7

Now that the Stanton had decided to visit Sam K. Barrows it was obvious that only the question of time remained. Even I could see the inevitability of it.

And at the same time, the Abraham Lincoln simulacrum neared completion. Maury set the next weekend for the date of the first test of the totality of the components. All the hardware would be in the case, mounted and ready to function.

The Lincoln container, when Pris and Maury brought it into the office, flabbergasted me. Even in its inert stage, lacking its working parts, it was so lifelike as to seem ready at any moment to rise into its day's activity. Pris and Maury, with Bob Bundy's help, carried the long thing downstairs to the shop; I trailed along and watched while they laid it out on the workbench.

To Pris I said, "I have to hand it to you."

Standing with her hands in her coat pockets, she somberly supervised. Her eyes seemed dark, deeper set; her skin was quite noticeably pale--she had on no make-up, and I guessed that she had been up all hours every night, finishing her task. It seemed to me, too, that she had lost weight; now she appeared actually thin. She wore a striped cotton t-shirt and blue jeans under her coat, and apparently she did not even need to wear a bra. She had on her low-heeled leather slippers and her hair had been tied back and held with a ribbon.

"Hi," she murmured, rocking back and forth on her heels and biting her lip as she watched Bundy and Maury lower the Lincoln onto the bench.

"You did a swell job," I said.

"Louis," Pris said, "take me out of here; take me somewhere and buy me a cup of coffee, or let's just walk." She started toward the door and after a moment of hesitation I followed.

Together, we strolled along the sidewalk, Pris staring down and kicking a pebble ahead of her.

"The first one was nothing," she said, "compared to this. Stanton is just another person and yet even so it was almost too much for us. I have a book at home with every picture taken of Lincoln. I've studied them until I know his face better than my own." She kicked her pebble into the gutter. "It's amazing how good those old photographs were. They used glass plates and the subject had to sit without moving. They had special chairs they built, to prop the subject's head so it wouldn't wobble. Louis." At the curb she halted. "Can he really come to life?"

"I dunno, Pris."

"It's all self-deception. We can't really restore life to something that's dead."

"Is that what you're doing? Is that how you think of it? If you put it like that I agree. Sounds like you're too deep in it emotionally. You better back away and get perspective."

"You mean we're just making an imitation that walks and talks like the real thing. The spirit isn't there, just the appearance."

"Yes," I said.

"Did you ever go to a Catholic mass, Louis?"

"Naw."

"They believe the bread and wine actually are the body and blood. That's a miracle. Maybe if we get the tapes perfect here, and the voice and the physical appearance and--"

"Pris," I said, "I never thought I'd see you frightened."

"I'm not frightened. It's just too much for me. When I was a kid in junior high Lincoln was my hero; I gave a report on him in the eighth grade. You know how it is when you're a kid, everything you read in books is real. Lincoln was real to me. But of course I really spun it out of my own mind. So what I mean is, my own fantasies were real to me. It took me years to shake them, fantasies about the Union cavalry and battles and Ulysses S. Grant... you know."

"Yeah."

"Do you think someday somebody will make a simulacrum of you and me? And we'll have to come back to life?"

"What a morbid thought."

"There we'll be, dead and oblivious to everything... and then we'll feel something stirring. Maybe see a snatch of light. And then it'll all come flooding in on us, reality once more. We'll be helpless to stop the process, we'll have to come back. Resurrected!" She shuddered.

"It's not that, what you're doing; get that idea out of your mind. You have to separate the actual Lincoln from this--"

"The real Lincoln exists in my mind," Pris said.

I was astonished. "You don't believe that. What do you mean by saying that? You mean you have the _idea_ in your mind."

She cocked her head on one side and eyed me. "No, Louis. I really have Lincoln in my mind. And I've been working night after night to transfer him out of my mind, back into the outside world."

I laughed.

"It's a dreadful world to bring him into," Pris said. "Listen Louis. I'll tell you something. I know a way to get rid of those awful yellowjackets that sting everybody. You don't take any risk... and it doesn't cost anything; all you need is a bucket of sand."

"Okay."

"You wait until night. So the yellowjackets are all down below in their nest asleep. Then you show up at their hole and you pour the bucket of sand over it, so the sand forms a mound. Now listen. You think the sand suffocates them. But it's not quite like that. Here's what happens. The next morning the yellowjackets wake up and find their entrance blocked with this sand, so they start burrowing up into the sand to clear it away. They have no place to carry it except to other parts of their nest. So they start a bucket brigade; they carry the sand grain by grain to the back of their nest, but as they take sand from the entrance more falls in its place."

"I see."

"Isn't it awful?"

"Yes," I agreed.

"What they do is they gradually fill their own nest with sand. They do it themselves. The harder they work to clear their entrance the faster it happens, and they suffocate. It's like an Oriental torture, isn't it? When I heard about this, Louis, I said to myself, I wish I was dead. I don't want to live in a world where such things can be."

"When did you learn about this sand technique?"

"Years ago; I was seven. Louis, I used to imagine what it was like down there in the nest. I'd be asleep." Walking along beside me, she suddenly took hold of my arm and shut her eyes tight. "Absolutely dark. All around me, others like me. Then--thump. That's the noise from above. Somebody dumping the sand. But it means nothing... we all sleep on." She let me guide her along the sidewalk, pressing tightly against me. "Then we doze; we doze for the rest of the night, because it's cold... but then daylight comes and the ground gets warm. But it's still dark. We wake up. Why is there no light? We head for the entrance. All those particles, they block it. We're frightened. What's going on? We all pitch in; we try not to get panicked. We don't use up all the oxygen; we're organized into teams. We work silently. Efficiently." I led her across the street; she still had her eyes shut. It was like leading a very tiny girl.

"We never see daylight, Louis. No matter how many grains of sand we haul away. We work and we wait, but it never comes. Never." In a despairing, strangled voice she said, "We die, Louis, down there."

I wound my fingers through hers. "What about the cup of coffee now?"

"No," she said. "I just want to walk." We went on for a distance.

"Louis," Pris said, "those insects like wasps and ants... they do so much down in their nests; it's very complicated."

"Yes. Also spiders."

"Spiders in particular. Like the trap-door spider. I wonder how a spider feels when someone breaks its web to pieces."

"It probably says 'drat,' " I said.

"No," Pris said solemnly. "It gets furious, and then it abandons hope. First it's sore--it would sting you to death if it could get hold of you. And then this slow, awful blind despair creeps over it. It knows that even if it rebuilds, the same thing is going to happen again."