11)

The screen door was heard shutting faintly, a noise so common it wouldn't have bothered any of the Dumes' but for their new guests. Julie looked at her parents in a peculiar, thoughtful manner and said Ro was still in the kitchen. Before any of them knew what was happening, Zeta promptly stomped his way to the back of the house, to have a look for himself. Julie went with him, followed by Jas, then Tess and Warren. They backed away from Zeta, who stood stark and ominous in the kitchen, lost in the general scan he took of the room. The articles on the disarrayed counter, the root beer float, the spoon in the sink, the left out whipped cream container, all nudged him to believe Ro had left abruptly. He followed in her footsteps, through the laundry room and out the back door.
"Ro!" he called as soon as he stood out of doors, accompanied by the rain and occasional faint flicker of lightning. He expected an answer, but never got one. He called a second time, heading toward the barn. It was when there was still no answer that he worried.
The Dumes' prepared themselves for a search in the rain, armed with umbrellas, hats and jackets. They paraded around the house looking for signs of Ro. Jas wanted to run off in Zeta's direction toward the barn, but his father made him take the northern side of the house instead. It would be better, Jas was told, if they searched separately in different areas. Jas complied grumpily.
Zeta searched for signs of Ro's prints in the mud of the paddock. He found one, ever so slight, and the human eye surely would have missed it. After tipping over the fence, into the real slosh of the farmstead, Zeta was able to track Ro's footprints with ease, deeply imprinted as they were in the malleable dirt. The chase to find Ro quickened, once he knew what impressions he was looking for, and Ro's steps had been in rather a straight line, but for a sudden jerk to the left here and there. Once he passed the grange shed, he stopped at the top of the hill, to gaze into the fields displayed before him. He called out for Ro again, then turned silent, his audio locator working to detect the slightest hint of noise, of anything familiar that may be Ro's voice. When "Audio Source Recognized" flashed through his on-screen display, he was relieved, and followed in the general direction of the weak source. The signal grew stronger as he neared. Finally, just over the next slope, he found her lying stilly, a contradictory figure in the field of sage grass, manure and mud.
"Ro!" he said, but she took no notice of his presence, only stared off into the space above. He stole a quick glance at the sky, just to see for himself what she regarded so intently. There was nothing there, only rain, but for one small clearing between two cumulonimbus clouds, where some stars were faint and barely discernable. Zeta knelt beside the girl and pulled her into his hold. Her neck and legs nearly melted over his arms, and he had to be careful on the way back to the house. Ro was lost in the culmination of a crippling madness. He was trying to detect what faint song she was singing to herself. "Audio Confirmed," the display told him. "Song: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Zeta smiled for her, unaware the song was synonymous with childhood; he thought merely of Ro's growing interest in the stars.
Jas noticed the synthoid returning with Ro, and he was having déjà vu to the experience at the river yesterday. He made himself wholly useful by opening the door to the kitchen, allowing Zee to pass through carefully, without bumping Ro's feet or head into walls. Jas ran out to fetch his sister and his parents. Zeta was uncertain exactly what to do with Ro now that he got her back under a roof. He hesitated to put her on the couch, afraid the Dumes' may dislike a dirty and wet girl lying upon it.
Ro had fallen asleep or fainted into unconscious oblivion. Zeta tried futilely to revive her.
The Dumes' rushed inside, Julie among them. She insisted that Ro be taken to her room, "slag how dirty she is," the girl passionately added. Zeta did as he was told, without even thinking about it, and left Ro on the bed.
Tess began to examine the comatose invalid, to check for broken bones. Zeta already knew what was Mrs. Dumes's desire to know. "She has nothing broken, but she must be changed and kept warm." He looked at Julie. "Can you tend to her?"
"Of course," Julie said tenderly. "Mother, draw a warm bath, will you?"
Zeta let himself out of the room, knowing he'd done everything he could and only desired to be out of the way. He passed Warren and Jas. Warren came up beside the sullen Mr. Smith at the top of the stairs, just as Zee descended. "What you need is a stiff drink," Warren said. Zeta attempted an appreciating smile, but it was weak and imperceptible. "Thank you, but no," he responded, as he and Warren alighted downstairs. Warren led him into the study, where Zeta recognized the bookcase and all the titles he'd noticed after supper. Warren poured himself a liqueur, and again offered something to Zeta, who again declined.
