Gadi came in arm in arm with Gimel, whom he had seized upon. “I’ve made a new friend.”
“A simple robot,” Avram said. “As you know, I’ve been working on cyborgs since you were a child.”
“I remember one that was clearly illegal.”
“They’re all illegal. But necessary to defend Tikva as a free town. Yod is just as illegal as the others. More so, since he works.”
“Yod? Purple shit! I don’t believe it.” Gadi turned to stare at Yod, who looked back implacably. “A robot? You know, I’ve heard rumors about projects like that in the assassin ports.” He ambled up to Yod and pinched the skin of his lower arm. “Feels real to me.”
“I know other people are making attempts, but I’ve succeeded. You must keep this secret. I don’t want to die by assassin tomorrow. He’s a blend of lab-grown biological and electronic components.”
“Well, call me the Son of Frankenstein! Things are wilder here than I’d have guessed.” Gadi planted himself squarely in front of Yod, who was backed against a counter. “We haven’t got anything like you in the industry. Forget Avram and come to Vancouver with me. I’ll make you a star.”
Shira realized that Yod was feeling what she could only describe to herself as deeply embarrassed, perhaps humiliated. He stood like Gimel, his hands clenched at his sides, staring off into space now, avoiding Gadi’s gaze, as he could not avoid Gadi’s curious examination.
“Gadi, I need your word,” Avram said. “This is not a matter for jokes. If you cannot give me your word, I’ll have to protect myself.”
Yod’s hands shot out. He lifted Gadi high into the air and held him flailing. “Avram requires that you promise. I can hold you like this all day and all week.”
“Yod!” Shira cried out warningly. “Careful.”
“I…promise,” Gadi croaked out.
Yod set him down. Gadi rubbed his chest and his hip gingerly. “What happened to the good old built-in robotic inhibitions against violence? I’ve been half crushed. I’m barely out of the hospital.”
“Who is Frankenstein?” Yod asked.
“He built a monster,” Gadi said. “Like my father has.”
“A monster?”
“I’ll point you to the story. Mary Shelley wrote it first, but there have been plays and flat films and stimmies.”
“No resemblance,” Shira said firmly. “Gadi is teasing you, Yod. Forget it.”
Avram pounded the counter impatiently. “The important thing, Gadi, is that for once you act responsibly and don’t gossip about this experiment with anyone. It’s dangerous. Malkah was just attacked. We’re under siege here. Try to understand this is not a joke. Not something to gossip about. Not something to make use of.”
“Well, the free towns are anachronisms. If you were part of a multi, you’d be protected.”
“It’s our choice, not yours,” Avram said. “We pay for our choice every day. As do you.”
“This time I paid a couple of quarts of blood and no little skin. You don’t have to worry. I’m used to keeping people’s secrets. I know things about stim stars the daily pops would kill to air.”
As Shira was escorting him from the lab, he murmured, leaning to her ear, “To think I was jealous of a machine! I’m slipping. You put one over on me, Shira, you sly pussy. When I saw him in the hospital, I interpreted his stiffness as threatening posture. Now I see it’s robot ineptitude.” He did not press her again about seeing him that night.
She was relieved. The moment he did not perceive a rival, he slacked off. Why did she feel the faintest pique of disappointment?
EIGHTEEN
To Die in the Base
“I hope I die in the Base,” Yod said quietly. He sat before a terminal in Avram’s lab. For four days he had spent at least twenty-two hours out of twenty-four patrolling Tikva Base, plugged in fully projected. He had not been willing to leave the lab. The last time she had seen him had been the day Gadi was read in. Shabbat had intervened; she had spent it with the convalescing Malkah. Sunday he had begun his immersion in the Base.
Today she had plugged in, made contact and insisted he disengage and eat. He did require nourishment and usually took food, although he had the capacity to metabolize any organic compound not poisonous to him, and a number of inorganic compounds as well. But the tray of food from the Commons she had brought to him sat untouched. He exhibited none of the physical slovenliness a human would have after working nonstop; his face was clean and beardless, his dark hair neat, his olive skin shone in its usual simulacrum of health.
