The Astral Mirror

by Ben Bova

  Dr. Young found that his hands were trembling. He wished that he hadn’t given up cigarettes: after all, oral eroticism isn’t all that bad. He glanced at the closed hallway door and knew that both the burly agents were standing outside, probably with their arms folded across their chest in unconscious imitation of the eunuchs who guarded sultans’ harems.

  He took a deep breath and went around the desk and sat on the typist’s chair.

  The phone rang as soon as his butt touched the chair. He jumped, but grabbed the phone and settled himself before it could ring again.

  “Dr. Carlton Young speaking.” His voice sounded an octave too high, and quavery, even to himself.

  “Dr. Young, I thank you for accompanying the agents who brought you there without questioning their purpose. They were instructed to tell you who sent them and nothing else.”

  He recognized the voice at once. “You—you’re welcome, Mr. President.”

  “Please! No names! This is a matter of utmost security.”

  “Ye—yessir.”

  “Dr. Young, you have been recommended very highly for the special task I must ask of you. I know that, as a loyal, patriotic American, you will do your best to accomplish this task. And as the most competent man in your highly demanding and complex field, your efforts will be crowned with success. That’s the American way, now isn’t it?”

  “Yessir. May I ask, just what is the task?”

  “I’m glad you asked that. I have a personnel problem that you are uniquely qualified to solve. One of my closest and most valued aides—a man I depend on very heavily— has gone into a tailspin. I won’t explain why or how. I must ask you merely to accept the bald statement. This aide is a man of great drive and talent, high moral purpose, and enormous energy. But at the moment, he’s useless to himself, to this Administration, and to the Nation. I need you to help him find himself.”

  “Me? But all I do is—”

  “You run the best computer dating service in the nation, I know. Your service has been checked out thoroughly by the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Defense Intelligence Agency—”

  “Not the CIA?”

  “I don’t know, they won’t tell me.”

  “Oh.”

  “This aide of mine—a very sincere and highly motivated man—needs a girl. Not just any girl. The psychiatrists at Walter Reed tell me that he must find the woman who’s perfect for him, his exact match, the one mate that can make him happy enough to get back to the important work he should be doing. As you know, I have a plan for stopping inflation, bridging the generation gap, and settling the Cold War. But to make everything perfectly clear, Dr. Young, none of these plans can be crowned with success unless this certain aide can do his part of the job, carry his share of the burden, pull his share of the load.”

  Dr. Young nodded in the darkness. “I understand, sir. He needs a woman to make him happy. So many people do.” A fleeting thought of the bins upon bins of floppy disks that made up his files passed through Dr. Young’s mind. “Even you, sir, even you need a woman.”

  “Dr. Young! I’m a married man!”

  “I know—that’s what I meant. You couldn’t be doing the terrific job you’re doing without your lovely wife, your lifetime mate, to support and inspire you.”

  “Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, of course. Well, Dr. Young, my aide is in the office there with you, in the inner office. I want you to talk with him, help him, find him the woman he truly needs. Then we can end the war in Indochina, stop inflation, bridge—well, you know.”

  “Yes sir. I’ll do my best.”

  “That will be adequate for the task, I’m sure. Good night, and God bless America!”

  Dr. Young found that he was on his feet, standing at ramrod attention, a position he hadn’t assumed since his last Boy Scout jamboree.

  Carefully he replaced the phone in its cradle, then turned to face the door that led to the inner office. Who could be in there? The Vice President? No, Young told himself with a shake of his head; that didn’t fit the description the President had given him.

  Squaring his shoulders once again, Dr. Young took the three steps that carried him to the door and knocked on it sharply.

  “Come in,” said an equally sharp voice.

  The office was kept as dark and shadowy as the anteroom, but Dr. Young recognized the man sitting rather tensely behind the desk.

  “Dr. Kiss—!”

  “No names! Please! Absolute security, Dr. Young.”

