Where Dreams are Born
by Holly Maguire
Author's Note:
I dedicate this chapter to Jude Law, especially since there is a lot of Joe in this part. I just heard the sad news about how badly his wife is treating him, so if you're reading this, Jude, I just want you to know I'm behind you all the way, whatever happens.
* * * * * *
Hobby led David down another corridor to another lad where the rest of the team had assembled. As they entered the room, David looked up at the throng of people, all looking at him and talking amongst themselves in soft but exceited voices. He remembered Mommy's scared words before she had run back to her car: "Stay away from where there are lots of people." These people didn't look dangerous. They smiled and clapped as Dr. Hobby led him into the middle of the room. They seemed very happyto see him.
A lady in a long dark blue dress with very dark skin and long curly black hair came up to hims and knelt down beside him.
"Hello, David," she said in a gentle voice, deeper than Mommy's, but just as nice. "Are you all right?"
She wore blue, so for a moment, David wondered if she might be the Blue Fairy. No, the Blue Fairy had blue eyes and hair as well.
"You're not here, you're not the Blue Fairy," he said, feeling that strange slowing inside him.
"No, my name is Grace. I'm a robopsychologist," she said. She added, "I work with Dr. Hobby."
"Can you make me into a real, live boy?" David asked.
"I can't make you real, but I can help you learn to be happy the way you are," Grace said.
Dr. Hobby was speaking to the rest of the people in the room. Grace helped David sit on a low table in the middle of the room, where the light shone on him from a large, long window. He didn't understand the things Dr. Hobby was saying, but it sounded very important. The people had moved their chairs a little closer, listening very curiously.
When he had finished talking, Dr. Hobby turned back to David, putting a hand on his shoulder. "David, I want you to tell us everything that happened, everything you remember."
"Where do you want me to start?" David asked.
"Start at the beginning, start with the earliest things you remember from when you went to live with the Swintons, with Henry and Monica."
David sat quiet for a moment. He remembered back to that afternoon. It seemed so long ago, and yet it seemed to have happened only that morning.
He told them about Henry letting him into the house, about Monica being scared at first. He told them about that first day, following her about as she cleaned and did laundry. He told them about the first time he saw her smile, after he laughed over how funny she looked at the dinner table with a strand of pasta hanging from the corner of her mouth. That strange moment when she touched his neck and said some strange words... and then afterward, he knew who Monica really was: she was Mommy, so bright in his world.
He told them about her playing with him and showing him how to help her around the house, doing laundry and making her coffee, just the way she liked it, how she read to him and tucked him into bed at night, how she gave him Teddy, who was like a real creature, but strange.
Then he told about the day Martin came home, and how she had him help her give Martin his medicine, how Martin slowly got better and grew strong enough to play with him, even though he didn't play very nicely. He told them how Mommy read them that wonderful book, "Pinnocchio", about a little wooden puppet who met the Blue Fairy and how she turned him into a real boy.
He told them how that made him want to be real, like Henry and Martin and Mommy, so she would love him the same way she loved Martin, and how he tried to do the kind of things real people did. He told them how Martin showed him what eating was, and how he hinself tried eating, but it only made his face get all hot and soft. He told them how Martin promised he would tell Mommy that he loved him (David) if he would sneak into Mommy's room in the middle of the night and cut a piece of her hair. But somehow he hurt Mommy and then Henry had scared him.
He told them about the party for Martin a few days later, by the pool, how one of Martin's friends had poked at him arm with a knife-thing. He didn't want to get hurt like Mommy, so he had run behind Martin to hide, but somehow they had both fallen into the water.
He told them how the next day, Mommy and he went for a drive in the country. They had stopped in a forest somewhere, with lots of shade and big trees. Then he felt that strange slowing again as he told how Mommy had said she had to leave him there alone, with Teddy, but she wouldn't tell him why.
He watched the faces of the people around him. They listened very closely, as if what he had to say was almost more important than what Dr. Hobby had to say. Except the lady named Grace. He didn't see her in the group, but maybe she had to go do something important.
* * * * * *
Grace Leveris headed for the neuronal feedback analysis lab, her feet almost refusing the commands from her brain.
As she entered the lab, the analysis team, six men, were setting up their equipment, adjusting a restraint chair to its smallest size, setting up cubereaders and other instruments on tables around it. The readouts would feed into a console with a bank of monitors at the head of the room, behind which sat a short, lean man with thinning reddish-brown hair, who sat watching the screens of the monitors with narrowed grey-green eyes.
