His name was Zephaniah, but everyone just called him Zeph.

He stood six feet two inches tall, was perfectly proportioned, could read small print from one hundred feet away, had lifted four hundred pounds in his time and could probably lift more if asked, retained just about everything he learned or read, and was fluent in eleven human and fourteen computer languages.

He was an android, of course.

A lot of people called him a robot, but that was simply because they were too lazy to differentiate. Robots had metal bodies, and were incapable of facial expressions, whereas Zeph’s body was covered with a facsimile epidermis, his head bore a shock of realistic-looking brown hair, his face was capable of simple expressions if not subtle ones, and his voice was able to accommodate major inflections.

But that figured, because Zeph was a Model QY4M, and in the three years since he was activated they hadn’t developed anything more sophisticated. At least, nothing that had reached the market. Not yet, anyway.

Still, truth to tell, as human as his attributes and features seem when I discuss them, whenever he was out in public he stood out like a sore thumb. (Yes, he had two of them, neither of them sore, one on each hand.)

Problem is, so did Ephram Callahan, who happened to be his billionaire owner. (No, that’s not a literary exaggeration. You don’t own something like Zeph if you are merely a multimillionaire.)

It wasn’t that Callahan was ugly and repulsive since birth. Actually, he had looked reasonably normal as a young teenager. Then he made his first fortune while still in high school—making fortunes was the one thing he excelled at—and found that as long as he had money to spend (to waste, even) people, and especially young female people, cared about no other aspect of him. So he put on a quick fifty pounds, and then another seventy-five. He stopped shaving, but could never remember his regular appointments with the barber, so he usually looked pretty shaggy and unkempt. (Which was not necessarily a bad way for a man of his features to look. The less kempt, the more hidden from view.) And what was hidden from view was fortunate if it got scrubbed as often as once a week.

He had a state-of-the-art kitchen, and a robot chef who cooked him up four or five calorie-laden meals every day. He had a state-of-the-art shower and steam room as well, but they languished unused for weeks and often months on end. Oddly enough, no one objected. Or maybe it wasn’t so odd at that. When you reek of money, other odors just seem to fade into insignificance.

Callahan was extremely proud of his possessions. He had the finest computer (though he didn’t know how to work it), the finest art collection (though he could never figure out what was so artistic about women with their clothes on), the finest car (well, make that cars, as he totaled at least one a year, usually more), a private plane with a private pilot (and a private stewardess since he could never figure out how to open the damned door), and an impressive collection of beautifully-bound antique books (none of which he ever felt compelled to read—but they sure impressed company, which was their sole purpose anyway).

There was really only one thing that he lacked, and that grated upon him, since clearly a man of his wealth and power should lack for nothing—and what he lacked was a woman. Well, not merely a woman. After all, he was Ephram Callahan, the richest and possibly most powerful man in the world, and it was only natural that he should want the most perfect woman in the world for his own.

So, his mind made up, he summoned Zeph and explained the situation. The android listened carefully, and when all was done he stared thoughtfully at his owner (who would much prefer to have been thought of as his god) for a long moment.

“There are many standards of perfection, Ephram,” he said at last. “You will have to be more explicit.”

“Call me ‘sir’,” said Callahan. “And specific in what way?”

“Well, for example, sir,” said Zeph, “is a profound knowledge of chemistry more important than, say, an equally profound knowledge of nuclear physics? Is red hair healthier than blonde? Is tall—?”

“Forget the physics shit,” muttered Callahan. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. “There’s an easier way to do this. Go out and buy me some men’s magazines, which will go a long way toward explaining what I’m looking for—and bring back change or you’re dog food by dinnertime.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Zeph, wondering why he had an urge to salute, and further wondering what kind of dog could digest all the mechanical parts of an android. He turned, walked out the door, and went to the nearest bookstore, where he purchased three magazines, then brought them back to Callahan’s mansion.

“Idiot!” yelled Callahan, without opening them.

“Sir?”

“I said men’s magazines, damn it!”

“Is that not what these are?”

“Two on muscle-building and one on weight-lifting! What kind of imbecile are you?”

“A Model QY4M, sir,” answered Zeph. “And are these not magazines about men?”

“What is my goal?”

“Becoming even richer and humiliating all your business rivals and enemies,” said Zeph.

“My more immediate goal, damn it! The one I mentioned earlier today!”

“To find and marry or otherwise possess the most perfect woman in the world.”

“Right!” snapped Callahan. “Not the second or third most perfect. I won’t settle for anything less than Number One. That means: not a single blemish. Not a mole, not a wart, nothing but perfection.” He held up the magazines. “And you won’t find them in here!”

