In the Beginning (25 page)

***

I ran. I ran through the tangled mob of people, through the screaming, yelling, hysterical android-hating people of Rigel City. Bullets whined overhead, and here and there I could see the bright flash of a disruptor-pistol warning the outraged crowd back. There was no stopping them.

I kept running. I reached the fence that bordered the spaceport, ran until I found an exit gate. There was a guard patrolling it, but I went by so fast he didn’t know what had happened.

My heart was pounding and my lungs seemed to be quivering under the strain. And right down in my stomach was a cold hard knot of fear. Not so much for myself directly—I was too numb for that. But I was afraid for Laura.

“Do you
have
to go to Trantor, darling?” she had asked. “I”ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too, darling,” and it had been the truth. “But we can’t afford both to go—and I can’t afford
not
to go. You know that.”

“I know, all right. But still—”

I had left her behind, and had been gone eight days. Only eight days—but in that time, Clay Armistead had fanned the smouldering human-android antagonism into a full-scale android kill.

The streets were nearly deserted as I raced into the heart of Rigel City. Up ahead, I could see fires burning—fires, no doubt, coming from shops of android shopkeepers. We had tried to live side by side, androids and men, identical in everything except birth, but it seemed doomed to failure.

I kept running, my legs moving almost mechanically. I passed one of the burning stores. It was John Nealy’s beauty parlor, and in the smoke and fiery shadows I could see figures moving about.

Someone emerged, face covered with soot. It was Lloyd Garber, a sedate, wealthy accountant—now wildeyed with fury. He saw me.

“Hey, Preston! Come give us a hand!”

I stopped. “Are you mixed up in this too, Garber?”

“We’ve got Nealy in here,” Garber said, ignoring my question. “We’re making him watch while we burn his store. We need some help.”

As Garber spoke, an expensive hairdrying machine came hurtling through the open door. There was a scream of anguish from within, and I thought I recognized the voice of android John Nealy, ladies’ hairdresser extraordinary. Androids tended to go into unmasculine businesses like that, I thought. Maybe that was why people like Clay Armistead hated them so.

I paused, wondering if I should take time out to help Nealy, when another soot-smeared figure emerged from the store. He was so blackened I couldn’t recognize him, but he waved his arm as soon as he saw me.

“Hey, Garber—there’s Cleve Preston!”

“Yeah, I know,” Garber replied. “I was just—”

“Didn’t you hear what Armistead said? Preston’s an android! He’s been hiding the red star all his life!”

“What?
But I—”

I didn’t stick around to see what would happen. Nealy would have to fend for himself. I dodged around the corner and ran as fast as I could. Footsteps pursued me for a while, and then I was alone. I kept on running.

It was a nightmare. The city was totally gripped by the android kill. How many of the inoffensive synthetic men were dead already I had no way of knowing—but I was sure Armistead and his men would not rest until every red-starred forehead had felt the boot.

And why me?
Why had Armistead suddenly decided
I
was an android, and made me the object of hatred along with the true synthetics? For a dizzy moment I nearly began to feel like an android myself.

There had been other android kills before, on other planets, in other cities. I had read about them; I had sympathized with the persecuted underdogs, had felt gratitude that it wasn’t happening here, to me and my family.

But now it
had
happened here—and it was happening to me. I was one of the hunted now, and a chill gripped me as I tried not to think of Laura’s probable fate.

Blind, unreasoning hatred was on the loose in Rigel City. And there was nothing I could do but run.

***

I reached my home about an hour later—or rather, what
had
been my home.

In the slanting late-afternoon shadows, it was a sight that nearly made me cry. I had bought an inexpensive but attractive bubble-home six years before, when Laura and I were married. It hadn’t been much, but it had been ours. It
had
been.

Now, it looked as if it had been in the path of a juggernaut. The door was smashed in, the interior charred and seared, the furnishings torn, books and drapes and chairs floating in puddles of dirty water. I moved from room to room, numb, too numb to cry.

Chalked on the wall of the room that had been my study was a simple, crude message:

ANDROIDS DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS

—C.A.

