He started the vitalizer.
The child shivered and began a low, steady cry. Sam tore down to the landlady’s apartment again and scooped up a square of white linen left on the bed for emergencies. Oh well, some more clean sheets.
After he had made the necessary repairs, he stood back and took a good look at it. He was in a sense a papa. He felt as proud.
It was a perfect little creature, glowing and round with health.
“I have twinned,” he said happily.
Every detail correct. The two sides of the face correctly inexact, the duplication of the original child’s lunch at the very same point of digestion. Same hair, same eyes—or was it? Sam bent over the infant. He could have sworn the other was a blonde. This child had dark hair which seemed to grow darker as he looked.
He grabbed it with one hand and picked up the Junior Biocalibrator with the other.
Downstairs, he placed the two babies side by side on the big bed. No doubt about it. One was blonde; the other, his plagiarism, was now a definite brunette.
The biocalibrator showed other differences: Slightly faster pulse for his model. Lower blood count. Minutely higher cerebral capacity, although the content was the same. Adrenalin and bile secretions entirely unalike.
It added up to error. His child might be the superior specimen, or the inferior one, but he had not made a true copy. He had no way of knowing at the moment whether or not the infant he had built could grow into a human maturity. The other could.