We Can Build You Read online

  “Who’s that?”

  “He was Lincoln’s Secretary of War.”

  “Aw!”

  “No, it’s the truth.”

  “When did he die?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Listen,” Maury said, “I have an electronic simulacrum back in the back seat, there. I built it, or rather we had Bundy build it. It cost me six thousand dollars but it was worth it. Let’s stop at that roadside cafe and gas station up along the road, there, and I’ll unwrap it and demonstrate it to you; that’s the only way.”

  I felt my flesh crawl. “You will indeed.”

  “Do you think this is just some bagatelle, buddy?”

  “No. I think you’re absolutely serious.”

  “I am,” Maury said. He began to slow the car and flash the directional signal. “I’m stopping where it says Tommy’s Italian Fine Dinners and Lucky Lager Beer.”

  “And then what? What’s a demonstration?”

  “We’ll unwrap it and have it walk in with us and order a chicken and ham pizza; that’s what I mean by a demonstration.”

  Maury parked the Jaguar and came around to crawl into the back. He began tearing the newspaper from the human-shaped bundle, and sure enough, there presently emerged an elderly-looking gentleman with eyes shut and white beard, wearing archaically-styled clothing, his hands folded over his chest.

  “You’ll see how convincing this simulacrum is,” Maury said, “when it orders its own pizza.” He began to tinker with switches which were available at the back of the thing.

  All at once the face assumed a grumpy, taciturn expression and it said in a growl, “My friend, remove your fingers from my body, if you will.” It pried Maury’s hands loose from it, and Maury grinned at me.

  “See?” Maury said. The thing had sat up slowly and was in the process of methodically brushing itself off; it had a stern, vengeful look, now, as if it believed we had done it some harm, possibly sapped it and knocked it out, and it was just recovering. I could see that the counter man in Tommy’s Italian Fine Dinners would be fooled, all right; I could see that Maury had made his point already. If I hadn’t seen it spring to life I would believe myself it was just a sour elderly gentleman in old-style clothes and a split white beard, brushing itself off with an attitude of outrage.

  “I see,” I said.

  Maury held open the back door of the Jaguar, and the Edwin M. Stanton electronic simulacrum slid over and rose to a standing position in a dignified fashion.

  “Does it have any money?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Maury said. “Don’t ask trifling questions; this is the most serious matter you’ve ever had facing you.” As the three of us started across the gravel to the restaurant, Maury went on, “Our entire economic future and that of America’s involved in this. Ten years from now you and I could be wealthy, due to this thing, here.”

  The three of us had a pizza at the restaurant, and the crust was burned at the edges. The Edwin M. Stanton made a noisy scene, shaking its fist at the proprietor, and then after finally paying our bill, we left.

  By now we were an hour behind schedule, and I was beginning to wonder if we were going to get to the Rosen factory after all. So I asked Maury to step on it, as we got back into the Jaguar.

  “This car’ll crack two hundred,” Maury said, starting up, “with that new dry rocket fuel they have out.”

  “Don’t take unnecessary chances,” the Edwin M. Stanton told him in a sullen voice as the car roared out onto the road. “Unless the possible gains heavily outweigh the odds.”

  “Same to you,” Maury told it.

  The Rosen Spinet Piano & Electronic Organ Factory at Boise, Idaho, doesn’t attract much notice, since the structure itself, technically called the plant, is a flat, one-story building that looks like a single-layer cake, with a parking lot behind it, a sign over the office made of letters cut from heavy plastic, very modern, with recessed red lights behind. The only windows are in the office.

  At this late hour the factory was dark and shut, with no one there. We drove on up into the residential section, then.

  “What do you think of this neighborhood?” Maury asked the Edwin M. Stanton.

  Seated upright in the back of the Jaguar the thing grunted, “Rather unsavory and unworthy.”

  “Listen,” I said, “my family lives down here near the industrial part of Boise so as to be in easy walking distance from the factory.” It made me angry to hear a mere fake criticizing genuine humans, especially a fine person like my dad. And as to my brother—few radiation-mutants ever made the grade in the spinet and electronic organ industry outside of Chester Rosen. Special birth persons, as they are called. There is so much discrimination and prejudice in so many fields … most professions of high social status are closed to them.

