Made to Measure, William Campbell Gault [free books to read TXT] 📗

Westchester that night, Joe told Alice, "Sam's a timid bidder. His wife's inclined to overbid. Plays a sacrificing game when she knows it will gain points. Our job will be to make her oversacrifice."

Sam's eyes opened at sight of her; his wife's narrowed. Joe took pride in their reaction, but it was a strange, impersonal pride.

They had a drink and some small talk, and settled around the table. It was more like a seance than a game.

They bid and made four clubs, a heart. Sam's wife got that determined look. With the opposition holding down one leg of the rubber, she figured to make the next bid a costly one.

She won it with six diamonds, and went down nine tricks, doubled. Sam started to say something, after the debacle, but one look at his wife's anguished countenance stopped him short of audibility.

Sam said consolingly, "I'm such a lousy bidder, dear. I must have given you the wrong idea of my hand."

Next time, Sam made up for his timidity. Sam, with one heart in his hand, tried a psychic. "One heart," he said firmly.

Sam knew there was a good chance the hearts were in the oppositions' hands, and this looked like a fine defensive tactic.

However, his wife, with a three-suit powerhouse, couldn't conceive of a psychic from Sam. She had need of only a second round stopper in hearts and a small slam in no trump was in the bag. She had no hearts, but timid Sam was undoubtedly holding the ace-king.

She bid six no-trump, which was conservative for her. She didn't want to make the mistake of having Sam let the bid die.

Joe had the ace, king, queen and jack of hearts and a three to lead to Alice's hand. Alice finished up the hearts for a total of seven tricks, and this time it was Mrs. Tullgren who opened her mouth to speak.

But she remembered Sam's kindness in the former hand, and she said, "It was all my fault, darling. To think I couldn't recognize a psychic, just because it came from you. I think we're overmatched, sweet." She paused to smile at Joe. "Up against the man who invented the comptin-reduco-determina." She added, as an afterthought, "And his charming, brilliant new wife."

Which brought about incident number three.

Alice turned to Mrs. Tullgren sweetly and asked, "Don't you really understand the comptin-reduco-determina?"

"Not even faintly," Mrs. Tullgren answered. She smiled at Alice.

The smile faded after about ten minutes. For Alice was telling her all about the comptin-reduco-determina. For an hour and nineteen minutes, Alice talked to this woman who had been humiliated twice, telling her all the things about the famous thinking machine that Mrs. Tullgren didn't want to know.

It wasn't until Alice was through talking animatedly that the entranced Joe began to suspect that perhaps the Tullgrens weren't as interested in the dingus as a scientific mind would assume.

They weren't. There was a strain after that, a decided heaviness to the rest of the evening. Sam seemed to sigh with relief when they said good night.

In the car, Joe was thoughtful. Halfway home, he said, "Darling, I think you know too much—for a female, that is. I think you'll have to have a go with the knowledge-instiller. In reverse, of course."

"Of course," she agreed.

"I don't object to females knowing a lot. The world does."

"Of course," she said.

She was a first model and, therefore, experimental. These bugs were bound to show up. She was now less knowing, more deceptive, and she could frown.

She began to remind him of Vera, which didn't make sense.

Alice was sad when he was sad, gay when he was gay, and romantic to the same split-degree in the same split-second. She even told him his old jokes with the same inflection he always used.

Their mood affinity was geared as closely as the comptin-reduco-determina. What more could a man want? And, damn it, why should Vera's perfume linger in that back bedroom?

The fumigators could do nothing. They left, after the third trip, shaking their heads. Joe stood in the doorway, insisting he could still smell it.

Alice said, "It's probably mental, dear. Perhaps you still—still—what's that word? Perhaps you still love her."

"How could you think that?" he asked. "How? How could you think that unless I was thinking it?"

"I couldn't. I love you, too, Joe, but you know why that is."

"What do you mean?"

"We both love you, Joe."

"Both? You and Vera?"

"No. You and I, we both love you."

"That," said Joe peevishly, "is ridiculous. If you could think for yourself, you'd know it was ridiculous."

"Of course," she agreed. And frowned, because he was frowning.

"You act like a robot," Joe said.

She nodded.

"That's all you are," Joe went on evenly, "a robot. No volition."

She nodded, frowning.

"I'm sick of it."

She said nothing, sympathetically looking sick.

And then he smiled and said, "I'm not stumped. Not the inventor of the comptin-reduco-determina. By Harry, I'll give you volition. I'll give you enough volition to make you dizzy."

And because he was smiling, she was smiling. And only a very perceptive person might notice that her smile seemed to have an intensity, an anticipation slightly beyond his.

He got to work on it that night. He would have to erase some of his mental background from her brain. He wanted her no less intelligent, no less discerning, but with enough of a change in background to give her a viewpoint of her own. He labored until midnight, and tumbled into bed with a headache.

