It is at night that faith in light is admirable.
Edmond Rostand, Chantecler
My master was a technician of some sort; he worked with computers, at home, alone
with his Borzoi hounds. He took good care of us; we were happy there, getting up with
him in the morning, running in the afternoons, at night curling up beside him while he
read to us in his wonderful, deep voice.
I think now he was probably one of the first to fall sick, but he still kept the routine up
with us. We knew something was wrong, but we didn't really know what. One night, he
made sure all our feeders were full, overflowing. He opened extra cans of food, left the
water in the sink running, and went to bed.
We fell asleep beside him as we always had.
But when we woke up, everything had changed.
I was the next to grow sick, and as I weakened, our food supplies began to dwindle.
Agrippa was the only thing that kept me safe, as I felt my body grow, and change, and
become strange to us both. But as my mind sharpened, I found my own ways of staying
alive. There were six Borzois. We were the only ones who survived.
After the change I spent months in his home, reading the only book he ever read: the
King James Bible. It taught me English, and to read, and occasionally the rich cadences
of the language still slip into my speech.
When they found Agrippa and I in the old house, they noticed I was immersed in the
Bible and took us to the mission. We stayed there six months. But now we are traveling
together, looking for the next place to stay.
It's already dark, though the moonlight is strong. I should just find a nice-looking tree
and curl up at its roots...
And then I hear the music. Music like my master used to play...
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi...
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world...I make my way toward the music.
There's an old barn just over the hill. I can see a faint glow through the cracks in the old
boards. Donna eis, donna eis requiem...
Candlelight. And I realize the music is not like my master used to play--
This music is real...
I walk closer to the door, and I can see the door...the doors, they're wide open. I can hear
the singing...real people, singing, I've never heard anything so wonderful...
Agrippa and I stand at the edge of the light, watching them sing, the music filling the
room and moving beyond the walls. When the song ends, someone touches the
conductor-- a woman, still human-- on the arm, whispers something in her ear. She
comes to the door. "Hello?"
"Hello," I say hesitantly. "I'm sorry, I was just listening..."
"No, no," she says. "Come in. Our singing is open to everyone..."
"'Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,'" I say to her.
She smiles. "Yes," she says. "Yes, we try to make a joyful noise...my name is
Constance." She extends her hand, and I take it. "You are welcome here," she says. "We
are members of the Society of Friends, but we have been singing the music of other
faiths-- there are so few of us left to sing any more." She steps back a little. "Come in,"
she says. "Join us."
<<<<----->>>>
"Constance?"
"Yes?"
"I want to thank you for offering us a place here."
"That is why we are here," she says, smiling at me. "We offer refuge for the lost, and
comfort for those who are alone, and those who are searching...I think you are one of the
last."
I nod.
"What are you searching for, Octavian?"
"I am looking for...a mission. A purpose. When I was a pet, and later, after our master
died-- all I wanted was to survive. But...I want something more than that. God must
have intended me for something more..."
"God intended us all for something more," Constance says gently. "But that doesn't have
to involve..."
"But mine does. I know...I know there's something. But I don't know
what. And I'm just waiting here until I find that purpose."
"You know, sometimes God's purpose may be something as simple as wanting us to lead
a good life..."
"I know, Constance. I don't mean to sound arrogant, and I don't mean to belittle anyone
else's choices...but...I know I'm here for something more."
I'm hanging the laundry up when I hear an unfamiliar voice, talking to Constance
inside our storage building.
"They give you any trouble?"
"No," she says. "They were fine. We gave them what we had left of the stew...it would
just have gone to waste..."
"They're gonna start expecting it, Constance, and then..."
"I'm not going to waste food when people are hungry."
"What are you going to do if they come and you don't have anything?"
"The Lord will provide," she says firmly.
"What if He doesn't?"
"Then we have you," she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice.
"What if I'm not here?"
"You'll be here."
He sighs. "Constance..."
"The Lord will provide for us. He always has."
"I hope you're right," he says softly.
Constance holds up her hands for silence. "There is an issue we must all address,"
she says.
Charlie asks, "What?"
"We're low on supplies," Constance says. "I am afraid our neighbor might have been
right when he suggested that we install a refrigerator."
"It would let our food last longer," Anna says. "Sometimes, even when we have guests,
we have too much..."
"And, as he has pointed out time and again, refrigerated food is safer food." Constance
smiles wryly. "If we could freeze, we could preserve even more food safely. So should
we get the refrigerator?"
Almost everyone nods.
"Still no consensus."
I stand up.
"Yes, Octavian?"
"I had a question...I know I'm new here, so perhaps you can explain to me..."
"A refrigerator? It's--"
"No, I know what those are. Why would any of you not want it?"
Something passes between them all; Constance frowns. After a moment, someone
finally answers me.
"It's not the refrigerator," Lauren says.
