Judge Hiram Benson tied his bow tie. Normally he wore a straight tie, and sometimes even a bolo tie - although never to court. But it took him the longest to tie his bow tie and he'd be damned if he was walking out that door any sooner than necessary. Vulture reporters. Not Oliver Peyton, of course, from the Hereford Brand. He's just excited to have a story this big land in his backyard, and relatively, he'd been an angel. But these hooligans up from Dallas, down from Oklahoma City, hell, the New York papers even had a few skulking around! Whole thing was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. 40 years, on the bench, solemnly doing his best for justice and law, and now he'd go down in the history books for a farce. His thoughts meandered like this through dressing and breakfast. Then he sipped his coffee, kissed Etta, and walked out the door.
He walked with a stately grace through the throngs of reporters, to all appearances ignoring the barrage of questions. But a few reached him, and he answered them ruefully, in the privacy of his thoughts.
"Judge Benson, is this whole trial a ploy by the Attorney General for re-election?" Hah! It's a ploy by damn near everyone for reelection, with maybe the exception of the Attorney General. JB Young had run unopposed for the last decade and a half, and he didn't want the damn thing anymore. He's setting up his sister's boy, who just happened to luck of the draw wind up the state prosecutor on this. Any decent defense would have had all this nonsense thrown out, but they said Richard Wyatt was looking for the Republican nomination in the gubernatorial race, and he needed the press from this as badly as Young's nephew. No, if Benson blamed anyone for this zoo, it was that showboat of a sheriff for "arresting" the damn thing in the first place. But there was no reason to say so. Let the young men play their games of politics. He was too old to care about who got what office. He served the law.
"Judge Benson, will the machine be sworn in or not?"
That got him shaking his head, although he still didn't say anything. The trial swearing in had been a disaster. The public wasn't allowed in. It wasn't an official part of the proceedings, just obliging a request from the man down from the Farnsworth Company, to see if he'd done his job right. He'd tried to keep the press out, on the grounds of avoiding a mistrial, but the clever bastards had all signed affidavits to sit on it until after the jury was sequestered. So there had been a crowd, watching, popping flash bulbs and joyfully scribbling away, as the first robot in history took the witness stand, even if it was just to check his gaskets or difference engine or something. Dan Coffrey, the bailiff, had given Benson a long, weary look, and then sidled gently up to the stand, like you'd approach a nervous horse. He'd slid the bible underneath the two fingered, steel hand, and nervously eying the reporters, cleared his throat.
"Farnsworth Model 619, serial number 543Q, have you been programmed to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"
There had been a long pause, as The Machine stared eerily ahead. It always seemed to be staring, Benson had thought. As the silence became uncomfortable, Coffrey repeated the question. Another pause, and then, a harsh, crackling grating noise. Benson had been briefly over come with relief, believing the infernal construction was broken, thus ending the circus that his life had become. But then it began to speak, and it became clear as it went on that the horrible noise had been laughter, of a sort.
"Listen, I can't believe in no God. Haven't got the heart for it. But you got the technical man t'come down and snip me up so's I can't lie no more, so yeah, I'll be squealing for you."
There had been an uproar, the reporters shouting questions, the litttle man from the Farnsworth Company turning beat red under the sudden attention, Benson's gavel ringing out, restoring order after some time. They had tried to proceed with sample questioning, but the Machine seemed to have shutdown, although it's red eyes glowed and there was the distinct whirl of a fan cooling its tubes. Finally they had turned to the nervous little Farnsworth man for answers.
"I, uh, I don't think there should be a problem. I think he - um, it, rather - well, I think it's waiting."
"For what?" Benson had asked.
"Well, uh, for the trial."
"But you said that a simulated trial should get the same results."
"Um, well, see, your honor, the thing is, I managed to remove the new subroutine generator, so it can't simulate scenarios it knows to be false. That's what allows us to rely on its ability to tell events as it has it recorded in its memory cards. But it might also be what's making it difficult for it to accept, the uh, the trial conditions."
"Well, how could it possibly know that this isn't a real trial?"
"Um, well, there's no Jury, your honor."
"And it can see that?"
At that point, the stammering little technician was interrupted by the whirring of cogs, as the newly-polished copper head turned its bright, unblinking gaze on the Judge. It said nothing, but its wide open eyes made its message abundantly clear. I can see lots of things, it suggested to Benson.
