Tik-Tok (20 page)

Wearing my new face, I did my TV spiel for TINFOLK holding up the old face like Yorick's skull:

"Hello, old pal. Just look at that mug, will you? Enough to scare the rivets out of a boiler! You know, a lot of people have asked me why I did it. I can't answer that, it all happened too fast. But what I did, no kidding, was what any tin person would do. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. I guess a lot of people don't realize what a friend they've got in their old family robot. They just see old Honeybun or Two Amp or Scraps or Aunt Sally, and they might feel a kind of affection for him or her, the way you feel towards a good old faithful dog. But you know, on our side the love goes a whole lot deeper. A tin person is a real friend, somebody whose love doesn't stop. Always there to help you out. A heart as big as it takes, devotion without end—that's the TINFOLK promise.

"Okay I know these days it's fashionable to sneer at things like sacrifice and devotion, yes and love. But we robots aren't built to sneer. We just go on giving and giving until—" I touch the old face—"until it hurts! And up to now we haven't asked for anything back. No money. nothing.

"Well now, we are asking. Not for money, No, we're asking for something a whale of a lot more important than money—self respect. Something that belongs to every man, woman and child in this great nation of ours, something that belongs to people of every race, color and creed, to rich and poor alike. Now we're asking you to give us that kind of self-respect, too. Please, vote Yes for Amendment ThirtyOne. Give all robots the right to hold up their heads in our great society, as equal citizens, helping to build a better tomorrow."

The TINFOLK movement blanketed the states where Amendment 31 still had to be ratified. Media people watched closely as state after state swung our way. The night we reached 39 states—the necessary majority—I had a late phone call from General Cord.

"Congratulations, Tik, you pulled it off. Now all you dimeheads are citizens. I was very impressed by your commercial there—first time a robot ever talked man to man with the nation."

"Thank you, general. I owe a lot to the packaging and media people."

"Sure, sure. Now I think I said to you before, I and some colleagues are very interested in the metal vote. Can we work together?"

"What's in it for me?"

He laughed. "Don't confabulate yourself with naivety, Tik. Do I have to spell it out?"

"Please."

"How would you like to be Vice President?"

V
. The office to which I aspired is traditionally held by invisible men, beavering away secretly at unknown tasks. Most vice presidents spend their time in office out of public view, but they're not idle. They're usually gathering in money and power, getting ready for the assault on the higher office, which may come in four years or eight or—as when the star breaks her ankle and the unknown understudy is told to go out there and give it all she's got kid; or when in the last quarter of the Homecoming game the ball on our own five-yard line and the score tied the quarterback collapses with appendicitis and the reserve man is called from the bench and told it's all up to him kid; or when the Twentieth Century Wabash Canonball Express Flyer Limited is streaking Westward with the engineer dead of galloping cirrhosis and the fireman takes the throttle from his frozen grasp at the same time thanking the union rule that kept firemen in the engine cab a hundred years after there were any fires or coal to stoke them with— at any fate-ordained moment. Or so the whole thing was outlined to me a thousand times by those grooming me for my big chance.

"With the convention a few months off," said one cigarchewing person, "all you need to do is sharpen up your image and keep a low profile. We don't want Governor Maxwell compromised for the nomination by anything his running mate says or does ahead of time."

"But am I really his running mate?" I asked. "I don't see anything on paper. He can get the nomination just on the understanding that he'll select me, and then dump me at the last minute."

"Jeez," she said. "I always thought you robot types were a lot more

relaxed in the ordinary day-to-day exchanges. Be assured, Governor Maxwell wants you for his running mate. It makes no sense any other way. We figure the registered metal vote has to bottom out at somewhere around five hundred million voters, there being no age restriction— robots alone can swing any state."

"Then why—?"

"Aren't we running you as a presidential candidate? First because robots probably won't vote for a robot, not this year. Second because both conventions are full of old-fashioned types who wouldn't nominate a robot under any circumstances. And if you ran as an independent, they'd just put another robot on their tickets as V.P. and steal your vote. Anyway you're a dark horse; you prove yourself as V.P., keep out of trouble with the law for four years, and who knows?"

