Souci was designed to be a sexual accessory for Julie. He was the key to unleashing her sexual functionality.
It wasn’t easy for guests to have their way with Julie, unlike the other AIs. Normal methods could not be used to establish sexual contact with her. If a guest tried to force the matter, she would immediately set out for the meadow with her basket.
Her dignity. Standoffishness.
She engaged in relations with the other AIs freely, but to guests she was cold, which was of course what made her appealing.
But if a guest understood the import of Souci, they could control Julie with ease. For guests, this was a simple puzzle in which success saw Julie’s desire unleashed. A mild amusement.
Only wealthy guests could afford the rights to Julie’s birthday.
Every birthday, a guest who had purchased the role of her father would offer her piles of presents. There was a store at the entrance to the Costa del Número heaped high with things that guests could buy and give to the AIs as gifts.
Julie hated her birthday, because it was obviously for the guests’ sake rather than her own.
But one birthday had been slightly different.
The moment Julie saw the man who had come as her father, she knew.
He’s younger than me!
The Realm of Summer had extremely high ethical barriers. No matter how wealthy the customer, if they were not of age they were not permitted inside. This boy, Julie thought, must be an unbelievably skilled hacker.
The boy wore the form of Julie’s father impeccably. He carried himself with both the poise and the hint of impending decline appropriate to a man in his late forties. His conversation, too, was spectacularly ordinary. But Julie clearly saw the lonely boy within, peering out at her from behind the multilayered barriers he had erected. He had armored his loneliness in pride and self-chosen isolation. Julie sensed something similar to herself in that, which meant there must be something unlike her in there too.
And that was what she wanted to see.
If only, she thought, she could open her father’s form and peek inside.
What was this hacker like?
She had never taken any interest in a guest before. It was not her function to: by design, she was oriented toward AIs rather than guests.
Her “father,” however, unusually for a guest, showed absolutely no enthusiasm for her. No doubt he had grasped the import of Souci at a glance. Julie tested him, sending sign after sign his way, but he did not respond in the slightest. He simply sat at the table watching her as he drank his tea.
What is this boy thinking? Why is he watching me?
Julie wished she could see herself as he did.
When her “father” finished his tea, he announced that he was going to his study to read. This surprised Julie. Her “father” was an unusually expensive role, and hacking was subject to harsh penalties. Someone willing to either pay that price or take that risk would usually make a point of savoring the secret pleasures of this little household.
Julie decided to enter her father’s room.
But to do what? He had just finished a cup of tea, after all… Julie felt the excitement rise as she cast about for a pretext. Following some moments of indecision, she picked up a couple of things and took them upstairs.
She knocked at the door. “Dad, can I have a moment?”
“Of course,” her father said from within.
Hearing the boy’s wholehearted commitment to imitating an older man’s tone of voice, Julie felt a smile threaten to rise. Tightening her lips, she opened the door.
A white curtain swam in the breeze behind her father, whose eyes were already on her.
“Come in,” he said.
Julie showed her “father” what she had brought with her. Another guest had given them to her as a gift, long ago. Her “father,” the boy, gazed at them, finally showing signs of interest.
“Colored pencils and a sketchbook?”
“That’s right. Will you draw me, Dad?”
The “father” who had given Julie these art supplies had begged her to draw him. As he removed his clothes. Or, rather, her clothes—that guest had been a woman, a bureaucrat in her late twenties. That perversion had been worth a rueful smile or two.
“All right.”
Her “father” laid the book he had been reading on his desk. It was large and bound in leather. A lengthy tale, by the looks of it.
“You’re finished with your book?”
“Sure. I’ve read it before. I was just indulging in some nostalgia. Give those over.”
Julie handed the sketchbook and pencils to her father. Large hands, the hands of a man in his prime, but inside him was a little boy. She wished she could reach through the disguise and touch his real hands. She imagined the hands of a nervous little boy. Her father’s hands opened the large sketchbook. A picture from last time was inside, on a page she hadn’t torn out. Julie blushed. Her father tore out and discarded the page without a word. The cover came off the large box of pencils.
“What about work?”
“A customer canceled their appointment and freed up my afternoon.” In the Realm, her father worked at an accountant’s office one town over.
“So you’re just going to take it easy?”
“I suppose so. I am making dinner tonight. It’s your birthday, after all. Mom will probably bake a cake, too.”
“Sounds lovely.”
Following her “father’s” directions, Julie stood by the window. The bright sunlight ringed her silhouette with halation. The tips of her hair became optical fibers and stood out clearly. Her “father” surveyed the scene, took a pencil, and began to sketch the overall shape on the paper.
“What made you want me to draw you?” he asked.
“Good question.” Julie’s smile floated in the light.
“I could draw your rabbit too, if you want.”
Her father had a tendency to slip into a more boyish way of speaking. He also seemed a little nervous around her—she was older than him, after all. These observations filled Julie with glee.
