"He shouldn't have said we were ugly," she pouted. "Isn't that important?"
"Women!" Ross said grimly. "If you'll kindly forget the trivial affront to your vanity perhaps we can figure something out."
Helena said stubbornly: "But he shouldn't. We're not. What if they just think we are because they all look alike and we don't look like them?"
Ross collapsed. After a long pause during which he tried and almost failed to control his temper he said slowly: "Thank you, Helena. You're wrong, of course, but it was a contribution. You see, you can't build up such a wild, far-fetched theory from the few facts available." His voice was beginning to choke with anger. "It isn't reasonable and it isn't really any help. In fact it's the God-damndest stupidest imitation of reasoning I have ever——"
"City," Bernard croaked, pointing. The jolting ride had become smoother, and gliding past the windows were green tiled buildings and street lights.
"Fine," Ross said bitterly. "We had a few clear minutes to think and now we find they were wasted by the crackpot dissertation of a female and my reasonable attempt to show her the elements of logical thinking." He put his head in his hands and tried to ignore them, tried to reason it out.
But the truck made a couple of sharp turns and jolted to a stop.
The door opened and the voice of their driver said, again from behind a flashlight's dazzling circle: "Out. Walk ahead of me."
They did, into a fair-sized, well-lighted room with eight people in it whom they studied in amazement. Every one of the eight was exactly the same height—six feet. Every one had straight red hair of exactly the same shade, sprouting from an identical hairline. Every one had precisely the same build—gangling but broad-shouldered. Their sixteen eyes were the identical blue under sixteen identical eyebrows. Head to toe, they were duplicates. One of them spoke—in exactly the same voice as the truckdriver's.
"So you want to be Joneses, do you?" he said.
"Absolutely impossible."
"But we took their money."
"Give it back. Reasonable changes, yes, but look at them!"
"We can't give it back. Look what we spent already. Anyway, Sam,——" It sounded like "Sam" to Ross.
"——anyway, Sam, look at some of the work you've done already. You can do it. I doubt if anybody else coujd, but you can."
Ross felt his eyes crossing, and gave up the effort of trying to tell which Jones was speaking to which. Even the clothing was nearly identical—purple pantaloons, scarlet jacket, black cummerbund sash, black shoes. Then he noticed that Third-from-the-left Jones—the one who seemed to be named Sam—wore a frilly shirt of white under the scarlet jacket. Only a lacy edge showed at the open collar; but where his was white, the others were all muted pastels of pink and green.
Sam said coldly, "I know nobody else can do it. Anybody else! Who else is there?"
A Jones with a frill of chartreuse pursed his lips. "Well," he said thoughtfully, "there's Northside Tun Jones———"
"Northside Tim Jones," Sam mimicked. "Eight of his jobs are in the stockade right now! Paraffin, for Jones's sake—he still uses paraffin to mold a face!"
"I know, Sam, but after all, these people need help. If you won't do it for them, what's left?"
Sam shrugged morosely. "Well——" he said. Then he shook his head, sighed, and came forward to look at the three travelers. With an expression of revulsion he said, "Strip."
Ross hesitated. "Hold it!" he said sharply to Helena, already half out of her coveralls. "Sir, there may have been some mistake. Would you mind explaining just what you propose to do?"
"The usual thing," Sam said irritably. "Fix your hair, build up your frames, level you off at standard Jones height. The works. Though I must say," he added bitterly, "I never saw such unpromising specimens in my life. How the Jones have you managed to stay out of trouble this long? Whose garrets have you been hiding in?"
Ross licked his lips. "You mean," he said, "you want to make us look more like you gentlemen, is that it?"
"I want!" Sam repeated in bafflement. Over his shoulder he roared, "Ben, what kind of creeps are you saddling me with?"
Ben, looking worried, said, "Holy Jones, Sam, I don't get it either. It was a perfectly normal deal. This guy came up to me in Jones's Joint and made a pitch. He knew the setup all right, and he had the money with him. Six hundred Joneses, cold cash; and it wasn't funny money, either." His face clouded. "I did think, though," he mentioned, "that he said two women and one man. But Paul Jones picked them up right at the rendezvous, so it must've been the right ones."
He glowered suspiciously at Ross and the others. "Come to think of it," he said, "maybe not. Tell you what, Sam, you just sit tight here for twenty minutes or so." And he hurried out of the room.
One of the other Joneses said curtly, "Sit down." Ross, Bernie, and Helena found chairs lined up against a wall; they sat. A different Jones rummaged in a stack of papers on a table; he handed something to each of them. "Relax," he advised. Obediently the three spacefarers opened the magazines he gave them. When they were settled, most of the Joneses, after a whispered conference, went out. The one that was left said, "No talking. If we made a mistake, we're sorry. Meanwhile, you do what you're told."
Ross found that his magazine was called By Jones; it seemed to be a periodical devoted to entertaining news and gossip of sports, fashion, and culture. He stared at an article headed "Be Glad the People's Police Are Watching YOU!", but the words made little sense. He tried to think; but somehow he couldn't find a point at which to grasp the flickering mass of impressions that were circling through his brain. Nothing seemed to make a great deal of sense any more; and Ross suddenly realized that he was very, very tired.
His mind an utter blank, he sat and waited.
It was twenty minutes and a bit more. Then the door flew open and half a dozen Joneses burst hi.
Even at first sight, Ross could tell that three of them were newcomers. For one thing, two were women; and the third, though red-haired, tall and gangling, had a nose a full centimeter shorter than any of the others, and his hair was crisply curled.
"All right, you Peepeece!" snarled the first Jones. "You found what you were looking for—now try to get out!"
Helena did the talking. It wasn't Ross's idea, but when her heel crunched down on his instep he was too startled to object, and from then on he didn't get a chance to get a word in edgewise.
He had to admit that her act was getting across with the audience. Long before she had finished reporting their meeting, their flight to Azor, the escape from "Minerva," and the flight here, most of the Joneses had put their guns away, and all were showing signs of stupefaction. "——And then," she finished, "we saw this truck, and that very good-looking man picked us up. And so we're here on Earth; and, honest to goodness, that's the exact truth."
There was silence while the Joneses looked at each other. Then the plastic-surgeon-type Jones, Sam with the white shirt front, stepped forward. "Hold still, my dear," he ordered. Helena bravely stood rigid while the surgeon raked searchingly through the roots of her hair, peered into her eyes, expertly traced the configuration of her ribs.
He stepped back, shaken. "One thing is for sure," he told the others, "they're not Peepeece. Not with those bones. They'd never get in."
Ben Jones beat his forehead and moaned. "How do I get into these things?" he demanded.
One of the female Joneses said shrilly, "We didn't expect anything like this. "We're honest Jonesfearing Joneses and——"
"Shut up!" Ben Jones roared. "What about the other two, Sam? They all right too?"
"Oh, for Jones's sake, Ben," Sam said disgustedly, "just look at them, will you? Do you think the police would take in a five-inch height deviation like that one-——" he pointed to Bernie——— "or a half-bald scarecrow like that?" Ross, stung, opened his mouth to object; but swiftly closed it again. Nobody was paying much attention to him, anyhow, except as Exhibit A.