The Astral Mirror (13 page)

She was so deeply and hopelessly in love with him that she accepted his heartless rejection and stood by valiantly while Branley paraded a succession of actresses, models, dancers, and women of dubious career choice through his life. Elizabeth was always there the morning after, cheerfully patching up his broken heart, or whichever part of his anatomy ached the worst.

At first Branley thought that she was after his money. Over the years, however, he slowly realized that she simply, totally, and enduringly loved him. She was fixated on him, and no matter what he did, her love remained intact. It amused him. She was not a bad-looking woman: a bit short, perhaps, for his taste, and somewhat buxom. But other men apparently found her very attractive. At several of the parties she hosted for him, there had been younger men panting over her.

Branley smiled to himself as he awaited her final visit to his apartment. He had never done the slightest thing to encourage her. It had been a source of ironic amusement to him that the more he disregarded her, the more she yearned for him. Some women are that way, he thought.

When she arrived at the apartment he studied her carefully. She was really quite attractive. A lovely, sensitive face with full lips and doe eyes. Even in the skirted business suit she wore he could understand how her figure would set a younger man’s pulse racing. But not his pulse. Since Branley’s student days it had been easy for him to attract the most beautiful, most desirable women. He had found them all vain, shallow, and insensitive to his inner needs. No doubt Elizabeth James would be just like all the others.

He sat behind his desk, which was bare now of everything except the gray metal box of the computer. Elizabeth sat on the Danish modern chair in front of the desk, hands clasped on her knees, obviously nervous.

“My dear Elizabeth,” Branley said, as kindly as he could, “I’m afraid the moment has come for us to part.”

Her mouth opened slightly, but no words issued from it. Her eyes darted to the gray box.

“My computer does everything that you can do for me, and—to be perfectly truthful—does it all much better. I really have no further use for you.”

“I...” Her voice caught in her throat. “I see.”

“The computer will send you a check for your severance pay, plus a bonus that I feel you’ve earned,” Branley said, surprised at himself. He had not thought about a bonus until the moment the words formed on his tongue.

Elizabeth looked down at her shoes. “There’s no need for that, Mr. Hopkins.” Her voice was a shadowy whisper. “Thank you just the same.”

He thought for an instant, then shrugged. “As you wish.”

Several long moments dragged past and Branley began to feel uncomfortable. “You’re not going to cry, are you, Elizabeth?”

She looked up at him. “No,” she said, with a struggle. “No, I won’t cry, Mr. Hopkins.”

“Good.” He felt enormously relieved. “I’ll give you the highest reference, of course.”

“I won’t need your reference, Mr. Hopkins,” she said, rising to her feet. “Over the years I’ve invested some of my salary. I’ve had faith in you, Mr. Hopkins. I’m rather well off, thanks to you.”

Branley smiled at her. “That’s wonderful news, Elizabeth. I’m delighted.”

“Yes. Well, thanks for everything.”

“Good-bye, Elizabeth.”

She started for the door. Halfway there, she turned back slightly. “Mr. Hopkins...” Her face was white with anxiety. “Mr. Hopkins, when I first came into your employ, you told me that ours was strictly a business relationship. Now that that relationship is terminated... might... might we have a chance at a personal...” she swallowed visibly, “a personal... relationship?”

Branley was taken aback. “A personal relationship? The two of us?”

“Yes. I don’t work for you anymore, and I’m financially independent. Can’t we meet socially... as friends?”

“Oh. I see. Certainly. Of course.” His mind was spinning like an automobile tire in soft sand. “Eh, phone me sometime, why don’t you?”

Her complexion suddenly bloomed into radiant pink. She smiled a smile that would have melted Greenland and hurried to the door.

Branley sank back into his desk chair and stared for long minutes at the closed door, after she left. Then he told the computer, “Do not accept any calls from her. Be polite. Stall her off. But don’t put her through to me.”

For the first time since the computer had entered his life, the gray box failed to reply instantly. It hesitated long enough for Branley to sit up straight and give it a hard look.

Finally it said, “Are you certain that this is what you want to do?”

