Eating Memories (9 page)

“Your paintings . . .” he says. For a moment they stand in the hall very much like lovers, hands clasped and growing somewhat sweaty. He looks at her with a lover’s confusion, too. “I’ve always liked your paintings.”

“Thank you, Mr. Parks.” She slips her hand from his, her palm hot from his touch. “That’s more than my mother would ever say.”

She turns and makes her way out the door.

Outside in the sun she stops, confused. Two gardening bots are working among the flowers. With a sense of disorientation, she realizes she has been looking for her car. Her mother’s death has been a trip in time of sorts.

Turning aside to the covered, motorized walkway, she steps on and lets it take her to the station.

Two
stops before her apartment she gets off the tram and wanders into a supermarket. She realizes that if the bots working the aisles could show surprise, they would have. She feels conspicuous, as if her slip were showing.

Lou makes her way around a startled black woman with a cheap stained coverall and three children in tow. The woman stares at her with hot, dark, suspicious eyes.

I used to come here all the time
, Lou wants to say to the woman.
Mama and me. The grocery store was an outing for us. We could relate here, for the most part, talking about the breads and about the meats. While we were in the store at least we had a topic of conversation. Something that interested us both for a while.
But even though Lou walks within a foot of the woman, they don’t speak. The death of the supermarket, like the death of her mother, has been so protracted that there isn’t much left to say.

Going to the fresh food section, Lou picks through the produce. The oranges have a slick, nubbly skin; the potatoes are dusty and smell of earth.

I just think you should do bluebonnets the way they used to be, Mama says. I like to see them as if they were still real, the way your Aunt Penny used to paint them.

You used to take me every spring to look for bluebonnets. To me the ride was the most important thing. There were never any bluebonnets without cars to see them by.

They used to be so beautiful, and now they’re gone. It’s a shame to remember them that way.

Bluebonnets were only background, Mama.

Lou stands staring at the peach in her hand. With its heavily rouged cheek and yellow skin it reminds her of the way morticians used to paint corpses.

Dropping the peach back into its refrigerated bin, she turns down the next aisle and stops short. Red and white Campbell paper cans are ranged over nearly half the shelves. She remembers the ache of childhood fevers and the taste of chicken noodle soup. She remembers Mama coming in the darkened room like a sweet ghost

Trembling, she reaches out and picks up a can. The household bot will fix it for her, but it won’t be the same. It won’t be bluebonnets.

I want to go to Mars
, she thinks, with abrupt vehemence. The thought is surprising, but the decision, in many ways, is not.
l need to go there only because I’ll never have to remember Mars the way it was before. Or should have been.

The soup can in her hands, she walks to the checkout counter: The bot arm reaches out and clamps the can gently as the side of its metal claw scans the price.

“Five ninety-five,” the bot says. “Will that be cash or card?”

She looks across the counter. The voice has come from the side of an elderly liquid crystal screen which shows the total and the words, “IT WAS A PLEA URE TO ERVE YOU.” She starts to shake.

“Will that be cash or credit?” the bot asks again, very pleasantly.

It waits for an answer, its mechanical hand pushed forward to accept payment.

She’s sobbing now, helplessly, her shoulders moving with it. Her mouth opens in, an O of anguish.

“Is this a robbery?” the bot asks politely.

A childish “whuh-whuh” sound of misery comes from her throat. She wants to answer, but can’t.

After a programmed wait, the bot asks, “Are you ill?”

When she doesn’t answer this time, there is a quiet TING over her head. Having exhausted its possible responses, the bot has called a human. He arrives, looking disheveled and surprised. Apparently not much goes on in supermarkets anymore, Lou thinks.

She leans on the counter. A warm tear splashes out over her hand. She can hear the ugly sounds she’s making, but can’t stifle them.

Stop that crying, Mama says. Stop it. Everyone’s looking at you.

“Ma’am?” the store manager asks. “Ma’am? Are you okay?”

Here, baby, here, Mama says. Put your head right here. And let me see your knee.

The crying has made her feel helpless, the way being sick or hurt always made her feel.

Oh, God, Mama, Lou thinks. It’ll never be better. It wasn’t even any better when I was living it. For you it was the bluebonnets; for me it was only the ride.

