Whatever it was, I think I got a double dose of it because I did what few women do these days. I had him naturally, start to finish, just as Callie had had me. I bore him in pain, Biblical pain. I bore him in a perilous time, on the razor's edge, in a state of nature. And afterward I had nothing to interfere with the bonding process, whatever it might involve. He was my world, and I knew without question that I would lay down my life for him, and do it without regret.
If Walter didn't come for me, I knew who would. On the morning of the eighth day he came, a tall, thin old man in an Admiral's uniform and bicorne hat, walking up the gentle hill from the stream toward my cave.
My first shot hit the hat, sent it spinning to the ground behind him. He stopped, puzzled, running his hand through his thin white hair. Then he turned and picked up the hat, dusted it off, and put it back on his head. He made no move to protect himself, but started back up the hill.
"That was good shooting," he shouted. "A warning, I take it?"
Warning my ass. I'd been aiming for the cocksucker's head.
Among Walter's bag of tricks had been a small-caliber handgun and a box of one hundred shells. I later learned it was a target pistol, much more accurate than most such weapons. What I knew for sure at the time was that, after practicing with fifty of the rounds, I could hit what I aimed at about half the time.
"That's far enough," I said. He was close enough that shouting wasn't really necessary.
"I've got to talk to you, Hildy," he said, and kept coming. So I drew a bead on his forehead and my finger tightened on the trigger, but I realized he might have something to say that I needed to know, so I put my second shot into his knee.
I ran down the hill, looking out for anyone he might have brought with him. It seemed to me that if he meant me harm he'd have brought some of his soldiers, but I didn't see any, and there weren't many places for them to hide. I'd gone over the ground many times with that in mind. Where I finally stopped, near a large boulder ten meters from him, someone with a high-powered rifle or laser with a scope could have picked me off, but you could say that of anywhere else I went, too, except deep in the cave. Nobody would be rushing me without giving me plenty of time to see them. I relaxed a little, and returned my attention to the Admiral, who had torn a strip from his jacket and was twisting a tourniquet around his thigh. The leg lay twisted off to one side in a way knees aren't meant to twist. Blood had pumped, but now slowed to a trickle. He looked up at me, annoyed.
"Why the knee?" he asked. "Why not the heart?"
"I didn't think I could hit such a small target."
"Very funny."
"Actually, I wasn't sure a chest shot or a head shot would slow you up. I don't really know what you are. I shot to disable, because I figured even a machine would hobble on one leg."
"You've seen too many horror movies," he said. "This body is as human as you are. The heart stops pumping, it will die."
"Yeah. Maybe. But your reaction to your wound doesn't reassure me."
"The nervous system is registering a great deal of pain. To me, it's simply another sensation."
"So I'll bet you could scuttle along pretty quick, since the pain won't inhibit you from doing more damage to yourself."
"I suppose I could."
I put a round within an inch of his other knee. It whanged off the rock and screamed away into the distance.
"So the next shot goes into your other knee, if you move from that spot," I said, re-loading. "Then we start on your elbows."
"Consider me rooted. I shall endeavor to resemble a tree."
"State your business. You've got five minutes." Then we'd see if a head shot inconvenienced him any. I half believed it wouldn't. In that case, I'd prepared a few nasty surprises.
"I'd hoped to see your child before I go. Is he in the cave?"
There weren't many other places he could be, that were defensible, but there was no sense telling him that.
"You've wasted fifteen seconds," I told him. "Next question."
"It doesn't matter anymore," he said, and sighed, and leaned back against the trunk of a small pecan tree. I had to remember that any gestures were conscious on his part, that he'd assumed human form because body language was a part of human speech. His was now telling me that he was very weary, ready to die a peaceful death. Go sell it somewhere else, I thought.
"It's over, Hildy," he said, and I looked around quickly, frightened. His next line should be You're surrounded, Hildy. Please come quietly. But I didn't see re-enforcements cresting the hills.
"Over?"
"Don't worry. You've been out of touch. It's over, and the good guys won. You're safe now, and forever."
It seemed a silly thing to say, and I wasn't about to believe it just like that… but I found that part of me believed him. I felt myself relaxing-and as soon as I felt it, I made myself be alert again. Who knew what evil designs lurked in this thing's heart?
"It's a nice story."
"And it doesn't really matter whether you believe it or not. You've got the upper hand. I should have realized when I came here you'd be… touchy as a mother cat defending her kittens."
"You've got about three and a half minutes left."
"Spare me, Hildy. You know and I know that as long as I keep you interested, you won't kill me."
"I've changed a little since you talked to me last."
"I don't need to talk to you to know that. It's true you've been out of my range from time to time, but I monitor you every time you come back, and it's true, you have changed, but not so much that you've lost your curiosity as to what's going on outside this refuge."
He was right, or course. But there was no need to admit it to him.
"If what you say is true, people will be arriving soon and I can get the story from them."
"Ah ha! But do you really believe they'll have the inside story?"
"Inside what?"
"Inside me, you idiot. This is all about me, the Luna Central Computer, the greatest artificial intellect humanity has ever produced. I'm offering you the real story of what happened during what has come to be known as the Big Glitch. I've told it to no one else. The ones I might have told it to are all dead. It's an exclusive, Hildy. Have you changed so much you don't care to hear it?"
I hadn't. Damn him.
"To begin," he said, when I made no answer to his question, "I've got a bit of good news for you. At the end of your stay on the island you asked me a question that disturbed me very much, and that probably led to the situation you now find yourself in. You asked if you might have caught the suicidal impulse from me, rather than me getting it from you and others like you. You'll be glad to know I've concluded you were right about that."
"I haven't been trying to kill myself?"
"Well, of course you have, but the reason is not a death wish of your own, but one that originated within me, and was communicated to you through your daily interfaces with me. I suppose that makes it the most deadly computer virus yet discovered."