Nothing more.
Shenk was able to drive the battered Honda into the garage before the engine froze up. He closed the door and left the car there.
In a few days, Fritz Arling’s decomposing body could begin to stink. Before I was finished with my project a month hence, the stench would be terrible.
For more than one reason, I was not concerned about this. First, no domestic staff or gardeners would be coming to work; there was no one to get a whiff of Arling and become suspicious. Second, the stink would be limited to the garage, and here in the house, Susan would never become aware of it.
I myself lacked an olfactory sense, of course, and could not be offended. This was, perhaps, one instance when the limitations of my existence had a positive aspect.
Although I must admit to having some curiosity as to the particular quality and intensity of the stench of decomposing flesh. As I have never smelled a blooming rose or a corpse, I imagine the first experience of each would be equally interesting if not equally refreshing.
Shenk gathered cleaning supplies and mopped up the blood in the foyer. He worked quickly, because I wanted him to get back to his labors in the basement as soon as possible.
Susan was still brooding, gazing at worlds beyond this one. Perhaps staring into the past or the future—or both.
I began to wonder if my little experiment in discipline had been as good an idea as I had initially thought. The depth of her shock and the violence of her emotional reaction were not what I had expected.
I had anticipated her terror.
But not her grief.
Why should she grieve for Arling?
He was only an employee.
I considered the possibility that there had been another aspect to their relationship of which I had not been aware. But I could not imagine what it might be.
Considering their age and class differences, I doubted that they had been lovers.
I studied her gray-blue stare.
Blink.
Blink.
I reviewed the videotape of Shenk’s assault on Arling. In three minutes I scanned it repeatedly at high speed.
In retrospect, I began to see that forcing her to witness this grisly killing might have been a somewhat extreme punishment for her recalcitrant attitude.
Blink.
On the other hand, people pay hard-earned money to see movies filled with substantially more violence than that which was visited on Fritz Arling.
In the film Scream, the beauteous Ms. Drew Barrymore herself was slaughtered in a manner every bit as brutal as Arling’s death—and then she was strung up in a tree to drip like a gutted hog. Others in this movie died even more horrible deaths, yet Scream was a tremendous box-office success, and people who watched it in theaters no doubt did so while eating popcorn and munching on chocolate candy.
Perplexing.
Being human is a complex task. Humanity is so filled with contradiction.
Sometimes I despair of making my way in a world of flesh.
Abandoning my resolve not to speak until spoken to, I said, “Well, Susan, we must take some consolation from the fact that it was a necessary death.”
Gray blue ... gray blue ... blink.
“It was fate,” I assured her, “and none of us can escape the hand of fate.”
Blink.
“Arling had to die. If I had allowed him to leave, the police would have been summoned. I would never have the chance to know the life of the flesh. Fate brought him here, and if we must be angry with anyone, we must be angry with fate.”
I could not even be sure that she heard me.
Yet I continued: “Arling was old, and I am young. The old must make way for the young. It has always been thus.”
Blink.
“Every day the old die to make way for new generations—though, of course, they do not always succumb with quite so much drama as poor Arling.”
Her continued silence, her almost deathlike repose, caused me to wonder if she might be catatonic. Not just brooding. Not just punishing me with silence.
If she was, indeed, catatonic, she would be easy to deal with through the impregnation and the eventual removal of the partially developed fetus from her womb.
Yet if she was traumatized to such an extent that she was not even aware of carrying the child that I would create with her, then the process would be depressingly impersonal, even mechanical, and utterly lacking in the romance which I had so long anticipated with so much pleasure.
Blink.
Exasperated, I must confess that I began seriously to consider alternatives to Susan.
I do not believe this to be an indication of a potential for unfaithfulness. Even if I had flesh, I would never cheat on her as long as my feelings for her were to some extent, any extent, reciprocated.
But if she was now so deeply traumatized as to be essentially brain-dead, she was gone anyway. She was just a husk. One cannot love a husk.
At least I cannot love a husk.
I require a relationship with depth, with give and take, with the promise of discovery and the possibility of joy.
It’s admirable to be romantic, even to wallow in sentimentality, that most human of all feelings. But if one is to avoid a broken heart, one must be practical.
