"What does that mean?" I said. "What kind of opening remark is that supposed to be?"

"It's Stanton's famous remark that got him into history," Maury said. "When Lincoln died."

"'Now he belongs to the ages,' "the Stanton practiced as it crossed the sidewalk and started up the steps.

"I'll explain to you in due course how the Edwin M. Stanton was constructed," Maury said to me. "How we collected the entire body of data extant pertaining to Stanton and had it transcribed down at UCLA into instruction punch-tape to be fed to the ruling monad that serves the simulacrum as a brain."

"You know what you're doing?" I said, disgusted. "You're wrecking MASA, all this kidding around, this harebrained stuff--I never should have gotten mixed up with you."

"Quiet," Maury said, as the Stanton rang the doorbell.

The front door opened and there stood my father in his trousers, slippers, and the new bathrobe I had given him at Christmas. He was quite an imposing figure, and the Edwin M. Stanton, which had started on its little speech, halted and shifted gears.

"Sir," it finally said, "I have the privilege of knowing your boy Louis."

"Oh yes," my father said. "He's down in Santa Monica right now."

The Edwin M. Stanton did not seem to know what Santa Monica was, and it stood there at a loss. Beside me in the Jaguar, Maury swore with exasperation, but it struck me funny, the simulacrum standing there like some new, no-good salesman, unable to think up anything at all to say and so standing mute.

But it was impressive, the two old gentlemen standing there facing each other, the Stanton with its split white beard, its old-style garments, my father looking not much newer. The meeting of the patriarchs, I thought. Like in the synagogue.