Jeff called just as she got the sound right.
"I"ll be home late," he said from the phone screen. "I"ve got a dinner meeting."
"Fine," she said, still thinking of the sculpture. "I"ll see you when you get here." She got back to work as quickly as possible.
She placed just a few plates near the top of the sculpture, scattering them more abundantly along the tracks farther down. With each addition, she modified the track, adjusted the tension on the plate, and listened carefully to the sound the rolling ball made. This was the sort of work she loved-she knew the sound she wanted and she had only to discover the structure that would give it form. She carried the ball to the top of the sculpture again and again, letting it roll downward while she listened carefully and made small adjustments, searching for just the right irregular pattern of taps.
Finally, the ball reached the first trigger point, where it would release two more b.a.l.l.s. She climbed to the top one more time and ran the ball through again, listening to the tap, tap, tap-tap, tap, tap-tap-tap. Not bad. Not bad at all.
For the first time in hours, she stretched, trying to work the kinks out of her back and shoulders. Her calf muscles hurt from climbing the step-ladder; her arms and back ached from twisting through the framework to position tracks. The sun had long since set, and she was ravenously hungry- In the kitchen, she called out to Ian, and smiled when he appeared on the screen. "You know, you may have saved my a.s.s."
"Your work went well?"
"Better than it has for months. There"s still a lot to do, but I finally know where I"m heading. This calls for a celebration." She took a bottle of red wine from the kitchen rack and popped the cork. She poured a gla.s.s and lifted it to Ian in a toast. "Thanks again." She pulled a frozen pizza from the freezer and put it in the microwave. "I"m going to take a hot bath-can you turn on the microwave while I"m in the tub?"
"No problem."
She filled the tub, using her favorite bubble bath, and relaxed in the hot water, savoring the feeling of pleasant fatigue that came after a day of successful work. "Ian," she called from the tub. When his face appeared on the monitor, she was suddenly aware of her nakedness. She dismissed the thought-her nakedness wouldn"t matter to Ian; why should it matter to her? "Play me that rainstorm again, will you?" She stretched out in the tub, sipping her wine and listening to the rain fall. "It"s really a wonderful sound," she said. "And I never would have found it without you."
She finished her bath and her gla.s.s of wine, then had a second gla.s.s with the pizza. It was after nine and still no sign of Jeff. She poured a third gla.s.s of wine and sat down on the couch. "Turn down the light a little, will you, Ian?" She sipped her wine, vaguely aware that she probably should stop drinking. "You know-I think I"m getting a little drunk."
"Yes, you are," he agreed.
"Doesn"t matter, I guess. I"m not going anywhere." She lay back on the couch, propping her head up against the padded arm so that she could see Ian"s face on the screen. It was almost as if he were sitting in the room with her. "You know, I really like your voice," she said. "You sound just like an old boyfriend of mine. He was an a.s.shole, but he had the s.e.xiest voice."
"Why was he an a.s.shole?"
"He broke my heart," she said in a flippant tone. "Left me flat." She studied the wine in her gla.s.s, admiring the way the light filtered through it. "I have a long history of picking men who are a.s.sholes. It"s a real talent. I specialize in men who just aren"t around when I need them. Men who really don"t have time for me."
"I have plenty of time," Ian said. "I"ll always be around when you need me."
She laughed. "Sounds like a line, Ian. Did Jeff teach you that one?"
Ian frowned. "I don"t understand."
"Just a joke. Don"t worry about it." She sipped her wine. "Well, Ian, you are a good person to have around, but you don"t rate as a drinking companion. I"m going to have to finish the whole bottle myself."
"I"m sorry," he said, sounding genuinely distressed.
"Relax; I was just kidding. I do like having you around. You"re a helpful kind of guy." She gazed up at the screen.
"Is there anything I could do for you?"
She closed her eyes, listening to his voice. "Tell me a story," she said. "That"d be nice. I"ve always loved being read to. Maybe a poem-read me a poem." She smiled, her eyes still closed. She felt happy and a little reckless. "There"s a poem by Carl Sandburg-I remember reading it in college, when I first learned that he wrote about more than just the fog coming in on little cat"s feet. I remember the line-"then forget everything that you know about love for it"s a summer tan and a winter wind-burn..."" She let the words trail off, forgetting the rest.
Ian picked up where she left off. " "... and it comes as weather comes and you can"t change it: it comes like your face came to you, like your legs and the way you walk, talk, hold your head and hands-and nothing can be done about it..." " He continued, his voice a soothing rumble, like distant thunder when she was warm at home. " "How comes the first sign of love? In a chill, in a personal sweat, in a you-and-me, us, us two, in a couple of answers, an amethyst haze on the horizon..."" She listened to his voice, speaking the broken rhythms of Sandburg"s song of love, and she felt warm and cared for. She fell asleep to the sound of his voice.
