Philip Dick - We Can Build You

Turning his head the Lincoln regarded him with a melancholy expression. I had never seen such despair on a face before, and I shrank back; so did Maury. Pris did not react at all; she merely remained standing in the doorway. The Lincoln rose to its feet, hesitated, and then by degrees the expression of pain faded from its face; it said in a broken, reedy voice--completely at contrast to its tall frame, "Yes sir." It inspected Barrows from its height, with kindliness and interest, its eyes twinkling a little.

"My name is Sam Barrows," Barrows said. "It's a great honor to meet you, Mr. President."

"Thank you, Mr. Barrows," the Lincoln said. "Won't you and your friends enter and accommodate yourselves?"

To me Dave Blunk gave a wide-eyed silent whistle of astonishment and awe. He clapped me on the back. "Wheee," he said softly.

"You remember me, Mr. President," I said to the simulacrum.

"Yes, Mr. Rosen."

"What about me?" Pris said drily.

The simulacrum made a faint, clumsy, formal bow. "Miss Frauenzimmer. And you, Mr. Rock... the person on which this edifice rests, does it not?" The simulacrum chuckled. "The owner, or co-owner, if I am not mistook."

"What have you been doing?" Maury asked it.

"I was thinking about a remark of Lyman Trumbull's. As you know, Judge Douglas met with Buchanan and they talked over the Lecompton Constitution and Kansas. Judge Douglas later came out and fought Buchanan, despite the threat, it being an Administration measure. I did not support Judge Douglas, as did a number of those dear to me among my own party, the Republicans and their cause. But in Bloomington, where I was toward the end of 1857, I saw no Republicans going over to Douglas, as one saw in the New York _Tribune_. I asked Lyman Trumbull to write me in Springfield to tell me whether--"

Barrows interrupted the Lincoln simulacrum, at that point. "Sir, if you'll excuse me. We have business to conduct, and then I and this gentleman, Mr. Blunk, and Mrs. Nild, here, have to fly back to Seattle."

The Lincoln bowed. "Mrs. Nild." He held out his hand, and, with a snorting laugh, Colleen Nild went forward to shake hands with him. "Mr. Blunk." He gravely shook hands with the short plump attorney. "You're not related to Nathan Blunk of Cleveland, are you, sir?"

"No, I'm not," Blunk answered, shaking hands vigorously. "You were an attorney at one time, weren't you, Mr. Lincoln?"

"Yes sir," the Lincoln replied.

"My profession."

"I see," the Lincoln said, with a smile. "You have the divine ability to wrangle over trifles."

Blunk boomed out a hearty laugh.

Coming up beside Blunk, Barrows said to the simulacrum, "We flew here from Seattle to discuss with Mr. Rosen and Mr. Rock a financial transaction involving backing of MASA ASSOCIATES by Barrows Enterprises. Before we finalize we wanted to meet you and have a talk. We met the Stanton recently; he came to visit us on a bus. We'd acquire you and Stanton both as assets of MASA ASSOCIATES, as well as basic patents. As an ex-attorney you're probably familiar with transactions of this sort. I'd be curious to ask you something. What's your sense of the modern world? Do you know what a _vitamin_ is, for instance? Do you know what year this is?" He scrutinized the simulacrum keenly.

The Lincoln did not answer immediately, and while it was getting ready, Maury waved Barrows over to one side. I joined them.

"That's all beside the point," Maury said. "You know perfectly well it wasn't made to handle topics like that."

"True," Barrows agreed. "But I'm curious."

"Don't be. You'd feel funny if you burned out one of its primary circuits."

"Is it that delicate?"

"No," Maury said, "but you're needling it."

"No I'm not. It's so convincingly lifelike that I want to know how conscious it is of its new existence."

"Leave it alone," Maury said.

Barrows gestured abruptly. "Certainly." He beckoned to Colleen Nild and their attorney. "Let's conclude our business and start back to Seattle. David, are you satisfied by what you see?"

"No," Blunk said, as he joined us. Colleen remained with Pris and the simulacrum; they were asking it something about the debates with Stephen Douglas. "It doesn't seem to function nearly as well as the Stanton one, in my opinion."

"How so?" Maury demanded.

"It's--halting."

"It just came to," I said.

"No, it's not that," Maury said. "It's a different personality. Stanton's more inflexible, dogmatic." To me he said, "I know a hell of a lot about those two people. Lincoln was this way. I made up the tapes. He had periods of brooding, he was brooding here just now when we came in. Other times he's more cheerful." To Blunk he said, "That's his character. If you stick around awhile you'll see him in other moods. Moody--that's what he is. Not like Stanton, not positive. I mean, it's not an electrical failure; it's supposed to be that way."

"I see," Blunk said, but he did not sound convinced.

"I know what you refer to," Barrows said. "It seems to stick."

"Right," Blunk said. "I'm not sure in my own mind that they've got this perfected. There may be a lot of bugs left to iron out."

"And this cover-up line," Barrows said, "about not questioning it as to contemporary topics--you caught that."

"I certainly did," Blunk said.

"Sam," I said to Barrows, plunging in, "you don't get the point at all. Maybe that's due to your having just made that plane flight from Seattle and then that long drive by car from Boise. Frankly, I thought you grasped the principle underlying the simulacra, but let's let the subject go, for the sake of amicability. Okay?" I smiled.

Barrows contemplated me without answering; so did Blunk. Off in the corner Maury perched on a workstool, with his cigar giving off clouds of lonely blue smoke.

"I understand your disappointment with the Lincoln," I said. "I sympathize. To be frank, the Stanton one was coached."

"Ah," Blunk said, his eyes twinkling.

"It wasn't my idea. My partner here was nervous and he wanted it all set up." I wagged my head in Maury's direction. "He was wrong to do it, but anyhow that's a dead issue; what we want to deal with is the Lincoln simulacrum because that's the basis of MASA ASSOCIATES' genuine discovery. Let's walk back and query it further."

The three of us walked back to where Mrs. Nild and Pris stood listening to the tall, bearded, stooped simulacrum.

"... quoted me to the effect that the Negro was included in that clause of the Declaration of Independence which says that all men were created equal. That was at Chicago Judge Douglas says I said that, and then he goes on to say that at Charleston I said the Negro belonged to an inferior race. And that I held it was not a moral issue, but a question of degree, and yet at Galesburg I went back and said it was a moral question once more." The simulacrum smiled its gentle, pained smile at us. "Thereupon some fellow in the audience called out, 'He's right.' I was glad somebody thought me right, because it seemed to myself that Judge Douglas had me by the coat tails."

Pris and Mrs. Nild laughed appreciatively. The rest of us stood silently.

"About the best applause Judge Douglas got was when he said that the whole Republican Party in the northern part of the state stands committed to the doctrine of no more slave states, and that this same doctrine is repudiated by the Republicans in the other part of the state... and the Judge wondered whether Mr. Lincoln and his party do not present the case which Mr. Lincoln cited from the Scriptures, of a house divided against itself which cannot stand." The simulacrum's voice had assumed a droll quality. "And the Judge wondered if my principles were the same as the Republican Party's. Of course, I don't get the chance to answer the Judge until October at Quincy. But I told him there, that he could argue that a horse-chestnut is the same as a chestnut horse. I certainly had no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together on the footing of perfect equality. But I hold the Negro as much entitled to the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as any white man. He is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color--perhaps not in intellectual and moral endowments. But in the right to eat the bread which his own hand earns, without leave of anybody else, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every other man." The simulacrum paused. "I received a few good cheers myself at that moment."