Child Page 3

  It added up to error. His child might be the superior specimen, or the inferior one, but he had not made a true copy. He had no way of knowing at the moment whether or not the infant he had built could grow into a human maturity. The other could.

  Why? He had followed directions faithfully, had consulted the calibrator tape at every step. And this had resulted. Had he waited too long before starting the vitalizer? Or was it just a matter of insufficient skill?

  Close to midnight, his watch delicately pointed out. It would be necessary to remove evidences of baby-making before the sisters Lipanti came home. Sam considered possibilities swiftly.

  He came down in a few moments with an old tablecloth and a cardboard carton. He wrapped the child in the tablecloth, vaguely happy that the temperature had risen that night, then placed it in the carton.

  The child gurgled at the adventure. Its original on the bed gooed in return. Sam slipped quietly out into the street.

  Male and female drunks stumbled along tootling on tiny trumpets. People wished each other a hic Happy New Year as he strode down the necessary three blocks.

  As he turned left, he saw the sign: “Urban Foundling Home.” There was a light burning over a side door. Convenient, but that was a big city for you.

  Sam shrank into the shadow of an alley for a moment as a new idea occurred to him. This had to look genuine. He pulled a pencil out of his breast pocket and scrawled on the side of the carton in as small handwriting as he could manage: Please take good care of my darling little girl. I am not married.

  Then he deposited the carton on the doorstep and held his finger on the bell until he heard movement inside. He was across the street and in the alley again by the time a nurse had opened the door.

  It wasn’t until he walked into the boarding house that he remembered about the navel. He stopped and tried to recall. No, he had built his little girl without a navel! Her belly had been perfectly smooth. That’s what came of hurrying! Shoddy workmanship.

  There might be a bit of to-do in the foundling home when they unwrapped the kid. How would they explain it?

  Sam slapped his forehead. “Me and Michelangelo. He adds a navel, I forget one!”

  Except for an occasional groan, the office was fairly quiet the second day of the New Year.

  He was going through the last intriguing pages of the book when he was aware of two people teetering awkwardly, near his desk. His eyes left the manual reluctantly: “New kinds of life for your leisure moments” was really fascinating!

  Tina and Lew Knight.

  Sam digested the fact that neither of them was perched on his desk.

  Tina now wore the little ring she’d received for Christmas on the third finger of her left hand; Lew was experimenting with a sheepish look and finding it difficult.

  “Oh, Sam. Last night, Lew… Sam, we wanted you to be the first—Such a surprise, like that, I mean! Why I almost—Naturally we thought this would be a little difficult… Sam, we’re going, I mean we expect—”

  “—to be married,” Lew Knight finished in what was almost an undertone. For the first time since Sam had known him he looked uncertain and suspicious of life, like a man who finds a newly hatched octopus in his breakfast orange juice.

  “You’d adore the way Lew proposed,” Tina was gushing. “So roundabout. And so shy. I told him afterward that I thought for a moment he was talking of something else entirely. I did have trouble understanding you, didn’t I, dear?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah, you had trouble understanding me.” Lew stared at his former rival. “Much of a surprise?”

  “Oh, no. No surprise at all. You two fit together so perfectly that I knew it right from the first.” Sam mumbled his felicitations, conscious of Tina’s searching glances. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s something I have to take care of immediately. A special sort of wedding present.”

  Lew was disconcerted. “A wedding present. This early?”

  “Why, certainly,” Tina told him. “It isn’t very easy to get just the right thing. And a special friend like Sam naturally wants to get a very special gift.”

  Sam decided he had taken enough. He grabbed the manual and his coat and dodged through the door.

  By the time he came to the red stone steps of the boarding house, he had reached the conclusion that the wound, while painful, had definitely missed his heart. He was in fact chuckling at the memory of Lew Knight’s face when his landlady plucked at his sleeve.

  “That man was here again today, Mr. Weber. He said he wanted to see you.”