"Don't worry," Warren said, then took a sip of the alcohol, "she'll be all right. How did you find her so fast, anyway?"
Zeta was running his fingers across the bindings of the books, only pretending what their canvas and paper edges felt like. He looked acutely at Warren. "I know Ro very well."
"Wonder what made her go out there in the first place?"
Zeta didn't have an answer, so said nothing. "I like your library, Mr. Dumes."
"Thank you," Warren responded warmly, sincerely pleased. "Most of it has been here since the house was built. A man of your--uh--interests would probably appreciate that."
"I appreciate a lot of things, Mr. Dumes." Zeta tried to find a way to pass the time normally, while waiting for word from upstairs that Ro wanted to see him. And she would want to see him. For some reason he didn't doubt it. Something had happened to her outside in the field, and he wanted to know what. He grabbed a book off the shelf as a means to pass time and embellish a skill humans took for granted, namely reading. Books were nice for him, but Zeta preferred the electronic device called a Reader. It suited his mind more a keener accuracy than words printed on paper. But, without a Reader around, Zeta made good use of the library. Warren left him alone in the study with the door shutting behind him. He said a mild "good night" as he did, so Zeta assumed the Dumes elders would be asleep before long. Since Zeta had no good judge of time, he had no idea what hour it was, but gathered it must have been rather late. The moment he wanted it, he could display his internal clock, but didn't bother with the useless task. Time was unimportant to him. Rather without knowing why, he took out from the inside pocket of his jacket the folded up piece of paper he had written only hours ago. Once he unfurled the pages, he read the brief poem again, then returned it deep to the safe haven.
It was a little while later that Jas and Julie entered, and the lazy dog Boom-Boom was at the wake of their heels. The dog, noticing Zeta's presence, gave the obligatory growl, but he was too tired to care. At first Zeta saw only the siblings approach, and he felt like his summons to see Ro had finally arrived. But it was Ro herself who came in through the door a moment later, behind the slow-moving Labrador. She stopped in the doorway and saw Zee rise to his feet at her entrance. She ran up to him and held him close, and he petted her on the top of her head.
"Thank you, Zee," she said into his shirt.
Her thank you was his best reward. "Are you all right, Ro?"
"I'm better." She was fine again. Clean, washed, for the second time that night, wearing fresh clothes while her muddy ones were tossed into the laundry by a helpful Julie, who did not want to see any Montgomery deCarlo design go to ruin from caked and dried dirt. And although Ro was as right as the stars in the sky, she was not yet ready to let go of Zeta. The run-in with the apparition of her father just opened the gaping wound in her heart, the particular hole was the one that desired affection and unconditional love of the parental sort. Zeta was the only one she'd ever known who could provide her with anything resembling love.
"I was thinking," Zee said to Ro, "about how things are so different now. Usually you're the one getting me out of trouble. Now I'm getting you out of trouble." Ro just squeezed him tighter, the smile of a pleased little girl on her face, the lost little girl Ro might've been once.
Julie closed the door of the study, almost with a slam. The three in her company looked over at her, startled by the sudden cacophony. "I have a question," she stated, in a demanding tone laced with juicy breath. "You two aren't really cousins, are you?"
Ro's voice cracked in her throat as she tried to answer, but she coward back. She flopped into a conveniently placed recliner and set her forehead to her fingertips. People's questions were often wearisome to Ro. It'd be far more agreeable if the world knew everything to start with, though impossible, it'd be less irritating.
"No," Zeta said to Julie. "Ro and I are friends, not cousins. That was just something she said. She thought it would be easier to believe."
Julie put her hands on her hips for a moment, then crossed her arms. She stuck out her chin to show her determination. "So what would be difficult to believe?"
Ro groaned. "The truth, of course. Zeta is a synthoid robot built by the government and wanted by the NSA, the same people who built him, for a crime he didn't commit."
Julie burst out in a mad laughter, hidden partially behind her hand. Jas watched on, stunned. He'd only known part of the truth, but had no idea the truth was so enormous and intriguing. "Wow," he said, suddenly in awe of Zeta in addition to Ro. "The NSA?" he asked. "The National Security Agency?" Ro lifted her eyebrows, somehow giving confirmation to Jas without a word. Julie, for a long moment, couldn't stop laughing. Jas shook her at the shoulder to rouse her sensibility, and finally she calmed down.
