by Robert Reed
…just like all those lovers, nameless and faceless and gone?
No one is talking to him. The seats beside him were the last to fill, his mood a legend and the day done at last and him sitting straight against the tug of acceleration. They’re coming up out of the mine, the air still hot and dust settling on them and their clothes, some of the miners looking at Gabbro when he won’t notice. He isn’t paying attention to anyone. He doesn’t know what’s on his own mind. Except that he is tired. Plain tired. He will sleep a full day now. He has already warned them. Tired. He knows he could collapse if the tugging quit. Him and his hyperfiber too. But that’s what I was chasing, he thinks. This feeling. This aching old-man crap. It’s like insulation. Even if he wanted, he couldn’t think of April now. He can barely remember her name.
“So what’s in store tonight?” one Morninger asks another. “Anything fun? You got a plan?”
“The usual,” she answers. One hand makes an imaginary glass, tipping it back and laughing. “What else is there?”
“Nothing,” the first Morninger says.
“Exactly.”
“Fuck this world,” he says. “Another few months and I’ve got enough to get home and comfortable for a while.”
“Yeah.” The glass is drained. She opens her hand. “What’re you doing with your share? You got a plan?”
“Ideas.” He rolls his head and grins. “Land by the river, maybe. A home. Whatever I can manage.” The river is the first of many planned rivers. In place of water, Morning will use durable silicones running like water and a series of underground pumps and pipes to circulate the discharge back to the high-ground sources. “If I don’t have enough, shit, I’ll just drink my earnings. In a good bar.”
“Yeah.”
“Fucking Small Fry.”
“No good bars in this town.”
“Not one,” he swears. “But maybe I’ll share your table tonight. Huh? What do you say?”
“Glad for the company, friend.”
The elevator slows itself with a high-pitched screech. Worn brakes complain, then succeed. They’ve stopped and Gabbro is standing without remembering himself standing, walking last out of the elevator and finding himself in the level afternoon light. The miners vanish into the waiting floaters. Gabbro won’t commit himself. He waves off the last floater and starts to walk, thinking he should ride and get home fast, except he doesn’t want to be home yet, and then he starts to trot until the hyperfiber muscles think to complain in their own fashion. They stick. They twitch. He catches himself hunting for something to rob for its power, just like he would on Morning, and then he stops moving and finds a floater pad and climbs the stairs with effort. One leg freezes for a moment. Look at me! he thinks. I’m drained dry! A floater descends to him, opens and thanks him for this opportunity to serve.
He climbs inside with a clumsy stiffness.
The floater rises and heads east, over the Old Quarter and the rest of the jumbled built-up landscape. He sees a column of smoke rising from a Farmstead, and suddenly he is thinking about April and everything else. It isn’t as if it comes back to him from somewhere. It’s as if the stuff has been inside him all along, waiting for him, stewing and steaming and ready to pounce.
He starts to cry.
“Are you all right?” asks the AI pilot. “Sir?”
Gabbro can’t answer the question. He doesn’t know for himself.
“Sir?”
“What’s your name?”
The AI sings some rambling name. Too much to remember, Gabbro thinks, and then the AI seems to hear his brain. “Pilot is good enough, sir.”
“Pilot.” Gabbro says, “You know something, Pilot? This is where I was born.”
“Sir?”
“Up in the air,” he explains. He starts to laugh, not able to stop himself and still crying. The AI is silent. “Listen to me,” he says. “I must sound crazy.”
“Do you think you sound crazy?” asks the AI.
“Tell me I do.”
“If you want—”
“Or don’t.”
It says, “Silence is my choice. I don’t think I can help by telling you anything.”
Gabbro looks out at nothing, his eyes incapable of focusing. “Call that address I gave you. It’s my home. Ask if there are any messages.” He waits. The process takes a few seconds, but he’s nervous and it seems to take an age.
“One message,” the AI reports. “‘Come and see me if you get in before dark. Signed Steward.’”
Gabbro breathes. “Steward, huh?” He tells the AI, “All right. Go one building south of my home. If you would.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Maybe I’ll catch Steward at home. You think?”
