I Sing the Body Electric. Ray Bradbury
for a long time the father cannot bring himself to ease his translator of the wind down to set him on the earth, but the boy, changed, comes down at last…”
Bayes sat looking at Phipps.
Phipps slugged down his drink, suddenly chagrined at his own expansiveness, then snorted:
“I’ll never make that film. But I will make this!”
And that was the moment he pulled forth and unfolded the blueprints of the Phipps Eveready Salem, Illinois, and Springfield Ghost Machine, the Lincoln mechanical, the electro-oil-lubricated plastic India-rubber perfect-motioned and outspoken dream.
Phipps and his born-full-tall-at-birth Lincoln. Lincoln. Summoned live from the grave of technology, fathered by a romantic, drawn by need, slapped to life by small lightnings, given voice by an unknown actor, to be placed there to live forever in this far southwest corner of old-new America! Phipps and Lincoln.
And that was the day, yes, of the first wild bursts of laughter which Phipps ignored by simply saying, “We must, oh we must, stand all of us, downwind from Gettysburg. It’s the only hearing place.”
And he shared out his pride amongst them. This man he gave armatures, to that the splendid skull, another must trap the Ouija-spirit voice and sounding word, yet others must grow the precious skin, hair, and fingerprints. Yes, even Lincoln’s touch must be borrowed, copied, the same!
Derision then was their style of life.
Abe would never really speak, they all knew that, nor move. It would all be summed and written off with taxes as a loss.
But as the months lengthened into years, their outcries of hilarity turned to accepting smiles and stunned wild grins. They were a gang of boys caught up in some furtive but irritably joyous mortuary society who met midnights in marble vaults to disperse through graveyards at dawn.
The Lincoln Resurrection Brigade yeasted full and prospered. Instead of one mad fool, a dozen maniacs fell to rifling old mummy-dust news-files, begging and then pilfering death masks, burying and then digging up new plastic bones.
Some toured the Civil War battlefields in hopes that history, borne on some morning wind, might whip their coats like flags. Some prowled the October fields of Salem, starched brown with farewell summer, sniffing airs, pricking ears, alert for some lank lawyer’s unrecorded voice, anxious for echoes, pleading their case.
And none more anxious nor paternal-proud worrying than Phipps until the month when the robot was spread out on delivery tables, there to be ball and socketed, voice box locked in, rubber eyelids peeled back to sink therein the deep sad eyes which, gazing out, had seen too much. The generous ears were appended that might hear only time lost. The large-knuckled hands were hung like pendulums to guess that time. And then upon the tall man’s nakedness they shucked on suiting, buttoned buttons, fixed his tie, a gathering of tailors, no, Disciples now on a bright and glorious Easter mom and them on Jerusalem’s hills ready to roll aside the rock and stand Him forth at their cry.
And in the last hour of the last day Phipps had locked them all out as he finished the final touches on the recumbent flesh and spirit and at last opened the door and, not literally, no, but in some metaphoric sense, asked them to hoist him on their shoulders a last time.
And in silence watched as Phipps called across the old battlefield and beyond, saying the tomb was not his place; arise.
And Lincoln, deep in his cool Springfield marbled keep, turned in his slumbers and dreamed himself awake.
And rose up.
And spoke.
A phone rang.
Bayes jerked.
The memories fell away.
The theater phone on one far stage wall buzzed.
Oh, God, he thought, and ran to lift the phone.
“Bayes? This is Phipps. Buck just called and told me to get over there! Said something about Lincoln—”
“No,” said Bayes. “You know Buck. Must have called from the nearest bar. I’m here in the theater. Everything’s fine. One of the generator’s acted up. We just finished repairs—”
“He’s all right, then?”
“He’s great.” He could not take his eyes off the slumped body. Oh Christ. Oh God. Absurd.
“I—I’m coming over.”
“No, don’t!”
“Jesus, why are you shouting?”
Bayes bit his tongue, took a deep breath, shut his eyes so he could not see the thing in the chair and said, slowly:
“Phipps, I’m not shouting. There. The lights just came back on. I can’t keep the crowd waiting. I swear to you—”
“You’re lying.”
“Phipps!”
But Phipps had hung up.
Ten minutes, thought Bayes wildly, oh God, he’ll be here in ten minutes. Ten minutes before the man who brought Lincoln out of the grave meets the man who put him back in it…
He moved. A mad impulse made him wish to run backstage, start the tapes, see how much of the fallen creature would motivate, which limbs jerk, which lie numb—more madness. Time for that tomorrow.
There was only time now for the mystery.
And the mystery was enclosed in the man who sat in the third seat over in the last row back from the stage.
The assassin—he was an assassin, wasn’t he? The assassin, what did he look like?
He had seen his face, some few moments ago, hadn’t he? And wasn’t it a face from an old, a familiar, a faded and put-away daguerreotype? Was there a full mustache? Were there dark and arrogant eyes?
Slowly Bayes stepped down from the stage. Slowly he moved up the aisle and stopped, looking in at that man with his head bent into clutching fingers.
Bayes inhaled then slowly exhaled a question in two words:
“Mr.... Booth?”
The strange faraway man stiffened, then shuddered and let forth a terrible whisper:
“Yes…”
Bayes waited. Then he dared ask:
“Mr … John Wilkes Booth?”
To this the assassin laughed quietly. The laugh faded into a kind of dry croak.
“Norman Llewellyn Booth. Only the last name is … the same.”
Thank God, thought Bayes. I couldn’t have stood the other.
Bayes spun and paced up the aisle, stopped, and fixed his eyes to his watch. No time. Phipps was on the freeway now. Any moment, he’d be hammering at the door. Bayes spoke rigidly to the theater wall directly in front of him:
“Why?”
And it was an echo of the affrighted cry of three hundred people who had sat here not ten minutes ago and jumped to terror at the shot.
“Why!?”
“I don’t know!” cried Booth.
“Liar!” cried Bayes, in the same breath and instant.
“Too good a chance to miss.”
“What?” Bayes whirled.
“…nothing.”
“You don’t dare say that again!”
“Because,” said Booth, head down, half hid, now light, now dark, jerking into and out of emotions he only sensed as they came, went, rose, faded with barks of laughter and then silence. “Because … it’s the truth.” In awe, he whispered, stroking his cheeks. “I did it. I actually did