We Can Build You by Philip K. Dick Read Free Book Online Page B

end of us,” I said.
    An interval passed. “Hello,” Maury said suddenly. “Let me talk to Mr. Barrows, please. This is Maury Rock in Ontario, Oregon.”
    Another interval.
    “Mr. Barrows! This is Maury Rock.” He got a set grin on his face; he bent over, resting his elbow on his thigh. “I have your letter here, sir, to my daughter, Pris Frauenzimmer … regarding our world-shaking invention, the electronic simulacrum, as personified by the charming, old-time characterization of Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin McMasters Stanton.” A pause in which he gaped at me vacantly. “Are you interested, sir?” Another pause, much longer this time.
    You’re not going to make the sale, Maury, I said to myself.
    “Mr. Barrows,” Maury said. “Yes, I see what you mean.That’s true, sir. But let me point this out to you, in case you overlooked it.”
    The conversation rambled on for what seemed an endless time. At last Maury thanked Barrows, said goodbye, and hung up.
    “No dice,” I said.
    He glowered at me wearily. “Wow.”
    “What did he say?”
    “The same as in the letter. He still doesn’t see it as a commercial venture. He thinks we’re a patriotic organization.” He blinked, shook his head wonderingly, “No dice, like you said.”
    “Too bad.”
    “Maybe it’s for the better,” Maury said. But he sounded merely resigned; he did not sound as if he believed it. Someday he would try again. He still hoped.
    We were as far apart as ever.

5
    During the next two weeks Maury Rock’s predictions as to the decline of the Rosen electronic organ seemed to be borne out. All trucks reported few if any sales of organs. And we noticed that the Hammerstein people had begun to advertise one of their mood organs for less than a thousand dollars. Of course their price did not include shipping charges or the bench. But still—it was bad news for us.
    Meanwhile, the Stanton was in and out of our office. Maury had the idea of building a showroom for sidewalk traffic and having the Stanton demonstrate spinets. He got my permission to call in a contractor to remodel the ground floor of the building; the work began, while the Stanton puttered about upstairs, helping Maury with the mail and hearing what it was going to have to do when the showroom had been completed. Maury advanced the suggestion that it shave off its beard, but after an argument between him and the Stanton he withdrew his idea and the Stanton went about as before, with its long white side whiskers.
    “Later on,” Maury explained to me when the Stanton was not present, “I’m going to have it demonstrate itself. I’m inthe process of finalizing on a sales pitch to that effect.” He intended, he explained, to feed the pitch into the Stanton’s ruling monad brain in the form of punched instruction tape. That way there would be no arguments, as there had been over the whiskers.
    All this time Maury was busy concocting a second simulacrum. It was in MASA’s truck-repair shop, on one of the workbenches, in the process of being assembled. On Thursday the powers that decreed our new direction permitted me to view it for the first time.
    “Who’s it going to be?” I asked, studying it with a feeling of gloom. It consisted of no more than a large complex of solenoids, wiring, circuit breakers, and the like, all mounted on aluminum panels. Bundy was busy testing a central monad turret; he had his volt-meter in the midst of the wiring, studying the reading on the dial.
    Maury said, ‘This is Abraham Lincoln.”
    “You’ve lost control of your reason.”
    “Not at all. I want something really big to take to Barrows when I visit him next month.”
    “Oh I see,” I said. “You hadn’t told me about that.”
    “You think I’m going to give up?”
    “No,” I admitted. “I knew you wouldn’t give up; I know you.”
    “I’ve got the instinct,” Maury said.
    The next afternoon, after some gloomy pondering, I looked up Doctor Horstowski in the