CEORGE OPPERLY was awakened by the sounds of bombs and sirens. He awoke in the dark with the stench of CS26 boring out his nostrils and an urge to puke he knew would become irresistible in about ten seconds. He made it to the john with no time to spare, gettting most of it in the sink. His head reeled and he splashed cold water on himself. This brought his attention to his hands and arms, and the sores.

He looked at himself in the mirror. He was shaking so violently that his face was a blur. Sores were beginning to develop all over him. He sobbed in terror, took a breath for another sob, and a gust of air brought the smell of the gas into the bathroom. There was an open window in his bedroom!

He rushed back to the bedroom, pushed the window in, pressed the seal around it, and turned the air filtration system up full blast, putting his head by the vent and sucking in long gasps. He heard a moan from the bed — Mary Opperly coming awake. He grabbed his wife and pulled her over to the vent, holding her weight by her tinselly hair and shaking her hard.

“Stop it, George,” she said, “I’m all right.’

He let go of her. “Goddam absent-minded bitch. Why didn’t you close the window when you came to bed?”

“Why didn’t you?”

“You went to sleep last. You’re supposed to check.”

Mary sat on the bed and lowered her head, looking somewhat shamed, but looking also somewhat like an animal making ready to charge. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot. How do you expect me to remember this kind of thing all the time. Do you know you’re the only person I know who hasn’t even had a lung job?”

“When I need a part replaced, Mary, I’ll get it replaced. Not until.” “Look at your skin, dummy.”

“Those clear up in a couple of weeks.”

“Couple of months, more like.”

A sore on his arm popped, cracked. He felt fluid running down his arm, but refused to look at it. “They still clear up. You know, Mary, I think maybe you left the window open on purpose — at least subconsciously. You want me to get replaced because you think replacements are fashionable.”

“They are fashionable, George,” Mary hissed. “They are so fashionable that these days, if you don’t have a replacement you’re suspect.” “That’s not true.”

“It is, and you know it. Too many people have had to get replacements.”

“They cost money, lots of money. The department has to have some justification . . he held a finger to her lips. “I know, I’ve got justification now. They’re replacing parts automatically now with far less reason than this rash I’ve got. I’ll talk to Pederson tomorrow.”

Mary would have nothing to do with peacemaking after that insult, though. She slapped his hand away from her mouth. Being slapped with a nusteel arm hurts. “We wouldn’t have to worry about windows if we lived underground.”

“I put in an application as soon as I made ‘A’ but everything in Old Fort Knox is filled. I haven’t been class A that long. All right, I’m sorry for that remark about the window.”

She relented. “OK,” she said, and leaned back on the bed to prepare for sleep again.

George walked over to the Doc in the comer and inserted a bill in the roller. The Doc began to buzz and click. “But these damn replacements are going to break our economy,” he said, last word-wise. “Look at you. You’ve had three.” It occurred to him that his mouth was getting him into trouble again. “I guess you’ve been maintaining my status for me,” he concluded. He laughed. She laughed. Privately, he wondered if she were accident prone. First an arm, then lungs and chest, then a skull fracture. Tinsel hair, unchanging in length, attached to a shiny nusteel skull. A year and a half ago a bomb had whistled down onto a crowded street, and everyone had ducked in time but her. He looked at her body across the bed, shimmering with invulnerability, almost half replaced, and cursed. He looked down at his own vulnerable flesh, being swabbed and bandaged by the Doc. And cursed.

By the time the Doc had finished with him it was time to put on his safety suit and go to work. An armored personnel carrier stopped by his freehold building every hour and a half to pick up workers. George hated the long wait. He decided to walk to work. It was an hour’s walk, but he’d still probably get there before the APC did. There was hardly ever any bombing during the day.

Two blocks away from his freehold he walked into devastation. Louisville Supply had been bombed into rubble. The instruments on his safety suit showed that in addition to a high concentration of CS26 in the area, there was a trace of radiation — far more likely to have come from something in the supply compound itself than from the bombs. He looked out over the slabs of concrete, the broken stone, the ash, and saw one lonely wall standing amid the field. Something white flashed from behind it. He pulled his gun and went over to investigate.

