hiding behind those curtains for?"
Every eye was turned toward the window draperies, just in time to see
the white, terrified face of Nicholas Martin flip out of sight like a
scared chipmunk's. Erika, her heart dropping, said hastily, "Oh, that
isn't Nick. It doesn't look a bit like him. You made a mistake, DeeDee."
"Did I?" DeeDee asked, perfectly willing to agree.
"Certainly," Erika said, reaching for the contract release in Watt's
hand. "Now if you'll just let me have this, I'll--"
"Stop!" cried St. Cyr in a bull's bellow. Head sunk between his heavy
shoulders, he lumbered to the window and jerked the curtains aside.
"Ha!" the director said in a sinister voice. "Martin."
"It's a lie," Martin said feebly, making a desperate attempt to conceal
his stress-triggered panic. "I've abdicated."
St. Cyr, who had stepped back a pace, was studying Martin carefully.
Slowly the cigar in his mouth began to tilt upwards. An unpleasant grin
widened the director's mouth.
He shook a finger under Martin's quivering nostrils.
"You!" he said. "Tonight it is a different tune, eh? Today you were
drunk. Now I see it all. Valorous with pots, like they say."
"Nonsense," Martin said, rallying his courage by a glance at Erika. "Who
say? Nobody but you would say a thing like that. Now what's this all
about?"
"What were you doing behind that curtain?" Watt asked.
"_I_ wasn't behind the curtain," Martin said, with great bravado. "_You_
were. All of you. I was in front of the curtain. Can I help it if the
whole lot of you conceal yourselves behind curtains in a library,
like--like conspirators?" The word was unfortunately chosen. A panicky
light flashed into Martin's eyes. "Yes, conspirators," he went on
nervously. "You think I don't know, eh? Well, I do. You're all
assassins, plotting and planning. So this is your headquarters, is it?
All night your hired dogs have been at my heels, driving me like a
wounded caribou to--"
"We've got to be going," Erika said desperately. "There's just time to
catch the next carib--the next plane east." She reached for the contract
release, but Watt suddenly put it in his pocket. He turned his chair
toward Martin.
"Will you give us an option on your next play?" he demanded.
"Of course he will give us an option!" St. Cyr said, studying Martin's
air of bravado with an experienced eye. "Also, there is to be no
question of a charge of assault, for, if there is I will beat you. So it
is in Mixo-Lydia. In fact, you do not even want a release from your
contract, Martin. It is all a mistake. I will turn you into a St. Cyr
writer, and all will be well. So. Now you will ask Tolliver to tear up
that release, will you not--_ha_?"
"Of course you won't, Nick," Erika cried. "Say so!"
* * * * *
There was a pregnant silence. Watt watched with sharp interest. So did
the unhappy Erika, torn between her responsibility as Martin's agent and
her disgust at the man's abject cowardice. DeeDee watched too, her eyes
very wide and a cheerful smile upon her handsome face. But the battle
was obviously between Martin and Raoul St. Cyr.
Martin drew himself up desperately. Now or never he must force himself
to be truly Terrible. Already he had a troubled expression, just like
Ivan. He strove to look sinister too. An enigmatic smile played around
his lips. For an instant he resembled the Mad Tsar of Russia, except, of
course, that he was clean-shaven. With contemptuous, regal power Martin
stared down the Mixo-Lydian.
"You will tear up that release and sign an agreement giving us option on
your next play too, ha?" St. Cyr said--but a trifle uncertainly.
"I'll do as I please," Martin told him. "How would you like to be eaten
alive by dogs?"
"I don't know, Raoul," Watt said. "Let's try to get this settled even
if--"
"Do you want me to go over to Metro and take DeeDee with me?" St. Cyr
cried, turning toward Watt. "He _will_ sign!" And, reaching into an
inner pocket for a pen, the burly director swung back toward Martin.
"_Assassin!_" cried Martin, misinterpreting the gesture.
