Jan and I soon left the hospital and set up housekeeping in an
apartment of our own. But with all that medical science could do, Doc
still had to stay in bed for a month. But he started directing the
forces of destiny, almost as soon as he could give orders.
I was in on the deal, of course, as were several doctors from the
hospital, and Bowhart, and Scharber when he arrived on Earth from
Ganymede.
"Gonna do it, Doc, aren't you?" Scharber said, when he first saw him
lying there, pale and wasted. "You lugs scared me plenty once. Now,
though, I feel foolish. Big words you need for this! It's the dawn of
the demigods!"
My blood thrilled with a mighty promise, too. At night, going to
sleep, I'd exert my will. Lodged inside my head was a micro-android.
I'd will myself into it again. And so, for a little while, I'd escape
from my own mountainous form, to float free in the air and consult the
notes and drawings on the parchment that I'd hidden on a molding in my
hospital room.
Doc and Jan would do the same. They, too, following the plan we had
made in space, had similarly cached their portions of his notes. But
now we had assembled the complete record of the android process in
Doc's house.
And so the beginning was made. When Doc was able to get around again,
things really got under way. He obtained a government grant. A whole
lab and a large staff of workers, was set aside for us. Retorts,
pressure-vats, and other apparatus to produce the basic materials, were
constructed and installed.
Ours was a major project, coinciding in time with another major
project. For the first real starship was finally under construction on
the Moon. Three more years it would take to be completed.
But our enterprise reached practical fruition in fourteen months. I was
among the men present when Dr. Lanvin lowered himself into a tank of
special gelatins.
He was nude and emaciated; yet he kept his humor, and a certain
dignity. A thin hand made a slight gesture. To Scharber and me and the
others, he said:
"This will be the easiest trick, learned among the micro-Xians. Simple
tissue-replacement, cell by cell. Improved protoplast in place of
protoplasm. That's all. Well, wish me luck."
The anesthetic that had been injected into his veins worked. He slumped
down gently. The gelatins closed in over his face, and the month of
slow gestation toward rebirth began. I saw his body at various stages
of the process; little changed in appearance except for much increased
robustness.
Other duties intervened, so I did not observe his actual removal from
the tank nor his reawakening. But Jan and I met him a few hours later,
as he left the small hospital of our lab. The old gray suit he wore,
hardly fitted him. He still had his ragged blond mustache. You could
tell that he was he--with many years subtracted. He looked about as old
as I was--twenty-three. But these were the only signs.
He grinned like a kid, jubilant, but a bit self-conscious. He said,
half joshing:
"Look me over--the miracle of the era, the successor to natural
man; and no casual observer could ever tell that I'm not as humans
have always been. I eat, I breathe oxygen; I need some foods with a
different mineral content, it is true. I sleep if I want to. Given a
mate of like substance, I can reproduce my own kind. But I won't age.
Cut a finger off me, and it would manage to live independently for
a long time. Wound me terribly, and I'd probably manage to heal up
someway. Deprive me of air, or common chemical foods, and my body would
try to seek out other sources of energy--sunlight, radioactivity, or
whatever is available. Even change my basic tissue fluid from water
to--"
It sounded a little like bragging, so Jan cut in with a feminine tease:
"Yes, Dr. Lanvin. But put on your overcoat. People will think it odd
that you're carrying it on such a sharp winter afternoon."
Doc laughed back, and obliged her almost with embarrassment, and we
were three old friends together.
"People get injured," I said, "or just grow old; and though limited
rejuvenation and repair is possible, this is a far better way. That's
how it should go, Doc; and you'd think that no one with sense would
want to stop it. In months there'll be thousands of androids. But here
we are again--unsure of how it'll all be taken. Like you say, this is
succession to natural man. It can be conceived of as the old Threat
of the Robot idea, with refinements. A force of staggering newness,
wonderful to the point of being terrifying. We're almost certain that
there'll be trouble."
The story of all we'd learned among the micro-Xians, and its
repercussions here at home, was mostly regarded as a fantastic rumor at
first. It was talked of lightly on the newscast, and wherever people
gathered:
"Little People that have been around all the time, watching us? Shucks,
even my Irish grandmother knew that! So we're gonna become wonderful,
artificial critters! Homo ex Machina! Well, well!... Okay--take me--I
was always one for improvements!"
Yes, it went something like that. And when people first truly knew,
their reactions were mild, curious, and friendly. One incident I
remember particularly.
* * * * *
Jan and I and Doc and a very pretty girl were walking in a quiet street
near the University. The girl was someone I had known from a picture.
