Asimov's Science Fiction 10-11/2001

by Dell Magazines

  It came out all wrong, of course.

  “A wonderful rest.

  “Really kind.

  “Fantastic Béarnaise.

  “So good of you.”

  There really was no point spinning this out any longer.

  “—Get out of your hair.”

  Rachel put her wine glass down on the coffee table. She missed the edge of it and it fell and rolled under her seat, the wine making a neat lunar crescent on the creamy carpet. She stood up so fast she cracked her shin on the edge of the table. She stifled a sob and ran into the kitchen.

  Frank took a deep breath, let it go, and deflated utterly into his seat. Then, like a bag of bones assembling itself, he got to his feet. “You fucking fuck,” he said.

  He snatched up the TV control and turned the volume all the way up, so I couldn't hear anything, and then he abandoned me.

  In the kitchen, something slipped off the table and shattered.

  I didn't really know what to do.

  Just then, I heard the back door open. I went to the window in time to see Rachel passing; she was in such a hurry, she was still buttoning up her raincoat. Her head was wrapped up like a pork joint in a clear plastic headscarf.

  Sheet lightning lit everything up as Rachel headed up the track. Not toward Thaxted, as I'd expected, but the other way, toward the woods. In that brief flash, she looked absurdly over-colored, all red cheeks and green boots, a figure out of a picture book. I leaned forward. My nose snubbed the glass. Something dropped inside me. Something gave.

  Frank's jacket was slung over a chair in the kitchen. I pocketed his keys. I eased the back door open against the wind.

  I was only in running shoes. My feet got wet through in the few seconds it took me to fight my way to the car.

  The soft-top was shivering and shuddering, as if at any moment the wind would tear it free. I unlocked the door. The car peeped a welcome.

  I lowered myself into the bucket seat and closed the door. It was the ordinary Escort layout inside. I found the ignition straight away. The engine caught immediately. The whole car thrummed and shuddered: a dog shaking itself dry. I levered the stick into reverse. The reversing lights lit up the gateposts and the lane. I curled my toes nervously against the accelerator, came up with the clutch, and stalled.

  I twisted the key back and forth to re-engage the motor. I eased more firmly down on the pedal. I came up with the clutch. The wheels spun, digging graves for themselves in the mud.

  The kitchen door flew open.

  I panicked. What was I thinking? That Frank could somehow fling himself out of the house and throw himself howling upon me, Sabatier in hand?

  A neat trick, given that he was already here, held in abeyance, deep in flesh I—for the moment—controlled.

  Still, stupid as it sounds, I panicked; I floored the gas, and the car leapt back like a frightened animal. It skidded. It swerved. But God was kind, and when I opened my eyes, I found that I had come to rest out in the lane.

  Not only was I in one piece—the car was even pointed the right way.

  Grinning, I muscled the stick into first.

  * * *

  I caught up with her very quickly. She was still walking, head lowered before the wind, bent-backed—an old woman. I tooted the horn. She ignored me. I pulled to a stop a little in front of her and called to her. She walked around me. In the end, I had to go out and get her. I don't remember what I said to make her come with me. Nothing edifying. It took me an age to get her into the car.

  “Where were you going?” I asked her.

  The rain dribbled out of my hair into my face.

  “I wanted a walk in the woods.” With a quick, angry gesture, Rachel tore off her plastic headscarf. Her hair was all disordered underneath. It fell over her eyes. She looked older than I had ever seen her, and sulky as a three-year-old. My heart ached as if it would break.

  “In this?”

  “It's in a dip,” she said, “it's sheltered, it's okay.”

  “I'm surprised you could see where you were going.”

  “Oh,” she whined, losing patience suddenly, “I wasn't going anywhere.”

  She bent down and tucked her boots to one side of the footwell. She'd insisted on taking them off before she got in the car, “or I'll get mud everywhere": Frank had her well trained. It was blowing so hard, rain blew in past her through the open door. Beads of it still clung to the dashboard. I turned the heater up.

  “Are we going home, then?” she said.

  I looked out at the rain.

  “Frank?”

  “Not Frank,” I said. “Jerry.”

  “Jerry?” she said, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

  * * *

  It was a good question.

  No one, prior to the operation, had been able to explain it adequately: how it was that Frank and I could share.

  “So how will I know when to take over Frank's body?”

  —You won't need to know. It'll just happen.

  “And what if Frank wants to take control back?”

  —It's not up to him. It's not up to either of you. It just happens.

  “How?”

  —The triggers work off the chemicals released in Frank's brain during certain emotional responses. He'll act when he wants to, you'll act when you want to.

  “And when I'm not acting?”

  —You'll either be aware, or not aware.

  “And who decides that?”

  —It just happens.

  “I mean, who decides?”

  —A complex deep grammar of emotional triggers.

  “A what?”

  —A story, if you like.

  “What story?”

  —Your story. Frank's story. The story you'll share.

  “But this isn't an episode of Green Lanes! This is really going to happen!”

  —It's still a story.

  * * *

  And wasn't that, after all, Rachel's great discovery—the very thing that made Green Lanes possible? Mind will make a story out of anything. Fiction is as essential to consciousness as the raw events themselves.

