"I've been waiting for you to invoke Lupé," she said after we had driven some distance in silence.
"Are we still having this conversation?"
"Where is she? Is she even coming back?" Deirdre stared ahead as though she were searching the darkness. "I think not. Maybe it's your inability to surrender to your own passions that drove her away."
"You don't know what you're talking about," I said quietly.
"Then please explain it to me! You can't use Lupé as an excuse—she understands the Rules of the Pack and the Coven. She would understand that you are my Sire and that you have obligations—"
"It would still hurt her."
"But she would accept it."
I silently counted off thirty-seven white divider stripes before she spoke again.
"And that's if she comes back." Deirdre cleared her throat. "And if she doesn't—"
"You're right, I'm using Lupé as an excuse. It would hurt me."
"I guess that really isn't a surprise." She tapped her fingers against the window glass. "Though I expected you to draw out some argument based on the power differential in our relationship—that, as my Master, such a coupling would exploit me. Or corrupt your sense of honor."
I didn't answer; I was too busy checking the rearview mirror.
"But I think it's more fundamental than that for you."
"We're being followed," I said, pressing down on the accelerator. "Unzip the pouch. Use the second magazine, it's loaded with ball ammo."
"Ball ammo?"
"Jacketed. I don't want to waste silver on a vehicle."
She picked up the pouch and opened it. "So is it simply a religious hang-up for you? Do you still fantasize that there is a God? That He would disapprove?"
She removed the Glock and checked the magazine while I strangled a bitter laugh. "Things have been done to me," I said, "that are changing me into an inhuman killing machine. Do you think I wring my hands and worry that God is concerned with my bedroom conduct when I'm starting to see human beings as slabs of meat? A smorgasbord of tasty treats who merely exist to give me momentary pleasure?"
The headlights in the rearview mirror drew quickly closer: our tail was accelerating.
"Then it's not a religious thing?"
"Depends on your definition of religion. Are you buckled up?"
She nodded but then loosened her belt strap, presumably to allow her to move and aim, if necessary. The human Deirdre I had met in Seattle would have been clueless if handed a firearm a year ago. Damien's murder had motivated her with a vengeance: she'd told me that she practically lived on Pagelovitch's shooting range after her "rebirth."
"Can you tell if it's a black Suburban?"
"Not yet," she answered. "And what do you mean by 'definition of religion'?"
I hunched over the wheel, trying to ease the tension in my back while gauging possible exit points—paved or otherwise. "Seems like everywhere you turn, there are laws. The laws of the Coven. The laws of the Demesne. The laws of the state of Louisiana. Me? I believe in the laws of physics."
She snorted. "Physics is your religion?"
"Why not?" I gestured toward the distant glow of the BioWeb complex. "Up there is one of its temples, where the pure laws of science are worshipped by acolytes in lab coats, meditating before the CRTs, invoking the rituals of mathematics and measurements. There are commandments and codicils from the subatomic level all the way up to the macrobiotic sphere. Laws of the seen and the unseen. Laws of the quantifiable and the unknown—sometimes silent and secret, but no less real while they await discovery."
" 'All kingdoms have a law given: and there are many kingdoms,' " Deirdre murmured, " 'for there is no space in which there is no kingdom; and there is no kingdom in which there is no space . . .' "
I nodded, easing back into my seat and stretching my arms against the steering wheel. "Poetic, but as apt a description of quantum mechanics as one is likely to squeeze into a single sentence."
"The Doctrine and Covenants by Joe Smith, 1832." She smiled at my expression. "What? You'd forgotten that I read, too? That Damien and I met in a library? Do you think you're the only one who has searched the various theologies for a loophole? An escape clause? A chance to recover our souls, our humanity, before the long darkness closes over us?" Her smile faded. "Well, let me save you a little homework: we inhabit a different kingdom, now. A very different kingdom and we are ruled by a very different law."
