Harlan Ellison & Ben Bova - Brillo.pdf - Harlan Ellison & Ben Bova - widez2

Brillo

Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova

Crazy season for cops is August. In August the riots start. Not just to

get the pigs off campus (where they don't even happen to be, because

school is out) or to rid the railroad flats of Rattus norvegicus , but they

start for no reason at all. Some bunch of sweat-stinking kids get a hydrant

spouting and it drenches the storefront of a shylock who lives most of his

time in Kipps Bay when he's not sticking it to his Spanish Harlem

customers, and he comes out of the pawnshop with a Louisville Slugger

somebody hocked once, and he takes a swing at a mestizo urchin, and the

next thing the precinct knows, they've got a three-star riot going on two

full city blocks; then they call in the copchoppers from Governor's Island

and spray the neighborhood with quiescent, and after a while the beat

cops go in with breathers, in threes, and they start pulling in the

bash-head cases. Why did it get going? A little water on a store window

that hadn't been squeegee'd since 1974? A short temper? Some kid

flipping some guy the bird? No.

Crazy season is August.

Housewives take their steam irons to their old men's heads. Basset

hound salesmen who trundle display suitcases full of ready-to-wear for

eleven months, without squeaking at their bosses, suddenly pull twine

knives and carve up taxi drivers. Suicides go out twenty-story windows

and off the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge like confetti at an astronaut's

parade down Fifth Avenue. Teenaged rat packs steal half a dozen cars and

drag-race them three abreast against traffic up White Plains Road till they

run them through the show windows of supermarkets. No reason. Just

August. Crazy season.

It was August, that special heat of August when the temperature keeps

going till it reaches the secret kill-crazy mugginess at which point eyeballs

roll up white in florid faces and gravity knives appear as if by magic, it

was that time of August, when Brillo arrived in the precinct.

Buzzing softly (the sort of sound an electric watch makes), he stood

inert in the center of the precinct station's bullpen, his bright

blue-anodized metal a gleaming contrast to the paintless worn

floorboards. He stood in the middle of momentary activity, and no one

who passed him seemed to be able to pay attention to anything but him:

Not the two plainclothes officers duckwalking between them a

sixty-two-year-old pervert whose specialty was flashing just before the

subway doors closed.

Not the traffic cop being berated by his Sergeant for having allowed his

parking ticket receipts to get waterlogged in a plastic bag bombardment

initiated by the last few residents of a condemned building.

Not the tac/squad macers reloading their weapons from the supply

dispensers.

Not the line of beat cops forming up in ranks for their shift on the

street.

Not the Desk Sergeant trying to book three hookers who had been

arrested soliciting men queued up in front of NBC for a network game

show called "Sell a Sin."

Not the fuzzette using a wrist bringalong on the mugger who had tried

to snip a cutpurse on her as she patrolled Riverside Drive.

None of them, even engaged in the hardly ordinary business of

sweeping up felons, could avoid staring at him. All eyes kept returning to

the robot: a squat cylinder resting on tiny trunnions. Brillo's optical

sensors, up in his dome-shaped head, bulged like the eyes of an

acromegalic insect. The eyes caught the glint of the overhead neons.

The eyes, particularly, made the crowd in the muster room nervous.

The crowd milled and thronged, but did not clear until the Chief of Police

spread his hands in a typically Semitic gesture of impatience and yelled,

"All right, already, can you clear this room!"

There was suddenly a great deal of unoccupied space.

Chief Santorini turned back to the robot. And to Reardon.

Frank Reardon shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other.

He absorbed the Police Chiefs look and tracked it out around the muster

room, watching the men who were watching the robot. His robot. Not that

he owned it any longer… but he still thought of it as his. He understood

how Dr. Victor Frankenstein could feel paternal about a congeries of old

spare body parts.

He watched them as they sniffed around the robot like bulldogs

delighted with the discovery of a new fire hydrant. Even beefy Sgt. Loyo,

the Desk Sergeant, up in his perch at the far end of the shabby room,

looked clearly suspicious of the robot.

Santorini had brought two uniformed Lieutenants with him.

Administrative assistants. Donkey work protocol guardians. By-the-book

civil service types, lamps lit against any ee- vil encroachment of dat ole

debbil machine into the paydirt of human beings' job security. They

looked grim.