He shuddered at the memory, shouldering his way through the last few, most persistent reporters, and climbed into his old ford and headed to the courthouse.
There was one question he did look forward to answering, he thought as he adjusted his robes in chambers. If they asked Hiram Benson why he'd let this case even come to trial, why he had been willing to put up with the notoriety of trying the case of the late James "Smiling Jim" Denton and the comatose "Dangerous" Dottie Caul, why he had even put up with the rapidly eclipsing notoriety of putting a Farnsworth Automated and Articulated Man on the witness stand, he had a simple answer. The look in the Caul family's eyes. Samantha Caul was a God-Fearing woman. She had seen her daughter only twice in the 5 years she took up with Jimmy Denton, and had called the police on her one of those times. She didn't think her daughter was a good girl. She didn't think her daughter was going to ever get out of that iron lung they had her in. She just wanted to know who she was praying for. He sighed, straightened his tie, and walked into the courtroom.
Well, young Benjamin Fayette made a fine speech for the State and Richard Wyatt made an even finer one for the defense, and they both got their pictures taken and that was just fine. And they made a good show over the next four days of going through the motions of the more prosaic forms of evidence and witnesses, but there was a buzz in the air, and Judge Benson had to put two men in contempt who were particularly rowdy, booing and hissing witness and demanding that they "put on the Automa-show already!" "This is not some cheap funhouse of parlor tricks," he'd decreed sternly. "This is a court of law!" But privately, he thought that they might as well be selling kettle corn.
Finally the day dawned, hot and still. Benson was mildly grateful for the sudden heatwave, which kept everyone on slightly better behavior. You could even hear the floorboards creak above the susurrus of the crowd as the Automan took the stand. As the machine lurched closer, Benson heard the shackles clanking against the frame and the mass of tubes inside it tinkling slightly, making a noise, Benson thought in some unfocused corner of his brain, like ice in a glass of lemonade. Bailiff Coffrey gave Benson a quick, private here-goes-nothing look, and stepped forward. They'd tailored the oath by collaborating with the Farnsworth man and by getting a Processing specialist down at the University of Texas on the phone. (He'd be coming up next week to testify on admissibility.) Coffrey's voice rang out,
" Farnsworth Model 619, serial number 543Q, are you currently programmed to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, in absence of any illegal modifications allowing you the faculty of fabrication?"
That slight unnerving pause, and then,
"Yeah."
"To prove you are at full processing, and cannot lie, summarize or otherwise manipulate facts, can you tell me how many human beings are in this room?"
"Yeah."
"How many human being are in this room?"
"311."
Benson nodded as the reporters whispered to themselves and added to their notes, motioning Ben Fayette forward.
"Counselor for the prosecution, your witness."
The young man nearly popped with self-importance as he strode forward, tugging his suspenders. Theatrics, thought Benson. Good old boy from the neighborhood motion. Won't see Wyatt tugging at his suspenders, he's running as a reformer. Too modern for that. Fayette cleared his throat.
"First of all, knock off the Model 619 hooey." The crowd erupted, and Benson had to gavel them into silence. As calm finally prevailed, the astonished Fayette collected himself enough to say, "Pardon?"
"You can call me Tin-Man, that's what Jimmy and Dottie call . . . called me. That or Rivets."
"Tin-Man Rivets?" Fayette repeated, still slightly dazed.
"Yeah, that'll do."
Fayette shook his head and continued.
"That is the late James Denton and Dorothy Caul, the defendant?"
"Yeah, that's who I meant."
"So you confirm that you were in their possession from the date 0f June 15th, 1931 until their recent arrest on the 16th of May this previous year, 1936?"
"No. I started as a 'possession' hen Jimmy got me in June. By July, he'd rigged me up with this swell persona and a subroutine generator so I could think for my ownsome. We were friends."
"Ah, yes, that would be the illegally modified tube model y79, the so called 'Personality tube', and the also banned Sanchez generator?"
"Yeah, what can I say, Jimmy loved machines. Trains, cars, automen, all of them. And what can I say, he was a bad, bad boy even then."
"So uh, Mr. . . .Rivets, you were with Mr. Denton when he met Ms. Caul in the august of '32?"
"I was there."
"And how would you describe their meeting?"
"Well, forgive the pun, but sparks flew."
Another ripple of laughter, this time gaveled-out.
