And then he had leaped off the bed and seized the disassembleator. He tore great chunks of wiring out of the center, threw it to the floor and kicked it into shapeless-ness. “No Sword of Damocles going to hang over my head,” he informed an open-mouthed Sam Weber. “Although, I could have used it on you, come to think of it.”
Sam eased himself to the mattress and sat down. His mind stopped rearing and whinnied to a halt. He had been so impressed with the helplessness of the baby and the mannikin that he had never dreamed of the possibility that his duplicate would enter upon life with such enthusiasm. He should have, though; this was a full-grown man, created at a moment of complete physical and mental activity.
“This is bad,” he said at last in a hoarse voice. “You’re unstable. You can’t be admitted into normal society.”
“I’m unstable?” his image asked. “Look who’s talking! The guy who’s been mooning his way through his adult life, who wants to marry an overdressed, conceited collection of biological impulses that would come crawling on her knees to any man sensible enough to push the right buttons—”
“You leave Tina’s name out of this,” Sam told him, feeling acutely uncomfortable at the theatrical phrase.
His double looked at him and grinned. “OK, I will. But not her body! Now, look here, Sam or Weber or whatever you want me to call you, you can live your life and I’ll live mine. I won’t even be a lawyer if that’ll make you happy. But as far as Tina is concerned, now that there are no ingredients to make a copy—that was a rotten escapist idea, by the way—I have enough of your likes and dislikes to want her badly. And I can have her, whereas you can’t. You don’t have the gumption.”
Sam leaped to his feet and doubled his fists. Then he saw the other’s entirely equal size and slightly more assured twinkle. There was no point in fighting—that would end in a draw, at best. He went back to reason.
“According to the manual,” he began, “you are prone to neurosis—”
“The manual! The manual was written for children of four centuries hence, with quite a bit of selective breeding and scientific education behind them. Personally, I think I’m a—”
There was a double knock on the door. “Mr. Weber.”