Part 2

That, if I understood her correctly, sounded fine to me. It was the best proposal I'd had yet. And surely it would have been poor hospitality to a lonely little girl some light-years away from home for me to have refused. "This is terribly sudden," I told her. "Uf! That ought to be enough of a hole for as wizened up a little old body as that ... yes, darling, I will marry you. Who's going to earn us a living?"

III

I climbed out of the hole and kissed her and, in time, we did manage to get the old woman buried.

The next day we applied for our license. Three days later we were married--so far as I know, an interstellar first. The job or money problem, as it turned out, was no problem. Her first thought was the direct, female approach to the problem. She could simply make it out of old newspapers whenever we needed some, as she had the body. She made some to show me.

"Well now," I told her, "it does seem the simplest way, I admit. But the government is pretty jealous of its ability to print money. It likes to think that nobody else can do the job just right."

I was afraid this might be one of her stubborn points but it wasn't. Government restrictions, bureaucracy and red tape were things she had no trouble understanding. "It is the same way back home with power and energy rations," she told me. "You have no idea the difficulty we had in building up the capital supply necessary for my trip here. So I suppose we must find another way. Don't you already have some of this money? Or couldn't you manage to borrow some?"

I had $37.62 in my checking account, but the house was in my name. I borrowed five grand. I invested. I was probably the most successful investor since old King Midas developed his touch. If I sank a buck in land, oil would turn up within the week, and if it turned out to be a geologically inexplicable tiny pocket the next week--that would be after I had unloaded. Stocks, commodities, it made no difference. The money rolled in. We had the touch. Paid our taxes, too, but she had a way with tax loopholes that gave the district collector a nervous breakdown.

We traveled, but we kept the old house. We always came back to it for sentimental reasons. We spent a lot of time in libraries, museums. We went to shows and concerts. Anything that was going, we went to it. She had a contagious interest that she communicated to--not to say forced on--me; and if some of the operas and symphonies we caught seemed to my elemental musical taste to run a little long and loud, I had my compensations. And a lot more than most; our adjustments were not all one-sided.

Example: We made a tour of Europe. Now, I always was a fine, loving husband to her. Completely faithful. But--well, there was a dark-haired, laughing, button-cute little chick who sang Spanish songs in English with an Italian accent in a little place on the Riviera. I didn't make a pass. I didn't even speak to her. But I have to admit that, as a strictly idle fancy, she did cross my mind once or twice.

"Hah!" my tall, statuesque, beautiful red-haired wife snorted at me one evening after we were back home. She was sitting listening to hi-fi, some of the very long-hair music that she called "the second most fascinating development of your kind." I was just sitting, maybe dozing a bit.

"So!" She gave it full-force, wifely indignation. "You sit there and you smile on me--and all the time you are thinking of this cheap, female, singing bullfighter you have seen two times. You have two times me in your mind!"

Already she was talking with just the accent that chick had used.

"Now look here," I protested, "you promised not to go prowling through my mind. A man is entitled to a little privacy!"

"How can you think so of this other woman? You don't--" sob--"love me any more!"

Women! That's the way trying to argue with them goes. You are always on the defensive.

"Aw now, Star-hon-baby," I said, "honestly, it was just a passing thought. I only--"

"I know what sort of thought it was! Very well." She got up and stalked off to the kitchen. I didn't get what she was up to, not even when I heard her banging temperishly about out there.

When there was a sudden flash and the lights blinked out, the idea hit me. I was scared. What if she had gone back, left me? I dashed to the kitchen. Just through the swinging door, I tripped over a body and fell into the kitchen table. Had she--? Then I heard a charming, slightly accented little giggle.

I didn't bother with my lighter. I reached out, caught her, pulled my sweet little dark-haired baby to me and kissed her. "Honey-doll, believe me--I do love you. No matter who you are, I love you!"

I meant every word of it, too. That was a brand of accommodation you will never get from any local girl.

* * * * *

The next night I had to dig a new grave out by the garage--a bigger one this time, for a big, beautiful, long-legged, red-haired body. Funny thing. Contrary to general belief, none of this ever seemed to do anything for the roses by the garage. They had done poorly ever since Aunt Belle left and they kept on doing poorly. Well, no matter. Six months later it was the little brunette's turn to go and we went back to red hair. When I say my wife was all women to me, I mean it.

The last model was medium height, Titian shade hair, not spectacular but cute, very companionable, very lovable, beautifully built, built to last. She was some builder, my wife, and she did a lot of fine construction work for me.

One night, back along about the third week of our marriage, I got to feeling lousy--sniffles, headache, no appetite.

It was no dramatic plague; just a typical, nasty case of flu. I used to get them every fall and winter. I mixed myself a couple of hot lemon and's, and explained it to my (tall, red headed) wife. "Oh, yes," she said. "I see."

I had an idea she took another quick prowl through my mind but I felt too sick to complain. "I'm going to bed," I told her. I went.

