Andre Norton - The Science Fiction anthology

“When?” I choked out.

“Why, today, as a matter of fact. It leaves Idlewild at eleven o’clock—”

I let him worry about my amnesia and started home fast. I didn’t know what they’d given that Prime for circuits, but there was no question now that he was out of control— way out of control. And poor Marge, all worked up for a second honeymoon—

Then it struck me. Poor Marge? Poor sucker George! No Prime in his right circuits would behave this way without some human guidance and that meant only one thing: Marge had spotted him. It had happened before. Couple of nasty court battles I’d read about. And she’d known all about George Prime.

For how long?

When I got home, the house was empty. George Prime wasn’t in his closet. And Marge wasn’t in the house.

They were gone.

I started to call the police, but caught myself just in time. I couldn’t very well complain to the cops that my wife had run off with an android.

Worse yet, I could get twenty years for having an illegal Prime wandering around.

I sat down and poured myself a stiff drink.

My own wife deserting me for a pile of bearings.

It was indecent.

Then I heard the front door open and there was Marge, her arms full of grocery bundles. “Why, darling! You’re home early!”

I just blinked for a moment. Then I said, “You’re still here!”

“Of course. Where did you think I’d be?”

“But I thought—I mean the ticket office—”

She set down the bundles and kissed me and looked up into my eyes, almost smiling, half reproachful. “You didn’t really think I’d go running off with something out of a lab, did you?”

“Then—you knew?”

“Certainly I knew, silly. You didn’t do a very good job of instructing him, either. You gave him far too much latitude. Let him have ideas of his own and all that. And next thing I knew, he was trying to get me to run off with him to Hawaii or someplace.”

“Bermuda,” I said.

And then Marge was in my arms, kissing me and snuggling her cheek against my chest.

“Even though he looked like you, I knew he couldn’t be,” she said. “He was like you, but he wasn’t you , darling. And all I ever want is you. I just never appreciated you before....”

I held her close and tried to keep my hands from shaking. George Faircloth, Idiot, I thought. She’d never been more beautiful. “But what did you do with him?”

“I sent him back to the factory, naturally. They said they could blot him out and use him over again. But let’s not talk about that any more. We’ve got more interesting things to discuss.”

Maybe we had, but we didn’t waste a lot of time talking. It was the Marge I’d once known and I was beginning to wonder how I could have been so wrong about her. In fact unless my memory was getting awfully porous, the old Marge was never like this—

I kissed her tenderly and ran my hands through her hair, and felt the depression with my fore-finger, and then I knew what had really happened.

That Marge always had been a sly one.

I wondered how she was liking things in Bermuda.

Marge probably thought she’d really put me where I belonged, but the laugh was on her, after all.

As I said, the old Marge was never like the new one. Marge Prime makes Jeree and Sybil and Dorothy and Dawn and Jane and Ruby all look pretty sad by comparison.

She cooks like a dream and she always brings me my pipe and slippers. As they say, there’s nothing a man likes more than to be appreciated.

A hundred per cent appreciated, with a factory guarantee to correct any slippage, which would only be temporary, anyhow.

One of these days, we’ll take that second honeymoon. But I think we’ll go to Hawaii.

Steadying his elbow on the kitchen table serving as desk, Brigadier General Straut leveled his binoculars and stared out through the second-floor window of the farmhouse at the bulky object lying canted at the edge of the wood lot. He watched the figures moving over and around the gray mass, then flipped the lever on the field telephone at his elbow.

“How are your boys doing, Major?”

“General, since that box this morning—”

“I know all about the box, Bill. So does Washington by now. What have you got that’s new?”

“Sir, I haven’t got anything to report yet. I have four crews on it, and she still looks impervious as hell.”

“Still getting the sounds from inside?”

“Intermittently, General.”

“I’m giving you one more hour, Major. I want that thing cracked.”

The general dropped the phone back on its cradle and peeled the cellophane from a cigar absently. He had moved fast, he reflected, after the State Police notified him at nine forty-one last night. He had his men on the spot, the area evacuated of civilians, and a preliminary report on its way to Washington by midnight. At two thirty-six, they had discovered the four-inch cube lying on the ground fifteen feet from the huge object—missile, capsule, bomb—whatever it was. But now—several hours later—nothing new.

The field phone jangled. Straut grabbed it up.

“General, we’ve discovered a thin spot up on the top side. All we can tell so far is that the wall thickness falls off there....”

“All right. Keep after it, Bill.”

This was more like it. If Brigadier General Straut could have this thing wrapped up by the time Washington awoke to the fact that it was something big—well, he’d been waiting a long time for that second star. This was his chance, and he would damn well make the most of it.

He looked across the field at the thing. It was half in and half out of the woods, flat-sided, round-ended, featureless. Maybe he should go over and give it a closer look personally. He might spot something the others were missing. It might blow them all to kingdom come any second; but what the hell, he had earned his star on sheer guts in Normandy. He still had ‘em.

He keyed the phone. “I’m coming down, Bill,” he told the Major. On impulse, he strapped a pistol belt on. Not much use against a house-sized bomb, but the heft of it felt good.

The thing looked bigger than ever as the jeep approached it, bumping across the muck of the freshly plowed field. From here he could see a faint line running around, just below the juncture of side and top. Major Greer hadn’t mentioned that. The line was quite obvious; in fact, it was more of a crack.

With a sound like a baseball smacking the catcher’s glove, the crack opened, the upper half tilted, men sliding—then impossibly it stood open, vibrating, like the roof of a house suddenly lifted. The driver gunned the jeep. There were cries, and a ragged shrilling that set Straut’s teeth on edge. The men were running back now, two of them dragging a third.

Major Greer emerged from behind the object, looked about, ran toward General Straut shouting. “... a man dead. It snapped; we weren’t expecting it....”

Straut jumped out beside the men, who had stopped now and were looking back. The underside of the gaping lid was an iridescent black. The shrill noise sounded thinly across the field. Greer arrived, panting.

“What happened?” Straut snapped.

“I was ... checking over that thin spot, General. The first thing I knew it was ... coming up under me. I fell; Tate was at the other side. He held on and it snapped him loose, against a tree. His skull—”

“What the devil’s that racket?”

“That’s the sound we were getting from inside before, General. There’s something in there, alive—”

“All right, pull yourself together, Major. We’re not unprepared. Bring your half-tracks into position. The tanks will be here soon.”