  It was always disappointing to the Rosen family that Chester’s eyes are set beneath his nose, and his mouth is up where his eyes ought to be. But blame H-bomb testing in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties for him—and all the others similar to him in the world today. I can remember, as a kid, reading the many medical books on birth defects—the topic has naturally interested many people for a couple of decades, now—and there are some that make Chester nothing at all. One that always threw me into a week-long depression is where the embryo disintegrates in the womb and is born in pieces, a jaw, an arm, handful of teeth, separate fingers. Like one of those plastic kits out of which boys build a model airplane. Only, the pieces of the embryo don’t add up to anything; there’s no glue in this world to stick it together.

  And there’re embryos with hair growing all over them, like a slipper made from yak fur. And one that dries up so that the skin cracks; it looks like it’s been maturing outdoors on the back step in the sun. So lay off Chester.

  The Jaguar had halted at the curb before the family house, and there we were. I could see lights on inside the house, in the living room; my mother, father and brother were watching TV.

  “Let’s send the Edwin M. Stanton up the stairs alone,” Maury said. “Have it knock on the door, and we’ll sit here in the car and watch.”

  “My dad’ll recognize it as a phony,” I said, “a mile away. In fact he’ll probably kick it back down the steps, and you’ll be out the six hundred it cost you.” Or whatever it was Maury had paid for it, and no doubt charged against MASA’s assets.

  “I’ll take the chance,” Maury said, holding the back door of the car open so that the contraption could get out. To it he said, “Go up there to where it says 1429 and ring the bell. And when the man comes to the door, you say, ‘Now he belongs to the ages.’ And then just stand.”

  “What does that mean?” I said. “What kind of opening remark is that supposed to be?”

  “It’s Stanton’s famous remark that got him into history,” Maury said. “When Lincoln died.”

  “’Now he belongs to the ages,’” the Stanton practiced as it crossed the sidewalk and started up the steps.

  “I’ll explain to you in due course how the Edwin M. Stanton was constructed,” Maury said to me. “How we collected the entire body of data extant pertaining to Stanton and had it transcribed down at UCLA into instruction punch-tape to be fed to the ruling monad that serves the simulacrum as a brain.”

  “You know what you’re doing?” I said, disgusted. “You’re wrecking MASA, all this kidding around, this harebrained stuff—I never should have gotten mixed up with you.”

  “Quiet,” Maury said, as the Stanton rang the doorbell.

  The front door opened and there stood my father in his trousers, slippers, and the new bathrobe I had given him at Christmas. He was quite an imposing figure, and the Edwin M. Stanton, which had started on its little speech, halted and shifted gears.

  “Sir,” it finally said, “I have the privilege of knowing your boy Louis.”

  “Oh yes,” my father said. “He’s down in Santa Monica right now.”

  The Edwin M. Stanton
did not seem to know what Santa Monica was, and it stood there at a loss. Beside me in the Jaguar, Maury swore with exasperation, but it struck me funny, the simulacrum standing there like some new, no-good salesman, unable to think up anything at all to say and so standing mute.

  But it was impressive, the two old gentlemen standing there facing each other, the Stanton with its split white beard, its old-style garments, my father looking not much newer. The meeting of the patriarchs, I thought. Like in the synagogue.

  My father at last said to it, “Won’t you step inside?” He held the door open, and the thing passed on inside and out of sight; the door shut, leaving the porch lit up and empty.

  “How about that,” I said to Maury.

  We followed after it. The door being unlocked, we went on inside.

  There in the living room sat the Stanton, in the middle of the sofa, its hands on its knees, discoursing with my dad, while Chester and my mother went on watching the TV.

  “Dad,” I said, “you’re wasting your time talking to that thing. You know what it is? A machine Maury threw together in his basement for six bucks.”

  Both my father and the Edwin M. Stanton paused and glanced at me.

