The Heart Goes Last

  And here is Charmaine, gazing up at him out of her blue eyes from a disembodied head. A photo of her is clipped to a stand on the table. He recognizes it: it's one with both of them in it, taken on their honeymoon at the beach, way back before any of this happened. He kept it in his locker.

  But he himself has been cut out of the photo. There's just a blank where he once grinned and posed, chest out, biceps flexed.

  A shiver runs up his spine. Who's been going through his stuff? Could it be that Charmaine has ordered up a replica of her own head and scissored him out of her life?

  Who to ask? He glances around. The operative assigned to Charmaine's head is on a coffee break. Anyway, what would the worker know? They just follow instructions. The order form is taped in place on the worktable; the expression checked in the box is T+H, with an added V. But the customer's name is inked out.

  Steady, he tells himself. "Who ordered this head?" he asks too casually.

  Budge gives him a straight look. Is it a warning? "Command performance," he says. "Ultra-special order. We've been told to be very meticulous with it."

  "It's going right to the top," says Kevin. "Not my type, personally - too vanilla - but someone up there must like that style."

  "The instructions are extra lifelike," says Gary.

  "We can't afford to screw it up," says Tyler.

  "Yeah, we really have to tiptoe through the tulips on this one," says Budge.

  Tulips. Tiptoeing. Kindly Budge with the pot belly is supposed to be his subversive contact? Budge, who looks like Charmaine's happy-gnome coffee cup? Surely not!

  "Tiptoe through the what?" he says.

  "Tulips," says Budge. "It's an old song. Before your time."

  Fucking crap. Spymaster Budge, confirmed. I really need a drink, thinks Stan. Right fucking now!

  X | GRIEF THERAPY

  HANDCREEP

  Charmaine sits in the back seat of the long, smooth, silent car. Beside her is Ed, who has just helped her into it, one hand on her black-suited elbow.

  "It's so good of you to come and collect me," she says to him tremulously. "In person." Her lower lip really is quivering, a tear really is trickling out of her eye. She blots it with the tip of her black cotton glove. That glove tip feels like a soft, dry rabbit foot, stroking her gently.

  She and Stan once had a rabbit foot. It was in the car when they'd bought it, along with a bunch of other junk. Stan wanted to toss it, but Charmaine said they should keep it because some rabbit had sacrificed its life so they could have good luck. So sad. The mascara, she thinks: is it running? But it would be crass at this moment to take the compact out of her black clutch bag to see.

  "It's the very least I could do," says Ed. He sounds almost shy. He pats her arm, a tentative pat that stops short of being too familiar. His voice is flatter and tinnier than it is when it's coming out of the TV, and he himself is shorter. She'd been sitting down the time he came to Positron and made that scary speech, and then complimented her on the blue teddy bear she'd been knitting; he'd seemed taller then, but she'd been looking up. She guesses he stands on a box when he's doing the important TV broadcasts about the tremendous progress and how they must all overcome the subversive elements. But right now, if you happened to glance in through the window, not that you could glance in because the glass is tinted, you would never guess that Ed is the big cheese of Consilience. The biggest cheese of all.

  Why are important men called big cheeses? Charmaine wonders; she needs to distract herself, she does not want to deal with the fact that Ed has patted her arm again, and this time his hand has hovered, then descended and remained, just below her elbow. You would never say big cheese about a woman, even an important one. And Ed looks sort of like a cheese, because of his slickness; the round kind of cheese with wax all over the outside that kids used to love. They used to trade for that cheese in order to get the wax. It was red, and you could peel it off the cheese and mould it into little figures, like dogs or ducks. That's what had been valued, the wax; the cheese was only an add-on. It wasn't flavourful, but at least it wasn't awful.

  Maybe that's what Ed would be like in bed, she thinks. Not flavourful but not awful. Something you didn't want that had to be accepted because of something you did want. He would have to be encouraged, he would have to be cheered on. Rapid breathing, false crescendos. Then there would be his gratitude, she'd have to cope with that. She would rather be the one feeling gratitude. Just thinking about all of it makes her tired.

