The Master Copy

There she was again. Joe Kelly watched the sleek red hovercar snake past and disappear into the London mist. He drank another toast as he saluted his wife for the ninth time that afternoon. The liquor tore at his raw throat. He frowned at the label: more cheap sour-mash pineapple from the Philippine Empire.

From the ground-floor window of his London house, he watched the crowds on their way to one of the big Saturday-night entertainments: a bullfight in Soho; gladiators at the old Festival Hall if you could afford 20 crowns; cockfighting in Camberwell for two crowns if you couldn't.

And five crowns will get you my wife in bed, he thought. Lynn Master, sex bomb of 1996, international goddess of cinematic lust. The bitch.

His wife came in from the sunroom, a blue drink in her hand. She strode swiftly toward him, her loose robe flowing easily with her, silhouetting her incredible body.

"Oh, Joe, darling. Are you at it again? Can't you leave off the drinks for just one day?"

He spun around and gestured with the bottle at the low car that purred by the window, with Lynn Master at the wheel.

"Goddamn it, Lynn. What do you think it's like, watching those damned models of you hustling around the clock? Do you think I like the idea of any damned tourist having you for five crowns?"

Joe Kelly was ten years older than his wife. His broad belly (continued on page 184) Master Copy (continued from page 101) gave him a majestic presence; with his fat cheeks and his ruddy complexion, he looked more like one of the merry landlords that still run public house along the Tottenham Court Road than the rocket engineer that he was.

"But darling, think of the money. I own forty percent of Robotics, and if you think I'm going to give that up——"

"For God's sake, nobody's asking you to give it up. Just put out more of the other androids you have. That French kid, what's her name?"

"Marcelle Pirout? That flat-chested whore? She's got no appeal." Then her voice softened. "And anyway, Joe, don't you think it's a bit old-fashioned to play the jealous husband? You've got the real me, after all."

Lynn leaned over the coffee table to pour herself another drink, and her long blue robe slid forward at the neck. The sharp light from the table lamp shone through the fabric, sending blue shadows chasing across the flesh of her ripe breasts. Kelly felt his chest tighten with desire. He wished he didn't need her so much.

"Then there's Tani Maiku, the Indonesian girl," he grunted. "Couldn't Robotics make more of her?"

"Listen here, Joe Kelly. If those Lynn Master androids were taken off the streets, where do you think we'd be?" Kelly could sense her irritation. "We had a hard enough time living on my Hollywood earnings. Now that we have it made, you want to call it quits." She tossed her long blonde hair angrily over her shoulder. Her odd eyes, one green, one blue, flashed in the light.

Kelly sat down wearily and took another drink. He studied her face. The soft white skin, smooth and clear as the surface of a lake; her moist red lips with the exciting tremor that had sent thousands, with their five crowns, searching for Lynn Master at the nearest street corner; and the odd eyes. It was her eyes, Kelly thought. They gave her face the innocent wantonness that drove men wild.

"We've had these arguments before," his wife said, "and they've never decided anything. Why don't we settle down with our drinks and watch Tri-V or something?"

Kelly felt the old restlessness within him. "I've got to go out for a while," he said. "Have to see Charlie and the boys."

"All right, Joe. Don't be too long."

Kelly hurried to his bedroom and locked the door. He took a pink mask from a locked suitcase and smoothed it in his hands before he carefully slipped it over his face. The mask was constructed from the same warm plastic that was used on robots to make them virtually indistinguishable from humans. He covered his bald head with a wig of luxuriant black hair and smiled at himself in the mirror. The strange new face smiled back. Shrugging on his overcoat, he slipped a small silver instrument into his pocket and listened at the bedroom door. The noise of the Tri-V came from the living room. He quickly stepped through the side door, into the chill London evening.

Kelly shuffled along the misty paths of Hyde Park. He remembered that first day, two months before, when he and Lynn had landed from New York. He had taken his first ride that same afternoon, while his wife was on set. A yellow hovercar had purred behind him and a window had slid down.

"Want a little ride, honey?" Lynn had said. "Just you and me through old Hyde Park? Come on, it's a pretty day."

Even the voice had been the same, but there was something a little different about the girl, and, as he decapitated his first Lynn a few minutes later, Kelly saw what it was. The real Lynn's left eye was blue. The left eye of the head he then held in his hands (no blood, just lots and lots of wires) was green, and the right one was blue.

His only weapon that first day had been a clumsy penknife, but the next day he bought himself a small welding laser. The beam could cut silently through the pseudo flesh and the circuitry of the androids in a matter of seconds. For the last eight weeks, in hotel rooms in Bloomsbury, under monorail towers on Hampstead Heath, and in his private apartment, he had sliced off Lynn's heads, one after another. It gave him a perverse pleasure to use the Lynns before he finished them off. To his distraught mind, it was the ultimate in unfaithfulness, and a salve for his jealousy: to make violent love to this synthetic image of his wife, this man-made duplicate of the woman he wanted and loved and sometimes hated.

His score now stood at 117. The London papers were screaming that the mad "killer" must be found, for Lynn's taxes were important to the city. After the collapse of the pound in 1989, Britain had rapidly lost her place at the table of great nations and had become a mecca for tourists. Her gaming rooms, jousting contests and, above all, her sin, were world-famous.

If he could just keep up two a day, he thought crazily, Robotics would have to stop making the Lynns, and he could have some peace. He could have her all to himself.

His first Lynn for that evening found him in St. James' Park.

"Hello, big boy. You look lonely. Why don't we take a little walk someplace?" Lynn said.

She took his arm and led him along the path. Kelly glanced quickly at the tall bushes that filled the park.

Not the apartment this time. Last time, somebody stared at her as we went in. Who wouldn't stare? Aloud, he said:

"How about the park?"

"Why not?" Lynn said.

They found a small area ringed by protecting shrubs. Lynn hurriedly slipped out of her clothes, and together they rolled in the deep grass. Her hungry mouth found his, and her arms and hands ranged over his body, as his veins pulsed with the daily passion that was new every time. And then, as Kelly stared at this Lynn, moaning naked beneath him on the dew-flecked grass, her eyes gleaming with lust, everything seemed to disintegrate.

For this Lynn's left eye was blue.

This time, there were no wires...