Part 2

His voice was high and shrill. "So you want to be beautiful, lovely to look at?"

"Yes."

"You shall be, my dear. Lie down please, lie down and trust me. You will have to trust me, of course. Simply have to trust me just the same."

"Will I be really beautiful--like the receptionist in the outer office?"

"Ha, ha, my dear!" He was pushing and pulling and finally she was lying down and staring at the whirling lines of the white ceiling and seeing Kelsey's smiling waiting yearning face in it. "That is a joke, a very funny joke. The receptionist out there is a human being. At least she would lead the unsuspecting to believe that she is. However, I must confess, my dear, that I have learned the sad truth that she is human in name only, that her heart is ice, and she is bitter with ambition."

"But she is so beautiful."

"Ah, but beauty is as beauty does, my dear. Or as beauty thinks. And sweet little ambitious Della in the outer office does not think lovely thoughts. Not at all, believe me. I have learned that from sad experience."

His hands hovered over her eagerly, fluidly, as though there were no bones in them.

"I want to be as beautiful as possible."

"You are fortunate in having been sent to Julian. I promise that under my touch you shall blossom into radiant beauty, the essence of feminine loveliness. You will be simply devastating."

He placed the tips of his long white fingers together and studied her with his head angled like a bird's. "A brunette, I think--"

"I'd rather be a blonde."

"Oh, you would, would you, my dear! You seem extraordinarily concerned for a robot." He stepped back and studied her curiously and the black eyes sharpened like narrowing beams of black searching light.

"You know," he said softly, "I studied in the greatest Salons of the continent to beautify women. Now I specialize in beautifying robots. Why? Simple but paradoxical, but not as paradoxical as it might seem. I can make a robot lovelier than a human."

"Lovelier than a human being!"

"Exactly. Much lovelier. Beauty comes from within as the sages say. It comes from the heart and the soul, my dear. And so few humans any longer have either heart or soul. Of course, that would imply that robots do have hearts and souls, so please, my dear, do not repeat what I have said. Already I am thought to be excessively eccentric for this sad conformistic age of orthodoxy and stupid unimaginative dependency. Beauty comes from individuality and strength, my dear. It comes from sadness and the ability to admit a sense of tragedy. Ah--but it is sad for me, for Julian, my dear. That my fulfillment comes only from adding a sense of life to humanoids. And looking at you--the likes of you--sometimes I wonder if you--"

His voice trailed off like smoke and he shrugged and waved his hands in the air. "So you want to be a blonde. Why a blonde?"

"A tall blonde," she said, "with lots and lots of sex appeal."

He kissed the tips of his fingers and rolled his eyes. "Your wish shall be granted. I, Julian, will outdo myself." He leaned over her. His voice was low. "Why is it that a robot can be made more beautiful than a human? Tell me, my dear, tell me and I shall never tell anyone else. Do you have a soul? Do you have a heart? Do you know what it is to be sad and alone and can you find some pleasure in it? Do you perhaps even find pleasure in yourself, and sometimes find it unnecessary to swim in a sea of humanity like a brainless protozoon?"

"But will I feel real, the way a human feels?"

He straightened up slowly. He touched his forehead, where beads of sweat were forming, and slowly he licked his thin red lips.

"My, my, but you are an inquisitive robot! Why does it mean so much?"

"Tell me, will I feel like the real thing? Flesh--when you touch flesh--"

His hands moved over her. He bent above her. A cabinet slid open. She caught the glint of many different colors of eyeballs looking startlingly real and liquidly alive, and rows of variously sized breasts, and lips, and muscle paddings, and eyelashes and eyebrows and ears and noses and fingers. There were gleaming instruments and jars and plastic tapes.

His face was close above hers and his lips worked nervously. He whispered, "I can see how it will be, my dear. You will feel so real to the touch of a hungry love that I shall be broken-hearted to let you go from my Pygmalion Palace of dreams come true. My dear, believe me. Believe Julian when he tells you this--there is no lonelier being in the world than a man who has not forgotten what beauty is in a world that has turned ugly from having lost its soul."