A warm hand reaches out and takes hold of her arm. The man is very close to her now. He slides his other arm around her shoulders and leads her to a chair. “What’s the matter?” His voice is concerned in the practiced way Mr. Parks’s voice was concerned.

She wants to lean her head on his shoulder, but that wouldn’t do, either. That part, the child-in-the-protective-land-of-the-adults part, has been gone for a long, long time. Even if she marries, no one will ever hold her that way again. No one could ever be that big; and she will never again be that small.

Her mouth stretches wide and very carefully over the words, as if the words themselves are made of splintered glass. “My mother. . .”

“Yes?” the man asks.

She looks at him, but the tears make him a confusing jumble of light and dark, like an angel in an abstract stained-glass window. She thinks to explain the bluebonnets to him, but finds, after all, that was only one of the givens, too obvious to mourn. “My mother just died,” she says.

Author Note:
Whoa! Talk about a blast from my past! This was a very early story indeed. I see now that it is terribly sloppy in places; and as I reread it, I itched to rewrite the thing.

Still, it was fun to think as a paranoid. You know, a true paranoid’s sinister plots must make a linear sort of sense in order for the whole delusion to hang together. I believe that’s where this story shines. The protagonist sees everything as evidence of his wacko theory. Never mind that the protagonist, in the end, is correct. He’s still crazy as a loon, isn’t he?

I hear the kids sometimes. They’re the worst. But when I run to the cargo bay to look at them, they’ve climbed back in their little coffins and put that mummy stuff around their faces. I can even see ice crystals in the wrappings. Clever.

I tell Mike.

“What do they say to you, Danny?” he asks.

I watch him. “They don’t say anything to me. They’re ghosts. They talk to each other.”

“Those children are in cryogenic suspension. You know that,” he tells me. He also says, “Besides, there are no such things as ghosts.”

Sometimes I slip up and say stuff like that to Mike. I forget that androids have no imagination.

“You’re an android,” I tell him.

He looks surprised. “Why in hell do you think that?”

“I killed somebody to get here. What’d you do?”

Mike looks away. When he’s trying to be evasive he does that. It’s so I can’t look into his eyes. They don’t do eyes very well. “I don’t think that’s pertinent.”

“It’s pertinent if you’re here. My ticket was murder. I sliced somebody. I forget now just why. Maybe I was going to rob them. It’s been a long time.”

I look out
the window into space. Stars that I don’t know look back. I never thought much about the stars until I was sent here. I still don’t think much of them.

“How long has it been?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“If you’re an android you know.”

“Maybe I’m not an android. Maybe you are.”

I think about that, of course, then I go into the kitchen and cut my arm with a knife. Red stuff comes out. It looks like blood.

Mike doesn’t sleep much. Sometimes he lays down in his bunk and pretends; but he never shuts himself off. Mike doesn’t bother me, though. It’s the kids that keep me awake.

“Maybe I’m going crazy.”

“Maybe so,” Mike says.

“You bastard. You’d like me to think that, wouldn’t you.”

Mike pretends to ignore me.

“I want to go home.”

Mike was pretending to read. He was pretending to be annoyed that I was interrupting him.

“Take me home. I’ll be good. I promise.”

He puts down the book. “You should have thought about that before you made the deal with the judge. Now it’s too late. We’re almost thirty light years from Earth. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

“I can kill the kids,” I tell him.

He picks up the book again. “I know you too well. You wouldn’t do that.”

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think. I killed once, didn’t I?”

“I read your report. Sounded like a case of self-defense and a bad lawyer to me.”

“Are you my guard or my jail-mate?” I ask him.

He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t answer, either.

“Anyway, I’d like to see if the kids are ghosts or not. If I can kill them, then I guess they were real.”

Finally Mike seems mad. He puts down the book and stares at me for a long time. “Then I’d have to kill you.”

Androids take their jobs very seriously. They also have no sense of humor.

I go to my cabin and turn on the Tactile. The bar is smoky the way it always is. The woman sitting on a stool is a blond this time, but she looks the same: Too much makeup; too little dress. Her top is cut to the navel, exposing a pair of cantaloupe breasts. Her skirt drags the floor.

