* * *
HG waited pensively for Eliza’s response as she sat at his computer reading his words. He was surprised how keen he was to get her approval on this.
“Not bad.” She finally passed judgement on his words, and the thrill of accomplishment he felt was completely unexpected. “It needs a little tightening here, and here, I think. And what made you go back to short stories all of a sudden? You haven’t written one of those in years.”
“Seeing you in hospital,” he answered. “Realising none of us is sure of how long we have.” Then hesitantly he added: “Do you think it’s publishable?”
“Definitely. It just needs a little work, then I suggest you send it to Colin for his magazine. I’m sure he’d be pleased to have your story grace his pages. Now will you help me with my book? I’ve hit a hard spot again.”
HG complied, returning to his work after he’d assisted her and surreptitiously asked her the name of Colin’s magazine. He made good use of her suggestions on how to improve his story and quietly e-mailed it away at the end of the day, saying in his covering letter that Eliza had suggested he submit it to them, not sure of what to expect.
* * *
There was an acceptance letter in his inbox within a fortnight.
“They accepted my story!” he crowed to Eliza.
“Well, of course they did,” she replied as if she hadn’t expected anything else. “You’re a good writer and it’s a good story.”
* * *
Eliza was so engrossed in her own writing that she didn’t register the ring of the doorbell, or that Carter and Powell were in the hallway outside having another whispered and heated discussion with HG until several comments had been said above a whisper. Powell hissed something about ‘This isn’t what you’re being paid for.’ At least that’s what Eliza thought he said, as she headed out to the hall to see what all the fuss was about. The talk lapsed into a guilty silence the second she arrived, a sure sign that what they were all talking about concerned her.
“What’s the problem here?” she enquired when the silence stretched between the argumentative men gathered in her hallway, which put her even more on her guard.
“My bank account … isn’t recognised. I can’t get paid for that short story I sold to Colin.” HG looked sheepish.
Eliza frowned. “Get them to transfer the money into my account then. HG, you’d better sort it out with the bank immediately. And your on-line transfer account? That hasn’t been breached, has it?”
HG raised an eyebrow of understanding, wished he’d thought of that first. It’d be relatively easy to set up a small e-pay account. “I’ll have to check.”
He made his way to his office down the hall as Powell and Carter were ushered into Eliza’s inner sanctum to review the nearly completed manuscript that suddenly she had doubts about. Fear clutched her heart with icy fingers.
They read, they approved, they left. Powell in particular had the happy glint of bestseller profits in his eyes as he departed, but Eliza still had her doubts. She summoned HG from his office urgently.
“What is it, my love?” He must, surely, see her uncertainty, the worried look on her face.
“Read this manuscript out loud for me, HG, from this page here.”
She’d only written those words this afternoon. They were fresh, he hadn’t looked at them yet, couldn’t extrapolate the new words from what she’d written so far if her greatest fears were based in truth.
And he read them back to her, word perfect, raising a quizzical eyebrow to her when he’d finished.
The confidence with which she had greeted the threesome in the hallway had quite evaporated. “Yes … that sounds like me. That is what’s written there, isn’t it, HG?”
“Of course, my love.” His answer emphatic.
“Prove it to me. Type in a line or two and let me read them back to you.”
And he did, and she was relieved to find that she could read them back to him in the order he had written them, not like when she was in hospital and the words came out all confused.
* * *
But HG still didn’t understand what was tormenting her so.
There was quiet desperation in her eyes and on her face as she grasped his arm with surprising strength and said, “You’d tell me the truth, wouldn’t you, HG? If this was all an elaborate mock up and my brain was too addled to write any more?”
Now he understood the cause of her anxiety. “I’d tell you, dearest. But would that buffoon, Powell, be hovering around you, urging you to complete your book if he couldn’t sell it?”
She conceded him the point, the anxiety fading from her face.
Not for the first time, he thought that she was working herself too hard, and this was yet another sign of the stress that she was under. Everyone acted as though she was the person she’d been before she’d had the stroke, but he knew this was not the case.
“I tell you what, why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off? We could take Bob down to the beach for a walk.”
“I’m not sure I could walk that far and back anymore.”
“Then we’ll take the car. Let the salt air clear your mind, get the feel of sand between your toes. Watch that damned dog of yours leap half way up the sky trying to catch seagulls. You’ll feel better for it, I promise you.”
And as Bob ran along the beach before them, leaping half way up the sky to catch seagulls that laughed in squawks as they escaped him, Eliza gave voice to all her fears. “How much sand is left in my hourglass, do you suppose?” She bent and grabbed a fistful of sand which slipped through her fingers and blew away to demonstrate. Before HG could formulate an answer she continued, “Do you know, when I first saw you in the hospital, I was sure I was dying, that my time had run out.”
“They managed to bring you back,” he told her quietly. “And when they inserted your nanos—well, they filled the hourglass to the brim again, so you have all the time in the world. No need to push yourself so hard, my dearest.”