As she approached the console, the small man looked up at her, eyes still narrowed.
He leaned back in his chair. "And so ze leetle lost mechanique 'as come 'ome?" he asked.
"Yes, Hobby and the others are talking with him, with David," she said, though her voice sounded hollow, unlike her own. She hated having to bring any Mecha in to the analysis lab when Meroveque was overseeing the run.
Meroveque linked his long fingers behind his head and put his feet up on the edge of the desk. "And zen you must lead zis lamb in to the shearers." He shrugged one shoulder in a lazy, Gallic gesture. "C'est la vie."
She nailed their analyist with a glare. "I know exactly what you're going to do with him." She couldn't bring herself to name it.
"It is but a simple procedure," he said, calmly. "Zhust ze next stazhe of ze ex-periment."
She wasn't sure what angered her more, Meroveque's detachment toward the procedure or his condescending attitude toward her. "He's a child. He shouldn't have to go through with this: it's vivisection."
"'ow can it be zat when ze subzhect is not even alive?" he said, leaning forward in his chair and looking her in the eye. "And 'ow else are we to study ze ef-fects of eemprinting, heeennh?"
"There has to be another way without sacrificing a little boy in the name of science."
Meroveque made a rude noise through his pursed lips. "You make science sound as eef eet were some pagan god."
"It is if you kill a little boy to study how his brain works," she said.
"Zat child ees, eef you recall, un humane mechanique."
She looked Meroveque in the eye. "Monica Swinton abandoned him out of fear. I'd do something similar if my little girl were threatened that way. If you ever become a father, Lambert Meroveque, you'd feel the same way if your child were in the same place. David should be allowed to go home to his family."
Meroveque's cold eyes remained unmoved and the sardonic smirk did not untwist from his mouth. "You forget, Madame, zat as a scientist, you 'ave a duty to zis corpor-ation."
"And I also have, as a human being, a duty to my fellow man." Before Meroveque could come back with some sneering retort, she turned and went out into the hallway.
She almost collided with a tall figure in gleaming black, carrying a Teddy Supertoy on his arm. Oh yes, the lover-Mecha.
"You seem to be in a hurry, milady," the Mecha replied, stepping aside for her with an easy grace.
She tried not smile in reply to the sweetly passionate curve of the Mecha's cupid's-bow mouth. "I'm afraid I am," she admitted.
"And what duty calls you?" he asked.
She looked back to the closed double doors of the neural analysis lab. "Come with me," she said, taking him by the arm and leading him back to the lab where Hobby and the rest of the team were listening to David's story.
"Where are we going?" the lover-Mecha asked.
"We're going to get David," she said.
* * * * * *
"And then you came in and found me..."David said, looking up at Dr. Hobby, as he stood by the table.
"Quite a journey for a little guy," said someone in the room. The people murmured in agreement.
David looked around. "Where are Teddy and Joe?" he asked.
Hobby put his hand on David's shoulder again. "They're in another room, waiting for you."
"Can I please go and see them?" David asked.
A strange look passed over Dr. Hobby's face, as if he were hurt somehow, but the look passed away.
"You can see them, but first we have to check and see if you're all right inside," Dr. Hobby said.
Maybe that was why Dr. Hobby looked sad. "Will it hurt?" David asked.
Dr. Hobby helped him off the table. "It might at first, but then it will be like being asleep for a long time."
"Like Martin went to sleep when he was sick and the doctors were trying to help him get better?" David asked.
Hobby took his hand and started to lead him toward the door. He paused and looked down at David. "Yes, it will be like that. A friend of mine on the team, Mr. Meroveque, will take a look inside your head while you're asleep, to see if everything is all right in there."
The doors opened from outside and Grace came in. Her face looked a little sad and a little scared.
"Do they have everything ready?" Dr. Hobby asked Grace.
"Yes... Meroveque has everything set up," she replied. Turning to David, she asked, "Do you want me to take you to where they'll check you up?"
David released Dr. Hobby's hand and took Grace's instead. "Yes, Grace."
Grace looked up into Hobby's face, hoping her eyes looked steady. "Let me take him there. It may be easier for him if a woman takes him."
Hobby nodded. "Whatever you think will be the best for him."
