“Yes,” Vandaleur answered, still confused by the discovery.
“And that explains why it refused to attack you that night on the Strand. It wasn’t hot enough to break the prime directive. Only in the heat.. .The heat, all reet!” He looked at the android. A lunatic command passed from man to android. I refused. It is forbidden to endanger life. Vandaleur gestured furiously, then seized Blenheim’s shoulders and yanked him back out of his desk chairlo the floor. Blenheim shouted once.
Vandaleur leaped on him like a tiger, pinning him to the floor and sealing his mouth with one hand.
“Find a weapon,” I called to the android.
“It is forbidden to endanger life.”
“This is a fight for self-preservation. Bring me a weapon!”
He held the squirming mathematician with all his weight. I went at once to a cupboard where I knew a revolver was kept. I checked it. It was loaded with five cartridges. I handed it to Vandaleur. I took it, rammed the barrel against Blenheim’s head and pulled the trigger. He shuddered once.
We had three hours before the cook returned from her day off. We looted the house. We took Blenheim’s money and jewels. We packed a bag with clothes. We took Blenheim’s notes, destroyed the newspapers, and we fled, carefully locking the door behind us. In Blenheim’s study we left a pile of crumpled papers under a half inch of burning candle. And we soaked the rug around it with kerosene. No, I did all that. The android refused. I am forbidden to endanger life or property.
All reet!
They took the tubes to Leicester Square, changed trains and rode to the British Museum. There they got off and went to a small Georgian house just off Russell Square. A shingle in the window read: NAN WEBB, PSYCHOMETRIC
CONSULTANT. Vandaleur had made a note of the address some weeks earlier. They went into the house. The android waited in the foyer with the bag. Vandaleur entered Nan Webb’s office.
She was a tall woman with gray shingled hair, very fineEnglish complexion and very bad English legs. Her features were blunt, her expression acute, She nodded to Vandaleur, finished a letter, sealed it and looked up.
“My name,” I said, “is Vanderbilt. James Vanderbilt.”
“Quite.”
“I’m an exchange student at London University.”
“Quite.”
“I’ve been researching on the killer android, and I think I’ve discovered something very interesting. I’d like your advice on it. What is your fee?”
“What is your college at the university?”
“Why?”
“There is a discount for students.”
“Merton College.”
“That will be two pounds, please.”
Vandaleur placed two pounds on the desk and added to the fee Blenheim’s notes.
“There is a correlation,” he said, “between the crimes of the android and the weather.
You will note that each crime was committed when the temperature rose above ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Is there a psychometric answer for this?”
Nan Webb nodded, studied the notes for a moment, put down the sheets of paper and said: “Synesthesia, obviously.”
“What?”
“Synesthesia,” she repeated. “When a sensation, Mr. Vanderbilt, is interpreted immediately in terms of a sensation from a different sense organ than the one stimulated, it is called synesthesia. For example: A sound stimulus gives rise to a simultaneous sensation of definite color. Or color gives rise to a sensation of taste. Or a light stimulus gives rise to a sensation of sound. There can be confusion or short circuiting of any sensation of taste, smell, pain, pressure, temperature and so on.
D’you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Your research has probably uncovered the fact that the android most probably reacts to temperature stimulus above the ninety-degree level synesthetically. Most probably there is an endocrine response. Probably a temperature linkage with the android adrenal surrogate. High temperatute brings about a response of fear, anger, excitement and violent physical activity. . . all within the province of the adrenal gland.”
“Yes. I see. Then if the android were to be kept in cold climates. . . .“
“There would be neither stimulus nor response. There would be no crimes.
Quite.”
“I see. What is psychotic projection?’
“How do you mean?”
“Is there any danger of projection with regard to the owner of the android?”
“Very interesting. Projection is a throwing forward. It is the process of throwing out upon another the ideas or impulses that belong to oneself. The paranoid, for example, projects upon others his conflicts and disturbances in order to externalize them. He accuses, directly or by implication, other men of having the very sicknesses with which he is struggling himself.”
“And the danger of projection?’
“It is the danger of the victim’s believing what is implied. If you live with a psychotic who projects his sickness upon you, there is a danger of falling into his psychotic pattern and becoming virtually psychotic yourself. As, no doubt, is happening to you, Mr. Vandaleur.”
Vandaleur leaped to his feet.
“You are an ass,” Nan Webb went on crisply. She waved the sheets of notes.
“This is no exchange student’s writing. It’s the unique cursive of the famous Blenheim. Every scholE in England knows this blind writing. There is no Merton College at London University. That was a miserable guess. Merton is one of the Oxford Colleges. And you, Mr. Vandaleur, are so obviously infected by association with your deranged android. . . by projection, if you will. . . that I hesitate between calling the Metropolitan Police and the Hospital for the Criminally Insane.”
I took the gun out and shot her.
Reet!
“Antares Two, Alpha Aurigae, Acrux Four, Pollux Nine, Rigel Centaurus,”
Vandaleur said. “They’re all cold. Cold as a witch’s kiss. Mean temperatures oI forty degrees Fahrenheit. Never get hotter than seventy. We’re in business again. Watch that curve.”
The multiple-aptitude android swung the wheel with its accomplished hands. The car took the curve sweetly and-sped on through the northern marshes, the reeds stretching for miles, brown and dry, under the cold English sky. The sun was sinking swiffly. Overhead, a lone ifight of bustards flapped clumsily eastward. High above the flight, a lone helicopter drifted toward home and warmth.
“No more warmth for us,” I said. “No more heat. We’re safe when we’re cold.