Bending forward, I bring my lips right next to hers. She smells like sweat and perfume. “I’m a leg man,” I tell her. “Can’t they ever get that straight? I’m a leg man. Who do I have to complain to around here?”

It was fun the first time I did that. Then I found out they don’t read.

“Buy me a drink,” she says in a throaty voice.

The bourbon makes my eyes water. The smoke in the room makes me squint. Off to the right I catch the sweet tang of marijuana.

“My place or yours?” the blond asks as she rubs a hot hand up the back of my neck.

I reach over to kiss her. Her mouth is soft as ripe fruit and she tastes of liquor and stale cigarettes. She disappears when I turn the Tactile off. I walk to the lounge.

“Don’t they have any better programs?” I ask.

Mike shrugs. “They have a whole library. You’ve been through them all.”

“You never use them.”

“I don’t get my pleasure that way.”

“What kind of pleasure do androids have?” I ask him.

He shakes his head wearily. “I’m a pretty good programmer. Maybe I can make you up one. What sort of thing would you like?”

“I’m tired of whores,” I tell him. “A nice girl would be good.”

Mike seems offended.

I stare down at his foot. It’s bare. The toenails are great. Very realistic. I’ve never seen Mike cut them. He has a brush in his room and there are blond hairs in it. They’re always the same hairs.

“I’d like to meet a nice girl,” I tell him. “We get married, raise a family. In this life, in this pretend life, I go into business. Something dull like insurance maybe. Maybe marketing. I got a son who goes to Princeton and a daughter who marries a doctor. We move to the country into a house with a white picket fence. We got a dog and three horses. Mary, my wife, loves the horses. She’s not much of a country club type, though. She stays home, takes care of the house and cooks me dinner. I come home from the office for lunch: Hot soup and a sandwich. Think you can make something like that?”

“Maybe,” he says and his voice is real quiet.

I get up from the chair and go to the back so he can’t see I’m shaking.

Mike follows me, anyway. “I’m scared,” I say.

“Of what?”

“I’m scared because nothing’s real. Time’s not real. I’m scared when I go to sleep because I sleep for a long time. They put a gas into the cubicle and I sleep for years. Then they wake me up so I think I’m living.”

“Who’d do that to you?”

I glance at him. “You would.”

Mike doesn’t say anything, but his eyes look strange, the way android eyes look.

“The only thing I can’t figure out is why you don’t let me sleep forever.”

“Maybe I’d get lonely.”

I laugh. “You can’t get lonely. You’re an android.”

For a minute Mike looks hurt. Then he lifts his eyebrows just like he was surprised again. “Oh, yeah. That’s right. I’m an android. I keep forgetting about that.”

“Maybe it has something to do with my sentence. Maybe I’m supposed to be awake.”

“Probably. Do they let lifers sleep their way through prison?”

I don’t answer. There are small blank spots in my memory, and the blank spots move: Bubbles in carbonated water. “You put me to sleep sometimes because you’re afraid I’ll go crazier.”

Mike shrugs and starts to walk away. “Whatever you want to think, Danny.”

I stop him by grabbing his arm. He looks around like he’s afraid or angry or something. “Where are, we going?” I ask him.

“A nice place. They promised us that. We spend our prison term in space, and when we get the kids to the new planet we’re free. They promised us that. Don’t you remember?”

“But why are we here? And who are those kids?”

“They’re going to colonate . . .” Mike stops, realizing his mistake. A strange mistake for an android. Maybe something’s wrong with his program. He laughs. His eyes don’t. “. . . I mean colonize . . .”

“I liked it better the other way. Colonate. They’re going to colonate a new planet. Me, they’re going to murderize.”

They’re going to murderize me. I can feel it. The kids talk about it among themselves.

“Why do you put me to sleep, Mike? It scares me. Don’t put me to sleep.”

He smiles sadly. His mouth is done good. After I eat I go to my cabin. Mike puts me to sleep for three years.

“How long has it been?” I ask him.

“I don’t know.”

“Time goes fast.”

“Time’s dilated with the speed we’re traveling.”

“You know what bothers me?” I ask.

“What?”

“I’ve been wondering why I’m here.”

He looks interested.

