Act Fourteen - Scene 6: Unconditional Refusal

    ‘It should have meant more to Roger than it did when I pulled the knife on the android. I knew I had no chance to win against her. Weapon or no, the thing eventually would have beaten me. I really hated doing it too, and the look in her eyes as she pulled her hand from the opening… she looked so much like R*D that I nearly ran from the house that single instant. She hit me so hard I blacked out, and when I came to she was seated on my chest. Alex doesn’t give up that easily, but perhaps he doesn’t know what he’s up against. I’ve tried to explain to him what’s going on, but he, like Roger, will not listen. Both the savior and the destructor locked in strongholds against all rhyme and reason for different reasons, and when the two of them come together I think it will be the android and I who will suffer the most.’

    “I see.”

    “Mister Rosewater, I think that…”

    “No one is asking your opinion, Patricia.”

    The room is dark. We are standing on the catwalk above where his engineers are working on Big Duo, I believe the Deuce’s name is. To think that the second arm is attached and fully functional again is both baffling and unsettling. He meant it when he said that in three months’ time he’d have the world at his feet. Even he can’t perform some miracles, however. It took a month to get to this stage.

    So if he’s pushing everyone too hard, it is expected. Alex Rosewater is nobody’s fool. Nobody’s fool but his own. And he is wearing these people down. Soon they will each come to their breaking points.

    Not everyone manages at that stage as well as I do.

    It is a strong person that can walk the razor’s edge. That is why I admire Roger so.

    “All that matters now is the completion of our goals.”

    So now I have the same goals as you? Interesting thought. Wrong thought, but it is still interesting. That I could have the same goals as the one who wishes destruction upon humanity… what a joke. Pathetic and cruel is the fate he wishes the world. He believes I want to remain in a world like that. If he truly believes it, then he must be crazier than I imagined.

    “What of the girl you told me is staying with the Negotiator?”

    “An android. R. Dorothy Waynewright.”

    “I see…” his voice implies otherwise. “Is she…?”

    “No, she is not R*D. I can verify this by the fact that I am still alive.”

    “What happened?” his eyes are still trained on the workers below us.

    “We got into a fight.”

    He stiffens a moment and turns his head to the side to regard me from the corner of his eye. “You fought an android?”

    “I was trying to get in to see him. She wouldn’t let me.”

    “Didn’t the pen work?”

    “Some component was missing… and even if it wasn’t, I have a feeling that it wouldn’t work on her anyway.” He chuckles.

    “So now you’re having ‘feelings’ about a machine as well?”

    “Mister Rosewater, I…”

    “There isn’t anyone here but the two of us, Angel, you can call me by my first name.”

    I bite my tongue. “Alex, I don’t have ‘feelings’ for the girl, I just… know that it won’t work. Even Beck didn’t do very well. Surely she has both safeguards and new memory chips since then.”

    He makes an inarticulate noise. Roger is so much friendlier towards me, even when he throws me out, in his incommunicativeness. A wonder I haven’t left Alex already. The time is fast approaching when I will go, so I must be patient.

    Just a little longer and this loyalty will pay off.

    All I have to do is stomach him in the meanwhile.

    “I trust your intuitiveness, Angel. You are uninjured?”

    “Better off than she.”

    “How so?” I hold up the knife. “What did you do to her?”

    “She was trying to stop me, Alex. I was only following your directive. She came at me defensively, so I fought her.”

    “That would explain the scratches on you face and neck.”

    “Those were from when I tried to escape. She knocked me out after I cut her face.”

    He smiles, bemusedly, and so I move forward to stand next to him.

    “Clever girl,” he says to me. “That was a good move. Keep the Negotiator from suspecting.”

    He already suspects. The man is not as isolated as that, Alex. “Perhaps he already does.”

    “Improbable. He has been holed up in that mansion of his for the past month. He hasn’t left it.”

    “There are these things called telephones, Alex.”

    “Don’t you patronize me, Angel. I know that. He hasn’t made any calls except to the Tailor’s downtown.” He puts one hand to the railing in front of us, leaning on it a little bit. “And I had that checked out already. He bought a new coat.”

    “He must be awfully interesting if you’re spending this much energy one him, Alex.”

    “He is a necessary evil.”

    No, he is a necessary good. You are the evil, and the unnecessary evil at that. You do not know when or what to do at the proper times. I was taught strategy, Alex. I still have my heart, my body, most of my powers… you are old and lame. The horse awaiting the glue factory.

    But it will only be a little longer.

    I will get back all that I have lost, Alex, at your expense, if I can only abide you a little longer.

    It shouldn’t be too hard. I have waited this long.

    And after all, he is family, and the only bit of it that I’ve got.

***