The FBI man sat impassively on a stout wooden bench that ran the

length of the room. He sat under posters for the Police Athletic League,

the 4th War Bond Offensive, Driver Training Courses and an

advertisement for The Christian Science Monitor with a FREE—TAKE

ONE pocket attached. He had not said a word since being introduced to

Reardon. And Reardon had even forgotten the name. Was that part of the

camouflage of FBI agents? He sat there looking steely-eyed and jut-jawed.

He looked grim, too.

Only the whiz kid from the Mayor's office was smiling as he stepped

once again through the grilled door into the bullpen. He smiled as he

walked slowly all around the robot. He smiled as he touched the matte

finish of the machine, and he smiled as he made pleasure noises: as if he

was inspecting a new car on a showroom floor, on the verge of saying, "I'll

take it. What terms can I get?"

He looked out through the wirework of the bullpen at Reardon. "Why

do you call it Brillo?"

Reardon hesitated a moment, trying desperately to remember the whiz

kid's first name. He was an engineer, not a public relations man. Universal

Electronics should have sent Wendell down with Brillo. He knew how to

talk to these image-happy clowns from City Hall. Knew how to butter and

baste them so they put ink to contract. But part of the deal when he'd been

forced to sell Reardon Electronics into merger with UE (after the stock

raid and the power grab, which he'd lost) was that he stay on with projects

like Brillo. Stay with them all the way to the bottom line.

It was as pleasant as clapping time while your wife made love to

another man.

"It's… a nickname. Somebody at UE thought it up. Thought it was

funny."

The whiz kid looked blank. "What's funny about Brillo?"

"Metal fuzz," the Police Chief rasped. Light dawned on the whiz kid's

face, and he began to chuckle; Reardon nodded, then caught the look of

animosity on the Police Chief's face. Reardon looked away quickly from

the old man's fiercely seamed features. It was getting more grim, much

tenser.

Captain Summit came slowly down the stairs to join them. He was

close to Reardon's age, but much grayer. He moved with one hand on the

banister, like an old man.

Why do they all look so tired ? Reardon wondered. And why do they

seem to look wearier, more frightened, every time they look at the robot?

Are they afraid it's come around their turn to be replaced? Is that the

way I looked when UE forced me out of the company I created ?

Summit eyed the robot briefly, then walked over and sat down on the

bench several feet apart from the silent FBI man. The whiz kid came out of

the bullpen. They all looked at Summit.

"Okay, I've picked a man to work with him… it, I mean." He was

looking at Reardon. "Mike Polchik. He's a good cop; young and alert. Good

record. Nothing extraordinary, no showboater, just a solid cop. He'll give

your machine a fair trial."

"That's fine. Thank you, Captain," Reardon said. "He'll be right down. I

pulled him out of the formation. He's getting his gear. He'll be right

down."

The whiz kid cleared his throat. Reardon looked at him. He wasn't

tired. But then, he didn't wear a uniform. He wasn't pushed up against

what these men found in the streets every day. He lives in Darien,

probably , Frank Reardon thought, and buys those suits in quiet little

shops where there're never more than three customers at a time.

"How many of these machines can your company make in a year?" the

whiz kid asked.

"It's not my company anymore."

"I mean the company you work for—Universal."

"Inside a year: we can have them coming out at a rate of a hundred a

month." Reardon paused. "Maybe more."

The whiz kid grinned. "We could replace every beat patrolman…"

A spark-gap was leaped. The temperature dropped. Reardon saw the

uniformed men stiffen. Quickly, he said, "Police robots are intended to

augment the existing force." Even more firmly he said, "Not replace it.

We're trying to help the policeman, not get rid of him."

"Oh, hey, sure. Of course!" the whiz kid said, glancing around the room.

"That's what I meant," he added unnecessarily. Everyone knew what he

meant. The silence at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. And in that

silence: heavy footsteps, coming down the stairs from the second-floor

locker rooms.

He stopped at the foot of the stairs, one shoe tipped up on the final

step; he stared at the robot in the bullpen for a long moment. Then the

patrolman walked over to Captain Summit, only once more casting a

glance into the bullpen. Summit smiled reassuringly at the patrolman and

then gestured toward Reardon.

"Mike, this is Mr. Reardon. He designed—the robot. Mr. Reardon,

Patrolman Polchik."

Reardon extended his hand and Polchik exerted enough pressure to

make him wince.

Polchik was two inches over six feet tall, and weighty. Muscular; thick

forearms; the kind found on men who work in foundries. Light, crew-cut

hair. Square face, wide open; strong jaw, hard eyes under heavy brow

ridges. Even his smile looked hard. He was ready for work, with a .32

Harlan Ellison & Ben Bova - Brillo.pdf

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