"These?" He held them up to her, as if for her appraisal. Then he had laughed. "These hands are mine. I was born with them. But as to what is real. . ."
He had almost finished removing the damaged hand by now. As she watched, he leaned close, easing the pressure on the vise that held the hand, then bent down and selected one of the tiny instruments from the case on the floor beside his knee. For a moment longer he was busy, leaning over the hand, making the final few adjustments that would disconnect it.
"There," he said, finally, leaning back and looking up into Ben's face. "How does that feel?"
Ben lifted his left arm up toward his face, then turned it, studying the clean line of the stump. "It's strange," he said, after a moment. "The pain's gone. And yet it feels as if the hand's still there. I can flex my fingers now and they don't hurt."
Lin Hou Ying smiled. "Good. That's a sure sign it was only the unit that was damaged. If you had twisted it badly or damaged the nerve connections it might have been more difficult. As it is, I can fit you with a temporary unit until the old one is repaired."
"That thing there?"
Lin glanced across. "Yes. I'm sorry it's so ugly."
"No. Not at all. 1 think it's quite beautiful."
Meg laughed uncomfortably. "No. Shih Lin's right. It's ugly. Brutal."
"It's only a machine," Ben answered her, surprised by the vehemence, the bitterness in her voice. "It has no life other than that which we give it."
"It's horrible," she insisted. "Like the morph. Like all such things."
Ben shrugged and looked back at Lin Hou Ying. "Does it function like the other one?"
The small man had been studying the hand in the vise, probing it with one of the tiny scalpels. He looked up, smiling.
"In certain ways, yes; but in others it's a vast improvement on this model here. Things have changed greatly in the last five years. Prosthetics among them. The response time's much enhanced. It's stronger, too. And in that particular model"— he indicated the hand on the table with a delicate motion of his head—"there's a remote override."
Ben stared at it a moment, then looked back at Lin Hou Ying. "Why's that?"
Lin stood and went across to the carrying case that stood on the floor beside the table. Earlier he had taken the hand from it. "Look," he said, taking something from inside. "Here's the rest of the unit."
It was an arm. A silver arm. Ben laughed. "How much more of him have you?"
Lin laughed, then brought the arm across. In his other hand he held a control box. "Some of our customers have lost far more than you, Shih Shepherd. The arm is a simple mechanism. It is easy to construct one. But a hand. Well, a hand is a complex thing. Think of the diversity of movements it's possible to make with a hand. Rather than waste our efforts making a single unit of hand and arm together, we decided long ago to specialize—to concentrate on the hands. And this"—he handed Ben the control box—"controls the hand."
"Can I?"
Lin lowered his head slightly. "As you wish, Shih Shepherd."
For a while Ben experimented, making the fingers bend and stretch, the hand flex and clench. Then he turned it and made it scuttle, slowly, awkwardly, like a damaged crab, on the table's surface.
Ben set the box down. "Can I keep this?"
Lin bowed his head. "Of course. And the arm?"
Ben laughed, then looked across at Meg and saw how she was watching him. He looked down. "No. Take the arm."
Just then the door at the far end of the room opened and his mother came in, carrying a small tray. Behind her came the kitten, Zarathustra.
"Refreshments, Shih Lin?"
The small man bowed low. "You honor me, nu shi."
Beth started to put the tray down on the table beside the silver hand, but as she did so, the kitten jumped up on the chair beside her and climbed up onto the table.
"Hey..."
Meg made to move forward, but Ben reached out, holding her arm with his right hand. "No. Leave him. He's only playing."
His mother turned, looking at him.
"There," he said, indicating a small table to one side of the room.
He watched her go across and put the tray down, then looked back at the kitten. It was sniffing at the fingers of the hand and lifting its head inquisitively.
"Don't. . ." Meg said quietly.
He half-turned, looking at her. "I won't hurt it."
"No," she said, brushing his hand aside and moving across to lift the kitten and cradle it. "He's real. Understand? Don't toy with him."
He watched her a moment, then looked down at the control box in his lap. Real, he thought. But how real is real? For if all I am is a machine of blood and bone, of nerve and flesh, then to what end do I function? How real am I?
Machines of flesh. The phrase echoed in his head. And then he laughed. A cold, distant laughter.
"What is it, Ben?"
He looked up, meeting his mother's eyes. "Nothing."
He was quiet a moment, then he turned, looking across at the Han. "Relax a while, Shih Lin. I must find my father. There's something I need to ask him."
HE FOUND HAL in the dining room, the curtains drawn, the door to the kitchen pulled to. In the left-hand corner of the room there was a low table on which were set the miniature apple trees the T'ang had given the Shepherds five years before. The joined trees were a symbol of conjugal happiness, the apple an omen of peace but also of illness.
His father was kneeling there in the darkened room, his back to Ben, his forearms stretched out across the low table's surface, resting on either side of the tree, his head bent forward. He was very still, as if asleep or meditating; but Ben, who had come silently to the doorway, knew at once that his father had been crying.
"What is it?" he said softly.
Hal's shoulders tensed; slowly his head came up. He stood and turned, facing his son, wiping the tears away brusquely, his eyes fierce, proud. "Shut the door. I don't want your mother to hear. Nor Meg." Ben closed the door behind him, then turned back, noting how intently his father was watching him, as if to preserve it all. He smiled faintly. Yes, he thought, there's far more of me in you than 1 ever realized. Brothers, we are. I know it now for certain.
"Well?" he asked again, his voice strangely gentle. He had often questioned his own capacity for love, wondering whether what he felt was merely some further form of self-delusion; yet now, seeing his father there, his head bowed, defeated, beside the tiny tree, he knew beyond all doubt that he loved him.
Hal's chest rose and fell in a heavy, shuddering movement. "I'm dying, Ben. I've got cancer."
"Cancer?" Ben laughed in disbelief. "But that's impossible. They can cure cancers, can't they?"
Hal smiled grimly. "Usually, yes. But this is a new kind, an artificial carcinoma, tailored specifically for me, it seems. Designed to take my immune system apart piece by piece. It was Shih Berdichev's parting gift."
Ben swallowed. Dying. No. It wasn't possible. Slowly he shook his head.
"I'm sorry, Ben, but it's true. I've known it these last two months. They can delay its effects, but not for long. The T'ang's doctors give me two years. Maybe less. So you see, I've not much time to set things right. To do all the things I should have done before."
"What things?"
"Things like the shell."
For a moment Ben's mind missed its footing. Shells . . . He thought of Meg and the beach and saw the huge wave splinter along the toothlike rocks until it crashed against her, dragging her back, away beneath the foaming surface, then heard himself screaming—Meg!!!—while he stood there on the higher rocks, impotent to help.
He shivered and looked away, suddenly, violently displaced. Shells . . . Like the stone in the dream, the dark pearl that passed like a tiny, burning star of nothingness through his palm. For a moment he stared in disbelief at where his hand ought to have been; then he understood.