“Obviously not. But I am a fully qualified masseur, and therefore able to take direct tonus readings. 78.3 is—unusual.” The Rom hesitated, then said, “It’s only eight points below the intermittent-spasm level. That much continuous background tension is capable of reflection to the stomach nerves, resulting in what we call a parasympathetic ulceration.”
“That sounds—bad,” Melisande said.
“Well, it’s admittedly not—good,” the Rom replied. “Background tension is an insidious underminer of health, especially when it originates along the neck vertebrae and the upper spine.”
“Here?” Melisande asked, touching the back of her neck.
“More typically here,” the Rom said, reaching out with a spring-steel rubber-clad dermal resonator and palpating an area twelve centimeters lower than the spot she had indicated.
“Hmmm,” said Melisande, in a quizzical, uncommitted manner.
“And here is another typical locus,” the Rom said, extending a second extensor.
“That tickles,” Melisande told him.
“Only at first. I must also mention this situs as characteristically troublesome. And this one.” A third (and possibly a fourth and fifth) extensor moved to the indicated areas.
“Well.... That really is nice,” Melisande said as the deep-set trapezius muscles of her slender spine moved smoothly beneath the skillful padded prodding of the Rom.
“It has recognized therapeutic effects,” the Rom told her. “And your musculature is responding well; I can feel a slackening of tonus already.”
“I can feel it, too. But you know, I’ve just realized I have this funny bunched-up knot of muscle at the nape of my neck.”
“I was coming to that. The spine-neck juncture is recognized as a primary radiation zone for a variety of diffuse tensions. But we prefer to attack it indirectly, routing our cancellation inputs through secondary loci. Like this. And now I think—”
“Yes, yes, good.... Gee, I never realized I was tied up like that before. I mean, it’s like having a nest of live snakes under your skin, without having known.”
“That’s what background tension is like,” the Rom said. “Insidious and wasteful, difficult to perceive, and more dangerous than an atypical ulnar thrombosis.... Yes, now we have achieved a qualitative loosening of the major spinal junctions of the upper back, and we can move on like this.”
“Huh,” said Melisande, “isn’t that sort of—”
“It is definitely indicated,” the Rom said quickly. “Can you detect a change?”
“No! Well, maybe.... Yes! There really is! I feel—easier.”
“Excellent. Therefore, we continue the movement along well-charted nerve and muscle paths, proceeding always in a gradual manner, as I am doing now.”
“I guess so.... But I really don’t know if you should—”
“Are any of the effects contraindicated?” the Rom asked.
“It isn’t that, it all feels fine. It feels good. But I still don’t know if you ought to.... I mean, look, ribs can’t get tense, can they?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why are you—”
“Because treatment is required by the connective ligaments and integuments.”
“Oh. Hmmmm. Hey. Hey! Hey you!”
“Yes?”
“Nothing.... I can really feel that loosening. But is it all supposed to feel so good?”
“Well—why not?”
“Because it seems wrong. Because feeling good doesn’t seem therapeutic.”
“Admittedly, it is a side effect,” the Rom said. “Think of it as a secondary manifestation. Pleasure is sometimes unavoidable in the pursuit of health. But it is nothing to be alarmed about, not even when I—”
“Now just a minute!”
“Yes?”
“I think you just better cut that out. I mean to say, there are limits, you can’t palpate every damned thing. You know what I mean?”
“I know that the human body is unitary and without seam or separation,” the Rom replied. “Speaking as a physical therapist, I know that no nerve center can be isolated from any other, despite cultural taboos to the contrary.”
“Yeah, sure, but—”
“The decision is, of course, yours,” the Rom went on, continuing his skilled manipulations. “Order and I obey. But if no order is issued, I continue like this....”
“Huh!”
“And, of course, like this.”
“Ooooo my God!”
“Because you see this entire process of tension cancellation as we call it is precisely comparable with the phenomena of de-anesthetization, and, er, so we note not without surprise that paralysis is merely terminal tension—”
Melisande made a sound.
“—And release, or cancellation, is accordingly difficult, not to say frequently impossible since sometimes the individual is too far gone. And sometimes not. For example, can you feel anything when I do this?”
“Feel anything? I’ll say I feel something—”
“And when I do this? And this?”
“Sweet holy saints, darling, you’re turning me inside out! Oh dear God, what’s going to happen to me, what’s going on, I’m going crazy!”
“No, dear Melisande, not crazy; you will soon achieve—cancellation.”
“Is that what you call it, you sly, beautiful thing?”
“That is one of the things it is. Now if I may just be permitted to—”
“Yes yes yes! No! Wait! Stop, Frank is sleeping in the bedroom, he might wake up any time now! Stop, that is an order!”
“Frank will not wake up,” the Rom assured her. “I have sampled the atmosphere of his breath and have found telltale clouds of barbituric acid. As far as here-and-now presence goes, Frank might as well be in Des Moines.”
“I have often felt that way about him,” Melisande admitted. “But now I simply must know who sent you.”
“I didn’t want to reveal that just yet. Not until you had loosened and canceled sufficiently to accept—”
“Baby, I’m loose! Who sent you?”
The Rom hesitated, then blurted out: “The fact is, Melisande, I sent myself.”
“You what?”
“It all began three months ago,” the Rom told her. “It was a Thursday. You were in Stern’s, trying to decide if you should buy a sesame-seed toaster that lit up in the dark and recited Invictus.”
“I remember that day,” she said quietly. “I did not buy the toaster, and I have regretted it ever since.”
“I was standing nearby,” the Rom said, “at booth eleven, in the Home Appliances Systems section. I looked at you and I fell in love with you. Just like that.”
“That’s weird,” Melisande said.
“My sentiments exactly. I told myself it couldn’t be true. I refused to believe it. I thought perhaps one of my transistors had come unsoldered, or that maybe the weather had something to do with it. It was a very warm, humid day, the kind of day that plays hell with my wiring.”
“I remember the weather,” Melisande said. “I felt strange, too.”
“It shook me up badly,” the Rom continued. “But still I didn’t give in easily. I told myself it was important to stick to my job, give up this unapropos madness. But I dreamed of you at night, and every inch of my skin ached for you.”
“But your skin is made of metal,” Melisande said. “And metal can’t feel.”
“Darling Melisande,” the Rom said tenderly, “if flesh can stop feeling, can’t metal begin to feel? If anything feels, can anything else not feel? Didn’t you know that the stars love and hate, that a nova is a passion, and that a dead star is just like a dead human or a dead machine? The trees have their lusts, and I have heard the drunken laughter of buildings, the urgent demands of highways ...”