She clasped the back of her chair. "You can't be. You've got to be some kind of Commie. . . ." She tested him. "What is the binomial sequence of the tape labeled 23-1002?" she asked slyly.
He cocked his head to the side.
"See? A fake. I knew it—"
"01, 0110, 0001, 1100, 010, 001001, 100, 11 ..."
The professor's gasp swallowed up the silence in the room. "How could you? How could you know that?"
"000,1010, 0110,00110," he said.
She threw her arms around him. "Darling, you've come home!"
A glimmer formed in Mr. Gordons's depthless eyes. "You understand. No one since my creator has been able to understand me."
"I understand, baby. Listen—01, 11001, 01111."
"Please," Mr. Gordons said, blushing. "No one's ever said that to me before."
"Don't be silly. I'm your mother. I changed your transistors when you were just a little batch of wires. 10010,00110-"
"Oh, Motherl"
"There, there," she said, patting his hair. "No one will ever take you from me again."
"Can you fix my memory data transceivers?"
"Of course, baby. Mothers can do everything."
"Everything?"
"Everything."
"In that case, there is one other thing I've always wanted," Mr. Gordons said shyly.
"Tell me, darling."
64
Mr. Gordons looked up to her hopefully. "Creativity," he said. "I want to be creative. I want to think independently. I want to be free."
The professor scratched her head thoughtfully. "I don't know if that's possible," she said. "And even if it were, what would happen if I gave you creativity? You wouldn't follow your programming."
The android cast his eyes downward. "I thought you'd say something like that."
The room returned to silence. Awkwardly, the professor put her arm around Mr. Gordons's shoulders. "Aw, I've always been a sucker for an ugly face," she said. "I'll see what I can do."
"Really?"
"No harm trying."
Slowly he took her hand in his. When he spoke, his voice was scratchy. "Thank you, Mom," he said.
The sound of soft footfalls brought them both to attention. "Dickey, is that you?" the professor called.
"Yes," he answered from the corridor. Dickey strode into the lab defiantly. "That cute man from Washington knows everything. I don't know what kind of hocus pocus you're into with this garbage-man, but he's going to put a stop to it."
Mr. Gordons rose. "This man must not continue talking about me," he said. "It will endanger my survival. I must stop him."
"Over my dead body, you will," Ralph Dickey said.
Mr. Gordons walked toward him. "Precisely."
65
"Don't bother about him," the professor said. "Get back here, Gordons." "I'll just be a minute, Mom." "Mom?" Dickey backed away from Mr. Gordons. "What's going on here? Hey, get away from me, you. Stop him, Professor." But Mr. Gordons already had the lab assistant by the scruff of the neck and was leading him out of the lab. "Hey, quit it. ... Where are you taking me? ... Help! Professor, stop him. Help!"
"Serves you right, you wimp. Gordons, find out where he hides the booze, while you're at it."
There was a scuffle, then silence. After a few minutes, Ralph Dickey walked back into the lab, his anxious face now composed and blank.
"What'd you do?" The professor leaped out of her chair. "What'd you do with my baby, you worthless bum?" Dickey wound his arms around the professor. "Get away!" she hollered. "Where's Gordons?"
"I'm here, Mom," he said lovingly. "Don't be an ass. I know who you are." "I am Mr. Gordons," he insisted. He pulled something out of his lab coat pocket. It was a key. "I believe you requested this."
She stared at it in amazement for a moment, then snatched the key out of Mr. Gordons's hand and ran straight for a steel and asbestos cabinet. "It works," she shrieked as the door to the cabinet flew open. With religious gravity, she lifted a gin bottle and held it aloft. "I've got the gin, Dickey," she taunted. "I'm Mr. Gordons."
66
She reached in for another bottle. "Here's the vermouth."
"The components for a martini. My creator's favorite drink."
The professor rooted around inside the cabinet, then began a frantic search through the laboratory. "Damn, damn, damn it to hell!" she yelled.
«XT • "
No ice.
"Just a moment." Mr. Gordons went to the sink, dribbled some water into his cupped hands, and squeezed. A moment later a dozen ice cubes tinkled into a glass beaker. "For you, Mom," he said, holding out the beaker to her. She grabbed it, sniffed the vermouth, filled the beaker with gin, and downed it. "I like you better this way, Ralph. Now just find Gordons for me and I'll let you keep your job."
"But I am Mr. Gordons," the man who looked like Ralph Dickey said. "I was given the capability to change form when my survival demands that I disguise my appearance."
She polished off another beaker. And another. "Prove it," she said.
As she was' pouring the fourth beaker of gin down her throat, Mr. Gordons stretched and twisted, squatted, and turned his back to her. He made sounds like metallic squeaks and crunching gears as he twirled into a blur. The professor polished off the bottle and began another as Mr. Gordons continued his strange motion. When at last he came to a stop, nothing remained of Mr. Gordons—or Dickey, or Verbanic—except a metal cube dotted with lights and wires.