I went straight home, certain that I would never see the inside of Psych-Dyne again. I sat in the hardcar bay for a long time, very still, trying not to think.
Inside, Dana waited for me, her face pinched with anger. „Home at last,“ she said. My first thought was that Yung had called her.
But I put on a mask of weary innocence. „Yes, home, Dana. It’s been a long day. Must we do this now?“
She stood by the housecomp. She touched the console, and Joanna’s image filled the screen. Joanna's face changed, grew soft with desire, and I realized I was watching a recording of my AutAn session of the night before. I had forgotten that the record would be kept by the housecomp. Or perhaps I was relying on Dana not to search for it. That wasn’t her way.
Dana watched me as I watched the screen. She saw something in my face that filled her eyes with tears. She turned away and went into her private rooms.
When Joanna began changing into Dana, I turned the screen off.
My rooms seemed too small. I paced back and forth for hours. I indulged in all manner of absurd fantasies. I would leave PsychDyne before Yung had a chance to have me fired, I would persuade Joanna to go with me, I would become a great livee impresario, with Joanna as my first discovery.
But these visions eventually led me to consider an unpleasant consequence. What would Dana do when I was gone? She was a warm, admirable woman, who had always trusted me. And had she done such terrible things that she deserved abandonment? And did I not still love her, in spite o f her odd preoccupations?
I veered away from those thoughts, back to my foolish dreams, which were easier to hold in my muddled head. After a second haler of Blue Coma, those dreams began to seem attainable, and I decided to call Joanna again.
A long time passed before she answered. Perhaps she’s in bed, I thought, and a delicious shiver ran through me. When I saw her, I felt a different sort of shock.
Her skin was like gray wax. The shadows on her face looked more like purple bruises than shadows. Her hair clung lifelessly to her skull. And yet she was the same woman I had felt such desire for. She was still beautiful, even so sadly diminished, so injured.
Her eyes were dull, empty of recognition. T hen her eyes cleared and she smiled, a fragile expression. „Thomas,“ she said. Her voice was still marvelous. She covered her face with her hands. „Don’t look at me, don’t…“ Anger filled me. „What happened? Did Yung do this to you?“
„You don’t understand, Thomas. Yes, he did it, but… “ Her voice was muffled by her hands.
A bar of static crossed the screen; her image broke up momentarily, then reformed. „I’m coming to get you,“ I said. „This is intolerable.“
„No,“ she said. „Please. It won't help.“
I heared no conviction in her voice. I switched off and went out to my hardcar.
The high ferroconcrete walls of Yung’s estate were designed to withstand assaults by mobs of disgruntled gutterwelfs, not the powerful armored body of my hardcar. I burst through into the dark grounds. The manse loomed up in my floodlights, a three-story structure of steel-clad masonry, windowless, grim. Without slackening my speed, I plowed into the manse just to one side of the armored security ingress. The hardcar penetrated easily, but ground to a halt inside, held by the rubble that had collapsed around its treads.
The exterior cameras showed nothing but swirling dust. I cut the car lights and waited. Nothing moved. The car was equipped with an exosuit, in case of a breakdown in some inhospitable quarter of Howlytown. After some struggle, I managed to get into it.
Clumsily armored, wall-eyed with lust, I was venturing into a dark fortress to rescue a storybook princess from the scrawny troll who held her captive. Absurd, absurd, though at the time I was in deadly earnest, and my thoughts were red.
I locked down the helmet and popped open the car’s dorsal hatch. As soon as I cleared the hatch, Yung fired his splinter gun. The spinning wires
knocked me momentarily off-balance, but the hardened composite of the exosuit protected me. I leaped from the car as if scalded, my heart hammering, my head clearing rapidly. But I was still determined.
„Yung!“ I shouted. „Let her go!“
„Go away,“ he screamed. „It’s too late, da Cruz. She doesn’t want to go with you. You can’t have her!“ He fired another burst of wire, but I was behind the car and the wire bounced off harmlessly.
„Let her tell me that,“ I said. „If she tells me she wants to stay, I’ll go away.“
He sobbed, a sudden shocking sound. I t came to me finally that Yung was not angry, had never been angry. The sounds he was making held nothing but desperate sorrow.
I hardly knew how to feel. I began to wish I had not been so impulsive. „Yung,“ I called. „Just let me talk to her. I’m not here to harm you, truly.“
„You can’t.“
„Why not? Isn’t she here?“
I raised my head cautiously over the spine o f the hardcar. My eyes had adjusted to the dimness, and I could see Yung slumped at the bottom of a great staircase, the splinter gun lying beside him. His head was turned to the wall. „Yes,“ he muttered. „I suppose so.“
I eased from the protection of the car, walked tiptoe across the rubble- strewn floor. There was no struggle; I had the gun before he looked up. „This won’t do any good,“ he said. „You can’t talk to her.“
I nudged him with the muzzle of the splinter gun. „Take me to her.“ He looked up at me and, amazingly, managed a weary smile. „Yes, of course.“
I followed him up the stair.
The mirrors were dull with cobwebs and some were shattered, the shards heaped along the walls where they had fallen. The InducDance platform’s golden cage was twisted and broken, as though some maniac had pounded the delicate filigree with a stout club. Dust lay thick over the sky-blue tiles, except for a place along one wall where a large heap of electronic gear was piled on several gurneys. Here the dust had been recently disturbed.
Yung was watching me sadly. „You see?“
„No,“ I said. „No, what is this? Where is she?“
„Oh, I think you do see, da Cruz. I think you do.“
I turned to him and put the splinter gun to his chest. „Tell me.“
He showed no fear. „She's gone, da Cruz. Eight years now. One day I came home and the house was empty.“
„Where..?“
He shrugged. „Beyond the Pale, down into Howlytown. She didn’t want to be found, and I couldn’t find her — though I still have men looking. She was so headstrong — that was one of her virtues.“ He pointed to the tangle of black boxes. „Before she left. That was when I was working on the personamatrix. This is all I have left of her. I was powering her down when you called the last time. I was going to take her to a hiding place. I should have done that years ago.“
I realized why Martin Yung hadn’t acted against me. „Such a powerful construct. Unregistered. Illegal,“ I said.
„Please,“ he said, touching my arm, though he was not a man who touched others easily. „Please, you wouldn’t tell. They’d take her away from me, they’d kill her.“ His face crumpled and tears slid down his withered cheeks. He drew a deep breath. „I know how you feel, da Cruz. I’ll give her to you. Just don’t tell. You don’t want her to die, do you? Did you hear me? I said I’ll give her to you — isn’t that what you want?“
A knot in the center of my chest began to loosen. „No,“ I said. „You’re her husband. I won’t tell anyone.“ For some reason, I was remembering the way Dana’s breasts had felt against my hands, warm, smooth, full of life.
I went down to my hardcar, backed out of the hole I had made in Yung’s manse, and drove home.
Dana’s door was open, and I went inside. The first room was empty and dark, and I went from room to room in growing panic. Empty, all empty.
I pressed my hands to my head, trying to calm myself. I thought of Martin Yung’s face when he had told me about his lost Joanna, that hollowed-out look. One day I came home and the house was empty….