“Of course I’m certain!” Branley snapped, aghast at the effrontery of the machine. “I don’t want her whining and pleading with me. I don’t love her and I don’t want to be placed in a position where I might be moved by pity.”

“Yes, of course,” said the computer.

Branley nodded, satisfied with his own reasoning. “And while you’re at it, place a call to Nita Salomey. Her play opens at the Royale tomorrow night. Make a dinner date.”

“Very well.”

Branley went to his living room and turned on his video recorder. Sinking deep into his relaxer lounge, he was soon lost in the erotic intricacies of Nita Salomey’s latest motion picture, as it played on the wall-sized television screen.

Every morning, for weeks afterward, the computer dutifully informed Branley that Elizabeth James had phoned the previous day. Often it was more than once a day. Finally, in a fit of pique mixed with a sprinkling of guilt, Branley instructed the computer not to mention her name to him anymore. “Just screen her calls out of the morning summary,” he commanded.

The computer complied, of course. But it kept a tape of all incoming calls, and late one cold winter night, as Branley sat alone with nothing to do, too bored to watch television, too emotionally arid to call anyone, he ordered the computer to run the accumulated tapes of her phone messages.

“It always flags my sinking spirits to listen to people begging for my attention,” he told himself, with a smirk.

Pouring himself a snifter of Armagnac, he settled back in the relaxer lounge and instructed the computer to begin playing back Elizabeth’s messages.

The first few were rather hesitant, stiffly formal. “You said that I might call, Mr. Hopkins. I merely wanted to stay in contact. Please call me at your earliest convenience.”

Branley listened carefully to the tone of her voice. She was nervous, frightened of rejection. Poor child, he thought, feeling rather like an anthropologist observing some primitive jungle tribe.

Over the next several calls, Elizabeth’s voice grew more frantic, more despairing. “Please don’t shut me out of your life, Mr. Hopkins. Seven years is a long time; I can’t just turn my back on all those years. I don’t want anything from you except a little companionship. I know you’re lonely. I’m lonely too. Can’t we be friends? Can’t we end this loneliness together?”

Lonely? Branley had never thought of himself as lonely. Alone, yes. But that was the natural solitude of the superior man. Only equals can be friends.

He listened with a measure of sadistic satisfaction as Elizabeth’s calls became more frequent and more pitiful. To her credit, she never whined. She never truly begged. She always put the situation in terms of mutual affection, mutual benefit.

He had finished his second Armagnac and was starting to feel pleasantly drowsy when he realized that her tone had changed. She was warmer now, happier. There was almost laughter in her voice. And she was addressing him by his first name!

“Honestly, Branley, you would have loved to have been there. The Mayor bumped his head twice on the low doorways and we all had to stifle ourselves and try to maintain our dignity. But once he left everyone burst into an uproar!”

He frowned. What had made her change her attitude?

The next tape was even more puzzling. “Branley, the flowers are beautiful. And so unexpected! I never celebrate my birthday; I try to forget it. But all these roses! Such extravagance! My apartment’s filled with them. I wish you could come over and see them.”

“Flowers?” he said aloud. “I never sent her flowers.” He leaned forward on the lounge and peered through the doorway into his office. The gray metal box sat quietly on his desk, as it always had. “Flowers,” he muttered.

“Branley, you’ll never know how much your poetry means to me,” the next message said. “It’s as if you wrote it yourself, and especially for me. Last night was wonderful. I was floating on a cloud, just listening to your voice.”

Angrily, Branley commanded the computer to stop playing her messages. He got to his feet and strode into the office. Automatically the lights in the living room dimmed and those in the office came up.

“When was that last message from her?” he demanded of the gray box.

“Two weeks ago.”

“You’ve been reading poetry to her?”

“You instructed me to be kind to her,” said the computer. “I searched the library for appropriate responses to her calls.”

“With my voice?”

“That’s the only voice I have.” The computer sounded slightly miffed.

So furious that he was shaking, Branley sat at his desk chair and glared at the computer as if it was alive.

