+J.M.J.+
The Shadows Between the Neon
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
I wrote this chapter so quickly, in such a dead heat, that I hardly realized I had finished it until about ten minutes after I'd set my pad aside. Then it hit me: I finished this story. This isn't exactly linear compared to the other chapters: It starts out on the morning of November 1st, then the somewhat flashback-like middle section continues from the cliffhanger from last chapter. Mild warning: I had seen this coming for quite a while, since the later chapters of "One of THOSE in Our Midst!" actually, but Cecie and Joe's relationship turns a corner and ends up at a fork in the road, plus there's also one slightly gruesome Mecha-related moment…but on with the chapter.
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I
X November 1, 2159
Camden Tribune, Headline
NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPHER ARRESTED FOR MECHA DESTRUCTIONS, ATTEMPTED MANSLAUGHTER
Rouge City—Last night, Halloran "Hal" McGeever", a photographer for the Rouge City Broadsheet, was arrested in connection with the recent series of Mecha destructions in the city and for the attempted killing of Merrill Loris, an accountant…
"I still can't believe you got separated from Cecie," Phila cried at Frank over the top of the newspaper he was trying to hide behind at breakfast.
"Do you think it makes me feel any better that I have no idea where Cecie and Joe got to?" Frank replied.
"Phila, this is no time to clapperclaw Frank; it wasn't his fault," Kip said.
"Cecie could be lying dead somewhere out there," Phila said.
The phone twittered at that moment.
"This is probably Burnstead telling us he just found Cecie's body," Phila added.
"Be quiet, Phila," Bernie said.
Frank picked up the phone. "Langier residence."
"Is Frank Sweitz there?" asked a gruff but gentle voice. "This is Raymond Flyte."
"Speaking," Frank said.
"We've found Cecie."
"Is…she all right?"
"She's resting right now; we have her wound biotaped up."
"Was she…was she cut up badly?"
"She had a four inch gash along her ribs, but she'll survive. She's a strong young woman."
"Can we see her?"
"She's still sleeping the last that I knew, but she'll probably be up soon enough."
"I'll be over as soon as I can," Frank said.
"In which case, I'll give her the fair warning."
"Thanks. Thanks for taking care of her."
"It was my pleasure."
The line cut out and Frank hung up the phone. He turned to Phila. "That was Mr. Flyte. He found Cecie; she's all right."
"It's better than Burnstead calling us to tell us the worst," Bernie said.
Phila said nothing to this.
After breakfast, Kip and Frank went up to Flyte's residence, known as the Perfumed Alcove, in one of the towers at the north end of the city. Frank carried with him a brown paper package containing Joe's things.
A doorman Mecha admitted them and a small serving man who could almost have been Julien's twin met them in the lobby and led them up to the 10th floor, where Flyte awaited them.
They entered a sitting room just off Flyte's office. Another door stood slightly ajar, showing a glimpse of dark red hangings that might have surrounded a rich bed.
Flyte entered from the office, in his shirtsleeves. "Sorry to keep you waiting, I've been trying to get in touch with the partner of my accountant, Mr. Loris."
"We just read about his injuries," Frank said. "We're awful sorry."
"Thanks. That means a lot to me. Loris and I are more than just business associates: we're friends as well. We were both outcasts of different kinds."
"And that's why you like Cecie," Kip said.
"You found out my little secret," Flyte said, smiling. He beckoned them to follow. "Come along, she's waiting for you."
He led them out into a foyer and up a staircase to another suite of rooms to a reception room that opened into another foyer with a staircase. He went out and up the stairs.
"This the closest you've ever been to the inside of a 'ho-house?" Frank asked Kip.
"Yeah, I'm surprised we don't have any company."
"Too early in the morning: mornings are slack for all hookers, Orga or Mecha. Used to come to these kinds of places at this time of the day back before Hal got me on Mechas: the girls welcomed the business if they weren't resting up from the night before…but I shouldn't say any more."
"You might warp my little mind." They both chuckled at this.
Flyte came down a moment later. "Give her a minute, she's just had her breakfast and she was settling down for a rest. She's still a little shaky."
"We won't wear out our welcome," Kip said.
Kip explored the books on the shelf over the mantel, or at least tried to: he found a set of bound volumes of The Pearl, a naughty periodical from the Victorian era.
"Yipes," Kip said, stepping back from the fireplace.
"Best not to get too nosy in places like this," Frank warned. "Though I must admit The Pearl and things like that have something of an advantage over the modern stuff."
"What do you mean?"
"It's got a certain air of whimsy that the modern age has lost."
Something rustled on the stairs. They both looked up.
Cecie descended the stairs, clad in a scarlet robe tied at her waist with a silver cord, a silver cross set with five red stones hung from a black velvet band around her neck.
