Julie was wearing a black sealskin coat and a chinchilla hat.
Shen Hui noted sardonically that it hadn't taken her long to outfit herself. He added that she had been silly to expose herself to him in this way.
“What do you mean?” she'd asked.
“I mean if you had any brains, you wouldn't have let me catch up with you. Do you realize how easily I could kill you? And you could do nothing about it, not even with all the skills I taught you.”
“I know that,” Julie said. “And I wasn't careless. I chose to let you find me.”
“What are you up to?”
“I don't choose to spend my life running,” Julie said. “I am extremely grateful to you, Shen Hui. You have taught me respect for the deeper law that underlies appearances. I appeal to that law now. Although you legally own me, your investment has been repaid many times and it is time that I went free. I served you well and you know it. I would like to shake hands and have us part friends.”
Shen Hui stared at her. His skin had aged incredibly, with a yellow cast to it like parchment that has been dried too long in the sun. She had never seen him looking so old. Even his thin mustache, which dropped down on either side of his face, seemed lifeless.
And his eyes were brown and opaque.
She wasn't sure what he would say. She knew that her life hung in the balance. Old as he was, and apparently unarmed, she had no doubt he could kill her anytime he chose.
“You are my greatest creation,” he said at last. “How could I kill you? Who would I have left to hate?”
Her life had really begun at that point. She spent several years on her own, accomplishing unbelievable feats of thievery in Europe and America. She made money easily, and spent it easily. Her life was rich and pleasurable, but she began to sense a loss of purpose, a slackness that was beginning to alarm her. It was a question of motivation. Shen Hui had taught her too well for her to be content with mediocre motives. Why was she doing what she was doing? What was she living for?
The only thing she could think to do with her life was to get rich. It wasn't enough, she knew, but it was a start. After she accomplished that, she'd take the next step.
For the present she was here with Stan, and Stan was as good as hooked, if she had any knowledge of men.
For dinner that night Stan had ordered a special Moroccan feast catered by a North African couple he knew. Although it was short notice, he had told them to go all out, and he served the meal himself using his best china and silverware. There were game birds roasted on spits, half a sheep braised in many exotic spices and served with rough tasty Arab bread, platters of fruits and vegetables, several different wines. The Moroccan couple followed instructions, delivering the feast and then leaving. Stan paid for it with almost the last of the cash he had on hand. One way or another, no matter what decision he made tonight, it was going to be a new life for him tomorrow.
Stan hadn't thought about what he was going to say. He didn't need to. He was suffused with a knowledge that he couldn't articulate yet. That would have to come later. For now it was enough to sit across the table from Julie while the strains of a Monteverdi madrigal tinkled in the background.
Julie had found an old ballroom dress upstairs, one of his grandmother's, neatly folded in a fragrant cedar drawer. It fit perfectly, and she had worn it down to dinner with a set of large pearl earrings that had once belonged to Stan's mother.
Stan, noting her preparations, had taken out the tuxedo he had worn to his recent college reunion. He put in the cat's-eye opal cuff links and the diamond pin in the buttonhole. He felt tall and graceful in this outfit, and a little ironic. It was playacting, of course, and he knew that; but it was also in some strange sense real. And Stan knew that there were many costumes he could have worn that night. He wouldn't have felt out of place in the golden mantle of Alexander the Great. Because just like the famous Macedonian, he was on the verge of new worlds to conquer. He was also up against a sea of trouble and pain, and he suspected he was doomed to die gloriously and young as well.
At dinner that evening Julie was radiant in the antique gown, Stan looking handsome in his tuxedo. He had saved a bottle of wine for a long time, waiting for an occasion like this. The bottle had been handed down to him by his parents — a rare St-Emilion, the great vintage of thirty-seven years earlier. Stan had taken good care of the bottle, storing it on its side in the temperature-controlled basement, making sure the cork was properly intact. He brought it up now and opened it with care, pouring a little into a fluted glass and tasting it.
“Just on the verge of turning,” he said. “But still superb. We've caught the St-Emilion at its peak, Julie. This is probably the last bottle of this stuff in the world.”
She tasted the ruby-red liquid he had poured for her. “It's marvelous, Stan. But what are we celebrating?”
“Need you ask?”
“I think not,” she said, “but I would like to hear it anyhow.”
“And hear it you shall.” Stan smiled. Never had he felt so at peace with himself. He didn't know where this course of action was going to take him, but he was satisfied to follow it.
“We're going to go with your plan, Julie. And we're going to follow it all the way. We both know the risks. We discussed them yesterday. We both know the odds are against us. But no more talk about that. I've decided, and I know that you have, too. We'll start in the morning.”
She reached across the snowy tablecloth and held his hand tightly. “Why tomorrow morning?”
“Because that's when my bank opens,” Stan said. “I'm ready for whatever we have to do.”
“I'm ready, too, Stan.”
“Well,” he said, half as a joke and half seriously, “I guess we've taken care of everything except what to name our alien.”
“What would you suggest?”
“What about Norbert, after the great Norbert Wiener, father of cybernetics, the science that gave it birth?”
“Sounds good to me,” Julie said. “I guess that just about covers it, Stan. Except for one thing.”
“What's that?”
She leaned close to him. He felt dizzy with her face so close to his. She bent closer. Her lips were partially open. He was fascinated by her teeth, all perfect except one small one to the left, an eyetooth. It was a little crooked.
And then he stopped thinking as she kissed him, and Ari the cybernetic ant stood in his box on the mantel and watched, and the flames of the fire lifted and died away, and Stan watched Ari watching and watched himself kissing Julie, not knowing that Ari was watching, and all this from within his frozen moment in time and all of it stained in the blue light of the royal jelly of memory.
4
Next morning he had a chance to show Julie around his house. She admired the fine old silverware he had inherited from his grandparents, and looked with something approaching awe at the portraits of his ancestors that hung on the great staircase that led to the upper rooms. There were dozens of somber oil paintings in ornate gilt frames, showing stern-faced men — some with side-whiskers and some clean-shaven — and proper-looking ladies in starched black bombazine and stiff Dutch lace. Stan had been lucky that this stuff still remained after the great destruction.
“It's wonderful, Stan,” Julie said. “I never knew who my parents were. They sold me before I knew them.”
“I've got more than enough relatives,” Stan said. “You can have some of mine.”
“Can I? I'd like that. I'll take that fat one with the smile for my mother.”
“That's Aunt Emilia. You've picked well. She was the best of the bunch.”
There were other treasures upstairs. Eiderdowns whose cases were heavy with intricate embroidery; gaudy antique jewelry; massive furniture cut from gigantic tropical trees whose species had become extinct.
“This is such beautiful stuff,” Julie said. “I could look at it forever. How do you ever pull yourself away?”