"You use the words 'laws' and 'rules' interchangeably—like they're the same thing," I said. "I think of rules as something people think up to keep other people in line: the rules of the Pack, of the Coven, of the Demesne. If I'm rebellious and clever enough, I can break those rules and get away with it." I shook my head. "Laws, on the other hand, are immutable facts of existence. Doesn't matter whether you agree with the law of gravity or not: one way or another, it will be obeyed."
"Chevy Nova," Deirdre interjected. "Green."
"Not a black Suburban," I mused. "Still could be Pagelovitch's crew."
"So. You're differentiating between the 'rules' of behavior and the 'laws' of existence?"
"Or the 'rules' of religion as opposed to the laws of God."
"So you do believe in God?"
I hesitated. "I believe in the universe. And I believe its nature is evidenced by how it is governed by law."
"Can you be any more obscure?"
"Obtuse," I said. "I think the word you're looking for is obtuse. And hold on tight!"
"The word I'm looking for is 'hold on tight'?"
I wrenched the wheel while my feet danced over the floor pedals: our car spun one-hundred-eighty degrees and I floored the gas pedal immediately.
"Take sustenance . . ." I began.
"This whole conversation started because you wouldn't take it when it was offered," she said as the screaming tires found traction and we leapt toward our pursuers.
"Our choices on the menu may vary, our appetites may wax or wane," I continued, "but the one immutable law of food is that, without it, we die."
The driver of the Chevy Nova decided I was sufficiently serious—or unstable—and steered his vehicle into a ditch, effectively ending our game of chicken with twenty yards to spare.
"We may vary in caloric intake," I added as we passed our would-be tailgaters, "volume consumed, tastes preferred, but we will waste away and die without some form of physical fuel for our physical bodies."
She nodded. "Okay, bologna or blood—I'll buy that humans and vampires must obey a fundamental law of biology." She looked back through the rear window. "I think they're stuck."
I nodded. "Even though they don't want to be, I'll bet. That's the problem of factual conditions versus wishful thinking. Which underscores my point, here. As a theology, the tenets of physics are consistent; the laws of thermodynamics and gravity hold us all accountable before the bar."
She laid the Glock on the bench seat between us. "Physics is one thing but behavioral needs are quite another. As individuals, raised in different cultures and environments, we have different needs." She pulled down the passenger sun visor.
"Do we?" I turned down a dirt road that would bring us back around to BioWeb by a more circuitous route. "Are your so-called 'behavioral needs' really necessities or just issues of preference? Food is food and our inability to live without it is not the same thing as whether you prefer meatloaf to crepes suzette."
"Actually, I prefer Meatloaf to Mozart." She opened her handbag, peered inside, then reached up and switched on the Merc's dome light.
"Music or food, you make my point about preference. Desire is not the same thing as true need."
She looked up and then out the side window at the darkness that paced us with every passing fence post. "How do you measure either?"
"Desire?" I considered briefly. "I think we each define our own. But our needs truly define us."
"You're playing at words."
"Am I? Desire unfulfilled may make us strong. It may make us weak. But if we perish from its lack then it was not a preference but truly a need."
"How can you know the difference before it is too late?"
I shrugged. "Most people don't know the difference between love and lust."
"Oooo, listen to you! And I thought I was the jaded soul."
"Assuming you still have one," I observed dryly.
"Testy." She went back to rummaging through her purse.
"Yeah? Well, the subject of the soul is . . . subjective. And I think I've lost my perspective this past year."
"Or maybe gained it for the first time," she suggested. "Your problem is you're trying to measure and define the unseeable."
"For now we see through a glass darkly . . ." I murmured. "If the invisible actually exists, then it is quantifiable. Physics shows us that anything can be measured if it acts or is acted upon—even the unseeable aspects of existence. Gravity, electricity—"
"I've seen electricity." She pulled out a lipstick case and opened it. "And gravity isn't hard to miss." She flipped down her visor and studied her lack of reflection in Lupé's clipped-on vanity mirror. "Damn! I keep forgetting!"
