The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (28 page)

Corry felt a revulsion, a horror at this thing that looked at him with glassy orbs that so resembled human eyes, but were so emotionlessly unhuman in their empty stare.

“Get out of here,” Corry said in a low voice as he advanced toward her. “Get out of here.” His voice was louder as he glared at her, the horror he felt crawling across his skin. “Get out of here! I don’t want any machine in here! Go on, get out of here!”

The robot looked back at him, then she opened her mouth and spoke. “My name is Alicia,” the mouth said. The voice was that of a woman, but there was a coldness to it. “My name is Alicia. What’s yours?”

It was ludicrous. It was beyond belief. This...this thing that spoke to him from the desert floor. This machine that mouthed proprieties as if from a book on etiquette. It spoke to him in a language of tea parties and civilization.

Corry took another step to stand near her, staring at her. He no longer shouted. He just stood there shaking his head and finally he said in a flat, even tone, “I’m going inside now. And when I come back out...when I come back out, I don’t want to find you here. Understand?”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and walked back toward the shack, leaving this thing that looked so much like a woman standing in the sand watching him as he disappeared inside.

She had come on what Corry was certain was Thursday and now it was Saturday afternoon. He had seen little of her. During the day she would stand on the knoll close to the shack watching him and at night she was either gone or on occasion he could hear her on the metal porch, but he never spoke to her.

He was digging a hole for garbage now and, as always, had waited till the late afternoon. Not that it was much cooler or that there was any more shade, but the habit pattern of a life spent on Earth still persisted in the functions of Corry’s existence. Late afternoon he’d always associated with cooling and even when it stayed breathlessly hot he did most of his physical labor then.

He leaned on his shovel, wiping a sweatless face, looking at a sun just reaching the top of the mountains. Now bright orange instead of glaring white, it nonetheless sent out its cascades of heat.

Alicia came walking down the dune toward him. She carried a bucket of water which she put down on the sand a few feet from him, her mechanical face staring at his as if sightless.

“Well? Corry asked her.

“I brought you some water. Where shall I put it?”

“Just leave it there and get out of here.”

“It’ll get warm,” Alicia said, “just sitting there.”

Corry took the dipper from the bucket, tasted the water, spit some of it out, and then put the dipper back. He stared at her and saw how intently she seemed to stare back.

“You’d know, huh? he asked.

“Know what?

“You’d know that water’d get warm.”

The corners of Alicia’s mouth wrinkled and it was as close to a smile as he’d ever noticed from her.

“I can feel thirst,” she said.

Corry wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at her again. He found himself staring at her a lot lately, but it was not the inventory of interest that a man uses to look at a woman. It was a clinical examination of a foreign object. It was the reluctant stare of a man who finds himself in a freak house and yet feels the painful fascination of all that which is strange and odd and unearthly.

“What else can you feel? Corry asked. The question was rhetorical.

“I don’t understand—” Alicia began.

“I suppose you can feel heat and cold, can’t you?” Corry interrupted her. “How about pain? Can you feel pain?

Alicia nodded and the flat voice suddenly sounded strangely soft. “That, too.”

Corry took a step over to her and looked at her. “How?” he asked. “How can you? You’re a machine, aren’t you?

“Yes,” Alicia whispered. “I am a machine.”

“Of course you are,” Corry said. His mouth twisted. His eyes glared at her with distaste. “Why didn’t they build you to look like a machine? Why aren’t you made out of metal with nuts and bolts sticking out of you? With wires and electrodes and things like that? His voice rose. “Why do they turn you into a lie? Why do they cover you with what looks like flesh? Why do they give you a face?” His nails dug deep into the palms of his hands and something else went into his voice at this moment. “A face,” he said, his voice very low. “A face that, if I look at it long enough, makes me think...makes me believe that...” His hands grabbed her shoulders and went up past her neck to cup her face in a hard and painful grasp.

Alicia closed her eyes against the pain. “Corry,” she said, her voice pleading.

“You mock me,” he said to her, ‘you know that? When you look at me. When you talk to me—I’m being mocked.”

“I’m sorry,” Alicia answered. She slowly reached up and felt her neck and shoulders. “You hurt me, Corry.”

Corry stared at her, repugnance in his eyes. “Hurt you? he asked her, his hands grabbing her shoulders again. “How in the Goddamn hell could I hurt you? His fingers dug into her flesh. “I’d like you to explain that to me. How could I possibly hurt you? This isn’t flesh. There aren’t any nerves under there. There aren’t any tendons or muscles.”

Corry felt the soft yielding stuff under his fingertips and for just an illogical moment he thought he smelled a perfume, a gentle sweetness that filled the air around her. And again the feeling rose in him that he must crush this thing in front of him. He must twist and pull it apart. He must end its standing there and mocking him from morning till night.

His fingers pressed tighter into her until, forced down by weight and pain, she was on her knees. He reluctantly pulled his hands away from her, looked at her kneeling there, her head down, her tousled brown hair hanging long in front of her.

