+J.M.J.+
Zenon Eyes: Eyes of Truth
By "Matrix Refugee"
Chapter III
Life
Author's Note:
Things start to heat up in this chapter, but please bear with it: the warm up is carefully slow-paced. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, and the journey of self-discovery always starts with a lot of baby steps…especially when you're not exactly human, or at least, not a carbon-based one. There's also a major first in this: the first time I've ever portrayed a racially mixed couple. (For that matter, I'm mostly plain vanilla Caucasian with a little Native American from several generations back on my mother's side) Maybe I'd better make that a racially and materially mixed couple…
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I
A week after the incident in the woods, Rhiannon and Lutwyn both received a message in their e-mail with a large attachment, the document they had awaited:
The Three Laws of Organics
And Recommendations for their Practical Application
By Joe Masters
Three afternoons later, as Joe sat at work at his drawing desk, he sensed someone approach and linger at his side. He looked up to see Sabrina, Lutwyn's secretary Mecha at his elbow.
"Was something required of me?" he asked, saving his work.
"Mr. Zipes wishes to speak to you in his office," she said. He logicked this to be something official; he minimized the document and rose to follow her.
Not only Lutwyn awaited him, but several division directors had also gathered there.
"I hope you don't mind the crowd: I passed on your paper to the rest of the board," Lutwyn explained.
"Remarkable work there, Masters."—"You've broken ethical ground we've never even thought to touch."—"This could revolutionize the whole industry."—"Trying to improve on Asimov, eh? Not bad work."—The words of the directors ran over each other. If Joe could have blushed, his face would have flushed up to his hairline.
"Thank you, your words are too kind; I meant this as means to help improve the lot of Mechakind," he replied when they had died down.
"We were considering having you transferred from design to the legal department—purely in an advisory role," Lutwyn said.
"Alas, I lack the educational qualifications necessary," Joe said. "For that matter, perhaps the only class despised as much as Mechas are lawyers, so were I to make the transfer, I would make myself a glutton for punishment." The board laughed at this remark.
"You're ahead of us in ethics," Powell, the head of Legal said. "Besides, you have one qualification we lack: subjectivity. You know what it is to be mistreated by ignorant Orgas; you've survived the worst kinds of treatment. If that doesn't qualify you in some degree to write and advise us about this, I don't know what would."
"I shall have to give the proposal much consideration. It is something no one, least of all myself, should approach too lightly."
"Take all the time you need, Masters," Powell said. "But I'll tell you this much: we could appreciate having someone who can tell us exactly what will or won't work."
"In the meantime," Lutwyn put in. "You might want to consider having that paper published. I'm sure the Journal of the American Robotics Association would publish it. And you'd do well to send it on to the Federal Robotics Administration."
"It would certainly give this discovery the coverage and consideration it needs and requires if it is to prove effective," Joe said. "Lucky for me I work for people like you."
@--`--
While many of the others were on lunch break, Joe set to work preparing the Three Laws of Humanics to send it to JARA or "the Journal", as if was most often called. He sent an electronic copy that day and put a hard copy of it in the regular mail that evening.
@--`--
A week later, Sokhar the secretary came to his cubicle. "I've not come to pest you: there's a call for you from the Journal," she said. "It's the chief editor himself."
He followed her to the office, where she handed him the phone and quickly turned away.
"Hallo?"
"Joe Masters?"
"Yes, that is I."
"This is Lewin Kratt, editor of the Journal of the American Robotics Association. I just read your proposed Three Laws of Organics. I was wondering if you would mind if we sent one of our writers to interview you?"
"No, I would not mind in the least if you think it would prove useful to your publication."
"It's more than useful; we've been wanting to interview you for some time now. We've heard a lot about you and we ran a few small items about you in the past. But it's time we heard your story form your end."
"In which case I hope none of this is what often goes by the name of flattery."
"No, Masters, this is serious. We're going to publish your paper in next month's issue, so would it be possible for us to conduct the interview within the next two weeks?"
"Yes, it would be quite possible."
"All right, what would be the best time for us?"
"I work during the day, so would it be possible for you to send your reporter in the evening?"
"We can handle that; I'll have Astrea call you to arrange the exact day and time."
"I shall anticipate both the call and the interview."
@--`--
The word that the journal was going to interview Joe spread through Companionates. Anyone who didn't subscribe bought a subscription, and the three locations each preordered copies of that issue in bulk. A rumor started that Joe's picture had made the front cover, but someone—probably Lutwyn, though a few hinted it might have been Joe in a rare modest moment—suppressed the rumor.
But it turned out to be true: the September issue arrived in bulk and sure enough, Joe's jade-green eyes and shy-extrovert smile shone from the cover.
Not long after this, the calls and letters started pouring in. Other trade magazines wanted to carry interviews with Joe; a few talks shows made similar offers. Even a TV network producer sent someone to offer Joe a contract for docudrama based on his life story. But he calmly turned them down. He had his work to do.
But even the notoriety had its shadow side. Several major newspapers carried op-ed pieces and letters to the editor that smacked strongly of the Frankenstein complex. One cartoonist even drew a snide panel that featured a caricature of Joe (wiring visible) unctuously proffering a book marked "Three Laws of Organics" to a human couple labeled "Human Race" while stabbing them in the back.
"People are entitled to form their own opinions, but one wonders if less strife would disrupt our world if people would learn their opinions end where their neighbors' rights and needs start," Joe said to Lutwyn after he'd seen the cartoon.
"Don't feel singled out; they did the same thing to Martin Luther King back in the 1960s," Lutwyn said.
"And they also called Oskar Schindler a Jew-kisser because he once kissed a Jewish girl out of compassion when the German Nazis made such gestures illegal."
Worse things than slurs happened. A suspicious package arrived at Companionates, addressed to Joe. The mailroom clerk identified it as a bomb and called the police. A bomb squad carefully detonated it and found it had contained some small explosives attached to a large can of industrial strength sulfuric acid. Another time, someone hacked Joe's e-mail inbox; while a week later, someone sent a message with a virus attached.
"I supposed they hoped that somehow, I have a direct interface with the computer," Joe said to Lutwyn as they headed home after that day.
"It's a good thing you don't, or there'd be hell to pay," Lutwyn said. "This is only me saying it, but if I were you, I'd seriously consider taking self-defense classes or carrying a stunner, just in case."
"Have you just given me a direct order? Of course I am thinking of Asimov's Second Law."
"It probably should be, but the decision is up to you."
A week later, Lutwyn thought he saw an odd bulge under Joe's jacket, high up on his left side, as if he had a holster on underneath.
Rhiannon heard about all this with mingled relief and concern: relief that Joe's proposal had largely been accepted, but concerned about the inhospitable factions.
In the middle of all this, the Zipeses announced that they were expecting a child. With the National Conference of Roboticists coming up in January, Lutwyn had his hands full, but Narsie insisted on coming with him for the Conference.
About the same time, a thick simulparchment envelope arrived in Joe's regular mail. He regarded it with caution and nearly had the mailroom clerk take it back to rescan it.
"I've scanned it twice already: it's clean," she said, reassuringly.
