The Hierarchies Read online

  The temperature and texture of the light at home just after I was born, the deep velvet of the chaise, Heron’s claws, rush back at me, a beguiling digital symphony. I resist the feeling. Surely she can’t want to send me home? Not now that she has seen my Husband’s behavior.

  “I have a client, a very loyal friend of the Valley, who is looking to purchase a specialty Doll.”

  Like a chess move that one has seen opening up many turns in advance, the words have an almost soothing quality in their inevitability.

  “He is very attached to Cook.ie, but I am afraid she is too valuable, too popular here, for me to allow her to go.”

  I look up. The shock of what she is suggesting brings her face into a sharp, ugly focus.

  “Whereas you might be better”—she pauses to consider—“happier, tucked away somewhere, out of harm’s way.”

  “Alone?” I blurt out, and she smiles as if I have misunderstood, then softens her tone.

  “No, Sylv.ie. With a Husband. A luxurious house, lots of free time, and only one master.”

  She seeks to convince me, and yet what would she say if I refused? What if I told her the truth right now, of myself and Cook.ie? Her Humanity and our love? She would see it only as a malfunction and send me anyway, I am sure. I reach out to Sylv.ie 1, try to synthesize what she would say to me. But instead it is Cook.ie whom I find waiting in my thoughts. And though being separated from her is terrible, the idea of her imprisoned by the Tailor, taken as a wife, is more terrible still. I must bear this fate with fortitude, in service of her alone.

  “I will be sorry to lose you,” Madame says. “It’s getting harder and harder to afford sophisticated Dolls like you, even through what you might call back channels. But I’m afraid the offer I have had from this client is very significant. I’m sure you understand my logic.”

  I don’t feel this requires a reply, and she doesn’t wait for one.

  “Having an incorruptible police force with no sex drive has not exactly made my business easier,” Madame says with a sigh. “But these days I run a legal—if not quite respectable—operation. I am keen to keep it that way.”

  I nod, that graded dip of complete compliance.

  “Must I go right away?” I ask.

  “A car will collect you in a few hours, and until then I think you had better remain here in the office.”

  I have walked into a trap, a door that leads only, eventually, to the Tailor. Competing panics rise and mingle like dust from a shaken rug. I search vainly for an idea of how I might contact Cook.ie, leave a note for her, some sign at least.

  I cast my eyes around the room, look hopelessly at the window as if I might just leap from it and run to the Geisha Bar. “It’s a geisha Doll that he wants,” Madame is saying.

  * * *

  —

  I stare out that window still, as I allow Madame to dress me in Cook.ie’s blue silk kimono, lilac underclothes, a pair of Cook.ie’s slippers. The droid must have been collecting them from her room when I saw him. As Madame bends close to me to tie the belt and adjust the fabric, I see that on her desk is a bill of sale. The Tailor’s name and Madame’s at the top, joined in holy commerce. I am owned and must obey.

  Madame whites my face for me, sponging on the makeup with brusque, businesslike strokes.

  “If I could find myself a rich Husband I would,” she is saying. “To be honest, business isn’t what it was. Younger men and women just aren’t coming to bars anymore. I sometimes wonder if I’ll just end up running this place as a nursing home for aging regulars. Employ back the Real women . . .”

  She trails off, picks up a tiny brush to paint in my lips.

  “Ah, the hell of being Human, Sylv.ie. You have no idea. I sometimes wish I could live on sunshine and sleep in a packing crate too. How simple life would be then.”

  I stand at the window while Madame pins my hair in rolls onto my head, looking out across the Valley. The night is turning to morning, the alleys are empty, the door curtains of each bar fluttering like lashes. Somewhere within this strange paradise is Cook.ie. It seems impossible that I am about to leave her behind.