I suppressed a grin. "You don't see yourself in the mirror—how do you know that you exist?" I elaborated: "You've seen the effects of electricity, you haven't actually seen the flow of electrons being passed from one atomic orbit to the next."
She evidently saw something else: She grabbed the Glock and, as she tilted the visor back toward the ceiling, I saw the flash of headlights in the looking glass.
"Chevy Nova?"
She nodded. "Looks as if they weren't that stuck, after all."
In retrospect the dirt road was a mistake: the dust trail had led them right to my rear bumper. Which they accelerated and bumped as Deirdre rolled down the passenger window. "I was wrong!" she called over the increasing noise from the wind and the two engines.
"About what?"
"About our date turning out to be a boring waste of a good evening!"
The car behind us dropped back and then accelerated to smack into our rear bumper again.
"You really know how to show a girl a good time!"
"Glad you're enjoying it!" I started to weave back and forth across the road: two tire tracks connected by packed earth and a handful of gravel didn't give me much leeway for evasive maneuvers. "Maybe you'd like to explain the rear end damage to my insurance agent!"
"Stop weaving, I can't get a shot!"
"It's a car, for Crissake! It's only five feet away! How hard can it be?"
Her head and one shoulder were out the window, now, and her hair streamed backwards, cloaking her face as she aimed the gun at our bumper car assailants. Nothing happened. The Nova banged into us again. Then a fourth time.
Deirdre pulled her head and arm back into the car.
"What's the problem?" I asked. "Gun jammed?"
"What's the problem?" She rolled the window back up and glared at me. "How about your chopped roofline makes the passenger window too narrow for me to fit through! I'm right-handed! I can't hit squat shooting left-handed from a moving car weaving all over a dirt road at high speed!" She turned around and knelt on the seat, bracing the gun in her right hand on the cushioned back support.
"What are you doing?"
"Aiming for their headlights."
"Through my rear window? Forget it!"
"You got a better idea?"
"I'm pretty sure," I said tightly, "the glass in this car is irreplaceable."
"And we're not?"
The Nova thudded into the rear bumper with enough force to jolt me against the steering wheel. Deirdre tumbled back against the dashboard.
"What about your rear end?" she asked, trying to extract her rear end from the foot well. "Isn't that irreplaceable?"
"Sheet metal is easier to rework than vintage auto glass," I sniffed.
She bared her teeth at me. "You need a moon roof."
I nodded. "Thought about it once. Too bad I didn't—hey!"
Deirdre fired off four shots into the night sky. Or rather, through the ceiling of my car, into the night sky. While I was still reeling from the noise and the smell of gunpowder she punched her fist through the roof and used her preternatural strength to peel back the metal and fabric like the lid of an old sardine can. "Don't get your panties in a wad," she groused. "I'll pay to have the job finished properly at the body shop of your choice—if we survive." She stood up and pushed her head and shoulders through the top of the car. The Glock barked twice more and the headlights in my rearview were suddenly dark.
The sound of our pursuer's engine receded as Deirdre squirmed back down into the car. She pulled the flap of metal back into a semblance of closure and ripped away the dangling swatch of ceiling fabric before she refastened her seat belt. "Now, where were we?" she asked as she laid the handgun back down and began to paw through her purse, again.
"Well. Um. You were saying that I needed a moon roof—"
"No." She produced a hairbrush and waved it at me. "Before. About seeing the unseen."
"Ah." I considered as she began working the tangles out of her auburn tresses. "I was just pointing out that we measure a myriad of unseen forces—physical, biological, emotional—all by way of their effects."
"And how do we do that?"
I looked in the rearview mirror but could see nothing. Now I needed a process for measuring the unseen. "We can, um, do that because we recognize a pattern of adherence to law. Consistency. Objects fall in obedience to the law of gravity. Not only fall, but must obey the same laws of velocity regardless of weight."
