Karl-Heinrich had not forgotten those evenings, ten years ago, eleven, twelve, when he had wandered disconsolate through the dark streets of Prague, gazing with insatiable longing at the girls he saw walking just ahead of him, or the ones sitting with their beaus in brightly lit cafes, or those standing before their mirrors in third-floor apartments. All of them as inaccessible to him as the inhabitants of alien worlds, those girls were. Then.
Well, he had access to them now. A long procession of them had marched through his bedroom in his years as Borgmann the borgmann. Starting with the girls he had lusted after in school, those of them that had survived the Great Plague: Jarmila and Magda, Eva, Jana, Jaroslava and Ludmila, the other Eva with the flat face and the wonderful bosom, and Osvalda, Vera, Ivana, Maria. Zuzana of the fiery hair. Bozena of the fiery temper. Milada. Jirina. Milena. He had had a long list to work his way through. Glorious Stepanka, alas, had died; he requisitioned her sister Katrina instead. And then Anna, Sophia, Theresa, Josefa. The other Milada, the tall one; the other Ludmila, the short one. And both Martinas. Some came with hatred in their eyes, some came in sullen indifference, some saw his bed as their gateway to special privilege. But they all came. What choice did they have?
Oh, yes, and Barbro Ekelund, too. One of the very first, even before Jarmila and Magda and Eva and the rest. The Swedish girl, the one for whom he had invented the myth of being able to tap into the Entity computers, the spontaneous boast that had been the beginning of all this for him. Barbro of the long slender limbs, the unexpectedly full breasts, the golden hair, the sea-green eyes.
“Why am I here?” she had asked, the first time he requisitioned her.
“Because I love you.”
“You don’t even know me. We’ve never met.”
“Oh, we have, we have. It was in August last year, in the Stare Mesto. You forgot.”
“August. The Stare Mesto.” A blank look.
“And then again at Christmastime. In the street. I wanted to buy you a coffee, but you were too busy.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”
“No. You don’t remember. But I do. Please, now, your clothes. Take them off.”
“What?”
“Please. Right now.” He was seventeen, then. Still new at this. Had had only four women up till that point, counting the first, and he had had to pay for that one, and she had been very stupid and smelled of garlic.
“Let me leave here,” she had said. “I don’t want to undress for you.”
“Ah, no, you will have to,” he said. “Look.” And he went to his computer, and from it came an official labor-requisition form, Barbro Ekelund of Dusni Street, Prague, assigned to hospital orderly duty, the Center for Communicable Diseases, Bucharest, Romania, effective three days hence. It seemed quite authentic. It was quite authentic.
“Am I supposed to believe that this is real?” she asked.
“You should. When you get home today, you’ll find that your residence permit has been revoked and your ticket for Bucharest is waiting for you at the station.”
“No. No.”
“Strip, then, please,” he said. “I love you. I want you.”
So she yielded, because she knew now that she had to. Their lovemaking was chilly and far from wonderful, but he had expected nothing much better. Afterward he revoked her transfer order; and, because he was still new at this then and had some residual human feelings of guilt still in his system, he wrote new orders for her that allowed her a year’s entry privileges at the swimming facilities in Modrany, and a season pass for two to the opera house, and extra food coupons for her and her family. She offered him the most rudimentary of thanks for these things, and did not take the trouble of concealing from him the shudder that ran through her as she was dressing to leave.
He had her come back five or six more times. But it was never any good between them, and by then Karl-Heinrich had found others with whom it was good, or who at least were able to make him think so; and so he left her in peace after that. At least he had had her, though. That was why he had given himself over to the Entities in the first place, so that he might have Barbro Ekelund; and Karl-Heinrich Borgmann was the sort of person who followed through on his intentions.
Now it was a dozen years later, an August day again, sunny, warm—sweltering, even; and on his screen was the information that a certain Barbro Ekelund was downstairs, desiring to see him, a matter of personal importance that would be of great interest to him.
Could it be? The very same one? It must. How many other Swedes could there be in Prague, after all? And with that very name.
Visitors here were unusual, except for those people whom Karl-Heinrich summoned to him, and he certainly had not summoned her. Their encounters of long ago had been too bleak, too chilly; he did not look back on them with sentimental fondness or longing. She was nothing more than a phantom out of his past, a wandering ghost. He leaned toward the mouthpiece of his servo and began to order her to be sent away, but cut himself off after half a syllable. Curiosity gnawed at him. Why not see her? For old times’ sake despite everything, a reunion with an artifact of his unhappy adolescence. There was nothing to be afraid of. Surely her resentment had died away, after all this time. And she was so close to having been the first woman he had ever possessed: the temptation to see what she looked like today overmastered him.
He told the servo to send her up, and activated the security spy-eyes mounted in his walls, just in case. No one, nothing, could get within his safety perimeter while the security field was on. It was a reasonable precaution for a man in his position to take.
She had changed, had changed a great deal.
Still slender and fair, yes, the golden hair, the sea-green eyes.
Still quite tall, of course, taller than he. But her radiant Nordic beauty had faded. Something was gone: the ski-slope freshness, the midnight-sun glow. Little lines at the corners of her eyes, along the sides of her mouth. The splendid shining hair somewhat dulled. Well, she was thirty, now, maybe thirty-one: still young, still quite attractive, actually, but these had been hard years for most people.
“Karl-Heinrich,” she said. Her voice was calm, neutral. She seemed actually to be smiling, though the smile was a distant one. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? You’ve done well for yourself.” She gestured broadly, taking in the paneled office, the river view, the array of computer equipment, the wealth of national artistic treasures all about him.
“And you?” he said, more or less automatically. “How have you been, Barbro?” His own tone sounded unfamiliar to him, oddly cozy. As though they were old friends, as though she were not merely some stranger whose body he had used five or six times, under compulsion, a dozen years before.
A little sigh. “Not as good as I would wish, to speak the truth,” she said. “Did you get my letter, Karl-Heinrich?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t recall.” He never read his mail, never. It was always full of angry screeds, execrations, denunciations, threats.
“It was a request for assistance. A special thing, something only you would really understand.”
His face turned bleak. He realized that he had made a terrible mistake, letting a petitioner get in here to see him in person. He had to get rid of her.
But she was already pulling documents out, unfolding papers in front of him. “I have a son,” she said. “Ten years old. You would admire him. He is wonderful with computers, the way you must have been when you were growing up. He knows everything about everything that has to do with them. Gustav, his name is. Look, I have his picture here. A handsome boy.”