"That depends. There are two kinds, and this one does look more real
than the other. In fact, for a time this actually becomes a part of your
body, a pseudo-flesh. But it's quite dangerous."
"The other kind is just a cosmetic, isn't it?"
"That's right, but--"
"Then I'm not worried," she said, tossing her head. "The way I see it,
it's dangerous not to use the best disguise we can get."
She might be right. At least he'd warned her, and as long as she had the
facts straight, the decision was hers to make.
Jadiver peeled off his jacket and slid into a protective smock. "Ask
Burlingame to come in. This is going to be delicate, you know."
The gamin grinned. "I've never been overly concerned about Vicon, and he
knows I can take care of myself." She stepped behind a screen and
presently came out again, nude. "Where do you want me to stand?"
"On the pedestal, under the light." He looked at her closely. He had
thought she was a little girl, a tired little girl who hadn't slept much
recently. It was the pert face that had fooled him, with the upturned
nose, because she wasn't young. Forty he would say, maybe more, nearly
as old as Burlingame.
Her body was slight, but not much was wrong with it. Here and there were
a few wrinkles, though in general her figure appeared youthful. It would
require all his skill to make her as spectacular in a low-cut gown as
she wanted to be. And her legs, though well shaped, were slightly
bowed, a sure sign of Venusian rickets. Early settlers hadn't realized
that the soil was deficient in some essential trace elements.
He would have to straighten her legs if she expected to mingle with
society. It was beyond his power to change the bones, but he could add
pseudo-flesh to give the same effect.
He slipped on the mask, attached the various containers, thrust his hand
into the glovelike control valve, and began to work.
She winced involuntarily as the spray tingled against her body and
adhered with constrictive force. He blocked out the areas he had to
alter and then began to fill in and build up.
"I don't see it," said Emily. "I know you must be good. That's why
Burlingame wanted you. But it seems to me this is out of your line."
He brought the spray up in a straight line along the edge of her shin.
"How good I am is a matter of opinion. Mine and the places I've worked."
"What places, for instance?"
"Mostly Earth."
"I've never been there," she said wistfully.
"You haven't missed much." He knew that, while he believed that with
part of his mind, essentially he was wrong. As the spray was drying on
her legs, he started filling out her breasts. "However, this isn't as
much out of my line as you think. Engineers specialize, you know. Mine's
industrial design. We don't usually monkey with the internal mechanism
of a machine, though we're able to. Mostly, we design housings for the
machines, robots as a rule."
He proceeded to her face and changed the upturned nose to a straight
one. "The ideal external appearance of a machine ought to establish the
function of that machine, and do so with the most efficient distribution
of space and material."
He stood back and eyed the total effect. She was coming along. "The
human body is a good design--for a human. It doesn't belong on a robot.
That, for most purposes, should be a squat container with three wheels
or treads, with eye-stalks and tentacles on top. I designed one like
that, but it was never built. Robots always look like beautiful girls or
handsome men, and the mechanism is twice as clumsy as it should be, in
order to fit in with that conception."
He squinted at the spray. "In other words, I design robot bodies and
faces. Why should it be strange I can do the same with humans?"
The spray was neither a liquid nor a dustlike jet. She shivered under
it. "Why don't you like robots? I don't see anything wrong with them.
They're so beautiful."
He laughed. "I'll give you an idea. I got tired of the meaningless
perfection of the bodies I was turning out. Why shouldn't the bodies be
beautiful, considering how they're made? Anyway, I put a pimple on one
model. Not on her face. Her shoulder."
She extended her hands and he took off the fine wrinkles with a sweeping
motion of the spray. "What happened?"
"I had to start looking for another job. But somebody higher up began to
think about what I'd done. Now, on Earth, all robots that model clothing
have some perceptible skin defects. More lifelike, they say."
"Is that why you came to Venus?"
"I'd been considering it for some time. It seemed to me that there ought
to be a place for a good designer, even if I did have to work on
robots." He smiled wryly. "A lot of other engineers had the same idea."
"Too much competition?"
"Sort of." He grimaced. "My first job here was designing female bodies
for so-called social clubs."
"Oh, those," she said scornfully.
"It's legitimate on Venus. Anyway, I tried out that idea again.
Customers didn't like it. Said they could get women with blemishes any
time. When they got a robot, they wanted perfection."
"Don't blame them," Emily said practically. She looked at him with
sudden suspicion. "Don't give _me_ pimples."
"Not a one," he assured her. "You're flawless."
And she was--with only one item missing. He flexed his fingers in the
control glove and sprayed on nipples. She was finished.
He shucked off the mask and laid aside the spray gun. "Look at
yourself."
She went to the mirror and turned in front of it. She smoothed her hands
across her face and smiled with pleasure. "It feels like flesh."
"It is, almost. Tomorrow you'll bleed there if you cut yourself."