A gloating smile appeared on St. Cyr's revolting features.
"Now we have him, Tolliver," he said, with heavy triumph, and these
ominous words added the final stress to Martin's overwhelming burden.
With a mad cry he rushed past St. Cyr, wrenched open a door, and fled.
From behind him came Erika's Valkyrie voice.
"Leave him alone! Haven't you done enough already? Now I'm going to get
that contract release from you before I leave this room, Tolliver Watt,
and I warn you, St. Cyr, if you--"
But by then Martin was five rooms away, and the voice faded. He darted
on, hopelessly trying to make himself slow down and return to the scene
of battle. The pressure was too strong. Terror hurled him down a
corridor, into another room, and against a metallic object from which he
rebounded, to find himself sitting on the floor looking up at ENIAC
Gamma the Ninety-Third.
"Ah, there you are," the robot said. "I've been searching all over
space-time for you. You forgot to give me a waiver of responsibility
when you talked me into varying the experiment. The Authorities would be
in my gears if I didn't bring back an eyeprinted waiver when a subject's
scratched by variance."
With a frightened glance behind him, Martin rose to his feet.
"What?" he asked confusedly. "Listen, you've got to change me back to
myself. Everyone's trying to kill me. You're just in time. I can't wait
twelve hours. Change me back to myself, quick!"
"Oh, I'm through with you," the robot said callously. "You're no longer
a suitably unconditioned subject, after that last treatment you insisted
on. I should have got the waiver from you then, but you got me all
confused with Disraeli's oratory. Now here. Just hold this up to your
left eye for twenty seconds." He extended a flat, glittering little
metal disk. "It's already sensitized and filled out. It only needs your
eyeprint. Affix it, and you'll never see me again."
Martin shrank away.
"But what's going to happen to me?" he quavered, swallowing.
"How should I know? After twelve hours, the treatment will wear off, and
you'll be yourself again. Hold this up to your eye, now."
"I will if you'll change me back to myself," Martin haggled.
"I can't. It's against the rules. One variance is bad enough, even with
a filed waiver, but two? Oh, no. Hold this up to your left eye--"
"No," Martin said with feeble firmness. "I won't."
ENIAC studied him.
"Yes, you will," the robot said finally, "or I'll go boo at you."
Martin paled slightly, but he shook his head in desperate determination.
"No," he said doggedly. "Unless I get rid of Ivan's matrix right now,
Erika will never marry me and I'll never get my contract release from
Watt. All you have to do is put that helmet on my head and change me
back to myself. Is that too much to ask?"
"Certainly, of a robot," ENIAC said stiffly. "No more shilly-shallying.
It's lucky you are wearing the Ivan-matrix, so I can impose my will on
you. Put your eyeprint on this. Instantly!"
Martin rushed behind the couch and hid. The robot advanced menacingly.
And at that moment, pushed to the last ditch, Martin suddenly remembered
something.
He faced the robot.
* * * * *
"Wait," he said. "You don't understand. I can't eyeprint that thing. It
won't work on me. Don't you realize that? It's supposed to take the
eyeprint--"
"--of the rod-and-cone pattern of the retina," the robot said. "So--"
"So how can it do that unless I can keep my eye open for twenty seconds?
My perceptive reaction-thresholds are Ivan's aren't they? I can't
control the reflex of blinking. I've got a coward's synapses. And they'd
force me to shut my eyes tight the second that gimmick got too close to
them."
"Hold them open," the robot suggested. "With your fingers."
"My fingers have reflexes too," Martin argued, moving toward a
sideboard. "There's only one answer. I've got to get drunk. If I'm half
stupefied with liquor, my reflexes will be so slow I won't be able to
shut my eyes. And don't try to use force, either. If I dropped dead with
fear, how could you get my eyeprint then?"
"Very easily," the robot said. "I'd pry open your lids--"
Martin hastily reached for a bottle on the sideboard, and a glass. But
his hand swerved aside and gripped, instead, a siphon of soda water.
