Chapter 5
He brushed me aside not ungently, but with a firmness. His muscles were thin and strong as wire thread, muscles like the long splintering sinews of oak when you split it.
"I'm going outside, Reed," he said to me, "and I may be quite a while."
Then he was gone, out the door. I was scared, confused. What should I do? Call someone, my dad maybe? And tell him what? To get there right away? How could he? He was a hundred miles away, in Birmingham. I put on my raincoat and boots, then went out into the storm myself. I figured I knew where Grandaddy was headed.
About halfway up the little hill that the grave was on top of, I saw him. He was moving through the woods without hurry, but steadily, as a deer will do when it is on the move, seeking its bed for the night. The clay sides of hill were slick with running water mingled with the first of the autumn leaves. I began to climb, quickly. A bolt of lightning struck nearby, and I started; I fell, half sliding, a good ways back down the hill. I remembered the big oak on top of the hill, the one from the tapestry, the helical scar it bore of lightning from past storms. I whimpered, shook my head hard to clear the fear of dying like a moth in a bug-zapper (but this was different, because out here, the bug-zapper was coming after me), then started back up the hill again.
In another flash, I saw my grandfather. He was almost at the top.
"Grandaddy, stop," I said, but the thunder rolled over my voice.
Finally I reached the hilltop, pulled myself into the little clearing where the grave was. There was the dark shape of my grandfather against the darker sky, like oil floating on black water.
Lightning crackled across the sky, and my grandfather flashed iridescent, his shape defined by a faint rainbow, just as oil will s.h.i.+ne on water.
I stopped short, rubbed my eyes. But my grandfather was still glowing slightly, even with no lightning. He was a prism, split into his primary colors, only his shape remaining.
More lightning. And he was a kaleidoscope, forming and reforming in darkly s.h.i.+ning patterns.
"Grandaddy."
I heard a voice in my ears. Or was it the night, the rush of the creek below, the wind? More importantly, was the voice of the night, this night, a woman's? "Let him be, boy, Reed. Let him weave himself a place."
Then the s.h.i.+fting of colors spread from my grandfather into the land about him. There was a stroke of lightning, and the process accelerated. The land was unwinding on itself, unbraiding as an old rope will twist apart. Was this something my grandfather was doing, or did the land separate, pull apart on its own? I will never know, though I suspect it was a little of both, a working together so closely that neither could tell you where one stopped and the other began. A kind of marriage.
The ground, the trees, the sky, separated, s.h.i.+fted into points and lines of color, like a 3-D drawing when you don't have those special kind of gla.s.ses. Then, near where my grandfather was standing, the very shape of the land undulated, s.h.i.+fted form beneath him. And he was s.h.i.+mmering, changing, too.
My grandfather wove himself into the pattern of the land. Or maybe I should say he planted himself, as a fanner will plant a seed. Just as he'd planted his Betty, those years ago. Like planting, but more like mixing. How can I say this thing? How can I?
And I sat at the edge of the clearing, under the old oak, until the storm abated and the stars came out. Then I went back to the cabin, coming down the gentler side of the hill, cras.h.i.+ng through the drying corn, walking up the driveway. The waterwheel was a blur, spinning out electricity like the miller's daughter spins gold in "Rumpelstiltskin." I took a breath of the rain-cleaned air and went inside.
I flicked on the switch, and the cabin's room filled with homespun light. There was the tapestry, directly across from me, the Prism Tree my grandmother had made. I sat down in her old rocker, turned around to face the wall rug. Was there a new strand in there somewhere to reflect, to resonate with, the new strand running through the land? What would my grandfather's color be? A steady, strong brown? The blue of loss and remembrance? The new green of spring?
And still, I have that tapestry still. It is in my den, where I draw up my plans for changing, for patterning the world. It is all that remains, really, for my grandfather's land has long since gone under, been changed. Is it lost, or merely planted, waiting for some spring, some new day?
And though my eyes grow older, still I think I can see that new thread that I spotted years ago, that night, staring at the tapestry. There, coming out of the chimney, weaving in and out of the sunlight smoke, is a thread of gray which is much darker and nearer to smoke than the blond of my grandmother's hair. Or is it really a new thread? My eyes grow tired, specifics blur. Light streams out, flows into the cabin, like lightning into the Prism Tree, only gentler, more subtle, an intricate joining of threads, twisting together like a lightning mark down the side of a tree, weft and warp-a sunbeam and the shadow it creates?
Desert Rain.
MARK L. VAN NAME.
and PAT MURPHY.
T.
