Time, and dinner was quickly served since Parric hadn’t bothered to accumulate the natural foodstuffs offered him by the Central. He was used to and somehow preferred the synthetics the ovenwall produced within minutes of his directions. Despite the impression he had allowed Jessica to foster, Mrs. Keller’s cooking was not all that exciting. Whoever had programmed her apparently had a passion for spices that his stomach forbore to cultivate.

  They spoke little while eating, a consensus soon arrived at when Ike, his voice stentorian even while whispering, announced his intention to prowl with his camera through the nightlife of the Town. Accordingly, he ate quickly, his face not bothering to disguise his distaste for the food, or for the ale which Parric preferred dark and warm. And when he had vanished, Parric swept the table clean and retreated to the porch, Jessica joining him after changing into a shift with subtly kaleidescoping patterns that kept him from staring too long at her figure.

  “Nice,” she said, leaning against the railing and nodding toward his chest. He looked down at his shirt, billowing at waist and sleeves to provide him with maximum comfort and coolness. It was typically his, unembroidered and black, making him seem heavier than he was. When he returned his gaze to her face, she grinned. “Really. I like it. Too many men are getting too damn fancy. Those slashed-look shirts and painted-on doublets ... the kilts I suppose I can live with, but when they wear pants that look more like skin than cloth—” She laughed and looked at him again as if praising him for his conservatism. “They say these things move in cycles, but sometimes I wonder.”

  There was laughter, friendly, and Parric saw Ike talking with Dan Bonetto, who was gesticulating excitedly around his garden.

  “What exactly do you do around here, Frank?”

  Parric eased his hand out of his pocket and rubbed the back of his neck. “When you ask me like that, it doesn’t seem like a heck of a lot. Observe, mostly. The doctor business is all for show and, I guess, to give me some misguided sense of importance. The times when 'I’m not at the clinic, I walk around talking, sitting, making sure there’s nothing out of kilter.”

  “Kilter?”

  He smiled at her puzzlement over the old word, relaxing enough to sit on the steps and fold his arms around his knees. “Malfunction, I guess it means. For example, if an android falls down unexpectedly, he damned well better show he’s in some kind of pain or look surprised or anything else a human would do in such a situation. Reactions, then, are mainly what I am supposed to keep track of. What it factors out to be is that they have to be perfect and imperfect at the same time.”

  She sat beside him and he eased carefully to the edge of the step, creating a gap she could not have ignored, instantly contrite that he had done it and too unsure to rectify his move.

  “It’s frightening, in a way,” she said, staring through a veil of dusk as the hills with their stunted trees and ragged crests sliced off the orange setting sun. “People should know what they’re living with.” “Supposedly they will, in time. Right now, though, these androids are needed to punch production.”

  She laughed, lightly, quickly. “Sounds like Floyd talking.”

  “It is, I guess. You listen to that growling long enough, you start to growl yourself. He’s right, though, I think. Androids can fill a role as a consumer, something people can’t do efficiently anymore. Once they’re established, however—”

  He stopped, punched at his thigh. “Damn!” “What?”

  “Listen, Jessica,” Parric said earnestly. “I’m not a 'brain or a computer or even a specially educated man. I got picked for this because I was a nobody who could tell when others were nobodies too. Like these androids. What I mean is, it just now hit me what you’re here for.” He waited for confirmation, but she refused to speak, watching him instead as if the Alpha itself were dependent upon his next words. “This program that you and whats-his-name, Ike, are making. It’s to show the people what they’re getting, what they’re going to have alongside them, isn’t it?”

  “Clever,” she said, without the malice he expected. “That’s right. Ike is the best propagandist trivitographer in the business. He can’t stand the thought of them not being human, but he’s not so far gone that he can’t see the value of what’s being tried here.” “Tried?” Parric was surprised.

