Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Made to Measure by William Campbell Gault (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📖
- Author: William Campbell Gault
Book online «Made to Measure by William Campbell Gault (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📖». Author William Campbell Gault
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.
Finally, Mrs. Harvey said, "Well, I never—"
"Of all the—" Dan Harvey said.
Joe rose and said, "Must get to bed, got to get to bed."
"Here?" Alice asked.
"No, of course not. Home. Let's go, dear. Have to rush."
Alice's smile had nothing sentimental about it.
He didn't berate her until morning. He wanted time to cool off, to look at the whole thing objectively. It just wouldn't get objective, though.
At breakfast, he said, "That was tactless last night. Very, very tactless."
"Yes, Joe. Tact requires deception. Tact is essentially deception."
When had he said that? Oh, yes, at the Hydra Club lecture. And it was true and he hated deception and he'd created a wife without one.
He said, "I'll have to devise a character distiller that won't require putting you back in the mold."
"Of course, dear. Why?"
"You need just a touch of deception, just a wee shade of it."
"Of course, Joe."
So she had tact.
He went to the office with very little of the absurdity mood stirring in him. He'd had a full breakfast, naturally.
At the office, there was a note on his desk: Mr. Behrens wants to see you immediately. It bore his secretary's initials. Mr. Behrens was the Chief.
He was a fairly short man with immense shoulders and what he'd been told was a classical head. So he let his hair grow, and had a habit of thrusting his chin forward when he listened. He listened to Joe's account of the interview with Burke.
When Joe had finished, the Chief's smile was tolerant. "Ribbing him, were you? Old Burke hasn't much sense of humor, Joe."
Joe said patiently, "I wasn't ribbing him. I took her out of the mold last night. I ate breakfast with her this morning. She's—beautiful, Chief. She's ideal."
The Chief looked at him for seconds, his head tilted.
Joe said, "Heat, that's what does it. If you'd like to come for dinner with us tonight, Chief, and see for yourself—"
The Chief nodded. "I'd like that."
They left a little early to avoid the crowd in the tube. Burke saw them leaving, and his long face grew even longer.
On the trip, Joe told his boss about the cybernetic brain, about his background and his beliefs stored in the memory circuits, and the boss listened quietly, not committing himself with any comments.
But he did say, "I certainly thought a lot of Vera. You wouldn't have to warm her in any incubating mold."
"Wait'll you see this one," Joe said.
And when she walked into the living room at home, when she acknowledged the introduction to the Chief, Joe knew the old boy was sold. The Chief could only stare.
Joe took him down to the basement then to show him the molecule agitator, the memory feeder, the instillers.
The old boy looked it over and said, quite simply, "I'll be damned!"
They went up to a perfect dinner—and incident number two.
The Chief was a sentimentalist and he'd just lost a fine friend. This friend was his terrier, Murph, who'd been hit by a speeding car.
The story of Murph from birth to death was a fairly long one, but never dull. The Chief had a way with words. Even Joe, one of the world's top-ranking non-sentimentalists, was touched by the tale. When they came to the end, where Murph had lain in his master's arms, whimpering, as though to comfort him, trying to lick his face, Joe's eyes were wet and the drink wobbled in his hand.
The Chief finished in a whisper, and looked up from the carpet he'd been staring at through the account.
And there was Alice, sitting erect, a smile of perfect joy on her face. "How touching," she said, and grinned.
For one horror-stricken second, the Chief glared at her, and then his questioning eyes went to Joe.
"She can't frown," Joe explained. "The muscles are there, but they need massage to bring them to life." He paused. "I wanted a smiling wife."
The Chief inhaled heavily. "There are times when a smile is out of order, don't you think, Joe?"
"It seems that way."
It didn't take long. Massage, orientation, practice, concentration. It didn't take long, and she was so willing to cooperate. Golly, she was agreeable. She was more than that; she voiced his thoughts before he did. Because of the mental affinity, you see. He'd made sure of that.
She could frown now and she had enough deception to get by in almost any company. These flaws were necessary, but they were still flaws and brought her closer to being—human.
At the office on Saturday morning, Sam Tullgren dropped in. Sam said, "I've been hearing things, Joseph."
"From Vera? At the Center?"
Sam shook his head. "Vera's been too busy to have much time for the director. She's our most popular number." Sam paused. "About the new one. Hear she's something to see."
"You heard right. She's practically flawless, Sam. She's just what a man needs at home." His voice, for some reason, didn't indicate the enthusiasm he should have felt.
Sam chewed one corner of his mouth. "Why not bring her over, say, tonight? We'll play some bridge."
That would be something. Two minds, perfectly in harmony, synchronized, working in partnership. Joe's smile was smug. "We'll be there. At eight-thirty."
Driving over to
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