Читать книгу Doll-Friend - Robert F. Young - Страница 5

He had a beautiful wife. But the girl he really loved came out of a slot machine — warm and soft and clinging and unalive.

Of all the doll-friends Carter had ever danced with, Edie Four was by far his favorite. The mere act of depressing keys E, D, and 4 on the console of the huge juke-doll box gave him a thrill comparable to the thrill Aladdin must have felt when he rubbed his magic lamp; and the mere sight of her when she emerged, all tall and golden in a golden gown, was in itself well worth the half dollar it cost to bring her to life.

It was a truism to say that all doll-friends were beautiful. Man, working with his lathes and his shapers and his plastics and his photoelectric cells, was a creator in his own right, and while unlike God he could not endow his products with souls, he could, and did, endow them with a physical perfection unmatched by any product ever to have come off the celestial production line. However, Carter’s preference for Edie did not stem solely from her physical allure: she had personality, too.

When he said something to her, she didn’t respond with the cliches the other doll-friends used. For instance, when he made a flattering remark, she didn’t come up with an archaic bromide like, “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls!” Instead, she’d say something like, ‘”I’m going to write that down in my diary when I get home tonight, and sleep with it under my pillow.”’ Or, if he asked her for a date—jokingly, of course—she didn’t quote Paragraph 16 of the Doll-Friend Handbook, the way the others did. Instead, she’d drop her eyes demurely and say something like. “I’d love to Floyd, but you know what people would say,” or, “What would your wife think!”

Naturally, Carter knew that the first shift E-D-4 manipulator in the upstairs control room was responsible for everything she said as well as everything she did; but he preferred to pretend that it was Edie, and Edie alone, who danced and talked with him, and spiked his cup of life with the golden spirits of romance.

“Personally,’”’ he said one evening, “I don’t give a damn what, my wife would think. And if I thought I could get away with it, I’d sneak you out the backdoor sometime and take you riding in my Cadillette!”

“But what good would that do you, Floyd? My manipulator would simply break contact and call the police. And you’d feel awfully silly being picked up with a rag doll on your hands.”

“You’re not a rag doll!”

“Without my manipulator I’m the equivalent of one.”

Carter looked deep into the blue lenses of her eyes. “Who is your manipulator, anyway?”

“You know I’m forbidden to tell you.”

Abruptly he whirled her between two of the booths that-bordered the dance floor, and stole a kiss. “Anyway, tomorrow’s Saturday,” he said. “And my wife works full time Saturdays, but I only work half a day. I’m going to monopolize you all afternoon!”

He whirled her back to the dance floor and they wound deftly in and out among the dancing doll-friends and their partners. It was the last dance of the day that he had time for, and he concentrated on enjoying it. The music became a pink cloud beneath his feet, and Edie turned into a golden-haired goddess.

“You do like me the best, don’t you?” she said to his shoulder.

“Compared to you, the others are nothing but paper dolls,” he whispered to the ribbon in her hair.

But for all his levity he felt depressed when the dance came to an end and he had to escort her back to the juke-doll box. They said good night, and she blew him a kiss over her shoulder as she re-entered the magic portal with her synthetic sisters. Carter headed for the bar straight-away.

He brooded over a beer, staring idly at the door behind the bar that opened on the stairs leading up to the control room, wondering absently why he never saw the manipulators come and go when they changed shifts. Presently he realized that this time when he’d asked Edie for a date, he’d only been half- joking. Moreover, Edie — or, more accurately, Ease’s manipulator—must have realized it, too. He waited for at least a modicum of embarrassment to apprise him that his infatuation had not quite exceeded the bounds of reality; but all he felt was a poignant regret that the treasured 3:00-7:00 P.M. interval of the day was rapidly drawing to a close.

At five after seven he left the Doll House and walked the three blocks to the corner where he met his wife every week-day night. They took an airbus home —Marcia’s Chevrolette was being summerized, and Carter couldn’t see exposing his Cadillette to the hazards of city driving—and sat silently in the semi-darkness, gazing idly at the projected photon signs that filled the April sky. Once the airbus flew right through one that said, TRY A CAKE OF CLOUD SOAP AND SMELL LIKE AN ANGEL, and he felt Marcia wince beside him.

He withheld his usual comment to the effect that it was high time she divested herself of her goddess-robes of idealism and accepted the status quo. He was too worn out from the grueling 9:00 A.M.-5:00 P.M. stint at Brainstorm, Inc. to feel like arguing. Glancing sideways at her and noticing the bluish crescents beneath her dark liquid eyes, it occurred to him that she was probably tired, too.

Well let her be tired! he thought. No one was making her work—no one except her own stubborn self. Lord knew, he’d never forced her to go out and get a job. That was her own idea—and like most of her ideas, there was no talking her out of it. He was willing to bet, though, that in another month or so she’d talk herself out of it. Working in an age as subject to psychological pressures as the Age of Mass-Creativity was, could become a pretty rough proposition, even when you had a job as easy as the one she claimed to have.

In their split-level apartment, Marcia slipped out of her coat and went into the kitchen. Carter removed his own coat and turned on the 3V set. Presently Marcia reappeared in the kitchen doorway. “Steak and French fries or ham and scalloped potatoes?” she asked.

“Steak and French fries,” Carter said.

She returned to the kitchen to open the appropriate vacuum-pac, and he sat down to watch the seven-thirty edition of the Up To The Second News. Her after-image lingered on his retina: tall and dark of hair; classic of features (except for the too-full lower lip); stately of neck and shoulders; Munroesque of breasts...He regarded it wonderingly, trying to understand, as he so often had before, how anyone could be so promising to look at and yet be so frustrating to live with. At length the after-image faded, and he turned his attention to the news.

One of the roving cameras had just picked up the aftermath of a collision between an aircab and an airbus. The airbus, in falling, had lodged between two apartment buildings, and white faces were protruding from its windows, mouths round with screams which the audio unit was as yet too distant to pick up. Above the scene, a rescue ‘copter was hovering in the night sky, blades gleaming in the starlight, and beyond its transparent hull the crew could be seen preparing to lower a huge magnet. Carter leaned forward tensely. The best part about live news was its utter unpredictability: not even the producers knew how any given event would come out.

Marcia came into the room. “The table’s set, Floyd. Would you like to sit down now?”

“No, not now! Look what’s happening, Quick!”

She glanced at the screen, turned away. At that very moment the airbus slipped free and fell the rest of the way down between the two buildings. The audio unit was now in position, and there was the gratifying crunch of metal, the rasp of steel on stone, followed by scream after scream after scream.

“Boy, that was a good one!” Carter said.

“Sounded like a one hundred percenter,” Marcia said. She turned down the volume. “Do you want to eat now, or wait and see the blood?”