Hubbard hesitated. But what worse could there be to tell? And then
the lawyer asked a ridiculous question, "Jan, do you know why Dyall's
machines didn't meet popular favor until he changed them?"
Emrys plunged back once again into the well of his memories. "Nobody
wanted to buy machines that looked too much like people; it made
them ... uncomfortable. So Dyall stopped designing robots and made
machines adapted to their separate functions and--" His voice became a
cry of anguish. "_Megan!_"
She turned her bland, smiling doll face toward him. "I'm sorry, Emrys,"
the sweet voice said.
Dyall's eyes were squeezed shut and something glistened on the edge
of them--something that Emrys would not admit were tears, because he
himself could never cry.
"When Alissa died," Dyall said, "I knew I couldn't love another woman.
So I made a mechanical doll in her image. I made her the woman every
man dreams of--lovely and sympathetic and undemanding. And I told
myself she would be better than the original Alissa because she would
be perfect, and Alissa wasn't; she would stay young forever, while the
real Alissa would have grown old ... if she had lived. But it wasn't
the same for me."
_Why was she the same for me, then?_ Emrys wondered bitterly. _Was it
because I didn't know? Is that all love is--self-deception?_
"Perhaps," Dyall went on, "Man cannot appreciate true perfection;
perhaps he's not good enough himself. Still, she was company of a sort
and so I kept her by me. And then, when I read of Emrys Shortmire's
arrival on Earth, I sent him a note, but he didn't answer; however, I
contrived to get a look at him anyway. Then I knew for sure that he was
Jan Shortmire himself; and then I knew what Megan's destiny was...."
"How _could_ you know he--I was Jan Shortmire?" Emrys demanded angrily.
It was insupportable that old Dyall should have known all along; it
spoiled the joke. "Where would you have--have gotten the concept?"
The old man smiled, opening his eyes. "Because the Morethans made me
the same offer they did you! Did you think you were the only one?" And,
throwing back his head, he derisively began to laugh aloud.
* * * * *
More than ever, Emrys hated the Morethans, not for what they would do
to Earth's pride, but for what they had done to his. Because now there
was nothing that he had been offered that Dyall had not been offered
also. And Dyall had not accepted the Morethans' offer, thereby proving
himself the better man. And Dyall had tricked him, thereby proving
himself the cleverer man. And Dyall had hated him even more than he
had hated Dyall, thereby proving himself the more constant man. So
there Emrys Shortmire, Jan Shortmire, was left ... with nothing but a
youthfulness of which, he had to admit to himself, he had grown rather
tired.
"I'm sorry, Emrys," Megan said. "I'm terribly sorry."
Dyall sprang from his chair. "I'm sick of that piping doll's voice of
yours! I've stood it for a century, and that's long enough!" Raising
his stick high in the air, he crashed it down upon the golden head,
the pretty pink and white face. And, frozen in horror, Emrys could
not move until it was too late. He had not conceived old Dyall capable
of committing outright murder so wantonly. Probably he wasn't; to him,
Megan was and had been always a doll.
And now she was a heap of broken wheels and gears on the thick rug.
Still, out of the heap of twisted machinery, a tiny, tinny voice kept
repeating "I'm sorry, Emrys. I'm terribly sorry."
Exhausted by his effort, Dyall sank back into his chair. And he laughed
as Emrys, wanting desperately to weep, unable to, bent over the pieces,
trying to fit them together again.
"You'll never do it, Jan," he croaked maliciously. "Even a good
engineer would never be able to repair it now. If I know how to create,
I also know how to destroy!" And he went into another paroxysm of
gleefully triumphant laughter.
Emrys saw that Megan was indeed far beyond his powers, and probably
old Dyall's, to repair. Filled with fury--the one emotion, he saw now,
that he had not given up--he turned to smash Nicholas Dyall as Dyall
had smashed his doll. But the old, old man sat perfectly still in his
chair. There was a broad grin on his face.
He made a very cheerful corpse.