Universe 2 - [Anthology] Read online

  His father stood there, waiting for him.

  “Hello, Dad.”

  And that was all. He could think of nothing more to say. “How are you” felt wrong, very wrong, and he wished he were anywhere but here.

  His father turned to the man beside him, whom Jake hadn’t noticed. “Do I go with him?” his father asked. Jake was surprised at the meekness in that voice; he’d remembered it as fuller, deeper. The other man, dapper in dress blacks, pressed his hand to the old man’s shoulder, guided him forward. “Yes, Mr. Grant. You go with your son.” To Jake, he added, “You’ll have to be patient. The first few hours are hazy for him. Disorientation.” The dapper man checked his watch, put it back in its pocket pouch. “He was just Recalled an hour ago; one of the first since the project was completed.”

  The man in black took a small cylindrical object from his pocket and gave it to Jake. “That’s your operator. When you go to sleep tonight, give that knob a small twist.” Jake looked at him curiously, and the man explained. Jake began to feel the beginnings of a tightness crawl in around his stomach. He looked at his father, trying to see the gears and clockwork mechanism he felt must be inside. He wondered if the flesh was real flesh, or only a plastic amalgam of some sort. Putting the cylinder in his sleeve, he took his father’s arm, and said, “Come on, Dad. Let’s go home.”

  * * * *

  His father was silent during the drive. Jake stared ahead, sometimes glancing at the roadstrip, sometimes at the automatic controls in front of him, not wanting to look across at the memory sitting beside him.

  No, not a memory, something more, he thought. That was his father; somewhere inside that body, his father lived. Jake concentrated on the roadway, then, and when he’d suddenly remember where the old man beside him had come from, a shiver would eat up his spine, and he’d reach out and hold the customary wheel assembly tightly, tightly, until the shiver passed and he could relax once more.

  * * * *

  Anne stopped by the apartment door, her hand poised over the entrance board. Behind her, Jake said, “Go ahead, Anne. He’s probably wondering what’s keeping us.”

  She glanced back at him, her features expressionless, though the tension was more than visible in her actions, in the line of her lips. “Why did you have to leave him alone? I could have come here by myself.”

  “I wanted to talk to you before you saw him. To make you understand. How things are.”

  “I understand how things are, Jake. You’re the one who doesn’t.”

  “Let’s not get involved with all that again, Anne. Just go in. Please.”

  She stepped back, waved at the door key. “Go ahead. It’s your apartment.”

  Annoyed, he reached out and punched the code on the board, slipped through the cycling door into the shallow foyer. His father sat on the couch, looking into the window screen. The old man shifted, moved around at the sound of the door opening. He smiled a tentative, hesitant smile; the disorientation was wearing off. He’s beginning to understand what’s happened, Jake thought; he knows we’ve brought him back.

  “Dad, this is Anne. You remember Anne.”

  “Of course I do,” said the old man. The face lifted open with another smile as they approached. “How are you, Anne? How are you?”

  They stood looking at each other for a moment, and then Anne started to step forward, and stopped. She canted her head a bit sideways, and then a bit to the other side, and studied the old man’s face, and seemed to say something to herself, and looked back at Jake; her face was white, and her voice strained.

  “Jake...”

  “Anne’s a little tired, Dad,” Jake said quickly. “Why don’t you sit down a minute, and we’ll be right back. Just hold on, all right?”

  Nodding, “Certainly, Jake. Hurry along.”

  The old man folded himself onto the couch.

  Jake took Anne’s hand just below the wrist, tightly, and drew her into the kitchen nook. “What are you trying to do? Hurt him?” Jake shook himself, pulled her a bit closer. “Can’t you even—” But she was crying.

  “It’s just like Dad,” she said, “just like he was. Just like him, Jake. I didn’t really . . .” and her voice faded out, lost as her body shivered, and she tried to pull her hand out of his. Jake relaxed his grip on her wrist, put his other arm around her and guided her closer to him, letting her press herself against his chest. He didn’t know what to do, beyond that. Through the arch, in the main room, he could see his father bent forward, staring down at the traffic on the roadstrips far, far below, as shown on the window screen. He’d seen him do that so many times before, it came as a shock, somehow, to see it again now. His father had spent hours by the window screen, having set the screen at maximum definition so his failing eyes could see through the smog and make out the most distant details.

  Why did it bother Jake now? The memory and the reality were one; was that it?

  “Why did you bring him back?” she asked him. Her voice was sudden; they’d been standing silently for some minutes. Jake brought himself out of his reverie, released Anne’s shoulders. She didn’t move away.

  “Why? Because I love him. Because I want ... to talk to him. I thought I could, now.”

