Rico shook his vegetable head. “What they gonna do next? Robots. So what happens t’you, Mike? They make you a detective?”
“Sure. And the week after that they make me Captain.”
Rico looked uncertain, didn’t know whether he should laugh or sympathize. Finally, he said, “Hey, I got a bottle for ya,” feeling it would serve, whatever his reaction should properly have been. “Betcha your wife likes it… from Poland, imported stuff. Got grass or weeds or some kinda stuff in it. S’possed to be really sensational.”
For just a second, peripherally seen, Polchik thought the robot had stirred.
“Escuchar! I’ll get it for you.”
He disappeared inside the bar before Polchik could stop him. The robot did move. It trembled…?
Rico came out with a paper bag, its neck twisted closed around what was obviously a bottle of liquor.
“I’ll have to pick it up tomorrow,” Polchik said. “I don’t have the car tonight.”
“I’ll keep it for you. If I’m on relief when you come by, ask Maldonado.”
The robot was definitely humming. Polchik could hear it. (The sort of sound an electric watch makes.) It suddenly moved, closing the distance, ten feet between them, till it passed Polchik, swiveled to face Rico—who stumbled backward halfway to the entrance to the Amsterdam Inn—then swiveled back to face Polchik.
“Visual and audial data indicate a one-to-one extrapolation of same would result in a conclusion that a gratuity has been offered to you, Officer Polchik. Further, logic indicates that you intend to accept said gratuity. Such behavior is a programmed infraction of the law. It is—”
“Shut up!”
Rico stood very close to the door, wide-eyed.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” Polchik said to him.
“Officer Polchik,” the robot went on as though there had been no interruption, “it is clear if you intend to accept a gratuity, you will be breaking the law and liable to arrest and prosecution under Law Officer Statutes number—”
“I said shuddup, dammit!” Polchik said, louder. “I don’t even know what the hell you’re talkin’ about, but I said shuddup, and that’s an order!”
“Yes, sir,” the robot replied instantly. “However, my data tapes will record this conversation in its entirety and it will be transcribed into a written report at the conclusion of our patrol.”
“What?” Polchik felt gears gnashing inside his head, thought of gears, thought of the robot, rejected gears and thought about Captain Summit. Then he thought about gears again…crushing him.
Rico’s voice intruded, sounding scared. “What’s he saying? What’s that about a report?”
“Now wait a minute, Brillo,” Polchik said, walking up to the robot. “Nothin’s happened here you can write a report on.”
The robot’s voice—Reardon’s voice, Polchik thought irritatedly—was very firm. “Logic indicates a high probability that a gratuity has been accepted in the past, and another will be accepted in the future.”
Polchik felt chili peppers in his gut. Hooking his thumbs in his belt—a pose he automatically assumed when he was trying to avert trouble—he deliberately toned down his voice. “Listen, Brillo, you forget the whole thing, you understand. You just forget it.”
“Am I to understand you desire my tapes to be erased?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Erase it.”
“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…let’s 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 bull-horn 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’ta 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 power 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.