We Can Build You (5 page)

Maury had risen to his feet. “We better get going.”

Together we left the cafe. “You know this Sam Barrows?” I asked.

“Sure. I mean, not personally; I know him by reputation. He’s the darndest fellow. He’ll bet on anything. If one of his mistresses—and that’s a story in itself—if one of his mistresses dived out of a hotel window he’d bet on which end hit the pavement first, her head or her tail. He’s like one of the old-time speculators reborn, one of those captains of finance. Life’s a gamble to a guy like that. I admire him.”

“So does Pris.”

“Admire, hell—adores. She met him. They stared each other down—it was a draw. He galvanized or magnetized her or some darn thing. For weeks afterward she could hardly talk.”

“Was that when she was job-hunting?”

Maury nodded. “She didn’t get the job, but she did get into the sanctum sanctorum. Louis, that guy can scent out possibilities on all sides, opportunities no one else could see in a million years. You ought to dip into
Fortune
, sometime; they did a big write-up on him around ten months ago.”

“From what she told me Pris made quite a pitch to him that day.”

“She told him she had incredible worth that no one recognized. He was supposed to recognize it, evidently. Anyhow, she said that in his organization, working for him, she’d rise to the top and be known all over the universe. But otherwise, she’d just go on as she was. She told him she was a gambler, too; she wanted to stake everything on going to work for him. Can you beat that?”

“No,” I said. She hadn’t told me that part.

After a pause Maury said, “The Edwin M. Stanton was her idea.”

Then it was true. That made me feel really bad, to hear that. “And it was her idea that it would be of Stanton?”

“No, it was my idea. She wanted it to look like Sam Barrows. But there wasn’t enough data to feed to its ruling monad guidance system, so we got reference books on historical characters. And I was always interested in the Civil War; it was a hobby of mine years ago. So that settled that.”

“I see,” I said.

“She still has Barrows on her mind all the time. It’s what her analyst calls an obsessive idea.”

We walked on toward the office of MASA ASSOCIATES.

When we entered our office we found my brother Chester on the phone from Boise, reminding us that we had left the Edwin M. Stanton in the family living room, and asking us to pick it up, please.

“Well, we’ll try to get out sometime today,” I promised him.

Chester said, “It’s sitting where you left it. Father turned it on for a few minutes this morning to see if it got the news.”

“What news?”

“The morning news. The summary, like David Brinkley.”

He meant
gave
the news. So my family had in the meantime decided that I was right; it was a machine after all and not a person.

“Did it?” I asked.

“No,” Chester said. “It talked about the unnatural impudence of commanders in the field.”

When I had hung up the phone Maury said, “Maybe Pris would get it.”

“Does she have a car?” I asked.

“She can take the Jag. Maybe you better go along with
her, though, in case there’s still a chance your dad’s interested.”

Later in the day Pris showed up at the office, and soon we were on our way back to Boise.

For the first part of the trip we drove in silence, Pris behind the wheel. All at once she said, “Do you have connections with someone who’s interested in the Edwin M. Stanton?” She eyed me.

“No. What a strange question.”

“What’s your real motive for coming along on this trip? You do have a concealed motive … it radiates from every pore of your body. If it were up to me I wouldn’t let you within a hundred yards of the Stanton.”

As she continued to eye me, I knew I was in for more dissection.

“Why aren’t you married?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you a homosexual?”

“No!”

“Did some girl you fell in love with find you too ugly?”

I groaned.

“How old are you?”

That seemed reasonable enough, and yet, in view of the general attitude she held, I was wary of even that. “Ummm,” I murmured.

“Forty?”

“No. Thirty-three.”

“But your hair is gray on the sides and you have funny-looking snaggly teeth.”

I wished I was dead.

“What was your first reaction to the Stanton?” Pris asked.

I said, “I thought, ‘What a kindly-looking old gentleman that is there.’”

“You’re lying, aren’t you?”

“Yes!”

“What did you actually think?”

“I thought, ‘What a kindly-looking old gentleman that is there, wrapped up in newspapers.’”

Pris said thoughtfully, “You probably are queer for old men. So your opinion isn’t worth anything.”

“Listen, Pris, somebody is going to brain you with a tire iron, someday. You understand?”

