He, She and It (58 page)

“I’ll use the small sensor-muter I’ve been working on. I believe I can disarm the house with it. Wait outside while I make sure.”

“Yod, I can’t wait outside. I have to go in.”

“You can wait five minutes, Shira. In order to vastly increase the chances of securing your son.”

Yod walked up to the door, while Shira waited. He had the rod-shaped device in his hand. He touched it to the door. A moment later, he opened the door and passed inside. The muter must have worked. She looked too suspicious, standing on the sidewalk outside a tech house. Quickly she followed Yod. The lights in the house went out. It was still daylight.

She heard Josh calling down, “There’s a power outage, Sylvie. Keep Ari in the high chair.”

A woman’s voice said, “The power is out down here too, Mr. Rogovin.”

“Go next door and find out if it’s general or just us.”

Yod intercepted the woman on the way to the door. He held her, a hand over her mouth, while Shira administered a hypo that would knock her out. It was the same kind she had used to vaccinate Ari every month or two against whatever new scourge was rampant. It was the size of a straight pin and could be inserted in any muscle. They carried the woman to the couch and laid her down. Yod opened and shut the front door. Shira ran into the kitchen.

“Ari.” She tried to speak calmly. His brown hair had darkened a little more, but it was the same tangle of curls, cut a little shorter than she preferred. His eyes, brown and oversized as her own, were wide with shock.

He stared at her, his mouth open. “Mama?” he screeched.

“Shh, my precious, I’ve come for you. I told you I’d never give up.” She kissed him. He was unresponsive, staring at her, his fists clenched. She lifted him out of the high chair. He let himself be lifted. Tears began to roll from her eyes. Tears ran down onto the shoulder of his dirty green-and-yellow rompers. She snuffled and shook her head hard. Must not cry. She would frighten him. “Mama’s so glad to see you!” He was heavier than she remembered. He did not struggle but did not respond.

Yod climbed the steps silently. Not a step creaked. He slipped upward and vanished. Ari had not yet seen him.

“When does the other guard come?” she asked Ari.

“Morning. When we go day care. Oscar.” He made a scowling face. Was he imitating Oscar?

“Is it always Oscar?” She had to wait for Yod to take care of Josh. Frightened until she felt as if she was babbling, she was very, very careful to sound calm. She slid him back into the high chair and began to feed him some miso soup. If he did not eat now, he would be cranky soon.

“Sometimes George. Don’t like George. He yells.” Ari began bouncing up and down in the chair. The soup dribbled down.

“Who was the woman who went next door?”

“My nana. Sylvie.”

She fed him the food that Sylvie had laid out. From upstairs came the sound of someone running, then thuds. A falling of furniture. “Somebody knocked things over!” Shira said cheerfully. Ari was staring at the ceiling, but he continued eating his soup. Then she grabbed some jars of food from the cupboard and stuffed them in her backpack. She hoped Yod had not hurt Josh. She was hurting him enough. “What does your nana do?” she asked, hoping to keep him from wondering what was happening.

“She feed me. Give me bath. Daddy, he dress me. Nana put my things on chair. Then she go home.”

“Where does she live?”

“Far, far away. With her little girl. Her little girl Suzie.”

“Does she go on the tube?”

“What the tube?”

Yod flowed down the steps, swift, silent. “Let’s go now.” He carried a large duffel bag. She recognized it as Josh’s weekender.

“Who you?” Ari pointed.

“Yod, do we have to give him the hypo? He’ll walk with us.”

Yod smiled at Ari. “Hello. I’m Yod. Are you Ari?”

“I’m afraid of giving him too much.”

“I can adjust it. Give me the hypo.”

Ari stared at the hypo as it passed from Shira to Yod. “Doctor?”

Yod said, “This won’t hurt.”

Shira rolled up his sleeve. His little fat arm. “Not too much!”

“No! No! Don’t stick me!” Ari began to bang his spoon against the high chair and to twist under her hands.

