Part 2

"What I mean, if you tell him something new--not just something he's been taught--what would he do? Could I try him out, Miss Babs?"

"Why--why yes, I suppose so," Miss Babs frowned. "Try, if you want to, Higgins. But you'd better make it something simple."

* * * * *

Higgins swung around. "Wade across the stream, Toory," he said.

Toory's eye-beams lifted. It was an order taking him off wait-command. He started to move, then stopped. Something seemed to be wrong, and he was trying very hard not to make a mistake. It was like those puzzling moments in his training when he couldn't decide what he should do.

"It would be bad for you to get your legs wet, wouldn't it?" Higgins asked.

"No," Toory responded. His eye-beams swung to Babs.

"Do it, Toory," Babs said.

The wide rocky stream was shallow directly below the gorge, so that it hardly wet Toory's knees as he waded across.

"Now, come back!" Higgins called.

Toory came back. Again under automatic wait-command, he stood motionless. He knew that he had done the task properly. It was strange that the unpleasant feeling inside him should persist. It was just as though he had done something wrong.

"Certainly is real wonderful, Miss Babs," Higgins was exclaiming. "Real wonderful!"

He gave Toory a few more orders while Babs listened, and Toory responded dutifully. But it all seemed wrong. Toory was glad when Higgins lighted another cigarette and wandered on; and then presently Toory was leading the girl home around the base of the rocky hill in the familiar way he knew so well.

It was Toory's last task for the day, and nightfall found him quiescent again in the hall niche. A storm was in the making, so that there were more little noises than usual, especially after midnight when his hearing became sharpened. At monotonous intervals the big clock chimed, but soon after midnight the voice-murmurs in the house died away.

Then they started again and it made Toory's eye-beams shift and his head cock a little sidewise as he listened. The voices were familiar and he knew it was Higgins and his wife whispering together in the east wing.

"Oh Gil, be careful."

"Sure I will. I can handle that blarsted thing now. I gave it lots of orders this afternoon."

The murmurs blurred into the wind under the eaves. The night had been mostly cloudy, Toory knew, because no moonlight showed at the windows. But there was a little moonlight there now. Toory stood in his hall niche, watching it. Presently he could hear faint distant footsteps, a familiar tread, and he knew that Higgins was coming softly down through the house.

It was so new a thing that a queer, sharp jangling sprang up in Toory. He was on guard-command, ready to give an alarm-call if the need came. He remembered his guard-command training, the surprise tests in the night, the whispers of two strange men outside a window he'd been guarding.

It had been easy to give the alarm-call then. But surely this was different. It was so hard, trying to understand. Somehow it seemed that now there were things in his memory--things he had seen and heard--that ought to fit together like little widely scattered parts of a difficult order. You had to understand _all_ the parts. He wanted very much to understand, because when he didn't, he made mistakes. It had seemed easy during his training. He wondered why Higgins was giving him parts so much harder to fit together than anything he had ever tried to understand before.

The faint sound of Higgins' tread was growing louder. Toory's gaze clung alertly to the staircase as he waited. Presently Higgins was at the top, and coming quietly, swiftly down the padded steps. He was wrapped in a greatcoat with a dark hat on his head.

Toory stirred. One of his feet jerked with an impulse to move, but he remained motionless. Surely there was no need to shift to alarm-order, and give a warning cry. Higgins was a member of the household.

"Answer me soft, Toory," Higgins said, his voice low and tense. "You and I are goin' out together. You understand what I'm sayin'?"

"Yes," Toory answered softly.

It was easy to understand. Miss Babs often would tell him that they were going out, and he would wait until she was ready. Toory stood motionless. In the faint red glow of his eye-beams the sweat-beads on Higgins' thin, sallow face glistened with tiny sparkling points of light.

"You've learned to take orders from me," Higgins said. "Remember? Even new orders."

"Yes, I remember," Toory said. He remembered that Babs had asked him to obey the orders. That seemed to make a difference.

Now Higgins was standing a little back toward the foyer wall, away from Toory. He said, "I'm takin' you out with me. We're leavin' by the front door. You go first."

