Forever Peace (14 page)

"When Portobello freezes over."

"Did they say when she'd be released?" Marty asked.

"No. Neurologist sees her in the morning. She'll call me."

"Better have her call Hayes, too. I told him everything was going to be all right, but he's nervous."

"He's nervous."

"He's known her longer than you have," Franklin said quietly. So had he and Marty.

"So did you see any Guadalajara?" Reza asked. "Fleshpots?"

"No. Just wandered around a little. Didn't get into the old city or out to T-town, what do they call it?"

"Tlaquepaque," Reza said. "I spent an eventful week there one day."

"How long have you and Blaze been together?" Franklin asked. "If you don't mind my asking."

"Together" probably wasn't the word he was searching for. "We've been close for three years. Friends a couple of years before that."

"Blaze was his adviser," Marty said.

"Doctoral?"

"Post-doc," I said.

"That's right," Franklin said with a small smile. "You came from Harvard." Only an Eli could say that with a trace of pity, Julian mused.

"Now you're supposed to ask me whether my intentions are honorable. The answer is we have no intentions. Not until I get out of service."

"And how long is that?"

"Unless the war ends, about five years."

"Blaze will be fifty."

"Fifty-two, actually. I'll be thirty-seven. Maybe that bothers you more than it does us."

"No," he said. "It might bother Marty."

Marty gave him a hard look. "What have you been drinking?"

"The usual." Franklin displayed the bottom of his empty teacup. "How long has it been?"

"I only want the best for both of you," Marty said to me. "You know that."

"Eight years, nine?"

"Good God, Franklin. Were you a terrier in a former life?" Marty shook his head as if to clear it. "That was over long before Julian joined the department"

The waiter sidled over with the wine and three glasses. Sensing tension, he poured as slowly as was practical. We all watched him in silence. "So," Reza said, "how 'bout them Oilers?"

THE NEUROLOGIST WHO CAME to see Amelia the next morning was too young to have an advanced degree in anything. He had a goatee and bad skin. For half an hour, he asked her the same simple questions over and over.

"When and where were you born?"

"August 12, 1996. Sturbridge, Massachusetts."

"What was your mother's name?"

"Jane O'Banian Harding."

"Where did you go to grade school?"

"Nathan Hale Elementary, Roxbury."

He paused. "Last time you said Breezewood. In Sturbridge."

She took a deep breath and let it out. "We moved to Roxbury in '04. Maybe '05."

"Ah. And high school?"

"Still O'Bryant. John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science."

"That's in Sturbridge?"

"No, Roxbury! I went to middle school in Roxbury, too. You haven't—"

"What was your mother's maiden name?"

"O'Banian."

He made a long note in his notebook. "All right. Stand up."

"What?"

"Get out of bed, please. Stand up."

Amelia sat up and cautiously put her feet on the floor.

She took a couple of shaky steps and reached back to hold the gown closed.

"Are you dizzy?"

"A little. Of course."

"Raise your arms, please." She did, and the back of the gown fell open.

"Nice bottom, sweetheart," croaked the old lady in the bed next to her.

"Now I want you to close your eyes and slowly bring your fingertips together." She tried and missed; she opened her eyes and saw that she had missed by more than an inch.

"Try it again," he said. This time the two fingers grazed.

He wrote a couple of words in the notebook. "All right. You're free to go now."

"What?"

"You're released. Take your ration card to the checkout desk on your way out."

"But... don't I get to see a doctor?"

He reddened. "You don't think I'm a doctor?"

"No. Are you?"

"I'm qualified to release you. You're released." He turned and walked away.

"What about my clothes? Where are my clothes?" He shrugged and disappeared out the door.

"Try the cabinet there, sweetheart." Amelia checked all the cabinets, moving with creaky slowness. There were neat stacks of linen and gowns, but no trace of the leather suitcase she'd taken to Guadalajara.

"Likely somebody took 'em," another old lady said. "Likely that black boy."

Of course, she suddenly remembered: she'd asked Julian to take it home. It was valuable, handmade, and there was no place here where it would have been secure.

