Tangle Hold Part 3

"Is that why you came to Venus?"

"I'd been considering it for some time. It seemed to me that there ought to be a place for a good designer, even if I did have to work on robots." He smiled wryly. "A lot of other engineers had the same idea."

"Too much compet.i.tion?"

"Sort of." He grimaced. "My first job here was designing female bodies for so-called social clubs."

"Oh, those," she said scornfully.

"It's legitimate on Venus. Anyway, I tried out that idea again.

Customers didn't like it. Said they could get women with blemishes any time. When they got a robot, they wanted perfection."

"Don't blame them," Emily said practically. She looked at him with sudden suspicion. "Don't give _me_ pimples."

"Not a one," he a.s.sured her. "You're flawless."

And she was--with only one item missing. He flexed his fingers in the control glove and sprayed on nipples. She was finished.

He shucked off the mask and laid aside the spray gun. "Look at yourself."

She went to the mirror and turned in front of it. She smoothed her hands across her face and smiled with pleasure. "It feels like flesh."

"It is, almost. Tomorrow you'll bleed there if you cut yourself."

She nodded. "Is that all?"

"Except for instructions, yes."

She looked at him with curious shyness and hurriedly slipped into her clothing. She hadn't minded nudity before, when she wasn't as lovely as she wanted to be. What she didn't know was that Jadiver liked her better as she had been.

Dressed, she came back to him. "What are those instructions?"

He tore off two envelopes attached to the container. He checked the spray gun to determine how much had been used.

"Pseudo-flesh is highly poisonous," he said, handing her the envelopes.

"The tablets in the white package neutralize the toxic effects. Take one every eight hours. And don't forget to take it, unless you want to end up in convulsions on the floor."

"I'll remember. When do I begin?"

"In three hours. And now for some advice I know you don't want. You can keep yourself as you are for two months. But you'll be healthier if you get rid of the pseudo-flesh as soon as you can."

She looked longingly at the face in the mirror. "How do I do that?"

"When you're ready, take the tablets in the green package, one every hour until the pseudo-flesh is absorbed. After it's gone, take three more at the same interval. The total time should be about thirteen hours." She was not paying attention. He eased between her and the mirror. "Get a complete checkup before you try this again. It takes years off your life."

"I know that. How many?"

"I can't say exactly. It's a body, pseudo-flesh weight ratio, plus some other factors that no one knows anything about. I'd estimate that you'll lose about three years for every two weeks you keep it."

"It's worth it," she said, gazing again into the mirror. She turned away in indecision. "I've always known Burlingame was mine, even if I wasn't pretty. Now I'm not so sure, after this."

It wasn't exactly Burlingame she was concerned with, thought Jadiver.

For a while she was going to be beautiful beyond her expectations. The irony was that almost any robot outshone her temporary beauty. She was jealous of machines that had no awareness of how they looked.

Jadiver straightened up. He hadn't fully recovered from his accident and he was tired. And the artificial skin, no matter what they said, hadn't been completely integrated to his body. It itched.

"Send the rest of them in, one at a time," he said as she went out.

It wasn't going to take long, for which he was grateful. Now that he knew a spying device hadn't been surgeried into him, there were certain aspects of the accident that demanded investigation.

Jadiver limped into the apartment. The chair unfolded and came to meet him as he entered. He relaxed in the depths of it and called out for food. Soon he had eaten, and shortly after that he dozed.

When he awakened, refreshed, he began the thinking he'd put off until now. The fee from Burlingame was welcome. It was dangerous business, so Jadiver had charged accordingly. Now his economic problem was solved for about a month.

In the hospital he had been sure of a motive for the accident. It had seemed simple enough: the police had planted a spying device in him.

However, since he had been examined thoroughly at Burlingame's and nothing had been found, that theory broke down.

There was still another possibility--someone had tried to kill him and had failed. If so, that put the police in the clear and he would have to look elsewhere. He might as well start there.

He walked over to the autobath and began inspecting it. It wasn't the one he'd been injured in. That had been removed and replaced by the management. It would have helped if he had been able to go over the original one.

The new autobath was much like the old, a small unit that fitted decoratively into the scheme of the room, not much taller than an upright man, or longer than a man lying down. The mechanism itself, and there was plenty, was effectively sealed. Short of an atomic torch, there wasn't any way to get into it.

Jadiver pryed and poked, but learned nothing. In response to the human voice, it automatically provided all the services necessary to human cleanliness, but there was no direct way to check on the involved mechanism.

He finally called the firm that made it. The usual beautiful robot answered: "Living Rooms, Incorporated. Can I help you?"

"Information," he said. "Autobath unit."

"Sales? New or replacement?"

"Service. I want to see about repairs."

"We have no repair department. Nothing ever wears out."

"Perhaps not, but it becomes defective and has to be replaced."

"Defective parts are a result of wear. Since nothing wears out, no repair is necessary. Occasionally an autobath is damaged, but then it doesn't work at all, even if the damage is slight. It has to be replaced."

That was what he thought, but it was better to be sure. "This is hypothetical," he said. "Suppose there was an accident in an autobath.

Is there an alarm system which would indicate that something was wrong?"

The robot was smooth and positive. "Your question is basically misleading, according to our statistics. In eight hundred and forty one million plus installations, on all the inhabited planets of the Solar System, there has never been one accident.