Brian Stableford Read online

  she felt much more at home, almost in control of herself, if not the situation.

  "May I take these off?" the boy asked, as if he'd read her thought and knew exactly how to throw a spanner in the works. He meant the glasses, of

  course.

  She barely hesitated. "Of course," she said. After all, she saw Jennifer's

  eyes every day. Jennifer never wore dark glasses.

  The boy removed the shades, folded them up and tucked them away in the breast pocket of his jacket. It was a good jacket--must have cost at least

  four hundred, with a quality label.

  Carl Ulick's eyes were blue. It was a discreet blue, though, not the kind

  of day-glo blue that the kind of people who used contact lenses as fashion

  accessories went in for. It was easy enough to see, if you looked hard, that the eyes were false, but they weren't obtrusively false. All the miraculously-compacted electronic bits were tucked away inside. Martha didn't have a clue what any of that stuff actually looked like, or how any

  of it worked; she still had to think in terms of miniature computers and

  miniature radio stations, as if Jennifer's eyes were lumber rooms packed

  tight with tiny screens and keyboards, with tiny cinema projectors to project the virtual displays on to the retina.

  "How long have you known Jennifer?" Martha asked, trying to make it seem

  like the perfectly natural question that it was.

  "Three years," he told her. "She posted a notice asking for advice--about

  training the cortex, that is. She needed moral support. I couldn't tell her anything the doctors hadn't, but it makes a difference if it's coming

  from the inside. The doctors know the theory, but they don't know how

  it

  feels. Only people who actually use their eyes really know what's involved

  in learning to see."

  Martha felt a stab of guilt when he said that. Of course Jennifer couldn't

  get adequate moral support from her parents. Of course she had to go to the Net in search of fellow citizens of the New Self. Of course she never

  told her parents who she was talking to, or what about, or to what effect.

  Why waste time blink-blink-blinking at your parents when you could be talking to somebody real? Why bother to tell them you've invited some smart kid to your birthday party to see that the stupid icing on your futile cake is all over the bloody place?

  "I suppose the time will come when we'll rip out the eyes of new-born babies as a matter of routine," Martha said, deliberately treading on dangerous ground. "Why leave them with a handicap when it's so easy to train their visual cortex to use supersight? In a hundred years time, people like me will be freaks. And it won't just be eyes, will it? By then, it will be whole bodies. Maybe they'll just take out the babies'

  brains and put them into different flesh, better in every imaginable way

  than the stuff mere genes provide. On the other hand, maybe there'll be superintelligent brains made out of silicon chips, so that we won't need

  the babies at all."

  The trouble with dangerous ground, she thought, as she lowered her eyes to

  avoid his accusative stare, is that it's always downhill every step of the

  way.

  "I don't think that's the right way to think about it," Carl Ulick opined,

  his fluty voice as mild as milk. "In my case, it really was a case of replacement. My eyes and ears didn't work, so the doctors took them out and gave me ones that did--ones that had extra abilities. When they're dealing with people whose eyes do work, they don't think in terms of replacement. They think in terms of augmentation."

  Martha didn't want an argument, especially today. It was Friday the thirteenth, after all. Jennifer was sixteen. Sweet sixteen and never been

  kissed, except perhaps in virtual reality. In virtual reality, she might

  have done anything--except, of course, that her visual cortex was still having trouble with adaptation. She could look out into cyberspace, live

  within the Net far more comfortably and far more fully than she'd ever be

  able to live in the world of her parents, but she was still half-blind there because her brain was too set in its ways. Even in the empire of the

  blind, she was still a cripple of sorts--and this was the guide dog who had come to her aid: the sighted man who was a king in the country of the

  exiles, the country beyond the borders of reality. Maybe Jennifer hadn't

  had sex even on the Net. Maybe she was still a stranger, and afraid, in the land she never made.

  I ought to know! Martha thought. She ought to tell me. I'm her mother,

  after all. I don't even know if she hates me for not having better genes,

  or the benefit of genetic counselling, or for having eyes that see after

  their own stupid fashion.

  "I'm sure they do," she said, in answer to Carl Ulick's little homily.

  "And I'm sure you're right about the proper way to think about it. I'm really very glad that Jennifer has been able to use her eyes, and that there are people out there who can help her. It's just....so difficult to

  understand. She doesn't talk to us much, you see. Now that she's found a

  world where she can function so much better, she doesn't like to come back

  to ours. But she's still in ours, day in and day out." The truth is in the

  flesh, she added, silently.

  "It must be very difficult for you," the boy conceded, graciously. "It was

  difficult for my parents, at first. I anchored them down for a long time,

  and when I wasn't a burden any more....well, as you say, it's as if I stepped into a world of my own, where they couldn't follow. I couldn't explain it to them--how it felt to be permanently tuned in to the Net, with access to every printed page and every visual image stored there.

