Part 4

Tom-Tom did not look as Gascon had remembered him. The checked jacket was filthy and frayed, and in the breast of it was a round black hole the size of a fingertip. The paint had been flaked away from the comical face, one broad ear was half broken off, the wig was tousled and matted. And the eyes goggled no more in the clownish fashion that had been made so famous in publicity photographs. They crouched deep in Tom-Tom's wooden face and glowed greenly, like the eyes of a meat-eating animal.

"You're the only man I ever expected to figure me out, Gaspipe," said Tom-Tom. "And even you can't do much about it, can you? Put away the gun. I've been shot at and shot at, and it does nothing but make little holes like this."

He tapped the black rent in his jacket-front with a jointed forefinger.

"As a matter of fact, I was glad to see your notice in the agony column. I think I'd have hunted you up, anyway. You see, we make a fine team, Gaspipe. There are things we can still do for each other, but you must be reasonable."

"I'm not here to let you make fun of me," said Gascon. "You're just a little freak, brought to life by the chance power evolved by a cracked old intelligence. Once I puzzled it out, I knew that I needn't be afraid. You can't do anything to me."

"No?" said Tom-Tom, with what seemed a chuckle. "Let me show you something, Gaspipe."

His wooden hand moved across the desk-top and touched a button. A section of the wall slid back like a stage curtain, revealing an opening the size of a closet door. The opening was fenced in with a metal grating. Behind it stood Shannon Cole, her long black hair awry, her face pale, her cloth-of-gold pajamas rumpled.

"Ben!" she said, in a voice that choked. "Did he get you, too?"

Gascon exclaimed, and turned as if to spring toward the grating. But at the same instant, with a swiftness that was more than a cat's, Tom-Tom also moved. He seemed to fly across his desk as though flung by a catapult. His hard head struck Gascon's stomach, doubling him up, and then Tom-Tom's arms whipped around Gascon's ankles, dragging them sidewise. Down fell the ventriloquist, heavily and clumsily. The gun flew from his hand, bouncing on the floor like a ball. Tom-Tom caught it in mid-bounce, and lifted it with both hands.

"I won't kill you, Gaspipe," he announced, "but I'll most emphatically shoot off your kneecap, if you try anything sudden again. Sit up. Put your back against that wall. And listen."

"Do what he says, Ben! He means business!" Shannon Cole urged tremulously from behind her bars.

Gascon obeyed, trying to think of a way to grapple that imp of wood and fabric. Tom-Tom chuckled again, turned back to his desk and scrambled lightly upon it. As before he touched the button, and Shannon was instantly shut from sight.

"Good thing I kidnapped her," he observed. "Not only is she worth thousands to her managers, but she brought you to me. Now we'll have a dandy conference. Just like old times, isn't it, Gaspipe?"

Gascon sat still, eyeing the gun. He might have risked its menace, but for the thought of Shannon behind those bars. Tom-Tom, so weirdly strong, might fight him off even if disarmed, then turn on his captive. The dummy that was no longer a dummy seemed to read his mind:

"No violence, Gaspipe. I tell you, it's been tried before. When the Dilson mobsters were through laughing at the idea of my taking over, one or two thought that Digs Dilson should be avenged. But their guns didn't even make me blink. I killed a couple, and impressed the others. I put into them the fear of Tom-Tom." Again the chuckle. "I'm almost as hard to hurt as I am to fool, Gaspipe. And that's very, very hard indeed."

"What do you want of me?" blurted Gascon, scowling.

"Now that's a question," nodded Tom-Tom. "It might be extended a little. What do I want of life, Gaspipe? Life is here with me, but I never asked for it. It was thrust into me, and upon me. My first feeling was of crazy rage toward the life-giver—"

"And so you killed him?" interrupted Gascon.

"I did. And the killing gave me the answer. The only thing worth while in life is taking life."

Tom-Tom spread his wooden hands, as though he felt that he had made a neat point. Gascon made a quick gesture of protest, then subsided as Tom-Tom picked up the gun again.

"You're wrong, Tom-Tom," he said earnestly.

"Am I? You're going to give me a moral lecture, are you? But men invented morals, so as to protect their souls. I don't have a soul, Gaspipe. I don't have to worry about protecting it. I'm not human. I'm a thing." Sitting on the desk, he crossed his legs and fiddled with the gun. "You've lived longer than I. What else, besides killing, is worth while in life?"

"Why—enjoyment—"

The marred head waggled. "Enjoyment of what? Food? I can't eat. Companionship? I doubt it, where a freak like me is concerned. Possessions? But I can't use clothes or houses or money or anything like that. They're for men, not dummies. What else, Gaspipe?"

"Why—why—" This time Gascon fell silent.

"Love, you were going to say?" The chuckle was louder, and the glowing yellow eyes flickered aside toward the place behind the wall where Shannon was penned up. "You're being stupid, Gaspipe. Because you know what love is, you think others do. Gaspipe, I'll never know what love is. I'm not made for it."

