“If I can’t sell you, I’ll turn you in to the police,” I said.
“I am valuable property,” I answered. “It is forbidden to endanger valuable property. You won’t have me destroyed.”
“Christ damn you!” Vandaleur cried. “What? Are you arrogant? Do you know you can trust me to protect you? Is that the secret?”
The multiple-aptitude android regarded him with calm accomplished eyes.
“Sometimes,” it said, “it is a good thing to be property.”
It was three below zero when the Lyra Queen dropped at Croydon Field. A mixture of ice and snow swept across the field, fizzling and exploding into steam under the Queen’s tail jets. The passengers trotted numbly across the blackened concrete to customs inspection, and thence to the airport bus that was to take them to London. Vandaleur and the android were broke. They walked.
By midnight they reached Piccadilly Circus. The December ice storm had not slackened and the statue of Eros was encrusted with ice. They turned nght, walked down to Trafalgar Square and then along the Strand, shaking with cold and wet. Just above Fleet Street, Vandaleur saw a solitary figure coming from the direction of St.
Paul’s. He drew the android into an alley.
“We’ve got to have money,” he whispered. He pointed to the approaching figure.
“He has money. Take it from him.”
“The order cannot be obeyed,” the android said.
“Take it from him,” Vandaleur repeated. “By force. Do you understand? We’re desperate.”
“It is contrary to my prime directive,” the android repeated. “The order cannot be obeyed.”
“Damn you!” I said. “You’ve murdered. . . tortured . . . destroyed! You tell me that now?”
“It is forbidden to endanger life or property. The order cannot be obeyed.”
I thrust the android back and leaped out at the stranger. He was tall, austere, poised. He had an air of hope curdled by cynicism. He carried a cane. I saw he was blind.
“Yes?’ he said. “I hear you near me. What is it?”
“Sir,...” Vandaleur hesitated. “I’m desperate.”
“We are all desperate,” the stranger replied. “Quietly desperate.”
“Sir.. . I’ve got to have some money.”
“Are you begging or stealing?” The sightless eyes passed over Vandaleur and the android.
“I’m prepared for either.”
“An. So are we all. It is the history of our race.” The stranger motioned over his shoulder. “I have been begging at St. Paul’s, my friend. What I desire cannot be stolen. What is it you desire that you are lucky enough to be able to steal?”
“Money,” Vandaleur said.
“Money for what? Come, my friend, let us exchange confidences. I will tell you why I beg, if you will tell me why you steal. My name is Blenheim.”
“My name is. . . Vole.”
“I was not begging for sight at St. Paul’s, Mr. Vole. I was begging for a number.”
“A number?”
“Ah, yes. Numbers rational, numbers irrational. Numbers imaginary. Positive integers. Negative integers. Fractions, positive and negative. Elh? You have never heard of Blenheim’s immortal treatise on Twenty Zeros, or The Differences in Absence of Quantity?” Blenheim smiled bitterly. “I am the wizard of the Theory of Numbers, Mr. Vole, and I have exhausted the charm of Number fOr myself. After fifty years of wizardry, senility approaches and appetite vanishes. I have been praying in St. Paul’s for inspiration. Dear God, I prayed, if You exist, send me a Number.”
Vandaleur slowly lifted the cardboard portfolio, and touched Blenheim’s hand with it. “In here,” he said, “is a number. A hidden number. A secret number. The number of a crime. Shall we exchange, Mr. Blenheim? Shelter for a number?”
“Neither begging nor stealing, eh?” Blenheim said. “But a bargain. So all life reduces itself to the banal.” The sightless eyes again passed over Vandaleur and the android. “Perhaps the Almighty is not God but a merchant. Come home with me.”
On the top floor of Blenheim’s house we share a room— two beds, two clàsets, two washstands, one bathroom. Vandaleur bruised my forehead again and sent me out to find work, and while the android worked, I consulted with Blenheim and read him the papers from the portfolio, one by one. All reet! All reet!
Vandaleur told him this much and no more. He was a student, I said, planning a thesis on the murdering android. In these papers which he had collected were the facts that would explain the crimes, of which Blenheim had heard nothing.
There must be a correlation, a number, a statistic, something which would account for my derangement, I explained, and Blenheim was piqued by the mystery, the detective story, the human interest of Number.
We examined the papers. As I read theni -loud, he listed them and their contents in his blind, meticulous writing. And then I read his notes to him. He listed the papers
-by type, by type face, by fact, by fancy, by article, spelling, words, theme, advertising, pictures, subject, politics, prejudices. He analyzed. He studied. He meditated. And we lived together in that top floor, always a little cold, always a little terrified, always a little closer.. . brought together by our fear of us, our hatred between us driven like a wedge into a living tree and splitting the trunk, only to be forever incorporated into the scar tissue. So we grew together; Vandaleur and the android. Be fleet be fleet.
And one afternoon Blenheim called Vandaleur into his study and displayed his notes. “I think I’ve found it,” he said, “but I can’t understand it.”
Vandaleur’s heart leaped.
“Here are the correlations,” Blenheim continued. “In fifty papers there are accounts of the criminal android. What is there, outside the depredations, that is also in fifty papers?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Blenheim.”
“It was a rhetorical question. Here is the answer. The weather.”
“What?”
“The weather.” Blenheim nodded. “Each crime was committed on a day when the temperature was above ninety-degrees Fahrenheit.”
“But that’s impossible,” Vandaleur exclaimed. “It was cold at the university on Lyra Alpha.”
“We have no record of any crime committed on Lyra Alpha. There is no paper.”
“No. That’s right. I—” Vandalepr was coiffused. Suddenly he exclaimed. “No.
You’re right. The furnace room. It was hot down there. Hot! Of course. My God, yes!
That’s the answer. Dallas Brady’s electric furnace. . . the rice deltas on Paragon. So jeet- your seat. Yes. But why? Why? My God, why?”
I came into the house at that moment and, passing the study, saw Vandaleur and Blenheim. I entered, awaiting commands, my multiple aptitudes devoted to service.