More advertisers cancelling. Saul took care of everything as it happened, waving problems aside with his hands, drilling instructions into employees with the insistent and demanding point of his finger. “You will do this.” “You will take care of that.”
It was all so easy now. Saul had attained a state of nirvana.
Finally he did hear from Mirro – a relentless tirade of shouting over the phone, her face wild and accusing. Saul shrugged. “When you begin paying my salary, then you will have a say in my business matters.”
“You want me to leave you?” Mirro screamed. “Is that what you want?”
“Oh no, of course not. I love you dearly. In fact, I want to make love to you right now – but I can’t, I’m working, and I also cannot allow you to take up any more of my time with personal matters. I have things to do.” He hung up on her, then broke out in excited giggles. He held his finger over the answer button, ready to push. When it rang he immediately answered.
“I don’t know what’s happened to you,” Mirro told him, her voice now quiet but a bit on the raw side. “I don’t know, but it scares me. Something has happened. I think you’ve cracked.”
“I feel fine. I’ll talk to you when I get home.”
“I won’t be here when you get here.”
“That’s a shame, Mirro. Where will you be?”
She stared at him through the screen, unable to say anything.
Saul enjoyed her expression, much like Vicky’s but more refined, more sophisticated. Mirro knew why she was frightened. She knew what was wrong. “You really have cracked, Saul,” she said in wonder. “You are insane.”
“Nonsense. I have a lot of responsibilities, my dear, and I have to take care of them to the best of my ability. I am a professional and hold a very important position, a key position, in this corporation. I can’t afford the luxury of domestic problems anymore. It’s that simple.”
“I’m moving out, Saul. I’ll be gone before you get home.”
“Take some food with you. You’ll need it.” Saul grinned.
Mirro looked suddenly alarmed. “What?”
“I’ve removed your name from the bank account. As of this morning you do not have access to my money.”
“You can’t do that!”
“I did it.”
“I’ll, I’ll get a lawyer! I’ll sue you!”
“You have to divorce me, first. And since we had a standard monogamous contract, your affair with my ex-employee Vicky constitutes a major breach of contract and therefor you forfeit everything. Go get a lawyer and see what he tells you. I’m willing to bet he tells you the same thing.”
This time it was Mirro who hung up. Saul had a long, healthy laugh at this, and wasn’t surprised when she called back a third time. “You’re not insane,” she told him. “You had all this carefully planned out. You must have. You have me trapped.”
“You’re not trapped. Do anything you want.”
“You hate me. You really do hate me.” Mirro started crying, and this made Saul giggle. A pity-play, he thought, hanging up on her. “You affect me not,” he told the blank screen. “Within a week you will be–-” Saul cut himself off before he could say it.
Saying it out loud would be insane. But he’d caught himself; it didn’t worry him. Everything was under control.
Dead, he thought. You will be dead. Possibly even tonight.
And you talk to me about hate? Your own hate is powering me. Your own hate is what I will use against you. You hate me so much that it’ll take your life.
And that, to Saul, was amusing. Amusing and simple. And so true.
He had to laugh.
#
Mirro walked away from the phone, still crying. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She couldn’t believe any of it. Saul had suddenly turned so ruthless – it staggered her mind. And after he’d been so sensitive, right after Vicky’s son … Mirro thought about this, wiping at her eyes, knowing the tears were making a mess out of her face. He must have been hurt, she decided. Vicky and I taking off like that, and not telling him … it must have destroyed him. It must have torn him apart.
What else could have changed him so?
Mirro decided that she shouldn’t leave – she decided that she should stay and try to talk to him, try to reason with him.
Make him understand that leaving with Vicky was not an attack upon him. She had done it for Vicky; she had done it because Vicky needed someone right then, someone to help her get over the loss, to help her carry on – couldn’t Saul understand that?
Of course he’ll understand, she thought. I’ve just got to explain it to him. Prove to him that it’s him that I love. Even give up seeing Vicky if I have to.
Oh my God, she thought. Could I actually do that? Give up Vicky?
After a moment of deliberation, she decided she could.
32. SOUL
The enclave was a cluster of buildings around a central common, an old abandoned college from the last century made up of 45 degree angles and greenhouse type windows. Wiley, Aaron and Savina had hiked by night to avoid the heat, but before they were anywhere near the place they were picked up by Danny Marauder in a stolen Mercedes 4000A air launch and flown the rest of the way.
Danny had kept the Mercedes low, hovering along just barely over the ice plants as he followed the highway north, then veered west and made his way carefully through the trees. “How did you know where to find us?” Savina asked him.
“Evelyn knew where you were. She told me.”
“How did Evelyn know where we were?”
Danny smiled and said, “How does Evelyn know anything?” and left it at that. Wiley and Aaron accepted it, so Savina did too.
However, she still wondered …
Savina had been shown to a hot shower and a soft bed, and she couldn’t believe how such simple things could bring such a sensation of peace and pleasure. She slept the rest of the night away and awoke far into the next morning. Sunlight smeared across a white tile ceiling above her, and a fly buzzed around in the room. She stretched and yawned and wiggled her fingers, and stared for a while at the dust motes suspended in the sun beams, dancing to an approximation of some bizarre zero-gee ballet. Somewhere came shouts and laughter, the sounds of children playing. Savina sat up and looked around her small room. A window, a bed, a table, and on the table a mason jar with water and flowers; she smiled, thinking, I’m back in civilization again!
She got up and put on some more new clothes that had been given to her, and opened the heavy metal door to the outside. She emerged in a brick-floored walkway crisscrossed my a million little cracks, which led out to a sunlit deck with chairs and people. One of the people was Evelyn Sunrunner.
“Good morning,” Evelyn called.
“Hi,” Savina said, walking up to her. She was introduced around, and the names went right through her head, instantly forgotten. “Is there a phone here? Or a terminal? I want to leave an anonymous message to someone.”
“Not right now,” Evelyn said. “We cannot have any electronic connection to the outside world while the Antichrist is here.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Wiley and Aaron are going to give it a soul,” she said.
“Aaron was so impatient he was up right after dawn setting the computers up. They made a working copy and I think they’re loading it now. Come on, I’ll show you.” Evelyn stood up, excused herself from the others and led Savina down an open ramp and down a flight of stairs. There was a small pond in a small common, and behind a large glass window she could see Aaron at a keyboard staring at a screen. Evelyn squeezed Savina’s shoulders and went to rejoin the others.
“Hi Savina,” Aaron said as she entered the room. She noticed his burn wound was covered over by a pink new skin patch. Hairlike wires stuck out every few centimeters and trailed down to a small power pack taped to his side.
“Muscle and nerve regrowth,” she said, pointing at it. “You were worse than I thought.”
“Lucky for me, it killed most of the nerves,” he said flippantly. “I’m on some great pain killers now.”
“I’ll bet. Where’s Wiley?”
“He’s getting more coffee.”
“How’s Jesus doing?”
He gave her a confused look for a moment, then smile. “Oh, this Jesus? We loaded it into RAM and it took one look around and erased its working copy. It couldn’t get at our master copy on the MSDs, thank God.”