Mike scowls. "It's who's offerin' it."
"I'm sorry, but I don't understand."
"He's not...he's not one of us."
I look at the faces around me. Like me, most of them are mutants, furry and fuzzy and
slimy... "What in the name of God are you talking about?"
They all begin at once.
"So many machines--"
"He's mocked us, laughed at our belief--"
"Can't trust him, can't trust anyone like that--"
A whisper, lower than the rest: "Abomination."
"Don't like the way he looks at us, like we're beneath him..."
"The Book says, 'Suffer not a witch to live...'"
"Snob."
"Not many of us grew up among computers and machinery like you did," Constance says
calmly. "They fear what they don't understand. And Don is...rather unusual."
"But it's a refrigerator."
"We'll owe him," Charles says darkly.
"He's a good man," Constance continues, ignoring the murmuring.
"Sneaks around behind our backs--"
"You can't trust him. That's all there is to it."
"What if we offered him some form of payment?"
Lauren snorts. "You can offer it..."
"He could probably use some help," Constance tells me. "He does a lot of repairs for
people in town..."
I knock at the door, and a voice I recognize as electronic greets me. "Hello?"
"Hello. My name is Octavian, and I'm here to discuss the refrigerator that has been
offered to the settlement."
A click, and the door swings open. "Please be seated."
The room is very simple: a bench, a chair. I sit on the bench, look around until I located
the speaker, directly across from me.
The speaker rattles to life again, but this time a live voice answers. "Octavian?"
"Yes."
"I'm Don." The voice I heard speaking to Constance the other day. "They've finally
come to their senses?"
"I...well..."
"I should know better than to expect that," he says dryly. "What is it?"
"We will not accept the refrigerator as a gift," I say carefully. Constance and I went over
what I should say last night. It sounded fine last night, logical, clean. Now it sounds
ludicrous. "However, if one of us can work for you..."
"Pay it off that way, eh?"
I nod, then realize he can't see me. "Yes."
A familiar hiss comes through the speaker. Solder? "Hm. Suppose I can always use you
for labor...are you strong?"
"Yes."
"Can you read?"
"Yes."
"Good. Come back tomorrow morning, I'll start you on something. Tell Constance I can
have the refrigerator ready for the beginning of the week...probably before then, but I
know what you're like about the Sabbath..."
"I'll tell her."
"All right then. Thank you, Octavian."
"Thank you." The door opens; it must be my signal to leave. "I'll see you in the morning,
then."
"Mmm..."
I leave him to his work.
The door opens for me in the morning. The bench has disappeared, and a wooden
workbench has taken its place. Some kind of machine is on the bench, and a
screwdriver, and a note.
See if you can take this apart. If you have too much trouble, just tell Chet, and I'll
find something else for you to do.
"Chet?"
"I'm Chet," the speaker says. "I'm the computer who runs the house."
I shrug my shoulders and pick up the machine; it looks familiar. Sound comes out of it
somewhere...radio. That was it. It's a radio.
I pick it up, try to figure out where the screwdriver's supposed to go.There are deep
indentations at the back of the radio...something silver deep inside. "Uh...Chet?"
"Yes?"
"It's kind of dark in here..."
"Oh. Of course." The light increases. "I apologize."
Those are the right indentations...I put the screwdriver into the grooves. "Why am I
taking this apart?"
"It doesn't work. You have to take it apart to find out what's wrong."
"What if I can't find out what's wrong?"
"That will be fine. He will be pleased if you can take it apart."
Supper is meager, at best. Even the skeptics are starting to look forward to the
refrigerator, if it means more food for everyone. As twilight sets in, the three vagrants
we fed the other night come to the door; a rat mutant, a horribly scarred human, and
something I can't even connect with a species.
"We're very sorry, but we don't have anything tonight," Constance says.
"We can smell that stew," the rat says.
"It's been finished," she explains. "We only had enough for ourselves..."
"Look, lady," the human growls, "we've had a long day, and..."
She shakes her head. "I'm sorry."
I can see the flash of metal; a knife? No...one of those things, what are they called...
"He's got a gun," Charles says nervously.
Yes. A gun.
The human moves closer to Constance, raises the weapon...
Agrippa jumps toward him--
an explosion of sound, but no, it can't be from the gun, he's there and the sound
was...
The gun's not even in his hand anymore, he's down, with Agrippa growling at him, her
teeth close to his throat.
"Agrippa," I hear myself say. "Easy."
"You know, I was reading the other night..." A voice from the left. Someone standing
there, a cloak hiding everything but the barrel of the gun. "Borzoi hounds can clear a six-foot fence, they're excellent jumpers...is she a purebred?"
"Yes," I say, trying to understand what I find familiar about his voice.
"That was your warning shot," the stranger says to the vagrants. "Next time I won't be so
nice...somebody pick that gun up."