"--only," ENIAC went on, "the forgery might be detected."
Martin fizzled the glass full of soda and took a long drink.
"I won't be long getting drunk," he said, his voice thickening. "In
fact, it's beginning to work already. See? I'm cooperating."
The robot hesitated.
"Well, hurry up about it," he said, and sat down.
Martin, about to take another drink, suddenly paused, staring at ENIAC.
Then, with a sharply indrawn breath, he lowered the glass.
"What's the matter now?" the robot asked. "Drink your--what is it?"
"It's whiskey," Martin told the inexperienced automaton, "but now I see
it all. You've put poison in it. So that's your plan, is it? Well, I
won't touch another drop, and now you'll never get my eyeprint. I'm no
fool."
"Cog Almighty," the robot said, rising. "You poured that drink yourself.
How could I have poisoned it? Drink!"
"I won't," Martin said, with a coward's stubbornness, fighting back the
growing suspicion that the drink might really be toxic.
"You swallow that drink," ENIAC commanded, his voice beginning to quiver
slightly. "It's perfectly harmless."
"Then prove it!" Martin said cunningly. "Would you be willing to switch
glasses? Would you drink this poisoned brew yourself?"
"How do you expect me to drink?" the robot demanded. "I--" He paused.
"All right, hand me the glass," he said. "I'll take a sip. Then you've
got to drink the rest of it."
"Aha!" Martin said. "You betrayed yourself that time. You're a robot.
You can't drink, remember? Not the same way that I can, anyhow. Now I've
got you trapped, you assassin. _There's_ your brew." He pointed to a
floor-lamp. "Do you dare to drink with me now, in your electrical
fashion, or do you admit you are trying to poison me? Wait a minute,
what am I saying? That wouldn't prove a--"
"Of course it would," the robot said hastily. "You're perfectly right,
and it's very cunning of you. We'll drink together, and that will prove
your whiskey's harmless--so you'll keep on drinking till your reflexes
slow down, see?"
"Well," Martin began uncertainly, but the unscrupulous robot unscrewed a
bulb from the floor lamp, pulled the switch, and inserted his finger
into the empty socket, which caused a crackling flash. "There," the
robot said. "It isn't poisoned, see?"
"You're not swallowing it," Martin said suspiciously. "You're holding it
in your mouth--I mean your finger."
ENIAC again probed the socket.
"Well, all right, perhaps," Martin said, in a doubtful fashion. "But I'm
not going to risk your slipping a powder in my liquor, you traitor.
You're going to keep up with me, drink for drink, until I can eyeprint
that gimmick of yours--or else I stop drinking. But does sticking your
finger in that lamp really prove my liquor isn't poisoned? I can't
quite--"
"Of course it does," the robot said quickly. "I'll prove it. I'll do it
again ... _f(t)_. Powerful DC, isn't it? Certainly it proves it. Keep
drinking, now."
* * * * *
His gaze watchfully on the robot, Martin lifted his glass of club soda.
"_F ff ff f(t)!_" cried the robot, some time later, sketching a
singularly loose smile on its metallic face.
"Best fermented mammoth's milk I ever tasted," Martin agreed, lifting
his tenth glass of soda-water. He felt slightly queasy and wondered if
he might be drowning.
"Mammoth's milk?" asked ENIAC thickly. "What year is this?"
Martin drew a long breath. Ivan's capacious memory had served him very
well so far. Voltage, he recalled, increased the frequency of the
robot's thought-patterns and disorganized ENIAC's memory--which was
being proved before his eyes. But the crux of his plan was yet to
come....
"The year of the great Hairy One, of course," Martin said briskly.
"Don't you remember?"
"Then you--" ENIAC strove to focus upon his drinking-companion. "You
must be Mammoth-Slayer."
"That's it!" Martin cried. "Have another jolt. What about giving me the
treatment now?"