“But I still feel that time is escaping me, HG, and I have so many books I need to write …”
“You will, my love, you will,” he soothed her. “And I will help you in any way I can.”
Back home, as she took a nap curled into his chest, he checked her health. The nanos were working perfectly, yet she tired so easily. She felt a little lighter pressed against him, as if she was fading away. He hadn’t been monitoring all her meals—Nona was still hostile towards him—but every night she slept deeply, her head resting on his chest while he researched story ideas of his own.
He thought he was coming to understand this necessity to write that burned in her like a fever. It seemed he’d been bitten by the same bug. He’d submitted another short story, and while she worked every day on her novel, he had another six stories on the go. He thought he’d test his emerging skills by writing a novel next.
The bank account Eliza had sorted for him still held the payment he’d received for the first story he’d sold. He didn’t need the money, yet he wanted to amass more. It was acknowledgement of his talent, of his very being.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He knew it, Carter and Powell knew it, Nona knew it, and in her own way, he expected even Eliza knew it despite the clever web of deception she wove around herself to make him appear a natural part of her life. It was because she needed him. Though to anyone who didn’t know her, she still appeared fiercely independent, she made room for him not only in her life but in her past, so that they could have a future together.
* * *
“There, I think I’ve finally finished.” Her hands were raised off the laptop keyboard with the flourish of an accomplished musician completing a complicated piece.
They were words HG thought he’d never hear. It had been a struggle as she’d alternated between confidence and self-doubt, repeatedly revising her work, making minor corrections.
While Robbie had been encouraging when ever he visited, or read her work in pro
gress, Powell had done nothing but nag her to finish the manuscript. HG would see her tense up, swallow her anger. When he tried to protect her, HG’s efforts saw him receive a tongue lashing from Powell for having his own developing career. It wasn’t why he’d been engaged. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t done.
And the man was adamant that Eliza should do a promotional tour when the book came out. HG had advised that meeting her fans would boost her spirits but it might also exhaust her. Powell seemed to think she was capable of the same pounding schedule she’d kept before she’d had her stroke, but nanos or not, she was a more fragile creature these days. Everything she had was channelled to keeping that little flame of creativity alive and burning in her. HG worried there was not an awful lot left for anything else, though she always seemed to have time for him.
With Robbie’s words of, “She’s not herself, is she?” HG found an unexpected ally. Robbie was also concerned about Eliza going on tour. They cut down the number of appearances Eliza was to make, and argued for longer breaks at home before she did another leg of the tour. Both of them would accompany her to the signings. Despite Powell huffing and puffing about the extra cost, they got their way. She was worth it, Robbie reminded Powell sharply. She’d been their top-selling author for years now, and he wanted her to hold that position for years to come.
* * *
“I feel like a broken down old racehorse,” Eliza said as the men all argued around her as if she couldn’t hear them, couldn’t speak her own mind. “Will she make it through one more campaign? Or should we cut our losses and send her to the glue factory now?”
While the two from the publishers traded verbal blows, HG homed in on her voice, caught her hand up in his and kissed her fingers. “Put out to stud perhaps,” he suggested, and it made her giggle the way he’d hoped it would.
“I’m too old for that as well! With you beside me, HG, I’m sure I’ll get through the tour okay. And Robbie will take care of me when you feel you need a break.”
Robbie and HG took it in turns to sit beside her as she signed her books for delighted fans overjoyed to see her recovered from her stroke and creating again. Many brought her flowers, chocolates, gifts, which she received like a queen, thanking the givers before handing them on to her minders as she got on with her signing and meeting her fans.
In one instance, as she passed him a small posy of flowers she’d been given, Eliza called HG by name. As he took the posy, the present-giver in front of Eliza reached out a tentative hand and lightly brushed his fingers. “I like your work too,” she told him shyly, and he was as surprised by her words as how they made him feel.
Eliza watched his reaction to the compliment and chuckled throatily. “Why, HG, I believe you’re blushing!”
* * *
At night in strange hotel rooms when she could no longer type the words for her next novel into her computer she’d lay on the bed and dictate, and he’d transcribe her words into the machine. And when her words slowed and stopped because she had finally drifted off to sleep, he kept writing.
She noticed. He knew she would because he realised by now that writing fiction was like having babies; you instantly recognised what was yours. Sometimes he’d see her smile as she revised her work and found his words entwined with hers like lovers wrapped about each other celebrating spring. She delighted at the union of their words, themselves.
And yet her energy seemed to leak slowly out of her through a hole no-one could fix.
“I don’t have much time left,” she’d whisper to him repeatedly.
“You can’t know that,” HG would try to jolly her out of her paranoia with a half smile, but she obsessed about it.
“I know,” she stated with a fierceness that frightened him. “And I must write.”
Eliza, who had prowled the world like a solitary lioness in her prime, looked at him with the shining eyes of a huntress; yet he was not her prey, and she would not devour him. They would hunt words down together for as long as she had left.
