Dorchin looked furious and sick--but, oddly, not afraid. "Damn it--"
he started to bellow, then closed his mouth and swallowed. "Listen,"
he said persuasively, "you're making a big mistake. I haven't
kidnapped anybody, believe me!"
"I don't believe you," said Burckhardt bluntly. "Why should I?"
"But it's true! Take my word for it!"
Burckhardt shook his head. "The FBI can take your word if they like.
We'll find out. Now how do we get out of here?"
Dorchin opened his mouth to argue.
Burckhardt blazed: "Don't get in my way! I'm willing to kill you if I
have to. Don't you understand that? I've gone through two days of hell
and every second of it I blame on you. Kill you? It would be a
pleasure and I don't have a thing in the world to lose! Get us out of
here!"
Dorchin's face went suddenly opaque. He seemed about to move; but the
blonde girl he had called Janet slipped between him and the gun.
"Please!" she begged Burckhardt. "You don't understand. You mustn't
shoot!"
"_Get out of my way!_"
"But, Mr. Burckhardt--"
She never finished. Dorchin, his face unreadable, headed for the door.
Burckhardt had been pushed one degree too far. He swung the gun,
bellowing. The girl called out sharply. He pulled the trigger. Closing
on him with pity and pleading in her eyes, she came again between the
gun and the man.
Burckhardt aimed low instinctively, to cripple, not to kill. But his
aim was not good.
The pistol bullet caught her in the pit of the stomach.
* * * * *
Dorchin was out and away, the door slamming behind him, his footsteps
racing into the distance.
Burckhardt hurled the gun across the room and jumped to the girl.
Swanson was moaning. "That finishes us, Burckhardt. Oh, why did you do
it? We could have got away. We could have gone to the police. We were
practically out of here! We--"
Burckhardt wasn't listening. He was kneeling beside the girl. She lay
flat on her back, arms helter-skelter. There was no blood, hardly any
sign of the wound; but the position in which she lay was one that no
living human being could have held.
Yet she wasn't dead.
She wasn't dead--and Burckhardt, frozen beside her, thought: _She
isn't alive, either._
There was no pulse, but there was a rhythmic ticking of the
outstretched fingers of one hand.
There was no sound of breathing, but there was a hissing, sizzling
noise.
The eyes were open and they were looking at Burckhardt. There was
neither fear nor pain in them, only a pity deeper than the Pit.
She said, through lips that writhed erratically, "Don't--worry, Mr.
Burckhardt. I'm--all right."
Burckhardt rocked back on his haunches, staring. Where there should
have been blood, there was a clean break of a substance that was not
flesh; and a curl of thin golden-copper wire.
Burckhardt moistened his lips.
"You're a robot," he said.
The girl tried to nod. The twitching lips said, "I am. And so are
you."
V
Swanson, after a single inarticulate sound, walked over to the desk
and sat staring at the wall. Burckhardt rocked back and forth beside
the shattered puppet on the floor. He had no words.
The girl managed to say, "I'm--sorry all this happened." The lovely
lips twisted into a rictus sneer, frightening on that smooth young
face, until she got them under control. "Sorry," she said again.
"The--nerve center was right about where the bullet hit. Makes it
difficult to--control this body."
Burckhardt nodded automatically, accepting the apology. Robots. It was
obvious, now that he knew it. In hindsight, it was inevitable. He
thought of his mystic notions of hypnosis or Martians or something
stranger still--idiotic, for the simple fact of created robots fitted
the facts better and more economically.
All the evidence had been before him. The automatized factory, with
its transplanted minds--why not transplant a mind into a humanoid
robot, give it its original owner's features and form?
Could it know that it was a robot?
"All of us," Burckhardt said, hardly aware that he spoke out loud. "My
wife and my secretary and you and the neighbors. All of us the same."
"No." The voice was stronger. "Not exactly the same, all of us. I chose
it, you see. I--" this time the convulsed lips were not a random
contortion of the nerves--"I was an ugly woman, Mr. Burckhardt, and nearly
sixty years old. Life had passed me. And when Mr. Dorchin offered me the
chance to live again as a beautiful girl, I jumped at the opportunity.
Believe me, I _jumped_, in spite of its disadvantages. My flesh body is
still alive--it is sleeping, while I am here. I could go back to it. But I
never do."
"And the rest of us?"
"Different, Mr. Burckhardt. I work here. I'm carrying out Mr.
Dorchin's orders, mapping the results of the advertising tests,
watching you and the others live as he makes you live. I do it by
choice, but you have no choice. Because, you see, you are dead."
"Dead?" cried Burckhardt; it was almost a scream.
The blue eyes looked at him unwinkingly and he knew that it was no
lie. He swallowed, marveling at the intricate mechanisms that let him
swallow, and sweat, and eat.