  “Well, maybe that was the wrong word, but let’s face it, Frank, there’s no absolute assurance it’s going to work. I told you once I was a little afraid of them myself. And so, I think, are you. Which,” she added in time to cut him off, "makes you a rather special person, no matter what you say. I mean, you don’t necessarily like this business, but you’re doing it because you care about the future, like me.”

  “Unfortunately,” Parric said, deciding she might as well get to know him as well as his charges, “I don’t care all that much about futures and things. I have enough trouble looking out for my own, such as it is. ” “Then why are you so interested in the Alpha?” Ike walked past them, waving, and Parric lifted a perfunctory hand in return. The two small Kellers were trailing behind the cameraman, shotgunning questions he seemed eager to answer as he pointed to his rig, pulled at switches and sliding panels. Parric wondered 'when he would bring himself up short in the realization that what he was talking to was not human; then dismissed the thought and replaced it with the Alpha, a starship launched from the tiny lunar base where ten-score gazers saw things the mundane Earth could not, or would not. Despite his insistence on remaining loyal only to himself, Parric had begun dreaming about the Alpha and the ramifications of its promises of something better than stumbling blindly around in a dark full of stars. There were no phrases, no speeches, no manner at all of semantic manipulation that could convey to the woman at his side in an unreal community why the few hopes he had left were sailing through near vacuum toward things he would never comprehend nor live to see.

  What it was, then, peeled off in painful layers: “I just am.”

  And she nodded, while he silently questioned.

  But as he turned to seek some answers, a call roused him and he stood to face Mrs. Keller, who was running surprisingly agilely across the street. Afterward, he remembered the oddity, but at the moment he was more interested in what she was saying.

  “Doctor! Doctor Parric! Have you heard? Lord, Doctor Parric, there’s a war!”

  Chapter 3

  Parric was on his feet and sidestepping to avoid a collision with the android matron. As his hands snatched at the railing to maintain his balance, he noticed how accurate her reactions were: the quivering lips, slightly moist and confused eyes, the head that twisted in bewildered anguish from his face to Jessica’s.

  “I heard it. It’s a war,” Mrs. Keller said as one hand crumpled the drably printed cloth that enveloped her bosom.

  “Don’t they have a link?” Jessica asked.

  “No,” he said as he smiled at Mrs. Keller to calm her down. “None in the Towns do. Subvocal communication didn’t seem fitting for those who have to pass.”

  “What are you talking about, doctor?” Mrs. Keller said, her fear shifting through to anger.

  “Nothing,” Jessica said. “He’s being himself again.”

  And Parric glared before turning away.

  "All right, Mrs. Keller, you start from the beginning and tell me what you thought you heard.”

  ‘‘Doctor, you know full well I don’t imagine I hear things.”

  True enough, he thought. Nobody had yet managed to transfer that particular weakness from man.

  ‘‘Me and Buddy—that’s my husband, Miss Windsor—we were listening to the audio because certain people we know haven’t been around to fix our trivid, and there was a newsflash that there was a war. I’m telling you, I heard it.”

  Just as Parric was about to plumb for further details, Ike scurried up the walk. ‘‘Brother Parric, you got troubles.”

  1 'Great," he said. 1 'If it’s a war, Mrs. Keller just told me.

  ‘‘More than that. You’d better head for the inside.” And he was past them into the house before either Parric or Jessica could stop him. Parric did notice, however, that his face was not much less whiter than his hair.

  ‘‘Mrs. Keller, you’d better go on back home now. I’ll call the Central and see what more I can find out. Don’t worry about a thing. This isn’t the first time there’s been a war this century, you know.”

  ‘‘Well, don’t I know it,” she said, suddenly huffed.

  ‘‘Nice touch,” he muttered to Jessica, who immediately left to join her assistant.

  Mrs. Keller sputtered a few more nothings, then turned away to run back across the street. Parric watched, puzzled at something he could not identify, before hurrying inside where the two reporters were sitting in the living room.

