Part 2

There had to be a way out. Maybe I could tell him a lie that would satisfy him. But what lie would satisfy him? What, other than the truth, could satisfy him?

I looked in the bathroom mirror at my unshaven, tortured features, my bloodshot eyes, my rats-nest of uncombed hair. And slowly I saw a smile crease my lips, distorting my face. I knew a lie he would accept as the truth--if I played it right.

I had to play it right. Just as there was only one truth, there was only one lie he would accept as the truth. If I failed to make him accept it I was licked.

How does an actor play his part? He lives it, believes it. I had to do that. I must keep repeating the lie in my mind, believing it, repeating it. Then I must _break down_ in the way my torturer expected me to.

I snapped off the light in the bathroom and struggled back to bed.

* * * * *

When I awoke, blinding white sunlight was bursting into the room from between half closed slats in the Venetian blinds, sending searing pain through my dehydrated eyes into my aching brain. A window was half open behind the blinds. A bird was singing just outside the window, its song a shrill, jarring discordance to my tortured eardrums.

I looked blankly around the room, feeling that something was missing. The sight of the pitcher with its red liquid, and the glass beside it, brought back memory. What was missing was Dr. Leopold Moriss standing over me asking his eternal question.

I cursed in a low mumble, hating him for even that. He had kept up his torture until I figured out something, and had ended it before I could put my plan into action. He was a dancing, taunting opponent who struck painful blows with ease, and danced out of reach when I found a way to fight back.

"Shut up!" I shouted at the bird, and felt a small sense of triumph when it obeyed.

Getting out of bed, I went to the door and opened it cautiously. There was no one outside. From somewhere in the house came the all too familiar sound of Dr. Moriss' voice. It was interrupted by Paula's, raised angrily. I left my door open, sneaking along the hall to the head of the stairs, until I could make out what was being said.

"... stop torturing him," Paula's voice came, angry and insistent.

"It's the only way, Paula," the doctor's voice said, as unperturbed as ever, even in the face of his daughter's obvious anger. "A fear that silences a man, makes him remain silent while his employers brand him a thief and blackball him from his profession, that drives him down the road to alcoholism, can't be broken down with kindness nor anything less than complete destruction of his ability to fight."

"It isn't human!" Paula's voice shot back. "If you keep it up I'll--I'll hate you as much as January does, even though you are my father."

"I won't have to keep it up much longer," her father replied, and for the first time I heard a note of human emotion in his tones. "When he breaks down and gets the load off his mind he'll get over the past few years and be himself again. I think you're half falling for him. It wouldn't be any good being married to an alcoholic who is incurable because he's hiding the thing that made him an alcoholic to begin with."

His next words shocked their way into my startled thoughts.

"But my motive isn't that humanitarian and you know it," he said, returning to his school-teacherish, lecturing voice. "I've repeated January's experiments. Out in my laboratory I have the completed and tested robot body exactly like my own, all ready for the transfer of my mind. I could go out there right this minute, and come in again in less than half an hour in that immortal mechanical body. But I don't dare to _until I find out what made January afraid_."

My turbulent thoughts settled into a state of wondering confusion. If he had gone that far why didn't he know what had made me afraid? Could it be--? Suddenly I knew! He hadn't discovered that _one last refinement_. That was it! I felt like laughing. But my attention was jerked back to the conversation below.

"I don't care," Paula's voice said doggedly. "I don't care if you never finish. It's inhuman anyway--to discard the body you were born in and transfer the electronic pattern of your mind and consciousness to a mass of non-living colloid dielectric perched inside the head of a robot made of stainless steel bones, plastic muscles, and copper nerves. You've got to stop torturing January."

"I won't have to after a couple more hours," Dr. Moriss said. "I'm going to wake him up and get him to drink some of that tomato juice with a little seasoning in it designed to make him sicker than he is. A few glasses of that and pounding my repeated question at him a few more times should do it."

I stole back to my room and grinned at the tomato juice. Did you ever put a jigsaw together and get a flash of insight that made the pieces fall into place suddenly, completing the puzzle almost by itself? That pitcher of tomato juice was the last piece. Everything fit, including that.

