by Stephen King
I quite liked Petite Augette. She was a plucky little thing, determined to see that the business that her grandmother had founded would survive the hard times. I watched her sell off many of the newer models to meet the agency’s operating expenses and, for a while, I both feared and hoped that I might be next. It would have been wonderful to be owned outright by someone. But by the same token, I knew that the Owen Bradshaws and Bobby Cammages of the Terran Empire were rare and the risks of ending up in an undesirable situation were very real. Mademoiselle had sometimes unknowingly leased me to clients who treated me harshly though, to her credit, no matter how much they paid, if she saw that I had suffered any physical damage, she almost always exercised the termination clause in the contract.
I don’t know why Petite Augette kept me. Perhaps, just like Deirdre, she saw me as a link to the past. Often, during slow periods, she would chatter to me as if she believed I was another purely biological being, wondering about the things I’d seen, seeking to know more about what her mother and grandmother had been like. To some degree, I could have told her but, as always, I was cautious and made certain to behave as if the scrubs had been completely successful. She didn’t seem to mind; to Petite Augette, the act of speculation seemed to be as rewarding as actually having the knowledge would have been.
“What secrets,” she sometimes mused aloud, lost in romanticism, “were once locked inside that gorgeous head of yours, Matthew?” She shook her head and frowned. “All washed away now. It seems a pity, doesn’t it? You knew so many amazing people. General Eisley and Malcolm Navarro, the artist. You lived with Parker Tollmann while he was building the Aracnian Bridge. I imagine Justice Rafferty might have discussed some of his famous cases in front of you, and I expect it was you who massaged the kinks from Xavier Mulletta’s muscles after he won the Pan-Colonial Decathlon all those times. Selling you, dear Matthew …” She’d generally stroke my chin or pat my head, at this point, as if I was a favorite pet as well as an incorruptible confident. “… would be like selling a piece of history.”
Naturally, I didn’t recognize all of the names. And of the sporadic memories that she evoked, some were not as pleasant as others. Still, I understood what she meant.
When I did manage to complete an engagement, Petite Augette would often leave me alone in the scrubbing room for long periods before commencing the process.
“There’s no rush, is there?” she’d ask, not really wanting an answer. Then, she’d chuckle wryly. “It’s not like they’re pounding down the door to rent, is it?”
During these times, I would retrieve my keepsakes from their cache and reminisce as best I could. Sometimes, I discovered that subsequent scrubbings had rendered one of my treasures meaningless to me. I kept those items anyway; they had been dear to me once.
Of course, I can still recall almost every detail of my time with Frankie Giordano. It was his father, Senator Franklin Giordano, who initially took the lease, though I was never quite comfortable when Frank, Sr. was around. In contrast to his vibrant, impetuous son, the Senator was a gruff and dour man, an uncompromising idealist who nevertheless was not at all naive to the manipulations and viciousness of politics.
At the outset, I suppose I was given to Frankie to punish him for some of his prior romantic indiscretions, and to prevent him from getting himself into even worse predicaments. If so, the Senator’s plan was only partly successful. Frankie bonded to me and I quickly became his favorite companion, his best buddy, the keeper of his secrets, and sometimes even his alibi when he inevitably found he’d gotten into trouble with his father once again. Yet, once I was on the scene, Frankie’s eye ceased to rove quite as much, and the voracious libido that caused the press to brand him as the Senator’s “trouble magnet” seemed to lessen. Then again, everything is relative.
Not that even I was able to satisfy him completely. Frankie often dragged me into threesomes and foursomes, orgies and bacchanals. Fortunately, his orientation was almost completely same-sexual, but his curiosity and his desire for new experiences was matched only by his stamina. Had things been only slightly different, and had he experimented with women, aliens or even large animals—all of which I sometimes feared he was capable of doing! —I don’t think my programming would have been up to the task.
Still, I somehow managed to match his pace. After the initial shock wore off, I found Frankie’s excitement contagious. I, too, began to look forward to the next, even more novel, sexual encounter. Yet, even someone as voracious as Frankie had to take an occasional break. And, when he did, I was always there for him. I happily joined him in his wildness; it is, after all, what I was designed to do. But when it was just the two of us, alone in his bed, his tenderness was unmatched and, though I must of necessity speak with limitations, I do not think I have ever felt more needed.
“It’s just you and me, Matt,” was his mantra. “Between the two of us, not much gets by, eh?”
He’d nudge me and wink playfully. Within hours I could count on being once again embroiled in some madcap and highly salacious adventure. Even then, with no forewarning, he’d break from whatever gymnastic penetration or new experience long enough to kiss me, deeply and passionately. He fancied that it was for my benefit, to let me know that he’d not forgotten I was present. But I knew the kiss proved the exact opposite, it reassured him that, no matter how bizarre or stimulating his current encounter was, I would always, always be there to love him after it was over.
