Dozing, I had heard Shira and the house speaking. My hearing is still excellent. I checked my terminal and saw she was in the Base. I wondered why she had entered at night, so I asked the house. The house told me all I needed to know. I found myself rising to the ceiling like a gravity dancer. Sudden energy came singing through my body. Sleep? Who needs it? Yod doesn’t, and I require little. I had done nothing but sleep and sulk for days and days and nights and nights, and lately played cat mother and practiced ascetic disciplines and an occasional trance state. Now Yod had cleared the Base again, and I was free to reenter my work, my life.
When the house told me that Yod might come, I waited. I saw him pass upstairs. The light did not go on. At last. I stole downstairs.
The night was halfway to dawn when he came softly down. He moves with his own kind of grace, that of perfect function. He saw me in the dark and stopped cold. I imagined I saw confusion on his face. I could guess he was wondering if my feelings would be hurt. He is good at reading human feelings from small kinetic changes, but he is poor at guessing them beforehand. He has trouble figuring out what will please and what will offend or hurt us.
I motioned him to keep silent and led him into my office, shutting the door before I turned on the light. I need good light to see anything. “You were successful?” I realized at once that question was ambiguous, and I started to grin. “Your patrol of the Base was successful?”
“The raiders were not pirates. They were from Yakamura-Stichen. Shira recognized both when I showed her their faces.” He filled me in, standing at attention. Many things about Yod amuse me. For one thing, he can stand perfectly still for hours, not twitching or shifting as any person would. He has a tendency to assume a position and stay in it, whether standing, sitting or lying down. I wondered if we should have built in a few twitches or nervous gestures for versimilitude. Then I began to realize what he had just told me. Not pirates. One of the world’s largest and most aggressive multis.
“You said Shira knew the razors. Who were they?”
He answered, and I found myself shrieking “No!” I made myself calm. I did not want to wake Shira; I did not want to frighten Yod. He had begun circling as if looking for someone else to attack. “Zee. My student. Did you have to kill her?” I could see her plainly, silky fine hair flopping in her eyes, a full rich tea brown, the eyes lighter. Walnut and maple.
“Malkah, she tried to kill you. She would have tried again.”
Zee was an eager young woman, desperate to please. She was overly attached to her mother. Then when she was twenty-five, her mother fell in love with a young man who had come here to study the fish meekro with Gila. “She quit suddenly last year—”
“Two years.” Yod corrected me. “I accessed her records.”
“That long? Zee went to Y-S. She must have taken the codes with her.”
“Under mnemosine hypnotism, she could recall the programming.”
“I used to make tisanes for her. She suffered from migraines. Why would she want to hurt me?…So it was never information pirates. It was Y-S attacking us. That’s far more dangerous.”
“Because they’re more powerful?”
“And it’s a change of tactics for the multis. We’re so vulnerable. Our survival is at stake. They don’t want us to endure free any longer.”
“Freedom is a concept I’m not sure I comprehend,” Yod said. “Perhaps because I’ve never been free.”
“Well, our work is cut out for us. There’s no sleeping this week. I suppose you might as well let Avram enjoy the rest of the night. I’ll plug in at seven and expect you two to be ready…Actually I’ll come over. We need to work out a master strategy before we begin.”
Yod had switched from perfect stillness to his hyperactive mode in which he wants to be attacking. I could feel his desire to please me. He reminded me of a powerful handsome horse who has given himself to a person to ride and befriend. His eyes caught the light, shining green. “I’m ready now.”
“But I’m not. I need several hours’ work before we can do anything useful together.”
“You’re no longer afraid of the Base.”
“You saved my life twice over, Yod.” I went and hugged him.
He embraced me back. “Do you want intimate contact? I can feel you are very excited.”
“Mentally, my dear, only mentally. That’s done between us.” He had, of course, read my body language accurately, because when I felt him, resilient, strong, with a kind of dry warmth all his own, I did desire him anew. For a moment I didn’t see why I should have relinquished him; what foolishness, what waste. Had I not helped create him as he was, in all his marvelous complexity and true ability? Why should I give him over to Shira, who will never really appreciate him as I do? I felt myself more deserving, more competent as a lover for him, and I wanted him back. Feelings I crushed as I would a flower in which I found a slug chewing the petals. “Listen to me, Yod, listen carefully. You’re not to tell Shira about us, not ever.”
“But why? Are you ashamed?”
“Of you? Never. Shira would be shocked. Very shocked. She’s more conventional than I am, Yod, especially at this time of her life. She would think it’s indecent for you to have been involved with me at all and especially to then become involved with her. Take my word.”
“Your word.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand, but I know you do.”
“Right. And don’t be too obvious around Avram. I don’t know how he’s going to react.”
“I assume he’ll disapprove, as he did about us.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Like many older men who are not attracted to older women, Avram assumes we are asexual. He was shocked—as Shira would be, remember. But Avram finds Shira attractive. What that little goody thrown into the pot will produce is anybody’s bad guess.” I waved my hand at him. “Go home. I have serious dreaming to do. Systems dreaming.”
