SOME DREAMS COME IN PACKAGES

David Kyle

The dream, in this instance, was to get to the stars— but a human being, at least in his present form, cannot live long enough to complete the journey...

* * * *

‘... and it is henceforth prohibited to manufacture, assemble, or operate, or otherwise engage in experimentation with, such automatons and/or robots, as have been specifically defined in the preceding paragraphs, within the political limits of the Megalopolis of the Greater City of New York...

Bye-Law K-9786, City Council,

New York Megalopolis Charter,

Adopted, July 1, 1988

The rocketship was travelling westwards, drawing a thin, grey line of exhaust across the rich blue of the evening sky. When it began to descend. Dr. Don VanGeorge moved back towards the safety shelter at the northern edge of the roof, careful not to lose sight of the blonde head of the girl. She was down near the landing platform awaiting Robert’s arrival.

Dr. Don VanGeorge was spying on the girl. He was a rational, intelligent, middle-aged man, who had convinced himself that he had to be a sneak and an eavesdropper for her own good. He knew he was right, but he despised himself anyway.

As the ship lowered, whistling and humming and stirring up the inevitable city dirt even a half mile above the ground street, the girl moved indoors. At the corner of his barrier, VanGeorge watched the dark ship slip down across the background of the distant skyline. Off to his left was the Brotherhood Building, the windows of its tower now steadily creating tiers of light another three hundred feet above the Science Building where he stood. He looked out past the tower, towards the river, beyond the dark line of the distant shore where the horizon was deepening from yellow into orange. Farther off, like a spear, was the silhouette of the Humanity Tower, its tip ablaze in the last rays of the hidden sun.

There was a short sudden silence which was obliterated by the impact of the opening hatchway.

The girl, Helen, Professor Haines’ daughter, had walked out alone, towards the unfolding stairway. VanGeorge moved closer, behind a service door, to peer through its narrow window. He saw Helen’s head lift and her tall body straighten and then he saw what she was seeing.

On the top step a pair of shining black boots began their descent, slowly bringing into view legs, then torso. The cuffs of the man’s grey gabardine pantaloons were tucked into his boot tops, and his laboratory blouse, crisply fresh, was in turn tucked tightly into the broad belt which bound his narrow waist. Above the top of his unbuttoned high collar rode his head, erect on stiff neck. The flesh of his angular face was firm, his brown hair neatly brushed, and his eyes had the hot spark which turns stones into gems.

VanGeorge instinctively held his breath. Helen hadn’t seen Robert in nearly a year. How would she greet him ? As friend? Or as beloved? Surely Robert must perceive her fragile passion? And how would he handle the situation without jeopardising his outrageous secret ?

It was not Helen who greeted Robert. It was Robert who greeted Helen. He stepped down, with a sudden quickness, and before she could realise what he was doing, had lifted her high in the air with his broad hands around her waist. VanGeorge saw that she was laughing, kicking her legs playfully, emotionally on the verge of tears.

Moments later they had disappeared through the terminal doors and VanGeorge did not hurry to follow. He looked at the glow in the west. The sky was purple now, with the evening star twinkling coldly to the left of the dark shadow of the Humanity Tower. Above the Tower was the full face of the moon. A shimmering blue-white ghost, brilliant, casting a pale sheet of light over the city. He had confirmed the truth: Helen loved Robert.

When Don VanGeorge arrived at his office a few minutes later twenty floors under the roof he hadn’t seen the couple anywhere in the Cybernetics Department of Division, but he had noticed the significance of the closed door to Helen’s office. He had never seen that door closed before. With a heightening sense of repugnance he made a quick decision, shut his own door, and switched on his intercom into her office. He activated only the sound, not the picture, so there would be no small warning light nor buzz in the other room. He sat down, putting a candy mint in his mouth, and listened.

‘Of course I missed you.’ That was Robert’s voice. Resonant yet quiet, a monotone which nevertheless conveyed the nuances of his thoughts and feelings, a thoroughly remarkable voice, thought VanGeorge, considering who Robert really was.

