"You'll find this interesting... and perhaps instructive," said Memfis in a colorless voice.
When she saw the first images of Garso-Yao, and watched her younger self lie against him in the datasoak cubicle, tears clouded her vision. She felt a pang of bittersweet remembrance.
"That was so long ago," she said. "I had forgotten."
"Not at all," said Memfis. "It was all there, just under the surface." He seemed a bit haggard, and dark smudges underlined his eyes.
Her heart twinged with sympathy.
Arriangel shook her head, annoyed with herself. Memfis was a slaver. He was exploiting her most private memories; why should she care about him? She gave all her attention to the screen.
When the recording reached the point of revision, during the scene with Loyaluiz, she opened her mouth to say that it hadn't happened that way.
Then she noticed that the on-screen databar was flashing a new message. "MNEMONIC VALIDITY: DIVERGING," it read.
"Oh," she said.
She Watched.
On this pseudotrack a little more time passed before things went wrong, and some odd twist occurred in her perception, so that she felt an illogical gratitude for the few extra sweetnesses that the artificial memories showed her, for the fragments of extra time spent happily in Garso-Yao's arms.
But then it began to come apart, though not as disastrously as it had in reality. This time, Garso-Yao did not kill himself when she left him; he used his frustrated passion to augment the force of his ambition and became a grim young man indeed.
Still, she was comforted.
"At least he didn't die," she whispered when the recording was finished.
Memfis looked at her. Some poorly concealed emotion burned through the weariness. Disgust? "Arriangel. Garso-Yao still rots in his grave, victim of a careless child's whim and his own weakness." He gestured at the screen, his hands trembling. "Do you think this is real? It's just a plausible lie — though in this case not a very pretty one. Or salable."
She felt an answering anger. "We loved well for a while; very well indeed. You make it seem as if it were nothing. You're wrong, even if it didn't last forever. When he died, my heart ached for months . . . and I guess it still does. Anyway, if you didn't like the way it went, why didn't you just keep changing it?"
Memfis shook his head, and now he only looked sad and tired. "I would have liked to, Arriangel, but past a certain point, the processors can't keep up with the complexity of the changes. I can redraw one significant event, sometimes two, but after that I have to let events run their course. If I don't, the processors overload and begin to strip away the gestalt of the redrawn reality, trying to free enough capacity to maintain the track. Eventually the track becomes a cartoon, if I push it far enough."
"I see," she said.
"Besides," he went on, as if she hadn't spoken. "I have no illusions about my skill and my machines. I rely on my subjects to make my art. I'm not like those love farmers who attempt to synthesize their characters from thin air, then put them through their wooden paces, jerking their strings and putting words in their mouths, phony light in their dead eyes. Such arrogance, to believe that they understand love so well that their feeble imaginings have any beauty, any resonance. Art is observation, not creation; what can anyone create that hasn't been done a trillion times before?"
His eyes kindled with a brilliant, brittle rage, and she was once again afraid of him. She edged away, crossing her arms under her breasts and looking away.
"No, no," he said, in a voice abruptly soft and low. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be so harsh. If Garso-Yao is dead, then so is that young Arriangel — and she was only foolish, not hateful. I believe that we can learn from our mistakes, that we can change and become capable of love." She glanced up and saw his face naked for an instant, undisguised by his usual armor of urbane confidence. "I must believe this," he whispered, looking down, his hands knotted together in his lap.
She wanted to throw her arms around him and give him what comfort she could... but she didn't quite dare... and then she grew angry with herself.
A silence grew between them, until she thought she would smother in it. But finally he spoke. "We'll try again in a few days. I didn't choose well, I'm afraid. Next time we'll do better; I'll research more carefully, think it through. We'll do fine, I'm sure." He patted her hand and gave her his marvelous smile.
She nodded.
"Meanwhile," said Memfis. "We'll rest. I can show you some of the amusements we have here, if you like."
"Please," she said, concealing eagerness. She found the prospect of his continued companionship interesting. She was no longer a young girl, to fall instantly into the fiery embrace of infatuation, but still... there was something intriguing about the slaver. No, she corrected herself, he wasn't actually a slaver; he was an artist whose work required slaves. She frowned. Why, exactly, was that so?
"May I ask you about your work?"
"Certainly," he said. "Though some questions I prefer not to answer."
"Oh. Well, can you tell me why you use slaves in your art? Why not chronicle the loves of free Citizens?"
He still smiled, though he looked a bit uneasy. "Several reasons, Arriangel. One is economic; Citizens would demand too large a proportion of the gross profits in compensation for their contribution — and ours is an expensive craft. Furthermore, many folk look upon their loves as private; they feel reluctance to make their passions public. I don't understand this myself . . . why not glorify your love?" He seemed momentarily sad. "Had I a great love, the universe would know of it."
Arriangel found this very strange. He had no lover? Incomprehensible, unless his standards were impossibly high. Perhaps he mutated into some hideous creature at frequent intervals.
He continued. "Also ... those who love greatly are frequently neither beautiful nor wealthy, and if I wish to find a market for my work, I must remember that most of my patrons don't care to experience the passions of homely nobodies." He looked pensive. "It's a pity, of course.”
"I see." She leaned against his shoulder, enjoying his warmth. "And I suppose that the most important Citizens would be least likely to allow such an invasion of their privacy, and would ask more money, too."
"You understand," he said ruefully.
"I guess. So, why do you work only with memories? Why don't you just seek out two beautiful people 'who can love,' as you say, and bring them together?"
He gave her an odd look, as though she had said something both clever and discomfiting. "There are problems in that approach," he said carefully. "For one, those who can love have generally already found someone to cherish, and would be unwilling to rearrange their emotional commitments for my convenience. Besides, love is such an illogical thing. Who can say why love begins, or why it chooses the objects it chooses? My subjects might very well despise each other. It would be an expensive risk."
"I suppose."
"There's another reason why I prefer to work with slaves — if they're capable of love, they've usually been separated from their dear ones."
"Oh."
He seemed uncomfortable, and his smile faded away. He didn't speak for a minute, and she felt no urge to interrupt the silence.
"Tell me, Arriangel," he finally said. "Would you rather be in a downlevel brothel?"
"No," she answered. She thought it an unnecessarily cruel question, even though no cruelty showed in his face.
The following days passed in a simulation of normality. While that time lasted, Arriangel could almost believe that she was the guest of some wealthy, reclusive friend.