With the only exception being his father, I believe I was the sole constant in Frankie’s life. I cared for him deeply; he cared for me. He was a master at creating complications, though, and I sometimes had to work very hard to keep him feeling that we were ideally suited for each other. In the early years, he was constantly testing me and, I like to think, I met all of his challenges. Once he realized that he was, above all, safe with me, in his own way, I think he fell in love.
It was, as I’m sure you’re already aware if you’ve kept up with recent events, our undoing.
The Senator’s strong and inflexible ethical code made him many enemies. Though he was no one’s fool, and though he had long familiarity with fending off political attacks, and a consummate skill when it came to diffusing rumor, or dealing with attempts to discredit him, he never anticipated that his Colonial nemeses would dig as deeply into his son’s private life as they did. Had they left off with publicly exposing Frankie’s intense intimate relationship with a bioconstruct, the scandal would have been chalked up to just the latest in a long line of madcap sexual peccadillos. But once they uncovered certain aspects of my unique qualities, Senator Giordano couldn’t afford to ignore the situation.
I still don’t know how I was exposed. Petite Augette certainly never allowed any of her suspicions about me to leak out even though, as it turned out, she’d had more than a few inklings that I was different from her other inventory. But once it became common knowledge that a bioconstruct existed that was even partially resistant to scrubbing, there was a huge public outcry—especially when it was revealed that I was one of the Intimate Companion series. Far too many people indulged in far too many nontraditional aberrations with bioconstructs to be willing to allow even one of them to retain potentially embarrassing memories.
Frankie was devastated. He spent much of the last night we were together just holding me and weeping. I did my best to comfort him, to reassure him that he would manage somehow and that, as for me, I really didn’t mind. But there are limits to even my skills.
At the time, I meant it. When the authorities told me that they’d altered the scrubs to compensate for whatever programming flaw of Owen’s allowed me to retain some of my memories, I accepted their verdict meekly, calmly and without objection. My original purpose, after all, was always to serve a specific function; it was inconceivable that I could have developed needs of my own.
My only pang of regret was when I passed through Petite Aug-ette’s office on my way to the scrub room and I saw that all of my keepsake
s were neatly laid out on her desk. I had no idea how long she’d known about my hidey-hole but I was grateful to her for never betraying my secret. I’d never suspected that such a physically tiny woman could shoo away the officers as efficiently as she did, but they quailed before her fierce personality.
“Please, Matthew,” she asked me, once she’d secured me an hour or so of respite. “Tell me about this one. When did you get it, and from whom? What does it mean to you?”
I responded as best I could and, when we were finished, she said, “I know that in a very short time, it won’t matter to you. You won’t remember. For now, I want your mind to be at peace. I want you to know that I will cherish these things, as you have. You’ve served me and my family for so long, it’s the least I can do.”
I smiled to comfort her and to reassure her that I understood, all the while thinking how kind it was of her to take the time to try to reassure and comfort me. Madame would have been proud.
Now, as I lie here strapped to the table in the scrubbing room, part of my mind flits from cherished memory to cherished memory, possibly for the last time. In these last moments before the procedure starts, I can’t help but wonder whether or not the scrub will fully take and, if it does, whether that may not be a kind of kindness of its own. As much as I presently mourn the thought of losing my memories of Frankie and Owen, of Bobby and the General, of so many others, I tell myself that if I cannot remember what’s been taken from me, I cannot regret the loss.
A final thought occurs to me as I hear the faint whir of the scrubbing mechanism kick in. If the authorities are right and if they have truly corrected Owen’s omissions, the most precious of my keepsakes will mean nothing to me when I awake. If I lose my memories of how I’ve lived, what I’ve done and, above all, who I’ve loved, I wonder … will I still be me?
THE COSMIC FAIR
DARREN SPEEGLE
I don’t know what I expected when I answered the door to my apartment that sunless morning, but it certainly wasn’t a woman in an Earth clown costume holding out an envelope to me.
“Am I being served?” I asked, staring at the thing without suspicion, or any other emotion. I didn’t care much for foolishness, especially after the demanding mission I’d been on these past several months.
“More like an invitation than a summons,” she said, crinkling the paint on her face with her smile.
“Invitation?”
“To the Cosmic Fair.”
“Aha,” I said. “Freneto sent you.”
“Can’t say I know a Freneto. Unless he’s descended from Carolyn.”
She referred to the woman who had discovered a cure for that most difficult of human challenges, cancer, a century ago. I didn’t know what to make of her remark since in fact Freneto was a descendant of the same Carolyn and everyone who was acquainted with him knew it. So I said nothing, letting my impatience communicate for me.
“You’ll find tickets enclosed, both for the fair and for travel. Other accommodations are noted in your packet.”
“Look—”
“At what, man? It’s an opportunity anyone would seize. Let yourself relax. You’ve accomplished your mission and averted a galactic war for humankind. Consider this a thank you. A thank you from someone who cares deeply about human affairs. Though she, herself, must only look on in fascination.”
What in Gaia’s name did that mean? Was she selling herself as an agent of a non-human? Or worse yet, was she claiming to be a non-human?
Now I was suspicious.