“If it hurts, I promise you can stick me tomorrow. Deal?” Yod brought the hypo to Ari’s arm. Ari jerked and hit at him, but Yod got it in. “Did that hurt?”

Ari tensed as he got ready to cry, but then his face softened and his eyes lost their focus. He began to droop in the chair. In a moment he fell forward. Shira cleaned the food from him and then slipped him into the duffel bag. “Can he breathe?”

“We should leave the zipper open as far as we can. Now we must exit before someone comes. The computer reports in regularly. I’ve reprogrammed the system to report everyone sleeping.” Yod slipped the duffel bag over his shoulder.

“Just one minute.” Shira ran upstairs. Ari must have his blanket, his bear, familiar things.

“No, Shira!” Yod tried to block her, but moving with the duffel slowed him. He made an aborted noise but did not follow her upstairs.

In the upper hall, Josh lay on the floor. His neck was turned at an unnatural angle. She knelt over him wringing her hands, with the sense that it was all her fault, that she must do something. She heard herself speaking to him, stupidly repeating his name as if that could wake him. “I’m sorry, Josh, I’m sorry!” Finally she made herself touch him. No pulse at the neck. No pulse at all. His skin was still warm, but he was dead.

For a moment she could not believe it, and she listened at his nostrils, pressed on his chest. He had to come back to life, he had to. But he would not. His face in death was oddly relaxed, the mouth fallen slightly open, the eyes half shut. She lowered the eyelids, wondering why she felt compelled to do that. It seemed polite. Sometimes he had looked like that in bed. She could almost remember when she had been full of hope for them, in the very beginning, when tenderness for this man had turned her to warm jelly. She began to weep, kneeling over him. Everything felt shattered.

She was furious at Yod, shocked but unsurprised. Just as she would never be truly astonished if Yod killed Gadi accidentally or on purpose, she was finally not surprised that he had killed
Josh. But Ari must not find out. Ever. She got control of herself. She made herself leave Josh, leave the body where it lay. She found Ari’s room, grabbed his favorite bear and his blanket, blue jammies. She ran down with them and stuffed them in her backpack. “Okay, now.” She avoided looking at Yod. He seemed about to speak, then did not.

The house came on around them as they left. Lights turned on, pop music in the kitchen, security that would report everyone sleeping. Sylvie lay unconscious on the couch. “Should I tie her up?” she asked.

“We must leave at once. She’ll be out approximately three hours.”

They trotted along the block to the moving sidewalk. The riders had changed from Y-S personnel in backless business suits to workers in their various color-coded uniforms. Shira and Yod headed straight for the tube station. Behind them rose the sound of an emergency vehicle, but it could have been anything. She did not turn, she did not look back.

They switched sidewalks twice more, Shira leading the way. She knew the fastest route across the enclave. As they approached the tube, the sidewalk grew more and more crowded. She was jammed against Yod. She interposed her body between Ari and other bodies, so that no one could feel what was being carried. It was awkward, and she was jostled and pummeled, but she kept her position. She must protect him equally from injury and discovery. How frightened he would be! Did she have the right to do this to him? But the life to which she was taking him was a better one, freer, more independent. He was being raised by a hired woman torn from her own daughter in the Glop. She and Malkah and Yod could do a better job. She swore they would. Now Ari had only her and her family. He had no father. They had killed him.

They passed through the portal of the Y-S enclave and were briefly exposed to the unfiltered sun as they crossed a wide square to the tube station. They were simply bodies in a sea of weary jostling flesh, two bodies carrying a hidden third. Yod elbowed into a car and got her a seat so that she could hold Ari, still in the bag. She longed to check him, but she did not dare. She confined herself to making sure through the cloth that he was breathing.

They had to change tubes in Chicago. They did not dare pause to rest or spend the night. She pulled Ari from the duffel and carried him openly in her arms. It was past rush hour. They were not the only couple traveling with a child. Ari was beginning
to stir, but he had not yet wakened. It was not as crowded on this tube. They were able to sit together. Immediately she asked Yod, “Why did you do it?”