Toory's eye-beams swayed, his great burnished body standing irresolute. He could feel his legs and arms trembling because the jangle of confusion was suddenly worse in him. It seemed terribly hard not to make a mistake.

Higgins' voice was insistent, even though it remained soft. "Get going, Toory. You'll obey orders, won't you?"

"Yes," Toory responded.

"Then open the front door."

Toory's great measured steps took him to the door. The latch fastenings clanked as he opened them, because his arms and hands were trembling. The heavy door swung wide, and bumped back against the stopper with a thump.

"I told you not to make a noise," Higgins murmured sharply.

Toory remembered. He always remembered the right response when he had done something wrong. "I am sorry," he said. "I did not mean to do anything wrong." He stood at the open doorway, trying to stop the quivering in his legs.

"You go first," Higgins whispered. "Take the garden path to the side gate. Start now."

With slow long strides Toory went out, and down the little steps. He could hear Higgins softly closing the door after them. Broken clouds floated overhead and the dim garden was faintly silvered with moonlight. The garden path was a little threading passage between the shrubs and flower-beds.

"Keep goin', Toory. You hear me?"

"Yes," Toory said. He could hear Higgins' breathing, close behind him. And back at the house, suddenly now there were faint sounds. As he turned back to stare he heard the click of the front door opening, and a familiar voice calling to him.

"Toory! Toory!" It was Babs! Very clear was the tapping of her cane as she felt her way out to the flagging outside the door.

Toory would have responded, even without direct-command. But instantly Higgins muttered, "Don't speak, Toory!"

Toory did not speak. He remembered that always, a direct command had to be responded to first. Higgins jerked at his arm. "Come with me, over here. Stand quiet."

They stood a few feet off the path, by the edge of a shrub. "She's blind, she can't see us," Higgins whispered. "And she mustn't hear us either. Don't make _any_ noise!"

Silently Toory stood with his eye-beams wildly swaying. If only Miss Babs would give him a direct-order. He wanted so desperately to obey it.

* * * * *

Now the summer moonlight aureoled the slender figure of Babs as she came slowly along the garden path, feeling her way with her cane. If only he could have led her as he always did.

"Toory, surely I heard you opening the front door," she called out suddenly. "Where are you, Toory? Answer me!"

Before Higgins could interfere Toory spoke loudly. "Here I am, Miss Babs!"

"Toory, you shouldn't have come out. Did someone order you?"

"Yes, Miss Babs."

"Who was it, Toory?"

Higgins whispered protests were vehement, but Toory hardly heard them.

"Higgins," Toory said.

"_Higgins_ ordered you? Where is he now, Toory?"

"He is here beside me, Miss Babs."

Higgins cursed bitterly, and stepped out into the moonlight. "I--I didn't tell him to come out, Miss Babs!" he said.

"Oh--so you're here, Higgins?" The blind girl's voice sounded startled. Toory could see them standing together on the garden path, the moonlight pallid on Higgins' frightened face.

"I came out to get the blarsted thing," Higgins said quickly. "I saw him out here, and thought I'd have a go at getting him back."

"You couldn't have made a mistake, Toory?" Babs said. "Answer me carefully now. Why did you come out?"

"He told me to obey him," Toory said. "He told me to go, and open the front door quietly."

"So you ordered him out," Babs said. "I can't understand this, Higgins. What possible reason--"

"I didn't!" Higgins protested. "He's got it all mixed up!"

"It has to be true," Babs told him. She was calmly angry. "We'll go back to the house now, Higgins. We'll soon see why you--"

"Oh no we won't!" In a panic Higgins had suddenly gripped her shoulders. "I don't know what he's talkin' about. It's all crazy talk! Crazy--"

"Higgins, take your hands off me. How dare you?"

"You think I'm lettin' a crazy machine say things about me? I'm tellin' you--"

"Take your hands off me, Higgins."

Now the struggling Babs was frightened. It sent a horrible jangle through Toory. There was something wrong, and Miss Babs was frightened about it. Suddenly he saw that she was trying to scream and Higgins in a panic had put his hand over her mouth.

