Made to Measure by William Campbell Gault (good book club books .TXT) 📕

He kissed her casually. "Ordinary." She slid over and he climbed in behind the wheel. "Sat with Sam Tullgren on the train."

"Sam's nice."

He turned on the ignition and said, "Start." The motor obediently started and he swung out of the lot, onto Chestnut. "Sam's all right. Kind of sentimental."

"That's what I mean."

Joe was silent. The coupe went past a row of solar homes and turned on Fulsom. Three houses from the corner, he turned into their driveway.

"You're awfully quiet," Vera said.

"I'm thinking."

"About what?" Her voice was suddenly strained. "Sam didn't try to sell you—"

"A new wife?" He looked at her. "What makes you think that?"

"You're thinking about me, about trading me in. Joe, haven't I—darling, is there—?" She broke off, looking even more miserable than Sam had.

"I don't intend to trade you in," he said quietly.

She took a deep breath.

He didn't look at her. "But you're going back to the Center."

She stared at him, a film of moisture in her eyes. She didn't cry or ask questions or protest. Joe wished she would. This was worse.

"It's not your fault," he said, after a moment. "I'm not going to get another. You're as ideal, almost, as a human wife can ever be."

"I've tried so hard," she said. "Maybe I tried too hard."

"No," he said, "it isn't your fault. Any reasonable man would be delighted with you, Vera. You won't be at the Center long."

"I don't want a reasonable man," she said quietly. "I want you, Joe. I—I loved you."

He had started to get out of the car. He paused to look back. "Loved? Did you use the past tense?"

"I used the past tense." She started to get out on her side of the car. "I don't want to talk about it."

"But I do," he told her. "Is this love something you can turn on and off like a faucet?"

"I don't care to explain it to you," she said. "I've got to pack." She left the car, slammed the door, and moved hurriedly toward the house.

Joe watched her. Something was troubling him, something he couldn't analyze, but he felt certain that if he could, it would prove to be absurd.

He went thoughtfully into the living room and snapped on the telenews. He saw troops moving by on foot, a file of them dispersed along a Brazilian road. He turned the knob to another station and saw the huge stock market board, a rebroadcast. Another twist and he saw a disheveled, shrieking woman being transported down some tenement steps by a pair of policemen. The small crowd on the sidewalk mugged into the camera.

He snapped it off impatiently and went into the kitchen. The dinette was a glass-walled alcove off this, and the table was set. There was food on his plate, none on Vera's.

He went to the living room and then, with a mutter of impatience, to the door of the back bedroom. She had her grips open on the low bed.

"You don't have to leave tonight, you know."

"I know."

"You're being very unreasonable."

"Am I?"

"I wasn't trying to be intentionally cruel."

"Weren't you?"

His voice rose. "Will you stop talking like some damned robot? Are you a human being, or aren't you?"

"I'm afraid I am," she said, "and that's why I'm going back to the Center. I've changed my mind. I want to get registered. I want to find a man."

She started to go past him, her grip in her hand. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Vera, you—"

Something flashed toward his face. It was her slim, white hand, but it didn't feel slim and white. She said, "I can see now why you weren't made Senior Assistant to the Adjutant Science Director. You're a stupid, emotionless mechanic. A machine."

He was still staring after her when the door slammed. He thought of the huge Domestic Center with its classes in Allure, Boudoir Manners, Diet, Poise, Budgeting. That vast, efficient, beautifully decorated Center which was the brain child of Sam Tullgren, but which still had to deal with imperfect humans.

People, people, people ... and particularly women. He rose, after a while, and went into the dinette. He sat down and stared moodily at his food.

Little boys are made of something and snails and puppydogs' tails. What are little girls made of? Joe didn't want a little girl; he wanted one about a hundred and twenty-two pounds and five feet, four inches high. He wanted her to be flat where she should be and curved where she should be, with blonde hair and gray-green eyes and an exciting smile.

He had a medical degree, among his others. The nerves, muscles, flesh, circulatory system could be made—and better than they were ever made naturally. The brain would be cybernetic and fashioned after his own, with his own mental background stored in the memory circuits.

So far, of course, he had described nothing more than a robot of flesh and blood. The spark, now—what distinguished the better-grade robots from people? Prenatal heat, that was it. Incubation. A mold, a heated mold. Warmth, the spark, the sun, life.

For the skin, he went to Pete Celano, the top syntho-dermatologist in the Department.

"Something special?" Pete asked. "Not just a local skin graft? What then?"

"A wife. A perfect wife."

Pete's grin sagged baffledly. "I don't get it, Joe. Perfect how?"

"In all ways." Joe's face was grave. "Someone ideal to live with."

"How about Vera? What was wrong with her?"

"A sentimentalist, too romantic, kind of—well, maybe not dumb, exactly, but—"

"But not perfect. Who is, Joe?"

"My new wife is going to be."

Pete shrugged and began putting together the ingredients for the kind of skin Joe had specified.

They're all the same, Joe thought, Sam and Pete and the rest. They seemed to think his idea childish. He built the instillers and incubator that night. The mold would be done by one of the Department's engravers. Joe had the sketches and dimensions ready.

Wednesday afternoon, Burke called him in. Burke was the Senior assistant, a job Joe had expected and been miffed about. Burke was a jerk, in Joe's book.

This afternoon, Burke's long nose was twitching and his thin face was gravely bleak. He had a clipped, efficient way of speaking.

"Tired, Joe?"

"What do you mean?"

"Not hitting the ball, not on the beam, no zipperoo."

"I'm—yes, I guess you're right. I've been working at home on a private project."

"Scientific?"

"Naturally."

"Anything in particular?"

Joe took a breath, looked away, and back at Burke. "Well, a wife."

A frown, a doubtful look from the cold, blue eyes. "Robot? Dishwasher and cook and phone answerer and like that?"

"More than that."

Slightly raised eyebrows.

"More?"

"Completely human, except she will have no human faults."

Cool smile. "Wouldn't be human, then, of course."

"Human, but without human faults, I said!"

"You raised your voice, Joe."

"I did."

"I'm the Senior Assistant. Junior Assistants do not raise their voices to Senior Assistants."

"I thought you might be deaf, as well as dumb," Joe said.

A silence. The granite face of Burke was marble, then steel and finally chromium. His voice matched it. "I'll have to talk to the Chief before I fire you, of course. Department rule. Good afternoon."

"Go to hell."

Joe went back to his desk and burned. He started with a low flame and fed it with the grievances of the past weeks. When it began to warm his collar, he picked up his hat and left.

Click, burr, click went the airlocks. Very few riders, this time of the afternoon. The brain would go in, intact, and then the knowledge instiller would work during the incubation period, feeding the adolescent memories to the retentive circuits. She would really spend her mental childhood in the mold, while the warmth sent the human spark through her body.

Robot? Huh! What did they know? A human being, a product of science, a flawless human being.

The rise, the big