"You might like the story when and if you hear all of it," I answered. "Let Dr. Lanvin, my superior, talk, when he is able."
Late that day I was on my feet briefly. I held my wife in my arms, saw her smile, heard her say: "Well, here we are, and what now, Charlie? I even wonder if folks will be disturbed to know that tiny Xians have been visiting Earth for ages, unnoticed. It's kind of creepy."
Doc grinned up at us wanly from his bed. "This carcass of mine seems pretty well spent from the strain of my absence," he laughed. "Oh, I guess the damned thing could be patched up some more. But why bother? When I can have another body, same size, same shape, same organs, including a brain duplicated to the last filament of a brain-cell—no special principle required, as in The Small—all built of tough protoplast, and with a few things straightened for a youthful appearance and advantages? Not a robot any more than a man is a robot, but a human of firmer flesh, capable of all that a human is capable of, but much more. Glad to see you two up and around."
Yeah, Doc had always been a progressive. Oh, he'd had his doubts, too; but now, if the Great Change fazed him at all, he didn't show it.
VIII
Jan and I soon left the hospital and set up housekeeping in an apartment of our own. But with all that medical science could do, Doc still had to stay in bed for a month. But he started directing the forces of destiny, almost as soon as he could give orders.
I was in on the deal, of course, as were several doctors from the hospital, and Bowhart, and Scharber when he arrived on Earth from Ganymede.
"Gonna do it, Doc, aren't you?" Scharber said, when he first saw him lying there, pale and wasted. "You lugs scared me plenty once. Now, though, I feel foolish. Big words you need for this! It's the dawn of the demigods!"
My blood thrilled with a mighty promise, too. At night, going to sleep, I'd exert my will. Lodged inside my head was a micro-android. I'd will myself into it again. And so, for a little while, I'd escape from my own mountainous form, to float free in the air and consult the notes and drawings on the parchment that I'd hidden on a molding in my hospital room.