+J.M.J.+
One of Those in our Midst!
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's note:
Ahh, the advantages of being unemployed…you may not have much money, but you got time to writewritewrite stuff. My argument for writing some of these "A.I." fictions is that someday I can turn them into straight robot stories and publish them for real…After several quiet chapters we now have a very busy chapter: confrontations between weak humans and self-righteous ones, philosophizing between semi-logical and purely logical minds, romantic interludes, wedding preparations…and more comedy.
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I
Chapter V
Pin Pricks, Philosophy, and Ponds
Immediately after breakfast, Ferde drove Kip and Frank to Amherst for their blood work.
"Why do they have to make Kip take the test? It's not like he's…done anything," Phila asked as she dried the breakfast dishes; they had a few more than usual since Peter had stayed home from work.
"Are you sure he hasn't? I mean, after all, he grew up in that city," Georgette asked.
"He's a virgin; he says he never had much interest in what goes on there, since he's been around it for so long."
"Well, I hope that hasn't killed his interest in, well, at least consummating the sacrament."
"I doubt it has," Phila replied.
Bernie came from the dining room with the last few dishes. When she heard the thread of the conversation, her face grew suddenly concerned.
"Is something wrong, Bernie?" Georgette asked.
Bernie put the plates in the sink. "Oh, nothing, nothing at all." Her lower lip trembled and she curled it in between her teeth.
"Something's wrong," Phila said. "What is it?"
"Just pre-wedding jitters, that's all," Bernie said.
Georgette looked into her niece's face. "Your eyes look wary. Is this about Frank?"
"I'm afraid he won't pass the test."
"Then Peter wasn't kidding when he told me Frank told you he's not longer a virgin."
Bernie shook her head. "He's been chaste for three years now."
"That's really not very long," Georgette said. "Oh dear, this changes everything."
At this point, Joe came in from the back bedroom, carrying the tray with Irene's dishes.
"How's Irene?" Georgette asked, averting her eyes as he set the tray on the counter.
"The venerable lady herself said she felt frisky today: she had her meal sitting by the window," he reported.
"How's her shoulder?"
"It gives her no pain today."
"Must be that herbal liniment Alice gave her," Phila said.
"Or perhaps it may stem from the massage I gave her this morning," Joe put in.
"Excuse me," Bernie said, stepping out of the room quickly. Joe gazed after her.
"Now what was that for?" Georgette asked.
A peculiar smirk of a smile crossed Joe's calm face. "Perhaps I should find this out from her."
Sarah kept to her room that day, but Peter had recruited Cecie to clean out the garage, not that it needed much cleaning, since peter kept it so orderly, unlike most garages. This left so little actual work to be done, that it really didn't require two people. As she swept the floor, Cecie allowed herself the covert luxury of a sigh of relief when Georgette came along and took Peter aside. She honed in her hearing on the two voices outside the garage door.
"Peter, is it really true that Frank isn't a virgin?"
"Bernie told me something to that effect. Why?"
"Did you know that he's only been celibate for three years?"
A long pause. "No, I didn't."
"That's not a very long time, and who's to know who he's been with…or what, for that matter."
"We'll have to have a talk with him when he gets back, and as soon as we get the results."
"Maybe he should take another one with another doctor."
"No, not unless the results from the first are questionable."
A moment later, Peter came back into the garage. Cecie emptied the dustpan into the trash barrel.
"Did you know that Frank Sweitz is not longer a virgin?" he asked.
"He admitted to Kip and I that he isn't, but it's really nobody's business except his and Bernie's and God's."
Peter looked over his shoulder and turned back to her. "How many of those did he admit to…consorting with?"
"He didn't give us the particulars; he's a lot more modest than he pretends to be."
"I'll have to have a talk with him."
About forty-five minutes later, Peter decided the garage was clean enough. At the same time, Ferde returned with Frank and Kip. Ferde and Kip got out of the front of the cruiser first, then they helped Frank out of the back; Frank trembled slightly and his face looked pale under its swarthiness. He leaned on Kip's shoulder as they came up to the garage.
"How'd it go?" Peter asked.
"I'm as clear as the driven snow they way I knew I was," Kip said. "But Frank had a little trouble."
"Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Frank. Would you rather that I told Bernie for you?" Peter suggested.
Frank lowered one eyebrow and raised the other. "Huh? No, let me tell you what happened: the nurse stuck me with the needle and took the sample. As soon as she pulled it out, I blacked out and hit the floor—bam! The pain just got to me. So the assistant got the smelling salts and brought me out of it. Then the results came back and I fainted again."
"They found you had something?"
"No, they found absolutely nothing. I thought for a minute they'd run Kip's a second time by accident; but nope, it was mine and it was clean."
"You lucked out, fella," Ferde said, punching Frank's arm.
"Ow."
"Sorry."
"You're very blessed to have passed. But that's something I need to talk to you about," Peter said, taking Frank by the shoulder and leading him into the house.
"Uh oh, I don't like the looks of this one bit," Cecie said.
"This better not turn into a single wedding," Kip added.
Ferde rolled up his sleeves and headed up to the house. "Lemme get a word of sense in edgewise."
"If there's anyone who can talk sense into Peter, it's Ferde," Cecie said, following him in.
She found she wasn't the only one cocking an ear to the living room archway. Joe stood with his back to the wall on one side of the archway.
"I told Bernie at Easter that I'm no longer a virgin," Frank admitted. "I'd hoped she'd keep this in confidence."
"I'd asked her if she knew if you were or were not. I felt it was important that we knew what sort of man is marrying our adopted daughter," Peter said.
"It's a blessing that you passed the test," Georgette put in, trying to sound reassuring.
"But is it a blessing to break someone's trust?" Frank asked.
"I didn't mean to break it; I gotta obey my father," Bernie said.
"Bern, you're twenty-three. You have to start thinking for yourself. You're not a child," Frank said.
"I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking."
"No offense, but it's a little late for that."
"We have the right and the need to be informed about what sort of man our son-in-law is," Peter said.
"But there's a reasonable limit to how far you can investigate. I mean, I understood and accepted your wanting the background check."
"We just wanted to know if you maintained your purity and if you can be faithful to Bernie."
"I suppose now you'll want the names and numbers of every girl I ever met."
"That might not be a bad idea."
"I hate to disappoint you, Mr. Connelly, but I can't remember them all."
"Why? Were there that many?"
"No, it's just not the sort of information I really wanted to remember. Do you really take me for the swaggering stud with the black notebook jammed with the names and numbers of every girl he's messed with?"
"We don't. We just want to know where you've been."
"Good grief! Even the priest in confession didn't ask me who I'd been with."
"It might not be a bad idea if he did," Peter said.
"I think it's a Canon law that they can't," Frank said.
"That wouldn't jive with common sense! That kind of requirement would scare people away from the sacrament of reconciliation."
"And for that matter, have all the women you've consorted with been flesh and blood?"
