She sighed her instant agreement and moved her expressive hands over
his chest and up to the hollows of his throat.
"I need a shave," he observed.
Her hands instantly caressed his face to prove that she liked a rather
bristly, masculine countenance.
Manet elbowed Veronica away in a gentlemanly fashion.
She made her return.
"Not now," he instructed her.
"Whenever you say."
He stood up and began pacing off the dimensions of the compartment.
There was no doubt about it: he had been missing his regular exercise.
"Now?" she asked.
"I'll tell you."
"If you were a jet pilot," Veronica said wistfully, "you would be
romantic. You would grab love when you could. You would never know
which moment would be last. You would make the most of each one."
"I'm not a jet pilot," Manet said. "There are no jet pilots. There
haven't been any for generations."
"Don't be silly," Veronica said. "Who else would stop those vile North
Koreans and Red China 'volunteers'?"
"Veronica," he said carefully, "the Korean War is over. It was finished
even before the last of the jet pilots."
"Don't be silly," she snapped. "If it were over, I'd know about it,
wouldn't I?"
She would, except that somehow she had turned out even less bright,
less equipped with Manet's own store of information, than Ronald.
Whoever had built the Lifo kit must have had ancient ideas about what
constituted appropriate "feminine" characteristics.
"I suppose," he said heavily, "that you would like me to take you back
to Earth and introduce you to Daniel Boone?"
"Oh, yes."
"Veronica, your stupidity is hideous."
She lowered her long blonde lashes on her pink cheeks. "That is a mean
thing to say to me. But I forgive you."
An invisible hand began pressing down steadily on the top of his head
until it forced a sound out of him. "Aaaawrraagggh! Must you be so
cloyingly sweet? Do you have to keep taking that? Isn't there any fight
in you at all?"
He stepped forward and back-handed her across the jaw.
It was the first time he had ever struck a woman, he realized
regretfully. He now knew he should have been doing it long ago.
Veronica sprang forward and led with a right.
<tb>
Ronald's cries grew louder as Manet marched Veronica through the
corridor.
"Hear that?" he inquired, smiling with clenched teeth.
"No, darling."
Well, that was all right. He remembered he had once told her to ignore
the noise. She was still following orders.
"Come on, Bill, open up the hatch for old Ronald," the voice carried
through sepulchrally.
"Shut up!" Manet yelled.
The voice dwindled stubbornly, then cut off.
A silence with a whisper of metallic ring to it.
Why hadn't he thought of that before? Maybe because he secretly took
comfort in the sound of an almost human voice echoing through the
station.
Manet threw back the bolt and wheeled back the hatch.
Ronald looked just the same as had when Manet had seen him last. His
hands didn't seem to have been worn away in the least. Ronald's lips
seemed a trifle chapped. But that probably came not from all the
shouting but from having nothing to drink for some months.
Ronald didn't say anything to Manet.
But he looked offended.
"You," Manet said to Veronica with a shove in the small of the back,
"inside, inside."
Ronald sidestepped the lurching girl.
"Do you know what I'm going to do with you?" Manet demanded. "I'm going
to lock you up in here, and leave you for a day, a month, a year,
forever! Now what do you think about that?"
"If you think it's the <i>right</i> thing, dear," Veronica said hesitantly.
"You know best, Willy," Ronald said uncertainly.
Manet slammed the hatch in disgust.
Manet walked carefully down the corridor, watching streamers of
his reflection corkscrewing into the curved walls. He had to walk
carefully, else the artery would roll up tight and squash him. But he
walked too carefully for this to happen.
As he passed the File Room, Ronald's voice said: "In my opinion,
William, you should let us out."
"I," Veronica said, "honestly feel that you should let me out, Bill,
dearest."
Manet giggled. "What? What was that? Do you suggest that I take you
back after you've been behind a locked door with my best friend?"
He went down the corridor, giggling.
He giggled and thought: This will never do.
<tb>
Pouring and tumbling through the Lifo kit, consulting the manual
diligently, Manet concluded that there weren't enough parts left in the
box to go around.
The book gave instructions for The Model Mother, The Model Father, The
Model Sibling and others. Yet there weren't parts enough in the kit.
He would have to take parts from Ronald or Veronica in order to make
any one of the others. And he could not do that without the Modifier.
He wished Trader Tom would return and extract some higher price from
him for the Modifier, which was clearly missing from the kit.
Or to get even more for simply repossessing the kit.
But Trader Tom would not be back. He came this way only once.
Manet thumbed through the manual in mechanical frustration. As he did
so, the solid piece of the last section parted sheet by sheet.
He glanced forward and found the headings: <i>The Final Model</i>.
There seemed something ominous about that finality. But he had paid
a price for the kit, hadn't he? Who knew what price, when it came to
that? He had every right to get everything out of the kit that he
could.
He read the unfolding page critically. The odd assortment of
ill-matched parts left in the box took a new shape in his mind and
under his fingers....
Manet gave one final spurt from the flesh-sprayer and stood back.
Victor was finished. Perfect.
Manet stepped forward, lifted the model's left eyelid, tweaked his nose.
"Move!"
Victor leaped back into the Lifo kit and did a jig on one of the
flesh-sprayers.
As the device twisted as handily as good intentions, Manet realized
that it was not a flesh-sprayer but the Modifier.
"It's finished!" were Victor's first words. "It's done!"