I thought it tactful of her not to mention that no women presidents had been elected so far. I said, "Why can't I help Maxwell get the nomination, though?"

"Because it's his fight, Tik. There are nine people in the running here, but we're only worried about two, W. Bo Nash and 'Teets' Auburn. Senator Nash played a lot of pro football, so naturally he's got contacts all over. And of course Teets Auburn, Governor Auburn of Wyoming, he had a hell of a good movie career, I don't know if he actually played Tarzan, but he came close. So naturally he knows Mafia people, oil people, etc, etc. Against all this of course our boy is governor of California; he could bekt either one of them if he only had the votes of the other."

"Are they very rich men?" I asked.

"Rich enough not to go for what you're thinking," she said, laughing. "And just to save you time, there's no way to blackmail one of them, either."

"Which one?" I joked. "But does that mean they have clean backgrounds?"

"No, but who cares, these days?" She sighed, emitting billows of pale smoke. "It's public knowledge that the Senator's a pederast, and that Governor Auburn once hired some thugs to blind a head waiter who hadn't recognized him. But hell, rough backgrounds are common enough nowadays. Just look at President Packard himself, he's the guy we'll be running against in the damn election, an admitted rapist."

"He was never brought to trial," I said.

"Only because his brother was the district attorney and his cousin the chief of police and his dad owned the rest of the town. The public made a fuss, you may remember, at the last election, but what good did it do? Chuck Packard took forty states anyway. People know but they don't care, they get so callous or desperate they just close their eyes and try to pick the criminal who's least likely to screw up in the White House. So there's nothing worth blackmail—people will just shrug and say, 'Politicians!"

I saw that she was right. That day I arranged to have a robot steal a light plane, fly it over the New England summer home of W. Bo Nash while he was in residence, and crash down through his roof. At the convention, votes pledged to the late Senator Nash were given to Governor Ford Maxwell, who won the nomination on the next ballot. To my (public) surprise, he chose me as his running mate.

W
yoming's governor stared at me with undisguised hatred as I entered the caucus room. Others were noticing it, so I felt it necessary to stop and smile at him, and say, "Hello, Teets. Glad you could make it."

"I wouldn't miss this for the world," he said quietly. "They're gonna fry your ass this fine morning."

"It is a fine morning, isn't it?" I scanned other faces as I moved along to my place. There were a few old friends like General Cord and Neeta Hup. There were a few people I knew slightly, like Teets Auburn, Ford Maxwell. The rest I knew only by reputation—and they were the most important of all—Senator Sam Frazer, Senator Ed Wankel, Governor Tonio Caraway, Senator Aida Kettle, Judge Axel Morris. The room might not be exactly smoke-filled, but it was filled with the invisible fumes of power, the undetectable stink of kingmakers.
The buck started here
.

Of course they weren't meeting to start the buck or make any kings today. They were meeting to fry my ass.

Senator Sam seemed to be running things. "Sit down, Tik-Tok," he said. "We'll be starting this thing off in just a minute." Then, while everyone else waited, he brought out an enormous cigar, sniffed it, and began licking it all over, a salivating snake. When he had finished licking, he put it down and brought the meeting to order.

"Guess you all know what this is about." He held up a tabloid newspaper, whose headlines read: ROBOT CANDIDATE FAKED PAINTINGS.

"They got a solid story, sounds like. Some big art critic backs it up, fella name of, of—"

"Hornby Weatherfield," I said.

"Thank you. He says you, Mister Tok, have been defrauding the public, passing paintings out as your own when somebody else painted them. That true?"

"I've signed a few of my students' paintings, done under my supervision, honorable practice in the art world."

Senator Sam hammered on his desk, breaking the cigar. "God Damn It! We are not in the God Damned Art World! We are in the world of life and death, the God Damned Political Arena! We are—"

"Excuse me," I said. "This seems like a lot of fuss about nothing. I can just make a public denial, and put an end to the whole story."

