Part 3

My mind clicked off one detail after another. It was my circuit. I might have built it myself. But I had destroyed everything except what I carried in my mind. Dr. Leopold Moriss had repeated my discoveries step by step. Reason had followed the path I had destroyed, just as surely as the instinct of an insect makes it live the life pattern of its ancestors down to the finest detail.

"Does it check?" The doctor asked.

I looked at one particular blob of solder connecting a blue coated wire with a red one, and nodded.

"Yes," I said carefully.

"How about the hoods?" he asked.

I quickly examined the hoods, heavy things on maneuverable frames. They could almost have been cast from the same mold.

"They're O.K.," I said.

"Then I want to get it over with now," Dr. Moriss said.

"What!" I exclaimed.

"Yes. Now," he said. "The sooner the better. Paula isn't expecting me to do it this way."

I took a deep breath. My eyes studied the straps to be buckled around the robot in such a way that it could only release itself when it became activated by a calm intelligence, and the straps fastened into the vacant table that could be buckled and unbuckled the same way, that would keep the body from throwing itself around violently under the wild play of neutral forces set loose as the mind was plucked from the living brain.

"All right," I said, my voice sounding queer and remote to me. "Lie down and I'll strap you up."

As he climbed onto the vacant table my eyes searched the room frantically for something _to cut the connection between that blue and that red wire_.

* * * * *

"I'm ready," the doctor said, relaxing on the table with no more apparent concern than a man getting into a barber chair for a shave.

I buckled the straps with fumbling fingers, my thoughts racing. There was not a tool in sight anywhere. Nothing that could cut that wire.

"We forgot to warm up the tubes!" Dr. Moriss exclaimed.

"You aren't as calm as you pretend to be," I chided, hiding the thrill of triumph that rose in me. "As soon as I finish buckling the straps on you and your future receptacle I'll warm up the circuit."

"Thanks, January," he said with relief.

I finished with him and went to the robot, the robot so soon to be activated with the doctor's intelligence. I buckled the straps about its inert form exactly the way I had done with the living.

"Why don't you turn the current on before doing that?" Dr. Moriss asked.

I smiled at him slowly. "Plenty of time," I said.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked. His eyes were suddenly sharp with suspicion.

"Oh, nothing," I said, shrugging. "A minute won't make a big difference will it?"

He studied me closely. My heart was beating against my ribs.

"I've changed my mind," he said abruptly, his fingers fumbling with the buckle that would release his arms. "I'll wait until later to do this."

"No you don't!" I said, my calm deserting me. I leaped around the tables. His fingers were trying desperately to open the buckle that would free his arms. I slapped them away and stood over him.

"This is for those hours of torture," I said, leering into his blank eyes. My fist crashed against the side of his jaw just in front of the ear. He sank back, limp and unconscious.

It was better this way. I was glad it had happened. Now I could be sure of what I did. I crossed the room to a bench and searched swiftly through drawers of tools until I found a wire cutter. In a moment I had clipped the blue coated wire where it was soldered to the red one. Quickly, with sure movements, I fastened the cover back on the case, threw the switch that sent electric current glowing through the cold filaments of tubes, and returned the wire clipper to its drawer. And by the time I had adjusted the two hoods into position over Dr. Leopold Moriss' head and that of the waiting robot form, the meters on the instrument panel showed that everything was ready for the final moment. The moment I had been looking forward to, working toward; when I could touch the switch that would begin the final act, completing my revenge.

My breathing was the only sound in the room as I stood for a moment surveying everything to be sure. I grinned into the doctor's closed eyes. It was too bad now that he wasn't conscious so that I could watch his fear and horror, so that he could know before I jabbed down on that switch what he had tortured me to discover.

* * * * *

All the hate that had built up in my soul went into that final act. I heard the faint click as the switch snapped over to contact. A horrible scream welled from the throat of the unconscious man as I ran to the stairs and stumbled down them.

I waited in the chemical lab, knowing that Paula would be watching the door of the building, and not wanting to face her until it was all finished. I was waiting for the sound of footsteps over my head. Slow steps that would cross and come down the stairs.

And finally I heard them. I watched the stairs and saw first the legs and then the rest of the man that was descending. It was the robot, controlled by the mind of Dr. Leopold Moriss. There was no hostility in its expression as its eyes settled on me. Rather, there was grave respect. It stopped in front of me, its movements so natural and smooth that no one could have guessed it was a non-living robot. I returned its studied gaze in silence. Then it went on past me to the door. I watched without moving as the door closed.

"Dad!" It was Paula's voice. "Tell January to come in here. Lunch's ready. Dad!" Her voice was full of sudden alarm. "Dad!" Then, "January!" Her feet pounded on the back steps and the narrow sidewalk outside. The knob rattled as she fumbled, then the door burst open and she stood framed there, her eyes wide with fear and horror and a half realization of what her mind was not conditioned to quite accept.

She saw me, and with a sob of relief she was across the room and in my arms. I held her head against the cradle of my neck, waiting.

And then it came.

Over our heads sounded a faint scuffle of a shoe, a hesitant footstep, another, and then another, dragging, stumbling.

Paula's trembling body stiffened at the first sound. She looked up at me in numb unbelief, then wonder, seeing in my expression, my eyes, the culmination of my revenge. She started to pull away, to run toward the stairs.

"No!" I said softly. "Wait. He deserved this."

The defiance left her. She stood beside me while we both waited.

Feet came into view. Legs. Hands sliding weakly along the wall for support. A face bearing the shocked realization that another mind existed in the world identical with itself. A realization of the fallacy of believing that by destroying oneself at the instant of creation of that other mind it would in some absolute way _become_ oneself.

As I looked at him standing there on the stairs the hate that I had nurtured disappeared. In its place was pity and sympathy.

I was up the stairs catching him before he could fall, lifting him, surprised at his lightness. Paula, her lips trembling on a hesitant worried smile, was opening doors ahead of me as I carried her father into the house and laid him on his bed.

And as Paula and I undressed him to treat the bruises caused by the straps, in my mind rose a picture of the other Dr. Leopold Moriss, the robot, hurrying along some street and, perhaps, already making plans to search for--the _other_ January Stevens.