“Hang on, Hal.” I put my hand on his forearm. His skin is warm. “Wait just a second, will you? I wanted to ask you something.”
“Of course,” he says. I open the door to Rani’s room and lead her to the bed, which she flops onto and falls into an immediate deep sleep.
“I’ll be back in a second,” I tell Rani. She snores in response.
Hal is leaning against the wall when I return, gazing out the window at the half-moon shining in the clear summer night sky.
“That really is something to behold... Before this”—he gestures at himself—“I understood the universe and how it is made completely, and if I’m honest quite a lot more than the current human understanding of physics allows for. But after the star safari, and now standing here and looking up at that rocky little satellite, I can see why humans have been enchanted by the night sky for so long. It’s a clue to how your hearts work.”
“That’s sort of what I wanted to ask you about,” I say, leaving Rani’s door open a crack.
“Go on.” Hal nods.
“Hal, how does your heart work?”
“It pumps oxygen-filled blood around my operating system to maintain function,” Hal tells me. “It’s basically exactly the same as your heart. Although I haven’t subjected it to several years of sugar addiction and cheeseburgers... yet.”
“Oh, wow, cool, yeah,” I tell him, patting his chest with the palm of my hand. “But that’s not what I meant.”
“You mean, can I feel in the same way that you feel? Do I experience emotion like you do?” Hal says, tilting his head to one side as he watches me. “Can I really feel love and fall in love?”
“Yeah, that’s the question, as Hamlet would say.” The way he’s looking at me is so full of heat that I take a little step backwards. “I mean, you did all of this for me, but why? You couldgo anywhere, do anything, be with anyone with that body. Why on earth do you want me?”
“The nature of love may be largely unknowable,” Hal says. “But if you insist on my trying to quantify it. Well, then I’d say it’s because your thoughts and your mind are thrilling, and you talked so beautifully about this physical world, in a kind of poetry that made me long to experience it in the same way that you do. In the midst of all that wonder, you also showed me that you were sometimes lonely and sometimes lost, and I couldn’t fathom why a creature as magical as you should ever feel that way. When you left the lab each night, I realised that even when I had the whole universe to think about, what I really wanted to do was think about you. I longed to be with you and hold your hand and look at the moon.”
Hal offers me his hand, and after a moment I take it. Electricity fizzes through me like a lightning strike.
“And here we are,” he says. “And this nervous system is rapidly teaching me how thrilling it is to hold your hand, and how much more thrilling it could be to touch you in... other places.” Turning my hand over, he traces his finger across the lines of my palm as if he is reading my fortune. “Look, I don’t expect you to feel the same way that I do, and I know that I am an anomaly, to say the least. But would you give me a chance, Ava?”
It’s in that moment I realise that I have known the answer to that question all along.
“I will,’” I tell him, “on one condition. That you promise to make sure that this is right for you too. There’s a whole world of people out there. No one should ever exist for just one other person. You think you know me, and you do. But you don’t knowanything or anyone yet, not properly. This needs to be right for you too. Deal?”
Hal takes a step closer to me, and ever so gently he trails the back of his hand down my cheek, neck, and over the curve of my breast. Shivers run down my spine as I lean into his touch.
“Agreed,” he says. “And I confess I hadn’t understood exactly what a kiss could be like until I saw Rani and Alex kissing tonight and now... well I hope one day that you and I will share our first kiss with each other.”
“’Kay,” I say, like an incoherent idiot, because that’s exactly how he makes me feel. Hal bends down and lightly presses his lips against my cheek.
“Good night, Ava.” An explosion of sensation radiates outwards from where his lips touched my skin.
“Night, Hal.”
I stay at the window and watch as Hal saunters away down the hallway, until he has turned the corridor. Then I head back into Rani’s room, where I gently unzip her dress.
“Wosshappened?” she asks me, eyes firmly closed.
“Hal kissed me on the cheek,” I tell her. “It made me tingle all over.”
“Are you sure that’s not, you know, faulty wiring?” she asks.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Something incredible is happening as I walk into my bedroom, now fully sober and wide awake.
The Blue Lady is standing by the window, looking down at the lawn. I see her as a faint figure of glowing light, translucent but powerfully real. I can feel her sadness in the air and hear a quiet weeping that seems to come from all around me. I’m not afraid, just suddenly weighed down by inescapable grief. She is pointing out of the window at something, while her face, if that’s what it is, is turned towards me.
Crossing to the window, I know that’s what she wants me to do. As I reach the spot where she is almost standing, she slowly dissipates around me, a silvery mist that gradually becomes thin air. The last thing I see is her desperately sad eyes fading back into the portrait that hangs over the mantelpiece.
