He, She and It (26 page)

“Avram, Malkah has just been attacked.”

“Yod said something had happened. He suddenly pulled out of the simulation and disappeared. He was able to break off their attack, but he couldn’t tell if Malkah was injured.”

One of the medics sat back. Now Shira recognized her as Hannah. “How is my grandmother?”

“She’s weak, but she’s conscious. You can speak to her.” In
her work role, Hannah did not giggle. She was businesslike, her hands moving deftly among the devices and their readouts.

“Malkah, you were attacked in the Base?”

“Yes,” Malkah answered weakly. She looked and sounded like an old lady. Her voice was feeble. Her eyes would not open all the way.

“Is she going to be all right? Is there neural damage?”

“Not like we’ve seen on the others,” Hannah said. “We’ll take her into the hospital to run some tests. But that she can speak is astonishing.”

She prepared to leave with them. “Avram, you heard that? I’ll be in touch later.”

Malkah came home the next day, going straight to bed. She was drained and shaken, but essentially undamaged. “Yod saved my life,” she said, lying in her high old carved bed, a massive piece of furniture made by a great-granduncle who had been a back-to-the-earth artisan in the days when trees had grown in abundance and wood had been common instead of precious. One bedpost was carved with the date 1979. Their wooden furniture, Malkah had often told Shira, was worth a fortune, but she would never sell it off.

“Yod was able to sense the attack, even though he wasn’t in touch with you? How?”

“He interfaces with computer intelligence in a way qualitatively different from the way we do. With part of his mind he’s in touch with what he’s doing, but another part is constantly surveying the background of other activity.” Malkah awkwardly groped toward a cup of herb tea. Shira placed it in Malkah’s hand, which dipped alarmingly. Malkah sipped it, put it down with a thud as if the cup were heavy.

“Of course. He has multi-tasking ability, like any other computer.”

“A computer, Shira, could not have saved me.”

Shira bowed her head. “I know that. And I’m grateful. You’re all I really have in the world. You’re my grandmother, for all purposes my real mother, and my best friend.”

Malkah smiled weakly. “Besides Yod, my artificing, my fabling saved me. You see, my medical file is a chimera. It says I have an artificial heart, but as you know, I don’t: They were aiming to stop it. The medics have my real files on paper, I insist on that, but I am always sneaking in and playing with the files that are in the Base.”

“That’s the real reason you never married, Malkah.”

“Why?” Malkah whispered, fallen back against the pillows.

“You’d have had to remain only one person, when you like to be changing and multiple. Spouses insist you be the person they think you are.”

“Children try to do that too,” Malkah whispered. “But they never know who you are. Until much later.”

Avram forced her to plod upstairs to where Gadi had launched a building project. Reluctantly she inched up the old narrow staircase, feeling herself growing younger and blurred. A blast of sound enveloped her.

Gadi had changed out of his media gear into a smartened-up version of the local dress. He was having part of the third floor remodeled in a great hurry for an apartment, working with a young crew—a few of their old schoolmates and their younger brothers and sisters. The music blared till the room shimmered with sound. He had set up little local virons, so that she walked first into a lavender cloud dripping crystalline stalactites, smelling of lilacs and uttering Chu’s latest opera, then into a throbbing room-sized heart reeking of musk and wine while it shrieked the latest nerve-rock hits. She had been sent in search of Gadi, for he was to be read in today. Avram was terrified that Gadi would figure out what was going on before he had been briefed, and would say something publicly.

She drew him aside. “We have to talk.”

“My view exactly. How about tonight?”

“This isn’t a personal conversation. Avram and I must discuss with you the project we’re working on.”

“Merde, Ugi. What do I care about lab blab?”

Ugiah—cookie—had been an old affectionate name he called her by. Even now it made her smile. “You’ll care about this. It concerns Yod.”

“Your weird boyfriend. I’m all ears. Let me get the crew properly launched on knocking out the right and not the wrong walls, and I’ll join you in labland in twenty minutes.” He stopped, swung on his heel to say, “Really, you can do much better. He isn’t couth, Ugi. He sits and glares like a demented antique clock.”

“I’ll see you downstairs.”

“I thought your marriage had exhausted your unbaked predilection for techies with two left hands. Now yet another?”

“Gadi, you never met Josh. You have no idea what he’s like.”

“Can you really believe that?” Gadi stepped very close to put
his finger in the indentation between her nose and upper lip. Irrelevantly she remembered Malkah telling her when she was little that an angel had touched her there before birth and made her forget everything she knew as a wise soul. Gadi said in an amused silky voice, “I bought his life file from an info pirate. I probably know more about old Josh than you do.”

She knew as she hurried downstairs that Gadi had not yet forgiven her for marrying. She did not judge him for that resentment, for if he married, she would feel bitter. As long as both were equally crippled, they shared a camaraderie of those inept at committing.

Avram paced. Yod stood in a corner. She had not seen him without Avram since their unfortunate pas de deux on the street; she could not tell if he was being machine-like and cold because of Avram’s constant presence or because of her rejection. Now the coming explanation to Gadi was making them all anxious. Yod started at sounds, swung around to glare at the wall, the ceiling. She could not help but feel he would like to pulverize something. At moments like this he reminded her of an attack dog more than a computer. He built up a charge that wanted to leap out in action. His dark bushy hair seemed to stand on end. His hazel eyes reflected every light.

Yet he had saved Malkah when no one else could have. If he had not been monitoring the entire Tikva Base in a way she could not even imagine, Malkah would be dead. She wanted to express that gratitude less woodenly than she had so far been able to in Avram’s presence, which inhibited her also. Today no hints of complicity linked them in a conspiracy of underlings. Yod did not glance at her, for he was occupied with that automatic three-hundred-and-sixty-degree surveillance never so blatantly displayed since the first week they had worked together.

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.”