Man or Machine: 2 (Body Electric) (8 page)

Hal swirled the wine in his glass. He took a sip, savoring it. “And this is the crux of it, isn’t it? This is what’s been driving you crazy?”

Ilsa got up. “Red probably left dessert around here somewhere.” She found two bowls and spoons near the freezer, and a bowl of fresh raspberries. She put ice cream in the bowls, plopped raspberries on top and brought them over to the table.

She should just stop talking to Hal and lock him back up. She shouldn’t drink wine with him and share ice cream and raspberries. She shouldn’t enjoy the sensuality of eating, the exchange of words and views over a table, or watching Hal’s hands as he held his glass, his mouth as he licked melting ice cream from his lip.

She should under no circumstances be talking about…

“Love,” said Hal. “The word freaks you out. You can’t even stand the possibility of the existence of something so out of your control.”

“I’m not freaked out by love. I love my family. I loved my father.”

“You love your robots.”

“Says the man who could type code before he could speak.”

“Says the man who still engages with the real world.”

“Says the man who broke into my house to steal my knowledge from me.”

“You’ve never invited me. Not once. Not even when we were seeing each other.” He shook his head. He even looked a little sad but who could tell if that was an act?

She slammed down her spoon and pushed her bowl away. She didn’t have much appetite anymore anyway. There were bigger things at stake than raspberries.

“You can’t sell what you’ve learned,” she said fervently. “It’s not even my knowledge now, Hal. It’s theirs. They should choose what to do with their lives, with the lives of the others who will be created after them. We don’t have the right to choose.”

“It seems as if you’ve made a lot of choices already about their lives and your life too.”

“I’m trying to teach them. I’m trying to do the best I can. And when they decide it’s time, they can leave to do whatever they want. They can sell off their designs if they need the money or if they want them developed. The ideas don’t belong to the Morgenstern family anymore. They belong to the robots. Please don’t make that choice for them, Hal. Please don’t sell your information.
Please.
”

He pushed his bowl away too. “I can’t promise that,” he said.

“Hal, you’ve got to understand that—”

“Tell me, Ilsa. Tell me so I’ll understand, because right now I don’t think I understand you at all.” His voice was low but it was angry, and it was definitely not an act. “If you wanted your robots to be human, why not make them so they can eat? Why not let them sleep? Those are as human experiences as having sex.”

“I—I didn’t—”

“You didn’t think? You expect me to believe that? All you do is think, Ilsa. And I respect your mind, I envy your mind, I worship your mind but
that is all you do
. You’re so scared of feeling that you’ve made yourself a tin man as a lover.”

Ilsa jumped up from her chair. “I did not—Dallas is not a
tin man
.”

“Is that why you left me? So that you could have a relationship with a man that you created, that you could control?”

“I don’t have control over him,” she said. She was trembling. “I don’t want to have control over anybody.”

“Then why did you leave me, Ilsa?” He was almost shouting now. The big kitchen echoed his words back.

“It was…I just felt it was over, that was all.”

“You didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face. You broke up with me by email.”

“It seemed the best way.”

“And then I hear you’ve quit MIT, that your apartment has been packed up and all your stuff is gone. You didn’t bother to tell me where you’d gone.”

“Hal, nobody can hide their whereabouts from you. You trace emails as easily as breathing. You knew I’d gone home.”

“I didn’t trace you.”

She blinked. She’d always assumed Hal knew exactly where she was. For the first six months, she’d expected him to turn up at their doorstep. Even though she knew she’d have to send him away if he did show up, she still felt daily pain that he didn’t.

Eventually, she’d accepted that he didn’t want to come after her. It hurt but it was fair enough—she’d broken up with him, after all.

But not to care enough to try to find out where she was, when it was so easy…

“You didn’t bother?”

“I can’t control you. I never wanted to. If you didn’t want me, that was your decision.” He still sounded furious. Her brilliant Hal, her clever man, passionate and intense. Pure intelligence and pure emotion in one body.

And not hers any longer.

“And then your father died,” he said. “You didn’t tell me about that either. I saw it on the news. So I got the message, Ilsa. I got it loud and clear. The one thing I don’t understand though, still, is why. Were you playing with me? Was I some sort of experiment? Or do you just not like people very much?”

“My father was sick,” she gritted. “He was dying. He asked me to come home because he needed help with his work. And his work was secret. So I couldn’t tell you.”

“Not even me.”

“Especially not you! You were the one person who’d understand it!”

She’d wanted to tell him. A hundred times every day, a thousand, she would wish she could ask Hal what he thought, bounce ideas off him. Share some of this burden of being her father’s only secret keeper, of being the creator.

A million times a day she wanted to reach over to him and touch his hand and feel his warm, human skin.

But the risk was far too great. She’d already lost her father. She couldn’t bear to lose anyone else.

“I didn’t have any choice, Hal,” she said firmly, to convince him and herself. “It wasn’t my secret to share. And it was more important than anything.”

“And that answers my question. That’s why you left me. I wasn’t that important to you.” He smiled at her. And this smile didn’t leave her breathless. It was amused and cold, the smile of the uncaring person he’d accused her of being.

This smile made her feel as if all the warmth in the world had been taken away.

“So we’re back to where we were before, Ilsa,” he said. “The information about your robots is worth billions of dollars. I know most everything I need to know to walk out of here today and start up manufacture. You’ve been hiding all this time for nothing. So what am I going to do with what I know?”

“You can’t just walk out and start building robots. The work doesn’t belong to you. We could press charges or sue.”

“And when has the law meant anything to me?”

