Chapter 13

John Dennis showed human surprise as Frank Corson lunged at him. He had either been lax in using the controlling power he’d been given, or else Frank Corson had an exceptional resistance.

Dennis released Rhoda, swayed drunkenly under Frank Corson’s clumsy football-type tackle, and swung his arm like a pivoting beam. The blow was a lucky one. His fist smashed low on Corson’s jaw, numbing the nerves of his neck on the left side.

Corson went down and, as he lay helpless, Dennis kicked him twice--once in the side and once, viciously effectively, in the head. Corson rolled over and lay still.

Dennis looked down at him in a drunken daze. “They will make an army and bring it here.”

Rhoda, standing in the center of an emotional maelstrom, watched the struggle from the prison of her own horror. At that moment she was physically, mentally and spiritually ill; a human being caught in the midst of forces beyond her knowledge and control.

Dennis laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “I want to make love.”

“No--no. Please--”

The drunkenness ebbed slightly and his eyes emptied. They looked into Rhoda’s. She shivered. He took the neck of her brunch coat in his fist and jerked downward. She had just come from the shower when she’d first opened the door for Frank Corson, and the vicious denuding gesture left her completely naked.

Dennis went clumsily to his knees, his arms around her, and he pulled her to the floor. She sobbed, but the tears were gone now and they were dry, wracking sobs.

“Undress me.”

She fumbled with his jacket and pulled it off while he knelt there in anticipation of he knew not what; wondering, wanting, knowing only an urge he could not understand but which had become a compulsion.

She took off his necktie and unbuttoned his shirt. Frank Corson stirred but did not regain consciousness. “Please,” Rhoda said, “let me help him.”

In answer, Dennis put his arms around her and drew her to him. “We will make love.”

“Yes--yes, we will make love--”

The ring of the doorbell was like thunder in the room. Dennis tensed, his eyes widened, and he got to his feet and stood swaying. Looking up at him, Rhoda saw a trapped animal, but the excitement was still there and she wanted to take him in her arms and hold him and protect him from the world.

But he had forgotten her. A cunning sneer took the place of the slavering animal look and he ran to the kitchen to reappear moments later with a butcher knife in his hand.

The bell rang again. Dennis snarled at the door and, in some kind of sheer ecstatic bravado, emitted a Tarzan roar.

Instantly a weight hit the door from the outside. It shuddered but did not give. Dennis crouched, gripping his knife. Frank Corson staggered to his feet and hurled himself groggily at the android. Dennis roared again, pushed away and arced the knife at his throat.

Rhoda screamed and lunged at Dennis’ legs. “No! No! Stop it! Please!”

Dennis teetered under her weight and the knife slanted downward across Frank’s chest. It ripped a red gash as the door shuddered a third time.

Dennis turned in that direction and crouched. The door splintered and flew open. Dennis lunged, like a line-bucking football player. He hit both Brent Taber and Captain Abrams simultaneously, sprawling them both and sending Abrams’ gun spinning out of his hand.

He leaped over them and dashed down the hall where the elevator man waited uncertainly, not sure whether to dispute the right of way or not. His indecision was fatal. Dennis wrapped an arm around his neck, pulled his head back and cut his throat with one slash of the knife.

Captain Abrams’ head had hit a doorjamb opposite the entrance to Rhoda’s apartment. He stirred and tried to come erect but he was unable to make it.

Brent Taber clawed the gun off the floor and came to one knee. He got off one shot as the elevator door was closing and saw the android spin away from the controls as the impact of the slug smashed the bone of his shoulder.

Taber lunged to his feet and went for the stairs.

There was no one in the lobby when he arrived there--no dead bodies, either. But on the sidewalk, in front of the building, a woman lay dead in a pool of blood.

In a sick rage, Taber looked in both directions and saw the android dive through a group of people half a block away. He tipped them over like tenpins and ran on. Taber gripped the gun tight and started in pursuit.

He could not fire because there was enough sidewalk traffic to make it dangerous. On ahead, the android’s path was blocked by a man. He sought to get clear but the android passed him close enough to jam the knife into his neck and send him screaming to the sidewalk.

A uniformed patrolman appeared on the other side of the street, further down. He took the situation in and understood Taber’s frantic gesture. A car screamed to a halt as the patrolman raced across the street, drawing his gun.

The android, seeing his escape cut off, veered into an areaway. The patrolman got there first and plunged in after him.