  “If you think Frank can make you happy,” I said, “you're wrong.” I felt mean, speaking that sentiment aloud through Frank's mouth. But I figured I was past caring about etiquette. I put the car into gear and drove us up the track, to the minor road that leads away from Thaxted, and on toward Stanstead and points south.

  Twigs and branches and scrap lay everywhere; the wood had emptied itself all over the junction. Scraps of black wheeled in front of the headlights. Belatedly, I realized that they were birds: crows, thrown out of their trees by the storm. The car thrummed and tilted slightly, caught by a strong gust.

  “Well?” she said, waiting for me to turn the car around, to drive back to her house, and warmth, and—let's face it—Frank.

  I looked at her. I wasn't here to jolly her along. I put the stick into first, turned left onto the metaled road, and headed south.

  If she was surprised, she didn't show it.

  “It's not your fault,” I said, “it's Frank.”

  She shrugged.

  “Are you sure you're dry enough in those things?”

  She folded her arms. “Leave me alone.”

  Dead branches had come down over the road. I took the hill gently in second gear—dropped to first around the corners. Here and there, skeins of mud smeared the road. Clogged gutters made fords in every dip.

  “What's he after, anyway?”

  “What?”

  “Frank,” I said. “What does he want?”

  “He was just trying to be helpful,” she said—a little spark of the old irony. She bit at a broken nail. Her hands were red and chapped from the cold. I turned the heater up as high as it would go. (I wanted to warm her hands in mine. I wanted to feel their roughness. I wanted to feel her grip.)

  “In a world full of bad ideas,” I said, “his are some of the worst.”

  “What do you mean?”
<
br />   “Letting me in,” I said. “Letting me share his flesh. It can't have been any easier for you than it's been for me.”

  Rachel watched me a moment. Then, quickly, she looked away, out of her window, hiding her face.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  We reached the brow of the hill. The woods fell behind us. The full force of the wind was upon us now. I dropped back from third into second because, try as I might, I couldn't stop the car from skidding round the corners. The rain, which had eased for a while, returned with redoubled fury. I hit the brake and turned on the fogs. I couldn't see a thing.

  She turned to face me. I think she was trying to laugh. It was hard to tell. “Frank?"

  “So?”

  “You think your sharing Frank's body was Frank's idea?”

  The visibility was so bad, I only saw the junction as we started to cross the road. I floored the brake and the car slid to a soft stop in the verge beneath the fingerpost. I reversed and set us on the right course again. “Of course it was Frank's idea,” I said. “Look at the way he's been knocking us together like pieces in a jigsaw. It's obvious.”

  “Frank,” she echoed.

  “Yes!”

  This time, the laugh—if laugh it was—made it to her lips. “Jesus!”

  “I'm not saying he doesn't love you,” I said. “In his own damaged fashion.”

  “Of course he loves me,” she said. “That's why he agreed to do it.”

  I stared at her.

  “Watch the road,” she said.

  I stared into the rain.

  “We used to do stuff,” she said. “I was lonely, after I left Green Lanes. I felt used up. I felt old. Frank was—well, he wanted to help. But the truth is, he's not that interested. It doesn't do very much for him. Sex, I mean.”

  “Christ.”

  “That's why I asked him if he minded having you—”

  I laughed. I thought it was a joke. A joke in bad taste, but...

  Rachel looked out of her side window again.

  I stared at the back of her head.

  “No,” I said, willing it away.

  “And he said yes. He agreed.”

  “You brought me here?”

  “It was a mutual decision.”

  “A mutual—”

  “Don't get angry,” she begged. “We thought the two of you could share.”

  The rain eased slightly. The wind blew as hard as ever. I was more tired than I knew—all my reactions were slow now. Wrestling the car through the wind, judging the power of the customized engine, all these things were taking their toll.

  “I guess we didn't really think it through,” Rachel admitted.

  “I don't believe I'm hearing this.”

  “People in the real world, Jerry, they bolt things together.” Her voice was old. “They make things work, any old how. They make compromises. They make their own happiness, out of scraps.” It was worse than old. It was dead.

  “So what was the idea?” I swallowed. It was too grotesque. “Frank on weekdays, me for the weekends?”

  “Something like that,” she said, and folded her arms.

  It wasn't true. My words had hurt her, and now she was simply defending herself, matching me brutality for brutality.

  If she had wanted me for sex, and only sex, she could have had me that night we rediscovered her record collection. But she had stopped us, that night. She had wanted us to wait. She had wanted something more.

  What?

  The wind was so strong and steady, the whole landscape appeared razed, west to east: hedges, fields, the branches of trees all lay at a crazy angle, trembling, as if at any second everything—trees, hedges, fence posts, roofs, even the car—might come unplucked and blow away.

  “I'm sorry,” she said. She was still hiding behind a wall of coldness. “You were always my favorite, you know that. You're the best actor we ever had.”

  It was too much. I couldn't bear to see her like this, so clammed up, so cold. And, as I cracked, I let it all out—all my emotional vomit. I told her how much I loved her. How I had always loved her, from the moment I became aware of my own existence, from the second I understood my own nature.