‘I must ask that, Robert.’ Helen’s voice, although feminine, had that same quiet quality of the intellectual mind in the mature body which underscored every word. ‘This past year has been very lonely for me. My feelings for you have deepened.’

‘Although I know it’s true—for both of us—we cannot admit it, Helen. Not even to ourselves.’

‘But why not ? I’m not thinking of the future. I’m thinking of the past. Our past. That can’t hurt the precious project...’

‘We must, nevertheless, think of the future. Your future. And your father’s. Time for personal dreams is gone.’ There was a long pause.

‘It’s settled, then. You are making the trip!’

‘So ... Your father told you at last ... Now you understand.’

VanGeorge clearly heard Helen’s involuntary sob. .

‘You’ll never survive. Everyone knows that. You’ll be the first, and the first man will never come back. Oh, I know it sounds as though I’m talking against the whole project but it’s the truth and I can’t help myself. I don’t want you to go out into space and die. I know I shouldn’t think of the future, but I love you too much. There! It’s said! I love you! Nothing else really matters.’

‘I must go, Helen. You know that.’

‘Not without a chance! Must you sacrifice yourself? We’re not savages! Let a machine do it! Hold me, Robert, hold me!’

VanGeorge heard swishing of clothes, the squeaking of Robert’s plastic boots on the polished floor, the sounds of bodies embracing. He had heard enough. The reality was obscene. A pretty, human female was in love with a handsome, inhuman robot!

VanGeorge savagely clicked off the intercom switch, his extreme indignation tempered by embarrassment. He cursed himself for his self-righteousness and banged around the room. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said aloud, with bitterness, ‘is the star trip worth it? Robert’s too valuable! Helen’s too involved! She’s unhappy! I’m unhappy! Even Robert the Robot is unhappy! And we call ourselves The Happy Society! Let’s get on with the whole bloody mess ... !’

He stormed out of the room and in front of Helen’s door he knocked loudly. ‘We’re due at the meeting! Are you ready?’

* * * *

In the hall, when the two came out, he made his greeting to Robert as warm as possible, which wasn’t difficult because he really liked Robert very much despite what he was. Damn it all, Robert was practically human—Helen was a mature woman with superior brains—what the hell was he, VanGeorge, so upset about when the melodrama would be over in a couple of hours ? Besides, he suddenly had to concede, perhaps Professor Haines had exaggerated! No conclusive proof had ever been demonstrated—Robert could be just a re-built human being, a sophisticated revivification, instead of a robot! Maybe. Just maybe.

‘Look, Doctor,’ Helen was saying enthusiastically, as they made their way down the elevator towards the meeting room, ‘see what Robert has brought for me!’ She held up a large loose-leaf binder, thick with pages and insertions. ‘He’s given me a whole year! The things he wanted to share with me while we weren’t together he’s put in this. And he’s made little drawings and he’s written all kinds of appropriate sentiments, the pages even have just the right colours and aromas and with talking photographs and stress plates with musical selections. A whole world we shared together while we were apart.’ All the time she was turning over pages, pointing at the details with delight and laughing excitedly.

‘How thoughtful!’ VanGeorge said. ‘I’ve always thought personal communication should utilise the art of the collage.’ Helen was soaking up his comments, yearning for exuberant affirmation of her own feelings. He had to give her more. ‘Robert has always been an artist at thoughtfulness. Yes, he’s very clever.’

Robert didn’t seem embarrassed by Helen’s adolescent fervency. His eyes were wide and blue and inscrutable. He kept straightening his tunic and flattening the lines of his pantaloons at his waist and thighs and touching fastidiously the buttoned top of his collar where it brushed his chin. Although Helen chattered away merrily, Robert kept to his usual taciturnity, and VanGeorge could see that they were both troubled. There was a strain between them all and it was growing, almost in direct ratio to the rapid approach of the conference so as to suggest the rupture would unavoidably come then. He could understand Helen—she was a woman. Especially she was an unmarried woman who was maternal and who had been practically a sister to Robert—even a mother. As for Robert, VanGeorge had found him bewildering until Doctor Haines himself had explained, although the explanation in many ways confused instead of clarified the situation. Ten years ago Robert had been shy and sensitive, yet utterly self-controlled. Last year he had begun to show an emotional breakdown and the doctor had been forced to continue Robert’s training among the scientists and technicians of the impersonal research facilities of Aerospace Dynamics. With his departure everyone had seemed helped—recognising at the same time that nothing had been changed or cured and that the day was coming when they would all be facing their personal relationships again under the most extreme of circumstances.