"I see you aren't," Gascon nodded solemnly. "All right, Tom-Tom. You can find life worth living if you try for supremacy in some line—leadership—"

"That," said Tom-Tom, "is where killing comes in. And where you come in, too."

He laid down the gun and put the tips of his jointed fingers together, in a pose grotesquely like that of a mild lecturer. "I've given my case a lot of time and thought, you see. I realize that I don't fit in—humanity hasn't ever considered making a place for me. I don't have needs or reactions or wishes to fit those of humanity."

"Is that why you turn to criminals? Because they don't fit into normal human ethics, either?"

"Exactly, exactly." Tom-Tom nodded above his poised hands. "And criminals understand me, and I understand them better than you think. But," and he sounded a little weary, "they're no good, either.

"You see, Gaspipe, they scare too easily. They die too easily. Just now you overpowered one. They're not fit to associate with me on the terms I dictate. If I'm going to have power, it will turn what passes for my stomach if I have only people—people of meat and bone—under me." He made a spitting sound, such as Gascon had often faked for him in the days when the two were performing. "As I say, this is where you come in."

"In heaven's name, what do you mean?"

"You're smart, Gaspipe. You made me—the one thing that has been given artificial life. Well, you'll make other things to be animated."

"More robots?" demanded Gascon. "You want a science factory."

"I am the apex of science come true. Oh, it's practical. A couple at first. Then ten. Then a hundred. Then enough, perhaps, to grab a piece of the world and rule it. Don't bug out your eyes, Gaspipe. My followers bought up the life-making machinery and other things for me. I have lots of money—from that ransom—and I can get more."

Gascon was finding the idea not so surprising as at first, but he shook his head over it. "I won't."

"Yes, you will. We'll be partners again. Understand?"

"If I refuse?"

Tom-Tom made no audible answer. He only turned and gazed meaningly at the place where Shannon was shut up.

Gascon sighed and rose. "Show me this machinery of yours."

"Step this way." Monkey-nimble, Tom-Tom hopped to the floor. He had taken up the gun again, and gestured with it for Gascon to walk beside him. Together they crossed the office to a rear corner, where Tom-Tom touched what looked like a projecting nail head. As with the door to Shannon's cell, a panel slid back. They passed into a corridor, and the panel closed behind them.

"Straight ahead," came the voice of Tom-Tom in the darkness. "Being mechanical, I have a head for mechanics. I devised all these secret panels. Neat?"

"Dramatic," replied Gascon, who could be ironical himself. "Now, Tom-Tom, if I do what you want, what happens to me and to Miss Cole?"

"You both stay with me."

"You won't let them ransom her?"

A chuckle, and: "I'll take the ransom money, but she's seen too much to go free. Maybe I'll make the two of you a nice suite of rooms for house-keeping—barred in, of course. Didn't you use to carry me around in a little case, Gaspipe? I'll take just as good care of you, if you do what I want."

The little monster did something or other to open a second door, and beyond showed the light of a strong electric lamp. They passed into a big windowless room, with rough wooden walls, probably a deep cellar. It held a complicated arrangement of electrical machinery.

Hopping lightly to a bench the height of Gascon's shoulder, Tom-Tom seized a switch and closed it. There were emissions of sparks, a stir of wheels and belts, and the hum of machinery being set in motion.

"This, Gaspipe, is what brought me to life. And look!" The jointed wooden hand flourished toward a corner. "There's the kind of thing that was tried and failed."

It looked like a caricature of an armored knight—a tall, jointed, gleaming thing, half again as big as a big man, with a head shaped like a bucket. There were no features except two vacant eyes of quartz, staring through the blank metal as through a mask. Gascon walked around it, his doctor-mind and builder-hands immediately interested. The body was but loosely pinned together, and he drew aside a plate, peering into the works.

"The principle's wrong," he announced at once. "The fellow didn't understand anatomical balance—"

"I knew it, I knew it!" cried Tom-Tom. "You can add the right touch, Gaspipe. That's the specimen that came closest to success before me. I'll help. After all, my brain was made by the old boy who did all these things. Through it, I know what he knew."

"Why didn't you save him to help you?" demanded Gascon. He picked up a pair of tapering pincers and a small wrench, and began to tinker.

"I told you about that once. I was angry. My first impulse was a killing rage. The death of my life-giver was my first pleasure and triumph. I hadn't dreamed up the plan I've been describing."

Anger was Tom-Tom's first emotion. Not so different from human beings as the creature imagined, mused Gascon. What had the lecturer at medical school once quoted from Emmanuel Kant:

"The outcry that is heard from a child just born was not the note of lamentation, but of indignation and aroused wrath."

Of course, a new-born baby has not the strength to visit its rage on mother or nurse or doctor, but a creature as organized and powerful in body and mind as Tom-Tom—or as huge and overwhelming as this metal giant he fiddled with—

Gascon decided to think such thoughts with the greatest stealth. If Tom-Tom could divine them, something terrible was due to happen. Stripping off his coat, he went to work on the robot with deadly earnestness.