A Borrowed Man (10 page)

I climbed, reached my shelf, waited for half an hour or so for the library to close, stripped, and slept. Once, as if I were dreaming, I heard what seemed like a familiar voice. For a while I lay awake, listening. It did not come again.

Eventually I turned over and slept once more.

 

7

“W
HERE'S
E. A. S
MITHE
?”

Next morning a watchbot woke me by poking me with a light pole. With its legs extended like stilts it was a pretty tall 'bot, but not tall enough to reach that shelf in Owenlight. “Get up and get dressed! Open in half an hour!”

It did not have to tell me I had almost missed breakfast. I yawned, got my new clothes back on (it was clean stuff now, since it had been taken up for washing and dry cleaning the night before), brushed my teeth, shaved, and so forth. You know. After that, following my nose took me to breakfast, a pretty long table in a wide aisle of the reclone section; I was late but not too late to get a bite to eat.

Most of us do not fancy creamed chipped beef on toast or cheese grits. I am lucky there. I like creamed chipped beef and I love good cheese grits. I was helping myself to my second ladle of grits when I heard a woman's voice at the far end of the table say, “Is that newbie Ern Smithe?”

All right, I ought to have recognized her voice, but I did not. I just said, “Here!” and went back to eating.

Pretty soon I smelled perfume, felt a little hand on my shoulder, and turned to look. I said something, I know, but it did not make much sense. I stammered, too, and that did not help.

I believe it must have been the stammering that got me kissed long and hard.

“I was just getting up.” That was Johnston Biddle, the historian.

Then he was gone and Arabella was slipping into his place. “You,” she announced in her iron lady voice, “are the world's most irritating man.”

“And you have the sweetest voice in the world,” I told her. “Goes with your face.”

“You mean in poetry.” She knew darned well exactly what I meant. “I could write terrifying poetry, too. I just don't choose to. Or not mostly.”

“In poetry,” I told her, “and also in conversation, but especially conversation. No matter what you say, your voice is always music.”

“You'll be bringing me chocolates next.”

“I've apologized a thousand times for those stupid sucking chocolates. I'll do it a thousand more, if you want me to.”

She looked pensive. “Actually, I enjoyed them. They just ruined my diet. Greased the skid to hell, as a matter of fact. I put on eight kilos.”

“One lousy box of chocolates on Valentine's Day couldn't possibly make a woman gain eight kilos.” Nobody else at the table was talking, and I was so conscious of it that it hurt.

“Well, it did. It started me eating horrible junk that I should never have touched. Candied watermelon rind, macaroni and cheese, devil's food cake, preserved turnips. Every kind of awful stuff.”

Preserved turnips? “I don't believe you.”

“More chocolates that I bought for myself. Lovely chocolates as dark as sin, and saltwater taffy. I remember the saltwater taffy vividly—the seascape on the box, the red, blue, and green wrappers, everything. If you still imagine my voice is sweet, you should taste that taffy. I…” Arabella shut up.

I leaned nearer, lowering my voice and wishing I could risk a kiss. “What is it, darling?”

“I was just thinking.…” She let it trail off, looked at me, and looked away.

“Yes? Tell me.”

“You can't buy me chocolates here, can you?”

“Here in the library? It certainly wouldn't be easy, but it might not be impossible.”

“We don't have any money.” Her hand found mine. “No money at all, Ern. And it's against the rules and we can't leave the library.”

Somebody ought to do a study on how long a man can talk to a woman without having to lie. I said, “Certainly I don't have any money now, but I might get some. If I did, I might be able to buy your chocolates while I was checked out.”

“You get checked out? Really?” Arabella turned to stare at me.

“Sometimes.” The terror that had befallen Colette filled my mind and, I am afraid, my voice, too. “Sometimes I do. Recently I was checked out for forty days and forty nights, but I've become separated from my patron. That's why I came here.”

“You don't belong here?”