ERESA LOOKED UP at the framework of welded steel tubing. It stood nine feet tall and just over six feet on a side. Within the framework, steel tracks snaked above and below one another in seemingly random patterns, forming a gleaming tangle. At regular intervals along the tracks, lines of one-inch ball bearings waited to be released. Teresa pulled the string that dangled from the chute at the top of the sculpture, and closed her eyes to listen.
With the faint whisper of metal sc.r.a.ping against metal, a gate opened and freed the first ball, which rattled along the grooved surface of the track. As the ball rounded the first curve, it struck a trip wire and released two more b.a.l.l.s. Each of these in turn freed more b.a.l.l.s, until dozens were rolling down the tracks with a sound like faraway thunder.
The music started slowly, building as the b.a.l.l.s rumbled down the tracks. The first ball struck a series of tuning forks, and three high notes rang out. Another ball rattled across a section of metal reeds, then clattered through a maze of gates. Every ball followed a different path: ringing bells, striking chimes, and bouncing off tuning forks.
When the first ball reached the gathering basket, the sound began to lessen. As the others followed the first, the sound faded entirely.
With her eyes still shut, Teresa shook her head. The music was not right; it was not even close. She wasn't sure anymore exactly how the composition should sound, but she knew this was not it. The piece sounded too mechanical, too predictable. In her proposal, she had promised the Santa Fe Arts Commission a sculpture that conveyed the essence of water, the rush and flow of it-a waterless fountain for a desert town. She wanted music that would remind people of rain drumming on a tin roof or the roar of a breaking wave. Instead, she had the hum of trucks on the freeway.
She turned away and looked through the sliding gla.s.s doors at the desert. The late June sun was setting, and clumps of gray-green rabbit brush cast long shadows. The landscape s.h.i.+mmered a little, distorted by heat rising from the flagstone patio just outside the door. She was alone, surrounded by heat and silence.
She closed her eyes and remembered the view from her old studio, a big, drafty room in the Marin Headlands Art Center. She had always been cold there: from early fall to late spring, she had worn wool socks and a down vest. Every winter, she had nursed a head cold that never quite went away. Still, the drafts that had crept in through cracks
She took a deep breath of the air-conditioned air and opened her eyes. The desert was still there.
She heard a knock on the door that led from the studio to the rest of the house. "Come on in!" she said, momentarily glad of the interruption. When Jeff opened the door, she said, "You're home early. It's nice to see you."
Jeff was thirty-seven, five years older than Teresa. But when he was excited, as he clearly was now, he looked like a kid. A shock of brown hair had fallen into his eyes; he pushed it back impatiently. Teresa had suggested last week that he needed a haircut, but he had just nodded, his thoughts elsewhere. He was too busy to make an appointment, he had said, too busy for almost anything.
He grinned at her now. "I've been here for a while, but I didn't want to disturb you when you were working. I came home early to finish installing the system in the rest of the house. It's just about ready to go."
For as long as Teresa had known Jeff, he had been working on the development of what he called "the system," some kind of computer program that could run a household. For the past four months, ever since they had returned from their honeymoon, he had been completely immersed in the project. When he wasn't at work, he was preparing their house for the first working prototype, installing cameras, microphones, and monitors in most of the rooms. The whole time, he had been trying to convince Teresa that the system would make her life much easier: it would answer the phone, put on music, adjust the air conditioner, look up information in its library. He was downright evangelical about it. Teresa had accepted his attempts to persuade her with amused skepticism, accepting this as another of Jeff's incomprehensible but lucrative computer projects.
"All I have to do now is define the personality," he said. "I thought maybe you'd want to help. You could design the face, choose the voice, stuff like that."
She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans, feeling uncomfortable. "You know I don't know anything about computers."
"You don't need to know anything. It'll be fun. Besides, I figured that if you created the personality, you'd have a better feel for it. You'll see it's completely in your control."
She glanced back at the sculpture. "I probably should keep on working. This really isn't going well."
He reached out and took her hand. "Oh, come on. You sound like you could use a break."
Reluctantly, she let him lead her into the living room. One wall of the room was dominated by a large monitor; the shelves of the surrounding wall unit were crowded with electronics gear, gadgets and gizmos that Teresa regarded as Jeff's toys. She knew how to turn on the stereo, the television, and the controller for the satellite dish, but she ignored the rest of it. She didn't like admitting it, but she found the collection of electronic devices a little intimidating.
Jeff gestured to the swivel chair in front of the monitor. "Why don't you sit here?"
"That's okay; you do it. I'll just watch."
