"Percy starts grade eight in two weeks,” he said. “He'll be too busy. And Carl and Emily both work during the day. And we can't afford to hire a home-care worker."
"We could if...” she began, and he mentally finished that sentence: if we sold the house.
He looked out one of the windows again. Yes, this house, small though it was, was bigger than they needed, and had been since Emily had moved out more than twenty years ago. Maybe they should sell it. As was now painfully obvious, Sarah was having real trouble with the stairs. Moving to an apartment would free up money and deal with that problem.
He'd reached the far end of the room and turned around, facing his wife again, and he saw her expression brighten. “You know what we need?” she said. “A Mozo."
"Mozo?” He said it the way she had, with two long-O sounds.
She nodded. “You know what that is?"
"I know it's worth fifteen points."
Sarah frowned. “It means ‘male servant,'” she said. “It's from the Spanish. But it's also the brand name for a line of robots designed to help the elderly."
Don narrowed his eyes. “They make such things?"
"See what I mean?” said Sarah. “You have got to get out more. Yes, they make such things, if by ‘they,’ you mean McGavin Robotics."
He stopped pacing. “Even a low-end bot costs a fortune."
"Sure. But Cody thinks I've got some special insight into decrypting the response from Sigma Drac. I'll tell him I need a Mozo. It wouldn't be a lie. I could easily get more done with someone to serve as a research assistant, get me coffee, and so on. And it would mean I'd never be alone. You could go out without worrying about me."
He thought about complaining that the last time they'd taken charity from McGavin, it hadn't worked out so well. But Sarah was right. He'd go nuts if he had to stay home all the time, and, well, a housebot would make a lot of things easier, wouldn't it?
* * * *
Chapter 29
It was as though Ikea sold mechanical men. The Mozo arrived disassembled in a cubic crate that measured about a meter on a side. Don found it disconcerting seeing the head in a plastic bag, and it took him a good five minutes to figure out how to connect the legs (which were stored folded in half at the knee). But, at last, it was done. The robot was sky blue trimmed with silver; its body was covered with a soft material like that used to make wet suits. It had a round head about the size of a basketball, with two glassy eyes. And it had a mouth, of sorts. He had seen similar things on some other robots he'd run into: a horizontal black line beneath the eyes that could animate to match speech patterns. Although the market for robots that looked more or less human was small, people did like robots to have some facial expression.
Don couldn't help comparing their new robot to the fictional bots of his youth. He decided that, except for the mouth, it looked most like one of those from the old Gold Key comic Magnus, Robot Fighter. And, he had to admit, it was way cool having one, and not just because it let him put a check mark beside another of those twenty items on his old high-school list of things to do.
He looked at the Mozo, another modern miracle they couldn't afford. “Well,” he said, hands on his hips, “what do you think?"
"It looks nice enough,” said Sarah. “Shall we turn it on?"
Don was amused to see that the switch was a recessed button in the middle of the robot's torso; their Mozo had an innie. He pressed the switch, and—
"Hello,” said a plain male voice. The mouth outline moved in a cartoonish approximation of the shapes human lips would have made. “Do you speak English? Hola. ¿Habla Español? Bonjour. Parlez-vous Français? Konichi-wa. Nihongo-o hanashimasu-ka?"
"English,” said Don.
"Hello,” said the robot again. “This is the first time I've been activated since leaving the factory, so I need to ask you a few questions, please. First, from whom do I take instructions?"
"Me and her,” Don said.
The robot nodded its basketball head. “By default, I will call you ma'am and you sir. However, if you prefer, I can address you any way you like."
Don grinned. “I am the Great and All-Powerful Oz."
The robot's mouth outline moved in a way that suggested the machine knew Don was kidding. “A pleasure to meet you, Great and All-Powerful Oz."
Sarah looked at the robot with a “see what I have to put up with” expression. Don smiled sheepishly, and she said, “Call him Don. And you can call me Sarah."