Then she knew that Julian had turned off her thermostat. Suddenly there was no feeling, no sound, no sight except that of the general blackout rushing in out of the night, down the halls, into the rooms, into her eyes.

How quickly and painlessly a robot could die, she thought. How easy it was to live and die and come back to life. You could be born suddenly full-grown and efficient. You could be blotted out again, just as suddenly. You could be born in any shape or size, born to do any one or combination of so many different things, and when your job was done you could so quickly be put to rest again. You could be born ugly, or round, or square, or like a pyramid, or something almost all arms, or legs, or eyes, or ears.

You could be born beautiful, hardly distinguishable from a beautiful human being who could receive love.

You could be born ugly and then be killed and brought back again as beautiful as a human being.

But you could not live without love.

Could something be returned that no one knew was there?

* * * * *

She stood before the mirror, hardly daring to breathe.

"Oh God," Julian whispered. He stood in a corner of the room, and his eyes were narrowed and his hands were gripped together. "I knew I was a genius. But this--this is something else! What have I done? Statues turned to living beauty. What in the name of God is this?"

"I'm beautiful," she said.

"Yes, yes," he said thickly. "Yes--"

"As beautiful as Gloria."

"Whoever she is, yes, yes--"

"He will love me."

"I love you, my dear, I love you," he whispered again and again.

A great calm came over her. A great calm and a great chill. She felt uneasy because she felt so wonderful, too wonderful, too uneasy, as if she might feel too deeply and something inside would break.

She felt Julian's hand on her and he was turning her around. "I must kiss you," he said. "I must kiss you. I love you."

"Yes," she smiled. "You may kiss me."

She imagined it was Kelsey kissing her. Kelsey's arms were around her neck, and she was longing for the face of Kelsey. She moved her lips over his forehead and his cheeks until she felt the moistness of his mouth. She saw the unsettled look in Julian's face and the sweat on his upper lip. It was her first kiss, and it was Kelsey she kissed.

Julian stepped back and touched his lips. He shook his head and jerked his face nervously toward the door.

He stared into her eyes. His fingers ran over her face. "Now I see it," he whispered hoarsely. "Now I see it. It was there before, before I ever touched you. It was in your eyes. I've always known that. I've known that no one creates beauty out of pastes and tape and foam rubber and false hair."

"I must go now," she said. "I must hurry."

"That's right, that's very right. You've got to go out of here, out of my sight and out of my mind!"

"Do I feel real?"

"My God! There's this light--that is what you feel--the light! Listen, listen to me whoever, whatever, you are. Listen. What's happening? You're more real than the woman who invites me to her apartment and assures me with insipid smiles and phony gestures that she is real. What's real? You're real--but you can't be real!"

He turned away from her and leaned against the wall. There was a catch in his voice, and she could see the throbbing in the side of his neck. "You had better go now. And tomorrow I won't remember you. I'm probably going crazy. Beginning to believe in my own pitiful wishes. Everyone I know--all of them--shells of phony beauty, something painted on, something stuck on the outside. Nothing real, nothing real at all. And what do I do--dream? Dream of somehow bringing real beauty back. But it never comes back! Beauty comes from inside. I cannot paste it onto the outside of a hollow shell and make beauty come alive!"

"Julian--"

He blinked at her, as though startled and afraid. "What has happened with you? How many like you are there? No, I can't start believing such an incredible thing. I'd be lost. Get out! Get out!"

She touched his shoulder. "Goodbye," she said softly. "I know what loneliness is."

When he turned to her again there were tears in his eyes. He whispered, "I believe you do--you really do. But how could it be? How could you have inside of you what we humans are losing?"

She sat in the Commutor Jet, returning to Master Kelsey. She knew that looking like a beautiful woman was not quite enough. She had to know the right things to say. She felt that she did know all the correct retorts, quips, the polite gestures and nuances and intonations that made one innocuously acceptable. She had watched the Tevee for years as they explained how to win people and influence the right friends, and gain the maximum amount of response from the group, from love, from whoever was joining their smile with yours.