"What treatment?"
Martin looked impatient. "You said you were going to impose the
character-matrix of Mammoth-Slayer on my mind. You said _that_ would
insure my optimum ecological adjustment in this temporal phase, and
nothing else would."
"Did I? But you're not Mammoth-Slayer," ENIAC said confusedly.
"Mammoth-Slayer was the son of the Great Hairy One. What's your mother's
name?"
"The Great Hairy One," Martin replied, at which the robot grated its
hand across its gleaming forehead.
"Have one more jolt," Martin suggested. "Now take out the ecologizer and
put it on my head."
"Like this?" ENIAC asked, obeying. "I keep feeling I've forgotten
something important. _F (t)._"
Martin adjusted the crystal helmet on his skull. "Now," he commanded.
"Give me the character-matrix of Mammoth-Slayer, son of the Great Hairy
One."
"Well--all right," ENIAC said dizzily. The red ribbons swirled. There
was a flash from the helmet. "There," the robot said. "It's done. It may
take a few minutes to begin functioning, but then for twelve hours
you'll--wait! Where are you going?"
But Martin had already departed.
The robot stuffed the helmet and the quarter-mile of red ribbon back for
the last time. He lurched to the floor-lamp, muttering something about
one for the road. Afterward, the room lay empty. A fading murmur said,
"_F(t)._"
* * * * *
"Nick!" Erika gasped, staring at the figure in the doorway. "Don't stand
like that! You frighten me!"
Everyone in the room looked up abruptly at her cry, and so were just in
time to see a horrifying change take place in Martin's shape. It was an
illusion, of course, but an alarming one. His knees slowly bent until he
was half-crouching, his shoulders slumped as though bowed by the weight
of enormous back and shoulder muscles, and his arms swung forward until
their knuckles hung perilously near the floor.
Nicholas Martin had at last achieved a personality whose ecological norm
would put him on a level with Raoul St. Cyr.
"Nick!" Erika quavered.
Slowly Martin's jaw protruded till his lower teeth were hideously
visible. Gradually his eyelids dropped until he was peering up out of
tiny, wicked sockets. Then, slowly, a perfectly shocking grin broadened
Mr. Martin's mouth.
"Erika," he said throatily. "Mine!"
And with that, he shambled forward, seized the horrified girl in his
arms, and bit her on the ear.
"Oh, Nick," Erika murmured, closing her eyes. "Why didn't you ever--no,
no, _no_! Nick! Stop it! The contract release. We've got to--Nick, what
are you doing?" She snatched at Martin's departing form, but too late.
For all his ungainly and unpleasant gait, Martin covered ground fast.
Almost instantly he was clambering over Watt's desk as the most direct
route to that startled tycoon. DeeDee looked on, a little surprised. St.
Cyr lunged forward.
"In Mixo-Lydia--" he began. "Ha! So!" He picked up Martin and threw him
across the room.
"Oh, you beast," Erika cried, and flung herself upon the director,
beating at his brawny chest. On second thought, she used her shoes on
his shins with more effect. St. Cyr, no gentleman, turned her around,
pinioned her arms behind her, and glanced up at Watt's alarmed cry.
"Martin! What are you doing?"
There was reason for his inquiry. Apparently unhurt by St. Cyr's toss,
Martin had hit the floor, rolled over and over like a ball, knocked down
a floor-lamp with a crash, and uncurled, with an unpleasant expression
on his face. He rose crouching, bandy-legged, his arms swinging low, a
snarl curling his lips.
"You take my mate?" the pithecanthropic Mr. Martin inquired throatily,
rapidly losing all touch with the twentieth century. It was a rhetorical
question. He picked up the lamp-standard--he did not have to bend to do
it--tore off the silk shade as he would have peeled foliage from a
tree-limb, and balanced the weapon in his hand. Then he moved forward,
carrying the lamp-standard like a spear.
"I," said Martin, "kill."