“Should I purchase women’s magazines with the remaining money you gave me?” asked Zeph.

“So I can read about cooking and sewing and decorating hovels that share walls with other hovels?” growled Callahan. “I should say not! Give me five minutes to get over wanting to tear you apart, and then I’ll explain what I’m looking for in terms even you can understand.” Zeph turned to leave the room for five minutes. “And give me my change or I’ll ship you to the scrap metal factory.”

Zeph handed him eighty-three dollars and sixty-two cents. “I am only seventeen percent metal, sir, none of it scrap.”

“Yet!” growled Callahan, as Zeph left the room.

When he returned five minutes later, Callahan seemed every bit as upset.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s get down to business.”

“Business, sir?” asked Zeph.

“Defining the perfect woman,” he said. “I assume you retain everything you’ve seen and heard in that massive brain of yours?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That includes photos and movies from the internet?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, pull up Audrey Hepburn.”

“Done, sir.”

“That fast?” he said, arching a shaggy eyebrow. “I’m impressed.”

“So, is Audrey Hepburn the perfect woman?” asked Zeph.

“Definitely not. Take a good look at her.”

“I am looking at her even as we converse, sir.”

“She’s too skinny. Too flat-chested. And her hair’s too short.”

“So the perfect woman is a fat, shaggy female with Audrey Hepburn’s brain and personality?” asked Zeph.

Callahan growled half a dozen words that were totally beyond Zeph’s comprehension. “Okay, now pull up Raquel Welch.”

“Done, sir.”

“Much better, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I have no idea, sir,” said Zeph. “She is reciting words someone else has written, so they do not necessarily reflect her intellect and her personality.”

“Forget that shit and concentrate on their looks!” snapped Callahan, naming five more woman, explaining what was perfect and imperfect about each of them, and getting more and more annoyed as Zeph pointed out the academic and intellectual accomplishments—or lack of same—of each.

After a couple of hours it occurred to Callahan that he’d only eaten three meals—not counting snacks—so far that day, so he told Zeph to keep doing research while he ate a couple of club sandwiches and watched some wrestling on television (he was a fanatic, of course, and was outraged when anyone called it an entertainment rather than a sport), and they’d discuss the matter further in the morning.

Because Zeph was quite a bright robot, he quickly realized that Callahan’s notion of the perfect woman didn’t fit any definition he could find or come up with—and since it was his job to please his employer he made the necessary mental adjustments and began searching in earnest, not for the perfect woman, but rather for Callahan’s conception of the perfect women.

Found her, too. Took him only three days.

Her name was Karen, but Callahan explained that they’d be changing it to something more exotic once he’d hooked up with her. She was neither an actress nor a model, which is why despite his speed it took Zeph seventy-seven hours and twelve minutes to conclude beyond a mathematical doubt that she was precisely what Callahan was looking for, and another couple of minutes to pinpoint her location.

“I can’t believe you found her that easily!” exclaimed Callahan, giving Zeph a grateful hug. “I figured it’d take months to find the perfect woman!”

Zeph possessed just enough independent judgment not to argue that Karen was not necessarily the perfect woman, but merely the most physically perfect one—and even that was stretching the definition to accommodate Callahan’s notion of perfection, which had nothing to do with stamina, speed, power, or even self-defense.

“I got a couple of board meetings coming up,” continued Callahan after he caught his breath, most of which he’d used up hugging Zeph, “so I’m going to send you out to get her and bring her back here.”

“What if she doesn’t want to come?” asked Zeph.

“Then you’ll hand her a quick five million dollars, which is enough to change anyone’s mind.” He handed a credit card to the android.

Zeph closed his eyes as his brain began whirring. After ten seconds he reopened them. “I can name 37,506 women who would not come, even for five million dollars.”

“Then it’s it lucky that you’re stronger than a bull, even if you’re three times uglier,” growled Callahan. “If need be you’ll pick her up and carry her back.”

“That would be against the law, sir,” said Zeph.

“I am your owner,” growled Callahan. “The law says you obey your owner’s orders—or else.”

“And if I am stopped by the authorities?” persisted Zeph.

Callahan walked to a table and picked up an ashtray. “I hereby dub thee Saint Wellington’s Clinic for Communicable Diseases,” he intoned, then put the ashtray back down. “Anyone asks you, you’re rushing her to the Clinic. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well?”

“Well what, sir?”

“The perfect woman is out there somewhere, waiting for me. Why the hell are you still standing here?”

