by David Brin
* * *
Hoyt had wondered if he should pour drinks. Scotch, maybe. Bridget liked Scotch. Just before she’d arrived at his apartment, he’d decided no—drinks meant glasses, glasses could be thrown. By either one of them.
“How was dinner?”
His voice sounded strange, even to him. Judging from the hesitant look on her face, it sounded strange to her, too.
“Dinner was fine.”
She stood just inside the door to his apartment, unsure if she should come all the way in. He’d expected her to be in a dress, or maybe some tight jeans and an even tighter T-shirt. Wasn’t that the kind of thing you wore when you were seeing a new man? But she wasn’t wearing anything like that. Jeans, yes, but her favorites, a bit saggy, with holes in them that she’d earned from long wear. Her hair was in a simple ponytail. Some lipstick and a little eye shadow, but nothing major. Bridget wasn’t dressed like she’d been out on a date.
“Hoyt, I’ve had enough of this bullshit. Are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on with you?”
Fear in that voice—fear of being wounded.
Would she lie about meeting that man? Correction: would she continue to lie about it. Hoyt gestured to his couch.
“Sure thing, honey. Have a seat. We’ll hash it out.”
She hesitated, a wild animal wary of a trap. She walked to the couch, sat.
A manila folder sitting on his small dining room table. He picked it up. The folder contained printouts. He hadn’t actually printed anything in months. Not much need for that any more.
Until now.
He’d thought of putting the incriminating images and video on a tablet or his phone, tossing it in her lap and telling her to hit play. But like the glasses, that would give her something to throw—tablets and phones cost money. If he was kicking her out of here tonight, he didn’t want to have to shell out hundreds of dollars to replace the shit she broke in her inevitable explosion of righteous indignation.
Because, after all, it wouldn’t be her fault, it would be Hoyt’s. He knew her too well. Bridget never did anything wrong. Someone else was always to blame.
He tossed the folder into her lap. He crossed his arms, stared down at her.
She looked at the folder, then up at him.
“What the hell is this?”
Hoyt shrugged. “You already know.”
“I’m quite fucking sure I don’t,” Bridget said, cold gravel in her voice. Her face, though, those eyes … they said stop. Those eyes said: whatever this is, please don’t do this to us.
He waited.
She opened the folder. She picked up the three printouts inside, slowly looked at them, one after another.
There was something about her seeing it, something that made it all click together. No going back. It made this real. It made them over.
“I thought we had something,” he said. His voice cracked on the last word. He cleared his throat, wished his face didn’t burn. “How could you do this to us?”
He hadn’t known what to expect from her. At the same time, he’d expected her to cry, to apologize, to beg forgiveness, promise to never do it again, because Hoyt knew she loved him. This other guy was some fling, or maybe an ex back for a tangle. She’d made a mistake, that was all. Maybe he could forgive her. Maybe they could move on.
But Bridget didn’t apologize.
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t look sad or distraught, guilty or crushed.
She looked angry.
“I didn’t do anything to us,” she said. “You did.”
An urge to lash out, so primitive, so overpowering. So angry. If a man had glared at him the way Bridget glared at him now, Hoyt would have tackled him, put him down.
“Don’t turn this around on me,” he said. “You should have told me there was someone else.”
The printouts and the folder flew into the air. Bridget was on her feet in an instant, chest-to-chest with him, her gray eyes—the eyes that had first hooked him—wide with rage.
“You asshole,” she said. “You were spying on me.”
“Don’t be so fucking grandiose. I didn’t follow you around, I just used that public-domain site. Don’t try and make this my fault, you—“
She took a step back, almost as if he’d slapped her. The indignation, gone. In its place, something far worse—tears.
In their twelve months together, he had never once seen her cry.
“That site that has all the public video,” she said. “All the cameras … that one?”
He crossed his arms, nodded. “That’s right. So, no, I didn’t spy on you, James Bond.”
A tear rolled down her cheek.
Her words came out as a whisper.
“The video you took at Starbucks. Is that what you used?”
Something about the way she said that sent a shiver up Hoyt’s spine. He didn’t know why.
“Yeah, that was it,” he said. “I had to—”
“The one where you made me tell you I loved you?”
A question, sheer disbelief, even though she already knew the answer.
It struck Hoyt, suddenly and all at once—he’d crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed. A sinking feeling. That sensation of realizing he’d done something wrong, of wondering how the hell he hadn’t known it was wrong while he was doing it. He should have had her say something else. Anything else.
But why should he feel bad? She was at fault here, not him.
“Yes,” he said. “I used that video.”
Bridget wiped away tears.
“He’s my fucking brother.”
The man had looked familiar …
“Bullshit,” Hoyt said. “You don’t have a brother.”
Bridget picked up a printout, looked at it.
“No, I never told you I had a brother.”
She slowly tore the paper in half, let the two halves fall. She picked up the second printout.
That sinking feeling deepened. His soul in quicksand. It wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be.
“You’re lying,” he said. He knew he was digging himself deeper, but was as unable to stop digging as he’d been to stop staring at her a year ago. “No one dates for a year without saying she has a brother.”
Bridget tore the paper in half, let the halves flutter down.