She had learned all the controversial things that must never be talked about, and all the popular immediate things that should be talked about incessantly. But she felt an intense need for rehearsal. This had to be successful. She had committed herself. She could not fail. Failure meant a return to the factory and the final fatal twist of the thermostat. It would not be murder, for they were ignorant of the existence of a robot's soul. And she didn't care about the risk. She would feel her love for Kelsey returned; she would feel his arms, his lips, his love. Let them, whoever they were, worry about the disappearance of a drab domestic named Alice.

Alice was dead. Alice had been reborn. Alice had come out of the lonely dark of unborn waste into the living light of love.

She carried on this imagined conversation with Kelsey, rehearsing. No, it was not enough to be filled to overflowing with love. You had to know how to act, you had to smile all the time, you had to say the right things and know when not to speak. Beauty is as beauty does.

"Well," the imaginary Kelsey said, smiling, "do you like Arnso's new hit recording, I'LL ALWAYS WANT YOU, as much as the one he recorded last week?"

"It's wonderful," she said, smiling. "The sweetest thing since WE'LL ALWAYS BE TOGETHER, NO MATTER WHAT. Which reminds me, honey. I'm going to buy one of those new Snap-Grav-Share-The-Fall suits. Don't you think they would be fun?"

"Lots of fun," the imaginary Kelsey said smiling. "Six people instead of three can share it. The more the merrier."

* * * * *

In her mind, the imaginary Kelsey hesitated, then said, "What Quik-Pik book are you reading right now?"

"Which one are _you_ reading, honey?" she evaded.

You never read anything everyone else wasn't reading; she knew that much.

"Well, I like MY DAY AT THE OFFICE. It shows how a woman gets through a day with her fellow workers in her office, how she smiles and is pleasant and well-liked and never loses her temper. It shows all the little tricks you can pull that help you sell yourself."

"That sounds like a wonderful book, honey. I'll get it at once!"

It sounded right. But there was something wrong. It was the right thing to talk about, but it wasn't what she would prefer to talk about if she were alone with Kelsey. Feeling the way she felt, she didn't think she would want to talk much at all if she were alone with Kelsey.

But she knew that was a real social taboo--not saying anything at all.

Anyway, she gave herself a Gold Star for being so sociable with the imaginary Kelsey. She was sure, very sure, she could sell herself to Kelsey.

Only she would have to have another name. Two names. Human names. Something that sounded beautiful.

Anita. Anita Starre.

She would knock on Master Kelsey's door and ask him for someone's address. He was so nice and considerate he would surely ask her in for a drink, or just ask her in, while he gave her directions.

Dry leaves crackled under her as she walked the half-block toward Kelsey's house. The night was black with a few cold stars in the endless vault of sky. It was late, but in almost all the houses you could see the gentle glow of Tevee color through the windows.

There was no sound at all where the houses of the project, all looking exactly the same, dwindled away into darkness like lines of dots made by a typewriter.

It was, she thought, as though everyone and everything in the world were waiting, waiting for the great white hot scream to explode in the night, the great awakening, the blinding hot flash of awakening that comes before the end. But Alice didn't feel afraid at all of an air-raid as she walked up onto Master Kelsey's porch and rang the bell. There had been so many false alarms, she wondered sometimes if there was any real threat at all. The war--a vague thing far away, never here, always somewhere else, but always supposed to be getting nearer. The war with the Asians--it just went on and on, you heard about it, and saw it on Tevee if you weren't afraid to look at the newscasts, but it never seemed to happen here.

His footsteps behind the door. The door opening. His shadow there, the pink lounge suit, the wavy hair with streaks of brown in the Viking yellow, the face sleepy from Tevee coming awake as he saw the beautiful woman standing there smiling. He smiled. Their smiles met.

"Hello," she said. "I'm Anita Starre. I'm looking for 16-03074 Carnegie Way."

"You're lost?"

"I seem to be lost, yes."

The great hope dawned in her as he smiled at her in a way no robot had ever been smiled at. A tender calm moved over her. The machinery that made her go, the sparks that made her live, all seemed to jump and tremble under the beautiful shell that had been created by the hands of Julian.