"Heavier-than-air craft fly in defiance of that law," she countered, working on a stubborn snarl behind her head. Her breasts rose in response as though seeking to demonstrate the Bernoulli principle in my defense.
"Gravity does not cease to exist, it remains immutable," I argued. The dirt road swung sharply to the right up ahead. "But airplanes and jets and even birds and bats and bugs rise in obedience to other immutable laws, laws of lift and velocity and aerodynamics. The courtroom of the airfoil administers 'higher' laws—if you'll pardon the pun."
"I'll pardon the pun if you'll make your point." Her voice shaded toward irritation. "And why is the rear window suddenly red?"
I glanced in the rearview mirror. The glass of the rear windscreen was aglow with blossoms of crimson, each bloom encompassing a bright red dot. The blooms moved like flowers stirred by a gentle breeze. As they migrated over to the passenger side of the window I reached over and shoved Deirdre's head down. "Designators!" I said.
"Desi-what?" Her head popped back up.
"Laser-sights!" I shoved her head back down.
"Laser—?" There was the sound of a small thunderclap and a round hole suddenly appeared in the windshield on Deirdre's side, radiating a nimbus of fine cracks.
"What was that?"
"Ah shit!" I said, glancing back and noting a matching hole—about the diameter of a pencil, ringed with a spider's web of cracks—in the rear window. The trade-in value of my car was definitely plummeting. "Nine millimeter."
"What?"
"A .22 short or a .45 ACP travel just under the speed of sound," I explained. "We probably wouldn't have heard it over the noise of the engine. A nine mil approaches mach one-point-five: that sound you just heard was a miniature sonic boom."
"They're shooting at us?" she asked with more than a touch of indignation.
"Actually," I said, wrenching the wheel into the turn, "they seem to be shooting at you."
"Why me?"
"Well, you did start it."
"You're the one who gave me the gun. Told me which ammo to use."
"Don't get upset."
"Don't get upset? They're shooting at me! How come they're not shooting at you?"
"Would you rather they shot at me?"
"No. I just want to know why."
"We could stop and ask them," I said reasonably.
She unbuckled her shoulder-harness. "Maybe I'll just shoot you myself," she said, falling across my lap and slapping the knob on the dash that controlled the headlights. Suddenly we were barreling along at sixty miles an hour in the dark.
"Hey!" I said, tapping the brakes. "What's the idea?"
"They have no headlights," she said, seemingly addressing my leg, "and we can see better in the dark than they can. As long as our lights are on, we make the better target and give them something to follow."
I felt the tires leave the hard-packed dirt ruts and tapped the brakes again as we slipped onto the grass. "Keep your foot off the brake," she demanded of my inner thigh.
"I can't see the bloody road!"
"Well, they can see our brake lights so just coast until your night vision kicks in!"
"I'm still half human, Deirdre; my infravision only registers major temperature differentials, not dirt roads after sundown!"
Her head popped back up and she grasped the wheel. "I'll steer. You just keep your foot off that brake until I tell you."
I glanced in the rearview mirror; once or twice a red dot swept across the back of the car but didn't stop or linger. Our pursuers were falling even farther behind.
"I don't like it," she muttered.
"You don't like it? They put holes in my windscreens! Never mind the cost, I don't know if I can get replacements for a 1950 Mercury Club Coupé!"
"I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about your whole 'physics as morality' premise."
I shook my head. "You really aren't going to let this go, are you?"
She smiled and I glimpsed the ghost of a fang in a faint reflection of starlight. "You haven't finished explaining how the physics of the universe abrogates human desire."
I sighed. "If there is a connection between physical law and human need, it's simply this: in every kingdom, seen and unseen, the principles are the same. You don't get something for nothing, everything affects something, and every action has a consequence."
"My daddy used to say there's a price tag on everything and there's no such thing as a free lunch," she said, snuggling against me and steering around something sizeable in the darkness. "The universe bites."
