“Hey, counselor,” Lew Knight was perched on the corner of his desk, “what are these long weekends we’re taking? You might not make as much money in the law, but does it look right for an associate of mine to sell magazine subscriptions on the side?”
Sam stuffed his ears mentally against the emery-wheel voice. “I’ve been writing a book.”
“A law book? Weber On Bankruptcy?”
“No, a juvenile. Lew Knight, The Neanderthal Nitwit”
“Won’t sell. The title lacks punch. Something like Knights, Knaves and Knobheads is what the public goes for these days. By the way, Tina tells me you two had some sort of understanding about New Year’s Eve and she doesn’t think you’d mind if I took her out instead. I don’t think you’d mind either, but I may be prejudiced. Especially since I have a table reservation at Cigale’s where there’s usually less of a crowd of a New Year’s Eve than at the Automat.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Good,” said Knight approvingly as he moved away. “By the way, I won that case. Nice juicy fee, too. Thanks for asking.”
Tina also wanted to know if he objected to the new arrangements when she brought the mail. Again, he didn’t. Where had he been for over two days? He had been busy, very busy. Something entirely new. Something important.
She stared down at him as he separated offers of used cars guaranteed not to have been driven over a quarter of a million miles from caressing reminders that he still owed half the tuition for the last year of law school and when was he going to pay it?
Came a letter that was neither bill nor ad. Sam’s heart momentarily lost interest in the monotonous round of pumping that was its lot as he stared at a strange postmark: Glunt City, Ohio.
Dear Sir:
There is no firm in Glunt City at the present time bearing any name similar to “Bild-A-Man Company” nor do we know of any such organization planning to join our little community. We also have no thoroughfare called “Diagonal”; our north-south streets are named after Indian tribes while our east-west avenues are listed numerically in multiples of five.
Glunt City is a restricted residential township; we intend to keep it that. Only small retailing and service establishments are permitted here. If you are interested in building a home in Glunt City and can furnish proof of white, Christian, Anglo-Saxon ancestry on both sides of your family for fifteen generations, we would be glad to furnish further information.
P.S. An airfield for privately owned jet and propeller-driven aircraft is being built outside the city limits.
That was sort of that. He would get no refills on any of the vials and bottles even if he had a loose slunk or two with which to pay for the stuff. Better go easy on the material and conserve it as much as possible. But no disassembling!
Would the “Bild-A-Man Company” begin manufacturing at Glunt City some time in the future when it had developed into an industrial metropolis against the constricted wills of its restricted citizenry? Or had his package slid from some different track in the human time stream, some era to be born on an other-dimensional Earth? There would have to be a common origin to both, else why the English wordage? And could there be a purpose in his having received it, beneficial—or otherwise?
Tina had been asking a question. Sam detached his mind from shapeless speculation and considered her quite-the-opposite features.
“So if you’d still like me to go out with you New Year’s Eve, all I have to do is tell Lew that my mother expects to suffer from her gallstones and I have to stay home. Then I think you could buy the Cigale reservations from him cheap.”
“Thanks a lot, Tina, but very honestly I don’t have the loose cash right now. You and Lew make a much more logical couple anyhow.”
Lew Knight wouldn’t have done that. Lew cut throats with carefree zest. But Tina did seem to go with Lew as a type.
Why? Until Lew had developed a raised eyebrow where Tina was concerned, it had been Sam all the way. The rest of the office had accepted the fact and moved out of their path. It wasn’t only a question of Lew’s greater success and financial well-being: just that Lew had decided he wanted Tina and had got her.
It hurt. Tina wasn’t special; she was no cultural companion, no intellectual equal; but he wanted her. He liked being with her. She was the woman he desired, rightly or wrongly, whether or not there was a sound basis to their relationship. He remembered his parents before a railway accident had orphaned him: they were theoretically incompatible, but they had been terribly happy together.
He was still wondering about it the next night as he flipped the pages of “Twinning yourself and your friends.” It would be interesting to twin Tina.
“One for me, one for Lew.”
Only the horrible possibility of an error was there. His mannikin had not been perfect: its arms had been of unequal length. Think of a physically lopsided Tina, something he could never bring himself to disassemble, limping extraneously through life.
And then the book warned: “Your constructed twin, though resembling you in every obvious detail, has not had the slow and guarded maturity you have enjoyed. He or she will not be as stable mentally, much less able to cope with unusual situations, much more prone to neurosis. Only a professional carnuplicator, using the finest equipment, can make an exact copy of a human personality. Yours will be able to live and even reproduce, but cannot ever be accepted as a valid and responsible member of society.”
Well, he could chance that. A little less stability in Tina would hardly be noticeable; it might be more desirable.
There was a knock. He opened the door, guarding the box from view with his body. His landlady.
“Your door has been locked for the past week, Mr. Weber. That’s why the chambermaid hasn’t cleaned the room. We thought you didn’t want anyone inside.”
“Yes.” He stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. “I’ve been doing some highly important legal work at home.”
“Oh.” He sensed a murderous curiosity and changed the subject.
“Why all the fine feathers, Mrs. Lipanti—New Year’s Eve party?
She smoothed her frilly black dress self-consciously. “Y-yes. My sister and her husband came in from Springfield today and we were going to make a night of it. Only… only the girl who was supposed to come over and mind their baby just phoned and said she isn’t feeling well. So I guess we won’t go unless somebody else, I mean unless we can get someone else to take care… I mean, somebody who doesn’t have a previous engagement and who wouldn’t—” Her voice trailed away in assumed embarrassment as she realized the favor was already asked.
Well, after all, he wasn’t doing anything tonight. And she had been remarkably pleasant those times when he had to operate on the basis of “Of course I’ll have the rest of the rent in a day or so.” But why did any one of the Earth’s two billion humans, when in the possession of an unpleasant buck, pass it automatically to Sam Weber?
Then he remembered Chapter IV on babies and other small humans. Since the night when he had separated the mannikin from its constituent parts, he’d been running through the manual as an intellectual exercise. He didn’t feel quite up to making some weird error on a small human. But twinning wasn’t supposed to be as difficult.
Only by Gog and by Magog, by Aesculapius the Physician and Kildare the Doctor, he would not disassemble this time. There must be other methods of disposal possible in a large city on a dark night. He’d think of something.