Behind the wall was an AAA crab-man who scuttled away from him weakly on all fours, connected to a parachute (the flash of white) which was tangled in its cord. The crab-man’s carapace was severely cracked. His chute must have become tangled, somehow, in the air. The sight enabled George to overcome his revulsion at the miscegenous creature enough to smile at the implications of what he saw. It was true, then, that the African-Arab Alliance didn’t have enough jet packs to go around. They might beat the AAA yet. His mouth contorted with disgust and he aimed into the crack in the carapace and shot the crab-man, who twitched a little, then stopped moving.

George hurried on. There might be uninjured ones about, and a tear in his suit would likely kill him before he got to safety.

Of all the AAA genetic modifications, the clawed varieties scared him the most. Of course, the more he was replaced, the less there would be to fear. The claws could do no more than scratch nusteel. But all of the AAA creatures gave him the creeps, and would undoubtedly continue to do so no matter what happened. In the nineteen years the war had gone on they had never stopped giving him or his fellow-countrymen the creeps. In fact, he remembered, it was the AAA’s refusal to sign the Genetic Research Treaty that precipitated the war.

This damned fiddling around with peoples’ genes should have been prohibited at the time of the first in vitro conception, George thought. The immorality of genetic modification was plain to most folks even then. Instead, it had attracted a host of scientists and piles of money, and when the programs were made illegal in one place, the men and money moved to another. The UN acted too late. By the time the Genetic Research Treaty was passed, those few Arab and African countries which still supported it had found it too profitable to quit, and were spawning armies of monsters. George winced. “Armies” was all too accurate a word.

At least the big bangs had never come. The fear of The Bomb accounted for that only partially, though. The AAA had used a few tactical nuclear weapons at the beginning, combined with some bacteriological wonders, but the UN had not bothered to reply with any nuclear weapons at all. Instead, they shot over some chemical agents that made mustard gas look like Ben-Gay, and the war was on. The AAA had defended its citizens by breeding them, and the UN had done the same for its people by replacing them. Both techniques had succeeded well enough to drag the war on for almost two decades. Maybe The Bomb would have been better in the long run. Such thoughts made George feel more and more defenseless, and he was glad when he got to the Louisville Personnel door.

He inserted his card and was admitted, went down to his office and stripped off his suit. Pederson was waiting for him. “My God,” Pederson said, “what happened to you?”

Opperly’s first reaction was to tell him about the crab-man, but then he realized that Pederson was talking about the bandages all over him. Great. A perfect opening for introducing The Subject. “I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said, “The wife left a window open last night — you know, we still have to live above ground even though I’m an ‘A,’ and I was . .

Pederson whistled. “You haven’t heard about CS27 yet, have you?” “What?” Chemical agents had been combined by the enemy into a kind of stew, the broth for which was CS. Every time new ingredients were fitted in, the number was raised.

“One new agent has been added. They haven’t figured out what the effects are yet. They haven’t even figured out whether a safety suit protects against it.”

“Pederson, let me get to the point right away. I want to go over to CHD and have some tests done today, see about some replacements. How bad do you need me?”

“Hell, 1 don’t need martyrs at all. I’d say it’s about time you got over there. Do you know that people have been wondering about you?” Opperly’s face flushed with anger. “What the hell right . .

“Now, don’t get started. I’m telling you this for your own good. One of your fellow workers, I won’t mention who, has actually questioned your mental stability — questioned whether or not you were suicidal. Repressed death-wish, you know, typical laymen senseless psychiatry. I stopped that, of course. It never got beyond me. But still, those kinds of thoughts do occur to people.” Pederson tapped his nusteel chest. “Anyway, what I’m saying is to get a replacement as soon as possible, to get on over there right away. Maybe they can learn something about the effects of this new agent from you. Take all the time you need.” “Thank you, sir.” Opperly was unsure about just how thankful he really was. He slipped his safety suit back on and started for the door.

Pederson’s voice caught him in the office vestibule. “Of course, if you should get back in time today to do any work, we need to reorganize police assignments. They dropped some crab-men in the area of the hit.”

