The Illustrated Man, Page 20

  Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

  Smith staggered back and fluttered his eyelids, appalled. He reached out and touched the warm hands and the cheeks of the thing.

  "Where'd you get him?"

  "Isn't he excellently fashioned?"

  "Incredible. Where?"

  "Give the man your card, Braling Two."

  Braling Two did a magic trick and produced a white card:

  MARIONETTES, INC.

  Duplicate self or friends; new humanoid plastic 1990 models, guaranteed against all physical wear. From $7,600 to our $15,000 de luxe model.

  "No," said Smith.

  "Yes," said Braling.

  "Naturally," said Braling Two.

  "How long has this gone on?"

  "I've had him for a month. I keep him in the cellar in a toolbox. My wife never goes downstairs, and I have the only lock and key to that box. Tonight I said I wished to take a walk to buy a cigar. I went down cellar and took Braling Two out of his box and sent him back up to sit with my wife while I came on out to see you, Smith."

  "Wonderful! He evensmells like you: Bond Street and Melachrinos!"

  "It may be splitting hairs, but I think it highly ethical. After all, what my wife wants most of all isme. This marionetteis me to the hairiest detail. I've been home all evening. I shall be home with her for the next month. In the meantime another gentleman will be in Rio after ten years of waiting. When I return from Rio, Braling Two here will go back in his box."

  Smith thought that over a minute or two. "Will he walk around without sustenance for a month?" he finally asked.

  "For six months if necessary. And he's built to do everything--eat, sleep, perspire--everything, natural as natural is. You'll take good care of my wife, won't you, Braling Two?"

  "Your wife is rather nice," said Braling Two. "I've grown rather fond of her."

  Smith was beginning to tremble. "How long has Marionettes, Inc., been in business?"

  "Secretly, for two years."

  "Could I--I mean, is there a possibility----" Smith took his friend's elbow earnestly. "Can you tell me where I can get one, a robot, a marionette, for myself? Youwill give me the address, won't you?"

  "Here you are."

  Smith took the card and turned it round and round. "Thank you," he said. "You don't know what this means. Just a little respite. A night or so, once a month even. My wife loves me so much she can't bear to have me gone an hour. I love her dearly, you know, but remember the old poem: 'Love will fly if held too lightly, love will die if held too tightly.' I just want her to relax her grip a little bit."

  "You're lucky, at least, that your wife loves you. Hate's my problem. Not so easy."

  "Oh, Nettie loves me madly. It will be my task to make her love me comfortably."

  "Good luck to you, Smith. Do drop around while I'm in Rio. It will seem strange, if you suddenly stop calling by, to my wife. You're to treat Braling Two, here, just like me."

  "Right! Good-by. And thank you."

  Smith went smiling down the street. Braling and Braling Two turned and walked into the apartment hall.

  On the crosstown bus Smith whistled softly, turning the white card in his fingers:

  Clients must be pledged to secrecy, for while an act is pending in Congress to legalize Marionettes, Inc., it is still a felony, if caught, to use one.

  "Well," said Smith.

  Clients must have a mold made of their body and a color index check of their eyes, lips, hair, skin, etc. Clients must expect to wait for two months until their model is finished.

  Not so long, thought Smith. Two months from now my ribs will have a chance to mend from the crushing they've taken. Two months from now my hand will heal from being so constantly held. Two months from now my bruised underlip will begin to reshape itself. I don't mean to soundungrateful . . .

  He flipped the card over.

  Marionettes, Inc., is two years old and has a fine record of satisfied customers behind it. Our motto is "No Strings Attached." Address: 43 South Wesley Drive.

  The bus pulled to his stop; he alighted, and while humming up the stairs he thought, Nettie and I have fifteen thousand in our joint bank account. I'll just slip eight thousand out as a business venture, you might say. The marionette will probably pay back my money, with interest, in many ways. Nettie needn't know. He unlocked the door and in a minute was in the bedroom. There lay Nettie, pale, huge, and piously asleep.

