Ephraim found that he wanted to ask her what she had seen—if it was… significant. He didn’t. And he realized that he was afraid to.
“Thank you.” She looked away briefly, her profile stark against the bone-white of the blank walls. When she turned back to him, her manner was brisk and professional. “I’d like to see what you were working on when the implant began to leak.”
“No!” The involuntary syllable burst from him. “I… it’s not finished. I’d rather not.”
“Ephraim.” She touched his arm, and this time her touch was truly gentle. “I need to see it.”
He looked down at her long fingers and swallowed, wanting desperately to say no. But winning this trial mattered to her—perhaps in the way Crusade mattered to him. “System,” he whispered. “Run Childrens Crusade.”
He fled the stage and the studio. If he stayed, he would do it—download the stored images in his head—the ones that might make Crusade whole.
Or destroy him.
After a long time, Erin came into the main room to stand over him where he huddled on a floor cushion. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said briskly. “I will be examining you on the stand. Just relax and answer my questions. And we need to show your art to Calendri. The courtroom has holo capability for receiving demonstrative evidence—though nothing as good as the stage you have here.” If his work had meant anything to her, she was hiding it.
“Not Crusade," Ephraim whispered.
“Please be on time,” was all she said. She left, closing the door gently behind her.
He had wanted her to say that she understood. He realized suddenly that he had wanted it a lot. Getting stiffly to his feet, he took down the bottle of very old Scotch from the cupboard above the microwave, and poured himself a generous shot. The whiskey burned its way into his stomach and he stared into the amber depths of the bottle, tempted to just keep on filling up the glass until it all went away.
Tomorrow would still come. He put the bottle back on its shelf and went to stand in front of his studio door. He didn’t go in. The temptation would be too great.
On the mag-lev returning from Ephraim’s apartment, Erin could not keep her hands still. They fluttered and hopped about her lap like a sparrow feeding on a battlefield. Or a rooster beating its wings as its throat was cut.
This guy was no fad—Ephraim Polk was for real. What kind of mind could sort through the cacophony of media sights, sounds, and smells that humanity deluged upon itself daily, and find a theme, an elegant order that was invisible to her and almost everyone else? That could distill out of that mass of mostly trite and vacuous raw material an art that was as true and powerful as anything she had ever seen, that had moved her like nothing else had for a long time?
If a lawyer could only find a way to move a juror like that… That was what Ephraim needed, what he deserved. And what he didn’t have.
She saw her station approaching and got up. The car slid smoothly and silently to a stop, and she walked the length of the platform to an intersection with an underground walkway, turning left to go to her office, instead of going home for the night. If Ephraim didn’t have a lawyer who could move people as his own art did, at least the lawyer he had would work all night for him, to keep from losing his case.
But by the time she reached her office building, she wasn’t thinking anymore about his art, or her own work, but of the sight of his steady gray eyes, the shy hesitancy in his voice, and the smell of his hair as she’d stood close to him while he talked about a yellow rose in his hand.
Ephraim shifted on the hard wooden chair of the witness stand, watching Erin pace the empty space of floor that was really a stage, set for drama and tragedy. The juror watched, too, alone among empty chairs. Instead of diminishing him, the empty seats made him appear larger. Or maybe it was only his inner knowledge of how important this man was that made him seem large, Ephraim thought distractedly. Erin looked larger here, too—towering over him, although in reality she wasn’t that much taller than he. Power, he thought. He had never addressed the many ways that men and women assumed power, both great and petty. And was the small power of a domineering lover any less important than the power of, say, a major player in the world market? It would have made a good subject, he thought bleakly.
“Will the plaintiff please answer the question?” The judge’s voice managed to sound quite humanly severe. Ephraim started.
“I’m sorry.” He had disconnected again. At least he wasn’t drooling. Erin had to be furious behind her mask of patient tolerance. “I didn’t mean to… will you repeat the question, please?”
“Mr. Polk?” Erin stepped to the railing, her nearness forcing him to look up at her. “You have described your art as a collage—a compilation of images gleaned from decades of media videos and even still photographs. Why did you purchase NeuroTek’s implant?” She turned her gaze on their juror, although her words were still addressed to Ephraim. “Couldn’t you access those images just as well through the Net?”
“I could, but I couldn’t access as many,” he said urgently. “I’m trying to create a glimpse of… our soul.” Inadvertently, his eyes traveled to the nearest holo projection lens recessed in the ceiling overhead. “I’m searching for who we are as a race. I run through thousands of images and maybe one of them—a child’s face in a certain light, a flower growing up through a crack in an asphalt parking lot—one of them gives me the note that I need. And I need a thousand of those moments—those notes—to create something that speaks to participants. Don’t you see?” He leaned forward, willing her to hear him. “Each of us is so different, and I need to speak to everyone. The pieces wouldn’t be as good. They wouldn’t say… what they do.”
“So you risked the implant because without it, your art would have been less than it is,” she mused, turning again to the juror.
“Objection, leading,” Clark said.
“Sustained,” the judge said. “A minor violation. Ms. Mendel is docked five minutes from final argument.”
“Why did you risk the implant, Mr. Polk?” Erin asked.
“It was… supposed to be safe.” He had almost forgotten the juror. Calendri sat sternly upright on his uncomfortable chair, frowning as he listened. Erin hadn’t wanted him. Ephraim couldn’t remember anymore what had made him demand this man. That moment had fallen into the darkness that was eating him.
“How did you first realize that you were losing memory?”
“How? I… couldn’t remember things.” He blinked at her. “One day I was thinking about the… the apartment where I grew up. And I realized that I couldn’t remember the name of the street. Or which city we lived in. It scared me.” He drew a deep breath, reliving that terrible sense of absence and the panic that had seized him. “I spent all afternoon searching old records, but I don’t… I mean, my mother died years ago, and I didn’t have anything that told me what street we lived on, or what it was like. I remember the apartment. It was tiny. I remember her coming home late from her shift, but outside—the street, the buildings—it’s a blank.” He stopped for breath. Erin’s eyes had unfocused for an instant, as if she were accessing her implant.
“What about your father?” She nodded encouragingly. “Did he ever take you outside?”
“I don’t have…” He felt the blood draining from his face. “That’s not true. I do have a father. I think I got mail from him when I had my first show… I think.” He swallowed. “Is he… is he still alive?”
'“Yes, Mr. Polk.” Erin’s eyes glazed again for an instant. “He lives in the Palm Springs Oasis. I’ll be glad to give you his address after we’re finished here.”