“It’s not quite believable yet.” That was all I could say. We embraced. I exploded the champagne, laughing softly to myself like a privileged madman. “Eternity is in love with the productions of Time” says Will Blake. “You have nothing to fear Benedicta; drink my dear, let us toast reality awhile.”
* * * * *
It could have had its funny side, too, the meeting between Julian and Io—I suppose—to an objective observer. I mean that he for his part had dressed most carefully, his hair was neat, his nails newly manicured; moreover he had developed a new and stealthy walk for the occasion, a sort of soliloquy glide out of Hamlet. He was at pains perhaps to disguise his fear? Whereas now I had more or less got on top of my own anxiety—the primitive terror that all human beings feel when faced by dummies of whatever kind, representations of hallowed reality: an Aurignacian-complex, as Nash might have called it. I was indeed swaggering a little in my new-found relief. Like a young man introducing a particularly pretty fiancée. I smiled upon my patron indulgently as I led him across the green lawns and down the long gravel paths, Julian snaking slowly behind me, rippling along. He had brought a small bunch of Parma violets with him as an offering. But suddenly he threw them away and swore. I think he was saying to himself, “My God! Here I am thinking of her as if she were real, instead of just an expensive contemporary construct.” I chuckled. “You will get used to her, to it, very quickly Julian. You’ll see.”
Henniker was in the room when we arrived. She pointed; apparently Iolanthe was in the lavatory. Julian seated himself with the air of someone taking up a strategic position, choosing a chair in the far corner of the room. At that moment Iolanthe entered and catching sight of him stood stock still smiling her soft hesitant smile with all its shyness welling up through the superficial assurance. “Julian at last” she said. “Well!” And walking across to him took both his hands in hers and stood staring down into his eyes with a candour and puzzlement which made him turn quite white. “At last we meet” she said. “At last, Julian!” He cleared his throat as if to make some response, but no words came. She turned triumphantly aside and got back into bed with the help of Henniker. “Henny, let us have tea, shall we?” she said in rather grandiose tones, and the older woman nodded and moved towards the door. Then Julian from the depths of a recovered composure said: “I don’t know where to begin, Iolanthe; or even if there is a place to begin, for I think you know everything by now. At any rate every bit as much as I know. Isn’t it so?” She frowned and licked her lips. “Not entirely,” she said “though I have made some provisional guesses. But now you own me don’t you? I wonder what you plan to do with me? I am quite defenceless, Julian. I am just one of your properties now.” His nostrils dilated.
His upper lip had gone bluish—like someone in danger of a heart attack. Iolanthe continued in a dreamy voice, almost as if she were talking to herself, recapitulating a private history to fix it more clearly in her own mind. “Yes, you were always there behind us, sapping us, sniping at us from behind the high walls of the company. How cleverly you disposed of Graphos too when you found he was my lover; I mean of course his career. He was very ill of course, that wasn’t your fault. And I kept expecting you to appear so that I could perhaps do a deal with you, plead with you, trade my body, even to save my little company, save my career. Nothing. You never did. Sometimes I thought I knew why really; I worked out reasons from what people told me about you—feminine reasons. Were they wrong I wonder Julian?”
The artless blue eyes, inquisitive and chiding, rested fixed on his face. He stirred uncomfortably and said:
“No. You know all the reasons. I don’t need to explain at this stage Iolanthe, do I? You haunted me just as much.”
He spoke gently enough, but at the same time I felt a sort of fury rising in him; after all, here he was being ticked off by a dummy for defections of behaviour towards an all too real (though now dead) Iolanthe! It was very confusing this double image. Moreover he could not lean forward and tapping her wrist say: “That’s enough now; do you realise that you are just a clever and valuable little dummy, fabricated by the experts of the firm? You are simply steel and gutta-percha and plastic and nylon, that’s all. So kindly hold your tongue.” He couldn’t do that, so he just sat still looking stubborn, while she went on in the voice of reminiscence. “Yes, when the production company failed, when Graphos died and when my career collapsed and I got ill, I expected some word from you—after all so much of this had been your deliberate design against me. I was puzzled, thought I might find some sympathy, some understanding of my plight. But no, you were out to smash me and take me prisoner. And now you have, Julian. But for a long time I dreamed about you: about how you would appear one day, all of a sudden, without warning. Yes, sitting just where you are now, dressed as you are, and a little tonguetied for the first time in your life by a woman’s love. You see, part of my fantasy was to imagine that you loved me. Now I know I was right. You do. Poor Julian! I do understand, but when Graphos went out the mechanism rusted, broke, and now I have an empty space where the thing used to live.” She gave a short and sad little laugh. “I grew tonguetied.”