Even Zeph would have been hard-pressed to describe a more perfect physical specimen than Karen, especially if she planned to have a lot of babies with those beautifully-rounded hips and nurse them all herself. She wasn’t very interesting to talk with, but then Callahan wasn’t looking for a chatterbox. There was certainly nothing wrong with her mathematical abilities. She took one look at the five million, grabbed it, announced “I’m your girl!”, didn’t get offended when he corrected her and explain that by accepting it she was now Ephram Callahan’s girl, and waited for her to pack.

She got half a suitcase filled, then stared at it, frowned, and tossed it onto the floor.

“Why am I bothering with this?” she said. “When we get where we’re going, I’ll buy a whole new wardrobe.”

“Sensible,” agreed Zeph. Then, “Perhaps you’d like to bring along something to read?”

She made a face. “Reading is for snobs.” She picked up a pair of earphones. “I’ll just listen to the Stones and some of my other favorites while we’re traveling.”

Zeph wished he could offer a non-committal shrug, but he didn’t know how.

“How many servants have I got?” she asked, as they walked out the door.

“Just me,” answered Zeph.

She frowned. “That’s gonna change,” she promised.

“Not bad,” said Callahan, walking once around Karen after Zeph had delivered and presented her to him in his office.

“Thank you,” she said, in the bored tones of one who was complimented on her looks with mind-numbing regularity.

“Not bad at all,” continued Callahan. He walked over to his desk and sat down on the edge of it. “Okay, take ’em off.”

“My clothing?” she asked.

“You got anything else that comes off top to bottom?” he shot back.

“If you don’t like what you see, we can part friends or even enemies, but I’m not returning your money.”

Ephram shrugged. “It’s just money.”

She smiled and started removing her blouse. “I like you already.”

When she had finished disrobing, he stared at her for a long minute, then turned to Zeph.

“You done good,” he said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now let her get dressed, then show her to my room, let her leave anything she brought along there. I assume she’ll want to go out and buy a bunch of stuff. She probably doesn’t know her way around the finer shops in town, and someone’s got to keep an eye on her while she’s handling all that cash, so escort her, take her wherever she wants to go, and have her back in time for dinner.” He turned to Karen. “I’ll have the chef make up something real special,” he told her. “Pork bellies, maybe. Oh—and from this moment on, you’re Carmelita.”

She frowned “Carmelita?”

He nodded. “Karen’s not a name for the columnists to bandy around. Besides, every Debbie, Susan, and Annie is a Karen these days.” Zeph actually frowned as he tried to process that. “I don’t know any Carmelitas, so you’re elected.”

Zeph waited for her to get dressed, showed her around the mansion, then took her shopping. She had a number of questions, most of them about Callahan, and he answered them all. Finally, just before rush hour, he summoned Callahan’s limousine and had it take them back to the mansion.

Their home life was, if not picaresque, at least typical, given the constituents. Numerous dinners at the finest restaurants with “friends” that neither of them really liked. Endless wrestling shows on a TV screen that formed the entire wall of a large room in the mansion. Ice cream treats galore. He read Mickey Spillane; she doted on Harlequin books. He liked country music, especially if it included a bit of yodeling. She liked rock, the more bone-jarringly cacophonous the better.

Finally came the turning point in all three lives. Zeph was serving them dinner, and had just poured the gravy over an exotic liver dish when Ephram cursed him for spilling a drop on the tablecloth. At that point, Carmelita turned to Ephram, and said, “Why can’t you, just once, be as thoughtful and considerate as Zeph?”

Despite the structure of the mansion, Ephram’s bellow could be heard more than a block away.

When he’d caught his breath—given his weight and shape and effort, even screaming, required recuperation time—he turned to Zeph.

“That’s the ball game!” he snapped. “You’re fired!”

“I must point out that I am not an employee, sir,” answered Zeph.

“You’re an uppity android and I never want to see you again!”

“But what am I to do, and where am I to go?”

“Out of my house, out of my sight, and out of my life!” roared Ephram.

Even though he was, by any standard, a world-class bastard, Ephram did shove a few hundred dollars at Zeph as he escorted him to the door. The android didn’t know quite what to do with the rest of his existence, but he knew he needed shelter until he could figure it out, and he rented a single room in a massive slum apartment building where the race and even the species of its boarders was inconsequential.

His room consisted of a cot, a table, a chair, and a third-hand computer sitting atop the desk. There was no television, no air conditioning unit, not even a bathroom unless he walked down the hall past twenty similar rooms. No closet, either.

But because he was an android nothing about his surroundings bothered him. He sat down at the desk, turned on the computer, and found that it worked—and that meant that unless he felt compelled to stare at a wall for the next century or whatever his lifespan was, he at least could find something to do.