“If it will be a help, I hope so. Yes, sir.”
The floater seems to be moving a little faster. Perhaps the AI is nervous in its own fashion, a Morninger of unknown balance riding inside its property. Gabbro tries to rest. He has trouble holding his head upright, his eyelids dipping shut; then there’s a thud and he looks around and the canopy is open and the AI says:
“A pleasure, sir. Thank you, sir.”
He pays and steps outside, somewhat recovered by the inactivity. He goes downstairs and turns once around, realizing this isn’t his building and forgetting what he had told the AI just a minute ago. He has come to see Steward. That’s right. He decides on the proper door and goes to it and announces himself to its single glassy eye. “He knows me.”
“But I’m sorry,” says the door. “He’s not home just now.”
“He left a message. He wanted to talk to me—”
“Sir? I’ve been instructed to let you come inside.” The door makes a sudden hissing sound, oversized locks being unfastened. Mag-locks of some kind, he thinks. Very special gear, he thinks. And the door comes open. “You can wait inside, if you wish.”
“A little while. Sure.” He enters the tiny apartment, suffering from the same feeling of being in the wrong place. This isn’t the apartment he has seen from outside. It’s all wrong…the furniture wrong, and all the shelves and a delicate sweet smell in the air…
“Hello?” says a voice in the back.
Gabbro says, “Hello? Excuse me?”
The door shuts and seals itself. He starts to move toward the bedroom, hearing motion, thinking this is wrong and he should get out of here now. At once.
“Come here,” says a girl. “Please?” She has a thick smooth voice, and he can’t help but like it. He sees her sitting on the edge of the bed, her bulky clothes nondescript and her face not just pretty. Gabbro stands in the bedroom door, not so much lost now as he is surprised. Who is she? What does she want? Why does he feel expected—?
She says, “Hello,” again.
“Hi.”
“You’re Gabbro, aren’t you? I’ve seen you.”
He waits.
She makes soft sounds, pulling at the rumpled sheets on the bed. “He trusts you, you know. Steward, I mean.” She looks small and frail, peering up at him and asking him, “Gabbro? Gabbro, tell me the truth. Have you ever, ever been truly scared?”
The important thing is vagueness. She keeps it all gray and quick and absolutely memorable. No, she won’t lure him into bed. She doesn’t want that stage. Touching is enough. Odors are enough. She wants a friend. A gesture here, a sad look there, and the big Morninger is sitting on the floor, eye to eye with Chiffon. She tells him a fuzzy-edged story that will help her and yet leave her with options, too. In case Steward should hear about this. He won’t, she promises Zebulina and Wisp. But in case.
A new friend and ally, she thinks. Bought at almost no risk.
Why not? If Steward could hire Gabbro and trust in his silence, surely she could invite him upstairs for a few minutes of talk. Nothing more. Where is the crime? Nowhere. She is so very lonely. So terribly bored. She touches him. Her bare hand shines in the day’s last light. Gabbro’s flesh is dry and oddly warm, firm and unmarred by wear or time. It’s the back of his
hand that she touches, leaking the usual cocktail, and of course she smiles and of course he can’t help but smile too. He seems tired. He says, “I’m sorry for being confused. I came to see Steward…and everything is so…so different…”
“Don’t go. Don’t.” She withdraws her hand, telling him, “Let’s move into the front room. We can sit. Talk. Just for a little while, please?” He nods and rises. He believes her stories about being scared and bored, not asking for details. He walks, something about his gait wrong. The cyborg seems tired in every respect. He picks up the Universal Globe in one hand and asks to see Morning. Then he looks outside and says to her:
“How does he do it? Masking Glass?” He is staring through the sealed glass door, over the unused balcony and down at his own apartment. “He likes his privacy, doesn’t he?”
“He’s a very special man.” How many people can you say that about? “One of a kind.”
“I guess that’s my impression. Yeah.”
“Gabbro?” she begins. “Do you know whom you helped when you climbed that building the other night?”
