He grinned and winked. "Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication.
Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be--awkward, shall we say. Very
awkward--"
I gave him a cold stare. I couldn't see where my domestic problems were
any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.
"We keep a few blanks here for the basic measurement. You'll go to our
laboratory on 14th Street to have the minute impressions taken. But I
can assure you you'll be delighted, simply delighted."
The blanks weren't very impressive--clay and putty and steel, faceless,
brainless. He went over me like a tailor, checking measurements of all
sorts. He was thorough--embarrassingly thorough, in fact--but finally
he was finished. I went on to the laboratory.
And that was all there was to it.
* * * * *
Practical androids had been a pipe dream until Hunyadi invented the
Neuro-pantograph. Hunyadi had no idea in the world what to do with it
once he'd invented it, but a couple of enterprising engineers bought
him body and soul, sub-contracted the problems of anatomy, design,
artistry, audio and visio circuitry, and so forth, and ended up with
the modern Ego Primes we have today.
I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked
outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty
woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the
recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime
when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked
in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a
tired look on his face.
"Meet George Faircloth Prime," the technician said, grinning at me like
a nursing mother.
I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly.
Nothing flabby about it.
I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. "Come on, Brother," I
said. "You've got a job to do."
But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.
George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded
neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought
what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The
only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime
did.
If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make
the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders,
he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my
signature. It would hold up in court.
And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted
girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time
I chose, he'd do that, too.
George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on
the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same
mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical
difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression
buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop
George Prime dead in his tracks.
He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a
pile of gears.
I'd planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.
Every man who's been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it
up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife's
natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes
it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be
confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough,
and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent
enough and crafty enough, he'll probably win in the end. The girls hate
him for it, but he'll win.
With some men, it's just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a
corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in
the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.
* * * * *
At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she
said. I told her I didn't _want_ her to clean it up. She could clean
the whole house as often as she chose, but _I_ would clean up the
workshop.
After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a
strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood
shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next.
A wrench would be back on the rack--upside down, of course. An open
paint can would have a cover on it.
I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I
swore I'd rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.
So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while
to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door
routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a
battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It
was that predictable.
She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore
her down. She didn't go into the workshop any more.
As I said, you've got to be persistent, but you'll win.
Eventually.
If you're _really_ persistent.
Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour
or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big
closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a
manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night,
there he was, just waiting to be put to work.
After supper, I went out to the workshop--to get the pipe I'd left
there, I said. I pushed George Prime's button, winked at him and
switched on the free-behavior circuits.
"Go to it, Brother," I said.
George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the
house.
Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.
It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on
the corner and headed uptown.
We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start
for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car,
business suit on, briefcase under his arm.
I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into
the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him
off and then drove away in the car.
Bless his metallic soul, he'd even kissed Marge good-by for me!
* * * * *
Needless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle
with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.
For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a
little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all
the time--he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that
he literally couldn't care less. But I felt apologetic all the same
whenever I took him out of his closet.
"She's really a sweet girl underneath it all," I'd say. "You'll learn
to like her after a bit."
"Of course I like her," George Prime said. "You told me to, didn't you?
Stop worrying. She's really a sweet girl underneath it all."
He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. "You're sure
you understand the exchange mechanism?" I asked. I didn't want any
foul-ups there, as you can imagine.
"Perfectly," said George Prime. "When you buzz the recall, I wait for
the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop,
and you take over."
"But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off."
George Prime looked pained. "Really, old man! I'm a Super Deluxe model,
remember? I don't have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this
cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You're the one that's nervous.
I'll take care of everything. Relax."
So I did.
Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very
cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after
a hard day at the office. When we weren't doing the town, that is.
As long as Jeree didn't try too much conversation, everything was
wonderful.
And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the
accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.
I could go on at some length, but I won't. I was building quite a
reputation for myself around the office.
Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the
novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It
took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable
program.
Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally "out" while formally
"in." Sometimes I took Sunday nights "out" if things got too sticky
around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime
cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can't completely
trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.
There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to
quick-step some questions about my work at the office--there was no
way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular
two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the
meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.
But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.
* * * * *
Marge didn't suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having
a remarkable effect on her. I didn't notice anything at first--I was
hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out
for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought
me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn't had a
good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.
I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to
mellow sometime.
But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn't mellowing a little too
much.
One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really
meant it. There wasn't an unpleasant word all through dinner, which
happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by
candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly
because I liked it.
We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old
times. _Very_ old times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge
again--really _looking_ at her, watching the light catch in her hair,
almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not
glint.
As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night,
she was practically ravishing.
"What are you doing to her?" I asked George Prime later, out in the
workshop.
"Why, nothing," said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn't fool
me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when
I'm guilty and pretending to be innocent.
"There must be _something_."
George Prime shrugged. "Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time
telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention
to her that she wants paid to her. That's elemental psychology. I can
give you page references."
I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts
run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell
when an odd bit of information will come in useful.
"Well, you must be doing quite a job," I said. _I'd_ never managed to
warm Marge up much.
"I try," said George Prime.
"Oh, I'm not complaining," I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime's
feelings can't be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it
was in character. "I was just curious."
"Of course, George."
"I'm really delighted that you're doing so well."
"Thank you, George."
But the next night when I was with Dawn, who happens to be a gorgeous
redhead who could put Marge to shame on practically any field of battle
except maybe brains, I kept thinking about Marge all evening long, and
wondering if things weren't getting just a little out of hand.
* * * * *
The next evening I almost tripped over George Prime coming out of a
liquor store. I ducked quickly into an alley and flagged him. "_What
are you doing out on the street?_"