Three Types Of Solitude

by Brian W. Aldiss


I
Happiness In Reverse

Judge Beauregard Peach was writing to his estranged wife, Gertrude. Gertrude had
her own prosperous career  as a lawyer. However,  following a number of  serious
quarrels with her husband, she had taken herself off with their adult  daughter,
Catherine, to the South of France.

There she was visited by an Oxford man she had known in the past, a  well-placed
journalist. They  sailed and  visited restaurants  and drank  copiously, and she
received unwelcome letters from Beauregard.

Beauregard  did  not  plead  for  her to  return.  His  mind  worked  in a  more
sophisticated way. Gertrude knew that way, admired it, feared it.


My dearest Gertrude, (he wrote)

I regret you are  not here with me  in Oxford, since the  case I am now  hearing
would interest you. It may indeed prove momentous.

We are sitting at Oxford Crown Court.  So unusual is the problem that the  court
is  always full  to overflowing.  The ushers  are having  difficulties with  the
crowds which  gather outside  early in  the morning.  Reporters are present, not
only from the Oxford Mail, as one  might expect, but from several of the  London
papers, together with a stringer from the New York Herald Tribune.

Traffic comes  regularly to  a standstill  from Magdalen  Bridge to  the railway
station, though 'nothing unusual about  that', as a would-be wit  has commented.
Unfortunately, the judge's wife has taken herself away for a holiday, while  her
husband sits upon the question, What to do with a man, no petty criminal, indeed
one of a long line of Oxford  eccentrics who intend no harm, who has  invented a
new, if rather wooden, race or species, the reproduction rate of which threatens
humanity?  (Incidentally,  what  a  conundrum to  face  an  ageing  man rendered
suddenly impotent  by his  wife's unfaithfulness!  I am  sure you  must laugh to
think of it.)

The case has been  unprecedented; I consider myself  fortunate to sit on  it. We
must think it one of  the perks of living in  Oxford - rather as if  we had been
present  last  century  at  that  evolution  debate  presided  over  by   Bishop
Wilberforce.

The world is crowded enough as  it is; sufficient ecological damage has  already
been done  to our  natural habitat.  Here before  me is  someone responsible for
more, much more, of the same.

The  accused,  Donald  Maudsley,  is  an  ordinary  enough  fellow  as   regards
appearances. A little beard, rather beaky  nose, fair hair tied back in  a short
pony tail. Of average height, or under. A melancholy man, but not unintelligent.
An old Oriel man, in fact.

He has a  way of telling  his story in  the third person,  which I found  rather
irritating at  first. It  becomes evident  that he  suffers from dissociation of
personality.

A transcript of his deposition runs as follows:

After gaining his degree,  this little man, by  name Donald Maudsley, went  into
Earth Sciences. He  attended the Brazil  Conference, after which  he disappeared
into the wilds of South America. This is the essence of his story.

This little man came  to live on the  edge of an undiscovered  rain forest which
swept right down to the South Pacific ocean. The sun shone, the winds blew,  the
rains came and went. Days and years  passed. No one knew where this man  was. He
had no contact with the outside world. No boat ever visited the shore. No  plane
ever passed overhead. It proved a  congenial place in which to undergo  a crisis
of identity.

The little man collected discarded sunsets. He swept them up every evening  when
they were spent, and kept them in a big golden cage in the depths of the forest.

Although he often sang  to himself, generally a  folk song about a  hermit polar
bear, he remained lonely.  He rarely met with  another living thing, apart  from
crabs on the beach. Occasionally a  white bird, an albatross, flew by  overhead.
The sight  merely increased  his feeling  of solitude.  The solitude pierced his
being and became a part of him.

Early one morning,  he cut down  a forest tree.  From a section  of the tree  he
fashioned a ventriloquist's dummy. He called  the dummy Ben. He imbued Ben  with
an illusion of life for the sake of company.

