"Shut up!" I shouted at the bird, and felt a small sense of triumph when it obeyed.
Getting out of bed, I went to the door and opened it cautiously. There was no one outside. From somewhere in the house came the all too familiar sound of Dr. Moriss' voice. It was interrupted by Paula's, raised angrily. I left my door open, sneaking along the hall to the head of the stairs, until I could make out what was being said.
"... stop torturing him," Paula's voice came, angry and insistent.
"It's the only way, Paula," the doctor's voice said, as unperturbed as ever, even in the face of his daughter's obvious anger. "A fear that silences a man, makes him remain silent while his employers brand him a thief and blackball him from his profession, that drives him down the road to alcoholism, can't be broken down with kindness nor anything less than complete destruction of his ability to fight."
"It isn't human!" Paula's voice shot back. "If you keep it up I'll—I'll hate you as much as January does, even though you are my father."
"I won't have to keep it up much longer," her father replied, and for the first time I heard a note of human emotion in his tones. "When he breaks down and gets the load off his mind he'll get over the past few years and be himself again. I think you're half falling for him. It wouldn't be any good being married to an alcoholic who is incurable because he's hiding the thing that made him an alcoholic to begin with."
His next words shocked their way into my startled thoughts.
"But my motive isn't that humanitarian and you know it," he said, returning to his school-teacherish, lecturing voice. "I've repeated January's experiments. Out in my laboratory I have the completed and tested robot body exactly like my own, all ready for the transfer of my mind. I could go out there right this minute, and come in again in less than half an hour in that immortal mechanical body. But I don't dare to until I find out what made January afraid."
My turbulent thoughts settled into a state of wondering confusion. If he had gone that far why didn't he know what had made me afraid? Could it be—? Suddenly I knew! He hadn't discovered that one last refinement. That was it! I felt like laughing. But my attention was jerked back to the conversation below.
"I don't care," Paula's voice said doggedly. "I don't care if you never finish. It's inhuman anyway—to discard the body you were born in and transfer the electronic pattern of your mind and consciousness to a mass of non-living colloid dielectric perched inside the head of a robot made of stainless steel bones, plastic muscles, and copper nerves. You've got to stop torturing January."