"Please, Teresa? You'd be helping me out. I might get some ideas watching you work. We're just starting to test this on people outside the lab."
"I'm a rotten guinea pig-I don't know what I'm doing."
"No, that makes you a perfect guinea pig. This is for regular people, not just computer nerds."
She studied his face and relented. "All right." She sat in the chair. "What do I do?"
"Here-I'll get you started." Jeff leaned over her and tapped on the keyboard. He straightened up as his company's logo appeared on the screen, then faded. "Now the set-up software will walk you through the process. Just type in an answer when it asks you a question, or use the mouse to point to your choice when it gives you a list. Once the full system is running, we'll switch to voice input."
Teresa read the words on the screen. "Do you want to create a companion?"
"Why not?" she said, pretending a nonchalance she didn't feel. She clicked the pointer on "Yes."
"Man or woman?" the screen asked.
She glanced at Jeff. "Your choice," he said. "I want you to be comfortable with this."
"Well," she said, "you know I'm partial to boys. And I don't think you could handle having two women around." She clicked the pointer on "Man."
"Name?"
She frowned at the screen. "I've got to name it? Don't you already have a name for it?" She glanced at Jeff.
He shrugged. "Some of the guys on the team call it HIAN, short for Home Information and Appliance Network."
"HIAN?" Teresa shook her head. "No sense of poetry, those computer boys." She thought for a moment and then said, "How about Ian? That has a nice sound." She typed it in.
"Would you like to choose a face or customize a face?" Below the question the screen displayed sample faces of many races, including Caucasian, black, Indian, Amerindian, Chinese, and j.a.panese.
Jeff leaned over her shoulder. "When it's up and running, you'll see the face on the monitor. It'll talk to you through the monitor's speakers, and see and hear you through the Minicams. We've got a whole rack of processors dedicated to animation: the face can smile, shrug, wink, frown -pretty much anything you or I can do. The display changes in real time." She glanced up at him; all his attention was on the screen. "My a.s.sumption has always been that it has to be friendly to succeed. Our human-interface people created the standard faces with that in mind, designing faces that most people would trust. Of course, you could also go with a celebrity-we've got a few that we're experimenting with: Katharine Hepburn, Robert Redford, Alec Guinness, Ronald Reagan-"
Teresa waved a hand, interrupting the monologue. "I don't want some prepackaged face that a marketing expert says I'll trust. I'll make my own, thanks." She clicked on the customize option.
"See, it's not as bad as you thought." Jeff rested one hand on her shoulder, absentmindedly ma.s.saging the tight muscles of her neck. "You'll be an expert in no time."
She leaned back into his hands, relaxing a little. "Ah," she said softly. "I remember those hands. It's been a while."
Oblivious, Jeff stopped rubbing to gesture toward the screen. It had changed to display small pictures of blank faces, hair, eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. "You see, now you can a.s.semble a face that you like from a variety of parts. Even people without your drawing ability can create a companion. Go ahead and make one you like."
"Okay, okay." She leaned forward again and clicked on the first face. Most of the dull gray of the screen winked out and in its place was a fat man's face, round cheeked and small chinned, empty of eyes and other features. She could see only the figure's blank face, neck, and shoulders. A black T-s.h.i.+rt covered the shoulders. She moved on to the next face, which was thin and aristocratic, with a delicate chin. She flipped through the choices, about twenty in all, and finally settled on one that was broad but a bit craggy. She liked the face and the burly shoulders that went with it.
At first, she chose a pair of bright blue eyes that reminded her of her father's eyes-intense and excitable, ready to challenge and confront. Then she reconsidered and selected a more muted shade of blue, closer to blue-gray. Intense, but with a touch of compa.s.sion.
Working methodically, she a.s.sembled a face. The screen responded to her changes instantly. As she worked, she forgot that Jeff was standing just behind her and concentrated on creating a picture of an attractive stranger. He wasn't a cla.s.sically handsome man, but he was good-looking in a rough-edged sort of way. She gave him a beard and a mustache and a diamond stud earring in his left ear. He looked like a guy who worked with his hands, she figured. He could have been a bouncer in a bar or a mechanic or a fisherman. Good-natured, she thought, but maybe a little dangerous. A motorcycle rider. A drifter. A sidewalk philosopher. The kind of guy she had always been involved with before she met Jeff.
"You're doing great," Jeff murmured.
She glanced up, feeling guilty that she had forgotten him, however briefly. She stopped working. "I guess that's it," she said. "That's good enough."