The man and the doll held  long conversations together, sitting on the  trunk of
the felled tree. In the main,  they discussed morality, and whether there  was a
necessity for it. The little man had a stern morality which had served to  shape
his life. While up at Oriel, he had met a handsome and intelligent young  woman,
the daughter of foreign royalty. He had been in love with her. But when she  had
done her best to persuade  him to make lov& to  her, he had refused and  shunned
her company.

Her response to rejection had been one of fury and vituperation.

He had  then studied  at Black  Friars to  take holy  orders, but once more felt
unable to  carry his  wishes through.  In his  despair, he  felt it was morality
which had driven him apart from all human company.

The dummy sometimes became passionate  on the subject, believing morality  to be
merely  a  failure  in  relationships.  For  a  wooden  thing,  the  dummy   was
surprisingly  eloquent.  It  ran  about the  beach,  such  was  its strength  of
conviction. But these arguments led nowhere, like the beach.

Gertrude, I am dining in hall this evening, and must change my clothes. My scout
is  here.  I will  write  to you  again  soon, to  give  you an  account  of the
conversations  which took  place, according  to Maudsley,  between him  and  his
dummy. With love,


Gertrude felt herself moved to write Beauregard a note in return.


The case on  which you are  sitting holds curious  echoes of our  own past. This
fellow Maudsley must ache to find love in a loveless and godless universe.  Yet,
according to his  account, he can  find it only  with a thing  of wood. You will
recall how Hippolytus spurns the  amatory approach of Phaedra, his  step-mother,
with priggish coldness. Both die.

This must provoke your  own memory, causing you  to look back upon  the seeds of
our present difficulties. I wish to hear no more about the case.

Gertrude


Nevertheless, the judge wrote again to his absent wife.


The case continues. We are now into the fourth day.

Maudsley claims that his treatment of  the dummy, Ben, as an independent  entity
was the cause of  its increasing semblance of  life. He built the  dummy a small
hut next to his  own, on a cliff  above the beach. When  he cooked a crab,  or a
fish, he always  served a portion  to the dummy,  who took it  away to 'eat'  in
private.

Gradually, he claims, they fell into discussing more personal topics. The  dummy
had no past life to  talk about, although it came  out strongly for a belief  in
abstaining from  meat and  growing upwards,  sprouting foliage  and fruit as you
went. This was like a religion with it.

When  the man  tried to  contradict it  on this  score, the  dummy claimed  that
bearing fruit was the moral way to live, since it was asexual. A pineapple was a
symbol of morality, true morality.

One day, the following conversation took place. Maudsley said, 'You cannot argue
that asexual reproduction is superior  to sexual reproduction. We are  different
kinds of  people, and  have to  employ whatever  methods God  has placed  at our
disposal to increase our kind. To argue otherwise is childish.'

'I'm a child at heart,' said the dummy, striking its chest.

'But you don't possess a heart.'

The dummy regarded him  strangely. 'What do you  know of my life?  Unlike you, I
spring from  the earth  itself. I  repress my  feelings because  I was born of a
tree. Trees,  in my  limited experience,  are very  dispassionate. I've  been so
private, I behave so woodenly.  I desire to have a  heart. But then -' this  was
said after some thought - 'don't you find that hearts make you sad?'

Maudsley stared meditatively out to sea, to the ocean which possessed  something
of the blankness of eternity.  'Mm. Something certainly makes me  sad. Something
hard to  define. I  always considered  it was  just the  passage of time, not my
heart.'

The dummy gave a scornful snigger. 'Time doesn't pass. That's just a human myth.
Time's all round us, like some kind of jelly. It's just human life that passes.'

'But what I'm trying to say is that I don't really know what makes me sad.'

'You can't have much knowledge of yourself, then!' said the doll. 'Nothing makes
me sad, except perhaps a splinter in my buttocks.'