Opperly didn’t feel like telling Pederson about his meeting on the way to work. He wasn’t in the mood for the obligatory congratulations on his kill. “Oh, really?” he said, “Rotten luck.”

THE CENTER for Human Development was a converted ten-story freehold building much like his own, except for the fact that it was underground. After he told the WAC at the front desk his business there she said, “Physical and testing in room 107. After that, you’ll want to see our Mr. Capra in 652.”

They photographed him inside and out and stuck him full of needles. One medical assistant measured him all over with calipers — something George had never heard of being done there. When George asked him about it, he told George to shut up and measured his mouth. After it was all over, they made George sit for a half hour before letting him go down to room 652.

The sign on the door read “H. Capra, Prosthetics Director.” He knocked and a cheery voice said, “Come in.”

The office was cluttered with plaques, framed certificates, and trophies. Behind an enormous oaken desk a glittering, all-nusteel man was rising. George started, and began to back out of the door, when the man said, “Relax, George, and come on in. There are going to be a lot more like me pretty soon; it’s time you got used to us.” He grinned, revealing shiny metal teeth, bounded over the great desk, and shook George’s hand. “I’m Harry Capra, have a seat and let’s talk.” Capra skipped happily back to his chair behind the desk, and George took a comfortable seat next to it, shaking his head sharply to rid himself of bedazzlement.

Capra pulled some papers off the desk and waved them around. “I’ve got your reports here. We still don’t seem to be able to figure out what that new agent’s for. It’s driving us crazy.”

George smiled, a little. “Maybe it doesn’t do anything. Maybe they just put it in to drive you crazy.”

Capra blinked, then laughed. “Maybe you’re right. Anyway, the other twenty-six agents have done their work. Actually, your exposure was slight — and a good thing, too — but the skin on your upper body has taken it pretty hard.”

Maybe that was what had happened to Capra, George thought, metal skin. “So you’re going to replace it?”

“Not exactly,” said Capra. “Please try not to be upset by this question, but why did you wait so long before coming to us?” He pulled a form out of the stack of paper and held a pencil over it expectantly.

“I’ve never been this badly off before. Replacement costs the department a lot of money. I didn’t want to come in for something trivial.”

“An admirable attitude, on the face of it. But surely you must know that the government encourages replacement. A hurt arm, say, gets replaced with a better arm, and that arm’s not likely to get hurt again. Prosthetics means protection, and protection is the goverment’s job. In fact — I tell you this privately, you understand — in another month having at least one replacement is going to be a qualification for class B citizenship or better. Surely you can’t be that blind to what I might call the whole direction of a society.”

“I tried to explain …”

“Come now, confess!” Capra yelled, gesturing expansively, sending paper flying, his grin widening, “aren’t you a little put off by this…’’His fist clanked against his chest, “… a little scared by it? Be honest.” George sighed. “I guess I have to admit …”

“Of course you are! And it’s a perfectly normal reaction. I felt the same way myself at one time. Not any more, of course.” He grinned and clanked again, then composed his metal face into a more serious expression. “Normal or not, though, these attitudes are anachronistic, and are going to have to be recognized as such. And, in fact, they will be. Officially.”

Opperly began to panic. “Does this mean I’m not going to get a replacement?”

“Oh, no. You’re safe. You came to me in time. But you’re going to have to get a hold on yourself and develop a more positive attitude toward prosthetics, because your replacement is going to be a lot more extensive than what you probably planned on.”

George wished Capra would get to the point. “How extensive?” “Well, remember what you said about the high cost of replacement? I only wish more people understood the enormous expense involved in protecting our citizens. For years the state tried to save money by replacing only what seemed necessary at the time — just the most affected areas — on the theory that the war wouldn’t last much longer. Now we know that a short-sighted policy that was. Patients come back again and again. Your own wife, it says here, has been to us three times, and she’s not at all exceptional. The solution to this problem is now clear. For a slightly larger original investment we can save a lot of money in the long run with Total Replacement.”

George began to feel dizzy. “Total?”

“Total.”