She stepped into the room. She had changed overnight: a new melancholy showed in her dark eyes. She kept one hand pressed to her side as she sat down on the couch beside Frank.
"Cecie…what happened to you?" Kip asked.
"I fell afoul with Jay's knife," she said. "I had to kill him."
"You got him with the EMP?" Frank asked.
She nodded. "There wasn't any other way. I didn't want to do it, but it had to be done. He was sick and scared."
"I can get the sick part if he really was the Mecha that injured those people in 'Frisco and Omaha, but what made him scared?" Kip asked.
"Hal was using him as a cat's-paw, but there was more to it than that. Jay still had a little bit of dignity left that the blown chip hadn't destroyed. But he's out of his sufferings now."
"And Joe saved your life?" Frank asked.
"Yes. He carried me here. Flyte had his doctor-Mecha biotape my wound. It's closing quickly: I can feel it tingling."
"No permanent damage?" Kip asked.
"I'll carry a scar, but it's nothing. I could have died, but I'm alive. I'm very alive."
Kip got up. "We're glad you are. I'll go call Phila and Bernie to let them know—if Flyte will let me use his phone."
"He will; tell him I asked you to call. And that's not just a cover: I want you to."
Kip went out. Cecie's gaze had turned to the floor: Frank could tell she had something on her mind. He looked at her, chin tilted down so that a rim of white showed under his leaf-colored irises. "It's happened, hasn't it?"
"You mean…?" she gave him a purely Gallic look, with a twist of one eyebrow.
"You?"
She nodded and gathered her robe about her as if she drew Joe's arms about her body. "I've been in him for a long time, but now he's in me. They live on affection, you know, even though they never ask for it."
"How did it happen?"
"One thing led to another, like they say. It was inevitable, you know. I'm a woman; if I were immune to his charms, there'd be some cause for concern. I've loved him for over a year now. It wasn't easy to keep this love inside me and hidden from him. He has his sensors; he knew it long before I let on to him. He was just waiting for my resolve to drop into his hand."
"Like a ripe fruit."
She ran her hand along her thigh. "The only fruit he can consume."
"It's none of my business, but would you let him have seconds?"
"I don't know."
Frank smoothed the sofa cushion beside him aimlessly with one hand.
"And not a word of this to anyone. Phila would have a conniption fit if she knew. I can trust you with this data."
"'This file is currently unavailable'. But you know she'll find out."
"I know, but I don't want anyone telling her."
"I understand. Where is he now?"
"He's upstairs waiting for me to come back, waiting so he can offer himself to me once more. It wasn't just once, but twice, later this morning. I couldn't keep my hands off him; I wanted to repay him." Tears showed on her cheeks though she smiled. "He's my first and probably my last. Someone like him you meet only once in your life."
"Was that your first time?"
She nodded. "I suppose I'm probably marked for life."
"Mechas do something to you. Once you've had 'em, you may never want a real lover again, or so they say. In some ways it's a minor miracle that I can do as well with Bernie as I do, after all the times I've been with Mechas."
She looked at him in earnest. "Did you feel like you'd died and gone to heaven?"
"Yes."
She ran her hand up her body, between her breasts to her shoulders, hugging them. "I don't think I can possibly be the same person after this. It's like…Cecie died and there's another person living in my body."
"If that were so, what is her name?"
"Magda," she said. "Magdalena."
In honor of the woman of Magdala who loved much, Frank thought.
Kip returned at this point. "Phila wants us to bring you down right away," he said.
"I shouldn't, I'm still a little shaky," Cecie replied.
"Besides, you probably want to be up there with your beloved," Frank said. "Oops."
"Why? What happened?" Kip asked. He looked at Cecie. Her face had gone red and she looked away. "I guess I missed something."
"Kip, swear to me on your mother's grave that you won't breathe a word of this to Phila."
"Tell me what it is, then I can swear."
"Joe and I…we became lovers."
Kip hesitated. Inwardly his jaw had dropped, but he dared not show it. Lovers…he didn't doubt Cecie could give in to her physical nature, but she had always seemed so rational and levelheaded around Joe. He'd seen women with things like Joe since he was a kid, but Cecie was different. Hearing about this was like hearing about a death in a friend's family, like seeing the stump of a favorite tree.
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"You're not the only one."
"I guess this does require my word of honor."
Cecie leaned wearily against the arm of the sofa, her face looking drawn.
"We're tiring you out," Frank said.
"No, it's not you," she said with a ghost of a smile.
"Besides, I gotta get back and finish writing up last night's news," Frank said.
"You certainly have your work cut out for you," she said.
They took leave of her shortly afterward. "I'm worried for her," Frank said as they walked home. "She's at a very vulnerable stage."