It took  a pace  or two  along the  shore, its  hands clasped  behind its  back.
Without looking at the man, it said, 'Nope, I'm never sad. Never have been,  not
even when I  was a sapling.  I can imagine  sadness, like a  kind of sawdust. It
worries me when you claim you're sad. You're like a god to me, you know that?  I
can't bear your sadness.'

The Oriel man gave a sad little laugh.  'That's why I try not to tell you  about
all the grief and longing in my heart.'

The dummy came and sat by the man, resting its chin in its hand. 'I didn't  mean
to upset you. It's really none of my business.'

'Maybe it is your business.'

A silence fell between them. Over the wide expanse of ocean, another sunset  was
gathering up its  strength to happen,  searching in its  palette for a  brighter
gold.

The dummy  broke the  silence. 'So  what's this  "sad" business  mean, anyway? I
mean, how often do you feel like doing it?'

'Sad? Oh, sadness is  just happiness in reverse.  We humans have to  put up with
it. Just being human is an awful burden to bear.'

'You keep on doing it? Is that  why you feel compelled to collect all  these old
secondhand sunsets?'

But Maudsley became annoyed at being  quizzed by a mere doll. 'Go  away, please!
Leave me in peace. You're pathetic, and your questions are meaningless!'

'How can they be meaningless? My questions are your questions, after all.'

'By what logic do you reach that conclusion?'

The dummy replied, 'I'm only your echo, when all's said and done.'

The man had  never considered the  matter in that  way. It occurred  to him that
perhaps all his life  he had only been  hearing echoes of himself,  and that his
morality, on which he  had once prided himself,  was merely a refusal  to permit
other people into his life.

He left the doll on the beach, and went to see how the sunset was getting on. As
he dragged its discarded colours to the cage in the middle of the rainforest, he
saw that the other sunsets he  had salved were slowly darkening with  time, like
old newspapers or discarded flags.


When  Gertrude received  this account  from her  estranged husband,  she  became
furious. She was convinced that he  was making up the Maudsley case.  She phoned
and left a  message on the  answerphone in Beauregard's  college rooms, ordering
him not to communicate with her on the subject again.

However, the judge sent his wife  another letter, excusing himself by saying  he
imagined that she might care to hear about the conclusion of the case.


Next morning, as Maudsley walked alone along the sand, a motorboat came  roaring
towards the shore and a woman jumped out on to the beach. She wore a white chino
suit and had a leather belt with  a bolstered gun about her waist. Although  she
behaved in an athletic way, he saw  when she came close that she was  quite old.
Her neck had withered.  There were liver spots  dotting her arms and  hands. But
the smile on her lined cheeks was good and her hair was dyed blond.

'Found you at  last,' she said.  'I'm from the  Chile Forestry Commission.  I've
come to rescue you.'

He was bemused, asking her shyly if she was the woman he had loved and  rejected
long ago in his Oriel days.

She laughed. 'Life isn't as tidy as all that. Besides, I was at Wadham. Hop into
the boat.'

Maudsley thought about his dummy and  about the store of spent sunsets.  Then he
hopped into the boat.

There his deposition ended.

Ladies and gentlemen of  the jury [I said),  through this man's negligence,  the
dummy people  now number  many thousands.  The original  dummy reproduced itself
asexually,  as  his  descendants  continue  to  do.  They  have  now  ruined the
rainforest - cut most of it down for their bodies -and that part of the world is
completely darkened by guttering sunsets.

A sentence  of life  imprisonment for  crimes against  ecology would  seem to be
appropriate.

That's the  end of  my letter  to you  today, my  dear Gertie.  Of course I feel
lonely without you, otherwise I would not waste my time inventing fables. I hope
you and Catherine  are having a  happy spell by  the sea, and  will soon make up
your minds to return to Oxford. Encaenia takes place in ten days; it would be so
convenient if you were to accompany me - it's to be held in All Souls this year.

You are  the hope  and inspiration  of my  life; I  cherish your  beauty and the
loveliness of your soul. Come back soon!

