The robots turned back to face each other. ‘Mr. President! I demand the defence Secretary explain the loss of the Graf Zeppelin and the 456th Bomb Group!’
The Defence Secretary nodded to the Commissioner of Public Safety. ‘Mr. Trumie threw them away,’ it said sorrowfully.
Once again, that sighing electronic drone from the assembled robots.
The Council fussed and fiddled with its papers, while the situation map on the wall flared and dwindled, flared and dwindled. The Defence Secretary cleared its throat again. ‘Mr. President, there is no question that the, ah, absence of an effective air component will seriously hamper, not to say endanger, our prospects of a suitable landing. Nevertheless - and I say this, Mr. President, in full knowledge of the conclusions that I may - indeed, should! - be drawn from such a statement - nevertheless, Mr. President, I say that our forward elements will successfully complete an assault landing -’
‘Mr. President!’ The breathless whisper of the blonde stenographer again. ‘Mr. President, Mr. Trumie is in the building!’
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 towards them.
The oak-panelled doors flew open, splintering.
A tall, dark male figure in grey 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 grey leather jacket and the same rocket-gun holsters - entered, stood for a moment, and took a 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 four hundred 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 shrilled. ‘Traitors! Traitors!’
He panted ferociously, staring 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!’ he cried shrilly. ‘Slay me these traitors!’
Wheep-wheep, and the guns whistled out of their holsters into the tall bodyguard’s hands. Rata-tat-tat, and two by two, the nineteen councilmen leaped, clutched at air and fell, as the rocket pellets pierced them through.
‘That one too!’ cried Mr. Trumie, pointing 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 twenty 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 marster. Long John’ll -’
‘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.
He 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 hold back a little? Od Doc Aeschylus, he don’t keer much to have 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 cinder-blocks were being thrust up into his body cavities, the ragged edges cutting, the hot weight crushing. ‘Take me back,’ he sobbed to the robots. ‘Take me away from these traitors. Take me to my Private Place!’
4
‘So you see,’ said Roosenburg, ‘he’s dangerous.’
Garrick looked out over the water, towards North 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 was dangerous, all right, 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 twenty-four.
‘Here you are,’ said the girl.
‘Look them over,’ said Roosenburg. ‘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 colour, 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 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, twenty 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-figure 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, all right; 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.