George Hill looked weakly down at his hands. They had been covered with blood. When he fainted he had dropped to the floor. The last thing he remembered was the feeling of the real blood pouring upon his hands in a freshet.
His hands were now clean-washed.
“I’ve got to leave,” said George Hill.
“If you feel capable.”
“I’m all right.” He got up. “I’ll go to Paris now, start over. I’m not to try to phone Katie or anything, am I.”
“Katie is dead.”
“Yes. I killed her, didn’t I? God, the blood, it was real!”
“We are proud of that touch.”
He went down in the elevator to the street. It was raining, and he wanted to walk for hours. The anger and destruction were purged away. The memory was so terrible that he would never wish to kill again. Even if the real Katie were to appear before him now, he would only thank God, and fall senselessly to his knees. She was dead now. He had had his way. He had broken the law and no one would know.
The rain fell cool on his face. He must leave immediately, while the purge was in effect. After all, what was the use of such purges if one took up the old threads? The marionettes’ function was primarily to prevent actual crime. If you wanted to kill, hit, or torture someone, you took it out on one of those unstringed automatons. It wouldn’t do to return to the apartment now. Katie might be there. He wanted only to think of her as dead, a thing attended to in deserving fashion.
He stopped at the curb and watched the traffic flash by. He took deep breaths of the good air and began to relax.
“Mr. Hill?” said a voice at his elbow.
“Yes?”
A manacle was snapped to Hill’s wrist. “You’re under arrest.”
“But—”
“Come along. Smith, take the other men upstairs, make the arrests!”
“You can’t do this to me,” said George Hill.
“For murder, yes, we can.”
Thunder sounded in the sky.
* * *
It was eight-fifteen at night. It had been raining for ten days. It rained now on the prison walls. He put his hands out to feel the drops gather in pools on his trembling palms.
A door clanged and he did not move but stood with his hands in the rain. His lawyer looked up at him on his chair and said, “It’s all over. You’ll be executed tonight.”
George Hill listened to the rain.
“She wasn’t real. I didn’t kill her.”
“It’s the law, anyhow. You remember. The others are sentenced, too. The president of Marionettes, Incorporated, will die at midnight. His three assistants will die at one. You’ll go about one-thirty.”
“Thanks,” said George. “You did all you could. I guess it was murder, no matter how you look at it, image or not. The idea was there, the plot and the plan were there. It lacked only the real Katie herself.”
“It’s a matter of timing, too,” said the lawyer. “Ten years ago you wouldn’t have got the death penalty. Ten years from now you wouldn’t, either. But they had to have an object case, a whipping boy. The use of marionettes has grown so in the last year it’s fantastic. The public must be scared out of it, and scared badly. God knows where it would all wind up if it went on. There’s the spiritual side of it, too, where does life begin or end? Are the robots alive or dead? More than one church has been split up the seams on the question. If they aren’t alive, they’re the next thing to it; they react, they even think. You know the ‘live robot’ law that was passed two months ago; you come under that. Just bad timing, is all, bad timing.”
“The government’s right. I see that now,” said George Hill.
“I’m glad you understand the attitude of the law.”
“Yes. After all, they can’t let murder be legal. Even if it’s done with machines and telepathy and wax. They’d be hypocrites to let me get away with my crime. For it was a crime. I’ve felt guilty about it ever since. I’ve felt the need of punishment. Isn’t that odd? That’s how society gets to you. It makes you feel guilty even when you see no reason to be.…”