"You can change the clothes, if you like," Jeff said. "A business suit, maybe."
"I like the black T-s.h.i.+rt," she said. "Ian's a casual kind of guy."
"You can choose a different background, too," he said. "It doesn't have to be gray." He leaned over and clicked the mouse on a small icon in the lower left of the screen. The gray background became a white wall; Teresa could see framed certificates behind Ian. "Doctor's office," Jeff said. "Or here-how about this?" He clicked again. The wood paneling that replaced the white wall looked familiar, as did the easy chair where Ian sat.
Teresa glanced behind her, half expecting to see Ian sitting on the chair. "You used our living room?"
"Why not?"
Teresa studied the screen, momentarily disoriented. It felt odd to see this imaginary person sitting on a chair that she knew was very real. It was as if she were watching a stranger answer her living-room phone.
"I kind of like that background," Jeff said.
"I guess so," she agreed slowly.
Jeff studied the face. "This one has a lot more character than any of our canned faces, that's for sure."
She studied the screen and the face she had created. "Yeah, Ian's no white-bread movie star. What now?"
Jeff leaned over and pulled a black box from the shelf beside the screen. A cable trailed from the back of the box to the computer. He clicked the mouse pointer on an icon labeled "Voice Definition," and the face on the screen came alive. Staring straight ahead, the face began to speak in a tinny voice. As the voice rose and fell, graphs jumped up and down in boxes below the "Voice Definition" heading.
"Four score and seven years ago..." it said.
"Jeff! The Gettysburg Address?" Teresa laughed.
"Why not? It's in the system. You wouldn't believe the library the system can access. We've got several multi-terrabyte optical stores, and-"
The tinny voice kept talking, restarting the address. "Do I turn this k.n.o.b?" she asked. She twisted the k.n.o.b on the box and jumped as the voice climbed to a screech. She turned the k.n.o.b slowly to the left until the voice was pleasantly deep. After a little fiddling, she had a level that sounded almost perfect. Almost. "That's real close, but he still sounds too all-American. Too mom and apple pie. I'd like a sort of Tom Waits growl. Not too much, but a little."
Jeff clicked the pointer in a box and typed a few words. The voice roughened as it hit "of the people." Ian's voice sounded like one of her lovers in college, a chain-smoking sculptor who had seduced her with love sonnets and then left her for a dance student with the world's thinnest thighs. Even though he'd been a jerk, she remembered the love poetry fondly. "That's perfect," she said. She leaned back in her chair, cus.h.i.+oning her head on Jeff's arm. "Now what?"
"That's it. We're ready to roll." He clicked the mouse in the box marked "Save," then typed a few words. The boxes and graphs disappeared and Ian's face filled the screen. "This is Teresa King, Ian," Jeff said. "And you should already know me."
"Yes. h.e.l.lo, Jeff." Ian watched them from the screen. His eyes moved back and forth between Jeff and her. "h.e.l.lo, Teresa. It's a pleasure to meet you."
She looked away, disconcerted by seeing the face she had created suddenly alive, talking to her from what looked like her own living room.
"We've had a team of people working on the animation for over a year," Jeff said, gazing at the screen. "And it's not just animation. There's a feedback mechanism that lets the system use data from the camera and its vision-recognition code to respond to movement in the room. It's also programmed to recognize facial patterns, and focus on them. It can interpret your expression as well as most people. Better than most. It looks natural, doesn't it?"
"Yeah." Teresa found the moving face extremely disconcerting; it looked too much like a real person. "Now how do we get some privacy?"
"Just tell it." Jeff looked at the screen. "We'd like to be alone, Ian. Beat it."
The screen went blank. "Beat it?" she said.
"It's programmed with a slang dictionary," he said. "You'd be surprised at the stuff it understands. We've programmed in-"
"Don't tell me," she interrupted. She turned her chair to face him. "No more computer talk. It's been a while since we've spent any time together and I don't want to waste it all." She stood up and put her arms around him, running one hand up the back of his s.h.i.+rt. "Personally, I think the most interesting part of the process was when you started rubbing my shoulders." She kissed his neck. "Let's see if we can develop that theme further, shall we? I've missed you." She kissed his neck again, working her way up toward his ear. "Have you missed me?" she murmured in his ear.
He put his arms around her. "Of course I have."
She kissed him on the lips. "I just don't want you to forget about me."
"I'd never do that."
"Oh, I don't know. You've been awfully busy lately."
"It won't be that much longer," he said. "We're close to the end. And you've been busy too, haven't you? I know you have a lot to do on your sculpture."