“Why do you want to die? What’s wrong?”
“That’s assuming I’m alive. I read Frankenstein and then many other versions of this story, from novels to books of crudely drawn cartoons. I watched flat projections called films. Then I entered two stimmies.”
“Yod, I told you to forget all that. What has a fantasy of the nineteenth century to do with you?”
“Dr. Frankenstein was a scientist who built a monster. I am, as Gadi said, just such a monster. Something unnatural.”
How could a machine feel self-pity? Nonetheless she had to deal with this sulk. “Yod, we’re all unnatural now. I have retinal implants. I have a plug set into my skull to interface with a computer. I read time by a corneal implant. Malkah has a subcutaneous unit that monitors and corrects blood pressure, and half her teeth are regrown. Her eyes have been rebuilt twice. Avram has an artificial heart and Gadi a kidney.” She perched on the edge of the table, trying to get him to face her. “I couldn’t begin to survive without my personal base: I wouldn’t know who I was. We can’t go unaided into what we haven’t yet destroyed of ‘nature.’ Without a wrap, without sec skins and filters, we’d perish. We’re all cyborgs, Yod. You’re just a purer form of what we’re all tending toward.”
He looked her in the eyes for the first time, glaring, unblinking. “You don’t even believe that. I disgust you.”
“You’ve never disgusted me. Sometimes you scare me a little. Sometimes you confound me.”
“When we were at the bay, when you saw my body, you looked away. I am ugly to you.” He pushed his face into his hands. The gesture was awkward, as if he had seen it in a stimmie and was trying it out, but the miasma of pain emanating from him was palpable.
“It isn’t polite to stare at someone’s naked body if you’re not involved. And women learn never to stare at men, because that can unleash violence.”
“The monster tried to communicate. He tried to be with people. But he was violent, as I am. He could only arouse hatred and commit harm.”
“Yod, you already saved Malkah’s life. You were not created out of some mad ambition of Avram’s to become a god. You’re not cobbled out of human garbage. You were created to protect a vulnerable and endangered community.”
“What were you created to do?”
“I see your point. But once we grow up, we all have purposes, goals, functions in a society.”
“Set by yourself.”
Shira hefted a quartz paperweight, put it down. “Not necessarily.
When I worked for Y-S, I governed little in my life. I certainly didn’t set my own goals at work, and I wasn’t in control at home. And now? Avram set up this project, and he’s my boss as much as he’s yours.”
Yod got to his feet, still fixing her with that implacable unblinking dark stare. Normally he made an effort to blink regularly, like a human. “Why are you arguing with me?”
“I don’t want you to be in despair.”
“Why not? Because you’d be out of a job? Avram will just build another cyborg.” Yod took the paperweight in his hand, held it up to the light. Then he squeezed it in his hand until it shattered. “Perhaps one who is more obedient. Who has less need for human interaction, who won’t go about like the monster, frightening and pestering humans.”
“What a magnificent adolescent funk you’re in. Now you’re more like a person than ever, with internal problems, a feeling of inferiority, the capacity for depre
ssion. We all live with this busy murk of pain and doubt inside us. So will you.” She walked away from him. Avram was a genius, he really was, she thought, to have built this quirky artificial person. Did Avram truly understand what he had created?
“Is this what you feel like, Shira? Because of your son, because of Gadi, do you carry this thing in you like an animal devouring you?”
She came to him, putting one hand lightly on his shoulder. “Just so.”
“Then I’ll endure it.” With infinite care, he took her other hand in his and raised it toward his face. For an instant she thought he was going to kiss her hand, but instead, with a gesture such as Hermes used to make, he bowed his head and rubbed his cheek lightly against her palm. His cheek was smooth as a child’s or another woman’s face, beardless.
It was such an odd and catlike gesture, she smiled as she stepped clear. “I do think of you as my friend. And unlike the monster’s friend in Frankenstein, I don’t need to be blind to like you. You’re not misshapen or monstrous. People generally take you for a human, don’t they?”