I would be able to tell my lie, and make Dr. Leopold Moriss believe it. Then--I would _help_ him. My wild laughter burst into my ears. By an effort of will I shut it off and climbed back into bed, simulating sleep, my ears tuned for the first sound of the doctor's coming.

* * * * *

The door opened. After a moment of suspense during which I kept my breathing slow and deep it closed softly. Padded footsteps came across the rug.

"January!" The doctor's voice was impersonal and insistent. His hand was gripped on my shoulder, shaking me. "Why were you afraid, January?"

I kept my eyes closed for a moment, mumbling protests. Inside I was laughing to myself, gloatingly. His voice was no longer torture. It was the senseless repetition of a parrot.

Suddenly it angered me. I opened my eyes, glaring, a corner of my mind thrilling to the beautiful way my emotions were giving authenticity to my acting.

"Why are you afraid, January?" the doctor repeated, his calm face hovering above me.

I shoved his hand away, sneering at him, and sat up. The movement sent stabs of pain through my head. I gripped my head in my hands, groaning.

"Drink this," Dr. Moriss ordered.

I looked up. He was holding the glass of tomato juice toward me, the tomato juice containing something to make me sicker. I felt the sneering smile distort the sensitive skin of my face as I reached out deliberately and took the glass from him. I looked into his dead eyes while I lifted it to my lips. Then I drank it.

I set the empty glass down on the stand.

"Get out!" I rasped. "Leave me alone."

"What made you afraid, January?"

Suddenly nausea gripped me. Blindly I struggled out of bed to the bathroom. As I went I felt a bitter laughter welling up silently in my mind.

"What made you afraid, January?"

I was retching. That was genuine. I clamped my hands over my ears. That was acting, because Dr. Leopold Moriss had lost his power to torture me.

"What made you afraid, January?"

With an animal snarl I straightened and turned on him, my eyes blinded with tears produced by the retching, my chin wet with vomit. He caught my flailing arms easily, folding them over my chest and pinning me against the wall.

"What made you afraid, January?"

I began to cry. It was an act, but my condition made anything resembling crying come out authentic.

I felt his hands drop from my arms. Still blubbering as though completely broken, I slid slowly to the tile floor, letting my head drop.

"All right, I'll tell you," I said weakly. A chill shudder shook my body. I buried my face in my arms resting on my knees.

"No, January!" It was Paula's voice. My head jerked upright. She was standing in the doorway, the living image of anger. The doctor had turned toward her, irritation showing on his face. "Dad," she said, her eyes flashing blue fire at him, "if you don't stop I'll get the police."

Alarm coursed through me. She was endangering my plan. I dropped my head back in the cradle of my arms to hide my expression.

"Paula!" the doctor was saying in exasperation. "Leave us--"

"I was afraid," I cut in, making my voice sound utterly listless and defeated, "of what I knew I would do unless I stopped my experiments and destroyed them.

"I had transferred the mind of a dog into a robot duplicate of its own body. The dog was a pet. It didn't know it was no longer in its own body, the body that had died when the mind pattern in the brain was lifted out and transplanted into the colloidal dielectric brain. It didn't know what had happened, so although it was often puzzled by things, it didn't mind.

"But I knew what the next step would be!" I lifted my head and stared at the doctor, avoiding Paula's eyes. They were standing there, holding their breath, waiting for my next words. I let my head drop into concealment in my arms again.

"The next step would be a robot body for myself," I said mechanically, tonelessly. "I would build it and enter it. And I would never be able to re-enter my normal body, because it would die in the transfer. I would be immortal--but at an awful price. The price of normal life, loving, being loved, and someday getting married and having children--and a mother for those children.

"And yet I knew that I would build that robot body and transfer my mind to it--if I kept on. So I destroyed my work, my reputation, my ability to earn the kind of money it would take to do what I didn't have the will not to do, if I could."