  “Which man? The tall, old fellow?”

  Mrs. Lipanti nodded, her arms folded complacently across her chest. “Such an unpleasant person! When I told him you weren’t in, he insisted I take him up to your room. I said I couldn’t do that without your permission and he looked at me fit to kill. I’ve never believed in the evil eye myself—although I always say where there is smoke there must be fire—but if there is such a thing as an evil eye, he has it.”

  “Will he be back?”

  “Yes. He asked me when you usually return and I said about eight o’clock, figuring that if you didn’t want to meet him it would give you time to change your clothes and wash up and leave before he gets here. And, Mr. Weber, if you’ll excuse me for saying this, I don’t think you want to meet him.”

  “Thanks. But when he comes in at eight, show him up. If he’s the right person, I’m in illegal possession of his property. I want to know where this property originates.”

  In his room, he put the manual away carefully and told the box to open. The Junior Biocalibrator was not too bulky and newspaper would suffice to cover it. He was on his way uptown in a few minutes with the strangely shaped parcel under his arm.

  Did he still want to duplicate Tina, he pondered? Yes, in spite of everything. She was still the woman he desired more than any he had ever known; and with the original married to Lew, the replica would have no choice but himself. Only—the replica would have Tina’s characteristics up to the moment the measurements were taken; she might insist on marrying Lew as well.

  That would make for a bit of a mad situation. But he was still miles from that bridge. It might even be amusing—

  The possibility of error was more annoying. The Tina he would make might be off-center in a number of ways: reds might overlap pinks; like an imperfectly reproduced color photograph, she might, in time, come to digest her own stomach; there could very easily be a streak of strange and incurable insanity implicit in his model which would not assert itself until a deep mutual affection had flowered and borne fruit. As yet, he was no great shakes as a twinner and human mimeographer; the errors he had made on Mrs. Lipanti’s niece demonstrated his amateur standing.

  Sam knew he would never be able to dismantle Tina if she proved defective. Outside of the chivalrous concepts and almost superstitious reverence for womankind pressed into him by a small-town boyhood, there was the unmitigated horror he felt at the idea of such a beloved object going through the same disintegrating process as—well, the mannikin. But if he overlooked an essential in the construction, what other recourse would there be?

  Solution: nothing must be overlooked. Sam grinned bitterly as the ancient elevator swayed up to his office. If he only had time for a little more practice with a person whose reactions he knew so exactly that any deviation from the norm would be instantly obvious! But the strange old man would be calling tonight, and, if his business concerned “Bild-A-Man” sets, Sam’s experiments might be abruptly curtailed. And where would he find such a person—he had few real friends and no intimate ones. And, to be at all valuable, it would have to be someone he knew as well as himself.

  Himself!

  “Floor, sir.” The elevator operator was looking at him reproachfully. Sam’s exultant shout had caused him to bring the carrier to a spasmodic stop six inches under the floor level, something he had not done since that bygone day when he had first nervously reached for the controls. He felt his craftsmanship wa
s under a shadow as he morosely closed the door behind the lawyer.

  And why not himself? He knew his own physical attributes better than he knew Tina’s; any mental instability on the part of his reproduced self would be readily discernible long before it reached the point of psychosis or worse. And the beauty of it was that he would have no compunction in disassembling a superfluous Sam Weber. Quite the contrary: the horror in that situation would be the continued existence of a duplicate personality; its removal would be a relief.

  Twinning himself would provide the necessary practice in a familiar medium. Ideal. He’d have to take careful notes so that if anything went wrong he’d know just where to avoid going off the track in making his own personal Tina.

  And maybe the old geezer wasn’t interested in the set at all. Even if he were, Sam could take his landlady’s advice and not be at home when he called. Silver linings wherever he looked.

  Lew Knight stared at the instrument in Sam’s hands. “What in the sacred name of Blackstone and all his commentaries is that? Looks like a lawn mower for a window box!”

