The Ego Machine

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 coљperating.'

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.'