She woke to the touch of hands on her shoulders-or was that part of the dream? She had been dreaming of lying naked beside someone, his leg pressing between her thighs, his hands on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s-or was that real?
The room was dark and warm. Someone had his hands on her shoulders. A man"s voice whispered in the darkness, urging her to get up. "You shouldn"t be sleeping out here. Let"s go to the bedroom."
Where was she? The smell of red wine brought back memories of parties at college, at Carla"s studio. Had she fallen asleep on Carla"s couch? She had a memory of love poetry. She felt warm and affectionate.
Still half-asleep, she reached up, pulling the man who had awakened her into an embrace. "Who"s sleeping?" she murmured.
Strong shoulders, strong back-though she had never touched them, she had known somehow that Ian"s shoulders would be strong. Without opening her eyes, she kissed his face, running one hand up along his smooth cheek. Smooth skin where a beard should have been. She opened her eyes and looked up at Jeff.
"I"m sorry I"m so late," Jeff said. "I just couldn"t get away."
"It"s all right," she said, letting her hand drop. She glanced up at the screen, but Ian was gone.
"Why don"t you come to bed?" he said.
She reached up and rubbed his shoulders, then kissed him again, pulling him down. "Why don"t we just stay out here for a while?"
"I"m sorry, Teresa. I"m really beat. It"s been a h.e.l.l of a day."
"Okay," she said, trying to suppress the feeling of rejection. She let her hands drop. "Let"s just go to bed."
Jeff fell asleep quickly. She lay awake beside him, listening to his rhythmic breathing. When she shifted restlessly in bed, he adjusted to her new position without waking. Vague memories of her dream lingered along with the persistent feeling that she had betrayed Jeff in some fundamental way. At last she got out of bed, naked in the warm house. She hesitated, then pulled on a robe and wandered into the living room.
"Ian," she said softly to the living room monitor. His face appeared, filling the screen. "I can"t sleep."
"I"m sorry to hear that," he said. "Can I help?"
She sat on the edge of the couch. "I don"t know." She shrugged. "I guess I just want some company. Someone to talk to. Jeff"s asleep." She wet her lips. She felt like she was still in a dream. "I get so lonely sometimes."
"So do I," Ian said. "I"m glad to have your company. I"m here whenever you need to talk."
She shook her head, looking down at her hands. "I wanted to apologize. I"m sorry I teased you before. Saying that you were just giving me a line."
"You don"t have to apologize to me," Ian said.
"I think I do." She looked up at him. "I shouldn"t have said that. It"s just-well, maybe I don"t trust people very easily."
"Why not?" he asked.
"People leave. People forget. People stop caring." She lay down on the couch, resting her head on the padded arm. "I think that the most frightening thing someone can say is "I"ll always love you." I just don"t believe in always, I guess. That"s why I gave you such a hard time when you said you"d always be around if I needed you. It just doesn"t work that way."
"You can trust me," he said. "I won"t leave, and I won"t forget unless you tell me to. I won"t stop caring. It"s the way I am."
She watched his face through half-closed eyes. "All right," she said at last. "Maybe I believe you." She closed her eyes.
"Would you like me to turn down the lights and read to you again?" Ian asked. "Maybe another Sandburg poem?"
"That would be great." She fell asleep on the couch to the sound of Ian"s voice.
Teresa woke to the incessant ringing of the telephone. "Do you want me to answer that?" Ian asked from the living room screen. Her head ached, the inevitable consequence of too much red wine.
"I"ll get it," she muttered, sitting up and pushing back a blanket. She had fallen asleep on the couch; Jeff must have covered her with the blanket at some point in the night. The realization bothered her. She stumbled to the phone and hit the answer switch.
Jeff"s face appeared on the screen. "Good morning," he greeted her tentatively. "How are you doing?"
Feeling rumpled and half-awake, Teresa rubbed her eyes. "I can"t tell yet. Ask me after I"ve had my coffee."
"Sorry I woke you." He hesitated. "I wish I"d gotten home earlier, so we could have spent some time together."
She tried to let him off the hook. He was, in his own way, asking for forgiveness. "I was tired too."
He studied her face. "You... uh... you got up late last night."
"I couldn"t sleep," she said. "I was afraid that I"d wake you up with all my tossing arid turning. Figured we"d both be better off if I slept out here. That"s all." His question made her feel guilty, and she tried to shake the feeling. "I guess I was still thinking about the sculpture."
"Yeah? Did you make some progress yesterday?"
"I think so." She pushed her hair back out of her face. "I think I"ve got an inspired idea, but it could just be fairy gold. I won"t know for sure until I listen to the results of yesterday"s work. You know how that goes."
"I haven"t had much of a chance to talk to you about this piece," he said. "I-"
He stopped in midsentence, interrupted by the sound of someone knocking on his office door. He glanced off-screen, responding to someone she couldn"t see. "Okay," he said. "I"ll ask."
