“At least I'm going to die happy.” Stan wasn't smiling as he spoke.
2
It was cold that night. Wind demons seemed to chase up and down the streets of New York, wailing at the high-flying moon like all of the banshees of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
The block that Stan's house stood upon had once been genteel, a part of Gramercy Park. Now, armed citizens patrolled the streets night and day. Insurrection and disorder were rife all over the city, brought on by the breakdown of law and order since the troubles with the aliens. Some people could remember the coming of the aliens, and the many deaths that had resulted from their macabre practices. Their effect on New York had been to make it seem a much older city than it in fact was, one of those ancient cities like Baghdad or Babylon. Now, after the aliens, the city felt like it had seen unimaginable evil, and was resting, a little exhausted, waiting for the good life to start up again.
After making himself a light dinner from an InstaPac protein ration, Stan went to the living room and started a fire in the fireplace. He sat down in a rocking chair and stared morosely into the flames, listening to the wind whistling outside the window and thinking of how little time he had left.
It was strange how, upon hearing that your life had an imminent termination date, you began to think of suicide. Stan had never before understood Schopenhauer's saying that he got through many a long night with thoughts of suicide, but now it made sense. To kill himself might even be a triumph; it would rob the cancer of its victory. No longer would he dance to death's tune. No longer could the pain curl him up and make him beg for relief. He could get out of it, laugh at it all, and, as Hamlet had said, “Make his quietus with a bare bodkin.“
From the plate of apples near his chair he picked up a short, keenly edged knife and looked at it like he'd never seen one before. Where in his body should he put it in? Should it be done hara-kiri style? Or was there another manner more appropriate for a Westerner?
And yet, tempting as the thoughts of suicide were, they were mainly interesting when considered in the abstract. He didn't really want to kill himself. He wanted to do something. But he didn't know what it was.
These were long, sad winter thoughts he was thinking, and he was startled out of his reverie when he heard the front door chimes.
Stan looked up in surprise. He wasn't expecting anyone. He was a lonely man as he had been a lonely boy. He had gotten used to his solitary condition early in life, and had learned there was no sense struggling against it. He felt that it was written somewhere that he should be alone. This was his fate. He had no girlfriends — in fact, no real friends at all. No one came to take him to the movies or a concert, or for an evening's drinking. Since his parents' death four years ago in a traffic accident, he had become even less sociable. Sometimes he talked with colleagues at the laboratory, but even among people who should have been his own kind, his macabre and ironic sense of humor kept him apart. Stan lived alone in the house. He had set up a laboratory in the basement, and as far as possible, he did his experiments, wrote his papers, and lived his life at home, in solitude, among familiar things.
It was here that he had written Cyberantics, his children's book about a cybernetic ant named Ari, based on an ant he had actually constructed himself. In fact, Ari was in the room with him now, perched on a small box on the mantel. The ant could see Stan as he hesitated a moment at the door.
The chimes rang again. He arose and went to answer the summons. The front door creaked in his hand, almost as if it were reluctant to open. Stan peered out, his nearsighted eyes blinking behind his thick glasses.
A young woman stood under the porch light and the first thing Stan noticed was the sheen of copper on her dark chestnut-red hair. She was tall and slender, and had masses of hair pushed back and tied behind her neck with a white ribbon. She wore a dark belted trench coat, severely cut, but not severe enough to hide the fact that she had a very good figure.
Her face was oval and attractive, lightly made up. An old scar, now almost completely faded but visible even in the darkness of the porch, ran from the outside corner of her left eye to the corner of her full lips. It looked like an old dueling scar, such as they had once sported in places like Heidelberg some centuries earlier. Could it really be a dueling scar? Did people still fight duels? Some accident, perhaps. But then why hadn't she had it surgically removed? One thing was certain; the scar seemed to enhance her beauty, just as ancient people believed that scarification increased a woman's charm.
“Dr. Myakovsky?” the woman said. “I am Julie Lish. I have a matter of considerable importance to discuss with you. May I come in?”
Stan had been staring at her hard, as if she were a lab specimen. Now he came back to himself with a start.
“Oh certainly; please. Come in.”
He escorted Julie Lish inside and led her through the gloomy hallway to the well-lighted room where he had been staring into the flames of a dying fire. He picked up a poker now and stirred the fire up, then indicated a pair of matching armchairs just a comfortable distance from the flames. She took one and he seated himself in the other, then quickly got up again.
“May I get you something to drink?”
She smiled at him, amused by his bumbling eagerness. “You don't even know what I've come for.”
“It doesn't really matter…. I mean, whatever it is, you are a guest in my house. Perhaps I could bring you a fruit drink? I'm afraid I have no alcohol to mix with it. Alcohol has an adverse effect on my can — my condition.”
“A glass of fruit juice would be nice,” Julie said. “I am well aware that you do not drink, Dr. Myakovsky.”
Stan had already begun pouring from a pitcher on a sideboard near the two armchairs. He looked up.
“Well aware? Why?”
“I've made it a point to find out about you,” Julie said. “I am always careful to research my future partners.”
Stan stared at her, his lips slightly parted, trying to make sense out of all this. Was she laughing at him? Girls were such unfathomable creatures! Although he was fascinated by them, Stan had always kept his distance, conscious that he was not the athletic, glib, casual sort of man that women liked. And here was this beautiful and exotic creature already talking about becoming partners with him?
“Please explain,” Stan said, with what he hoped was dignity. “You say you've studied me?”
“Probably better than you've studied yourself,” Julie stated. “For example, I know about your first date. You were fifteen.”
“Do you know what was special about it?” Stan asked.
“I do indeed,” Julie replied. “You never showed up for it. You got cold feet at the last moment. And that, Doctor, could be said to characterize all your dealings with the opposite sex.”
Stan remembered the incident. He wondered if he had revealed it in some memoir he might have published at the invitation of a computer magazine. How else could she have found out? And what did she want to know that sort of thing for, anyhow?
“I don't get this.” Stan looked at her. “What have you come here for? What do you want?”
“Stan,” Julie said, “I'll make it short and sweet. I'm a thief. A good one. No, I'm a lot better than just good. I'm one of the best who ever lived. Unfortunately I can't bring you press clippings. Really good thieves don't get written up. You'll just have to take my word for it.”
“All right, let's say I accept it,” Stan said. “So?”