“Malkah, you’ve stopped telling me about Joseph Golem. I enjoyed finding that story in the Base at night, when everyone else sleeps.”
“But we see each other now face-to-face…I’ll continue. I promise.”
Yod smiled wistfully. “His story is meaningful to me. I’m glad we can see each other again. Every day I missed you. Time does not make my memories less intense, and thus they evoke the same reactions each time I access them.”
I stood in the courtyard in the darkness, hearing rather than seeing him leave. I had a desire to call him back. This was the real letting go, this night, far more ultimate than when I had permitted Avram to guess and thus cut off our liaison. I wanted to be younger, I wanted to be stronger, I wanted back the body that had for so many years of my life been equal to that hard driven dance, that sensual twisting and turning, that rich passionate descent into the tips and the roots of the senses. Yod was my true last lover. After him, I would desire none other. I had created him to be all I might want, and now I had truly let him go. My body and my mind mourned him.
Suddenly I had a genuine pang of appetite. The kittens, too, had wakened hungry. I picked at a medley of leftovers from meals I had not enjoyed. Standing in the kitchen tasting them—with the kittens nibbling gruel on the counter before me—me eating everything cold and with the same fork, I enjoyed food as I hadn’t since the attack. I had thought Shira might be too conventional and too sexually timid to acknowledge an attraction to Yod. I was surprised by her boldness. Somehow he had wormed his way through her defenses. She was desperate to interpose someone between Gadi and herself. How would she feel in the morning? Ashamed? Guilty? I hoped she had the courage of her pleasure. I hoped I had been able to give her that.
Now goodbye to the noisy hot surface clatter of the intimate life and on to the problem of restructuring the defenses of our Base. It would be a fierce keen pleasure to bang my mind against Avram’s again, to strike our ideas on each other’s stubborn steel. Whenever we’ve been able to force ourselves to work together, what wonders we have performed—when we do not act like a snake w
ith two heads, one straining east while the head on the far end pulls west.
Now we knew our enemy, and it was a deadly one. Yakamura-Stichen was one of the ten most powerful multis in the world, and the world included the satellites. They were coming after us for some reason, and they would not stop.
When I left, Shira was still sleeping. I asked the house to tell her to go see Zee’s mother and break the news to her. She used to spend after-school time at Zee’s house, I vaguely remembered, so she might have some rapport.
I realized in midmorning as I rose for air, making coffee to excuse the break in concentration, that I was once again enjoying my life, that I was in full possession of myself, my faculties, that I was—more than happy—joyous. I like a good hard job that matters. I like that push of anxiety bearing on creation. Maybe I’m just an adrenaline addict. That morning I almost loved Avram. Sometimes he irritates me so much I forget how bright he is, how extraordinary a mind he has, how imaginative he is in his science. Sometimes I have to admit he’s as good as I am—that good.
At noon, while we were eating a pickup lunch, Gadi bombed in on us. “Why is access to the Base closed? How am I supposed to manage?”
The Base of course was not entirely shut down. The master computers had to maintain the wrap, regulate temperature, circulate water, monitor air quality, clean the waste water, run the external surveillance gadgets and screen their output, operate the fusion plant, desalinate and remove toxins. Internal com-con was functional, so we could talk to each other and so we had a means, not as good as direct, but usable, to access the Net. But aside from security, which has secondary status after life-support systems, nothing else was operational. We were down until we had re-created our defenses.
“Didn’t you hear it’s a holiday?” I said cheerfully. “Yom Yod.” Yod Day. “He killed the razors who slashed me.”
“Where’s Shira?”
“Off telling a mother her daughter tried to murder me and is now dead. Want to join her? I’m sure she could use the help.”
The truth of the matter is, I like Gadi. I’ve liked him since he was a gawky lonely miserable child. I think he’s found his art the way I found mine, and I like people who plunge into the work they want to spend themselves on. However, his influence on Shira is another matter. They did each other in, and I vastly prefer her involved with a cyborg than with a man-boy stuck at age fifteen sexually and emotionally. It’s a great advantage to him in his work: he has his head into adolescent fantasy and spins it into riches. I’m a greater believer in sexual satisfaction than in emotional angst, and I don’t give a damn whether she can persuade herself she loves Yod or not, so long as she has the sense to spend what free time she has with him instead of Gadi.
Gadi did not ask further where Shira was. Yod had heard none of this, as he was interfaced programming the details on the first structures we designed. Gadi went off in a crowd of those kids who hang around him now, imitating his gestures, intonation, style. When Shira ran in, he had long gone.
“Malkah, I stopped by the house. There was a secured message for me from Y-S asking for a meeting. They say my appeal on the custody of Ari had been reconsidered. What should I do?”
“They have your son,” I said. I felt cold all through. A new offensive. They were planning something. “How can you trust them enough for a meeting?”
“They aren’t about to gun me down, are they? I have to go. I have to see what they want Maybe the attack on the Base comes from an entirely different arm of Y-S than who decides about children’s custody. Why assume they’re related?”
“Don’t let them in here,” Avram said. “Meet them outside.”