“But I don’t need everything replaced, just …”

“Mr. Opperly, you weren’t listening. We don’t want you coming back here. We don’t want you to be injured again. Preventive prosthetics is the name of the game from here on out. You must learn to develop a healthy attitude toward it. The directive was signed by the Secretary General only two days ago, and it’s not going to change for a long time, if ever. We’re going to do it all ih one shot. You’ll be one of the first to benefit from this policy, one of the first to be truly and completely protected.” Capra expanded his chest with pride. “I was the first. I bet you didn’t know that. Two years ago … experimental, then.” He pointed to his shoulder.

George leaned over and looked where Capra was pointing. There was an identification plate on the shoulder which read “TRU1.” “You?” George asked.

“Total.” Capra rose up and beat his fist against various parts of his body. They all clanked.

A thought occurred to George. “What about the brain?” “Certainly,” said Capra. “There are nerve agents in that gunk they shoot at ust you know. Why worry about them?” He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a clear packet of goo. “You must know that we’ve been able to manufacture brains from the various electragels for over a decade. Electragel neurons, if you can call them that, may not work the same way as bioneurons, but they accomplish the same thing,

or can be organized so they can accomplish it. The stuff set up its own circuits and the latest brain made from the gels has, I understand, actually a slightly higher storage capacity than the biological brain. The only problem with using it in prosthetics was that they couldn’t find a way to transfer the information into it from a biobrain. They solved that problem two years ago, and now the equipment for accomplishing the transfer takes up about the space of a beer can.”

“I’ve heard about the electragels,” said George, “but I’ve never heard of this.”

“It hasn’t been especially publicized. But we’ve been replacing just brains alone with the new techniques ever since they were perfected. Now, of course, an electragel brain is included in the Total Replacement Unit, along with the transfer equipment.” Capra shuttered his eyes. “Of course, there couldn’t be much publicity for it. For one thing, when we replace a brain the experience of transferral is necessarily eliminated. I mean, when the information is being transferred, neither brain is thinking, so there’s nothing to remember. And we don’t tell them. So folks who’ve had their brain replaced don’t know about it.”

Opperly laughed nervously. “So my brain could have been replaced already?”

Capra smiled. “It might have been. Those records wouldn’t be in this set. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter, since you’re going to be replaced tomorrow or the next day. And the unit can transfer information from electragel to electragel, too.”

Capra looked at the clock and said hurriedly, “I’m sure you must have many questions, but I’ve got another appointment in three minutes. We’ll schedule you another half-hour tomorrow..he pulled a big sheet of paper which had been divided into a lot of little squares off the floor and wrote “Opperly” across two squares, “… and get you replaced and out of here.”

THE SOUNDS of bombs and sirens woke him up again that night. He looked at the clock. No, morning. It was a little after five-thirty. His appointment was at seven. No sense in going back to sleep.

He took off his bandages and got into the Doc, looking down at Mary who, he decided, could sleep through anything. He looked at her tinsel hair scattered on the pillow, her nusteel skull. Was there pink and grey tissue inside that shell, or electragel? The explosion had been a year and a half ago. It could be. He tried to think of any personality changes occurring after the explosion. He couldn’t think of any. But then, there shouldn’t be any such changes, whether her brain had been replaced or not.

Right, he said to himself, there shouldn’t be any changes. So why does it bother me? Capra is right. My attitudes are anachronistic. But

he knew he wouldn’t be able to resist asking the CHD people.

Would they tell him? Probably not, but what the hell.

The bombing seemed to have stopped. He could walk there, think things out. The Center For Human Development was only a little farther than work. He put on his protective suit, decided to skip breakfast. Shit on a shingle on Wednesdays, anyway.

GEORGE WAS not a man especially sensitive to emotional vibrations but it was obvious to him that H. Capra, Prosthetics Director had changed considerably since yesterday. For one thing, he had become, somehow, a pompous ass. He was far stuffier.

Capra pointed at a chair. “Please be seated, Mr. Opperly.”

Opperly sat down in a wood chair with a slatted seat. He wriggled uncomfortably.

“I have been informed,” Capra said, “that you have been harassing our employees.”

