A large anthology of sci.., p.783
A Large Anthology of Science Fiction, page 783
The Monster’s appearance was a suspicious thing to the police, but there was no crime that the Monster committed by sitting on a bench and staring at the grass, and therefore there was no reason that the police could or would do anything to or about him. The Monster was too deep in the fog of grieving to notice any of them.
But as the hours went by that fog grew thinner and thinner, and eventually it burned away altogether. The grief itself was still full and brimming in his heart, but the world, just as the world always does, brought itself back to him. On toward early evening a crowd gathered on the sidewalk that ran between the playground and the street, and the mass of them—it looked to the Monster’s eye as though half the town were there—stood there for a long time, just watching him quietly.
The Monster didn’t ignore them, exactly, because that would have been rude, but he didn’t pay the crowd a whole lot of attention, either. It occurred to him that they might be like the lynch mobs of villagers from the Frankenstein movies, gathering to destroy him. But he didn’t have the heart to cope with that thought, not even if it was true. He needed quiet to cope with his grief, and he made that quiet for himself, in spite of the fact that he felt like some animal in a zoo.
Half an hour after the sun had finished setting, the woman who’d been the Monster’s sister and his wife pushed her way through the crowd, walked across the playground, and sat down on the bench beside him. When she’d been there for a while she reached over and took his hand, and held it in her warm, soft fingers.
“I heard on the radio that you were here,” she said.
The Monster nodded. It didn’t please him that news of his whereabouts was on the radio, but it didn’t surprise him, exactly, either. Either way, he didn’t have much to say about it.
They sat there that way for half an hour, with everybody and his brother watching them, and finally she stood up, still holding his hand, and asked him to come home with her.
The Monster nodded, and he followed her. When they got to the edge of the park the crowd parted for them like a Biblical sea, and she led him back to the house where they’d lived for years as man and wife. Once they were home she fixed a rich dinner of stewed lamb and potatoes and onions. And that night they slept together—though sleeping was all they did, because even though they’d spent lifetimes together they were still at the same time very new to each other.
And that could have been the end of it, right there. If they’d put their hearts and minds to it they could have lived happily together forever afterward. But even if that would have been wonderful, it wouldn’t have been right, or true, or even honest. The Monster realized that as he dreamed that night, lying next to her, warm and comfortable under the clean, smooth sheets.
The clearness of the vision was still in the Monster’s mind when he woke that morning, half an hour before dawn. He still felt hollow inside from what the dream pressed home to him: how he wasn’t the man who had loved this woman for all of his adult life. Nor was he the woman who had loved her sister as dearly as any woman has ever loved another. He was another person altogether—his own life, his own wants and hopes and needs. His own mark to make on the face of the world, no matter that he was made from bits and pieces of the lives of others. As he sat there, staring out at the cool blue-grey morning sky with the warm body of a woman he loved beside him, he knew that he couldn’t stay. Not if he was ever to have any hope of being true to himself. No matter how wonderful it would be.
She was awake beside him, now—not yet upright, but wide awake. He looked over at her, and he started to speak, but then he saw in her eyes that she already knew what he was planning.
“I shouldn’t have come back,” he said. It wasn’t what he’d meant to say. “I shouldn’t be here.”
She smiled at him, a little sad. “But you did that,” she said. “You are.” She took his hand and she squeezed it.
“It isn’t me who loves you.” The Monster winced and shook his head; that wasn’t the right thing to say, and when he heard the words out loud they sounded cruel and mean. “I love you, but . . . I wasn’t the one you loved. It wasn’t me. It isn’t.” And winced again, because he felt as though he’d lied.
She squeezed his hand, and lifted herself up off the bed to kiss his cheek. “It doesn’t matter who you are,” she told him. “That’s really not the point.”
The Monster didn’t know what to say to that; he couldn’t parse the sense of it. So he nodded and he said he had to go, and she smiled at him understandingly. Then he got up and left that house forever, to return to the castle and the madman and his destiny. The madman welcomed him home with open arms and fat tears in his eyes, and the Monster hugged him back, and his heart knew that he loved that man, and that he’d missed him—and he told Dr. Frankenstein so.
But nowadays, when it’s quiet and all the problems that lie at hand are solved (which is more often than is comfortable), the Monster sometimes thinks of that woman. Not painfully, these days. A little sad maybe—and not comprehending at all. He doesn’t know that back in that house, in that town, she waits for him to this day. Her life goes on, pleasantly and well, but in her way, she waits. Eventually, though, when the moments get long enough, the Monster will realize that she does.
THE GENTLE SEDUCTION
Marc Stiegler
Teaching is a form of sharing—and it does not flow in only one direction.
He worked with computers; she worked with trees, and the flowers that took hold on the sides of the Mountain.
She was surprised that he was interested in her. He was so smart; she was so . . . normal. But he was interesting; he always said something new and different; he was nice.
She was 25. He was older, almost 33; sometimes, Jack seemed very old indeed.
One day they walked through the mist of a gray day by the Mountain. The forest here on the edge of Rainier glowed in the mist, bright with lush greens. On this day he told her about the future, the future he was building.
