“Surely he didn’t think he was beautiful,” Joe remarked.
“Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder.”
“How stupid you are. You’re ugly, too.”
“And you’re a collection of rattletrap gears, pistons and cogs. You’ve got worms,” said Gallegher, referring of course, to certain mechanisms in the robot’s body.
“I’m lovely.” Joe stared raptly into the mirror.
“Maybe, to you. Why did I make you transparent, I wonder?”
“So others could admire me. I have X-ray vision, of course.”
“And wheels in your head. Why did I put your radioatomic brain in your stomach? Protection?”
Joe didn’t answer. He was humming in a maddeningly squeaky voice, shrill and nerve-racking.
Gallegher stood it for a while, fortifying himself with a gin rickey from the siphon.
“Get it up!” he yelped at last. “You sound like an old-fashioned subway train going round a curve.”
“You’re merely jealous,” Joe scoffed, but obediently raised his tone to a supersonic pitch. There was silence for a half-minute. Then all the dogs in the neighborhood began to howl.
Wearily Gallegher dragged his lanky frame up from the couch. He might as well get out. Obviously there was no peace to be had in the laboratory. Not with that animated junk pile inflating his ego all over the place. Joe began to laugh in an off-key cackle. Gallegher winced.
“What now?”
“You’ll find out.”
Logic of causation and effect, influenced by probabilities, X-ray vision and other enigmatic senses the robot no doubt possessed. Gallegher cursed softly, found a shapeless black hat, and made for the door. He opened it to admit a short, fat man who bounced painfully off the scientist’s stomach.
“Whoof! Uh. What a corny sense of humor that jackass has. Hello, Mr. Kennicott. Glad to see you.
Sorry I can’t offer you a drink.”
Mr. Kennicott’s swarthy face twisted malignantly. “Don’ wanna no drink. Wanna my money. You gimme. Howzabout it?”
Gallegher looked thoughtfully at nothing. “Well, the fact is, I was just going to collect a check.”
“I sella you my diamonds. You say you gonna make somet’ing wit’ ’em. You gimme check before. It go bounca, bounca, bounca. Why is?”
“It was rubber,” Gallegher said faintly. “I never can keep track of my bank balance.”
Kennicott showed symptoms of going bounca on the threshold. “You gimme back diamonds, eh?”
“Well, I used ’em in an experiment. I forget just what. You know, Mr. Kennicott, I think I was a little drunk when I bought them, wasn’t I?”
“Dronk,” the little man agreed. “Mad wit’ vino, sure. So whatta? I wait no longer. Awready you put me off too much. Pay up now or elsa.”
“Go away, you dirty man,” Joe said from within the room. “You’re awful.”
Gallegher hastily shouldered Kennicott out into the street and latched the door behind him. “A parrot,” he explained. “I’m going to wring its neck pretty soon. Now about that money. I admit I owe it to you. I’ve just taken on a big job, and when I’m paid, you’ll get yours.”
“Bah to such stuff,” Kennicott said. “You gotta position, eh? You are technician wit’ some big company, eh? Ask for ahead-salary.”
“I did,” Gallegher sighed. “I’ve drawn my salary for six months ahead. Now look. I’ll have that dough for you in a couple of days. Maybe I can get an advance from my client. O.K.?”
“No?”
“Ah-h, nutsa. I waita one day. Two daysá, maybe. Enough. You get money. Awright. If not, O.K., calabozo for you.”
“Two days is plenty,” Gallegher said, relieved. “Say, are there any of those bootleg theaters around here?”
“Better you get to work an’ not waste time.”
“That’s my work. I’m making a survey. How can I find a bootleg place?”
“Easy. You go downtown, see guy in doorway. He sell you tickets. Anywhere. All over.”
“Swell,” Gallegher said, and bade the little man adieti. Why had he bought diamonds from Kennicott? It would be almost worth while to have his subconscious amputated. It did the most extraordinary things. It worked on inflexible principles of logic, but that logic was completely alien to Gallegher’s conscious mind. The results, though, were often surprisingly good, and always surprising.
That was the worst of being a scientist who knew no science-who played by ear.
There was diamond dust in a retort in the laboratory, from some unsatisfactory experiment Gallegher’s subconscious had performed; and he had a fleeting memory of buying the stones from Kennicott. Curious. Maybe-oh, yeah. They’d gone into Joe. Bearings or something. Dismantling the robot wouldn’t help now, for the diamonds had certainly been reground. Why the devil hadn’t he used commercial stones, quite as satisfactory, instead of purchasing blue-whites of the finest water? The best was none too good for Gallegher’s subconscious. It had a fine freedom from commercial instincts. It just didn’t understand the price system of the basic principles of economics.
Gallegher wandered downtown like a Diogenes seeking truth. It was early evening, and the luminates were flickering on overhead, pale bars of light against darkness. A sky sign blazed above Manhattan’s towers. Air-taxis, skimming along at various arbitrary levels, paused for passengers at the elevator landings. Heigh-ho.
Downtown, Gallegher began to look for doorways. He found an occupied one at last, but the man was selling post cards. Gallegher declined and headed for the nearest bar, feeling the needs of replenishment. It was a mobile bar, combining the worst features of a Coney Island ride with uninspired cocktails, and Gallegher hesitated on the threshold. But at last he seized a chair as it swung past and relaxed as much as possible. He ordered three rickeys and drank them in rapid succession.
After that he called the bartender over and asked him about bootleg theaters.
“Hell, yes,” the man said, producing a sheaf of tickets from his apron. “How many?”
“One. Where do I go?”
“Two-twenty-eight. This street. Ask for Tony.”
“Thanks,” Gallegher said, and having paid exorbitantly, crawled out of the chair and weaved away.
Mobile bars were an improvement he didn’t appreciate. Drinking, he felt, should be performed in a state of stasis, since one eventually reached that stage, anyway.
The door was at the bottom of a flight of steps, and there was a grilled panel set in it. When Gallegher knocked, the visascreen lit up -obviously a one-way circuit, for the doorman was invisible.
“Tony here?” Gallegher said.
The door opened, revealing a tired-looking man in pneumo-slacks, which failed in their purpose of building up his skinny figure. “Got a ticket? Let’s have it. O.K., bud. Straight ahead. Show now going on. Liquor served in the bar on your left.”
Gallegher pushed through soundproofed curtains at the end of a short corridor and found himself in what appeared to be the foyer of an ancient theater, circa 1980, when plastics were the great fad. He smelled out the bar, drank expensively priced cheap liquor, and, fortified, entered the theater itself. It was nearly full. The great screen-a Magna, presumably-was filled with people doing things to a spaceship. Either an adventure film or a newsreel, Gallegher realized. -
Only the thrill of lawbreaking would have enticed the audience into the bootleg theater. It smelled. It was certainly run on a shoestring, and there were no ushers. But it was illicit, and therefore well patronized. Gallegher looked thoughtfully at the screen. No streakiness, no mirage effect. A Magna enlarger had been fitted to a VoxView unlicensed televisor, and one of Brock’s greatest stars was emoting effectively for the benefit of the bootleggers’ patrons. Simple highjacking. Yeah.