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“I don’t care who or what you are, nobody touches me. ”
He thinks for a moment, then says, in all seriousness, “Would you like to touch me then? You can feel all the seams. You can see what makes me me. ”
She doesn’t even dignify that with a response. “Do you think the kids who were unwound to be a part of you wanted it?”
“If they were tithes, they did,” Cam says, “and some of them were. As for the other ones, they had no choice . . . any more than I had a choice in being made. ”
And for a moment, within the fury she feels toward the people who created him, Risa realizes that Cam, as much as all the kids who were unwound to make him, is a victim too.
“Why are you here?” she asks him.
“I have lots of answers to that one,” Cam says proudly. “ ‘The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. ’ Carl Jung. ”
Risa sighs, exasperated. “No—why are you here, in this place, talking to me? I’m sure Proactive Citizenry has more important things for their beta test to do than talk to me. ”
“Where the heart is,” he says. “Uh—I mean—I’m here because this is my home. But I’m also here because I want to be. ”
He smiles at her, and she hates the fact that his smile is sincere. She has to keep reminding herself that it’s not his smile at all. He’s just wearing the flesh of others, and if it was all peeled away, there’d be nothing in the center. He is little more than a cruel trick.
“So did your brain cells come preprogrammed? A head full of ganglia implants from the best and the brightest?”
“Not all of them,” Cam says quietly. “Why do you keep holding me responsible for the things I had no control over? I am what I am. ”
“Spoken like a true god. ”
“Actually,” he says, returning a little bit of her attitude, “God said, ‘I am that I am,’ if you’re going by the King James version. ”
“Don’t tell me—you came programmed with the entire Bible. ”
“In three languages,” Cam says. “Again, not my fault, it’s just there. ”
Risa has to laugh at the audacity of his creators—did it occur to them that filling him with biblical knowledge while playing God was the ultimate hubris?
“And anyway, it ain’t like I can regurgitate it verbatim, I just got a workin’ knowledge of a whole lotta stuff. ”
She looks at him, wondering whether the sudden change in speech pattern from advanced-placement to country-casual is a joke, but she can tell it’s not. She supposes as connections spark through the various and sundry bits of his brain, he kicks out all kinds of talk.
“May I ask you what made you change your mind?” he asks. “Why did you agree to the operation?”
Risa looks away. “I’m tired,” she tells him, even though she’s not, and shifts to face away from him. Even this action of rolling sideways in her bed was something she could not easily accomplish before the operation.
When it becomes clear that she’s not going to answer him, he asks, “May I come see you again?”
She keeps her back to him. “No matter what I say, you’ll come anyway, so why bother asking?”
“Well,” he says as he leaves, “it would be nice to have permission. ”
She lies there in that position for a long time, trying not to give a foothold to any of the thoughts swimming through her mind. Finally she dozes off. This is the first night she dreams of the avalanche.
- - -
Roberta is off somewhere taking care of business on the day Risa first walks—and only a week after waking up, instead of two. It’s a day that brings to a head all her conflicted emotions. She wants this to be a personal moment, not something shared, but as usual, Cam comes uninvited.
“Milestone! This is a momentous occasion,” he tells her cheerily. “It should be witnessed by a friend. ”
She throws him an icy gaze, and he does a verbal backpedal.
“Aaaand since no friends are present, I’ll have to do. ”
A male nurse who looks more like a steroid-pumped boeuf grabs Risa’s upper arm and helps her swing her legs off the bed. It’s an unearthly sensation to actually feel them cantilevered out over the floor. She bends her knees shakily until she feels the tips of her toes touch the wooden floor.
“They should have a rug on the floor,” Cam tells Nurse Beefcake. “To make it softer for her. ”
“Rugs slip,” Nurse Beefcake replies.
With the nurse holding her on one side, and Cam on the other, she rises to her feet. The first step is the hardest. It’s like dragging her foot through mud, but the second step comes with remarkable ease.
“Atta girl!” says the nurse, like he’s talking to a baby taking her first step—and in a sense she is. She has no balance whatsoever, and her knees feel like they’ll give out at any moment, but they don’t.
“Keep going,” Cam says. “You’re doing great!” By the fifth step, she can’t hold back the visceral joy she’s been suppressing. A smile fills her face. She becomes short of breath and giggles giddily at the simple joy of walking.
“That’s it,” says Cam. “You’re doing it! You’re whole again, Risa! You have a right to enjoy it!”
And although she doesn’t believe that’s true, she can’t fight the moment. “The window!” she says. “I want to look out the window. ”
As they turn slightly to angle toward the window, Nurse Beefcake tentatively lets go, and now it’s just Risa with her arm around Cam’s shoulder and his arm around her waist—and she wants to be furious that she wound up stuck in this position with him, but that feeling is overridden by giddy sensory overload from her feet, her ankles, her shins, her thighs; parts of her body that just a few short days ago felt nothing at all.