  "Dear Nettie." He was almost overwhelmed with remorse at her innocent face there in the semidarkness. "If you were awake you would smother me with kisses and coo in my ear. Really, you make me feel like a criminal. You have been such a good, loving wife. Sometimes it is impossible for me to believe you married me instead of that Bud Chapman you once liked. It seems that in the last month you have loved me more wildly than ever before."

  Tears came to his eyes. Suddenly he wished to kiss her, confess his love, tear up the card, forget the whole business. But as he moved to do this, his hand ached and his ribs cracked and groaned. He stopped, with a pained look in his eyes, and turned away. He moved out into the hall and through the dark rooms. Humming, he opened the kidney desk in the library and filched the bankbook. "Just take eight thousand dollars is all," he said. "No more than that." He stopped. "Wait a minute."

  He rechecked the bankbook frantically. "Hold on here!" he cried. "Ten thousand dollars is missing!" He leaped up. "There's only five thousand left! What's she done? What's Nettie done with it? More hats, more clothes, more perfume! Or, wait--I know! She bought that little house on the Hudson she's been talking about for months, without so much as a by your leave!"

  He stormed into the bedroom, righteous and indignant. What did she mean, taking their money like this? He bent over her. "Nettie!" he shouted. "Nettie, wake up!"

  She did not stir. "What've you done with my money!" he bellowed.

  She stirred fitfully. The light from the street flushed over her beautiful cheeks.

  There was something about her. His heart throbbed violently. His tongue dried. He shivered. His knees suddenly turned to water. He collapsed. "Nettie, Nettie!" he cried. "What've you done with my money!"

  And then, the horrid thought. And then the terror and the loneliness engulfed him. And then the fever and disillusionment. For, without desiring to do so, he bent forward and yet forward again until his fevered ear was resting firmly and irrevocably upon her round pink bosom. "Nettie!" he cried.

  Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

  As Smith walked away down the avenue in the night, Braling and Braling Two turned in at the door to the apartment. "I'm glad he'll be happy too," said Braling.

  "Yes," said Braling Two abstractedly.

  "Well, it's the cellar box for you, B-Two." Braling guided the other creature's elbow down the stairs to the cellar.

  "That's what I want to talk to you about," said Braling Two, as they reached the concrete floor and walked across it. "The cellar. I don't like it. I don't like that toolbox."

  "I'll try and fix up something more comfortable."

  "Marionettes are made to move, not lie still. How would you like to lie in a box most of the time?"

  "Well----"

  "You wouldn't like it at all. I keep running. There's no way to shut me off. I'm perfectly alive and I have feelings."

  "It'll only be a few days now. I'll be off to Rio and you won't have to stay in the box. You can live upstairs."

  Braling Two gestured irritably. "And when you come back from having a good time, back in the box I go."

  Braling said, "They didn't tell me at the marionette shop that I'd get a difficult specimen."

  "There's a lot they don't know about us," said Braling Two. "We're pretty new. And we're sensitive. I hate the idea of you going off and laughing and lying in the sun in Rio while we're stuck here in the cold."

  "But I've wanted that trip all my life," said Braling quietly. He squinted his eyes and could see the sea and the mountains and the
yellow sand. The sound of the waves was good to his inward mind. The sun was fine on his bared shoulders. The wine was most excellent.

  "I'llnever get to go to Rio," said the other man. "Have you thought of that?"

  "No, I----"

  "And another thing. Your wife."

  "What about her?" asked Braling, beginning to edge toward the door.

  "I've grown quite fond of her."

  "I'm glad you're enjoying your employment." Braling licked his lips nervously.

  "I'm afraid you don't understand. I think--I'm in love with her."

  Braling took another step and froze. "You'rewhat?"

  "And I've been thinking," said Braling Two, "how nice it is in Rio and how I'll never get there, and I've thought about your wife and--I think we could be very happy."

  "T-that's nice." Braling strolled as casually as he could to the cellar door. "You won't mind waiting a moment, will you? I have to make a phone call."

  "To whom?" Braling Two frowned.

  "No one important."

  "To Marionettes, Incorporated? To tell them to come get me?"

  "No, no--nothing like that!" He tried to rush out the door. A metal-firm grip seized his wrists. "Don't run!"

  "Take your hands off!"

  "No."

  "Did my wife put you up to this?"