"This isn't true, Jas!" she exclaimed to her brother, a hand at her stomach where it ached from over-laughing. "This little tart of a girl is pulling one over on you."
Ro resented being called 'a tart'. "Zeta, do you mind a demonstration?"
"Not at all." Zeta turned off his hologram capability and appeared before Julie in his synthoid shape. Julie gaped at him, her mouth slacked, her eyes wide.
It was wonderful for Ro to see someone eat their own words. "Am I still a tart?" she asked in perfect but fake sweetness.
Julie Dumes paid no attention to Ro. She was drawn instead to Zeta, to whom she stepped and stood before. She poked at him with a finger, and Zeta swayed from the touch. Julie flicked her hair over her shoulder, out of the way, and crossed her arms. "H'mm," she hummed. "Most interesting. A synthoid, huh? They're not supposed to exist."
"We shouldn't have told you," Zeta said to her. He didn't care for the speculating look in Julie's eyes. He could see something at work in her. As she was leaning toward him for a closer inspection, he suddenly transformed into his human shape again, back to Zee Smith.
Julie backed off a couple of steps. "No," she told him calmly, "I'm not going to turn you in. You saved my brother's life." Julie glanced at Ro under thick eyelashes. "You're not a tart. Honest. You're both obviously wonderful, caring--uh--people."
"Could you tell that to the NSA?" Ro did have the hardest time suppressing a sarcastic question, especially when it came so easily, as though expected.
Jas asked Ro if they really didn't do what the NSA suspected they did.
"Ro," Zeta began, "didn't do anything."
"Yeah," Ro added, "I came in later. And I really did what they thought I did. It's about the only thing they've been smart enough to get right so far."
Zeta observed her, but she couldn't fathom any meaning in that look. She thought, at first, he might disagree with something she'd said.
Julie sunk into the study's worn couch. She looked between Ro and Zeta, as if trying to find some answer to a question she hadn't yet asked. When she finally did, it was aimed directly toward Zeta. "How do you feel, Zee? What do you feel? I've never met a robot before. I want to know. Like any--any human--I'm curious about how the others live."
"'The others,'" Ro said, with an unintended chuckle. "They're not another species."
Julie was smarted, but stood by her question. She watched Zee in anticipation.
"Well, I have the basic human senses built in, but each one is severely different than what a normal human has, particularly touch and smell and taste. But I have essentially better eyesight and hearing than any human."
Jas was unable to tear his eyes away. It was the dream of any child of the mid-twenty-first century to meet a synthoid, the world's newest mythological creature. "Fascinating." Jas poked Zeta in the upper arm. "Can you feel that?"
Zeta shook his head. "Not much. I only have a very general sense of touch. Weight, for instance. I know what is solid, what is liquid, what is soft, what is flexible. But I know no difference in fine texture."
The Dumes children's curiosity of Zee Smith was amplified. Both had their own idea of what they found interesting about their robot house guest. Jas was interested in the technical side, Julie in the brain. And Julie was not as shy as her brother. It was she who prompted the most talk from Zeta, and how they ended up in an analytical, late-night conversation.
"What about--" Julie began, then hesitated, a little blush coming into her cheeks, "--emotions? That is what I meant when I asked what you feel. What do you feel?"
"I feel enough," Zeta replied.
Julie would not let the laconic response be satisfactory. She goaded him further. "Do you love? Do you hate? Do you get angry? Do you get sad?"
"Sometimes," he said.
"'Sometimes' to which?"
"To all. Sometimes I feel love, hate, anger, sadness. I didn't at first," he said. "But it started to grow."
Ro glanced at Zeta, as this hadn't been something she was aware of, but had only contemplated in her abundant moments of free time. She, however, remained quiet.
Zeta added a nod, as though trying to agree with himself. "I'm much more aware than I used to be."
"How interesting," Julie said. "So you feel compassion, then?"
"Compassion, yes. I can feel compassion. Sympathy. Sympathy only sometimes. Understanding is more frequent. It is easy to understand an occurrence or a happening, whether it is to me or someone else, when all your brain has is facts, and speculation is less easy to know. To speculate I have to plan. I suppose that is no different than a human, is it? You must gather what information you can about something, and then form an opinion, an idea, then you have your speculation. But that is all conjecture. It is not fact. Believing in things that are not straight facts is one of the things that makes people wondrously human. This is what I work to control inside of me. Robots are built to believe only in facts, and adhere to nothing else. It is conjecture and guesswork that can make us human."