"I think she knows that," Kip said. "But if Phila finds out now, she'll be all over Cecie and that would finish her off."
Cecie went up the stairs to the room Flyte had let her use. She paused at the door, leaning against the doorpost, not sure if she could face him again.
The door opened as if by itself. A hand emerged around the edge of the leaf; the fingers reached out and touched her face, stroked her jaw, down to her neck. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.
"She couldn't be in better hands, really," Bernie said to Phila as they washed the breakfast things.
"What makes you say that? Flyte is a whoremonger, for goodness sake," Phila cried.
"He's a good man in spite of it; he's a gentleman."
"There were serial killers who were gentlemen."
"Remember what Cecie said about the spark of goodness hiding in the bad person and the cloud of wickedness lurking in the good person? I think this is a case of that. Remember when Joe got pinned with the restraining bolt and Mr. Flyte didn't hole it against Cecie? He's a good man."
"She'll be corrupted."
"Maybe we're all corrupted in our own way," Bernie said.
Later, Cecie lay nestled in the crook of Joe's arm, her eyes half-closed.
"Could you ask for a more thorough painkiller?" he asked.
"You're as good as morphine and just as addictive," she replied.
She let her eyes slide closed, pretending to sleep. But she knew that he knew she wasn't yet asleep.
After a little while, the sham became a reality.
Cecie didn't remember how she got up to Flyte's residence. But she remembered awakening with the pungent scent of smelling salts in her nostrils. She sneezed and opened her eyes.
She looked up into a slightly nondescript yet pleasant young man's face framed with silvery platinum blond hair. He wore a white lab coat over surgical scrubs; something quietly pensive and yet blank about the eyes and the gloss of his skin told her what he was: a doctor-Mecha, an older model that had been discontinued.
"Where am I?" she asked, trying to sit up. The Mecha pressed her back on the pillows gently.
"You are in a safe place with people you know; just lie still and let me look at your injury," he said.
She looked down. She lay on a wide bed covered with black satin sheets and a violet comforter, red velvet pillows under her head. She had been stripped, but a towel covered her breasts and the covers had been pulled up to her belly. The Mecha gently probed her wound, now crusted with dried blood.
She winced. She looked up to the head of the bed. Flyte stood there, a tall, white haired woman at his side. Cecie noticed a strong similarity between their faces, the same calm, patricianly hawkish features.
"Where's Joe? Is he…?" she asked.
The woman knelt beside the bed. "He's undergoing a diagnostic himself. So far he's all right," she said. "I'm Riana, Flyte's sister."
"No arteries have been severed, but some sutures will be necessary to aid the biotape," the doctor reported. "She will live."
The Mecha felt at her wrist, then placed his palm over her heart. "Breathe deeply, Miss Martin?" She complied, but the wound still throbbed. "Good, good. There is no sound of bleeding in the lungs or the chest cavity."
He pushed up his sleeve and opened a compartment in his forearm. He took out a vinyl tie with which he tied off her left arm, raising the veins. From another compartment in his other forearm and took out a small syringe.
"This may sting, but it will pass," he warned. She started panting. "Breathe deeply now and count to ten."
She looked away and forced her lungs to fill and empty slowly, ticking off numbers in her head.
At four her eyelids grew heavy, at five the room started to recede. By six she fell asleep.
A half an hour or ten hours could have passed. She heard movement about her. She felt soft hands smoothing something over her wound.
She peeled back her eyebrows to open her eyes and looked down.
A loose scarlet robe lay under her; the doctor Mecha smoothed a layer of biotape over her wound, a thick pinkish-brown patch like a second skin full of nanobots ready to deliver an extra dose of nutrients to her cells to speed the process of healing her flesh.
She looked about the room. It wasn't a large room, but she couldn't see much of it on account of the violet canopy and curtains about the bed. A battery lantern stood on the bedside table, with a carafe of water and a clean glass next to it.
"Thank you," she managed to say to Flyte, who sat beside the bed. "I owe you."
"No. I owe you," he said. The doctor Mecha stepped aside and let Riana close the robe over Cecie.
"What do you mean?" Cecie asked.
"Joe told me everything," Flyte said. "You saved his brain again."
"I had to…I love him."
Flyte patted her brow as if she were his daughter. "I know you do, girl. I believe he does too, in his own way."
"You need to rest, Miss Martin," the doctor Mecha said.
Cecie closed her eyes and leaned her head back. A few moments passed. Someone nudged her awake. She opened her eyes. Riana sat beside her, a white tablet in her cupped hand, a glass of water in the other.