“I beg your pardon,” said George, catching it a little, “I was merely

trying to find the answer to a trivial question, one which should have been a simple matter for your people to answer. Perhaps you can answer it.”

“I can’t tell you anything about your wife, Mr. Opperly. That information is classified. I’m surprised that you would ask.”

“I had to ask. Forget it. I expected this, really.”

“I know the answer,” Capra giggled, “but I won’t tell you.”

George looked up quickly. Capra’s face was a blank. Had he heard him right?

“I know many things,” Capra went on, “Many secret things. Everything has been arranged.”

“Huh?”

“Everything has been arranged. There was no need for additional measurements, all the reports taken on you yesterday jibed. Your replacement is even now being sent to your freehold. Your wife will sign for it and it will be there when you get home.”

“Wait a minute. Are you going to operate on me at home?”

“Not necessary. Since you are being Totally Replaced all that really has to be done is to transfer your brain contents, if you have any, into the unit’s. TRU8071 is geared to your brain wave patterns. When you get home stand directly in front of it and push in on the identification plate. You will shed your corruptible body and put on celestial garb.” “Huh?”

“As I told you yesterday … I think it was you … the transfer unit is incorporated into the TRU. Just press the ID plate. The transfer will burn out your present nervous system. Nothing we can do about that, even if we wanted to.” He giggled again. “Think of the power, Mr. Davis. You will gain the secret knowledge.” He took the clear packet out of his desk and squeezed it. Electragel spattered over the desk. He stared at it.

George got up. “It’s been a pleasure, sir.” He started backing away, nervously.

“I’m sorry,” Capra said, shuddering. “I can’t think what came over me. Maybe I ought to have a check-up.” He stood up and offered George his hand. “I’ll be seeing you again.”

George hung around CHD for a while, until the WAC began giving him a mean stare. Then he called Pederson to make excuses for the day. He wanted to go home, to confront TRU8071, his new self. Pederson was sympathetic, but jealous, which improved George’s mood.

“Totally replaced! George, they must be grooming you to take over my job! Can you put in a good word . .

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just a new policy. We’ll all have them pretty soon. Take my word for it, you can get a sniffle tomorrow, go in to have

a sinus replaced, and come out with the same deal.”

This news made Pederson so happy that George got the day off.

George decided to walk home again. He had to admit to himself that the thrill he got out of the risk in this exposed walk was the main reason he took it, and this might be the last time he could enjoy it. After he was replaced, he laughed to himself, he would be far less vulnerable on these walks. He would probably wind up taking the APC like everyone else.

The rubble where Louisville Supply once stood had been bombed into smaller pieces of rubble. He squeezed a finger under the seal of his face flap for a fraction of a second and sniffed. CS26 — no, 27 now. He wondered if the brains at CHD had figured it out yet.

His breathing became more labored. He realized that he was tiring out; the gas must be getting to him in spite of all the Doc could do. He began to regret taking this walk. A piece of concrete slipped unexpectedly beneath his feet. The slab seemed to be moving of its own accord. He fell on his side hard, the wind rushed out of him and fogged his mask. He felt something hard grasp his leg and pull. Shapes, indistinct through the fogging, seemed to be coming out from under the slab. As the mask cleared, he saw a claw coming at his throat. Pressure was applied at his pressure points with clinical precision and he blanked out.

HE CAME to in an underground room — little more than a hole in the ground, really — he could feel the roots pressing against his back where his stool was shoved against the wall. He was tied to the stool, he realized, and trussed up all over. It was an uncomfortable, primitive room, but it had electric light. It was very bright, in fact. Furthermore, there were several spotlights shining down on him. He was the star. He must be the star, because he was naked. Was this a porno movie, then? He couldn’t see any cameras, but then, he couldn’t see anything, because the lights were so bright. But, wait a minute. A one-man porno movie would be boring.

“Where are the women?” he asked.

“Mr. George Opperly,” a precise, clerical voice answered from in back of the lights, “you are coming out of the effects of a drug we have given you. You are in the hands of the Triple-A Army. Believe it or not, we are going to let you out of here alive, but you have to show signs of normal behavior again first.”

