* * * * *
I _can hear_! she shouted to herself. _It's a strange voice, a most
unusual accent. I couldn't possibly have imagined it. I'm not deaf!
Maybe I'm not blind either! Maybe I just had a nightmare_--
"I know that you cannot answer. But do not fear. You will soon be able
to speak again."
Who was it? Not a man's voice, nor a woman's. It was curiously hoarse,
and yet clear enough. Uninflected, and yet pleasant. A doctor? Where
could a doctor have come from?
"Your husband is also alive. Fortunately, we reached both of you at
about the time death had just begun."
Fortunately? She felt a flash of rage. _You should have let us die. It
would be bad enough to be alive by myself, a helpless cripple dependent
upon others. But to know that Fred is alive too is worse. To know that
he has a picture of me like this, ugly and horrifying, is more than I
can stand. With any other man it would be bad enough, but with Fred it's
unendurable. Give me back the ability to talk, and the first thing I'll
ask of you is to kill me. I don't want to live._
"It may reassure you to know that there will be no difficulty about
recovering the use of the limbs proper to you, and the organs of
sensation. It will take time, but there is no doubt about the final
outcome."
What nonsense, she asked herself, was this? Doctors had done wonders in
the creation and fitting of artificial arms and legs, but he seemed to
be promising her the use of _real_ limbs. And he had said, "organs of
sensation." That didn't sound as if he meant that she'd see and hear
electronically. It meant--
Nonsense. He was making a promise he couldn't keep. He was just saying
that to make her feel better, the way doctors did. He was saying it to
give her courage, keep her morale up, make her feel that it was worth
fighting. But it _wasn't_ worth fighting. She had no courage to keep up.
She wanted only to die.
"Perhaps you have already realized that I am not what you would call
human. However, I suggest that you do not worry too much about that. I
shall have no difficulty in reconstructing you properly according to
your own standards."
* * * * *
Then the voice ceased, and she was left alone. It was just as well, she
thought. He had said too much. And she couldn't answer, nor ask
questions of her own ... and she had so many.
He wasn't human? Then what was he? And how did he come to speak a human
language? And what did he mean to do with her after he had reconstructed
her? And what would she look like after she was reconstructed?
There were races, she knew, that had no sense of beauty. Or if they had
one, it wasn't like a human sense of beauty. Would he consider her
properly reconstructed if he gave her the right number of arms and legs,
and artificial organs of sight that acted like eyes--and made her look
like some creature out of Hell? Would he be proud of his handiwork, as
human doctors had been known to be, when their patients ended up alive
and helpless, their bodies scarred, their organs functioning feebly and
imperfectly? Would he turn her into something that Fred would look at
with abhorrence and disgust?
Fred had always been a little too sensitive to beauty in women. He had
been able to pick and choose at his will, and until he had met her he
had always chosen on the basis of looks alone. She had never understood
why he had married her. Perhaps the fact that she was the one woman he
knew who _wasn't_ beautiful had made her stand out. Perhaps, too, she
told herself, there was a touch of cruelty in his choice. He might have
wanted someone who wasn't too sure of herself, someone he could count on
under all circumstances. She remembered how people had used to stare at
them--the handsome man and the plain woman--and then whisper among
themselves, wondering openly how he had ever come to marry her. Fred had
liked that; she was sure he had liked that.
He had obviously _wanted_ a plain wife. Now he would have an ugly one.
Would he want _that_?
She slept on her questions, and waked and slept repeatedly. And then,
one day, she heard the voice again. And to her surprise, she found that
she could answer back--slowly, uncertainly, at times painfully. But she
could speak once more.
"We have been working on you," said the voice. "You are coming along
nicely."
"Am I--am I--" she found difficulty asking: "How do I look?"
"Incomplete."
"I must be horrible."