They entered the elevator and dropped seventy stories in silence. At the Communications Level they walked across the marble floor to the private elevator to the persona] laboratory of the head of the department, virtually the home of Doctor Haines for the past twenty years.

As they were going up, VanGeorge decided to ease the tension of silence which had enveloped them and at the same time prepare them for the ordeal which was to come.

‘Well, what we’ve been preparing for is almost here. Ten years for me. Seven, for the newest member of the team. Over two decades for your father, Helen. ‘Sbeen a long time. And all during that time we’ve had our eyes fixed on our one goal—the starship.’ That wasn’t exactly a lie. After all, however important Robert had been over the years he had always been part of the starship experiment. ‘Robert has always been an important part of our plans, we all know that, but now he is the most important part. Everything we do must go towards his success.’

Helen’s transient light-heartedness faded away to solemnity.

They walked out into the white corridor, down the hall, and into the outer-room of the cybernetics department. Brockton and Doctor Haines were sunk in the soft contour chairs, talking. They looked up when the three of them entered, Brockton at Helen and the doctor at Robert.

The room was large, a huge window in the far wall framing the view of the city. The indirect lighting cast no shadows on the department apparatus and filing cabinets lining the left wall, nor any highlights on the metal bodies of the robots on racks along the right wall. The only bright and lively colours in the room came from Helen’s low-walled cubicle. There on her desk, next to her unfinished portrait of Robert, was the vase of perma-fixed flowers he had sent to her a month ago. VanGeorge looked at the painting on its aluminium easel, seeing more clearly now how impassionately she had limned the face and eyes to the neglect of all other features.

Brockton was flashing his famous smile at Helen as the three of them sat down, Robert next to her on a couch, close but not touching. Brockton’s lean, browned face was pleasant, yet it had a trace of worry, VanGeorge felt, and the man’s muscular fingers were drumming nervously against his bare knees which thrust themselves out of the starched khaki shorts. Despite there never having been a romance between Brockton and Helen, that handsome egoist had always treated her like a possessive guardian or a condescending husband. Perhaps the reason was that he simply didn’t know how to express his genuine concern and affection.

Dr. Haines had stepped back away from Robert after his soft, intense private words of greeting and had taken a limp leather notebook from the breast pocket of his tunic and was thumbing through it. He found his place and looked up seriously at Robert. ‘I haven’t seen you in a week,’ he said. *I suppose Helen has warned you not to go.’ His small brown goatee jutted out belligerently, but his eyes were warm with affection.

Robert didn’t reply immediately, so Helen said, ‘Yes. What you propose is inhuman.’

Brockton made a gurgling noise and VanGeorge had an overwhelming impulse to break out in some fierce sardonic laughter. Helen was so incredibly, stupidly naive—he was doing right to try to protect her. ‘How did you find out?’ Brockton added with heavy irony in his tone. When both VanGeorge and Dr. Haines looked at him sharply, he said, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be here. This is a family affair, sort of, so if you’d like Don and me to leave we will certainly understand.’ Don VanGeorge, mildly startled, could only nod his agreement.

‘Of course not,’ Dr. Haines said, mildly.

‘Nonsense, Brock,’ Helen said simultaneously. ‘You and Doctor Don are part of the family too. I’ve known all along what Robert’s role would be. It’s just that now the time has come I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

‘I’m ... sorry. Very sorry,’ Brockton said and shifted his glance to Robert. There was a compassionate sincerity to his words which was immensely depressing.