  "No."

  "Did she guess? Did she talk to you? Does she know? Is that it?" He screamed. A hand clapped over his mouth.

  "You'll never know, will you?" Braling Two smiled delicately. "You'll never know."

  Braling struggled. "Shemust have guessed; shemust have affected you!"

  Braling Two said, "I'm going to put you in the box, lock it, and lose the key. Then I'll buy another Rio ticket for your wife."

  "Now, now, wait a minute. Hold on. Don't be rash. Let's talk this over!"

  "Good-by, Braling."

  Braling stiffened. "What do you mean, 'good-by'?"

  Ten minutes later Mrs. Braling awoke. She put her hand to her cheek. Someone had just kissed it. She shivered and looked up. "Why--you haven't done that in years," she murmured.

  "We'll see what we can do about that," someone said.

  * * *

  The City

  THE city waited twenty thousand years.

  The planet moved through space and the flowers of the fields grew up and fell away, and still the city waited; and the rivers of the planet rose and waned and turned to dust. Still the city waited. The winds that had been young and wild grew old and serene, and the clouds of the sky that had been ripped and torn were left alone to drift in idle whitenesses. Still the city waited.

  The city waited with its windows and its black obsidian walls and its sky towers and its unpennanted turrets, with its untrod streets and its untouched doorknobs, with not a scrap of paper or a fingerprint upon it. The city waited while the planet arced in space, following its orbit about a blue-white sun, and the seasons passed from ice to fire and back to ice and then to green fields and yellow summer meadows.

  It was on a summer afternoon in the middle of the twenty thousandth year that the city ceased waiting.

  In the sky a rocket appeared.

  The rocket soared over, turned, came back, and landed in the shale meadow fifty yards from the obsidian wall.

  There were booted footsteps in the thin grass and calling voices from men within the rocket to men without.

  "Ready?"

  "All right, men. Careful! Into the city. Jensen, you and Hutchinson patrol ahead. Keep a sharp eye."

  The city opened secret nostrils in its black walls and a steady suction vent deep in the body of the city drew storms of air back through channels, through thistle filters and dust collectors, to a fine and tremblingly delicate series of coils and webs which glowed with silver light. Again and again the immense suctions occurred; again and again the odors from the meadow were borne upon warm winds into the city.

  "Fire odor, the scent of a fallen meteor, hot metal. A ship has come from another world. The brass smell, the dusty fire smell of burned powder, sulphur, and rocket brimstone."

  This information, stamped on tapes which sprocketed into slots, slid down through yellow cogs into further machines.

  Click-chakk-chakk-chakk.

  A calculator made the sound of a metronome. Five, six, seven, eight nine. Nine men! An instantaneous typewriter inked this message on tape which slithered and vanished.

  Clickety-click-chakk-chakk.

  The city awaited the soft tread of their rubberoid boots.

  The great city nostrils dilated again.

  The smell of butter. In the city air, from the stalking men, faintly, the aura which wafted to the great Nose broke down into memories of milk, cheese, ice cream, butter, the effluvium of a dairy economy.

  Click-click.

  "Careful, men!"

  "Jones, get your gun out. Don't be a fool!"

  "The city's dead; why worry?"

  "You can't tell."

  Now, at the barking talk, the Ears awoke. After centuries of listening to winds that blew small and faint, of hearing leaves strip from trees and grass grow softly in the time of melting snows, now the Ears oiled themselves in a self-lubrication, drew taut, great drums upon which the heartbeat of the invaders might pummel and thud delicately as the tremor of a gnat's wing. The Ears listened and the Nose siphoned up great chambers of odor.

  The perspiration of frightened men arose. There were islands of sweat under their arms, and sweat in their hands as they held their guns.

  The Nose sifted and worried this air, like a connoisseur busy with an ancient vintage.

  Chikk-chikk-chakk-click.

  Information rotated down on parallel check tapes. Perspiration; chlorides such and such per cent; sulphates so-and-so; urea nitrogen, ammonia nitrogen,thus: creatinine, sugar, lactic acid,there!

  Bells rang. Small totals jumped up.