I looked up cautiously, my face lax, my eyes half veiled, to see how they were taking what I was saying. Paula's face was a mask of pity and sympathy. Her father's was one of fixed attention and belief. I dropped my head again and muffled my voice.

"Pepper--my dog--not comprehending what was wrong with him, grew more and more bewildered. He got run over a month later. It couldn't kill him, but it wrecked his robot frame. I smashed his colloid brain and buried him to put his immortal mind out of its bewildering confused--existence."

"But--" It was Dr. Moriss' voice, full of growing, pleased conviction. "Then there was nothing you discovered other than what I've already discovered and tried?"

"No," I lied. And he believed me.

* * * * *

The hours passed swiftly, with long gaps during which I slept, unconscious of the conflict of hunger and alcohol starvation being fought in every cell of my body. The sunlight through the lattice-work of the Venetian blinds became a pleasant and welcome warmth. The song of the persistent bird outside the window grew joyful, and something I missed when it didn't come for a long time.

Paula sat on the edge of the bed and washed my face and ran an electric razor over it while I basked in the pleasant rays from her deep blue eyes. She fed me tall glasses of tomato juice spiked only with grapefruit juice, and with cool, clinking ice cubes that caressed my fevered lips....

"You're looking much better this morning, January," she said, leaning back and inspecting her handiwork with the shaver. "Feel up to trying a scrambled egg fried in butter, with golden brown toast and nice crisp bacon?"

"And make the coffee black--and hot," I said.

"Yes, sir," she said in mock subservience.

She had her breakfast with me. The fluffy scrambled eggs and warm toast began to nestle comfortably in my stomach, and Paula nestled comfortably on the edge of the bed sipping her coffee, her hair radiant flows of rich browns and mahoganies capturing and transmitting the sunlight from the window.

Her red lips parted to reveal gleaming white teeth when she laughed intimately, happily, at my running humor. I relaxed, my mind at ease, Dr. Leopold Moriss momentarily forgotten....

She displayed my suit proudly on its coat hanger, freshly cleaned and pressed, the stack of four new shirts still in their cellophane wrappers. I watched her retreat from the room with something inside me, my heart perhaps, hurting.

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror putting a knot in the tie. It had been a long time since I'd had a choice of ties, ten of them. I inspected it in the glass. Then the realization that it wasn't a new tie rose to consciousness. It was Dr. Moriss'.

I tore it off, ripping the collar of the shirt in my anger. I stood there, panting with emotion. My purpose was back! Slowly, like the flames of a charcoal fire fanned by a gust of wind, the fire of hate in my eyes died down, leaving only the glowing coals, which would be unnoticed behind the mask of a smile.

I practiced that smile while I put on another shirt and knotted another of Dr. Leopold Moriss' ties about my neck. I had played enough poker in penny ante dives up and down the west coast during my wanderings to perfect the lazy unrevealing poker smile.

There was a knock. Paula's voice sounded. "Are you dressed?"

"Come in!" I called.

Her eyes literally bathed me with admiration. She let the door slam behind her without hearing it.

"That's right!" I said. "You've never seen me before when I looked like a decent human being."

"Oh, I have too," she retorted.

"Do I look anything like you thought I would?"

"That's just it," she said. "You look _exactly_ like I dr-- hoped you would." Then, like she was snapping out of a dream, "Dad wants you downstairs. That is, he said to tell you he would like you to drop into the study if you want to, but also to tell you you don't have to. You're free to come and go as you please. He said expressly to tell you that." She stopped breathlessly, the dreamy stare coming back into her eyes.

"Why, sure," I said. "I guess I won't mind dropping into his study--too much." I grinned. "Though I'd much rather ignore him and go out someplace with you."

"That's a date," she said softly, wrinkling her nose at me, "after you see dad."

We tripped lightly down the stairs hand in hand as if we had done it hundreds of times before.

"That the door?" I asked, looking at the one she had ushered me through when I had first arrived.

"Yes," she said.

I gently disengaged her hand and tapped her cheek with my fingers. Suddenly I took her chin between my fingers and tilted her face up. She looked gravely into my eyes. I bent to kiss her. Her red lips curved to meet mine....