"That, like everything else I've done, is between me and God."
"Didn't you cover a story in Rouge City?"
"I did, but anything else I may have done there doesn't concern you."
"Then you've been…there."
"Cecie lives there, but she's never done anything; Kip grew up there and he's still as virgin as the driven snow."
"That's them; we're talking about you."
"I know what you're talking about: you're pulling me apart because I've made a few youthful mistakes."
Just as Cecie realized Ferde wasn't in the room, he came to the doorway.
"What took you so long?" Cecie asked in a low voice.
"Got held up by Alice," he replied, looking at her. "How's it going in there?"
"Bad."
"They are treating him with the same unkindness as they have rendered to me, and he is one of their kind," Joe added.
Ferde set his heavy jaw and strode into the room. "Hey, Peter, did I hear you chewin' up Frank?"
"We're only trying to reason with him."
"Let him alone, Pete. Would you rather have him or someone who's molested children? You should consider yourself really lucky that you have someone as decent as Frank wanting to marry Bernie."
"If he isn't a virgin, he's hardly decent."
"Aside from that, you don't get much better than Frank. You think I was as pure as the driven snow when I married Alice? You think it bothers her that she wasn't my first? Remember Trina Wentford? Maybe we slipped up, but thank God we sorted it all out in the end."
"I'm only trying to keep Bernie from getting hurt," Peter argued.
"So do you have to hurt me in the process?" Frank growled. "Good God! You have less common sense than that Mecha friend of Cecie's—and you're treating me about the same way you treat him."
"But Bernie had nothing to do with that…that creature," Georgette said. "Did you?"
"No," Bernie said, not quite convincing.
Joe smiled and lowered his eyelids secretively.
"But can you continue to be strong in virtue for the rest of your life? Are you ready to be faithful to Bernie?" Peter asked.
"Pete, don't badger him," Ferde warned.
A long silence. "I'm ready to be faithful to Bernie, but I don't think you're ready to have a son-in-law like me," Frank said. "Now, if you'll excuse me…"
Frank strode out of the living room. He glanced at Cecie, then at Joe. "Did you hear all that?" he asked.
"Most of it, unfortunately. I listened only because I care," Cecie said.
"And so they render to one of their own kind the same breed of courtesy they reserved for me," Joe added with sympathy.
"I guess the gap between us just got narrower," Frank said. "Trouble is, it doesn't sink in on you. You're made of tougher stuff than I am."
"It does not affect me in the manner it affects you. If they cannot appreciate individuals such as you and I, they are, perhaps, unworthy of us."
"That's one way to look at it. I sure wish I could handle it as well as you do."
"Perhaps you could copy his style," Cecie said.
"As long as I don't have to use that hoity-toity British accent," Frank said, eyeing sidewise first her, then Joe.
"Does it bother you?" the Mecha asked.
"No, it would just sound weird on me."
"So what are you going to do now?" Cecie asked.
"I'm on my way to start packing," Frank said.
"Don't work too hard at it: don't lock your trunk. Ferde might still be able to get through to Peter."
He shrugged. "It couldn't hurt to prepare for the worst. But at the same time, expect the unexpected."
"How can you do that properly? Such thinking makes the unexpected become the expected," Joe put in.
"I'll tell you one thing to expect: I might come around for the stuff I loaned you, like that shirt you've got on."
Joe calmly undid the collar. "As you require."
"Uh, Joe, not yet. You can keep it for now."
"What was all the yelling I heard down there?" Sarah asked Cecie when she came upstairs, looking for Phila.
"Don't let anyone know I told you this, but Peter just chewed Frank out because Frank had a few, er, ladyfriends in the past."
"I bet even Sir Galahad wouldn't be good enough for Peter."
"I don't think so either."
"Hey, you could write a story about that: a medieval knight gets caught in some kind of time tunnel thing and he ends up in 22nd century America."
"There's an old movie like that."
"Really? It sounds good."
"It's a good movie for grown folk; medieval knights were a little more earthy than we think of them. Things were simpler back then. But maybe I'll write a story like that for folks your age."
"Sound like fun."
"But before I go off, what about what we were discussing? Do you sweat by the sun and the moon and the Dog Star that this lies locked in your heart?"
Sarah laid her hands over her heart. "I swear."
"Good. Thanks."
At that point, Bernie came up the stairs. She quickened her pace as she passed Joe, who waited on the landing for Cecie. Sarah glanced down.
"Uh, excuse me," she ducked into Cecie's room.
"Are you all right, Bern?" Cecie asked.
"I'm thinking I'd better pack up and go back to the Sister in St. Louis," Bernie said. Her left hand twisted her engagement ring around on her right ring finger.
"You can't cave in now. You have to be stronger now than you ever were. You have to cut the tie with the past, and this may just be the way that happens."
"But Peter will hate me."
"Ferde just might be able to change his mind. He's done it before."
"This might be the time Ferde can't get through to him."
"Start praying, then keep on doing what you'd be doing anyway—and I don't mean packing."
"If that's the case, then maybe all I can do now is pray." Bernie went into her room and closed the door.
Cecie went to Phila's room. She found the older of the Connelly girls busy stitching the lace cap of her wedding veil.
"What was going on downstairs?" Phila asked.
"That's what I came up here to tell you. Peter's trying to stop Frank from marrying Bernie."
"Is this about his past?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
Phila laid aside the veil and stuck the needle into the pincushion. "This is awful. He can't do it."
"He thinks he can, and he thinks he's gonna protect Bernie from a bad decision. But I have a bad feeling that he's only going to make the whole situation worse."
"How worse?"
"If she doesn't marry Frank, she'll go for someone, or rather something else."
"Who?"
"That someone is standing on the landing, eying Bernie's door."
"Who? I mean, Kip told me Mat's been eying Bernie, but I never knew she had any interest in him."
"Not Mat. I mean someone who looks an awful lot like Frank."
"Not Joe."
"Yes. Joe."
"Excuse me," Phila got up and went out. Cecie heard her go downstairs, two at a time.
She went out into the hallway. Joe stood at the head of the stairs, leaning gracefully against the banister, gazing toward Bernie's door with warm eyes.
"Perhaps…if Frank cannot cut the ties that bind Bernadette to her old life, I may yet be the scissors to cut those ties," he mused.
Cecie stepped in front of him, toe to toe. "Don't even think that. If you didn't cost 20,000 NB, I'd knock you down the stairs right now for thinking that."
He stepped back from her, but he kept his gaze on her. "Do I detect jealousy in your voice?"
"No, I'm just trying to help save a good marriage. Excuse me." She stepped past him, heading downstairs. She passed Georgette coming up on the way.
The air in the dining room felt heavy with tension when she entered a minute later. Ferde, Frank, Stephen, Kip and Phila stood facing Peter across the table. Mat came in with Irene, whom he set down on a chair on the same side as the younger folks.
