She wasted so much of her time in that folly. She grew — with enormous effort — a few rubbery roots, a handful of stringy seedpods, the occasional mildewed fruit.
When I returned home at the end of a long day, I would find her in her garden, bedraggled and sweaty, hands black to the wrists. Or I would find her in the kitchen, concealed behind a heap of antique cooking manuals, the air thick with stomach-churning smells. She persisted in preparing samples of her harvest for me, but I could never bring myself to eat them.
„Why?“ she would ask me. „It’s good, Thomas. If you’d only try it — doesn’t it smell good?“
„Dana. I’ve eaten good clean synthetics all my life. This — this is unprocessed, not even sterile! Why would you want to put it in your mouth?“
She would look at me and smile, a little sadly. „Because it’s real, Thomas.“ Then she would take the plate away.
She meant well, I knew; she was offering me the pleasures she held dearest. But Dana would not give me what I needed most; she would not act as her station required. We no longer entertained; she might try to force a plate of some disgusting substance upon our quests or lecture them on reality and the fruits thereof. She was never rude, but she was relentless.
More and more I found myself thinking bitter thoughts. My initial rise through the ranks had been swift, but I had reached a plateau, and I suspected it was because my wife was so adamantly eccentric, so different from the wives of the other male execs. Often I envied them those wives, so cool, so perfect, so beautiful — such elegant ornaments to their husbands’ careers. They could discuss politics, fashion, the latest exploits of the great livee actors. They knew the correct way to serve a tray of delight, how to dress, how to hold themselves so as to seem distillations of all that was precious. Impossible to imagine them at the graceless grubbing in the dirt that so fascinated Dana, scratching up vegetables like a gutterwelf with a rooftop turnip patch. I loved her too much to hate her, but I was nearly mad from frustration.
I had planned to leave without speaking to her, but now I turned and went through the lock into her greenspace.
Inside the dome, the air was humid, thick with the stink of vegetation and earth. The brassy psuedosunlight struck my eyes. Dana stood at the far side, scraping bark carefully from a starveling tree. I watched for a moment, both angry and sad.
„Hello, Thomas,“ she said. She gestured at the tree. „See, new growth, here,“ she said, and pointed to a pale green tuft at the tip of one scraggly branch.
What did she expect me to say? The tentative pleasure in her face faded.Her feet were bare and filthy. She wore a grubby coverall, her long black
hair was pinned up in a careless tangle, her face was smudged. She walked toward me, her heavy breasts swinging under the coverall, smooth brown flesh showing where the coverall gapped open.
Against my will, I wanted her. She sensed my mood, as she always did, and she came very close, her mouth softening. Her scent filled my nostrils, her perfume and the sharpness of her sweat. She pushed the straps from her sholders and the coveralls fell to her waist. She took my hands and held them against her breasts; her skin was warm and moist, slippery.
I pushed her away. „Here?“ I asked, incredulous. „Here? This is dirt, Dana; don’t you understand?“ I kicked at the ground, a clod flew across the garden and spattered on the steel.
I turned and left, trembling with outrage and thwarted passion.
I half-expected to be locked out, to see the red flash of a termination notice when I put my eye to the idbox. But security passed me in, and I went up to my floor.
The greetings of my fellow execs seemed unforced; no one regarded me with gloating pity. I wondered why Yung hadn’t reported my behavior. He was not a tolerant man, by all accounts.
I met my immediate superior in the corridor. She nodded pleasantly and would have passed by, but I stopped her.
„Matild, a moment, please.“
Her eyes were mild, guileless, „Yes, Thomas?“
„Gratify my curiosity if you can.“ I fixed a casual expression on my face. „I was by Yung’s office last night. I’d have sworn, ha ha, that he was talking to his wife. I didn’t even know he was married.“
A remarkable change came over Matild's square, open face. For а moment, I could not identify the emotion, but then I saw it was some mixure of sorrow and fierce protectiveness. „Didn’t you?“ Her voice was suddenly cold.
My heart sank; she was Yung’s wife. Still, I wasn’t really surprised. What man could see her face and not wish to keep her close? „I’m surprised. She must be a tolerant woman, to put up with a chilly fish like Yung. Do you know her?“
Matild stepped back, as if from a noxious smell. „You know nothing of Martin Yung. And your interest in Joanna is foolish and dangerous.“ She turned and walked away without another word.
Her name was Joanna. Compared to that lovely information, Matild’s displeasure seemed insignificant.
I restrained myself until midmorning, then I checked to be sure Yung was still in his laboratory. I punched in his home code with trembling fingers, my stomach full of butterflies. Before the code activated, I hurriedly flipped the privacy switch, blanking the video and masking my voice.
In the screen, a still of Martin Yung appeared, a carefully composed portrait. „Yes?“ a neutral, machine-generated voice asked.
„May I speak to Joanna?“
„Joanna is, at the moment, unable to come to the vid. Would you care to leave a message?“
I hesitated. What could I say that would not immediately focus Yung’s wrath on me? „No, no, I’ll try later.“
I reached out to break the connection, but the machine spoke again. „Is this Thomas da Cruz?“
My finger stabbed at the switch, and sweat broke on my forehead. What sort of game was Yung playing? Fear augmented my hatred. But after a bit, a slow anger seeped in and flushed away some of the fear. One thing seemed clear. Yung wanted this kept private, which accorded with my own wishes.
I wondered why Yung didn’t use the personamatrix answering device, one of his most profitable developments. Perhaps he understood that a carefully composed still would represent him more attractively than a replica of his meager personality.
On an impulse, I punched in my own home code. The screen filled with my face. A mask of calm helpfulness covered the harsh features. The eyes were unfocused, almost dreamy. My voice spoke, in well-modulated tones. „Hello,“ it said. „Thomas da Cruz is currently unavailable. This is an artificial personality construct based on Citizen da Cruz. However, no statement or promise made by me can be considered binding on Citizen da Cruz.“
When the legal disclaimer ended, and the persona kicked in, his eyes sharpened, and he frowned. „Oh. It’s us.“
„Is that any way to talk to yourself?“ I asked.
„How else? I have less-complicated access to my feelings about us than you do. What? Shall I call our wife?“
„No,“ I said hastily.
My face looked back at me, a cold half-smile touching the lips. „Oh? It’s always good for my morale to see how much our personalities have diverged since you made me.“
I broke the connection. The screen went black. For some reason I felt a little sick to my stomach.
Eventually, I decided to use my wormhole.
I dug my wormhole when I first came to PsychDyne. At the time, it just seemed the thing to do; every junior analyst built his own backdoor into the system. It was fun, it was challenging, it was educational, it was almost expected. I even had a destructive RAM virus ready to eat holes in the corporation’s vital records. O f course, we were young enough and foolish enough to think we could beat the phagocyte programs that constantly patrolled the system, alert for such pranks.
But the phages weren’t quite as effective at keeping things from leakingout of the system.