Kathe Koja - Mirror of My Youth

One of the most exciting new writers to hit the science fiction scene in some time, Kathe Koja is a frequent contributor to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She has also sold stories to Pulphouse, Universe, The Ultimate Werewolf, A Whisper of Blood, and elsewhere. Her first novel, The Cipher, was released to enthusiastic critical response, and a new novel, Bad Brains, was greeted with similar acclaim. Her third novel, Skin, has just been published. She has had stories in our Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Annual Collections. Here, with her usual hard-edged élan, she gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “technological obsolescence”. .

Raymond’s sweat. Just a bead of it, a proud greasy glitter in the Slavic valley of his temple, his left temple mind you, the one pointed at her. Of course it would be. Rachel had passed no day, had in fact lived no moment of her entire adult life without one of Raymond’s irritations parading itself before her. It was a gift he had.

He shifted, there on the bench, the preciously faux-Shaker bench he insisted upon inserting in her morning room like a splinter in her living flesh.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked her.

She forbore to answer in words, preferring the quick nod, the quicker rise from her chair, beat him to the door if she could. She couldn’t. His healthy rise, his longer reach, his more advantageous proximity to the door, and still he stopped, paused to hold it for her:

“After you,” he said.

“Why not,” she said. “Once in a lifetime can’t hurt.”

Halfway through the long drive, he spoke again, her hands tight and graceful on the wheel: “Those gloves look shabby,” he said.

“They are shabby.”

“Well, why don’t you get some new ones?”

“That’s right.” The defroster’s heat blowing back, oven-dry into her face. “That’s you, isn’t it, Ray? When it wears out, get a new one. Because the old one doesn’t work anymore. Because the old one’s wearing out.” There were certainly no tears, she had cried this all out years before, but the anger was as bitter and brisk as new snow.

His profile, advantageous in the passing arctic shine of the landscape. His noble brow. “Oh, for God’s sake. Aren’t you ever going to stop feeling sorry for yourself?”

Who else will, she wanted to say, but that was as petty as it sounded and anyway they were there, the low shiny lines of the clinic before them, as cool and precious as mercury in the manicured drifts of the grounds. The circular driveway looked as if it had been literally swept clean. She pulled the Toyota right up to the entrance, as if it were a nice hotel with a nice doorman who would see to it that the car was safely parked. Her hand on the heavy glass door, warm as honey even through her shabby glove, her frozen skin, did they even heat the glass? No discomfort here, she thought— royal-blue carpet, pink marble glint of the receptionist’s desk — heated glass and heated floors, only the client left cold. It made her smile, and she kept the smile to give to the receptionist. There was no point in taking it out on him.

But the receptionist’s smile, heavy lips, bright teeth, was all for Raymond: “Good afternoon, Mr. Pope,” not presuming to offer his hand until Ray offered his, then accepting it in a flurried, flattered grasp, oh God if she had seen it once she had seen it a million times. If he said anything about Brain Fevre she would vomit on the spot.

“It’s an honor to have you here,” the receptionist said ’

“Thank you,” Raymond said.

“Dr. Christensen is waiting for you. Will you come this way, please?”

Rachel followed, silent, silent in the warm office, thinking not of what was to come or even of their, no, her first visit here, the papers and papers to sign, the needles and the sharp lights, but of a day when Raymond had sat, slumped and sorry before his terminal, the monitor screen bright and crazed with the germinus of what would become Brain Fevre, saying, “It isn’t any good. It isn’t working.” Fingers restless on the keys, toying with Delete.

“It’s going to.” Her hands, not on his shoulders — they had already got past that — but on the green slope of his swivel chair, unconsciously kneading the leather, the padding beneath like flesh under skin. “Just sweat it out, Ray. You can do that.”

And he, lips skinned back like Benjamin who lay beneath his feet, “What the hell would you know about it?” and the echo of Benjamin’s mimicking growl. Benjamin had loved Ray like a, like a dog, though of course Rachel had been the one to care for him, fill his dishes and let him in and out and drive him to the vet for the interminable shots that prolonged his painful life, drive him too for the last shot that set him free, that set Raymond breaking casseroles and cups in the kitchen when she came home alone ’

“Why didn’t you tell me?” weeping in his rage, and she, still able to be surprised, protesting that she had told him, had begged him to come with her, to be with Benjamin at the end, and he had taken her World’s Fair mug, her sister’s mug, and standing poised like Thor before the porcelain sink—

“Mrs. Pope?”

“Oh.” Looking up to see Dr. Christensen, smiling, this smile for her now but she was past needing smiles, at least for today. “Are you ready to go?”

Raymond’s words. “Of course,” she said, making it a point to rise smoothly, showing nothing of the jeering clack of bone on bone, the pain that in its inception had compelled her here, back when such things were not only prohibited but prohibitively expensive, before the ambiguities of the Frawley Act, before she had come to loathe Raymond so professionally it was almost a job. It was her job, after all, because after all what else did she have to do, useless keeper of the shrine when the god himself was still alive to tend to the incense and answer the mail, every letter hand-signed by the master in his very own childish scrawl, his—

And a door, opening into the jabber of her panic. Scent like medicine, but not. And her voice, but not her voice.

“Hello.” And beyond the fumble of the others, their self-congratulatory greetings, looking to see herself, eighteen and smiling, holding out her hand.

Carlene. Raymond had named her, of course. She was his toy, after all. She moved around the house like water, her grace so eerie to Rachel from whom it originated, from whom it had so long ago decamped, deserting her at the onset of the disease. In the days when she could still cry, not for herself or the pain, but Raymond. In the days when Raymond still held her, when they talked, talking out this, too, this plan, she whispering, “I don’t care so much about dying, but I can’t stand for you to be alone.” And he, breath hot against her forehead, tears in his voice, “I can’t stand it either,” and together they wept. For him.

Together they signed the papers, got the bank draft, almost everything they had — this was in the days before Brain Fevre, before the money that made their original sacrifice ludicrous, Ray had spent almost that much last year on redoing the Japanese garden. Together they read through the documents, discussed the procedure, experimental, frightening. She drove to the clinic alone, lay in cold paper garments, waiting.

“Did my husband call?”

A meaningless smile. “Perhaps he will later, Mrs. Pope.”

When the cells took hold, when the birth began, it was Raymond they notified, while she lay anxious and drugged not half a hall distant. When she finally arrived home, knees trembling, stomach sore from all the vomiting, she sagged in the doorway of his studio and slurred out, “It’s a girl.”