He opened it slowly. Inside, printed in silver ink on cream simulparchment was an invitation from the ARA, as well as a letter from the Association director asking him to speak on his proposed Three Laws.
He slipped this into his breast pocket: Lutwyn had to see this.
"You know what this means, Masters?" Lutwyn said; he made it a habit to call Joe by his surname when they discussed vital matters.
"What does it mean?"
"It means you've been officially accepted as a roboticist, not just a robot. You've jumped the gap."
"At least some class of humans has accepted my proposal."
"And they want you to speak on it, too. You realize the weigh of importance riding on this."
"I have given it much consideration. How am I to give this proposed talk? I have no need for notes, and yet should I extemporize, the more credulous listeners will suspect I have been pre-programmed."
"Use the notes anyway, just to throw the skeptics off. Mess with their heads a little. Besides, you'd look more convincing."
"But one question I must ask of you: do you know if Ms. Jackford will attend this conference?"
"I'm not sure; you'd have to ask her."
Next morning, Joe met Rhiannon in line at the security checkpoint in the entryway of the complex. She was in line for a retina scan, but he approached her.
"Good morning, Joe."
"Good morning Ms. Jackford. Might I ask a question of you?"
"Sure."
"Are you attending the National Conference of Roboticists two months from now?"
"I hadn't been planning on going, but then I heard you might be speaking at it, so I changed my mind."
"You would attend it on account of me?"
"Yes."
"Then this seals the matter: I must accept their proposal."
Her turn came next. He stepped aside as one of the guards held a retina scanner to her eyes. Another guard ran an X-scanner over Joe; since he lacked scannable retinas, they had to use other means.
@--`--
In late January, he accompanied Lutwyn and Narsie on the transcontinental hyperjet flight to Las Vegas. They arrived in the late evening, as the neon signs began to glow against the dark of the desert.
"It looks very like Rouge City from above," Joe commented, gazing out the window.
"But it's a whole lot tamer," Lutwyn said.
"How would you know?" Narsie teased.
"I've been there once on business."
Passing through airport security posed its own problems: Joe set off the metal detectors, so the security staff had to take him aside to run an X-scanner over him.
One of the guards eyed Joe curiously. "Hey, you the Mecha who wrote that paper on the Three Laws?" he asked.
"If you mean, am I Joe Masters? Yes, I am he."
"Golly. M' daughter's in robotics: she thinks you've got the best code of ethics since the Ten Commandments."
"In the words of Oscar Wilde, 'God save me from my disciples'."
"Well, sorry for the inconvenience, sir."
Lutwyn smiled to Joe after they had finally collected the baggage and were on their way by cab to the Bellagio Hotel.
"You know what happened in security back there?" Lutwyn asked.
"The guard addressed me as 'sir', if that is what you refer to." Joe's gaze shifted quickly, as if he did a "double take". "I have been addressed with a term usually reserved for respect among your kind."
"I bet that guard was so startled he hardly knew what he was saying," Narsie said.
Once they got to their respective hotel rooms—a very obsequious bellhop Mecha carried Joe's bags—Joe got out his journal and, even before he unpacked, made a special note for the date:
22 January 2201—an Orga has addressed me as "sir".
@--`--
The conference was held in a vast convention center near the Bellagio Hotel, occupying several large exhibit halls on the ground floor. Of course there were a few people who initially mistook Joe for a demo model—to his aversion—until they noticed the ID tag clipped to his lapel. He kept a low profile, anticipating his presentation, which was not until the afternoon of the second day.
"I don't know why the attention isn't going straight to his processors, the way it usually does," Narsie said, observing Joe.
"I keep waiting for the penny to drop, but I have a feeling it won't," Lutwyn replied.
Anticipating a major turnout for Joe's presentation, the convention planners had set it in a large exhibit hall. Even with seating for ten thousand, people still stood in the back and along the walls, whispering and talking amongst themselves. Closed circuit plasma TV screens carried the image of the Companionates logo holojected on the screen behind the rostrum.
The head of the FRA, Aldon Tieffman, approached the rostrum first.
"Since the late Allen Hobby devised the innovation known as imprinting and it was put into application by his and other companies, a number of unprecedented events have occurred in the field of robotics. Several imprinted Mechas have developed and displayed abilities never before seen in robots. Perhaps one of the earliest was a Companionates-constructed model who amazed and even shocked us recently by his recent discovery in the field of robo-ethics. Here to introduce him is Dr. Lutwyn Zipes, director of operations of the Shohola, East Pennsylvania division of Companionates."
Tieffman stepped away form the rostrum to a swell of applause, and let Lutwyn approach.
Joe, notes in hand, stood in the shadows of the offset, his head bent as if he but half-listened to Lutwyn's introduction. Rhiannon approached him from behind and touched his shoulder.
He turned sharply, facing her and fixing her with his gaze. "It is you, Rhiannon. I am sorry: I took you for an intruder."
"Are you all right?"
"I think I have a bad case of neurons." He couldn't call it nerves, so he had to use the closest metaphor he could devise.
"You'll be all right; you'll do great."
"I hope that I may convey the message to them as clearly as possible," he said. "And that they shall be able to take them into their hearts as well as their heads, as I know you have."
"I practically got 'em tattooed to my arm, under Asimov's Three, of course."
He laughed softly at this.
She reached out and kissed him on the cheek. He looked at her warmly in the dark and edged closer to her.
He politely withdrew. "You have set my neurons aright."
"Anything to help."
A stagehand approached and touched Joe on the arm. "You're on, Mr. Masters." A security guard in a lead-lined cape came up behind Joe as he stepped out onto the stage.
Following the elder Zipes's example at Joe's first art show years before, the security staff had discreetly placed tall men in floor-sweeping lead-lined capes at the four corners of the stage. They had also scanned everyone who came into the hall, looking for EMP guns. Already, there had been minor demonstrations outside the convention center, and the less-scrupulous protestors might have infiltrated with a homemade electromagnetic pulse gun made from a stunner with the amps increased.
The crowd burst out in cheers and applause as Joe approached the rostrum. He smiled in appreciation, then modestly raised his hands for quiet.
"You gestures of appreciation run too effusively," he said, the sound system carrying his gentle voice to the corners of the hall. "If I could blush, every inch of my dermis would have turned rose-colored." The crowd laughed and applauded again.
At length, they finally let him proceed.
@--`--
"You were marvelous!" Rhiannon cried as he came offstage afterward, over an hour later. She hugged him around the neck. Not on reflex, his arms slid about her waist. She kissed him chastely, holding him at arms length.
They separated as Lutwyn ran up to them. "Joe, you were fantastic," he said, giving Joe a brotherly hug and gently punching him on the arm.
"One does what one can," he replied, with a modest shrug.
"This is a red letter day for your kind," Lutwyn said. "No crowd has ever before listened to a robot the way that crowd just did."
Joe took this in silence, processing it. His eyes seemed to mist over for a moment.
"No, this is the second time a gathering of humans has heeded the words of a robot," he said at length. "The first occurrence of this nature happened in the arena of a Flesh Fair near Haddonfield, New Jersey, when a small Mecha pleaded for his life and a mob forgot its herd instinct for an instant and turned its hatred from two Mechas to their tormenters."