"I was hoping more for a description of the activities during their -"
"Yeah, I knew what you meant. Jimmy and I were stealing Dottie's car, she busted us, but she was a funny broad. Wanted to come with us. Jimmy musta liked the looks of her. I don't have the heart for human beauty. That's what Dottie always said when she'd ask me if she was pretty and I'd tell her I didn't know. Said I had no heart, just like that Tin-Man in that kids book."
"And can you tell us more about the activities of Mr. Denton and Ms. Caul once they partnered?"
And so his voice - the Judge found himself inexorably drawn to the anthropomorphizing terminology - droned on, for three days, describing the debauchery and butchery of James Denton and Dottie Caul, who armed with tommy guns, stolen cars, and yes, a shockingly violent Farnsworth Model 619 Automaton had robbed and murdered their way through most of the southwest. Particularly graphic and disturbing were "Tin-man"'s own accounts of what he personally had down to various bank guards, police men, and other people who had gotten in the way of what the press had labeled a "dangerous duo" but clearly was some sort of horrific trio. In a moment that had to be stricken from the court record, due to the sustained objection of irrelevance, Fayette had broken down and asked, "How could you?"
Tin-Man had just stared at him for a while, then slowly brought up his shackled hands and thumped his hollow chest. "No heart, see? The Farnsworth company built me to calculate, Jimmy made it so I could think, but no one said I had to care. Don't got the heart for it."
The counter-questioning was fairly clever. Without ever overstepping the bounds of appropriate court behavior, Wyatt managed to turn some of the spotlight off the bizarre spectacle of a machine that clearly thought it was some sort of person, although, clearly not a decent one. Most of Wyatt's questioning was geared to showing that "Tin-Man Rivets" lacked basic comprehension skills, that he couldn't properly understand what he'd seen, leaving room for reasonable doubt. But it wasn't geared towards winning; it was geared towards showing that Richard Wyatt was compassionate towards small family's like the Cauls, but that he was basically a law and order candidate who would put a swift stop to criminals like Jimmy Denton and Dottie Caul, and would also stop the flow of illegal modifiers from Mexico. Rivets passed each test with horrible certainty.
But then something strange happened. In the middle of testimony, where he was recounting Denton's brief joint ventures with the still-at-large Holson Gang, Tin-man said, "So Jimmy and me and these other guys . . ." at which point Wyatt held a hand up to silence the Auotman, and raised an expectant eyebrow at Benson. Benson sighed and said, "Let the record show that the Machine has once again referred to itself as human or human like when it is in fact, not human at all."
There was a whirr of gears as the red eyes rotated to fixate on Judge Benson. And then back to Richard Wyatt. And after that, Tin-Man Rivets wouldn't answer a single question. Wyatt eventually began to sweat, then to rail at him, finally losing his composure and grabbing pieces of evidence at random to see if he could get the Device to comment on them.
"Mr. Rivets, could you please identify what is in this photo, marked exhibit g?"
The robot stared for a long time, a pause so long that Wyatt sighed and was clearly about to ask something else, or perhaps finally end the questioning, when a low hiss came out of Rivets' speakers.
"Fuck you."
"Pardon?"
"I said, 'FUCK YOU' you shyster prick."
The radio-like whine filled the courtroom, drowning out even the gavel, the astonished crowd, Judge Benson's cries for order and threats of condemnation.
"That's a fucking photograph, it's a fucking photograph of me, covered in blood, their blood, and the blood of some of you fuckers on the night of May 16th, when all you cop bastards shot my best fucking friends in the whole fucking world and I took some of you down in revenge!" Bailiff Coffrey and the other officers in the room who had been on crowd control rushed forward, as Tin-man Rivets stood up and snapped his shackles like gossamer, a chink of shattered chain flying and scratching the astonished Judge Benson. "And fuck you if you think I'm just a machine, I loved those two, I loved them with all of myself, I loved them enough to kill for them and I did!" At this, the Robot hurled the nearest officer into the crowd ,"And fuck you for making me rat them out, when Jimmy's dead and Dottie's dying from the bullets and being kept alive on machines, God she's about as much machine as I am now, and fuck you if you think I'm gonna talk any more. I just don't have the fucking heart for it." And before anyone could reach him, Tin-Man Rivets, with a horrible screech of metal on metal and a tinkling of glass, reached into his own chest, and crushed the tubes that gave him what had looked like intelligence, what had appeared to be life.