It began to come back. “In the claws of the Triple-A-A, you mean.”

“As you will,” the voice answered. “I happen to have hands, personally. Others of us have claws, others … other things. But we are all whole men.”

George laughed. “How about whole ‘other things’” He imitated the

other’s peculiar accent as best he could.

“Whole men,” the voice went on, “and so are you. You, too, are a whole man. You surprise us by not having defiled your body with metal. It is also lucky for you, or I would not have been able to restrain my people from killing you.”

“Where am I?”

“It is also lucky for you that you do not know that. That, too, would bring about your death.”

“Why am I here?”

“It was assumed that you were an abomination. We were going to torture you and then kill you. It is a sort of ritual.” The voice became aggrieved. “If our broadcasts weren’t censored you would know what we were going to do with you.”

Terrorism is a lot less effective without the media, George thought, smugly.

“We never expected to find anyone coming from a class A facility to be a whole man, Mr. Opperly. You would not tell us under drugs, perhaps you can now: why is it that you have not defiled yourself?” Adrenalin burst into George’s system and he thought that his head was clearing at last. “The reason I have not ‘defiled myself is because you haven’t been able to screw up any of my body parts enough to get a replacement.”

Another voice said, “Surely the loss of a body part is not a reason for turning yourself into a thing; half flesh, half metal.”

It began to dawn on George that the fantastic stuff coming out of the mouths of these AAA soldiers was spoken in all sincerity. Perhaps the government shouldn’t have censored their broadcasts. It was amazing how bizarre a society could become after nineteen years of war. How can we ever hope to understand the enemy?”

“Let me get this straight,” he asked aloud, “you cut off a person’s leg, and then when he gets a crutch you kill him because he got a crutch?” A fist came out of the darkness and struck George in the mouth. The soft earth in back of his head cushioned the whiplash.

“Leave him alone,” said the first voice, “he doesn’t realize what he is saying. His mind is poisoned, and part of that poison is our own.” The first voice came into the light. It was a young brownskinned man — about eighteen years old — with a goatee. “I am Dr. Ghazali,” he said. “Let me show you something.” Ghazali was not a crab-man. At the end of his left arm he displayed a hand with five fingers. He appeared to have been modified in some way, though. Under his jacket something moved, and both arms were in view.

Ghazali pulled a knife from his belt and cut off his left little finger. The blood spurted for only a second, then stopped. Pink, wrinkled flesh seemed to have grown at the end of the stump. “By this time tomorrow,” said Ghazali, “it will have grown back. Sergeant, cut the ropes and give Mr. Opperly his clothes.”

George was beginning to suspect that the past two days had been a nightmare. In a while, he would wake up. But, no … he had heard of people thinking that before in similar situations. So it must be real.

Ghazali spoke again. “This kind of regrowth process could have been known to your people. We have been broadcasting the information, along with various other kinds of news, for the past eighteen years. Since we have to let you go anyway, we will let you take some messages.”

“Let me go?”

“Yes. Your mind is warped, but you are no abomination. We have little choice. There’s no chance you’ll be able to lead your troops here, anyway. They’ll never find us, probably. And if by some strange chance they should find us, it would make little difference. We’ve got this war won. In another four or five years it will all be over. For instance do you know about the robots they have now, into which your people are locking their souls?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” George said tiredly, “a prosthetic is a prosthetic: a tool …”

“The Total Replacement Units, then?”

“Yes.”

“You must beware of them. The new gas we put in the air, do you know of it?”

“Yes.”

“It is designed to effect certain changes in the confluences of electrical paths in electragel — that, and nothing else.” Ghazali smiled. “This will produce a diversity of effects, ranging from a complete wiping of memory to dangerous psychopathy to catatonia, or whatever their electragel equivalents are. It may even turn some of the metal men into geniuses, although I very much doubt it. You must protect yourself.” His expression turned serious. “We shall drive your metal men mad, do you understand? They will become dangerous to you, to themselves, to everyone.”

George remembered Capra’s odd behavior and began to believe him.