The fury that he felt was beyond any understanding. He knew only that he must destroy. Kneeling in front of him was his loneliness. Prostrate at his feet was the heat and the discomfort. Vulnerable and weak was the massive desert. It was all in front of him now in the form of this mocking machine. This was the wildness in his mind as he picked up the shovel, lifted it high in the air. He had already begun the downward arc of the swing as he screamed at her.

“You know what you are?” The metal face of the shovel glinted in the departing sun. “Do you know what you are? You’re like that broken-down heap I’ve got sitting in the yard. You’re a hunk of metal with arms and legs instead of wheels.” The shovel stopped its descent and shook in his hand. His voice took on a different tone, quieter and somehow plaintive.

“But that heap...that Goddamn heap doesn’t mock me like you do. It doesn’t look at me with make-believe eyes and talk to me with a make-believe voice. Well listen, you...listen, machine. I’m sick of being mocked by a ghost, by a memory of woman. And that’s all you are. You’re a reminder to me that I’m so lonely I’m about to lose my mind.”

The woman raised her face to him and it was only then that he realized that her eyes were wet and that tears rolled down her cheeks. Very slowly his hand went loose and he was unaware of it when the shovel slipped from his fingers and dropped down to the sand. He stared at her. The face was no longer inanimate, no longer immobile. It had depth and emotion. It was filled with the nuances and the mysteries of that which is woman and there was beauty in the face, too. Corry trembled and slowly went down to his knees to kneel close to her. He extended a shaking hand that met her cheek and he felt the wetness.

“You can cry, too, Can’t you?”

Alicia nodded. “With reason,” she looked up at him again. “And I can feel loneliness, too.”

He took her arm and helped her to her feet, then stood very close to her. There was a moment’s silence before he could bring himself to speak. Finally he said, “We’ll go back home now We’ll eat our dinner.”

She nodded again. “All right.” She started to walk ahead of him.

Corry called out to her. “Alicia?”

She stopped and turned.

“Alicia,” he began. There was something in his tone. Something rich. Something deep. It was man talking to woman. There was gentleness and compassion and something that went beyond both.

“Yes, Corry?”

“I don’t care...I don’t care how you were born...or made. You’re flesh and blood to me. You’re a woman.” He took a step toward her and reached out for her. Her hand met his. “You’re my companion. Do you understand, Alicia? You’re my companion. I need you desperately.”

She smiled at him. A smile of infinite warmth. A smile that lit up the face and that shone in the eyes. A smile that was yet another part of the beauty that was this woman. “And I need you, Corry.”

They held hands as they walked back toward the shack. Corry would reflect later that at this moment he had felt a peace and composure almost unbearably sweet. And, walking toward the shack he was conscious of the feel of her hand. When he stole a look at her profile he felt that this was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.

They went into the shack and she started to set the table. Corry’s eyes never left her. This woman must never leave his sight again. He must never be without her. And though he could not articulate this because his whole being was so scarred and battered by conflicting emotions, James W. Corry had indeed found salvation. It had come in the form of a woman. James W. Corry was in love.

Eleven months had passed. They had been incredible months for Corry. Incredible in the sense that everything had changed. Loneliness had become quiet and solitude. The vast expanse of desert had taken on a strange beauty. The star-filled nights held interest and mystery. He sat on the porch at the close of a day and wrote in his diary. “Alicia has been with me now for almost a year. Twice when Allenby has brought the ship in with supplies I’ve hidden her so that the others wouldn’t see her. I’ve seen the question in Allenby’s eyes each time. It’s a question I ask myself It is difficult to write down what has been the sum total of this very bizarre relationship. It is man and woman, man and machine, and there are times when I know that Alicia is simply an extension of myself I hear my words coming from her. My emotions. The things that she has learned to love are the things that I have loved.”

He stopped and listened to the sound of Alicia singing from inside the shack. The voice high and clear. He smiled and continued to write again. “But I think I’ve reached the point now where I shall not analyze Alicia any longer. I shall accept her simply as a part of my life—an integral part.”

He continued to write, silently turning the page, conscious of Alicia’s voice as it drifted from inside the shack. She came to the door and smiled at him. He knew the smile as he knew the face. Each line. Each expression. Each look of the eyes. He smiled and winked at her, then threw her a kiss. She turned from the door and disappeared. He looked down at what he had been writing. “Because I’m not lonely anymore, each day can now be lived with. I love Alicia. Nothing else matters.”

It was night and she lay cradled in his arms as they looked up toward the stars.

“Look. Alicia,” Corry said. “That’s the star, Betelgeuse. It’s in the constellation of Orion. And there’s the Great Bear with its pointer stars in line with the Northern star. And there’s the constellation Hercules. See it, Alicia?” He traced a path across the sky with a finger, then turned to look down at her face. It was in shadow, only her eyes visible in the starlight.

“God’s beauty,” she answered softly.

Corry nodded. “That’s right, Alicia. God’s beauty.”

The girl suddenly stiffened. “That star,” she asked. “What’s that star, Corry?”

Corry studied the tiny dot that traversed the night sky. “That’s not a star. That’s a ship, Alicia.”

“A ship?”

The tiny dot grew in brightness and dimension as they were watching. Alicia turned to him. “There’s no ship due here now, Corry. You said not for another three months. You said after the last time it wouldn’t be for another—”