Quinby looked up with the sharp pleasure of a new idea. “There’s nothing we can do with the third,” he said. “But eating and drinking— Guzub, you want to see usuforms go over, don’t you?”
“And remember,” I added practically, “you’ve got a royalty interest in our robot barkeep.”
Guzub rolled all his eyes up once and down once—the Martian trick of nodding assent.
“All right,” said Quinby. “Practically all bartenders are Martians, the tentacles are so useful professionally. Lots of them must be good friends of yours?”
“Lodz,” Guzub agreed.
“Then listen . . .”
That was how we launched the really appealing campaign. Words? Sure, people have read and heard millions upon billions of words, and one set of them is a lot like another. But when you get down to Guzub’s three essentials—
Within a fortnight there was one of our usuform barkeeps in one bar out of five in the influential metropolitan districts. Guzub’s friends took orders for drinks, gave them to the usuforms, served the drinks, and then explained to the satisfied customers how they’d been made—pointing out besides that there had not been an explosion. The customers would get curious. They’d order more to watch the usuform work. (It had Martoid tentacles and its own body was its shaker.) The set-up was wonderful for business—and for us.
That got at the men. Meanwhile we had usuform cooks touring the residential districts and offering to prepare old-fashioned meals free. There wasn’t a housewife whose husband didn’t say regularly once a week, “Why can’t we have more old-fashioned food instead of all these concentrates? Why, my mother used to—”
Few of the women knew the art. Those of them who could afford android cooks hadn’t found them too satisfactory. And husbands kept muttering about Mother. The chance of a happy home was worth the risk of these dreadful dangerous new things. So our usuform cooks did their stuff and husbands were rapturously pleased and everything began to look swell. (We remembered to check up on a few statistics three quarters of an hour later—it seemed we had in a way included Guzub’s third appeal after all.)
So things were coming on sweetly until one day at the Sunspot I looked up to see we had a visitor. “I heard that I might find you here,” Sanford Grew said, smiling. He beckoned to Guzub and said, “Your oldest brandy.”
Guzub knew him by sight. I saw one tentacle flicker hesitantly toward a bottle of mikiphin, that humorously named but none the less effective knockout liquor. I shook my head, and Guzub shrugged resignedly.
“Well?” Quinby asked directly.
“Gentlemen,” said Sanford Grew, “I have come here to make a last appeal to you.”
“You can take your appeal,” I said, “and—”
Quinby shushed me. “Yes, sir?”
“This is not a business appeal, young men. This is an appeal to your consciences, to your duty as citizens of the Empire of Earth.”
I saw Quinby looking a little bothered. The smiling old boy was shrewd; he knew that the conscience was where to aim a blow at Quinby. “Our consciences are clear—I think and trust.”
“Are they? This law that you finagled through the Council, that destroyed what you call my monopoly—it did more than that. That monopoly’ rested on our control of the factors that make robots safe and prevent them from ever harming living beings. You have removed that control.”
Quinby laughed with relief. “Is that all? I knew you’d been using that line in publicity, but I didn’t think you expected us to believe it. There are other safety factors beside yours. We’re using them, and the law still insists on the use of some, though not necessarily Robinc’s. I’m afraid my conscience is untouched.”
“I do not know,” said Sanford Grew, “whether I am flattering or insulting you when I say I know that it is no use trying to buy you out at any price. You are immune to reason—”
“Because it’s on our side,” said Quinby quietly.
“I am left with only one recourse.” He rose and smiled a gentle farewell. “Good day, gentlemen.”
He’d left the brandy untouched. I finished it, and was glad I’d vetoed Guzub’s miki.
“One recourse—” Quinby mused. “That must mean—”
I nodded.
But it started quicker than we’d expected. It started, in fact, as soon as we left the Sunspot. Duralite arms went around my body and a duralite knee dug into the small of my back.
The first time I ever met Dugg Quinby was in a truly major and wondrous street brawl, where the boy was a whirlwind. Quinby was mostly the quiet kind, but when something touched him off—and injustice was the spark that usually did it—he could fight like fourteen Martian mountaineers defending their idols.
But who can fight duralite? Me, I have some sense; I didn’t even try. Quinby’s temper blinded his clear vision for a moment. The only result was a broken knuckle and some loss of blood and skin.
The next thing was duralite fingers probing for the proper spots at the back of my head. Then a sudden deft pressure, and blackness.
We were in a workshop of some sort. My first guess was one of the secret workshops that honeycomb the Robinc plant, where nobody but Grew’s most hand-picked men ever penetrate. We were cuffed to the wall. They’d left only one of the androids to guard us.
It was Quinby who spoke to him, and straight to the point. “What happens to us:
“When I get my next orders,” the android said in his completely emotionless voice, “I kill you.”
I tried to hold up my morale by looking as indifferent as he did. I didn’t make it.
“The last recourse—” Quinby said.
I nodded. Then, “But look!” I burst out. “This can’t be what it looks like. He can’t be a Robinc android because he’s going—” I gulped a fractional gulp “—to kill us. Robinc’s products have the safety factor that prevents them from harming a living being, even on another being’s orders.”
“No,” said Quinby slowly. “Remember that Robinc manufactures
