“You’ll see how convincing this simulacrum is,” Maury said, “when it orders its own pizza.” He began to tinker with switches which were available at the back of the thing.
All at once the face assumed a grumpy, taciturn expression and it said in a growl, “My friend, remove your fingers from my body, if you will.” It pried Maury’s hands loose from it, and Maury grinned at me.
“See?” Maury said. The thing had sat up slowly and was in the process of methodically brushing itself off; it had a stern, vengeful look, now, as if it believed we had done it some harm, possibly sapped it and knocked it out, and it was just recovering. I could see that the counter man in Tommy’s Italian Fine Dinners would be fooled, all right; I could see that Maury had made his point already. If I hadn’t seen it spring to life I would believe myself it was just a sour elderly gentleman in old-style clothes and a split white beard, brushing itself off with an attitude of outrage.
“I see,” I said.
Maury held open the back door of the Jaguar, and the Edwin M. Stanton electronic simulacrum slid over and rose to a standing position in a dignified fashion.
“Does it have any money?” I asked.
“Sure,” Maury said. “Don’t ask trifling questions; this is the most serious matter you’ve ever had facing you.” As the three of us started across the gravel to the restaurant, Maury went on, “Our entire economic future and that of America’s involved in this. Ten years from now you and I could be wealthy, due to this thing, here.”
The three of us had a pizza at the restaurant, and the crust was burned at the edges. The Edwin M. Stanton made a noisy scene, shaking its fist at the proprietor, and then after finally paying our bill, we left.
By now we were an hour behind schedule, and I was beginning to wonder if we were going to get to the Rosen factory after all. So I asked Maury to step on it, as we got back into the Jaguar.
“This car’ll crack two hundred,” Maury said, starting up, “with that new dry rocket fuel they have out.”
“Don’t take unnecessary chances,” the Edwin M. Stanton told him in a sullen voice as the car roared out onto the road. “Unless the possible gains heavily outweigh the odds.”
“Same to you,” Maury told it.
The Rosen Spinet Piano & Electronic Organ Factory at Boise, Idaho, doesn’t attract much notice, since the structure itself, technically called the plant, is a flat, one-story building that looks like a single-layer cake, with a parking lot behind it, a sign over the office made of letters cut from heavy plastic, very modern, with recessed red lights behind. The only windows are in the office.
At this late hour the factory was dark and shut, with no one there. We drove on up into the residential section, then.
“What do you think of this neighborhood?” Maury asked the Edwin M. Stanton.
Seated upright in the back of the Jaguar the thing grunted, “Rather unsavory and unworthy.”
“Lisfen,” I said, “my family lives down here near the industrial part of Boise so as to be in easy walking distance from the factory.” It made me angry to hear a mere fake criticizing genuine humans, especially a fine person like my dad. And as to my brother–few radiation-mutants ever made the grade in the spinet and electronic organ industry outside of Chester Rosen. _Special birth_ persons, as they are called. There is so much discrimination and prejudice in so many fields . . . most professions of high social status are closed to them.
It was always disappointing to the Rosen family that Chester’s eyes are set beneath his nose, and his mouth is up where his eyes ought to be. But blame H-bomb testing in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties for him–and all the others similar to him in the world today. I can remember, as a kid, reading the many medical books on birth defects–the topic has naturally interested many people for a couple of decades, now–and there are some that make Chester nothing at all. One that always threw me into a week-long depression is where the embryo disintegrates in the womb and is born in pieces, a jaw, an arm, handful of teeth, separate fingers. Like one of those plastic kits out of which boys build a model airplane. Only, the pieces of the embryo don’t add up to anything; there’s no glue in this world to stick it together.
And there’re embryos with hair growing all over them, like a slipper made from yak fur. And one that dries up so that the skin cracks; it looks like it’s been maturing outdoors on the back step in the sun. So lay off Chester.
The Jaguar had halted at the curb before the family house, and there we were. I could see lights on inside the house, in the living room; my mother, father and brother were watching TV.
“Let’s send the Edwin M. Stanton up the stairs alone,” Maury said. “Have it knock on the door, and we’ll sit here in the car and watch.”
“My dad’ll recognize it as a phony,” I said, “a mile away. In fact he’ll probably kick it back down the steps, and you’ll be out the six hundred it cost you.” Or whatever it was Maury had paid for it, and no doubt charged against MASA’s assets.
“I’ll take the chance,” Maury said, holding the back door of the car open so that the contraption could get out. To it he said, “Go up there to where it says 1429 and ring the bell. And when the man comes to the door, you say, ‘Now he belongs to the ages.’ And then just stand.”
“What does that mean?” I said. “What kind of opening remark is that supposed to be?”
“It’s Stanton’s famous remark that got him into history,” Maury said. “When Lincoln died.”
“‘Now he belongs to the ages,’ “the Stanton practiced as it crossed the sidewalk and started up the steps.
“I’ll explain to you in due course how the Edwin M. Stanton was constructed,” Maury said to me. “How we collected the entire body of data extant pertaining to Stanton and had it transcribed down at UCLA into instruction punch-tape to be fed to the ruling monad that serves the simulacrum as a brain.”
“You know what you’re doing?” I said, disgusted. “You’re wrecking MASA, all this kidding around, this harebrained stuff–I never should have gotten mixed up with you.”
“Quiet,” Maury said, as the Stanton rang the doorbell.
The front door opened and there stood my father in his trousers, slippers, and the new bathrobe I had given him at Christmas. He was quite an imposing figure, and the Edwin M. Stanton, which had started on its little speech, halted and shifted gears.
“Sir,” it finally said, “I have the privilege of knowing your boy Louis.”
“Oh yes,” my father said. “He’s down in Santa Monica right now.”
The Edwin M. Stanton did not seem to know what Santa Monica was, and it stood there at a loss. Beside me in the Jaguar, Maury swore with exasperation, but it struck me funny, the simulacrum standing there like some new, no-good salesman, unable to think up anything at all to say and so standing mute.
But it was impressive, the two old gentlemen standing there facing each other, the Stanton with its split white beard, its old-style garments, my father looking not much newer. The meeting of the patriarchs, I thought. Like in the synagogue.
My father at last said to it, “Won’t you step inside?” He held the door open, and the thing passed on inside and out of sight; the door shut, leaving the porch lit up and empty.
“How about that,” I said to Maury.
We followed after it. The door being unlocked, we went on inside.
There in the living room sat the Stanton, in the middle of the sofa, its hands on its knees, discoursing with my dad, while Chester and my mother went on watching the TV.
“Dad,” I said, “you’re wasting your time talking to that thing. You know what it is? A machine Maury threw together in his basement for six bucks.”
Both my father and the Edwin M. Stanton paused and glanced at me.
“This nice old man?” my father said, and he got an angry, righteous expression; his brows knitted and he said loudly, “Remember, Louis, that man is a frail reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but goddamn it, mein Sohn, a thinking reed. The entire universe doesn’t have to arm itself against him; a drop of water can kill him.” Pointing his finger at me excitedly, my dad roared on, “But if the entire universe were to crush him, you know what? You know what I say? Man would still be more noble!” He pounded on the arm of his chair for emphasis. “You know why, mein Kind? Because he knows that he dies and I’ll tell you something else; he’s got the advantage over the god-damn universe because it doesn’t know a thing of what’s going on. And,” my dad concluded, calming down a little, “all our dignity consists in just that. I mean, man’s little and can’t fill time and space, but he sure can make use of the brain God gave him. Like what you call this ‘thing,’ here. This is no thing. This is _ein Mensch_, a man. Say, I have to tell you a joke.” He launched, then, into a joke half in Yiddish, half in English.