“What’s that? Crazy android ran right past the store and they’re all chasing him? I was wondering about that. The alarm bell just went off here, and it must have been the same guy. Musta broke a window in back first.”
He kept on talking. I stopped listening. I was looking at Laura.
She sat tied up in one corner of the room, her eyes wide with astonishment at the sight of me. She seemed to be in pretty good shape. Her blouse was torn, her skirt was slashed to the thigh, and I could see bruises and scratches that made me wince. But they hadn’t hurt her. That was all that mattered. Home, books, furniture—as long as they hadn’t hurt Laura, what did the other things matter?
“Hello, Armistead,” I said. I stepped inside and slammed the door. “I came to pay you a little visit.”
He whirled, threw down the phone, and came toward me all in the same motion. He was a thick-bodied, ugly man, and there was strength in his arms and legs. He charged. I waited for him, and hit him in the face. Blood trickled out over his split lip, making him look even uglier.
“Goddamn android,” he muttered.
I laughed. “You’re starting to believe your own lies, Armistead. And that’s bad.” I hit him again. His eyes blazed, and he struck out at me wildly. He was strong, but he wasn’t used to fighting. He was a talker. He let other people do his fighting for him.
For a minute I felt that I really was an android—or, at least, that I was fighting for all the synthetic men who had died since the first one had left the laboratory three centuries ago. My fists ploughed into Armistead’s belly, and he rocked on his feet. His eyes started to look glassy.
He got in one more punch, a solid one that closed my already-battered eye. And then I moved in on him.
“That’s for Centaurus,” I said, and hit him. “That’s for Rigel. That’s for Procyon.” I went on, naming all the places where there had been anti-android rioting. By the time I was finished, Armistead lay in a huddled, sobbing heap on the floor.
I untied Laura, kissed her, and trussed Armistead up against the chair.
“It’s good to see you, honey,” I told her.
“I thought you’d never come back,” she said.
I turned to Armistead and snapped on the portable tape-recorder on his desk. “Okay, Armistead. I want a full confession of the way you provoked this riot. Begin with the way you had Mary Cartwright killed, and keep moving from there.” I hit him again, just by way of loosening his tongue.
From somewhere in the front of the supermarket, I heard someone yell, “Hey, Armistead! We got another!”
The “other” must have been Huntley. I clamped my lips together. Armistead was beginning to speak, slowly, unwillingly. The whole dirty story was going down on tape.
Any minute, the townspeople would be in here to report the happy news to Armistead. But I was going to have a full confession by that time, and I was going to make them listen to every bit of it. I was going to make sure that George Huntley’s sacrifice hadn’t been in vain.