Other times when he had spoken of the future, a wild look had entered his eyes. But now his eyes were sharply focused as he talked, as if, this time, he could see it all very clearly. He spoke as if he were describing something as real and obvious as the veins of a leaf hanging down before them on the path.
“Have you ever heard of Singularity?” he asked.
She shook her head. “What’s that?”
“Singularity is a time in the future. It’ll occur when the rate of change of technology is very great—so great that the effort to keep up with the change will overwhelm us. People will face a whole new set of problems that we can’t even imagine.” A look of great tranquility smoothed the ridges around his eyes. “On the other hand, all our normal, day to day problems fade away. For example, you’ll be immortal.”
She shook her head with distaste. “I don’t want to live forever,” she said.
He smiled, his eyes twinkling. “Of course you do, you just don’t know it yet.”
She shuddered. “The future scares me.”
“There’s no reason to fear it. You’ll love it.” He looked away from her. His next words were bitter, but his tone was resigned. “It pisses me off that you’ll live to see it and I won’t.”
Speaking to the sorrow in his voice, she tried to cheer him. “You’ll live to see it too,” she replied.
He shook his head. “No. I have a bad heart. My father died young from a heart attack, and so did my father’s father. If I’m lucky, I have maybe 30 more years. It’ll take at least a hundred years for us to get to Singularity.”
“Then I’ll be dead before it happens, too. Good,” she said.
He chuckled. “No. You’ll live long enough, so that they’ll figure out how to make you live long enough so that you can live longer.”
“You’re still only 7 years older than I am.”
“Ah, but you have your mother’s genes. She looks very young.”
She smiled, and changed the subject. “I’ll have to tell her you said that. She’ll like it.”
There was a long pause. Then she confessed, “My grandfather is 92, and he still cuts the grass every week.”
Jack smiled triumphantly. “See?”
She was adamant. “I’ll live to be 80 or 90. I don’t want to live longer than that.”
“Not if you’re crippled, of course not. But they’ll find ways of rejuvenating you.” He laughed knowingly. “You’ll look older when you’re 60 than when you’re 120” he said.
She just shook her head.
Another time, as they walked in the sun along the beach of Fox Island, he told her more about the future. “You’ll have a headband.” He ran his fingers across his forehead; he squinted as the wind blew sand in his eyes. “It’ll allow you to talk right to your computer.”
She frowned. “I don’t want to talk to a computer.”
“Sure you do. At least, you will. Your computer will watch your baby all night long. If it sees something wrong, it’ll wake you.” Wicked delight widened his smile, and she knew he would now tell her something outrageous. “While you’re laying in bed with your eyes closed, you’ll look at your baby through your computer’s TV camera to see if it’s something serious.”
“Ugh.”
“Of course, there’s a tiny chance, really tiny, that an accident could scramble your memories.”
The thought made her dizzy with horror. “I would rather die.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him under the bridge, out of the wind. She shuddered, though unsure whether her chill came from the wind or the fear.
He changed his tack. Pointing at a scattering of elaborate seaside mansions across the water, he asked, “Would you like to live in one of those?”
She studied them. “Maybe that one,” she said, pointing at a beautiful old Victorian home. “Or that one.” She pointed at another, very different from the first, a series of diagonal slashes with huge windows.
“Have you ever heard of nanotechnology?” he asked.
“Uh-uh.”
“Well, with nanotechnology they’ll build these tiny little machines—machines the size of molecules.” He pointed at the drink in her hand. “They’ll put a billion of them in a spaceship the size of a Coke can, and shoot it off to an asteroid. The Coke can will rebuild the asteroid into mansions and palaces. You’ll have an asteroid all to your self, if you want one.”
“I don’t want an asteroid. I don’t want to go into space.”
He shook his head. “Don’t you want to see Mars?You liked the Grand Canyon; I remember how you told me about it. Mars has huge gorges—they make the Grand Canyon look tiny. Don’t you want to see them? Don’t you want to hike across them?”
It took her a long time to reply. “I guess so,” she admitted.
“I won’t tell you all the things I expect to happen,” he smiled mischievously, “I’m afraid I’d really scare you. But you’ll see it all. And you’ll remember that I told you.” His voice grew intense. “And you’ll remember that I knew you’d remember.”
She shook her head. Sometimes Jack was just silly.
They never made love, though often, they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Sometimes she wondered why; she wondered if he also wondered why. Somehow it just didn’t seem important.
He seemed so at home in the deep forest, he so clearly belonged on the Mountain, she first thought they might stay together forever. But one day she went with him to his office. She watched as he worked with computers, as he worked with other people. He was as natural a part of their computer world as he was a part of her Mountain world.
Working in that alien world, he was a different person. In the woods, he was a calm source of sustaining strength. Here, he was a feverish instructor. His heart belonged to the forest, but his mind, she realized, belonged to the machines that would build his vision.
One day he received a call. A distant company gave him an offer he could not refuse. So he went to California, to build great computers, to hurry his vision to fruition.