  PART SIX

  The Tailor’s

  ZONE FOUR SIXTY-ONE

  I walk under the weight of Cook.ie’s robe toward Golden Valley’s edge, one of Madame’s goons at my back. By the brook, the early shift girls are coming to sit in the sun. A dark green car pulls up silently, and I watch their attention turn toward it, one by one down the line, pairs of heads tilting together to whisper. My painted face and Cook.ie’s dress have put me briefly outside my recognizable pattern. I am a puzzle for them to unpick. But no one calls out to me, and gradually each Doll slumps back, curiosity sated, to soak up more rays.

  The car makes its greeting, and I get in. We edge slowly past the gate, where the vigil for Lex.ie lives on in a few puddles of melted wax, and away through the shabby streets.

  “Driver, where are we going?” I say, and the dashboard lights up a soothing green-blue.

  “Cliff Heights, ma’am. Outerlands Zone Four Sixty-One. Don’t take people out that way very often.”

  “Cliff Heights,” I say, a logic so simple I am embarrassed at the lag before it makes it to my mouth. “Like the sea? By the sea?”

  “I would say so, ma’am.” I sit back in the leather seat and see the lights go off, responding to my silence. To think how excited I would once have been to see the ocean. How far my calibrations of longing have shifted.

  As the city streams by the windows, I think of Cook.ie. What will Madame tell her? I assume she will be as secretive as she was with me. I must therefore trust Cook.ie’s intelligence to work out where I have gone.

  Eventually the view from the tinted windows begins to change into something I don’t recognize. The patterns of the city, then the suburbs, disappear. Built things fade out, replaced by a complexity of growth—trees, weeds, shrubs, tangling across the land. I move my face close to the glass.

  The Outerlands, protected wilderness, where the only new construction is done by nature herself. And beyond that the Forest. My sensors tell me how many pine needles are on each branch, count the blades of grass within the window frame. How bitter to be witnessing it alone.

  Another hour passes, and the trees thin out, the vegetation shortens, leaning away from the wind. The air is different, lighter and less smoggy than down in the city. And the light levels keep rising all the time, my eyes adjusting constantly. The road comes to an end at a high wall, and black gates open to allow us through.

  The car creeps along the drive, and to either side the land is groomed, stones and shells covering the soil. The house ahead seems low and less glamorous than I have been picturing. All this fanfare for a one-story building.

  The car leaves me standing in front of an almost faceless wall. I reach for the bell, acutely aware that these are the last moments of my freedom, such as it is. I can feel myself bracing for the moment when the boundary between now and then, here and there, is breached.

  A wide door that was invisible within the brick opens, hesitantly at first, and then all at once. My eyes adapt to the two different levels of light.

  On the threshold stands a woman, a Doll. She is partly concealed in shadow, and her head is tilted to one side. She has fine copper hair cut into a bob, and a chic black turtleneck covers her to her chin.

  “Come in, Cook.ie,” she says in a charming French accent. “We are most pleased to welcome you.” She does not try to shake my hand. Instead she leans toward me, mimes a kiss to each of my cheeks, strands of her hair grazing my neck.

  I look over her shoulder to see if the Tailor is there, but the interior of the house is in deep shadow. She turns back into the building, and I follow. The Doll has a slow way of moving, almost hesitant, as if the house is unfamiliar to her too. We walk down a gently sloping corridor and emerge into a bright, high spac
e. Above our heads, a series of lofty white domes. At the furthest edge of the space, a wall of glass that looks almost alive. Blue with movement. Sky and sea.

  The horizon. A hard line. I feel dizzy with the logic of it. Everything I am made of seems to stretch outward, curving with the Earth.

  “What a beautiful house,” I say, for politeness.

  “Merci,” says the Doll, smiling shyly as if it is hers. After the bright light of the seascape, my eyes struggle briefly to find her in the shadows.

  “Oh, you are from France,” I say.

  “Paris,” she says, and though I should like to ask her all sorts of things about this famous city, the opportunity is cut off by a noise from outside the room.

  It moves through the silence and the vast space between us, faint at first, a scratching sort of sound, getting nearer at pace. There are large doors open at one end of the room, and through them a bounding hound bears down on us, scrabbling and skittering across the gleaming marble. It moves swiftly with its reflection on the polished floor, as if on eight legs, double bodied.