Dr. Haines said, ‘The only thing we’re here to discuss is the flight, that’s all, not Robert.’

‘Well, then. Dad, that’s the trouble,’ Helen said, ‘I think you should recognise you’ve put Robert in the position after all these years of not being able to say “no”. We all know there are doubts about the wisdom of the project. Why do we have to have such secrecy? We’ve lived with the idea so long we don’t realise how fantastic it is.’

‘You’re right, Helen! Absolutely! This is the last chance to avoid failure!’ Brockton was looking directly at Dr. Haines as he spoke. ‘This is the last chance for second thoughts. I’m willing and anxious to go—no matter how poor my survival chances seem.’

‘I suppose it still seems daring to you, Helen,’ her father said, ‘even after you’ve worked with us. But can you really call it fantastic?’

‘A trip to the stars?’ she replied. ‘I should think so!’

‘Not just a trip to the stars, my dear,’ he said, running his long fingers through thick brown hair, ‘—an interstellar ship with a pilot.’

‘But ... It’s too early for a manned-ship flight. Every research bears that out. The trip will take a lifetime. The pilot is certain to die.’

Brockton said, ‘Oh!’ so explosively that they all frowned and looked at him quizzically. He shut his mouth firmly and flushed and looked at the floor. How he had ever kept Robert’s secret from her in the last few years was beyond VanGeorge’s understanding.

Dr. Haines was sadly displeased with Helen. He tapped his notebook, cleared his throat and said, ‘I know you’re my daughter, Helen, but you’re strictly my secretarial assistant here in cybernetics. All factors are carefully calculated in our plans and you know this. We cannot afford sentiment.’ He clenched and unclenched his jaws. ‘Robert can always change his mind, I’m sure Brock will be ready, but the schedule calls for Robert to leave by eleven o’clock tonight. As we know, the starship has been in a parking orbit around the moon for a week.’

‘I know you don’t think sentiment belongs in this place.’ Helen’s face was white, but her voice was unchanged. ‘Someone has to think that way about Robert.’

Brockton ponderously cleared his throat. ‘You mustn’t!’ he said. It was a command.

‘You can’t order me what not to feel. Brock!’

Brock’s reply was almost a whisper. ‘And what do you feel, Helen? Is it love?’ The silence was harsh and agonising to VanGeorge. He hardly dared to breathe. Brockton leaned across the way and took Helen’s shoulders in his big hands. ‘Is it love?’ he repeated. He shook her slightly, so that her body quivered under the loose, thin folds of her blouse. Then he pushed her away from him and stared at Robert who sat unmoving on the couch. There wasn’t a single wrinkle line on Robert’s youthful face, only his eyes, round and brilliant, had life.

‘You, Helen,’ Brockton said. ‘You love that?’

Robert’s eyebrows went slowly up, bending into two perfect arcs and pinching the skin of his forehead into three long lines. He rose from the couch, lean and wiry, gazing up at Brockton who had also risen and was a foot taller.

‘Don’t lose your temper, Brock.’

‘I’m disgusted, Robert. Disgusted and revolted. Why didn’t you tell her?’ Brockton reached out quickly, grasping Robert’s left ear, and seemed to try to tear it off his head.

Robert knocked up Brockton’s arm and stepped back. When Helen stood beside Robert and sympathetically made a caressing gesture over Robert’s violated ear, Brockton was infuriated and swung his fist at Robert’s jaw. Robert dodged and with his own open right hand pushed Brockton’s head back so violently that the man crashed against the couch and flipped over it to the floor.

Before Brockton could get up, VanGeorge pulled Robert into the next room, Helen right behind.

‘I’m sorry, Doctor Don,’ Robert said.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ the older man replied.

‘I have to tell her, Don. She has to know and it has to be me to tell her.’

When VanGeorge didn’t reply, Robert turned to her. VanGeorge looked at the row of M-5 robots standing against the far wall.

‘Helen, you do not love me.’ A weird rattle distorted his voice. She swung her eyes nervously across his face.

‘Helen, you must not love me.’ His hands were moving back and forth as though he had no control over them.

