Herb Cornith didn't really mind getting
married as long as the girl answered his strict
specifications which were simply--a superwoman!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
February 1951
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Herb Cornith shook his dark head in disappointment. "Nope," he said,
"she won't do. Lacks an ounce of being the right weight."
The willowy blonde behind the desk blinked blue eyes and frowned.
"But Mr. Cornith," she insisted, "you fit Miss Lucy Hollowell's
specifications perfectly. She even specified that the man must be very
exacting, meticulous and choosy. Certainly you are being all of that
when you quibble over an ounce in her weight."
Cornith picked up the specification sheet in his muscular right hand.
He studied it out of thoughtful brown eyes. "This doesn't look right,"
he said. "I'll admit that I have strong features, but I'm not handsome."
"To a woman, you are handsome, Mr. Cornith. In fact, magnetically so."
"I'm only six feet tall, not seventy-three inches."
"That is a typographical error, Mr. Cornith. It should read seventy-two
inches. The corrected copy should be along soon. Something went wrong
with the machine."
"And my eyes are not particularly expressive. I generally conceal my
thoughts."
"That, Mr. Cornith, is merely your own opinion. You don't know what
expression you might put into your eyes when you look into the eyes of
your soul-mate."
"The eyes of my what?"
"Excuse me, Mr. Cornith. I know you're not the poetic type. You're the
rugged type, but brainy, realistic. Still, you fit the specifications."
"You said there was another sheet to the specifications?"
"Yes. It won't be finished until tomorrow. But let me assure you that
it fits you. In fact, it describes your every virtue and fault."
Cornith glanced round the large room. His brown eyes came to rest on
a model of an early Martian rocket ship. He studied it for a space,
mentally seeing its interior and its outmoded atomic drive. It reminded
him that he should get back to the laboratory and check on those
ray-collector tests. This business of dickering over specifications for
a wife was a nuisance. His requirements had been on file since he had
taken the Levet test at the age of eighteen. Because of his exacting
nature they had been hard to fill. Now at twenty-seven he was still
unmarried. Not that he cared. But by reason of the fact that he was of
the higher mental level, and physically fitted to survive in a complex
and expanding civilization, he was urged by the Foundation to marry and
beget children.
* * * * *
This was the accepted procedure. Marriage was seldom discouraged, but
it was urged only on those who came up to certain specifications. The
purpose was to improve mankind in order that man might hold his own in
a solar system that was even now reaching out toward the stars. The
system had long been in effect on Mars, but owing to the colder climate
and the thinner atmosphere, Mars had less than a tenth the population
of earth. Selective breeding alone had enabled these to survive.
"Sorry," Cornith said. "This Lucy Hollowell fits everything except she
is too skinny. I don't want a bag of bones for a wife."
The blonde smiled wryly. "She is only a half-ounce under the
specifications, to be exact. Perhaps you have not carefully read your
requirements. Let me remind you, Mr. Cornith, the Foundation probed
your every thought, conscious and subconscious, your every physical
reaction, and they specified merely that the girl must be unusually
intelligent, naming the subjects which will fit into your pattern; that
she must be beautiful according to your standards; that she must be
five-feet four-inches tall and weigh a hundred and twenty-three pounds.
"Now, Mr. Cornith, there is one little thing which the Foundation has
decided that you implanted in your thoughts by suggestion before taking
the test. They decided that you were being facetious. I am alluding
to the specified requirements that your wife must be able to wiggle
her ears, throw her voice and perform sleight-of-hand tricks, among
other curious things. The Foundation says that these things may not be
essentially required. But they do admit the requirement that she must
be eager to please you at all times. And since it is Lucy Hollowell's
nature to be eager to please the man she marries, she is even now
practicing ventriloquism and learning how to wiggle her ears. She has
a brilliant mind and will have no difficulty learning a number of
sleight-of-hand tricks."
"But she's too skinny!"
"Half an ounce, Mr. Cornith. She weighs a hundred and twenty-two
pounds, fifteen ounces. She could very easily gain that ounce by making
an effort, but you specified that there should be no conscious effort
to meet physical measurements and weight requirements. She was to be
weighed, dripping wet, as she came from under the shower, just before
breakfast. We assume that the wetness weighed half an ounce."
"I don't like skinny females."