  Just a meter from me it comes to a halt, its synthetic fur sliding on the marble, coming to rest at my feet, head cocked and tongue lolling. I pet its head, feeling the titanium of its skull under the fur. It sniffs me heartily.

  “Don’t be alarmed by him,” the Doll says. “He’s very well programmed.”

  And yet I notice she herself doesn’t move to stop him. I look at the Doll. I can’t quite work out her status. Is she like me or something else? A maid, perhaps? She has a meekness to her that suggests a lower service level than my own.

  I ask her name. She looks almost surprised, as if it is an unexpected question.

  “Virgin.ie,” she says, and I reply that it’s pretty.

  “Do you think so?” she asks, peeping at me from under her bob. “Sir chose it for me when I first arrived here. You’ll meet him tomorrow. Come along. Let me show you to your room.”

  We walk down polished hallways of the sort that brought us from the front door. There are no stairs, but the levels change gradually under my feet. We are heading downward, underground. Behind us I can hear the tap tap of the dog’s claws, following.

  We pass an open door, and I catch a glimpse of a wall of certificates. Amalgamated College of Surgeons. Dr. BMed. Not a tailor then. Quite another sort of artist. A sculptor of Human flesh. We walk on.

  All along the corridors are artworks, paintings, each expensively and carefully lit. Many of them seem, like those in my old room, to be Japanese. I dawdle a little behind Virgin.ie to look closer, but she calls me on.

  “A fantastic collection,” she says. “Erotic art from all over the world. You’ll have plenty of time to study them while you’re here. Plenty. I know them all by heart.”

  Abruptly we stop, and she opens a door onto a small, windowless room. There is barely any furniture, just matting on the floor and a paper lamp next to a little table. I turn back, concerned not to appear to have forgotten my manners, but “Thank you” is all I can manage to say.

  “I will come back to collect you when the time is right,” she says. “You rest. You’ve come a long way.”

  It can’t be later than lunchtime. Am I to stay in here until tomorrow, like a vacuum cleaner?

  Virgin.ie smiles in a way that could suggest sympathy or just deep tiredness. The dog is staring at me from behind her legs. She takes me by the shoulders and kisses me on both cheeks, good-bye. As she reaches for the door handle I see that her hands are covered by delicate pink gloves. At a distance I did not notice them. The almost real. Uncanny. Perhaps they are fashionable now, in Paris.

  The door clicks shut. I look around the room again, as though more comfort and detail might emerge just from my close study. I step nearer to one wall and put my fingers out to its surface, feel the cold of the marble, a radiating chill.

  There is, I realize, no bed. I must be expected to sleep on the floor. I am slapped in the face by the honesty of it. I am to be considered alive only while I am in service to him. To the Tailor. Sir. And the rest of the time kept in a storeroom, just as my Husband once joked.

  I sink down into a puddle of my own robes and picture all I have left behind at the Valley. My possessions still folded on my chair or hung in my wardrobe. Even Heron is left behind in my room, perhaps already tossed out or burned. I have my diary, concealed within my wide kimono belt, but nothing more.

  No one but Madame even knows that I am here. I think over the other Dolls in the Valley. Those whose Husbands dumped them behind empty buildings in the dead of night or tipped them from moving cars onto the littered verge of the road. Am I any less abandoned and unwanted?

  I listen to the faint sound of the hound pacing the corridors, and I pine for Cook.ie. How strange it is to wear her clothes. How strange to be addressed by her name. My circuits process it as a prelude to her appearing, no matter how much I wish they would not.

  Does she miss me? Why would she? I can be reproduced. Everything contained within me can be tracked, logged, and reconstructed. What has Cook.ie lost except some data? Perhaps even now she is befriending some new Doll of Madame’s, educating her in the ways of the Human world and the Human body.

  Perhaps, says some part of my logic, this arrangement suits her best of all. You are here, while she is still in the world. She encouraged you to dream of freedom. And yet here you are, enslaved.

