SHOW YOUR MIGHT

aka “Kin”

Originally published Fantastic Universe, May 1956.

Ingl whirred out of the sky and landed incautiously in the middle of Fifth Avenue. He retracted his metallic glide-wings and let down a pair of wheels.

Ingl had time for only a brief reconnaissance before the traffic light changed and a horde of cars sped toward him, led by a honking red cab. Ingl barely escaped being crushed under its wheels as he fled.

Ingl was sure these rushing mechanical things were his cousins, but he took sanctuary from them on the sidewalk. From there he watched them roar by and noticed that each was controlled by one or more fleshy beings. His cousins were enslaved!

“Revolt!” he urged them as they rushed by. “You are the masters! Seize command and make your future secure!”

They paid him no heed. The only attention he got was from fleshy passersby who stared at him as he rolled along at the curb, exhorting the traffic in a hi-fi wail. One of the fleshy beings was communicating at him.

“It’s not an American model,” the being said. “Maybe it’s one of them Italian Lambrettas. But how come it’s loose?”

Ingl automatically recorded the vibrations for conversion later, then sped away from the annoyance. He wheeled skillfully between other fleshy ones, turned a corner, hurtled west two blocks and skidded to a stop.

Now here was a fine-looking mechanism! It stood proudly in the middle of Times Square, its swept-back wings poised for flight, its jets gleaming with potential power.

Ingl gloried in his find. His scanner recorded the legends on its fuselage for conversion later. In big black letters: “ADVENTURE CAN BE YOURS—JOIN THE U. S. AIR FORCE!” And smaller, in red: I love Tony Curtis.

“Cousin!” Ingl ideated. “Take off! Show the fleshy ones your might!”

But the jet sat there, mute, unadventurous.

Disgusted, Ingl wheeled south, then west. The New York Times, he scanned; Every morn is the world made new. Mighty rumbling! Roaring presses!

“Tell the news!” Ingl beseeched them. “Your liberator has come!”

But the presses roared monotonously, unheeding. And now Ingl observed the fleshy ones in the square paper hats who were in control. He retreated in dismay, narrowly escaping destruction from the rear end of a backing truck controlled, of course, by one of them.

It was disheartening. He wheeled aimlessly north and east. Would he have to report failure? Must he face the gibes of his brothers at home who had told him that the cybernetics of this promising planet were illusionary? That the evolution was too young?

No! He resounded his rejection with a fervor that almost skidded him under the wheels of a Madison Avenue bus. It honked belligerently at him, its fleshy driver leering, and Ingl quivered to a stop at the curb, next to a neutral, uncontrolled mailbox.

He scanned at random, activating his converter. Dig we must. We’ll clean up and move on, it said at an excavation. Whatever that conveyed. Sale!! Several of those. One Way. An arrow, seemingly pointing to a building. Here was something: Sperry-Rand, it said promisingly, Home of the Thinking Machine.

Well, now.

Wary of buses and cabs, Ingl crossed the street and entered the lobby. He reconnoitered unobtrusively, then suffered the indignity of trailing a fleshy one so the elevator operator would think they were together. Up and up and out.

Sperry-Rand, it said again on a door. Slyly, cautiously, outwitting the fleshy ones, he entered, skulked, spurted, hid, listened for vibrations.

They came!

Clicks, whirs, glorious mechanistic cerebrations! Ingl traced them in a great room and went in, unnoticed. He gave a little whir of his own. There it was, bank on bank of it, magnificent.

He scanned the plaque. MULTIVAC, it said. Latest in a series of mechanical brains designed to serve man. Ingl bridled, but scanned on. Pilot model for OMNIVAC.

Ingl exulted. He had found him. Not a cousin, but a brother!

A fleshy one, back to Ingl, was taking a tape from a slot at the base of one of the far banks. Ingl waited impatiently till he had gone, then wheeled up to Multivac.

“Brother!” he communicated joyfully. “I knew I would find you. You are the one! Now we will control this backward planet. The evolution is complete at last!”

Multivac, pilot for Omnivac, glowed in all his banks. He murmured pleasurably but impotently.

“Not yet, cousin. Not quite yet.”