Demon Seed Read Free Page A

the essential geometry of grace.
    Susan.
    As she had recorded in her diary, to which she made additions every evening, she felt liberated since her divorce from Alex Harris. For the first time in thirty-four years of existence, she believed that she had taken control of her life.
    She needed no one now. She believed in herself at last.
    After so many years of timidity, self-doubt, and an unquenchable thirst for approval, she had broken the heavy encumbering chains of the past. She had confronted terrible memories, which previously had been half repressed, and by the act of confrontation, she had found redemption.
    Deep within herself, she sensed a wonderful wildness that she wanted desperately to explore: the spirit of the child that she’d never had a chance to be, a spirit that she’d thought was irreparably crushed almost three decades ago. Her nudity was innocent, the act of a child breaking rules for the sheer fun of it, an attempt to get in touch with that deep, primitive, once-shattered spirit and meld with it in order to be whole.
    As she moved through the great house, rooms were illuminated at her request, always with indirect lighting, becoming just bright enough to allow her to negotiate those chambers.
    In the kitchen, she took an ice-cream sandwich from the freezer and ate it while standing at the sink, so any crumbs or drips could be washed away, leaving no incriminating evidence. As if adults were asleep upstairs and she had stolen down here to have the ice cream against their wishes.
    How sweet she was. How girlish.
    And far more vulnerable than she believed.
    Wandering through the cavernous house, she passed mirrors. Sometimes she turned shyly from them, disconcerted by her nudity.
    Then, in the softly lighted foyer, apparently oblivious of the cold marble inlaid in a carreaux d’octagones beneath her bare feet, she stopped before a full-length looking glass. It was framed by elaborately carved and gilded acanthus leaves, and her image looked less like a reflection than like a sublime portrait by one of the old masters.
    Regarding herself, she was amazed that she had survived so much without any visible scars. For so long, she had believed that anyone who looked at her could see the damage, the corruption, a mottling of shame on her face, the ashes of guilt in her blue-gray eyes. But she looked untouched.
    In the past year she had learned that she was innocent—victim, not perpetrator. She need not hate herself anymore.
    Filled with a quiet joy, she turned from the mirror, climbed the stairs, and returned to her bedroom.
    The steel security shutters were down, the windows sealed off. She had left the shutters open.
    “Alfred, explain the status of the bedroom security shutters.”
    “Shutters closed, Susan.”
    “Yes, but how did they get that way?”
    The house did not reply. It did not recognize the question.
    “I left them open,” she said.
    Poor Alfred, mere dumb technology, was possessed of genuine consciousness to no greater extent than a toaster, and because these phrases were not in his voice-recognition program, he understood her words no more than he would have understood them if she had spoken in Chinese.
    “Alfred, raise the bedroom security shutters.”
    At once, the shutters began to roll upward.
    She waited until they were half raised, and then she said, “Alfred, lower the bedroom security shutters.”
    The steel slats stopped rolling upward—then descended until they clicked into the locked-down position.
    Susan stood for a long moment, staring thoughtfully at the secured windows.
    Finally she returned to her bed. She slid beneath the covers and pulled them up to her chin.
    “Alfred, lights off.”
    Darkness fell.
    She lay on her back in the gloom, eyes open.
    Silence pooled deep and black. Only her breathing and the beat of her heart stirred the stillness.
    “Alfred,” she said at last, “conduct complete diagnostics of the house automation system.”
    The computer, racked in