“Where’s Jimmy?” she asked. “And what happened to our houseboy?”
He’d been prepared for deviousness of some kind, but this caught him off guard. For a second, he fumbled in his mind, trying to hold his facial muscles firmly.
“Don’t lie to me!” she snapped. “You lied to me once, when I went to the hospital. I haven’t forgotten that. And I didn’t think you’d dare try it again. Henry Needham, what have you done with my boy?”
He let his muscles sag then. “You mean—you mean Jimmy’s run away? Maryl, you’re nuts. I sold the houseboy two weeks ago when he began to mistake orders. Jimmy couldn’t have run off with him.”
“Jimmy’s upstairs,” she said slowly. She frowned, then shook her head. “I thought . . . Maybe I’m just worried about school, and everything . . .”
“We could skip another year of school,” he suggested quickly. She nodded, and turned quickly toward the stairs, smiling again. But there was still an odd expression on her face.
The suspicious looks continued for the next two days. But on the third, she was as radiant as she had ever been. Henry could get nothing out of Zenia. He suspected that somehow the maid had let something slip, but if so, the results had worn off.
The crisis seemed to have passed, in any event, without the need of Broderick’s advice. Another week slipped by, and twice Maryl ate with him. The house was better regulated. She still slept part of the time with Jimmy, but some mornings he woke to find her in the opposite bed. Time, he thought—time, and no new worries. In spite of Broderick’s fine theories, Maryl was sound material. She’d be herself again, yet.
It was just a week before the real Jimmy was to return that he awoke to find her sitting up, studying him. He roused himself, trying to reach a stage of alertness, but she smiled and pushed him back.
“I’m just being fond of you, Henry,” she said, and there was new warmth in her laugh. “You’re the clever Henry I always knew you were. Who else would have thought of getting me a robot Jimmy to substitute for my boy while he was sick? Oh, don’t deny it—I called up one of the women friends of your mother—one I met two years ago. And I’m not mad, not at all. I think it was very sweet of you to bring me the new Jimmy. Without him, I couldn’t have stood it.”
“Maryl!” He caught her suddenly, studying her face. But there were no secrets in it. She’d found out, somehow —but she’d taken it. Broderick be damned! Maryl was all right again. She was too smart to be fooled, but it didn’t matter now. “Maryl, to hell with my work. Let’s pack up and go out to Mother’s until the boy’s ready to come back. Let’s make it a celebration. Let’s . . .”
She grinned, but shook her head. “And you with the new fusion jet about to be put through its trials? Don’t be silly, Henry. I can wait, now!”
She proved that she could, too. Henry watched her while the week dragged along. The success of the jet meant nothing compared to the new—or rather, old—Maryl. Then he got the final returns on it, and knocked off. He put through a couple of calls, chuckling to himself. Psychiatrists! A good husband was worth a dozen of them. If a man couldn’t figure what was good for his own wife, who could? And this would be the best thing of all.
A surprise party was just the thing. She was expecting Jimmy back in two more days, but the boy was well. And happiness never hurt anyone. He wound up his affairs, climbed into his heli, and took off for his mother’s place, chuckling at the picture of Maryl’s face when he walked through the door with Jimmy that night.
It came off on schedule—at least through the door. He’d warned the boy about the substitute, and about the surprise. And that part went off well, too. Jimmy considered his robot twin a fine joke as they stood there, watching Maryl and the robot coming down the stairs to the door.
Then she stopped. Her eyes darted from one to the other. She hesitated a second longer. Then she swung about, picking the robot up hastily and heading him back up the stairs, with a quick word in his ear.
“It’s all right, Maryl,” Henry began. “Jimmy knows ...” “Jimmy doesn’t. He’s too young for that—too innocent!” She came across the hall now, her back straight and her lips drawn straighter. She went past Henry, and up to her son.
