The Stutterer

was dressed in--" "Governor Leibowitzhas promised speedy action and attorney general Markle has stated--"

  The main street of Ballarat was brilliantly lighted. Many of theresidents, aroused by the alarm from the powerhouse, were out, standingin small groups in front of the stores and talking excitedly to oneanother.

  He hesitated, unwilling to walk through the bright street, but uncertainwhere to turn. Two men talking loudly came around the corner suddenlyand he stepped back into a store entrance to avoid them. They stoppeddirectly in front of him. One of them, an overalled farm hand from hislooks, said, "He killed a kid just a little while ago. My brother-in-lawheard it."

  "Murderer," the other said viciously.

  The farmer turned his head and his glance fell on Hall. "Well, a newface in town," he said after a moment's inspection. "Say I bet you're areporter from one of the papers, aren't you?"

  Hall came out of the entrance and tried to walk around the two men, butthe farmer caught him by the sleeve.

  "A reporter, huh? Well, I got some news for you. That thing from Grismetjust killed a kid."

  Hall could restrain himself no longer.

  "That's a lie," he said coldly.

  The farmer looked him up and down.

  "What do you know about it," he demanded. "My brother-in-law got it fromsomebody in the state guard."

  "It's still a lie."

  "Just because it's not on the teledepth, you say it's a lie," the farmersaid belligerently. "Not everything is told on the teledepth, Mr.Wiseheimer. They're keeping it a secret. They don't want to scare thepeople."

  Hall started to walk away, but the farmer blocked his path.

  "Who are you anyway? Where do you live? I never saw you before," he saidsuspiciously.

  "Aw, Randy," his companion said, "don't go suspecting everybody."

  "I don't like anyone to call me a liar."

  Hall stepped around the man in his path, and turned down the street. Hewas boiling inside with an almost uncontrollable fury.

  * * * * *

  A few feet away, catastrophe suddenly broke loose. A faulty section ofthe sidewalk split without warning under his feet and he went pitchingforward into the street. He clutched desperately at the trunk of a tallpalm tree, but with a loud snap, it broke, throwing him head on into aparked road car. The entire front end of the car collapsed like an eggshell under his weight.

  For a long moment, the entire street was dead quiet. With difficulty,Hall pulled himself to his feet. Pale, astonished faces were staring athim from all sides.

  Suddenly the farmer started screaming. "That's him. I knew it. That'shim." He was jumping up and down with excitement.

  Hall turned his back and walked in the other direction. The people infront of him faded away, leaving a clear path.

  He had gone a dozen steps when a man with a huge double-barreled shotgunpopped out from a store front just ahead. He aimed for the middle ofHall's chest and fired both barrels.

  The blast and the shot struck Hall squarely, burning a large hole in hisshirt front. He did not change his pace, but continued step by step.

  The man with the gun snatched two shells out of his pocket andfrantically tried to reload. Hall reached out and closed his hand overthe barrel of the gun and the blue steel crumpled like wet paper.

  From across the street, someone was shooting at him with a rifle.Several times a bullet smacked warmly against his head or his back.

  He continued walking slowly up the street. At its far end several menappeared dragging a small howitzer--probably the only piece in the localarmory. They scurried around it, trying to get it aimed and loaded.

  "Fools. Stupid fools," Hall shouted at them.

  The men could not seem to get the muzzle of the gun down, and when hewas a dozen paces from it they took to their heels. He tore the heavycannon off of its carriage and with one blow of his fist caved it in. Heleft it lying in the street broken and useless.

  Almost as suddenly as it came, his anger left him. He stopped and lookedback at the people cringing in the doorways.

  "You poor, cruel fools," Hall said again.

  He sat down in the middle of the street on the twisted howitzer barreland buried his head in his hands. There was nothing else for him to do.He knew that in just a matter of seconds, the ships with theirpermallium nets and snares would be on him.

  * * * * *

  Since Jordan's ship was not large enough to transport Jon Hall's greatweight back to Grismet, the terrestrial government put at the agent'sdisposal a much heavier vessel, one room of which had been hastily linedwith permallium and outfitted as a prison cell. A pilot by the name ofWilkins went with the ship. He was a battered old veteran, given tocigar smoking, clandestine drinking and card playing.

  The vessel took off, rose straight through the atmosphere for aboutforty miles, and then hung, idly circling Earth, awaiting clearancebefore launching into the pulse drive. A full course between Earth andGrismet had to be plotted and cleared by the technicians at the dispatchcenter because the mass of the vessel increased so greatly with itspulsating speed that if any two ships passed within a hundred thousandmiles of each other, they would at least be torn from their course, andmight even be totally destroyed.

  Wilkins had proposed a pinochle game, and he and Jordan sat playing inthe control room.

  The pilot had been winning and he was elated. "Seventy-six dollars sofar," he announced after some arithmetic. "The easiest day's pay I madethis month."

  Jordan shuffled the cards and dealt them out, three at a time. He wastroubled by his own thoughts, and so preoccupied that he scarcelyfollowed the game.

  "Spades, again," the pilot commented gleefully. "Well, ain't that toobad for you." He gave his cigar a few chomps and played a card.