  “It’s uh, sort of a measuring gadget. Gives the right size for one thing and another and this and that. Won’t be able to get you the wedding present I have in mind unless I know the right size. Or sizes. Tina, would you mind stepping out into the hall?”

  “Nooo.” She looked dubiously at the gadget. “It won’t hurt?”

  It wouldn’t hurt a bit, Sam assured her. “I just want to keep this a secret from Lew till after the ceremony.”

  She brightened at that and preceded Sam through the door. “Hey, counselor,” one of the other young lawyers called at Lew as they left. “Hey, counselor, don’t let him do that. Possession is nine points, Sam always says. He’ll never bring her back.”

  Lew chuckled weakly and bent over his work.

  “Now I want you to go into the ladies’ room,” Sam explained to a bewildered Tina. “I’ll stand guard outside and tell the other customers that the place is out of order. If another woman is inside, wait until she leaves. Then strip.”

  “Strip?” Tina squealed.

  He nodded. Then very carefully, emphasizing every significant detail of operation, he told her how to use the Junior Biocalibrator. How she must be careful to kick the switch and set the tape running. How she must cover every external square inch of her body. “This little arm will enable you to lower it down your back. No questions now. Git.”

  She was back in fifteen minutes, fluffing her dress into place and studying the tape with a rapt frown. “This is the strangest thing—According to the spool, my iodine content—”

  Sam snaffled the Biocalibrator hurriedly. “Don’t give it another thought. It’s a code, kind of. Tells me just what size and how many of what kind. You’ll be crazy about the gift when you see it.”

  “I know I will.” She bent over him as he kneeled and examined the tape to make certain she had applied the instrument correctly. “You know, Sam, I always felt your taste was perfect. I want you to come and visit us often after we’re married. You can have such beautiful ideas! Lew is a bit too… too business-like, isn’t he? I mean it’s necessary for success and all that, but success isn’t everything. I mean you have to have culture, too. You’ll help me keep cultured, won’t you, Sam?”

  “Sure,” Sam said vaguely. The tape was complete. Now to get started! “Anything I can do—glad to help.”

  He rang for the elevator and noticed the forlorn uncertainty with which she watched him. “Don’t worry. Tina. You and Lew will be very happy together. And you’ll love this wedding present.” But not as much as I will, he told himself as he stepped into the elevator.

  Back in his room, he emptied the machine and undressed. In a few moments he had another tape on himself. He would have liked to consider it for a while, but being this close to the goal made him impatient. He locked the door, cleaned his room hurriedly of accumulated junk—remembering to grunt in annoyance at Aunt Maggie’s ties: the blue and red one almost lighted up the room—ordered the box to open—and he was ready to begin.

  First the water. With the huge amount of water necessary to the human body, especially in the case of an adult, he might as well start collecting it now. He had bought several pans and it would take his lone faucet some time to fill them all.

  As he placed the first pot under the tap, Sam wondered suddenly if its chemical impurities might affect the end product. Of course it might! These children of 2353 would probably take absolutely pure H2O as a matter of daily use; the manual hadn’t mentioned the subject, but how did he know what kind of water they had available? Well, he’d boil this batch over his chemical stove; when he got to making Tina he could see about getting aqua completely pura.

  Score another point for making a simulacrum of Sam first.

  While waiting for the water to boil, he arranged his supplies to positions of maximum availability. They were getting low. That baby had taken up quite a bit of useful ingredients; too bad he hadn’t seen his way clear to disassembling it. That meant if there were any argument in favor of allowing the replica of himself to go on living, it was now invalid. He’d have to take it apart in order to have enough for Tina II. (Or Tina prime?)

  He leafed through Chapters VI, VII and VIII on the ingredients, completion and disassembling of a man. He’d been through this several times before; but he’d passed more than one law exam on the strength of a last-minute review.

