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“His new hunger for love,” said Hoenikker, “was matched only by his ignorance of the pitfalls of love. He only knew that love made him feel wonderful, no matter where it came from.”

Hoenikker turned off Jenny, took off the shoes, lay down on the cot again. “George chose the perfect love of a robot,” he said, “leaving me to do what I could to earn the love of an imperfect, deserted girl.”

“I—I’m certainly glad she’s well enough to say whatever she’s got to say to him,” I said.

“He would have gotten the message in any event,” said Hoenikker. He handed up a slip of paper. “She dictated this, in case she wasn’t up to saying it to him personally.”

I didn’t get to read the message right away, because George showed up at the back door of the van. He looked more like a robot than he’d ever made Jenny seem. “Your house again—your wife again,” he said.

George and I had breakfast in a diner. Then we drove over to the GHA works and parked in front of the Research Laboratory.

“Sonny Jim,” George said to me, “you can run along now, and start leading a life of your own again. And much obliged.”

When I got off by myself, I read what Nancy had dictated to her second husband, what she’d said in person to George.

“Please look at the imperfect human being God gave you to love once,” she’d said to George, “and try to like me a little for what I really was, or, God willing, am. Then please, Darling, become an imperfect human being among imperfect human beings again.”

I’d been in such a hurry to get off by myself that I hadn’t shaken George’s hand or asked him what he was going to do next. I went back to the van to do both those things.

The back door of the van was open. Jenny and George were talking inside, very soft and low.

“I’m going to try to pick up the pieces of my life, Jenny—what’s left of it,” George said. “Maybe they’ll take me back in the Research Laboratory. I’ll ask anyway—hat in hand.”

“They’ll be thrilled to have you back!” said Jenny. She was thrilled herself. “This is the best news I’ve ever heard—the news I’ve been longing to hear for years.” She yawned and her eyelids drooped. “Excuse me,” she said.

“You need a younger man to squire you around now,” said George. “I’m getting old—and you’ll never get old.”

“I’ll never know another man as ardent and thoughtful as you, as handsome as you, as brilliant as you,” said Jenny. She meant it. She yawned again. Her eyelids drooped some more. “Excuse me,” she said. “Good luck, Angel,” she mumbled. Her eyes closed all the way. “Good night, Sweetheart,” she said. She was asleep. Her battery was dead.

“Dream a little dream of me,” whispered George.

I ducked out of sight as George brushed away a tear and left the van forever.

(illustration credit 4)

THE EPIZOOTIC

While new young widows in extraordinary numbers paraded their weeds for all to see, no official had yet acknowledged that the land was plagued. The general population and the press, long inured to a world gone mad, had not yet noticed that affairs had recently become even worse. The news was full of death. The news had always been full of death. It was the life insurance companies that noticed first what was going on, and well they might have. They had insured millions of lives at rates based on a life expectancy of sixty-eight years. Now, in a six-month period, the average age at death for married American males with more than twenty thousand dollars in life insurance had dropped to an appalling forty-seven years.

“Dropped to forty-seven years—and still dropping,” said the president of the American Reliable and Equitable Life and Casualty Company of Connecticut. The president himself was only forty-six, very young to be heading the eighth-largest insurance company in the country. He was a humorless, emaciated, ambitious young man who had been described by the previous president as “gruesomely capable.” His name was Millikan.

The previous president, who had been kicked upstairs to chairmanship of the board of directors, was with Millikan