"And with the conjecture comes the compassion."
"Yes. Feelings have no fact, have they? Feelings are only subjective, never objective. That is why it is important for me to speculate: it is how I learn to feel."
Ro was growing confused, but she was tired and it was well after midnight. Still, she found the topic of conversation more intriguing than she could admit. She'd never been one to delve into deep philosophy before, yet she found she was enjoying the notions presented. Zeta and her never talked much about such ideas, since any discussion of them before had made Ro uncomfortable. But not tonight. Perhaps she was learning that Zeta wanted to learn; he had curiosity toward emotions, and that was a curiosity not dealt with quickly. Ro even supposed she wanted to learn about love and affection, souls and a life of harmony. Why hadn't she realized it before? She was lost momentarily in fierce jealousy focused at Julie, for she had been the one to bring up the intense topic.
Julie was thinking about Zeta's attention to Ro, when they had hugged earlier, and how, with such effortlessness, Zeta gave his love. "What about affection? Every human needs affection. What do you need?"
Zeta was quiet for a long, thoughtful moment, beguiled, searching for an answer. Ro was uncomfortable for Zeta's sake, and she wanted to say something so he wouldn't be forced to reply, and even Julie was about to retract the complicated question when he finally found what he'd been looking for.
"Being without affection would--would frighten me. Does that make me human? No. There are many qualifications to being human, like having a soul." He shot a harmless peer at Ro, who smiled at him. He hadn't forgotten their recent discussion of souls. "I may never have a soul, because I was not born with flesh. I was not--I was not even born."
It was Jas this time who interceded, from the spot he'd claimed as his own on the floor. "That might not be true, Zee."
The synthoid looked at the kid, caught off guard. Hope, as a word and as a feeling, came into his mind.
"I read in a book once that not every human has a soul, and not everyone is born with one."
Julie scoffed at her twerpy little brother. "When did you read a book that wasn't brought home from school?"
Jas rolled his eyes, annoyed. "All right," he huffed, "it wasn't a book, really. It was a graphic novel."
Julie couldn't help but snort in ridiculing laughter.
"Go on," Zeta urged Jas. "I'm interested."
"Well," Jas said, calmly taking control of the thoughts that raced in his mind, "I'm not sure that every human is born with a soul, but I like to believe that they are, or, at least, can get one. I think every living thing has to have a soul--eventually. Maybe it isn't something you're born with at all, no matter what you are or how you came to exist."
"Oh," Ro suddenly said, "you mean it's more like something that's gained as you go through life, as you learn more about what it's like being alive. Maybe it's just something in you that's aware of your own existence." Ro, in the quiet stare of the siblings, faced Zee. She was tired and nearly numb, but still able to be playful. "So, tin man, you might not have been born with a soul, but you could still end up with one. You're earning it right now, even as we sit here. That's got to be worth something to you. Don't you think?"
Zeta only nodded. He was too pleased to speak.
The Dumes teens soon shuffled themselves off to bed, though it was difficult to tear themselves away from the synthoid sitting in their study, under their roof. The clock in the living room sweetly chimed half-past the hour of one and could be heard through the hallway and into the den. Julie was sure that Ro would be needing sleep after the adventure out in the rain. Feeling ever hospitable, especially now that she knew their secret, Julie offered Ro the use of her bedroom for the night. Ro declined, saying she'd feel more comfortable sleeping on the couch. Plus, she knew she needed to talk to Zeta, and that was best done exactly where they were, in the private study.
Julie hesitated in front of Zeta, trying to form an awkward apology. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. I certainly wouldn't have--"
Jas tugged at his sister's arm. "Forget it, Jule. Trust me."
For once, she took her brother's advice and did let it go. She wasn't so awfully embarrassed, anyway. "Zee," she said with a wink, "you could've picked a less attractive hologram, that's for sure."
Ro smiled and Zeta only stared at Julie blankly, but Ro had the inkling he was a touch amused. Julie hugged and kissed Zeta and Ro goodnight, and Jas just waved shyly from the door, calling the lethargic Boom-Boom to his side. As soon as it was shut, and they were certainly alone, Zeta focused attention to Ro.