‘Helen, I like you.’ His hands continued their aimless rhythm, back and forth, and she seemed hypnotised and dumb.

‘Helen, as much as possible, I care for you. But, ah, there’s a conflict point, we’ve got to consider, the homeostasis, the ontogenetic, that is, my training, ah.’ The rattle was in his voice again. He stopped moving, awkwardly holding his arms in place as if paralysed.

He began again.’ ‘I have always been truthful...

Dr. Don VanGeorge began to have some second thoughts. At first he had believed that Helen should be told. He had always believed, right back at the start, years ago when he had met Robert, that Helen should not have been the only one forbidden the knowledge. She, of all of them, should not have been deceived. But now, in the last few seconds, VanGeorge was suddenly unsure; there would only be another twelve hours. Robert could leave. Helen would better bear the tragic role of frustrated lover than of outraged simpleton.

‘Helen, you must suspect the truth...’ Robert lowered his hands stiffly to his belt and hooked them there. ‘Surely you must know.’ He paused and turned his head away from her. ‘It’s nothing new. You’ve worked here. You know your father. Cybernetics. Professor Haines has progressed far since the days of Wiener of MIT and Aiken of Harvard. I don’t have to explain cybernetics to you, do I?’

She shut her eyes. Behind VanGeorge’s back he could feel the presence of the rows of de-activated robots, which to Helen must have suddenly become grotesque blurs of polished metal.

‘Just one moment, Robert,’ VanGeorge said. ‘You’re leaving in a matter of hours. Do you think you should go into this?’

‘Please, Doctor VanGeorge,’ Helen said. ‘Let Robert say what he feels he must say.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘I know this laboratory. I know my father has built many servo-mechanisms. I remember them all as stiff, mechanical curiosities. But that was years ago. Before the rules of 1988.’

‘It was their strikingly human characteristics that caused the reaction, Helen,’ Robert said. ‘They disrupted the city. Laws were passed—no more experimenting with robots in the city limits. Theoretical experiments, yes, but no more free-will automatons were permitted here.’ Robert paused and looked at her expectantly.

‘Why of course!’ Helen said. She was suddenly excited and she grasped Robert’s right hand in her own. ‘You’ve been here all along. What a horrible thought I had—what a fright you’ve given me.’

Robert’s eyes were hot and glittering. He said firmly, ‘I am your father’s secret exception.’

VanGeorge felt muscles all over his body jerking under the flood of emotion which swept like a hot wave through him. He avoided looking directly at the couple because he knew he would betray his embarrassment for them. He noticed that Helen had involuntarily dropped Robert’s hand.

‘That’s why such effort was taken to make me look like—like a human being,’ Robert said without bitterness.

There was silence. VanGeorge could imagine that the girl’s heart had frozen and shattered within her and that the pieces would be falling like snow into the pit of her stomach. As the substitute father he had become to her, as the chance replacement for her own hardworking and dedicated father, he now felt more sorry for her than he had ever felt.

‘Do you understand?’

When VanGeorge looked up, Robert was devoting his entire attention to her. Helen tried to nod. Tears had begun to creep down her reddened cheeks. She tried to speak. Deep, wracking sobs came instead. Then she managed to say in a tiny voice, pretending a sudden objective indifference, ‘So that’s why you’re called Robert. Not much imagination there. You could have been named Phil, after phylo-genetics. That would have been cleverer.’

She started to laugh hysterically and stopped it quickly in order to cry out, ‘I don’t believe you!’

‘Nevertheless, I am.’ His hands began to move aimlessly again.

‘You have a human mind. You have a human brain. You wouldn’t lie about that!’

‘No,’ he said. He shut his eyelids. VanGeorge, in his daze, could only think: does she realise that he rarely blinks? Wasn’t that one of the flaws—one of the inconspicuous flaws in his masquerade ?

‘I do not have a human mind, Helen,’ he continued softly. ‘Somewhat organic, but not human. But I do have human behaviour. I am very nearly a pure, psychological product of environment.’