"You stay out here," I said gruffly.

I turned to the door. My hand touched it, hesitated, then twisted the knob. On my face was the smile I had practiced.

* * * * *

Dr. Leopold Moriss was sitting as I had left him so long ago, puffing contentedly on a long black cigar, his dead eyes staring expressionlessly through the haze and streamers of blue smoke. I stepped inside, closing the door behind me. Its click seemed to be the spring that brought him to life.

"Well, January," he said like a school teacher welcoming a child who has been down with the mumps, "you're looking better." He nodded. "Much better. I hope you feel better, too." He shot me a questioning look.

"Yes sir," I said.

"Nothing like getting rid of something," he said. "Getting it off your chest so you can forget it--but that isn't what I wanted to see you about." He leaned forward suddenly. "Is that lipstick?" he asked.

"No, tomato juice," I said dryly. He chuckled while I wiped it off.

"I'd like you to go over my research with me," he said, reverting abruptly to his school teacher voice. "You're the only living man who knows anything about it other than me. You'd like that?" He looked almost pleading.

"All right," I said, shrugging indifferently.

"Not exactly keen about it?" he said, chuckling again. "After what you told me I don't blame you. But it'll be good therapy, and with Paula in the background I don't believe you'll have any trouble resisting the temptation to gain immortality in a non-living robot."

"Maybe you're right," I said.

"With me it's different," he went on enthusiastically, paying little attention to my comment. "I'm getting on in years. My wife has been gone long enough so that she's just a memory. Paula is grown up. There's nothing to keep me from making the jump. Of course, I get a rather peculiar feeling every time I think of actually taking this step, and waking up to find my original body lying there on the other table, dead. But it doesn't alter the milk to pour it into another bottle. And from my experiments with dogs there doesn't seem to be any sensation accompanying the process of transfer. As a matter of fact, with one dog I teased him with a juicy bone up to the instant of transfer. The first thing he did in the robot body was look around for the bone. Rapid as the flicker of a film."

"Yes, I know," I said dryly. "I found the same thing. No consciousness of transfer or any other sensation. With the scanner-transferer it takes place in less than a ten thousandth of a second. Every electrical pattern of the brain complex is lifted out as an infinitesimal segment and transplanted into the colloid dielectric complex without alteration."

"Like a television eye scans a scene, in a way," the doctor added. "But let's go out to my laboratory. I'll show you _my body_."

He laughed at the remark as he stood up and went to the door.

My hands were trembling visibly. I hid them in my pockets, gripping them into tight fists to stop their trembling. I followed him into the hall, holding onto my appearance of calm detachment with every ounce of my will. The doctor had not yet found out what had made me afraid. But he would. He'd find out when I was ready for him to.

"We're going out to the lab, Paula," Dr. Moriss was saying.

"Oh," Paula said, disappointment in her tone.

"Wait a minute, Dr. Moriss," I said. "Paula and I are going out for a walk first."

"That can wait a half hour," he said. "I just want to show you--my body." He chuckled.

"It can't wait," I said, "and even if it could I want a breath of fresh air before going into that lab."

"He's been sick for three days without being out," Paula said. "Stop being so selfish, dad."

"That's unkind, Paula," Dr. Moriss said, "but go ahead." He turned back into his study.

* * * * *

We walked along sidewalks hand in hand, with kids playing catch and hop-skip as hazards, and shapeless, harassed women struggling home with overloaded shopping bags.

We heard the dying wail of sirens and saw a crowd at a corner, and joined it to watch the callous internes lift a screaming woman onto a stretcher while she repeated, "Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God," over and over, and a white faced teenage boy kept repeating to an unsympathetic but silent police officer, "I didn't see her. I didn't see her. I didn't see her."

We had coffee and hamburgers in a smelly, ten stool hole-in-the-wall served by a jovial, potbellied cook-and-waiter who sweated olive oil profusely over a dirty griddle, while his cracked jukebox blared out music from cracked records--and looked at each other and laughed when we couldn't talk above the noise.