“You will leave here. You will go out and tell your people these things. You will have no choice. Among other reasons, it will be your duty as a good citizen to do so. And their despair will contribute to hastening the end of this war. Goodbye, Mr. Opperly.”

THE NEXT time George came to, he was a little quicker on the uptake. But, then again, maybe they used a different drug on him this time. No credit, no blame. He seemed to have instantly changed his environment, suddenly being in his safety suit, fully clothed, at the door of his freehold building. It was night already. He ran to his freehold, burst into the living room, and cried, “Mary! You’ll never believe what happened to me on the way home!”

Mary was sitting on the couch, holding the dead metal hands of a TRU with Opperly’s face.

Mary’s head turned slowly around. “T. R. U.” She spoke each letter like a prayer. “Total Replacement Unit. Oh, George, you’re so lucky.” Her face lit up. George couldn’t remember having seen her like this since the first year of their marriage. “Activate it now, George.” George choked. “Mary, I’m afraid I’d better not. Did you hear what I said when I came in? Something strange happened to me on the way ‘home. I think we’d better discuss it first.”

“Why don’t you get into your replacement unit first, George. Then we can discuss it. It only takes a minute.” She got up from the couch. The unit’s hands fell against the seat with a thud, the torso leaning to one side. Mary put George’s hands in hers and led him to the unit.

“Mary, listen. What happened to me on the way home suggests that there might be something wrong with that thing. I ran into some crab-men.”

George had expected, even wanted a strong reaction to that news. But the reaction he got was too strong. Mary produced a bloodcurdling shriek and backed away from George. He caught her arm. “The crab-men,” she said, “they’re coming here, aren’t they? Nothing is safe. Where is my letter opener?” Tears began to pour out of one eye. “Get into the unit now, George. It’s your only chance. I don’t care for myself… well, I do, but it’s only keyed to you, the delivery man said so, and besides, I tried … and at least you’ll be safe.” She pointed to the couch. “Look, George, it wants you.”

He looked at the couch. Sure enough, the TRU had straightened its back and was raising its arms toward him. George gasped and backed away, pulling his wife with him. “It’s not supposed to do that,” he whispered.

“Of course it is, George.”

“No it’s not. The gas must have activated something.” He wondered what.

“Of course it is, George, or it wouldn’t be doing it.” She laughed mechanically, like a novelty-shop laughing toy.

George felt sick. Mary was becoming hysterical. My God, she was hysterical. He took a deep breath and slapped her. Her head jerked back and came around again. Then it jerked back, and came around again, and back, and forth, continuously. “Mary, stop it!”

“Stop what?” Her head continued repeating the motion. Tears were streaming out of her left eye, her right was dry. Her behavior was bizarre, to say the least. The conclusion was horribly obvious. She had an electragel brain, and everything the AAA had said to him was true. He looked at TRU8071. The new agent also obviously had the effect of stimulating electragel brains that weren’t supposed to be activated. The unit rose clumsily to its feet, staggered, fell, and began clawing its way up again.

“Stop what?” Mary asked.

“What?”

“Stop what?”

George looked at the metal reproduction of his face rising up level with his own, tottering, struggling for balance, smiling, frowning, grinning in a random pattern of expressions. He expected the thing to fall down again, but it flung a leg out and caught itself. It Was learning to walk. It was learning very fast. And it was walking towards him. It was responding to his own brain wave patterns, doing what it was designed to do. He was the stimulus.

From other freeholds in the building he heard various yells, hoots, screams, and thumps. Whatever resistance there was in electragel brains to the new agent, it seemed to have been pretty consistent from brain to brain, and it seemed to have run out.

“Goodbye, Mary.”

“Stop what?” Mary asked.

The thing took another step towards him, picking up speed, and another, while George remained by the door, frozen with fascinated horror. Suddenly the thing stopped, and its arm began to climb towards its ID plate. The fascination broke then, and George sealed his face mask and ran. Maybe he could get to CHD. Somebody there might know what to do.

