Bill stood regarding it, his fingers still on the wheel of the pump. Then, when he realised what it meant, he recaptured some of his old exuberance, and danced around the laboratory carrying a carboy of acid as though it were a Grecian urn.
Further experiments convinced him that he had set foot within the portals of Nature’s most carefully guarded citadel. Admittedly he could not himself create anything original or unique in Life. But he could create a living image of any living creature under the sun.
A hot summer afternoon, a cool green lawn shaded by elms and on it two white-clad figures, Joan and Will, putting through their miniature nine-hole course. A bright-striped awning by the hedge, and below it, two comfortable canvas chairs and a little Moorish table with soft drinks. An ivy-covered wall of an old red-brick mansion showing between the trees. The indefinable smell of new-cut grass in the air. The gentle but triumphant laughter of Joan as Will foozled his shot. That was the atmosphere Bill entered at the end of his duty tramp along the lane from the laboratory-it was his first outdoor excursion for weeks-and he could not help comparing it with the sort of world he had been living in: the benches and bottles and sinks, the eye-tiring field of the microscope, the sheets of calculations under the glare of electric light in the dark hours of the night, the smell of blood and chemicals and rabbits.
And he realised completely that science wasn’t the greatest thing in life. Personal happiness was. That was the goal of all men, whatever way they strove to reach it. Joan caught sight of him standing on the edge of the lawn, and came hurrying across to greet him.
“Where have you been all this time?” she asked. “We’ve been dying to hear how you’ve been getting on.”
“I’ve done it,” said Bill.
“Done it? Have you really?” Her voice mounted excitedly almost to a squeak. She grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him across to Will. ”He’s done it!” she announced, and stood between them, watching both their faces eagerly. Will took the news with his usual calmness, and smilingly gripped Bill’s hand.
“Congratulations, old lad,” he said. “Come and have a drink and tell us all about it.”
They squatted, on the grass and helped themselves from the table. Will could see that Bill had been overworking himself badly. His face was drawn and tired, his eyelids red, and he was in the grip of a nervous tension which for the time held him dumb and uncertain of himself.
Joan noticed this, too, and checked the questions she was going to bombard upon him. Instead, she quietly withdrew to the house to prepare a pot of the China tea which she knew always soothed Bill’s migraine. When she had gone, Bill, with an effort, shook some of the stupor from him, and looked across at Will. His gaze dropped, and he began to pluck idly at the grass.
“Will,” he began, presently, “I—” He cleared his throat nervously, and started again in a none too steady voice. “Listen, Will, I have something a bit difficult to say, and I’m not so good at expressing myself. In the first place, I have always been crazily in love with Joan.”
Will sat, and looked at him curiously. But he let Bill go on.
“I never said anything because—well, because I was afraid I wouldn’t make a success of marriage. Too unstable to settle down quietly with a decent girl like Joan. But I found I couldn’t go on without her, and was going to propose—when you beat me to it. I’ve felt pretty miserable since, though this work has taken something of the edge off.”
Will regarded the other’s pale face—and wondered.
“This work held out a real hope to me. And now I’ve accomplished the major part of it. I can make a living copy of any living thing. Now-do you see why I threw myself into this research? I want to create a living, breathing twin of Joan, and marry her! ”
Will started slightly. Bill got up and paced restlessly up and down.
“I know I’m asking a hell of a lot. This affair reaches deeper than a scientific curiosity. No feeling man can contemplate such a proposal without misgivings, for his wife and for himself. But honestly, Will, I cannot see any possible harm arising from it. Though, admittedly, the only good thing would be to make a selfish man happy. For heaven’s sake, let me know what you think.”
Will sat contemplating, while the distracted Bill continued to pace. Presently, he said, “You are sure no physical harm could come to Joan in the course of the experiment?”
“Certain—completely certain,” said Bill.
“Then I personally have no objection. Anything but objection. I had no idea you felt that way, Bill, and it would make me, as well as Joan, very unhappy to know you had to go on like that.”
He caught sight of his wife approaching with a laden tray. “Naturally, the decision rests with her,” he said. “If she’d rather not, there’s no more to it.”
“No, of course not,” agreed Bill.
But they both knew what her answer would be.
“Stop the car for a minute, Will,” said Joan suddenly, and her husband stepped on the foot-brake.
The car halted in the lane on the brow of the hill. Through a gap in the hedge the two occupants had a view of Bill’s laboratory as it lay below in the cradle of the valley.
Joan pointed down. In the field behind the ‘cemetery’ two figures were strolling. Even at this distance, Bill’s flaming hair marked his identity. His companion was a woman in a white summer frock. And it was on her that Joan’s attention was fixed.
“She’s alive now!” she whispered, and her voice trembled slightly. Will nodded. He noticed her apprehension, and gripped her hand encouragingly. She managed a wry smile.
“It’s not every day one goes to pay a visit to oneself,” she said. “It was unnerving enough last week to see her lying on the other couch in the lab, dressed in my red frock—which I was wearing—so pale, and—Oh, it was like seeing myself dead!”
“She’s not dead now, and Bill’s bought her some different clothes, so cheer up,”
said Will. “I know it’s a most queer situation, but the only possible way to look at it is from the scientific viewpoint. It’s a unique scientific event. And it’s made Bill happy into the bargain.”
He ruminated a minute.
“Wish he’d given us a hint as to how he works his resuscitation process, though,” he went on. “Still, I suppose he’s right to keep it a secret. It’s a discovery which could be appallingly abused. Think of dictators manufacturing loyal, stupid armies from one loyal, stupid soldier! Or industrialists manufacturing cheap labour!
We should soon have a world of robots, all traces of individuality wiped out. No variety, nothing unique—life would not be worth living.”
“No,” replied Joan, mechanically, her thoughts still on that white-clad figure down there.
Will released the brake, and the car rolled down the hill toward the laboratory. The two in the field saw it coming, and walked back through the cemetery to meet it. They reached the road as the car drew up.
“Hello, there!” greeted Bill. “You’re late—we’ve had the kettle on the boil for half an hour. Doll and I were getting anxious.”
He advanced into the road, and the woman in the white frock lingered hesitantly behind him. Joan tightened her lips and braced herself to face this unusual ordeal. She got out of the car, and while Will and Bill were grasping hands, she walked to meet her now living twin.