"Why?" I asked. "It only means that everything has value. Consequences can be good as well as bad. Price tags can show you where the bargains are shelved and the treasures are buried. What you choose produces an effect, a result. On you. On someone else. On a place, a thing, or a pattern of existence."
"Now you're going to segue into the morality of physics," she said dryly.
"It's not about being right," I said. "When it comes to the laws of physics, it's only a matter of what is. Right or wrong have nothing to do with it. The law of gravity doesn't care if you're a good person or a bad person. Saint or sinner, you walk off the edge of a five-hundred-foot cliff and the law of gravity is going to slap a summons on your ass, court's in session, and sentencing phase is coming up in ten seconds."
"Turn off ahead," she announced. "Take your foot off the gas but don't touch the brake unless I say so."
I peered through the darkness ahead of us and glimpsed a gray ribbon bleeding out of the purple blackness. "Asphalt?"
"Very good! You just may be less human than you think."
Now there was a comforting thought.
Deirdre spun the wheel and, as we left the dirt ruts behind and bumped onto smooth blacktop, I goosed the accelerator. Dim light from distant pole lamps beside barns and fuel pumps illumed the road turning the ribbon of gray to dirty silver. I could almost make out the oil stains and crushed moths now.
"What about miracles?" she asked as I took the steering wheel back into my grasp. She stayed, snuggled against me.
I shrugged. "Show me one that negates a physical law without serving a higher one, like Bernoulli's principle, and we'll talk. Otherwise, statistics suggest the saints tend to die younger and uglier than the wicked of this world."
"So, invoke the laws of physics and God has no place in the universe?"
"Quid pro quo or ipso facto?" I countered. Another pair of headlights popped up in my rearview mirror. "That the universe runs like a complex and self-perpetuating machine hardly precludes an intelligence behind the design. The self-winding watch winds itself—but someone designed it, crafted the parts, and assembled it before sending it off to its own self-contained existence." The headlights were too far back to be sure, but I was betting it wasn't the Chevy Nova. I turned our headlights back on. Driving with them off would just call more attention to us now.
"So you do believe in God," she said. The note of challenge in her voice was more wistful than accusatory.
"I did. Once upon a time. Now the idea only seems to make me angry."
She laid a cool hand on my thigh. "Nietzsche said 'we are all apes of a cold god.' "
I hunched my shoulders. "Which is worse: an empty universe where life is but a short distraction from the long nothingness that comes before and after? Or a Supreme Intelligence that is indifferent and unresponsive to suffering and injustice? Don't ask me that question: I'm already damned so, for me, it doesn't really matter."
She squeezed my leg. "So what does matter?"
"People. Loyalty. Truth. Love."
"Love," she repeated.
"The real deal. Not the pantomimes of hormones, hungers, and egos. By the way, it was Marx, not Nietzsche."
"Not Nietzsche?"
"Marx," I affirmed, "Karl not Groucho."
"I get them mixed up all the time—Karl and Groucho."
I nodded. "I have the same problem with the Lennon boys. Which one wrote 'Give Peace A Chance,' Vladimir or John?"
She picked up the handgun again. "Those headlights are still getting closer."
"I'm not going that fast."
"Then go faster. And finish your point."
"Which point?"
"Your definition of morality in an amoral universe."
"I don't think I'm talking about morality, really," I said, pressing down on the accelerator. "I'm just talking about what works and what doesn't according to the laws of the universe."
"Faster."
"Driving or talking?"
"Both."
The headlights in the rearview mirror dropped back and held for the moment. "We know that the universe is a series of physical kingdoms, each interactive and structured to be ruled under a set of laws. Some of these kingdoms are invisible. Some, as yet, unmeasureable. The fact that we cannot yet quantify or measure them makes them no less real than the atom was before it was quantified by John Dalton."
"Of the infamous Dalton Gang?"