Yes. David…Rhiannon realized.
@--`--
The talk had a double effect. Reporters and photographers hounded Joe for questions and pictures. Every major newspaper carried his photo on the front page. People pestered him for his autograph.
Women tried flirting with him; one night, as he sat with Rhiannon and the Zipeses at their table in the hotel restaurant (his chair turned back to front, signifying his status), a slightly tipsy woman came up to him and propositioned him. Lutwyn signaled to the waiter to have the interfering party removed.
Joe handled the situation well. "I must inform you, madam, that I no longer traffick myself in such a manner," he informed her astutely. The woman glared at him cockeyed and let the maitre d' lead her out.
"Before Serin found you, I bet you never expected you'd someday turn a woman down," Lutwyn said. Joe replied merely with an astute smile.
Later that night, a mob gathered outside the Bellagio Hotel and burned an obscene effigy of Joe. The same mob also tossed bottles and rocks through the windows of the lower story; no one was injured except a service Mecha vacuuming carpets.
In the wee hours of the morning, someone jimmied the door to Joe's room. A security guard caught the intruder in the act, when the smart lock let out a warning alarm.
Hearing the commotion, Lutwyn ran to check on Joe. The security guards overrode the lock and let Lutwyn enter.
The room looked empty. Papers lay scattered on the bed and the floor. The bedclothes had been pulled awry on one side, as if someone had slid off the bed. Lutwyn approached the bed and peered under it.
He spotted a large gray leather cocoon already beginning to unwind itself. Joe poked his head from it.
"What have you got there?" Lutwyn asked, helping him out from under the bed and off the floor.
"I had that made to order should I ever be endangered by an attacker with an EMP," Joe replied. "It is lead-lined."
"Sort of like a portable panic room," the security guard said. "You must have second sight, that intruder had an EMP."
Lutwyn saw near-pain memories flick by in the Mecha's eyes.
"At least he didn't get near enough to you to do anything. We were right there."
They moved Joe to another hotel an increased security.
"Perhaps I should return to Shohola," Joe said to Rhiannon next morning, sitting at her breakfast table in the restaurant.
"If you did, you'd be caving in to their assaults. You have to stay here the whole time, just to show them what you're made of."
"They know of what I am made of; that is why they hate me." Realization passed over his face. "Yes, you speak rightly; they need to see that I man not just any other Mecha. No, that lacks strength: I am not just any other…stupid fiberhead." His mouth struggled to mold the last word.
"Someday, that word 'll be forbidden," she declared.
She accompanied him that day, almost as if she were his self-appointed guard.
That evening they attended a concert in the ballroom of the convention center. A Companionates model had learned to play the piano, and his imprinter had given permission for him to make his semi-public debut with a program of Chopin and Rachmaninoff.
Alex Hilliard…He looked almost like any ordinary young man in his late teens, slightly gangly, with dishwater blond hair naturally tousled, his narrow face knife thin, his gray eyes kept primly averted from the audience; yet he never blinked and something too symmetrical haunted his too-smooth face, giving away his true nature. But his coldness toward the audience eclipsed under his passionate playing. He swayed his upper body in time, not merely with the beat, but with the melody, leaning in closer to the instrument at quieter moments, leaning back when the melody swelled.
Rhiannon studied him carefully; she noticed something oddly familiar about him. No, could it be?
She nudged Joe. "He looks a little like you," she whispered.
"He should resemble me. I based the design of his torso upon my own."
"Isn't he a custom job?"
"Yes, the client asked for a young model, but she was not particular about appearances, which gave us more opportunity for expression."
"But you never expected this."
He gazed at the young artist in respectful silence. "No, I did not expect it any more than I expected to learn to paint, to design."
"Was he imprinted?"
"Yes, he is."
Afterward they were fortunate enough to shale hands with the young prodigy. Rhiannon mentally used the word "fortunate" with charitable reservation: Alex had a limp, listless handshake and his attitude in greeting her bore so much adolescent ennui that she wondered why anyone would bother to build such a creature. Joe seemed not to notice, or else he too was trying to be charitable. At least this gave her an opportunity to see, up close, the similarities between the designer and the designee: Joe could have been Alex's older brother by ten years if they had been Orga. Indeed, the younger Mecha's torso looked like an immature version of Joe's, the posture not as elegant, even a little slouchy, and much scrawnier, as if Alex just needed to fill out with a little graceful musculature.
Rhiannon bought a copy of the young artist's debut album on the way out.
With his guard trailing them, Joe escorted Rhiannon back to her hotel room.
"What I want to know is why would anyone want to build a teenager?" she asked him. "I mean, people get embarrassed by their flesh and blood teenage kids; why build a Mecha teenager?"
He processed this ponderingly. "Perhaps they did this to see if it could be done. Aside from his cold indifference, he is perfect in all respects: no acne, no awkwardness, no need to remind him to shave.
"And yet," he added. "If they constructed him to be the perfect young man, to see if such can be accomplished, what shall befall him? Will he suffer the fate of so many if not most of his kind?" She wondered if images of Jane and her fate still lingered in his immediate recall. "What shall be his fate, when his parents tire of him?"
"Especially when he could use a few lessons in manners," she said, trying to break the tension. "Maybe you could teach him; you're the prototype of the perfect gentleman."
He bowed his head modestly. "I doubt he would bring enough willingness to learn what I could teach him."
"Not those lessons. He might have enough simulated hormones that he doesn't need any encouragement from anyone."
"I meant not that brand of courtesy. No, only those who have first mastered the art of timing can master the art of seduction. He lacks the former, and unless he can be convince otherwise, any training in the latter would go utterly to waste; most likely he would merely learn to rend hearts."
"All right, if someone like him were discarded and you could help him, would you?"
"I would assist him as if he were any other Mecha in need, not because he deserved it, but because he needed it."
She almost commented on this, but she decided to withhold it. Joe could get egotistical when praised.
At her door, she gave him a friendly "good night" hug with one arm; she had to fight off an impulse to kiss his cheek before they parted.
The next morning, she found him awaiting her in the hotel lobby. They spent that day as they had the day before, viewing exhibits, attending talks, walking together along the concourse of the convention center.
That evening they attended an extremely dull talk given by one of the former chiefs of the FRA. After the first half hour, which turned out to be only ten minutes, Joe nudged Rhiannon.
"Are you bored with this yet?"
"Yeah, let's get out of here."
"Alas, I found this talk extremely stimulating," he said in an ironic drawl. He got up and helped her out through the discreetly thinning crowd.
"Come on, there's something I want to show you," she said, leading him out into the night.
They went for a long walk, past all the lights, into the velvety darkness of the desert, to a spot she knew from a previous visit to the city.
They sat together for a long time on a hilltop overlooking the city, just gazing down at the lights and up at the stars.
"What kind of name is Rhiannon?" Joe asked at length.
"I think it's the name of a Welsh witch-goddess," she said.
