Glasshouse - Charles Stross [46]
He jumps and glares at me. He’s tense, wound up like a spring, positively fizzing. “Yes? What do you want?” he demands.
“Oh, nothing.” I smile and inspect his face. “I just wanted to sympathize with you, having a wife who doesn’t get up in the morning for Church. That’s downright inconvenient. Will I see her here next week?”
“Yes,” he grates. He’s holding his hands stiffly by his sides, and they’re clenched into fists.
“Oh, good! How marvelous. Listen, you don’t mind me visiting to see her this afternoon, do you? We’ve got a lot to talk about, and I thought she’d—”
“No.” He glares at me. “You’re not seeing the bitch. Not today, or—whenever. Go away. Whore.”
I’m not sure what the word means, but I get the general picture. “Okay, I’m going,” I say tensely. If I’d had a few more days with the bench press and the weights, things might be difficult: But not right now. Not yet.
I turn and walk back over to Sam. He doesn’t say anything when I lean against him, which is just as well because I don’t trust myself to be tactful, especially not while we’re in public, and I can’t escape. My heart’s pounding, and I feel sick with suppressed anger and shame. Cass is being treated as a virtual prisoner by her husband. I’m being publicly ridiculed and making enemies just for trying to maintain my sense of identity. This whole polity is rigged to try to make us betray our friends . . . but somewhere out there, people are looking for me with murder in mind. And if I don’t keep a low profile, sooner or later they’ll find me.
6
Sword
AFTER Church we go home. Sam doesn’t have to work on Sunday, so he watches television. I go and explore the garage. It’s a flimsy structure off to one side of the house, with a big pair of doors in front. There’s a workbench, and the hardware shop zombies have already installed all the stuff I bought yesterday. I spend a while tinkering with the drill press and reading the manual for the arc-welding apparatus. Then I go and work out on the exercise device in the basement, grimly pretending that it’s a torture machine for transferring physical stress to the bones of a human victim and that Jen’s on the receiving end of it. After I’ve squished her into a bloody lump the size of a shopping bag, I feel drained but happier and ready to tackle difficult tasks. So I go looking for Sam.
He’s in the living room, staring blankly at the TV screen with the volume turned off. I sit down next to him, and he barely notices. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I’m—” He shakes his head, mute and miserable.
I reach for his hand but he pulls it away. “Is it me?” I ask.
“No.”
I reach for his hand again, grab it, and hang on. He doesn’t pull away this time, but he seems to be tense.
“What is it, then?”
For a while I think he isn’t going to say anything, but then, just as I’m about to try again, he sighs. “It’s me.”
“It’s—what?”
“Me. I shouldn’t be here.”
“What?” I look around. “In the living room?”
“No, in this polity,” he says. Now I get it, it’s not anger—it’s depression. When he’s down, Sam clams up and wallows in it instead of taking it out on his surroundings.
“Explain. Try and convince me.” I shuffle closer to him, keeping hold of his hand. “Pretend I’m one of the experimenters, and you’re looking to justify an early termination, okay?”
“I’m—” He looks at me oddly. “We’re not supposed to talk about who we were before the experiment. It doesn’t aid enculturation, and it’s probably going to get in the way.”
“But I—” I stop. “Okay, how about you tell me,” I say slowly. “I won’t tell anyone.” I look him in the eye. “We’re supposed to be a monadic couple. There aren’t any negative-sum game plays between couples in this society, are there?”
“I don’t know.” He sniffs. “You might talk.”
“Who to?”
“Your friend Cass.”
“Bullshit!” I punch him lightly on the arm. “Look, if I promise I won’t tell?”
He looks at me thoughtfully. “Promise.”
“Okay, I promise.” I pause. “So what’s wrong?”
His shoulders are hunched. “I’ve just come out of memory surgery,” he says slowly. “I think that’s where Fiore and Yourdon and their