The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF

by Martin Greenberg

  Maltzer shook his head. “Nobody could believe it. No two people were ever in quite the same relationship before as Deirdre and I have been. I helped her come back out of complete – oblivion. I knew her before she had voice or hearing. She was only a frantic mind when I first made contact with her, half insane with all that had happened and fear of what would happen next. In a very literal sense she was reborn out of that condition, and I had to guide her through every step of the way. I came to know her thoughts before she thought them. And once you’ve been that close to another mind, you don’t lose the contact easily.” He put the glasses back on and looked blurrily at Harris through the heavy lenses. “Deirdre is worried,” he said. “I know it. You won’t believe me, but I can – well, sense it. I tell you, I’ve been too close to her very mind itself to make any mistake. You don’t see it, maybe. Maybe even she doesn’t know it yet. But the worry’s there. When I’m with her, I feel it. And I don’t want it to come any nearer the surface of her mind than it’s come already. I’m going to put a stop to this before it’s too late.”

  Harris had no comment for that. It was too entirely outside his own experience. He said nothing for a moment. Then he asked simply, “How?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I’ve got to decide before she comes back. And I want to see her alone.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” Harris told him quietly. “I think you’re imagining things. I don’t think you can stop her.”

  Maltzer gave him a slanted glance. “I can stop her,” he said, in a curious voice. He went on quickly, “She has enough already – she’s nearly human. She can live normally as other people live, without going back on the screen. Maybe this taste of it will be enough. I’ve got to convince her it is. If she retires now, she’ll never guess how cruel her own audiences could be, and maybe that deep sense of – distress, uneasiness, whatever it is – won’t come to the surface. It mustn’t. She’s too fragile to stand that.” He slapped his hands together sharply. “I’ve got to stop her. For her own sake I’ve got to do it!” He swung round again to face Harris. “Will you go now?”

  Never in his life had Harris wanted less to leave a place. Briefly he thought of saying simply, “No I won’t.” But he had to admit in his own mind that Maltzer was at least partly right. This was a matter between Deirdre and her creator, the culmination, perhaps, of that year’s long intimacy so like marriage that this final trial for supremacy was a need he recognized.

  He would not, he thought, forbid the showdown if he could. Perhaps the whole year had been building up to this one moment between them in which one or the other must prove himself victor. Neither was very well stable just now, after the long strain of the year past. It might very well be that the mental salvation of one or both hinged upon the outcome of the clash. But because each was so strongly motivated not by selfish concern but by solicitude for the other in this strange combat, Harris knew he must leave them to settle the thing alone.

  He was in the street and hailing a taxi before the full significance of something Maltzer had said came to him. “I can stop her,” he had declared, with an odd inflection in his voice.

  Suddenly Harris felt cold. Maltzer had made her – of course he could stop her if he chose. Was there some key in that supple golden body that could immobilize it at its maker’s will? Could she be imprisoned in the cage of her own body? No body before in all history, he thought, could have been designed more truly to be a prison for its mind than Deirdre’s, if Maltzer chose to turn the key that locked her in. There must be many ways to do it. He could simply withhold whatever source of nourishment kept her brain alive, if that were the way he chose.

  But Harris could not believe he would do it. The man wasn’t insane. He would not defeat his own purpose. His determination rose from his solicitude for Deirdre; he would not even in the last extremity try to save her by imprisoning her in the jail of her own skull.

  For a moment Harris hesitated on the curb, almost turning back. But what could he do? Even granting that Maltzer would resort to such tactics, self-defeating in their very nature, how could any man on earth prevent him if he did it subtly enough? But he never would. Harris knew he never would. He got into his cab slowly, frowning. He would see them both tomorrow.

  He did not. Harris was swamped with excited calls about yesterday’s performance, but the message he was awaiting did not come. The day went by very slowly. Toward evening he surrendered and called Maltzer’s apartment.