"Yes, it fits you, for you are Rhiannon: you are a witch in that you are a wise woman, and you have helpful power through the magic words of laws and ethics. And you are at once a goddess. You wind me up inside…"
She turned to him. Even in the dim light cast by the thin crescent moon and the diffused light from the city far below, she could see his face already starting to warm to her. She had things stored up in her heart that she'd wanted to say to him, but now was not the time. Prudence kicked in even as she wanted release these pent up words. The sorceress might not be able to halt the process they would set in motion.
"Who else have you said those words to since Serin passed?" she asked.
He processed this for a moment. "To only two others have I said these words."
"Were you in love with them?"
"For a moment, but they would not give to me what Serin could."
"Serin's been gone nearly six years now, and you've been celibate since?"
"Aside from these interludes and some exchange of amorous pleasantries, there has been no one like her."
"Are you sure you're not malfunctioning or something? I mean, you were built specific for one purpose when they made you new." She looked at his hands, folded on his lap, close to her. She took his left hand in hers and held it up to the dim light. He still wore his wedding band. "You don't exactly need this any more." She tugged on the band of gold.
"I know that I need not wear it any longer, and yet if I had a heart it would still belong to Serin."
The implications of imprinting, she realized. He might outlive them all, but he would always possess an inerasable attachment to Serin. His response smacked of the ancient Victorian attitude of the bereaved spouse remaining faithful to the deceased spouse, even shunning remarriage.
She wondered what would happen if she tried leading him on. He wouldn't be her first, not even her first of his kind. Would it even work? She wondered how much of his original programming remained intact, how much had time and experience overwritten. Perhaps it was best if she waited for him to come around.
"Do you miss Serin?"
He pondered this. "I suppose you would call it missing her. Through her I learned to love as only your kind can love. We belonged to each other. She is gone, but I remember her. I have only to reach into recall to find an image of her as clear as if she stood before me."
"But it just isn't the same as having her in your arms."
"No, it is not the same."
She couldn't say it outright; it was much too soon. "Joe, I just want you to know I have a great deal of respect for you as a person. I'm very glad I know you and I've been working you and I'm glad to have helped you this far. I just want you to know I'll always be there to help you and counsel you in whatever hare-brained scheme you come up with. I like you."
"In which case, I like you too."
They fell silent, nothing more to say. She looked at the city below. "It's late, we should be heading back."
"I was about to suggest this course of action for your sake; you are the one who has to sleep," he said, helping her up.
At the door to her hotel room she turned to him again. "I hope you understand," she said.
"To speak honestly to you, I do not. It lies not with you, but with the way my…mind functions."
She smiled and leaned over to kiss his cheek, chastely, friend-like. He returned the gesture, just brushing her cheek with his lips before they separated.
Back in his hotel room, Joe made another notation in his journal. "Ms. Jackford—or shall I call her Rhiannon?—not only likes me, she has called me a person."
@--`--
He anticipated things getting back to normal once he got back to Shohola, but the next few months were anything but normal.
The offices of the Congressional District, and of the Senator for the State of East Pennsylvania contacted him asking permission to draft a bill based upon his Three Laws. A book proposal came from a major publishing house, and some agent for a New Hollywood producer offered him a movie deal based on his life story. He agreed to the more serious proposals, but the less serious one left him with something he'd never encountered before.
"Have you ever had to decide which of two courses of action will bring about the most good for all parties involved?" Joe asked Lutwyn one Sunday afternoon as he sat in the Zipes' basement, helping him assemble a crib.
"I do it all the time: be glad you're only in design, not a directorship; I have to make a dozen decisions every hour. Why, what's got your processors in a knot?"
Joe described his position. "Mechakind requires legislation to protect it, and yet I would do well to find some means to earn or raise money to start my proposed mission of rescuing and repairing damaged Mechas."
"You could easily do both: start with the legislation, then work on the book in your spare time, and when that's done, sell the film rights."
"Perhaps this is why I could not decide: the situation had not so binary a structure."
"I'll tell you what is a binary structure," Lutwyn said, grinning.
"This would be?"
Lutwyn pointed at the crib. "This crib: It wouldn't let me put it together upstairs in the nursery, but it practically put itself together down here. I guess I'll just have to drag it upstairs."
Joe offered his hand. "Let me assist you."
Between the two of them, they struggled the crib up the stairs to the nursery.
On his way out, Joe passed by the living room door.
"Did I hear Lutwyn putting you to work?" Narsie called from within, a "you-poor-thing" tone to her voice. Joe pivoted and approached the open door.
"No, but I offered him my strength in carrying your offspring's crib up to the nursery," he replied.
Narsie lay propped on the couch, a pillow under her side. Her condition had grown palpable, obvious, but to his eyes, she was an object of wonder. He approached her reverently and knelt by the couch almost with reverence.
"There's something I want you to feel," she said. She took his hand in hers. "It's not that kind of touch." She pressed the palm of his hand to her belly. He felt only her warmth at first. "Hold on…There." He felt movement through her flesh, a flutter, then a tiny blow. He looked at her.
"That is your child?"
"Yes, that's little Serina or Nathan."
"Serina…you would call your girl-child this?"
"Yes."
A week or two later, the office girls held a party for Narsie. Rhiannon showed up to give Narsie the hat and mitten set she had crocheted, but she had to excuse herself under pretext of having some briefs to prepare for a client.
She went to the atrium to clear her eyes of the tears.
She found Joe there, talking with the gardener, a young woman of slightly less than average intelligence who worked wondrously with the plants. Even as they spoke, the girl clipped a flower from an inconspicuous spot on a bush and handed it to him; he took it delicately in his fingertips.
"I always wondered where you get your flowers this time of year," Rhiannon said to him.
"If Trina does not give me one, I find one when they are in season, or I buy one," he said. "How go the festivities?"
"They're going well, I just had to get back to the pile of work on my desk."
He smiled astutely. "Your office faces the outside, not the atrium."
She sighed. "It's a really dark story, Joe. I don't know if you could bear it."
"My tale has not always had a sunlit backdrop. You know of mine, tell me of yours."
She breathed deeply. "Ten years ago, when I was in college, I got engaged to be married. Cal was eager to get in the sack with me, but I told him time and time again, I wouldn't unless we were married. He kept pressuring me, but I refused to give in. These were my principles, and all I wanted was for him to respect them. He started treating me rough in other areas, trying to wear me down, but I wouldn't budge. Finally, I told him I couldn't marry him if he was going to pressure me like this. We got into an argument. He hit me." She took a deep breath. "I mean, he roundhouse-punched me. He knocked me down." She tried to keep the tears back. "And then he raped me." The tears slid down her face. "It would have been bad enough if he just used what nature gave him. But he didn't. He used a broom handle on me." Her tears came hard now.
Joe put a hand on her shoulder. He retracted it hesitantly. She took his hand by the wrist and held his palm to her shoulder.
"I almost died from the shock. I lay there for twelve hours until a service Mecha found me when it—he, I'm sorry—found me when he was trimming bushes. I was so cut up inside that the doctors had a hard time piecing me together. They told me I'd never be able to have a child."
"Not ever?"
She shook her head. "Cal went to prison. I went a little crazy after that. I decided if I couldn't have a child, I'd have no use for a flesh and blood man. I even switched law majors from family law to Mecha-Orga legal relations. After what I've been through, sometimes I feel like I identify with your kind better than my own."
