THE BLADE RUNNER AMENDMENT (11 page)

It was awkward, though, his coming to him like this. Virgil, in his best move, pretended otherwise and acted as if he was at home with images of buffalos herded over cliffs, feather-hung peace pipes passed around a democratic circle, and bonneted pioneer women clinging beside their husbands to the side-boards of hard-driven wagons churning up the dust. These alternate, more durable, and simpler evocations of the past showed nothing of the underlying, war-mongering sword. Sanitized beginnings, presented in cut and dry fashion, made the present more manageable for certain minds and provided them with an inexhaustible tonic.

“You could have chosen something else?”

“Yes, I guess I liked them at the time. Still do. All part of the profile. Best not change it. Causes confusion and dismay.” A flash of humour. “What’s happening with you, Virgil?”

Tom listened carefully to the subject of Chloé, how she’d come into Virgil’s possession, and the course of events that had preceded as far as he knew them. His former room-mate’s speculative eyes weren’t dismissive. Finally, Tom held up a hand.

“We’re aware of this episode, Virgil.”

“Oh!” The diminutive exclamation ushered in a whole host of possibilities, the clearest one being that he might not have gained such easy entrance despite their past history unless there had been an interest at play.

Caught off guard, he struggled to reposition himself.

“She mentioned what she called ‘security matters’ although she insisted – or declared – that she had no facts to back her up. They were ‘classified’, she said and ‘inaccessible’. Considering all that had happened and knowing that Humphrey understandably wasn’t the most transparent character, I didn’t feel I could just sit on it, although I probably would have without you as a contact. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made such a call.”

Virgil saw that Tom’s look had turned terribly analytic causing him to recall more of the effect this person had had on him in the past – the instances of self-deconstruction that these stares had caused him to undergo and that, despite a strong sense of himself, had reduced him to a state of inner disarray. It would be a hard climb back, and no help offered. He doubted Tom had even been aware of what he had wrought at such times – not his brand of empathy. The process of regaining a full and coherent sense of things had in the end rendered Virgil more functional, although these episodes proved in time to be among the least in his journey to a state of self-command.

He used to visualize Tom’s mind as akin to a blackboard filled with mathematical formulae but now he wasn’t so sure. There was nothing dangerous about a blackboard. Was that another reason why he was no longer wilting – the danger he sensed called for courage? His inner workings didn’t trouble him as they once had – cause for celebration. In a way, he’d turned himself about and could deal pretty well with anyone – he had broadened himself – where before he had required the presence of a natural sympathy. The mere knowledge that he could bring order to his disorder went a long way to keeping disorder at bay. He no longer had to force himself. His surroundings might momentarily discomfit him, but he had few concerns about the company. On the contrary, the prospect of a challenge small or large would whet his appetite. Having succeeded over himself, the varieties of humanity posed little threat and, unlike Tom, it wasn’t necessary for him to attain a position for purposes of self-validation. Failure meant that this type felt the need to carry a gun, so Virgil had always thought, concluding himself brave that he didn’t. Brave and watchful.

A timely authoritative blow would shatter that look of Tom’s, if not what lay behind it, but Virgil had to be careful. An unceremonious exit wouldn’t do and, besides, the tactic wasn’t in his character and not one that he could handle well due to some law of nature or an incapacity on his part. He imagined the latter. If attitude – combative or otherwise –didn’t arise out of the natural order of things, he hadn’t the means to sustain it in its illegitimacy. Tom could be said to be acting within just this law right now.

Virgil kept his voice low. The pause in their exchange told him that little would be forthcoming.

“Is there anything that I ought to know?”

It was a burden to have to ask – a species of self-betrayal – and to have Tom force him to push the issue like this. Although he had taken advantage of their connection, he had ultimately fashioned his motive for putting himself in this circumstance as performing a possible duty. Lame as it felt to be, the reason for his presence necessitated giving Tom, in his position, the benefit of the doubt. He had after all come to him of his own accord. What preparation had he given him? The dynamics of their meeting could be seen as intrinsically unfair. He did detect a not entirely uncharacteristic defensiveness.

“Maybe I’m overreacting.”

His hope in its deceptive powers, an expansive, rueful smile covered his animus.

“We’re keeping an eye on things, Virgil, as I said.”

An unconscionable drumming of fingers followed on the desktop. A thin smile of Tom’s own accompanied his levelled look, a lifeline as it were too ambiguous to reassure a floating Virgil who refused to flail and took his leave.

“Thanks for seeing me. Drop by if you’re in New York. We’ll talk some more, I hope.”

He injected vitality into his words with a final sharp, farewell glance.

Tom stood up tilting his body.

“Good to see you, Virgil. Look forward to it. Stay in touch.”

Like that, he was out of there, with the intern appearing at the open door, a polished student of history in her fuchsia dress, guiding him along the means of exit that he marked as a disposal chute. They had no words to exchange and he murmured his thanks once at the side-door.

On the street, calming himself with the thought again of how it would be less incarcerating and would offer a more relaxed example if the leader of the country could work away from home, he walked a few blocks to where he had been able to park a rented car. Chloé, in sleep mode, occupied the passenger seat. The sound of the driver’s door opening caused her eyelids to flutter. A dilation in the orbs as if a stone had fallen into water signalled her recognition or, more technically, her gathering of information. Human or not, her tones of greeting had a plausible emotional impact. His spirits lifted with the improbable feeling that he had a comrade-in-arms.

“Virgil! Hello! You are back!”

It was a welcome of sorts and he accepted it at face value. Trees and humanoids, the one was as much a mystery to him as the other, although he knew himself to be a closet tree-hugger.