  I

  did try, but it wasn't so hard for me. Once the implants in my ears were

  working it was easy to learn to talk and I was so glad of it I babbled all

  the time about anything and everything. It's not so easy for Jennifer.

  For

  her, it's far easier to talk to me, or anyone else wired into the Net, than it is to talk to you. You mustn't think that it's because she doesn't

  want to. I'm sure she loves you very much, and I'm sure she's very grateful for everything you do for her."

  "I know that," Martha assured him, dishonestly. "How much, exactly, do you

  know about Jennifer's condition?"

  "I don't know much about medical science or molecular genetics," Carl Ulick told her, although she couldn't tell whether he was missing the point on purpose. "The technical terminology's beyond me. All I know, really, is that her motor nerves don't work and that the condition is still deteriorating. I gather that she's almost entirely paralysed. She told me that she needed the new eyes even if she never learned to see properly, because her eyelids were the only part of herself she still had

  enough control over to use--instead of fingers, that is. Sorry, I didn't

  put that very well--what I mean is...."

  "It's all right," Martha told him, brusquely. "I know exactly what you mean." After a moment's hesitation, while she wondered why she didn't feel

  relieved that she didn't have to protect any lies that Jennifer had told,

  she continued: "She used to be able to use her fingers, you know--just a

  bit, for a while. Then, after they gave up on the speech therapy, they fitted a keypad gizmo to her mouth so that she could pick out the

  letters

  with her tongue--but the disease is degenerative, you see. It just gets worse and worse."

  "I know," the boy said. "She told me. I can't follow all the jargon, but

  she can."

  Martha felt tears welling up then. For some reason, the thought that Jennifer understood what was happening to her
--that the fancy eyes which

  had allowed her to look directly into the information-world of the Net had

  allowed her to read and inwardly digest every single research paper ever

  written about her condition--always seemed to add that extra turn of the

  screw to the tragedy itself.

  Taking a defensive sip of tea, Martha tried to blink the tears way. She was determined not to make a show of herself by reaching up to dab at her

  eyes while the boy was watching her. "Why did you come here," she whispered. Her confusion had made it impossible for her to hold the question back any longer.

  Carl Ulick paused, but it wasn't one of Geoff's theatrical pauses. The boy

  really was thinking. Eventually, he said: "I'm sorry if I've upset you, but it was Jennifer I came to see. I just wanted to give her a birthday present--and she wanted me to come. If you'd just let me see her for a few

  minutes....it really will be all right."

  He's right, of course, Martha thought, still fighting back the tears.

  I'm

  the one who's being stupid. I'm the one who's being blind. I'm the one who

  doesn't understand. Of course she's told him everything. Of course she wanted him to come. Of course she wouldn't think it worth her while to try

  explaining it to us, blinking and blinking and blinking and knowing all the while that she wasn't getting through....

  Outside, in the road, she heard a car door bang. All banging car doors sounded alike, but she knew that this particular bang was Geoff's. He'd been within sight of the men in yellow jackets, after all, and on the other side of the accident the road must have been beautifully clear.

  He'd

  probably had the accelerator flat to the boards ever since, and now he was

  here to complicate matters--after they'd only just been simplified.

  She heard the sound of a key in the front door, and then she heard the door open and close. It didn't bang; no matter what kind of noise he made

  in the street Geoff always came into the house on tiptoe, out of respect

  for his daughter's condition.

  "That's my husband," she said, wishing that she didn't sound--or look--so

  utterly foolish.

  "It's very kind of you to come all this way," Geoff said to Carl Ulick,

  "but I really don't think that Jennifer should have asked you without telling us."

  "I'm sorry about that," the boy replied, doggedly, "but she is

  expecting

  me, and I can't see that there's a problem. I just want to give her a present."

  Martha waited by the door. She knew that she ought to go into the kitchen

  and finish icing the birthday cake, but she also knew that she might be needed here. She now regretted the instinct that had sent her scurrying for the phone, anxious to turn the problem over to Geoff so that he could

  sort it out. It was an instinct that was utterly reliable where dripping

  taps and defective light-switches were concerned, but now that she thought

  back on all the Jennifer problems she had automatically turned over to Geoff she wasn't so sure that he had ever been the best person to handle

  them.

  "The thing is," Geoff said, depositing his briefcase in the gap between the TV and the rubber-plant, exactly as he always did, "that I'm not sure

  you understand the situation here. Jennifer's a very sick girl. She doesn't have visitors, apart from the doctors. I suppose she can communicate with you--and other people like you--fairly readily, in spite

  of the problems she's had adapting to her new eyes, but she isn't nearly

  so good at coping with face-to-face communication. I don't think you understand the kind of pressure you'd be putting her under by coming here

  in person to see her in the flesh. I can understand why she might have thought that it was a nice idea, but I'm certain she hasn't thought it through. It's very kind of you, as I said, and we'll be only too glad to

  pass your present on to Jennifer, but we have to be very careful. I really

  don't think...."