  “This nice old man?” my father said, and he got an angry, righteous expression; his brows knitted and he said loudly, “Remember, Louis, that man is a frail reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but goddamn it, mein Sohn, a thinking reed. The entire universe doesn’t have to arm itself against him; a drop of water can kill him.” Pointing his finger at me excitedly, my dad roared on, “But if the entire universe were to crush him, you know what? You know what I say? Man would still be more noble!” He pounded on the arm of his chair for emphasis. “You know why, mein Kind? Because he knows that he dies and I’ll tell you something else; he’s got the advantage over the god-damn universe because it doesn’t know a thing of what’s going on. And,” my dad concluded, calming down a little, “all our dignity consists in just that. I mean, man’s little and can’t fill time and space, but he sure can make use of the brain God gave him. Like what you call this ‘thing,’ here. This is no thing. This is ein Mensch, a man. Say, I have to tell you a joke.” He launched, then, into a joke half in Yiddish, half in English.

  When it was over we all smiled, although it seemed to me that the Edwin M. Stanton’s was somewhat formal, even forced.

  Trying to think back to what I had read about Stanton, I recalled that he was considered a pretty harsh guy, both during the Civil War and the Reconstruction afterward, especially when he tangled with Andrew Johnson and tried to get him impeached. He probably did not appreciate my dad’s humanitarian-type joke because he got the same stuff from Lincoln all day long during his job. But there was no way to stop my dad anyhow; his own father had been a Spinoza scholar, well known, and although my dad never went beyond the seventh grade himself he had read all sorts of books and documents and corresponded with literary persons throughout the world.

  “I’m sorry, Jerome,” Maury said to my dad, when there was a pause, “but I’m telling you the truth.” Crossing to the Edwin M. Stanton, he reached down and fiddled with it behind the ear.

  “Glop,” the Stanton said, and then became rigid, as lifeless as a window-store dummy; the light in its eyes expired, its arms paused and stiffened. It was graphic, and I glanced to see how my dad was taking it. Even Chester and my mom looked up from the TV a moment. It really made one pause and consider. If there hadn’t been philosophy in the air already that night, this would have started it; we all became solemn. My dad even got up and walked over to inspect the thing firsthand.

  “Oy gewalt.” He shook his head.

  “I could turn it back on,” Maury offered.

  “Nein, das geht mir nicht.” My dad returned to his easy chair, made himself comfortable, and then asked in a resigned, sober voice, “Well, how did the sales at Vallejo go, boys?” As we got ready to answer he brought out an Anthony & Cleopatra cigar, unwrapped it and lit up. It’s a fine-quality Havana-filler cigar, with a green outer wrapper, and the odor filled the living room immediately. “Sell lots of organs and AMADEUS GLUCK spinets?” He chuckled.

  “Jerome,” Maury said, “the spinets sold like lemmings, but not one organ moved.”

  My father frowned.

  “We’ve been involved in a high-level confab on this topic,” Maury said, “with certain facts emerging. The Rosen electronic organ—”

  “Wait,” my dad said. “Not so fast, Maurice. On this side of the Iron Curtain the Rosen organ has no peer.” He produced from the coffee table one of those masonite boards on which we have mounted resistors, solar batteries, transistors, wiring and the like, for display. “This demonstrates the workings of the Rosen true electronic organ,” he began. “This is the rapid delay circuit, and—”

  “Jerome, I know how the organ works. Allow me to make my point.”

  “Go ahead.” My dad put aside the masonite board, but before Maury could speak, he went on, “But if you expect us to abandon the mainstay of our livelihood simply because salesmanship—and I say this knowingly, not without direct experience of my own—when and because salesmanship has deteriorated, and there isn’t the will to sell—”

  Maury broke in, “Jerome, listen. I’m suggesting expansion.”

  My dad cocked an eyebrow.

  “Now, you Rosens can go on making all the electronic organs you want,” Maury said, “but I know they’re going to diminish in sales volume all the time, unique and terrific as they are. What we need is something which is really new; because after all, Hammerstein makes those mood organs and they’ve gone over good, they’ve got that market sewed up airtight, so there’s no use our trying that. So here it is, my idea.”