  Jordan had been looking out of the window. The ship had tilted and hecould see without rising the rim of Earth forming a beautiful geometricarc, hazy and blue in its shimmering atmosphere.

  "Come on, play," the pilot said, impatiently. "I just led an ace."

  Jordan put down his cards. "I guess I better quit," he said.

  "What the devil!" the pilot said angrily. "You can't quit like that inthe middle of a deal. I got a flush and aces."

  "I'm sorry," Jordan said, "but I'm going to lie down in my cabin untilwe are given clearance."

  He opened the door of the little room and went into the hall. He walkeddown past his own cabin and stopped in front of another door, a new onethat was sheathed in permallium. He hesitated a few moments; then hesnapped open the outside latch and walked in, letting the door swingclosed behind him.

  * * * * *

  Hall lay unmoving in the middle of the floor, his legs and arms fastenedin greaves of permallium.

  Jordan was embarrassed. He did not look directly at the robot.

  "I don't know whether you want to talk to me or not," he started. "Ifyou don't want to, that's all right. But, I've followed you since youlanded on Earth, and I don't understand why you did what you did. Youdon't have to tell me, but I wish you would. It would make me feelbetter."

  The robot shrugged--a very human gesture, Jordan noted.

  "G-go ahead and ask me," he said. "It d-doesn't make any differencenow."

  Jordan sat down on the floor. "The boy was the one who gave you away. Ifnot for him, no one would have ever known what planet you were on. Whydid you let the kid get away?"

  The robot looked straight at the agent. "Would you kill a child?" heasked.

  "No, of course not," Jordan said a little bit annoyed, "but I'm not arobot either." He waited for a further explanation, but when he saw nonewas coming, he said: "I don't know what you were trying to do in thatpowerhouse at Ballarat, but, whatever it was, that old man couldn't havestopped you. What happened?"

  "I l-lost my head," the robot said quietly. "The alarm and the lightsrattled me, and I got into a p-panic."

  "I see," said Jordan, frustrated, not re
ally seeing at all. He sat backand thought for a moment. "Let me put it this way. Why do you stutter?"

  Hall smiled a wry smile. "Th-that used to be a m-military secret," hesaid. "It's our one weakness--the one Achilles heel in a m-machine thatwas meant to be invulnerable."

  He struggled to a sitting position. "You see, we were m-made ass-soldiers and had to have a certain loyalty to the country that m-madeus. Only living things are loyal--machines are not. We had to think likehuman beings."

  Jordan's brows contracted as he tried to understand the robot.

  "You mean you have a transplanted human brain?" he asked incredulously.

  "In a way," Hall said. "Our b-brains are permallium strips on which themind of some human donor was m-magnetically imprinted. My mind wascopied f-from a man who stuttered and who got panicky when the going gotrough, and who couldn't kill a child no matter what was at s-stake."

  Jordan felt physically ill. Hall was human and he was immortal. Andaccording to galactic decree, he, like his fellows, was to be manacledin permallium and fixed in a great block of cement, and that block wasto be dropped into the deep silent depths of the Grismet ocean, to beslowly covered by the blue sediment that gradually filters down throughthe miles of ocean water to stay immobile and blind for countlessmillions of years.

  Jordan arose to his feet. He could think of nothing further to say.

  He stopped, however, with the door half open, and asked: "One morequestion--what did you want with the electrical generator plants onEarth?"

  Slowly and without emotion Hall told him, and when he understood, hebecame even sicker.

  * * * * *

  He went across to his cabin and stood for a while looking out thewindow. Then he lit a cigarette and lay down on his bunk thinking. Aftera time, he put out the cigarette and walked into the hall where he pacedup and down.

  As he passed the cell door for about the tenth time, he suddenly swungaround and lifted the latch and entered. He went over to the robot, andwith a key that he took from his pocket, he unlocked the greaves andchains.

  "There's no point in keeping you bound up like this," he said. "I don'tthink you're very dangerous." He put the key back in his pocket.

  "I suppose you know that this ship runs on an atomic pile," he said in aconversational tone of voice. "The cables are just under the floor inthe control room and they can be reached through a little trap door."

  Jordan looked directly into Hall's face. The robot was listening withgreat intentness.

  "Well," the agent said, "we'll probably be leaving Earth's atmosphere inabout fifteen minutes. I think I'll go play pinochle with the pilot."

  He carefully left the door of the cell unlatched as he left. He walkedto the control room and found Wilkins, a dry cigar butt clenched betweenhis teeth, absorbed in a magazine.

  "Let's have another game," Jordan said. "I want some of thatseventy-six dollars back."

  Wilkins shook his head. "I'm in the middle of a good story here. Realsexy. I'll play you after we take off."

  "Nothing doing," Jordan said sharply. "Let's play right now."

  Wilkins kept reading. "We got an eighteen-hour flight in front of us.You have lots of time."

  The agent snatched the magazine out of his hands. "We're going to playright now in my cabin," he said.

  "You quit when I have aces and a flush, and now you come back and wantto play again. That's not sportsmanlike," Wilkins complained, but heallowed himself to be led back to Jordan's cabin. "I never saw anybodyso upset about losing a miserable seventy-six bucks," was his finalcomment.