The others were beginning to talk again, the kind of quick embarrassed talk people use to cover up the fact that they have been eavesdropping.

I shook my head. “I'm the property of the Spice Grove Public Library.”

“They'll send you back there.”

“I know. That's why I came here. The lady who checked me out lives in Spice Grove. She's a teacher.”

“You're property. Property this lady borrowed.”

I nodded.

“Don't you think that's horrible? Really now, Ern. Don't you think it's criminal?”

“It's worse than criminal. It's factual.”

“I suppose you're right. There's no use talking. Eat your eggs.”

“They're cheese grits.” I took a bite. “Wouldn't you like to taste them?”

“I did once. Will we ever be free?”

I shook my head.

“Why would they do that? Why reclone me? They won't even let me write.”

I sighed. “If I try to explain, will you resent it?”

“Yes! No. Oh, I don't know!”

“Then I'll try to explain. They won't let you write because there would be no point to it. Few people would appreciate your poetry, and new poetry from you—written tomorrow—would only cheapen the wonderful work you did a century ago.”

“They'll burn me! If nobody checks me out, they'll burn me.”

I put my arm around her, and she pressed her face against my chest. We sat like that until three 'bots came to clear the table and made us leave.

Arabella stepped away. “I got your shirt wet.”

I told her it would dry.

“I know. But it won't be comfortable until it does. Will you take it off?”

I shook my head.

“You're afraid they'll punish you. We're not supposed to do those things.”

“They wouldn't do anything serious, just make me put it back on or bring me a new one. But…”

“What? What is it, Ern?”

“We'll fight. Or I'm afraid we will.”

“I'd like that. Fighting, I wouldn't be so down, just mad. Mad's a lot better. ‘Great wit is unto madness near allied.' Who said that?”

“Shakespeare probably. It sounds like him.”

“He's lucky.” It sounded serious.

“Because he can't be recloned?”

Arabella nodded, her black curls dancing. “They'll burn me. You've been checked out how many times? Honestly now.”

“Three.”

“Once for forty days. You said that.”

“I was lying. It was really ten days. One and a half weeks, if you want to look at it like that.”

“And now you're separated. You've lost the woman who checked you out.”

I nodded. “She left me behind in a hotel room.”

“That's not as bad as being burned. I can't bear to think about that.”

“Then don't. Someone will check you, probably several someones. And before they burn you, the library will offer you for sale at a very low price. Somebody will surely buy you then.”

“And have me burned as soon as I begin to show my age. You're not a woman! You don't know. We do!”

“This is the fight I knew would start. I wish you'd come up onto my shelf, so we could fight up there. This is terribly public.”

Arabella hung her head. “They'd tell me I was going to be burned. They'd only mean it a little bit, but it's a little bit more every time they say it. Oh, Ern! Can't you get me out of here?”

“I'll try. You probably know what I'm going to tell you now, but I'm going to tell you anyway. Maybe reminding you will help. The world population is down to about one billion, but a lot of people want it lower still—a few hundred million. Reclones add to the population. Not a lot, but we're different and stand out. There's political pressure against recloning. To escape the pressure as much as possible, the libraries have to treat us like things, like books or tapes, and destroy us in some fashion when we're no longer useful. Burning is painful, but quick. They could starve us to death or see to it that we died of thirst.”

“You're taking their side!”

“No, I'm explaining why they act as they do. If we want to live, we've got to understand why it is they think we've got to die. All right if I change the subject?”

“That depends on—the library will open in a minute or two.”

“And a 'bot will come around to shoo us onto our shelves, but you won't be shooed if you'll join me on mine.”

“I won't!”

“Then I'll join you on yours.”

“Damn it! I—I knew this was going to happen. I'm terribly, terribly sorry that it happened so soon. We're not married anymore.”

“Arabella…” I tried to find words. Maybe I said something sensible. If I did, I can't remember what it was.