“His name is Mike,” she said. Her words trembled with anguish, with rage. “He’s a heroin addict. Recovering, or so he says, but I’ve heard that before. Mike ripped our family apart. He lied to me. He stole from me. He poisoned people against me. I wrote him out of my life. I even moved so he wouldn’t know where I was. I didn’t tell you about him because I wanted a life without him in it.”
Hoyt kept hunting for the lie. He didn’t find it. Was this for real?
“If you cut him out of your life, why were you with him?”
She shrugged. “The motherfucking Internet. You can track down anyone. He found my old Facebook page. I should have deleted it, but … I don’t know. I don’t use it anymore. I checked it the other day, not sure why. He’d sent me a video. Said he’d cleaned up his act, wanted a chance to do right by me. It took me awhile to decide, but I met with him. That was goddamn hard to do, because he made it so impossible to trust that I didn’t trust anyone. Until you, Hoyt.” She picked up the final printout. “I trusted you.”
This time, she didn’t tear the paper—she handed it to him.
He couldn’t think. His hands took the paper, held it up for his eyes to see.
The man—Mike—he had gray eyes.
He had Bridget’s eyes.
Hoyt stumbled, grabbed the table to stop himself from falling.
He’d been wrong.
The imagined betrayal had felt devastating. This was better, and yet so much more—if betrayal was being hit by a car, pure relief was being crushed beneath a tank.
He let the printout drop to the floor.
“My God,” he said. “I thought … oh, shit, honey … I’m sorry. I lo
ve you so much, I…”
He reached for her.
She slapped his hands away.
“Don’t touch me,” she said. “You don’t get to touch me.”
Gray eyes: wet with tears, but narrow. Hard.
Hard like armor.
“I didn’t know,” Hoyt said. “I mean … come on, you would have thought the same thing.”
Bridget shook her head.
“I wouldn’t have,” she said. “Because I trusted you. And I can’t, now. Not ever. Don’t call me. Don’t text me. Don’t anything me.”
She stormed to the door. He wasn’t sure if he should try and stop her. By the time he realized he should, she’d slammed the door behind her.
Hoyt glanced at the floor. The picture of Mike, her brother, stared up at him.
Gray eyes.
Bridget’s eyes.
A classic of human vision, empathy …
… and courage.
TO SEE THE INVISIBLE MAN
ROBERT SILVERBERG
And then they found me guilty, and then they pronounced me invisible, for a span of one year beginning on the eleventh of May in the year of Grace 2104, and they took me to a dark room beneath the courthouse to affix the mark to my forehead before turning me loose.
Two municipally paid ruffians did the job. One flung me into a chair and the other lifted the brand.
“This won’t hurt a bit,” the slab-jawed ape said, and thrust the brand against my forehead, and there was a moment of coolness, and that was all.
“What happens now?” I asked.
But there was no answer, and they turned away from me and left the room without a word. The door remained open. I was free to leave, or to stay and rot, as I chose. No one would speak to me, or look at me more than once, long enough to see the sign on my forehead. I was invisible. You must understand that my invisibility was strictly metaphorical. I still had corporeal solidity. People could see me—but they would not see me.
An absurd punishment? Perhaps. But then, the crime was absurd too. The crime of coldness. Refusal to unburden myself for my fellow man. I was a four-time offender. The penalty for that was a year’s invisibility. The complaint had been duly sworn, the trial held, the brand duly affixed.
I was invisible.
I went out, out into the world of warmth.
They had already had the afternoon rain. The streets of the city were drying, and there was the smell of growth in the Hanging Gardens. Men and women went about their business. I walked among them, but they took no notice of me.
The penalty for speaking to an invisible man is invisibility, a month to a year or more, depending on the seriousness of the offense. On this the whole concept depends. I wondered how rigidly the rule was observed.
I soon found out.
I stepped into a liftshaft and let myself be spiraled up toward the nearest of the Hanging Gardens. It was Eleven, the cactus garden, and those gnarled, bizarre shapes suited my mood. I emerged on the landing stage and advanced toward the admissions counter to buy my token. A pasty-faced, empty-eyed woman sat back of the counter.
I laid down my coin. Something like fright entered her eyes, quickly faded.
“One admission,” I said.
No answer. People were queuing up behind me. I repeated my demand. The woman looked up helplessly, then stared over my left shoulder. A hand extended itself, another coin was placed down. She took it, and handed the man his token. He dropped it in the slot and went in.
“Let me have a token,” I said crisply.
Others were jostling me out of the way. Not a word of apology. I began to sense some of the meaning of my invisibility. They were literally treating me as though they could not see me.
There are countervailing advantages. I walked around behind the counter and helped myself to a token without paying for it. Since I was invisible, I could not be stopped. I thrust the token in the slot and entered the garden.
But the cacti bored me. An inexpressible malaise slipped over me, and I felt no desire to stay. On my way out I pressed my finger against a jutting thorn and drew blood. The cactus, at least, still recognized my existence. But only to draw blood.
I returned to my apartment. My books awaited me, but I felt no interest in them. I sprawled out on my narrow bed and activated the energizer to combat the strange lassitude that was afflicting me. I thought about my invisibility.