She led David down the hallway, walking a little quick for him, but Joe had been a quick walker too.
They turned a corner of the hallway. Joe stood there, with Teddy on his arm. He handed the bear down to David.
"He was looking for you, David," Joe said. "Have you found her? Have you found the Blue Fairy?" As he said this, he looked at Grace with that odd kind of "happy" look, like the look Henry had given Mommy when she had dressed pretty and smelled so nice.
Grace looked back down the hallway, as if she were afraid something was coming. "We haven't got much time," she said. "I can't explain it, but you both have to get out of here."
Joe cocked his head. "Are we in bad trouble?"
"No... but you have get David out of here," she paused and a tremor passed through her shoulders. "It isn't safe for him." She took them both by the arm and led them down a staircase to a place were there were a lot of amphibicopters and things like that. She led them up to a small copter, about half the size of the one they'd escaped from Rouge City in. David climbed into the cockpit to examine it.
"Joe, can you fly this?" she asked.
Joe scanned the instrument panel, then looked up at her. "It is simpler than the one in which we fled here."
"Good." She took a key from a ring in her pocket and pressed it into Joe's hand. "This is my personal copter: I'm giving it to you. I want you to take it and use it to take David far away from here. Go inland, fly up to Canada. Fly underwater and stay down there for a day or two. Just get David away from here."
Joe took the key. He smiled at Grace. "If some bad trouble lies in wait for David and I, and if you would help us to escape, such generous bravery should not go unrewarded."
She glanced back up the stairs. "What did you have in mind?" she asked.
"I would kiss you, but only if you so desire," Joe said.
Grace smiled, her eyes crinkling up at the corners. "Well, one kiss won't take too long." Joe had started to moved closer. "But just one."
Joe smiled at her, lowering his eyelids almost conspiratorially. "Then I shall make it worth its singularity," he said, putting one hand on her waist, the other on her shoulder.
* * * * * *
Hobby entered the neuro-analysis lab. The techs sat idle, talking among themselves, one man reading a newspaper and cracking jokes over the headlines. Behind his console, Meroveque sat back, hands linked behind his head, whistling a tediously jaunty French folk tune through a gap in his teeth, a sure sign he was bored.
"Where is David?" Hobby asked.
Mervoque stopped whistling. "I was about to go and ask you where 'e 'ad gone."
Hobby glanced toward the door. "Grace didn't bring him here?"
"Non, she deed not."
Alarms went off in Hobby's head. "Where could she be?" he asked of no one in particular.
Mervoque shrugged, a wide gesture, arms spread, palms up. "The last time I 'ad zeen 'er, she was wondering what became off ze mechanique amoureau. I zink she went in search off 'eem. I told 'er zat 'e was in your library."
"And David wanted to see Joe," Hobby said, completing the equation. "Thanks, Meroveque."
When Hobby had gone, Meroveque darted a surreptitious glance out the window, watching for an amphibicopter. Altruism was such an expensive virtue, but he hoped he bought Grace some time...
* * * * * *
David tried not to stare at Joe and Grace. He knew what they were doing was called kissing: he'd seen Mommy and Henry doing it, but not quite as long as this. Teddy stood up on David's lap, reached out and tugged at the bottom of Joe's long coat.
Grace let go of Joe. "No more of that, not in front of David." She looked up the stairs again. Fear showed in her eyes as she looked back. "You better run, they'll be down here any minute."
Joe took her hand in both of his and kissed the back of it, quickly. "Thank you," he said, and climbed into the cockpit.
Grace hurried back from the copter as Joe started it up. "You're welcome."
Joe hit the switch to close the canopy.
"Now where can we go?" David said, feeling that cold, fast thing called 'scared".
"We'll go where it will be hard for them to look for us," Joe said. "Under the water."
As Joe initiated take-off and they moved out of the landing shelter, a group of men in white coveralls, followed by Dr. Hobby and a few others came running down the stairs. Grace came running forward, yelling like she didn't want them to leave, but they had already taken off and were heading out over the water.
They flew close to the building, behind the jets of water gushing from the lions' mouths and eyes. Just skimming the water, they flew into the shadow of another building. Joe glanced back, then hit a switch marked "submerge".
The copter bounced as the water broke under them. The water lapped quickly up the sides of the plexiglas bubble that closed them in.
"Are we safe?" David asked.
