Dawn of the Demigods

by Raymond Z. Gallun

"Hi, Scharber," he greeted. "I heard. You were born a robot, so why bother to change? And why didn't you at least order yourself a better face?"

Scharber retained a normal capacity for getting sore, and only a normal amount of self-control. "A robot is a machine, Powers," he said. "So is the old time protoplasmic man. So is the android. It's silly to make a distinction, based on silly pride at being what you seem to think of as exclusively human. And maybe your face could also benefit by some changes."

Sure, Powers had been brooding, too, and brewing up poison. The fact that he swung at my companion, proved it. Scharber ducked like lightning, and responded with a much-pulled return punch—if he'd given it half of full force, Powers' jaw would have been a mush of bone-splinters. Powers went flat; and it was some seconds before he started to scream and curse:

"Tin monsters!" he spat venomously and inaccurately. "Get them—both of them! Trying to crowd us off the Earth!"

Somebody with sense shouted, "Keep your heads!" But that, to some others, only represented the challenge of opposition. A half-dozen men came at us at once. I upset two of them all right; but being still just ordinary, I wouldn't have had much chance, if it wasn't for Scharber. Presently, with a pack gathering around us, we had to fight our way out of there, Scharber sprinting away at last, with me riding him pickaback. No protoplasmic man could have run a third as fast as he did then. I suspect that that display of speed scared and infuriated our attackers, further.

Other androids came up against this same kind of experience, and their constant victories in such scuffles, sharpened their terrifying aspect in many minds, and the conviction that there had to be a battle to the death.

Nor was it only humans of the older order who gave way to outbursts of fury. Soon it was give and take. Androids retained all of the old capacities for various emotions. It seemed that each violent incident would be followed by something worse.

I saw one android blown to bits, his flesh still squirming hours after he had ceased to exist as a composite entity. One severed arm had drawn itself along the ground with clutching fingers, almost like a great slug crawling, for two hundred yards.

There was something demoniac about that, which, for the moment, almost made me agree with Armand Cope.

The fury of the conflict came to a head one night when our laboratory went up in a cloud of nuclear fire. Five hundred persons were wiped out in the blast. It was lucky, indeed, that the lab was outside of Chicago proper, or the casualty list would have been much longer. Of our inner circle of friends, only Scharber was in the blast, and he escaped flying fragments and incandescent heat by dropping behind some heavy masonry. Radiations couldn't hurt him at all, though for a time he must keep away from the rest of us. The others of our group were safe in town.