When he went through his relatively meager list of accomplishments, he eliminated serving exquisite dishes from even more exquisite utensils, opening doors for those who expected/demanded the service, vacuuming the carpets (not a room in the building possessed a carpet or a rug), or doing the hundred other little chores Ephram had demanded of him.

In fact, when he narrowed it down, the one talent he possessed that might yield some results was his ability to use the computer to find the perfect woman.

Not Ephram’s perfect woman. He’d known even before he found Carmelita that she was the perfect physical specimen, at least based on all the literature and illustrations he could access, but that was as limiting now as the day he was first given the assignment of finding her.

So he spent every hour, day and night, searching for a more thorough definition of the perfect woman, and for the woman who best fit that definition.

And because this was a much more thorough and complex search, it took him 117 hours and thirteen minutes to pinpoint her.

Her name was Murgatroyd Barto, she was forty-three years old and living alone in an apartment across town, she had a pair of college degrees, and she was living on an inheritance.

Once he found her address, Zeph spent a few hours walking from his room to her apartment, all the while trying to figure out how to introduce himself. When he arrived he entered the building, climbed to the third floor, went to apartment with the proper number on the door, and knocked on it.

It opened a moment later, and Murgatroyd Barto, who looked exactly like the college yearbook photo he had seen (but a quarter century older, with a few wrinkles, and some gray streaks in her hair), opened the door.

“Yes?” she said, staring at him curiously. Obviously this was not a woman who had a plethora of android visitors.

“Good afternoon,” said Zeph. “My name is Zephaniah, though I’d much prefer it if you call me Zeph.”

“All right, you’re Zeph,” she replied. “Now what can I do for you?”

“I’d like a few minutes of your time, if I may?”

“Is this some kind of survey?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Absolutely not, ma’am,” said Zeph.

She stared at him for another moment, then shrugged. “Okay, Zeph. Come on in.”

“Thank you,” he said, following her through her foyer into her living room. “I admire those prints you have hanging,” he said. “I like Michelangelo and Botticelli, though I must confess to being less impressed by Degas.”

She smiled. “I feel much the same way.” Then, “An android who appreciates art! How many of you can there be in the world?”

“I’ve no idea,” answered Zeph. “I’ve never found anyone who can or will discuss it with me.” He stared at her. “Perhaps . . . ?”

“I’d be happy to!” she said. “I’ve been dying to talk about art with someone. Is painting your only serious artistic interest?”

“Well, except for literature and music,” he replied. “At least they’re what come to mind.”

“Who are your favorite authors?” she asked.

“I like so many of them, all for different reasons,” answered Zeph. “To be honest, my knowledge isn’t profound enough to have a favorite.”

“What do you think of Jane Austen?” asked Murgatroyd. “On odd-numbered days, she’s probably my favorite.”

“She was a masterful artist,” answered Zeph. “I especially like the following”—and he quoted, verbatim, two pages from Emma.

“You’ve committed it to memory!” she explained.

“I am a Model QY4M android, Murgatroyd,” he said. “Anything I read, anything I see, anything I hear, remains with me.”

“How remarkable!” she said. “You don’t need anyone or anything else!”

“You’re mistaken,” replied Zeph.

“Oh?” she said.

“I can retain them, but my experience is limited. I can tell you that Medusa broke her vow of celibacy with Poseidon, but I can’t tell you why. I can tell you what paints and brush strokes Salvador Dali used to create The Persistence of Memory, but I can’t tell you why all the clocks are flaccid or why the critics admire such unreality.”

She reached out and put a wrinkled hand on his shoulder. “Then it’s a good thing we’ve met,” she said, “because I can explain most of the things that puzzle you.”

“And the ones you can’t, we can learn together?” asked Zeph.

“Absolutely!” Suddenly she frowned. “Of course, that depends on availability. Where do you work?

“I don’t,” replied Zeph.

She shook her head. “I mean, who owns you?”

“No one anymore.”

She stared at him with a strange expression her face. “You’re a totally free agent?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And you would like to spend all day, every day, discussing literature, art, and music with me?”

“Yes, Murgatroyd.”

“May I assume that is why you have sought me out from all others?”

“Yes,” answered Zeph. “There was no comparison.”

She looked her surprise. “Really?”

He nodded his head. “Really.”

She continued staring at him for another few seconds. “I have a spare room, off to the left. It’s yours if you want it.”

“Thank you, Murgatroyd,” said Zeph.

She stared at him one last time, then threw her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder, which was softer than she had anticipated. “I’ve been so lonely!”

And as he considered what she said and snaked an arm around her, the thought occurred to Zeph that I haven’t realized it until this instant, but I’ve been lonely, too.

And now the two misfits, who suddenly found their perfect fits, would never be lonely again.