Joe glanced up. The light grew dimmer as they sank deeper. "We are now."
The light seemed to turn a shadowy shade of blue around them. They moved along cracked streets, keeping to the shadows of the ruinous buildings that heaved up from the ocean floor.
"What was that you and Grace were doing?" David asked.
"That? *That*, David, was what is called kissing," Joe replied, smiling gently at David's innocence.
"But what is it for?"
"It is what you do if you love someone, to be affectionate, to be gracious."
David didn't quite understand all of Joe's words, but he thought he knew what his friend meant. He set Teddy aside and climbed up into Joe's lap. Putting his arms around the older Mecha's neck, heput his face against Joe's and kissed him.
Joe took one hand off the controls and gently put David back in his seat. "I meant, it is what men and women do if they love each other," Joe added, gently. David's brow crinkled with confusion. "You will understand it someday, when you become a real boy and you've grown up."
David's face brightened at the thought that the two of them were going to find the Blue Fairy, together.
"But first we have to find where the Blue Fairy lives," David said.
"Yes! No time to be lost; to fulfill the quest, we must hold fast to it."
As they roved the city streets, going further toward the ancient shoreline, Joe kept glancing at the little one at his side, far forward in his seat, Teddy in his lap, gazing ahead, watching the play of light and shadow in the silver-blue depths. Joe found he wanted only for David's happiness; that much he had been built for, albeit for a much less innocent form of happiness.
But at the same time, he sensed a greyness in his awareness, something he had never felt before, as if the prospect of David's becoming "real" and becoming like the rest of Orga-kind caused something to slow in his processor. It was such a new sensation that he almost thought he was malfunctioning. No matter: he had chosen to make David's goal his own and he would see him through it, come what may.
For that matter, when David was grown, he would need to know about that *other* half of the Orga equation called woman. This little one had so much to learn, Joe wondered if he knew enough to fully train him.
Too bad that David's mommy had failed to tell the little one about the world, but lucky for him that theier paths had crossed. He would take it upon himself to guide David, wherever the journey took them.
There was a word for the new role he had taken on, something his kind had not been built for, but which David had somehow revealed to him. That word he thought -- having heard it infrequently -- was "father".
by Holly Maguire
Author's Note:
I dedicate this chapter to Jude Law, especially since there is a lot of Joe in this part. I just heard the sad news about how badly his wife is treating him, so if you're reading this, Jude, I just want you to know I'm behind you all the way, whatever happens.
* * * * * *
Hobby led David down another corridor to another lad where the rest of the team had assembled. As they entered the room, David looked up at the throng of people, all looking at him and talking amongst themselves in soft but exceited voices. He remembered Mommy's scared words before she had run back to her car: "Stay away from where there are lots of people." These people didn't look dangerous. They smiled and clapped as Dr. Hobby led him into the middle of the room. They seemed very happyto see him.
A lady in a long dark blue dress with very dark skin and long curly black hair came up to hims and knelt down beside him.
"Hello, David," she said in a gentle voice, deeper than Mommy's, but just as nice. "Are you all right?"
She wore blue, so for a moment, David wondered if she might be the Blue Fairy. No, the Blue Fairy had blue eyes and hair as well.
"You're not here, you're not the Blue Fairy," he said, feeling that strange slowing inside him.
"No, my name is Grace. I'm a robopsychologist," she said. She added, "I work with Dr. Hobby."
"Can you make me into a real, live boy?" David asked.
"I can't make you real, but I can help you learn to be happy the way you are," Grace said.
Dr. Hobby was speaking to the rest of the people in the room. Grace helped David sit on a low table in the middle of the room, where the light shone on him from a large, long window. He didn't understand the things Dr. Hobby was saying, but it sounded very important. The people had moved their chairs a little closer, listening very curiously.
When he had finished talking, Dr. Hobby turned back to David, putting a hand on his shoulder. "David, I want you to tell us everything that happened, everything you remember."
"Where do you want me to start?" David asked.
"Start at the beginning, start with the earliest things you remember from when you went to live with the Swintons, with Henry and Monica."
David sat quiet for a moment. He remembered back to that afternoon. It seemed so long ago, and yet it seemed to have happened only that morning.