“Take Yod with you,” I said. I was thinking that he could record the entire meeting. They would never permit taping, but Yod would produce a perfect record we could go over later. He might be able to protect Shira, in case her confidence was misplaced. The old rules had been broken, and no suspicions seemed truly paranoid.
“Do you want to come along?” Shira asked me. “We’ll pick some neutral meeting place.”
Yod, who had pulled out of the machine when Shira arrived, stood now. “I want to go. I must go with you.”
Shira paced, one hand tangled in her hair. She had that fey deer look she often has, but I could feel her resolve. She turned to Avram and me, looking back and forth between our faces. “I could ask Cybernaut to provide space and security. They’re not likely to be in Y-S’s pocket, are they?”
“A canny idea,” I said. “Play off the juggernauts against each other. Still, I will not go. I’ll rely on Yod.”
“I haven’t decided if Yod should be permitted to leave the town,” Avram said, “although this might provide an opportunity to test his physical defense functions. We need such a shakedown, and he’s had no opportunity yet.”
I said, “In any event, this isn’t your decision to make alone, Shira, Avram. Y-S attacked Tikva. It would seem suspicious if Shira, a former employee, were to confer with them on her own now. We need to take the matter before the Town Council Monday night and see if a meeting feels safe to the town. I’ll gladly present the matter.”
“Fine,” Avram said. “But Yod need not appear. I’m not ready for the Council to meet him.”
“At some point they’ll have to, Avram. Secrecy never works, because nothing ever stays a secret long.”
“It is not yet time,” was all he said, staring at me from his ice-blue eyes, which still can make my spine radiate under his gaze. Ah, Avram: too bad we can’t meet once again ardent, sweet, in some vineyard of the soul. But my very tone of being rasps on your nerve ends. What a pity for us, old angel.
TWENTY-TWO
The Present
The morning after, Tikva was shaken up like a handful of dice, and everything fell differently. The Base was closed, and all work on regular projects halted. The Base Overseers met with the other members of the Town Council, and everybody tried to assimilate the news that one of the largest multis in the world was their enemy. Zee’s mother collapsed and was hospitalized. The Council commended Yod and questioned Shira about Y-S intentions; however, she could be of little assistance, having spent her time there at such a low grade. All agreed the restoration of defenses was paramount. As for Shira’s meeting with Y-S, they decided she should use the negotiations to try to buy time and to find out, if possible, what Y-S wanted from the town.
Malkah hit the ground running. Shira saw Malkah only at an occasional mealtime and sometimes first thing in the morning. Shira was inessential this week. Her skills would come into play further along in the process. All Yod’s time was usurped by the need to fortify the Base, as was Malkah’s, Avram’s, and the energies of twenty-plus other designers. Therefore the question of seeing Yod or dealing with what had happened could not even arise. Shira dickered with Y-S, and a meeting was set up for the following week in the Cybernaut facility 22.6 kilometers away, for ten a.m. on a Tuesday. She read on through Yod’s specs. She still did not have Malkah’s notes. Since the timing for pursuing the matter seemed poor, she would have to wait.
She had plenty of time to contemplate what had occurred, to run rings around it until her memory blurred from too much handling. She recognized a certain chagrin in herself, an embarrassment that she had responded so strongly on a sexual level to a mechanical device. Sexual level. That was handling it with tongs. Better to admit she had fallen open like an old book, like Malkah’s antique atlas, all the way to the spine. It had been so many years since she had lost control sexually, since she had responded more than tepidly, that her excitement shook her sense of herself.
Her deep and almost violent sexual pleasure not only disturbed but confused her. She had imagined that it was her love for Gadi, that early emotional bonding, that had made the sex with him much more satisfying and engaging than anything in her life since. But what she was responding to in Yod was simply technique. He had been programmed to satisfy, and he satisfied. She had to admit she was perhaps a little disappoi
nted in herself that she could indeed be pleased by what was programmed to do just that.
Yet struggling with injured pride for mastery, she experienced, too, a powerful sense of freedom. If that depth of sexual response was not necessarily and permanently tied to Gadi, then she was not married to him in her very synapses, as she had believed since they had parted as lovers. If Yod could rouse her fiercely and she could break into storms of orgasm, then she could also do so eventually with someone to whom she could pledge herself and whom she could love passionately. Gadi had not ruined her irreparably for loving. The myth that had governed her emotional life for the last ten years was peeling off like an old mural of two burning children impaled on their love, and the bricks beneath the chipping paint emerged unweathered.
She was deeply confused. She wanted to go and see Gadi to test herself, but she was afraid. She wanted to see Yod again; she was no longer pleased that the crisis had removed him from her ken.
She was the cat mother by default, and the kittens squirmed in her lap, climbed her legs mewling, chasing each other and then falling asleep everyplace from the kitchen counter to the top of the terminal. Every night they ran to Malkah’s bed and screamed until Shira collected them into hers. She spent hours petting them while she contemplated her emotions. For years she had not found her interior life quite so fascinating: perhaps not since adolescence. Malkah had named the kittens Leila (night) and Zayit (olive); Malkah could tell them apart from across the room, although her eyesight was obviously failing. Shira could not tell which was which. Both were female, so lifting their tails did not help her.