‘One of my father’s mechanical children,’ she whispered. She closed her eyes too. ‘Once I squandered a week’s salary on perfume to please you.’

‘Not his child,’ Robert said, ‘his alter-ego.’

‘No!’ Helen was crushing VanGeorge’s right arm in her fingers. ‘I don’t believe it! You’re saying this because of the star trip. You can’t be’—and she flung out a pointing hand at the row of robots—’one of those!’

Robert smiled a stiff smile. ‘They’re my grandparents, not my brothers. Do you want proof?’ He picked up a stool and in an instant had driven his fist through the thin metal seat. They saw the deep scratches on his hand but the blood did not come.

‘I know you’re strong, Robert,’ she said. ‘You’ve hurt your hand.’

Robert’s visage was strangely contorted. ‘More proof? Shall I give you a Brockton type of demonstration?’ he asked and reached his hand up towards his face.

‘No!’ Helen screamed and collapsed into VanGeorge’s arms.

For a moment the doctor and the astronaut stood there, unmoving, looking at the unconscious girl.

‘Do you think you should have told her?’ VanGeorge said helplessly.

‘Yes,’ Robert said. ‘She can’t love me. It would be terribly wrong.’

‘I suppose so,’ said VanGeorge. He started to stretch her out on the couch. ‘You go tell her father what happened. I’ll take care of her.’

Robert turned on his squeaking heels and stalked from the room.

For a long time VanGeorge sat on a chair by Helen’s side, letting her sleep, his own head held in his hands, thinking inconsequential, repetitious thoughts.

They both were in the same positions when Dr. Haines came into the room.

‘Thank you, Don,’ the professor said. ‘Don’t worry about Helen. She’s all right. I know she is. We’ve only minutes ahead of us and we can’t discuss this calamity now. Robert is all right, too, I’m positive. I’ve continually stressed the need that he must be clear-headed during the entire five hundred and twenty days of acceleration, that’s for nearly two years, each and every twenty-four hours. He’ll surmount this crisis. In fact, he may be better for it. Don’t worry about Helen. Many human beings have affection for inhuman beings.’

Robert had entered the room suddenly and the men knew that he heard the doctor’s final remark.

Dr. Haines said briskly, ‘She’s all right, Robert. There’s no need to be distraught or distracted—remember, the photon-drive is radically different, hazardous, and untested. There can be no mistakes.’

‘Don’t worry. Doctor,’ Robert said. ‘Goodbye, Doctor VanGeorge.’ They shook hands formally and firmly. ‘And thank you—sincerely.’ He broke away with a sudden touch of shyness. He looked at Dr. Haines. ‘Am I a being. Doctor? Am I living? Where does a living being begin and mere machinery leave off ?’

Dr. Haines’ eyes were momentarily sad. ‘I don’t know, Robert. Most people describe it simply as a soul.’

God-given, VanGeorge thought to himself. There’s the incomprehensibility.

‘Does a dog have a soul?’

‘I don’t know.’ Dr. Haines let his breath out in an audible sigh. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps you do, too, Robert. There is no clear-cut truth.’

‘Truth is elusive,’ Robert said, ‘yet people die for it. Perhaps some day mankind will know complete truth.’

‘Perhaps, Robert.’

‘If you’ll permit me, both of you—let me express myself with a quotation. “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come.” ‘

Dr. Haines’ lined, tired face was faintly curious. ‘That’s the Bible, I suppose, Robert?’

Robert nodded. ‘St. John, sixteenth chapter, thirteenth verse.’ He smiled. ‘When I get back in a hundred years I’ll quote Shakespeare. I’ve a lot of reading to do—and I’ll have the time. You know, humans spend all that time sleeping when they could be reading.’

Robert shook Dr. Haines’ hand quickly and stepped back. ‘Goodbye, Doctor,’ he said simply.

The older man moved forward and put his hand on Robert’s shoulder. ‘You must succeed, Robert—you’re a dear, dear friend.’

Robert put his hand on top of the other’s. Without any emotion he said, ‘I will succeed, Doctor—you’re my father.’

