Now, I’ll admit I’m no infant. I’ll never see a hundred again. But I’m no antique either. And I think it’s a crying shame that the rising generation is so completely out of touch with the last century. Not that I ever intended to be writing my memoirs; I didn’t exactly construct my life to that end. But somebody’s got to tell the real story of what androids meant and how they ceased to mean it. And I’m the man to tell it, because I’m the man who discovered Dugg Quinby.
Yes, I said Quinby. Dugglesmarther H. Quinby, the Q. in Q.U.R. The man who made your life run the way it does today. And I found him.
That summer was a hell of a season for a trouble shooter for androids. There was nothing but trouble. My five-hour day stretched to eight, and even ten and twelve, while I dashed all over New Washington checking on one android after another that had cracked up. And maybe you know how hot the Metropolitan District gets in summer—even worse than the rest of Oklahoma.
Because my job wasn’t one that you could carry on comfortably in conditioned buildings and streets, it meant going outside and topside and everywhere that a robot might work. We called the androids robots then. We hadn’t conceived of any kind of robot that wasn’t an android, or at least a naturoid of some sort.
And these breakdowns were striking everywhere, hitting robots in every line of activity. Even the Martoids and Veneroids that some ex-colonists fancied for servants. It would be an arm that went limp or a leg that crumpled up or a tentacle that collapsed. Sometimes mental trouble, too: slight indications of a tendency toward insubordination, even a sort of mania that wasn’t supposed to be in their make-up. And the thing kept spreading and getting worse. Any manifestation like this among living beings and you’d think of an epidemic. But what germ could attack tempered duralite?
The worst of it was there was nothing wrong with them. Nothing that I could find, and to me that meant plain nothing. You don’t get to be head trouble shooter of Robinc if anything can get past you. And the second worst was that it was hitting my own staff. I had had six robots under me—plenty to cover the usual, normal amount of trouble. Now I had two, and I needed forty.
So all in all, I wasn’t happy that afternoon. It didn’t make me any happier to see a crowd in front of the Sunspot engaged in the merry pastime of Venusianbaiting. It was never safe for one of the little green fellows to venture out of the Venusian ghetto; this sport was way too common a spectacle.
They’d got his vapor inhalator away from him. That was all there was to the game, but that was enough. No extra-physical torment was needed. There the poor giller lay on the sidewalk, sprawled and gasping like a fish out of water, which he practically was. The men—factory executives mostly, and a few office foremen—made a circle around him and laughed. There was supposed to be something hilariously funny about the struggles of a giller drowning in air, though I never could see it myself.
Oh, they’d give him back his inhalator just in time. They never killed them off; the few Venusians around had their uses, particularly for repair work on the Veneroid robots that were used under water. But meanwhile there’d be some fun.
Despite the heat of the day, I shuddered a little. Then I crossed to the other side of the street. I couldn’t watch the game. But I turned back when I heard one loud shout of fury.
That was when I found Dugg Quinby. That shout was the only sound he made. He was ragingly silent as he plowed through that mass of men, found the biggest of them, snatched the inhalator away from him, and restored it to its gasping owner. But there was noise enough from the others.
Ever try to take a bone from a dog? Or a cigar from a Martian mountaineer? Well, this was worse. Those boys objected to having their fun spoiled, and they expressed their objection forcibly.
I liked this young blond giant that had plowed in there. I liked him because his action had asked me what I was doing crossing over to the other side of the street, and I didn’t have an answer. The only way even to try to answer was to cross back.
Androids or Q. U. R., single-drive space ships or modern multiples, one thing that doesn’t change much is a brawl, and this was a good one. I don’t know who delivered the right that met my chin as I waded in, and I don’t know who it was meant for, but it was just what I needed. Not straight enough to do more than daze me for a minute, but just hard enough to rouse my fighting spirit to the point of the hell with anything but finding targets for my knuckles. I avenged the Venusian, I avenged the blond youth, I avenged the heat of the day and the plague of the robots. I avenged my job and my corns and the hangover I had two weeks ago.
The first detail that comes clear is sitting inside the Sunspot I don’t know how much later. The blond boy was with me, and