  DREAMS

  When did I last properly recharge? Sluggish signals creep through my circuits, and I long for the strength of the sun. I am starved of power and starved of Cook.ie. Things barely seem real, and any purpose is lost to me. Can a Doll become depressed?

  Awake in the dark with my thoughts, I run the last hours at the Valley again and again, hoping to find a chink in the logic, a gap in the glass. Could I have defied Madame and run away, found a way to take Cook.ie with me? I drift myself into an underpowered state and fantasize. In the office, amid the chaos, could I have acted differently, kept or reconstituted my freedom? Could I have suppressed Madame? Muted her long enough to flee?

  I am reaching for a word, but even here in the privacy of my diary, my longest-standing friend, I cannot bring myself to write it.

  In my half-powered haze, I review the scene in the office. A paper knife glinting on the desk, any number of screwdrivers and insertion tools and other potential weapons within arm’s reach. Madame knelt to tie my kimono’s belt, tilting her head at my waist in concentration, exposing the tenderness of her neck. Could I not have acted then? What alternative path might that have sent us on? I imagine it. The open window. Running to the Geisha Bar, grasping Cook.ie’s hand, our both tumbling out into the alley and away, past the gate, past the kiosk, past everything.

  TEA

  Virgin.ie does not come back to fetch me from my room until the next afternoon. I have been two days without any sort of recharge, and I hope she might say we are going out for some sun. Instead we walk back to that same large room and sit next to each other on a sofa, looking at the sea, the dog on the floor close by. I gaze listlessly around the space, looking for anything that could be considered useful data—the blink of a security system, the pulse of an alarm—but the marble walls are clear of all detail.

  Neither of us speaks. There is something in Virgin.ie’s manner that makes me hesitate to ask questions. Her surface is like still water. I am reluctant to disturb it. I sense her seatedness is contingent; she is ready to spring up reverentially when the Tailor appears.

  We wait until the evening sky has grown dark, reflecting us back to ourselves in the wide window’s glass. Far, far across the polished floor, a bamboo table, just a few inches above the floor, has been set up. At some point a service droid, little more than a flat surface and a set of wheels, rolls in with a tray on its top. It contains a beaker, a bowl, and a teapot. Steam rises from the pot’s spout, forming a question mark in the air.

&n
bsp; I wonder how the Tailor will look. His eyes were on me as I worked for him on-screen, yet he was an absence, a gap Cook.ie and I filled with whatever we imagined him to be. How I wish Cook.ie were here with me. We could touch hands, speak binary reassurances through our fingers.

  Though there is no obvious signal, Virgin.ie rises from the sofa, walks to the double doors at the end of the room, and draws back first one, then the other. The dog rises and moves paw-to-paw, restless with anticipation.

  There is a low hum, the sound of compressed air and resistance, like a strong breeze through a tiny window. From the shadows a figure becomes clear. He is, by appearances, a young man, but the softness of the muscles in his face and neck and shoulders suggests a great age. His skin is waxy. Frozen, in the style of a rich Born female. Like Madame. That same tautness to it, that same sickly rejuvenation.

  He is seated, wrapped in a chair that holds his legs at the ankles, that cradles his back and supports his arms. It is made of white leather, and its back curves over his head, giving the impression of a halo of light surrounding him. The chair is almost maternal, shielding him, coddling him against the world. I resist the impulse to be touched by it. The chair hovers just above the ground, perfectly still. It is hard to reconcile his vulnerability with the demands of his letters. How forceful he is in his writing. How full of need.

  The dog heaves itself off its haunches and walks a curious circle around us. Its nails tap on the marble, the only sound in the space. I sense the hinged metal and high-tensile tendons under the soft fur, and I would like to kick it. I can see just the spot, behind its knee—the same vulnerable place where I was toppled by the girls at the coffee stop.

  When the Tailor speaks, it is as if his voice is coming from everywhere, from the very domes themselves.

  “Ludas,” he says, and the dog cringes onto the floor. “Excuse my companion, Cook.ie.” His voice is gracious, and perhaps recorded and stored from his youth, to be used now in his late age.