One hand came back and forward, and her palm caught the boy behind the ear, sending him staggering. “You!” Her voice rose to a scream of rage. “You—trying to come in here! Get out. Get out, do you hear! You filthy little monster! Do you think I don’t know what you’ll do? Do you think you can come here and steal the place of my own little Jimmy?”
Her arm came up again, but Henry got between them somehow. “Maryl—this is Jimmy. See how he’s grown! A whole inch. And Mother’s been teaching him to read! Look, let him show you!”
She was across the room, shouting for Zenia. “Throw them out! Zenia, throw them out! They can’t do it!”
Henry stood rooted to the floor as the maid came forward, keyed to obey Maryl before anyone else. He shot one uncomprehending look at his wife and another at the stricken face of the real Jimmy. Then the sickness in him was swallowed up by the younger misery beside him.
“It’s all right, Jim,” he said quietly. “It’s all right. Your mother’s sick—I didn’t want to tell you, because I thought she’d be better. We’ll go and get Dr. Broderick, and then everything will be all right.”
He retreated through the door, leading the boy. “She’s delirious, Jim—you know what that means—like the time your friend Phil had the fever. But she’ll be all right, later. Come on, I’ll let you fly the heli while we find a phone and get Dr. Broderick.”
This time, Broderick made no comments. His eyes slitted once on the visiphone, and then he nodded. “Leave the boy in the heli, Henry,” he ordered. “And for God’s sake, don’t forget to take the key out with you. I’ll meet you in front of your house.”
Reaction had set in by the time Broderick arrived. Henry had only a vague idea of what went on as they were let into the house by Zenia. Broderick headed up the stairs toward the nursery, motioning Henry to wait. He dropped onto a chair, sitting on the edge, and took the drink that Zenia brought. As the door to the nursery opened, there was the sound of sobbing, and then it closed, leaving only silence.
The third drink was finished when Broderick came back, and his face was taut and worn. Henry stumbled toward him. “Is it . . . ?”
“The worst that could happen—or the best. I don’t know. I should have you confined to a cage in the zoo with the other apes, Henry. Damn it, I told you to let me know at the first sign. Oh, drat it, I know it’s my own fault. I should know better than to trust a man who’d marry a neurotic woman and then stick with her. G/Aip and see her, but don’t say anything. Just look in the door and come out again.”
Henry crept up silently. There were no sounds of sobbing now, only a crooning blur of words. He opened the door a crack, forgetting Broderick’s advice as he tried to phrase something comforting. But she didn’t look around, Her face was close to that of the robot Jimmy, and she was crooning to it.
“No they’re not. Not to my little robot. My own little baby boy. I won’t let them. Dr. Broderick understands. He won’t let that mean old man do anything. And you’ll always be mine. Always. You’ll never grow old, and you’ll never be mean to me. No other woman will ever have you, ‘cause you won’t grow up and go away from me. You’ll always be just the way you are. My own little boy, my sweet little robot boy who’s all mine! Won’t you, Jimmy boy?”
“All yours, Mama,” the robot answered, and a small hand came out to rest on her hair caressingly. “Just like I am.”
She gurgled happily. “All right. And what’s a robot, angel?”
“A robot’s the nicest kind of special boy, Mama,” the creature answered, gurgling back. “And it’s me, ‘cause I love you.”
“And what’s a Mama?” she asked.
Henry shut the door softly, cutting off the words, while the voices went on and on until Broderick came up to lead him down and into the kitc
hen for another drink. “There’s still Jimmy,” the psychiatrist reminded him. “Suicide won’t solve that, Henry!”
He hadn’t realized he was thinking it, though the man was right. “Jimmy.” He rolled it off his tongue. “You can erase the memory of this from him, can’t you?”
Broderick nodded. “We’ll do that, of course. We’ll do everything we can to make sure our future citizens don’t inherit the sins of their fathers. But can you forget, Henry? If there’s one chance in a hundred of returning Maryl, can you take it and forget what has happened? Can you build a whole new life for yourself?”
Henry’s eyes rested on Broderick. Therapy, he thought. Therapy—stall the patient with any promises until he can be given full treatment.
