Word Puppets Read online

  Shaking, Julius shoved the stump squarely in Leonard’s vision. The phantom twitched with inaudible music. “If the devil sat down with us and offered to trade my hand for my soul, I’d do it. I’d throw yours in with the bargain.”

  “Good.” Beads of sweat dotted Leonard’s forehead. “Except he’s already got mine.” He pushed a newspaper across the table, folded open to a page in the Arts and Leisure section.

  Svetlana Makes Triumphant Return to Figure Skating

  Julius stared at the article. She had suffered from bone cancer and lost her foot. Two years ago, she was told she would never skate again. Now she was at the Olympics.

  “How?”

  “A blastema bud.”

  Jules wiped his hand over his mouth. “I thought those were illegal.”

  “Here. Yes. Calcutta? No.” His tongue flicked again, always the sign of a sticking point in negotiations. “But the blastema has to be from a related embryo to reduce chances of rejection.” He paused. “Svetlana got herself pregnant.”

  The phantom hand froze.

  “I know her doctor.” Leonard tapped the paper. “I can get you in.”

  Cheri sat in the living room looking at a catalog of baby furniture. When Julius entered, she smiled, barely looking up from the glossy pages. “Did Leonard have anything interesting to say?”

  Julius hesitated in the door and then eased onto the sofa across from her. “He’s found a way to get my hand back.”

  Her catalogue hit the coffee table, the pages slapping against the wood. Cheri stared at the stump. Her mouth worked soundlessly.

  “It’s not legal.” Agitato beats pulsed in his phantom fingers. “It’s—” He broke off, rubbing his left arm above the bandages to ease the ache. She wanted the baby so badly. “I feel like I’m dead. Like this.”

  Cheri reached across the coffee table to grab his good hand. “Whatever it takes, Jules.”

  He started to shake and pulled back. “The doctors can transplant a blastema bud to the stump and regrow my hand. But we have to do it now, before scar tissue forms.”

  “That’s not so bad.” She got off the couch to kneel beside him. “I don’t mind moving to a country where it’s legal.”

  He bit his lip and nodded.

  Cheri ran her hand through his hair. Cool and soothing, her fingers traced a line from his scalp to the nape of his neck. “Hey. Sweetie. What’s wrong?”

  Wrong. She wanted to know what was wrong. The shaking started again. “It has to be related.”

  She froze. They hung suspended, as if waiting for a conductor to start the next movement. Julius stared at the carpet until Cheri moved her hand.

  She slid it down his back and stood. “Related?”

  He nodded. “To reduce the chances of rejection.”

  “So it might not work?” Cheri wrapped her arms around herself.

  “I don’t have another choice.” He held the stump up so she could see it. “Do you have any idea what it’s like? I can’t play.”

  “You could teach.”

  A laugh ripped out of him. “It’s not the same thing! I can’t go from being part of the music to hearing it butchered. I mean, can you imagine me with eight-year olds? Christ. Kill me now.”

  “Sorry.” Cheri paled, her skin becoming almost translucent in the light. She turned and went to the window. “What do you want me to say?”

  Say yes. Say you understand. “I—I just wanted to talk about options.” Julius crossed the room to stand behind Cheri. He reached out to hold her and stopped, staring at the stump. In his memory, the tour-bus tipped and landed with his arm out the window, sliding on his hand. Grinding it away. “I should have stayed in the room.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He wouldn’t have gone if she hadn’t insisted. “We can make another baby.”

  “Can we?” A vein pulsed in her neck. “It’s been two years, Jules.”

  “So you miscarried before.” The phantom hand clenched in a tight fist. “You might miscarry again, and then you won’t have a baby and I still won’t have a hand. Is that what you want? Are you happy that I can’t play anymore?”

  Her shoulders hitched and Cheri shook her head.

  Julius pinched the bridge of his nose. He had gone too far, but she had to understand. “I’m sorry. I just see this chance and it’s the first time I’ve hoped since the accident.” He put his hand on her shoulder. She trembled, her shoulder as tight as a bow. “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded but did not turn.

  Julius waited for more but Cheri continued to stare out the window. He squeezed her once and walked away.

