"Get out!" I rasped. "Leave me alone."
"What made you afraid, January?"
Suddenly nausea gripped me. Blindly I struggled out of bed to the
bathroom. As I went I felt a bitter laughter welling up silently in my
mind.
"What made you afraid, January?"
I was retching. That was genuine. I clamped my hands over my ears. That
was acting, because Dr. Leopold Moriss had lost his power to torture
me.
"What made you afraid, January?"
With an animal snarl I straightened and turned on him, my eyes blinded
with tears produced by the retching, my chin wet with vomit. He caught
my flailing arms easily, folding them over my chest and pinning me
against the wall.
"What made you afraid, January?"
I began to cry. It was an act, but my condition made anything
resembling crying come out authentic.
I felt his hands drop from my arms. Still blubbering as though
completely broken, I slid slowly to the tile floor, letting my head
drop.
"All right, I'll tell you," I said weakly. A chill shudder shook my
body. I buried my face in my arms resting on my knees.
"No, January!" It was Paula's voice. My head jerked upright. She was
standing in the doorway, the living image of anger. The doctor had
turned toward her, irritation showing on his face. "Dad," she said, her
eyes flashing blue fire at him, "if you don't stop I'll get the police."
Alarm coursed through me. She was endangering my plan. I dropped my
head back in the cradle of my arms to hide my expression.
"Paula!" the doctor was saying in exasperation. "Leave us--"
"I was afraid," I cut in, making my voice sound utterly listless and
defeated, "of what I knew I would do unless I stopped my experiments
and destroyed them.
"I had transferred the mind of a dog into a robot duplicate of its
own body. The dog was a pet. It didn't know it was no longer in its
own body, the body that had died when the mind pattern in the brain
was lifted out and transplanted into the colloidal dielectric brain.
It didn't know what had happened, so although it was often puzzled by
things, it didn't mind.
"But I knew what the next step would be!" I lifted my head and stared
at the doctor, avoiding Paula's eyes. They were standing there, holding
their breath, waiting for my next words. I let my head drop into
concealment in my arms again.
"The next step would be a robot body for myself," I said mechanically,
tonelessly. "I would build it and enter it. And I would never be able
to re-enter my normal body, because it would die in the transfer.
I would be immortal--but at an awful price. The price of normal
life, loving, being loved, and someday getting married and having
children--and a mother for those children.
"And yet I knew that I would build that robot body and transfer my mind
to it--if I kept on. So I destroyed my work, my reputation, my ability
to earn the kind of money it would take to do what I didn't have the
will not to do, if I could."
I looked up cautiously, my face lax, my eyes half veiled, to see how
they were taking what I was saying. Paula's face was a mask of pity
and sympathy. Her father's was one of fixed attention and belief. I
dropped my head again and muffled my voice.
"Pepper--my dog--not comprehending what was wrong with him, grew
more and more bewildered. He got run over a month later. It couldn't
kill him, but it wrecked his robot frame. I smashed his colloid
brain and buried him to put his immortal mind out of its bewildering
confused--existence."
"But--" It was Dr. Moriss' voice, full of growing, pleased conviction.
"Then there was nothing you discovered other than what I've already
discovered and tried?"
"No," I lied. And he believed me.
* * * * *
The hours passed swiftly, with long gaps during which I slept,
unconscious of the conflict of hunger and alcohol starvation being
fought in every cell of my body. The sunlight through the lattice-work
of the Venetian blinds became a pleasant and welcome warmth. The song
of the persistent bird outside the window grew joyful, and something I
missed when it didn't come for a long time.
Paula sat on the edge of the bed and washed my face and ran an electric
razor over it while I basked in the pleasant rays from her deep
blue eyes. She fed me tall glasses of tomato juice spiked only with
grapefruit juice, and with cool, clinking ice cubes that caressed my
fevered lips....
"You're looking much better this morning, January," she said, leaning
back and inspecting her handiwork with the shaver. "Feel up to trying a
scrambled egg fried in butter, with golden brown toast and nice crisp
bacon?"
"And make the coffee black--and hot," I said.
"Yes, sir," she said in mock subservience.
She had her breakfast with me. The fluffy scrambled eggs and warm
toast began to nestle comfortably in my stomach, and Paula nestled
comfortably on the edge of the bed sipping her coffee, her hair radiant
flows of rich browns and mahoganies capturing and transmitting the
sunlight from the window.
Her red lips parted to reveal gleaming white teeth when she laughed
intimately, happily, at my running humor. I relaxed, my mind at ease,
Dr. Leopold Moriss momentarily forgotten....
She displayed my suit proudly on its coat hanger, freshly cleaned
and pressed, the stack of four new shirts still in their cellophane
wrappers. I watched her retreat from the room with something inside me,
my heart perhaps, hurting.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror putting a knot in the tie. It
had been a long time since I'd had a choice of ties, ten of them. I
inspected it in the glass. Then the realization that it wasn't a new
tie rose to consciousness. It was Dr. Moriss'.
I tore it off, ripping the collar of the shirt in my anger. I stood
there, panting with emotion. My purpose was back! Slowly, like the
flames of a charcoal fire fanned by a gust of wind, the fire of hate
in my eyes died down, leaving only the glowing coals, which would be
unnoticed behind the mask of a smile.
I practiced that smile while I put on another shirt and knotted another
of Dr. Leopold Moriss' ties about my neck. I had played enough poker
in penny ante dives up and down the west coast during my wanderings to
perfect the lazy unrevealing poker smile.