  How far could she force herself to go, supposing it comes to that? Because it will, if she allows it. She can tell, because of the look Ed is giving her now, a kind of damp, sickly, pious look. Reverence crossed with hidden lust, but behind that a determination to get what he wants. It's a dangerous look disguised as niceness. First they wheedle, but if you won't do that thing they want, they get hurtful.

  Never mind, she tells herself. Think about flowers, because now you're safe. Except she isn't safe. Maybe no one can ever be safe. You run into your room and you slam the door, but there isn't any lock.

  "It is absolutely the least we could do," says Ed. "We want to be here for you, in your great loss."

  "Thank you," Charmaine murmurs. What to do about the hand? She can't push it away; that would be rude, and she would lose the edge it gives her. Not that she has the edge exactly, but it's an edge of sorts, as long as she neither offends him nor encourages him. What if she grasped the hand in both of hers and started to cry? No, that might turn him on even more. He might lunge, clumsily. She can't have him lunging just before the funeral.

  "You've been brave," Ed continues. "You've been...loyal. You must feel very alone now, as if there's no one you can confide in."

  "Oh, I do," says Charmaine. "I do feel alone." No lie there. "Stan was so -"

  But Ed doesn't want to hear about Stan right now. "We want to assure you that you can rely on us, on all of us in Management here at Consilience. If you have any concerns, any problems, any fears or worries you want to share..."

  "Oh, yes. Thank you. That makes me feel so...protected," she says with a little intake of breath. Fat chance she'd ever share her fears, especially the ones she's having right now. This is thin ice. Powerful men don't take well to rejection. Rage could result.

  There's a pause. "You can rely on...me," says Ed. The hand squeezes.

  What a nerve, thinks Charmaine with indignation. Making advances to a widow - to a woman whose husband has just died heroically in a tragic chicken accident. Even if he hasn't, and even if Ed knows he hasn't. He knows, and he'll use that knowledge as a weapon. He'll whisper her husband-killing guilt into her ear, then he'll seize her in his cheesy arms and stick his cheesy mouth on hers because she has committed a terrible crime and this is how she'll be expected to pay.

  If he tries that I'll scream, thinks Charmaine. No, she won't, because no one would hear her except the driver, who has surely been trained to ignore any noises from the back seat. And a scream would blow her edge right out of the water.

  What to do, how to act? She can't let herself be taken for granted. If Ed must be endured, she'll need to make him beg a little. If only for form's sake. It will have to be a negotiation, like asking for a pay raise, not that she ever did that when she had a real job, at Ruby Slippers. But suppose he's open to a negotiation, what could she get from him in return?

  Luckily the car is drawing up to the curb, because they're at the funeral chapel. Ed has removed his hand, and the door on his side is being opened from the outside, not by the driver but by a man in a black suit. Then her own door is opened and Ed helps her out. There's a crowd gathered, with that muted look - like stuffed cloth - that people waiting for funerals used to have back when funerals were still done properly around here. When people still had the money to put into them. Before dead people were simply cast adrift.

  Ed offers his arm and leads Charmaine on her shaky black high heels and her slender black suit through the clustered people. They draw back to let her
pass because she is sanctified by mourning. She keeps her eyes lowered and does not look around or smile, as if she's in deep grief.

  She is in deep grief. She is.

  QUALITY CONTROL

  "Down the hall," says Budge. "Next stop, Quality Control. Hang in there, we're almost done." He pats Stan's shoulder.

  This has to be a signal. Stan clamps down on his urge to laugh. This whole thing is crazed. Charmaine's head? Budge the spook? You couldn't make it up. He's finding it hard to take it seriously. But it is serious.

  Quality Control, says Kevin, is where they put the bodies through their paces before they attach the heads. It's to test the mechanical and the digital, says Gary, especially the writhing and the smoothness of the pelvic action. The space is filled with the motion of thighs and abdomens, like some grotesque art installation; there's a soft pulsing sound and a smell of plastic.

  "Waldo, you want a ride round the block on one of these?" says Derek. Stan reflects that, come right down to it, nothing turns him on less than the sight of a dozen headless, naked plastic bodies miming the act of copulation.There's something insect-like about it.

  "I'll take a rain check," he says. They all laugh.