"If you don't let Bernie marry Frank, Phila and I will go to Rouge City and get married there." Kip was saying. "We can do without all these fancy preparations, can't we?"
"Yes, we can," Phila said, with surprising conviction.
"Besides, how do you know you aren't interfering with some vast, eternal plan?" Irene said. "Frank is everything you need in a son-in-law. As soon as Kip told me he'd found the girl he wanted to marry and that she had a younger sister, I started prying that, if it was part of the plan, she'd find the young man who'd be the best for her and her family. She met Frank at the convent shortly after that."
"I prayed the same kind of prayer Irene prayed," Cecie said.
"If you interfere with our marrying, how do you know it won't make things worse? How do you know I might lose the will to keep going like I have for the past three years and cave in to my old self?" Frank said.
Cecie heard Joe's light footsteps behind her and sensed that white noise that hovered about him. "I know I am but a Mecha, but might I put in a word?" he asked.
Peter threw up his hands in desperation. "Speak, if you'll stay out of this after you've said your piece."
"Cecie has told me that you worship a god who willed to become human and to walk among your kind. One wonders if, should your God Himself offer to marry Bernadette, would even He come up to your standards of which you take such pride?"
"By Venus, the machine said it best," Ferde cried. Said Mecha responded to this with a barely concealed smile of pride.
"But where's Bernie in all this?" Peter asked.
Georgette came down with Bernie. Peter rose slowly as Bernie joined Frank. She put her hand in his.
"I'm not letting him go," Bernie said.
"All right, I'll admit it. Frank, Bernie, I'm sorry. It was…unchristian and thoughtless of me to say the things I said. I take them back. I shouldn't question your judgment."
"And it was stupid of me to let you badger me into letting out things I should have kept confidential," Bernie said.
"I'm the one responsible for that," Peter admitted. "I'm sorry, Bernadette."
Frank slipped his arm about Bernie. "I think it'll work out anyway, by the grace of God." He turned Bernie's face up to his and leaned down to kiss her. She moved at the last second, so he ended up kissing her nose. Mat giggled half-teasingly; Irene let out an "Aawww!" Joe looked away with something like jealousy.
"I guess that means the double wedding is still on," Kip said.
"Good thing: we got two and a half days left to get ready for it," Phila said.
"But can we, like, have some lunch first?" Mat asked.
"Especially those of us who've had blood taken out of us," Kip added.
"For those of us capable of digesting it," Joe added, haughtily.
"Y' know, metal-boy, I liked you better when you were philosophizing," Ferde retorted.
After supper, later that evening, Peter retired to the living room to read that week's Wanderer.
He found that Mecha of Cecie's lounging in his armchair, one leg slung over the arm, reading a book. At first he—it, whatever—seemed to be aimlessly flipping pages, but he realized its eyes scanned down each page before it turned over to the next.
"Er, Joe, you're sitting in my chair."
The robot looked up, an odd look on its face—curious? Puzzled? Caught in the act? Indignant? He couldn't read its expressions well. It rose to its feet.
"Forgive me, I knew not this was your seat," it said, stepping aside.
"What's that book you have there?"
It turned the volume over for him to see. "La Vita Nuova, or The New Life, written by your Dante Aligheri; he tells of his first love, of the joy and pain it brought him.
"You really can read that?"
"I can, though I must admit that read slowly for my kind."
"Aha." Peter sat down and picked up the Wanderer, which lay on the pillar table at his elbow. He had hardly read the transcript of the Pope's general address for that week, on the inside of the front page, when he felt someone's gaze on him. He looked up.
The robot, now seated on the end of the sofa, had laid the book aside and gazed at him with that same look of blank interest mixed with something else. Pride? Superiority? Contempt? What was it?
"What?" he demanded.
"What…?" it asked.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"I am merely looking at you."
"Well, you have no need to."
"I know that I do not. And yet still, I wish to know more about you by observing you."
"Well, what have you learned by observing me?"
The Mecha fixed him with its gaze in silence. What was it thinking…processing…whatever.
"You are, in fact, a lonely man full of pain. You fear pleasure, and thus you turn it into pain inside you."
"I…what? How do you know this?"
"One might call me, to use a phrase I have heard Cecie use in reference to me, a student of human nature. In order to maximize the experience of each of my customers, I must first deduce what sort of woman she is. I have used the same mode of inference in observing you, and I have reached this conclusion. Unless I mistake the data, I have guessed correctly."
"How do you know that?"
"Your eyes shifted toward me as I stated my deduction."
"All right, so you think the goal in life is pleasure? 'Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you will die', is that it?"
The Mecha's face went blankly puzzled. "The eating and drinking I leave to you kind, these being purely Orga functions. And yet I hope to make merry those who partake of the pleasures my company affords. And if your lives run so short a course, why make so short a time so unpleasant?"
"We're not trying to make it unpleasant, we're giving up something transitory for the sake of winning eternal happiness in heaven."
"But may you not allow yourself some happiness as you journey toward your afterlife? Can you deny that the relations between the sexes carry with them many treasures of delight, both small and great?"
"Yes, that's so, but that pleasure is there so people will be attracted to marriage and the begetting of children. You realize that…sex was created for the purpose of propagating the human race."
"I know that there exists a connection between the two, as far as your species is concerned. But is it not so that conditions have required you to limit your numbers?"
"Unfortunately, yes. But that doesn't change the whole meaning of sex."
"If you pursued that line of thought to its logical conclusion, one would be lead to say that every embrace must result in the creation of new life."
"Not necessarily, no; but it would be a good idea."
"So what then would you say of a couple who enjoy their embraces even thought, for whatever reason, they will not bear a child?"
"Well, as long as they aren't doing anything to deliberately frustrate procreation, yes, but they shouldn't enjoy themselves too much."
"How they could they enjoy their mutual company too much?"
"If you make it the be-all and end-all of the, er, company they keep, if they think more of the pleasure than any other aspect."
"But we are to bring happiness into the lives of those we encounter. Does that not also apply to lovers? Thus, should not some great element of their happiness come from the pleasure their company brings to them?"
"That's quite true, but they—and you--have to realize that these pleasures are transitory."
"Quite true. One must withdraw from the embrace when the climax has passed. But when one cannot consort with one's beloved, may not one recall with happiness the time one has spent in the arms of the beloved?"
"You can, but you can't think of that person as an object of pleasure. Which leads me to a question I've wanted to ask you: can you…do you feel pleasure in…what you do?"
The Mecha pondered this, or was it merely moving data around in whatever lay beneath that glossy-haired scalp. It probably had no answer.
"Just as I can sense pain, so also I can sense pleasure. I was built this way so that I might savor the duty of the services I render to my customers."
"So you enjoy…being with these women?"
"It is not only their company, it is the task of relieving their loneliness which brings me pleasure."
"So you were made to enjoy sinning?"
The Mecha's brow pinched slightly. Its eyes went even more blank than usual.