He sat down and reached for the tray. “I’ll eat what you brought. Thank you. A friend, that’s good. Good!” he said, imitating the monster’s inflection from the old flat film.
“It can’t be ‘Good!’” she said. “It got cold while we were arguing.”
“It is the same material whether it is twenty degrees or thirty degrees.”
“Some food is supposed to be hot, like most soups and regular coffee; some, like salad, is supposed to be cool; some, like ice cream, is supposed to be frozen.”
He shrugged, eating quickly, methodically. “Humans make many distinctions that evade me. Tell Malkah I miss her. She has not been in the Base.”
“No. She’s still weak, and she’s afraid to plug in.”
“That’s like a bird afraid to fly. How’s that for a simile? Is my grasp of figurative language growing?”
“By leaps and bounds.”
With a fleeting smile, he turned to finish the meal, then shoved the tray from him. “Now I’m plugging back in. I should not be disturbed until I disengage. Tell Avram to leave me alone, and you too, Shira—don’t return until I send a message or come to you. I must stay in the Base until my task is accomplished.”
Shira found herself unnaturally free. In spite of what Yod had told her, she did stop by several times a day. His body sat inanimate, deserted. He could have been gutted already, he could be brain dead. She wanted to summon Avram to use his equipment on Yod to see if his mind was still alive, but Yod’s injunction that he not be disturbed held her back. She felt a little guilty standing before him, staring at his slack body; she also felt an unexpected desire to touch him. His finely molded features offered the innocence of sleep. Her curiosity felt prurient and tacky. She fled.
She gravitated upstairs. Gadi had created a mood of party on the construction site, where more volunteers came and went than he needed. Some old friends just got in the way, but Gadi gave everyone a task. Most of his volunteers were teenagers or college students home for the summer. They had heard of Gadi for years, heard gossip about him, enjoyed his work, fantasized about his life in Veecee Beecee.
The work was going smoothly and rapidly. Once the pickup crew had knocked out walls in order to create a good-sized space, they had only to fit the modular units in to set up new walls, barriers, doors. He left the outer walls and the windows intact.
“Ugi, see, I’m incorporating our old room. I’ll keep it as my inner sanctum. In Veecee I have a house with a tower, built for Rush Bobbin—you remember him, he was big in rapture stimmies a few years back. He could project high lust like nobody else. For a while. He burned out. They all do.”
As he marched her over, arm around her shoulder, the blue room with its iron bedstead was just as it had been, rag rug on the floor, shade at half mast on the window. He obviously felt more nostalgia for this room than she did; it was marred for her by the last time she had seen it. Odd shrine. A room where they had blundered into love perfect and round and gleaming; a room where Gadi had broken that crystal artifact to bits, as Yod had crushed the paperweight. They could stand as now on the threshold together, but never could they enter the true room, embedded in the past like a bubble in glass. She had a moment of almost chokingly rich identification with Gadi, like a scent too heavy to breathe. Indeed, she could smell the slight tang of his sweat under a perfume he used, subtle but loaded with pheromones. It cost more an ounce than gold; she recognized it from stimmies, where both men and women often wore that scent. It was called Lust.
Meals were picnics among the chaos of construction. They all camped on rugs and blankets and pads in the middle of the opened-up rooms and shared whatever they had. Shira found herself sitting cross-legged on the floor giggling while she nibbled chicken wings, corn bread and cucumber salad. In Tikva, they had real food as in the multi enclaves. In the Glop, people ate mostly vat-grown foods made of algae—her college years had been spent eating that artificially flavored, dyed and textured stuff. With the drying up or drowning of the great breadbaskets of previous centuries, the world was always short on earth-grown food. It was a luxury now, but here they raised much of their own produce, fish and chicken. She felt herself suddenly fifteen, as if the intervening years had lifted like a suit of armor she had been wearing and here was Shira again, the real Shira, giddy, adolescent, joyful and simple as a bird singing—in a cage? She felt a sudden pang of wariness, as if a hot wire had pierced her.