Incredible how the Hal she knew could be erased just like that, leaving the person who’d broken into her house. The person who’d taken control of her lover merely to demonstrate that he could. The person who was trying to steal everything she valued and ruin it, while making a joke.

“I’m not asking you for my sake,” she pleaded.

“I know. If it were for your sake, I might have considered keeping what I’d learned to myself. As it is…” He shrugged.

“Then I have to keep you here in the house.”

He smiled at her again. Wide and cold.

“That is absolutely fine with me,” he said. “Baby.”

* * * * *

Red had already prepared an en-suite guest room for him with fresh sheets and towels and soap, a selection of paperback books and drinks and snacks. She had cleared the room of any electronic items or tools.

She had also put an old-fashioned, thick padlock on the door.

Ilsa escorted Hal to the guest room. He didn’t put up any struggle, just walked beside her in silence. She opened the door for him.

“Not going to tie me up this time? Pity.” He went in without a backward glance.

After she locked him in, she laid her forehead against the door and tried to breathe freely, in the way she hadn’t been able to since she’d found him in the house.

In a way she hadn’t been able to since she’d left him, two years and eleven months and four days and thirteen hours ago.

Distantly, through the thick door, she could hear him laugh. It was a bitter laugh. A laugh, somehow, of triumph.

“So,” said Cally at breakfast, “I hear you’ve got a man held captive in a bedroom upstairs.”

Ilsa nearly choked on her cereal. “Blue told you?”

“No. Blue’s the soul of honor. Red told me. She says you also have a hot, well-hung newbie robot to play with. You’ve been busy, sis.”

Of course. She hadn’t sworn Red to secrecy and Red automatically answered any question a member of the family asked her.

“I totally approve,” said Cally. “You haven’t been having nearly enough fun since Dad died. Or even before, as far as I know.”

“It’s not fun and games,” said Ilsa. “Hal Thomas is a technological genius and he’s here for espionage.”

“I looked him up online. He’s filthy rich, does security systems for half the civilized world. And sort of cute. Went to MIT at the same time as you, it seems. Red says you knew him.”

“He wants to sell the designs of our robots to the highest bidder.”

“So you’re going to keep him in a guest room until he’s too old and gray to care about money? Is that the plan?”

Ilsa had not slept at all last night. She’d lain in her bed, in the bed where she’d watched Hal and Dallas having sex, and despite the fact that Red had changed the sheets and bedspread, she swore that she could smell Hal. That she could feel his warmth still on the mattress. At about four in the morning she’d turned on the light and searched the entire bed, head to foot and under the pillows and everything, in case he had left a single hair behind.

He hadn’t.

She could feel him in the house too, like a disturbance in the air. A storm coming, ready to break. She kept on hearing him say how he wasn’t important to her. She kept on hearing the way he’d laughed through the closed door.

She’d loved him. And she’d realized last night, soon after searching her bed for the faintest trace of him, that her feelings hadn’t changed at all.

Even though she’d done her best to forget him. Even if he’d betrayed her by trying to steal her family’s secrets. It didn’t matter.

She still loved him.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with him,” she said miserably.

“If you’re not playing with him, it might not be a bad idea just to let him go.” Cally spread jam thick on her toast. “I think people should learn about the robots. It’s the first step toward getting them accepted into mainstream society.”

“But it’s also the first step to having them exploited.”

“I know. But the thing is, Ilsa, we can’t keep what amounts to an entire new race of people a secret. And it is a race, now that there are two of them.” She looked at Ilsa speculatively. “Is the new electric guy good in bed?”

I’m not entirely sure because I’ve only had sex with twenty-six percent of him, but he looked good when I saw him with my ex-boyfriend.

“Um…”

“Blue and I worked out a great way of sharing sensations if you need—”

“Don’t worry. I’ve figured it out.”

Cally nodded. “Can I give you a word of warning though, little sis?”

“Call the police about Hal. I know.”

“No, it’s about the new guy. I can see why you’d choose to have a robot lover. You’ve always been more comfortable with technology than people. My total opposite, until I got it together with Blue.” Cally’s expression went a little dreamy, as if she were remembering something particularly good. “But it’s not all binary, sis. The whole point of a robot with a personality is that they’re unpredictable. You told me that yourself.”

“I don’t want Dallas to be predictable.”

“But do you want him to be safe?”

Ilsa didn’t answer. Cally glanced at her watch and got up. “I’m going to be late for work again.” By the door, though, she paused. “You named him
Dallas
?”

“He named himself Dallas.”

Cally laughed. “Okay. Let me know if you need any help with him, Ilsa? Or the spy dude?”

For a moment, Ilsa was tempted to confide in her sister. To tell her about her true relationship with Hal, about how she felt as if her heart had been wrung apart since he’d appeared. About how her body felt as if it were in heat. About how nothing was safe anymore.

“Okay,” she said instead. “And I’ll introduce you to Dallas.”

“Blue will be happy to have a new buddy. And there’s something else that’s good about this.”

“What’s that?”

“It’ll really piss off our dear brother when he gets back.”

* * * * *

She and Blue walked around the perimeter of the property and the house to see if they could spot how Hal got in. There was no physical trace and he hadn’t left an electronic trace either. He could have been hiding for minutes or hours before they found him.

She went to the workshop and spent most of the day updating their network security systems, knowing all the time it was probably futile. It wasn’t her strongest point, and besides, there wasn’t a security system invented that Hal couldn’t breach. Although Ilsa had scrupulously avoided any information about him since she’d left him, Cally’s news about how he made his money made total sense.