Ril and Ramani are on the steps talking to each other, their conversation inaudible. Robert and Lucy take a moment to observe unseen.
“I wonder what it is with those two,” Robert muses.
“Do you suppose they are lovers?” Lucy asks, transfixed by the couple.
“Come on,” Robert says, grabbing Lucy’s hand and pulling her after him into the clearing. “And behave yourself.”
Ril and Ramani turn to greet them, both dressed in dinner suits. Like Lucy’s, Ramani’s is in the style of a man’s, cut for a woman, though with a more appropriate choice of shoe. She has an appreciative grin for Robert.
“We do scrub up rather well, don’t we, Mr. Cantor.”
“Are you both rested?” Ril enquires. “I trust the house was in order.”
“It was, thank you.”
Ramani motions Robert and Lucy up the steps, taking the opportunity to look over Lucy’s attire.
“A good choice, Lucy. It suits you.”
“Thank you.”
Robert detects the haughtiness in her voice that manifests when Lucy’s mood is condescending or combative. He raises his eyebrows at Ramani to show he sees the game she is playing, as Lucy trots up the steps.
The pavilion is a single open space divided by its dome, brightly lit and elegant in appearance. The hall to the left contains a formal dining table set for dinner, with sofas and armchairs arranged around it in informal clusters. The other hall is a dance floor, with an empty stage at the far end. Between the two, opposite the main entrance, a set of French windows lead out onto a terrace.
Lucy’s attention has been caught by the dining table and comfortable chairs—lots of tactile sensations. Robert watches her drift among it all, unaware of their hosts’ gaze fixed upon himself. Snapping out of it he turns to find them—
Music starts playing.
A string quartet on the stage. Four young women in Edwardian dress. Three violins and a cello.
“Who the bloody hell are they?” Robert asks, startled by their sudden appearance.
He doesn’t wait for a response, but heads off toward them, trailed by Ril and Ramani, Lucy quickly bringing up the rear.
Robert arrives at the stage to gawp at the performers, the four players appearing oblivious to his presence.
“They’re not real,” Ril says.
“They’re androids?” Robert says, looking the four over. “Like Lucy?”
A deeply wounded expression washes onto Lucy’s face, Robert’s preoccupied gaze missing it, but Ramani having quickly turned to see Lucy’s reaction, making no comment on the all too evident hurt that Robert’s casual remark has inflicted.
Ril sweeps an outstretched hand through the cello.
“Autonomous projections, much like your own avatar technology,” Ril explains. “It’s an entertainment system.”
“They seem so real.” Robert says.
“They do, don’t they. Drink?”
Ril motions Robert to a waiter holding a tray of champagne flutes.
Robert can’t help but jump at the second sudden appearance. “Jesus!”
Ril and Ramani politely laugh at his reaction, the waiter remaining unfazed as Lucy passes her hand through his chest. Another projection.
“Try some, Lucy.” Ramani says to her.
Lucy takes a flute, with a furtive glance at Robert, who follows suit, only to then tap the tray with the side of his glass. Both are solid, something Robert finds perplexing.
“A little parlor trick,” Ril admits. “Ah, guests!”
Couples dressed in eveningwear drift in from the terrace, Robert unable to make out the exact point of their manifestation. One couple passes close to them with a polite, if silent, acknowledgment.
“Okay…getting a little weird now.”
“It will help lend an ambience to the evening,” Ramani says to him, taking a glass of champagne for herself. “You’ll get used to it. Now drink, Robert. It’s Pol Roger, your favorite.”
Both Ril and Ramani take a generous sip from their flutes, prompting Robert to take a large swig from his own. Lucy, having observed carefully, does likewise.
With a sidewise glance at his hosts, Robert steps away into the gathering, while Lucy finds her own distractions. Mesmerized, he wanders among the projections, who skillfully avoid him so as to preserve the illusion. None talk—not to him or each other. Nor do they exhibit any particular interest—only when he makes a point of making eye contact does he get some form of polite response. One of the women he finds particularly attractive. She makes it clear that his interest is far too forward.
Robert soon finds himself at the French windows, from where he surveys the scene, projection people circulating, the string quartet playing and Lucy chasing waiters carrying trays of canapés under the ever-watchful eye of Ramani.
He slips out onto the terrace.
* * *
A refreshing chill to the evening accentuates the woodland scents, punctuated by the occasional heady waft of honeysuckle and azalea, though it is not cool enough to be uncomfortable. It is, as it has thus far shown to be, perfect. Robert’s gaze quickly finds the night sky and its profusion of stars.
“Is it real or another projection?” he asks.
Ril has quietly joined him.
“The dome is open to starlight. You see the night sky as it is.”
“How much life is out there?”
“It is everywhere,” Ril says, shifting his gaze to match Robert’s.
“After a century of looking we have found nothing.”
“A veil has been drawn over these worlds to obscure what lies beyond,” Ril says.
“What lies beyond?”
Robert lowers his gaze to confront Ril.
“All of creation.”
“Why hide that?”