With love,

Your Beau



II
A SINGLE-MINDED ARTIST

Arthur Scunnersman bought  a mansion in  the hills behind  Antibes. He rented  a
house in Santa Barbara. He bought a  yacht in Nice which never left harbour.  He
threw lavish parties in  London, Paris and New  York. He gave the  University of
Oxford two million dollars for  a new art institute to  be built on the site  of
the Radcliffe Infirmary. His clothes were newly bought every day.

Arthur  Scunnersman  was everywhere.  His  face appeared  everywhere.  His women
friends were many. He treated each  one well, but casually; he was  uninterested
in their inner lives. It was rumoured that on occasions he slept between a  lady
and her son.

The breath of scandal made him even more interesting. Arthur Scunnersman was the
artist of his age. He had become famous while still up at Oxford. His  paintings
and sketches commanded vast sums. His scenic designs for movies and ballets were
immensely well paid. And his subjects  were so various. There seemed nothing  he
could not do. The name Scunnersman was on everyone's lips.

His friends noted that he would disappear for weeks at a time. He would reappear
with new  works, abstracts,  rep-resentationals, portraits...  On his  return to
society, he would throw a party.  Everyone attended who had the privilege  to be
invited. Arthur himself  sang at such  parties. Sometimes he  sang songs he  had
composed  on the  spur of  the moment.  Everyone was  charmed, touched,  amused.
Records were issued of his music, with Arthur singing the songs. Everyone bought
them. What a magician he was!

Certainly he was diverse. It was  the astonishing diversity of his artwork  that
most charmed the world - that  glowing, fashionable, wealthy world which was  so
cap*^ vated by  Arthur Scunnersman and  all he seemed  to stand for,  effortless
success above all.

Until  one  month  an  influential  art  critic  criticized  his  diversity   as
rootlessness. Then  Arthur was  gone. The  world's reporters  swore to track him
down. They never found him.

They did not think to look in a small Norwegian town twenty kilometres south  of
Oslo. The town  was called Dykstad.  The house Scunnersman  bought was ordinary,
and stood in an ordinary street, opposite the post office.

In the Dykstad house, Scunnersman lived in solitude with a housekeeper, a  woman
by name Bea Bj0rklund. Bea was a country woman. Strange to relate, she had never
heard the name of Scunnersman. But she knew a great deal about mackerel fishing.

Bea was plain  and placid and  given to plumpness,  and her blond  hair was kept
plaited and  rolled about  her head,  so that  it resembled  an ornamental bread
loaf. Her teeth were good, her eyes blue. She washed and cooked and cleaned  for
Scunnersman, and, after two months had passed, she succumbed to his  entreaties,
let down her long hair and entered his bed.

She insisted that they made love in the missionary position. She reached  orgasm
quickly and calmly.  They lived lives  of strictly regulated  mediocrity. Oxford
was never mentioned. Scunnersman did nothing. Occasionally, Scunnersman would go
for a walk in the neighbourhood -just  as far as the old stone bridge  and back.
He did not take  drugs or drink, as  formerly, although Bea sometimes  persuaded
him to enjoy a glass of akavit with her in the evening, before they went to bed.

Sometimes  they drove  to the  coast in  her old  rusty Ford  and went  mackerel
fishing on the deep and restless North Sea. Bea taught Scunnersman how to hold a
rod. Soon, he was also able to catch mackerel, though never as many as she.

He did not paint. He had no paints in Dykstad.

When Christmas came, he went to the big local store up the street and bought Bea
some lacy French underwear.  Bea went to the  big local store up  the street and
bought Scunnersman a wooden case of oil paints and brushes.

He opened it with astonishment.

'What gave you this idea?'

She showed two pretty dimples as she replied, 'I thought perhaps you might  like
to take up painting as a hobby. I once saw an artist on television and he looked
quite a lot like you. They said he was very successful.'

'Did they now?'

'Maybe you could be successful like him, if you tried. You got good at  catching
mackerel, that's sure!' She laughed, showing her pretty gums and teeth.

