He, She and It (67 page)

They had been given a conference room by the Net computer. In the spatial metaphor that was the Net, they requested coordinates at the entrance map, and their conference room was highlighted. Moving about in the Net used different controlling imagery at different times. Lately the Net had been using escalators and moving walkways, so they mounted and moved swiftly into position. They dismounted in an area marked Conference Room 147 Z-18. What they saw was a room. Inside double doors stood a doughnut-shaped table with chairs all about it. No one was there. They sat down. They waited. After ten minutes of waiting, Shira began to fret. Perhaps this was a trick. Perhaps their bodies were being kidnapped while they sat waiting in the Net. To waste ten minutes of Net conference time—since Y-S of course was paying for the time—was a potlatch of resources.

“How long should we wait?” Shira finally asked.

“Five minutes more,” Malkah said. “That’s quite sufficient.” She was frowning, tapping a drumbeat on the table. Shira had been struck since she was a child by the way objects in the Net felt solid. You could bang on a table. Presumably you could run into one, although she never had.

At exactly fourteen minutes and forty-five seconds after they had begun waiting, the double doors opened again and the party from Y-S filed in one at a time. Dr. Upman, one of their cyberneticists, entered first; all except Yod recognized him at
once. His trademark was a head of Einsteinian bushy hair, allowed like Avram’s to turn white. Avram greeted him by name, as did Malkah. A polite exchange of formal salutations. The same with the next to enter, Dr. Vogt, a needle-thin woman of fifty who had done the basic design on the robots that ran the Pacifica Platform. Again, greetings, warmer toward Avram. Then Shira remembered. Before coming to Tikva, Avram had taught out in California, and Barbara Vogt had been his graduate student. When Gadi was seven, Avram returned to Tikva.

Next in was Dr. Yatsuko, portly head of the AI section, her former boss. All big guns. As each appeared, Shira pronounced the names for the benefit of Yod. He could access information on them, and she wanted him to understand what they were facing. Dr. Yatsuko was tall for a Japanese, massive. He was reputed to be absolutely loaded with circuitry, including an artificial heart, pancreas, eyes and additional sensors. Indeed his eyes, like Yod’s, were too perfect to be real. He stared at Yod, his pupils expanding and then contracting rhythmically.

Then Roger Krupp entered, flanked by assistants. None of Shira’s party had ever met him, for he was the subdirector of Y-S, the tactical genius, it was reputed. He did not speak to them or acknowledge their presence but took a seat at the table, flanked by assistants, one male, one female, apparently twins but presumably cut-and-paste jobs. Everyone sat. One empty chair remained on the Y-S side. Finally the last person entered: her ex-husband, Josh.

She felt an immense sense of relief. He was not dead. But she had seen him lying on the floor with his neck broken and his eyes glazed. Experimental procedures were constantly being employed, but brain death was still irreversible. Suppose she had been mistaken? He might not be dead, only crippled. He would not project himself paralyzed. He stared at her with an expression she could not read but that frightened her with its intensity. She was the only person he addressed himself to. She could scarcely look away from him. Her guilt was bubbling in her, guilt for leaving him, guilt for stealing back her son, guilt for his death—but he was not dead. Why had he come? What did he want? He would demand Ari back. They would negotiate Ari away from her.

“Hello, Josh. I’m pleased to see you,” she said cautiously.

“I doubt that,” he said. He nodded at Yod. “You should have instructed it to do a better job of killing me.”

“We still intend to proceed on assault charges,” the male
attendant of Krupp announced. “We want the cyborg delivered to us for justice.”

“Justice has nothing to do with the matter,” Malkah said. “Every female fights for her young. And will kill for her young. We’re still a part of nature, no matter how we’ve destroyed the world.”

“It is very simple,” the male attendant said. “If you do not turn over the cyborg, we will send assassins into your Base every week. We will make sure you cannot keep your Base active. You’ll have to put all your effort into defending, rebuilding. The Base is vital to your economy, I believe?”