Charles leans down and takes it gingerly. "Good. Just set it on that shelf there...you got
any bullets in it?"
The thug just looks up at Agrippa.
"Doesn't matter," the stranger continues. "We'll just make sure you won't be scaring
anyone else with it...the next time you try to pull something like this, I won't be so
friendly, do you understand?"
The thug grunts assent.
"Good. Can you get her off him?"
"Agrippa, c'mon, it's okay..."
She trots back to my side, and I put my hand on her back to calm her.
"Get going," the stranger says, and raises the barrel of the gun ever so slightly.
The thug gets up, and he and his companions disappear into the blackness.
A murmur from the people around me, and I realize why his voice has sounded familiar.
"Don?"
"Octavian. You did a good job with that radio." A sound, and the gun disappears. "I
didn't expect you to be able to fix it...I'm impressed."
"Thank you." I look into the hood. Metal... armor of some sort?
"I'll see you in the morning, then."
"Will you?"
"What?"
"Will I see you, or will I see the house?"
"You..." A slight movement in behind the hood, a glimpse of dark eyes. "You'll see
me."
"Good."
"Good night," he says, and he vanishes.
"See what I tell ya?" Lauren says. "Creepy."
"You still haven't asked."
"You'll tell me."
He stops working for a second, leans on his left hand, the one that's flesh. "How do you
know that?"
"You wouldn't have said anything about it if you weren't going to tell me."
I look up at him, and he smiles. "It's been three days and already you know me too
well."
"So tell me."
"I'm a cyborg," he says, holding his other arm out for my inspection. "Somewhere,
somehow, somebody figured out how to make flesh and machinery work together. We
were attacked by cyborgs years ago, and I was badly injured...but not as badly as the
cyborg I'd been fighting. The machinery left its old host behind and took me."
"How...how does it work?"
He shrugs his shoulders. "I've been trying to understand it since before the bombs hit.
I've figured out what runs it, and how to control it, for the most part...but that's as close as
I've gotten."
"What's it like?"
"Like being a human can opener," he says cynically. "Chet, could you open that window
a little?"
One of the windows raises an inch.
"You know, it was fun at first," he says, smiling grimly. "'Wow, I can make my hand into
a laser cannon! Cool!'" He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "'Course back then, I was
already a freak, what did it matter...and I think part of it was I was just happy to still be
alive..."
"You should be."
He looks bitter. "Should I? What kind of life is this, Octavian? I sit here in this house
fixing things, talking to myself and the computer I programmed, half the town's afraid of
me, half of the colony wants to burn this place down..."
"But the world is still here. If you look out the window you can still see sunsets...there
are still children, and stars, and wonders...God has given us life, and it is so
precious..."
"God?" He looks skeptical.
"Do you believe in Him?"
"I don't know what I believe any more. I used to believe...I guess...but..." He gets up,
looks out the window, gestures at the faintly glowing lake. "How could a god,
any god, let this happen?"
"Because He gave us a choice. He let us build this world, let us build a society with great
art and music, and literature, and television and guns and bombs and alcohol..."
"And cyborgs," he says softly.
"Yes. And cyborgs... and we used them. We took them all and... we weren't careful with
them. We were stupid..."
"Not you personally, not us--"
"You know what I mean."
"Yeah." He holds up the cyborg hand. "I didn't choose this...but I'm part of it,
anyway."
"Do you feel with it? Physically?"
He nods. "Some. I'm...aware of it, I guess. But it's not like touching things with flesh. It
registers things, but it...it doesn't feel. I don't even know how to explain it
really...this hand detects," he says, gesturing with each hand as he mentions them, "and
this hand senses...if I touch you with this hand," the cyborg hand, "it'll tell me the
temperature and texture, but if I touch you with this hand..." He reaches out and
touches my arm. "I feel fur."
I lift up my hand, raise it just above the metal arm. "Can I?"
He nods, and I lower my hand until it touches the metal. It's surprisingly warm.
"I think it heats itself to my body temperature. Something about the interface..."
"And if I touch you here," I say, putting my free hand on his other arm, "you'll feel it
differently."
"Yes." The living arm is just a bit warmer than the metal, and I can feel the difference
between the living flesh and the strange metallic substitute, the pulse and heat of veins
and skin contrasted with the dead smoothness of the cyborg arm.
At dinner, Charles stares at me until finally someone asks him what he's staring at.
"I'm looking for machinery," he says. "Surprised he doesn't have one of those magic
gloves on yet."
"Very funny," Lauren says.
"I like him," I say. "I don't know why you're all so suspicious of him."
The muttering that is becoming familiar to me commences again. "Technology,"
someone says firmly, "is what destroyed our world..."
"That's not the worst of it..."
"What is the worst of it?" I ask.