“Tonguetied” he repeated ruefully, seeming somehow put out of countenance. They looked at each other steadily, but with an extraordinary air of mutual understanding. Then she said: “But not any more somehow” and a renewed cheerfulness flowed into her. “I have half recovered from that period and perhaps so have you. Now there seems to be something else before us—I don’t know how to put it, perhaps a friendship? At any rate something unlike anything I have ever known before. Julian, do you feel it too?”
He nodded coldly, critically. His face betrayed no emotion whatsoever at this somewhat extraordinary speech. Then she added calmly, with an air of simplicity, a Q.E.D. air, which was completely disarming, “I don’t think I can do without you any more, Julian. It’s more than flesh and blood can stand.” It was terribly moving, the way she said this.
“Of course,” he said softly, greedily. “It’s the loneliness. No, you won’t have any more of that, I promise you.”
She extended her long languid waxen hands and he got up to take them and carry them to his lips with swift precision, yet without any trace of deep feeling. I could see however that the strain of his first interview with Iolanthe was beginning to tell on him as it had on me; he was being slowly flooded by the same unreasonable sensation of gradual suffocation. Just like me. We of course were both conscious that we were talking to an experimental dummy; but she, unconscious as yet of her own unreality, was at ease and as perfectly sincere (if I can use the word) as … well, as only a dummy could be. What am I saying? It was an extraordinary paradox, for we were literally worn out by having to act a part while she was fresh as a daisy. One wanted to laugh and cry at the same time—how well I understood Julian’s desire to be gone! “Now there will be time,” said Iolanthe coolly “all the time in the world, to take a leisurely look at everything I have missed in my rush through life. Later maybe you may help me to rebuild my career once more; unless you think I am too old to act any more.”
He shook his head decidedly and said, “First things first; when you are quite well we shall see.”
“But I feel so well already” she said.
“Nevertheless.”
At this point Henniker produced the tea and I could see the proconsular eye of Julian fixed upon Iolanthe to admire the excellence of her tea-time deportment. His alarm had subsided somewhat, the temperature of his anxiety had dropped a little. Then she added: “In a way we were well-matched enemies … parricide against infanticide … no, that is not the way to say it.”
“What a memory you have got” he said bitterly, and she nodded, taking an imaginary sip of China tea. “Mine is as long as my life,” she said “but yours is as long as the firm’s, Julian.”
I was in bliss. A dummy that could forge repartee like this … better, cleverer than a real woman; because less arbitrary, less real, less feminine. And
yet, on the other hand, the little note of bitterness in her voice was very human, very feminine. If she were absolutely identical with Iolanthe surely she was Iolanthe? Obviously we must spend a bit of time to work out the differences between the real and the invented; but if there were none? Julian was talking again, softly, indifferently it seemed: “Well, you would not join the firm so how could I reach you—for I am more the firm than I am myself in a manner of speaking; what could I bring to you or offer to you that did not bear the fingerprints of Merlin’s? But you refused all my offers, you evaded me.” He paused to take out a cigar and crackle it in his fingers; but then he replaced it in his cigar-case with an air of irresolution. Her lip curled as she said with a tinge of contempt, “But now? I am broken and bridled am I not? The firm has swallowed my little company. I am your captive at last, Julian, amn’t I?”