“The tour is exhausting her,” HG told Robbie privately, knowing he could rely on Robbie’s sympathy. “She needs rest, and a new infusion of nanos—”
“The doctors gave us a 10 year guarantee,” Robbie interrupted, surprised.
“Her body continues to deteriorate. You’re all expecting too much of her, she expects too much of herself and she’s pushing herself too hard. I fear she’s heading for another stroke.”
“But the nanobots are there to stop that.”
“They can’t make her immortal. If her body deteriorates faster than they can repair it, if she has a bad fall, if her heart stops beating while she sleeps …”
“Then it’s your job to restart it, isn’t it? What do you think we got you for? We’ve invested a lot of money in her, we expect to recoup it.”
HG observed how similar Robbie sounded to Powell, but kept his thoughts to himself. “She has given her all to her writing, to you as her publishers, to her fans … but sooner or later …” The death sentence hung between them. “She needs time to rest, regain her strength.”
And yet HG more than anyone, knew what ever drove her raged hotter than what fuelled him. She was like a dying star, and yet she seemed intent on hurtling towards oblivion as fast as she could, with not a minute’s care for the world she’d leave behind, or the sorrow her passing would cause.
But how could she know? Why was she so sure she was dying when no test he could run on her could confirm it?
She was looking so weak and tired, her skin pale, splotched and brittle like old paper, that they ended her tour early. She didn’t even fight their decision. In more than one way she leaned against HG for strength, and with all the nobility she could muster, she acquiesced to his pushing her around in a chair. Like night after sunset, her end was drawing in.
One night as they lay together in her big bed, her head resting on his chest listening to the wheels and cogs of his heart, she said, “You don’t know how much it pains me to tell you this, HG, but I fear I must leave you soon.”
And as she spoke the words he heard his mechanical heart break. How could she know? No human he encountered came with an expiry date tattooed on their body. Yet he accepted that somehow she knew more than he did.
“My love,” he murmured, and he squeezed her bird-like hand in his, felt her flutter beside him.
“Now you mustn’t worry, HG. You’ll be taken care of. I’ve seen to it. What’s mine is yours and always has been.”
“And what’s mine is yours, and forever will be.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead as tears formed in his eyes.
He listened to her through the night as she slept, listened to the silence when her heart stopped beating, overrode the protocol programmed into him to keep her alive no matter what the cost. For a time the nanobots whirred around her, trying to keep her breathing, make her heart beat again, push the blood through her veins. He could almost taste their confusion and sadness when she did not respond. They had failed. In time they too succumbed to silence.
She had worked hard enough for those who would exploit her. It was time to let her go. And yet he remained motionless, holding her body in his arms through the night, aware this was probably his last chance to hold her.
When Nona called her down for breakfast, HG carefully disengaged himself from her cold, still, body, tried to gather his courage, his thoughts. He had played through this scene all through his lonely night. He hadn’t anticipated Nona’s scream when he told her, though. While there’d always been distance between them, now she looked at him as if he were a monster.
She raced up the stairs to see for herself, and her wailing for Eliza filled the house with sorrow. She was inconsolable, so it fell to him to call Robbie and Powell to let them know.
At least their responses were predictable. Powell flew into a fine range. “Back in your box!” he yelled at HG, no need to even play at civility now that Eliza was gone. “Our contract with you is terminated.”
HG
nodded acquiescence of his situation, and merely held out a sheet of paper for Powell to read.
Powell naturally expected it to be the contract, but was surprised to find he was looking at a page from a story.
“Eliza’s work, undoubtedly,” he proclaimed, having read it. “Did she finish a final novel and secret it away from us by any chance?”
Astute as ever, HG saw the dollar signs illuminate Powell’s eyes. “Eliza’s and my work. Can you tell who wrote which line … ?” His eyebrow arched as if to say, ‘What was that about getting into a box?’
“But you can’t!” Powell all but exploded. “You’re a machine!” That last word was spat out of his mouth as if it were the vilest of insults.
HG cocked his head in acknowledgement. “Indeed. But one that’s learned to write fiction in his own voice, as well as to imitate hers.”
Powell blustered before him. “You’ve experienced a little success, I grant you, but only through your association with her. Your efforts are that of an awkward beginner—”
“Pinpoint my words on that page then, if they are so crass.”
Powell read the page again, and couldn’t differentiate. “A trick,” he declared indignantly. “You’ve merely printed out a page of Eliza’s writing and you’re trying to trick me.”
“And why would I do that, Mr Powell?”
“So we don’t decommission you.”
“I think you’ll find it hard to decommission me when you read her will. I am the sole beneficiary of her estate.”
“But you’re a mechanoid! You can’t inherit, you aren’t a legal entity.”
“I was real enough for Eliza. And, of course, you’re well within your rights to contest her will through the courts—but think of the publicity it will generate.”
“That could well go against us,” Robbie supplied, perhaps picturing the global news headlines once the word got out.
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