He then endeavored, with the most admirable single-heartedness, to carry
out his expressed intention. The first thrust of the blunt, improvised
spear rammed into St. Cyr's solar plexus and drove him back against the
wall with a booming thud. This seemed to be what Martin wanted. Keeping
one end of his spear pressed into the director's belly, he crouched
lower, dug his toes into the rug, and did his very best to drill a hole
in St. Cyr.
"Stop it!" cried Watt, flinging himself into the conflict. Ancient
reflexes took over. Martin's arm shot out. Watt shot off in the opposite
direction.
The lamp broke.
Martin looked pensively at the pieces, tentatively began to bite one,
changed his mind, and looked at St. Cyr instead. The gasping director,
mouthing threats, curses and objections, drew himself up, and shook a
huge fist at Martin.
"I," he announced, "shall kill you with my bare hands. Then I go over to
MGM with DeeDee. In Mixo-Lydia--"
Martin lifted his own fists toward his face. He regarded them. He
unclenched them slowly, while a terrible grin spread across his face.
And then, with every tooth showing, and with the hungry gleam of a mad
tiger in his tiny little eyes, he lifted his gaze to St. Cyr's throat.
Mammoth-Slayer was not the son of the Great Hairy One for nothing.
* * * * *
Martin sprang.
So did St. Cyr--in another direction, screaming with sudden terror. For,
after all, he was only a medievalist. The feudal man is far more
civilized than the so-called man of Mammoth-Slayer's primordially direct
era, and as a man recoils from a small but murderous wildcat, so St. Cyr
fled in sudden civilized horror from an attacker who was, literally,
afraid of nothing.
He sprang through the window and, shrieking, vanished into the night.
Martin was taken by surprise. When Mammoth-Slayer leaped at an enemy,
the enemy leaped at him too, and so Martin's head slammed against the
wall with disconcerting force. Dimly he heard diminishing, terrified
cries. Laboriously he crawled to his feet and set back against the wall,
snarling, quite ready....
"Nick!" Erika's voice called. "Nick, it's me! Stop it! _Stop it!_
DeeDee--"
"Ugh?" Martin said thickly, shaking his head. "Kill." He growled softly,
blinking through red-rimmed little eyes at the scene around him. It swam
back slowly into focus. Erika was struggling with DeeDee near the
window.
"You let me go," DeeDee cried. "Where Raoul goes, I go."
"DeeDee!" pleaded a new voice. Martin glanced aside to see Tolliver Watt
crumpled in a corner, a crushed lamp-shade half obscuring his face.
With a violent effort Martin straightened up. Walking upright seemed
unnatural, somehow, but it helped submerge Mammoth-Slayer's worst
instincts. Besides, with St. Cyr gone, stresses were slowly subsiding,
so that Mammoth-Slayer's dominant trait was receding from the active
foreground.
Martin tested his tongue cautiously, relieved to find he was still
capable of human speech.
"Uh," he said. "Arrgh ... ah. Watt."
Watt blinked at him anxiously through the lamp-shade.
"Urgh ... Ur--release," Martin said, with a violent effort. "Contract
release. Gimme."
Watt had courage. He crawled to his feet, removing the lamp-shade.
"Contract release!" he snapped. "You madman! Don't you realize what
you've done? DeeDee's walking out on me. DeeDee, don't go. We will bring
Raoul back--"
"Raoul told me to quit if he quit," DeeDee said stubbornly.
"You don't have to do what St. Cyr tells you," Erika said, hanging onto
the struggling star.
"Don't I?" DeeDee asked, astonished. "Yes, I do. I always have."
"DeeDee," Watt said frantically, "I'll give you the finest contract on
earth--a ten-year contract--look, here it is." He tore out a
well-creased document. "All you have to do is sign, and you can have
anything you want. Wouldn't you like that?"
"Oh, yes," DeeDee said. "But Raoul wouldn't like it." She broke free
from Erika.
