Escape Velocity: The Anthology (27 page)

      
He dropped the ball then, and with his two front legs he tried to climb up my chest. I held him close, stroked his back, and told him everything was okay. I petted him over and over and told him that everything was okay until I saw that his eyes weren’t looking at me anymore, and I knew he was dead.

      
It wasn’t until I lifted his body off me that I saw that the stinger of his right paw was embedded in my forearm.

      
Only a few minutes had passed since the men had left. They might still be in the building. I didn’t have the remotest inkling of a plan, but I knew I was going after them. I went out to the front hall of my building. I could hear a voice in the upstairs hall; it was the nasal squawk of Art, the short one. I started to run up the stairs when a wave of dizziness hit me. There didn’t seem to be any ‘down’ anymore, so I gripped the banister and used it to pull myself into a seated position on the steps. I could wait. They’d have to come down this way.

      
Just as I felt my head clearing, I heard footsteps on the stairs above me.

      
I stood and looked up at them. They looked back. The taller one took his gun from a pocket. “Get back inside your place, squid-sucker,” he said.

      
I stood frozen, coming to terms with what I was seeing. “Oh,” I said. I looked down at the sting mark on my arm, looked back up at the faces of the two men standing above me on the stairs.

      
Just reading a lot of subtle visual cues
, Amy had said. That’s what the Hexis did better than any human, better than any Earth animal; that’s what they spend their lives developing and learning, and that was what poor Chester injected into me as he died. The ability to look at people and see every tiniest clue about what they’re feeling and thinking.

      
Looking into the faces of these two men was like listening to someone shout. Art, the shorter one, was the easier of the two. He had the intelligence and emotions of a child. There was something twisted and ugly in him, but he was inconsequential. I decided to send him home.

       “
Art,” I said. Watching his reaction told me how to adjust my voice. Hit the right tone with this man, and his stunted mind would react like it was the voice of his mother/father/teacher. “Go home, Art,” I said. “Quit being an asshole and go home. Now!” He started, looked at me with blank eyes, said “Yessir,” and left, passing me on the stairs. It was so easy I almost wanted to laugh.

      
The tall one got wide-eyed as he watched his partner leave. He was afraid now, and that made him more dangerous. “You get outa my way, freak,” he said, pointing his gun at my head, the muzzle trembling. His eyes flickered to my left arm, covered with Chester’s blood.

       “
You know what I see when I look at you?” I said. “I see a piece of garbage that used to be a man. You know the only way you can believe that the Hexis are a danger is by being stupid. But you like having something to hate. A minute ago I wanted to wring your neck. Now I just feel sorry for you.”

       “
You shut the hell up.”

       “
Get out of here,” I said backing down the steps to the landing.       He came down the steps, keeping the gun pointed at me. As he passed me I said, “Wait a minute,” and made a motion with my left arm. He flinched, and the distraction was enough for me to reach out with my right hand and twist the gun out of his grip. It was like outsmarting a child. I pushed the gun against his temple and backed him up to the banister of the landing. “Here,” I said. “Take this; it belongs to you.” And I smeared Chester’s blood from my left hand onto his face. I backed away and he ran down the stairs and out the door, swearing and wiping his face frantically. With any luck he’d spend the rest of the night scrubbing himself raw.

I stood there for a while. Then I went downstairs and knocked on Karen Hunt’s door. She opened it and said “Oh, dear heaven. You poor man, someone has killed your little Chester.” She took my arm and brought me in, had me sit down. She puttered over me like a mother, cleaning and bandaging the cut on the side of my head, wiping Chester’s blood off me. She laid a cool cloth on my forehead. Then she left me, and I guessed from the sounds coming from the kitchen that she was making tea.

      
When she came back she knew what I was about to say before I said it.

       “
Yes,” she said. “I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely honest with your friend Amy. I thought it best if people don’t learn about this... effect... any sooner than necessary. It will just give those who are afraid something else to be afraid of.”

       “
Yes,” I agreed. I’d been avoiding looking at her since I came in, but I looked at her now. I saw kindness and honesty, I saw the arthritis that gave her occasional pain in her left hip, I saw a long and happy marriage in her past, I saw an athletic and vigorous younger woman who was resentful of the effects of her age, I saw some hints about her sexuality that were none of my business. I gave a tired half-chuckle. “I could start a new career as a gypsy fortune teller,” I said. Karen just looked at me with a quiet smile.

      
I thought about Amy.
What would I see when I looked at her? How would this change our relationship? What would I tell her?

       “
It opens up new possibilities,” Karen said. “It makes life more... complicated in some ways, but it doesn’t change who you are, and the people you know and care about are still the same.”

      
She put a cup of tea in front of me and sat down with her own cup. “I saw another Hexapod a few days ago,” she said. “Its owner said it was one of the very early ones, almost seven years old. It moved rather slowly, compared to your poor Chester. I think it was getting old.”

       “
So in a few years or so, pet Hexis will start dying of old age,” I said. “More owners will be stung when they die.”

       “
Yes. Accidentally at first, but in time people will learn about this effect and will allow themselves to be stung – to receive this final gift from their pets. In time there will be many of us, all over the world.”

      
She stood and walked over to the photograph of Sarah, her Hexapod. “So much of what’s wrong with the world exists because of how people don’t see when they’re being lied to or told the truth, don’t see the reality of other people’s pain, don’t see what makes other people act the way they act. After the sting, all these things become plain. So plain you can’t ignore them.”

