Brian Stableford Read online

  He just wilted. Those blue, unshaded eyes had knocked the stuffing out of

  him--as if, like Superman's eyes, they had looked right into his heart and

  shrivelled it with heat. "All right," he whispered. "If that's what you want."

  He was talking to Martha, trying to shift the blame---but it was the boy

  who said: "It is."

  "If you can hang on for two minutes," Martha said, "I'll finish icing the

  cake. We can all go up together." She wasn't ashamed of the cake any more.

  She knew that Carl Ulick wasn't going to look down on her because she couldn't ice a decent curve. She knew, too, that he wasn't going to

  flinch

  when he saw Jennifer in the flesh.

  While they went up the stairs Martha wondered what was in the box. In times past she and Geoff had had all kinds of options when Jennifer's birthday came round. They had bought her pictures to decorate the walls of

  her room, music to play on her stereo, textpaks to slot into her king-sized bookplate. Ever since she'd had her new eyes fitted, though, she'd been tuned into the Net.

  Now, Jennifer could summon any piece of music she wanted, and she could replace the walls of her room with any of a million virtual rooms--and even if she couldn't see them very well, that was far, far better than the

  prison-cell in which she'd lived for more than twelve years. Now, the king-sized bookplate always faced away from the bed, displaying nothing but the things Jennifer said, when she took the trouble to use her blinking eyes to say anything at all.

  Geoff had to open the door of Jennifer's room because Martha was holding

  the cake in both hands. She'd put a single lighted candle on it in the hope of making amends for the lousy icing. She intended to invite Carl Ulick to blow it out.

  Jennifer wasn't asleep. She couldn't actually look around when the door opened, but her eyes shifted in their sockets. Like Carl Ulick's, Jennifer's eyes were blue, but they were a brighter blue than his. Her hair was bright too, and the time Martha had put into grooming it earlier

  that afternoon hadn't gone to waste. Jennifer wasn't pretty, and the wasting of her nerves had taken all the life out of her flat cheeks and slack mouth, but she did have nice hair.

  Geoff should have introduced the visitor but he didn't. He just stood aside, unwilling or unable to rouse himself from his sulk. It wasn't that

  he was ashamed of the way his daughter was--he just couldn't avoid being

  infected, in spirit if not in body, by the fact of her slow decline.

  What

  the boy had told him hadn't made any difference; when be looked at Jennifer now he still saw a hopeless case. He didn't dare to hope.

  Do I? Martha asked herself.

  The lack of an introduction didn't matter.

  "Hello Jennifer," Carl Ulick said, shuffling nervously towards the bedside. "I'm Carl. I'm sorry I'm a little late."

  HELLO CARL. GOOD TO SEE YOU AT LAST. The words appeared on the out-turned

  bookplate with marvellous alacrity, red letters against a black background. Martha realised that Jennifer must have had them set up in advance, ready to flash at the least twitch of her eyelid.

  "Your mother's brought your cake," Carl told her, dutifully, "and I've brought you a present."

  But the cake's useless, Martha thought. Now that you can only take liquids, cake's just as useless as all the other things we used to give you. We can think of you while we eat it, but all you can do is look at it

  and weigh its worth as a measure of our love. She knew that she was being

  stupidly maudlin, but she couldn't help it. She blinked away the threat of

  a tear and concentrated hard on Carl Ulick's slender fingers as they

  tore

  the sellotape away, peeled back the burgundy wrapping-paper and lifted the

  lid of the white plastic box within.

  Jennifer was watching too. For the moment, her eyes were turned away from

  the great wide world of the Net, bringing the ordinary world into focus--the world where her poor half-blind parents were condemned to spend

  their relentlessly ordinary lives.

  The thing that lay in the five-inch box was less than four inches across.

  It was round and lenticular, like an oversized magnifying glass. Martha could see that it wasn't glass, though--it had a texture like jelly, or one of those silicone implants they used to implant in women's breasts in

  the days before cosmetic somatic engineering. It seemed to be some kind of

  fluid-filled sac but the fluid wasn't clear; it had clouds in it: ominously dark clouds, as grey as thunderheads.

  The boy set the box down on the bed and used two hands to lift the jelly

  up. His attitude was reverent and his hands didn't shake at all. Martha glanced down at her own burden, and the awkward way she bore it, but she

  soon returned her attention to the bed, the boy and the blinking bookplate.

  WHAT IS IT?

  This time, Jennifer had to blink each letter individually but the message

  appeared by swift and sure degrees.

  "It's a closed ecosystem," Carl said, glancing sideways at Martha to include her in the explanation. "You can get them in glass globes, with photosynthetic algae to import the energy required to keep them going, but

  this is different. These are all artificial micro-organisms, cooked up in

  a lab. The primary producers are thermosynthetic. Instead of soaking up photons they absorb heat from the environment. The soft shell's a wonderfully efficient conductor. If I put it on your chest, just below the

  neck, it will absorb heat from your skin. Your body-heat will become the

  motor of a little universe. There's nothing in there bigger than a single

  cell, but the organisms at the top of the food-chain are bioluminescent.