  “Jules?” Her voice caught him halfway across room. “We should do it.”

  Afraid to look at her, he stopped. “Do you mean that?”

  “Yes.” The word almost disappeared into the hush of the room.

  “Because I don’t want to force you into anything.” He tasted the hypocrisy on his lips, but he needed this. She had to understand that.

  She turned to face him then. Her face, all cheekbones and dark circles, was blotched red with anger. “You’re offering me a choice between giving you your hand back and raising a child that you hate. What choice do you think there is?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  Cheri shook her head, rejecting his apology. “Tell Leonard I said, ‘yes.’ ” She turned back to the window and leaned her head against the glass.

  “Cheri.” He stopped. Nothing he could say would make her feel better, without giving away the thing he wanted. The thing he needed. He plucked at the bandages on his stump. If he could play again . . . “You have to understand what this means to me.”

  “I understand that I’m your second love. I said yes. I can’t give you anything else.”

  Julius stared at her unforgiving back. “Thank you.”

  He slid out of the room to call Leonard. His hand trembled on the receiver.

  Down the hall, the door the bathroom shut. Cheri retched once. Then again.

  Julius pressed the phone harder against his ear and started running Wilde’s Lament in his mind.

  He concentrated on the fingering.

  The last vibrations of Wilde’s opus 12 buzzed through Julius’s thighs and into his chest. He flexed the fingers on his left hand as he released the cello’s neck.

  Across the room, Leonard sat with his head tilted down so that his chin vanished in his neck. Julius swallowed, the gulp sounding as loud as it had when he first auditioned for Leonard.

  Leonard lifted his head. “What was that?”

  “A Lament in Rondo Form for Solo Cello, Opus 12.” Julius stroked the cello’s silky wood. The sweat on his palm left a film on the instrument.

  Leonard grunted. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “Well.”

  “Well?” Christ, the man was trying to kill him. Julius looked down, loosening his bow as he waited for the verdict.

  “Heard from Cheri?”

  “She sent me a card on my birthday.” His left hand spasmed. “Are you going to tell me what you thought?”

  “Turn the gig down.”

  Julius almost dropped the bow. “You’re kidding. It’s Carnegie Hall! I’ve been working for this for the last three years.”

  Leonard leaned forward. “Jules. Have I ever steered you wrong?”

  “Three years, Leonard.” He’d given up more than the time to be able to play again.

  “Take a gig in a symphony, build up your chops again. You wouldn’t have to audition.”

  “Screw that.”

  “You asked for my opinion. As your agent—”

  “Another agent would get me the gigs that I want.”

  “Sure.” Leonard shrugged and headed for the door. “Take it, you’ll sell out the house. But after people hear you play, the only gigs you’ll be able to book will be novelty shows.” His words resonated in the belly of the cello. “You aren’t ready. It’s like you’re playing two different pieces now.”

  Julius h
adn’t thought anyone else could hear it. He gripped the cello between his knees, as if the fragile wood could shield him from the truth. “How long?”

  He paused in the doorway. “How long did it take you to become world-class before?”

  “Fifteen years . . . ” Fifteen years of études and climbing his way up through the chairs of symphonies.

  “Then that’s your answer.” Leonard shut the door.

  Within Julius’s left hand, the old phantom hand twitched again and started playing Bach’s Sonata in D-minor. He clenched his hand, but the fingering did not stop.

  For Want of a Nail

  With one hand, Rava adjusted the VR interface glasses where they bit into the bridge of her nose, while she kept her other hand buried in Cordelia’s innards. There was scant room to get the flexible shaft of a mono-lens and her hand through the access hatch in the AI’s chassis. From the next compartment, drums and laughter bled through the plastic walls of the ship indicating her sister’s conception party was still in full swing.

  With only a single camera attached, the interface glasses didn’t give Rava depth perception as she struggled to replug the transmitter cable. The chassis had not been designed to need repair. At all. It had been designed to last hundreds of years without an upgrade.

  If Rava couldn’t get the cable plugged in and working, Cordelia wouldn’t be able to download backups of herself to her long-term memory. She couldn’t store more than a week at a time in active memory. It would be the same as a slow death sentence.