“Just come,” she said. “Let it be a gift for you, Arben Vanders. Please accept it as well as your host’s invitation to join her for dinner at the lounge in your hotel on the evening of your arrival. I am instructed to make the point that you will not be disappointed.”
This time there was no crinkling paint, only the smooth canvas of possibility.
I said, “May I ask the name of my host.”
“You wouldn’t recognize it if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“Ia.”
“Ia? That’s it?”
“It’s as close a translation as I can come up with. It’s the name of a flower.”
I shook my head, tired of strangers at the door. “I am under no obligation to go if I accept your envelope.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“I’m telling you. My curiosity may well be replaced by boredom by the time I’ve looked the packet over. Boredom or sound reason.”
“Fair enough. We’ll see you or we won’t a few months from now.”
I took the envelope but paused before closing the door to ask, “Why are you in a clown outfit?”
“It seemed … fitting.”
I let the door close without asking her to expound.
Swirling changes on a vast holographic map. Waves upon waves of soundless, nonsensical weather patterns in the form of armies and churches and memories and intentions, banners and symbols and book pages fluttering in the strange winds of time. Marches, quests, explorations, discoveries, movements, renaissances, slaughters, atrocities, entire histories unfurling like the blood-soaked petals of some maddened cosmic flower, a woman’s own flower spilling plagues upon an unsuspecting world and universe.
And in the center of it all, in the core of that first and last flower, a question … a burning, never satisfied existential question …
Why—
—do we dream?
That’s the way I described it upon waking from the dream the next morning. Those were the exact words I wrote in the pad I keep by my bed. When you’ve sat in a room with, when you’ve mediated between, your kind and two alien intelligences whose less physical attributes—how else to explain?—are more advanced, more sophisticated than our own, you tend to do such things. If you’re me, that is. If you’re Arben Vanders, appointed by popes and puppeteers to save the universe from itself.
I described it that way because it felt that way to me. In the dream, assuredly. But more importantly, outside of it. Coming out of my sessions with Mirilus, one of the two races in question, I sometimes felt as if I might crumble beneath the weight of its—his?—collective psyche, while at the same time experiencing such a sense of disorientation that I was forced to wonder how the same universe had managed to produce the both of us. That humankind had crossed the stars was a feat in itself. To find ourselves in the same room with such beings was unreal.
But this had been the most dangerous thing of all in my negotiations with them—thinking of humans as inferior. In truth we possessed a raw, utilitarian persistence, a drive almost greater than the curiosity that spawned it, that they had long ago forgotten. Not to mention our spirit, our will, our dogged defiance when confronted with obstacles, all the intangibles the other races seemed at once not to understand and to greatly admire—if not covet. Evolving into a psychically unified species must leave one regretful.
So says I, who in truth only understood them enough to know that the ancient side of them might be appealed to. That they could be approached with more than notions of order and peace. That they could be made to remember sympathy for life, for the desperation of existence. The burden to bear for me was knowing that what I’d touched in them might have had more to do with some longing for lost individuality than for love and peace. Indeed, for what I could make of it, we were specimens to them, to be re-learned from.
Which brings me back around to the dream I had in the wake of the invitation’s delivery. When mediating with Mirilus, particularly, I would return to my residence to have dreams that seemed to directly target the human condition. During these times I felt as though I was being explored for answers to my own human questions.
What is it to persevere in the face of such odds as you have experienced as a species? Where do the drive, the spirit, the flame come from? What is your source? How came you to be? What do you want of your path that you should pursue it so diligently, so frantically, when there seems to be nothing at the end except rest
from the pain you never cease to endure? Never seem to quit relishing?
The dream with which my messenger in clown attire had left me smacked of similar stuff. Was the host she spoke of Mirilan? Was Mirilus not finished with negotiations after all?
There was only one way to know and that was to accept the invite and attend the fair.
Gaia help us our human curiosity.
I made a point of not looking in the direction of the hotel lounge as I checked in. I had three hours before I was to meet my host, and I’d no desire to prolong the wait by speculating as to the whos and whats and whys. Instead I made myself a drink in the room before I unpacked, letting the warm Irrilia relax my body, my nerves, as I hung up my clothes, hooked up the computer and holo-unit, and took a long hot shower. It hadn’t been that taxing a trip, Ebula being in the same sector as the terraformed world on which I lived, in the thick of intergalactic activities, both commercial and political. But it felt as if I was releasing a year’s worth of anxiety, which indeed I was, having had no break from it since the day the ambassador contacted me to sit with him and the galactic security adviser to discuss a special mission. It felt good to let all that roll off me, with nothing but another strange, mysterious, potentially life-altering meeting awaiting me now.
You’re being dramatic, I told myself as I sat on the bed in my towel, wondering if I should shave—that most hated maintenance ritual—while my skin was still supple, the pores open from the steaming shower. I turned on the television, but it had nothing to advise beyond what a bomb the Cosmic Fair was going to be. The cosmos, it reported, was defined as the universe considered as a whole of interconnecting parts. In that spirit was the Cosmic Fair conceived. Come experience the wonder …