  “Why should it be any different now? You two were almost strangers near the end. Why should you expect . . .” She stopped, drew in a breath, let it out slowly and eased herself back against him. “Forgive me, Jake. Everything’s switched around, and I don’t know what’s right to say or not to say. All these years, I didn’t think about how it’d be to see him—well, alive, like that. It was something you talked about, that you spent your share of the inheritance on, and I didn’t believe it would ever, ever happen. And now he’s there, and I know him and I don’t know him, and I don’t know what to say.”

  “You’ve said a lot.”

  “Haven’t I, though?” She tilted herself a bit away from him in order to peer up at him through her bangs. “I know I’m not making any sense. And I know this isn’t what you want from me. You must feel terrible, Jake. I’m sorry.” She held him now, and Jake felt confusion, wondering how their roles had been reversed, so that she was now the comforter.

  “I don’t know how I feel, Anne. Honestly.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head. His father had moved out of view, presumably to get closer to the window screen.

  Jake said, “It’s what I want, I think. I need to see him this one more time. Maybe I can ... do something.”

  “But you can’t,” she said, raising her voice on the first two words, dropping it almost to a whisper on the last when she realized she spoke too loudly. “You can’t. It’s over; that’s not really Dad. You can’t change anything; you just can’t. Jake: what you have is a mass of memories. You just can’t make love to a memory.”

  He pulled away from her, shocked at the analogy, not considering what she’d said, only the way she’d said it.

  “Let’s drop it now, Anne. All right? I think we should go back in.”

  “You go back, Jake. I’ve got to leave.” She started away a step, stopped. “I’ve got a family, you know; I don’t need him for that, anymore. And I can’t ask him . . . can’t ask it . . . for something it just can’t give.”

  She left, then, slipping out the door of the apartment before Jake could call her back. The old man watching the window screen didn’t see her go. Jake decided it was best that way. Dad would never understand.

  * * * *

  Jake handed his father a tumbler half-filled with wine, a single cube of ice bobbing and turning amid the dusky red. The old man accepted the glass and held it with both hands, resting it on his lap. He watched Jake sit down across from him, and his eyes never left Jake’s face. Jake couldn’t read his father’s expression; it was a distant one, not quite parental, not quite real. Jake raised his glass, and his father raised his own, moving just a bit awkwardly.

  “Do you have a toast?” Jake asked.

  “No, Jake. It’s your wine, aft
er all.” Smiling.

  Jake felt strange; he felt himself carried along. The quality of the scene was off, he knew. It existed only because of the momentum that had propelled it since his youth. He couldn’t get moving.

  Jake said cheers, and sipped at his wine, and the old man sipped at his, too.

  “How’s the book?”

  “All right. I’m working at it.”

  “Do you have a publisher?”

  “Not yet.”

  His father shook his head, quietly saying something that Jake couldn’t hear.

  “I think it’ll sell, Dad. I’m sure it will.”

  “You know best for yourself, Jake.”

  “You don’t approve?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s your work, and your life.”

  Jake nodded, and said nothing.

  His father took a drink of his wine, and looked about the apartment. His gaze stopped on the hologram, and his lips shifted and tightened, smiled. “Nothing’s changed, I see. You still have the picture.”

  “Yes.” (What else, what can you say?)

  “What, three years ago? No. Six, now. Has it been that long? Nothing seems to have changed. Nothing at all.”

  “I’ve kept it this way.”

  “But why? For me? Don’t be foolish, Jake.”

  “I did. I kept it this way, so . . .” (So, why? Why this way? Uncomfortable; strange.)

  “Speak up, Jake. What did you say?”

  “Nothing, Dad.”

  “Hmm.” The old man crossed his legs over each other, looked back at the window screen. Gray filtered in from either side of the screen, obscuring most of the picture. “That’s different, though; it wasn’t so bad, the last I saw. Been getting worse?”

  “Much worse. It’s hard to walk outside.”

  “Those filters, they work out?”

  “More or less.”

  “More or less.” His father sighed. “Now, Jake—just what is that supposed to mean? You have to be more explicit, boy.”

  “I’m sorry, I mean sometimes they work well, and sometimes not so well. People die.”

  His father made an “ahhh” sound, and continued to sip at his wine, rolling the glass back and forth between his palms when he didn’t.

  “What ever happened to that girl, what was her name, Susanne?”

  “Susan. We haven’t seen much of each other, Father.”

  “Not much? You mean you let it slide?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Jake, don’t you ever finish anything? You’re always caught between the beginnings and the ends. What happened with you and this girl?”

  “Nothing, Dad; nothing at all.”

  “Now, Jake. You’re going to be twenty-five soon, and twenty-five’s the age for a man to marry. You can’t keep passing by things like this. Call that girl immediately, and have her come over here, and we’ll see what can be done. Yes, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll see what can be done.”