"This will take away some of the pain and help you sleep better," Riana said. Cecie sat up carefully. She took the pill in one hand and put the pill on the back of her tongue. Riana gave her the glass of water, which Cecie drank, washing the pill down her throat. Riana took the glass and drew the covers up over her chest.
"Now don't move for another five hours. The nanobots in that tape have to work on your flesh."
Riana got up and went out, closing the door behind her softly.
A moment later, it opened again and two tall forms, one slightly taller than the other, moved into the room.
"If she shows any signs of change for the worst, you send for me at once," she heard Flyte saying. "But don't touch her or go near the bed until at least five hours have passed."
"As you wish," she heard Joe reply.
She heard nothing more for a long time.
Hal came to a few moments after Frank had knocked him out. Nursing his jaw, he dragged himself through the darkened streets.
"Hey, Jay! Where in h--- are you, fella?" He set off along Broad Way, looking for any sign of Jay. It was times like this he wished he'd thought to put a tracking device in Jay.
He went down a side street; his foot caught on something on the ground and he fell flat on his face. Cursing acridly, he got up and stooped to examine the stumbling block.
It wasn't a block at all, but rather a prone figure. Two pallid gray eyes stared sightlessly at him.
"Oh, God, JAY!" he moaned, falling to his knees, trying to survey the wreckage. Jay's limbs had detached from his torso and his head had rolled away from the rest of his body. Hal smelled the unmistakable stink of ozone over the dead Mecha. Whoever had done this had finished off the job with an EMP, no hope of repairs. Even his cube would be fried.
Hal turned over Jay's head and, taking the light intensifier from his pocket, turned it on.
The faceplate had been smashed in from the fall, but he could still dimly recognize his partner's features.
Police sirens wailed in the near distance, coming closer, but he paid them no heed. He heard an amphibicopter pass over. A spotlight splashed over him. Hal stayed still, hoping they would overlook him. It passed on.
He heard footsteps nearby. More lights fell over him. He looked up
A ring of policemen and security guards surrounded him. He stood up, raising his hands over his head.
Burnstead approached him. "I hate to break the news to you, but you're going to have to wrap this one up," he said. "You're under arrest for the assault of Merrill Loris. Or did you have Jay do that for you as well."
"How could he do that when someone did him?" Hal retorted. As Burnstead lead Hal away toward the police amphibicopter parked in a square at the end of the street, he noticed something dragging from Hal's left ankle. Burnstead stopped him and turned a flashlight on the object.
Jay's hand gripped the cuff of Hal's trouser leg.
Five hours, Mr. Flyte had ordered him. Joe sat in the shadows of Cecie's room, counting off the seconds by his internal clock.
Four hours, thirty minutes and ten seconds: Cecie had hardly moved the whole time, on account of the drugs she had been given to help her sleep. He watched her from his spot on the floor, sitting on a cushion, watching the bed.
Riana had given him the pillow though he had no need for it and Mr. Flyte had ordered him to keep a strict watch over Cecie in case anything happened they needed to know about.
She breathed quietly and deeply the whole time. She moved once under the covers. He heard her moisten her lips twice.
Four hours, forty-five minutes, fifty-six seconds: she moved, rustling the bedcovers, turning over on her back.
Four hours, fifty-seven minutes, fifteen seconds: he heard her sigh once. Was that a word? Oh…? No…?
Joe?
Five hours, two minutes, five seconds: her body twitched. He got up and moved to the foot of the bed for a better look.
Five hours, three minutes, two seconds: she sat up. She rubbed her face with both hands. She put one foot to the floor, then the other. She stood up, tentatively. She swayed a little and held onto the bedside table. She sat back on the bed and filled the glass from the carafe.
Five hours, six minutes: she set the glass on the table and slid her legs under the covers.
Cecie awoke with a parched throat. She touched her left side gingerly; she winced a little, but it was no longer the deadening pain of before. Good pain, healing pain, weakness-leaving-the-body pain, not death gnawing at her flesh. She sat up.
She tried to stand up, but she still felt weak. She sat down and by the light of the battery lamp, poured herself a glass of water from the carafe.
Outside, the wind still blew, whistling at the window. She set the glass on the table and leaned back on the pillows, sliding her legs under the covers.
She could not fall asleep again. The drugs to deaden the pain must have worn off, and there was still a lot of adrenalin pulsing in her veins. She lay listening to the night sounds.
Something moved in the room, rustled at the hangings about the bed. She looked down. The covers at her feet stirred, then rippled. They rose over something moving underneath that was not her. She flinched, drawing back from it.
The covers at her groin rose as if by themselves, rounding over some object beneath them. She tensed, ready to flee or to kick the intruder in the head, and yet she lay mesmerized by the movement. The entity moved toward the edge of the covers.
Joe's swarthy face looked at her from beneath the covers. He drew closer to her, his arms framing her spread thighs.