“You can barely handle your hostility, can you? Is that because you’re a failure in your own eyes? Maybe you’re being too hard on yourself. Tell me your childhood dreams and goals and I’ll tell you if—”

“Not for a billion dollars.”

“Are they shameful?” She continued to study me intently. “Did you do shameful sexual things with yourself, like it tells about in the psych books?”

I felt as if I were about to pass out.

“Obviously I hit on a sensitive topic with you,” Pris said. “But don’t be ashamed. You don’t do it anymore, do you? I suppose you still might … you’re not married, and normal sexual outlets are denied you.” She pondered that. “I wonder what Sam does, along the sex line.”

“Sam Vogel? Our driver, now in the Reno, Nevada, area?”

“No. Sam K. Barrows.”

“You’re obsessed,” I said. “Your thoughts, your speech, your tiling the bathroom—your involvement in the Stanton.”

“The simulacrum is brilliantly original.”

“What would your analyst say about it?”

“Milt Horstowski? I told him. He already said.”

“Tell me,” I said. “Didn’t he say this is a deranged manic compulsion of some kind?”

“No, he agreed that I should be doing something creative. When I told him about the Stanton he complimented me on it and hoped it would work out.”

“Probably you gave him one hell of a biased account.”

“No. I told him the truth.”

“About
refighting the Civil War with robots!”

“Yes. He said it had flair.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “They’re all crazy.”

“AU,” Pris said, reaching out and ruffling my hair, “but you, buddy boy. Right?”

I could say nothing.

“You take things so seriously,” Pris drawled. “Relax and enjoy life. You’re an anal type. Duty bound. You ought to let those old sphincter muscles let go for once … see how it feels. You want to be bad; that’s the secret desire of the anal type. They feel they must do their duty, though; that’s why they’re so pedantic and given to having doubts all the time. Like this; you have doubts about this.”

“I don’t have doubts. I just have a yawning sense of absolute dread.”

Pris laughed, rumpled my hair.

“It’s funny,” I said. “My overwhelming fear.”

“It’s not an overwhelming fear you feel,” Pris said matter-of-factly. “It’s simply a little bit of natural carnal earthly lust. Some for me. Some for loot. Some for power. Some for fame.” She indicated, with her thumb and first finger, a small amount. “About that much in total. That’s the size of your great big overwhelming emotions.” Lazily, she glanced at me, enjoying herself.

We drove on.

In Boise, at my family’s home, we picked up the simulacrum, re-wrapped it in newspapers, and lugged it to the car. We returned to Ontario and Pris let me off at the office. There was little conversation between us on the return trip; Pris was withdrawn and I smoldered with anxiety and resentment toward her. My attitude seemed to amuse her. I was wise enough, however, to keep my mouth closed.

When I entered the office I found a short, plump, dark-haired woman waiting for me. She wore a heavy coat and carried a briefcase. “Mr. Rosen?”

“Yeah,” I said, wondering if she was a process server.

“I’m Colleen Nild. From Mr. Barrows’ office. Mr. Barrows
asked me to drop by here and speak to you, if you have a moment.” She had a low, rather uncertain voice, and looked, I thought, like someone’s niece.

“What does Mr. Barrows want?” I asked guardedly, showing her to a chair. I seated myself facing her.

“Mr. Barrows had me make a carbon of a letter he has prepared for Miss Pris Frauenzimmer, a carbon for you.” She held out three thin sheets, onion-skin, in fact; I saw somewhat blurred, dimmed, but obviously very correctly-typed business correspondence. “You’re the Rosen family from Boise, aren’t you? The people who propose to manufacture the simulacra?”

Scanning the letter, I saw the word
Stanton
pop up again and again; Barrows was answering a letter from Pris having to do with it. But I could not get the hang of Barrows’ thoughts; it was all too diffuse.

Then all at once I got the drift.

Barrows had obviously misunderstood Pris. He thought the idea of refighting the Civil War with electronic simulacra, manufactured at our factory in Boise, was a civic enterprise, a do-gooding patriotic effort along the lines of improving the schools and reclaiming the deserts, not a business proposition at all. That’s what she gets, I said to myself. Yes, I was right; Barrows was thanking her for her idea, for thinking of him in connection with it … but, he said, he received requests of this sort daily, and already had his hands full with worthy efforts. For instance a good deal of his time was spent in fighting condemnation of a war-time housing tract somewhere in Oregon … the letter became so vague, at that point, that I lost the thread completely.