The Globe is now a yellowish-white world, clouds speckled with the tiny airborne cities. Morning. He squints at Morning and sets the Globe down on its shelf, and she makes a mental note to change the Globe to some other world. Titan would be appropriate. As soon as he is gone.
“Do you know what I am?”
Gabbro blinks. “I think I do.”
“A Flower.”
“What’s he doing with you?”
And she tells him. It doesn’t feel right, for some reason. The old lies about Dirk. It brings on guilt and images of Steward. But he believes the story from the first, just like Steward believed; she sees it in the handsome face, in the sympathetic curl of the lips. She wants to thank him for helping them. For helping her. She only wishes it were over and done and she were safe. “My owner is quite terrible, you see—” But Steward says that in a week or so, with luck, they’ll be rid of the man.
Gabbro nods. “I wish you luck.”
“And you?” She is on the sofa. He is on the floor, legs crossed. “I get the feeling that you’d like to talk to someone.”
“You haven’t seen April, have you? In my home?”
“I haven’t, no.” She watches his hands squeezing one another. The hyperfiber skin gives squeaks, eerie little squeaks, as the fingers play across one another. “Tell me.”
He begins to talk. She sees him as vulnerable, small and quite sad and ready for any audience with the time. He talks about April and some terrible fight yesterday afternoon. Did she see any of it? No? She says she was sleeping, as was Steward, and they didn’t. He doesn’t paint a scene. He doesn’t repeat what was said between April and him. But she can imagine the fight’s intensity, offering herself to Gabbro as something passive. An unjudging audience. This is better than touching, she thinks. There’s nothing here to feel guilty about. She feels immune. As night draws in around the campsite, life in suspension, two alloyed primates are discovering the oldest, finest secret. Between them they share so very much. They do.
18
Here’s something interesting. Morningers accustomed to living and working in remote territories and down in the deepest mines keep certain kits close at hand. Survival kits, if you will. Suppose a shaft collapses and the power sources are cut. Suppose the miners are trapped and some of them are near collapse too, their hyperfiber flesh in desperate need of recharging. In each survival kit is a special recharging cord with only one purpose. A Morninger with spare energy will run it from himself to the ones in need, draining himself for their good. The history of Morning is full of this odd brand of heroism. Some of the heroes let themselves die in order to save friends, or sometimes strangers…their bodies turning rigid and utterly useless. They cannot talk above a whisper or breathe deeply or focus their dying eyes…
—excerpt from a traveler’s notebook, available through System-Net
He came into her room just as she came awake this morning, smiling and telling her about an idea. Some brainstorm he had had a minute ago. Did she want to hear? She said, All right. Tell me.
It’s about Gabbro, he said.
She waited. In the morning light, and for no clear reason, Toby had turned back into a stranger. It was like yesterday had never happened. None of it. What about Gabbro? she asked.
And that was when he checked himself. He pulled back a notch or two with his enthusiasm. Listen, he said, if there’s a better time…maybe I should come back…
What is it?
What we were talking about last night. Teaching him a lesson by scaring him somehow.
So? she asked.
You want to do it, don’t you? A lesson? he asked, keeping his voice tightly leashed. Nothing urgent. Nothing quite honest.
She said, The bastard.
He said nothing.
I guess I do. Why wouldn’t I? she asked. Except the fury inside her was gone. She didn’t care so deeply anymore, her face mending and the pain dulled by medication and a good night’s sleep giving her that floating sensation, the hospital mattress more than comfortable beneath her. The doctor had said she would leave this afternoon.
Toby said, Because I had this idea. About something we could do tonight.
Yeah?
He paused. What was he thinking then? she wonders. What was going on inside that crazy skull?
Go on, she urged him.
Can you get us inside his apartment? he asked.
The door knows me. Sure. I’m sure it’ll let me inside.
You are? He wouldn’t have changed the programming?
Maybe. He might. But I don’t see him doing it too soon. She said, He may want me to come back, the bastard. So he can smooth things over.
All right. Fine. We’ll pretend that we can get inside. Okay?
Go on.
Cyborgs sleep, right?
Everyone sleeps.
