Ray Aldridge
Her Virtues
I remember the moment I fell in love with Martin Yung’s wife. The moment seized me without warning, and perhaps that was why I was so vulnerable, so ill-prepared.
Long after the end of the business day, I made my way through Yung’s deserted laboratories. I carried a rack of important documents. I needed the most important one, the one that bore Yung’s personal chop. I expected to find him in his office; he was a man with no respect for time, or for any of the other limitations that ordinary men accept.
My mind wasn’t on my work; I was thinking of Dana. „What difference does it make to you what I do?“ my wife had said during last night’s installment of our perpetual argument. „Oh, I know, Thomas, you’re here; yes, there you stand, but you’re not here“
I don’t know how to respond to a statement like that. Would anyone? At Yung’s private suite, the thick steel door was slightly ajar. It swung open at my touch, into darkness.
I hesitated for only a moment before I slipped silently inside, though I knew I was violating PsychDyne protocol. I rehearsed my excuses. Oh, I’d say, you‘re here. The door was open and I was afraid someone had broken in…
Yung sat before his vidphone, speaking in low tones. In profile, his aging face glowed, lit by the screen and by some secretive pleasure.
The happiness in his voice surprised me. He wasn’t a happy man, though I could never understand why. PsychDyne, Inc., exists only to market the fruits of his remarkable mind. His product list reads like a roll call of the major psychocybe advancements of the twenty-first century: the AutAn projective auto-analyzer, the PanDev personamatrix answering device, the emotigogue replicator, and more.
I suppose I should be grateful, not envious. But a hundred ambitious mid-management execs could take my place. There is only one Martin Yung.
Curiosity filled me. What could bring such a tender smile to those cold precise lips? I moved silently behind Yung, and I saw her.
How to describe Joanna Yung? Words seem inadequate, even now. Her oval face laughed from the small screen. Her eyes were huge, pale hazel, tilted up at the corners. Her honey-colored hair fell in shimmering floating waves, so fine that each delicate strand appeared to tremble on the brink of lifting away from her shoulders. Her mouth was small and full, a lovely sweet blossom. Her skin seemed polished, a silky perfect substance not wholly human.
An icepick slipped gently between my ribs, probing for my heart. My envy of Yung hardened into hatred. The combination o f desire and hate was as strong and sudden an emotion as I had ever felt.
A sound escaped me, and Yung jerked about in his chair, glaring.
„Da Cruz! What do you want?“ The softness melted from his face. His eyes were chips of hot black stone.
I hardly reacted. I still watched her; I couldn’t look away. She saw roe, and interest drew her brows together slightly, a delicious expression. My knees weakened. Her smile brought an adolescent blush to my face.
Yung noticed the direction of my gaze, and he moved his narrow body to block my view of the screen. His face trembled with emotion: despair, fear, a sad dark humor, and — strangely — pity. „Get out. Get out, poor bastard…“ he said. His voice carried a strange undertone, a sizzle, the sound o f water dancing on hot iron.
I didn’t turn away until he switched off the screen. Madness, I thought. I’ve Iost my mind. I left silently, my errand forgotten.
I went down to the egress level and boarded my hardcar. I sat staring at my clenched hands, seeing nothing but her face.
Home. I stood for a moment in the foyer, looking at the door to Dana’s rooms. A slow pulse o f red light glowed there, her privacy signal. Relief filled me; I didn’t feel up to another round just then.
Alone in my amusement room, I paced, I played a game of Claque against the housecomp, I popped a haler of Blue Coma. Not even the drug could distract me from an obsessive replaying of the scene in Yung’s office. The woman’s beautiful face burned in my memory. The Coma slowed my thoughts, made each disjointed idea that floated up into my mind seem as inevitable as the rising of the sun.
Eventually, my glance wandered to the AutAn that lay in a tangle of cable on a high shelf. A fine notion occurred to me.
I went over to the AutAn, lifted it down, brushed away the dust from the sensor pads. This particular AutAn was a developmental model discarded from the labs. I had taken it home to augment my collection of toys.
I carried the device to the housecomp station, jacked it into the housecomp's coremem, slaved the comp’s display to the Aut An’s processors. I sat before the screen, lowered the sensor harness over my head, settled the inductor leech at the base of my skull.
I reached out and tapped the reset.
Color swirled, settled into the shape of my face. The eyes were shut, so I saw my face as I had never seen it in a mirror, a hard dark secretive face, the brows heavy and black over deep eye sockets. The cheekbones were sharp, the nose a blade, the mouth a merciless narrow line. A barrio assassin, I thought, without the honest scars of his trade.
The eyes opened, a glittering gray. For an instant the eyes were neutral, unseeing; then the processors in the AutAn began their work, nudging the image with a tiny bit of expression, measuring my response, nudging in another direction, analyzing, correcting, seeking the strongest response. The face began to change, showing me to myself.
The eyes narrowed, the chin lifted, the mouth twitched into an ugly fey smile, and I looked into a face alive with evil arrogance. The lips drew back, exposing unnaturally sharp teeth, and the brows arched into mocking scimitars. The face grew leaner, more vulpine, and glossy black fur flowed down the forehead into a sharp peak.
I could almost feel my flesh and bones melting into a new and more truthful shape. My heart pounded, the blood roared in my cars. I gasped for breath, wet with fear-sweat. I raised my hands to cover my eyes.
A minute later I grew calmer and reached out to the reset.
I thought of the woman, forcing the image into the AutAn with all my will. When finally I looked, she was there.
By the grace of the machine, she was even more beautiful, more perfect. She looked straight at me, with that same tender, sweet, teasing smile.
Her cheeks flushed a delicate rose, her pupils seemed darker and larger, her lips parted to reveal small white teeth. Her eyelids flickered, half-closed. Her eyes seemed to roll back for an instant, then opened wider than before. Moisture glittered above her mouth, which grew softer and fuller.
I became conscious of a painful erection, and I shifted in my scat and tugged at my pants, trying to relieve the discomfort.
When I looked at her again, she was changing.
The taut perfect planes of her face harshened, ever so slightly. The marvelous eyes narrowed just a little, grew cooler, less inviting. Her hair darkened, coarsened. The face thinned, the porcelain skin roughened, showed the marks of living. „No, wait,“ I said. The change accelerated until I was looking into the accusing brown eyes of my wife.
„No,“ I said, making a warding gesture at the screen. But I couldn’t look away.
Dana’s face cooled into misery. Her eyes filled with tears, her mouth trembled, the shadow of some deep sorrow fell over her face.
Even so, she was still a handsome woman, her features strong and clean. My hand stabbed the kill switch.
In the morning, on my way to the hardcar bay, I saw Dana’s note, scrolling endlessly across the housecomp’s display: I`ll be in the garden. Pause. I`ll be in the garden. Pause. I`ll be…