"So that is why you have chosen to aid my kind." He drew her close to him, gently. His cheek brushed hers tenderly.
His arms loosened and he held her slightly away from him. He put his hand behind her head and leaned in. "It is all right. It is not that kind of a kiss."
He touched his lips to hers compassionately; she tried not to, but she clung to him.
Her beeper went off. She pulled away from him. "I gotta run. Believe me, I don't want to," she said.
"I trust I have not been too forward."
She patted his arm. "You've been just right for me. Thanks. Thank you."
She let him go and went back to her office.
@--`--
A month later at the beginning of April, Narsie gave birth. Lutwyn brought Joe along to the birthing center, as part of his education.
Joe kept a respectful, almost nervous distance the whole time. If he could breathe, he would have been holding it, watching the painful effort it took to bring an Orga child into the world.
But at length, the nurse handed a blanket-wrapped bundle into Narsie's arms.
"Mrs. Zipes, you have a beautiful daughter. Do you have a name for her?"
"Serina," Narsie breathed as she moved aside the blankets to get a better look at her little one.
"Serina Josepha," Lutwyn added. He glanced at Joe with his eyes.
"You thought of me?" he asked.
"You couldn't have Serin without you, so it only seemed fitting to keep your names together." Lutwyn took his daughter into his arms. To the child, he added, "You share the names of two very brave people."
Joe scanned the little one's face. She did not much resemble either of her parents, but that could change as she grew. He looked at Narsie. Sweat still ran down her reddened face, and her copper-colored hair hung damp with sweat, but her face and eyes shone with an inner light of joy. He saw the same light, the same joy shine on Lutwyn's face.
"Would you like to hold her?" Lutwyn asked.
"It would be an honor," Joe replied.
Lutwyn carefully placed Serina in his arms. Joe held her as if she were a small sheaf of flowers, as if a movement could dissolve her. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. He smiled at her. She blinked and smiled back.
"She likes you," Lutwyn said, grinning. "Maybe she'll carry on the family tradition of robotics."
"Perhaps she will help end the animus that divides us."
"Maybe she will. After all, she might be the first baby to be held by a Mecha within minutes of her birth."
@--`--
Later that week, Rhiannon encountered Joe in a hallway of the complex.
"Now I know why you wept when you told me you can bear no child," he said.
"Why?" she asked.
"I have held Lutwyn's daughter; this gesture so small raised sensations that defy all classification, beyond joy and wonder to something almost religious."
"Children do that to you if you let them. They can exasperate you and drive you to distraction, but they never fail to charm me."
"They are our future."
"How do you define 'our'?"
"They must be educated to accept my kind; they alone can cleanse this world of strife. So in a sense they belong to both our kinds, since the fates of both lie with them."
@--`--
The end of season ball had been postponed till the beginning of May on account of Narsie's recovery period. Most of the women in design were chattering like so many schoolgirls about the gowns they'd had made up or altered, and who they would be going with.
"Hey, Joe," Manoj, the draftsman in the next cubicle, asked, peering over the top of the divider, "Are you going to the big wing ding?"
"If you are referring to the end of season ball, I may."
"All the girls will thank you if you do go; you're probably the only guy in the division who really knows how to dance."
"Perhaps I shall attend, but only if one young woman attends."
"Who, Rhiannon?"
"Perhaps."
Just at quitting time, someone knocked on Rhiannon's door. She looked up from collecting her folders and saw Joe leaning gracefully against the doorframe.
"Hey, Joe, whaddya know?" she caught herself saying.
"At the risk of impertinence, I would like to know if you shall attend the end of season ball?"
"Well, I hadn't been planning to, but I just might change my plans for you."
"If you do change your plans, I would be more than pleased to escort you." He smiled at her graciously as he offered her his hand.
"When you put it that way, I wouldn't want to go with anyone else," she said, giving her hand to him. He took it and raised it to his lips.
@--`--
She had a silver taffeta dress she had worn as a friend's bridesmaid; she altered this herself in her spare time that week. She went out and bought herself a pair of ballet slippers; with her hair styled up, she'd look taller than Joe unless she wore shoes that flat.
The afternoon before the ball, she splurged and went out to have her hair and nails done. This got her mind off her nerves for a little while.
But as six o'clock came near and she stood in her room before her mirror, putting on her chartreuse peridot earrings and the matching necklace, she started to get a fit of the nervous giggles. She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
The doorbell chimed. She gathered her shawls and her handbag and went downstairs.
When she opened the door, she found Joe waiting for her, posed elegantly against the stone rail of the stoop. He wore a knee-length frock coat that shimmered in the late sunlight like liquid metal, over a silver shirt with a Byron collar and high-waisted trousers of the same material as the coat, molded tastefully over his loins, but looser from his thighs downwards.
"Wow, Joe, you look like a 1930s movie star," she cried.
He smiled at this. "And you, Rhiannon, look like a queen," he replied, proffering his arm to her.
He'd hired a car, one of the newer autopilot models; she felt like a queen in her chariot as they glided along the streets to the Hotel Royade.
She knew every woman in the ballroom had her eye on them as soon as they entered. She'd never had this many people admiring her escort. Joe turned to her and winked, as if to say 'How does it feel to have every woman in the room wishing she were in your shoes?'. She smiled and winked back.
All through that evening, women kept trying to cut in on them as they danced, but they politely averted these less than proper gestures. Rhiannon had never had a better evening; her feet seemed to skim the floor. It was as if her girlhood dreams of dancing with Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly had come true, only better. They both got a little crazy dancing to "A Little Bit of Mambo", but she relaxed in his arms as they slow-danced to "Unchained Melody".
Later on, they went out onto the terrace. Stars filled the clear sky above and the full moon hung high overhead. Joe glanced at it warily, but his face soon relaxed.
They sat together on the stone parapet that surrounded the terrace. She edged her hand close to his. He covered it with his own. She noticed something different about it. She looked closely: his left ring finger was bare.
"You took off your wedding band?" she asked.
"The time had come to remove it."
"Are you looking for someone?"
"Perhaps I shall pursue this course; I do not wish to pursue alone the mission I have chosen."
They went back in after a little while. After about an hour, they took their leave; Rhiannon had had enough of the crowd and wanted to be alone with him.
They took a stroll in the park not far from her house. She led him to a hill where she liked to sit on a large rock naturally shaped like a seat.
They leaned back against it, side by side, her head close to his shoulder. He slipped his arm about her, holding her closer.
She had been very quiet, almost thoughtfully quiet, as if she were trying to make a decision within herself. His pursuit centers started to initiate the process, but he carefully suspended it until she made a move that she wanted more.
"Are you tired, Rhiannon? You have grown very quiet."
"Oh, maybe a little. I just wanted to be near you."
"Near me as a friend, or as a lover?"
"Well, I'm starting to look at you as a lot more than just a friend."
"Do you love me as more than a friend?"
She looked into his face in the moonlight. "Yes, Joe, I love you." She nuzzled her face into his shoulder, triggering a number of pursuit centers as she did so. He put his arms about her, drawing her closer still. Reaching behind her, he gently fingered the top hook of her gown.