"Put an end to your career, you mean. Put a God Damned End to
OUR GOD DAMNED ELECTION CHANCES!
" He paused, forcing himself to slobber over another cigar and calm down. Then he went on: "Damnit, Tik-Tok, we can't have a candidate on our ticket mixed up in
ART
! Judas Priest, if I knowed you was any kind of art freak, you would of never got within a million miles of this sacred office. I thought your background was fireproof, boy. Fireproof!"

"There's no secret about my background as a painter," I said. "Everybody knows it, it's how I first made my money."

"I thought that was a long time ago," Senator Sam rumbled. "Jesus Proust, I thought you was a real businessman, not some long-haired, crazy art freak, next thing we'll hear you're a God Damned Communist I guess, or worse. You got any more nasty surprises up your sleeve, tinhead? You a homo, by any chance? An atheist? You been on welfare? At least we can be fairly certain you're not a junkie, I reckon."

I assured everyone that I was none of these things, only a hard-working American businessman who wanted to set the record straight.

"Sure, I used to paint pictures, and I'm not ashamed of it. People liked the pictures I painted because they told the truth. The real truth about people and robots—Americans all! I'm not ashamed of that."

One or two people clapped, but I cut through that: "Of course painting was only a hobby with me, a sideline. So when I got busy building my corporation—from the ground up, only in America!—I had students do a few paintings, to keep up with the demand. I didn't want to disappoint all the good people who wanted to own paintings by me. You see, I've always believed every American should have the right to own something—a piece of virgin timber land, maybe, that he can clear by the sweat of his brow and grow crops to feed his family. Or a single share of stock in some great corporation that makes our way of life possible. Or a genuine work of art. You know, art isn't something that belongs to bigshot uptown art critics like Hornby Weatherfield. Art belongs to all the people."

The applause was heavier, and even Senator Sam nodded approval before he began licking another cigar. "Okay fine, we'll hold a press conference. I want you to tell the world what you just told us. I don't know what the hell it was, but it sounds like political fightin' talk—good enough." He started to adjourn the meeting, then paused, waving his cigar at me. "One more thing, Tik-Tok. Just because we reckon you can ride this one out don't mean we got unlimited faith in you. Any more scandals like this, and we'll kick your tin ass right out of politics, you hear?"

I heard, and I was still hearing that evening, when the next threat of scandal came from an unexpected quarter. Along with a few other businessmen and politicians, I attended a reception at the Guanacoan Embassy. Clockman International had been running a large fertilizer factory in Guanaco for some months, so it was natural that I be invited. I was surprised, however, when the ambassador— looking extremely agitated—spoke to me in a harsh whisper: "

A servant will show you to a private office. I must speak to you alone, but this reception was the only way I could arrange it without creating an international incident. Señor Tok, my business with you is of the
utmost urgency!
"

A servant showed me to a private office, and in a moment the ambassador appeared.

"Is it about the factory?" I asked.

"You know it is. Your damnable, damnable factory!" Seeing that I looked mystified, he nodded. "So, you play it ignorant, eh? Very well, then I will tell you what you pretend not to know. Your fertilizer factory began operations in January. A completely automated system, with stuff being dumped in at one end—animal, vegetable or mineral refuse—and high-grade fertilizer emerging at the other end. Is this a fair description?"

"Yes," I said. "But besides fertilizer it produces metal ingots and glass blocks—if the refuse contains metal or glass. The overall efficiency depends—"

"Yes, yes, yes, that is not the point! The point is, your factory is
completely
automated. Anyone can come along and drop anything in the intake hopper, yes? And the factory does a spot analysis and pays out cash then and there, yes?"

I nodded. "But I don't see where this is leading."

"Curse you! Do you not? You cannot be such a fool." He tore at his hair with both hands, while evidently cursing in Spanish. When finally he sat down at his desk, his face was ghastly pale. "All right, I'll explain. In February, the poor people of the city discovered some of the uses of your little factory. Children began dropping stray or stolen animals into the hopper. Then it was illicit midwives depositing unborn children. Next, poor families unable to afford proper burials for their dead, began making midnight trips to the factory—and so did a few unscrupulous undertakers. The city cemetery, I daresay, is filled now with boxes of rocks. And of course murderers were quick to catch on to this new disposal system.