The Science Fiction Anthology. Fritz Leiber
At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she said. I told her I didn’t want her to clean it up. She could clean the whole house as often as she chose, but Iwould clean up the workshop.
After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next. A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open paint can would have a cover on it.
I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I swore I’d rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.
So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It was that predictable.
She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore her down. She didn’t go into the workshop any more.
As I said, you’ve got to be persistent, but you’ll win.
Eventually.
If you’re really persistent.
Now all my effort paid off. I got Marge out of the house for an hour or two that day and had George Prime delivered and stored in the big closet in the workshop. They hooked his controls up and left me a manual of instructions for running him. When I got home that night, there he was, just waiting to be put to work.
After supper, I went out to the workshop—to get the pipe I’d left there, I said. I pushed George Prime’s button, winked at him and switched on the free-behavior circuits.
“Go to it, Brother,” I said.
George Prime put my pipe in his mouth, lit it and walked back into the house.
Five minutes later, I heard them fighting.
It sounded so familiar that I laughed out loud. Then I caught a cab on the corner and headed uptown.
We had quite a night, Jeree and I. I got home just about time to start for work, and sure enough, there was George Prime starting my car, business suit on, briefcase under his arm.
I pushed the recall and George Prime got out of the car and walked into the workshop. He stepped into his cradle in the closet. I turned him off and then drove away in the car.
Bless his metallic soul, he’d even kissed Marge good-by for me!
Needless to say, the affairs of George Faircloth took on a new sparkle with George Prime on hand to cover the home front.
For the first week, I was hardly home at all. I must say I felt a little guilty, leaving poor old George Prime to cope with Marge all the time—he looked and acted so human, it was easy to forget that he literally couldn’t care less. But I felt apologetic all the same whenever I took him out of his closet.
“She’s really a sweet girl underneath it all,” I’d say. “You’ll learn to like her after a bit.”
“Of course I like her,” George Prime said. “You told me to, didn’t you? Stop worrying. She’s really a sweet girl underneath it all.”
He sounded convincing enough, but still it bothered me. “You’re sure you understand the exchange mechanism?” I asked. I didn’t want any foul-ups there, as you can imagine.
“Perfectly,” said George Prime. “When you buzz the recall, I wait for the first logical opportunity I can find to come out to the workshop, and you take over.”
“But you might get nervous. You might inadvertently tip her off.”
George Prime looked pained. “Really, old man! I’m a Super Deluxe model, remember? I don’t have fourteen activated Hunyadi tubes up in this cranial vault of mine just for nothing. You’re the one that’s nervous. I’ll take care of everything. Relax.”
So I did.
Jeree made good all her tacit promises and then some. She had a very cozy little apartment on 34th Street where we went to relax after a hard day at the office. When we weren’t doing the town, that is. As long as Jeree didn’t try too much conversation, everything was wonderful.
And then, when Jeree got a little boring, there was Sybil in the accounting department. Or Dorothy in promotion. Or Jane. Or Ingrid.
I could go on at some length, but I won’t. I was building quite a reputation for myself around the office.
Of course, it was like buying your first 3-V set. In a week or so, the novelty wears off a little and you start eating on schedule again. It took a little while, but I finally had things down to a reasonable program.
Tuesday and Thursday nights, I was informally “out” while formally “in.” Sometimes I took Sunday nights “out” if things got too sticky around the house over the weekend. The rest of the time, George Prime cooled his heels in his closet. Locked up, of course. Can’t completely trust a wife to observe a taboo, no matter how well trained she is.
There, was an irreconcilable amount of risk. George Prime had to quick-step some questions about my work at the office—there was no way to supply him with current data until the time for his regular two-month refill and pattern-accommodation at the laboratory. In the meantime, George Prime had to make do with what he had.
But as he himself pointed out he was a Super Deluxe model.
Marge didn’t suspect a thing. In fact, George Prime seemed to be having a remarkable effect on her. I didn’t notice anything at first—I was hardly ever home. But one night I found my pipe and slippers laid out for me, and the evening paper neatly folded on my chair, and it brought me up short. Marge had been extremely docile lately. We hadn’t had a good fight in days. Weeks, come to think of it.
I thought it over and shrugged. Old age, I figured. She was bound to mellow sometime.
But pretty soon I began to wonder if she wasn’t mellowing a little too much.
One night when I got home, she kissed me almost as though she really meant it. There wasn’t an unpleasant word all through dinner, which happened to be steak with mushrooms, served in the dining room (!) by candlelight (!!) with dinner music that Marge could never bear, chiefly because I liked it.
We sat over coffee and cigarettes, and it seemed almost like old times. Very old times, in fact I even caught myself looking at Marge again—really looking at her, watching the light catch in her hair, almost admiring the sparkle in her brown eyes. Sparkle, I said, not glint.
As I mentioned before, Marge was always easy to look at. That night, she was practically ravishing.
“What are you doing to her?” I asked George Prime later, out in the workshop.
“Why, nothing,” said George Prime, looking innocent. He couldn’t fool me with his look, though, because it was exactly the look I use when I’m guilty and pretending to be innocent.
“There must be something.”
George Prime shrugged. “Any woman will warm up if you spend enough time telling her all the things she wants to hear and pay all the attention to her that she wants paid to her. That’s elemental psychology. I can give you page references.”
I ought to mention that George Prime had a complete set of basic texts run into his circuits, at a slightly additional charge. Never can tell when an odd bit of information will come in useful.
“Well, you must be doing quite a job,” I said. I’d never managed to warm Marge up much.
“I try,” said George Prime.
“Oh, I’m not complaining,” I hastened to add, forgetting that a Prime’s feelings can’t be hurt and that he was only acting like me because it was in character. “I was just curious.”
“Of