  Jake shook his head; his father didn’t see the motion, wasn’t looking at Jake. He was looking away, his eyes fixed on some distant point beyond Jake, just as they were fixed in the hologram Jake kept on the desktop.

  “No, Dad.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “I’m twenty-seven. Three years, Dad.”

  “Oh? Oh. Yes. Well, call that girl, anyway. It’s not right, I tell you, Jake, for a boy your age to let things slip. Call her, right now.”

  “Dad, I haven’t seen her in three years.”

  “What do you mean, you haven’t? Yesterday—” But he stopped, seemed to flounder a moment. “That was a while ago, wasn’t it, Jake?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  They sat for a while in silence, then, each sipping his wine, one looking at the other, the other staring into space.

  “Dad-”

  “Jake,” the old man cut in. “Jake, you haven’t forgotten her, have you?”

  “Forgotten who?”

  His father reddened. “Your mother, Jake.” He drew in a breath, let it out slowly; dimly, Jake could hear the rustle of something in his father’s chest. Something that didn’t quite sound like flesh. “You’ve been taking good care of her?”

  “She died a year after you, Dad. She was sick.”

  “You should take care of her, Jake,” his father said, continuing. He didn’t pause, hadn’t seemed to hear what Jake had told him. “She’s been good to you. And me, too, I know. Not every woman would stay with a man as long as she has.”

  “Dad, she’s dead.”

  “You take care of her, Jake; see that she never suffers like me. You’ll make sure of that, won’t you?”

  “Dad . . .” But his father wasn’t listening.

  No. His father just didn’t understand.

  “Things have changed, Dad,” Jake said, softly. His father looked up at him. The eyes were blank; he could see the light from over his shoulder glinting off them. Some sort of plastic. “Things have changed.”

  “Nonsense. Certainly, the smoghas gotten worse, but you? And your sister, Anne? No. You’re still the same. Both of you; just as you were yesterday, as you’ve always been.” The old man laughed, and put his wine glass to his lips, and drank. “No. No. You haven’t changed. Nothing’s changed.”

  “Dad, why were things wrong between us?”

  “What? How do you mean, wrong?”

  “You never listened to me, you know; just now, you didn’t hear a word I said.”

  “Not true, Jake, not true. I heard everything you said, everything. You just have it wrong.”

  “I don’t have it wrong, Dad. That whole speech you just gave; you gave that when you were dying, how I should take care of Mother. But she’s dead, Dad. She is dead.”

  “And you should take care of her; you know you should.”

  “Not a word I’ve said.”

  “Nonsense. Nonsense.”

  “Not a word, not a word. You can’t hear me.”

  “I’ve heard everything.”

  “But you don’t understand, and you never will, not now.”

  “What are you talking about, Jake?”

  “I can’t change you. The memory of you hurts me, and I wanted to fix it, to make my memory a good one—but I can’t. I can’t change you, any more than I can honestly change that memory. God.”

  “Jake, Jake. You’re so young. You’ll see, in a few more years—”

  “I’m twenty-seven, Dad. And I’ve done nothing with my life, as long as I’ve been under you.”

  “How can you be twenty-seven? I should know my own son’s—” The old man stopped, looking confused; Jake sighed and took the cylinder from his pocket.

  “Jake? Everything is wrong, isn’t it?” He looked at Jake with eyes wide and frightened. Not the eyes that Jake had feared when he was younger; those eyes existed in only one place, where they would always exist, exactly the same, until, Jake realized, he did the needed thinking, and rethinking.

  “Yes, Dad. Everything is wrong. You’re just a memory,” Jake said, as he made the necessary adjustment to the cylinder’s tiny knob.

  * * * *

  The waiting room wasn’t as crowded as it had been the day before. The black girl didn’t look as harassed as she had been, but the expression on her face was hardly one of relief. She frowned with concern, and the frown didn’t completely wash away when Jake came up to the desk, his father trailing behind, his movements mechanical and abrupt. She looked at Jake suspiciously, as someone who’s just come to a more cynical view of his supplicants might, and inclined her head towards the mock-up of an old man. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “I’ve shut down the memory circuits; by the book, I think. He’s just a robot now.” He handed the girl the cylinder, and she set it between them on the desktop.

  “What’s happened to everyone?” he asked.

  “Word gets around quick,” she said. “I guess the ghouls have crawled back under their rocks.”

  “What?”

  “N
ever mind. It just looks like Recall’s going to shut down.”

  “Too bad. It’s a dying business.”

  She groaned, tried to ignore him. When he didn’t leave, she looked up again, frowning. “Yes? What else?”

  “Just one more thing,” Jake said, looking back at the shell behind him. “Who do I see about a funeral?”