She glanced at her glass, nodded, and drained it. Mike had extracted a promise from her that she would drink one drink before she talked. He could see that she was a trifle tense, and he thought the liquor would relax her somewhat. Now he was ready to listen.
She handed him her empty, and while he refilled it, she said: “It’s about Snookums again.”
Mike gave her her glass, grabbed the nearby chair, turned it around, sat down, and regarded her over its back.
“I’ve lived with him so long,” she said after a minute. “So long. It almost seems as though I’ve grown up with him. Eight years. I’ve been a mother to him, and a big sister at the same time—and maybe a maiden aunt. He’s been a career and a family all rolled in together.” She still watched her writhing hands, not raising her eyes to Mike’s.
“And—and, I suppose, a husband, too,” she continued. “That is, he’s sort of the stand-in for a—well, a somebody to teach—to correct—to reform. I guess every woman wants to—to remake the man she meets—the man she wants.”
And then her eyes were suddenly on his. “But I don’t. Not any more. I’ve had enough of it.” Then she looked back down at her hands.
Mike the Angel neither accepted nor rejected the statement. He merely waited.
“He was mine,” she said after a little while. “He was mine to mold, to teach, to form. The others—the roboticists, the neucleonicists, the sub-electronicists, all of them—were his instructors. All they did was give him facts. It was I who gave him a personality.
“I made him. Not his body, not his brain, but his mind.
“I made him.