they apply it to a problem?"
"Make a dozen robots," said Knight. "Let each one of them become an expert in a certain branch of law."
"I'd make them telepathic," Albert said. "They'd be working together like one robot."
"The gestalt principle!" cried Knight. "A hive psychology! Every one of them would know immediately every scrap of information anyone of the others had."
Lee scrubbed at his chin with a knotted fist and the light of speculation was growing in his eyes. "It might be worth a try. If it works, though, it'll be an evil day for jurisprudence." He looked at Albert. "I have the books, stacks of them. I've spent a mint of money on them and I almost never use them. I can get all the others you'll need. All right, go ahead."
Albert made three dozen lawyer robots, just to be sure they had enough."
The robots invaded Lee's study and read all the books he had and clamored for more. They gulped down contracts, torts, evidence and case reports. They absorbed real property, personal property, constitutional law and procedural law. They mopped up Blackstone, corpus juris and all other tomes as thick as sin and dry as dust.
Grace was huffy about the whole affair. She would not live, she declared, with a man who persisted in getting his name into the papers, which was a rather absurd statement. With the newest scandal of space station cafйdom capturing the public interest at the moment, the fact that How-2 Kits had accused one Gordon Knight of pilfering a robot got but little notice.
Lee came down the hill and talked to Grace, and Albert came up out of the basement and talked to her, and finally they got her quieted down and she went back to her painting. She was doing seascapes now.
And in Lee's study, the robots labored on.
"I hope they're getting something out of it," said Lee. "Imagine not having to hunt up your sources and citations, being able to remember every point of law and precedent without having to look it up!"
He swung excitedly in his hammock. "My God! The briefs you could write!"
He reached down and got the jug and passed it across to Knight. "Dandelion wine. Probably some burdock in it, too. It's too much trouble to sort the stuff once you get it picked."
Knight had a snort.
It tasted like quite a bit of burdock.
"Double-barreled economics," Lee explained. "You have to dig up the dandelions or they ruin the lawn. Might as well use them for something once you dig them up."
He took a gurgling drink and set the jug underneath the hammock. "They're in there now, communing," he said, jerking a thumb toward the house. "Not saying a word, just huddled there talking it over. I felt out of place." He stared at the sky, frowning. "As if I were just a human they had to front for them."