'A' as in Android Read online

  “I assure you, we are not ‘girls,’ Carmody. You wouldn't understand. You just wouldn't, not at all.”

  “Try me,” I suggested. I turned idly to look about the room, and my eyes took in the port first. Outside, I could see Saturn's great bulk, low in the right side of the port, and much closer, so close that it couldn't have been more than a few miles away in space, was a ship. A ship! There were spacesuits here on this boat someplace, and if I could reach one, could kick myself clear of the lock and jet out to that ship...?

  “...Dimensions. Interlocking, say like two soap bubbles, Carmody. You live in one; we live in the other. There aren't a lot of us—perhaps a billion—and if you saw our dimension, you'd know why we like yours better. Just a question of infiltration now—and what could arouse less suspicion than some innocent, wonderfully graceful Dancing Girls? We'll get popular, Carmody. It's starting already; so popular that there'll be a dozen Dancing Girls in every nightclub in the solar system. Then, in time—”

  I was hardly listening. A door opened, and one of the other Dancing Girls came into the room.

  “Is he ready now?” she demanded.

  Tara nodded. “I guess so. Carmody, are there any other questions before you're Jones, completely? No hard feelings, I hope. And even if you have them now, you won't—not when you're Jones. You'll have the memories of an android named Jones, who was made here, on this ship, a few days ago, but your memories will go back fifty years, and you'll be loyal to us. A publicity agent for us in your spare time, a mechanic otherwise. Any questions?”

  I fiddled about for a question. I needed time. If they could take themselves from another dimension and assume their present, almost-earthly shapes, if they could kill me and yet somehow not kill me, leaving my body dead in an alley in Hyperion City, but leaving me alive in the scrawny body of android Jones...?

  I had to believe Tara. I couldn't doubt a word of it. So incredibly simple. Sure, no one would suspect a dancing girl of anything. What did you have to be afraid of?

  “One more question,” I said. I lifted a big bowl off the table and hurled it at her. “Just how strong are you?”

  She stumbled back a few steps, trying to wipe some liquid from her eyes. She cursed roundly, and she may have been from another dimension, she may have assumed the shape of a girl here, but let me tell you she knew how to curse.

  The other dancing girl leaped at me, and I side-stepped. I didn't want her to grab me, not when I remembered what Tara had done that day in Tuttle's office.

  I ran out the door and I kept running. Behind me, I heard feet pounding down the corridor.

  I don't know where they got the ship, but the single spacesuit I found hanging on a hook looked awfully old. I hoped it would be airtight, and I didn't have much time to think about it one way or the other. I stepped into the suit and took down the plexi helmet, and then someone spun me around and I saw it was Tara.

  I swung my arm in a wide arc, starting from around someplace behind my back, and the helmet pounded against her face like a runaway meteor. It staggered her. The blow could have killed a man, but Tara just stumbled back a few steps, momentarily dazed.

  The helmet fit in place snugly, the way it should, and I prayed again for air. Then I swung the lock door up, and I got a surprise.

  There was no lock. Just cold empty space, with Saturn far off and the other ship hanging in space like a silver dart, much further than it had been before, but still close enough to reach with the suit jets.

  I sensed the air wooshing out of Tara's ship, and I smiled. Maybe my worries were over. They had to be. You don't just go walking around in deep space, even if it's inside a ship.

  Only Tara did. Her damned synthetic body—or whatever the make-believe dancing girl's flesh housed, could adjust to anything, instantly. She came for me, smiling innocently, still as if almost nothing was wrong. Maybe I'd been naughty, but that's all.

  I kicked away from the ship a few yards. Tara stood in the simple doorway, and I felt a little giddy. I thumbed my nose at her.

  It didn't last. She lifted a blaster and fired, and then I switched my jets on and began to soar away, darting, spinning, weaving—until I felt something like a gyroscope which lost its bearings.

  The beam from her blaster zipped through space on all sides of me, but in a little while I was out of range, and by the time she could turn that ship around—even if she could withstand more gravities than a robot—I'd be in safe hands.

  I smiled grimly as I swept closer to the other ship.

  “Look,” I said. “Please, this is the fourth time I've told my story. It's been six months since the freighter picked me up.”

  The police officer shrugged. “What do you want me to do, Jones? We like to be nice to you Andies—”

  “I'm not an android!”

  “We checked your fingerprints. There's the characteristic inverted V in the whorls. You have the android identification mark. You have your papers. Sylvester Jones, Android 1st class, Mechanic. So what do you want us to do? This Carmody guy is dead. He's buried now.”

  “Please. I'm Carmody—”

  “Now listen! We're going to have to put you away, Jones. We don't like to be hard on androids, but—”

  “Carmody! Carmody! That's me, damn it—”

  “Now, Jones, you'd better go away. We took you to Carmody's widow. She gave you the answer. Please, Jones, like a good Andie.” He frowned. “And that story you tell, better keep it to yourself. Dancing Girls invading the solar system. Ha, ha ha...”

  I stood outside in the streets of Earth. Chicago. Home Town. It looked strange. I saw a billboard. “A hundred Dancing Girls in the Club Falcon. See them...”

  The craze had swept the system. Every habitable world. Every club. They all had their long-stemmed Dancing Girls. Androids now, with little A's on their wrists, paying taxes properly, no questions asked. Infiltration...?

  * * *

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  Milton Lesser, 'A' as in Android

 

 

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