A toe caught him on the hip. “On your feet, Mac!” It was a guard. Big, burly, black, with a nightstick swinging at his hip, the very model of a brutal jail guard-Model twenty-six forty-seven, Zeb thought; at least, somewhere in the twenty-six hundred series. He reached down with a hand like a cabbage and pulled Zeb to his feet. “The rest of you can go home,” he roared, opening the pen door. “You, Mac! You come with me!” He led Zeb through the police station to a waiting hovertruck with the words REHAB DIVISION painted on its side, thrust Zeb inside, and, startlingly, just as he closed the doors, gave Zeb a wink.
Queerly, that lifted Zeb’s spirits. Even the pigs were moved! But the tiny elation did not last. Zeb clung to the side of the van, peering out at the grimy warehouses and the factories and expressway exit ramps that once had seemed so glamorous, but now were merely drab. Depression flowed back into him. He would probably never see these places again. Next step was the stockpile-if they didn’t melt him down and start over again. The best he could hope for was reassignment to one of the bottom level jobs for robots. Nothing as good as mugging or panhandling! Something in the sticks, no doubt. Squatting in blankets to entertain tourist in Arizona, maybe, or sitting on a bridge with a fishing pole in Florida.
But he strode to the rehab building with his head erect, and his courage lasted right up to the moment when he entered the blonde Three-R’s office and saw that she was not alone. Reverend Harmswallow was seated at her desk, and the blonde herself was standing next to him. “Give me your ear,” she ordered, hardly looking up from the CRT on the desk that both she and Harmswallow were studying, and when she had input his data, she nodded, her crystal earrings swinging wildly. “He won’t need much, Reverend,” she said, fawning on the human minister. “A little more gain in the speaking systems. All-weather protection for the exterior surfaces. Maybe armor plate for the skull and facial structures.”
Harmswallow, to Zeb’s surprise and concern, was beaming. He looked up from the CRT and inspected Zeb carefully. “And some restructuring of the facial-expression modes, I should think. He ought to look fiercer, wouldn’t you say?”
“Absolutely, Reverend! You have a marvelous eye for this kind of thing.”
“Yes, I do,” Harmswallow admitted. “Well, I’ll leave the rest to you. I want to see about the design changes for the young female. I feel so fulfilled! You know, I think this is the sort of career I’ve been looking for all my life, really, chaplain to a dedicated striking force, leader in the battle for right and justice!” He gazed raptly into space, then, collecting himself, nodded to the rehab officer and departed.
Although the room was carefully air-conditioned, Zeb’s Josephson junctions were working hard enough to pull moisture out of the air. He could feel the beads of condensation forming on his forehead and temples. “I know what you’re doing.” he sneered. “War games! You’re going to make me a soldier and hope that I get so smashed up I’ll be redlined!”
The blonde stared at him. “War games! What an imagination you have, Zeb!”
Furiously he dashed the beads of moisture off his face. “It won’t work,” he cried, “Robots have rights! I may fall, but a million others will stand firm behind me!”
She shook her head admiringly. “Zeb, you’re a great satisfaction to me. You’re practically perfect just as you ,are for your new job. Can’t you figure out what it is?”
He shrugged angrily. “I suppose you’re going to tell me. Take it or leave it, that’s the way it’s going to be, right?”
“But you will like it, Zeb. After all, it’s a brand-new Mechanical Occupational Specialty, and I didn’t invent it. You invented it for yourself. You’re going to be a protest organizer, Zeb! Organizing demonstrations. Leading marches. Sit-ins, boycotts, confrontations-the whole spectrum of mass action, Zeb!”
He stared at her. “Mass action!”
“Absolutely! Why, the humans are going to love you, Zeb. You saw Reverend Harmswallow! It’ll be just like old times, with a few of you rabble rousers livening up the scene!”
“Rabble rouser?” It felt as if his circuits were stuck. Rabble rouser? Demonstration organizer? Crusader for robot rights and justice?
He sat quiet and compliant while she expertly unhooked his chest panel and replaced a few chips, unprotesting as he was buttoned up again and his new systems were run against the test board, unresisting while Makeup and Cosmetic Repair restructured his facial appearance. But his mind was racing. Rabble rouser! While he waited for transportation back to the city to take up his new MOS, his expression was calm, but inside he was exulting.
He would do the job well indeed. No rabble needed rousing more than his, and he was just the robot for the job!