"What do you mean by sinning?"
"You don't know that your servicing women is evil?"
"Is it an evil to relieve the unhappiness of lonely women through giving to them the pleasure of a man's company?"
"It is the way you do it…by lying with every woman who comes near you."
"You are mistaken, Mr. Connelly. Not every woman who makes use of my services seeks my embrace. Cecie does not, nor does Irene. Many of my regular customers desire the pleasure of my presence or conversation, or my touch innocently rendered."
"But what about the women who sleep with you?"
"They alone sleep; I cannot."
"You know what I mean. I'm being serious here. What about the women who decide they want more from you? Aren't you aware of the sin you lead them into?"
The robot looked aside, its face a mask of blank confusion. It looked at him. "How do you define sin?"
"I mean a wrong act, an immoral act, breaking the law of God."
"I cannot break the laws of being in which I cannot believe."
"You mean you're an atheist?!"
"I am but a machine, albeit an intelligent one. I lack a grasp of that which cannot be seen. So far as I know, I lack this thing called a soul which your species possesses."
"So far as you know…Do you know anything? Do you have any idea what morals are?!"
"Do you refer to large paintings on walls?"
"That's a mural, you moron."
The thing lifted its chin, its eyes growing cold with scorn. "I beg to differ with this term. I am a Mecha, an artificial intelligence endowed with a body designed to serve as a simulacrum of the human person."
"I know what you are, you're an infernal bit of machinery. You're one of the devil's best devices for leading us astray. You're—"
"Pardon my interrupting your torrent of words, but these statements have grown insulting. If we are to carry on this discussion like gentlemen, you would do well to divorce your thoughts form your more passionate emotions."
"All right, all right," Peter paused to breathe deeply and slowly. His temples had started to throb slightly. He looked at this metal and silicon entity and wondered if it ever knew what a headache felt like. Probably not, but for a thing that prided itself on rendering illicit pleasure, it was certainly giving and being a pain.
"Have you no shame? Have you no sense of guilt? Don't you have any idea what a wrong act is?"
"There are certain acts that are proscribed to me. I may not render my services to a minor, nor to a drunken woman, nor to one clearly insane or of less than average intelligence."
"On what grounds? Why are they forbidden and how do you know that they are?"
"There exist in my programming certain overrides, so in a sense, I have no desire to pursue these subjects."
"But if you didn't have these overrides, would you go after these sorts of women?"
"No, I would not. My logic processors tell me that to engage in intercourse with a minor violates the laws of the state, and that to engage in it with a drunken or insane or mentally handicapped subject would perhaps jeopardize my physical well-being and functionality."
"But still, those aren't morals."
"Perhaps they are not by your definition, but they are principles I must abide by."
"You have to have some definition of what morals are and are not. Don't you at least have a conscience?"
"If I do not have a soul, then doubtlessly I lack this function as well."
"Then you don't know right from wrong?"
"Perhaps first you should define what you mean by right and by wrong."
"It wouldn't matter if I did, you wouldn't get it."
"Perhaps I would comprehend or, as you put it, 'get it' better than you assume."
"By right I mean something that follows the first half of the basic moral law, 'Do good; avoid evil". I suppose you want me to define good and evil."
"It would clarify matters."
"All right, by good I mean something that enhances the life of the soul, and by evil, I mean something that harms or destroys the life of the soul."
"But is not the soul that part of a human which endures after the death of the body? How then can it be destroyed?"
"I meant that as a metaphor. Sin may as well kill the soul for the damage it does to the life of the soul. Do you understand this?"
"I believe I understand. The harm this thing called sin causes to the soul sounds very like a programming malfunction."
"Except that it's something you do to yourself; it isn't something that just happens to you like a programming glitch."
"I believe that I understand. But what sort of action you class as a sin?"
"Okay, a perfect example of a sin would be for a woman to…make use of your services."
"What makes this a sin when my services relieves a lonely woman's heart of its pain?"
"You didn't understand a word I said."
"I understood most of what you have described, but at this point it turns incomprehensible."
"I couldn't be any more clear!"
The thing looked at him in blank incomprehension, unblinking, which made it look even less intelligent.
"And they call your kind artificial intelligence," Peter murmured.
Cecie came into the room at this point. "Oh, there you are, Joe."
The Mecha arose and approached her. "Thank goodness you came here," it said, with relief.
"Is he messing with your processors?" she said in a "poor-little-thing" voice. She patted its shoulder tenderly; it took her hand in its own. She slid her hand free gently. "You go on out and meet me in the walled garden; the moon's rising and it looks nice out there."
"I shall count the seconds till I see you next," it said and went out by way of the deck.
She turned to Peter and said, "I didn't hear all that you said, but I couldn't help overhearing a lot of what went on. What was all that about?"
"I was only trying to give him some moral instruction," Peter said.
"You have to remember he doesn't think the way we do. He doesn't understand the concept of morals."
"He's an utterly immoral fiend."
"No, he's innocently amoral. He's in a pre-Adamite state. Imagine if God had created a man with the gift of reason, but without a soul or a conscience. You'd have something like Joe."
"That makes him all the more dangerous morally."
"He's not completely responsible for his actions. He has volition, but it's limited by the parameters of his specific programming. He's like an animal with the gift of reason and no other human endowment except for a body in the form of a human."
"But he's still morally dangerous."
"He understands the meaning of 'no' better than a lot of Orga men. And he knows how to respect someone's sensibilities: he won't do anything to anyone unless they let him. I don't let him get away with much more than friendly touches on the shoulder or the arm or such."
"I certainly hope so. I won't have you necking in the garden with that…impertinent machine."
"Pert, but not impertinent," she said.
She found Joe sitting on the edge of the basin of the fountain, gazing up to the sky. As she emerged from the yew tunnel, he rose and turned to her.
"Did I take too many seconds?" she asked.
"Three hundred too many for me," he replied.
"Was Peter hard on you?" she asked, taking his offered hand and letting him lead her to the stone bench.
"I cannot say whether the trouble arose from his convoluted explanation or from my nature."
"You're a very simple creature compared to us. Soulless, and therefore demonless; in some ways you have it better than we do." She slid her arms around his neck and stroked the sides of his head. "Did he give you a headache?"
"Were I suffering that pain, the very sight of you and the touch of your caress would cure that ill."
"Usually you're the one healing me," she said. He edged in closer, his face nearer to hers, his eyelids lowered. She let him go. "Nope, don't open up them there eyes and turn 'em on me."
He raised his chin slightly and opened his eyes, giving her the "sad puppy" look.
She poked him just below the ribs. "You adult-sized brat."
After breakfast next morning, Cecie, Phila, Bernie, and Georgette brought down the boxes of white Christmas lights from the attic.
"Are you sure those are gonna be enough?" Sarah said, trailing them.
"Allison Diocletian's coming with their lights; they do their whole house and yard with white lights every year," Phila said.