It would not be such a hardship, I told myself. I had never depended overly on other human beings. Indeed, had I not been sentenced in the first place for my coldness toward my fellow creatures? So what need did I have of them now? Let them ignore me!
It would be restful. I had a year’s respite from work, after all. Invisible men did not work. How could they? Who would go to an invisible doctor for a consultation, or hire an invisible lawyer to represent him, or give a document to an invisible clerk to file? No work, then. No income, of course, either. But landlords did not take rent from invisible men. Invisible men went where they pleased, at no cost. I had just demonstrated that at the Hanging Gardens.
Invisibility would be a great joke on society, I felt. They had sentenced me to nothing more dreadful than a year’s rest cure. I was certain I would enjoy it.
But there were certain practical disadvantages. On the first night of my invisibility I went to the city’s finest restaurant. I would order their most lavish dishes, a hundred-unit meal, and then conveniently vanish at the presentation of the bill.
My thinking was muddy. I never got seated. I stood in the entrance half an hour, bypassed again and again by a maitre d’hotel who had clearly been through all this many times before: Walking to a seat, I realized, would gain me nothing. No waiter would take my order.
I could go into the kitchen. I could help myself to anything I pleased. I could disrupt the workings of the restaurant. But I decided against it. Society had its ways of protecting itself against the invisible ones. There could be no direct retaliation, of course, no intentional defense. But who could say no to a chef’s claim that he had seen no one in the way when he hurled a pot of scalding water toward the wall? Invisibility was invisibility, a two-edged sword.
I left the restaurant.
I ate at an automated restaurant nearby. Then I took an autocab home. Machines, like cacti, did not discriminate against my sort. I sensed that they would make poor companions for a year, though.
I slept poorly.
* * *
The second day of my invisibility was a day of further testing and discovery.
I went for a long walk, careful to stay on the pedestrian paths. I had heard all about the boys who enjoy running down those who carry the mark of invisibility on their foreheads. Again, there is no recourse, no punishment for them. My condition has its little hazards by intention.
I walked the streets, seeing how the throngs parted for me. I cut through them like a microtome passing between cells. They were well trained. At mid-day I saw my first fellow Invisible. He was a tall man of middle years, stocky and dignified, bearing the mark of shame on a domelike forehead. His eyes met mine only for a moment. Then he passed on. An invisible man, naturally, cannot see another of his kind.
I was amused, nothing more. I was still savoring the novelty of this way of life. No slight could hurt me. Not yet.
Late in the day I came to one of those bath-houses where working girls can cleanse themselves for a couple of small coins. I smiled wickedly and went up the steps. The attendant at the door gave me the flicker of a startled look—it was a small triumph for me—but did not dare to stop me.
I went in.
An overpowering smell of soap and sweat struck me. I persevered inward. I passed cloakrooms where long rows of gray smocks were hanging, and it occurred to me that I could rifle those smocks of every unit they contained, but I did not. Theft loses meaning when it becomes too easy, as the clever ones who devised invisibility were aware.
I passed on, into the bath chambers themselves.
Hundreds
of women were there. Nubile girls, weary wenches, old crones. Some blushed. A few smiled. Many turned their backs on me. But they were careful not to show any real reaction to my presence. Supervisory matrons stood guard, and who knew but that she might be reported for taking undue cognizance of the existence of an Invisible?
So I watched them bathe, watched five hundred pairs of bobbing breasts, watched naked bodies glistening under the spray, watched this vast mass of bare feminine flesh. My reaction was a mixed one, a sense of wicked achievement at having penetrated this sanctum sanctorum unhalted, and then, welling up slowly within me, a sensation of—was it sorrow? Boredom? Revulsion?
I was unable to analyze it. But it felt as though a clammy hand had seized my throat. I left quickly. The smell of soapy water stung my nostrils for hours afterward, and the sight of pink flesh haunted my dreams that night. I ate alone, in one of the automatics. I began to see that the novelty of this punishment was soon lost.
* * *
In the third week I fell ill. It began with a high fever, then pains of the stomach, vomiting, the rest of the ugly symptomatology. By midnight I was certain I was dying. The cramps were intolerable, and when I dragged myself to the toilet cubicle I caught sight of myself in the mirror, distorted, greenish, beaded with sweat. The mark of invisibility stood out like a beacon in my pale forehead.
For a long time I lay on the tiled floor, limply absorbing the coolness of it. Then I thought: What if it’s my appendix? That ridiculous, obsolete, obscure prehistoric survival? Inflamed, ready to burst?
I needed a doctor.
The phone was covered with dust. They had not bothered to disconnect it, but I had not called anyone since my arrest, and no one had dared call me. The penalty for knowingly telephoning an invisible man is invisibility. My friends, such as they were, had stayed far away.
I grasped the phone, thumbed the panel. It lit up and the directory robot said, “With whom do you wish to speak, sir?”
“Doctor,” I gasped.
“Certainly, sir.” Bland, smug mechanical words! No way to pronounce a robot invisible, so it was free to talk to me!
The screen glowed. A doctorly voice said, “What seems to be the trouble?”