«Is that an order?»
«It’s an order!»
The robot hummed to itself for a heartbeat, then, «Primary programming does not allow erasure of data tapes. Tapes can be erased only post-transcription or by physically removing same from my memory bank.»
«Listen—» Rico started, «—I don’t wan’ no trub—»
Polchik impatiently waved him to silence. He didn’t need any complications right now. «Listen, Brillo …»
«Yes. I hear it.»
Polchik was about to continue speaking. He stopped. I hear it? This damned thing’s gone bananas. «I didn’t say anything yet.»
«Oh. I’m sorry, sir. I thought you were referring to the sound of a female human screaming on 84th Street, third-floor front apartment.»
Polchik looked everywhichway. «What are you talkin’ about? You crazy or something?»
«No, sir. I am a model X-44. Though under certain special conditions my circuits can malfunction, conceivably, nothing in my repair programming parameters approximates ‘crazy.’»
«Then just shuddup and let’s get this thing straightened out. Now, try’n understand this. You’re just a robot, see. You don’t understand the way real people do things. Like, for instance, when Rico here offers me a bottle of—»
«If you’ll pardon me, sir, the female human is now screaming in the 17,000 cycle-per-second range. My tapes are programmed to value-judge such a range as concomitant with fear and possibly extreme pain. I suggest we act at once.»
«Hey, Polchik …» Rico began.
«No, shuddup, Rico. Hey, listen, robot, Brillo, whatever: you mean you can hear some woman screaming, two blocks away and up three flights? Is the window open?» Then he stopped. «What’m I doin’? Talking to this thing!» He remembered the briefing he’d been given by Captain Summit. «Okay. You say you can hear her … lets find her.»
The robot took off at top speed. Back into the alley behind the Amsterdam Inn, across the 82nd-83rd block, across the 83rd-84th block, full-out with no clanking or clattering. Polchik found himself pounding along ten feet behind the robot, then twenty feet, then thirty feet; suddenly he was puffing, his chest heavy, the armament bandolier banging the mace cans and the riot-prod and the bullhorn and the peppergas shpritzers and the extra clips of needler ammunition against his chest and back.
The robot emerged from the alley, turned a 90° angle with the sharpest cut Polchik had ever seen, and jogged up 84th Street. Brillo was caught for a moment in the glare of a neon streetlamp, then was taking the steps of a crippled old brownstone three at a time.
Troglodytes with punch-presses were berkeleying Polchik’s lungs and stomach. His head was a dissenter’s punchboard. But he followed. More slowly now; and had trouble negotiating the last flight of stairs to the third floor. As he gained the landing, he was hauling himself hand-over-hand up the banister. If God’d wanted cops to walk beats he wouldn’t’a created the growler!
The robot, Brillo, X-44, was standing in front of the door marked 3-A. He was quivering like a hound on point. (Buzzing softly with the sort of sound an electric watch makes.) Now Polchik could hear the woman himself, above the roar of blood in his temples.
«Open up in there!» Polchik bellowed. He ripped the .32 Needle Positive off its velcro fastener and banged on the door with the butt. The lanyard was twisted; he untwisted it. «This’s the police. I’m demanding entrance to a private domicile under Public Law 22-809, allowing for superced’nce of the ‘home-castle’ rule under emergency conditions. I said open up in there!»
The screaming went up and plateau’d a few hundred cycles higher, and Polchik snapped at the robot, «Get outta my way.»
Brillo obediently moved back a pace, and in the narrow hallway Polchik braced himself against the wall, locked the exoskeletal rods on his boots, dropped his crash-hat visor, jacked up his leg and delivered a powerful savate kick at the door.
It was a pre-SlumClear apartment. The door bowed and dust spurted from the seams, but it held. Despite the rods, Polchik felt a searing pain gash up through his leg. He fell back, hopping about painfully, hearing himself going, «oo—oo—oo» and then prepared himself to have to do it again. The robot moved up in front of him, said, «Excuse me, sir,» and smoothly cleaved the door down the center with the edge of a metal hand that had somehow suddenly developed a cutting edge. He reached in, grasped both sliced edges of the hardwood, and ripped the door outward in two even halves.
«Oh.» Polchik stared open-mouthed for only an instant.
Then they were inside.
The unshaven man with the beer gut protruding from beneath his olive drab skivvy undershirt was slapping the hell out of his wife. He had thick black tufts of hair that bunched like weed corsages in his armpits. She was half-lying over the back of a sofa with the springs showing. Her eyes were swollen and blue-black as dried prunes. One massive bruise was already draining down her cheek into her neck. She was weakly trying to fend off her husband’s blows with ineffectual wrist-blocks.
«Okay! That’s it!» Polchik yelled.
The sound of another voice, in the room with them, brought the man and his wife to a halt. He turned his head, his left hand still tangled in her long black hair, and he stared at the two intruders.
He began cursing in Spanish. Then he burst into a guttural combination of English and Spanish, and finally slowed in his own spittle to a ragged English. «… won’t let me alone … go out my house … always botherin’ won’t let me alone … damn …» and he went back to Spanish as he pushed the woman from him and started across the room. The woman tumbled, squealing, out of sight behind the sofa.
The man stumbled crossing the room, and Polchik’s needler tracked him. Behind him he heard the robot softly humming, and then it said, «Sir, analysis indicates psychotic glaze over subject’s eyes.»
The man grabbed a half-filled quart bottle of beer off the television set, smashed it against the leading edge of the TV, giving it a half-twist (which registered instantly in Polchik’s mind: this guy knew how to get a ragged edge on the weapon; he was an experienced barroom brawler) and suddenly lurched toward Polchik with the jagged stump in his hand.
Abruptly, before Polchik could even thumb the needler to stun (it was on dismember), a metal blur passed him, swept into the man, lifted him high in the air with one hand, turned him upside-down so the bottle, small plastic change and an unzipped shoe showered down onto the threadbare rug. Arms and legs fluttered helplessly.
«Aieeee!» the man screamed, his hair hanging down, his face plugged red with blood. «Madre de dios!»
«Leave him alone!» It was the wife screaming, charging—if it could be called that, on hands and knees—from behind the sofa. She clambered to her feet and ran at the robot, screeching and cursing, pounding her daywork-reddened fists against his gleaming hide.
«Okay, okay,» Polchik said, his voice lower but strong enough to get through to her. Pulling her and her hysteria away from the robot, he ordered, «Brillo, put him down.»
«You goddam cops got no right bustin’ in here,» the man started complaining the moment he was on his feet again. «Goddam cops don’t let a man’n his wife alone for nothin’ no more. You got a warrant? Huh? You gonna get in trouble, plenty trouble. This my home, cop, ‘home is a man’s castle,’ hah? Right? Right? An’ you an’ this tin can …» He was waving his arms wildly.
Brillo wheeled a few inches toward the man. The stream of abuse cut off instantly, the man’s face went pale, and he threw up his hands to protect himself.
«This man can be arrested for assault and battery, failure to heed a legitimate police order, attempted assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon, and disturbing the peace,» Brillo said. His flat, calm voice seemed to echo off the grimy walls.