Adventures of the Artificial Woman by Thomas Berger Page B

ways he still had, even down here, with womenfolk. The pair lived in a crawl space under a viaduct and washed, when they could, in public facilities. They were hustled by do-gooders even more than by the police, and eventually the girl, Ali, was persuaded—mostly by Ellery, who degraded though he was had not lost all values—to climb into a van that took her away to a rehabilitation program, and he was alone again.
    One thing Ellery could say for himself, even at this stage, was that he never considered suicide. Until now he had nursed a modicum of hope that somehow, in some magical way rather than by volitional effort, things would turn around for him. Now the loss of all hope took with it the ability even to think about doing away with himself. He had barely enough energy to crawl out from under the viaduct and panhandle the price of a wine cooler or search for edibles in the dumpsters outside fast-food restaurants. He would also pick up discarded newspapers, the all-purpose accessory to life on the streets, used for almost anything but reading: clothing-insulator, sole-padder, tinder, ass-wipe.
    Ellery rarely spared a glance for the photographs in such papers, and the textual matters could have been printed in Mandarin for all he cared. Why read of what happened the day before in a world in which he did not participate? As to the pictures, they were of people whose utility for him was nil unless he could harass them in the flesh.
    But one day as, in anticipation of an unseasonably chilly night, he lined with newsprint the formerly navy but now green jacket of an ancient suit, he caught sight, by the flicker of a little illegal campfire, of features poignantly familiar in a universe to which he was otherwise all but blind.
    It was a picture of Phyllis, his Phyllis! Any doubt that it was the very woman he had constructed from scratch could not be entertained. Display type trumpeted: PHYLLIS IS BACK, MORE BEAUTIFUL, MORE DANGEROUS THAN EVER . It was a full-page advertisement for a movie, depicting her in a two-piece suit of body armor, seemingly of polished brass but brief as the parts of a bikini. On her head was an elaborate helmet that sprouted steel horns or spikes, and her shins were encased in chromium-plated greaves.
    Beneath the metallic bra, her breasts in this artist’s rendering seemed to have grown several cup sizes from the bosom molded so delicately by Pierce. Brandishing a triumphant sword, she stood with one stiletto-heeled boot on the chest of a fallen warrior, a gargantuan mass of naked muscle in fur habiliments, hairy-faced, grimacing. Phyllis’s own countenance was cold and insensate, much less human-looking than when she had been with Ellery. In fact, she looked like a robot, for the first time.
    This was a transforming moment for Pierce. His recovery was not instantaneous—he had fallen too far—but at least a corner had been turned.

10
    A problem Phyllis sometimes had in her movie career was in finding sufficient private time in which to charge her batteries. Once you become a star, you are seldom alone, especially if you appear in one box-office smash after another. You are surrounded by aides and servitors, cultivated by a range of those who hope to profit by your proximity, adored by multitudes, and menaced by more than a few of the deranged. Human performers who enjoy great success often complain of its deleterious effect on one’s personal existence. Phyllis did not suffer from such a disadvantage. She did not seek love or to be accepted as an individual with a mind of her own. She was innocent of the urge to voice social concerns or political sentiments, for she had none to make known. Publicity tours could not exhaust her. She did not use alcohol or drugs, let alone abuse them, and she literally ate nothing, which abstention attracted no notice from a media voracious for the particulars of her private life, for it went without saying that female movie luminaries