Robert quickly strode to the couch and bent and kissed Helen on the forehead. ‘Tell her what I did, please. You see, the truth is that I do love Helen.’

Then Robert was disappearing out the door.

Helen was struggling to lift herself off the couch, crying out, ‘Godspeed, Robert!’ But he didn’t hear because he was already gone.

‘You should have told him, Father,’ she said, as VanGeorge helped her to sit erect. ‘You should have told him who I really am.’

VanGeorge looked in bewilderment at his chief, sensing the deep mystery behind her words, and saw the man’s face melting into agony.

‘It’s not too late. Father,’ she said. ‘Let me go with him.’

‘Impossible—the ship’s not equipped.’

‘It could be, easily. There’s still time for the contingency plan, to put in Brock’s equipment.’

‘You forget, my dear, you’d die out of contact with your brain.’

‘Not all of me. Father.’ Helen’s voice sounded heavily ironic. ‘Just this me would die. Maybe not even then. Maybe this one of me would live for a long time. And I could help Robert for the crucial first phase. After that, why worry? I’ll die and still exist to live again.’

‘Don’t torture us both, Helen. The idea’s impractical and foolhardy. You know it is. It simply can’t be done.’

‘I know,’ Helen said. ‘You’re right.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘I’m disconnecting, Father.’ Her voice was flat now. ‘Maybe for ever.’ Then she crumpled into VanGeorge’s arms as if dead.

Incredibly, her father ignored her, the professor spinning on his heel and rushing from the room.

VanGeorge, in a daze, snatched the girl’s wrist in his fingers and bent his ear to her chest. When he was certain she was alive he made her body comfortable on the couch. As he started to summon help, Dr. Haines’ voice issued out of VanGeorge’s personal communicator under his left shirt-cuff.

‘Don? Helen’s all right.’ The words were without emotion. ‘Come into my private lab.’

During the few minutes it took VanGeorge to get there, his mind was muddled into stupefaction by innumerable unanswered questions. Then he was standing in front of Dr. Haines, staring vapidly into his face. The horror that had recently crawled across the doctor’s face had given way to intense anguish.

‘For God’s sake, Don,’ Dr. Haines said, ‘give me your advice! I’ve only a few minutes before Robert’s gone— should I admit to him that he’s partly human ? He’s part of me, because he’s part of my daughter. His bits of organic matter came from her brain.’

‘What?’ VanGeorge was incredulous, his skull exploding with the thought: no wonder Robert and Helen felt so deeply towards each other! The relationship was staggering —and grotesque! The thought showed in his face because Dr. Haines said quickly, ‘It’s a misleading truth, you know,’ and gently pulled him through the red security door. Only twice before, in all the ten years of their professional relationship, had VanGeorge been through that private doorway into the secluded inner room. There, in a console of closed circuit television, a monitor pictured a complex glass and metal case. Inside was a human figure. The unfamiliar object to VanGeorge’s eye took on the appearance of an electronic coffin with a corpse.

Then VanGeorge almost cried out at the recognition of the form inside the cubicle. He had to grasp Dr. Haines’ arm to keep his balance from the sudden dizziness. The human figure was, unbelievably, a bizarre representation of Helen Haines, half-mummified, lying in a bed of gadgets, veiled by a network of a thousand glittering wire strands. Peaceful, though, somehow like a nearly naked, pink and skinny child in a magic bed.

‘Helen?’

‘Yes, Helen.’ The professor’s words hung within Van-George’s head like the stifling pall of smoke from a burst bomb.

Dr. Haines punched a button and another monitor flickered into colour to show Helen back on the couch just as VanGeorge had left her. ‘And there, also, on the couch,’ Dr. Haines said. That’s also Helen.’

‘Two? Two Helens?’

‘Yes, although actually that young girl’s body is Helen’s telefactor—a living telefactor—her personal marionette.’

‘A telefactor?’ VanGeorge said, stunned almost into incoherence. ‘An image of your daughter. Another robot?’