Oddly enough, instead of putting in a restless night, I slept like a log. When I woke up the next morning, I felt great. In fact, as I burst into a spontaneous and very tuneful chorus of _Body and Soul_ in the shower, it came to me that I had never in my life felt so well. When I looked in the mirror to shave, it seemed to me I was even looking better.

Later that day I was up on the roof putting up a TV aerial. I hadn't ever bothered with TV, but she wanted to learn all about even that. I put up the aerial. Then I fell off the roof. I dropped twelve feet, landing on my left arm and shoulder on hard-packed lawn. Then I got up and dusted myself off. No damage. I was all right.

"Clumsy," she said to me from the porch.

"No," I said. "Damn it, there was this loose shingle up there. It slipped right out from under me and--anyway, you might at least be a little sympathetic. It's a wonder I didn't break my arm. In fact, I can't understand why I didn't."

"Nothing broke because of the improvements I made in you last night."

"What?"

"Darling," she said, "I made a few improvements. Of course, you were very attractive, lover. Perfectly charming. But structurally, really, you were a most imperfect mechanism. So now that I have made a study of these bodies your people use, I ... rebuilt you."

"Oh? Oh! Now, look here! Who in hell said you could?"

* * * * *

It did, at the time, seem pretty damned officious. I was sore. However, I had to admit that the changes she made worked out rather well. A strong, light metallic alloy seems to make much better bones than can be made of calcium. General immunity to disease was desirable, I couldn't deny. My re-wired nervous system and modified muscular structure were as pleasant to work with as they were efficient. I was a new man.

Of course, every woman always wants to make a finer specimen of whatever slob she marries. Only I had the luck to get the one who knew how to do the job properly--from the inside out, rather than by simply peck, peck, pecking away at the outside.

It was all as near perfect as a marriage can be. I have no complaints now--and very few even then. She had built me to last a couple of centuries. I was ready and willing to string along with her all the way.

But it never does work out that way, does it?

What happened to us, as it does to most, was that at the end of the third year she got pregnant. A very ordinary female trait, you may say, and not ordinarily surprising. No. Except that she was no ordinary female.

We were in bed one night--our last night as it turned out--when she told me.

"Darling," she said, and kissed me. "I have something to tell you."

"Haw?" I was sort of sleepy.

"I've been hoping and hoping it would happen, but I wasn't sure it could."

"Ha? Whatsat?"

"Darling, we--are going to become parents."

"What?" I was awake then. "We're going to have a baby? Why, that's great. Wonderful! Do you think he'll take after me?" As I thought it over, it seemed something of a problem. What would the heredity be? In fact, _how_ could it be?

"Never mind, darling," she said quietly--sadly, I like to think, as I look back on it. "That's woman's work, you know. Just leave the details to me."

I kissed her. We were very loving and tender. I went to sleep, and dreamed all night long that I was Siamese twins in a fratricidal finish fight over my model wife.

IV

I woke up by daylight to a horrible, icy, lost and separated feeling, as though part of me had really died. I reached out my hand for reassurance--and I yelled.

That sweet, soft-curved body in the bed next to me was cold and dead.

"Please! don't be frightened. It's all right. Really, it's all right." That was a voice that wasn't a voice again, as back in the beginning. It was familiar and at the same time new. It _wasn't_ all right! I looked up, over the bed. There were not one but two tiny, blinding-bright pinpoints of light.

"What? Who?"

"Father," they said, "we are your children."

They were certainly not my idea of it.

"No. Oh, no! Star-baby, where are you?"

"Here. We were she. Now she plus you has become us. She has divided and now we are two, the children of you and she."

"Nonsense. Quit the double talk and give it to me straight!" Double talk it was. But if it was nonsense, it was an unhappy sort of nonsense I couldn't get around.

Coming slightly out of shock, I tried arguing and got nowhere. I never won any arguments from their mother either. I was convinced in spite of myself that this was the simple, brutal truth. It was the way of reproduction of her form of life. My alien wife had divided, to become two half-alien offspring.

I felt lousy. I didn't _want_ two bright, pin-point kids. I wanted my wife. "But look, why couldn't one of you--"

"Why, father!" I got it in a tone of shocked horror. "Such a thing would be positively incestuous. No. We must go now. This is what mother-we came here for--to mix and to re-vitalize her-our people by the addition of a fresh, new stream of life force."

"You mean me?" It was flattering to think my stock would invigorate the population of a sun, but it was no cure for the loneliness in which I was lost. "You are going back across space--and leave me here alone?"

"Yes, father. We must leave at once."

"Oh, now, wait just one radiating little minute! You say I'm your father. Well, I forbid--"

Weary patience. "Now, father, please."

"But--will you come back sometime?"

"Certainly. With the success of her-our mission, we hope the factions back home will unite in a policy of further interchange. We and others of our family will come. Soon, we hope. It could even prove possible to find a way of converting you to our own form, so that later you may return with us."

