"Dammit, this is serious," he tried to say. He looked at Chiun. Chiun said, "We will learn nothing more here today. What can we learn from a woman who doesn't even know what a synapse is?" He looked hurt.
They walked toward the door, retreating from the peals of laughter that reverberated in the room as Dr. Carlton went from hilarity to hysteria. Silently, they trudged down the hallway toward the metal front door. As they reached the sliding panel, Remo said, "Dammit, Chiun, I'm not taking this."
"What are you going to do?"
"Attack," Remo said. "Attack. Wait outside for me."
Chiun shrugged and went out through the automatic door. Remo was alone in the corridor. He walked noiselessly back toward the main computer room.
The door to the room was still open, but there was no more laughter from within. Inside, instead, Remo heard the drone of voices. The female voice was Vanessa Carlton's.
"… you must change all the lock combinations and install additional electronic detectors. Do you understand?"
The male voice that answered was dull and thin sounding. "I understand. Anything you wish, Doctor."
"Then do it."
At that moment, Remo entered the room.
Standing before the control panel where he had left her was Dr. Carlton. But in front of her stood a man. He wore a gray business suit. Remo looked to the left. The dummy that she had kicked to the floor was gone. It too had worn a gray suit. Both Dr. Carlton and the man turned as Remo entered the room, the man's eyes following Dr. Carlton's startled gaze. Herkily, jerkily, it took a step forward toward Remo. Its eyes were clear, but seemed unfocussed, yet locked on Remo with a look he would have sworn was hate had it been seen anywhere but on that expressionless face.
"No, Mr. Smirnoff," said Vanessa Carlton. "Do what I said about the locks."
The man stopped his advance toward Remo. His metallic voice answered again. "As you wish, Doctor."
Remo watched as the creature moved toward him, walking deliberately like a man recovering from a paralyzing stroke who has found that his body no longer does the simple basic things naturally, and each act is the direct result of will. Remo stepped aside, watching Mr. Smirnoff's hands waiting for a move against him, and then realizing he was a fool: would robots tip their moves with their hands? But Mr. Smirnoff slid past him silently, without a glance, and went through the door.
After he had left, Dr. Carlton spoke. "So what now, Browneyes?"
"You can start anywhere."
"Where's your friend?"
"Waiting outside."
"How much do you know about Mr. Gordons?" she asked.
"I know one thing now."
"Which is?"
"He's not human," Remo said.
Vanessa Carlton nodded. "No, he's not. But you'll probably wish he were."
"You in the business of making robots?" Remo said.
"No. Spaceship components." Vanessa Carlton put down her new martini glass, and, stepping lightly over the glass chips from her dropped last drink, went to the computer console. From a small cabinet in the front of the computer, she took out a handful of electrical leads. Carefully, she began to separate the tangled wires as she talked.
"It was just more efficient to make them in humanoid shape," she said. "It allowed them to understand better what will face a crewmember on a later manned mission. What is a problem for a six-foot astronaut might not be a problem for a foot-square metal box. So I used the humanoid shape."
"Why didn't you use it on your rolling bartender there, Mr. Seagrams?"
"He was just an early experiment in getting computers to respond to voice signals." She began to lay the electrical leads out, as she separated each one from the cluster, onto the long table in front of the computer panel. "I worked out that problem. Not only could they hear and understand but I made it possible for them to talk. I programmed them for increasingly more difficult tasks. But…" She shook her head sadly. "No creativity. Let's face it, Browneyes, machines don't mean a thing if they ain't got that swing. Mr. Gordons was the closest I've come."
Remo perched on the edge of a chair, watching Dr. Carlton, follow her bouncing breasts around the table, stretching wires out to their full length.
"What's the difference between Gordons, say, and Mr. Smirnoff there?"
"Night and day," the blonde said. "Mr. Smirnoff is programmed to obey and to do whatever pleases me. He's just a dedicated mechanical butler. But Mr. Gordons, now he's different."
"How?"
"He's an assimilator and fabricator. It was a major breakthrough. Mr. Gordons is the entire American military-industrial complex gathered up in one. He can take anything and make anything out of it. Put a chair in front of him and he can make paper out of it or an exact replica of the tree it came from. Given raw materials, he can duplicate anything. If you must know, that man-like look of his, he created it all himself out of plastics and metals."
She had all the leads separated now and she raised herself up on the conference table, sitting on its edge. She took one of the electrical leads and began to fasten it with tape to her left temple.
"So what makes him different?" asked Remo. "So he's a strong robot that looks like a man. Why's he coming after us?"
Dr. Carlton shook her head with the dismay of the specialist trying to explain the complicated to the layman. "It's his program," she said. "Look. Here is how it went. The government wanted a creativity program. I couldn't give them one. It looked like the government was going to close down our lab. I needed to come up with something. I came up with survival."
"Survival," said Remo.
"Right. Mr. Gordons is programmed for survival. Nothing else matters to him except how to survive." Left electrode in place, she began to tape another electrode to her right temple. "Somehow, he must have gotten the idea that you and your friend threaten his chances for survival. I guess he decided he must get rid of you to survive. Remember, that's all he knows."
"What did the government say about it?"
"Well, that was my thought," said Dr. Carlton. "If I couldn't design creative intelligence, I might be able to get practically the same result if I could program a robot to survive. That was why they wanted creative intelligence anyway: to help a spaceship survive. I thought a survival mechanism might work just as well as a creatively intelligent one."
"So?"
"So," she said bitterly, "I couldn't convince the government. They didn't want anything to do with it. They gave me three months to come up with creativity."
The two head electrodes were in place and Dr. Carlton now began attaching a third to her left wrist.
"So I came back here and told the staff we were in trouble. That it looked like the lab wouldn't survive. Mr. Gordons heard me. That night, he devised a human form for himself and ran out. I haven't seen him since."
"Well, didn't you tell anybody? Give them a warning?"
"Warn them about what? Remember, when Mr. Gordons was here, he was just a machine. He looked kind of like a butter churn atop a hospital cart. He took human form as a survival mechanism when he was leaving. He assimilated plastic and metal and redesigned himself. But I've never seen him. I don't know what he looks like. That's why I have such security here. I've been afraid he'll come back, if he decides there's something here that he needs, and I for one wouldn't want to try to stop him."
She had finished strapping the electrodes on both wrists and now beckoned Remo to her with a finger.
"Come here, Browneyes."
Remo walked to where Vanessa Carlton sat on the edge of the table. She put her arms around his chest. "For all I know, you might be Mr. Gordons. That's why I'm going to have to test you."