"A pleasure to meet you, Don and Sarah. What you are hearing is my default voice. However, if you prefer me to use a female voice or a different accent, I can. Would you like that?"
Don looked at Sarah. “No, this is fine,” she said.
"All right,” said the robot. “Have you chosen a name for me yet?"
Sarah lifted her shoulders and looked at Don. “Gunter,” he said.
"Is that G-U-N-T-H-E-R?” asked the robot.
"No H," said Don. And then, unable to help himself, “Get the H out."
"My little boy,” Sarah said, smiling at Don. She'd said that often enough over the years, but, just now, it seemed to hit a little too close to home. She must have noticed his quickly suppressed wince, because she immediately said, “Sorry."
Still, he thought, she was right. He was a kid at heart, at least when it came to robots. And his absolute favorite when he was growing up, as Sarah well knew, was the robot from Lost in Space. He got miffed whenever people called that robot Robby, although Robby, the robot from the movie Forbidden Planet, did bear a passing resemblance to the one from Lost in Space—not surprising, given that they were both designed by the same person, Robert Kinoshita. The Jupiter2's robot was mostly just referred to as “the Robot” (or the “bubble-headed booby” and a hundred other alliterative insults by Dr. Smith). Still, many hardcore Lost in Space fans called it B-9, which was the model number it gave for itself in one episode. But Don had always contended that the barrel-chested automaton with vacuum-cleaner hoses for arms was actually named GUNTER, because another episode contained a flashback, showing the robot in its original packing crate, which was labeled “General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Robot.” Despite pointing this out to people for—God, for over seventy years now—Don hadn't won many converts. But at least now there was a robot in the world who indisputably had that name.
Of course, thought Don, Sarah understood all this. She'd grown up watching Lost in Space, too, although what she'd loved most about it were the photos of real nebulas and galaxies used in space scenes ("Astronomical Photographs Copyrighted 1959 by the California Institute of Technology,” the card on the ending credits said). But, he realized sadly, none of this would mean anything to Lenore or anyone else who was as young as he felt.
They continued responding to Gunter's questions for about half an hour, outlining the sorts of duties he was to perform, whether he should answer the phone or door, advising him not to enter the bathrooms when they were occupied unless he heard a call for help, and so on.
But Gunter's principal job was making sure Sarah was safe and well. And so Don said, “Do you know CPR?"
"Yes."
"What about the Heimlich maneuver?” asked Sarah.
"That, too. I'm fully trained in first aid. I can even perform an emergency tracheotomy, if need be, and my palms have built-in defibrillator pads."
"See!” said Don. “He is like Gunter. The real Gunter could shoot lightning out of his claws."
Sarah looked at Don with an affectionate grin. “The real Gunter?"
Don laughed. “You know what I mean.” He looked at the blue machine. “What do we do with you when we go to bed?” he asked. “Do we turn you off?"
"You may if you wish,” said Gunter, and he smiled reassuringly. “But I suggest you leave me on so that I can respond instantly to any emergency. You can also set me tasks to perform while you're sleeping: I can dust and do other chores, and have a hot breakfast ready for you when you get up."
Don looked around the living room, and his eyes landed on the fireplace. “Do you know how to make a fire?"
The robot tilted his head a little to one side, and, if glass lenses could be said to have a faraway look, Gunter's did for a second. “I do now,” he said.
"Great,” said Don. “We'll have to get some wood, come winter."
"Do you get bored if you have nothing to do?” asked Sarah.
"No,” said the robot, and he smiled that reassuring smile again. “I'm content just to relax."
"An admirable trait,” said Sarah, glancing at Don. “I wonder how we ever got along without one."
* * * *
Chapter 30
Don found himself feeling more and more confused with each passing day. He'd had a handle on life, damn it all. He'd understood its rhythms, its stages, and he'd moved through them all, in the proper sequence, surviving each one.
Youth, he knew, had been for education, for the first phase of professional development, for exploring sexual relationships.