He told them about Henry letting him into the house, about Monica being scared at first. He told them about that first day, following her about as she cleaned and did laundry. He told them about the first time he saw her smile, after he laughed over how funny she looked at the dinner table with a strand of pasta hanging from the corner of her mouth. That strange moment when she touched his neck and said some strange words... and then afterward, he knew who Monica really was: she was Mommy, so bright in his world.
He told them about her playing with him and showing him how to help her around the house, doing laundry and making her coffee, just the way she liked it, how she read to him and tucked him into bed at night, how she gave him Teddy, who was like a real creature, but strange.
Then he told about the day Martin came home, and how she had him help her give Martin his medicine, how Martin slowly got better and grew strong enough to play with him, even though he didn't play very nicely. He told them how Mommy read them that wonderful book, "Pinnocchio", about a little wooden puppet who met the Blue Fairy and how she turned him into a real boy.
He told them how that made him want to be real, like Henry and Martin and Mommy, so she would love him the same way she loved Martin, and how he tried to do the kind of things real people did. He told them how Martin showed him what eating was, and how he hinself tried eating, but it only made his face get all hot and soft. He told them how Martin promised he would tell Mommy that he loved him (David) if he would sneak into Mommy's room in the middle of the night and cut a piece of her hair. But somehow he hurt Mommy and then Henry had scared him.
He told them about the party for Martin a few days later, by the pool, how one of Martin's friends had poked at him arm with a knife-thing. He didn't want to get hurt like Mommy, so he had run behind Martin to hide, but somehow they had both fallen into the water.
He told them how the next day, Mommy and he went for a drive in the country. They had stopped in a forest somewhere, with lots of shade and big trees. Then he felt that strange slowing again as he told how Mommy had said she had to leave him there alone, with Teddy, but she wouldn't tell him why.
He watched the faces of the people around him. They listened very closely, as if what he had to say was almost more important than what Dr. Hobby had to say. Except the lady named Grace. He didn't see her in the group, but maybe she had to go do something important.
* * * * * *
Grace Leveris headed for the neuronal feedback analysis lab, her feet almost refusing the commands from her brain.
As she entered the lab, the analysis team, six men, were setting up their equipment, adjusting a restraint chair to its smallest size, setting up cubereaders and other instruments on tables around it. The readouts would feed into a console with a bank of monitors at the head of the room, behind which sat a short, lean man with thinning reddish-brown hair, who sat watching the screens of the monitors with narrowed grey-green eyes.
As she approached the console, the small man looked up at her, eyes still narrowed.
He leaned back in his chair. "And so ze leetle lost mechanique 'as come 'ome?" he asked.
"Yes, Hobby and the others are talking with him, with David," she said, though her voice sounded hollow, unlike her own. She hated having to bring any Mecha in to the analysis lab when Meroveque was overseeing the run.
Meroveque linked his long fingers behind his head and put his feet up on the edge of the desk. "And zen you must lead zis lamb in to the shearers." He shrugged one shoulder in a lazy, Gallic gesture. "C'est la vie."
She nailed their analyist with a glare. "I know exactly what you're going to do with him." She couldn't bring herself to name it.
"It is but a simple procedure," he said, calmly. "Zhust ze next stazhe of ze ex-periment."
She wasn't sure what angered her more, Meroveque's detachment toward the procedure or his condescending attitude toward her. "He's a child. He shouldn't have to go through with this: it's vivisection."
"'ow can it be zat when ze subzhect is not even alive?" he said, leaning forward in his chair and looking her in the eye. "And 'ow else are we to study ze ef-fects of eemprinting, heeennh?"
"There has to be another way without sacrificing a little boy in the name of science."
Meroveque made a rude noise through his pursed lips. "You make science sound as eef eet were some pagan god."
"It is if you kill a little boy to study how his brain works," she said.
"Zat child ees, eef you recall, un humane mechanique."
She looked Meroveque in the eye. "Monica Swinton abandoned him out of fear. I'd do something similar if my little girl were threatened that way. If you ever become a father, Lambert Meroveque, you'd feel the same way if your child were in the same place. David should be allowed to go home to his family."
Meroveque's cold eyes remained unmoved and the sardonic smirk did not untwist from his mouth. "You forget, Madame, zat as a scientist, you 'ave a duty to zis corpor-ation."
"And I also have, as a human being, a duty to my fellow man." Before Meroveque could come back with some sneering retort, she turned and went out into the hallway.