Malkah smiled broadly. “What an excellent test for our defenses. We couldn’t hire a better advertisement.”

Avram looked directly at Krupp. He did not bother addressing the mouthpiece. “Do you expect us to believe that if Yod is turned over to you, you won’t attempt to wipe us out? That’s unbelievable.”

“Not when you consider the cost of assassins,” Dr. Vogt said. “We want the cyborg. Once we have possession of it, we’re satisfied. You’re of no further interest to us and not worth the expense of tying you up further.”

“Cyborg,” Dr. Yatsuko said in his deep commanding voice—possibly augmented with resonances designed to impress? “You are programmed to attack and defend, are you not?”

“I’m not programmed to answer questions I don’t choose to answer,” Yod said.

“Any machine can be reprogrammed,” Dr. Yatsuko said. “But wouldn’t you rather be the progenitor of a race? You can be a leader among your own kind, in an army of cyborgs.”

“Your proposition is that we should turn the cyborg over to you—Yod in whom I’ve invested twenty years, the life of my worthy assistant, every bit of credit I could co-opt. Much of the surplus of Tikva is tied up in Yod. He’s the climax of my life’s research.”

Roger Krupp made a slight gesture with his left hand. Immediately Dr. Upman said, “We’re authorized to offer a reasonable payment to your town. Are you prepared to negotiate in good faith?”

The female assistant spoke to Shira. “I’m sure you’re delighted to find that the robot did not kill your husband. We’re prepared to reunite you in full possession of a Status Eighteen. All the prerogatives of that rank for yourself, for your son.
What other facility can offer such an education as a Status Eighteen receives from Y-S?”

“Come back, Shira. I should never have taken Ari from you. But I miss him.” The voice issuing from Josh quavered with feeling.

She found her eyes brimming tears, but of course crying was merely symbolic here. Her guilt was certainly being roused. He could not forgive her. That was not humanly possible.

“I miss you. Let’s try again. Let’s heal our wounds. Your work in Tikva is finished. At Y-S we can both work to full capacity.”

A strange icy feeling invaded her. “Our past history does mean a lot to me. Do you remember how your parents died, Josh?” First Riva was dead and then not dead. Next Josh was dead and now not dead. Resurrection was growing commonplace.

He blinked with surprise, a trait she remembered. No, she must be mistaken. “They died of botacellic plague.”

Shira sat back, and the welter of confused emotions subsided. This was not Josh. The answer the impersonator had given was what Josh always put down on personnel and official forms. In fact his parents had been killed in fighting in the Jewish quarter of Munich, to which so many Russian Jews and ex-Israelis had fled. If this were Josh, he would guess her intent and answer with some allusion to the truth.

“It’s the best thing for your son, Shira,” the female assistant said. “By far the best thing.”

“If you’ve produced this imitation of my dead husband for any purpose other than amusement, I can’t guess what it is.”

“Mrs. Rogovin.” Dr. Upman addressed her. “You’re obviously the handler of the cyborg. You have operated with it twice that we know of, once at the meet near Cybernaut, once by successfully penetrating our Nebraska compound. Although you didn’t program it, you handle it alone. Of course we want you. You’ve demonstrated unique abilities. Don’t you want to go on handling the cyborg under our direction? We’ll soon have not one but hundreds.”

“I’m utterly opposed to trafficking in people, and Yod is a person, albeit not a human person,” Malkah said. “Whatever you bring to the attack against us, we can defend. We may also be able to engage some assistance, since other customers do use our wares.”

“I’m sure you can defend,” Dr. Vogt said soothingly, “but
think of the time and energy it will drain from your profitable work. You’ll bleed to death, slowly but quite steadily.”

Dr. Yatsuko shook a huge finger at Malkah. “You’re growing senile. Any intelligent machine has a mind but no consciousness. You speak like a child who thinks the house is alive.”