Broderick shook his head this time, again seeming to read Henry’s mind. “It’ll cost every cent you have, Henry. You’ll have to move to a new town where nobody knows you, get yourself a new apartment and a new job—a job, not a position until you can earn one. And no robots. Absolutely nothing from this life. There are new techniques, but they’re risky and imperfect. All psychiatry is imperfect. You may find differences.”
“For Maryl-” Henry began slowly.
Broderick cut him off. “No, for Jimmy. Because all I can promise is that we won’t permit anything which will ruin his future. We want you and Maryl to be happy, but we don’t demand it. And if anything goes wrong, you’ll be the one to suffer for it. Well?”
“When?” he asked.
“Whenever you’re ready, Henry. We’ll have finished what we can do before you can find your job and set yourself up with reasonable conveniences.”
He thought it over, looking for the trick. Maybe, if they made it hard enough for him, they could force him to take some job which would prove a blind alley, where he could never earn enough to support a wife and son. They could put Maryl away with her robot and bring Jimmy up with their cold and logical scientific ideas. Once they got him away, he could never fall back on Personal Privilege laws. And his therapy would be the slow adjustment of a man in a routine job, looking forward with dimming hopes to a future that always was one step away.
He’d been muttering to himself, but Broderick must have heard some of it. The psychiatrist grimaced. “No, Henry. You’ll have some money left—enough to set yourself up. And you’re too good an accountant to pigeonhole in any small job, even if you are rusty. There’s an opening for you, wherever you go.”
There had to be some catch, or they’d have tried it long ago. And yet it sounded like more than humoring him. He considered it, but he already knew his decision. “There’s a plane leaving in an hour for Seattle,” he remembered aloud.
Broderick lifted the receiver and began dialing for a heli-cab. “Sooner than you think, Henry,” he promised.
He kept his promise. It was less than two weeks later that Henry stood at the airport in Seattle, watching a boy of six and a hesitatingly smiling Maryl get off the plane and head toward him.
* * * *
But it was four years before he found the catch, and then only by accident, or one of the lapses of memory only psychiatrists could explain. He was finishing up a late evening at the office, winding up an involved new contract with a New York firm. He was impatient to get home, and trying to make up his mind whether to take flowers to his wife or a new gadget to his son. And his fingers dialed the New York number automatically, before he realized it was the number of his own former home.
For a second, he started to hang up. Then curiosity got the better of him, and he hesitated while an image sprang onto the screen.
There was a face in the foreground, but his attention snapped to the couch behind—first in recognition, then in shocked disbelief. There, a six-year old boy who looked exactly like his memory of Jimmy was playing cat’s-cradle with a Maryl whose face was radiant with pleasure. An older Maryl, a faintly time-eroded copy of the wife who waited for him at home. . . .
“Good evening. Mrs. Needham’s residence,” the voice of the robot maid insisted again.
Henry wordlessly studied the face on the screen. It was not the face of Zenia—definitely not Zenia.
“Sorry,” he said haltingly. “Wrong number.”
He sat for long minutes after he’d hung up, staring at the blank screen. The phone buzzed once. It was probably the New York lawyers calling him. But he let it ring, without answering.
And finally he nodded. He’d get both the gadgets and the flowers.
When a man had such a fine future citizen for a son— and the only completely loyal and understanding wife in the world—he could afford to splurge a little.
<>
* * * *
ROBERT CRANE
Most of the stars inStar Science Fiction Stories are the steady, familiar ones that have been radiating in the science-fiction magazines for years past; but this one is a nova. You’ve never seen the by-line of Robert Crane in print on a science-fiction story until now; but you can reliably expect to see it many, many times from here on in. It is the pseudonym of a young Englishman, now living and writing in the United States, who has published four books in England, and has two more due to appear shortly. For many years Crane was with the B.B.C. in London; during the war he was attached to the Intelligence Branch of the Royal Air Force and later he worked for the British Foreign Office—all of which has provided him with a rich background for his writing career. At present he is at work on his first science-fiction novel. With pride and pleasure, then, we offer you Robert Crane’s first published science-fiction story ...
