Lust. Geoff Ryman
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always the pattern. He’d start out well, with a promising swelling, gallons of lubricant, and then the sudden irretrievable collapse.
‘We’re not going to be much use to each other are we?’ the original Michael said.
‘We could just cuddle,’ said his copy, hopefully. Michael had done enough cuddling. He looked at his own body and asked it: why? It’s a beautiful body, everything else about it works.
‘Shall we try again?’ Michael asked himself.
‘OK,’ chuckled the copy, weakly. It was lie, Michael knew. He was ashamed and now simply wanted to escape. This Michael was an amazingly disheartening sexual partner. But Michael was determined to persevere, for both their sakes.
It is a very strange thing to kiss yourself. There is no change of taste, and you know exactly what the tongue will do, how it will respond. I’d never realized, thought Michael, how useful my lips are. I hated my fat lips. But they’re great for kissing.
If only this Angel would move them.
Michael leaned back and looked at himself. He was surprised at how angry he felt. He had been moved, roused, and then let down. It felt like rejection, it felt personal. He made a soft fist and gave his partner a gentle, chiding thump. There was a distant disturbance in his own shoulder, as if someone had thrown a pebble into a pool some distance away.
‘Now you know how other people feel,’ said his copy, something dark and steely creeping into his own eyes.
‘Oh, Jesus, let’s sit down,’ said Michael. They sat next to each other on the bed. His partner looked defeated, mournful. Michael put an arm around his shoulder to comfort him, and they lay side by side, comrades rather than lovers.
Michael changed the subject. ‘You feel anything? From me?’
‘A kind of a buzz.’
‘It wouldn’t hurt you, would it?’
The copy scowled. ‘I don’t think I would know what it was.’
‘I just wanted to know if I could hurt people.’
The Angel sighed. ‘It would give them a turn if they showed up at your flat and met themselves by mistake.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
They turned and looked into each other’s faces, like brothers, like friends. They both had the same dark eyes, and his copy’s eyes were black and sad. Do I always look this mournful having sex? Isn’t sex supposed to be fun?
The Angel asked, ‘Do you have any idea how we got this way?’
The focus of Michael’s vision seemed to shift and he saw something in the face, and jumped up, and scuttled away. ‘Jesus Christ, you look just like Dad!’
Michael turned back around, and the bed was empty. Even the baggy Y-fronts had gone.
Back at work, Ebru asked Michael, ‘Where do you go in the afternoons?’
Her smile was rueful, teasing, an evident mise-en-scène. Because her eyes were saying: you’re supposed to be running this place.
‘Lunch,’ replied Michael. ‘Why, was there a problem?’
She was leaning as if relaxed across her desk. She sprawled. It was a difficult posture to read, because it seemed friendly but was also disrespectful.
Her voice drawled; she sounded sleepy. ‘The University called. You were supposed to be teaching a course today.’
Oh shit, oh no, of course, it’s Thursday.
Ebru looked bored. ‘What could I do? I told them you would call when you got back.’
‘Oh, Jees, was it Professor Dennis? Oh darn. OK. I’ll give her a call.’
‘Could you leave me with your number please where you will be when you go out?’
‘Yeah sure. I’ll get a mobile, so you can call me.’
Michael jerked forward, wanting to escape. Ebru had more to say. ‘The grant application forms have been on your desk for a week. I just wanted to make sure you knew they were there.’ Michael had to apply for funds for the next stage of research; they were to teach the chicks tasks such as pushing buttons for food. The aim was to keep the facility going, so the University could rent it out for other projects. The aim was that Michael would eventually make himself some kind of Director.
‘Right, yes. I’ve been meaning to get to that.’
‘Emilio was saying that he has not been told the file names for the control group slides. This means he has fallen behind on his data entry and filing.’
‘Sorry,’ said Michael. ‘A lot on my plate.’
Ebru dismissed it, as if sleepy. ‘I wasn’t chasing you.’
Oh yes you were.
Alone in his windowless office, Michael told himself: you have been neglecting your job.
It had been just over three weeks since the episodes began. There had been five afternoons at the Chez Nous, four with Johnny and one with himself. They had moved from late winter into spring. How did he think people would not notice?
There was a Fridge full of frozen, unfiled slides. How could he ask people to work for him? People who were on short-term contracts, which meant they could not get a mortgage. How could he ask them to work punctiliously, perfectly, as science demanded?
And, oh shit, he was also supposed to be writing a phase paper on the difference between Windows NT and Unix for his MSc in Computer Science. It was due next Monday. He’d done nothing about it.
Michael hung his head, and then lowered it into his hands from shame.
God, he found himself asking, why have you done this to me?
God, in the form of the painted brick wall, could not answer, or rather, decided not to, or rather, couldn’t be bothered.
Well, the wall seemed to say, on its own behalf if not God’s, I’m just a wall and not very interesting, but I am the life you have chosen. You put yourself in this office with these slides and files and papers and coursework and you’d better get on with it.
Michael needed to talk to someone. He had no one to talk to, most especially not his staff, his lover, or their friends. All his friends were Phil’s friends.
‘Help,’ he said in a small voice that was not meant to be heard.
‘Hiya,’ said a voice that poised somewhere in mid-Atlantic. Something white moved in the corner of his eye.
His Angel was sitting on the corner of the desk, wearing his white lab coat. His smile was mild and his eyes faded; he looked detached.
Michael saw himself. I have good feelings for people, but I don’t connect. So they don’t always know that.
‘Hiya,’ Michael said. ‘I’ve been neglecting things.’
‘You have a miracle to deal with. Ah. I think you’ll find that most people who have one of those find it’s a full-time job. I mean, Phil Dick just saw pink lights, and look how long that took to sort out.’
Michael’s face shook itself with unexpected tears, like a dog getting out of water. He certainly didn’t feel that unhappy. The reaction didn’t seem to link to any emotion until he spoke, vehemently.
‘I didn’t want an extra full-time job. I didn’t ask for this. What is it for, what I am supposed to do with it, and why, why me?’
The Angel looked back, big and kindly and powerless. ‘I know less than you do.’
Michael apologized, his default