“They have you. You’re an android. You’re an immortal, as much as anything can be. You take care of the ship. I don’t do anything. They really don’t need me. I’m a murderer, after all. And I’m slowly going crazy. I can’t be around the kids when they get to that new place.”

It looks like he’s trying very hard to follow my train of thought. “So you tell me. What do you think you’re doing here?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m scared.”

“I think you’re already crazy,” he says.

When I go to my cabin Mike puts me to sleep for another three years.

I wake up screaming.

It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Mike upset. He comes over and puts his hand on my shoulder. He has a strong hand, a hand that should belong to a father or a big brother or something. “Don’t, Danny. It’s all right.”

“Oh, Christ. I’m so scared.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Of being alone.”

“I’m here,” he tells me.

I’m ashamed to cry because I cry ugly. Not like some people I used to know. When I cry, I blubber. Mike puts his arms around me and holds me tight, my head right up against him. I can hear his heart pound easy and slow in his chest. His body is warm. On the index finger of his right hand is a tiny white scar, no wider than a hair.

I tell him, “Sometimes I think something will happen to you, like your program will fail or something, and I’ll be here all by myself. Me and the ghosts of those kids. Can you die?”

“Everyone dies. Everyone.”

“Just don’t leave me.”

His warm breath lifts the hair on my forehead. “No, Danny. I won’t leave you. Don’t be afraid.”

He holds me for a long time, not saying anything else. When he takes me to my cabin to rest. I sleep for four years.

When I wake up we’re there.

“That blue planet. It wasn’t there when I went to bed.”

“We travel fast.” Mike says.

“How long has it been?”

Mike stares at me with his empty, android eyes. “Thirty-nine years,” he tells me.

Before we go down, I wander into the bathroom and study myself in the mirror. I can’t remember too well, but it seems like I haven’t aged. I don’t know if Mike is lying about how long it took, or if, when he puts me to sleep, he freezes me, too. I’d never know. I’ll never know.

He gets me into the landing vehicle. He knows how to fly it. They never taught me anything except how to work the Tactile and where to find the programs. .After we land. I wait a long time before Mike opens the door.

“What are we waiting for?”

He looks up from his instruments. “I’m checking the air. We don’t want to walk outside and get poisoned.”

“Right. How long has it been?”

“Couple of hours. I had to make sure of the particulate count, fungus, pollen. That sort of thing. I had to take soil samples with the corer and check for bacteria. So,” he says somberly. Mike’s always somber. “You ready, or what?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He opens the door. Bright, friendly light flows into the airlock like a promise. I take a deep breath. The breeze smells of rain.

We walk outside. It’s not Earth, but something like it. Trees bearing purple pear-shaped fruit tower over my head. I stroll a few feet. The moss under my feet is spongy. The air is cool and damp. To my right is a stream with neon-pink fish in its depths.

“Pretty?” Mike asks.

I take in a long breath, watching the pattern the sun makes as it lances through the strange leaves. It has been so long that my voice isn’t quite steady. “Please tell me. Is it real?”

“Yes,” Mike says from behind me. “It’s real. But is it pleasant?”

I start to ask if he doesn’t see that for himself, but then I remember he can’t. It’s not his fault. Androids can tell safe; but they can’t tell beautiful.

We’d been together a long time. Mike and me. He’d made me feel fear. At times he’d made me feel hatred. This was the first time I felt sorry for him.

On a broad oval leaf next to me cool globes of dew shimmer. “Yes,” I say as tears gather in my eyes and roll, sweet and hot, down my cheeks.

“Danny?”

I turn and see the pulse pistol in his hands .. He’s pointing it at the center of my chest.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says.

The world explodes into color. The targeting field makes rainbow auras around things. I hear the excited beep-beep-beep as the lock-on of the pistol finds me.

Then the beep-beep and the colors go away. I can breathe again. Mike’s hand is jerking up and down. His eyes roll up into his head. There is something very wrong with his program.

I hear the SHOMP sound as the pistol fires and the PLINK as the laser hits a boulder not a foot away from my side.

Mike stops shaking. I’m looking right at his face. His voice and mouth are sad. His eyes are empty. “I’m sorry,” he says. He’s not looking at me.