But he recharges when he sleeps. Right? He’s got a…what? A way of plugging into a power source, doesn’t he?
April said, The human of the future. Right.
Toby shook his head, the Gardener in him disgusted. He said, Am I wrong? Isn’t he vulnerable then? Sleeping?
I guess.
For instance, if we were to tinker with that recharging cord…there must be a way, a trick…you know what I’m saying?
No.
We turn him off, said the Gardener.
Yeah?
We drain him when he plugs in. We pull out his juices and teach him a good hard lesson. We can show him that he’s not so damned tough and all. That he can’t break a girl’s face for no reason.
She tried imagining it happening as he described it, clinical and efficient. So we just let him lie there? she asked. For how long?
Until he learns his lesson, Toby said.
How long?
Maybe a night. Whatever it takes.
I don’t know…
We won’t actually hurt him, I mean! Don’t think I want him hurt in any real way.
She didn’t like Toby this morning. Yesterday he was a saint, golden and splendid and brought to her by her good fortune. Today she has doubts. It’s nothing she can name or point to, but there are doubts nonetheless. There was that careful sense of words and expressions this morning. Now he is beside her, underneath the floater pad and mostly hidden, watching Gabbro’s apartment and neither of them speaking but doing it with such damned intensity. They’re like a couple of ticking bombs. She’s almost scared to move, scared to brush up against anything for fear of setting off an explosion.
This morning Toby had promised, We’ll just let him stew for a while. Nothing else. By tomorrow we’ll let him go.
I guess it’s possible, she had confessed. Then she explained how Morningers had special cords meant to milk them of energy. They were the same shape and color as the rechargers. She mentioned a couple of Old Quarter shops where the miners went to sell the gear they had stolen from work. For cash. For credit. She said, There
’s a lot of stuff you can find in those shops. No questions asked. No one remembered.
He said nothing.
She looked at him and felt uneasy, saying, I don’t know though. I keep thinking of myself setting that stupid fire—
Which is nothing. To him. You know it’s nothing.
I suppose so.
So why are you defending him?
Am I?
I’m looking at what he did to you. You can’t see your own face. I did and all I see now is that mask. Toby said, I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t scare him. Maybe you’re right.
I never said—
Let’s let him go. Forget him. Heal and pay the bills and forget about it. There are ways they can suppress bad memories, aren’t there? I’ve heard of expensive Terran tricks—
I’ve got insurance, she offered. I don’t have bills.
You’re right. You don’t. You’ll walk away with nothing gone but your pride.
I want to scare him! she growled.
The bastard, he said.
Well, she said, I don’t see why you’re pressing me.
Because this is our chance. We have to move fast, don’t you see? He might change the door’s programming anytime. How can we trap him inside that shell if we can’t get inside to do it? April? Is something wrong with me? Is my thinking wrong here?
She looks at Toby now. It’s past dusk. Lightning bugs are hovering around them, lending a lazy kind of motion to the still air. She can see Toby’s watchful face and one webbed hand supporting his chin, his expression intense and his back held straight. They have been here for a little while, hiding in a tangled mass of vines. Like she suspected this morning, Gabbro’s door still recognized her and opened willingly for her and her guest. Toby had done his work while she stood guard in the hallway, ready to delay Gabbro should he appear. The splicing took him an age; he didn’t understand the tools or the recharging cords, Gabbro’s or theirs. But then he was finished, whistling to himself while both of them hustled out of the building and up to their hiding place. Now she is bored. It would be easier, she thinks, if she weren’t so scared too. She wants this finished. She tries to imagine Gabbro lying helpless in his bed, her standing on his chest and taunting him in various ways, cursing and kicking and generally cleansing her spirit until it sparkles. The problem is that the images don’t last. She can’t quite get her revenge straight in her mind. The fury inside her refuses to come now. She can’t guess why. The night air is too soothing, she thinks. The vines below are too good a mattress. There’s no moon yet and isn’t that needed? And then there’s Toby, too. Sitting beside him, watching his cold patient stare, it occurs to her that she knows nothing whatsoever about revenge.