What other little things had she forgotten? The John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science was on New Dudley. Her office at the lab was 12-344. What was Julian's phone number? Eight.

She retrieved her toiletry kit from the bathroom and got the miniphone out of it. It had a toothpaste smear on the punch-plate. She cleaned it with a corner of her sheet and sat on the bed and punched #-08.

"Mr. Class is in class," the phone said. "Is this an emergency?"

"No. Message." She paused. "Darling, bring me something to wear. I've been released." She set the phone down and reached back and felt the cool metal disk at the base of her skull. She wiped away sudden tears and muttered "Shit."

A big square female nurse rolled in a gurney with a shriveled little Chinese woman on it. "What's the story here?" she said. "This bed is supposed to be vacant."

Amelia started laughing. She put her kit and the Chandler book under her arm and held her gown closed with the other hand and walked out into the corridor.

IT TOOK ME A while to track Amelia down. Her room was full of querulous old women who either clammed up or gave me false information. Of course she was at Accounts Receivable. She didn't have to pay anything for the medical attention or room, but her two inedible meals had been catered, since she hadn't requested otherwise.

That may have been the last straw. When I brought in her clothes she just shrugged off the pale blue hospital gown. She didn't have anything on underneath. There were eight or ten people in the waiting room.

I was thunderstruck. My dignified Amelia?

The receptionist was a young man with ringlets. He stood up. "Wait! You ... you can't do that!"

"Watch me." She put on the blouse first, and took her time buttoning it. "I was kicked out of my room. I don't have anyplace to —"

"Amelia —" She ignored me.

"Go to the ladies' room! Right now!"

"Thank you, no." She tried to stand on one foot and put a sock on, but teetered and almost fell over. I gave her an arm. The audience was respectfully quiet.

"I'm going to call a guard."

"No you're not." She strode over to him, in socks but still bare from ankles to waist. She was an inch or two taller and stared down at him. He stared down, too, looking as if he'd never had a triangle of pubic hair touch his desktop before. "I'll make a scene," she said quietly. "Believe me."

He sat down, his mouth working but no words coming out. She stepped into her pants and slippers, picked up the gown and threw it into the 'cycler.

"Julian, I don't like this place." She offered her arm. "Let's go bother someone else." The room was quiet until we were well out into the corridor, and then there was a sudden explosion of chatter. Amelia stared straight ahead and smiled.

"Bad day?"

"Bad place." She frowned. "Did I just do what I think I did?"

I looked around and whispered, "This is Texas. Don't you know it's against the law to show your ass to a black man?"

"I'm always forgetting that." She smiled nervously and hugged my arm. "I'll write you every day from prison."

There was a cab waiting. We got in fast and Amelia gave it my address. "That's where my bag is, right?"

"Yeah ... but I could bring it over." My place was a mess. "I'm not exactly ready for polite company."

"I'm not exactly company." She rubbed her eyes. "Certainly not polite."

In fact, the place had been a mess when I went to Portobello two weeks earlier, and I hadn't had time to do anything but add to it. We entered a one-room disaster area, ten meters by five of chaos: stacks of papers and readers on every horizontal surface, including the bed; a pile of clothes in one corner aesthetically balanced by a pile of dishes in the sink. I'd forgotten to turn off the coffeepot when I'd gone to school, so a bitter smell of burnt coffee added to the general mustiness.

She laughed. "You know, this is even worse than I expected?" She'd only been here twice and both times I'd been forewarned.

"I know. I need a woman around the place."

"No. You need about a gallon of gasoline and a match." She looked around and shook her head. "Look, we're out in the open. Let's just move in together."

I was still trying to cope with the striptease. "Uh ... there's really not enough room...."

"Not here." She laughed. "My place. And we can file for a two-bedroom."

I cleared off a chair and steered her to it. She sat down warily.

"Look. You know how much I'd like to move in with you. It's not as if we hadn't talked about it."

"So? Let's do it."

"No ... let's not make any decisions now. Not for a couple of days."

She looked past me, out the window over the sink. "I, you think I'm crazy."

"Impulsive." I sat down on the floor and stroked her arm.