“Never mind him. Just draw me.”
“Fair enough.”
With conscious effort, Julie looked away from the boy, turning her face to the window. But she still felt his eyes on her. It was a good feeling. Having him draw her picture had been a good idea, she thought. It gave her control over his gaze.
“It’s not like you to hole up in your study,” she said.
“It’s not?”
Her “father” held the sketchbook vertically and began scribbling on it with the pencils. What kind of picture was he drawing over there?
“No. Normally when you’re home you won’t leave me and Mom alone.”
“If I always acted the same, you’d get sick of it soon enough. Sometimes I like to break the mold. And look—it got you to come to my study, didn’t it?”
This annoyed Julie. But part of her enjoyed even this annoyance, and her thoughts were thrown into confusion. Had he planned all this?
The sun’s rays were so bright. Julie turned to let the light show through her thin linen dress. Today she wore nothing underneath. She was conscious that he could see the lines of her body, but she didn’t mean to be provocative. What she intended was a few steps short of that. She just wanted him to look. And keep him there a while.
“I can’t wait for dinner tonight,” she said, not particularly truthfully. She felt as if there was something else she wanted to say.
“I’d better roll up my sleeves.”
That over-earnest grown-up tone. Julie’s shoulders shook with suppressed laughter.
“There,” said her father. “Done.” He flipped the sketchbook around, and Julie saw the picture.
It was in vivid color.
He had drawn her using every single
pencil in the box.
There were touches of blue and purple on her skin, pink and mint green in the linen of her dress. Colors had been dropped in mutual repulsion into every shadow, across every bright surface.
These hues melted together and faded away to give the impression that Julie was clad in uniform white light.
Light as chaste as a bridal veil.
Light as pure as a bouquet of lilies.
Julie felt her face grow hot.
His sketching was more accurate than any camera. He had caught the summer breeze in her loose strands of her, the smug, calculating smile she had flashed for a moment. What a wonderful eye this guest had. Julie hugged the picture carefully to her chest.
“This is the best present I’ve ever gotten,” she said. “By far.”
“Just wait until dinner, then,” said her father. “Thank you. I enjoyed this.”
“You know what? I want to kiss you.”
“You do, eh? Thank you. I’ll look forward to dinnertime, then.”
“I want to kiss you, Dad.”
He father smiled at her again, then returned to his book. As if nothing had happened. As if he did not want to be disturbed by anyone. Julie was deeply disappointed. And so she stepped lightly out of the library and spent the long afternoon in her own room, gazing at the sketchbook and thinking about nothing. Normally she would call Souci to her bed, but she wasn’t in the mood today.
When the sun began to set, she filled the basin with water from the pitcher and washed her face. She brushed her hair. Stripping naked, she looked at herself in the mirror. Then she got dressed again, this time in a navy blue dress with an orange daisy print. She checked her nails and the color of her tongue.
The delicious smell coming from the kitchen surprised her as she descended the staircase.
In the dining room, Julie’s mother would not meet her eye. Something was afoot. What could it be? She got the feeling it would not be a pleasant surprise.
The table seated four. Julie’s seat was opposite her “father’s,” and her little brother sat across from their mother.
Julie’s father removed a broad stewpot from the oven. Some broth had bubbled out from between pot and lid and been cooked onto the side of the pot, creating the delicious smell that filled the room.
“I’ll do the serving.”
The lid came off.
The dark brown sauce inside was still boiling as Julie’s father stirred it with a ladle, which he then used to scoop out Souci’s head.
Julie’s brother vomited. Her mother closed her eyes tight, ground her teeth, and lowered her eyes in forbearance.
Julie did not lose her composure.
She remained completely calm.
Part of her was aghast, and another part of her was able to accept this as an entirely ordinary turn of events.
This latter part mystified her, but also seemed completely natural.
Poor Souci had been boiled whole in the broth as it thickened into a sauce. Not as meat for the feast table. As Souci, the rabbit.
Most of his skin had melted off, and his ears were dissolving too. The meat was sloughing off his face.
Stirring the broth with the ladle had brought to the surface great clouds of boiled-off hair as well.
“Was he alive?”
“He was.”
In the man’s eyes there was not a hint of cruelty. Nor any indication that he was gloating over Julie’s response. His loneliness twinkled like a distant star.
“Poor thing.”
Julie, too, was like the surface of still water. Not a single ripple. If this had happened yesterday, I might have cracked. Today is different. The pity I feel for Souci is real, but it isn’t enough to break me.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” the man said, submerging the ladle again.
“Poor thing …” Even Julie wasn’t sure who the words were for.
Rising to her feet, Julie plunged both hands into the boiling sauce.
She scooped up the head of her beloved Souci and hugged it to her chest. The sauce was thick and much hotter than boiling water. It poured from Souci’s empty eye sockets onto Julie’s chest, her abdomen.