"Martin!" Watt told the playwright frantically, "Get St. Cyr back.
Apologize to him. I don't care how, but get him back! If you don't,
I--I'll never give you your release."
Martin was observed to slump slightly--perhaps with hopelessness. Then,
again, perhaps not.
"I'm sorry," DeeDee said. "I liked working for you, Tolliver. But I have
to do what Raoul says, of course." And she moved toward the window.
Martin had slumped further down, till his knuckles quite brushed the
rug. His angry little eyes, glowing with baffled rage, were fixed on
DeeDee. Slowly his lips peeled back, exposing every tooth in his head.
"You," he said, in an ominous growl.
DeeDee paused, but only briefly.
* * * * *
Then the enraged roar of a wild beast reverberated through the room.
"_You come back!_" bellowed the infuriated Mammoth-Slayer, and with one
agile bound sprang to the window, seized DeeDee and slung her under one
arm. Wheeling, he glared jealously at the shrinking Watt and reached for
Erika. In a trice he had the struggling forms of both girls captive, one
under each arm. His wicked little eyes glanced from one to another.
Then, playing no favorites, he bit each quickly on the ear.
"Nick!" Erika cried. "How dare you!"
"Mine," Mammoth-Slayer informed her hoarsely.
"You bet I am," Erika said, "but that works both ways. Put down that
hussy you've got under your other arm."
Mammoth-Slayer was observed to eye DeeDee doubtfully.
"Well," Erika said tartly, "make up your mind."
"Both," said the uncivilized playwright. "Yes."
"No!" Erika said.
"Yes," DeeDee breathed in an entirely new tone. Limp as a dishrag, the
lovely creature hung from Martin's arm and gazed up at her captor with
idolatrous admiration.
"Oh, you hussy," Erika said. "What about St. Cyr?"
"Him," DeeDee said scornfully. "He hasn't got a thing, the sissy. I'll
never look at him again." She turned her adoring gaze back to Martin.
"Pah," the latter grunted, tossing DeeDee into Watt's lap. "Yours. Keep
her." He grinned approvingly at Erika. "Strong she. Better."
Both Watt and DeeDee remained motionless, staring at Martin.
"You," he said, thrusting a finger at DeeDee. "You stay with him. Ha?"
He indicated Watt.
DeeDee nodded in slavish adoration.
"You sign contract?"
Nod.
Martin looked significantly into Watt's eyes. He extended his hand.
"The contract release," Erika explained, upside-down. "Give it to him
before he pulls your head off."
Slowly Watt pulled the contract release from his pocket and held it out.
But Martin was already shambling toward the window. Erika reached back
hastily and snatched the document.
"That was a wonderful act," she told Nick, as they reached the street.
"Put me down now. We can find a cab some--"
"No act," Martin growled. "Real. Till tomorrow. After that--" He
shrugged. "But tonight, Mammoth-Slayer." He attempted to climb a palm
tree, changed his mind, and shambled on, carrying the now pensive Erika.
But it was not until a police car drove past that Erika screamed....
* * * * *
"I'll bail you out tomorrow," Erika told Mammoth-Slayer, struggling
between two large patrolmen.
Her words were drowned in an infuriated bellow.
Thereafter events blurred, to solidify again for the irate
Mammoth-Slayer only when he was thrown in a cell, where he picked
himself up with a threatening roar. "I kill!" he announced, seizing the
bars.
"_Arrrgh!_"
"Two in one night," said a bored voice, moving away outside. "Both in
Bel-Air, too. Think they're hopped up? We couldn't get a coherent story
out of either one."
The bars shook. An annoyed voice from one of the bunks said to shut up,
and added that there had been already enough trouble from nincompoops
without--here it paused, hesitated, and uttered a shrill, sharp,
piercing cry.
Silence prevailed, momentarily, in the cell-block as Mammoth-Slayer, son
of the Great Hairy One, turned slowly to face Raoul St. Cyr.