the spin… rails breaking… the car rolling… metal screeching, popping, twisting up like rubber… her blood running down his hands as he pulled her through the shattered window… her unseeing eyes…
When he was done, Tina said, 'You must have loved her very much.'
'Too much to live with the memory.'
'I look like her, don't I?'
'A little.'
'Is that the reason — you're interested in me?'
'Not the sole reason,' he said.
'I destroyed the bio-computer shell.'
'How?'
'I smashed its undersides with a hammer, then fed it down the garbage chute, where it'll be compressed into a tiny cube.'
He smiled and took her hand in his unbandaged hand. 'That's quite violent for a demure young lady. I'm sure it must have been satisfying, but what am I going to do for a living now?'
'You'll be my crutch,' she said. 'You'll make me care.'
'You once thought that was impossible.'
'Maybe I've changed my mind — and maybe I've already begun to care, just a little.'
He patted the waterbed. 'Come here, lie down.'
'I don't think you're in any condition for that,' she said.
'Neither do I. I just want to have you beside me, to put my arm around — if I can.'
She stretched out on the mattress and turned against him, curled in the hollow under his shoulder and put her cheek against his chest. For a long while he lay like that, looking at her black hair, which starred with points of blue light from the ceiling lamp and became, in his mind, the deep and beautiful flow of space where suns and worlds and possibilities were limitless.