"What are you…? Go away," she mumbled.
"Your protestations do not convince," he said, inching closer. "Your lips say no, but your eyes say yes. You've had enough vile tricks played on you for one night. Why not allow yourself a treat?"
She almost laughed. "Come closer, I'm not supposed to accept any unwrapped treats."
He crept closer. A black silk dressing gown covered his form, but it had slid back from his shoulders and the skirts had opened over his thighs and more than that.
"It'll do," she said.
He crept closer still, keeping his body clear of hers. He lay down beside her, turning her onto her right side, facing him.
"No trick, just treats," he said, from inches away on the pillow.
"I could use a little sweetness to cheer me up, fella," she said. "Just be gentle…my wound."
Joe reached down to her left side, running just his fingertips over the fabric of her robe. "I shall handle you with the care that you need: no more horrors, only delights." His hand slid up to the neck of her robe. "May I?"
She laughed gently, her head still light from the painkiller. "Yes, you goblin."
Later the following afternoon, she nestled against his shoulder. Riana came in to check on Cecie.
"Well, you must be feeling better if you're at it again," she said, helping Cecie to rise. "How do you feel?"
"The pain's almost gone," Cecie said. She glanced at Joe, who reclined, propped up on his elbow, behind her on the bed. "He had a little something to do with it."
"I'll bet he did," Riana said with a smile. Joe returned the smile, his head bent slightly, eyelids lowered, but Cecie detected a proud little glint under there.
Riana led Cecie into the next room, a dressing room, with a walk in closet along one wall. "That thing that stabbed you ruined your clothes, but I think you're about the same size." Riana opened the closet door and rummaged among the clear plastic garment bags hanging inside. She took down a white gown with violet facings.
"Oh no, I couldn't," Cecie said, blushing.
Riana looked at her with the openness of a Mecha, no judgment, no questioning. "You're affected by him."
Cecie nodded.
"Well, hmmmm…let's see." She moved aside a few other garment bags. She drew out a dark green dress.
"Yes, that will do," Cecie said. "But…I don't mean to pry, but whose dresses were these?"
"They belonged to Flyte's wife, the mother of his daughter. She died not long after Kira passed away after a long bout of Werner's syndrome. Someone started a vicious rumor that Estelle killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills, but she died of a heart attack. She couldn't bear to go on living without her daughter. Flyte never really got over it. That's possibly why he latched onto you: you're like a surrogate daughter."
"I wondered that; he told me once he would have had a daughter my age."
"Does that bother you at all?"
"No," Cecie said, taking the dress. "I lost my father when I was fourteen. It's more than coincidence: Flyte wants a daughter figure; I want a father figure. Why not reach out and help each other?
"And who would think," she added, "that a lover-Mecha would bring us together."
Cecie showered—alone, with the door locked. The doctor Mecha had removed the biotape and had her air the wound. She washed around it carefully. She dried herself with a huge towel Riana had provided. She wrapped it about herself and returned to the dressing room, where Riana had laid out a set of undergarments she had gone out to buy.
She pulled the dress on over her head and zipped the back.
She sensed a presence behind her. She turned around.
Joe stood in the doorway behind her, fully dressed, leaning one shoulder against the doorpost, eying her.
"How long have you been there?" Cecie asked.
"Only the time that it took you to fasten the back of your dress," he replied. "Exactly three seconds." He stepped closer to her, his hands clasped behind him, his coattails pushed back.
"If you think you're gonna find out how this dress looks crumpled on the floor, you have another thought coming," she said.
"I harbored no such intentions," he said, innocently.
She let him lead her down to the lower floor, where Flyte awaited them in the main room. Flyte stood alone in the well of a window through which the golden afternoon sunlight shone.
"Have you heard any news since last night?" he asked.
"Not since Jay's death," she said.
"And her salvation," Joe added.
Flyte touched the crepe band at his sleeve. "Loris, my accountant—my friend—was injured. Halloran McGeever shot him with an EMP. Loris was on a pacemaker; the surgeons over at the hospital in Camden managed to replace it, but he almost didn't make it."
"That's horrible," Cecie said. "Do the police know why Hal did this? Did they catch him?"
"The police arrested McGeever last night; they brought him to Camden for questioning. He hasn't told them anything."
"Typical of Hal—from the little I know of him. Which is a lot more than I care to know."
"Perhaps Frank Sweitz could unbind his tongue with some well-placed words,' Joe suggested.
"I'll have to pass that on to him," Cecie said. To Flyte she added, "Did you…what about Julien?"
Flyte shook his head gravely. Joe put a consoling hand on her shoulder.
"Julien was totaled," Flyte replied. "The one consolation—if you want to call it that—is that he was still under warranty. I can get a replacement, but it won't be the same."