“Can I keep this?” I asked Miss Nild.

“Please do. And if you’d like to comment, I’m sure Mr. Barrows would be interested in anything you have to say.”

I said, “How long have you worked for Mr. Barrows?”

“Eight years, Mr. Rosen.” She sounded happy about it.

“Is he a billionaire, like the papers say?”

“I suppose so, Mr. Rosen.” Her brown eyes twinkled, enlarged by her glasses.

“Does he treat his employees good?”

She smiled without answering.

“What’s this housing project, this Green Peach Hat, that Barrows is talking about in the letter?”

“That’s a term for Gracious Prospect Heights, one of the greatest multiple-unit housing developments in the Pacific Northwest. Mr. Barrows always calls it that, although originally it was a term of derision. The people who want to tear it down invented the term and Mr. Barrows took it over—the term, I mean—to protect the people who live there, so they won’t feel spat upon. They appreciate that. They got up a petition thanking him for his help in blocking condemnation proceedings; there were almost two thousand signatures.”

“Then the people who live there don’t want it torn down?”

“Oh no. They’re fiercely loyal to it. A group of do-gooders have taken it upon themselves to meddle, housewives and some society people who want to increase their own property values. They want to see the land used for a country club or something on that order. Their group is called the Northwest Citizens’ Committee for Better Housing. A Mrs. Devorac heads it.”

I recalled having read about her in the Oregon papers; she was quite up in the fashionable circles, always involved in causes. Her picture appeared on the first page of section two regularly.

“Why does Mr. Barrows want to save this housing tract?” I asked.

“He is incensed at the idea of American citizens deprived of their rights. Most of them are poorer people. They’d have no place to go. Mr. Barrows understands how they feel because he lived in rooming houses for years … you know that his family had no more money than anyone else? That he made his money on his own, through his own hard work and efforts?”

“Yes,” I said. She seemed to be waiting for me to go on, so I said, “It’s nice he still is able to identify with the working class, even though he’s now a billionaire.”

“Since most of Mr. Barrows’ money was made in real estate, he has an acute awareness of the problems people face in their struggle to obtain decent housing. To society ladies such as Silvia Devorac, Green Peach Hat is merely an unsightly conglomeration of old buildings; none of them have gone inside—it would never occur to them to do so.”

“You know,” I said, “hearing this about Mr. Barrows goes a long way to make me feel that our civilization isn’t declining.”

She smiled her informal, warm smile at me.

“What do you know about this Stanton electronic simulacrum?” I asked her.

“I know that one has been built. Miss Frauenzimmer mentioned that in her communications both by mail and over the phone to Mr. Barrows. I believe Mr. Barrows also told me that Miss Frauenzimmer wanted to put the Stanton electronic simulacrum onto a Greyhound bus and have it ride unaccompanied to Seattle, where Mr. Barrows is currently. That would be her way of demonstrating graphically its ability to merge with humans and be unnoticed.”

“Except for its funny split beard and old-fashioned vest.”

“I was unaware of those factors.”

“Possibly the simulacrum could argue with a cab driver as to the shortest route from the bus terminal to Mr. Barrows’ office,” I said. “That would be an additional proof of its humanness.”

Colleen Nild said, “I’ll mention that to Mr. Barrows.”

“Do you know the Rosen electronic organ, or possibly our spinet pianos?”

“I’m not sure.”

“The Rosen factory at Boise produces the finest electronic chord organ in existence. Far superior to the Hammerstein Mood Organ, which emits a noise nothing more adequate than a modified flute-sound.”

“I was unaware of that, too,” Miss or Mrs. Nild said. “I’ll mention that to Mr. Barrows. He has always been a music lover.”

I was still involved in reading Barrows’ letter when my partner returned from his midday coffee break. I showed it to him.

“Barrows writing to Pris,” he said, seating himself to pore over it. “Maybe we’re in, Louis. Could it be? I guess it isn’t a figment of Pris’s mind after all. Gosh, the man’s hard to follow; is he saying he is or he isn’t interested in the Stanton?”