“Oh. Oh, I see,” Reardon said, trying to be friendly.
“It’s only for tonight, Mike,” the Captain said. “Just a test.”
Polchik nodded as though he understood far more than either Reardon or Summit had told him. He did not turn his big body, but his eyes went to the robot. Through the grillwork Brillo (with the sort of sound an electric watch makes) buzzed softly, staring at nothing. Polchik looked it up and down, slowly, very carefully. Finally he said, “Looks okay to me.”
“Preliminary tests,” Reardon said, “everything short of actual field runs…everything’s been tested out. You won’t have any trouble.”
Polchik murmured something.
“I beg your pardon?” Frank Reardon said.
“On-the-job-training,” Polchik repeated. He did not smile. But a sound ran through the rest of the station house crew.”
“Well, whenever you’re ready, Officer Polchik,” the whiz kid said suddenly. Reardon winced. The kid had a storm-window salesman’s tone even when he was trying to be disarming.
“Yeah. Right.” Polchik moved toward the front door. The robot did not move. Polchik stopped and turned around. Everyone was watching.
“I thought he went on his own, uh, independ’nt?” They were all watching Reardon now.
“He’s been voice-keyed to me since the plant,’“ Reardon said. “To shift command, I’ll have to prime him with your voice.” He turned to the robot. “Brillo, come here, please.”
The word please.
The buzzing became more distinct for a moment as the trunnions withdrew inside the metal skid. Then the sound diminished, became barely audible, and the robot stepped forward smoothly. He walked to Reardon and stopped.
“Brillo, this is Officer Mike Polchik. You’ll be working with him tonight. He’ll be your superior and you’ll be under his immediate orders.” Reardon waved Polchik over. “Would you say a few words, so he can program your voice-print.”
Polchik looked at Reardon. Then he looked at the robot. Then he looked around the muster room. Desk Sergeant Loyo was grinning. “Whattaya want me to say?”
“Anything.”
One of the detectives had come down the stairs. No one had noticed before. Lounging against the railing leading to the squad room upstairs, he giggled. “Tell him some’a your best friends are can openers, Mike.”
The whiz kid and the Chief of Police threw him a look. Summit said, “Bratten!” He shut up. After a moment he went back upstairs. Quietly.
“Go ahead. Anything,” Reardon urged Polchik. The patrolman drew a deep breath, took another step forward and said, self-consciously, “Come on, let’s go. It’s gettin’ late.”
The soft buzzing (the sort of sound an electric watch makes) came once again from somewhere deep inside the robot. “Yes, sir,” he said, in the voice of Frank Reardon, and moved very smoothly, very quickly, toward Polchik. The patrolman stepped back quickly, tried to look casual, turned and started toward the door of the station house once more. The robot followed.
When they had gone, the whiz kid drywashed his hands, smiled at everyone and said, “Now it begins.”
Reardon winced again. The Desk Sergeant, Loyo, rattled pencils, tapped them even, dumped them into an empty jelly jar on the blotter desk. Everyone else looked away. The FBI man smiled.
From outside the precinct house the sounds of the city seemed to grow louder in the awkward silence. In all that noise no one even imagined he could hear the sound of the robot.
Polchik was trying the locks on the burglarproof gates of the shops lining Amsterdam between 82nd and 83rd. The robot was following him, doing the same thing. Polchik was getting burned up. He turned up 83rd and entered the alley behind the shops, retracing his steps back toward 82nd. The robot followed him.
Polchik didn’t like being followed. It made him feel uneasy. Damned piece of junk! he thought. He rips one of them gates off the hinges, there’ll be hell to pay down at the precinct.
Polchik rattled a gate. He moved on. The robot followed. (Like a little kid, Polchik thought.) The robot grabbed the gate and clanged it back and forth. Polchik spun on him. “Listen, dammit, stop makin’ all that racket! Y’wanna wake everybody? You know what time it is?”
“1: 37 A.M.” the robot replied, in Reardon’s voice.
Polchik looked heavenward.
Shaking his head he moved on. The robot stopped. “Officer Polchik.” Mike Polchik turned, exasperated. “What now ?”
“I detect a short circuit in this alarm system,” the robot said. He was standing directly under the Morse-Dictograph Security panel. “If it is not repaired, it will cancel the fail-safe circuits.”
“I’ll call it in,” Polchik said, pulling the pin-mike on its spring-return wire from his callbox. He was about to thumb on the wristhand callbox, when the robot extruded an articulated arm from its chest. “I am equipped to repair the unit without assistance,” the robot said, and a light-beam began to pulse at the end of the now-goosenecked arm.
“Leave it alone!!”
“A simple 155-0 system,” the robot said. “Fixed temperature unit with heat detectors, only barely exceeding NFPA standard 74 and NFPA 72-a requirements.” The arm snaked up to the panel and followed the break line around the outside.
“Don’t screw with it! It’ll set it—”
The panel accordion folded back. Polchik’s mouth fell open. “Oh my God,” he mumbled.
The robot’s extruded arm worked inside for a long moment, then withdrew. “It is fully operable now.” The panel folded back into place.
Polchik let the pin-mike slip from his fingers and it zzzzz’d back into the wristhand. He walked away down the alley, looking haunted.
Down at the corner, the Amsterdam Inn’s lights shone weakly, reflecting dully in the street oil slick. Polchik paused at the mouth of the alley and pulled out the pin-mike again. He thumbed the callbox on his wrist, feeling the heavy shadow of the robot behind him.
“Polchik,” he said into the mike.
“Okay, Mike?” crackled the reply. “How’s yer partner doing?”
Glancing over his shoulder, Polchik saw the robot standing impassively, gooseneck arm vanished; ten feet behind him. Respectfully. “Don’t call it my partner.”
Laughter on the other end of the line. “What’s’a’matter, Mike? ‘Fraid of him?”
“Ahhh…cut the clownin’. Everything quiet here, Eighty-two and Amsterdam.”
“Okay. Oh, hey, Mike, remember…if it starts to rain, get yer partner under an awning before he starts t’rust!”
He was still laughing like a jackass as Polchik let the spring-wire zzzzz back into the call box.
“Hey, Mike! What you got there?”
Polchik looked toward the corner. It was Rico, the bartender from the Amsterdam Inn.
“It’s a robot,” Polchik said. He kept his voice very flat. He was in no mood for further ribbing.
“Real he is, yeah? No kidding?” Rico’s face always looked to Polchik like a brass artichoke, ready to be peeled. But he was friendly enough. And cooperative. It was a dunky neighborhood and Polchik had found Rico useful more than once. “What’s he supposed to do, eh?”