"No, it won't," Cecie agreed and crossed herself on her chest.
She had her supper with Flyte, over which she told him about the previous night's adventures.
That evening, she went to Mass with Flyte, Joe at her side.
Phila went with Frank and Bernie to the early evening Mass. On her way back from Communion, she spotted Cecie in the back pew, next to Raymond Flyte, with that Mecha on her other side, a little closer than usual. Cecie kept her eyes bent the whole time. Something did not seem right about her, but what was it?
Phila peered back again. She hadn't seen Cecie go up to Communion.
Cecie hadn't budge from the same spot a moment before, but Phila noticed her chewing on her lip in a way that mean something was weighing on her mind.
After Mass, Phila approached Cecie on the sidewalk outside the chapel. The streetlights were on now, but the neon had yet to return.
"Cecie, are you sure you're all right?" Phila asked. "Should you really be up and about?"
"I had to come to Mass to thank God for getting me through last night," Cecie said.
"She's a gift from God herself," Flyte said.
"But…you didn't receive Communion," Phila said. "I don't…what happened?"
"It's nothing you really need to know," Cecie said.
Phila looked up at Joe, who kept a protective hand on Cecie's shoulder. She looked at Cecie.
She recoiled.
"You didn't!" she cried. "You…you…gave yourself to this…this machine."
"Let her who is without sin cast the first stone," Cecie said. "I'm only a human; I'm not a saint." She slid her shoulder out from under Joe's hand and stepped away. "Excuse me."
"Cecie?" Joe started after her. Phila dared to grab his arm and pulled him back.
"She doesn't need you now," Phila said.
But something jumped from his body to hers in that brief touch. She looked up into those eyes and she saw something there she had never seen before. Despite the blank look of confusion there, she noticed something else
Desire.
Not the seething satyr look she had glimpsed in Hal's eyes, but an innocent question.
What is this that binds us all together?
She stepped away, chastened, and hurried to join Kip.
"Don't let her get to you, son," Flyte said, taking Joe aside by the shoulder and leading him down the street. "You go find Cecie; she might want you back." Joe smiled at this. "There, I knew you'd like that."
Cecie wanted only to be alone, to lie on the couch in her room with the door closed, in the dark, except for the batter candles that still glowed on the table.
Now she knew why they called it the little death.
Her side still ached, not the wound, but lower and more toward the middle, probably an ovulation pain.
No wonder she'd been so easy with him: mix a cocktail of anesthetic and painkillers with female hormones and the presence of a beautiful man in a small room and you had instant trouble.
She should just do the right thing and go home to Westhillston, her real hometown, if they would have her back. Which they wouldn't.
If it was the old Celtic New Year, she ought to make a resolution.
Go live in some place Joe is not?
Maybe.
Joe stood on the sidewalk against a lamppost outside the Graceley, gazing up at Cecie's window. He saw her shadow move across it, but she did not stop to look out. Agency policy told him to wait fifteen minutes for a woman to come down.
The time ticked by. At the fourteenth minute, she came to the window and drew the blind, blocking the light.
He waited one minute more. She might change her mind. The minute passed. He turned on his heel and went in search of more eager company.
Was it something he had done?
Or was this a case of post-act reformation?
Cecie got up and shucked the borrowed dress. She'd get a courier to bring it back to Flyte the next day. Please, Flyte, don't do me any more favors…
She ran her hands through her hair and put on her night things.
She poked at a few writing projects she hadn't touched since before the Danse Macabre, but her mind was far away, still fleeing over the rooftops, still pressed against the wall of the bulkhead with Jay's blade in her ribs, still in bed, wrapped in Joe's arms, her head pillowed on his chest.
She opened the journal on her datascriber and got it all down. Then she went back to work.
At almost midnight, she relented and crawled into bed. She lay on her right side, eyes closed, trying to empty her mind; but the image of Joe's sultry face emerging from beneath the coverlet came into her mind.
She swore he sat at the foot of the bed, awaiting her call to him or some gesture to stir him into action. Her flesh warmed, recalling his kisses, his caresses, covering every inch of her skin except the place where the knife had bitten her.
She curled up into a ball and wept till she swore her tears had turned to blood.
Frank met Cecie in Main Plaza next afternoon after Hal's arraignment in Camden that morning. She looked a little better, as if the aftereffects of her sufferings had lessened.
"So what's the news with the job?" she asked.
"I got in," Frank said, reaching for his wallet and showing her the official media pass, complete with photo and a chip bearing a copy of his genetic code.
"Congratulations!" she said. "In that case, eh, are you and Bernie settling in the city?"