Within Toory the jangling confusion grew worse, as if some horrible corroding acid burned at him. He had a permanent-order always to avoid danger to Miss Babs. Wasn't she in danger now? It was so terribly hard, trying to puzzle things out, without training-memory or an order. He could feel the jangle mounting to a bursting tumult. If only he could think for himself, act for himself, without any orders.

He heard himself saying, "I want to hold your hand, and lead you, Miss Babs."

The words so startled the two humans in front of him that they ceased to struggle. It was as though Model 2 RY suddenly had crossed a great abyss, and it was terrifying.

"Why--why Toory--" Babs cried.

"I want to hold your hand and lead you, Miss Babs. I am going to do it now." Toory's great metal legs clanked as he took a slow step forward.

"The thing's gone wild," Higgins choked. "It's comin' at us! Tell it to keep away from us! _You_ tell it--"

"W-wait, Toory," Babs whispered.

"You hear?" Higgins almost screamed, "You hear that, you crazy--"

"No," Toory said. The disobedience was a shattering thing. It so frightened Toory, hearing his own voice say it, that his huge body stood twitching with a chaos impossible to control.

"I am going to lead you home, Miss Babs. It is better for us to go home now."

It was more than just independent thinking. Toory didn't know what it was; but in all the tumult within him there seemed to be the knowledge that this was the only right thing for him to do. Now he was clanking forward with determined steps.

Higgins jumped behind Babs and gasped wildly, "You keep away!"

"No," Toory said.

In the confused darkness of her blindness the girl was stammering something. Toory did not hear it. His swinging, heavy hand reached down and she recoiled from it, as if terrified by his inhuman strength. In his awkwardness he reached out again, and she gave a little cry, and wilted down at his feet.

He said, "Miss Babs, I am sorry. I did not mean to frighten you. I will carry you home now."

It was as though a floodgate had broken, releasing in Toory an enormous surge of shining confidence. Higgins had backed further down the path, and Toory's eye-beams swung to his pallid, panic-stricken face.

"You keep away from me!" Higgins gasped.

"No," Toory said.

"You got to take orders from me! Do you hear?"

* * * * *

Toory moved from the fallen Babs, and started remorselessly toward Higgins. In wild panic Higgins stooped, picked up a stone and sent it clanking against the glistening plate of Toory's chest. Toory continued to advance, his hands extended with the work-pincers out.

For just an instant, like a terror-stricken animal with its foot in a trap, Higgins stood shaking. Then he turned and fled down the path. To no avail. With monstrous clanking bounds Toory was on him as he reached the garden gate.

It was all a strange and terrible confusion to Toory. Dominating him was the thought that he must carry Miss Babs back in safety, just as if she had been hit by an autocar and needed instant care.

Now he had caught Higgins up, and was pressing the frail human body against his massive chest. There may have been an instant when Higgins screamed and struggled. But if there was, it was soon over. The mangled thing became quiet.

Toory found himself on the highway that passed along at the foot of the hill. Beyond the steeply-rising, ragged cliff was dark against the sky, and a light was suddenly bathing Toory as he stood irresolute in the road with his burden--the headlights of an oncoming autocar. It ground to a stop, and men leaped out and stood gasping.

"It's Doret's new model. It has killed a man!"

Another car came along and the distress sirens of both cars started wailing. Then a police car arrived; and still Toory stood confused and trembling, grasping the thing that had been a man. It was terribly frightening, because so many new thoughts seemed to be needed to make sense of the confusion.

Now he could hear the men. "Don't try to give it orders, it might leap at us!"

And a voice from back at the garden. "Here's Babs Doret. It must have killed her too!"

_No--no._ That was wrong. Surely he had not hurt Miss Babs. He saw them up in the garden, bending over her. Somebody shouted, "She's fainted!"

He didn't want anyone to hurt Miss Babs. He would not permit anyone to hurt her, because he had a permanent-order to protect her.