Taber, gasps tearing at his lungs, arrived thirty seconds later. During that time, he’d expected the sound of shots from the patrolman’s gun. But there was silence.

He braked on his heels, skidded into the areaway, and saw the android advancing on the patrolman. The latter stood motionless, the gun hanging useless at his side.

“Drop! Drop!” Taber yelled. He cursed as he tried to angle in the narrow areaway in order to get a clear shot.

The android advanced with his knife raised. In desperation, Taber fired at the lethal fist that held the weapon. And he was lucky. The hand snapped open under the ripping impact of the bullet and the knife rang sharply against the wall as it ricocheted to the ground.

Only then, did the patrolman obey the order to drop. He went to one knee and Brent Taber fired three shots into the chest of the android.

He hesitated. There was only one slug left in the revolver. If the three didn’t spot the android, he planned to wait for closer contact and put the sixth slug into the forehead.

The android shuddered. The fire and frenzy went out of him. He tried to lift a leg and was surprised when it didn’t move. He looked down at it. Completely bemused, he peered down at his crimson chest. He looked up at Taber without anger, only with surprise. A distinct expression of wistful regret crossed his face as he sank to the ground.

The tenth android was dead.

The patrolman came shakily to his feet. His face was as pale as death. “I--I don’t know what happened. Buck fever. Pure buck fever, and I’ve been on the force for ten years.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Taber said.

“Don’t worry. All of a sudden I freeze under pressure and he says, ‘Don’t worry.’”

“I meant it. This is no ordinary man. It wasn’t buck fever at all. I couldn’t have faced him myself if I hadn’t rattled him with that lucky shot.”

The patrolman wanted to believe. He most pathetically wanted to believe. “Honest?”

“It’s the God’s honest truth. No man could have stood in front of that killer and pulled a trigger. He’s a master hypnotist. You’re all right. We won’t say a word about what happened in here. And you’ll have no trouble in the future.”

The patrolman shook his head. “Still, I gotta do something about it.”

“Talk to your psychiatrist,” Taber said. “In the meantime, keep that crowd out there from spilling in here.”

Taber pushed out through the choked entrance to the areaway and went back up the street. It was alive with activity now and he passed unnoticed. No one recognized him as the man who had given chase in the bloody business that would make headlines that evening in every New York newspaper.

And yet the radio and TV news commentators gave it no special attention. It went in along with other items of the day’s news as a more or less routine big-city happening.

One national-hookup headliner stated: “In New York City today, a man identified as John Dennis, address unknown, went berserk in a fashionable Upper East Side apartment. Dennis, wielding a knife, killed a man and a woman, and seriously wounded another man before he was cut down by police bullets.

“A jet airliner, down in the North Atlantic today, imperiled the lives of seventy-six...”

Frank Corson lay propped on two pillows in a private room of the Park Hill Hospital. Rhoda Kane sat in a chair beside the bed. She was pale and very beautiful. The fire was now gone from her body and the fever from her eyes.

“They say he wasn’t human. They say he was an android.” She shuddered, looked down quickly, then slowly raised her head.

“Yes.”

“I’ll--I’ll never understand. I get sick thinking about it. I’ll just never understand.”

“He was human and yet not human. He had extraordinary powers that we don’t begin to understand, so that what happened to you is no disgrace.”

“It’s a terrible disgrace.”

“It happened to me, too. When he told me to sit down I had to do it. I was helpless.”

“But you fought! You overcame it.”

Frank Corson smiled wryly. “No, I didn’t. It was just that he’d had little time to work on me. It was a single mental blow, so to speak, that laid me out. Like one punch in the ring. Gradually, I came out of it.”

“I think I tried to fight.”

“Of course, you did. The disgrace was mine. I acted like a child. I should have realized that something extraordinary had happened. But I nursed my miserable little ego like a three-year-old.”

“How could you know? My cruelty to you--”

“Don’t talk like that! I knew about the ninth android, and I met the tenth one in front of your apartment that second morning. I should have associated. Brent Taber did, otherwise we might both be dead.”

“It’s all over now. It doesn’t make any difference.”

“No, it doesn’t make any difference.”

She looked at him in silence for several moments. “You’ve changed, Frank.”

“Yes, I guess I have. I guess we all grow up eventually. We all face reality and live with it.”

“Frank--I think I’m going to cry.”

He could not turn his eyes in her direction. He looked straight ahead but his voice was soft. “Go ahead, Rhoda. I understand.”