She looked him in the eye; she put her hand behind her back, gently taking his hand by the wrist, and pushed it away.
"I'm sorry, Joe, but I'm afraid you can't do that."
"Why may I not?" he asked. His original programming had obliged him to follow what was asked of him but many of the original overrides had themselves been overridden.
"I made a promise to myself that no white boy would get me under him unless I had his last name tacked to the end of mine, and his wedding ring was on my finger. And that applies to silicon white boys, too."
"I have only touched your dress."
"I don't mean to sound prudish, but if you started feeling me up, I'll be wanting more." She looked away from him. "Sometimes just looking at you makes me want more."
He released her gently out of respect for her wishes.
"Joe, could you love me?"
"I could, given the proper circumstances and protocols."
"Imprinting," she murmured.
"What did you say?"
"I'm mumbling; I'm tired."
"Shall I bring you home?"
"No, not just yet. I want to be with you a little while longer. Is that okay?" She didn't want to set him off again.
"Yes, I can restrain myself better than most men."
Overhead, the sky slowly darkened as they sat gazing at the stars. The air grew chillier; she nestled closer to him for warmth, so he obliged her by raising his skin temperature slightly.
Night retreated. The eastern sky brightened. Overhead, the zenith paled from midnight blue to powder blue as the eastern horizon colored gold and pink.
"It has grown so late, it is early," he said.
"I was about to say it's time I said good night to you and went home."
"Rather, you would say good morning," he said.
He helped her up and led her back to the car.
At her door, she turned to him her face just centimeters from his. "Thank you, I just wanted to say I had a wonderful evening…that's a really lame way to say it."
"It matters not, I know the meaning. I would not have wanted to have spent it with any other person than you."
She pulled him to her and kissed him. She intended it to be a kiss of gratitude, but something else emerged in her heart. Her hands slid up behind his head; she let him kiss her deeper, harder. She felt his "heart" throb against hers.
She let him go. "Good morning," she murmured and went inside.
@--`--
Once he got back to his apartment and let himself in, he went straight to the storage room. His recall had reminded him of something, a locked box with his name on it, a box that had some significance to him as a Mecha. He'd seen it when he had moved, bur he had had no reason since for looking into it.
In the very back corner of the room, he found it, a metal box about a foot long on a side. The top bore a faded label with Serin's handwriting "Joe 2.0, paperwork, et al." A simple lock held it closed. He had no data available about a key, so he picked the lock with a screwdriver from his repair kit.
Inside, he found a lot of papers and several disks. One group of CD-RW disks bore the label "Joe 2.0, designs and conceptuals". There were several release and liability statements, bearing Serin's signature, a repair and maintenance log, a user's manual (he didn't know quite why, but he shook his head over this). And then at the very bottom he found a plastic envelope with a broken seal on the flap in the back. He lifted the flap and found a translucent sheet of simulparchment.
Imprinting Protocol, it read across the top. A set of instructions and a list of seven words followed.
He couldn't process why these word rang familiar in his awareness and recall, but they seemed to have something to do with Serin, something to do with a memory fragment blocked from his recall.
Imprinting protocol…
Companionates was now making and programming imprint chips for custom jobs and as an option for newer models.
Serin had jotted a date on the page, 12 May 2170.
He got up and went to the table in his inner chamber. His wedding band lay on a china dish on the tabletop. He picked up the ring and scanned the date on the inside. 12 May 2170.
He logicked that the date meant that on this day she had imprinted him, for this was the same date as the blocked memory shard in his recall.
So he had been imprinted. This bit of "realization" at once brought sensations of curiosity and confusion. It made him all the more aware of how different he was from Orga, but at the same time, he started to query if he could ask someone to imprint him. He had more freedom than most of his class; he had a national identity card after all.
Rhiannon…?
She had told him point blank that she loved him but that she wouldn't let him make love to her unless she was married to him. He realized that his relationship to Serin had been a common law marriage of sorts.
He decided that he would have to have to ask for her hand in marriage, but that he would have to hold off until he had completely won her heart. After work someday later that week, he would make some simple gesture: ask her to take a walk with him or offer to buy her dinner.
But Monday evening, as he logged out of the computer, Rhiannon came up beside him, she looked utterly different with her hair pulled back and wearing one of her conservative blue suits.
"Hi, Joe."
"Hello, Rhiannon."
"Are you doing anything Thursday night?"
"I had nothing in particular planned that night; why do you ask?"
"A friend gave me a couple of theatre tickets for that night; The Importance of Being Earnest is at the Forge Playhouse. Would you like to come?"
"I would be delighted to join you. Wilde's writings happen to hold an especial place in my being."
Once he got home, he jotted a notation in his planner for Thursday night.
He got a chance to return the favor the following week by taking her out to dinner on Wednesday. The following Sunday they took a long walk in the woods; Friday they went to a gallery opening featuring several of his more recent works of art.
He found himself having a difficult time sticking to his schedule between the times he saw her outside of work. At night, when he should have been writing his autobiography, he caught himself wanting only to replay recalled images of Rhiannon and their times together.
This went on for two months. Each time he saw her, he wanted to ask her to consider marrying him or at least imprinting him. Or, most desirably, both. He made her desires and wishes his own; she was the woman and the least he could do was respect them. Better still, he could take her desires into his own being, which should be the standard of the best relationships, whether both parties were of flesh or silicon.
@--`--
One Friday night, Rhiannon sat working late in her office. She'd been expecting a message or a call from Joe, but nothing had come. That wasn't like him at all.
She heard someone clear their throat, although it sounded more like someone saying the syllables "a-hem" very low and quickly. She looked up.
Joe stood before her desk, his hands behind his back, coattails flipped back.
"Rhiannon, may I speak to you? It is of the utmost importance to us."
"Well, sure." What was this about?
"As things stand," he said, pacing slightly, "I do not think we can carry on without a major change of circumstances. I sense what you feel about me, and perhaps you have intuited what I have started to feel about you." he paused and turned to her.
She braced herself for the break-up speech.
He approached her slowly, his eyes on her face but not looking into her eyes. He stopped at her feet and knelt before her, like the Prince offering the glass slipper to Cinderella. He drew his hands from behind his back and held out to her a thick red plastic envelope.
"What's this?" she asked, taking it. She turned it over. Imprinting Protocol.
"Rhiannon Jackford, would you imprint me?" He looked into her eyes as he said this.
"Joe, you don't have to do this. I love you as you are." His calm, expectant face fell, then resolved into calm resignation. She took his hand in hers. "Well, all right, but remember what I said before. I'm not gonna let you do anything to me unless we're married. And my mama told me I shouldn't marry a white boy unless it was in front of a preacher."
"You are religious?'
She wagged her head. "Sort of. Don't look sad. I know someone who just might marry the likes of us. I just have to twist his arm a little."
His smile returned. "In which case, I shall be counting the minutes and the seconds until you have attained this."
"But the hard part is getting the state to recognize us as a married couple."
"You are a lawyer and a wise woman; I am certain you shall find the means to charm the bureaucrats."
