"Yes." He pauses. "But Reeve, I'm a monster. There are things in my headeven after excisionthat I don't like to visit. You don't want to get too close to me."
"Sam." I shift toward him. "I'm... There are things I tried to bury, too. I could say the same. Do you care?"
"What, about what you did?"
"Yes."
"No."
"Well, then." It's my turn to sound shaky. "What I said earlier stands. A bargain, and you agreed to it, hmm?"
He shrinks away. "I didn't know."
I swallow to try and clear my dry mouth. "I don't mean right now," I say. To my surprise, I mean it. "But I still want you, just as soon as you get used to the idea that I want you and I'm still me. You don't have to project your hatred of what you were forced to do onto me. And besides, I didn't see any barbs on your cock the other night."
"But you've changed too much!" He bursts out, like an iced-over air valve finally cutting loose. "Since Dr. Hanta saw you. Before that, you were you : You were moody and thoughtful, you were cynical, you were funnyI don't have the words for it. Whatever she did, it's changed you , Reeve. You'd refuse to do something just because it was expected of you; now you're trying to make me fuck you! Do you really want to get trapped in YFH for the foreseeable future? Trapped and pregnant, too?"
I think about it for a moment. "What's the problem?" Hanta is a more than conscientious doctor, and I'm confident I can survive a pregnancyafter all, every female mammal in my family tree did it before me, didn't they? How bad can it be?
"Reeve." Now he's looking at me as if I've morphed into battle-form, sprouting spikes and guns and armor before his eyes. I giggle. It's like he's seen a ghost! "What have they done to you?"
"Offered me a way out of having been a monster." I lean toward him hopefully. "Give me a kiss?"
DESPITE my best planning, we do not make love in the end.
In fact, when I finish the cleaning up and come to bed, Sam gets up and, with sleepy dignity, insists he's sleeping alone.
I am so angry and frustrated that I could cry. My problem is easily definedit's the solution that eludes me. It's not that I've changed a lot, butwith or without Hanta's promptingI've decided to take some time out of struggling, and the outward manifestation looks like a huge switch. Sam simply hasn't caught up with me yet. It's very disturbing to be around someone who seems to have inverted all their values and beliefs, and I know if it was Sam who'd been in hospital and come home glassy-eyed and different, I'd be incredibly upset. But I wish he wouldn't project his anxiety onto meI'm all right, in fact I'm better than I've been at any time since I first woke up in the custody of the surgeon-confessors.
Yes, there's a problem here: Fiore and Yourdon are doing something very dubious with a serialized copy of Curious Yellow, they've figured out a way to defeat the security patch in everyone's implants; and they seem to be researching how to use social control rules installed via CY to create an emergent dictatorship. Butand this is the important questionwhy should I care? Haven't I been through enough already? I don't have to let myself be tortured by my own memories; I've already nearly killed myself trying to do what Sanni and the others in Security Cell Blue wanted. I've done my duty, and failed. And now...
My dirty little secret is that while I was in hospital I realized that I could give up. I've got Sam. I've got a job that has the potential to be as interesting as I want it to be. I can settle down and be happy here for a while, even though the amenities are primitive and some of the neighbors are not to my taste. Even dictatorships need to provide the vast majority of their citizens with a comfortable everyday life. I don't have to keep fighting, and if I give up the struggle for a while, they'll leave me alone. I can always go back to it later. Nobody will scream if I stop, except maybe Sam, and he'll adapt to the new me eventually.
All of which is great in theory, but it doesn't help when I'm crying myself to sleep, alone.
16. Suspense
THE next day is Friday. I wake up late, and by the time I get downstairs, Sam has already gone to work. I feel drained, enervated by the aftereffects of my infection and the stupid climbing attempt, so I don't do much. I end up spending most of the day shuttling between the bedroom and the kitchen, catching up on my reading and drinking cups of weak tea. When Sam comes homereally late, and he's already eaten at the steak diner in town and had a glass or three of wineI demand to know where he's been, and he clams up. Neither of us wants to back down, so we end up not talking.
On Saturday I come downstairs in time to find him putting the lawn mower away. "You'll need to tidy up in the garage," he says by way of greeting.
"Why?" I ask.
"I need to stash some stuff."
"Uh-huh. What stuff?"
"I'm going out. See you later."
He means itten minutes after that he's gone, off in a taxi to who knows where. And it's our most significant communication in two days.
I kick myself for being stupid. Stupid is the watchword of the day. So I go into the garage and look for stuff to throw out. It's a scrapyard of unfinished projects, but I think the welding gear can go, and the half-finished crossbow, and most of the other junk I've been tinkering with under the mistaken idea that what I need to escape from is where I am, rather than who I am. Some bits are missing anyway; I guess Sam's already made a start on clearing it out to make room for his golf clubs or whatever. So I heap my stuff in one corner and pull a tarpaulin over it. Out of sight, out of mind, out of garage, that's what I say.
Back inside, I try to watch some TV, but it's inane and slow, not to mention barely comprehensible. Bright blurry lights on a low-resolution screen with a curving front, slow-moving and tedious, with plots that don't make sense because they rely on shared knowledge that I just don't have. I'm steeling myself to turn it off and face the boredom alone when the telephone rings.
"Reeve?"
"Hi? WhoJanis! How are you?" I clutch the handset like a drowning woman.
"Okay, Reeve, listen, do you have anything on today?"
"No, no I don't think sowhy?"
"I'm meeting a couple of friends in town this afternoon to try out a new cafe near the waterfront that's just appeared. I was wondering if you'd like to come and join us? If you're well enough, that is."
"I'm"I pause"supposed to take it easy for a few days. That's what Dr. Hanta said." Let her chew on that. "Is there a problem with work?"
"Not so you'd notice." Janis sounds dismissive. "I'm catching up on my reading, to tell the truth. Anyway, I got the note from the hospital. Don't worry on my part."
"Oh, okay then. As long as I'm not going to have to run anywhere. How do I get to this place?"
"Just ask a taxi to take you to the Village Cafe. I'll be there around two. I was thinking we could try out the cafe and maybe chat."
I am getting an itchy feeling that Janis isn't telling me everything, but the shape of what she's not telling me is coming through clearly enough. I shiver a bit. Do I really want to get involved? Probably notbut they'll start talking if I don't, I think. Besides, if they're planning something stupidly dangerous, I owe it to Dr. Hanta to talk them out of it, I suppose. I glance at the TV set. "All right. Be seeing you."
It's already one o'clock, so I change into a smarter outfit and call a taxi to the Village Cafe. I've no idea what friends Janis might have in mind, but I don't think she'd be tasteless enough to invite Jen along. Beyond that, I don't want to risk making a bad impression. Appearances count if you're trying to up your score, and other people pay attention to that kind of thing. And I don't expect Janis would be organizing anything like this if it wasn't important.