  Martha could see that Carl Ulick was becoming slightly annoyed. She was becoming rather annoyed herself--and that was unusual, because Geoff's speeches usually washed over her like steady rain, gradually wearing her

  down without ever raising the slightest hint of anger or resistance.

  She

  was afraid that the boy might say something that would make things worse,

  so she stepped in before he could.

  "Would it really do any harm, Geoff?" she said. "Maybe if he just looked

  in...."

  Geoff turned on her in frank astonishment, raising his eyebrows as if to

  say: Is this what I rushed home for? Did I come hell for leather in answer

  to your hysterical call, only to find that you've gone over to the enemy?

  "I think it might do some harm," Geoff said, as if anyone but a complete

  idiot would have been able to understand his concern and support his stance. "I don't think this young man understands...."

  "Actually, Mr Mortimore," said Carl Ulick, doing exactly what Martha had

  been afraid he'd do, "I think it might be you who doesn't understand."

  Geoff's pause was the mother of all pauses. For the first time in her life, Martha understood what people meant when they said that there were

  times when you could hear a pin drop. She felt that she could have watched

  the pin in question fall, in slow motion close-up, even though she only had the eyes that nature had given her.

  Like all Geoff's pauses, though, this one only led to an anti-climax.

  There was nowhere else it could lead, in a household as civilized as this

  one. "Indeed," he said, in a tone so falsely polite that you could have cut it with a paring-knife. "In that case, perhaps you'd like to explain

  it to me."

  Martha realised that Geoff thought that he could deal with Carl Ulick as

  he might have dealt with any common-or-garden fourteen-year-old boy. He thought that his acid request for an explanation would only bring forth bluster and confusion. He thought that he had the upper hand within the ordered sanctum of his own home. Martha already knew that he was wrong on

  every count, and couldn't tear herself away even though she knew full well

  that her presence would make his humiliation worse.

  "You said that Jennifer's a very sick girl," the boy said, by way of preamble.

  "She is," Geoff confirmed, feeling that he was on safe ground. "Very sick

  indeed."

  "In fact," Carl Ulick said, "you think she's dying."

  Martha winced. Even Geoff winced. Neither of them wanted to make the obvious reply.

  "Well, she isn't," the boy told them, with all apparent sincerity. "She used to be. She told me once that she used to think that there was nothing

  to life except dying, and that she was just saving time. Now, she knows that she's living."

  Martha could see that the boy was taking care not to go for the jugular.

  He was taking care not to say aloud what Jennifer must actually have said--that she was the only one in the house who had turned the corner, had given up dying and taken to living. But Jennifer had never said that

  to Martha. She had never said anything to Martha about any of this. She had turned for help to someone who had ears to hear and eyes to see--someone lucky enough to be born deaf and blind; someone lucky enough

  to take full advantage of the wonders of modern technology.

  "I'm glad...." Geoff began--but Carl Ulick hadn't finished. His pauses were honest pauses.

  "Jennifer knows that she's in a race," the boy said, "but she honestly thinks she has a fair chance of winning it. She's keeping a close eye on

  every team involved in relevant research. She thinks that they'll find a

  way to control the r
egeneration of neural tissue accurately enough to begin stitching her back together again--her phrase, not mine--before the

  degeneration kills her. She thinks they'll be able to hold her together

  long enough and well enough for what she calls serious cyborgization. I think she's right. She can't see half the things I can see, because her visual cortex can't produce the illusion of deep immersion in virtual reality, but she can read and she can hear. I wish there were better words

  to describe it, but there aren't. I suppose the only way you can imagine

  what she's experiencing is to think of her new eyes as little videophones

  planted in her skull--glorified versions of the mobile in your car--but the sight they offer is so much richer than that....she's not dying, Mr Mortimore. She was, but she isn't any more. I wish she could have explained that to you herself, but I can understand how difficult it is for her."

  This time, Geoff didn't bother to pause. "Is that why she told you to come?" he wanted to know. "To lecture us?"

  Of course it is, you bloody idiot, Martha thought. And how else could she

  do it, when it's so hard for her to speak to us, and so much harder for us

  to listen?

  "Of course not," Carl Ulick said, as generously as he could. "I wanted to

  come, and she said I could. I wanted to give her a birthday present."

  He

  was still clutching the square package sealed in wine-coloured wrapping.

  I

  bet it's a good present, Martha thought. I bet he knows what you ought to

  give to a girl who has everything--everything, at least, that we could think of.

  "She should have told us," Geoff insisted, doggedly. "This isn't right."

  But he knew he'd lost the battle, and the war. He didn't have any answer

  to the boy's charges.

  "It's just a present, Geoff," Martha said, as soothingly as she could--and

  she'd had a lot of practice. "It can't do any harm to let him give it to

  Jenny himself. She'd never forgive us if we didn't." And she'd be right,

  she added, silently. What can I have been thinking of, to be so scared?

  Geoff wilted. He could have shot Martha a venomous glance, but he didn't.