The great joy filled her, surged inside her. She could be near, so near him, now that she had the right look and the right smile. She could tell him and show him how she loved to be near him--No, she would not have to tell him that; he would know. Real love you just knew about. You didn't have to say it. She would just kiss him and kiss him and never have to tell him--

"This is Carnegie Way," Kelsey was saying. His eyes were fixed on her face, then his eyes were brightening as they looked at her height and her slim rich curves. "But it's five blocks from the address you're looking for." He pointed to the left and told her how to get to 16-03074. His eyes continued to explore her figure with just the right degree of polite interest.

She stepped closer until she was almost inside the hallway. She could feel the warmth of him. "Why," she said suddenly, "you're Mr. Kelsey!"

His smile broadened with some hungry concept of himself that had been fed. "But how did you know, Miss Starre?"

"A girl friend of mine, Miss Davies, works in your office."

"Oh, Miss Davies! She got a Silver Star--"

"Yes, she admires you so much. She has a picture of you, Mr. Kelsey. She told me how you won a Golden Star for being so cooperative."

"We all help one another. Miss Davies is such a wonderfully warm and sympathetic girl. Well, Miss Starre, what a coincidence!"

"Isn't it?"

"Well--maybe you could come in and rest a few minutes. We're watching Tevee."

She nodded quickly. She felt that magnetic force, the clicking communion, the way she had always seen it on Tevee. How easy it was, after all, if you looked right and smiled right and said the correct things.

"Oh, I'd love to!"

* * * * *

Miss Gloria Tonnencourt stood up, and the three of them seemed subdued and softened in the Tevee light. Kelsey said, "Gloria, this is a friend of mine, a really dear friend, Anita Starre."

There was something wrong. It was under the surface, Alice thought, but it was there. Under the smiles, something tense and wrong and dangerous. She had never felt it before, but she felt it now. It was Gloria, the way the smile seemed set on Gloria's face as she said she was very pleased to meet Miss Starre. It had always been there, that smile, so it couldn't go away, but Alice knew that if she were Miss Tonnencourt she would not feel like smiling. No one could smile, she thought, if they were losing their love. Real love you could die of losing.

They all smiled at one another. Kelsey got three drinks and they drank to one another's happiness as though there was no question that there could be anything else in the world but happiness.

Gloria has to do what's right, Alice thought. No matter how painful, she has to do what's right. I'm lucky because she has to do what's right, because she always has to be a good sport about everything.

They chatted together like good sports for a while, talked about the pop tune of the week, the favorite sports hero of the day, the best Quik-Pik book of the hour, the Sky-Splitter, the Roaromatic Roadeater, the Silver and Golden Stars for cooperation, the Blue Stars for communal feeling. The Carnegie Awards for sociability.

They have to get along, Alice thought gladly. They have to get along. They can't afford to offend one another.

Gloria finally got up, seeming tired in spite of her smile, and said, "I'd better be going now. I--I can see that you two have a real thing for one another already. I--I think it's just--wonderful--so wonderful, really--"

Kelsey didn't seem to hear Gloria at all, hardly seemed to know she was there. He kept looking at Alice. "Please don't go, Gloria," he said as he kept on looking at Alice.

"It's awfully sweet of you to ask me to stay, but I really must go now. It's--it's getting late."

I know how you really feel, Alice thought. I know, I know, somewhere deep inside you feel an awful sickness like death, but on the outside you smile. I know how you feel.

But do you know how you feel anymore, Gloria? Can you feel the way you really feel? What would happen if--

But no matter how Gloria felt, no Mirror on a wall could have been critical of her appearance, her poise, her polite good-sport way of bowing out.

Gloria moved toward the door. Kelsey hurried over there and opened it for her. "You two be happy," Gloria whispered. "You two seem to be so--so very right for an anther."

The door shut. It was as though Gloria Tonnencourt had never been there.

How could it be so easy? Alice's hand trembled as Kelsey moved toward her. With Gloria it had been so quick, happening so fast, over so easily.

"Regular girl," Kelsey was saying. "What wonderful warmth and understanding."

"She's sweet," Alice heard herself saying. But that wasn't true. She only felt that Gloria had been sad. If it had been sweet it was bitter-sweet sadness. But Alice had to forget about Gloria. Gloria was gone. It was like she had never been here at all, as though all those evenings of love had never been. Switch it on, switch it off. It was like Tevee, she thought, like Tevee--

Kelsey asked her to sit down on the couch, and then he was sitting near her, nearer to her. Then he was touching her, his face inches from hers.

