We Can Build You

"Naw," I said. But the name did sound familiar.

"There was an article on him in _Look_. When he was twenty he always rose at five a.m., had a bowl of stewed prunes, ran two miles around the streets of Seattle, then returned to his room to shave and take a cold shower. And then he went off and studied his law books."

"Then he's a lawyer."

"Not anymore," Pris said. "Look over in the bookcase. The copy of _Look_ is there."

"Why should I care?" I said, but I went to get the magazine.

Sure enough, there on the cover in color was a man labeled:

SAM K. BARROWS, AMERICA'S MOST ENTERPRISING

NEW YOUNG MULTI-MILLIONAIRE

It was dated June 18, 1981, so it was fairly recent. And sure enough, there came Sam, jogging up one of the waterfront streets of downtown Seattle, in khaki shorts and gray sweatshirt, at what appeared to be sunup, puffing happily, a man with head shining due to being smooth-shaven, his eyes like the dots stuck in a snowman's face: expressionless, tiny. No emotion there; only the lower half of the face seemed to be gri

"If you saw him on TV--" Pris said.

"Yeah," I said, "I saw him on TV." I remembered now, because at the time--a year ago--the man had struck me unfavorably. His monotonous way of speaking... he had leaned close to the reporter and mumbled at him very rapidly. "Why do you want to work for him?" I asked.

"Sam Barrows," Pris said, "is the greatest living land speculator in existence. Think about that."

"That's probably because we're ru

Barrows had solved the real estate speculation problem. In a serks of far-reaching legal actions, he had managed to get the United States Government to permit private speculation in land on the other planets. Sam Barrows had singlehandedly opened the way for subdividers on Luna, Mars and Venus. His name would go down in history forever.

"So that's the man you want to work for," I said. "The man who polluted the untouched other worlds." His salesmen sold from offices all over the United States his glowinglydescribed Lunar lots.

"'Polluted untouched other worlds,' "Pris mimicked. "A slogan of those conservationists."

"But true," I said. "Listen, how are you going to make use of your land, once you've bought it? How do you live on it? No water, no air, no heat, no--"

"That will be provided," Pris said.

"How?"

"That's what makes Barrows the great man he is," Pris said. "His vision. Barrows Enterprises is working day and night--"

"A racket," I broke in.

There was silence, then. A strained silence.

"Have you ever actually spoken to Barrows?" I asked. "It's one thing to have a hero; you're a young girl and it's natural for you to worship a guy who's on the cover of magazines and on TV and he's rich and single-handedly he opened up the Moon to loan sharks and land speculators. But you were talking about getting a job."

Pris said, "I applied for a job at one of his companies. And I told them I wanted to see him personally."

"They laughed."

"No, they sent me into his office. He sat there and listened to me for a whole minute. Then, of course, he had to take care of other business; they sent me on to the perso

"What did you say to him in your minute?"

"I looked at him. He looked at me. You've never seen him in real life. He's incredibly handsome."

"On television," I said, "he's a lizard."

"I told him that I can screen dead beats. No time-wasters could get past me if I was his secretary. I know how to be tough and yet also I never turn away anyone who matters. You see, I can turn it on and off. Do you comprehend?"

"But can you open letters?" I said.

"They have machines who do that."

"Your father does that. That's Maury's job with us."

"And that's why I'd never work for you," Pris said. "Because you're so pathetically small. You hardly exist. No, I can't open letters. I can't do any routine jobs. I'll tell you what I can do. It was my idea to build the Edwin M. Stanton simulacrum."

I felt a deep unease.

"Maury wouldn't have thought of it," Pris said. "Bundy-- he's a genius. He's inspired. But it's idiot savantry that he has; the rest of his brain is totally deteriorated by the hebephrenic process. I designed the Stanton and he built it, and it's a success; you saw it. I don't even want or need the credit; it was fun. Like this." She had resumed her tilesnipping. "Creative work," she said.

"What did Maury do? Tie its shoelaces?"

"Maury was the organizer. He saw to it that we had our supplies."

I had the dreadful feeling that this calm account was god's truth. Naturally, I could check with Maury. And yet--it did not seem to me that this girl even knew how to lie; she was almost the opposite from her father. Perhaps she took after her mother, whom I had never met. They had been divorced, a broken family, long before I met Maury and became his partner.

"How's your out-patient psychoanalysis coming?" I asked her.

"Fine. How's yours?"

"I don't need it," I said.

"That's where you're wrong. You're very sick, just like me." She smiled up at me. "Face facts."

"Would you stop that snap-snapping? So I can go to sleep?"

"No," she answered. "I want to finish the octopus tonight."

"If I don't get sleep," I said, "I'll drop dead."

"So what."

"Please," I said.

"Another two hours," Pris said.

"Are they all like you?" I asked her. "The people who emerge from the Federal clinics? The new young people who get steered back on to course? No wonder we're having trouble selling organs."

"What sort of organs?" Pris said. "Personally I've got all the organs I want."

"Ours are electronic."

"Mine aren't. Mine are flesh and blood."

"So what," I said. "Better they were electronic and you went to bed and let your houseguest sleep."

"You're no guest of mine. Just my father's. And don't talk to me about going to bed or I'll wreck your life. I'll tell my father you propositioned me, and that'll end MASA ASSOCIATES and your career, and then you'll wish you never saw an organ of any kind, electronic or not. So toddle on to bed, buddy, and be glad you don't have worse troubles than not being able to sleep." And she resumed her snapsnapping.

I stood for a moment, wondering what to do. Finally I turned and went back into the spare room, without having found any rejoinder.

My god, I thought. Beside her, the Stanton contraption is all warmth and friendliness.

And yet, she had no hostility toward me. She had no sense that she had said anything cruel or hard--she simply went on with her work. Nothing had happened, from her standpoint. I didn't matter to her.

If she had really disliked me--but could she do that? Did such a word mean anything in co

She must see only the most meager outer part of people, I decided. Must be aware of them in terms only of their coercive or non-coercive effects on her... thinking that, I lay with one ear pressed against the pillow, my arm over the other, dulling the snap-snapping noise, the endless procession of cuttings-off that passed one by one into infinity.

I could see why she felt attracted to Sam K. Barrows. Birds of a feather, or rather lizards of a scale. On the TV show, and again now, looking at the magazine cover... it was as if the brain part of Barrows, the shaved dome of his skull, had been lopped off and then skillfully replaced with some servo-system or some feedback circuit of selenoids and relays, all of which was operated from a distance off. Or operated by Something which sat upstairs there at the controls, pawing at the switches with tiny tricky convulsive motions.