The door opened again and Sam appeared. He had a mask on, but it was hanging under his chin. "If you gentlemen would come in now."
In the living area, the little woman, also with a mask hanging around her neck, was pouring coffee from a flowered ceramic jug. She was smiling brightly but looked unhappy. Opposite her sat someone tall, in gray shirt and slacks, leaning back, legs out, arms on the arms of his chair, motionless. Something was wrong with his face.
"Well, now," said Sam heartily. His wife looked up at him with an agonized smile.
The tall figure turned its head and Sinescu saw with an icy shock that its face was silver, a mask of metal with oblong slits for eyes, no nose or mouth, only curves that were faired into each other. "...project," said an inhuman voice.
Sinescu found himself half bent over a chair. He sat down. They were all looking at him. The voice resumed, "I said, are you here to pull the plug on the project." It was unaccented, indifferent.
"Have some coffee." The woman pushed a cup toward him.
Sinescu reached for it, but his hand was trembling and he drew it back. "Just a fact-finding expedition," he said.
"Bull. Who sent you -- Senator Hinkel?"
"That's right."
"Bull. He's been here himself, why send you? If you are going to pull the plug, might as well tell me." The face behind the mask did not move when he spoke; the voice did not seem to come from it.
"He's just lookinhg around, Jim," said Babcock.
"Two hundred million a year," said the voice, "To keep one man alive. Doesn't make much sense, does it. Go on, drink your coffee."
Sinescu realized that Sam and his wife had already finished theirs and that they had pulled up their masks. He reached for his cup hastily.
"Hundred-percent disability in my grade is thirty thousand a year. I could get along on that easy. For almost an hour and a half."
"There's no intention of terminating the project," Sinsecu said.
"Phasing it out, though. Would you say phasing it out."
"Manners, Jim," said Babcock.
"Okay, my worst fault. What do you want to know?"
Sinescu sipped his coffee. His hands were still trembling. "That mask you're wearing," he started.
"Not for discussion. No comment, no comment. Sorry about that, don't mean to be rude; a personal matter. Ask me something--" Without warning, he stood up, blaring, "Get that damn thing out of here!" Sam's wife's cup smashed, coffee brown across the table. A fawn-colored puppy was sitting in the middle of the carpet, cocking its head, bright-eyed, tongue out.
The table tipped; Sam's wife struggled up behind it. Her face was pink, dripping with tears. She scooped up the puppy without pausing and ran out. "I better go with her," Sam said, getting up.
"Go on, and Sam, take a holiday. Drive her into Winnemucca, see a movie."
"Yeah, guess I will." He disappeared behind the bookshelf wall.
The tall figure sat down again, moving like a man; it leaned back in the same posture, arms on the arms of the chair. It was still. The hands gripping the wood were shapely and perfect but unreal; there was something wrong about the fingernails. The brown, well-combed hair above the mask was a wig; the ears were wax. Sinescu nervously fumbled his surgical mask up over his mouth and nose. "Might as well get along," he said and stood up.
"That's right, I want to take you over to Engineering and R & D," said Babcock. "Jim, I'll be back in a little while. Want to talk to you."
"Sure," said the motionless figure.
Babcock had had a shower, but sweat was soaking through the armpits of his shirt again. The silent elevator, the green carpet a little blurred. The air cool, stale. Seven years, blood and money, five hundred good men. Psych section, Cosmetic, Engineering, R & D, Medical, Immunology, Supply, Serology, Administration. The glass doors. Sam's apartment empty; gone to Winnemucca with Irma. Psych. Good men, but were they the best? Three of the best had turned it down. Buried in the files. Not like an ordinary amputation, this man has had everything cut off."
The tall figure had not moved. Babcock sat down. The silver mask looked back at him.
"Jim, let's level with each other."
"Bad, huh."
"Sure it's bad. I left him in his room with a bottle. I'll see him again before he leaves, but God knows what he'll say in Washington. Listen, do me a favor; take that thing off."
"Sure." The hand rose, plucked at the edge of the silver mask, lifted it away. Under it, the tan-pink face, sculptured nose and lips, eyebrows, eyelashes, not handsome but good-looking, normal-looking. Only the eyes wrong; pupils too big. And the lips that did not open or move when it spoke. "I can take anything off. What does that prove."
"Jim, Cosmetic spent eight and a half months on that model and the first thing you do is slap a mask over it. We've asked you what's wrong, offered to make any changes you want."
"No comment."
"You talked about phasing out the project. Did you think you were kidding?"
A pause. "Not kidding."
"All right, then open up, Jim, tell me; I have to know. They won't shut the project down; they'll keep you alive, but that's all. There are seven hundred on the volunteer list, including two US senators. Suppose one of them gets pulled out of an auto wreck tomorrow. We can't wait till then to decide; we've got to know now. Whether to let the next one die or put him into a TP body like yours. So talk to me."
"Suppose I tell you something but it isn't the truth."
"Why would you lie?"
"Would you lie to a cancer patient."
"I don't get it. Come on, Jim."
"Okay, try this. Do I look like a man to you."
"Sure."
"Bull. Look at this face." Calm and perfect. Beyond the fake irises, a wink of metal. "Suppose we had all the other problems solved and I could go into Winnnemucca tomorrow; can you see me walking down the street -- going into a bar -- taking a taxi."
"Is that all it is?" Babcock drew a deep breath. "Jim, sure there's a difference, but for Christ's sake, it's like any other prosthesis -- people get used to it. Like that arm of Sam's. You see it, but after a while you forget it, you don't notice."
"Bull. You pretend not to notice. Because it would embarrass the cripple."
Babcock looked down at his clasped hands. "Sorry for yourself?"
"Don't give me that," the voice blared. The tall figure was standing. The hands slowly came up, the fists clenched. "I'm in this thing; I've been in it for two years. I'm in it when I go to sleep, and when I wake up, I'm still in it."
Babcock looked up at him. "What do you want, facial mobility? Give us twenty years, maybe ten, we'll lick it."
"No. No."
"Then what?"
"I want you to close down Cosmetic."
"But that's--"
"Just listen. The first model looked like a tailor's dummy; so you spent eight months and came up with this one, and it looks like a corpse. The whole idea was to make me look like a man, the first model pretty good, the second model better, until you've got something that can smoke cigars and joke with women and go bowling and nobody will know the difference. You can't do it, and if you could, what for."
"I don't-- Let me think about this. What do you mean, a metal--"
"Metal, sure, but what difference does that make? I'm talking about shape. Function. Wait a minute." The tall figure strode across the room, unlocked a cabinet, came back with rolled sheets of paper. "Look at this."
The drawing showed an oblong metal box on four jointed legs. From one end protruded a tiny mushroom-shaped head on a jointed stem and a cluster of arms ending in probes, drills, grapples. "For moon prospecting."
"Too many limbs," said Babcock after a moment. "How would you--"
"With the facial nerves. Plenty of them left over. Or here." Another drawing. "A module plugged into the control system of a spaceship. That's where I belong, in space. Sterile environment, low grav, I can go where a man can't go and do what a man can't do. I can be an asset, not a goddamn billion-dollar liability."