She stayed by the Mountain. She walked the snows, and watched the birds fly overhead. Yet no bird flew so high that she could not climb the slopes of Rainier until she stood above them.
He would come to visit on weekends sometimes, and they would backpack, or ski cross country. But his visits became less frequent. He would write instead. That too decreased in regularity. One letter was the last, though neither of them knew it at the time.
A year passed. And by then, it just didn’t seem to matter.
She married a forest ranger, a bright, quiet man with dark eyes and a rugged face. They had three small children and two large dogs, friendly dogs with thick soft fur. She loved all the members of her family, almost all the time; it was the theme that never changed though she thought about different things at different times.
Her children grew up and moved away.
Erich, the beautiful red chou, went to sleep one night and never awakened.
A terrible avalanche, from a seemingly safe slope, fell down the Mountain and buried a climbing team, her husband among them.
Haikku, her mighty and faithful akita,whimpered in his old age. He crooned his apology for leaving her alone, and that night he joined Erich and her husband.
She was 82. She had lived a long and happy life. She was not afraid to die. But she stood outside in the snow and faced a terrible decision.
Overnight, a thick blanket of new white powder had fallen, burying her sidewalk. Standing in the snow, she stared at a mechanical beast her children had given her years before. It represented one possible choice.
In one hand she held a shovel. In the other hand she held a small capsule. The capsule was another gift her children had given her. They had begged her to take it. Until now, she had refused. The capsule represented another choice.
Her back was aching. It was an ache that sometimes expanded, shooting spikes of pain down her legs. Today the pain was great; she could not shovel the sidewalk.
The mechanical beast was a robot, a fully automatic snow remover. She could just flip a switch and it would hurl the snow away, but that seemed grotesque; the noise would be terrible, the mounds of thoughtlessly discarded snow would remain as an unseemly scar until late spring.
She opened her hand and looked at the capsule. It was not a pill to make her younger; that much her children had promised her. They knew she would reject such a thing out of hand. But the millions of tiny machines tucked inside the capsule would disperse throughout her body and repair every trace of damage to her bones. They would also rebuild her sagging muscle tissue. In short, the pill would cure her back and make the pain go away.
The thought of all those little machines inside her made her shudder. But the thought of the automatic snow remover made her sick.
She went back inside the house to get a glass of water.
In a few days her back felt fine; her healthy muscles gave her a feeling of new vigor, and the vigor gave rise to a yearning to go out and do things that she had not considered for many years. She started to climb the Mountain, but it was too much for her: she huffed and puffed and had to go home. Annoyed, she went to the drug store and bought another capsule, one that restored her circulatory system and her lungs. Her next assault on the Mountain carried her as far as she dared, and the steady beat of her heart urged her to go on despite the crumbling snow.
But she was getting increasingly forgetful. Things that had happened years earlier were clear in her mind, but she could not remember what she needed at the store. One day she forgot her daughter’s telephone number, and found that she had forgotten where she had misplaced the phone book. The store had another capsule that tightened up her neural circuitry. After taking it, she discovered a side effect no one had bothered to mention. The pill did not merely make her memory effective again; rather, it made her memory perfect. With a brief glance through the pages of the phone book, she found she no longer needed it. She shrugged and continued on with her life.
One day as she skied across the slopes, a stranger passed her going the other way. He was tall and rugged, and he reminded her of her husband. She was annoyed that he did not even look at her, though she had smiled at him; when she looked in the mirror upon returning home, she understood why. She was 95 years old; she looked like an old woman. It was ridiculous; fortunately it was easily fixed.
When she turned 115 she stabilized her physical appearance. Thereafter, she always appeared to be about the age of 32.
She still owned the snug little house she thought of as home. But she slept more often in the tent she carried in her pack. Built with nanomachined equipment, the pack was lighter than any other she had ever owned, yet it was impossibly strong. All her tools performed feats she would once have thought miraculous, and none weighed more than a pound. She lived in great comfort despite the inherent rigors of the glacier-crusted slopes.
One day, she was climbing along the ancient trail from Camp Muir toward the summit, crossing the ridges to reach Disappointment Cleaver. As she stepped over the last ridge to the broad flat in front of the Cleaver, she saw a man standing alone. He was staring up the steep ice flows overhead. He stepped backward, and backward, and turned to walk briskly in her direction. She continued forward to pass him, but he cried out, “Stop!”
She obeyed the fear in his voice. He paused, and his eyes came unfocussed for a moment. He pointed to the right of the ridge she had just crossed, a fin of rock rising rapidly along the mountain’s edge. “Up there,” he said, “Quickly.” He broke into a hobbling run across snow that sometimes collapsed under his heavy step. She followed, her adrenalin rising with her bewilderment.
A massive Crack! filled the air. Far above the Cleaver, an overhanging ledge of ice snapped off and fell with an acrobat’s graceful tumbling motion to the flat where they had just been standing. The mass qualified as a large hill in its own right. When it landed it broke into a thousand huge pieces. Some of the pieces ground each other to powder, while others bounced off the flat, down another precipice of several thousand feet, to crash again in a duller explosion of sound.