"It seems I've known you for years and years," he said.

And then she was forgetting everything else but Kelsey. It was easy, so easy when you looked and felt right. So easy and she didn't want to think about anything else but Kelsey, dear, sweet, darling Kelsey.

She received him in her arms, with a wild desire, a wild hunger to cover his face with kisses. She felt the intensity taking hold of her, gripping her body, quickening the pounding throb of machinery that was hidden now, hidden away deep and silent and beating now like a human heart.

She kissed his cheek. Her lips strayed over his skin. Her lips glided over his face, felt the moist trembling of his lips.

She felt his trembling, his shuddering sigh, the way his arms convulsed and gripped her, and then she saw the unsettled look, the light in his eyes as he clung to her and at the same time seemed to push her away.

He was frightened. He was trembling, and he was afraid, and his face was flushed.

"What's the matter, darling?" she whispered.

* * * * *

He stared at her. His lips were trembling. "I--I don't know. What is it? It was never like this."

"What was never like this?"

"Love--I mean--you--what is it?"

"Real. It's real, darling Kelsey. That's the difference, isn't it?"

"Real?" His face had an uncomprehending look, the cheek muscles trembling as he spoke, his voice hollow and frightened. "Something," he whispered. "What is it? I've never felt anything like it. It--it's too much, maybe. Too much or something--I don't know--"

His face was white. He was sliding away from her.

Already I am losing him, she thought. He's going away. Somehow he senses what is wrong, without knowing what it is he knows. In spite of the beautiful surface, he senses that I am not real, not human, not a being at all.

"No, please," she whispered.

She moved desperately and clutched at him and held him tightly, shocked at his stiffness now, his reluctance, his trembling. She felt tears inside, though they could never show. "Please, please," she whispered.

His voice was shaking. "Listen--it's too much. You scare me. Wait a minute now, let's talk about this. I want to know--"

"How can you be scared of love?"

"Love? This isn't love. It's--it's like anger. It's--I've never known anything like this!"

"Let yourself know. Please."

He closed his eyes. His lips trembled. "I--I felt like I was going to die," he whispered.

Suddenly he turned and stared at the Tevee.

He knows, she thought dully. He knows I'm what I am underneath. But he doesn't know that he knows. He can't admit what seems impossible.

He gasped. His body jerked. She looked at the Tevee frame. There was nothing on it suddenly but a frightening, wavering, milky emptiness.

And a voice; a voice without a face.

"Due to the possibility of an immediate air-raid, Tevee is dead. All transportation is stopped. Those of you who were thoughtful and cooperative enough with your sponsor to order our emergency entertainment projectors will now turn them on. It will greatly decrease anxiety. Red-out regulations will be in effect for two hours."

Kelsey's face was gray. "Air-raid," he whispered. "It's here. It's really here!"

"It's all right, darling." She touched his arm. "It's all right--"

The light went out.

Somewhere Alice heard screaming. It seemed to fill the walls, the floor, the ceiling and the night itself, everywhere, as though the very air was screaming in some vast agony. The sirens.

She heard a whimpering sound and realized that it was Kelsey. She held him tightly in her arms. He was shivering.

The Tevee screen seemed like a page on which vital print had died, something strangely alive but without sound or meaning, like an exposed brain without thought, like the deadness of an open eye in a corpse.

"All lights will be extinguished for two hours," the voice said. "Everyone will go immediately to their air-raid shelters!"

"Two hours," Kelsey whispered.

"I'm here," she said. "We're together, darling. There's nothing--"

He didn't seem to hear her. He leaped out of her arms, and she heard furniture crashing as he blundered around wildly in the dark.

"The shelter," he yelled hoarsely. "The shelter!"

She followed him unerringly in the dark, to the stairs, without stumbling. When she found him at the bottom of the stairs in the tunnel leading to the private air-raid shelter, he was whimpering and shivering violently.

"Two hours--two hours--two hours--" he whispered, over and over.