  There were enough armchairs in the room to accommodate a committee, something Parric had insisted upon when, in choosing furnishings, he had reminded himself of the barren sterility of his own, now nearly forgotten apartment. Set into the wall that faced the front brace of windows was a meter-square screen presently coded to one of the news channels. What he saw as his eyes adjusted to the glare in the dimly lighted room were maps of Eurecom and the New United Kingdom unevenly blotched with a producer’s idea of dangerous red. As he sat in the one chair he used most often and waited for it to squirm to his posture, the screen flickered and a sprawling chart of the Eastern Panasian Union and the Japanese Empire faded into view. It, too, was smeared, almost totally covered with the red that now seemed to acquire more a character than the spectrum’s segment it represented.

  “What—”

  And Jessica hushed him over the commentator’s return.

  “This,” said the theatrically somber voice, “shows the latest results from the Panasian block; as much, that is, as we can ascertain considering the clamp on Japan’s satellite news network. As of now, no one seems to know who started the war, and no one is admitting it, but Continental Government sources agree that the territory between Eurecom and Western Panasia was definitely the focal point of the attack which, they further estimate, commenced some four weeks ago.”

  “What’s he talking about? How can a war go on for four weeks without anyone knowing about it?”

  “Shut up, doctor,” Ike said and turned up the volume.

  “. . . unleashed through self-destruct missiles not seen since the early days of the last century. Though spotty at best, much was apparently highly contagious and spread through the usual economic intercourse and tourism that regularly occurs between these sectors. There is no indication of how exacting the human damage is, nor what it will be despite the massive aid being rushed to the populations involved. However, it is generally supposed by unnamed sources that fully two million or more have already been fatally afflicted, and there is no doubt that this horrifying, though unofficial, figure will rise.

  “I repeat, by ContiGov decree, all Noram citizens will report to their assigned medical centers for inoculations as soon as they have been issued passes by the proper authorities. Should signs of vomiting, nervous spasms, high fever and/or small swellings along the inside of the armpits and side of the neck appear, do not attempt to administer first aid of any kind. Evacuate the premises and report the occurrence immediately to the police.

  “It is suggested that all comunits remain tuned to this station for further information and instructions. There will be, repeat, there will be no entertainment programs for the duration of this emergency.

  “And now, repeating our previous bulletins—”

  Ike stood and slapped the screen into gray, walked to the window, and looked out across the darkened street.

  Jessica remained still, taut, as Parric watched her gripping clawlike the arms of her chair. She’s been through this before, he thought without knowing why, and he made no move to comfort her.

  War, and he was not surprised.

  Biological, and he was appalled by that hell.

  Inevitable, and that frightened him.

  “Jess, we’d better leave right away,’’ Ike said, lacking complete conviction.

  "No way to get where you’d want to go," Parric said when it was evident Jessica wasn’t going to respond. “Not unless someone sends back the vehicle that flew you in. You’d never get your equipment over these hills. No roads, remember?’’

  “Brilliant,’’ Ike said. “That’s just perfect.’’

  “Floyd,’’ Jessica said suddenly. “We’d better get in touch with Floyd.’’

  A lifeline: and the generally granite composure of Coates’ manner was sought as balm for their slow comprehension of a new definition of horror. Parric fumbled at the comunit’s board for a moment before he was able to code in the private number he had been given for emergencies. None of the three doubted, unvoiced, that their own country hadn’t been affected, but they waited childlike for Coates to tell them otherwise.

  When the signal cleared and Coates peered into the room, their nightmares were given foundation.

  He appeared shaken but still confident though a pressure tic made it seem as if he were winking at them.

  “All of you there?’’

  Parric nodded, then waited until Ike and Jessica moved into range of the screen’s sensors.

  “What happened, Floyd?’’ he said, floating above the unperturbed sound of his voice like an observer unattached to the world spinning death. “What do we do?’’

  “Well, at least you’re not hysterical,’’ Coates said.