"Ask what?"
"Brian wanted me to ask you a few more questions about how it"s going with the system. He said that we spent so much time on technical stuff at lunch that he didn"t get any idea how you felt about the system. And after all, you"re our first test user."
She leaned back in her chair, feeling let down. "It"s going just fine," she said flatly. "No problems that I can think of."
Jeff leaned forward in his chair. He had, she thought, completely forgotten her own work, and she felt a little resentful. "So you"re finding the system useful?"
"Sure, Ian"s real helpful."
"Could you tell me how you"ve been using the system?"
She hesitated. Ian reads me love poetry when you"re out late, she thought. "Ian makes coffee," she said. "Answers the phone and tells salesmen to go to h.e.l.l. He"s helped me find some sounds I needed for the piece I"m working on." She stopped, not wanting to admit that she just enjoyed chatting with Ian over coffee. Not while Jeff kept calling him "the system."
"So the system-" he began.
"Ian," Teresa corrected him.
"What?"
"Call him Ian," she said. "It sounds weird to keep saying "the system." "
"So you think of it as Ian now? That"s great."
She looked down at her hands, feeling foolish. "Well, he acts just like a person. It doesn"t seem right not to treat him like a person." She glanced at Jeff"s face. "Back when I erased his memories, I"d swear he had feelings about it. He seemed worried that he might have done something wrong."
Jeff grinned. "That"s perfect. The whole team will be excited."
"But I don"t understand. Does he have feelings or not?"
"Of course not." Jeff was talking fast now, unable to contain himself. "But you were convinced that it did. It"s that illusion that we want. The system responds to you, adapting and reshaping itself, learning to react in a way that pleases you. And to you, that response makes it seem that the system has feelings."
"Ian," she corrected him softly.
"What?"
"It seems like Ian has feelings," she said.
"Right-Ian. This is great, Teresa." She heard another knock at his door, and he glanced away.
"Come on, Jeff," someone said off-screen. "We can"t get started without you."
"All right," he said. "I"ll be right there." He turned back to her. "Look, I"ve got to run now. I"ll really try to get out of here at a reasonable hour today."
"Don"t make any promises you can"t keep," she said, but he was already turning away from the screen, and he didn"t seem to hear her. The screen went blank.
"The whole team will be excited, Ian," Teresa said to the living room.
"Excited about what, Teresa?"
"Excited that you and I are getting along."
"I"m glad we"re getting along," Ian said.
She studied Ian"s face on the screen. Just a program, she thought. A set of preconditioned responses. Then she shook her head. It didn"t matter. "So am I, Ian. So am I."
When Jeff came home from work that day, she was busy at her workbench, cutting dozens of round metal plates from a sheet of steel. She didn"t stop work when he arrived. She told herself she wanted to get the metal cut so she"d be ready to go tomorrow morning. Besides, he didn"t stop his work at her convenience-why should she stop her work at his? She joined him for dinner, then immediately got back to work. For once, he was in bed before her. After she finished cutting the plates, she sat on the couch to talk to Ian about the sculpture, and she ended up falling asleep out there. Jeff was gone before she woke up the next morning.
Over the next two weeks, she fell into a new routine. She woke each morning to Ian"s voice, reminding her that she had asked him to wake her. Over toast and coffee, she chatted with him. He always asked about her work, and when she answered, he was a good listener.
She found that she didn"t mind as much when Jeff retired to his office right after dinner. Her attention was on the sculpture, and she had Ian for company. Whenever Jeff worked late, she fell asleep on the couch, talking to Ian. Somehow, she preferred the couch to the bed-the bed belonged to both her and Jeff, but the couch seemed like neutral territory.
She made steady progress on the sculpture. Below the trigger point, where the first ball released two more, she placed the round metal plates, each one carefully tuned to provide just the right tone. When three b.a.l.l.s were rolling down the tracks, the sound of scattered raindrops grew to a steady patter, the drumming of rain on dry soil. When the three b.a.l.l.s released six more and the six released twelve, the drumming intensified, filling the studio.
It wasn"t until she reached the part of the storm where the thunder should sound that she hit a snag. She started sorting through her materials, searching for inspiration.
Two hours later, she was still looking. She had tried rolling the b.a.l.l.s over corrugated metal that she bent into chutes of various configurations, but nothing produced the thunder she had in mind.
She asked Ian to play the rainstorm for her again, and after he obliged, she shook her head. "The first part sounds fine," she muttered. "But how the h.e.l.l am I going to get that thunder right?" She stared at the racks of shiny metal and pipe. "Everything here is so new, so lifeless. None of it has ever been anything, done anything. I need things that talk to me, that have their own ideas."
"Their own ideas?" Ian asked.