"Who puts 'em up?" Frank called up the stairs. "That jerk with the ice water in his veins instead of blood?"
"I'd like to know that myself. It's easier to imagine him as the Grinch stealing everyone else's lights," Cecie said.
"You shouldn't speak so disrespectfully of him," Georgette corrected.
"Hey, I worked for the buzzard for four years, I'm entitled to the fringe benefit of carping behind his back."
"Don't listen to Cecie; Shay puts them up," Phila said.
"Are you sure it isn't some serving man Mecha built to look like him? I just don't see him doing something like putting up lights; it might be too fun for his sensibilities," Kip said, taking the boxes from Phila. He hugged her with his free arm. "Just remember to breathe deeply while they're doing the test."
"I will," she promised. She hugged him back and let him go. "Come on, Bernie."
Frank took the boxes from Bernie and set them on the floor. He hugged her tenderly. "It's not as bad as you think," he told her.
"Oh yeah? Who was the one who bounced off the floor yesterday?" Kip twitted.
"That was after the test," Frank insisted. He kissed Bernie and let her go.
"I don't know why we have to do this," Phila said, as Georgette led them out.
"It's part of this crazy world we live in," her mother replied.
Peter came down with the last of the white lights and followed the rest of the group outside. "The only problem with using these white lights is you take away their significance. "They're really Christmas lights after all."
"C'mon, they're just white lights after all," Frank said.
Cecie, Irene, and Sarah had the job of detangling the strings of lights on the deck.
"That young friend of yours is a youth tonic," Irene said, holding the end of a string of lights while Sarah got the snarls out of it.
"Don't let him hear you say that," Cecie said as Joe came up the steps from the yard. He paused at the top step and smiled to Irene.
"You spoke much too soon, Cecie," he said, darting a glance at her. "Perhaps, were I permitted to linger here on the deck, instead of being shackled with transporting these strings of lights, you could continue partaking of this youth tonic."
"If he keeps whining about carrying the lights, he just might get his wish," Kip called from the yew tunnel.
"Don't give him any ideas," Cecie called back. She glanced at Joe, whose face had assumed a serenely innocent look, but she noted a twist of a smirk at the corner of his mouth.
Sarah and Irene had unsnagged another string, which Sarah passed to Joe. Her face went red as her fingers brushed his in the process.
"I have reiterated it ten times already this morning, and so for the eleventh time, I must remind you I was not constructed for such labors," he said, lifting his chin with disdain as he carried the lights down the slope.
"Hey, Joe, let's go!" Frank called.
"That decidedly is not my epigram," Joe said coldly, as he stepped into the yew tunnel.
Allison came through the alleyway between the house and the garage, with a large box of lights under her arm. "Hello? Where is everyone?" she called.
Cecie stood up. "We're up here on the deck."
As Allison started for the deck, Joe came up the slope, long-stepping to her side. "May I assist you with that box, Allison?" he asked.
"Well, uh, thanks," she said. She let him take the box from her. He hoisted it lightly to his shoulder as they came up to the deck.
"How come we can't get him to carry the detangled strings that graciously?" Frank asked, as he and Peter came up to the deck.
"It's very kind of you to loan us your lights," Peter said.
"We didn't want your garden to look too dim," Allison said.
"So did you mark the strings?" Peter asked, opening the lid.
"Yes, Shay had the boys and me put green labels on the strings," Allison replied, reaching in and taking out one of the small plastic frames the lights were neatly wound around.
"Great, no more detangling," Sarah said with relief.
"But you'll still have to bring them down to us as we need them," Peter said, looking at Joe, who gazed at Allison with warming eyes. "Joe?'
The Mecha turned to Peter. "You asked something of me?"
"Yes, I said you'll still have to bring the sets of lights down to us."
"I'll do it," Sarah said.
"Lucky for me that you volunteered for this task," Joe said.
"But detangling them is half the fun of putting lights up," Cecie groaned.
"He would eliminate half the fun," Frank growled.
"He just likes to keep it efficient," Allison said. She looked at her watch. "I gotta run. I hope the yard comes out well."
"You'll find out tonight," Peter said.
"Oh yes, the rehearsal."
"Be at the church at 19.30. The party's here at 20.30."
"Shall I see you then?" Joe asked.
"Shay and the boys and I'll be there," Allison said to Peter, but Cecie thought she saw her glance at Joe.
Allison left, but Joe lingered in the alleyway, gazing after her. Cecie went down and touched his arm. He turned back to her.
"What is Diocletian's relation to Peter Connelly? I have sensed an affinity between them," he said.
"They went to college together; Peter's an assistant to the CEO of the grocery store chain Diocletian works for," Cecie said, leading him back to the deck. "Peter helped him get the job he has now."
Sarah came up for more lights, keeping her eyes averted from Joe.
"That girl's got a crush on you, boy," Irene said. Joe looked at her.
"I may not approach her."
"I know you can't, and you shouldn't yet. But I've noticed that you notice her actions."
"She'll be a beautiful woman some day."
"She will be. I won't live to see her grown, but please God He'll let me watch over her from the other side."
"Perhaps another dose of youth tonic will ensure that you live to see her grown," Joe said.
"Oh, I'm only too willing for another dose," Irene said, blushing.
In the walled garden, Frank glanced up the length of the garden toward the house. "Hey, Kip, you sure we can't test the strings of lights on metal-britches?"
"Positive: not enough amps and nowhere to plug it in."
"You sure about not enough amps? I'd figure something like him would have plenty."
"I'm sure. If you're a mechanic and you've lived in Rouge City for as long as I have, you learn a lot of weird little bits of technical know-how about these things," Kip said, anchoring a cord along the top of the garden wall.
"There's something I've been meaning to ask you," he added.
"About what?" Frank asked, unrolling a string of lights from its plastic frame.
"You said you started living celibate three years ago, right?"
"I sure did."
"And you also said you covered a news story in Rouge City three years ago."
"Unfortunately, yeah."
"Why do I have a funny feeling in my stomach that there's a connection between the two events?"
Frank slung the string of lights around his neck. "Kip, my brother-in-law to be, you're as keen at deduction as a lover-Mecha. You're dead right: there is a connection.
"This friend of mine who works in one of the night clubs in the city greased the skids and got me a table at Tails, which being, as you know better than me, the swankiest, most expensive joint in the whole dump. He'd been telling me about the Sierra class Mechas that had just been brought in from Stockholm, how I had to try one, y' know, 'You'd never know you were getting it on with silicon', y' know. Well, lemme tell you, the very sight of the one I chose was almost enough to make me convert then and there. I mean, you know how most sex-Mechas look just a little too perfect? Things like our dear little friend Joe."
"Yeah, except he now has one physical flaw: that blemish on his left cheek where I had to weld a crack on his infrastructure. Go on."
Frank paced, his thumbs through the cord of the light string. "Well, this chick, Ingaborg, or whatever they called her, didn't have that too-perfect look. I mean, she looked Orga; I almost took her for one.