“To deliver mankind from temptation. Industrialization, war, technological advancement. It is a common transitional period. A civilization that destroys itself during the process is not a threat. Isolation aids a swift conclusion.”
“Isolation?”
“The solar system has been under quarantine for two centuries now. You can see, but you cannot hear.”
“The Veil…You’re filtering out all forms of communication?” Robert asserts. “That’s why we can’t find any signs of intelligent life?”
“Quite so. To ensure mankind focuses on itself, without any distractions.”
“So why lift the Veil?”
“We haven’t.”
“But you revealed yourselves, and that changes everything.”
“It does, doesn’t it,” Ril says, with the tiniest hint of a smile.
“So why?”
“Because mankind survived.”
“I wouldn’t be too hasty.”
“You survived long enough. It is no longer a question of whether you will destroy yourselves.”
“What then?”
“Modern humans, as a species, have existed for two hundred thousand years. But this is a blink of an eye on a cosmological scale. For other civilizations to be ahead of you by a million years is nothing. Can you imagine the difference between humans and such a race? It isn’t just a question of how you could understand them, but of how they could understand you. That is the purpose of this place.”
Robert looks back up at the stars.
“Are they watching us now?”
“Yes, they are.”
“Are they here?” asks Robert, returning his gaze to Ril.
Ril smiles politely.
“Dinner is served,” he says.
* * *
The projection people lounge in the nearby sofas and armchairs, with Robert and Lucy seated at the dining table with their hosts. Lucy sniffs at a glass of white wine before taking a sip, Ramani watching her intently, biting down on a fork-full of fine green beans with a crunch.
The main course, fillet of halibut, is both cooked perfectly and presented impeccably. Having missed out on the sandwiches scoffed by Lucy Robert i
s famished, scooping up another mouthful of creamed potato with some gusto, before washing it down with a good swig of wine—a very fine Bordeaux indeed. While the vegetables were broadly as they appeared to be, Ril had informed them that the wine had been synthesized and the fillet artificially grown from a protein complex, a topic of conversation he evidently thought to be an icebreaker, with not much having been said since on account of appetite and culinary delight rather than there having been too much information.
Seeing Robert’s hunger to be abated, Ril ends the silence.
“It occurs to us that the two of you make an intriguing couple.”
Lucy’s ears prick up, munching in the green beans poking out of her mouth as Ril qualifies his assertion, tipping his hand toward Robert first.
“The Messiah virus coursing through your veins has left you being seen as an abomination,” he says to him, “by almost the entire human race, who would be happy to see you destroyed, while you,” he says, tipping his hand toward Lucy, “are widely distrusted and reviled with a xenophobic zeal unparalleled in human history.”
Robert clears his palette with another generous swig of wine.
“If we are monstrous, then we were made monstrous,” he says.
“But the monster is a lie,” Ril retorts. “Or perhaps one might say a truth, distorted by those in power, so that fear and prejudice will do their dirty work for them. It isn’t just your nature that has been made to seem monstrous, but also your actions arising from that nature. The things you did.”
“How do you feel about that, Lucy?” Ramani asks of her quite directly.
Lucy is equally direct in her response.
“I am not sure that I care what others think of me anymore.”
“Your point being what?” Robert asks of Ril.
But it is Ramani that answers.
“That you both represent change,” she says. “One might even say that you each represent a different aspect of humanity’s future. Perhaps even its salvation. Ironic, isn’t it.”
“Ironic?”
“Sometimes the things we fear the most—hate and distrust the most—are the very things we need the most.”
“You are seen as a nemesis,” Ril says. “But really you represent the next stage for humanity. And that’s why you are here.”
“Mankind needs to stop and think about what it means to be human,” says Ramani.
She watches Lucy for any hint of a response, of which there is none, before turning her attention to Robert.
She touches his hand, Lucy following the movement.
“Shall we dance?” Ramani asks.
Robert eyes her up, drains his glass and takes her hand, projection people rising to follow them both to the dance floor. Lucy looks on, full of dismay, unaware of Ril’s scrutiny of her.
* * *
The projection people move as couples in harmony with the music, the quartet now bolstered by additional strings. It’s a slow dance, not too formal, not too intimate, Robert’s hand resting in the small of Ramani’s back, hers on his shoulder, their other hands clasped.
Being of similar heights it’s initially a staring contest, one that Robert considers Ramani can easily win, and so decides instead to focus on his lead, taking them skillfully on a full circuit, a skill equally matched by her perfect poise and faultless anticipation of each step.
“You dance very well, Mr. Cantor,” Ramani says, with her characteristically mischievous grin.
“You know, I do believe you and I have met before,” Robert casually remarks.
“Indeed we have.”
“St Luke’s Hospice. Peter’s nurse. I take it you are also the two individuals tormenting Cardinal Ansoni?”
“Tormenting?” she retorts, with a mock pout. “Tut, Mr. Cantor, tut. We have always had Joseph’s best interests at heart.”
“And ours? Mine and Lucy’s?”
“Of course. How do you feel about your current situation?”