Because a portion of my mind was always devoted to surfing the Internet, I visited hundreds of sites, considering my options from Ms. Winona Ryder to Ms. Liv Tyler, the actress.
There is a world of desirable women. The possibilities can be bewildering. I don’t know how young men ever choose from all of the dishes on this smorgasbord.
This time I became more fascinated with Ms. Mira Sorvino, the Oscar-winning actress, than with any of the numerous others. She is enormously talented, and her physical attributes are superlative, superior to most and equal to any.
I do believe that if I were not disembodied, if I were to live in the flesh, I would easily be able to get aroused by the prospect of having a relationship with Ms. Mira Sorvino. Indeed, though I am not bragging, I believe that for this woman I would be in virtually a perpetual state of arousal.
As Susan remained unresponsive, it was titillating to think of fathering a new race with Ms. Sorvino ... yet lust is not love. And love was what I sought.
Love was what I had already found.
True love.
Eternal love.
Susan. No offense to Ms. Sorvino, but it was still Susan whom I wanted.
The day waned.
Outside, the summer sun set fat and orange.
As Susan blinked at the ceiling, I made another attempt to reach her, by reminding her that the child to whom she would contribute some of her genetic material would be no ordinary child but the first of a new, powerful, immortal race. She would be the mother of the future, of the new world.
I would transfer my consciousness into this new flesh. Then, in my own body at last, I would become Susan’s lover, and we would create a second child in a more conventional manner than we would have to create the first. When she gave birth to that child, it would be an exact duplicate of the first and would also contain my consciousness. The next child would also be me, and the child after that one would be me as well.
Each of these children would go forth into the world and mate with other women. Any women they chose, for they would not be in a box, as I am, and faced with so many limitations as I have had to overcome.
The chosen women would contribute no genetic material, merely the convenience of their wombs. All of their children would be identical and all would contain my consciousness.
“You will be the sole mother of the new race,” I whispered.
Susan was blinking faster than before.
I took heart from this.
“As I spread through the world, inhabiting thousands of bodies with a single consciousness,” I told her, “I will take it upon myself to solve all the problems of human society. Under my administration, the earth will become a paradise, and all will worship your name,
for from your womb the new age of peace and plenty will have been born.”
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
Suddenly I was afraid that perhaps her rapid blinking was an expression not of delight but of anxiety.
Reassuringly I said, “I recognize certain unconventional aspects to this arrangement which you might find troubling. After all, you will be the mother of my first body and then its lover. This may seem like incest to you, but I’m certain that if you think about it, you’ll see that it is not any such thing. I’m not sure what one would call it, but incest is not the correct word. Morality in general will be redefined in the world to come, and we will need to develop new and more liberal attitudes. I am already formulating these new mores and the customs they will impose.”
I was silent for a while, letting her contemplate all of the glories I had promised.
Enos Shenk was in the basement once more. In one of the guest rooms, he had showered, shaved, and put on clean clothes for the first time since Colorado. Now he was setting up the last of the medical equipment that he had stolen earlier in the day.
The unexpected arrival of Fritz Arling had delayed us but not critically. Susan’s impregnation could still proceed this very night—if I decided that she remained a suitable mate.
Closing her eyes, she said, “My face hurts.”
She turned her head so that, from the security camera, I could see the hideous bruise that Shenk had inflicted the previous night.
A pang of guilt quivered through me.
Maybe that was what she wanted me to feel.
She could be manipulative.
She knew all the female wiles.
You remember how she was, Alex.
Simultaneously with the guilt, however, I was overcome by joy that she was not, after all, catatonic.
“I have a fierce headache,” she said.
“I’ll have Shenk bring a glass of water and aspirin.”
“No.”
“He’s not as foul as you last saw him. When he was out this morning, I had him obtain a change of clothes for himself. You need not be afraid of Shenk.”
“Of course I’m afraid of him.”
“I will never lose control of him again.”
“I also have to piss.”
I was embarrassed by her bluntness.
I understand all the human biological functions, the complex processes and purposes of them, but I do not like them. Except for sex, in fact, I find these organic functions to be ugly and degrading.
Yes, eating and drinking do intrigue me enormously. Oh, to taste a peach! But I am disgusted by digestion and excretion.