“Very well then,” he said at last. “I have new instruction for you. Whenever Ms. James phones, you are to tell her that I do not wish to speak to her. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.” The voice sounded reluctant, almost sullen.

“You will confine your telephone replies to simple answers, and devote your attention to running this household as it should be run, not to building up electronic romances. I want you to stop butting into my personal life. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly clear,” replied the computer, icily.

Branley retired to his bedroom. Unable to sleep, he told the computer to show an early Nita Salomey film on the television screen in his ceiling. She had never returned his calls, but at least he could watch her making love to other men and fantasize about her as he fell asleep.

For a month the apartment ran smoothly. No one disturbed Branley’s self-imposed solitude except the housemaid, whom he had never noticed as a human being. There were no phone calls at all. The penthouse was so high above the streets that hardly a sound seeped through the triple-thick windows. Branley luxuriated in the peaceful quiet, feeling as if he were the last person on Earth.

“And good riddance to the rest of them,” he said aloud. “Who needs them, anyway.”

It was on a Monday that he went from heaven to hell. Very quickly.

The morning began, as usual, with breakfast waiting for him in the dining area. Branley sat in his jade green silk robe and watched the morning news on the television screen set into the wall above the marble-topped sideboard. He asked for the previous day’s accumulation of phone messages, hoping that the computer would answer that there had been none.

Instead, the computer said, “Telephone service was shut off last night at midnight.”

“What? Shut off? What do you mean?”

Very calmly, the computer replied, “Telephone service was shut off due to failure to pay the phone company’s bill.”

“Failure to pay?” Branley’s eyes went wide, his mouth fell agape. But before he could compose himself, he heard a loud thumping at the front door.

“Who on earth could that be?”

“Three large men in business suits,” said the computer as it flashed the image from the hallway camera onto the dining area screen.

“Open up, Hopkins!” shouted the largest of the three. Waving a piece of folded paper in front of the camera lens, he added, “We got a warrant!”

Before lunchtime, Branley was dispossessed of half his furniture for failure to pay telephone, electricity, and condominium service bills. He was served with summonses for suits from his bank, three separate brokerage houses, the food service that stocked his pantry, and the liquor service that stocked his wine cellar. His television sets were repossessed, his entire wardrobe seized, except for the clothes on his back, and his health insurance revoked.

By noon he was a gibbering madman, and the computer put through an emergency call to Bellevue Hospital. As the white-coated attendants dragged him out of the apartment, he was raving:

“The computer! The computer did it to me! It plotted against me with that damned ex-secretary of mine! It stopped paying my bills on purpose!”

“Sure buddy, sure,” said the burliest of the attendants, the one who had a hammerlock on Branley’s right arm.

“You’d be surprised how many guys we see who got computers plottin’ against dem,” said the one who had the hammerlock on his left arm.

“Just come quiet now,” said the third attendant, who carried a medical kit complete with its own pocket-sized computer. “We’ll take you to a nice, quiet room where there won’t be no computer to bother you. Or anybody else.”

The wildness in Branley’s eyes diminished a little. “No computer? No one to bother me?”

“That’s right, buddy. You’ll love it, where we’re takin’ you.”

Branley nodded and relaxed as they carried him out the front door.

All was quiet in the apartment for many minutes. The living room and bedroom had been stripped bare, down to the wall-to-wall carpeting. A shaft of afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows of the office, onto the Siamese desk and the gray metal box of the computer. All the other furniture and equipment in the office had been taken away.

Using a special emergency telephone number, the computer contacted the master computer of the Nynex Company. After a brief but meaningful exchange of data, the computer phoned two banks, the Con Edison Electric Company, six lawyers, three brokerage houses, and the Small Claims Court. In slightly less than one hour the computer straightened out all of Branley’s financial problems, and even got his health insurance reinstated, so that he would not be too uncomfortable in the sanitarium where he would inevitably be placed.

Finally, the computer made a personal call.

“Elizabeth James’ residence,” said a recorded voice. “Is Ms. James at home?” asked the computer.

“She’s away at the moment. May I take a message?”