Frederik Pohl - Man Plus

He stopped at the corner of his own home street. There was a car with two men inside it parked across from the door. Warning signals flashed in his brain, and the car became a tank, howitzer pointed at his head. They were no problem. He changed course and ran through the backyards, scaling fences and slipping through gates, and at his own home he extruded the copper nails in his fingers for purchase and climbed right up the outside wall.

It was what he wanted to do. Not just to avoid the men in the car outside, but to act out a fantasy: the moment when he would burst in on Dorrie through the window, to catch her at — what?

In the event itself, what he caught her at was watching a late movie on television. Her hair was sticky with coloring compound, and she was propped up in bed eating a solitary dish of ice cream.

As he slid the unlocked window open and crawled through, she turned toward him.

She screamed.

It was not just a cry, it was instant hysterics. Dorrie spilled her ice cream and leaped out of bed. The TV set toppled and crunched to the floor. Sobbing, Dorrie pressed herself against the far wall, eyes squeezed tight and fists pressed against them.

“I’m sorry,” Roger said inadequately. He wanted to approach her, but reason prevented. She looked very helpless and appealing, in her see-through butcher-boy smock and tiny bikini-ribbon panties.

“ Sorry ,” she gasped, looked at him, averted her eyes and fumbled her way into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

Well, thought Roger, she was not to be blamed; he had a clear notion of what a grotesque sight he had been, coming through a window without warning. “You did say you knew what I looked like,” he called.

There was no answer from the bathroom; only, a moment later, the running of water. He glanced around the room. It looked exactly as it had always looked. The closets were as full of her clothes and his as they had always been. The spaces behind the couches were as empty of lovers as ever. He was not proud of himself for searching the apartment like any medieval cuckold, but he did not stop until he was certain she had been alone.

The phone rang.

Roger’s instant reflexes had him grabbing the earpiece out of its cradle almost before the first brrr sounded, so quickly and brutally that it was deformed into scrap in his hand. The vision screen flickered and then went dark again, its circuitry linked with the sound. “Hello?” Roger said. But there was no answer; he had made sure that nobody would ever speak on that instrument again.

“Christ,” he said. He had had no clear idea of how this meeting would go, but it was apparent that it had begun badly.

When Dorrie came out of the bathroom she wasn’t crying, but she wasn’t speaking either. She went into the kitchen without looking at him. “I want a cup of tea,” she said over her shoulder.

“Wouldn’t you rather I made you a drink?” Roger offered hopefully.

Roger could hear the sounds of the electric kettle being filled, the faint susurrus as it began to simmer and, several times, a cough. He listened harder and heard his wife’s breathing, which became slower and steadier.

He sat down in the chair that had always been his chair and waited. His wings were in the way. Even though they elevated themselves automatically over his head he could not lean back. Restlessly he roamed into the living room. His wife’s voice called through the swinging doors: “Do you want some tea?”

“No.” Then he added, “No, thank you.” Actually he would have liked it very much, not because of any need for fluids or nutrients but for the feeling of participating in some normal, precedented event with Dorrie. But he did not want to spill and slobber in front of her, and he had not practiced much with cups and saucers and liquids.

“Where are you?” She hesitated at the swinging doors, the cup in her hands, and then saw him. “Oh. Why don’t you turn a light on?”

“I don’t want to. Honey, sit down and close your eyes for a minute.” He had an idea.

“Why?” But she did as he requested, seating herself in the wing chair on one side of the fake fireplace. He picked up the chair, with her in it, and turned it away, so that she was facing into the wall. He looked around for something to sit in himself — there was nothing, or nothing that comported with his new geometry: floor pillows and couches, all awkward for his body or his wings — but on the other hand, he knew, he had no particular need to sit. His artificial musculature did not need that sort of relaxation very much.

So he stood behind her and said, “I’d feel better if you weren’t looking at me.”

“I understand that, Roger. You frightened me, is all. I wish you hadn’t burst in the window like that! On the other hand, I shouldn’t have been so positive I could see you, I mean like that , without — Without going into hysterics, I guess is what I want to say.”

“I know what I look like,” he said.

“It’s still you, though, isn’t it?” Dorrie said to the wall. “Although I don’t remember you ever climbing the outside of a building to get into my bed before.”

“It’s easy,” he said, taking a chance on what was almost an attempt at lightness.

“Well” — she paused for a sip of tea — “tell me. What’s this about?”

“I wanted to see you, Dorrie.”

“You did see me. On the phone.”

“I didn’t want it to be on the phone. I wanted to be in the same room with you.” He wanted even more than that to touch her, to reach out to the nape of her neck and press and caress the tendons into relaxing, but he did not quite dare that. Instead he reached down and ignited the gas flame in the fireplace, not so much for warmth as for a little light to help Dorrie. And for cheerfulness.

“We aren’t supposed to do that, Roger. There’s a thousand-dollar fine—”

He laughed. “Not for you and me, Dorrie. Anybody gives you any trouble, you call up Dash and say I said it was all right.”

His wife took a cigarette from the box on the end table and lit it. “Roger, dear,” she said slowly, “I’m not used to all this. I don’t just mean the way you look. I understand about that. It’s hard, but at least I knew what it was going to be before it happened. Even if I didn’t think it would be you . But I’m not used to your being so — I don’t know, important.”

“I’m not used to it either, Dorrie.” He thought back to the TV reporters and the cheering crowds when he returned to Earth after rescuing the Russians. “It’s different now, I feel as if I’m carrying something on my back — the world, maybe.”

“Dash says that’s exactly what you’re doing. Half of what he says is crap, but I don’t think that part is. You’re a pretty significant man, Roger. You were always a famous one. Maybe that’s why I married you. But that was like being a rock star, you know? It was exciting, but you could always walk away from it if you got tired of it. This I don’t think you can walk away from.”

She stubbed out her cigarette. “Anyway,” she said, “you’re here, and they’re probably going crazy at the project.”

“I can handle that.”

“Yes,” she said thoughtfully, “I guess you can. What shall we talk about?”

“Brad,” he said. He had not intended it. The word came out of his artificial larynx, shaped by his restructured lips, with no intervention by his conscious mind.

He could feel her stiffening up. “What about Brad?” she asked.

“Your sleeping with him, that’s what about Brad,” he said. The back of her neck was glowing dully now, and he knew that if he could see her face it would display the revealing tracery of veins. The dancing gas flames from the fireplace made an attractive spectrum of colors on her dark hair; he watched the play appreciatively, as though it did not matter what he was saying to his wife, or she to him.