Mature adulthood had meant a committed marriage, raising children, and consolidating whatever material prosperity he had been entitled to.
After that had come middle age, a time for re-evaluation. He'd managed to avoid the affair and sports car then; his midlife crisis, precipitated by a minor heart attack, had finally spurred him to lose weight, and hearing so many women—and some men—tell him how good he looked, how he was hotter at forty-five than he'd been at thirty, had been tonic enough to help him weather those years without needing to do anything more to prove he was still attractive.
And, finally—or so it should have been—there had been the so-called golden years: retirement, becoming a grandparent, taking it easy, an epoch for acceptance and reflection, for companionship and peace, for winding things up as the end approached.
The stages of life; he knew them and understood them: collectively, an arc, a storyline, with a predicable, clichéd beginning, middle, and end.
But now there was suddenly more; not just an epilogue tacked on, but a whole new volume, and a totally unplanned one, at that. Rollback: Book Two of the Donald Halifax Story. And although Don understood he was its author, he had no idea what was supposed to happen, where it was all supposed to lead. There was no standard plot skeleton to follow, and he didn't have a clue how it was going to end. He couldn't begin to visualize what he should be doing decades down the road; he wasn't even sure what he should be doing in the present day.
But there was one thing he knew he had to do soon, although he was dreading it.
"I have something to tell you,” Don said to Lenore the next time he saw her.
Lenore was lying naked in bed next to him, in her basement apartment on Euclid Avenue. She propped her head up with a crooked arm and looked at him. “What?"
He hesitated. This was more difficult than he'd thought it would be, and he'd thought it would be very difficult. How'd he ever get into a situation in which telling his ... his ... his whatever Lenore was ... that he was married would be the easy part?
He let the air out of his lungs through a small opening between his lips, puffing his cheeks out as he did so. “I—um, I'm older than you probably think I am,” he said at last.
Her eyes narrowed a bit. “Aren't you the same age as me?"
He shook his head.
"Well, you can't be any more than thirty,” she said.
"I'm older than that."
"Thirty-one? Thirty-two? Don, I don't care about six or seven years. I've got an uncle who is ten years older than my aunt."
I can do ten years for breakfast, he thought. “Keep going."
"Thirty-three?” Her tone was getting nervous. “Thirty-four? Thirty—"
"Lenore,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment. “I'm eighty-seven."
She made a small raspberry sound. “Jesus, Don, you—"
"I'm eighty-seven," he said, the words practically exploding from him. “I was born in 1960. You must have heard about the rejuvenation process they've got now. I underwent a rollback earlier this year. And this"—he indicated his face with a counterclockwise motion of his hand—"is the result."
She scuttled sideways on the bed, like a crab on hot sands, increasing the distance between them. “My ... God,” she said. She was peering at him, studying him, clearly looking for some sign, one way or the other, of whether it was true. “But that procedure, it costs a fortune."
He nodded. “I, um, had a benefactor."
"I don't believe you,” Lenore said, but she sounded as though she were lying. “I—I mean, it can't..."
"It's true. I could prove it in a hundred different ways. Do you want to see some photo ID, the way I looked before?"
"No!" An expression of ... of disgust, perhaps, had fleetingly passed over her face. Of course she didn't want to see the old man she'd just had inside her.
"I should have told you sooner, but—"
"You're damn right you should have. Shit, Don!” But then, perhaps the thought occurring because she'd just uttered his name, a glimmer of hope appeared in her eyes, as if she'd realized that this might all be some elaborate put-on. “But, wait, you're Sarah Halifax's grandson! You told me that."
"No, I didn't. You guessed that."
She pulled even farther away, and managed to cover her breasts with the sheet, the first hint of modesty he'd ever seen from her. “Who the hell are you?” she said. “Are you even related to Sarah Halifax?"