  The Nose whispered, expelling the tested air. The great Ears listened:

  "I think we should go back to the rocket, Captain."

  "I give the orders, Mr. Smith!"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You, up there! Patrol! See anything?"

  "Nothing, sir. Looks like it's been dead a long time!"

  "You see, Smith? Nothing to fear."

  "I don't like it. I don't know why. You ever feel you've seen a place before? Well, this city's too familiar."

  "Nonsense. This planetary system's billions of miles from Earth; we couldn't possibly've been here ever before. Ours is the only light-year rocket in existence."

  "That's how I feel, anyway, sir. I think we should get out." The footsteps faltered. There was only the sound of the intruder's breath on the still air.

  The Ear heard and quickened. Rotors glided, liquids glittered in small creeks through valves and blowers. A formula and a concoction--one followed another. Moments later, responding to the summons of the Ear and Nose, through giant holes in the city walls a fresh vapor blew out over the invaders.

  "Smellthat, Smith? Ahh. Green grass. Ever smell anything better? By God, I just like to stand here and smell it."

  Invisible chlorophyll blew among the standing men.

  "Ahh!"

  The footsteps continued.

  "Nothing wrong withthat, eh, Smith? Come on!"

  The Ear and Nose relaxed a billionth of a fraction. The countermove had succeeded. The pawns were proceeding forward.

  Now the cloudy Eyes of the city moved out of fog and mist.

  "Captain, the windows!"

  "What?"

  "Those house windows, there! I saw them move!"

  "Ididn't see it."

  "They shifted. They changed color. From dark to light."

  "Look like ordinary square windows to me."

  Blurred objects focused. In the mechanical ravines of the city oiled shafts plunged, balance wheels dipped over into green oil pools. The window frames flexed. The windows gleamed.

  Below, in the street, walked two men, a patrol, followed, at a s
afe interval, by seven more. Their uniforms were white, their faces as pink as if they had been slapped; their eyes were blue. They walked upright, upon hind legs, carrying metal weapons. Their feet were booted. They were males, with eyes, ears, mouths, noses.

  The windows trembled. The windows thinned. They dilated imperceptibly, like the irises of numberless eyes.

  "I tell you, Captain, it's the windows!"

  "Get along."

  "I'm going back, sir."

  "What?"

  "I'm going back to the rocket."

  "Mr. Smith!"

  "I'm not falling into any trap!"

  "Afraid of an empty city?"

  The others laughed, uneasily.

  "Go on, laugh!"

  The street was stone-cobbled, each stone three inches wide, six inches long. With a move unrecognizable as such, the street settled. It weighed the invaders.

  In a machine cellar a red wand touched a numeral: 178 pounds . . . 210, 154, 201, 198--each man weighed, registered and the record spooled down into a correlative darkness.

  Now the city was fully awake!

  Now the vents sucked and blew air, the tobacco odor from the invaders' mouths, the green soap scent from their hands. Even their eyeballs had a delicate odor. The city detected it, and this information formed totals which scurried down to total other totals. The crystal windows glittered, the Ear tautened and skinned the drum of its hearing tight, tighter--all of the senses of the city swarming like a fall of unseen snow, counting the respiration and the dim hidden heartbeats of the men, listening, watching, tasting.

  For the streets were like tongues, and where the men passed, the taste of their heels ebbed down through stone pores to be calculated on litmus. This chemical totality, so subtly collected, was appended to the now increasing sums waiting the final calculation among the whirling wheels and whispering spokes.

  Footsteps. Running.

  "Come back! Smith!"

  "No, blast you!"

  "Get him, men!"

  Footsteps rushing.

  A final test. The city, having listened, watched, tasted, felt, weighed, and balanced, must perform a final task.

  A trap flung wide in the street. The captain, unseen to the others, running, vanished.

  Hung by his feet, a razor drawn across his throat, another down his chest, his carcass instantly emptied of its entrails, exposed upon a table under the street, in a hidden cell, the captain died. Great crystal microscopes stared at the red twines of muscle; bodiless fingers probed the still pulsing heart. The flaps of his sliced skin were pinned to the table while hands shifted parts of his body like a quick and curious player of chess, using the red pawns and the red pieces.