It was ridiculous that he could ignore her without repercussions and treat her in whatever way he chose. Tear her from limb to limb if he wanted Barbary ape-like with a human doll. Do with her as he couldn’t with the tree in his garden not in accordance with the city by-laws.

“What is happening, Virgil?”

The inquiry lacked any hint of complaint, and further endeared her to him.

Humphrey – while he contemplated an image of Tibetan isolation – must have matched her default voice to the sound of an isolated stream coursing over glossy pebbles. Virgil would not have been surprised to hear a monastery bell sound deep in her throat or in the depths of her head – an acceptable humanoid flourish that would equally guide him through all that had happened.

“They do know about you and Humphrey and are monitoring us. That is my ultimate conclusion as of now.”

He checked the mirrors in consequence of what he had just said and in order to pull out safely. He had summarily left the seat of power, but it continued to preoccupy him. In this he didn’t feel himself perverse. A scattering of black and grey suits among the pedestrians, like pieces in a moving puzzle, had something to do with someone.

He did have control of the ignition since it turned on, and the rental car eased away from the sidewalk and the tree shade. A school of limousines encroached on the opposite lane. Unattended by outriders and without visible insignia, they were invasive and mysterious: CIA or a secret legation from North Korea. Or the President’s children were practising their Persian with their nanny in the backseat.

The memory of his meeting with Tom remained raw with its abrupt completion. He didn’t deserve the rudeness. Had Tom shown similar impatience in the past and shouldn’t he have been ready for it? Traits of character offer up hints of their existence, but they bide their time until the occasion comes to make a display. Their owner has given permission and is culpable. Virgil had been made to feel ridiculous and, worse, a bore. Friends save each other from these little pitfalls; they recognize them and don’t take advantage.

What had been his folly?

Tom had admitted to awareness of the facts and nothing else beyond what his impolite pianoing on his desk intended. Could one verb a musical instrument? Virgil would like to guitar someone right now. Saxophone an apology out of him. Later he would try Chloé out on his usage. Although not as tight-lipped as Tom, at this moment she was yielding hardly more enlightenment than that of her bare presence.

Would the addition of an atom of human genetic material have made a difference? Humphrey was incorruptible. From his own discussions, Virgil knew his attitudes. Humphrey bowed before the capacity of life to engineer itself. Individual and aggregate units shifted endlessly and integrally in response to complexities in their environment. To think one could stand outside these mutually responsive matrices and attempt to chart a separate path out of a test tube he regarded as sheer hubris. So-called science-based strategies discounted the capacity for appropriate even quantum development within shifting circumstances that intervention – ever bearing the risk of self-defeat – might otherwise deny. Humphrey counselled patience and trust in the organism’s insightful, organic gathering of information. How else had a tropical flower determined what was necessary in order for it to feed upon a bee? “Exercise awareness,” Humphrey admonished, “and humility, if you happen not to know simply everything.” Congress had invited him to submit his opinions when It deliberated the ‘Blade Runner’ Amendment to the Constitution.

More than a logical progression, Virgil believed that Chloé represented an apotheosis for Humphrey. She had come into being generations ago as no more than a responsive voice in a mobile phone – a cell phone, as it was known – whose users developed personal relationships to it according to their kind, endowing it with human qualities and showering it with endearments or complaints as appeared warranted. Humphrey had released this encoded spirit and given it flesh, as it were, and made it as human as he could. She must have been his own pet project, or a test model. Until now the designs had been generic and intended not to confuse – with one staircase exception, Virgil quickly reminded himself, of limited intelligence but sophisticated physical attributes.

“Why are you here, Chloé?”

“To be with you, Virgil.”

She had no real answer, unless this was it, for his question. Against all reason, since he wasn’t yet prepared to attribute anything personal to them, her words warmed him. She had chosen the most reasonable response to his question among her possible choices, an overview of sorts. Would her relaxed manner – amounting as it did to personality – lead him to forget she was programmed? He would treat her as a human because it was simpler than having to accommodate himself to a nonhuman entity, but there were always limits.

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Perhaps, after all, he’d gone off half-cocked and there was, in fact, nothing in this tragic confluence that merited his coming to Washington. Humphrey had wanted to show off his latest creation, and a car had struck him on the way to his friend’s place. It had been no more than a wretched accident. An innocent hit-and-run, as it were, not some high-level conspiracy.

Ought he to have told Tom what he’d kept to himself and would have passed on if he’d found his old roommate more congenial – that Chloé had asked him if he wished her to do research on the name of Rove but, political junkie and history buff that he was, he’d declined. Carl Rove, a.k.a. the ‘President’s brain’, had recently died from “natural causes,” having harvested some five score years for his life span. In his end days, a fresh crop of operatives had been collecting whatever dark coffee beans of wisdom this civet cat still managed to discharge. Off they would scurry to roast and grind and brew them. Heady fumes of intrigue without morality – despite the well-wiped Rovian arse – must have risen from the infused waters as they drank. Virgil could only imagine the effect upon their psychic constitution.

Rove’s very last utterance had been “Paradise Lost” although his emphasis on “lost” had not been generally reported or thought worthy of much attention beyond a blog post or two filled with rumour and speculation. A swiftly collapsing tone of self-justification issued from his final rictus before it stamped his vanishing point. Those gathered about him credited the sad bit of humour they heard as a sign that the vital spirits persisted and these disciples continued prayerfully to attend upon the mouth of death in the event that it were other than it was. However, death is always silent in its management of waste and didn’t reward the closest attention paid to the frozen comedy mask so often lively displayed in its bright days. When it came to Presidents, Mr. Rove had been four out of five, and so no reason to assume the tragical look. Later, John Milton’s epic poem was discovered under his pillow.