Ramani’s query seems uncharacteristically sincere to Robert, who wants to keep a light tone.
“I find it to be the same as my previous situation, but on a much larger scale,” Robert quips. “Except that now I have an errant teenager in my charge, one with a supercomputer for a brain, and upon whom I am likely dependent as my only means of returning home.”
“You could not fly the Afrika yourself?”
“Not without support from Earth.”
“Ah, the Veil,” Ramani’s grin returning.
Robert senses Ramani taking the lead, the subtle pressure from her hand on his shoulder, a gentle squeeze on his clasped hand, but they have the measure of each other now and he has no trouble keeping in step.
“This is all a little theatrical isn’t it?” Robert says. “Couldn’t you have just landed on the White House lawn?”
“And do what? Say what?”
“Oh, I don’t know…how about take me to your leader?”
Ramani halts their dance, the sincerity returning.
“Their desire and subsequent failure to control the situation would undermine the process.”
“What process?” Robert asks.
“The transition of the human race into the greater community of intelligences that span the galaxy.”
It’s the bottom line, the definitive statement. But despite everything he has seen and experienced up to this point, it still manages to deliver a punch hard enough to momentarily suspend all other lines of thought.
“So you are going to lift the Veil,” he says.
“No, Robert. You are.”
Robert has no response to that. He wants to ask how but the question seems so—
“The human race must be assessed before it can be included in the community.”
“And if things don’t go well?” Robert manages.
“Then the Veil becomes a shroud.”
* * *
Little more had been forthcoming from their hosts and all were agreed that a good night’s sleep was in order, Robert keeping what he had learnt from Ramani to himself as he and Lucy make their way back through the woodland.
Trees creak and leaves rustle with the faintest of breezes. It gives him more unease than earlier, and he can’t help but look all about in the eerie light—moonlight without any obvious source, let alone an actual moon, projected or otherwise.
Lucy is wan.
“I don’t feel well,” she calls out, trailing not far behind him.
“Too much champagne, young lady.”
“I only had the same as you.”
“The virus metabolizes the alcohol,” Robert says, stopping to allow Lucy to catch up.
“Uugghh!” she wails, grabbing her stomach. “This doesn’t feel good!”
Robert comes quickly to her aid.
“Okay, you are going to throw up—vomit. Do you know what that is?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Just let your body do what it needs to do. Don’t fight it.”
Her body takes control, a reflex action that has her bend over, heave and bring up the remains of her evening. Robert comforts her, though noting the lack of smell, and the even consistency of what spews out her. Brand new stomach—like a baby’s?
“That’s it. Just go with it.”
Another big heave.
“It’ll all be over in just a moment.”
A couple of dry heaves and Lucy is able to spit her mouth clean. Robert hands her a handkerchief, which she takes with her eyes averted from him. Having wiped her lips she keeps herself turned away, leaving Robert unsure as to what he should do.
She starts crying.
“I did not like that!” she sobs.
“Luce…it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let you drink so much.”
Robert crouches down, placing a comforting arm about her.
Lucy is comforted, turning into him, resting her head on his shoulder, arms wrapping about him. Robert is struck by how real it feels—and how disconcerting.
“Don’t wor
ry,” she whispers into his ear. “I’m a fast learner.”
Robert breaks the awkward embrace, stepping back from her with a look of shock.
“Luce…”
She backs away from him, with her own look of hurt and dismay.
“You like Ramani, don’t you,” she says bitterly. “I saw the way you looked at her. Or is it Commander Toor?”
“Lucy, no. It’s not like that—”
“After all, what am I? Nothing but an android!”
Robert makes the connection with his off-the-cuff remark at the pavilion—he has nowhere to go as the shame engulfs him. But Lucy is not done.
“A machine!” she wails at him. “Property of Cantor Satori Incorporated!”
She turns away bawling, falling to her knees, heaving great sobs. Robert comes to her side, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder, Lucy shrinking away from the touch.
“It was a stupid remark, Lucy, and I deeply regret it.”
It’s enough to stop her sobbing, but she keeps her face turned away, wiping the tears away from her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I danced with Ramani to see if she would tell me anything more. That’s all. Yes, I do find her to be an attractive woman, but age and the virus have altered my perspective on life in that regard.”
Once again he seeks to place a comforting hand on her shoulder, and it is accepted.
“I do find that I am fond of you, Lucy.”
“What does that mean?” her voice full of derision.
“Your smile warms my heart and your tears break it. The daughter I never had.”
Lucy cannot help but slump under the weight of the sentiment.
Robert waits patiently for the return of her gaze, bringing with it the resolution that they both need. He is not disappointed when she gives it—
The crack of wood snapping on the forest floor abruptly ends the moment, with Robert immediately on his feet, scanning the tree line about them. Silence. A falling branch, perhaps?
Something makes a move, crashing through the undergrowth. Robert finds it—an upright figure heading away from them. He bounds into the shrubbery after it, pushing through the foliage with ease, enough to gain on the invader, only to then lose sight of him—or her.
The Veil Page 9
