"It walked," Barrows said.
"Pardon?"
"I say, it walked to my office from the Greyhound bus station."
"In any case," Maury said, "what we've achieved here has no precedent in the electronics trade."
After dinner we drove to Ontario, arriving at the office of MASA ASSOCIATES at ten o'clock.
"Funny little town," Dave Blunk said, surveying the empty streets. "Everybody in bed."
"Wait until you see the Lincoln," Maury said as we got out from the car.
They had stopped at the showroom window and were reading the sign that had to do with the Lincoln.
"I'll be a son of a gun," Barrows said. He put his face to the glass, peering in. "No sign of it right now, though. What does it do, sleep at night? Or do you have it assassinated every evening around five, when sidewalk traffic is heaviest?"
Maury said, "The Lincoln is probably down in the shop. We'll go down there." He unlocked the door and stood aside to let us enter.
Presently we were standing at the entrance to the dark repairshop as Maury groped for the light switch. At last he found it.
There, seated in meditation, was the Lincoln. It had been sitting quietly in the darkness.
Barrows said at once, "Mr. President." I saw him nudge Colleen Nild. Blunk grinned, looking enthusiastic, with the greedy, good-humored warmth of a hungry but confident cat. Clearly, he was getting enormous enjoyment out of all this. Mrs. Nild craned her neck, gasped faintly, obviously impressed. Barrows, of course, walked on into the repairshop without hesitation, knowing exactly what to do. He did not hold his hand out to the Lincoln; he halted a few paces from it, showing respect.
Turning his head the Lincoln regarded him with a melancholy expression. I had never seen such despair on a face before, and I shrank back; so did Maury. Pris did not react at all; she merely remained standing in the doorway. The Lincoln rose to its feet, hesitated, and then by degrees the expression of pain faded from its face; it said in a broken, reedy voice--completely at contrast to its tall frame, "Yes sir." It inspected Barrows from its height, with kindliness and interest, its eyes twinkling a little.
"My name is Sam Barrows," Barrows said. "It's a great honor to meet you, Mr. President."
"Thank you, Mr. Barrows," the Lincoln said. "Won't you and your friends enter and accommodate yourselves?"
To me Dave Blunk gave a wide-eyed silent whistle of astonishment and awe. He clapped me on the back. "Wheee," he said softly.
"You remember me, Mr. President," I said to the simulacrum.
"Yes, Mr. Rosen."
"What about me?" Pris said drily.
The simulacrum made a faint, clumsy, formal bow. "Miss Frauenzimmer. And you, Mr. Rock... the person on which this edifice rests, does it not?" The simulacrum chuckled. "The owner, or co-owner, if I am not mistook."
"What have you been doing?" Maury asked it.
"I was thinking about a remark of Lyman Trumbull's. As you know, Judge Douglas met with Buchanan and they talked over the Lecompton Constitution and Kansas. Judge Douglas later came out and fought Buchanan, despite the threat, it being an Administration measure. I did not support Judge Douglas, as did a number of those dear to me among my own party, the Republicans and their cause. But in Bloomington, where I was toward the end of 1857, I saw no Republicans going over to Douglas, as one saw in the New York _Tribune_. I asked Lyman Trumbull to write me in Springfield to tell me whether--"
Barrows interrupted the Lincoln simulacrum, at that point. "Sir, if you'll excuse me. We have business to conduct, and then I and this gentleman, Mr. Blunk, and Mrs. Nild, here, have to fly back to Seattle."
The Lincoln bowed. "Mrs. Nild." He held out his hand, and, with a snorting laugh, Colleen Nild went forward to shake hands with him. "Mr. Blunk." He gravely shook hands with the short plump attorney. "You're not related to Nathan Blunk of Cleveland, are you, sir?"
"No, I'm not," Blunk answered, shaking hands vigorously. "You were an attorney at one time, weren't you, Mr. Lincoln?"
"Yes sir," the Lincoln replied.
"My profession."
"I see," the Lincoln said, with a smile. "You have the divine ability to wrangle over trifles."
Blunk boomed out a hearty laugh.
Coming up beside Blunk, Barrows said to the simulacrum, "We flew here from Seattle to discuss with Mr. Rosen and Mr. Rock a financial transaction involving backing of MASA ASSOCIATES by Barrows Enterprises. Before we finalize we wanted to meet you and have a talk. We met the Stanton recently; he came to visit us on a bus. We'd acquire you and Stanton both as assets of MASA ASSOCIATES, as well as basic patents. As an ex-attorney you're probably familiar with transactions of this sort. I'd be curious to ask you something. What's your sense of the modern world? Do you know what a _vitamin_ is, for instance? Do you know what year this is?" He scrutinized the simulacrum keenly.
The Lincoln did not answer immediately, and while it was getting ready, Maury waved Barrows over to one side. I joined them.
"That's all beside the point," Maury said. "You know perfectly well it wasn't made to handle topics like that."
"True," Barrows agreed. "But I'm curious."
"Don't be. You'd feel funny if you burned out one of its primary circuits."
"Is it that delicate?"
"No," Maury said, "but you're needling it."
"No I'm not. It's so convincingly lifelike that I want to know how conscious it is of its new existence."
"Leave it alone," Maury said.
Barrows gestured abruptly. "Certainly." He beckoned to Colleen Nild and their attorney. "Let's conclude our business and start back to Seattle. David, are you satisfied by what you see?"
"No," Blunk said, as he joined us. Colleen remained with Pris and the simulacrum; they were asking it something about the debates with Stephen Douglas. "It doesn't seem to function nearly as well as the Stanton one, in my opinion."
"How so?" Maury demanded.
"It's--halting."
"It just came to," I said.
"No, it's not that," Maury said. "It's a different personality. Stanton's more inflexible, dogmatic." To me he said, "I know a hell of a lot about those two people. Lincoln was this way. I made up the tapes. He had periods of brooding, he was brooding here just now when we came in. Other times he's more cheerful." To Blunk he said, "That's his character. If you stick around awhile you'll see him in other moods. Moody--that's what he is. Not like Stanton, not positive. I mean, it's not an electrical failure; it's supposed to be that way."
"I see," Blunk said, but he did not sound convinced.
"I know what you refer to," Barrows said. "It seems to stick."
"Right," Blunk said. "I'm not sure in my own mind that they've got this perfected. There may be a lot of bugs left to iron out."
"And this cover-up line," Barrows said, "about not questioning it as to contemporary topics--you caught that."
"I certainly did," Blunk said.
"Sam," I said to Barrows, plunging in, "you don't get the point at all. Maybe that's due to your having just made that plane flight from Seattle and then that long drive by car from Boise. Frankly, I thought you grasped the principle underlying the simulacra, but let's let the subject go, for the sake of amicability. Okay?" I smiled.
Barrows contemplated me without answering; so did Blunk. Off in the corner Maury perched on a workstool, with his cigar giving off clouds of lonely blue smoke.
"I understand your disappointment with the Lincoln," I said. "I sympathize. To be frank, the Stanton one was coached."
"Ah," Blunk said, his eyes twinkling.
"It wasn't my idea. My partner here was nervous and he wanted it all set up." I wagged my head in Maury's direction. "He was wrong to do it, but anyhow that's a dead issue; what we want to deal with is the Lincoln simulacrum because that's the basis of MASA ASSOCIATES' genuine discovery. Let's walk back and query it further."