parallel circuit I mentioned.
"In the beginning, that circuit was a formless matrix and only faintlyresembled your nervous system. As nerve data was exchanged back andforth, it began to resemble you more and more, especially your mind.Now, for practical purposes, it is you and I can look into it at will."
Jadiver stirred uneasily.
"Don't you understand?" asked the robot. "My mind isn't yours, and viceversa. But we do have one thing in common, a synthetic nervous systemwhich, if you were killed, would begin to disintegrate slowly andpainfully. And now that it's developed as much as it is, I wouldprobably die, too, since that synthetic nervous system is an otherwiseunused part of my brain."
"There were two other victims before me," said Jadiver.
"There were, but they were derelicts--dead, really, before theexperiment got started. They lasted a few hours. I tried to help them,but it was too late. It was not pleasant for me."
* * * * *
Not only was it a friend; it had a vital interest in keeping him alive.He could trust it, had to. After what had happened, doubt wasn't calledfor.
Jadiver rubbed his weary eyes. "That shield I used," he said. "Did itwork?"
The robot laughed--Jadiver's laughter. It had copied him in many ways."It worked to your disadvantage. The circuit signals got through to me,but I couldn't send any back until Doumya Filone chipped off part ofyour disguise. Then I spoke to you. Before that, I had to misdirect thepolice. I built up a complete and false history for you and kept themlooking where you weren't."
If he had thought, he would have known it had to be that way. The policewere efficient; they could have taken him long ago without the aid ofthe circuit. But it had seemed so easy and they had trusted therobot--had to where the circuit was concerned. No man could sit in frontof a screen and interpret the squiggles that meant his hand was touchingan apple.
Jadiver sat down. The strain was over and he was safe, bound for somefar-off place.
"The police used you, though not as much as you used them," he said."Still, they didn't develop the theory."
"They didn't. There was a man on Earth, a top-notch scientist. He workedout the theory and set up the mechanism. He had a surgical assistant, aperson who would never be more than that on Earth because she wasn'tgood on theory, though she was a whiz at surgery. She realized it andgot his permission to build another machine and take it to Venus.Originally it was intended to accumulate data on the workings of thehuman nervous system.
"On Venus, things were different. Laws concerning the rights ofindividuals are not so strict. She got the idea of examining the wholenervous system at once, not realizing what it meant because it had neverbeen done that way. She discussed it with officials from the policedepartment who saw instantly what she didn't--that once an extensivecircuit was in a human, there was no way to get it out, except by death.They had no objections and were quite willing to furnish her withspecimens, for their own purposes and only incidentally hers. Once thefirst man died, they had her and wouldn't let her back out, though shewanted to."
"Specimen," repeated Jadiver. "Yeah, I was a specimen to her." His headwas heavy. "Why didn't you tell me this in the beginning?"
"Would you have listened when I first contacted you?" asked the robot."Later, perhaps. But once you put on the shield, I couldn't get in touchwith you until you were with Doumya Filone."
* * * * *
Would Jadiver have listened? Not until it became a matter of rawsurvival. Even now he hated to leave Earth and what it meant for theunknown dangers and tedium of a planet circling an alien sun. It wasmore than that, of course. Just as he'd had a design for a perfectrobot, he had in mind a perfect woman. He could recognize either when hesaw it.
"Doumya Filone was the assistant?"
"She was." The robot was his now, Jadiver knew. Others had built it, butit belonged to him by virtue of a nervous system. It had as good a mindas his, but it wouldn't dispute his claim. "Like yourself," continuedthe robot, "in the Solar System she would never have been more thansecond rate, and she wanted to be first. Hardly anyone recognizes it,but the Solar System is not what it once was. It's like a niceneighborhood that decays so slowly that the people in it don't noticewhat it's become. There are some who can rise even in a slum, butthey're the rare exceptions.
"Others need greater opportunity than slums offer. They have to leave ifthey expect to develop freely. But the hold of a whole culture is strongand it's hard to persuade them that they have to go." The robot paused."Take a last look at a blighted area."
Outside planets glimmered in the distance.
Jadiver was tired and his eyes were closing. Now he could sleep safely,but not in peace.
"Don't regret it," advised the robot. "Where you're going, you'll havereal designs to work on. No more pretty robot faces."
"Where is it--Alpha Centauri?" Jadiver asked disinterestedly.
"That ship left yesterday. They got their quota and left within thehour, before any of the passengers could change their minds. We're goingfarther, to Sirius."
* * * * *
Sirius. A mighty sun, with planets to match. It was a place to be big.Big and lonely.
"I can't force you to do anything," said the robot. It sounded pleased."But I have no inhibitions about others."
The robot flipped up its cowl. There was a storage space and a woman init.
Except for her hands, she was bound tightly by tangle strands.
"I don't think she likes you at the moment," said the robot. "She'lltell you that as soon as she's able to speak. She may relent later, whenshe realizes what it's really like on Sirius. You've got the wholevoyage to convince her."
The eye-stalks of the robot followed Jadiver interestedly. "Are youlooking for the tongs? Remember that the tangle stuff is repelled byyour skin."
Jadiver willingly used his hands and the tangle strands fell off.
As the robot had predicted, Doumya Filone was not silent--at first.
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