‘It’s not on my mind,’ I said.
‘I could stop at a busy intersection of any big downtown city in the US and collar ten citizens, and six of those ten, if asked what was on their mind, would say, “The US Civil War of 1861.” And I’ve been working on the implications – the practical side – ever since I figured that out, around six months ago. It has grave meaning for MASA ASSOCIATES, if we want it to, I mean; if we’re alert. You know they had that Centennial a decade or so back; recall?’
‘Yes,’I said. ‘In 1961.’
‘And it was a flop. A few souls got out and refought a few battles, but it was nothing. Look in the back seat.’
I switched on the interior lights of the car and twisting around I saw on the back seat a long newspaper-wrapped carton, shaped like a display window dummy, one of those manikins. From the lack of bulge up around the chest, I concluded it wasn’t a female one.
‘So?’ I said.
‘That’s what I’ve been working on.’
‘While I’ve been setting up areas for the trucks!’
‘Right,’ Maury said. ‘And this, in time, will be so far long remembered over any sales of spinets or electronic organs that it’ll make your head swim.’
He nodded emphatically. ‘Now when we get to Boise – listen. I don’t want your dad and Chester to give us a hard time. That’s why it’s necessary to inform you right now. That back there is worth a billion bucks to us or anyone else who happens to find it. I’ve got a notion to pull off the road and demonstrate it to you, maybe at some lunch counter. Or a gas station, even; any place that’s light.’ Maury seemed very tense and his hands were shaking more than usual.
‘Are you sure,’ I said, ‘that isn’t a Louis Rosen dummy, and you’re going to knock me off and have it take my place?’
Maury glanced at me oddly. ‘Why do you say that? No, that’s not it, but by chance you’re close, buddy. I can see that our brains still fuse, like they did in the old days, in the early ’seventies when we were new and green and without backing except maybe your dad and that warning-to-all-of-us younger brother of yours. I wonder, why didn’t Chester become a large-animal vet like he started out to be? It would have been safer for the rest of us; we would have been spared. But instead a spinet factory in Boise, Idaho. Madness!’ He shook his head.
‘Your family never even did that,’ I said. ‘Never built anything or created anything. Just middlemen, schlock hustlers in the garment industry. I mean, what did they do to set us up in business, like Chester and my dad did? What is that dummy in the back seat? I want to know, and I’m not stopping at any gas station or lunch counter; I’ve got the distinct intuition that you really do intend to do me in or some such thing. So let’s keep driving.’
‘I can’t describe it in words.’
‘Sure you can. You’re an A-one snow-job artist.’
‘Okay. I’ll tell you why that Civil War Centennial failed. Because all the original participants who were willing to fight and lay down their lives and die for the Union, or for the Confederacy, are dead. Nobody lives to be a hundred, or if they do they’re good for nothing – they can’t fight, they can’t handle a rifle. Right?’
I said. ‘You mean you have a mummy back there, or one of what in the horror movies they call the “undead”?’
‘I’ll tell you exactly what I have. Wrapped up in those newspapers in the back seat I have Edwin M. Stanton.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘He was Lincoln’s Secretary of War.’
‘Aw!’
‘No, it’s the truth.’
‘When did he die?’
‘A long time ago.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘Listen,’ Maury said, ‘I have an electronic simulacrum back in the back seat, there. I built it, or rather we had Bundy build it. It cost me six thousand dollars but it was worth it. Let’s stop at that roadside cafe and gas station up along the road, there, and I’ll unwrap it and demonstrate it to you; that’s the only way.’
I felt my flesh crawl. ‘You will indeed.’
‘Do you think this is just some bagatelle, buddy?’
‘No. I think you’re absolutely serious.’
‘I am,’ Maury said. He began to slow the car and flash the directional signal. ‘I’m stopping where it says Tommy’s Italian Fine Dinners and Lucky Lager Beer.’
‘And then what? What’s a demonstration?’
‘We’ll unwrap it and have it walk in with us and order a chicken and ham pizza; that’s what I mean by a demonstration.’
Maury parked the Jaguar and came around to crawl into the back. He began tearing the newspaper from the human-shaped bundle, and sure enough, there presently emerged an elderly-looking gentleman with eyes shut and white beard, wearing archaically-styled clothing, his hands folded over his chest.
‘You’ll see how convincing this simulacrum is,’ Maury said, ‘when it orders its own pizza.’ He began to tinker with switches which were available at the back of the thing.
All at once the face assumed a grumpy, taciturn expression and it said in a growl, ‘My friend, remove your fingers from my body, if you will.’ It pried Maury’s hands loose from it, and Maury grinned at me.
‘See?’ Maury said. The thing had sat up slowly and was in the process of methodically brushing itself off; it had a stern, vengeful look, now, as if it believed we had done it some harm, possibly sapped it and knocked it out, and it was just recovering. I could see that the counter man in Tommy’s Italian Fine Dinners would be fooled, all right; I could see that Maury had made his point already. If I hadn’t seen it spring to life I would believe myself it was just a sour elderly gentleman in old-style clothes and a split white beard, brushing itself off with an attitude of outrage.
‘I see,’ I said.
Maury held open the back door of the Jaguar, and the Edwin M. Stanton electronic simulacrum slid over and rose to a standing position in a dignified fashion.
‘Does it have any money?’ I asked.
‘Sure,’ Maury said. ‘Don’t ask trifling questions; this is the most serious matter you’ve ever had facing you.’ As the three of us started across the gravel to the restaurant, Maury went on, ‘Our entire economic future and that of America’s involved in this. Ten years from now you and I could be wealthy, due to this thing, here.’
The three of us had a pizza at the restaurant, and the crust was burned at the edges. The Edwin M. Stanton made a noisy scene, shaking its fist at the proprietor, and then after finally paying our bill, we left.
By now we were an hour behind schedule, and I was beginning to wonder if we were going to get to the Rosen factory after all. So I asked Maury to step on it, as we got back into the Jaguar.
‘This car’ll crack two hundred,’ Maury said, starting up, ‘with that new dry rocket fuel they have out.’
‘Don’t take unnecessary chances,’ the Edwin M. Stanton told him in a sullen voice as the car roared out onto the road. ‘Unless the possible gains heavily outweigh the odds.’
‘Same to you,’ Maury told it.
The Rosen Spinet Piano & Electronic Organ Factory at Boise, Idaho doesn’t attract much notice, since the structure itself, technically called the plant, is a flat, one-story building that