The Purple Fields
“You look just fine,” Rose said, accompanying him to the door. “So young and handsome. I’m very proud of you.”
He tilted her chin and kissed her.
“Scott,” she whispered, and moved her head back to gaze up at him: “Good luck with Mr. Painter.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything’s going to turn out fine.” And then, seeing the anxiety still in her eyes, he added, “Painter is a good guy. He has lots of influence.”
She patted his arm. “Hurry, now, or you’ll miss the train.”
He smiled. She still called them trains.
“The mono,” he said.
“The train, the mono. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?” She gave a little pout as if she would never understand these newfangled contraptions. “Try to be home early for dinner.”
“I’ll try.”
“Good luck,” she said fervently. “Good luck, my darling.”
I’m only looking for a job, he thought. What’s so hard about finding a job?
He went to the garage and climbed into the little gyrocar, letting it start by rolling down the driveway. The battery was low and he wanted to conserve it. There was something radically wrong with batteries these days: they only lasted a couple of months. He could remember when batteries lasted two or three years; but that was before the war, twenty years ago. Before the Program.
He parked the gyro in the station yard and waited for the monorail car. He was a tall man, bronzed, alert, physically trim. The mono was nine minutes late, and he laughed inwardly. There was an old French saying about everything changing but everything remaining the same only more so; it wasn’t quite true because (for example) France itself had been almost wiped out in the last war, and here at home the Program had changed other things, including the Constitution. But the Long Island Rail Road, as Rose persisted in calling it, still could not run its trains on schedule, even though it was now called Universal Monorails, Incorporated. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Nine minutes late.
When the little mono arrived he went to the forward compartment in order to smoke, and he lit a cigarette as soon as he had fastened his safety belt. There had been several bad wrecks on this line recently, and safety belts had been installed by order of the Program. He could remember the young man talking about this order on the telerama, explaining calmly and lucidly all about safety straps, how they safeguarded the b
ody in the event of sudden stops, and so on and so on. And the young man went on to talk about the bad times before the war when the oldies were in charge of everything, when you even had oldies of fifty or sixty at the controls of public transportation. The Program had changed that, the young man said proudly. All mono engineers were under thirty, in prime physical condition, with terrific IQ’s.
Hence, Scott said to himself, safety belts.
* * * *
Rose tidied the house quickly, and then bathed, and dressed very carefully. She brushed her hair for a long time until it simply shone, and she put a little rouge on her cheeks, rubbing it in well. It was terribly important to look her best today—young and vivacious. She had not told Scott where she was going. She did not want to worry him. Poor Scott, she thought. My poor darling. He has enough worries already.
* * * *
Sitting back in his seat Scott felt supremely confident. Today was going to be a good day. Everybody spoke highly of Painter: Painter was an understanding guy, helpful. Painter was Personnel Director of Consolidated Communications, Inc., an outfit that employed seventy thousand men. Painter could always find a spot for somebody who was reliable and experienced. Painter will fix everything, Scott thought.
Looking down the low monocar Scott could see the heads and shoulders of the youngsters going to work; and he could not help wondering about this new world, this new generation. They all seemed to have been hatched on the same summer afternoon. They were all husky, thick-necked, small-headed, with the same serious eyes, the same strong noses, the same tight, sensuous mouths. Rose was always delighted by them—they were exactly like the young men in advertisements years ago who were supposed to convince you that you should smoke Zany Cigarettes or use Bugle Soap in your bath. But now they had become a national type. Program men. All in neat blue suits and black shoes and black ties; and all brilliant, fantastically brilliant, and full of energy. They ruled the country now, they were the power behind the Program. Scott recalled the Thirty-Ninth Amendment: No person shall be eligible to the office of President who has passed the age of thirty-five years. . . .