"It's a technique," Pris said, "a sales technique. He's cutting the ground out from under us."
"Words," the simulacrum said, "are weapons."
"Can't you say anything to him?" I asked the simulacrum. "All you did was debate with him."
The simulacrum shook its head no.
"Of course it can't do anything," Pris said. "Because it argues fair, like we did in school. That's the way they debated back in the middle of the last century. Barrows doesn't argue fair, and there's no audience to catch him. Right, Mr. Lincoln?"
The simulacrum did not respond, but its smile seemed-- to me--to become even sadder, and its face longer and more lined with care.
"Things are worse now than they used to be," Maury said. But, I thought, we still have to do something. "He may have the Stanton under lock and key, for all we know. He may have it torn down on a bench somewhere, and his engineers are making one of their own slightly redesigned so as not to infringe on our patents." I turned to Maury. "Do we actually have patents?"
"Pending," Maury said. "You know how it works." He did not sound encouraging. "I don't doubt he can steal what we have, now that he's seen our idea. It's the kind of thing that if you know it can be done, you can do it yourself, given enough time."
"Okay," I said, "so it's like the internal combustion engine. But we've got a headstart; let's start manufacturing them at the Rosen factory as soon as possible. Let's get ours on the market before Barrows does."
They all looked at me wide-eyed.
"I think you've got something there," Maury said, chewing his thumb. "What else can we do anyhow? You think your dad could get the assembly line going right away? Is he pretty fast on converting over, like this?"
"Fast as a snake," I said.
Pris said derisively, "Don't put us on. Old Jerome? It'll be a year before he can make dies to stamp the parts out with, and the wiring'!! have to be done in Japan--he'll have to fly to Japan to arrange for that, and he'll want to take a boat, like before."
"Oh," I said, "you've thought about it, I see."
"Sure," Pris said sneeringly. "I actually considered it seriously."
"In any case," I said, "it's our only hope; we've got to get the goddam things on the retail market--we've wasted enough time as it is."
"Agreed," Maury said. "What we'll do is, tomorrow we'll go to Boise and commission old Jerome and your funny brother Chester to start work. Start making die stampers and flying to Japan--but what'll we tell Barrows?"
That stumped us. Again we were all silent.
"We'll tell him," I announced, "that the Lincoln busted. That it broke down and we've withdrawn it from market. And then he won't want the thing so he'll go back home to Seattle."
Maury, coming over beside me, said in a low voice, "You mean cut the switch on it. Shut it off."
I nodded.
"I hate to do that," Maury said. We both glanced at the Lincoln, which was regarding us with melancholy eyes.
"He'll insist on seeing it for himself," Pris pointed out. "Let him back on it a couple of times, if he wants to. Let him shake it like a gum machine; if we have to cut it off it won't do a thing."
"Okay," Maury agreed.
"Good," I said. "Then we've decided."
We shut off the Lincoln then and there. Maury, as soon as the deed was done, went downstairs and out to his car and drove home, saying he was going to bed. Pris offered to drive me to my motel in my Chevvy, taking it home herself and picking me up the next morning. I was so tired that I accepted her offer.
As she drove me through closed-up Ontario she said, "I wonder if all wealthy, powerful men are like that."
"Sure. All those who made their own money--not the ones who inherit it, maybe."
"It was dreadful," Pris said. "Shutting the Lincoln off. To see it--stop living, as if we had killed it again. Don't you think?"
"Yes."
Later, when she drew up before my motel, she said, "Do you think that's the only way to make a lot of money? To be like him?" Sam K. Barrows had changed her; no doubt of that. She was a sobered young woman.
I said, "Don't ask me. I draw seven-fifty a month, at best."
"But one has to admire him."
"I knew you'd say that, sooner or later. As soon as you said but I knew what was going to follow."
Pris sighed, "So I'm an open book to you."
"No, you're the greatest enigma I've ever run up against. It's just in this one case I said to myself, 'Pris is going to say but one has to admire him' and you did say it."
"And I'll bet you also believe I'll gradually go back to the way I used to feel until I leave off the 'but' and just admire him, period."
I said nothing. But it was so.
"Did you notice," Pris said, "that I was able to endure the shutting down of the Lincoln? If I can stand that I can stand anything. I even enjoyed it although I didn't let it show, of course."
"You're lying to beat hell."
"I got a very enjoyable sense of power, an ultimate power. We gave it life and then we took the life right back--snap! As easy as that. But the moral burden doesn't rest on us anyhow; it rests on Sam Barrows, and he wouldn't have had a twinge, he would have gotten a big kick out of it. Look at the strength there, Louis. We really wish we were the same way. I don't regret turning it off. I regret being emotionally upset. I disgust myself for being what I am. No wonder I'm down here with the rest of you and Sam Barrows is up at the top. You can see the difference between him and us; it's so clear."
She was quiet for a time, lighting a cigarette and sitting with it.
"What about sex?" she said presently.
"Sex is worse yet, even than turning off nice simulacra."
"I mean sex changes you. The experience of intercourse."
It froze my blood, to hear her talk like that.
"What's wrong?" she said.
"You scare me."
"Why?"
"You talk as if--"
Pris finished for me, "As if I was up there looking down even on my own body. I am. It's not me. I'm a soul."
"Like Blunk said, 'Show me.'
"I can't, Louis, but it's still true, I'm not a physical body in time and space. Plato was right."
"What about the rest of us?"
"Well, that's your business. I perceive you as bodies, so maybe you are; maybe that's all you are. Don't you know? If you don't know I can't tell you." She put out her cigarette. "I better go home, Louis."
"Okay," I said, opening the car door. The motel, with all its rooms, was dark; even the big neon sign had been shut off for the night. The middle-aged couple who ran the place were no doubt tucked safely in their beds.
Pris said, "Louis, I carry a diaphragm around in my purse."
"The kind you put inside you? Or the kind that's in the chest and you breathe in and out by."
"Don't kid. This is very serious for me, Louis. Sex, I mean."
I said, "Well, then give me funny sex."
"Meaning what?"
"Nothing. Just nothing." I started to shut the car door after me.
"I'm going to say something corny," Pris said, rolling down the window on my side.
"No you're not, because I'm not going to listen. I hate corny statements by deadly serious people. Better you should stay a remote soul that sneers at suffering animals; at least--" I hesitated. But what the hell. "At least I can honestly soberly hate you and fear you."
"How will you feel after you hear the corny statement?" I said, "I'll make an appointment with the hospital tomorrow and have myself castrated or whatever they call it."
"You mean," she said slowly, "that I'm sexually desirable when I'm cruel and schizoid, but if I become MAUDLIN, THEN I'm not even that."
"Don't say 'even.' That's a hell of a lot."
"Take me into your motel room," Pris said, "and screw me."