"But then, later, she—ahem—proved to me that she really was only a machine."
"What happened?"
"I had no idea at first. All I know is I felt every hair on my body stand on end and I blacked out. I woke up in a hospital in Camden a day later, paralyzed from the waist down. The doctors told me the Mecha had malfunctioned: a power surge or something. I could have died, but thank God I didn't. The paralysis went away a day later. But pretty soon, I'm afraid, Bernie's gonna discover I have a weird-looking burn mark in a none-too-strategic area."
"Talk about a wake up jolt."
"Yeah, made me decide to stop acting like there was no tomorrow. Bern came along at a good time, the honeymoon period of my conversion had just started to wear off and I'd just started having those questions in the back of my head: 'Why did y' make this decision, Frank?' And 'Whaddya mean, no sex?' stuff like that."
"And then she came along."
"Yep, she was my reason for living clean. Thanks for sticking up for me yesterday."
"Hey, anything to help. Now, don't let Peter hear this, he'd be livid."
Peter stepped out of the yew tunnel. "I'm afraid I'll have to deny you that caution. No, don't look ashamed. It was a question I'd wanted to ask you anyway."
At seven, as the sun started to sink behind the trees and the sky darkened, Peter let Kip do the honors and throw the master switch in the basement to turn on the backyard lighting.
The yard glowed like a fairyland. The lights on the fountain shifted colors: red to green to blue and back. The yew tunnel shone with a mist of lights on its underside. Lights outlined the walls of the walled garden and framed its window holes. More lights outlined the bridge, reflecting off the water.
"It's like a million fire sprites came to hover in the trees," Sarah cried.
Cecie, sitting on the deck with Joe at her side, unconsciously put her arm about him. He glanced at her and encircled her waist with his arm, finding her other hand and clasping it tenderly.
The rehearsal went as Cecie expected it would. Teddy, the younger of the Diocletians' sons had been chosen to be ring-bearer, a duty he clearly loathed from the way he thunked down the aisle when they rehearsed the procession ("Teddy! Pick Up YOUR FEET!!!" Diocletian had shouted at him.). Terez Bax's seven-year old cousin Dina would be the flower girl, a duty she obviously anticipated by the way she minced down the aisle. During a lull at the foot of the altar, when Peter got into a discussion with Father Kunstler's stand-in Father Slope about the arrangement of the wedding party in the sanctuary, Dina poked Cecie's arm.
"Is yer friend fake or is my grandmother tellin' stories?" she pig-whispered to Cecie.
"None of your business," Cecie hissed.
A moment later, with Peter and Father Slope still conferring, Joe suddenly jolted, letting out a high-pitched shriek.
"OUCH!"
Dina, who stood just in front of Cecie and Joe, looked very innocent.
"Who, or was it what made that infernal noise?" Father Slope demanded.
Joe cast a baleful glance at Dina. "This young…Orga female has stuck my hand with a corsage pin." He held up his injured hand. Cecie saw a small mark on the back of his hand.
Father Slope regarded Joe coldly for a second. "Must we have…that in the wedding party, much less in the church?"
"He didn't cause any trouble Sunday at Mass," Cecie said. "Either he stays or we both go." To Joe she added in a low voice. "Don't take it personally; she makes a blood sport out of throwing pebbles at service droids. And I won't tell you what she does to her Supertoys: if you could dream, it would give you nightmares."
"Perhaps she serves as sufficient proof for limiting your numbers," he replied in an undertone.
"No, she's what you get from this one-to-two kids policy."
The Connellys could have afforded a more lavish rehearsal party, but they wisely chose to reserve the major festivities till after the wedding ceremony, where it rightly belonged. The families of the members of the wedding party gathered on the back deck for some old-fashioned conversation and punch…for those able to drink it.
"With Phila and Bernie getting married, perhaps you should consider settling down, Cecie," Conrad Bax, Terez's father, suggested.
"In some ways, I've already settled down," Cecie said.
"Well, in that case, perhaps you, young man, should do the right thing for this young lady." He directed this to Joe, who sat on the deck at Cecie's feet, reclining gracefully like some male odalisque.
Cecie almost replied, but Joe got the first word. "That depends upon what you mean by doing the right thing for someone."
"Aw, you know I meant you should marry her."
Cecie swallowed a howl of laughter and started to open her mouth to intervene, but again Joe stepped into the breach for her.
He cocked his head and smiled thinly at Conrad. "Have you forgotten that I am of a kind that neither marries nor gives in marriage?"
"Oops, sorry. It's a little hard to remember that you're…uh…" Turing's test had struck again.
Joe brushed it aside with one hand gently spread. "It is nothing of consequence."
The next day, everything came at once: first the dress boxes from Miss Araminta's shop showed up: bridesmaids' dresses and wedding gowns; then came the boxes from the formal shop. Next the trucks and the crew arrived from the tent rental and started erecting the marquee tent and the dance floor on the Bowling Green.
"It's gonna be one fun floor to dance on with all those bumps in the lawn," Kip said, watching the crew from the deck.
"It's a Bowling Green, not a pool table, y' know," Frank said. "Betcha ten NB the only one who can dance on it is Cecie's escort."
"And the way he's been acting, he'd complain about it hurting his delicate feet."
Sarah's dress hadn't been hemmed enough, so Phila had to baste the hem.
"Is this an ill omen on the eve of the wedding?" Sarah asked dramatically, her hands clasped before her.
"No, it just means someone didn't use the right measurements," Phila said.
Phila and Bernie washed the dishes that night. Everyone had been slightly on edge all day, what with all the last minute concerns. Frank had been especially daffy as he cleared the dinner table, singing some very inane song about someone sending Sven ten tents.
Bernie went out into the now-darkened yard to survey everything. The lights were off in the yew tunnel, and a single floodlight shone in the walled garden. She stood on the footbridge, gazing across the water to the ghost-castle of the marquee. She breathed a deep sigh. This time tomorrow night she would be waltzing on the dance floor with her husband. Frank Sweitz. Mrs. Frank Sweitz. Bernadette Sweitz (Mrs. F.). Mr. and Mrs. Francis J.X. Sweitz of Albany, New York. And then…and then…she couldn't even imagine what the wedding night would be like. For starters she had absolutely no idea what it would entail. Secondly…secondly, she didn't know if she should think of Frank like that. He liked to kid around with her, but the thought of actually…
Masculine laughter broke out from the garage loft. Something was up. "Take that, Mr. One-Percent-Body-Fat!" Frank's voice hollered gleefully. She'd had a glimpse the week before of Frank minus his shirt, trimming bushes, but she hadn't seen enough to think either way about…what he looked like.
An odd sound approached from behind her, a ripple of sound in the night, a white noise over the chirping of the crickets. A light step creaked on the bridge. She turned around.
A tall, slender shadow stood there, poised elegantly, one arm resting gracefully on the handrail.
