Philip Dick - We Can Build You

We ordered drinks.

"Did you really make your first pile playing poker in the Service?" I asked Barrows.

"No, craps it was. A six-month floating crapgame. Poker takes skill; I have luck."

Pris said, "It wasn't luck that got you into real estate."

"No, it was because my mother used to rent out rooms in our old place in L.A." Barrows eyed her.

"Nor," Pris said in the same tense voice, "was it luck that has made you the Don Quixote who successfully tilted the Supreme Court of the United States into ruling against the Space Agency and its greedy monopolizing of entire moons and planets."

Barrows nodded at her. "You're generous in your description. I had in my possession what I believed to be valid title to parcels on Luna, and wanted to test the validity of those titles in such a way that they'd never be challenged again. Say, I've met you."

"Yes," Pris said, bright-eyed.

"Can't place you, though."

"It was only for a moment. In your office. I don't blame you for not remembering. I remember you, however." She had not taken her eyes from the man.

"You're Rock's daughter?"

"Yes, Mr. Barrows."

She looked a lot better, tonight. Her hair had been done, and she wore enough make-up to hide her paleness, but not so much as to give her the garish mask-like appearance which I had noticed in the past. Now that she had taken off her coat I saw that she wore an attractive fluffy jersey sweater, short-sleeved, with one piece of gold jewelry--a pin shaped like a snake--over her right breast. By god, I decided, she had a bra on, too, the kind that created bulk where there was no bulk. For this extraordinary occasion Pris had obtained a bosom. And, when she rose to hang up her coat, I saw that in her high, very thin heels she appeared to have nice legs. So, when the occasion demanded, she could fix herself up more than correctly.

"Let me take that," Blunk said, sweeping her coat away from her and bouncing over to the rack to hang it on a hanger. He returned, bowed, smiled merrily at her and reseated himself. "Are you sure," he boomed, "that this dirty old man--" He indicated Maury. "Is actually your father? Or is it not the case that you're committing a sin, the sin of statutory rape, sir?" He pointed his finger in a mock-epic manner at Maury. "Shame, sir!" He smiled at us all.

"You just want her for yourself," Barrows said, biting off the fantail of a prawn and laying it aside. "How do you know she's not another of those simulacrum things, like the Stanton one?"

"I'll take a dozen gross!" Blunk cried, his eyes shining.

Maury said, "She really is my daughter. She's been away at school." He looked uncomfortable.

"And come back--" Blunk lowered his voice. In an exaggerated aside he whispered hoarsely to Maury, "_In the family way_, is that it?"

Maury grinned uneasily.

Changing the subject I said, "It's nice to see you again, Mrs. Nild."

"Thank you."

"That Stanton robot scared the slats out of us," Barrows said to Maury and me, his elbows resting on the table, arms folded. He had finished his prawns and he looked well-fed and sleek. For a man who started out on stewed prunes he seemed to enjoy his food to the hilt. I had to approve of that, personally; it seemed to me to be an encouraging sign.

"You people are to be congratulated!" Blunk said. "You produced a monster!" He laughed loudly, enjoying himself. "I say kill the thing! Get a mob with torches! Onward!"

We all had to laugh at that.

"How did the Frankenstein monster finally die?" Colleen asked.

"Ice," Maury said. "The castle burned down and they sprayed hoses on it and the water became ice."

"But the monster was found frozen in the ice in the next movie," I said. "And they revived him."

"He disappeared into a pit of bubbling lava," Blunk said. "I was there. I kept a button from his coat." From his coat pocket he produced a button which he displayed to each of us in turn. "Off the world-famous Frankenstein monster."

Colleen said, "It's off your vest, David."

"What!" Blunk glanced down, scowling. "So it is! It's my own button!" Again he laughed.

Barrows, investigating his teeth with the edge of his thumbnail, said to Maury and me, "How much did it set you back to put together the Stanton robot?"

"Around five thousand," Maury said.

"And how much can it be produced in quantity for? Say, if several hundred thousand are run off."

"Hell," Maury said quickly. "I would say around six hundred dollars. That assumes they're identical, have the same ruling monads and are fed the same tapes."

"What it is," Barrows said to him, "is a life-size version of the talking dolls that were so popular in the past; correct--"

"No," Maury said, "not exactly."

"Well, it talks and walks around," Barrows said. "It took a bus to Seattle. Isn't that the automaton principle made a little more complex?" Before Maury could answer he continued. "What I'm getting at is, there really isn't anything _new_ here, is there?"

Silence.

"Sure," Maury said. He did not look very merry, now. And I noticed that Pris, too, seemed abruptly humorless.

"Well, would you spell it out, please," Barrows said, still with his pleasant tone, his informality. Picking up his glass of Green Hungarian he sipped. "Go ahead, Rock."

"It's not an automaton at all," Maury said. "You know the work of Grey Walter in England? The turtles? It's what's called a homeostatic system. It's cut off from its environment; it produces its own responses. It's like the fully automated factory which repairs itself. Do you know what 'feedback' refers to? In electrical systems there--"

Dave Blunk put his hand on Maury's shoulder. "What Mr. Barrows wants to know has to do with the patentability, if I may use such an unwieldly term, of your Stanton and Lincoln robots."

Pris spoke up in a low, controlled voice. "We're fully covered at the patent office. We have expert legal representation."

"That's good to hear," Barrows said, smiling at her as he picked his teeth. "Because otherwise there's nothing to buy."

"Many new principles are involved," Maury said. "The Stanton electronic simulacrum represents work developed over a period of years by many research teams in and out of Government and if I may say so myself we're all abundantly pleased, even amazed, at the terrific results... as you saw yourself when the Stanton got off the Greyhound bus at Seattle and took a taxi to your office."

"It walked," Barrows said.

"Pardon?"

"I say, it walked to my office from the Greyhound bus station."

"In any case," Maury said, "what we've achieved here has no precedent in the electronics trade."

After dinner we drove to Ontario, arriving at the office of MASA ASSOCIATES at ten o'clock.

"Funny little town," Dave Blunk said, surveying the empty streets. "Everybody in bed."

"Wait until you see the Lincoln," Maury said as we got out from the car.

They had stopped at the showroom window and were reading the sign that had to do with the Lincoln.

"I'll be a son of a gun," Barrows said. He put his face to the glass, peering in. "No sign of it right now, though. What does it do, sleep at night? Or do you have it assassinated every evening around five, when sidewalk traffic is heaviest?"

Maury said, "The Lincoln is probably down in the shop. We'll go down there." He unlocked the door and stood aside to let us enter.

Presently we were standing at the entrance to the dark repairshop as Maury groped for the light switch. At last he found it.

There, seated in meditation, was the Lincoln. It had been sitting quietly in the darkness.

Barrows said at once, "Mr. President." I saw him nudge Colleen Nild. Blunk grinned, looking enthusiastic, with the greedy, good-humored warmth of a hungry but confident cat. Clearly, he was getting enormous enjoyment out of all this. Mrs. Nild craned her neck, gasped faintly, obviously impressed. Barrows, of course, walked on into the repairshop without hesitation, knowing exactly what to do. He did not hold his hand out to the Lincoln; he halted a few paces from it, showing respect.