Charles says darkly, "you shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an
abomination."
"So when they continued asking him," I reply, "he lifted up himself, and said unto them,
he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone..."
"Not all of us feel that way," Lauren says. "I just...he just gives me the creeps. But as
long as you two get along..."
"Lauren," Constance says.
"Well-- I mean...what I meant to say is that you shouldn't let our opinions affect yours.
You certainly know him the best of any of us, except maybe Constance. If he's a good
man, that's all that matters. Right?"
A difficult silence around the table. "Right," a few people say; others scowl and return to
their meals.
"I wouldn't get near him," Charles mutters, loud enough so we all can hear him.
"Something like that shouldn't be allowed to live."
After a few weeks, we settle into a routine, taking lunches at noon, a break at three.
Sometimes Agrippa and I will take a nap at break time-- one of the few habits I have left
from the old days. Today, though, Don's given me a new book to read, The Way
Things Work, and I am too engrossed in its pages to want to sleep, leaning against
the bench in the workroom as Don finishes repairing a clock.
He reaches down, absent-mindedly scratches the back of my neck, and I close my eyes
and lean closer to him. His hand reaches further down my back, more of a caress
now...oh, that feels good.
"Tave," Don says, "do you think..." He looks down at me, realizes what he's been doing,
pulls his hand back. "I'm sorry, Tave, I..."
I meet his eyes. "It-- it's all right. I--"
He looks away. After a moment, he asks, "You were with Agrippa...back before you
mutated?"
"She's my mother."
He nods. "I miss my family. My brothers...my sensei..."
"Sensei?"
"My teacher...our teacher. Our father, really...I haven't seen any of them since the
bombs..."
"Was he a mutant too?"
Don nods. "A rat." He smiles. "You know, he named us all after Renaissance
artists."
"Renaissance?"
"Mmm. A long time ago, in Italy, there was a Renaissance-- 'rebirth'-- in art, and science,
and philosophy-- my whole name's Donatello...and my brothers were Michaelangelo, and
Raphael, and Leonardo."
"My master had a painting by Raphael...a madonna. With cherubs at her feet."
He nods. "That one was really popular..." He shakes his head. "Raph was the crazy
one...always flyin' off the handle...I miss him so much. I miss 'em all..." His smile fades.
I reach up and rest my fingers on his. He takes my hand, holds it for a long time.
After supper, Constance takes me aside. "Octavian?"
"Yes?"
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"You were upset, I could tell..."
I shrug my shoulders. "This is my concern, Constance."
"Then it concerns me," she says firmly, guiding me into the stall she uses as an office.
"Come on...they never listen here. You can talk to me. Please. I want to know what's
disturbing you."
"It's ridiculous," I say.
"Come on," she says. "Sit down. And if it bothers you, then it's not ridiculous."
I shake my head. "It sounds so foolish--"
"Please. Tell me."
Agrippa puts her head under my hand, and I stroke her. Funny, touch was so natural to
us then...I close my eyes, open them again. Say it and get it over with. "I held his
hand today." I move to get up.
She takes my arm. "Is that all?"
I shake my head again. "That's all...but--" I settle back into my chair. "Constance--
we're...we're getting too close. It's..."
"Octavian," she says gently. "It's all right..."
I put my hand in front of my eyes, push my palm against my forehead. "When I was at
my master's house, he kept joking about 'fixing' me...I wasn't...performing my
duties...with the bitches..."
I look up at Constance. "I know what I am. I just don't know...what I can do about it. I
know the Bible says..."
"But not everyone reads the Bible in that--"
"I know that too. They threw me out of the last mission I was in for making graven
images..."
She sighs.
"But that...I knew they were wrong. I knew...but this..."
I put my hands up to my face, and Constance puts her arms around me. "And the lord
God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone...'"
"And so he made woman," I say bitterly. "I know all the passages,
Constance."
She says nothing, only tightens her embrace.
I hear him swearing in the other room and run in. "Don? You okay?"
"Hand failed," he says. "Dropped the damn solder iron--" I can see the black mark on the
table. "--like an idiot I tried picking it up..." He holds up the melted fingers of his right
hand. "Take hours for that to get back to normal...doesn't work the way it used to." He
rubs the back of his left hand with his right.
"It's dying, you know," he says, his eyes concentrating on the metal hand. "The whole
skeleton...the power supply's going, and even if I could get more plutonium for the core,
I'd probably give the rest of my body cancer or something...I can feel it slowing down,
concentrating on essential tasks, using the living half of my body more and more. When
I first found myself in this thing, if I got hurt, the metal would replace it...now I'm left to
heal on my own." He gestures at the scar on his upper arm. "That would've been patched
with metal...instead it healed on its own, more or less..."
"So what happens when--"
"When the skeleton finally runs out of juice?" He looks up at me. "I don't know."
