The Revolt of Aphrodite (75 page)

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 relief 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.

But after that gambling outing she seemed to show an increased impatience with constraint, and I began to fear that she might take the law into her own hands. She said to Marchant, “In the long run you can’t deny me my freedom forever. I have the right to start to rethink out my career, to rebuild it if I decide I would like to.” Then she discovered that one of her teeth had been given a small filling which she could not remember having had placed by her dentist. It was just a passing cloud, so to speak, and she was easily persuaded that her memory had slipped. But she was right; when we had
another
look at the dentist’s jaw diagram we discovered out mistake. “How could I have forgotten,” she said “I who live in such terror of dentists? Ah well, my memory must be failing—it’s old age,
darling
Felix, that is what it is.”

Ten days later I braked the car violently in the middle of the village; there was Iolanthe walking nonchalantly out of the door of the Gold Swan, lighting up a cigarette. She burst out laughing as she saw my alarmed face. “I couldn’t resist” she said. “I gave Henny the slip and trotted down for a whisky.” Like the real Iolanthe, who had had so much trouble from her public, she had taken to a brown wig which completely transformed her face. In this way no fans would pester her. I didn’t know what to say; it seemed ridiculous to chide her. After all there was nothing intrinsically dangerous or harmful in what she had done—it was just an agreeable escapade for her. But it made me think. I had a long confabulation with Marchant. We wondered perhaps whether it might be time to move her into a large hotel, say, where there would be plenty of movement, plenty of life around her. Or whether we should buy her a dog—no, but like the real Iolanthe she wasn’t keen on dogs because of the infernal quarantine restrictions in Britain. Well then, what?