The night was cold. Moonlight filtered through a heavy layer of clouds onto the field of rubble, showing irregular planes of glimmering white concrete sticking up at odd angles out of nothing. He heard the TRU coming up behind him and he cut out across the rubble again. The thing was still pretty clumsy, no matter how fast it could move its legs. Maybe on the run to CHD the thing would trip and break something trying to negotiate the twisty hunks of concrete.

He laughed bitterly. Fat chance. The thing was a permanent prosthesis, designed above all else not to break. But he couldn’t think of anything better, so he kept running. The TRU lumbered behind him, slowly catching up.

The TRU is stupid, George thought. If he could just get his fear under control, he could outwit the thing. Unless he had an electragel brain, too, in which case he could hardly hope to outwit a pegboard. But then, if he had an electragel brain, the whole incident was probably an hallucination and he had nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry

about at all. A nervous gasp of laughter escaped his lips.

Think. The best interpretation of events, of what happened at his freehold door, was that the transfer of information from his brain into the electragel brain, of his personality from himself into his TRU self, could only be accomplished at a distance of a few feet, else his running away would have accomplished nothing. The thing could be looked on as having a weapon with only a short range. He stopped, gasping for breath, and looked behind him. The TRU stopped and pushed its ID plate. It took a few more steps and pushed it again. That settled the question.

George observed further that it seemed to be incapable of doing two! things at once, like running and pushing the plate. What’s more, the thing obviously didn’t know its range. It started loping towards George again. George pulled his gun and fired at it. The bullet hit it in mid-torso and the thing jerked and stopped, but only for a second.

He started running again, leading the TRU over the twistiest parts of the bombed-out compound. Every now and then he would hear the thing trip and crash, and George would stop, catch his breath, and try to think. He was unfamiliar with the design of the thing. He had never paid much attention to prosthetics — well, no time for regret now. Was there anywhere he could shoot it and hope to disable or kill it?

The plate. The ID plate pushed in and out, providing the closest thing there was in the TRU to a hole leading to its innards. The plate was a switch, connected in some way to the electragel brain. If there was any hope, it lay in shooting the TRU there. Provided the thing didn’t leam to do two things at once, and provided it stopped out of its range and within George’s. It was a gamble. George grinned, got into prone position, and waited.

The unit really did move amazingly fast, he decided. It closed the distance to twenty feet in a minute. Then it began pressing its plate, taking two steps, and pressing its plate again. When it got about eight feet away, George fired.

There was no burst of sparks, no smell of burning. For a second George thought he had failed. Then the thing crashed to the ground and moved no more.

George stayed in the prone position, shivering, for a good ten minutes before he got to his feet and began the long walk to CHD to make his report to whatever authorities were still sane.

WITH BORED persistence Dr. Ghazali proofread another of a long line of radio programs to be broadcast to nobody. Except some faceless UN censor, he reminded himself. Briefly, he studied his left little finger. It was full length already, and the nail was beginning to push

‘N

its way up. He felt a surge of pity for the poor, stupid UN forces, trapped in a tin dream. Maybe, at least, one of his broadcasts would disturb the censors enough to get them talking privately to others. Maybe not. Probably they would never save themselves. He sighed.

He was alarmed by a clatter outside the door, and voices. He fumbled in his desk drawer for his pistol, then the voices became clearer. He heard snatches of Ewe and Arabic. He sighed again, then looked at the clock. The first patrol was not due back for another quarter-hour.

The door swung open and a sergeant and a corporal came in backwards, dragging big canvas sacks. “We found this right outside Opperly’s door,” the sergeant said, emptying one of the sacks. George Opperly’s body tumbled onto the floor.

“Dead?”

“Yes,” said the sergeant. “We also found this.”

The corporal emptied his sack, and a metal man with Opperly’s face came sliding onto the floor. It was bound tightly in ropes, but it was not struggling, nor did it look like it had ever struggled.

“The ropes are purely precautionary,” the sergeant said. “It was sitting next to Opperly’s body, doing nothing at all. It hasn’t reacted to anything since we first encountered it.”

Tears came to Ghazali’s eyes. “We should have killed him this moming. Now it is too late. We’ll destroy this thing tomorrow.” Ghazali peered closely at the blank metal face. “I wonder what it is thinking?” he asked no one in particular.