He was going through the last intriguing pages of the book when he was aware of two people teetering awkwardly, near his desk. His eyes left the manual reluctantly: “New kinds of life for your leisure moments” was really fascinating!
Tina and Lew Knight.
Sam digested the fact that neither of them was perched on his desk.
Tina now wore the little ring she’d received for Christmas on the third finger of her left hand; Lew was experimenting with a sheepish look and finding it difficult.
“Oh, Sam. Last night, Lew… Sam, we wanted you to be the first—Such a surprise, like that, I mean! Why I almost—Naturally we thought this would be a little difficult… Sam, we’re going, I mean we expect—”
“—to be married,” Lew Knight finished in what was almost an undertone. For the first time since Sam had known him he looked uncertain and suspicious of life, like a man who finds a newly hatched octopus in his breakfast orange juice.
“You’d adore the way Lew proposed,” Tina was gushing. “So roundabout. And so shy. I told him afterward that I thought for a moment he was talking of something else entirely. I did have trouble understanding you, didn’t I, dear?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, you had trouble understanding me.” Lew stared at his former rival. “Much of a surprise?”
“Oh, no. No surprise at all. You two fit together so perfectly that I knew it right from the first.” Sam mumbled his felicitations, conscious of Tina’s searching glances. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s something I have to take care of immediately. A special sort of wedding present.”
Lew was disconcerted. “A wedding present. This early?”
“Why, certainly,” Tina told him. “It isn’t very easy to get just the right thing. And a special friend like Sam naturally wants to get a very special gift.”
Sam decided he had taken enough. He grabbed the manual and his coat and dodged through the door.
By the time he came to the red stone steps of the boarding house, he had reached the conclusion that the wound, while painful, had definitely missed his heart. He was in fact chuckling at the memory of Lew Knight’s face when his landlady plucked at his sleeve.
“That man was here again today, Mr. Weber. He said he wanted to see you.”
“Which man? The tall, old fellow?”
Mrs. Lipanti nodded, her arms folded complacently across her chest. “Such an unpleasant person! When I told him you weren’t in, he insisted I take him up to your room. I said I couldn’t do that without your permission and he looked at me fit to kill. I’ve never believed in the evil eye myself—although I always say where there is smoke there must be fire—but if there is such a thing as an evil eye, he has it.”
“Will he be back?”
“Yes. He asked me when you usually return and I said about eight o’clock, figuring that if you didn’t want to meet him it would give you time to change your clothes and wash up and leave before he gets here. And, Mr. Weber, if you’ll excuse me for saying this, I don’t think you want to meet him.”
“Thanks. But when he comes in at eight, show him up. If he’s the right person, I’m in illegal possession of his property. I want to know where this property originates.”
In his room, he put the manual away carefully and told the box to open. The Junior Biocalibrator was not too bulky and newspaper would suffice to cover it. He was on his way uptown in a few minutes with the strangely shaped parcel under his arm.
Did he still want to duplicate Tina, he pondered? Yes, in spite of everything. She was still the woman he desired more than any he had ever known; and with the original married to Lew, the replica would have no choice but himself. Only—the replica would have Tina’s characteristics up to the moment the measurements were taken; she might insist on marrying Lew as well.
That would make for a bit of a mad situation. But he was still miles from that bridge. It might even be amusing—
The possibility of error was more annoying. The Tina he would make might be off-center in a number of ways: reds might overlap pinks; like an imperfectly reproduced color photograph, she might, in time, come to digest her own stomach; there could very easily be a streak of strange and incurable insanity implicit in his model which would not assert itself until a deep mutual affection had flowered and borne fruit. As yet, he was no great shakes as a twinner and human mimeographer; the errors he had made on Mrs. Lipanti’s niece demonstrated his amateur standing.
Sam knew he would never be able to dismantle Tina if she proved defective. Outside of the chivalrous concepts and almost superstitious reverence for womankind pressed into him by a small-town boyhood, there was the unmitigated horror he felt at the idea of such a beloved object going through the same disintegrating process as—well, the mannikin. But if he overlooked an essential in the construction, what other recourse would there be?
Solution: nothing must be overlooked. Sam grinned bitterly as the ancient elevator swayed up to his office. If he only had time for a little more practice with a person whose reactions he knew so exactly that any deviation from the norm would be instantly obvious! But the strange old man would be calling tonight, and, if his business concerned “Bild-A-Man” sets, Sam’s experiments might be abruptly curtailed. And where would he find such a person—he had few real friends and no intimate ones. And, to be at all valuable, it would have to be someone he knew as well as himself.
Himself!
“Floor, sir.” The elevator operator was looking at him reproachfully. Sam’s exultant shout had caused him to bring the carrier to a spasmodic stop six inches under the floor level, something he had not done since that bygone day when he had first nervously reached for the controls. He felt his craftsmanship was under a shadow as he morosely closed the door behind the lawyer.
And why not himself? He knew his own physical attributes better than he knew Tina’s; any mental instability on the part of his reproduced self would be readily discernible long before it reached the point of psychosis or worse. And the beauty of it was that he would have no compunction in disassembling a superfluous Sam Weber. Quite the contrary: the horror in that situation would be the continued existence of a duplicate personality; its removal would be a relief.
Twinning himself would provide the necessary practice in a familiar medium. Ideal. He’d have to take careful notes so that if anything went wrong he’d know just where to avoid going off the track in making his own personal Tina.
And maybe the old geezer wasn’t interested in the set at all. Even if he were, Sam could take his landlady’s advice and not be at home when he called. Silver linings wherever he looked.
Lew Knight stared at the instrument in Sam’s hands. “What in the sacred name of Blackstone and all his commentaries is that? Looks like a lawn mower for a window box!”
“It’s uh, sort of a measuring gadget. Gives the right size for one thing and another and this and that. Won’t be able to get you the wedding present I have in mind unless I know the right size. Or sizes. Tina, would you mind stepping out into the hall?”
“Nooo.” She looked dubiously at the gadget. “It won’t hurt?”
It wouldn’t hurt a bit, Sam assured her. “I just want to keep this a secret from Lew till after the ceremony.”
She brightened at that and preceded Sam through the door. “Hey, counselor,” one of the other young lawyers called at Lew as they left. “Hey, counselor, don’t let him do that. Possession is nine points, Sam always says. He’ll never bring her back.”
Lew chuckled weakly and bent over his work.
“Now I want you to go into the ladies’ room,” Sam explained to a bewildered Tina. “I’ll stand guard outside and tell the other customers that the place is out of order. If another woman is inside, wait until she leaves. Then strip.”