  “I under—no, come to think of it, I don’t understand. Why keep the fact that you’re using a computer-dating service so secret? What do the Russians and Chinese care—” The man behind the desk cut him short with a gesture. “It’s not the Russians or Chinese. It’s the Democrats. If they find out—” He waggled both hands in the air—a Semitic gesture of impending doom.

  Dr. Young took one of the plush chairs in front of the desk. “But Dr. K—”

  “Just call me Henry,” the other man said. “But don’t get personal about it.”

  “All right, Henry. I still don’t see what’s so terrible about a man in your position using a computer dating service. After all, some of the top Senators and Congressmen on the Democratic side of the aisle have been clients of mine.”

  “I know, I saw it all in the FBI report. Or was it the DIA report? Well, never mind.” He fixed Dr. Young with a penetrating stare. “How would it look if the Democrats knew that the President’s most trusted and valued aide couldn’t get a girl for himself? Eh?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you could—”

  “I can’t!” The penetrating stare melted into something more pathetic. “I can’t, the God our forefathers knows I’ve tried. But I’m a failure, a flop. There are times when I can’t even talk to a woman.”

  Dr. Young sat there in shocked silence. Even his advanced degrees in psychology might not be enough for this task, he began to realize.

  “It’s my mother’s fault!” Henry all but sobbed. “My pushy mother! Why do you think I took this job in the White House? Because she pushed me into it, and because I thought it might help me to get girls. Well, it hasn’t. I can tell the President when to invade Cambodia. I can eat shark’s fin with Chou En-lai, but I get totally tongue-tied when I try to talk to an attractive woman! My momma— what can I do?”

  Henry started to bury his head in his hands, then with an obvious effort of great willpower, he straightened up in his chair. “Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t get emotional like that.”

  “No, it’s good for you,” Dr. Young soothed. “You can’t keep everything bottled up all the time.”

  “Well I have been,” Henry retorted sourly, “and I’m getting very uptight about it.”

  Uptight? thought Dr. Young. And everyone thinks he’s a man of the world. I’ve got to help him.

  “Listen,” he said, “you tell me the kind of girl you like, and I’ll comb my computer files until I find her—”

  Henry smiled faintly, stoically. “So what good will that do? I’ll take one look at her and collapse like a pricked balloon, you should excuse the expression.”

  But Dr. Young expected that response and was ready for it. “You don’t understand, Henry. The girl that I’ll find for you will be special. She’ll be anxious to make you happy: she’ll know that the future of the nation—of the whole world—depends on her pleasing you.”

  “How can you be sure that she’ll really want to?”

  “Leave it to me,” Dr. Young said, with his best professional smile of assurance. “Just tell me what you’d like, and I’ll get my computer cracking on it before the sun comes up.”

  Henry gave a little shrug, as if he didn’t really believe what he was hearing but was desperate enough to give it a try anyway.

  “I’ve already taken the liberty,” he said, “of coding my”—he smiled bashfully—“my dream girl onto this floppy disk. And you won’t have to use your own computer. Too risky, security-wise, for one thing. Besides, the FBI computer has
everybody on it.”

  Dr. Young gasped. “The FBI computer?”

  Henry nodded.

  Then it hit!

  For the first time, it struck home to Dr. Young that he was really playing in the big leagues. Was he ready for it?

  The room was sumptuous, with thick carpeting and rich drapes framing the full-length windows that looked out over Manhattan’s glittering skyline. A thousand jewels gleamed in the skyscrapers and across the graceful bridges, outshining by far the smogged-over stars of heaven.

  Henry swallowed his nervousness as he stood at the doorway with the famous movie star.

  “Um, nice room you’ve got here,” he managed to say.

  She smiled at him and slid out of her coat. “The studio arranged it. It’s mine until the premiere tomorrow night.”

  Her dress glittered more than the view outside. And showed more, too. Henry worked a finger into his shirt collar. It was starting to feel uncomfortably tight, and warm.

  “Here, let me help you,” she purred, still showing her perfectly capped teeth in a smile that earned a thousand letters per week, most of them obscene.