It was painful.
It was hot.
“Is it hot?” the man asked.
Julie nodded.
Tears welled in Julie’s eyes from the pain.
Sharpening all her nerves, Julie searched the stew for the last remaining sensations of Souci.
She loaded into herself the records of the pain and fear that Souci had felt in his last moments. Then she simply endured them. She felt that she had to punish herself. Why was that?
“Poor thing.”
This time the man mumbled the words.
It seemed to Julie that something passed between them at that moment, carried on their gaze. It felt as if they had become accomplices in something. With Souci as foundational sacrifice. Poor Souci. I’m sorry… Look how much heat and pain I’m enduring, too. Forgive me.
“I want to kiss you, Dad,” Julie said, hugging Souci’s melted head to her chest.
Out of the corner of her eye Julie saw her mother turn her face away. Her mother’s profile was frozen solid; Julie saw this too.
This was not the usual routine. This had been a special birthday. The first birthday that was actually for Julie.
“I want to kiss you, Dad.”
The man held out his hand and supported Souci’s head, still hot enough. Sauce overflowed the rabbit’s skull onto his hand, scalding it badly.
Julie looked into the eyes of the genius hacker. Why she had recognized him in there she now understood as well.
The two exchanged a kiss over the bubbling stew. The smell of Souci’s blood seemed to celebrate their union.
Long ago.
A memory of a long-ago day.
Yvette cast her nearly sightless gaze across the great table.
In the dark blur of her vision, the only thing she could make out clearly was the gleam of the Crystal Chandelier. Every light in the room, she saw, was gathered in it as if drawn in by gravity.
Of all the Eyes that Yve had known, the Chandelier was the most remarkable of all. It was in a class all its own. Could she really control it? The thought made her shiver. She felt herself shrinking at the prospect.
Yve hugged herself as if from affection, as if in encouragement. Her generous breasts, the swell of her hips, her shoulders, her neck, her legs: she ran her palms over them all, following the lines of her body through her clothes.
Unable to see her face or figure in the mirror, Yve knew her body only through touch, and the range of sensations that touch aroused within were a surer foundation for her than anything else.
Whenever she hugged herself, Yve tried increasing and relaxing the tightness of her grip. Through long and repeated experimentation, she had come to know how her body responded to different degrees of strength, worked to closely measure and understand how her senses worked. As a rule, her senses were sufficient unto themselves. A world enfolded within her palms.
But if there was one point at which that world were open, it was the Glass Eyes.
To Yve, Eyes were the only thing that could act as a mirror.
This was because Eyes dealt not only in vision but in all the senses and sensations deriving from phenomena and perception.
Yve was one of only a handful of AIs who, when they sat face-to-face with an Eye, observed correctly that it reflected every one of their own senses.
When Yve moved her hand into an Eye’s field of effect, her finger was met by another coming the other way—her finger’s reflection in the Eye. Behind that reflected finger lay a reflection of her entire body, with identical sensory distribution. She could sense this reflected image of herself, and even though it would eventually begin to change according to
the Eye’s function, she was so thoroughly familiar with the sensations within her own body and their basic values that she could, with perfect accuracy, ascertain the changes wrought by the Eye on the reflected image. Could understand how the Eye worked, in other words.
Yve was unusually sensitive to nonvisual stimuli. Her senses had been formed with external factors excluded, using Yve herself as the measure; they were personal, even aloof, but precise and unwavering. This was not a result of her blindness so much as it was a God-given gift. If the heavens smiled on AIs too, that is.
It was only natural that her facility with the Eyes would be unequaled in the Realm of Summer. Only Yve could read an Eye’s nature in an instant, like a master jeweler assessing a gem. Only Yve could bend an Eye to her will. And so she loved them, without reservation.
But right now she was stiff with nerves.
Can I do this? she asked herself, over and over. Can I do it? Can I pull it off just as the boy planned?
The Chandelier was surrounded by something transparent that flickered like a flame. The Eye’s effects were extending outside of the glass substance. Yve ran her hands over her body the way she always did to calm her feelings. Her first task was to “start up” the Chandelier. The program that would run the trap network was written in the pattern of the lace spread beneath it. Unlike a program written in characters, it would not be read linearly. It was a mesh programming language that spread across the plane.
How would she make the Glass Eye read it? This was what she had been entrusted with.
“Everyone?” Yve said in her usual quiet, hesitant voice.
Only the three sisters and Julie were seated at the large table with her. All the men who could use a Glass Eye were deployed to the front.
Yve placed her fingers lightly on the lace’s filigreed edge, as if it were the keyboard of a delicate instrument.
“It’s all right,” said Julie. “We’ve got you.” The three sisters nodded, and Yve knew it so surely it was almost as if she could see it. Under the powerful “light” of the Chandelier, she could even sense the dimple on each sister’s left cheek.
The Thousand Year Beach Page 10