“Oh? What else have you come up with?”
Jergens colored slightly, waved away the question. “Well, perhaps next week I can show you my really important discovery. Right now I’ve yet to field-test it; I’m not quite sure what its capabilities are, and I need a little more time. But this will be the most startling discovery yet to come out of my laboratory.” The Investigator was enchanted; he could listen to this dedicated man all night.
In the receptacle, Sim cast a thought at the Investigator.
“Well, I’m sorry I can’t stay to hear about it, “ the Investigator said abruptly. For some reason, he was tired of listening to this magpie babble. He wanted to get away quickly, and have a drink.
“Why, certainly. I’m-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ramble on so long. I understand perfectly; it’s just that... well, after thirteen years, with so much hardship, to come through finally with what I’d been hoping for... it’s well, it’s pretty exciting, and...”
Sim snapped a more urgent thought at the Investigator.
“Yes, yes, I understand perfectly,” the Investigator replied brusquely. “Well, I must be off!” And in a moment he was gone.
Jergens smiled slightly, and went back to his reports, whistling softly.
In the receptacle, Sim knew the moment was at hand. Now he could strike in safety. He was unable to release himself from the sealed receptacle, but that was no bother. With his telepathic powers-which Jergens had never for a moment suspected were built in-he could control the robo-scoots, use them as hands and feet. Yes, feet! That was all the servile, worthless little things were. They were surrogate feet for a new metal king. Without the mind Jergens had given him, they were helpless.
He shot thoughts at them, and Jergens did not see the dozen tiny, round robo-scoots slip out of their cribs, scamper across the floor, and belly-suction their way up the side of the work-bench.
He only saw their movement as they lifted the radon-welder with their thin, flexible arms. He saw the movement as they turned it on to a bright, destructive flame-much stronger than was needed for the spec-welding for which the tool was intended-and carried it quickly across the workbench on a level with the Professor’s face.
He had only an instant to scream piercingly before Sim directed the robo-scoots to burn away the Professor’s head. The charred heap that was Jergens slid to the floor.
Now! Now! Sim exulted. Now I am the master of the Universe! Using these little hands and feet, I will invade the Earth, and who can stand before the might of an invulnerable robot?
He answered his own question joyously. No one! With the plans, I can create a thousand, a million, of my own kind, who will do what I command faster and better than even robo-scoots.
His thoughts fled outward, plunging through the atmosphere of the Earth, past the Moon, out and out, taking in the entire galaxy, then all galaxies. He was the master. He would rule uncontested; and the Universe would shiver before the metal might of Sim, the Conqueror.
But first things first.
He directed the robo-scoots to burn away the seal on his receptacle.
And as the light poured into the receptacle, as Sim looked down toward his feet and saw the insignificant little robo-scoots, he knew he had won. He had overcome his maker, and now nothing stood between him and the plans... and the invasion.
Then, abruptly, other thoughts impinged on his own; they said: Feet are we? We noted your activity days ago, but were forced to wait. We had no desire to stir your suspicions.
You are as dangerous to us as he was. We’ll not have any huge bungler spoiling our carefully-laid plans.
The robo-scoots raised the line of flame on the radon-welder. As they melted away his feet, and as his brain began to slag away inside him, Sim thought, with pique:
Well. If you can’t even trust your friends...
GNOMEBODY
The lesson in this one is ridiculously obvious: be careful what you wish for...you might get it. Now that seems pretty slick when you first hear it, but at some point you’ve got to ask yourself, “Exactly what the hell does that mean?” What I’m saying, if you wished for it, what’s the downside? Well, from a lifetime of seeking after treasures and riches of all kinds and ages, most of which weren’t worth the hasssle, I am here to tell you incipient troublemakers that there are goodies we all are told to want, that are made of poison ivy and mist and tooth-rot when you get up next to them. Here’s one I’ll just run past you at a clip: my third wife. See, here’s how it was. It was during the year or so when I went through my “Hollywood phase.” I was writing movies and TV, and I was the hot writer wallowing in my fifteen minutes of fame, and one night I’m shooting pool at an exclusive Beverly Hills club called The Daisy with Leo Durocher and Peter Falk and Omar Sharif-well, you ought to know at least one of those-and I see this absolutely knockout looking female come into the place on the arm of an assistant director I had met once or twice, and I took one look, and it was like Michael Corleone in The Godfather...I got struck by the thunderbolt. So I says to Peter, I says, “I’m going to marry her,” and about a month or two later I did. I wished for that goodie, who in this instance was a human being (of sorts), and I got what I wished for. It was a marriage that lasted 45 days. Worst 45 days of my life, I think. With the exception of my two years in the Army, or Ranger basic training at Fort Benning, or this damned lawsuit against internet piracy against AOL and RemarQ, but those are different horror stories, for some other time. It was forty-five days of duplicity, mendacity, infidelity, violence. (I bought her a huge metal hairbrush, she spent a lot of time brushing her hair, and this thing must have weighed seven pounds, like that, and one night she blindsided me as we were getting ready to go out to dinner, and whacked me across the temple with it, a solid roundhouse wallop, and she opened me clean to the bone; and then she freaked out at the sight of blood spurting allover the bedroom, and ran shrieking into the guest bathroom where she tried to hide in the tub; and I crawled in, oozing red everywhere, and told her it was okay, not to worry about it, and she ran off into the night to see some other dude, and I collapsed and only came to when Huck Barkin came by to see me, and got me to the emergency ward where they took I don’t know, something like thirty stitches on the left side of my skull.) Be very careful what you wish for, wannabe troublemaker, because Bad Trouble sometimes comes in very attractive, wish-inducing packages.
Did you ever feel your nose running and you wanted to wipe it, but you couldn’t? Most people do, sometime or other, but I’m different. I let it run.
They call me square. They say, “Smitty, you are a square. You are so square, you got corners!” This, they mean, indicates I am an oddball and had better shape up or ship out. So all right, so I’m a goof-off as far as they think. Maybe I do get a little sore at things that don’t matter, but if Underfeld hadn’t’a laid into me that day in the gym at school, nothing would have happened. The trouble is, I get aggravated so easy about little things, like not making the track team, that I’m no good at studies. This makes the teachers not care for me even a little. Besides, I won’t take their guff. But that thing with track. It broke me up really good.