We Can Build You. Philip Dick K.
the head. Or haven’t you bothered to read the history books?’ And then I saw it. ‘You had to read the books in order to make the instruction tapes. So you know better than I what the Stanton feels toward Lincoln! You know he’s apt to roast the Lincoln into charred rust any minute!’
‘Don’t get mixed up in last year’s politics.’ Maury put down his letters for a moment, sighing. ‘The other day it was my daughter; now it’s the Stanton. There’s always some dark horror lurking. You have the mind of an old maid, you know that? Lay off and let me work.’
I went back downstairs to the shop again.
There, as before, sat the Stanton, but now it had finished its book; it sat pondering.
‘Young man,’ it called to me, ‘give me more information about this Barrows. Did you say he lives at our nation’s Capitol?’
‘No sir, the state of Washington.’ I explained where it was.
‘And is it true, as Mr Rock tells me, that this Barrows arranged for the World’s Fair to be held in that city through his great influence?’
‘I’ve heard that. Of course, when a man is that rich and eccentric all sorts of legends crop up about him.’
‘Is the fair still in progress?’
‘No, that was years ago.’
‘A pity,’ the Stanton murmured. ‘I wanted to go.’
That touched me to the heart. Again I reexperienced my first impression of it: that in many ways it was more human – god help us! – than we were, than Pris or Maury or even me, Louis Rosen. Only my father stood above it in dignity. Doctor Horstowski – another only partly-human creature, dwarfed by this electronic simulacrum. And, I thought, what about Barrows? How will he look when compared, face to face, with the Stanton?
And then I thought, How about the Lincoln? I wonder how that will make us feel and make us look.
‘I’d like your opinion about Miss Frauenzimmer, sir,’ I said to the simulacrum. ‘If you have the time to spare.’
‘I have the time, Mr Rosen.’
I seated myself on a truck tire opposite its brown easychair.
‘I have known Miss Frauenzimmer for some time. I am not certain precisely how long, but no matter; we are well-acquainted. She has recently left the Kasanin Medical Clinic at Kansas City, Missouri and returned here to her family. As a matter of fact I live at the Frauenzimmer home. She has light gray eyes and stands five feet six inches. Her weight is one-hundred-twenty-pounds at this time. She has been losing weight, I am told. I cannot recall her as anything but beauteous. Now I shall dilate on deeper matters. Her stock is of the highest, although immigrant; for it has imbibed of the American vision, which is: that a person is only limited by his abilities and may rise to whatever station in life is best-suited to those abilities. It does not follow from that however, that all men will rise equally; far from it. But Miss Frauenzimmer is quite right in refusing to accept any arrangement which denies her expression of those abilities and she senses any infringement with a flash of fire in her gray eyes.’
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