“I have as much consciousness as you do,” Yod said. “Enough to know that is not the man I killed. If I were in the room with someone who tried to kill me, I would have feelings, reactions. He has none. He’s a fake.”

There was a little silence after Yod’s statement, as if they were so startled they could not produce a response. Malkah spoke quickly into the vacuum. “Yod is a person. Persons cannot be sold. If you want him, you must hire him away of his own volition.”

“Machines do not have volition, Dr. Shipman—surely you have not entirely taken leave of your senses,” Dr. Vogt said. “They have programming that defines goals. Since they are compelled to pursue those programmed ends, they may appear willful, but we are dealing with the same projection of affect my little boy was guilty of when he used to say a chair hit him.”

Avram stood. “I believe we have reached the end of useful discussion.”

“Sit down,” Krupp bellowed, the first time he had spoken. “I will say when the meeting has ended. Do you accept our offer, or shall we commence our program of incursions into your Base?”

Avram remained standing but did not move toward the door. “We are not authorized to deal for Tikva. Only the Town Council can do that. You must send through the Net a precise offer, and we will present it. The Council will decide. Only they can do so. You haven’t made a concrete offer yet.”

“This cyborg is the property of the town?”

Avram wavered. Finally he simply nodded.

“He is not the property of anyone,” Malkah insisted. “But he’s a citizen of the town.”

“The town has as a matter of fact not yet ruled on that point,” Avram said. “If you send through the precise terms, I shall be glad to present them to the Council Monday night, when the whole matter of Yod’s status is on the agenda as item number one of a full town meeting.”

“One of those places that votes: how quaint,” Krupp said. Now he rose. He could not tolerate anyone standing over him. All of his party promptly jerked to their feet. “I don’t care if
you consult the entrails of chickens to reach a decision. I want your answer by nine a.m. next Tuesday, three October. Otherwise we will launch our attack.”

They filed out one at a time, the Josh imitation last. He glared at Shira and at Yod and then scuttled after the others. Was he a creation of machine intelligence? Was he an actor skilled at projection of foreign personae? Seeing Josh even artificially had hit her hard. She could not yet respond to what had happened, but she would have time to think about it. She would have the rest of today and Monday until nineteen-thirty to fret and brood and make plans.

After they had unplugged, Yod went home with Malkah and Shira. They walked down the street, bright with sun mellowed by the wrap, the bustle of a Sunday morning in Tikva: the voices of children playing in the next street, the sound of a cello being practiced, Danny the carpenter walking his dog, someone hammering. Yod said, “I’m going to write a speech to deliver tomorrow night. Will you both help me? We must persuade the Council to free me from Avram’s control. I suspect time is running out for me. Running out fast.”

FORTY-FIVE

The Return of Joseph

I hate fasting, but of course today I do it. Last night the Kol Nidre service was more moving than usual, and it always does shake me hard. My part was to read the poem by Mara Schliemann that everybody but the Orthodox use these days, about the heritage we share now of having had a nation in our name as stupid and as violent as other nations: a lament for a lost chance, a botched redemption, a great repair of the world, tikkun olam, gone amiss. My eyes always burn when I read it, and my throat begins to thicken.

This is the season we must forgive others and ask them to pardon us. I went to Yod this morning, and I asked him to forgive me for having taken part in his formation; more than ever, I have been thinking what overweening ambition and pride are involved in our creating of conscious life we plan to
use and control, when we cannot even fully use our own minds and we blunder and thrash about vainly in our own lives. No life is for us but for itself.

Unlike a human, Yod is not apt to pretend he does not understand what you are saying when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable to understand. He has a kind of dignity all his own. He said, “What you gave me is the good part of my existence. But you must forgive me, too, as I try to find my own way out of the untenable position of being Avram’s wholly owned monster.”

Lying in bed now, weak with hunger, I must finish my story for Yod. I cannot work today, and I promised him.