  The constant reference to mental instability disturbed him. “The humans constructed with this set will, at the very best, show most of the superstitious tendencies, and neurosis-compulsions of medieval mankind. In the long run they are not normal; take great care not to consider them such.” Well, it wouldn’t make too much difference in Tina’s case—and that was all that was important.

  When he had finished adjusting the molds to the correct sizes, he fastened the vitalizer to the bed. Then—very, very slowly and with repeated glances at the manual, he began to duplicate Sam Weber. He learned more of his physical limitations and capabilities in the next two hours than any man had ever known since the day when an inconspicuous primate had investigated the possibilities of ground locomotion upon the nether extremities alone.

  Strangely enough, he felt neither awe nor exultation. It was like building a radio receiver for the first time. Child’s play.

  Most of the vials and jars were empty when he had finished. The damp molds were stacked inside the box, still in their three-dimensional outline. The manual lay neglected on the floor.

  Sam Weber stood near the bed looking down at Sam Weber on the bed.

  All that remained was vitalizing. He daren’t wait too long or imperfections might set in and the errors of the baby be repeated. He shook off a nauseating feeling of unreality, made certain that the big disassembleator was within reach and set the Jiffy Vitalizer in motion.

  The man on the bed coughed. He stirred. He sat up.

  “Wow!” he said. “Pretty good, if I do say so myself!”

  And then he had leaped off the bed and seized the disassembleator. He tore great chunks of wiring out of the center, threw it to the floor and kicked it into shapeless-ness. “No Sword of Damocles going to hang over my head,” he informed an open-mouthed Sam Weber. “Although, I could have used it on you, come to think of it.”

  Sam eased himself to the mattress and sat down. His mind stopped rearing and whinnied to a halt. He had been so impressed with the helplessness of the baby and the mannikin that he had never dreamed of the possibility that his duplicate would enter upon life with such enthusiasm. He should have, though; this was a full-grown man, created at a moment of complete physical and mental activity.

  “This is bad,” he said at last in a hoarse voice. “You’re unstable. You can’t be admitted into normal society.”

  “I’m unstable?” his image asked. “Look who’s talking! The guy who’s been mooning his way through his adult life, who wants to marry an overdressed, conceited collection of biological im
pulses that would come crawling on her knees to any man sensible enough to push the right buttons—”

  “You leave Tina’s name out of this,” Sam told him, feeling acutely uncomfortable at the theatrical phrase.

  His double looked at him and grinned. “OK, I will. But not her body! Now, look here, Sam or Weber or whatever you want me to call you, you can live your life and I’ll live mine. I won’t even be a lawyer if that’ll make you happy. But as far as Tina is concerned, now that there are no ingredients to make a copy—that was a rotten escapist idea, by the way—I have enough of your likes and dislikes to want her badly. And I can have her, whereas you can’t. You don’t have the gumption.”

  Sam leaped to his feet and doubled his fists. Then he saw the other’s entirely equal size and slightly more assured twinkle. There was no point in fighting—that would end in a draw, at best. He went back to reason.

  “According to the manual,” he began, “you are prone to neurosis—”

  “The manual! The manual was written for children of four centuries hence, with quite a bit of selective breeding and scientific education behind them. Personally, I think I’m a—”

  There was a double knock on the door. “Mr. Weber.”

  “Yes,” they both said simultaneously. Outside, the landlady gasped and began speaking in an uncertain voice.

  “Th-that gentleman is downstairs. He’d like to see you. Shall I tell him you’re in?”

  “No, I’m not at home,” said the double.

  “Tell him I left an hour ago,” said Sam at exactly the same moment.

  There was another, longer gasp and the sound of footsteps receding hurriedly.

  “That’s one clever way to handle a situation,” Sam’s facsimile exploded. “Couldn’t you keep your mouth shut? The poor woman’s probably gone off to have a fit.”

  “You forget that this is my room and you are just an experiment that went wrong,” Sam told him hotly. “I have just as much right, in fact more right… hey, what do you think you’re doing?”