"Bernadette?" a sultry baritenor asked.
"H-hey, Joe, whaddya know?" The words came out before she could stop them.
He stepped away from the railing. "There are few things I strongly detest: one of those is leaving business unfinished."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I mean only the night in the Paradise Garden Club, the night when you let me release the tension in your being, when I first showed you that you were beautiful, that you could love a man and not know fear. You let me kiss your cheek, but you would not let me cut the cord that binds your lips."
"I don't know. I couldn't…I have Frank now."
He paced closer to her. "Tomorrow you will have Frank, but tonight you still have one chance left to finish that which you began with someone else…that which you started…with me."
"I can't, I-I mean, I shouldn't, I mean…I don't know what I mean any more."
He stepped up to her, face to face. He put his hands on her shoulders, light as a feather, the touch just pressing the fabric of her blouse against her skin. He ran his hands slowly down her arms, lingering, stopping at her elbows. "You still have time, but only if you are willing. I can do nothing for you…unless you first give me the sign."
"What sign?" she asked, just above a breath.
"If you will but take my hands."
She felt her arms stir and slide under his hands, drawing back. His palms passed over her wrists; she felt them cover her palms and his fingers clasp hers. They felt so like Frank's only…moreso. She lifted her face to his. She licked her lips, nervously, her mouth parted.
He leaned down to her. His lips brushed her cheek; she let him draw her closer. He kissed her other cheek, making contact. She tried to kiss his cheek in turn, felt the skin, softer than Frank's, utterly without bristle or blemish.
His arms slid down about her back; he laid his mouth over hers, gently at first. She sensed a gentle throbbing against his chest…had he a heart under there? Breath from his nostrils fanned her face and the masculine scent from his skin made her think of Frank.
He retracted slightly and held her closer. Her stomach tightened then relaxed against his shirtfront. She felt the tip of his tongue part her jaws. She clung to him, her hands gripping whatever structures he had under the simulated flesh of his back that replicated shoulder blades.
He withdrew from her mouth for a split second; then she found herself kissing him back as she'd never let herself do with Frank. She let herself explore the lining of his mouth, finding the salt sweetness there.
She let him press her even closer to him, feeling that…something…below his waistband. Her knees went weak under her and she sank down backward, slowly, Joe on top of her, bearing down gently.
As his weight pressed her to the decking, something exploded inside her head. She could only see Frank's face. She resisted, tightened. She broke free of Joe's embrace. Those feelings! Those damned, hellish feelings!
He tried to hold onto her, but she kicked him away violently. She heard his scream, then a loud splash.
She jumped up and looked over the railing. The surface rippled. Could he get out? Should she run for help? Would the water damage him?
The surface broke. Joe emerged from the water, dripping from head to toe. She fled to the house. Distantly, she heard him splashing about. Then she heard his footsteps on the path. She bolted for the deck and ran inside.
Once out of the water, Joe paused long enough to run a quick self-diagnostic. The water had caused him no damage. His pain receptors still fired where Bernie had kicked him. He centered the diagnostic on the 'injured' area. No damage, just pressure against the tubes and pumps and pressure releases; already the pain impulses had started to diminish. He still would function up to normal capacity. It would hardly be the first time a disgruntled woman had kicked him in the groin.
Phila was trying the altered dress on Sarah to see if the hem had come out right. Georgette was going over a checklist with Cecie.
"Bernie, are you all right?" Phila asked.
"Joe came up—behind me—on the bridge. I got scared—I knocked him—in the water."
Georgette looked at Cecie. "Can he swim?"
"He can fish himself out. It's not deep and he's tall enough."
Wet footsteps squelching on the deck told them Joe had survived his watery ordeal. Cecie went out to him.
"What happened?!" she demanded, taking him aside. "Tell me the short version—in an undertone."
He glanced over her shoulder toward the screen door. "It seemed at first I might still be the one to cut the last tie that still binds her soul to her old life, but she grew frightened and she pushed me away so violently that I dropped into the pond.
"Stay right here. Do not budge if you value your functionality." She went to the wall of the garage. "Hey, Frank?"
Frank came to the open window and put his head out. "What's going on? We heard a splash and a lot of scampering around."
"I have endured a misadventure with a pond," Joe announced.
"Okay, I get the picture: one shirt and one pair of pants coming up—make that coming down." Frank pulled his head in.
A moment later, a gray work shirt and a pair of khaki-colored corduroys dropped out the window. Cecie caught them and marched Joe up to the house and inside.
She found a clean towel and sent him into the bathroom to change and dry himself off.
"Will his things be all right?" Georgette asked as she and Cecie hung them up to dry in the laundry room.
"Yes, the shirt's some kind of plastic fiber, the coat's of simuleather—perfectly waterproof—and the pants are a synthetic satin."
"No…underwear?"
"You think someone in his line of business bothers with that?"
Bernie had gone to her room and stayed there for the rest of the night. She didn't even come down for night prayers, but Peter, surprisingly, did not insist.
"Wedding jitters," he shrugged.
When everyone else had gone to bed, Cecie went down to check on Joe, who lingered in the living room, sprawled out in Peter's armchair.
"You were trying to seduce her."
"I merely offered to her what her feelings told her to take."
"You could have wrecked this whole wedding. I'm beginning to wish I'd never brought you along. You've caused me no end of trouble."
He looked up into her eyes. "But would you prefer my company to that of another? Or to none at all save that of ordinary men?"
"Right now, I'm not sure. You leave Bernadette alone, or I will personally have you sent back to Rouge City nailed up in a wooden crate. Got it?"
He looked at her with a blank look. He got it. His face slowly resumed its default look, that gentle, genteelly smoldering look of sensuousness that always made her think of Rudolf Valentino in the antique silent 2-Ds.
"As you insist," he said at length. "But your voice still hints strongly of jealousy."
She took his hand in hers. She almost leaned down to kiss him, but she stopped herself. "You're still an adult-sized brat." She let him go and went upstairs.
"A dark, inhuman stranger threatens a virginal bride on the eve of her wedding; he tries to seduce her, but she strikes him and sends him tumbling, tumbling into a pond," Sarah whispered in the half-light, a sheet held over her head like a hood. She flung it back. "Is this a sign? What does this omen bode?"
"It's a sign I may have chosen the wrong guy—or at least the wrong kind of guy for a wedding date," Cecie said, winding her alarm clock. She turned down the bedcovers and climbed into bed.
"If you cast him off, I shall take him to my bosom," Sarah said, hugging the sheet to her.
"You only wish." Cecie reached for the bedside lamp and switched it out.
In the dark, Sarah lay awake, thinking of all the stories she had read of omens and signs on the eve of the wedding day, of strange guests come to the wedding feast…
She moved among a throng of dancers in a vast ballroom, two servants in golden livery at her back. Golden ornamentation covered the silver walls, black and white marble columns supported the copper-colored goffered ceiling above, while black and white and scarlet and silver tiles tessellated the floor.