  “Give me a minute,’’ Ike said, “and I’ll fix you up.’’

  “You talk too much, Lupozny,” Coates said, his face too large to allow Parric to see where he was though he suspected he would not recognize the place could he examine it.

  “Give, Floyd,” Jessica said, her voice curiously soft, “what do we do?”

  “Nothing right now. You’ve heard the news, so I assume you know some idiot has blown the world apart with some kind of passing plague. Make that plural. Some were too heavy to be carried by the wind, but at least one was portable enough to spread over a hell of a lot of space.”

  “Us?” Parric said, his face dull in resignation.

  “Some of it,” Coates admitted after an uncomfortable pause. “Luckily, synthidotes are popping up all over the place, but you’ll pardon me if I suspect the speed at which those formulae were handed over. I wouldn’t be surprised if those donors were in for a lot of trouble when this is over. Anyway, that’s beside the point right now. Some jackass, you see, broadcast the full and unholy details before we could get a clamp down, and now there are panics I haven’t seen since the early days of the Ghetto War. Frankie, it was a lot easier at Everlasting, believe me. These people here are tripping all over themselves. I wish I could tell you all more, but I can’t.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?” Parric said before Jessica could stop him, but Coates ignored him.

  “Listen,” Coates said, leaning closer, “you’ll all have to stay there for the time being. As far as I can tell, it won’t be for very long. Just keep the channel open. In case.” He glanced to one side, nodded, and looked back. “Frankie, watch out for those children of mine. I wouldn’t want them getting hurt.”

  And he was gone, fading into a starpoint before Parric could snap back.

  Silence, then, that cloaked in ritual fashion the fear and accentuated the relief. Only minor outbreaks. They would not die. Riots. They will not die.

  Ike pushed aside his armchair and began experimenting with the barcab, trying to circumvent the preset liquors that barely had time to settle in a glass before they sheathed his throat. He offered one first to Jessica, who refused, and then to Parric, who took the glass, emptied it, and handed it back for another. Ike nodded in surprise, but Parric would not stay with him, walking instead to the front door.

  “Join me?” he asked no one in particular and stepped outside without hearing an answer.

  The street was deserted, lights glaring like lanterns across the cityless black night. He looked up and out from under the overhang of the porch roof and stared at the stars slightly blurred by the barrier that closed him out, protected him in. He pushed, probing, grasping with what he had for something he could not have. Alpha could not hear him when he whispered, “They’ve done it. Oh, my God, they’ve done it.”

  Wrenching from a place he had not known was so deep within him, a sob shattered the still evening and there was a coolness and warmth on his cheeks that he wiped away quickly in unreasoning shame.

  On alternate blocks streetlamps popped on to complement the charade.

  “You know, there’ve been times when I’ve forgotten you’re really human,” Jessica said quietly. Then, "I’m sorry. I’ve known you less than a day and I had to say that of all things. I’m sorry.”

  Though knowing he should have been angered, he could only lift a weak hand in silent absolution.

  “You said you were married once.”

  She said nothing, clucked her tongue as if to dismiss it.

  “Contract, was it, or were you a lifer?”

  “Lifer,” she said after they’d listened to a glass break inside, and another. “He gets violent when he’s depressed.”

  “Nice guy.”

  “He died. My husband, that is. During the Arabian Wars.”

  “I . . .I missed it,” he said in an odd, token apology. “Too young, they said.”

  “So was he, but he wanted a ribbon.”

  Motionless, then, they danced around each other’s sorrow without scaling the walls that separated them. In silence.

  Lights, like torches thrust into caverns, glared from the lower floors of most of the houses along the street. A door slammed, and another. Parric shuddered away the tension that had cocooned him and watched as old man Dix shambled across the road away from him. Invisible, visible, he moved from black to the serrated pools of streetlamp glow.

  Now where? Parric took a step down, remembered Jessica, and asked if she wanted to go with him.

 

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