She almost collided with a tall figure in gleaming black, carrying a Teddy Supertoy on his arm. Oh yes, the lover-Mecha.
"You seem to be in a hurry, milady," the Mecha replied, stepping aside for her with an easy grace.
She tried not smile in reply to the sweetly passionate curve of the Mecha's cupid's-bow mouth. "I'm afraid I am," she admitted.
"And what duty calls you?" he asked.
She looked back to the closed double doors of the neural analysis lab. "Come with me," she said, taking him by the arm and leading him back to the lab where Hobby and the rest of the team were listening to David's story.
"Where are we going?" the lover-Mecha asked.
"We're going to get David," she said.
* * * * * *
"And then you came in and found me..."David said, looking up at Dr. Hobby, as he stood by the table.
"Quite a journey for a little guy," said someone in the room. The people murmured in agreement.
David looked around. "Where are Teddy and Joe?" he asked.
Hobby put his hand on David's shoulder again. "They're in another room, waiting for you."
"Can I please go and see them?" David asked.
A strange look passed over Dr. Hobby's face, as if he were hurt somehow, but the look passed away.
"You can see them, but first we have to check and see if you're all right inside," Dr. Hobby said.
Maybe that was why Dr. Hobby looked sad. "Will it hurt?" David asked.
Dr. Hobby helped him off the table. "It might at first, but then it will be like being asleep for a long time."
"Like Martin went to sleep when he was sick and the doctors were trying to help him get better?" David asked.
Hobby took his hand and started to lead him toward the door. He paused and looked down at David. "Yes, it will be like that. A friend of mine on the team, Mr. Meroveque, will take a look inside your head while you're asleep, to see if everything is all right in there."
The doors opened from outside and Grace came in. Her face looked a little sad and a little scared.
"Do they have everything ready?" Dr. Hobby asked Grace.
"Yes... Meroveque has everything set up," she replied. Turning to David, she asked, "Do you want me to take you to where they'll check you up?"
David released Dr. Hobby's hand and took Grace's instead. "Yes, Grace."
Grace looked up into Hobby's face, hoping her eyes looked steady. "Let me take him there. It may be easier for him if a woman takes him."
Hobby nodded. "Whatever you think will be the best for him."
She led David down the hallway, walking a little quick for him, but Joe had been a quick walker too.
They turned a corner of the hallway. Joe stood there, with Teddy on his arm. He handed the bear down to David.
"He was looking for you, David," Joe said. "Have you found her? Have you found the Blue Fairy?" As he said this, he looked at Grace with that odd kind of "happy" look, like the look Henry had given Mommy when she had dressed pretty and smelled so nice.
Grace looked back down the hallway, as if she were afraid something was coming. "We haven't got much time," she said. "I can't explain it, but you both have to get out of here."
Joe cocked his head. "Are we in bad trouble?"
"No... but you have get David out of here," she paused and a tremor passed through her shoulders. "It isn't safe for him." She took them both by the arm and led them down a staircase to a place were there were a lot of amphibicopters and things like that. She led them up to a small copter, about half the size of the one they'd escaped from Rouge City in. David climbed into the cockpit to examine it.
"Joe, can you fly this?" she asked.
Joe scanned the instrument panel, then looked up at her. "It is simpler than the one in which we fled here."
"Good." She took a key from a ring in her pocket and pressed it into Joe's hand. "This is my personal copter: I'm giving it to you. I want you to take it and use it to take David far away from here. Go inland, fly up to Canada. Fly underwater and stay down there for a day or two. Just get David away from here."
Joe took the key. He smiled at Grace. "If some bad trouble lies in wait for David and I, and if you would help us to escape, such generous bravery should not go unrewarded."
She glanced back up the stairs. "What did you have in mind?" she asked.
"I would kiss you, but only if you so desire," Joe said.
Grace smiled, her eyes crinkling up at the corners. "Well, one kiss won't take too long." Joe had started to moved closer. "But just one."
Joe smiled at her, lowering his eyelids almost conspiratorially. "Then I shall make it worth its singularity," he said, putting one hand on her waist, the other on her shoulder.
* * * * * *
Hobby entered the neuro-analysis lab. The techs sat idle, talking among themselves, one man reading a newspaper and cracking jokes over the headlines. Behind his console, Meroveque sat back, hands linked behind his head, whistling a tediously jaunty French folk tune through a gap in his teeth, a sure sign he was bored.
