Bruggil's Bride

by ROBERT F. YOUNG

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe March 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

She came off the Androids, Inc., production line in September, 2241. She was five feet, seven inches tall, weighed 135 pounds, had flaxen hair and pale blue eyes. Her built-in batteries were guaranteed for ten years, her tapes were authentic Kirsten Flagstad, and her name was Isolde.

She was shipped to New York via strato-freight, and late in October she opened the season at the Metropolitanette in what the hundred or so die-hard enthusiasts still holding the Wagnerian fort, called the best Tristan ever. Afterwards, she was deactivated and stored away, along with Tristan, Brangane, Melot, King Marke, Kurvenal, the shepherd and the helmsman, and the various knights, soldiers, attendants, and sailors that constituted the rest of the dramatis personae.

At that time the black market in androids was relatively new, and only standard measures were taken to guard the Metropolitanette storeroom. Operatic androids were not exactly the kind of merchandise the average twenty-third century citizen liked most to find underneath his Christmas tree, and to a Wagnerian aficionado, the idea of the average music lover stealing one was as preposterous as the idea of a twentieth century bobby soxer stealing a Caruso original. But an operatic android was potentially capable of doing other things besides singing recitative and arias—as a number of twenty-third century operators had begun to realize some time before the beginning of this history. Hans Becker was one of them.

You've seen Hans. You've seen him in bars and on airbusses, in waiting rooms and in automats. He likes to sit in secluded corners and study people through his cigar smoke. He has a penchant for ostentatious blondes and dirty comic films. He has a passion for the quick credit.

You see him now. He is talking to a mousy little man in a decrepit bar off Fifth Avenue. The little man nods every now and then, smiles a satisfied smile every time Hans sets him up a beer. The little man is a night watchman. He is a night watchman in the very building where the Metropolitanette stores its deactivated androids. He is in his fifties, and he too likes ostentatious blondes. But on a night watchman's pay, the only ones he can afford are a little too ostentatious even for 

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