"_Human, but without human faults, I said!_"
"You raised your voice, Joe."
"I did."
"I'm the Senior Assistant. Junior Assistants do not raise their voices
to Senior Assistants."
"I thought you might be deaf, as well as dumb," Joe said.
A silence. The granite face of Burke was marble, then steel and finally
chromium. His voice matched it. "I'll have to talk to the Chief before
I fire you, of course. Department rule. Good afternoon."
"Go to hell."
* * * * *
Joe went back to his desk and burned. He started with a low flame and
fed it with the grievances of the past weeks. When it began to warm his
collar, he picked up his hat and left.
Click, burr, click went the airlocks. Very few riders, this time of
the afternoon. The brain would go in, intact, and then the knowledge
instiller would work during the incubation period, feeding the
adolescent memories to the retentive circuits. She would really spend
her mental childhood in the mold, while the warmth sent the human spark
through her body.
Robot? Huh! What did they know? A human being, a product of science, a
_flawless_ human being.
The rise, the big hiss of the final airlock, and Inglewood. Joe stood
on the platform a second, looking for his car, and then realized she
wasn't there. She hadn't been there for a week, and he'd done that
every night. Silly thing, habit. Human trait.
Tonight, he'd know. The flesh had been in the mold for two days. The
synthetic nerves were plump and white under the derma-ray, the fluxo
heart was pumping steadily, the entire muscular structure kept under
pneumatic massage for muscle tone.
He'd thought of omitting the frowning muscles, but realized it would
ruin the facial contours. They weren't, however, under massage and
would not be active.
And the mind?
Well, naturally it would be tuned to his. She'd know everything he
knew. What room was there for disagreement if the minds were the same?
Smiling, as she agreed, because she couldn't frown. Her tenderness, her
romanticism would have an intensity variable, of course. He didn't want
one of these grinning simperers.
He remembered his own words: "Is this love something you can turn
on and off like a faucet?" Were his own words biting him, or only
scratching him? Something itched. An intensity variable was not a
faucet, though unscientific minds might find a crude, allegorical
resemblance.
To hell with unscientific minds.
He went down to the basement. The mold was 98.6. He watched the
knowledge instiller send its minute current to the head end of the
mold. The meter read less than a tenth of an amp. The slow, plastic
pulse of the muscle tone massage worked off a small pump near the foot
of the mold.
On the wall, the big master operating clock sent the minute currents
to the various bodily sections, building up the cells, maintaining the
organic functions. In two hours, the clock would shut off all power,
the box would cool, and there would be his--Alice. Well, why not Alice?
She had to have a name, didn't she?
* * * * *
Warmth, that was the difference between a human and a robot, just
warmth, just the spark. Funny he'd never thought of it before. Warmth
was--it had unscientific connotations. It wasn't, though.
He went upstairs and fried some eggs. Twice a day, for a week, he had
fried eggs. Their flavor was overrated.
Then he went into the living room and snapped on the ball game.
Martin was on third and Pelter was at bat. On the mound, the lank form
of Dorffberger cast a long, grotesque shadow in the afternoon sun.
Dorffberger chewed and spat and wiped his nose with the back of his
glove. He looked over at third and yawned.
At the plate, Pelter was digging in. Pelter looked nervous.
Joe said, "Bet that Dorffberger fans him. He's got the Indian sign on
Pelter."
Then he realized he was talking to himself. Damn it. On the telenews
screen, Dorffberger looked right into the camera and nodded. He was
winding up, and the director put the ball into slow motion. Even in
slow motion, it winged.
"Ho-ho!" Joe said. "You can't hit what you can't see."
Pelter must have seen it. He caught it on the fat part of the bat,
twisting into it with all his hundred and ninety pounds. The impact
rattled the telenews screen and the telescopic cameras took over.
They followed the ball's flight about halfway to Jersey and then the
short-range eyes came back to show Pelter crossing the plate, and
Martin waiting there to shake his hand.
Joe snapped off the machine impatiently. Very unscientific game,
baseball. No rhyme or reason to it. He went out onto the porch.
The grass was dry and gray; he'd forgotten to set the sprinkler
clock, Vera's old job. Across the street, Dan Harvey sat with his
wife, each with a drink. Sat with his human wife, the poor fish. They
looked happy, though. Some people were satisfied with mediocrities.
Unscientific people.
Why was he restless? Why was he bored? Was he worried about his job?
Only slightly; the Chief thought a lot of him, a hell of a lot. The
Chief was a great guy for seniority and Burke had it, or Joe would
certainly have been Senior Assistant.
The stirring in him he didn't want to analyze and he thought of
the days he'd courted Vera, going to dances at the Center, playing
bridge at the Center, studying Greek at the Center. A fine but too
well-lighted place. You could do everything but smooch there; the
smooching came after the declaration of intentions and a man was bound
after the declaration to go through with the wedding, to live with his
chosen mate for the minimum three months of the adjustment period.
* * * * *
Adjustment period ... another necessity for humans, for imperfect
people. Across the street, the perfectly adjusted Harveys smiled at
each other and sipped their drinks. Hell, that wasn't adjustment, that
was surrender.
He got up and went into the living room; fighting the stirring in him,
the stirring he didn't want to analyze and find absurd. He went into
the bathroom and studied his lean, now haggard face. He looked like
hell. He went into the back bedroom and smelled her perfume and went
quickly from the house and into the backyard.
He sat there until seven, listening to the throb from the basement.
The molecule agitator should have the flesh firm and finished now,
nourished by the select blood, massaged by the pulsating plastic.
At seven, she should be ready.
At seven, he went down to the basement. His heart should have been
hammering and his mind expectant, but he was just another guy going
down to the basement.
The pumps had stopped, the agitator, the instiller. He felt the mold;
it was cool to the touch. He lifted the lid, his mind on Vera for some
reason.
A beauty. The lid was fully back and his mate sat up, smiled and said,
"Hello, Joe."
"Hello, Alice. Everything all right?"
"Fine."
Her hair was a silver blonde, her features a blend of the patrician and
the classical. Her figure was neither too slim nor too stout, too flat
nor too rounded. Nowhere was there any sag.
"Thought we'd drop over to the Harveys' for a drink," Joe said. "Sort
of show you off, you know."
"Ego gratification, Joe?"
"Of course. I've some clothes upstairs for you."
"I'm sure they're lovely."
"They are lovely."
While she dressed, he phoned the Harveys. He explained about Vera
first, because Vera was what the Harveys considered a good neighbor.
Dan Harvey said sympathetically, "It happens to the best of us.
Thinking of getting a new one, Joe?"
"I've got one right here. Thought I'd drop over, sort of break the ice."
"Great," Dan said. "Fine. Dandy."
The event was of minor importance, except for the revelation involved.
The Harveys had a gift for putting guests at ease, the gift being a
cellar full of thirty-year-old bourbon the elder Harvey had bequeathed
them at the end of their adjustment period.
The talk moved here and there, over the bourbon, Alice sharing in it
rarely, though nodding when Joe was talking.
Then, at mention of someone or other, Mrs. Harvey said tolerantly,
"Well, none of us are perfect, I guess."
Alice smiled and answered, "Some of us are satisfied with mediocrities
in marriage."
Mrs. Harvey frowned doubtfully. "I don't quite understand, dear. In
any marriage, there has to be adjustment. Dan and I, for example, have
adjusted very well."
"You haven't adjusted," Alice said smilingly. "You've surrendered."
Joe coughed up half a glass of bourbon, Dan turned a sort of red-green
and Mrs. Harvey stared with her mouth open. Alice smiled.