45 - Cam
For Cam this is nothing short of heaven. She’s holding him. Relying on him. He convinces himself that this is the moment that all the barriers will fall. He’s convinced she will turn to him and kiss him even before they reach the window.
She grips his neck tightly for support. Her hold on him pinches the seam there, but it’s a good feeling. He imagines her putting pressure on all his seams, making them ache. No pain could ever feel so good.
They reach the window. No kiss, but she hasn’t let go of him either. She can’t or she’ll fall, but Cam wants to believe she’d hold him anyway.
The sea is rough this morning. Spray launches high into the air with the pounding of eight-foot rollers. An island can be seen in the distance.
“No one ever told me where we are. ”
“Molokai,” Cam tells her. “In Hawaii. The island used to be a leper colony. ”
“And Roberta owns this place?”
Cam detects unveiled bitterness in the way Risa says her name. “It’s owned by Proactive Citizenry. Actually, I think about half the island is. This place was some rich guy’s summer home once, but now it’s their medical research center—and Roberta is the head of medical research. ”
“Are you her only project?”
It’s a question Cam has never even considered before. As far as he knows, he is the center of Roberta’s universe. “You don’t like her, do you?”
“Who, me? No, I love her dearly. Evil scheming bitches are my favorite kind of people. ”
Cam feels a sudden protectiveness and an unexpected spike of anger. “Red light!” he blurts. “She’s the closest thing I have to a mother. ”
“You’d be better off storked. ”
“Easy for you to say. A ward like you doesn’t even know what a mother is. ”
Risa gasps, then brings her hand back and slaps him hard across the face. The momentum of the slap pushes her off balance, and she falls backward—but the nurse is there to catch her. He gives Cam an accusing glance, then returns his attention to Risa. “Enough for now,” the way-too-muscular male nurse says. “Back into bed. ”
He helps Risa bac
k to bed while Cam stands impotently at the window, not sure who to be mad at—himself, her, or the nurse for taking her away from him.
“Did the slap sting evenly, Cam,” she asks with a nasty bite in her voice, “or do the kids in your face all feel it differently?”
“Teflon!” he says, refusing to let her comment stick.
“Muzzle!” He cannot let himself lash out again. He cannot! He takes a deep breath, picturing the tumultuous sea calming to a glassy lake.
“I know I invited that slap,” he tells her calmly, “but watch what you say about Roberta. I do not speak unkindly of the people you love—have the same courtesy for me. ”
- - -
Cam gives Risa some space. He knows this change in her life must be as traumatic as it is wonderful for her. He still doesn’t quite understand what made Risa change her mind about allowing the operation, but he knows Roberta can be persuasive. He likes to pretend that some of it had to do with him—that deep down, beneath her initial repulsion, was a curiosity, perhaps even an admiration for the mosaic that had been created from all his disparate parts. Not the one they put together for him, but how he took what he was given and made it all work.
They eat one meal a day together. “It is imperative,” Roberta tells him, “if the two of you are ever going to bond, that you dine together. Meals are when the psyche is most vulnerable to attachment. ”
He wishes Roberta didn’t make it all sound so clinical. Growing accustomed to each other’s company shouldn’t be about Risa’s “vulnerability to attachment. ”
Risa does not yet know that she is here to be his companion.
“Do not rush this,” Roberta has told Cam. “She must be groomed for the role, and we have other things planned for her first. We’re turning her folk-legend status to our advantage, creating a powerful media presence before we link the two of you together publicly. That will take time. In the meantime, be your wonderful, charming self. She is yours to win. ”
“And if I don’t?”
“I have every confidence in you, Cam. ”
Risa is in his thoughts through each activity of the day. She becomes a thread weaving through all the seams of his mind, binding them together more tightly. And she’s thinking of him, too. He knows because of the way she watches him secretly. He plays basketball one afternoon with an off-duty guard. He has his shirt off, revealing not only his seams, but his musculature, in tip-top shape. A boxer’s six-pack abs, a swimmer’s powerful pecs—flawless muscle groups reined in by a finely tuned motor cortex to produce the perfect layup. Risa watches him play from a window in the main living room. He knows, but he doesn’t let on—he just delivers spectacular game, allowing his body to speak for itself. Only when he’s done playing does he glance up at her, to let her know that her stolen glimpses of him aren’t stolen at all—they’re given freely. She backs away from the window into shadows, but they both know she was watching. Not because she had to but because she wanted to, and Cam knows that makes all the difference in the world.
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