  And I would have told her more. I would have told her of all the times I had watched her through the CCTVs as she pulled her all-nighters at the studio. How I watched her grow good at her job. How I watched her grow tired. How I watched her grow old. How I had (so often!) longed to be out of Green Lanes—rich a world as that was—and with her in her world, the “real” world (whatever that is).

  “Come on, Jerry,” she coaxed, as to a child, an importunate, lovelorn twelve-year-old, “Don't feel so bad.”

  It was unendurable. “Why are you talking to me like this?”

  “Because I made a mistake,” she said.

  “What mistake?”

  “I wanted you for sex, for romance, for the thrill.”

  “You can have me for that!”

  She laughed. “I know! Don't you see? I know! Only I've come to realize, now you're here—that's not what I want.”

  “Then what is it you want?”

  “I thought I could change you,” she said.

  Which drew me up.

  “Change me?”

  She laughed. “Pathetic,” she said, more easy, more friendly, now. “Isn't it?”

  “Change me? How?”

  “How do you think?”

  Slowly, the truth chuckled in.

  She wanted to change me.

  So what else was new? Every woman does. Every schoolgirl. “You wanted to reform me!”

  She bit her lip in embarrassment.

  “Is that it?”

  “I couldn't help it,” she said, in a small voice. “It's the way you're written. The way I wrote you. Women can't help wanting to sand off your rough edges. It's your charm. Your floppy-haired charm.” She shook her head, amazed at herself. “You'd think if anyone was forewarned, it would be me, wouldn't you?”

  “But I can change,” I said, dogged. But I knew, in my heart of hearts, that it wasn't true.

  I was a stud. I was written that way. She had written me that way. Her optimum fantasy male.

  Her optimum fantasy male.

  I was a pretty clapped-out stud by now, of course—after eight years of Green Lanes plotlines, who wouldn't be? A canned stud, now that another actor, fresh from its beta test, had been launched upon Green Lanes in place of me.

  But for as long as a substrate somewhere—be it studio AI, or the blood and goo of a human central nervous system—ran a software engine called Jerome Jones, I was, and would always be, a stud.

  “I love you,” I said. “I can change.”

  “No.”

  “Don't people change?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “So I'll change.”

  “You're not a person,” she said. “You're an actor.”

  “So what?” I demanded. “Are you trying to tell me there's a difference? What difference? What fucking difference? I live twenty-four-seven, same as you do. I sleep. I shit. I fuck. There are no differences. Soapworld. Real world. They're mirror images of each other. That's what you always said. Or was that just a line of bullshit you fed the color supplements?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It was.”

  Which shut me up.

  There was a sudden, oblique silvering of fields to the East. In the rear-view, I caught a glimpse of the moon, rising through a gap in the cloud.

  The outskirts of Godmanchester were awash with refuse spilt from bins blown open in the gale.

  “Jerry, where are we?”

  “A1198,” I said.

  “Is that supposed to mean something?”

  “A14.”

  “What?”

  “M6. M5. Dorset. Cornwall by morning. Like we planned.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Well we could go M1, M4....”

  “Stop the car.”
r />   “Fuck you. I want to see Cornwall.”

  “Stop the—Stop!”

  She didn't need to tell me. I already had the brake pedal flat to the floor.

  Cereal cartons bounded through the gutters. A tea bag caught in the wipers a second, then it was gone. Leaves hung motionless in the air before us, glittering in the headlights, fluttering in space as though suspended by some delicate, magical force.

  It wasn't a big tree. As trees go. We skidded, swerved, Rachel closed her eyes, and I felt my heart swell to see her sitting there, so calm, almost as if she had fallen asleep in her seat. I wished I'd had time to hold her. I may as well have done. I wasn't doing any good where I was.

  We hurtled side-on into the fallen tree. A branch punched a hole straight through the rear side window, reared and tore through the roof. Skewered, the car slid up to the trunk and came to rest with the left front wheel about a foot in the air.

  Rachel drew breath. And again.

  “Rachel?”

  Her eyes came open.

  “Rachel?”

  She took another breath. She blinked. She looked at me.

  “Are you okay?”

  She said nothing. She got out of the car.

  “Rachel?”

  The branch stuck up out of the roof as though it had grown up through the floor of the car. The wind had torn the tree out by the root. A low brick wall lay in Lego pieces across the pavement. The wind was so strong, I could barely stand up. It was stripping the tree: I kept having to flinch and spit out leaves.

  “Rachel?”

  She stopped and leaned against the trunk. Something pinged. The shredded roof tore free of the frame, and the car, released from the impaling branch, fell back on its wheels. Rachel slipped off the trunk and landed in the road.

  I offered her my hand.

  She shook her head.

  “Rachel.”

  She looked at me. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I have to do this. Cut.”

  “What?”

  “Cut!"

  I blinked at her. I smiled. I twinkled my eyes.

  “Curtain! Oh my dear God,” she wailed. “Frank?”

  The rain began again.

  “You can't have him,” I said.

  There was horror in her eyes. “Cut!”

  “You can't have him,” I said. “I won't let you.”