"That’s right, I want to take you over to Engineering and R and D," said Babcock. "Jim, I’ll be back in a little while. Want to talk to you."
"Sure," said the motionless figure.
Babcock had had a shower, but sweat was soaking through the armpits of his shirt again. The silent elevator, the green carpet, a little blurred. The air cool, stale. Seven years, blood and money, five hundred good men. Psych section, Cosmetic, Engineering, R and D, Medical, Immunology, Supply, Serology, Administration. The glass doors. Sam’s apartment empty, gone to Winnemucca with Irma. Psych. Good men, but were they the best? Three of the best had turned it down. Buried in the files. Not like an ordinary amputation, this man has had everything cut off.
The tall figure had not moved. Babcock sat down. The silver mask looked back at him.
"Jim, let’s level with each other."
"Bad, huh."
"Sure it’s bad. I left him in his room with a bottle. I’ll see him again before he leaves, but God knows what he’ll say in Washington. Listen, do me a favor, take that thing off."
"Sure." The hand rose, plucked at the edge of the silver mask, lifted it away. Under it, the tan-pink face, sculptured nose and lips, eyebrows, eyelashes, not handsome but good-looking, normal-looking. Only the eyes wrong; pupils too big. And the lips that did not open or move when it spoke. "I can take anything off. What does that prove."
"Jim. Cosmetic spent eight and a half months on that model and the first thing you do is slap a mask over it. We’ve asked you what’s wrong, offered to make any changes you want."
"No comment."
"You talked about phasing out the project. Did you think you were kidding?"
A pause. "Not kidding."
"All right, then open up, Jim, tell me; I have to know. They won’t shut the project down; they’ll keep you alive but that’s all. There are seven hundred on the volunteer list, including two U.S. senators. Suppose one of them gets pulled out of an auto wreck tomorrow. We can’t wait till then to decide; we’ve got to know now. Whether to let the next one die or put him into a TP body like yours. So talk to me."
"Suppose I tell you something but it isn’t the truth."
"Why would you lie?"
"Why do you lie to a cancer patient."
"I don’t get it. Come on, Jim."
"Okay, try this. Do I look like a man to you."
"Sure."
"Bull. Look at this face." Calm and perfect. Beyond the fake irises, a wink of metal. "Suppose we had all the other problems solved and I could go into Winnemucca tomorrow; can you see me walking down the street, going into a bar, taking a taxi."
"Is that all it is?" Babcock drew a deep breath. "Jim, sure there’s a difference, but for Christ’s sake, it’s like any other prosthesis—people get used to it. Like that arm of Sam’s. You see it, but after a while you forget it, you don’t notice."
"Bull. You pretend not to notice. Because it would embarrass the cripple."
Babcock looked down at his clasped hands. "Sorry for yourself?"
"Don’t give me that," the voice blared. The tall figure was standing. The hands slowly came up, the fists clenched. "I’m in this thing, I’ve been in it for two years. I’m in it when I go to sleep, and when I wake up, I’m still in it."
Babcock looked up at him. "What do you want, facial mobility? Give us twenty years, maybe ten, we’ll lick it."
"No. No."
"Then what?"
"I want you to close down Cosmetic."
"But that’s—"
"Just listen. The first model looked like a tailor’s dummy, so you spent eight months and came up with this one, and it looks like a corpse. The whole idea was to make me look like a man, the first model pretty good, the second model better, until you’ve got something that can smoke cigars and joke with women and go bowling and nobody will know the difference. You can’t do it, and if you could, what for?"
"I don’t— Let me think about this. What do you mean, a metal—"
"Metal, sure, but what difference does that make. I’m talking about shape. Function. Wait a minute." The tall figure strode across the room, unlocked a cabinet, came back with rolled sheets of paper. "Look at this."
The drawing showed an oblong metal box on four jointed legs. From one end protruded a tiny mushroom-shaped head on a jointed stem and a cluster of arms ending in probes, drills, grapples. "For moon prospecting."
"Too many limbs," said Babcock after a moment. "How would you—"
"With the facial nerves. Plenty of them left over. Or here." Another drawing. "A module plugged into the control system of a spaceship. That’s where I belong, in space. Sterile environment, low grav, I can go where a man can’t go and do what a man can’t do. I can be an asset, not a goddamn billion-dollar liability."
Babcock rubbed his eyes. "Why didn’t you say anything before?"
"You were all hipped on prosthetics. You would have told me to tend my knitting."
Babcock’s hands were shaking as he rolled up the drawings. "Well, by God, this just may do it. It just might." He stood up and turned toward the door. "Keep your—" He cleared his throat. "I mean, hang tight, Jim."
"I’ll do that."
When he was alone, he put on his mask again and stood motionless a moment, eye shutters closed. Inside, he was running clean and cool; he could feel the faint reassuring hum of pumps, click of valves and relays. They had given him that: cleaned out all the offal, replaced it with machinery that did not bleed, ooze or suppurate. He thought of the lie he had told Babcock. Why do you lie to a cancer patient? But they would never get it, never understand.
He sat down at the drafting table, clipped a sheet of paper to it and with a pencil began to sketch a rendering of the moon-prospector design. When he had blocked in the prospector itself, he began to draw the background of craters. His pencil moved more slowly and stopped; he put it down with a click.
No more adrenal glands to pump adrenaline into his blood, so he could not feel fright or rage. They had released him from all that—love, hate, the whole sloppy mess—but they had forgotten there was still one emotion he could feel.
Sinescu, with the black bristles of his beard sprouting through his oily skin. A whitehead ripe in the crease beside his nostril.
Moon landscape, clean and cold. He picked up the pencil again.
Babcock, with his broad pink nose shining with grease, crusts of white matter in the corners of his eyes. Food mortar between his teeth.
Sam’s wife, with raspberry-colored paste on her mouth. Face smeared with tears, a bright bubble in one nostril. And the damn dog, shiny nose, wet eyes…
He turned. The dog was there, sitting on the carpet, wetted tongue out—left the door open again—dripping, wagged its tail twice, then started to get up. He reached for the metal T square, leaned back, swinging it like an ax, and the dog yelped once as metal sheared bone, one eye spouting red, writhing on its back, dark stain of piss across the carpet, and he hit it again, hit it again.
The body lay twisted on the carpet, fouled with blood, ragged black lips drawn back from teeth. He wiped off the T square with a paper towel, then scrubbed it in the sink with soap and steel wool, dried it and hung it up. He got a sheet of drafting paper, laid it on the floor, rolled the body over onto it without spilling any blood on the carpet. He lifted the body in the paper, carried it out onto the patio, then onto the unroofed section, opening the doors with his shoulder. He looked over the wall. Two stories down, concrete roof, vents sticking out of it, nobody watching. He held the dog out, let it slide off the paper, twisting as it fell. It struck one of the vents, bounced, a red smear. He carried the paper back inside, poured the blood down the drain, then put the paper into the incinerator chute.