  "Yeah, right, we didn't want to either," says Tyler.

  "They fix that smell later on," says Gary. "They add synthetic pheromones, and then there's a choice of orange blossom, rose, ylang-ylang, chocolate pudding, or Old Spice."

  "I'd say you need the head, at the very minimum," says Budge. "They stick them on after the bodies have checked out Affirmative. It's tricky, a lot of neural connections; all that work would be wasted if the body's defective."

  Stan looks down the line, to the far side of the room: it's like an operating theatre over there. Bright overhead lights, air purifiers. They're even wearing full caps and surgeon's masks.

  "You don't want any hairs or dust getting into those heads," says Derek. "It can screw up the reaction time."

  They proceed to Wardrobe and Accessories. Racks of clothes stand ready - ordinary street clothing, business suits, leather outfits, feathers and sequins and gaudy costumes; also rolling shelves, with many different wigs. Movie sets must have looked like this, back in the days of Technicolor musicals.

  "Here are the Rihannas and the Oprahs," says Kevin. "And the Princess Dianas. Those are the James Deans and the Marlon Brandos and the Denzel Washingtons and the Bill Clintons, and that's the Elvis aisle. It's mostly the white jumpsuit model they go for, with the studs and spangles, but there's other choices. The black with gold embroidery, that's popular. Not with the old ladies though, they want the white."

  "And this is the Marilyn section," says Budge. "You can have five different hairstyles, and in the outfits you get a choice too, depending on what movie. That's from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the pink dress; there's the black suit from Niagara, and over there is the all-girl jazz band one from Some Like It Hot..."

  "Where are these headed for?" says Stan. "The Oprahs. Are they that into Oprah, in Holland?"

  "You name it, someone's gonna be fetishistic about it," says Derek.

  "Our biggest customers are the casino operations," says Gary. "The ones in Oklahoma, but they can be puritanical there. Even though these aren't real women and so forth. Whereas, Vegas. It's whatever, whenever, and the place is knee-high in cash. The rust-belt stuff never hit there."

  "Not the upmarket venues, anyway," says Budge. "Shedloads of foreign tourists, big spenders. Your Russians, your Indian millionaires, your Chinese, your Brazilians."

  "No regulations," says Tyler. "Sky's the limit."

  "Whatever you can think of, it's either up and running already or it will be," says Derek.

  "There's a lot of Elvises and Marilyns there anyway," says Kevin. "Alive ones. So the replicas blend right in."

  "What's that over there?" says Stan. He's spotted a bin full of knitted blue teddy bears.

  "They're for the kiddybots," says Kevin. "They get dressed in the white nighties or the flannel pjs. They're boxed in flannelette sheets, and each one has a bear tucked into the package for extra-realistic effect."

  "That is fucking sick," says Stan.

  "I hear you," says Derek. "Yeah, it's sick. We agree, we felt the same when we found out about this product line. But they aren't real."

  "Who knows? Maybe these bots are sparing real kids a whole lot of pain and suffering," says Kevin. "Keeps the pervs off the streets."

  "I don't fucking buy that!" says Stan. "They'll use these for dry runs, they'll practise up, then they'll..." Zip it, he tells himself. Don't get involved.

  "But a lot of customers do buy it, if you see what I mean," says Gary. "They buy it like hotcakes. This vertical is a big earner for Possibilibots. Hard to argue with the bottom line."

  "Jobs are at stake, Waldo," says Derek. "Mega-jobs. Folks out there have bills to pay."

  "That's not a good reason," says Stan. They're all watching him now, but he pushes on. "How can you go along with this? It's not right!"

  "It's time for your trial run," says Budge. He gives Stan's shoulder a little nudge, turning him toward the exit. " 'Scuse us, guys. I've got it set up in one of the private test rooms. There's some things a man needs to do alone."

  Laughter. "Have a good trip," says Derek. Gary adds, "Heavy on the lube."

  --

  "Down here," says Budge. "Nothing much left on the tour proper, except Shipping," he says. "It's mainly carting the boxes around; they're all packed and locked by the time they get to Shipping. That's my department, Shipping. Want to grab a beer?"

