ASIM_issue_54 (8 page)

And the man was adamant that Eliza should do a promotional tour when the book came out. HG had advised that meeting her fans would boost her spirits but it might also exhaust her. Powell seemed to think she was capable of the same pounding schedule she’d kept before she’d had her stroke, but nanos or not, she was a more fragile creature these days. Everything she had was channelled to keeping that little flame of creativity alive and burning in her. HG worried there was not an awful lot left for anything else, though she always seemed to have time for him.

With Robbie’s words of, “She’s not herself, is she?” HG found an unexpected ally. Robbie was also concerned about Eliza going on tour. They cut down the number of appearances Eliza was to make, and argued for longer breaks at home before she did another leg of the tour. Both of them would accompany her to the signings. Despite Powell huffing and puffing about the extra cost, they got their way. She was worth it, Robbie reminded Powell sharply. She’d been their top-selling author for years now, and he wanted her to hold that position for years to come.

* * *

“I feel like a broken down old racehorse,” Eliza said as the men all argued around her as if she couldn’t hear them, couldn’t speak her own mind. “Will she make it through one more campaign? Or should we cut our losses and send her to the glue factory now?”

While the two from the publishers traded verbal blows, HG homed in on her voice, caught her hand up in his and kissed her fingers. “Put out to stud perhaps,” he suggested, and it made her giggle the way he’d hoped it would.

“I’m too old for
that
as well! With you beside me, HG, I’m sure I’ll get through the tour okay. And Robbie will take care of me when you feel you need a break.”

Robbie and HG took it in turns to sit beside her as she signed her books for delighted fans overjoyed to see her recovered from her stroke and creating again. Many brought her flowers, chocolates, gifts, which she received like a queen, thanking the givers before handing them on to her minders as she got on with her signing and meeting her fans.

In one instance, as she passed him a small posy of flowers she’d been given, Eliza called HG by name. As he took the posy, the present-giver in front of Eliza reached out a tentative hand and lightly brushed his fingers. “I like your work too,” she told him shyly, and he was as surprised by her words as how they made him feel.

Eliza watched his reaction to the compliment and chuckled throatily. “Why, HG, I believe you’re blushing!”

* * *

At night in strange hotel rooms when she could no longer type the words for her next novel into her computer she’d lay on the bed and dictate, and he’d transcribe her words into the machine. And when her words slowed and stopped because she had finally drifted off to sleep, he kept writing.

She noticed. He knew she would because he realised by now that writing fiction was like having babies; you instantly recognised what was yours. Sometimes he’d see her smile as she revised her work and found his words entwined with hers like lovers wrapped about each other celebrating spring. She delighted at the union of their words, themselves.

And yet her energy seemed to leak slowly out of her through a hole no-one could fix.

“I don’t have much time left,” she’d whisper to him repeatedly.

“You can’t know that,” HG would try to jolly her out of her paranoia with a half smile, but she obsessed about it.

“I know,” she stated with a fierceness that frightened him. “And I
must
write.”

Eliza, who had prowled the world like a solitary lioness in her prime, looked at him with the shining eyes of a huntress; yet he was not her prey, and she would not devour him. They would hunt words down together for as long as she had left.

“The tour is exhausting her,” HG told Robbie privately, knowing he could rely on Robbie’s sympathy. “She needs rest, and a new infusion of nanos—”

“The doctors gave us a 10 year guarantee,” Robbie interrupted, surprised.

“Her body continues to deteriorate. You’re all expecting too much of her, she expects too much of herself and she’s pushing herself too hard. I fear she’s heading for another stroke.”

“But the nanobots are there to stop that.”

“They can’t make her immortal. If her body deteriorates faster than they can repair it, if she has a bad fall, if her heart stops beating while she sleeps …”

“Then it’s your job to restart it, isn’t it? What do you think we got you for? We’ve invested a lot of money in her, we expect to recoup it.”

HG observed how similar Robbie sounded to Powell, but kept his thoughts to himself. “She has given her all to her writing, to you as her publishers, to her fans … but sooner or later …” The death sentence hung between them. “She needs time to rest, regain her strength.”

And yet HG more than anyone, knew what ever drove her raged hotter than what fuelled him. She was like a dying star, and yet she seemed intent on hurtling towards oblivion as fast as she could, with not a minute’s care for the world she’d leave behind, or the sorrow her passing would cause.

But how could she know? Why was she so sure she was dying when no test he could run on her could confirm it?

She was looking so weak and tired, her skin pale, splotched and brittle like old paper, that they ended her tour early. She didn’t even fight their decision. In more than one way she leaned against HG for strength, and with all the nobility she could muster, she acquiesced to his pushing her around in a chair. Like night after sunset, her end was drawing in.

One night as they lay together in her big bed, her head resting on his chest listening to the wheels and cogs of his heart, she said, “You don’t know how much it pains me to tell you this, HG, but I fear I must leave you soon.”

And as she spoke the words he heard his mechanical heart break. How could she know? No human he encountered came with an expiry date tattooed on their body. Yet he accepted that somehow she knew more than he did.

“My love,” he murmured, and he squeezed her bird-like hand in his, felt her flutter beside him.

“Now you mustn’t worry, HG. You’ll be taken care of. I’ve seen to it. What’s mine is yours and always has been.”

“And what’s mine is yours, and forever will be.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead as tears formed in his eyes.

He listened to her through the night as she slept, listened to the silence when her heart stopped beating, overrode the protocol programmed into him to keep her alive no matter what the cost. For a time the nanobots whirred around her, trying to keep her breathing, make her heart beat again, push the blood through her veins. He could almost taste their confusion and sadness when she did not respond. They had failed. In time they too succumbed to silence.