"It is strange for me, isn't it?" She closed her eyes and kneaded her forehead. "Maybe I'm still medicated."

I hoped that was it. "I'm sure that's all it is. You need a couple of days' more rest."

"What if they botched the operation?"

"They didn't. You wouldn't be walking and talking."

She patted my hand, still looking abstracted. "Yeah, sure. You have some juice or something?"

I found some white grape juice in the refrigerator and poured us each a small glass. I heard a zipper and turned around, but it was only her leather suitcase.

I brought her drink over. She was staring intently, slowly picking through the contents of the suitcase. "Think something might be missing?"

She took the drink and set it down. "Oh, no. Or maybe. Mainly I'm just checking my memory. I do remember packing. The trip down. Talking to Dr., um, Spencer." She backed up two steps, felt behind her, and sat down slowly on the bed.

"Then the blur—you know, I was sort of awake when they operated. I could see lots of lights. My chin and face were in a padded frame."

I sat down with her. "I remember that from my own installation. And the drill sound."

"And the smell. You know you're smelling your own skull being sawed open. But you don't care."

"Drugs," I said.

"That's part of it. Also looking forward to it." Well, not in my case. "I could hear them talking, the doctor and some woman."

"What about?"

"It was Spanish. They were talking about her boyfriend and ... shoes or something. Then everything went black. I guess it went white, then black."

"I wonder if that was before or after they put the jack in."

"It was after, definitely after. They call it a bridge, right?"

"From French, yeah: pont mental."

"I heard him say that — ahora, el puente — and then they pressed really hard. I could feel it on my chin, on the cushion."

"You remember a lot more than I did."

"That was about it, though. The boyfriend and the shoes and then click. The next thing I knew, I was lying in bed, unable to move or speak."

"That must have been terrifying."

She frowned, remembering. "Not really. It was like an enormous ... lassitude, numbness. As if I could move my arms and legs, or speak, if I really had to. But the effort would have been tremendous. That was probably mood drugs, too, to keep me from panicking.

"They kept moving my arms and legs around and shouting nonsense at me. It was probably English, and I just couldn't decipher their accents, in my condition."

She gestured and I handed her the grape juice. She sipped. "If I remember this right... I was really, really annoyed that they wouldn't just go away and let me lie in peace. But I didn't say anything, because I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of hearing me complain. It's an odd thing to remember. I was really being infantile."

"They didn't try the jack?"

She got a faraway look. "No ... Dr. Spencer told me about that later. In my condition it was better to wait and have the first time be with someone I knew. Seconds count, he explained that to you?"

I nodded. "Exponential increase in the number of neural connections."

"So I lay in a darkened room then, for a long time; lost track of time, I suppose. Then all the things that happened before we... we jacked, I thought it was a dream. Everything was suddenly flooded with light and a couple of people lifted me and bit me on the wrists— the IVs—and then we were floating from room to room."

"Riding a gurney."

She nodded. "It really felt like levitation, though—I remember thinking, 'I'm dreaming,' and resolving to enjoy it. An image of Marty floated by, asleep in a chair, and I accepted that as part of the dream. Then you and Dr. Spencer appeared—okay, you were in the dream, too.

"Then it was all suddenly real." She rocked back and forth, remembering the instant we jacked. "No, not real. Intense. Confusing."

"I remember," I said. "The double vision, seeing yourself. You didn't recognize yourself at first."

"And you told me most people don't. I mean you told me in one word, somehow, or no words. Then it all snapped into focus, and we were ..." She nodded rhythmically, biting her lower lip. "We were all the same. We were one ... thing."

She took my right hand in both of hers. "And then we had to talk to the doctor. And he said we couldn't, he wouldn't let us ..." She lifted my hand to her breast, the way it had been that last moment, and leaned forward. But she didn't kiss me. She put her chin on my shoulder and whispered, voice cracking: "We'll never have that again?"

I automatically tried to feed her a gestalt, the way you do jacked, about how she might be able to try again in a few years, about Marty having her data, about the partial re-establishment of neuron connection so we might try, we might try; and a fraction of a second later I realized no, we weren't connected; she can only hear something if I say it.