  The square head of the cable slipped out of Rava’s fingers. Again. “Monkey!” She slammed her heel against the ship’s floor in frustration.

  “If you can’t do it, let someone else try.” Her older brother, Ludoviko, had insisted on following her out of the party as if he could help.

  “You know, this would go a lot faster if you weren’t breathing down my neck.”

  “You know, you wouldn’t be doing this at all if you hadn’t dropped her.”

  Rava resisted the urge to pull the mono-lens out of the jack in her glasses and glare at him. He might have gotten better marks in school, but she was the AI’s wrangler. “Why don’t you go back to the party and see if you can learn something about fertility.” She lifted the cable head and tried one more time.

  “Why you little—” Rage choked his voice, more than she had expected from a random slam. She made a guess that his appeal to the repro-counsel didn’t go well.

  Cordelia’s voice cut in, stopping what he was going to say. “It’s not Rava’s fault. I did ask her to pick me up.”

  “Yeah.” Rava focused on the cable, trying to get it aligned.

  “Right.” Ludoviko snorted. “And then you dropped yourself.”

  Cordelia sighed and Rava could almost imagine breath tickling her skin. “If you’re going to blame anyone, blame Branson Conchord for running into her.”

  Rava didn’t bother answering. They’d been having the same conversation for the last hour and Cordelia should know darn well what Ludoviko’s answer would be.

  Like programming, he said, “It was irresponsible. She should have said no. The room was full of intoxicated, rowdy people and you are too valuable an asset.”

  Rava rested her head against the smooth wood side of the AI’s chassis and closed her eyes, ignoring her brother and the flat picture in her goggles. Her fingers rolled the slick plastic head of the cable, building a picture in her mind of the white square and the flat gold cord stretching from it. She slid the cable forward until it jarred against the socket. Rotating the head, Rava focused all her attention on the tiny clues of friction vibrating up her arm. This was a simple, comprehensible problem.

  She didn’t want to think about what would happen if she couldn’t repair the damage.

  Being unable to download her old memories meant Cordelia would have to delete herself bit by bit to keep functioning. All because Rava had asked if she wanted to dance. At least Ludoviko hadn’t heard that part of the accident. Rava rotated the head a fraction more and felt that sweet moment of alignment. Pushing the head forward, the pins slid into their sockets, as if they were taunting her with the ease of the connection. The head thunked into place. “Oh, yes. That’s good.”

  She opened her eyes to the gorgeous vision of the cable plugged into its socket.

  Cordelia spoke, her voice tentative. “It’s plugged in?”

  For another moment, Rava focused on the cable before her brain caught what Cordelia had asked. She yanked the mono-lens out of the jack and the lenses went transparent. “You can’t tell?”

  The oblong box of Cordelia’s chassis had been modified into a faux Victorian-era oak lapdesk which sat on the fold-down plastic table in Rava’s compartment. Twin brass cameras—not period correct—stood at the back and swiveled to face Rava. Above the desk, a lifesize hologram of Cordelia’s torso hovered. Her current aspect was a plump middle-aged Victorian woman. She chewed her lip, which was her coded body language for uncertainty. “It’s not showing in my systems.”

  “Goddamit, Rava. Let me look at it.” Ludoviko, handsome, smug Ludoviko reached for the camera cable ready to plug it into his own VR glasses.

  Rava brushed his hand away. “Your arm won’t fit.” The hum of the ship’s ventilation told Rava the life support systems were functioning, but the air seemed thick and rank. Ignoring her brother, she turned to the AI. “Does your long-term memory need a reboot?”

  “It shouldn’t.” Cordelia’s image peered down as if she could see inside herself. “Are you sure it’s plugged in?”

  Rava reattached the camera’s cable to her VR glasses and waited for the flat view to overlay her vision. The cable rested in its socket with no visible gap. She reached out and jiggled it.

  “Oh!” Cordelia’s breath caught in a sob. “It was there for a moment. I couldn’t grab anything, but I saw it.”