  She undid his tie and popped the collar button open. “Make yourself comfortable and tell me all about those nasty Russians you outsmarted.”

  “I—uh—um—”

  Taking him by the wrist, she led Henry to the plushest couch he had ever seen and pulled him down into it, right next to her lush, lascivious body.

  “You’re not going to be shy with me, are you? After all, I’m just a lonely little girl far from my home, and I need a big strong daddy to look after me.”

  He could smell her musky perfume, feel the brush of her beautiful plasticized hair against her cheek.

  “I, uh, I’ve got to catch a plane for—for Ulan Bator in one hour!” As the words popped out of his mouth, Henry sat up stiffly on the edge of the couch. He looked at his wristwatch. “Yes. One hour, to Ulan Bator. That’s in Mongolia, you know.”

  She stared at him, pouting. “But what about our date tomorrow night? The premiere of my new movie!”

  “I’m sorry. You’ll have to go with someone else. The President needs me in Mongolia. Top secret negotiations. You mustn’t say a word about this—any of this! To anyone!”

  With a shrug that nearly popped her breasts out of the low-cut gown, she said, “Okay. Okay. But tell those creepy friends of yours that I’ve done my patriotic duty, and don’t come around here looking for more!”

  “But she liked you,” Dr. Young said. He felt surprised and slightly hurt as he sat in the same dimly lit office in the Pentagon. Again it was late at night, and again Henry sat nervously behind the desk.

  “It was all an act. She’s an actress, you know.”

  “Of course, I know. But she genuinely liked yoy. It was no act. Take my word for it.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Well—” Dr. Young hesitated, but then realized he’d find out anyway. “We had her room bugged. She cried for twenty minutes after you left.”

  Instead of getting angry, Henry looked suddenly guilty. “She did?”

  A kaleidoscope of emotions played across Henry’s face. Dr. Young saw surprise, guilt, pride, anxiety, and then he stopped watching.

  At length Henry shook himself, as if getting rid of something unpleasant. “She was too—flighty. A silly child.”

  “She was what you programmed into the computer,” Dr. Young retorted. “I checked out the characteristics myself, mathematically, of course.”

  “Well, the computer goofed!”

  “No, Henry. That’s not possible. You simply didn’t give us a description of what you really want in a woman. You told us what you think you want, you gave us some idealizations. But that’s not what your heart’s really set on.”

  “You’re trying to tell me I don’t know what I want?”

  “Not consciously, you don’t. Now with a team of psychiatrists and possibly hypnosis therapy—”

  “No!” Henry slammed a hand on the desktop. “Too risky! Remember our need for absolute security.”

  “But your conscious mind has only a very hazy idea of what your dream woman should be. The very term ‘dream woman’ indicates—”

  “Never mind,” Henry said firmly. “Just add a few points to the computer program. I want someone just like Jill, but tougher, more intelligent. Better able to stand on her own feet.”

  Dr. Young nodded. Another week of computer programming ahead.

  “This is my Pad, Hank. What do you think of it?” Henry surveyed the crumbling plaster, the dirt-caked floor, the stacks of books strewn across the room covering the sink and the range, the desk, the drawing board, the sofa, the coffee table. The only piece of furniture in the filthy place that wasn’t covered with books or papers of one sort or another was the bed. And that looked like something out of a Hong Kong brothel—a slimy, grimy, wrinkled mess that seemed to be writhing by itself even as he stared at it.

  “It’s efficient looking,” he said. Actually, it looked like the storage room in the cellar of a Village tenement. Which it had been, until recently.

  “Efficient, huh?” Gloria tossed her head slightly, a motion that spilled her long sun-bleached hair over one T-shirted shoulder.

  “It’s efficient, all right,” she said. “This is where I do my writing, my illustrating, my editing, and my fucking.”

  Henry blinked. His glasses seemed to be getting steamed up. Or maybe it was dirt.

  “You like to fuck, Hank?” she asked, grinning at him.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and heard his voice utter a choked, “Yes.”