Frank glanced around: a female Mecha that might have been the infamous Jane had her eye on him. "Nah, we're settling in Camden, across the river. I'm heading over there just now."
"What for?"
"Finkelsteen wants an official interview with Hal."
"So, what did he plead this morning?"
"No contest to all charges: armed assault, destruction of self-motivated property worth an excess of 800,000 NB, tampering with a public electrical power supply—"
"What?"
"The blackout. Turns out Hal busted the firewall of the computers at the power station here and uploaded a bug that paralyzed the computers last night and yesterday."
"I'd think Hal would be pleading insanity, just to keep himself in the news."
"He had the idea for this stunt to get himself some leverage in the paper. But as we know, that went like a lead balloon. Plus, he had so many charges he had no idea where to start. There's more, you know: aiding and abetting in the crimes of another, harboring a fugitive from justice, deliberately removing a license tag from a Mecha."
"Removing the license tag…well, that would explain Jay's lack of one. Did they ever find out where he came from?"
"Hal told me the whole story when I saw him last night. It turns out Jay was a street prostitute like our boy, but his owner, a woman named Candace Kincaid, was less vigilant than Flyte in keeping track of recalls and things like that.
"Hal met Jay in Omaha when he was there covering a story on a radical pro-AI group out there. You know what they say about the two sado-masochists finding each other in a roomful of people. Hal found out Jay was suffering on account of that blown chip. It fried some of his components, so Hal offered to help him—at a price."
"Don't tell me: sexual favors and killing those Mechas, which would kill two birds at one stone—excuse the pun: Hal would have his story, and Jay would have a ready supply of undamaged parts."
"Burnstead figured that out. I have to admit, I unlocked some information his questioning couldn't. I'd warned them that, so Burnstead brought me in to talk to Hal."
"So what's going to happen to him now?"
"They're sending him to maximum security in Camden for three years."
Maximum security. She trembled.
"He joked about what a dumb punishment it was, said since he'd spent a year in cryostasis, it would be like coming home—in about those exact words. Then after they release him they'll put a GPS chip in his shoulder."
"I don't want to think of anyone—not even Hal—in that." She'd seen photographs of the inside of a new maximum security facility, with the incarcerated in separate, coffin-like isolation pods stacked one above another, each criminal wired to a VR system which would force them to live over and over the crime they had committed—from the viewpoint of their victim.
An image passed through her mind's eye of Hal being led into the facility stripped to his shorts, the doctors strapping him into his pod and injecting him with a hallucinogenic sedative, then burning off his hair at the points where they would graft on the electrodes. She'd heard about Hal resisting arrest, but what would he do when they led him into prison? Would he resist, or would he comply, feigning submission but inwardly mocking his jailors. Or would fear reduce this cynic to a whimpering bundle of terror?
"I gotta get going and catch the monorail to Camden, before they put him in. You'll hear the rest—you okay, Cecie?"
"Yeah, just concerned for Hal."
They parted. Cecie went back to the Graceley as quickly as she could, avoiding anything that looked remotely like Joe.
Later that afternoon, as she got ready to go to confession and Mass, someone knocked at her door. She answered it, careful to look through the peephole first. It didn't sound like Joe's knock, but she had to be careful. She couldn't see.
Burnstead stood at the door. "Do you mind if I come in for a moment?" he asked.
"I was just going out, but I can spare some time." she opened the door wider for him.
"I just wanted to thank you for cornering that rogue Mecha for us—even if you had to destroy him in the process."
"I acted only in self-defense," she said.
Burnstead reached into his breast pocket and took out an envelope. "The Sheriffs' Departments of Nova Francisco and Omaha sent this over: it's a little token of their appreciation, you might call it." he held it out to her. she took it and opened it.
Inside were two checks, totaling 100,000 NB.
She held it out to him. "I can't take it," she said.
"I can't take it back."
She stuffed it into his hand. "You keep it yourself; I did what I did for Joe's sake, to save his brain."
He held it out to her again. "My supervisors will find it a little suspicious if I bring it back or keep it."
She took it. "You win."
Father Nick Crawford heard confessions late that afternoon. The line was unusually long, but not for today, All Soul's Day, with the spiritual financiers making sure they had invested enough time in church to gain the total remission of their departed loved one's remedial education in the hereafter.
He'd heard talk of McGeever's confession at his arraignment earlier that day. Fitting that it should happen that day, but he wished McGeever could have had it easier, or that the prison system could find a more humane means of correction.
A line of penitents…"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…
"I peeked at a dirty magazine"—"I swore at my wife"—"I hit my brother"—"I looked a little too long at a sex-Mecha, a female"—"I didn't let the clerk know she gave me back too much change"—"I got into an argument with my husband, and then I was wishing I'd married my sweetheart in high school"…
"My last confession was a week ago…and…Father, I've disobeyed the implications of the Sixth Commandment."