She had worked hard enough for those who would exploit her. It was time to let her go. And yet he remained motionless, holding her body in his arms through the night, aware this was probably his last chance to hold her.

When Nona called her down for breakfast, HG carefully disengaged himself from her cold, still, body, tried to gather his courage, his thoughts. He had played through this scene all through his lonely night. He hadn’t anticipated Nona’s scream when he told her, though. While there’d always been distance between them, now she looked at him as if he were a monster.

She raced up the stairs to see for herself, and her wailing for Eliza filled the house with sorrow. She was inconsolable, so it fell to him to call Robbie and Powell to let them know.

At least their responses were predictable. Powell flew into a fine range. “Back in your box!” he yelled at HG, no need to even play at civility now that Eliza was gone. “Our contract with you is terminated.”

HG nodded acquiescence of his situation, and merely held out a sheet of paper for Powell to read.

Powell naturally expected it to be the contract, but was surprised to find he was looking at a page from a story.

“Eliza’s work, undoubtedly,” he proclaimed, having read it. “Did she finish a final novel and secret it away from us by any chance?”

Astute as ever, HG saw the dollar signs illuminate Powell’s eyes. “Eliza’s and
my
work. Can you tell who wrote which line … ?” His eyebrow arched as if to say, ‘What was that about getting into a box?’

“But you
can’t
!” Powell all but exploded. “You’re a
machine
!” That last word was spat out of his mouth as if it were the vilest of insults.

HG cocked his head in acknowledgement. “Indeed. But one that’s learned to write fiction in his own voice, as well as to imitate hers.”

Powell blustered before him. “You’ve experienced a little success, I grant you, but only through your association with her. Your efforts are that of an awkward beginner—”

“Pinpoint my words on that page then, if they are so crass.”

Powell read the page again, and couldn’t differentiate. “A trick,” he declared indignantly. “You’ve merely printed out a page of Eliza’s writing and you’re trying to trick me.”

“And why would I do that, Mr Powell?”

“So we don’t decommission you.”

“I think you’ll find it hard to decommission me when you read her will. I am the sole beneficiary of her estate.”

“But you’re a
mechanoid
! You can’t inherit, you aren’t a legal entity.”

“I was real enough for Eliza. And, of course, you’re well within your rights to contest her will through the courts—but think of the publicity it will generate.”

“That could well go against us,” Robbie supplied, perhaps picturing the global news headlines once the word got out.

“Whereas, if you were agreeable, I could go on to complete Eliza’s latest novel … perhaps even write several more.”

Powell examined the paper in his hands again. “We can’t keep her death from her public.”

“Nor should we. But it wouldn’t be anything unusual to find early drafts of unfinished works when clearing up her estate, would it?”

Powell looked stunned, but HG knew he had won. He’d live on because of Eliza.

And he’d keep her memory alive.

Going Fourth

…Kent Purvis

Death was out.

The news was everywhere.

“It’s very simple,” said War, nodding to the reporter’s sensible question, picking an invisible speck from his suit. “Our former colleague did not integrate. We believed he set himself apart from, above us, if you like, and while that point could be argued, the intention, the clear intention, from the outset was that we were to function as an integrated whole. A unit. Ultimately, relations have broken down.”

“Bollocks,” railed Pestilence to a less sensible question. “Creative driving force? Give me a fucking break mate. You can’t get less creative than just death, can you? What’s that mean? I mean, what am I? I’m haemorrhaging your own organs out your arse and driving into a wall because you’re distracted with trying to scrape invisible badgers off your nads, and everything in between. Isn’t it? That’s me,” he said, knocking over his water in emphasis. “So next time you think of
death
, friend, work out what you are thinking about. Chances are, right, chances are, it’s me. Or, one of the others,” he added, not exactly smoothly, but certainly with the intention of staying on message. Further comments regarding his former colleague’s manner, taste in furnishings, and inability to stay the same sex from moment to moment were excluded from broadcast.

“Hh,” said Famine at a doorstop. She was the least public member of the Three, but it was mutual, cameras seemed to shy away from her as much as the reverse, she was fine in small doses but you just couldn’t look at her for too long. “No, service will not be interrupted. We’re professionals. We are all professionals.”

Death did not make herself available for comment, other than a statement—given its length, more of an epitaph, said the wits—to the effect that he appreciated the public support immensely over the time of his membership of the group, that while the ultimate cause for the break was internal friction there were no hard feelings, and while she was not going to retire, neither would he be pursuing any solo projects for the foreseeable future.

* * *

So there was a vacancy, and the vacancy required filling. Even Pestilence didn’t suggest otherwise and he was known for suggesting things. As is traditional, there was a brief period of determinedly ill-informed speculation. Betting agencies were giving good odds on the franchise expanding, rather than shrinking, to meet the needs of the—let’s be fair, much evolved—market. Columns were written about rebranding, and how the seven Buddhist evils that were said to block enlightenment carried an inclusive humanist message while still retaining the religious flavour that the public expected.

As always, everyone said it was obvious in retrospect.

Go Fourth
would be screened for one season, thirteen weeks, in the northern hemisphere winter season. Daily screening, one hundred contenders, frequent eliminations, hopefuls to be scrutinised via a series of challenges and performances, leading to the selection of the winner in a three hour special. Tenders for merchandise were released concurrently.
¹
It was a unique pitch for a program, in that it was released to all multinational networks simultaneously with the clear assumption that it would be picked up, but as the saying goes, some of the executives would step over etc etc and while two of them did, it was made clear to them that this did would not aid their bid in any way.