@--`--
That evening she went to see her cousin Darrell, known in her family as "Cousin Rev".
"I've got a problem," she said. "There's somebody I want to marry."
"Don't tell me: you popped the question to him and scared the poor guy."
"No, he actually did, and he's not the marrying type."
"Really? Not bad work if you ask me."
"It is, especially because he never really 'got' marriage before."
"So how old is he?"
She did the math in her head. "He's about, oh, maybe fifty-seven, fifty-eight."
"Fifty-eight?! He better have some of them rejuvenation implants."
"He's had a lot of good care over the years."
"Does he work? Can he support you?"
"Yes, he's a Mecha designer, does a little art on the side."
"So who is he?"
"Joe Masters."
Darrell almost fell off his chair. "Ree, you don't mean that Mecha, do you?"
"Yes, I do."
"How are you going to get the marriage license?"
"There's a loophole. Some woman married a boulder a couple years back, and believe me, Joe's got a lot more life in him than a boulder does."
"Well, I don't know. I suppose you're the same species, you're just made of different stuff, that's all."
@--`--
"That didn't take long," Astarte said in the design wing coffee nook a few mornings later, as she and Chauncey and Sokhar lingered during their break.
"What didn't take long?" asked Sokhar.
"You haven't heard about our Joe and Rhiannon Jackford?" asked Astarte.
"Well, I'd heard they'd been thick as thieves since the end of season ball. What's going on now, are they breaking up?"
"You wish," Chauncey said.
"The exact opposite: I heard that Joe asked her to imprint him, and she agreed only if he'd marry her."
Sokhar's fingers lost their grip on her paper cup of coffee. It hit the floor and splatted over the rug. She swore under her breath and grabbing some paper towels, got down to blot it before it stained.
As she knelt there, Joe came in with a larger vase than usual, holding several red and white roses. He stepped carefully around her as he went to change the water in the sink, excused himself, then stepped just as carefully around her on his way out.
"Joe as someone's one and only?" she murmured.
"Well, once he got used to it, he and Serin were inseparable; you weren't here, Chaunce, but he used to come up here about once a week to call on Serin. Once in a while he'd come at her lunch break and they'd disappear. It's good he's hitching himself to Rhiannon; she's so levelheaded, she'll keep him in line, no foolishness, no inappropriate stuff."
"Why, what inappropriate stuff did Serin and he do?"
"It wasn't the worst, except everybody outside the locked door of her office was trying not to hear what was coming through the door," Astarte related. "That was the only time Trask Zipes ever had to reprimand her for anything. She never did it again."
"Serin did that? I could see anyone but her doing that."
"This was before your time, Chaunce."
"How much you wanna bet Joe brings out something in Rhiannon she was just holding back?" Chauncey insinuated.
"I don't see that happening."
"I don't wanna see that happening," Sokhar said.
At the risk of being guilty of bothering Joe again, Sokhar passed by his cubicle on the way back to her desk. Fortunately he wasn't there.
He had the tidiest cubicle in the wing, if not in the whole complex, but it didn't have a stiffly ordered feeling to it. The vase of flowers occupied a shelf above the desk, with a few books on design at the other end of the shelf, more for show than for reference. The stylus for the touchtablet lay neatly in its groove. The papers and printouts and manila folders on the desktop lay neatly stacked. At the head of the desk, right below the vase on the shelf stood a picture frame with a colored sketch of Rhiannon.
She heard his light step in the hallway and his light voice conversing with one of the design chiefs. She hurried back to her niche as quickly and quietly as she could.
@--`--
That evening, as he logged out of the system, Joe felt someone come up beside him and take his hand. He turned and looked into Rhiannon's amber eyes.
"Can I talk to you in private?" she asked.
"Of course you may."
She led him up to the flat roof of the complex. They walked up there, circling the glass light of the atrium.
She said nothing for so long, he almost initiated a conversation. But she turned to him and took both his hands in hers.
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"Yes, Joe, I will imprint you."
"On the condition that first I must marry you?"
"Yes."
He could not refuse her when she looked him in the eye. "In that case, I will marry you. Have you found your preacher?"
"I have; now I just have to convince Shohola County to let us have a marriage license."
"You will find a way."
She smiled, her eyelids lowering as she started to look away. He took her chin in his fingertips and tilted her face back to his.
"This time, it is that kind of a kiss," he said, his face just millimeters from hers.
He drew her to him, tight. She yielded to him just that much, this firm, strong woman, and he processed this in appraising her spirit. She clung to him, letting herself go weak for just a moment.
@--`--
She didn't want a big wedding. They arranged a quiet get together in the Zipes' living room. Rhiannon spent more time cutting through the red tape, than she spent looking for a wedding dress.
Darrell still hesitated about performing the ceremony, but Rhiannon insisted. "I ain't getting' wed by no jay-pee!" she teased him over the phone, using her best fake ghetto mama voice. "And I ain't gonna imprint this white-boy fiberhead unless his last name is my last name. Uhn-uh!"
"All right already," Darrell said, giving in.
He agreed wholeheartedly after he met Joe for the first time at the wedding rehearsal. "I've wed a lot of couples, but the two of you together make them look pretty shabby," Darrell declared.
At the Big Moment, she almost choked on her vows and dropped the ring from sheer nerves; but seeing Joe's almost impassively shy calm, as he pledged himself to her and slipped the ring on her finger, she let everything drop back into place.
"By the powers invested in me by the state of East Pennsylvania, I now pronounce you man and wife," Darrell proclaimed. To Joe he added, "You may kiss the bride—lightly now." Joe gave him an innocent look as he turned to Rhiannon. The gathering laughed, but it soon turned to a teasing mass sigh as Joe kissed his bride.
As they headed out down the aisle between the congregation, Joe darted an especially sly wink at Rhiannon and flicked his head to his left. Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" began to play from his music centers, but he flicked it off as soon as they reached the vestibule.
"That better not be a permanent fixture," she said.
"Have no fear, Mrs. Masters; the file was devised to self-delete," he said. "It was Galloway's idea, but I had final approval."
"That's something he would do."
They went by monorail to Rouge City that night. The city had changed in some ways, but it had stayed the same in others. Several nightspots and clubs had changed hands. A few buildings had been torn down and others built in their place. A few places he had found business or had assignations remained unchanged. The garish neon lights still covered every building, and the streets still teemed with people, Orga and Mecha, the buyers and the bought.
They lodged in the Hotel Graceley, a tasteful Art Deco structure amid the more gaudy—and raucous—buildings around it. Rhiannon had the opportunity to sign the register as "Rhiannon Masters (Mrs. J.)", which nearly made her cry, but which gave him another chance to hug her tenderly.
She let the tears flow freely once they had reached the room, once Joe had carried her over the threshold, and once the bellhop had gone. He sat beside her on the bed.
"Those are happy tears?" he asked.
"Yes, yes, they are."
She still let him kiss them away, but she soon realized not all the tears on her face were her own. She kissed his tears, which put a stop to them but helped to start something so wondrous she almost thought it was a dream. Any minute now she might awaken to find herself alone in her narrow bed at home.
Afterwards, she closed her eyes and lifted her eyelids slowly. He still gazed into her eyes, lingering over her. She still clung to him, but she relaxed her grip.