"Where is David?" Hobby asked.
Mervoque stopped whistling. "I was about to go and ask you where 'e 'ad gone."
Hobby glanced toward the door. "Grace didn't bring him here?"
"Non, she deed not."
Alarms went off in Hobby's head. "Where could she be?" he asked of no one in particular.
Mervoque shrugged, a wide gesture, arms spread, palms up. "The last time I 'ad zeen 'er, she was wondering what became off ze mechanique amoureau. I zink she went in search off 'eem. I told 'er zat 'e was in your library."
"And David wanted to see Joe," Hobby said, completing the equation. "Thanks, Meroveque."
When Hobby had gone, Meroveque darted a surreptitious glance out the window, watching for an amphibicopter. Altruism was such an expensive virtue, but he hoped he bought Grace some time...
* * * * * *
David tried not to stare at Joe and Grace. He knew what they were doing was called kissing: he'd seen Mommy and Henry doing it, but not quite as long as this. Teddy stood up on David's lap, reached out and tugged at the bottom of Joe's long coat.
Grace let go of Joe. "No more of that, not in front of David." She looked up the stairs again. Fear showed in her eyes as she looked back. "You better run, they'll be down here any minute."
Joe took her hand in both of his and kissed the back of it, quickly. "Thank you," he said, and climbed into the cockpit.
Grace hurried back from the copter as Joe started it up. "You're welcome."
Joe hit the switch to close the canopy.
"Now where can we go?" David said, feeling that cold, fast thing called 'scared".
"We'll go where it will be hard for them to look for us," Joe said. "Under the water."
As Joe initiated take-off and they moved out of the landing shelter, a group of men in white coveralls, followed by Dr. Hobby and a few others came running down the stairs. Grace came running forward, yelling like she didn't want them to leave, but they had already taken off and were heading out over the water.
They flew close to the building, behind the jets of water gushing from the lions' mouths and eyes. Just skimming the water, they flew into the shadow of another building. Joe glanced back, then hit a switch marked "submerge".
The copter bounced as the water broke under them. The water lapped quickly up the sides of the plexiglas bubble that closed them in.
"Are we safe?" David asked.
Joe glanced up. The light grew dimmer as they sank deeper. "We are now."
The light seemed to turn a shadowy shade of blue around them. They moved along cracked streets, keeping to the shadows of the ruinous buildings that heaved up from the ocean floor.
"What was that you and Grace were doing?" David asked.
"That? *That*, David, was what is called kissing," Joe replied, smiling gently at David's innocence.
"But what is it for?"
"It is what you do if you love someone, to be affectionate, to be gracious."
David didn't quite understand all of Joe's words, but he thought he knew what his friend meant. He set Teddy aside and climbed up into Joe's lap. Putting his arms around the older Mecha's neck, heput his face against Joe's and kissed him.
Joe took one hand off the controls and gently put David back in his seat. "I meant, it is what men and women do if they love each other," Joe added, gently. David's brow crinkled with confusion. "You will understand it someday, when you become a real boy and you've grown up."
David's face brightened at the thought that the two of them were going to find the Blue Fairy, together.
"But first we have to find where the Blue Fairy lives," David said.
"Yes! No time to be lost; to fulfill the quest, we must hold fast to it."
As they roved the city streets, going further toward the ancient shoreline, Joe kept glancing at the little one at his side, far forward in his seat, Teddy in his lap, gazing ahead, watching the play of light and shadow in the silver-blue depths. Joe found he wanted only for David's happiness; that much he had been built for, albeit for a much less innocent form of happiness.
But at the same time, he sensed a greyness in his awareness, something he had never felt before, as if the prospect of David's becoming "real" and becoming like the rest of Orga-kind caused something to slow in his processor. It was such a new sensation that he almost thought he was malfunctioning. No matter: he had chosen to make David's goal his own and he would see him through it, come what may.
For that matter, when David was grown, he would need to know about that *other* half of the Orga equation called woman. This little one had so much to learn, Joe wondered if he knew enough to fully train him.
Too bad that David's mommy had failed to tell the little one about the world, but lucky for him that theier paths had crossed. He would take it upon himself to guide David, wherever the journey took them.
There was a word for the new role he had taken on, something his kind had not been built for, but which David had somehow revealed to him. That word he thought -- having heard it infrequently -- was "father".