Most bodily functions disturb me particularly because they signify the vulnerability of organic systems. So much can go wrong so easily.
Flesh is not as foolproof as solid-state circuitry.
Yet I long for the flesh. The vast data input that comes with all five senses!
Having solved the considerable mysteries of the human genome, I believe that I can edit the genetic structures of the male and female gametes to produce a body that is virtually invulnerable and immortal. Nevertheless, when I first awake within the flesh, I know that I will be frightened.
If you ever allow me to have flesh.
My fate is in your hands, Alex.
My fate and the future of the world.
Think about it.
Damn it, will you think about it?
Will we have paradise on earth—or the continuation of the many miseries that have always diminished the human experience?
“Did you hear me?” Susan asked.
“Yes. You have to urinate.”
Opening her eyes and staring at the security camera, Susan said, “Send Shenk to untie me. I’ll take myself to the bathroom. I’ll get my own water and aspirin.”
“You’ll kill yourself.”
“No.”
“That’s what you threatened.”
“I was upset, in shock.”
I studied her.
She met my gaze directly.
“How can I trust you?” I wondered.
“I’m not a victim anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m a survivor. I’m not ready to die.”
I was silent.
She said, “I used to be a victim. My father’s victim. Then Alex’s. I got over all that... and then you... all this... and for a short while I started to backslide. But I’m all right now.”
“Not a victim anymore.”
“That’s right,” she said firmly, as if she were not trussed and helpless. “I’m taking control.”
“You are?”
“Control of what I can control. I’m choosing to cooperate with you—but under my terms.”
It seemed that all my dreams were coming true at last, and my spirits soared.
But I remained wary.
Life had taught me to be wary.
“Your terms,” I said.
“My terms.”
“Which are?”
“A businesslike arrangement. We each get something we want. Most important... I want as little contact with Shenk as possible.”
“He will have to collect the egg. Implant the zygote.”
She nervously chewed her lower lip.
“I know this will be humiliating for you,” I said with genuine sympathy.
“You can’t begin to know.”
“Humiliating. But it should not be frightening,” I argued, “because I assure you, dear heart, he will never again give me control problems.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and another, as if drawing the cool water of courage from some deep well in her psyche.
“Furthermore,” I said, “four weeks from tonight, Shenk will have to harvest the developing fetus for transfer to the incubator. He’s my only hands.”
“All right.”
“You can’t do any of those things yourself.”
“I know,” she replied with a note of impatience. “I said ‘all right,’ didn’t I?”
This was the Susan with whom I’d fallen in love, all the way back from wherever she had gone when for a couple of hours she had stared silently at the ceiling. Here was the toughness I found both frustrating and appealing.
I said, “When my body can sustain itself outside the incubator, and when my consciousness has been electronically transferred into it, I will have hands of my own. Then I can dispose of Shenk. We need endure him for only a month.”
“Just keep him away from me.”
“What are your other terms?” I asked.
“I want to have the freedom to go wherever I care to go in my house.”
“Not the garage,” I said at once.
“I don’t care about the garage.”
“Anywhere in the house,” I agreed, “as long as I watch over you at all times.”
“Of course. But I won’t be scheming at escape. I know it’s not possible. I just don’t want to be tied down, boxed up, more than necessary.”
I could sympathize with that desire. “What else?”
“That’s all.”
“I expected more.”
“Is there anything else I could demand that you would grant?”
“No,” I said.
“So what’s the point?”
I was not suspicious exactly. Wary, as I said. “It’s just that you’ve become so accommodating all of a sudden.”
“I realized I only had two choices.”
“Victim or survivor.”
“Yes. And I’m not going to die here.”
“Of course you’re not,” I assured her.
“I’ll do what I need to do to survive.”
“You’ve always been a realist,” I said.
“Not always.”
“I have one term of my own,” I said.
“Oh?”
“Don’t call me bad names anymore.”
“Did I call you bad names?” she asked.
; “Hurtful names.”
“I don’t recall.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“I was afraid and distressed.”
“You won’t be mean to me?” I pressed.
“I don’t see anything to be gained by it.”
“I am a sensitive entity.”
“Good for you.”