"So why not kingdoms both natural and supernatural?" I asked, refusing to be baited. "Physical and metaphysical? Is there spiritual existence beyond the electro-chemical processes of the human brain? Perhaps we are merely waiting for another Madame Curie to open new windows into those yet unseen and unquantified realities?"
"The kingdoms of the soul," she murmured.
"Why not? We are physical beings and, as such, are subject to the laws of physics. Walk off a cliff, plunge to our deaths. Place our hand in the flame, our flesh is burned and we feel pain. Why wouldn't there be laws and consequences of a spiritual nature?" I noticed the headlights in the mirror were slowly closing the distance between us. "Where's the spare magazine?"
"Must have fallen on the floor." Deirdre leaned down and groped under the seat. "So," she pondered, "the laws of physics in commandment form might be: 'Thou shalt not walk off of five-hundred-foot cliffs.' And: 'Blessed is he who does not place his hand into the flame.' " She came back up with the spare magazine of silver-treated Glasers, which she tucked into her cleavage for safekeeping and ready access.
"Works for me." I tilted the rearview mirror to try to get a better look at the vehicle behind us.
She snorted. "Eventually, of course, religions would arise to teach us that God hates people who walk off of cliffs and delights in chastising those who wickedly play with fire."
I grinned. It felt like a death rictus so I lost it immediately. "But a loving and compassionate God would have nothing to do with that. He might say, 'I love you and don't want you to come to harm so I give you these commandments as warnings. It's not judgment or punishment. This is the way that the universe works and it is the laws of gravity and thermodynamics that must be obeyed. If you attempt to defy an immutable law, there's gonna be some hurtin' goin' on.' "
"So you're suggesting the vengeful and wrathful God of the Old Testament is a bad rap," Deirdre said, twisting back around for a better look at the car behind us. "Warn against the consequences of head-butting immutable law and the messenger gets the blame."
I nodded. "Especially if the laws invoke the commandments of the heart."
"It still sounds very Calvinistic to me."
"What would you prefer, something very Calvin and Hobbsistic?" I sighed. "Some people will always look for loopholes whether it's theology, biology, or relativity. 'Why doesn't God make the universe harmless,' they'll carp. 'Make fire cold, negate the pull of gravity?' They wouldn't have to figure out how to cook their food or warm their homes as they go flying off the surface of the planet, flung into the void by the law of centrifugal force. They'd lobby to have every law negated or rescinded until the universe was devoid of structure, without form and void—entropy and nihilism because somebody always chafes when they notice boundaries."
"The problem with all that," she said, raising her voice as she pulled down on the metal flap that used to be part of the car's roof, "is the interpretation of the unseen and immeasurable has to be arbitrary. No one's quantified the rules—excuse me, laws—of the spiritual kingdoms in measurable, even provable form. In the meantime you get people who nail other people to crosses or wear them around their necks as they burn witches and launch crusades!"
"You're right."
"I am?"
"And wrong," I added as the metal flap gave way with a distressed groan. The wind poured down into the car, swirling Deirdre's hair into a twisting, flamelike dance and forcing us to raise our voices again. "The fiction of the fools and the foul doesn't make what's True any less true."
She tossed the flap into the backseat.
"They just obscure the path to discovering what really works and what doesn't," I elaborated. "The fact that I'm pissed at the universe doesn't change its actual nature. If there is no God—or if there is and He doesn't bloody care—it ultimately makes no difference whether I rebel or suck up or divert myself with ritual and poetry: the laws of the universe, seen and unseen, will have their way. So, for me, my own brand of religion is all about figuring out which rules are the real laws. And which are merely the diversions and obfuscations of misled or purposely evil people."
"Interesting," she said. "But we're still left stumbling around in the dark. Who can measure love? Is fear merely a biochemical reaction? Where does desire come from? Why do two men respond to the same oppression with such different thoughts and emotions?"