"We have another one, less brilliant, but who meets all physical
requirements other than weighing a hundred and twenty-three pounds and
four ounces."
"Too fat. Can't stand fat women."
"Would you permit Lucy Hollowell to gain half an ounce consciously? She
can do it in a few hours. Has a brilliant mind. Can regulate her own
glandular flow."
"No. I don't want to marry a woman who is always thinking about her
weight, and if she starts now--"
"You're very exacting, Mr. Cornith!"
"Naturally. The requirements of Lucy Hollowell demand an exacting man.
At least that's what the Foundation reports."
"Then you are giving her serious thought?"
* * * * *
"None whatever! She's too skinny. If she just had an ounce more meat on
her bones, I'd marry her and not even ask her name. But I don't want to
live the balance of my days with a female who looks like an animated
skeleton, who has to stand twice in the same spot to cast a shadow, who
has to drink tomato juice to keep you from looking through her."
"How about the woman of the same height who weighs a hundred and
twenty-three pounds, four ounces."
"A beef-trust like that! Count me out. She'd cast her shadow twice.
It would take a week to hug her, a little at a time. She'd shake
the house down every time she walked across the floor. Impossible to
keep her in clothes. I'd need a nylon and linen factory to supply the
material for one outfit. No! I'd rather have a skeleton than a whale."
"Then you'll consider Lucy Hollowell?"
"I didn't say that. I wouldn't mind taking a look at her from a
distance, because if she does fit the other specifications she must be
something out of a dream. Too bad she has to be built like a rail."
"Not like a rail, Mr. Cornith."
"A skeleton then."
"Not like a skeleton, either. She is Miss Venus of 2190."
"What? You mean, this gawky Lucy Hollowell is the same as that gorgeous
bundle of curves and pulchritude?"
"Exactly. And now you're interested, huh?"
"No. She doesn't meet the specifications."
"But you'll let her come over to the laboratory and watch you work,
won't you? After all, you meet her requirements."
"No! I don't want any walking bean-poles around the laboratory."
"But maybe she wouldn't appear just that."
"She's underweight."
"According to your requirements--only. Thousands of men think she is
perfect. And she's going to be mighty disappointed if her dream man--"
"Her what?"
"Sorry. I forgot you're not the poetic type. She doesn't think of you
as her dream man, but she does think of you as being everything she
wants in a man. You'll let her come to the laboratory, won't you?"
"No."
"But she does at least want to see you. Do you know you are the only
man out of thousands who exactly meets her requirements? Even to those
crinkles in your forehead when you frown. And even to being stubborn
about things."
"I've got to get back and check those ray-collectors--"
"And you'll let her go along with you?"
"No."
"But she's waiting in the next office, and your requirements call for a
woman who has a mind of her own. I think she's--"
"Not a mind of her own that makes her determined to have her own way in
everything."
"Of course not. But I think she's--"
"I specified a woman who would not try to wear the pants."
"She won't. That is, not yours, anyway. Though you're too big for them.
But I think she's going with you to the laboratory."
* * * * *
"That's what you think," Cornith said with finality and stood up.
"No long, lean, gawky drink-of-water is going to tag along after Herb
Cornith. Especially a female bag of bones. Uh! Excuse me. Who is the
lady who just entered without knocking?"
"Oh! Just a second. Miss Hollowell, Mr. Cornith was just getting ready
to come by for you. Miss Hollowell, Mr. Cornith."
Cornith drew a deep breath and ran a finger beneath his collar. He
stared, drinking in the beauty of the symmetrical figure beneath
the rose-colored dress, the radiance of the smooth features. He had
seen her before, but only in a vague dream in which she was far more
lovely than the telecast views of Miss Venus, but in the dream she
had not done to him what she was doing now. She acted upon him much
as a single-pole magnet does to a magnet of opposite polarity. More,
she seemed stunned herself. Her lips parted slightly, revealing white
teeth, and her deep azure eyes seemed to be saying things that only
eyes can say.
"A pleasure," Cornith said, enclosing her small warm hand in his. "I
was just telling Miss--" He gestured toward the girl behind the desk.
"I was just telling her that I--er, I, uh."
"You're going to the laboratory," Lucy Hollowell said, more as a direct
reading of his thoughts than as a question.