C.A.—Clay Armistead! And again the accusation of android.

My home destroyed, my wife kidnapped or dead, I walked dazedly down the steps to the street and slouched at the edge of the curb. Night was coming now, and the four moons glittered coldly above, shining without sympathy. There was no sympathy in the world, I thought—only hatred.

I had lost everything I loved within eight days. In the distance, I heard the sound of shouting and killing. It was quiet here, in the residential district of Rigel City, but I could imagine what it must have been like the day they did
this
to my home.

As I sat slouched there, a voice from above me said, “It’s a tough break, Preston.”

I spun to my feet instantly and turned to face the speaker. It was Ken Carpenter, my next-door neighbor, who stood above me. I reached out and grabbed him by the throat.

“Go ahead, Carpenter—call me an android too! Pull out a gun and kill me! You can’t take anything else from me!”

“Whoa!” Carpenter said, in a choked voice. “Easy, Cleve. I had nothing to do with this.”

Suspiciously, I released my grip. He rubbed his throat for a moment or two. “You’re pretty quick on the trigger, aren’t you?”

“I have to be,” I said. “In the last couple of hours I’ve learned it’s the only way to stay alive.”

“I guess you’re right,” Carpenter said. “I don’t blame you for wanting to kill, either.” He shook his head sadly. “I watched the whole thing, Cleve. It was awful.”

His face was red, and he couldn’t meet my eyes. “You helped, didn’t you?” I asked. I wasn’t even angry.

He said nothing, but words weren’t necessary. I could see the guilt unconcealed on his face.

After a pause he spoke. “I had to,” he said hoarsely. “They—they came here. Armistead asked me to help.” He lowered his head. “They would have done the same thing to my house if I refused. I—I had to, Cleve.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’ve got a wife and family too. I won’t hold any grudge.” It was the truth. I probably would have done the same thing. If Carpenter had made any move to save my house, he would only have brought destruction needlessly on his own head.

I moistened dry lips. “Tell me where Laura is,” I said.

“Armistead took her away,” Carpenter said quietly.

“Took her away? Where?”

“Just before they burned your house,” said Carpenter. “Armistead went in himself and came out with your wife. They put her in a car and drove away with her.”

“They didn’t hurt her?”

Carpenter shook his head. “She gave them quite a fight, but I didn’t see them hurt her. They just took her away.”

“You know they’re calling me an android, don’t you?” I asked.

He nodded. “Armistead started spreading that around yesterday afternoon. There was a big gang outside your house and they took Laura away. I went outside to find out what was happening, and Armistead said they were going to burn your place because you’re an android.” He looked at me suspiciously for a second. “It’s not true, is it? I mean—”

“No, it’s not true!” I said angrily. “How did all this start? This riot, I mean.”

“Well, you know how it’s been between humans and androids here—sort of an uneasy truce for years. And you know how Armistead feels about equal rights for them. Well, two days ago an android murdered Mary Cartwright.”

“What?”

Mary was another neighbor of ours, a young housewife from down the block. She was a good friend of Laura’s; they spent a lot of time together.

“But Mary was in favor of android equality,” I said in confusion. “Why would—”

Carpenter shrugged. “It happened, that’s all. It was a particularly vicious murder. As soon as word got around, Armistead got up and said it was time we got rid of the androids in Rigel City, before they killed the rest of us.”

I was stunned. The androids were peaceful, likable folk, who kept to themselves and were well aware of the consequences of an act such as this. “How do they know it was an android?” I asked. “Are they sure?”

“Positive. The android was caught in the act.”

“By whom?”

“Armistead. He—”

“That’s enough,” I said in sudden disgust. The whole crude plot was painfully obvious now. Armistead had had Mary Cartwright murdered by his own henchmen, and had framed an android. He had then used this “evidence” as provocation to touch off an android kill—and the reign of terror was still going on. The municipal authorities were probably paralyzed; the police force was pitifully inadequate, and in all likelihood half of them had joined the rioters anyway.