  It was Deirdre’s face that answered, and for once he saw no remembered features superimposed upon the blankness of her helmet. Masked and faceless, she looked at him inscrutably.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked, a little uncomfortable.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, and her voice was a bit metallic for the first time, as if she were thinking so deeply of some other matter that she did not trouble to pitch it properly. “I had a long talk with Maltzer last night, if that’s what you mean. You know what he wants. But nothing’s been decided yet.”

  Harris felt oddly rebuffed by the sudden realization of the metal of her. It was impossible to read anything from face or voice. Each had its mask.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “Exactly as I’d planned,” she told him, without inflection.

  Harris floundered a little. Then, with an effort at practicality, he said, “Do you want me to go to work on bookings, then?”

  She shook the delicately modeled skull. “Not yet. You saw the reviews today, of course. They – did like me.” It was an understatement, and for the first time a note of warmth sounded in her voice. But the preoccupation was still there, too. “I’d already planned to make them wait awhile after my first performance,” she went on. “A couple of weeks, anyhow. You remember that little farm of mine in Jersey, John? I’m going over today. I won’t see anyone except the servants there. Not even Maltzer. Not even you. I’ve got a lot to think about. Maltzer has agreed to let everything go until we’ve both thought things over. He’s taking a rest, too. I’ll see you the moment I get back, John. Is that all right?”

  She blanked out almost before he had time to nod and while the beginning of a stammered argument was still on his lips. He sat there staring at the screen.

  The two weeks that went by before Maltzer called him again were the longest Harris had ever spent. He thought of many things in the interval. He believed he could sense in that last talk with Deirdre something of the inner unrest that Maltzer had spoken of – more an abstraction than a distress, but some thought had occupied her mind which she would not – or was it that she could not? – share even with her closest confidants. He even wondered whether, if her mind was as delicately poised as Maltzer feared, one would ever know whether or not it had slipped. There was so little evidence one way or the other in the unchanging outward form of her.

  Most of all he wondered what two weeks in a new environment would do to her untried body and newly patterned brain. If Maltzer were right, then there might be some perceptible – drainage – by the time they met again. He tried not to think of that.

  Maltzer televised him on the morning set for her return. He looked very bad. The rest must have been no rest at all. His face was almost a skull now, and the blurred eyes behind their lenses burned. But he seemed curiously at peace, in spite of his appearance. Harris thought he had reached some decision, but whatever it was had not stopped his hands from shaking or the nervous tic that drew his face sidewise into a grimace at intervals.

  “Come over,” he said briefly, without preamble. “She’ll be here in half an hour.” And he blanked out without waiting for an answer.

  When Harris arrived, he was standing by the window looking down and steadying his trembling hands on the sill.

  “I can’t stop her,” he said in a monotone, and again without preamble. Harris had the impression that for the two weeks his thoughts must have run over and over the same track, until any spoken word was simply a vocal interlude in the circlin
g of his mind. “I couldn’t do it. I even tried threats, but she knew I didn’t mean them. There’s only one way out, Harris.” He glanced up briefly, hollow-eyed behind the lenses. “Never mind. I’ll tell you later.”

  “Did you explain everything to her that you did to me?”

  “Nearly all. I even taxed her with that . . . that sense of distress I know she feels. She denied it. She was lying. We both knew. It was worse after the performance than before. When I saw her that night, I tell you I knew – she senses something wrong, but won’t admit it.” He shrugged. “Well—”

  Faintly in the silence they heard the humming of the elevator descending from the helicopter platform on the roof. Both men turned to the door.

  She had not changed at all. Foolishly, Harris was a little surprised. Then he caught himself and remembered that she would never change – never, until she died. He himself might grow white-haired and senile; she would move before him then as she moved now, supple, golden, enigmatic.

  Still, he thought she caught her breath a little when she saw Maltzer and the depths of his swift degeneration. She had no breath to catch, but her voice was shaken as she greeted them.

  “I’m glad you’re both here,” she said, a slight hesitation in her speech. “It’s a wonderful day outside. Jersey was glorious. I’d forgotten how lovely it is in summer. Was the sanitarium any good, Maltzer?”

  He jerked his head irritably and did not answer. She went on talking in a light voice, skimming the surface, saying nothing important.