On impulse we climbed aboard a streetcar just as it was starting up, and grinned at the conductor when he yelled above the noise, "Watch it. Wanta get killed?" And sat very close together while the ancient monument to a past civilization thundered on, on what promised to be its last trip.

And we got off and pretended we were lost. We went into pawnshops and looked at second hand diamond rings, whose fires were dimmed by the grimy sweat of the pawnbroker's fingers and the secret knowledge they held within their secret carbon heart of broken romances and marriages, and poverty that had led their former owners here to exchange a dream that had shattered for a week's rent in a fourth rate hotel.

We bought a newspaper from a blind man, and had a coke in a corner drugstore while we read it and worried about the world situation, and a gaunt thing with brown bags under her eyes told the patient druggist all her symptoms in a whining monotone.

We looked in windows at fur coats marked down from four hundred and ninety-nine ninety-five. We bought a sack of popcorn in an automatic vending machine that cheated on the amount, and fought over it until it skidded out of our hands onto the sidewalk. We had our picture taken together in a twenty-five cent booth, pretending to each other it wasn't so we could sit with our heads together.

When our feet grew reluctant we looked about us and discovered we were back home, and wondered with real surprise how that had happened, and how our feet had known without us knowing.

I half turned to retreat, feeling a panic and a sense of having left something undone or unsaid that should have been said. Paula was looking at me, her eyes troubled, and suddenly I knew she felt the same way, only there was a basic difference. She was holding back her feelings about her father shuffling off his mortal body for an imperishable one of non-living matter. And I? The thought fled fearfully into my subconscious. There could be no turning back, whatever the price.

I took Paula's hand, patted the side of her face until her smile brightened again. Hand in hand we slowly walked toward the house, our eyes on the drawn curtains of the study window behind which waited a man whom I had grown to hate even more than I loved his daughter.

* * * * *

The laboratory was a two story building in back of the house, reached by a narrow sidewalk in the grudging space the builders had left between the two. I paused at the door after the doctor had opened it and gone in. Paula was still at the kitchen door where we had left her, her eyes round with unvoiced protest and mute appeal.

"Are you coming?" the doctor's voice protested my delay.

"O.K.," I said, stepping inside and closing the door.

Our feet rang hollowly on the wood floor as we crossed a conventional chemical laboratory to steps leading upward. The doctor's face was flushed with excitement and eagerness. His footsteps were light on the stairs, light and swift. My own were heavy and slow behind him, each hollow blow the beat of a devil drum in some voodoo jungle as my thoughts rushed back over the lifetime I had crowded into the past three years, to prepare me for what I would see.

"There it is," the doctor said as I reached the last step and paused.

I saw the trim panel of the transfer machine, the two leather upholstered tables. But they were no more than background impressions as my eyes fixed on the form lying full length on one of those two tables.

If Dr. Leopold Moriss had not been standing beside me I would have sworn it was him--or his corpse. Unconsciously my feet carried me forward and to one side where I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh, the open unblinking eyes with irises the same pale blue. And blue-veined hands that seemed to have died just the moment before.

"Color photography," the doctor was explaining. "The sensitized chemicals impregnated in the rubberoid, and the color image of my own flesh imprinted in it from a projector."

"As authentic as a counterfeit ten dollar bill," I wisecracked tonelessly. "Even to the clothes and shoes!"

"Exactly," Dr. Moriss said, laughing gleefully. "Take a look at the insides of the transferer and see if it looks familiar to you. I built it so the circuits are all exposed and easy to follow. Different colored wires."

I stepped around the duplicate of the doctor on the table, something inside me crawling frantically, and unfastened the back of the cabinet, exposing the circuit. Skills that had not dimmed and would never dim took control of my sight and traced each element of the circuit, comparing it with that which I myself had built--and destroyed....

The drops of solder that held wires in contact glistened dully--silver blobs dotting orderly geometrical designs composed of blue, yellow, green, orange, and too many other colors to count. Little cylinders that were condensers and resistors and tubes and coils.