  Reaching up, my father turned on his hearing aid.

  “Thank you, Jerome,” Maury said. ‘This Edwin M. Stan-ton electronic simulacrum. It’s as good as if Stanton had been alive here tonight discussing topics with us. What a sales idea that is, for educational purposes, like in the schools. But that’s nothing; I had that in mind at first, but here’s the authentic deal. Listen. We propose to President Mendoza in our nation’s Capitol that we abolish war and substitute for it a ten-year-spaced-apart centennial of the U.S. Civil War, and what we do is, the Rosen factory supplies all the participants, simulacra—that’s the plural, it’s a Latin type word—of everybody. Lincoln, Stanton, Jeff Davis, Robert E. Lee, Long-street, and around three million simple ones as soldiers we keep in stock all the time. And we have the battles fought with the participants really killed, these made-to-order simulacra blown to bits, instead of just a grade-B movie type business like a bunch of college kids doing Shakespeare. Do you get my point? You see the scope of this?”

  We were all silent. Yes, I thought, there is scope to it.

  “We could be as big as General Dynamics in five years,” Maury added.

  My father eyed him, smoking his A & C. “I don’t know, Maurice. I don’t know.” He shook his head.

  “Why not? Tell me, Jerome, what’s wrong with it?”

  ‘The times have carried you away, perhaps,” my father said in a slow voice tinged with weariness. He sighed. “Or am I getting old?”

  “Yeah, you’re getting old!” Maury said, very upset and flushed.

  “Maybe so, Maurice.” My father was silent for a little while and then he drew himself up and said, “No, your idea is too—ambitious, Maurice. We are not that great. We must take care not to reach too high for maybe we will topple, nicht wahr?”

  “Don’t give me that German foreign language,” Maury grumbled. “If you won’t approve this … I’m too far into it already, I’m sorry but I’m going ahead. I’ve had a lot of good ideas in the past which we’ve used and this is the best so far. It is the times, Jerome. We have to move.”

  Sadly, to himself, my father resumed smoking his cigar.

  3

  Still hoping my father would be won over, Maury left the Stanton—on consignment, so to speak—and we drove back to Ont
ario. By then it was nearly midnight, and since we both were depressed by my father’s weariness and lack of enthusiasm Maury invited me to stay overnight at his house. I was glad to accept; I felt the need of company.

  When we arrived we found his daughter Pris, who I had assumed was still back at Kasanin Clinic at Kansas City in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Mental Health. Pris, as I knew from what Maury had told me, had been a ward of the Federal Government since her third year in high school; tests administered routinely in the public schools had picked up her “dynamism of difficulty,” as the psychiatrists are calling it now—in the popular vernacular, her schizophrenic condition.

  “She’ll cheer you up,” Maury said, when I hung back. “That’s what you and I both need. She’s grown a lot since you saw her last; she’s no child anymore. Come on.” He dragged me into the house by one arm.

  She was seated on the floor in the living room wearing pink pedal pushers. Her hair was cut short and in the years since I had seen her she had lost weight. Spread around her lay colored tile; she was in the process of cracking the tile into irregular pits with a huge pair of long-handled cutting pliers.

  “Come look at the bathroom,” she said, hopping up. I followed warily after her.

  On the bathroom walls she had sketched all sorts of sea monsters and fish, even a mermaid; she had already partially tiled them with every color imaginable. The mermaid had red tiles for tits, one bright tile in the center of each breast.

  The panorama both repelled and interested me.

  “Why not have little light bulbs for nipples?” I said. “When someone comes in to use the can and turns on the light the nipples light up and guide him on his way.”

  No doubt she had gotten into this tiling orgy due to years of occupational therapy at Kansas City; the mental health people were keen on anything creative. The Government has literally tens of thousands of patients in their several clinics throughout the country, all busy weaving or painting or dancing or making jewelry or binding books or sewing costumes for plays. And all the patients are there involuntarily, committed by law. Like Pris, many of them had been picked up during puberty, which is the time psychosis tends to strike.