  This time Harris saw her as he supposed her audiences would, eventually, when the surprise had worn off and the image of the living Deirdre faded from memory. She was all metal now, the Deirdre they would know from today on. And she was not less lovely. She was not even less human – yet. Her motion was a miracle of flexible grace, a pouring of suppleness along every limb. (From now on, Harris realized suddenly, it was her body and not her face that would have mobility to express emotion; she must act with her limbs and her lithe, robed torso.)

  But there was something wrong. Harris sensed it almost tangibly in her inflections, her elusiveness, the way she fenced with words. This was what Maltzer had meant, this was what Harris himself had felt just before she left for the country. Only now it was strong – certain. Between them and the old Deirdre whose voice still spoke to them, a veil of – detachment – had been drawn. Behind it she was in distress. Somehow, somewhere, she had made some discovery that affected her profoundly. And Harris was terribly afraid that he knew what the discovery must be. Maltzer was right.

  He was still leaning against the window, staring out unseeingly over the vast panorama of New York, webbed with traffic bridges, winking with sunlit glass, its vertiginous distances plunging downward into the blue shadows of Earth-level. He said now, breaking into the light-voiced chatter, “Are you all right, Deirdre?”

  She laughed. It was lovely laughter. She moved lithely across the room, sunlight glinting on her musical mailed robe, and stooped to a cigarette box on a table. Her fingers were deft.

  “Have one?” she said, and carried the box to Maltzer. He let her put the brown cylinder between his lips and hold a light to it, But he did not seem to be noticing what he did. She replaced the box and then crossed to a mirror on the far wall and began experimenting with a series of gliding ripples that wove patterns of pale gold in the glass. “Of course I’m all right,” she said.

  “You’re lying.”

  Deirdre did not turn. She was watching him in the mirror, but the ripple of her motion went on slowly, languorously, undisturbed.

  “No,” she told them both.

  Maltzer drew deeply on his cigarette. Then with a hard pull he unsealed the window and tossed the smoking stub far out over the gulfs below. He said:

  “You can’t deceive me, Deirdre.” His voice, suddenly, was quite calm. “I created you, my dear. I know. I’ve sensed that uneasiness in you growing and growing for a long while now. It’s much stronger today than it was two weeks ago. Something happened to you in the country. I don’t know what it was, but you’ve changed. Will you admit to yourself what it is, Deirdre? Have you realized yet that you must not go back on the screen?”

  “Why, no,” said Deirdre, still not looking at him except obliquely, in the glass. Her gestures were slower now, weaving lazy patterns in the air. “No, I haven’t changed my mind.”

  She was all metal – outwardly. She was taking unfair advantage of her own metal-hood. She had withdrawn far within, behind the mask of her voice and her facelessness. Even her body, whose involuntary motions might have betrayed what she was feeling, in the only way she could be subject to betrayal now, she was putting through ritual motions that disguised it completely. As long as these looping, weaving patterns occupied her, no one had any way of guessing even from her motion what went on in the hidden brain inside her helmet.

  Harris was struck suddenly and for the first time with the completeness of her withdrawal. When he had seen her last in this apartment she had been wholly Deirdre, not masked at all, overflowing the metal with the warmth and ardor of the woman he had known so well. Since then – since the performance on the stage – he had not seen the familiar Deirdre again. Passionately he wondered why. Had she begun to suspect even in her moment of triumph what a fickle master an audience could be? Had she caught, perhaps, the sound of whispers and laughter among some small portion of her watchers, though the great majority praised her?

  Or was Maltzer right? Perhaps Harris’ first interview with her had been the last bright burning of lost Deirdre, animated by excitement and the pleasure of meeting after so long a time, animation summoned up in a last strong effort to convince him. Now she was gone, but whether in self-protection against the possible cruelties of human beings, or whether in withdrawal to metal-hood, he could not guess. Humanity might be draining out of her fast, and the brassy taint of metal permeating the brain it housed.