The voice sounded like Cecie Martin's, but the tone was hooded, even throatier than usual.
"You, er, did what?" he asked nonchalantly, even humorously. Cecie tended to theologize a little.
She drew in a long breath. "I've lain with my best friend."
"Well, what were the circumstances?"
"My head was fogged from anesthetics and painkillers following some minor surgery. I just wanted to be held. Joe was there with me; we were alone. He only wanted to console me, and you know as well as I that's one of the few ways he knows how."
"You probably weren't in full possession of your will. But were you conscious of what you were doing?"
"Yes. It hurt but I didn't care."
"What hurt?"
"Joe was careful to avoid my wound, but it still pained me." She chuckled humorlessly. "'When I should rush into sin, let it be with a limping foot!' I was crying out in pain as much as I was crying out in delight.
"But the trouble is, I don't know if I'm sorry for it or not."
"The fact that you're here confessing is proof enough that you are. What do you sense in yourself?"
"I'm dismayed that I've let this friendship go to a level I never really intended. I'm a little angry with myself. I fell like I took advantage of Joe, even though there's really no way that I can. I don't think I'd ever do it again."
"But if you do, just get up, and keep going."
"I've thought of going back to my hometown, but they won't want me there, not after what I've done. I don't belong here any more, either."
"Do any of us really belong anywhere, except the hands of God?"
"That's true. All my life, I've wanted just one perfect lover. I found him in Christ in the Eucharist, but I also found him in Joe. It's like Christ is my perfect heavenly lover, and…I can't say it."
"Say it, lay down that burden."
"And Joe is my perfect earthly lover."
"In that case, which do you value more?"
"I'm not sure. Just as I want to be free from this so I can receive Communion and be able to speak with Christ within the depths of my heart in the stillness of the chapel with my veil around my face, there's another part of me that wants to lie under silken sheets in Joe's arms, feeling him within me in a totally different way."
"The fact that you're here, confessing, means you really want Christ in your heart."
"I know. But I also know that once I leave here I'll be back to my old ways, longing for the wrong lover."
"Don't beat up on yourself for it; just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again."
"I will."
She received her heavenly Lover at Mass and spent a long while afterward praying, talking with her Lover until the form vanished into her being.
She got up a little reluctantly and went out into the night.
As she stepped out onto the pavement, she wrapped her veil scarf-like around her neck, with just the tassel over her head. The sky had turned that iridescent black that always hung over the city at night.
Iridescent black, like the gleaming garments of the young fellow who approached her, his eyes scanning her up and down.
She tried to turn away from Joe, but she felt a gentle hand take the tassel of her veil and unwind it from her head, using it to draw her close. She turned her face to his.
Her eyes met those of her earthly lover.
The End…
Afterword:
The slight "lady-or-the-tiger" ending was purely intentional. Yes, there is a sequel to this, but I'm holding off on it for a while in order to devote more time to the too long neglected "Zenon Eyes: Eyes of Truth", to "The Eyes Have It", the Minority Report/"A.I." crossover I tossed out into the world and a couple other odds and ends, including a alternate ending fanfiction based on the movie Gattaca (if you have not seen it and you are a Jude Law fan like me, watch it or you won't get a dang word of my fiction when I post it! [You'll also know why it's an alternate ending…{get it? odds and "ends"}]). I'll tell you this much: the as of yet untitled sequel to this will be made up of simulated journal fragments, newspaper clippings, etc. and it will also ground the "Cecie Martin" series into "A.I." (It's set to take place just before, during, and just after the second act of the film.).
Literary Easter Eggs:
"a certain air of whimsy…"—I'm not sure about Victorian erotica, since I've never actually read any, but I remember accidentally running across in an antiques store a bunch of nineteenth century pornographic snap shots (by today's standards they were PG-13 rated. Really.) which were more cleverly naughty than genuinely obscene. The most memorable one was entitled something like "The Proudfoots' Maid Serves the Salad Without Dressing", which featured said maid serving said salad in just her underwear, and remember that 19th century women's underwear covered more skin than some 21st century clothes do!
Joe's hand reaching around the door—image derived from the Song of Songs
"When I should rush into sin…"—a direct quote from Paul Claudel's The Satin Slipper.
Maximum security—the idea for this device is a combination of the power plants in The Matrix and the maximum-security facility seen in Minority Report; plus there was also an episode of the new Twilight Zone which featured the idea of having criminals endure VR replays of their crimes—from the victim's viewpoint (I came up with the idea even before I saw said episode. Weird.)
"pick yourself up, dust yourself off…"—I don't know if it is, but this sounds oddly like a line from a 1940s song.