  * * * * *

  The robot lay perfectly still until he heard the door to Jordan's cabinslam shut, and then he arose as quietly as he could and stole out intothe hall. The steel of the hall floor groaned, but bore his weight, andcarefully, trembling with excitement inside of his ponderous metallicbody, he made his way to the control room. He knelt and lifted thelittle trap door and found the naked power cable, pulsating withelectrical current.

  In a locker under the panel board he found a length of copper wire. Itwas all he needed for the necessary connection.

  Since his capture, his fellows on Grismet had been silent with despair,but as he knelt to close the circuit, their minds flooded in on him andhe realized with a tremendous horror that there were now nineteen, thatall except he had been bound and fixed in their eternal cement prisons.

  "We are going to have our chance," he told them. "We won't have muchtime, but we will have our chance."

  He closed the circuit and a tremendous tide of electric power flowedinto his head. Inside that two-inch shell of permallium was a smallstrip of metal tape on whose electrons and atoms were written theborrowed mind of a man. Connected to the tape was a minute instrumentfor receiving and sending electromagnetic impulses--the chain by whichthe mind of one robot was tied to that of another.

  The current surged in and the tiny impulses swelled in strength andpoured out through the hull of the ship in a great cone that penetratedEarth's atmosphere in a quadrant that extended from Baffin land toOmaha, and from Hawaii to Labrador. The waves swept through skin andbone and entered the sluggish gelatinous brain of sentient beings,setting up in those organs the same thoughts and pictures that playedamong the electrons of the permallium strip that constituted Jon Hall'smind.

  All nineteen clamored to be heard, for Hall to relay their voices toEarth, but he held them off and first he told his story.

  * * * * *

  The Casseiopeian delegate to the Galactic Senate was at the momentfinishing his breakfast. He was small and furry, not unlike a very largesquirrel, and he sat perched on a high chair eating salted roast almondsof which he was very fond.

  Suddenly a voice started talking inside of his head, just as it did atthat very second inside the heads of thirteen billion other inhabitantsof the northwest corner of Earth. The Casseiopeian delegate was sostartled that he dropped the dish of almonds, his mouth popping open,his tiny red tongue inside flickering nervously. He listened spellbound.

  The voice told him of the war on Grismet and of the permalliumconstructed robots, and of the cement blocks. This, however, he alreadyknew, because he had been one of the delegates to the Peace Conferencewho had decided to dispose of the robots. The voice, however, also toldhim things he did not know, such as the inability of the robots tocommit any crime that any other sane human being would not commit, oftheir very simple desire to be allowed to live in peace, and most of allof their utter horror for the fate a civilized galaxy had decreed forthem.

  When the voice stopped, the Casseiopeian delegate was a greatly shakenlittle being.

  * * * * *

  Back on the ship, Hall opened the circuit to the nineteen, and theyspoke in words, in memory pictures and in sensations.

  * * * * *

  A copter cab driver was hurrying with his fare from Manhattan to OysterBay. Suddenly, in his mind, he became a permallium robot. He was boundwith cables of the heavy metal, and was suspended upside down in a hugecement block. The stone pressed firmly on his eyes, his ears, and hischest. He was completely immobile, and worst of all, he knew that abovehis head for six miles lay the great Grismet Ocean, with the blue mudslowly settling down encasing the cement in a stony stratum that wouldlast till the planet broke apart.

  The cab driver gasped: "What the hell." His throat was so dry he couldscarcely talk. He turned around to his fare, and the passenger, a youngman, was pale and trembling.

  "You seeing things, too?" the driver asked.

  "I sure am," the fare said unsteadily. "What a thing to do."

  * * * * *

  For fifteen minutes, over the northwest quadrant of Earth, the words andthe pictures went out, and thirteen billion people knew suddenly whatlay in the hearts and minds of nineteen robots.

  * * * * * br />
  A housewife in San Rafael was at the moment in a butcher shop buyingmeat for her family. As the thoughts and images started pouring into hermind, she remained stock-still, her package of meat forgotten on thecounter. The butcher, wiping his bloodied hands on his apron froze inthat position, an expression of horror and incredulity on his face.

  When the thoughts stopped coming in, the butcher was the first to comeout of the trancelike state.

  "Boy," he said, "that's sure some way of sending messages. Sure beatsthe teledepths."

  The housewife snatched her meat off the counter. "Is that all you thinkof," she demanded angrily.

  "That's a terrible thing that those barbarians on Grismet are doing tothose ... those people. Why didn't they tell us that they were human."She stalked out of the shop, not certain what she would do, butdetermined to do something.

  * * * * *

  In the ship Hall reluctantly broke off the connection and replaced thetrap door. Then he went back to his cell and locked himself in. He hadaccomplished his mission; its results now lay in the opinions of men.

  * * * * *

  Jordan left the ship immediately on landing, and took a copter over tothe agency building. His conversation with his superior was something hewanted to get over with as soon as possible.

  The young woman at the secretary's desk looked at him coldly and led himdirectly into the