Robert F. Young by Your Ghost Will Walk

Author:Your Ghost Will Walk
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-17T20:28:49+00:00

‘Smoke me early, smoke me late,

Smoke me if you’re underweight.

I’m delightful and nutritious

And decidedly delicious!’”

“Why, that’s terrific, sir! You should really wow ‘em with that one! Gee, Mr. Wade, you must be a genius to think up stuff like that.”

“Well, hardly a genius.”

Charley wiped another fitting, applied the gun. “Oh yes you are, sir!”

“Well…”

Mr. Wade left the garage on light footsteps. He never sang in the shower, but tonight he broke tradition and gave his voice free rein. And all the while he sang, visions danced through his mind—visions of people everywhere, filing into drugstores and smoke shops, saying, “I’d like a Wade Talking Cigarette Case, please”; visions of more and more orders pouring into the factory and the cigarette companies vying with each other for an exclusive option on the new rhyme, and the conveyor belts going faster and faster and the production-line girls moving like figures in a speeded-up movie

“Arthur!”

Mr. Wade turned the shower intercom dial to T. “Yes, dear?”

“It’s Betty and Bob,” Mrs. Wade said. “I can’t find them anywhere!”

“Did you look in the kitchen?”

“I’m in the kitchen now and they aren’t here and the dishes are all stacked in the sink and the floor hasn’t been swept and—”

“I’ll be right there,” Mr. Wade said.

He toweled himself hurriedly and slipped into his shirt, shorts and slippers, all the while telling himself what he’d tell them when he found them. He’d lay it right on the line this time: either they got on the ball and stayed there or he’d really have their tapes cut out!

Abruptly he remembered that he’d already made the same threat quite a number of times, that he had, in fact, made it that very evening. Was it possible? Could his threatening to have their tapes cut out have had anything to do with—

But of course it couldn’t have! They were only androids. What could their tapes possibly mean to them?

Still …

He joined Mrs. Wade in the kitchen and together they searched the house from front to back. The children had retired to their rooms with their TV sets sometime earlier and, when questioned, said they’d seen nothing of Betty and Bob either. After the house, Mr. and Mrs. Wade searched the grounds, with the same result. Then they tried the garage, but there was no one there except Charley, who had just finished Mr. Wade’s Caddy and was starting in on Mrs. Wade’s. No, Charley said, running an appreciative hand along a silvery upswept tailfin, he’d seen nothing of them all evening.

“If you ask me,” Mrs. Wade said, “they’ve run away.”

“Nonsense. Androids don’t run away.”

“Oh yes they do. Lots of them. If you’d watch the newscasts once in a while instead of mooning all the time over what a great poet you are, you’d know about such things. Why, there was a case just the other day. One of those old models like yours, which some other cheapskate thought he could save money on, ran away. A mechanic named Kelly or Shelley or something.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.