“If you were peaceful, you wouldn’t drink so much,” Farker said mildly. “Drinking is the sign of an unresolved conflict.”
“No kidding,” Cobb said heavily. In the golden warmth of the sun, the sherry had taken quick effect. “Here’s an unresolved conflict for you.” He ran a fingernail down the vertical white scar on his furry chest. “I don’t have the money for another second-hand heart. In a year or two this cheapie’s going to poop out on me.”
Farker grimaced. “So? Use your two years.”
Cobb ran his finger back up the scar, as if zipping it up. “I’ve seen what it’s like, Farker. I’ve had a taste of it. It’s the worst thing there is.” He shuddered at the dark memory—teeth, ragged clouds—and fell silent.
Farker glanced at his watch. Time to get going or Cynthia would …
“You know what Jimi Hendrix said?” Cobb asked. Recalling the quote brought the old resonance back into his voice. “ ‘When it’s my time to die, I’m going to be the one doing it. So as long as I’m alive, you let me live my way.’ ”
Farker shook his head. “Face it, Cobb, if you drank less you’d get a lot more out of life.” He raised his hand to cut off his friend’s reply. “But I’ve got to get home. Bye bye.”
“Bye.”
Cobb walked to the end of the asphalt and over a low dune to the edge of the beach. No one was there today, and he sat down under his favourite palm tree.
The breeze had picked up a little. Warmed by the sand, it lapped Cobb’s face, buried under white whiskers. The dolphins were gone.
He sipped sparingly at his sherry and let the memories play. There were only two thoughts to be avoided: death and his abandoned wife, Verena. The sherry kept them away.
The sun was going down behind him when he saw the stranger. Barrel chest, erect posture, strong arms and legs covered with curly hair, a round white beard. Like Santa Claus, or like Ernest Hemingway the year he shot himself.
“Hello, Cobb,” the man said. He wore sungoggles and looked amused. His shorts and sport shirt glittered.
“Care for a drink?” Cobb gestured at the half-empty bottle. He wondered who, if anyone, he was talking to.
“No thanks,” the stranger said, sitting down. “It doesn’t do anything for me.”
Cobb stared at the man. Something about him…
“You’re wondering who I am,” the stranger said, smiling. “I’m you.”
“You who?”
“You me.” The stranger used Cobb’s own tight little smile on him. “I’m a mechanical copy of your body.”
The face seemed right and there was even the scar from the heart transplant. The only difference between them was how alert and health the copy looked. Call him Cobb Anderson2. Cobb2 didn’t drink. Cob envied him. He hadn’t had a completely sober day since he had operation and left his wife.
“How did you get here?”
The robot waved a hand palm up. Cobb liked the way the gesture looked on someone else. “I can’t tell you,” the machine said. “You know how most people feel about us.”
Cobb chuckled his agreement. He should know. At first the public had been delighted that Cobb’s moon-robots had evolved into intelligent boppers. That had been before Ralph Numbers had led the 2001 revolt. After the revolt, Cobb had been tried for treason. He focused back on the present.
“If you’re a bopper, then how can you be… here?” Cobb waved his hand in a vague circle taking in the hot sand and the setting sun. “It’s too hot. All the boppers I know of are based on super-cooled circuits. Do you have a refrigeration unit hidden in your stomach?”
Anderson2 made another familiar hand gesture. “I’m not going to tell you yet, Cobb. Later you’ll find out. Just take this....” The robot fumbled in its pocket and brought out a wad of bills. “Twenty-five grand. We want you to get the flight to Disky tomorrow. Ralph Numbers will your contact up there. He’ll meet you at the Anderson room in the museum.”
Cobb’s heart leapt at the thought of seeing Ralph Numbers again. Ralph, his first and finest model, the one who had set all the others free. But…
“I can’t get a visa,” Cobb said. “You know that. I’m not allowed to leave the Gimmie territory.”
“Let us worry about that,” the robot said urgently. “There’ll be someone to help you through the formalities. We’re working on it right now. And I’ll stand in for you while you’re gone. No one’ll be the wiser.”
The intensity of his double’s tone made Cobb suspicious. He took a drink of sherry and tried to look shrewd. “What’s the point of all this? Why should I want to go to the Moon in the first place? And why do the boppers want me there?”
Anderson2 glanced around the empty beach and leaned close. “We want to make you immortal, Dr. Anderson. After all you did for us, it’s the least we can do.”
Immortal! The word was like a window flung open. With death so close nothing had mattered. But if there was a way out…
“How?” Cobb demanded. In his excitement he rose to his feet. “How will you do it? Will you make me young again too?”
“Take it easy,” the robot said, also rising. “Don’t get overexcited. Just trust us. With our supplies of tank-grown organs we can rebuild you from the ground up. And you’ll get as much interferon as you need.”
The machine stared into Cobb’s eyes, looking honest. Staring back, Cobb noticed that they hadn’t gotten the irises quite right. The little ring of blue was too flat and even. The eyes were, after all, just glass, unreadable glass.
The double pressed the money into Cobb’s hand. “Take the money and get the shuttle tomorrow. We’ll arrange for a young man called Sta-Hi to help you at the spaceport.”
Music was playing, wheedling closer. A Mr. Frostee truck, the same one Cobb had seen before. It was white, with a big freezer box in back. There was a smiling giant plastic ice-cream cone mounted on top of the cab. Cobb’s double gave him a pat on the shoulder and trotted up the beach.
When he reached the truck, the robot looked back and flashed a smile. Yellow teeth in the white beard. For the first time in years, Cobb loved himself, the erect strut, the frightened eyes. “Good-bye,” he shouted, waving the money. “And thanks!”
Cobb Anderson2 jumped into the soft-ice-cream truck next to the driver, a fat short-haired man with no shirt. And then the Mr. Frostee truck drove off, its music silenced again. It was dusk now. The sound of the truck’s motor faded into the ocean’s roar. If only it was true.
But it had to be! Cobb was holding twenty-five thousand-dollar bills. He counted them twice to make sure. And then he scrawled the figure $25,000 in the sand and looked at it. That was a lot.
As the darkness fell he finished the sherry and, on a sudden impulse put the money in the bottle and buried it next to his tree in a meter of sand. The excitement was wearing off now, and fear was setting in. Could the boppers really give him immortality with surgery and interferon?
It seemed unlikely. A trick. But why would the boppers lie to him?
Surely they remembered all the good things he’d done for them. Maybe they just wanted to show him a good time. God knows he could use it. And it would be great to see Ralph Numbers again.
Walking home along the beach, Cobb stopped several times tempted to go back and dig up that bottle to see if the money was real there. The moon was up, and he could see the little sand-colored crabs moving out of their holes. They could shred those bills right up, he thought, stopping again.