"Did it happen to you again?" he asked. He sat back into the chair he'd used most of the night, and Ro leaned into the arm rest.
"It did." She bit her lip, afraid to go on. The experience was both emotionally close to her but visually far away.
"Do you want to tell me? I worry about you."
"The thing is . . . I can't really remember what happened. I only have impressions of what happened, like remembering something from my earliest dreams. I don't know if I was just dreaming, but it seemed real enough." When she got through the simple oration of the meeting with her father, Ro hastened to add: "There is an inconsistency in this which confuses me more than anything, even the hallucinations. It's the fact that I know my parents are dead. That is a fact. But my brother isn't. Yet, I've had visions of him. I don't understand that--more than I don't understand the rest."
"I have no answers for you, Ro," Zeta replied in dissatisfaction. The encyclopedic brain he had lacked a depth in psychoanalysis and behavior interpretation. And though he knew Ro better than he knew any human, he still had no further insight.
"That's all right. I didn't expect you would. There are riddles I want answered, sure, just not necessarily this one."
"But there's something I've wanted to ask you, since the night we met Jas."
"Well?" Ro said while waiting during Zee's extended silence. "What is it?"
"Why did you keep lying to him, about your family? You know you have a brother---"
"Do I?" Ro couldn't help but refract the concept. "I don't know much about him. And he's not really like my brother. But you're overlooking one giant point as to why I didn't mention him, and why I never do."
Zeta lifted a shoulder, and his random human kinetics always threw Ro's mind into a tailspin.
"I don't want people to know about him. I don't want anyone to know that we know each other. It's bad enough that Bucky knows, the little traitor. Casey doesn't deserve to be sucked into obscurity and threatened by the NSA simply because of some girl who happens to be his sister. That's not fair. I wouldn't wish it on him." Ro fell into the opposite chair, sprawling her legs over the arm's edge. "Make sense?"
"Of course. If given a little more time I would've thought the same. I'll no longer be surprised if you never mention Casey MacCurdy again."
Ro ran a hand through her hair, and left the fingers on her forehead. She was thinking back to the images of her father. There were a few things Pierce Rowen had said which Ro negated from her dissertation to Zeta. The stuff about her childhood, how she'd once been so interested in the wonder of life. It was something Zeta wouldn't understand. "What's 'mo stoir' mean?
He calculated the foreign words, but, ruefully, shook his head. "That is not a language I am equipped to know."
"Probably just as well. . . . I wonder what would've happened if I'd taken my father's arm when he offered it."
"Why didn't you?"
"Something held me back," she said. "I don't know what it was." She kicked a gentle foot at Zee's elbow. "Maybe it was you!" She was joking, of course, but still there was that nagging suspicion in the far back of her mind that maybe it wasn't a joke. "I'd rather be here than anywhere else, I guess. You don't have to be afraid to let me out of your sight. I'm going to be fine."
"I know." Zeta reached over to Ro's nearby bare foot and was inclined to tickle the bottom of it, but Ro snatched it away, fully knowing his intention. She scoured at him. Zeta smiled, as being caught before the crime was almost as fun as the tickling. "You should sleep now, Ro. It's late. And we should leave early."
Ro found no cause to argue. The idea of sleep was a beautiful, happy dream. She hit Zeta on the arm mischievously. "Tell me more about the Seven Sisters tonight, will you?" The story was necessary for her that night, after her father's mention of the stars. And Ro was realizing her old inherent fascination with the sky, feeling that interest burning steadily to knew life. The world had been Ro's first crush, and she was falling back in love with the universe. Pierce Rowen had been right: she would remember what had so long ago been forgotten.
Zeta looked up at her as she stood in front of him. He knew she was weary from the night, forlorn almost, but he wanted her mood lightened. "If you say please."
She rolled her eyes. "Please," she said in a flat, drab voice. When Zeta agreed, as if he wouldn't, Ro laid down on the old plaid couch where Julie had sat earlier. Even that conversation seemed like ages ago, when only forty minutes or so had passed. Ro punched a throw pillow under her head, while Zeta draped his long coat over her. She snuggled under the black velveteen collar, with the blue synthetic-wool fabric laced around her fingers. Zee only had to tell about thirty seconds of the myth before Ro was asleep.