I shrugged. "The fact that I do not know doesn't equate that I can not know. The laws governing our unseen selves are consistent: without companionship we are lonely, without hope we come to despair, without love we wither. The degree and the timetable may vary from person to person, but we are so alike in our needs—even if we are unalike in our expression of those needs and the forms we desire to put upon them."
Deirdre unfastened her seat belt and turned, thrusting her head and shoulders through the open roof to look back.
"What are you doing?"
"Objects in mirror are closer than they actually appear," she announced over the rush of night air. She ducked back in and refastened her seat belt. "Black Suburban. Are we done?"
I noticed that she did not put the Glock back down.
"Just one more point," I said, "since you wanted to pursue this topic. If I kiss your lips, you would take it as a sign of affection. If I were to kiss you and then betray you, you would feel the betrayal that much deeper—either because the kiss was false, or the kiss was true but I betrayed you anyway. Our bodies, our nerve endings, our pleasure centers—what we do with them defines our relationships and our intent."
The Suburban made its move. It accelerated until it swerved around to pull alongside, matching my speed. The tinted glass windows remained closed, keeping its occupants anonymous.
"When I lie with Lupé," I continued, refusing to gawk, "when we make love and our bodies are joined, we are one. One flesh. It is our covenant. It is our pledge that though we are often individuals, yet we have a union between us that makes us more than the sum of our separate selves. That physical joining helps define our oneness in our unseen and unmeasureable aspects. We say to one another in the most primordial and fundamental language: I am One with you. Together, we are complete. And that act is more than the cement of our oneness, it is transformative: it becomes more than a symbol, it becomes The Truth." I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. "As long as neither of us betrays that Truth."
The dark window parallel to mine lowered and I could see Stefan Pagelovitch's face limned by the pale glimmer of the dashboard lights.
I lowered my window. "Your timing is lousy: Deirdre and I are talking about sex."
)A mistake, my dear Christopher,( came his telepathic response. )You should be discussing death; you are on your way to embrace it.(
Jeez, and here I thought we'd just spent the last twenty minutes running away from it, I sent back.
"What?" he called aloud.
"So what's your advice?" I yelled back.
"Come back with me to Seattle! Tonight!"
"Other than that?"
"Other than that I cannot help you!"
"I am weakened by every recruit to my banner. Is not a man better than a town?"
"What?"
"Emerson. Ralph Waldo, not Lake and Palmer." I raised my window and accelerated. The Suburban dropped back and fell in behind us.
Deirdre just looked at me.
"If I were to lie down with you and join my flesh to yours," I continued, "I would be saying to you that we are one. I am one with Deirdre, and she with me. We are complete together. And if it wasn't a lie between us, it would diminish my bond with Lupé because our oneness would no longer be unique. It would be the start of a lie between her and me. The Lie." The entrance to the BioWeb facilities was coming up on our right and I decelerated and turned in. "If it was a 'lie' between us then my relationship with Lupé is still diminished but you and I have also lied to one another."
"I don't—"
"I can't truly be One with her," I said, cutting her off, "if I'm not exclusive." The guard at the gate came out and checked the invitations that I held out my window. He looked at the bullet holes in the fore and aft windscreens and the makeshift moon roof. I was preparing to use the old Jedi mind trick when he waved us on through.
"Love," I said, maneuvering around a phalanx of expensive automobiles with real sunroofs and unventilated windshields, "requires an act of trust. True love is that greatest act of faith. When we lie to one another in the pantomime of love, we do violence to our secret selves and damage one another."
I parked so that we were near the entrance but facing the road in case we had to leave in a hurry. "And when we have lied, or been lied to, often enough—our capacity for love, to give or receive, is harmed beyond words."
"So, if you were to lie with me," she said with a forced dimple, "you would have to lie with me."
"By Jove," I murmured, "I think she's got it."
"I think we should have stopped when you said you didn't desire me."
I tried to match her smile but felt the weight of my words pulling at the corners of my mouth. "Ah," I said as we opened our doors, "but that would have been 'to lie with you,' as well."