"But look--"

But that was it. A few more words and, "Goodby, father," they said, putting a reasonable amount of regret into it--even though I know damned well they were itching to get going. "And do take care of yourself."

They were gone. I was alone. No big, lush and lovely wife; no button-cute little brunette wife; no gay, lively, companionable, loving Titian-haired wife. No wife at all.

I had never been so alone. Nothing but me. What was I to do?

Well, there was only one possible thing to do, and I did it. I got drunk. I hung one on. It was a beauty. Sometime in the course of the following night I held a tearful wake out by the garage and I buried my wife's last body. That, I recognize, was thoughtless. I could and should have called doctors and undertakers to tell me there was no life left in the body, and then let them do the digging for me in a more formal, costly manner. But, for one thing, I was drunk. For another, I guess I'd just sort of gotten into the habit of doing it the other way.

* * * * *

Much too early the next day--like about 2:30 in the afternoon--the doorbell rang. I was totally despondent, nursing my sorrow and a fat hangover with a cold beer and some of my Star-baby's more heavily long-hair, hi-fi selections.

I let the bell ring for a while. Then I let somebody pound on the door for a bit. But that got to be hard on my headache so I went to the door.

There was Mrs. Schmerler, from next door, who used to be a real biddy-buddy of my Aunt Belle's. There were a couple of hard-eyed cops with her, too. They all pushed right on in.

"Celebrating something, Mac?" inquired cop number one, while Mrs. Schmerler and the other glared suspiciously about.

"No," I said, too miserable to think. "Not celebrating, mourning. Just lost my wife, and kids, too."

"He never had any children!" said Mrs. Schmerler. "Only women. And a great deal too many of the cheap tarts. What his poor, dear Aunt Belle, as saintly a woman as ever lived, would say.... Why don't you ask him what he was digging for--digging and yowling _Star dust_--out there by his garage last night? And not the first time, neither!"

The sudden realization of what could be turned up out there by the garage--and how that would look to the unsympathetic and non-credulous eyes of the law--hit me. I opened and closed my mouth three or four times like an unwell goldfish. Nothing came out except a miasma of alcohol. Mrs. Schmerler gaped at me with delighted shock, indignation and horror. It was the great moment of her life.

The cops stepped in--not aggressively, more big-brotherly--and took a good, firm grip on my arm.

I won't go into the rest of all that. They got a squad and they dug. They took me in. I wouldn't talk. They locked me up. Cell block bookies quoted 50-1, no takers, I would make the death cell. The way I felt, I didn't care. The newspapers went wild. Things had been slow since the election. All my old pals from my working days on the paper were making a buck with special "Even then there was something frighteningly different about him" feature stories.

The next day, as my hangover faded and I got to thinking things over, my outlook changed. It was no time for me to give up. I would get a lawyer.

I walked over to rattle my cell door for a bit. "Hey! Hey there, guard. Come here a minute, huh?"

He came. "So? Is our Bluebeard softening up? Want to make a statement?"

"Uh-uh. Not me. I just want to ask a question. Those bodies, are they going to autopsy them?"

"Not yet. Today."

"Well, look--"

I had a little trouble persuading him, but I got him to take down all the data I could remember on the first one, the old hag. There would be records on her at the County Hospital. They'd never make any charge worse than body-snatching stick on that one.

The others? I chuckled. I was imagining the medical officers' expressions when they ran into those stainless-steel bones, plastic circulatory system, metallic wiring and the assorted other little innovations that my wife--my _late_ wife--had installed in her body-building exercises. That would give them something to think about.

So--that's my story; all of it up to now. I'm still here in my cool little cell, and I am damned lonesome. But I am not scared. I figure I have about four different kinds of insurance.

* * * * *

In the first place, the way I am built now, with all the improvements in structure and durability she put into me, I doubt they could electrocute me. I'd probably just short the equipment out. A thing like that would make me quite a scientific curiosity, no doubt; but not, at least, a dead one.

Second, there are my investments and the way the money has piled up. You know and I know perfectly well that they just don't ever send a million bucks plus to any electric chair.

Besides, third place, while I have no doubt I can be convicted of something, I don't see how it could be murder. I wouldn't be surprised to see me get sent to the loony bin. I won't much mind that. I have nothing to do but wait anyway.

And, in the fourth place, which is what I am waiting for, there are my children--hers and mine. They are coming back. Soon, I hope. Not alone, I hope. "Tell them back there," was the last thing I said before they left, "tell them I want a girl just like the girl that married your dear old dad."

I admit it's a poor thing for a man to have to send his kids to do his courting for him--but at least mine are pretty exceptional children. Much better informed than most, too. They should bring me back a new bride. They've got to.

Somehow I kind of have a feeling now that a blonde--maybe a tall, willowy, statuesquely stacked type--might be nice for a while. After that, I don't know. I'll have to think it over. The waiting is what is going to be tough.

Kids aren't really undependable today. Are they?