He kissed her and suggested she try on the underwear. He would watch.

On the twelfth day  of Christmas, he decided  he would paint. One  corner of the
sparse living room  particularly attracted him.  It contained a  shelf with some
books propped up against a heavy stone vase, an old armchair, purple with a  red
cushion on it, and a little window  which looked out on the small patch  of land
where they grew vegetables, mainly cabbages.

He began slowly to paint. The brush on the canvas was strange to his touch.  Bea
watched the process without comment.

He asked her over his shoulder what he had asked her before, 'What gave you  the
idea?'

This time she said with a smile, 'People in the village find it bad that we live
together without marriage. So I make you  out to be an artist. Then they  do not
worry. They expect nothing else from artists.'

He rose and kissed her ripe lips.

She was sceptical about the painting when it was finished. 'It's nice. But  it's
not quite like the real thing.'

'But what would be the point of it being exactly like the real thing?'

The  next day,  he painted  the same  corner of  the room  as previously.  Bea's
response was as before.

He was amused. He painted  the corner of the room  over and over. She was  never
entirely satisfied.

When he had produced his  hundredth canvas, she kissed him  tenderly, suggesting
he gave up. 'You'll never be a success...'

But Arthur Scunnersman was just beginning to enjoy himself.



III
TALKING CUBES

War had followed war. Civil war  had come with destructive ferocity. My  adopted
country was in ruins. Many hundreds  of thousands of people had died.  Many fine
buildings had been destroyed.  Many hovels had gone.  Whole towns were now  mere
rubble. People  were homeless.  Many lived  under sheets  of plastic  and boiled
water on fires built of twigs. Many  died in their sleep, of anger or  sorrow or
injury.

I had returned there attached to a peace-keeping force, as an Oxfam official. No
longer young, I found this country I had loved, where I once enjoyed an  intense
love affair, had succumbed to old age. How was it to grow young again? How  were
the minds of the people to be rejuvenated? How were north and south ever to live
in harmony again?

Enemy landmines were still hidden in  the open country, waiting to blow  off the
legs of peasants and passers-by. Enemy machines still prowled amid the  desolate
streets  of  towns.  These  technological  crabs  remained  untiring  in   their
programmed malice, and  would fire laser  beams at anything  that moved, whether
from north or  south. I volunteered  to officiate in  the task of  detecting and
dismantling them.

One fine October weekend, I had to attend a multiethnic peace conference in  the
capital city. A  fine new international  hotel had been  built in an  area still
remaining moderately intact. Something resembling what we call 'normality' - our
Western version of normality - had been established there. Our version  included
baths and showers and meals for which  one sat down at tables to eat.  Meals for
which one paid with plastic credit cards.

On my first evening in the hotel, I met in the bar a woman who had studied  with
me at university.  Later, we had  met again in  the foreign capital,  before the
divisions in the country  erupted into civil war.  Her name was Sushia  Klein. A
heavily built man with a shaved head accompanied her.

My heart seemed to leap. I stood stock still. She was seated at a table, looking
up at the man,  who was standing with  his broad shoulders turned  to me. Behind
them on the wall was a panoramic picture of storks, flying or preening,  against
a black background. With terrible force,  the thought came to me how  everything
had changed; not only the circumstances  of a once prosperous country, not  only
my circumstances, but no doubt  Sushla's circumstances as well. However  hard my
life had been since we parted, her life had probably been at least as  difficult
- this precious woman once destined for a quiet scholarly life. Something in the
look of her partner's  thickset body told me  that she had few  choices, perhaps
few desirable choices, in her current way of living.

So I stood there, uncertain  whether or not to retreat.  The joy and pain of  an
old love was upon me.

The thickset man took a chair, still with his back to me. So I could see  Sushia
less in profile, more in full face, as she turned her gaze on him.