At this a sudden little flash lit up both pairs of eyes, a sudden spark of fury, of antagonism, of sexual fury. I had not seen this look on Julian’s face before. Then she drawled with her most mischievous air, “I could come to you tonight, Julian, if you wished. Just tell me where and when!” He went deathly white at the insult but he eyed her contemptuously, his eyes glittering like those of a basilisk. He said nothing, and it was obvious that he was not going to say anything. “Just tell me” she repeated, and I thought she took a sort of savage delight in provoking his male pride thus; surely she knew the sad story of Julian—the fate of Abelard? Nevertheless she stayed there staring at him with the same expression of provocation on her face outfacing his silence, laying to discountenance him. He was absolutely still. But now I saved the day by putting in a word or two. “Now. Now. You are under Dr. Marchant’s orders Iolanthe. Don’t forget it please.” It broke the spiteful spell. She pouted adorably and said “I was only teasing, Felix; just to see how far one could go with Julian.” But she began to pick at the tassels of the bedcover with long painted nails. I did not particularly care for the note of insolence in her voice: I thought it might be a good moment to make our exit. I announced that I must leave as I had an appointment and Julian immediately elected to come with me; yet he seemed without visible emotion, visible relief. I kissed the warm cheek of my angel, and gave her fine fingers a squeeze. “Until tomorrow” I said, confiding her to the faithful ministrations of Henniker who stood at the foot of the bed smiling tenderly at her; the older woman was by now quite cured of her original fright and dismay. But she had overcome it in the simple fact of believing in the new Iolanthe—of believing her to be real! By some simple déclic of the mind she had abolished the knowledge of Iolanthe’s dummyhood and replaced it with a fully conscious belief and acceptance of her as a real woman.
We walked slowly along the gravel paths towards the carpark; Julian was sunk deep in thought, gazing down at his feet. “I suppose you have a set of experiments to subject her to?” he said at last quietly. “Yes. For the time being we are recording her night and day to study the general patterning of the memory-increment apparatus. I propose later to set her back into the Iolanthe picture by letting her meet a few of the people Io knew in real life—people like Dombey, her agent—just to see how capably she works.”
“I abolished the mate, you know” said Julian quietly. “I wonder whether it was right or wrong. You say she could make love this creature?” I said I saw no reason why not, she had the organs. “Of course, when she speaks about love and so on, you have to make a sort of mental correction in realising that the words are simply coded into a machine by an echo-master, and in the final analysis simply come out of a metal box.”
“I know,” he said “it’s weird. But she is so word-perfect that one wonders if she couldn’t live happily with a member of the human species, as a wife, I mean.” The chauffeur opened the door of the car for him but he still stood, shaken to the bottom of his soul by this interview and the possibilities it promised. “We must be careful not to feel too much affection for it” I said. It was easily said, I know. “But you are half in love with her already” said Julian, smiling up at me suddenly, and of course he was speaking the truth—I was mad about my own invention, like every inventor is. O yes I was. He went on slowly, thoughtfully. “And what sort of future do you envisage for her, for it? Will she ever be allowed out into the world?”
“Nothing very definite was worked out for her—we didn’t know how real she might turn out to seem; she might have been vastly more limited both physically and mentally than she is. The whole operation was done on spec, Julian, you know that. Now I think we must really submit her to extensive testing before letting her increase the range of her activities; we must think about her a bit as one does about a handicapped person, which of course she is, because she is only a machine, a love-machine.” I don’t know why I used that stupid phrase, it simply popped out. “I see” he said, frowning at the ground. “We can begin by bringing the world to her for a while; then if she satisfies every requirement, if she is fool-proof, we can gradually insinuate her into quotidian reality, so to speak; in the end we might accord her an autonomous life of her own, like any other taxpayer, lover, wife or dog.”
He hoisted himself slowly into the car, still sleepy with thought. “I will see her every day with you until I get over that extraordinary feeling of panic” he said; and then very suddenly: “Felix, if we wanted to abolish her it would be an easy matter wouldn’t it?” I jumped as if he had stuck a pin in me. “Abolish her?” I cried sharply, and he smiled. “I’m sorry; but one must think of every possible contingency mustn’t one?”
“Not that one” I said. “Never that Julian.”
“Well, I am in your hands.”
