the abilities I have gathered through the steps of my transformation, but has them without making those same transformations itself.'
'But what purpose-'
Frankenstein, Frankenstein!
'To help mankind, as I told you, Jacob. Forget your Frankensteins. Yes, I have known what you've been thinking. Another ability of mine. But I certainly don't hold anything against you. I couldn't even if I should, because I have developed above the level of revenge and vendetta. Jacob, believe me, I only want to help mankind. I can use my powers to liberate each man's brain so that it is one hundred percent operable as is mine. Every man can become a superman.'
'And develop into what you've become?'
'No, no, no. This is only a stage, Jacob, that a few android facets of me will have to undergo in order to produce more androids-a highly sophisticated form of budding. That's how I created this other me. Man will always look like Man, but will now have abilities far beyond anything he ever dreamed of.'
I believed Him now. There was nothing else for me to do. 'Then we'll explain it to the police-'
'No, Jacob,' He said. 'There will be a long, drawn-out fight before I am accepted by mankind. We have to play for more time.'
'How, for God's sake!' I thought of the advancing troops.
'You'll take this one with you and let them kill him. They'll think they have finished off the menace of the Android-Who-Wouldn't-Take-Orders. That will give me time enough.'
I stood, looking at the android who would die, the part of Him that was to be sacrificed. 'One thing,' I said.
'What is that, Jacob?' He could read my mind and find out, but He was being polite and letting me have my speeches.
'What will we do for room? You'll not only be making Man nearly immortal, but you'll be flooding the world with replicas of yourself, with Doppelgangers. Where will we put everyone?'
'With his entire intellect at hand, with all of his brain open to use, Man will move out into the stars, Jacob. There are no limits any longer. There is more than enough room, Jacob. I saw to that.'
'You saw to it?'
'When I formed it, Jacob. When I created the universe.'
I choked, almost fell. The new android gripped me and grinned His old grin. I looked back to the blob of tissue pulsing before me. 'You are trying to say that-'
'You had no idea how unusual my flesh was, did you, Jacob? It's the flesh, Jacob. Sorry to break it to you so suddenly, but-as you know-there is so very little time. The soldiers are almost at the front door, by the way. You had better get my other self upstairs and let them kill him. I won't let them do anything to you, Jacob. As soon as things are straightened out here, I'll send one of my selves to you. I'll always be with you.'
I turned and started up the stairs behind the android. My mind was spinning wildly, unable to settle on any orderly thought progression.
'And Jacob,' He said behind me. I turned. 'Man will not be nearly immortal. He will be completely immortal. The time has come. There will soon be an end to death.'
We went upstairs into the living room. We walked to the door and threw it open, stepping onto the porch overlooking all that grand scenery. He walked down the steps into the snow, His arms outstretched, and they shot Him. Half a dozen marksmen opened fire. He jerked spasmodically, danced across the white carpet, and crashed to His face, blood pouring out of His body in twenty different places.
I raised my hands and stepped outside. It was Him they wanted to kill. They would take me prisoner and decide my fate later. Two WA policemen flanked me, cuffed my hands together, and led me across the frozen earth toward the copter on the far hill.
It was not snowing at all now. The wind had ceased to blow.
Once, I looked back at the bloody corpse. He had said there would soon be an end to death. I realized that this could not be called death. Not really. They had merely shot a husk. He lived on in the amoeboid flesh in the old ice cellar. And there would be thousands of other husks shortly. He was with us at last. He. And, of course, His name had always been spelled with a capital letter. He? Man was moving out. Man was immortal. The mystery of His flesh wrapped us like a blanket and carried us into the New World.
TWO: The enemy is self?…
X
New York City is a weird conglomeration of old, new and experimental that staggers the mind of anyone who has not lived in a city its size. Harboring approximately eighty-five million souls, it is the second largest metropolis in the world. Size alone would be enough to awe men from urban areas (which comprise sixty percent of North America) where only a few hundred thousand live in small communities, for his neighborhood still supports individual houses (though even there they are beginning to dwindle in number), still has streets open to the air and paved of concrete and macadam, still permits automobiles on roads other than the mammoth freeways. New York City, of course, has none of these things.
All of New York City's inhabitants live in high-rise apartment buildings, some as long as three and four blocks, the newest ones towering to two-hundred stories in some places. You can get a one-bedroom apartment or anything up to eight bedrooms, living room, dining room, two dens, playroom, reception room, two kitchens, and a library. These last suites are few and far between, for even in our Great Democracy, there are just not that many citizens able to shell out four thousand poscreds a month for a place to live. And to buy it-make certain you've just hit the first new oil well in the last ten years, have found a way to triple the life of a car battery between rechargings, or have discovered the answer to the food problem so that all the synthetic meats will taste as juicy and tender as the real thing.
And New York, of course, no longer has conventional streets, and would not allow an automobile into its great, throbbing mass of humanity even if it did. There is just no more room for individual vehicles in a metropolis of this size. Imagine eighty-five million people out on the roads of one city, and you'll have some idea of the sort of traffic jam that the city fathers used to have nightmares about before the Renovation.
Renovation? That period of the city's history was a landmark not only for the city and the nation, but for the entire world. There was a time when New York City was a part of New York State. During this time, the mayor could get little if any aid from the state government in Albany. The state was glad to take sales tax and state income tax from the metropolis' citizens, but was reluctant to pay back on an equal basis. Finally, when the situation became critical, when the city had an unbearable population of fifty-seven million, the mayor and the council arranged to bring before the people of the city a proposal that they seek to become another state. This was shortly before World Authority began to function as a valid international organization. The vote was cast and returned in favor of the proposal. The mayor proceeded to declare the city independent of the state.
The Governor, a rather stupid man who had been elected because of his appearance and his family name, who had been nominated for his faithful party work for thirty years, and who had been allowed into party politics in the first place simply because his family was a large contributor to candidate funds, thought the city's proclamation could be laughed off. He cut off all state funds to the city and sat back to wait them out.
He never finished waiting. The city leveled its own income tax, now that it did not have to worry about state levies at a percentage just above what they would need to start renovating the metropolis, and just below what the citizens would accept without revolution. There followed a ten-year building program wherein the city was restructured to accommodate its people. Space previously given over to streets was done away with. Instead, a series of underground tubes, much faster and more extensive than the subways, was installed. The existing buildings were connected with new sections of new buildings, until most of the city was one structure. Then, shoved through these structures, other transportation facilities were constructed, especially the computer- channeled Bubble Drops that webbed the city with hundreds of thousands of tubeways in which single-passenger plastic bubbles were bulleted along by compressed air cartridges slung under them. The interior of each of the tubeways was perhaps two feet wider than necessary to accept the bubbles. Projecting from the walls were