“Your ex-husband? I’m sorry.”

She clenched her hands together, willing herself to keep control. “It was unnecessary.” They spoke very softly, their heads close together. She held herself so she would not accidentally touch him.

“It did not seem so. He was wearing the same device as the guard, and he began signaling for help as soon as he saw me. I had time only to leap across the room and hit him. I only struck him once, Shira. I did not realize he would be injured seriously.”

“Yod, he was dead.”

He nodded. He was turned toward her, trying to get her to meet his gaze. “I regret that very much. It was the one blow that killed him, but I only intended to keep him from making the call. As it was, he opened a frequency, and I’m sure they arrived quickly.”

“Shh. No more about it. Never in front of Ari.” She forced herself to touch Yod’s hand. He had gotten her child back for her. No one else would have done so. She had chosen to sacrifice Josh to her desire for her child. She had chosen that. She must remember. Yod had only acted in her interest, even if his own was surreptitiously involved. She could never give up and go back to Josh quite now. Yod had done as she had wanted, and the guilt was entirely hers to bear, silently and secretly. “You didn’t kill him. If anybody killed him, it must have been Y-S. We left him alive and unconscious, like the nanny. Understood?”

He nodded, looking frightened. “I cannot alter my memories. They’ll continue to exist. But I can put a block on them such that I never refer to today and such that no one else can ever access them. This is for the boy?”

“He is now under your protection even more than I am. You must put him first at all times.”

“Shira, it’s not in my nature to be able to put him ahead of you, but I’ll protect him with my life, the same as you.… I’m sorry. I never wanted to give you pain. Once it happened, I didn’t want you to know. I’ll say nothing more.”

“Good. No more alluding to it, whether we’re alone or together. I mean it, Yod, when I say utter silence.”

Ari was yawning now and scrubbing his eyes. She held him more closely, wrapping his familiar worn blue blanket around
him, the blanket Malkah had sent as a present when he was born. The blanket he would not allow to go off to the laundry, which she had always had to wash by hand, so that it would not leave the house. The difficult time was ahead, when he wakened in the tube in the frightening noise and darkness and bad air, when he wakened to the strangeness of her and of Yod. I wanted my child, I wanted him back more than I wanted anything else in the world. As long as I live I must bear the responsibility and the guilt for the choice I made to take him back. Yod killed, but I let him. I did not order him to protect Josh at all costs, because that wasn’t my priority. She saw Josh’s body crumpled on the floor of the upstairs hall, fallen as if from a considerable height, with the neck twisted and the eyes half open. Once she had loved him. Then she had left him. Then she had had him killed.

THIRTY-NINE

The Battle at the Gates

My daughter is alive. She sends word as an afterthought, and my mourning passes from grief into clownishness. Why did she wait so long to let me know? Daily I study Ari to understand who this boy child is. I am used to daughters and granddaughters, but I know rather a lot about the male too. Ari has appeared like an exotic bird on the tree outside the window, when I was a girl and birds lived everywhere and flew in the air like animate flowers. Now this child comes shouting his demands, loud, healthy, precious, overbearing.

Yod is working heroically to be human; I see it every day. He wants desperately to satisfy Shira, to be her man, her husband, to father her son. I wonder if the programming I gave him to balance his violent propensities wasn’t a tragic error, if I did not do him an injustice in giving him needs he may not be able to fulfill. I fear Yod experiences something like guilt at his inadequacy, at not being human enough for her. He strains, unsure how far he is from succeeding, because he cannot know what the real thing would feel like. Men so often try to be inhumanly
powerful, efficient, unfeeling, to perform like a machine, it is ironic to watch a machine striving to be male.

Yet Ari obviously accepts him, far more perhaps than Shira realizes. Ari senses that he can get away with almost anything with Yod, who will often obey him when any other adult would laugh off his requests or simply ignore them.