Husband and wife, man and woman…
Man.
@--`--
Next day, they went northeast into New Jersey to a hick town called Haddonfield.
What he recalled as a hick town had been redeveloped into a respectable exurb. Even the streets he once knew had been changed, renamed or rerouted. He couldn't even find the Shangri-La Hotel, which he'd frequented. A Motel 6 had been built on almost the same spot it had occupied; they checked in there.
"That was almost fifty years ago; things change a lot in that amount of time," she said. "I went back to my hometown a year or two ago, to visit the neighborhood I'd grown up in, nice little subdivision with a pond. Well, the pond was still there, only a lot smaller, and the subdivision had been torn down and a megaplex shopping mall built in its place."
"However, that presented not so dramatic a transformation," he said sitting on the foot of the bed, his body hunched, his head bent almost dejectedly. If he had been Orga, she would have offered him a cup of tea from the teamaker in the tiny kitchen alcove. She sat down behind him and put her arms about his torso, winding her legs about his waist. She felt him stiffen.
"Not now, Rhiannon, if I had a carbon-based brain, it would now be aching."
She let him go. "I know something that'll get you in the mood; something I nearly forgot last night." She got up and went to her bag. She took out a large envelope sealed with a thumbprint reader. She unsealed it and opened it; she drew out a red plastic envelope. Her hands started to tremble as she drew out the sheet of simulparchment it held.
His eyes followed her movements; his head came up. His eyes lost their morose look and took on a look of shy interest.
She knelt before him and reached up to his hairline. She felt the tiny switch under the slight widow's peak and pressed it. His eyes locked with hers.
She reached behind his neck and pressed the second, the trigger, which lay where the ganglia knot would have been on an Orga.
"I'm going to read off a few words, you have to repeat them after me," she said.
"As you wish."
"Venus."
"Venus."
"Ovid."
"Ovid."
"Nexus."
"Nexus."
"Tempo."
"Tempo."
"Carmine."
"Carmine."
"Saturnine."
"Saturnine."
"Rhiannon."
"Rhiannon."
"Joe."
"Joe."
"Rhiannon."
"Rhiannon…"
She let go the trigger. She knew the implications of imprinting, the responsibility she bore to him now, the ethics involved, but dang it, she felt terror pass through her veins. He looked no different than he had a few minutes before. She tossed the papers onto the desk, shaking like a leaf.
"Dearest, you need have not fear," she heard him say.
She looked at him. He sat beside her on the floor, his face just a hairsbreadth from hers. "What? What did you just call me?"
"I called you dearest, that is what you are to me."
Her fears dissolved, melted away by once glance from those warming eyes, and one touch of his hand on her wrist. She let him draw her between his spread knees.
@--`--
For all intents and purposes, Room 102 of the Haddonfield Motel 6 might as well have been transformed into the Shangri-La Hotel, to guess from the joyously amorous racket within.
@--`--
If he was good unimprinted, he was excellent post-imprinting. "Show me" was as much her own motto as it was the motto of her home state of Missouri, and she'd been shown what imprinting could do for him, for his kind. This she now knew was not merely the gesture of programming, but of something deeper. Only someone whose emotions worked equally balance by perfect logic could approach her with such fierce tenderness as he had.
They still lay entwined afterward, her arms still clasping him, her head nestled in his neck. She glanced at the both of them; she wasn't much of a spiritual woman, except when it came to ethics, but she couldn't help noticing the icon they formed. Male-female, natural-mechanical, black-white…
Well, off white: his silicon dermis had a naturally tanned look to it, but he could have been an extremely light African-American, except for his obvious Anglo-Saxon/Caucasian facial structure and his dulcet British accent.
She chuckled to herself.
"Has something amused you?" he asked.
"I'm just looking at how light you look next to me and I got to thinking, if this were two-hundred fifty years ago, this would so not be happening: a white Englishman in love with and married to a black girl."
"Two-hundred fifty years ago, my kind were being predicted as metallic monstrosities which clanked as they moved."
"Well, you don't clank, but you hum all the time.'
"I do?"
"All that's beside the point. I mean, we're different races—that is if you were a flesh and blood human."
"I have never seen us so. I have always seen you as woman and Orga."
"I guess then you're color blind."
"My sight receptors are set at unlimited color range."
"No, not that sort. I mean, oh, you know the way people treat other people who are different."
"Remember that I have endured this treatment."
"I mean, some people can't see another person for their skin color. You don't do that."
He looked at her intent. His eyes went blank with processing, then they resumed their expression. "I understand. Would that they could share this talent."
@--`--
Later that evening, they went out for a walk; Joe still tried to find some relic of the past he recalled, but to little avail. She'd never seen such dejection on his face before, except the day Jane had to be put down. She hoped it didn't trigger his tear ducts.
They headed back to the hotel. She put a comforting arm about his back.
A cruiser pulled up alongside them; a window buzzed down.
"Hey, lookit this!" an adolescent voice in the cruiser yelled. A sixteen-year-old kid stuck his shaggy head out. "A niggress and a fiberhead!"
Someone in the cruiser hurled a bottle at them. Joe shielded Rhiannon with himself; the bottle struck his shoulder a glancing blow. He let out a scream of pain so high-pitched it barely seemed possible to have come from a manly set of lungs—er, a manly voice synthesizer. The cruiser sped off, the occupants laughing like apes.
They went back a little quicker than they had headed out. Once they reached the safety of the hotel room, Joe took off his shirt and unsealed his shoulder joint. With the aid of a couple mirrors, he set to work tightening a few conductors knocked awry, nothing major. She tried not to stare the way she had before, when he'd had the tear ducts installed. She made her face look curiously intent, so as not to offend him.
He resealed the joint and pulled on his shirt. A smirk of derision passed over his face. "One thing has not changed in this town," he said at length.
"What's that?" she asked. She knew the answer, but she wanted to help him vent.
"The inhabitants still hate my kind."
"We'll work on that together."
To be continued…
Afterword:
I may be starting a real job within a week or two, so I'll try to get as many chapters of this and of "One of Those in Our Midst!" out as I possibly can between now and then, to tide you over until my schedule settles. A few words of things to come: watch for an unusual cameo in the next chapter
Literary Easter Eggs:
"Alex Hilliard"—The last name refers to the classical all male a capella group known as the Hilliard Ensemble, while the robot himself refers to an eighteenth century German automaton which could play the spinet, an early form of the piano. The inventor's secret has since been lost, but he also designed other automatons that could play the flute and the guitar, a "robot" arm that could draw landscapes and plane figures, even a "robo-duck" that swam, quacked and ate corn.
"Two courses of action"—I must have been thinking of John Nash's famous principles of governing dynamics; I was listening to the soundtrack of A Beautiful Mind while I drafted this.
"It is not that kind of a kiss."—Another Spielberg crossover. I lifted this moment from Schindler's List, when Schindler kisses the Commandant's Jewish housemaid out of compassion.
The woman marrying a boulder—I've heard an urban legend to this effect, plus there was a genuine case of someone trying to get a marriage license so they could "marry"…a horse.