"Yesss,” he said, protracting the word into a gentle hiss. “But"—he swallowed hard, trying to keep it all together—"but I'm not her grandson.” He found himself unable to meet her eyes, and so he looked down at the rumpled bedspread between them. “I'm her husband."
"Fuck,” said Lenore. “Shit."
"I am so sorry. Really, I am."
"Her husband?” she said again, as if perhaps she'd misheard the first time.
He nodded.
"I think you should leave."
The words tore into his heart, like bullets. “Please. I can—"
"What?” she demanded. “You can explain? There's no fucking explanation for this."
"No,” he said. “No, I can't explain. And I can't justify it. But, God, Lenore, I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt anyone." His stomach was churning, and he felt disoriented. “But I want you to ... to know, to understand."
"Understand what? That everything that has gone down between us has been a lie?"
"No!” he said. “No, no, God, no. This has been more ... more real than anything in my life for—"
"For what?” she sneered. “For years? For decades?"
He let out a long, shuddering sigh. He couldn't even protest that she was being unfair. The fact that she was even still talking to him was more, he knew, than he had a right to. Still, he tried to defend himself, although, as soon as the words were out, he realized how ill-advised they were. “Look,” he said, “you're the one who turned things physical."
"Because I thought you were somebody you aren't. You lied to me."
He thought about protesting that he hadn't, not technically, or at least not often. “And, anyway,” she continued, “who started things is so beside the point it's not even in the same solar system. You're an octogenarian, for God's sake. You're old enough to be my grandfather."
He'd expected those last few words, but they didn't hurt any less for that. “Sarah underwent the same treatment,” he said, blurting it out. “But it didn't work for her. She's still physically eighty-seven, and I'm ... this."
Lenore said nothing, but her mouth was slightly downturned and her eyebrows were drawn together.
"Cody McGavin paid for it,” continued Don. “He wanted Sarah to be around when the next reply comes in from Sigma Draconis. I—I was just along for the ride, but..."
"But now you're Sarah's caregiver."
"Please,” he said. “I didn't ask for any of this."
"No, no, of course not. It all just sort of happened—a multi-billion-dollar
medical procedure."
He shook his head. “I should have known you wouldn't understand."
"If you want understanding, go to a support group. There must be one for people like you."
"Oh, yeah. Sure. They're meeting right now, in Vienna. I can't afford to go there. I am—I worked it out—I am four orders of magnitude poorer than the next poorest person who has undergone this process. For every single dollar I've got, they've each got ten thousand dollars. That's not being in the same solar system, Lenore."
"Don't snap at me. I haven't done anything wrong here."
He took a deep breath. “You're right. I'm sorry. It's just that I don't know what to do, and ... and I don't want to lose you. I really do care about you; I haven't been able to stop thinking about you. And I don't know what I'm doing, but I do know this: the only times of late I've been happy—the only times—are when I'm with you."
"There must be somebody else who—"
"There's no one. My friends—what few I have who are still alive—they don't understand. And my kids—"
"Oh, crap. I hadn't thought about that. You've got kids!"
In for a penny, in for a pound. “And grandkids. But my son is fifty-five and my daughter is about to turn fifty. I can't expect them to understand a parent half their age."
"This is crazy,” she said.
"We can work it out."
"Are you nuts? You're married. You're sixty years older than me. You've got kids. You've got grandkids. And—God, you must be retired, right? You don't even have a job."
"I've got a pension."
"A pension! Jesus."
"This doesn't have to change anything,” he said.
"Are you out of your fucking mind?"
"Lenore, please—"
"Get your clothes," she snapped.
"Pardon?"
"Get your clothes, and get the hell out!"
* * * *
Chapter 31
It had been months since Don had seen his grandchildren. He missed them, but he'd been avoiding contact, having no idea how to explain what had happened to him. But, finally, there was no choice. Today, Thursday, September 10, was Emily's fiftieth birthday, and just as attendance for everyone else had been mandatory at Don and Sarah's anniversary party, so his attendance was non-negotiable as his daughter reached the half-century mark.
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