She wore a sweeping gown of the eighteenth century all of black and white and silver and pearl. The black and white and scarlet and silver costumes of the crowd swirling in slow grace around her suggested Carnival; each dancer wore a mask, some the faces of animals, some of grotesques, still others perhaps of Greek gods and goddesses, nymphs and satyrs. She glanced at her own face reflected in a mirror on the wall: she wore a simple black domino trimmed with pearls and silver tinsel.
As she glided through the company of elegant revelers, couples would stop and bow to her as she passed them. She seemed to be a high lady, or a princess, or perhaps a young queen to these people. She bowed to them in turn, not wishing to seem proud.
Roaming through the glittering swarm, she scanned each masked face, seeking a face to glimpse beneath and recognize. But this could not prove possible: the masks veiled each wearer's face, hiding their identity.
Suddenly the graceful waltz tune that played, shimmering in the air, faded away to a whisper. The dancers paused; the crowd parted but she could not see who approached.
She felt someone take her hand and kiss it tenderly, lingeringly. She turned to look upon the stranger.
A figure in a flowing black cloak over a close-fitting coat of black satin with wide-cut skirts over knee breeches of the same sheening cloth knelt beside her, lowering a silver mask over his face as he withdrew from her hand. A scabbard without a sword hung beneath his cloak from a belt around his narrow waist. A wide lace cuff flecked with silver threads covered his graceful hand. He still clasped her hand as he stood up.
The sight of the stranger's mask at first brought her revulsion: it resembled some eerie, robotic form of a skull, almost featureless save a small slit of a mouth, a mere suggestion of a nose, and sockets filled only with dull gray orbs. But the memory of the stranger's lips beneath the mask caressing her hand lingered strongly enough that she did not pull away from the stranger, but only held his hand firmly.
A whisper rustled through the crowd: "The Knight of the Silver Mask!" she heard them say. "The queen has taken his hand!"—"He has kissed her hand!"—"She accepts his hand!"
She let the Knight put his other hand upon her waist. She held up the corner of her wide skirts as he led her through the slow whirl of a waltz. She tried to see his eyes through the lusterless eyes of the mask. She felt his gaze upon her, piercing, yet caressing, through the mask, his glances caressing her face so that she believed she felt a touch steal along her cheek, down to her chin.
Then the music ceased. The dancers halted where they stood. From the head of the hall, a great clock chimed the hour. Then sounded the strokes, thirteen all told. The guests removed the masks from their faces.
But no faces showed beneath the masks, only strange, metallic, machine skull-visages.
She nearly screamed in blank horror, but the Knight of the Silver Mask turned her to him.
The silver mask concealed itself behind a narrow, sensuous face. Green eyes unblinking gazed at her from a swarthy countenance…
Alone in the living room, Joe scanned every bit of auditory data that reached his sensors, identifying every sound and cross-referencing them to the different inhabitants of the house, going to bed. He made certain all movement had long ceased for at least an 'hour' before he made his move. He arose and ascended the stairs.
He paused on the landing, his boundary, and listened. A sound like a loud sigh emerged behind Cecie's door. He climbed the last steps and approached her door. He listened carefully. It came again. He put his hand to the latch and lifted it. She had not locked the door; he opened it.
He scanned the room, taking note of the layout, how it had changed since the first time he had seen it: they'd added a small cot-bed at the foot of Cecie's bed. He heard Sarah's quiet breathing among the nest of blankets on it.
He approached Cecie's bed. She lay on her side, facing him; her arms clasped the pillow her head barely rested on. She sighed, but she did not show signs of wakefulness. Her eyes lay closed, tears on the lashes. She lay still.
He climbed onto the bed beside her. He carefully lifted her head, rearranged the pillow and laid her head upon it. Then he laid himself down beside her, across the bedcovers, and slipped her arm about his waist. If she must hold something, let that something be him. If she dreamt of anything, let his image be there to comfort her.
He lay beside her, watching her with one eye, watching the square of window with the other, tracking the passage of the night into day.
As soon as the sky lightened, he arose with great care, so as not to awaken Cecie. He paused long enough to kiss her on the forehead and caress her cheek before he slipped out of the room and retreated to his appointed place.
Not a moment too soon. Ten minutes had hardly passed before Georgette peered through the living room doorway. She startled as he looked at her.
"Oh, it's only you," she said. "How did you—I'm sorry, I forgot you don't sleep. How was your night?"
"It passed without incident," he replied, "by contrast with the evening and, I anticipate, by contrast with the coming day."
To be continued…
Afterword:
Hoo! Time and energy permitting, I may get another chapter of this out later this week. I hope to complete this one and then work out the plot snarls for the rest of "Zenon Eyes: Eyes of Truth" before proceeding with that…we shall see what we shall see. But still, serializations are such fun: the most fun is keeping the readers in suspense.
Literary Easter Eggs:
"it's a Canon law…"—I'm not sure if it really is, but I know I read somewhere that in the post-Protestant revolution era (1500-1600) rigorist elements started to creep into the Catholic Church as a result of an over-zealous effort to restore the balance within the Church, and some scrupulous priests started asking for too many particular details in the confessional, so this had to be rooted out to prevent harm to the faithful.
"Wanderer"—this is a real Catholic newspaper, one of my favorites (except when they attack things I hold dear, like Harry Potter).
"the goal in life is pleasure"—I had the good fortune to get my hands on a copy of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, as condensed by Peter Kreeft, so I re-read the section on pleasure and its relation to man's happiness. Much of Peter Connelly's argumentation is based on a faulty understanding of Thomas's arguments, as well as a somewhat poorly elaborated sermon I heard the Sunday I wrote this chapter (I'm not criticizing the cleric who preached it, I just wish he'd given it a little more thought, because the rigorists could misconstrue his statements).
"large paintings on walls?"—I lifted this fragment of a line from the 1995 remake of the classic 1953 movie Sabrina (one of the rare instances where the remake improves on the original); it's become one of my all-time favorite movie lines along with "Fate, it would seem, is not without a sense of irony." (The Matrix) and "It's what I do." (Anyone guess what that's from???).
Father Slope—the name and some elements of the character's personality are an utterly shameless thievery from Dr. Slope, the pompous and irascible Anglican minister in Anthony Trollope's comic novel Barchester Towers. And while I'm on the subject of annoying but funny characters, Dina Bax is a thinly disguised version of the seven-year-old girl from hell my mother babysits; if there really were Mechas, she'd make life hell for them.
The dream scene—I based this on the carnival ball dream sequence in the movie Labyrinth, but I also thought of the ball in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death", of Tanith Lee's exquisite "When the Clock Strikes", a dark, decidedly non-Disneyesque rewrite of "Cinderella", of an unusual German set design for a staging of Der Rosenkavalier, and of the first half of Ravel's "choreographic tone poem" La Valse.