Sushia, I saw, had grown much older - as had I. She was from the south,  whereas
I was from the north. Nevertheless, we had once enjoyed an intense love  affair.
I say we enjoyed it; but the enforced secrecy of our love tore us apart; it  was
an extraordinary  mixture of  fear, triumph,  admiration and  sheer lust. We had
both been proud to take  a lover from the rival  race; but there had been  peace
then, of a kind, and hope for the future, of a kind.

Memories  of that  past time  overwhelmed me  as our  eyes met.  Sushia  excused
herself from the man she was with and came gladly towards me. He sat glaring  at
us.

'Sushia, after so many years...'

'Oh, was it not all just yesterday?'

We sat in a corner  of the salon and drank  slow beers together. We were  formal
with each other, and rather at a loss for words.

'Although it's a coincidence that we meet here,' she said, 'I am better prepared
for it than you, as it happens.'

I looked a question at her. There were streaks of grey in her hair.

She  produced  from  a  carrier  bag  a  small  transparent  cube,  perhaps  ten
centimetres to  a side.  She pushed  the ashtray  away, setting  the cube on the
table between us. Looking sometimes directly at me, and sometimes at the perspex
cube, she said, 'I have had the  afternoon off duty. I wandered through the  old
streets in the ancient quarter. As I went, I thought of you, and how we had once
walked there  together. I  loved the  city at  that time.  It seemed  so full of
vigour. Most of the stalls have gone now. Then, of course, it became the capital
of an enemy power, the north. And you were gone. Well, times were different when
we were at university, weren't they? Better, certainly.'

'Very much better, Sushia.' Her hand lay on the table. I covered it with mine.

'This cube - they  were known as holocubes  in their day -  turned up in a  junk
shop just along the road  and down the first alleyway  to the left. I bought  it
because it so happens that I had found its double in a shop in a south town some
while ago. So much for synchronicity... Now I have the pair. It's a miracle that
both have survived amid so much destruction. Both still work. I shall take  them
back to Oxford with me next week.' 'You're going back to Oxford?'

'My daughter works  at the Ashmolean  Museum, in the  print department. But  you
didn't know I had a daughter.' She flashed me a smile from under her  eyelashes.
'Not by you, I may add.'

A little dart  of jealousy coursed  through my being.  'The other cube  is in my
room, the one I bought earlier. I wish you to see them both working. We can plug
them in there. I don't imply anything else by inviting you up to my room.  We're
too old for all that stuff. Drained of love. At least I am. Nor can I forget you
were recently my enemy, or one of them. And the atrocities your people committed
against mine.'

'Not my people. I  don't have people any  more.' 'Yes, you do.  It's written all
over you. England. Oxford.' 'Oh, that! No, I just have mines.' I explained  what
my occupation was. 'Those mines were laid by both sides. Despite the peace, they
continue to kill and maim.'

'Like old grudges.'  Sushia smiled sadly.  She watched as  the man she  had been
with - possibly  her husband -  violently stubbed out  a cigarette and  left the
hotel through the glass doors.

I accompanied her up to her room. I  was jaded and glad to have someone to  talk
to - her above all  others. A man's tropical suit  hung on a cupboard door.  His
shaving kit lay on a side table. The bed was dishevelled.

Sushia phoned room service for coffee. Decaffeinated. I stood apart from her. My
desire was no longer for her, only for our past, our mutual past, when our  beds
had been permanently dishevelled.

I did vaguely  remember the holocube  craze. Lovers liked  them. When the  cubes
were  switched  on, a  head  appeared inside,  looked  lifelike, spoke,  smiled,
sometimes wept.  The illusion  was simply  achieved: a  hologrammed image of the
subject was  inscribed on  a collapsed  germanium-alloy core.  It sprang to life
when current was passed through  it, speaking via loudspeakers concealed  in its
base. If another person had a similar  bolocube, the two heads could be made  to
appear to converse together.

Sushia switched on one of the cubes. The head of a woman with short raven  hair,
red lips, and a  pert nose appeared. She  did not move, remaining  frozen in the
block of artificial ice. The image was rather grainy.