      
She lifted her hand to touch the glass of the photograph. “The sweet, silly animals. When they sting us they’re just obeying a blind instinct to pass on what they’ve learned from a lifetime of living with people. But a side effect is that they pass on some of their gentleness as well. That’s a lovely thought, isn’t it?”

       “
Karen...” I paused, too many thoughts crowding my head at once. “I just made two grown men act like a couple of trained seals. I could have made them do almost anything. Don’t you think that kind of power will be misused?”

       “
Don’t worry, Charles. You earned the gift by taking Chester into your life and loving him. No truly evil person will receive the sting. You’ll see. This will be a good thing for the world. A gift of kindness and sanity sent to us through the death of an innocent. That sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Only this time it will work. This time it will really work.”

      
She’s smiling at me as I lay my head back and close my eyes. My new eyes, Chester’s eyes; eyes that see more than I’m sure I want to see. I hope Karen is right, but I don’t have her faith and I’m unsure and afraid. One way or another, the world is going to change, and I’m going to be a part of that change. I don’t think I want to be. Right now the only thing I’m sure of is that I wish I could have Chester back.

Perfection of the Mind

David Wallace Fleming

Definition: Ontology − the branch of metaphysics that studies the nature of existence.

The unfolded paper rested in Jacob’s palm. He reread the six premises and two conclusions of the Ontological argument once more. Though he’d taken philosophy in college its abstract logic still escaped him. He’d always felt that an argument as complex as the Ontological was a fickle thing, only to be appreciated briefly in the mind through strong concentration before its meaning fluttered off. As he stared at his handwriting on the paper, losing the focus and brilliance of the argument, he wondered if Aquinas or Descartes had seen the argument in its absolute, pure, naked clarity. He folded-up the notebook page and tucked it in his pants pocket.

      
The receptionist called to him, “Mr Stewart.”

      
Jacob looked up.

       “
Dr Evert will see you.”

      
He walked down the empty hallway and opened the oak door to enter the pale-yellow office which smelled faintly of Ramen noodles. Dr Karen Evert crouched in a black crepe skirt. She was balanced on low heels, preparing to shoot a toy basketball. She mumbled something to herself and released the ball which fell through the rim as her down-turned wrist remained in the air.

      
Her brown eyes widened as she turned, “Hey!” She hunched and her freckles vanished into the creases near her nose. “Ah, sorry.” Her gray tank top with its generous v-neck was more sexy-casual than professional. However, she made it work.

      
She patted a leather chair as she passed, “Please, have a seat, Jacob.” Her voice was mature for her young face. Raspy yet sweet. She seated herself in her burgundy high-back chair.

      
Jacob inspected a collage of photographs on a wall. In one picture, a red-haired young girl in a daisy-patterned sundress sat on Karen’s lap at a restaurant terrace on a gorgeous summer afternoon. “That’s a nice shot you’ve got there, Dr Evert.”

      
Her eyebrows rose. “I can dunk but the boys won’t let me. Why won’t you call me Karen?”

       “
Sorry, I’m more comfortable with Doctor, Doctor.”

       “
Whoa, now he’s calling me Doctor, Doctor it’s getting worse.” Karen laughed.

      
Jacob faked a chuckle. “So you can dunk. They really make you stronger than they need to, huh? I guess that’s because when you’re made they’re not sure what profession you’ll take on.”

       “
Not to change subjects. Which you know I do often. But I just like things a little casual.”  

       “
So I need to call you Karen. For some part of my therapy?”

       “
No.” She placed a pen inside her desk. “That isn’t why.” 

      
Jacob turned to find her watching him, intently. “I’ve come here for several months . . .”

       “
Yes?”

       “
I’ve wondered how I look to you.” Jacob returned to the collage to find Karen holding a newborn at a Christmas party. A young woman and her girlfriends looked on cheerfully in the foreground as an older woman scowled from a distance.

       “
I’m not sure I understand,” Karen said.

       “
I mean, how do I appear physically? I’ve read how your synthetic core is surrounded by real tissue – organs that work better than ours. I guess that means your senses have more strength than I’d ever need.”

       “
That’s half of it. It takes strength of both the mind and the senses to really figure out this world and the people in it.”    

       “
I see,” Jacob said. “So that makes you one hell of a psychologist. Is that it?”

      
Karen grinned. “At the risk of being immodest, yes.” 

       “
That little girl on your lap in the photo – Claire’s almost that age now. It’s the strangest thing to be a thirty-five-year-old man and see pieces of yourself in your five-year-old daughter. It makes you realize things about life.”

       “
Jacob, last time we talked about Elizabeth. We started discussing how you’re handling the separation.”

       “
Is there a reason my chair is so far from your desk?”

       “
It’s just a room, Jacob. You can move your chair, again, if you like.”

       “
I’m okay.”

       “
How’s Claire doing?”

       “
Her condition is worse. She said today she knows she’s dying.”

       “
But her physicians
are
making progress?”

       “
I’m the only one that can help her. I need to rebuild the AI system.”

       “
Without the consent of your employer?”

       “
Yes.”

       “
Jacob. Does being a biomedical engineer in viral research make you responsible for what happens to Claire?”

       “
Yes.”

       “
Tell me why.”

       “
Because she’s beautiful. Because I love her. She can make me laugh until I can’t breathe. I can’t logic my way out of failure.”

      
Karen scribbled something with pen strokes so mechanically uniform it made Jacob’s stomach turn.

       “
Is it hard having to support her emotionally while you’re going through the divorce with Elizabeth?”

       “
It’s hard. Last week we talked about where people go when they die. I noticed the cross you wear…”

       “
Jacob, how did you explain to Claire where people go when they die?”