  Maltzer laid his trembling hand on the edge of the opened window and looked out. He said in a deepened voice, the querulous note gone for the first time:

  “I’ve made a terrible mistake, Deirdre. I’ve done you irreparable harm.” He paused a moment, but Deirdre said nothing. Harris dared not speak. In a moment Maltzer went on. “I’ve made you vulnerable, and given you no weapons to fight your enemies with. And the human race is your enemy, my dear, whether you admit it now or later. I think you know that. I think it’s why you’re so silent. I think you must have suspected it on the stage two weeks ago, and verified it in Jersey while you were gone. They’re going to hate you, after a while, because you are still beautiful, and they’re going to persecute you because you are different – and helpless. Once the novelty wears off, my dear, your audience will be simply a mob.”

  He was not looking at her. He had bent forward a little, out the window and down. His hair stirred in the wind that blew very strongly up this high, and whined thinly around the open edge of the glass.

  “I meant what I did for you,” he said, “to be for everyone who meets with accidents that might have ruined them. I should have known my gift would mean worse ruin than any mutilation could be. I know now that there’s only one legitimate way a human being can create life. When he tries another way, as I did, he has a lesson to learn. Remember the lesson of the student Frankenstein? He learned, too. In a way, he was lucky – the way he learned. He didn’t have to watch what happened afterward. Maybe he wouldn’t have had the courage – I know I haven’t.”

  Harris found himself standing without remembering that he rose. He knew suddenly what was about to happen. He understood Maltzer’s air of resolution, his new, unnatural calm. He knew, even, why Maltzer had asked him here today, so that Deirdre might not be left alone. For he remembered that Frankenstein, too, had paid with his life for the unlawful creation of life.

  Maltzer was leaning head and shoulders from the window now, looking down with almost hypnotized fascination. His voice came back to them remotely in the breeze, as if a
barrier already lay between them.

  Deirdre had not moved. Her expressionless mask, in the mirror, watched him calmly. She must have understood. Yet she gave no sign, except that the weaving of her arms had almost stopped now, she moved so slowly. Like a dance seen in a nightmare, under water.

  It was impossible, of course, for her to express any emotion. The fact that her face showed none now should not, in fairness, be held against her. But she watched so wholly without feeling – Neither of them moved toward the window. A false step, now, might send him over. They were quiet, listening to his voice.

  “We who bring life into the world unlawfully,” said Maltzer, almost thoughtfully, “must make room for it by withdrawing our own. That seems to be an inflexible rule. It works automatically. The thing we create makes living unbearable. No, it’s nothing you can help, my dear. I’ve asked you to do something I created you incapable of doing. I made you to perform a function, and I’ve been asking you to forego the one thing you were made to do. I believe that if you do it, it will destroy you, but the whole guilt is mine, not yours. I’m not even asking you to give up the screen, any more. I know you can’t, and live. But I can’t live and watch you. I put all my skill and all my love in one final masterpiece, and I can’t bear to watch it destroyed. I can’t live and watch you do only what I made you to do, and ruin yourself because you must do it.

  “But before I go, I have to make sure you understand.” He leaned a little farther, looking down, and his voice grew more remote as the glass came between them. He was saying almost unbearable things now, but very distantly, in a cool, passionless tone filtered through wind and glass, and with the distant humming of the city mingled with it, so that the words were curiously robbed of poignancy. “I can be a coward,” he said, “and escape the consequences of what I’ve done, but I can’t go and leave you – not understanding. It would be even worse than the thought of your failure, to think of you bewildered and confused when the mob turns on you. What I’m telling you, my dear, won’t be any real news – I think you sense it already, though you may not admit it to yourself. We’ve been too close to lie to each other, Deirdre – I know when you aren’t telling the truth. I know the distress that’s been growing in your mind. You are not wholly human, my dear. I think you know that. In so many ways, in spite of all I could do, you must always be less than human. You’ve lost the senses of perception that kept you in touch with humanity. Sight and hearing are all that remain, and sight, as I’ve said before, was the last and coldest of the senses to develop. And you’re so delicately poised on a sort of thin edge of reason. You’re only a clear, glowing mind animating a metal body, like a candle flame in a glass. And as precariously vulnerable to the wind.”