Gadi dropped gracefully beside her. “How do you happen to be free of our oversized lab rat today?” He lolled on his elbow, speaking softly under the throbbing music.
“It was cruel to give him the Frankenstein material.”
“I thought it rather apropos. And he was fascinated. He watches everything on superfast forward, you know. I’m beginning to enjoy him. Notice I follow polite local usage and call it ‘him.’ Shira, the Council has been after me to do something for the town—as if I’d chosen to vegetate here.”
“You were talking about running a little school.”
“I suppose I will have to carry through. Talking is so much easier. Wouldn’t you like to help me? It could be fun. We’ll create festivals and virons and all kinds of pretty games.”
“I’m employed already,” she said dryly. She noticed that sitting so near to Gadi, she was not breathing quite normally. She was holding her breath and then quietly, surreptitiously, gasping for air. The pheromones were affecting her; but so was Gadi himself, curled there in a graceful and languid sprawl with his gray eyes half shut, glittering at her. His face was a dark tan, almost café au lait, de rigueur this year in the media trades. They were all dipped. Against the dark skin, his eyes gleamed like mercury. He ate a wing fastidiously, sensually, watching her. He bit into a peach and then passed it to her. She shook her head no. She had a sense of being coaxed too fast. No, she was paranoid or projecting her own attraction. After they had parted, she forced herself to observe, Gadi had gone on growing. He was taller than Yod, taller than Josh, in fact. He kept himself slender and supple. She wondered defensively how much time and money went into his beauty.
“Gadi, I’ve been wondering if you understand why Avram made Yod. He says it’s for defense of the town, but when he began with Alef, we weren’t under much pressure, at least that I knew about.”
“When I was little and we lived in the Bay Area, he got into trouble with robotics experiments.” He stroked her cheek. “That’s long before he ever considered coming here.” He had a casual way of touching her as if they were lovers, as if he had every right, but never quite in a way she could challenge without playing the fool or the prude. It kept her off balance. “I was a test tube baby. I think those five years of trying made him think there had to be an easier way to create life—especially more obedient life.”
“Yod isn’t always as obedient as you imagine.” She leaned away.
“Anybody can see I’ve been satisfactorily replaced. I’m sure
Dr. Frankenstein had a son who wrote Byronic poetry, wore his hair halfway down his back, whined about the stink of chemicals and jacked all the maids.”
She realized she was seriously tempted to tell him about Yod’s approach; that desire to confide scared her. The impulse felt…half disloyal, half dangerous. He was licking his fingers, delicately as a cat. “I always gain weight here. The chickens taste better, did you ever notice? Remember how Malkah used to pot roast a chicken for us with carrots and onions and called it Gadi’s treat? How we used to lie on the grass of your courtyard all full and happy as puppies and she’d tell us tall stories? No stim can ever be more magical. Remember, Shira?”
“I remember.” The memory scared her. She excused herself, checked Yod—immobile as ever, dead as a plant stand—then rushed home to look in on Malkah. She mistrusted her own withdrawal. Why shouldn’t she enjoy herself with a group of kids? Had Josh infected her with his inability to enjoy? Had she entered a premature middle age? After all, Gadi had done exactly nothing but act friendly.
In the two long blocks on the way to her house, five people stopped her to ask about Malkah. Each one had a different recipe for depression. The whole town knew that Malkah had taken to her bed, and it frightened them. “Exercise,” Hannah urged. “Music is the best therapy,” Zipporah said, pressing her arm. Shlomo, who had gone to school with them and was rushing off to visit Gadi, paused to shout, “Bake a chocolate cake! Chocolate’ll do it.”
Malkah was huddled in bed. Shira addressed her with tentative disapproval. “I thought you were going to get up today?”
“What for?” Malkah turned her face to the wall. She looked ten years older than she usually looked. Her face was puffy and waterlogged.
“Don’t they expect you back at work?”
“What do I care what they expect? I’ve had a long and full career. The hell with them.”