She _looked_ like the picture, again, now. That is, she had become like
Doc. For the sake of youth and beauty, women can be more bold than
men. She was Irma Tandray Lanvin, Doc's former wife--returned. And
maybe she'd learned something about her man--that her rival, science,
was part of him, and that she'd better take him as he was. Maybe he'd
also learned the need of being attentive to a woman. Anyway, they both
looked devoted, now, and I hoped it was so.
But what I meant to tell about was our neighbors. First we met
Corbison, the mechanic, saying:
"Hi, Professor Lanvin. A fella'd hardly know you."
"It's still me," Doc answered.
Others gathered around as we paused to talk.
"How do you feel, Doctor?" asked an elderly woman. And when he replied,
"Fine!" she said, "Think of it! I'm glad!"
There was even a pooch, who began with a prolonged sniffing at Doc,
which progressed to a puzzled yelp, a wrinkling of brow above soulful
and humorous brown eyes, then a licking of his hand, and a caper. In my
mind the thought sprouted that a dog could become android, too.
"Wouldn't the word be 'canoid?'" Jan teased, knowing me well enough to
be sometimes almost clairvoyant.
"Ah, the language struggles to keep up with progress!" a bookish youth
commented lightly.
One of two small boys with their father fumbled with my fingers. "Aw,
it feels just like anybody's hand, Mister," he growled, disappointed.
"That's a case of mistaken identity, young fella," I pointed out. "I
_am_ anybody--yet."
Irma Tandray Lanvin took his grubby mitt, and laughed. "Is that the
same, Joey?" she questioned. "It shouldn't be, but I'll bet it is."
The kid looked as if his leg was being pulled.
There was just friendly interest and wonder among all those people,
then.
"What they reminded me of," Irma said later, "was some kind of
simple natives on a lost island, being shown a mirror for the first
time--before they think of black magic. Is that what we all are,
basically, at first? Simple? Trusting?"
"That's a good question," Jan commented.
And so it was for months more. But all the elements of catastrophe were
present. Earth was a crowded but beautiful place. Technology had done
much to give it an idyllic mood, and to shelter its inhabitants in
cotton-wool. But that same technology that could build so miraculously,
still held a devilish potential, if it served minds motivated by hate
and fear. Need one even remember, here, the asteroids that were the
fragments of Planet X, or the glassy, fused-down ruins of Mars, still
slightly tainted with radiations of nuclear fusion and fission?
The drives of intellect, of whatever origin, seem always to have a
sullen, combative streak, constructive in one sense, since it is the
force that brings peoples up from nothing. But the stubborn taking of
sides also harbors deadly danger.
Almost unobtrusively at first, the threatening clouds began to gather
throughout the world. At our busy and expanding lab, Bowhart, who, with
Scharber, had been crewman aboard the _Intruder_, came to represent one
phase of the opposition to the Great Change.
I remember what he said to me one day, his earnest face serious, his
brow crinkled with the effort to be reasonable:
"Charlie, I could be all wrong. But for some time I've been thinking.
Already there are twenty thousand once near-dead people who have been
changed over; not to mention five thousand others who were in good
health. Part of me admires the humanitarian angles here. But then
there's that feeling of a slow, creeping invasion, so far unopposed.
I can't exactly put my finger on just what makes it horrible; but at
night I wake up sweating cold all over. Maybe I've got a blind spot
in my head. All I know is that most everything about this remarkable
duplication of humanity goes against the instincts in my slow
Neanderthal guts. No, don't argue, Charlie. I've heard all of Dr.
Lanvin's counter-points, and I just can't feel right about the whole
thing. So I'd be a hypocrite if I worked in this lab any longer. I'll
leave today, with the best of wishes to you and yours, and Dr. Lanvin.
Tell him, will you?"
"All hail, Bow," I said, shaking his hand. "Thanks for the honesty. I
know what you mean. I've felt it all myself, even though I don't quite
agree."
Scharber, his former buddy, was also present in my office. They shook
hands almost formally, now. For Scharber had moved all the way to the
other side of the fence. He'd become the thrilled, eager kind.
"Poor Bow," he growled after Bowhart was gone. "A good guy, a
gentleman. But mixed up, like some tough kid, afraid to ride on a
merry-go-round. Feeling a black-rat-brown-rat difference. A primitive
terror of being crowded out by something far more vigorous, and
different from what he has always conceived of as human. Which brings
up the reason why I'm here to see you, Charlie. I've screwed up my
nerve to change the quality of my bones and meat. As far as I'm
concerned, the process might as well start tonight. Okay?"