  "Sure," says Stan. He almost blew it back there, over the kiddybots. And those fucking blue teddy bears. What pervert dreamed that one up? "How about the trial run?" he says.

  "Forget it. We've got other business," says Budge. "Tulip business."

  "Right," says Stan. Is he supposed to know what that means?

  "In here - it's my office." They go in; standard cubicle, desk, couple of chairs. Minibar: Budge gets two beers, pops the tops.

  "Take a seat." He leans forward across the desk. "My job is to ship you. You and whatever you're taking with you. I don't know why and I don't know what, so no point asking."

  "Thanks," says Stan, "but..." He wants to ask about Charmaine, about her head. Is she in danger from some twisted stalker? If so, he can't leave Positron. He can't just desert her.

  "No need for thanks," says Budge. "I'm just a hired gun, I do what I'm told. It's one of our specialities, people-moving." He doesn't look like a friendly uncle any more: he looks efficient. "Me, for instance. To get me inside, they tucked me into a box of torsos, along with the ID I'd need. It worked fine. But you're our first try at shipping someone out."

  "Who's this we?" says Stan. "You mean Jocelyn."

  "First off, your brother, Conor," says Budge. "We go way back. We did some time together when we were kids."

  "Conor!" says Stan. "How did he get into this?" Trust fucking Conor. Not that he does. He remembers the sleek dark car in front of the trailer park, that time he went to see Con. Who's the pay pal?

  "Same way he gets into everything," says Budge. "We got a call, we made a deal. We have a reputation for keeping our word. Doing what we've been paid for."

  "Mind my asking who paid you?" Stan asks.

  "Classified," says Budge, smiling. "So, here's the plan. We'll put you into an Elvis outfit, then into a bot shipping crate. An Elvis would be the closest to your size."

  "Wait a minute!" says Stan. "You want me to be a sexbot? You're pimping me out? No fucking way, that won't -"

  "It's only for the shipping part," says Budge. "There's not a lot of options. You can't just walk out of here. And they check every Management vehicle and match up the biometrics. Remember, even though they think you're dead, your data will still be on file. But inside the shipping box, and to the casual glance..."

  "I don't look like Elvis," says Stan.

  "You will when we add the outfit and the finishing touches," says Budge. "And it's not t
he real Elvis you need to resemble, it's the imitation Elvises. Not hard to look like one of them."

  "What do I do when I get there?" says Stan.

  "We're sending a guide out with you," says Budge. "She'll help you."

  "She?" says Stan. "The only women I've seen in here have been plastic."

  "The prostibots are just one of the solutions that Possibilibots is marketing," says Budge. "There's something even more advanced." He checks his watch. "Showtime."

  They go out into the hallway, turn a corner, then another corner. More framed pictures of fruits: a mango, a kumquat. The fruit, he notes, is getting more exotic.

  "Bots can't hold a real conversation," says Budge. "Even the best of them. Today's tech isn't there. But higher up the income scale, the customers want something they can show off to their friends; something less like, less like -"

  "Less like a brain-dead trashbunny," says Stan. What's Budge leading up to?

  "Let me put it to you," says Budge. "Suppose you could customize a human being through a brain procedure."

  "How do you mean?" says Stan.

  "They use lasers," says Budge. "They can wipe your attachment to anyone previous. When the subject wakes up she imprints on whoever's there. It's like ducklings."

  "Holy crap," says Stan.

  "So, shorthand: choose a babe, give her the operation, stick yourself in front of her when she's waking up, and she's yours forever, always compliant, always ready, no matter what you do. That way nobody feels exploited."

  "Wait a minute," says Stan. "Nobody's exploited?"

  "I said nobody feels exploited," says Budge. "Different thing."

  "Women sign up for this?" says Stan. "For the brain op?"

  "Not sign up, exactly," says Budge. "Wake up is more like it. That way there's more freedom of selection. The clients wouldn't likely want anyone desperate enough to sign up of their own accord."

  "So, they fucking kidnap people?" says Stan.

  "Not to say I'm endorsing it," says Budge.

  "That's..." Stan doesn't know whether to say evil or brilliant."Don't they - don't these women care about their earlier lives? Don't they resent -"