“I’d be glad to watch the baby for a few hours.” He started down the hall to anticipate her polite protest. “Don’t have a date tonight myself. No, don’t mention it, Mrs. Lipanti. Glad to do it.”
In the landlady’s apartment, her nervous sister briefed him doubtfully. “And that’s the only time she cries in a low, steady way so if you move fast there won’t be much damage done. Not much, anyway.”
He saw them to the door. “I’ll be fast enough,” he assured the mother. “Just so I get a hint.”
Mrs. Lipanti paused at the door. “Did I tell you about the man who was asking after you this afternoon?”
Again? “A sort of tall, old man in a long, black overcoat?”
“With the most frightening way of staring into your face and talking under his breath. Do you know him?”
“Not exactly. What did he want?”
“Well, he asked if there was a Sam Weaver living here who was a lawyer and had been spending most of his time in his room for the past week. I told him we had a Sam Weber—your first name is Sam?—who answered to that description, but that the last Weaver had moved out over a year ago. He just looked at me for a while and said, ‘Weaver, Weber—they might have made an error,’ and walked out without so much as a goodbye or excuse-me. Not what I call a polite gentleman.”
Thoughtfully Sam walked back to the child. Strange how sharp a mental picture he had formed of this man! Possibly because the two women who had met him thus far had been very impressionable, although to hear their stories the impression was there to be received.
He doubted there was any mistake: the man had been looking for him on both occasions; his knowledge of Sam’s vacation from foolscap this past week proved that. It did seem as if he weren’t interested in meeting him until some moot point of identity should be established beyond the least shadow of a doubt. Something of a legal mind, that.
The whole affair centered around the “Bild-A-Man” set, he was positive. This skulking investigation hadn’t started until after the gift from 2353 had been delivered—and Sam had started using it.
But till the character in the long, black overcoat paddled up to Sam Weber personally and stated his business, there wasn’t very much he could do about it.
Sam went upstairs for his Junior Biocalibrator.
He propped the manual open against the side of the bed and switched the instrument on to full scanning power. The infant gurgled thickly as the calibrator was rolled slowly over its fat body and a section of metal tape unwound from the slot with, according to the manual, a completely detailed physiological description.
It was detailed. Sam gasped as the tape, running through the enlarging viewer, gave information on the child for which a pediatrician would have taken out at least three mortgages on his immortal soul. Thyroid capacity, chromosome quality, cerebral content. All broken down into neat subheads of data for construction purposes. Rate of skull expansion in minutes for the next ten hours; rate of cartilage transformation; changes in hormone secretions while active and at rest.
This was a blueprint; it was like taking canons from a baby.
Sam left the child to a puzzled contemplation of its navel and sped upstairs. With the tape as a guide, he clipped sections of the molds into the required smaller sizes. Then, almost before he knew it consciously, he was constructing a small human.
He was amazed at the ease with which he worked. Skill was evidently acquired in this game; the mannikin had been much harder to put together. The matter of duplication and working from an informational tape simplified his problems, though.
The child took form under his eyes.
He was finished just an hour and a half after he had taken his first measurements. All except the vitalizing.
A moment’s pause, here. The ugly prospect of disassembling stopped him for a moment, but he shook it off. He had to see how well he had done the job. If this child could breathe, what was not possible to him! Besides he couldn’t keep it suspended in an inanimate condition very long without running the risk of ruining his work and the materials.
He started the vitalizer.
The child shivered and began a low, steady cry. Sam tore down to the landlady’s apartment again and scooped up a square of white linen left on the bed for emergencies. Oh well, some more clean sheets.
After he had made the necessary repairs, he stood back and took a good look at it. He was in a sense a papa. He felt as proud.
It was a perfect little creature, glowing and round with health.
“I have twinned,” he said happily.
Every detail correct. The two sides of the face correctly inexact, the duplication of the original child’s lunch at the very same point of digestion. Same hair, same eyes—or was it? Sam bent over the infant. He could have sworn the other was a blonde. This child had dark hair which seemed to grow darker as he looked.
He grabbed it with one hand and picked up the Junior Biocalibrator with the other.
Downstairs, he placed the two babies side by side on the big bed. No doubt about it. One was blonde; the other, his plagiarism, was now a definite brunette.
The biocalibrator showed other differences: Slightly faster pulse for his model. Lower blood count. Minutely higher cerebral capacity, although the content was the same. Adrenalin and bile secretions entirely unalike.
It added up to error. His child might be the superior specimen, or the inferior one, but he had not made a true copy. He had no way of knowing at the moment whether or not the infant he had built could grow into a human maturity. The other could.
Why? He had followed directions faithfully, had consulted the calibrator tape at every step. And this had resulted. Had he waited too long before starting the vitalizer? Or was it just a matter of insufficient skill?
Close to midnight, his watch delicately pointed out. It would be necessary to remove evidences of baby-making before the sisters Lipanti came home. Sam considered possibilities swiftly.
He came down in a few moments with an old tablecloth and a cardboard carton. He wrapped the child in the tablecloth, vaguely happy that the temperature had risen that night, then placed it in the carton.
The child gurgled at the adventure. Its original on the bed gooed in return. Sam slipped quietly out into the street.
Male and female drunks stumbled along tootling on tiny trumpets. People wished each other a hic Happy New Year as he strode down the necessary three blocks.
As he turned left, he saw the sign: “Urban Foundling Home.” There was a light burning over a side door. Convenient, but that was a big city for you.
Sam shrank into the shadow of an alley for a moment as a new idea occurred to him. This had to look genuine. He pulled a pencil out of his breast pocket and scrawled on the side of the carton in as small handwriting as he could manage: Please take good care of my darling little girl. I am not married.
Then he deposited the carton on the doorstep and held his finger on the bell until he heard movement inside. He was across the street and in the alley again by the time a nurse had opened the door.
It wasn’t until he walked into the boarding house that he remembered about the navel. He stopped and tried to recall. No, he had built his little girl without a navel! Her belly had been perfectly smooth. That’s what came of hurrying! Shoddy workmanship.
There might be a bit of to-do in the foundling home when they unwrapped the kid. How would they explain it?
Sam slapped his forehead. “Me and Michelangelo. He adds a navel, I forget one!”
Except for an occasional groan, the office was fairly quiet the second day of the New Year.