  So much of the AI’s experience was translated for laypeople like Rava’s family, that it seemed almost surreal to have to convert back to machine terms. “You have a short?”

  “Yes. That seems likely.”

  Rava sat with her hand on the cable for a moment longer, weighing possibilities.

  Ludoviko said, “It might be the transmitter.”

  Cordelia shook her head. “No, because it did register for that moment. I believe the socket is cracked. Replacing that should be simple.”

  Rava barked a laugh. “Simple does not include an understanding of how snug your innards are.” The thought of trying to fit a voltmeter into the narrow opening filled her with dread. “Want to place bets on how long before we hear from Uncle Georgo wondering why you’re down?”

  Cordelia sniffed. “I’m not down. I’m simply sequestered.”

  Pulling her hand out, Rava massaged blood back into it. “So . . . the hundred credit question is . . . do you have a new socket in storage.” She unplugged the camera and leaned back to study Cordelia.

  The AI’s face was rendered pale. “I . . . I don’t remember.”

  Rava held very still. She had known what not having the long-term memory would mean to Cordelia, but she hadn’t thought about what it meant for her family. Cordelia was their family’s continuity, their historical connection to their past. Some families made documentaries. Some kept journals. Her family had chosen to record and manage their voyage on the generation ship with Cordelia. Worse, she managed all their records. Births, deaths, marriages, school marks . . . all of it was managed through the AI who could be with every family member at all times through their VR glasses.

  “Oh, that’s brilliant.” Ludoviko smacked the wall with the flat of his hand, bowing the plastic with the impact.

  Rava focused on the hard metal floor, to hide the dismay on her face. “Well, look. Uncle Georgo said multiple times that our Grands packed duplicates of everything, so there’s got to be a spare. Right?”

  “Yes?” The uncertainty in Cordelia’s voice hurt to hear. Since Rava was a child, Cordelia had known everythi
ng.

  “So, let’s ping him to see if he’s got a copy of the inventory. Okay?” She adjusted her VR glasses and tried to project reassurance with her smile.

  Cordelia shook her head, visibly distressed. “I can’t transmit.”

  “Right . . . ” Rava bit her lip realizing she had no idea what her uncle’s contact was. “Crap. Ludoviko do you have his contact info?”

  He turned and leaned against the wall, shaking his head. “No, Cordelia always connects us.”

  “I’m sorry.” The droop of the AI’s eyes drew a portrait of genuine unhappiness.

  He waved his hand. “Just print it and I’ll dial manually.”

  Rava rolled her eyes, glad to see him make such a basic mistake. “Ludoviko, if she can’t transmit to us, she can’t transmit to a printer either.” She triggered the VR keyboard and lifted her hands to tap on the keyboard that seemed to float in front of her. “Tell me and I’ll dial it.”

  Ludoviko sneered. “How old school.”

  “Bite me.” Rava tapped out the sequence on the virtual keyboard as Cordelia gave her the routing number.

  Before she toggled the call, Cordelia said, “Oh! Hardwiring! I’m sorry, I should have thought of that sooner.” Cordelia’s shoulders relaxed and she put a hand to her chest in a perfect mimicry of a Victorian woman avoiding a swoon. “You could hardwire me to the main ship system and then I can use that to reach my memory.”

  “Would that work?” Rava withdrew her hand from the trigger. She couldn’t remember ever seeing a computer with external cables to anything.

  “It should.” Cordelia looked down the back of her chassis, like a woman trying to see the closure on her gown.

  Rava toggled the keyboard off and walked around to the back of the AI’s chassis. Beneath two shiny brass dials were four dark oblongs. She’d forgotten that they even existed. “At least these are easy to access.” She buried her hand in her hair, staring at the ports. “Any idea where the heck I am supposed to get a cable?”

  “With her other spare parts.” Ludoviko didn’t say “stupid” but she could hear it.

  “And those would be . . . where?” Rava crouched to examine the ports. They appeared to take a different socket from the cable inside the AI. “ ’Cause I’m thinking our family hasn’t accessed that pod since before Launch. You want to make a guess about which of our pods has her spare parts or were you suggesting we spend the credits to have all of them brought up from the hold?”