“I’m sorry, Ed.”
“So am I. You don’t know how sorry I am.”
Another silence. Then: “How are you doing, anyway?”
“I’m okay. I’m not letting these bastards get to me.”
“You still remember me?”
“You know I do, baby. I can see that red hair shining. I can see you sitting there high up above me going for a big one.”
“Oh, honey—”
“I love you, Lacy.”
“I love you too. You miss me, Ed? Really?”
“You know how much.”
“It’s really shitty, about this weekend. You and me walking along the beach in Mendo—”
“Don’t make it any harder,” he said. “You know I would if I could.”
“I had so much to tell you, too.”
“Like what?”
“There’s a funny thing. About our space project—you remember?”
“Sure I remember,” he said.
But there must have been a perceptible jiggle in his voice, because she said, “I mean, the one when we were trying to sell mind-trips to Betelgeuse Five, that one. I had a dream the other day that I took one. A mind-trip. That I really went to some other star, you know?”
He said, “You can’t start believing your own scams, baby.”
“It was the realest thing. There was a red sun in the sky and a blue one. And I saw a big golden thing with horns standing on a block of white stone, some kind of space monster, and it reached out to me, it seemed to be beckoning to me. It was like a giant. It was almost like a god. And in the sky—”
“Listen, baby, this call is costing me a fortune.”
“Just let me tell you. It wasn’t any ordinary dream. It was like real, Ed. I saw the trees of this planet, I saw the bugs, even, and they weren’t like our trees or bugs, and—but the funny thing was, it was just the sort of gig we were trying to sell people, the one they sent you up for, and—”
“Lacy, hey. They’re calling me to go down to the therapy session.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Will I see you next weekend? I can hear all the rest of it then.”
“I’m not sure, next weekend. I told you, it doesn’t look good.”
“Try for it, Lacy. I miss you so damn much.”
“Yeah, Ed. Me too.”
It didn’t sound convincing, how much she missed him. The bitch, he thought. Anger surged in him. If she had been within reach he would have slapped her around. And then he realized that none of this was her fault, that she had been primed to come tomorrow, that it was his wife who had scrambled things up. He couldn’t expect Lacy to keep herself on ice indefinitely, week after week. Quickly he went through one of the anger exercises Dr. Lewis had shown him.
He said as tenderly as he knew how, “I love you, Lacy. I wish I could see you tomorrow. You know that.”
He signed off. Then he touched his ring. “Request wife,” Ferguson said.
His recorded voice replied, “Wife: Mariela Johnston. Birthday August seventh. She’ll be thirty-three this summer. You married her in Honolulu on July fourth, 2098. She’s hot stuff but you can’t stand her any more. Your lawyer is checking to see if you’ve got grounds for an annulment.”
Fine, he thought. But obviously nothing’s happened about that yet. And here she comes for her conjugal, wiping out Lacy’s weekend. Shit. Shit. Hanging in there for the community property, I bet that’s what she’s doing. The good little wife, coming for the conjugal.
There was a tap at the door.
“Who?” Ferguson called.
“Alleluia,” said the most musical female voice he had ever heard.
Something stirred in his muddled and mutilated memory bank, but he was unable to get hold of it. He touched his ring and said, “Request Alleluia.”
“Fellow patient at Nepenthe Center. Synthetic woman, terrific body, very fucked-up personality. You’ve been screwing her on and off all summer.”
He stared at the ring in disbelief. Screwing a synthetic? You must have been awfully hard up, kiddo. But if the recorder says so, it must be so.
“Come on in,” he said.
When he saw her, he started believing what the ring had told him. Synthetic or not, he could easily imagine himself going to bed with her. She had presence. She could pass for real. She was beautiful beyond all plausibility, too, the way synthetics usually were. Laser-star looks, long legs, creamy skin, tumbling black hair, perfect face. She wore something thin and shimmering, with nipples showing through. With the light from the hallway behind her, he saw the black pubic triangle plainly too. He had never really understood why they bothered putting pubic hair on the imitation people, unless it was to keep them from getting recognized too easily for what they were; but you recognized them anyway because they were better looking than any natural person could ever hope to be.
She glided into the room and said, “Are you okay?”
“Why? Don’t I look okay?”
“Extremely tense. Jumpy, edgy, irritated. Maybe this is the way you always look, but you don’t look relaxed.”
“Irritated? Shit, yes, I’m irritated. There’ve been complications,” he said. “The wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I don’t like it. It’s messed me up very bad.” He shook his head. “Hell, this is no way to start a conversation, is it? Try again. Hello there, you. Alleluia. Allie.”
She smiled. “I’m sorry. Hello. You’re Ed Ferguson, aren’t you?”
“You bet your pretty ass I am.”
“I had a note under my pillow that said I ought to go introduce myself to you first thing after pick. I think I do this every morning, don’t I?”
“Yes,” he said, although he had no more memory of it than she did. He rose and went to her, and pulled her to him and they kissed, and he ran his hands up over her breasts. They felt the way he imagined a fourteen-year-old’s breasts would feel, hard as plastic but warmer. “We do this every morning, yes. We get acquainted again. Alleluia, Ed. Ed, Alleluia. Very pleased to make your acquaintance. See? That’s the system.”
“It’s almost worth having to do pick,” she said. “To get acquainted again. Each time is like the first time, isn’t it?” She laughed and snuggled against his chest. “Let’s go take a walk in the woods this afternoon, okay? Your roommates will be getting back here soon.”
“I can’t go this afternoon, Allie.”
“Can’t?”
“The irritating complication I was speaking of. Got a visitor at ten-thirty. My wife. She’s coming on a conjugal.”
She moved back from him, looking pained. “I didn’t know you had a wife, Ed.”
“Neither did I, till the communications computer reminded me. She was supposed to come Tuesday, but somehow she’s arriving today instead. So the woods are out, sweetheart.”
“We still have three hours.”
“Conjugal is supposed to be conjugal,” Ferguson said. “You understand? If I could I would, you know that, but today I’m just not free. All right? She’ll be gone Sunday afternoon and then we can play. Is that all right?”
He saw the anger in her eyes, and it scared him. Women’s anger always did; but Alleluia’s anger was special even as women’s anger went, because she was special. If she wanted to, he knew, she could pull his arms and legs off the way you’d pull the wings off a fly. Synthetic people were amazingly strong. And this one was an emotionally disturbed synthetic person, and she was standing between him and the door. He flicked a glance at the phone, wondering if he could thumb the plate fast enough to call for help before she pounced.
But she didn’t pounce. She went through some internal exercise—he saw the muscles moving in her cheeks—and calmed herself. “All right,” she said. “After she goes. Your wife.”