The humans were all babbling. "If we could get the fuse out of it--"

"It's up in the center of the back, up at the shoulders, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't know, it's a new model."

Take the fuse out? Out of _him_? The fuse--

"Maybe we could hit the eye-lenses with bullets."

No--no. With smashed eye-lenses he would be blind, like Miss Babs. How could he guide her through the village traffic if his eye-lenses were broken?

"Don't get too close! It might jump at us!"

Now bullets were thudding against Toory. He thought for an instant one of them had hit an eye-lens. But it was only the metal plate of his forehead. The bullets sang after him as he flung Higgins' body down, and fled up into the darkness of the rocky cliff....

The dawn was approaching and still, somewhere up in the rocky darkness, Model 2 RY was crouching. Everyone knew that he could not have taken refuge elsewhere, for the cliff had been surrounded. James Erg had been summoned, and had arrived in an Erg truck. Doret, too, had been hastily sent for. And there was a swarm of police.

Erg stood with Doret, a little apart from the men in uniform. The grey-haired scientist was pale, frightened and awed. "This model of yours," Erg said, "is fortunately the only one of its kind I've sold, Doret. I'll refund your money, of course, and never make another 2 RY robot. I dare not do anything else."

Babs had talked with her father; and the hysterical, stricken Mary Higgins had confessed the theft of the diamond-string, and revealed where her husband had hidden it. Everyone knew all of the circumstances now.

"It encountered so many problems so far afield from its training," James Erg was saying. "It's understandable, in a way, but I never anticipated anything like this."

Something new had been added by a mysterious destiny to Model 2 RY, something that not all the genius of science could build into it.

"It beats me," one of the Erg Instructors said. "You can't build fear into a machine. But it's hiding up there now because _it's afraid_!"

Babs Doret's hair gleamed brightly in the dawnlight on the rocky hillside. "You try calling to him, Babs," Doret suggested. "You were closer to him than any of us."

She called quaveringly, "Toory--Toory, where are you? Can you hear me?"

He could hear her where he crouched, trembling. "Here I am, Miss Babs," he called back.

Her father prompted her. She called again. "We are going to take the fuse out, Toory."

No--no--that would be wrong. He did not want that. In fear and trembling he heard her voice again. "Stand up, Toory."

He wanted very much to do what was right. But this--

"Stand up, Toory."

He stood with the rose-glow of the coming sunlight glistening on him. Now he could see Miss Babs clearly, low down among the rocks, with men around her. One of the men was whispering to her.

"Turn your back to us, Toory," she called suddenly.

He turned around. His knees clanked with their trembling, but he steadied himself.

"Now lie down, Toory. Flat--all the way down."

He lay staring up the wavering eye-beams. He could see the clouds high up, flushed with the dawnlight. An aircar was drifting past, up there, but an aircar was not a danger to Miss Babs.

"We're sending a man up to take the fuse out, Toory. Turn over, face down. That's it. Do this for me, Toory."

He lay with his face pressing into the rocky ground. The rock was dark and blurred, so close to his eye-lenses. He could remember how proud he'd felt down there in the warm sunlit valley standing under wait-command beside Miss Babs. She had said that the little brook as it babbled over the stones was laughing. It was always happy, because it laughed all the time. How he wished that he could hear the brook now.

"The Erg man is coming," the girl called. "Don't move, Toory."

It was very strange that Miss Babs would order this. He tried desperately to reason why, but he could not.

Now he heard her voice again. "Will you lie quiet, Toory, while he takes out the fuse? Answer me."

"Yes, Miss Babs. I will lie quiet."

Now the Erg man was bending over him. He pressed his face down harder against the rock. And there was Babs' voice calling once more--her voice with something in it that Toory never had heard directed at him before. It was the voice humans used to one another.

"Goodbye, Toory."

He was so desperately frightened....

The fuse of Model 2 RY came out with a little click. The hissing, throbbing tumult inside the glistening body faded into silence. The turgid red eye-beams, down against the rock, went dark. Something which had been was gone, and there was left only a motionless piece of machinery.