  “Good. Me too. But no sexual chauvinism. I get on top the same number of times you do,” she said, starting toward the bed and pulling off the T-shirt. “No oral stuff unless we go together, and,” she stepped out of her ragged jeans, “say, how many times can you pop off in one—” She turned and saw that she was talking to the empty air. Henry had fled, and left the door open behind him.

  “She was a monster!” Henry babbled to Dr. Young. “That computer is trying to destroy me. I’m going to have it investigated! And you too!”

  “Now, now,” Dr. Young said as soothingly as he could. “No one’s tampered with anything. I’ve done all the programming myself, taken the printouts myself, done it all by myself. I haven’t slept a full night since our first meeting. I’m losing business because of you.”

  “She was a monster,” Henry repeated.

  “If you’d only let the psychiatrists probe your subconscious—”

  “No! I went through all that months ago. All they ever said was that it’s all my mother’s fault. I know that!”

  Dr. Young made a helpless shrug. “But if you can’t verbalize your real desires—can’t tell me what you’re really looking for—how can I help you?”

  Clenching his hands into fists and frowning mightily Henry said, “Just find me the girl I’m looking for. Someone who’s beautiful, intelligent, patient, patriotic—but not aggressive!”

  Back to the computer, Dr. Young thought wearily. But something in the back of his mind made him smile inwardly. There might be—yes, that might work.

  The Baroness’s yacht rode easily at anchor in the soft swells of the sheltered cove. The coast of Maine was dark, just a jagged blackness against the softer star-scattered darkness of the sky.

  “I’ve never seen the stars look so beautiful,” Henry said. Then, sneaking a peek at the notes on his shirt cuff, he added, “They’re almost as beautiful as you.”

  The Baroness smiled. And she was truly beautiful as she stood by the rail of the yacht, almost close enough to touch her warm and thrilling body to his. Her long midnight hair, always severely combed back and pinned up during the day, was now sweeping free and loose to her lovely bare shoulders.

  “I would offer you another drink, Henri, but the servants have gone ashore.”

  “Oh?” He gripped the rail a bit tighter. “All of them?”

  “Yes, I sent them aw
ay. I wanted to be alone with you.”

  Henry took a deep breath. All through the evening—the ballet recital, the dinner, the dizzying private jet ride to this cove, the dancing on the deck—he had been steeling himself for the supreme moment. He had no intention of muffing it this night.

  “Maybe,” he suggested slyly, “we can go back inside and find something for ourselves.”

  She put a hand to his close-shaven, lime-scented cheek. “What an admirable idea, Henri. No wonder your President depends on you so heavily.”

  Half an hour later they were sitting in the salon on a leather couch, discussing international relations. Gradually, Henry began to realize that the subject had drifted into the super-romantic areas of spies and espionage.

  She was leaning against him, as closely as her extensive bosom would allow. “You must have known many spies— clever, dangerous men and deceptive, beautiful women.”

  “Uh, well, yes,” he lied. His hands were starting to tremble.

  Suddenly she slid off the couch and kneeled at his feet. “Pretend I’m a spy! Pretend you’ve caught me and have me at your mercy. Tie me up! Beat me! Torture me! Rape me!”

  With a strangled scream, Henry leaped to his feet, dropped his glasses, bolted for the hatch, pounded up the ladder to the deck, and leaped into the water. For the first time since his last full summer at camp, he swam for his life. And his sanity.

  “It’s useless, it’ll never work. It’s just no good.” Henry was muttering as Dr. Young led him down a long antiseptically white corridor.

  “It might work. It could work.”

  For a moment the doctor thought he would have to take Henry by the hand and march him through the corridor like a stern schoolteacher with a recalcitrant child. Studying his “customer,” Dr. Young realized that Henry was going down the drain. His physical condition was obviously deteriorating: his hands trembled, there were bags under his eyes, he had lost weight, and his face was starting to break out in acne. And his mental state! Poor Henry kept muttering things like, “Peeking—must get the Ping-Pong people to Peeking—”