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shrugged. “Just joking, old man, just joking. Still, it’s fun to think about, eh? Freedom from wife. Absolutely safe and harmless. Not even too expensive, if you’ve got the right contacts. And I’ve got a friend who knows a guy—”

      Just then, Jeree walked past us and flashed me a big smile. I gripped my cup for dear life and still spilled coffee on my tie.

      As I said, a guy gets fed up.

      And maybe opportunity would only knock once.

      And an Ego Prime would solve all my problems, as Harry had told me.

      It was completely illegal, of course. The wonder was that Ego Prime, Inc., ever got to put their product on the market at all, once the nation’s housewives got wind of just what their product was.

      From the first, there was rigid Federal control and laws regulating the use of Primes right down to the local level. You could get a license for a Utility model Prime if you were a big business executive, or a high public official, or a movie star, or something like that; but even then his circuits had to be inspected every two months, and he had to have a thousand built-in Paralyzers, and you had to specify in advance exactly what you wanted your Prime to be able to do when, where, how, why, and under what circumstances.

      The law didn’t leave a man much leeway.

      But everybody knew that if you really wanted a personal Prime with all his circuits open and no questions asked, you could get one. Black market prices were steep and you ran your own risk, but it could be done.

      Harry Folsom told his friend who knew a guy, and a few greenbacks got lost somewhere, and I found myself looking at a greasy little man with a black mustache and a bald spot, up in a dingy fourth-story warehouse off lower Broadway.

      “Ah, yes,” the little man said. “Mr. Faircloth. We’ve been expecting you.”

      I didn’t like the looks of the guy any more than the looks of the place. “I’ve been told you can supply me with a—”

      He coughed. “Yes, yes. I understand. It might be possible.” He fingered his mustache and regarded me from pouchy eyes. “Busy executives often come to us to avoid the—ah—unpleasantness of formal arrangements. Naturally, we only act as agents, you might say. We never see the merchandise ourselves—” He wiped his hands on his trousers. “Now were you interested in the ordinary Utility model, Mr. Faircloth?”

      I assumed he was just being polite. You didn’t come to the back door for Utility models.

      “Or perhaps you’d require one of our Deluxe models. Very careful workmanship. Only a few key Paralyzers in operation and practically complete circuit duplication. Very useful for—ah—close contact work, you know. Social engagements, conferences—”

      I was shaking my head. “I want a Super Deluxe model,” I told him.

      He grinned and winked. “Ah, indeed! You want perfect duplication. Yes, indeed. Domestic situations can be—awkward, shall we say. Very awkward—”

      I gave him a cold stare. I couldn’t see where my domestic problems were any affairs of his. He got the idea and hurried me back to a storeroom.

      “We keep a few blanks here for the basic measurement. You’ll go to our laboratory on 14th Street to have the minute impressions taken. But I can assure you you’ll be delighted, simply delighted.”

      The blanks weren’t very impressive—clay and putty and steel, faceless, brainless. He went over me like a tailor, checking measurements of all sorts. He was thorough—embarrassingly thorough, in fact—but finally he was finished. I went on to the laboratory.

      And that was all there was to it.

      Practical androids had been a pipe dream until Hunyadi invented the Neuro-pantograph. Hunyadi had no idea in the world what to do with it once he’d invented it, but a couple of enterprising engineers bought him body and soul, sub-contracted the problems of anatomy, design, artistry, audio and visio circuitry, and so forth, and ended up with the modern Ego Primes we have today.

      I spent a busy two hours under the NP microprobes; the artists worked outside while the NP technicians worked inside. I came out of it pretty woozy, but a shot of Happy-O set that straight. Then I waited in the recovery room for another two hours, dreaming up ways to use my Prime when I got him. Finally the door opened and the head technician walked in, followed by a tall, sandy-haired man with worried blue eyes and a tired look on his face.

      “Meet George Faircloth Prime,” the technician said, grinning at me like a nursing mother.

      I shook hands with myself. Good firm handshake, I thought admiringly. Nothing flabby about it.

      I slapped George Prime on the shoulder happily. “Come on, Brother,” I said. “You’ve got a job to do.”

      But, secretly, I was wondering what Jeree was doing that night.

      George Prime had remote controls, as well as a completely recorded neurological analogue of his boss, who was me. George Prime thought what I thought about the same things I did in the same way I did. The only difference was that what I told George Prime to do, George Prime did.

      If I told him to go to a business conference in San Francisco and make the smallest possible concessions for the largest possible orders, he would go there and do precisely that. His signature would be my signature. It would hold up in court.

      And if I told him that my wife Marge was really a sweet, good-hearted girl and that he was to stay home and keep her quiet and happy any time I chose, he’d do that, too.

      George Prime was a duplicate of me right down to the sandy hairs on the back of my hands. Our fingerprints were the same. We had the same mannerisms and used the same figures of speech. The only physical difference apparent even to an expert was the tiny finger-depression buried in the hair above his ear. A little pressure there would stop George Prime dead in his tracks.

      He was so lifelike, even I kept forgetting that he was basically just a pile of gears.

      I’d planned very carefully how I meant to use him, of course.

      Every man who’s been married eight years has a sanctuary. He builds it up and maintains it against assault in the very teeth of his wife’s natural instinct to clean, poke, pry and rearrange things. Sometimes it takes him years of diligent work to establish his hideout and be confident that it will stay inviolate, but if he starts early enough, and sticks with it long enough, and is fierce enough and persistent enough and crafty enough, he’ll probably win in the end. The girls hate him for it, but he’ll win.

      With some men, it’s just a box on their dressers, or a desk, or a corner of an unused back room. But I had set my sights high early in the game. With me, it was the whole workshop in the garage.

      At first, Marge tried open warfare. She had to clean the place up, she said. I told her I didn’t want her to clean it up. She could clean the whole house as often as she chose, but Iwould clean up the workshop.

      After a couple of sharp engagements on that field, Marge staged a strategic withdrawal and reorganized her attack. A little pile of wood shavings would be on the workshop floor one night and be gone the next. A wrench would be back on the rack—upside down, of course. An open paint can would have a cover on it.

      I always knew. I screamed loudly and bitterly. I ranted and raved. I swore I’d rig up a booby-trap with a shotgun.

      So she quit trying to clean in there and just went in once in a while to take a look around. I fixed that with the old toothpick-in-the-door routine. Every time she so much as set foot in that workshop, she had a battle on her hands for the next week or so. She could count on it. It was that predictable.

      She never found out how I knew, and after seven years or so, it wore her down. She didn’t go into the workshop any more.

      As I said, you’ve got to be persistent, but you’ll win.

      Eventually.

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