Next morning, at breakfast, he told her, "We'll try it out tonight. After that, you'll be a person."

"Of course. And will you love me, Joe?"

"More coffee, please," he answered.

At the office, there was another note from his secretary: Mr. Burke wants to see you. At your convenience.

At your convenience? Was Burke going soft? Joe went right in.

Burke was smiling, a miracle in itself. Burke's voice was jovial. "The Chief's been telling me about the new wife, Joe. I guess I owe you an apology."

"Not at all," Joe said. "I had no right to be rude. I was a little overworked—at home. I wasn't myself."

Burke nodded smugly, soaking it up. "Beautiful, the Chief tells me. Am I going to meet her, Joe?"

"If you want. How about tonight, for dinner? I've got something new planned. I'm giving her volition. Maybe you'll want to watch."

"Volition?"

Joe went on to explain about volition, making it as simple as he could, to match Burke's mind.

"That," Burke said when he'd finished, "I want to see."

They went home in the crowded Inglewood tube. Sam was there, but Sam seemed to avoid them, for some reason. All the way home, Joe had the uncomfortable feeling that Burke didn't believe any part of this business, that Burke was making the trip only to substantiate his own misconceptions.

But when Alice came into the living room, smiling brightly, extending her hand to the Senior Assistant, Joe had a gratifying glimpse of Burke's face.

Burke was lost. Burke stared and swallowed and grinned like a green stage hand at a burlesque show. Burke's smile was perpetual and nauseating. Even in the face of Alice's cool reserve.

The dinner was fine, the liquor mellow.

Then Joe said, "Well, Alice, it's time for the volition. It's time for your birth as a person."

"Of course," she said, and smiled.

They went down into the basement, the three of them; she sat in the chair he'd prepared and he clamped on the wired helmet and adjusted the electrodes.

Burke said weakly, "It isn't—dangerous, is it?"

"Dangerous?" Joe stared at him. "Of course not. Remember how I explained it?"

"I—uh—my memory—" Burke subsided.

She closed her eyes and smiled. Joe threw the switch. She'd have knowledge; she'd have the memory of her past few days of existence as his alter ego. She'd have volition.

The contact clock took over. Her eyes remained closed, but her smile began to fade as the second hand moved around and around the big, contact-studded dial.

Joe was smiling, though she wasn't. Joe was filled with a sense of his own creative power, his own inventive genius and gratification at the worried frown on the face of the imbecile Burke.

Then the clock stopped and there was a buzz; the meters dropped to zero. Alice opened her eyes. For the first time, as a person, she opened her eyes.

Her smile was back. But she was looking at Burke. Looking at Burke and smiling!

"Baby," she said.

Burke looked puzzled, but definitely pleased. In all Burke's adult life, no female had ever looked at him like that.

Joe said tolerantly, "You're a little confused yet, Alice. I'm your husband."

"You?" She stared at him. "Do you think I've forgotten you? Do you think I don't know you, after living inside your brain, almost? You monster, you egocentric, selfish, humorless walking equation. You're not my husband and I'd like to see you prove that you are."

Now it was only Burke who smiled. "By George," he said, "that's right. There's no wedding on record, is there, Joe?"

"Wedding?" Joe repeated blankly. "I made her. I created her. Of course there's no—"

"Of course, of course, of course," Alice shrilled. "That's all you know. You're the original 'of course' kid. Things aren't that certain, Junior. I've known you just long enough and just well enough to detest you." Now she pointed at Burke. "That's what I want. That's my kind of man."

Burke gulped and grinned, nodded. "To coin a phrase, you said it, kiddo." He smiled at Joe. "I'll run her right down to the Center and get her registered, and take out an intent option. I guess we can't fight fate, Joe, can we?"

Joe took a deep breath of air. "I guess not. I guess it's—kismet."

He was still standing there when he heard the front door slam. He kept staring at the machine, not seeing it, hearing instead all she had said. She knew him better than anyone who lived. Better, actually, than he knew himself, because she didn't rationalize, being outside his mental sphere now. You might say she'd been in his mind and detested what she had found there.

It was a crawling feeling, the knowledge that he had been guilty of rationalization himself, that he had faults his mind refused to acknowledge. He couldn't doubt that he was all the cold and gruesome things she had called him. The worst shock, however, was that he had studied psychology and honestly had believed he was an objective thinker.

But who, he realized, could be completely honest about himself?

He looked at the machine and saw the non-rationalization electrodes. He had used that on her and she had seen clearly what he still couldn't recognize. What he needed, apparently, was a good, objective look at his own mind.

He set the contact clock for objectivity maximum and clamped the electrodes on his head. He reached for the switch, had to close his eyes before he could throw it.