Anti-android hatred was an easy thing to stir up. The synthetic men and women were too handsome, too intelligent, too perfect—too easy to envy and to hate. The three centuries since their development had been marked by a steady history of riots such as this one.

Only now it was here, right here, and I was caught up in the middle of it.

And Laura? Where was she?

Suddenly I felt the desire to wring Clay Armistead’s thick neck.

***

I started to walk, without knowing where I was going. I just felt that I had to get moving, to walk off the overpowering frustration and fear and hate I was feeling.

Half an hour later, I found myself in a part of Rigel City I had never been in before—the oldest part of town, almost a slum. Here things were quiet. There was no sign of the rioters. Maybe the riot was dying down finally; maybe all the androids were dead or in hiding.

It was now night. The air was becoming chilly, and I felt cold and alone.

A figure moved in front of me. Someone was lurking in the shadows. Instantly, I went on guard.

The prowler was circling toward me in the dimness, and I saw the gleam of a knife suddenly against the dull black of the night. I poised myself and waited for the attack. I was becoming accustomed to violence as the normal activity of life.

Curiously, the man in the shadows remained there. We froze, boxing each other in uneasily, each waiting for the other to spring. Finally he stepped forward, knife upraised.

I moved forward to meet him, and as the knife descended my hand shot up to intercept the other’s arm. I clamped my hand around his wrist and held him there. We stared into each other’s faces.

In the flickering light of the four moons I could see him plainly. His features were even and regular, and he would have been handsome but for the raw, jagged gash across one cheek. Imprinted in the center of his forehead was a neat, five-pointed red star.

He was an android.

“You’re Cleve Preston, aren’t you?” he asked.

I nodded.

“You can let go of me, then. I won’t stab you.” There was something in his voice that made me trust him, and I let go. He sheathed the knife and looked curiously at me. “So you’re one of us! I heard Armistead shouting it.”

“Sorry,” I said. “You’re wrong. I’m no more of an android than Armistead is. He’s just framing me for some motive of his own.”

“But—”

As the knife started to raise again, I quickly said, “But I’m on your side! I’m being hunted like an android, and so I’m fighting like one. I’m with you, whoever you are.”

“George Huntley,” the android said. “I thought you were a human—I mean, one of the rioters. I couldn’t take any chances. I’ve been hiding in the back alleys here ever since the thing started.”

“I understand.”

“They took your wife, didn’t they?” he asked suddenly.

“How did you know?”

“I saw them,” he said. “She’s in Armistead’s headquarters. His supermarket. That’s the headquarters for the whole thing, you know.”

The supermarket was in the heart of town, about half an hour’s quick walk further on. “The place must be guarded,” I said. “Can we get in?”

“They’ll kill you on sight!” Huntley said.

“I have to get in there,” I told him. “My wife is in there. Do you understand that? My
wife.”

“Yes, but—all right, come on! You and me—we’ll go in there and get your wife!”

***

It was a strange alliance—a human being everyone accused of being an android, and a genuine android whose life was forfeit if he got caught. I stood a chance—just a chance.

We arrived at Armistead’s supermarket near midnight, approaching it cautiously from the rear. There was a crowd milling around outside, talking and strutting, probably busy telling each other about their day’s exploits in killing and looting. I shuddered as I saw them—complacent, proud of their day’s work.

“How are we going to get inside?” I asked. “There must be a hundred of them.”

He rubbed his forehead nervously, fingering the damning star. Unconsciously, he seemed to be rubbing some of the grime away so the mark of his non-humanity stood out more clearly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s a side window. You go in, and I’ll follow you.”

“How about the alarm?”

“You want your wife?” the android asked.

“I want to stay alive,” I said.

“You will,” Huntley said, and prodded me to keep heading forward. After a few minutes he said, “I’d like your wife to get free too.”

“What business is it of yours?”

He looked at me squarely. “Androids have brothers,” he said. “Vat-mates, really, but we feel a pretty close affection. My brother was the android who supposedly murdered Mary Cartwright. Armistead’s butchers cut him down before he could deny it.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.

“You know something else? Your wife was the only witness to the murder of Mary Cartwright.”