‘Not a robot. Alive. Grown in the lab from her own cells. Her own blueprint faithfully self-copied. Not just a regenerated organ or two, but an entire organism. Just as she was and would’ve been.’

‘But the other? The—the sleeping Helen ...?’

‘Tucked away safely in a room down in the lower levels. She’s lain there for over fifteen years.’ The professor’s goatee exaggerated the sudden emotional trembling of his chin and his eyelashes wetly darkened with tears. ‘Her useless body has wasted away, but not her brain. She can exist there like that for ever:’

‘You didn’t—you didn’t—’ VanGeorge tried to say. ‘You—your own daughter—you didn’t experiment—?’

‘Another secret experiment? Another secret exception? Not deliberately, but in desperation. Twenty years ago Helen should have died. I froze her body alive, although only her head was essential. For another body I preferred flesh and blood, so I cultured another container. I didn’t want my daughter to be a cyborg—more machine than human being. At first I thought of taping her mind for re-recording in the baby’s brain. But I had to wait for the baby’s physical development. Then I thought of a brain transfer. Finally I took the safest way, and the simplest—I linked the old brain With the new by electrodynamics. The mature mind easily dominated the fresh brain. So much so that the refabricated Helen is virtually independent and the original Helen is mentally quiescent. She’s forty-two, but her fifteen-year-old body has matured at twice its normal rate.’

‘Fifteen?’ VanGeorge said, astonished. ‘The beautiful young lady I met years ago was only eight or nine?’

‘You thought she was a precocious teen-ager?’ Dr. Haines permitted himself a sad smile. ‘She’s a mature young woman with her mind and soul full of life. Her exceptional life must not be wasted.’

‘You think Helen would be wasted on Robert?’ VanGeorge decided to answer his own question. ‘I think she’s mature enough to make her own decisions.’

‘Yes, but she’s entirely human. I don’t know what Robert is. She is a very successful, if radical, medical technique for individual preservation. She’s even more than that. Robert is humanoid, not human—the origin of his organic matter is of no importance. The miniscule few thousand cells from Helen was simply easier than synthesis.’ The professor paused, tightening the muscles around his mouth. ‘But you’re right,’ he said at last. ‘Helen should know all the facts and make the decisions. Somehow, and she too has discovered this, Robert is not less than human, but more than human.’

‘Then tell your daughter before it’s too late.’

The two men looked at the monitors. In one was the young girl, by now surrounded by anxious medical technicians. In the other was the woman into whom was woven the artificial life-sustainers, the machines serving her and responding to her and responding for her, an apparatus with a real human soul. It was to that woman that the father spoke:

‘I will play back a conversation which Dr. Don and I have just had, Helen. Then we will do what you ask.’

While Dr. Haines adjusted the equipment, VanGeorge said, ‘Have you considered, Professor, the consequences of all this experimentation ? You’re altering Mankind’s billion-year-old evolutionary pattern. You’re forcing us across the threshold of tomorrow. Our world, our galaxy, even the universe, will be irrevocably changed.’

For the first time, Dr. Haines sat down on a stool and gestured his friend towards another.

‘Yes, I’ve thought a great deal about that, Don,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that’s my actual purpose in the great scheme of things. Perhaps that’s why Man has evolved in his unique way. To be the father and mother and midwife to the creation, evolution and eventual ascendancy of the thinking, feeling machine.’

From the first monitor there came an emergency warning buzz. Dr. Haines switched on the two-way soundpicture. A technician’s ghastly face filled the camera and blurted out, ‘My God, Doctor, Helen’s heart has stopped. There are all the symptoms of permanent death!’

Suddenly from the second monitor came a spoken message reconstituted from the library of sounds of young Helen’s voice. Almost natural, almost human. ‘There is only me now, Dad! Only the true identity which is Helen! Tell Robert I will wait for him. Tell him I’ll be here, the Helen whom he loves, a hundred years from now!’

VanGeorge looked at the Helen-thing.

Some day, if he were lucky and could live that long, he would help raise another young Helen to greet Robert, in the flesh, on his return home.