Whatever else had gone wrong with society a century hence, there seemed to have been a profound collapse in moral judgment, a triumph of fascist thinking that valued clones and human beings and machine intelligence equally—which was to say almost not at all.
The incessant drumming of the rain was like the relentless rush of time that washed away the days and carried all lovers—and hope—toward the same mortal void.
He said, “I’d be living with an assassin. One night you’ll come home with blood on your dress and call it wine.”
“No, I never will. I’ll spare you all knowledge of what I do. To intrigue you, I made the mistake of telling you about my work. I can’t untell it. But I won’t be in your face with it again.”
In an emotional vortex that pulled him toward despair, he said, “It would be madness to do what you want.”
He felt her stiffen at his rejection, but she didn’t remove her hand from his chest. She slid it to his abdomen. “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love . . . the only meaning.”
A not unpleasant shiver passed through David, a recognition of the potential of tomorrow in spite of the calamity of today. “That’s a quote from Thornton Wilder, from his novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Emily was enthralled by that story.”
Sliding her hand to his groin, Anna said, “Yes, I know.”
He was afraid to say what must be said next.
After a silence, he pursued his suspicion. “There’s a poem by John Keats that I like. Emily liked it, too. It contains two lines that are especially poignant. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all—’”
She finished it: “—all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
David met her eyes. “Love without truth isn’t beautiful. It’s not even love.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she took her hand away from him.
He said, “The memory scan you made of Emily that night . . . You told me that you learned what love is from her. She knew love is the ultimate beauty. Therefore, love is the ultimate truth of the world. You can’t love me and lie to me, not truly love me. That’s a lesson I learned at the cost of . . . everything. And if you truly love me, you’ll never make me live a lie.”
If Anna had been angry with him before, she had largely hidden it well. She couldn’t conceal her extreme displeasure now. “Don’t do this to me, damn you. Don’t be such a piece of shit. Love me like I love you.”
“You can’t insist on being loved.”
“Oh, but I can. I do. I fucking insist on it. Never think I don’t. I fucking insist.” She smiled to take the edge off what she’d said, but her smile was strained, manic, without charm, a crescent of insanity.
The two fans of his books who had become obsessed with him, who had taken actions requiring him to hire Isaac Eisenstein to provide security at his publicly announced appearances, both shared four characteristics. They were socially awkward. They believed that they were victims of an unjust society. They read his fiction in such a way that they were convinced he understood them and sympathized with them. And they saw his success as based in part on the exploitation of their victimhood; they believed he was writing about them, and therefore he owed them recognition, friendship, money, even love and marriage. One a man, the other a woman, they had been capable of violence, but neither had been a killer with “much experience of blood,” as was Anna, alias Maddison.
Nevertheless, David did not relent. “Maybe love can’t be fully understood from a memory scan. In fact, I’m sure it can’t. Now, please, Anna, I want to see her grave. And more than merely see it. I want to dig it open. I want to open the casket. I want to see her body. If there is a body.”
Judging by her expression, he suspected that with his words he had signed his own execution order.
| 93 |
Anna turned from David and went to the dresser and stood reviewing the photographs of him that were arranged there.
David waited, not allowing himself to hope, for it was human nature often to hope for the wrong thing, while thinking it right.
When Anna had been silent so long that he suspected her displeasure might be ripening into a darker and more dangerous passion, he said, “I love how kind you were to Calista on her last day. I love you for enduring so much suffering and not becoming the monster you were accused of being when you were a child. Regardless of what you might look like, regardless of what the hellish future has required you to do, there’s goodness in your heart.” He was not sure that was true, though he was willing to concede it. “But I can’t love you the same way that I love her. I love her entirely, her virtues and her faults, the intricate weave of her, every thread in the pattern that is the real Emily Carlino.”