  When it's stabilised you can see them glinting in the dark, like tiny flashes of lightning."

  As he spoke the boy placed the lump of jelly exactly where he'd said he would. He didn't have to move anything out of the way; the intelligent mattress and coverlet that kept Jennifer's unmoving body free of bedsores

  required her to be naked, and the coverlet only came up far enough to hide

  her nipples, for modesty's sake.

  Jennifer didn't have to look down to see it. There was a mirror set above

  her bed, so that she could look at herself. She had insisted, and Geoff hadn't been able to talk her out of it. Jennifer looked into the mirror

  now with her bright blue eyes, studying the circle that lay on her sternum

  like an enamelled pendant, grey clouds set against the background of her

  uncannily pale skin.

  "You don't have to keep it on all the time, of course," the boy told her.

  "If you put it somewhere cool the whole system goes into suspended animation--a kind of hibernation." He turned to Martha, adding: "You don't

  need to put it in the fridge. A drawer will do."

  LEAVE IT, Jennifer said, as if she feared that Martha might ship it away

  instantly..

  I knew it would be good, Martha thought. Even though we racked our brains

  and couldn't think of anything, I knew there had to be an answer. Her eyes

  already give her access to everything there is to be seen, and her flesh

  is so frail that she can't lift a finger or even use her tongue to proper

  effect, but she still has blood in her veins and heat in her heart--heat

  enough to sustain a world in miniature.

  "The truth is in the flesh," she murmured. She was talking to herself, but

  everyone could hear her.

  NO. The word appeared angrily red on said Jennifer's bookplate. The device

  added, letter by letter: NOT TRUTH. NOT ME.

  Martha knew that her acute embarrassment must be showing. The candle-flame

  flickere
d as her hands shook.

  "What Jennifer means," Carl Ulick said, softly, "is that truth is in the

  senses. Truth is in what you see and hear, and how you interpret it.

  Warmth is in the flesh."

  It was Geoff who asked: "Do you like the present, Jenny?"

  YES, the bookplate flashed. WEAR IT ALWAYS. WANT TO SEE THE LIGHT.

  "Me too," said Geoff.

  "You'll have to wait a while," Carl Ulick advised. "Give it a couple of hours, then switch off the lights. When your eyes have adjusted to the dark, you'll see the sparks. It's beautiful."

  "I baked you a cake," Martha said, as she came forward to join the boy.

  "I'm sorry about the icing. I just can't seem to steady my hands any more.

  I'll put some icing in the blender later, so that you can taste it.

  Would

  you like Carl to blow out the candle?"

  YES.

  Carl blew out the candle. He opened his mouth to say something else but he

  stopped when he saw the bookplate's screen flicker into life again.

  I LOVE YOU, Jennifer spelt out, one red letter at a time.

  Carl was, after all, a fourteen-year-old boy. He couldn't take that kind

  of declaration with equanimity. Like a perfect fool--a gloriously perfect

  fool--he turned to Martha and said: "She means you." He meant I told

  you

  so--and so he had. Not that Martha had every doubted that her daughter would love her parents, if she could. All that Martha had doubted was that

  her daughter was still capable of love, now that her frail flesh had become so pale, so nearly dead.

  Jennifer had set the message to repeat.

  I LOVE YOU, the screen said. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU.

  Martha wasn't about to object to Carl Ulick's heroic attempt to include them in Jennifer's fulsome thanks, and neither was Geoff. Geoff wasn't quite magnanimous enough to suggest aloud that the message might have been

  meant to include all of them, but that was only because he was too busy pausing. He knew well enough what Jennifer meant.

  Carl Ulick's face was as crimson as the letters. His confusion was a joy

  to behold--but he was pleased. He was certain that he'd done the right thing, delighted that he'd had the guts to follow through. Martha knew that even Geoff must be relieved, by now, that he hadn't managed to deflect the boy from his purpose.

  Martha also knew, and was very glad she knew, that it didn't matter in the

  least who Jennifer's words were intended for.

  The important thing--the only important thing--was that she was able to mean what she said.

  © Brian Stableford 1997, 2000

  This story first appeared in Stephen McClelland (ed.), Future Histories (Horizon House / Nokia, 1997).

  Elsewhere in infinity plus:

  nonfiction - Inherit the Earth reviewed by Nick Gevers; Year Zero reviewed by Keith Brooke.

  Elsewhere on the web:

  Brian Stableford at Amazon (US) and at the Internet Bookshop (UK).

  The Brian Stableford website, maintained by Ian Braidwood.

  Find out about Brian's novel Year Zero, published in June 2000 by Sarob

  SF&F.

  Brian Stableford interviewed by John Kenny for Albedo One, 1997.

  Brian's ISFDB bibliography.

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