“I know what you want, Ern. Our divorce is final, and you're not going to get it.” She turned and walked away fast, heels clicking on the floor tiles.

I called, “All I want is for you to love me!”

She was climbing the ladder to a high shelf when I shouted that, and if she heard me she gave no sign. It was one of those times when I wish to God I could talk the way I think.

Back on the shelf where I had slept, I walked up and down. Four steps one way, and four the other. What had I done right, and where had I screwed up? For sure I had tried to rush things, thinking—assuming, really—that she would understand that I just wanted to hold her, to kiss her a dozen times and get kissed by her. Maybe she had, but I do not think so.

Time passed, and the same old thoughts, the same old regrets, came back again and again. When they were stopped by somebody's calling for me, I was glad to get away from them. He was young, blond, and quite a bit smaller than most men, dressed in a faded blue chore smock that did not even come close to going with his culottes and pointed boots.

He waved. “Come down, will you?”

I was happy to do it.

“You're E. A. Smithe?” He offered his hand. It was softer than I had expected. “I guess there's a lounge here somewhere. Someplace where I can buy you a nerbeer?”

I shook my head. “I doubt it.”

“Kafe maybe? Something like that?”

“I'm a stranger here myself, but it doesn't seem likely. We might ask.”

We did, meaning he did.

“Out on the patio,” he said when he came back. “It's out into the hall, two lefts and a right, then through the double doors, but I'm not supposed to buy you anything to eat.”

“Then don't,” I said.

“Maybe they'll have hot chocolate. You like hot chocolate?”

Here it was again. I nodded, mostly because I was too dumb not to.

“Great! We'll find out. I'm not supposed to borrow you. I guess you know.”

“Correct.” We were walking, and walking damned fast. I wondered what had got him so nervous.

“Why nothing to eat?”

“There is a rule to that effect.” The truth was I had never thought about it. “If you checked me out, you'd be expected to feed me if you kept me more than a day. Here in the library it's forbidden. I suppose it must be to keep us from begging, not that we would. Or at least only a few of us would.” I was trying to remember the name of the boy Dr. Johnson had talked about, the young genius who had choked to death on a sweet roll. It would not come, and that boy had lived hundreds of years too early for recloning anyway.

The blond man stopped. “Hey, would a couple of yellowbacks help?”

I tried to remember if anybody had offered me creds before.

“Maybe you don't have a lot.” He was getting out his wallet.

The truth was that I had quite a bit, the money from Colette's shaping bag. I knew what would happen if the librarians found out about that, so I said I did not have shit, adding, “We're not paid, you understand. One doesn't pay property, and most of us belong to some library. It's the Spice Grove Public Library in my case.”

“Sure. You're slaves.”

“Not exactly. Slaves are fully human and can be freed. We aren't and can't be. Besides, slavery is currently against the law. We just require a license.”

“I got it. Here's a couple—three hundred. With my compliments. All right?”

I took the money, telling myself I did it because I did not want to piss him off.

The Owenbright Public Library had this screwy patio covered with a wide tent top of semitransparent film. There were potted palms, tables and chairs of the outside kind, and a counter (under its own little roof) where you could buy kafe and doughnuts—stuff like that. A couple of the tables were already getting leaned on by patrons reading diskers they would probably get all spotted with kafe.

The blond man picked a table and told me to sit down. “I'll get us somethin'. Chocolate if they got it. Just wait here. How about a san'wich?”

I knew the rule, but I had not gotten much breakfast, and it hit me that this library'd probably be too chicken to punish another library's reclone. So I said I would like one and thanks.

“I'll see what they got.”

He came back with a little stack of sandwiches and two mugs of hot chocolate. He set a mug and a sandwich in front of me, looked around to see if anybody was watching, and pulled a flask from a pocket of his loose blue smock. “Swan-n-Sweetheart five star. Pretty good, too.” He decanted a healthy swallow into my chocolate and helped himself to one.

My sandwich turned out to be tuna salad on rye.