The Stainless Steel Leech
Roger Zelazny
They're really afraid of this place.
During the day they'll clank around the headstones, if they're ordered to, but
even Central can't make the search at night, despite the ultras and the infras -
and they'll never enter the mausoleum.
Which makes things nice for me.
They're superstitious: it's part of the circuitry. They were designed to serve
man, and during his brief time on earth, awe and devotion, as well as dread,
were automatic things. Even the last man, dead Kennington, commanded every
robot in existence while he lived. His person was a thing of veneration, and all
his orders were obeyed.
And a man is a man, alive or dead - which is why the graveyards are a
combination of hell, heaven, and strange feedback, and will remain apart from
the cities so long as the earth endures.
But even as I mock them they are looking behind the stones and peering into the
gullies. They are searching for - and afraid they might find - me.
I, the unjunked, am legend. Once out of a million assemblies a defective such as
I might appear and go undetected, until too late.
At will, I could cut the circuit that connected me with Central Control, and be a
free `bot, and master of my own movements. I liked to visit the cemeteries,
because they were quiet and different from the maddening stamp-stamp of the
presses and the clanking of the crowds; I liked to look at the green and red and
yellow and blue things that grew about the graves. And I did not fear these
places, for that circuit, too, was defective. So when I was discovered they
removed my vite-box and threw me on the junk heap.
But the next day I was gone, and their fear was great.
I no longer possess a self-contained power unit, but the freak coils within my
chest act as storage batteries. They require frequent recharging, however, and
there is only one way to do that.
The werebot is the most frightful legend whispered among the gleaming steel
towers, when the night wind sighs with its burden of fears out of the past, from
days when non-metal beings walked the earth. The half-lifes; the preyers upon
order, still cry darkness within the vite-box of every `bot.
I, the discontent, the unjunked, live here in Rosewood Park, among the dogwood
and myrtle, the headstones and broken angels, with Fritz - another legend - in
our deep and peaceful mausoleum.