When the other cube  was switched on, a  male head appeared, young,  perky, with
broad cheek bones. From  an oilskin cap on  his head, blond curls  protruded. He
too was immobile.

I recognised the portraits of ourselves when young. Dread overcame me. That  had
been she. That had been me.

Sushia moved the cubes closer together and  made the two heads, the man and  the
woman, face each other.

The images began to speak.

The young woman opened  falteringly, but almost at  once began an outpouring  of
love.

'... I am  unable to tell  you how much  I love you.  At home, a  brook of fresh
water flows by our little  house. My love for you  is like that - always  clear,
always renewed. I have never felt before  what I feel for you, not for  any man.
Oh my darling, I know I will always, always, love you and crave your company.'

The man's image was sharper. It was easier to hear what he was saying.

'These are hard times. The situation grows worse. Our politicians must be  blind
or mad. This house came under rifle fire last night. I want to tell you I  still
love you, but it is  impossible to visit you now.  But I must let you  know I am
thinking of you.'

He paused.  The woman  spoke again.  'You were  in my  arms only last night. All
night long you were in my arms. How wonderful it was! You know I give myself  to
you entirely, without reserve, as the ground drinks the summer rain. Be mine for
ever, my darling, and - Happy Birthday!'

The male smiled  with some tenderness.  He spoke English  with a concise  Oxford
intonation.

'The vows we  took two years  ago remain valid.  It's just that  I cannot get  a
permit any  more to  travel in  the south.  I'm sick  of the whole situation. In
fact, I have to tell you -I'm leaving our country, this country suddenly full of
disputation. I'm going abroad before things get any worse...'

As he mastered his feelings, the woman spoke again. 'Oh, thank you, my  darling,
for saying you can come tomorrow. We can stay together in my cousin's room.  She
is away. I will be open to you.  Indeed, just to say these happy things, I  feel
myself  already opening.  Oh, my  darling lover,  come to  my arms,  to my  bed.
Tomorrow we'll be together again.'

The man said, 'It's ghastly that things  have turned out this way. More than  we
bargained for, eh?  Still, there were  always differences between  us. Your ways
were more -well,  backward, than ours  in the north.  You should have  come here
when I invited you. Not that I blame you. We should have foreseen that civil war
was brewing. So -farewell, dear Sushia!'

Sushla's image said, 'Yes, I'll be here  waiting for you. Not a cloud shall  mar
our love for one another.  That I swear!... I am  unable to tell you how  much I
love you. At home, a brook of fresh water flows by our little house. My love for
you is like that - always clear, always renewed. I have never-'

Sushia switched off the cubes. 'After that they just go on repeating themselves.
Saying their little piece over and over again - those protestations of love.'

With tears burning in  my eyes, I said,  uneasily, 'Of course, his  holocube was
recorded some months after hers. When things had become so much worse...'

She buried her face in her hands.  'Oh, we know they are not really  conversing,
those two, those ghosts of  our young selves. Their pre-programmed  speeches are
triggered by pauses  in the other's  monologues. But oh,  it cuts so  deep-' Dry
sobs choked off her words.

In guilt and sorrow,  I said, 'Sushia, I  remember cutting that cube.  Having to
part hurt me just as much as it did you...'

When I put an arm about her shoulder, she gently detached it.

'I know that,' she said, looking up angrily, her face stained with tears.  'What
happened to us was just in the nature of things.'

I clutched one of her hands. 'The nature of things.'

She gave a kind of laugh. 'How I hate the nature of things!'

When I tried  to kiss her  lips, she turned  her head away.  I pleaded, then our
lips met, as once they had done. Though they remained together, lip against lip,
breath against breath, this time it was not as prelude but rather as finale.

As I made my way downstairs - the lifts were not working - I thought, the war is
over now. Like my youth.

I had not stayed for the coffee to arrive. Sushia remained in her room with  the
old cubes, old words, old emotions.