Slowly the car wound its way down the leafy roads. I betook myself to the studio to study the schemata that Marchant had worked out for the daily life of Iolanthe in these initial stages. A masseur who did not know she was not real had turned in a most interesting report on her body which made me swell with pride. That at least showed no particular anomalies in the disposition of the muscle schemes; he had found her musculature if anything too firm. He wondered if some predisposition to sclerosis might not be envisaged! No, in every way so far she seemed to be of a mechanical perfection that eluded all criticism. Every word she uttered was also being monitored, and playing through this library of speeches one could find nothing disoriented, nothing out of key. She had a fully grown organ of memory to fall back on as she lived her real life. Marchant had scribbled a note or two about his visits to the patient. She had proved very docile and co-operative. “Too damn real for my liking” he added sardonically. “I keep almost forgetting she is an It.”
So we embarked thoughtfully and I hope skilfully upon this experiment; but it was hard to shed the feeling of unreality which crept over us as we watched the perfected mimicry of her gestures, heard this highly articulate woman talking, arguing, even singing. It was a good ten days before we let her out of bed, but finally there seemed little reason to deny her the right to walk about her house and garden. Julian was away for part of this time, and I had to visit Geneva for a week. We took it in shifts to attend her levees. Nor did Benedicta react in any particular manner to my absorption in the life of this model—I had not really expected her to; yet her little speech in Athens had filled me with a certain misgiving. I felt that, like the rest of us, she would get used to Iolanthe, conquer an initial repulsion and panic, and come to accept her for what she was—an experiment. But I told her quite candidly what Iolanthe had said about disliking her, and asked her if she would mind waiting a while before risking a meeting with her. In the meantime the daily life of Iolanthe herself was being gradually filled in at the edges by designedly quotidian events. For example, we got hold of her agent and invited him down to see her; now, despite the fact that he was fully briefed about the doll, the impact of Iolanthe was so marked and so faithful to the original which he had loved that he passed out cold upon the carpet and had to be revived. He was revived, of course, but he was badly shaken. Naturally we explained this away as rel
ief to find her recovered from her illness. We tried as far as possible never to let her doubt the reality of herself—to make her self-conscious in the true sense of the word.
But gradually, inevitably, she began to feel a sense of constraint; after all, she was being pretty closely watched and monitored, and up to now had not been allowed to go beyond the garden fence. The excuse we gave was of course medical. But the minute a patient begins to feel better he or she is tempted to throw good advice to the winds. This aspect of things was a trifle preoccupying; but Henniker was always unobtrusively there to follow her movements. She reported the fact that Iolanthe had asked if she might go down to the village, and had shown some pique when told that Marchant had forbidden it. Later she tackled Marchant himself about it, and I must say I thought the reasons he gave sounded somewhat shallow if not downright shifty. “We are fighting a losing battle” I said. “She has got through all her tests so quickly, I don’t see how we can keep her locked up much longer without arousing her suspicions. Indeed it might be a good idea to start letting her out a bit, though of course someone will always have to be with her; she’s too valuable to lose, or to let get damaged.”
Julian asked to see her alone during this time, and spent many long hours in the house talking to her; I could hear him pacing up and down slowly in her room. Once I heard his normally low voice raised as if in anger; another time I had the illusion that she was shedding tears. But there was nothing much to be done. When I was in Geneva I opened a weekly paper and found a picture of the gambling rooms at Gunters—baccarat in progress; and there to my surprise stood Julian in his dinner jacket, shoulder to shoulder with a bewigged Iolanthe who was watching the play with great interest. As soon as I got back I rang up Julian and he confirmed that he had taken her out for an evening, with Marchant’s consent. “I can tell you something new” he said. “She has the devil’s own luck, computer luck you could call it. We made a packet. Felix, I want to thank you; I feel extremely happy. When do you think she can be declared absolutely autonomous, absolutely free?” I could not really think up an answer to this question. “It raises one of those bogies, Julian, and I think you’ve heard enough chop-logic about freedom, specially from me. How free will she be? How will her freedom compare with our own imaginary freedom? Goodness, I can’t answer you; the whole thing is still in the realms of pure experiment. But why should you ask? Are you in danger of falling in love with my little toy, are you going to ask for her hand in marriage?” Once again I had slipped tactlessly; I felt rather than heard him grinding his teeth, and in a low voice, almost a whisper, he uttered an obscenity. “I’m sorry,” I added vaguely “but the question just set me off on a long train of thought. Her precarious freedom against ours … but we mustn’t start taking her too seriously, Julian.” I had the impression that he gave a little groan. The line went dead. And that was all.