by Tanith Lee
“Oh yes,” I breathed. “Ooma, ooma, oh yes.”
But the extension wasn’t up yet.
10
We went out to this android animal breeding farm in Lorun’s plane.
It sits there, way off from the city, though you can still see the enormous glitter of the dome sides stretching up and up till they’re out of sight in the distance.
The farm, the first of seven, only one of which makes actual Q-Rs, is also under a dome, but a small dome with a mere pebble of a sun and sequins of stars, and they’re just around to get the animals used to it all. Apparently Lorun’s maker is one of the button-popping, dial-turning brigade, but even so you’re expected to fraternize with the growing animals, and it seemed really groshing, interesting, worthwhile work. I had this sudden vision in which my future gelled, more or less permanently married to Lorun, our child at hypno-school, and me working at the farm with his maker, being ever so companionable and all that. It got to me so much that I turned to him and said:
“Lorun, there was an ulterior motive in my coming to Four BOO. I wanted to find…” and then I hesitated, I don’t know why, although perhaps I really do know. I felt I just couldn’t ask about the child just yet.
“Yes?” he prompted.
“No,” I murmured, “after this. I’ll tell you later.”
He looked a bit irked, but let it pass.
We left the plane and went in and out of pagodas and towers and palaces, stopped by lakes and rode up to cloud masses where birds of fire and perfume were being trained to fly and sing. And after a bit I started to feel depressed out of my mind. I tried to fight it and got high-voiced and over-merry, but it didn’t do any good. I think it was the pet’s fault, really. It went silent and started to shiver.
“I think the animals here scare it,” I said to Lorun, to start with. I mean they were all puffing out flame and scent and waterspouts and goodness knows what, and half of them were phosphorescent or watery, or disappeared at every third step and reappeared at the fourth, or something. And then I began to see that this wasn’t what got the pet down. The pet was an animal too, but a real animal, a born animal, primitively conceived and carried, hatched out of a warm, sat-on-by-a-furry-bottom egg, in the desert. These animals were made of the same molecules, by similar primaries and ovaries, but with the Q-Rs’ electrically motivated life-spark, and the same subservience to mankind. They’re for decoration. They are to be pretty and mythical. And suddenly I recalled my ooma dragon in the Jade Tower, and a pain burst in my heart like a great flower. How often had I sat in its harmless mouth, full of pine scent and green fire, that should have been able to champ me into mash? I knew an intense longing to cry but couldn’t, and held the pet to my face so that we could share our twin inhibited misery.
Lorun was elegantly, callously, leading me from lawn to pen, from turret to waterway. “Stop!” I wanted to shout. “I can’t bear any more.” I wanted to set them all free to play in the desert, and then I realized, with even more intense pain, that the real animals would run from them in fear at first, but finally would tear their defenseless bodies to pieces.
Then Lorun suggested we go stare in at the breeding tanks in their crystallize twilight, and I thought of my real, half-alive child, waiting for its own crystallize twilight, and gasped: “Take me back to the city. Please take me back.”
“What?” Lorun was immediately irritated. I became aware how irritable he always was when things went against his own plans.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I feel tosky. I can’t—it’s all those poor unknowing animals. I—”
“Oh, what a fool you are at times,” Lorun said almost pleasantly; he thought I was sweetly aggravating.
Misery changed to anger. I suppose I just felt on the defensive.
“Take me back to the city, v….n you!”
Lorun’s urbanity slipped, but his face said more than words. He came striding over to me and I cowered. All at once the pet turned around from my cheek and snarled at him. It was the first time the pet had ever snarled at Lorun. Lorun at once took time off to propitiate it, to prove to us all how easily he could charm flame from clay. He cajoled and ingratiated and stretched out his hand. The pet possibly thought this was an aggressive move, but was the pet that selt? I don’t think so.
Growl—snarl—snap! went the pet, and bit Lorun the hardest it had ever bitten anyone, and it had done me a fair amount of damage on the quiet.
Lorun slapped the pet hard, and then he swore. He used words I’d never even heard before; I vaguely recollect trying to remember them for future use, through my sorrow and shock.
“I’ll take you back,” he said finally, “but not that floop beast you’re holding so fondly.”
“Take both or neither,” I snapped.
“Then neither,” Lorun said, dripping blood.
“The relief is all mine,” I said, ice-cold and feeling as if I was going to be ill underneath the cold. I sounded marvelously final, though. I turned and he came after me.
“All right,” he said, “I’m sorry, but the ghastly thing shouldn’t have bitten me.”
“It had my full approval,” I said, but I still wanted to be talked out of it.
“You know you drive me zaradann,” he said. “Come on. We’ll all be friends again.” He caressed my hair. “Let’s go see the breeding tanks.”
I flung him off.
“Haven’t you listened to anything I said?” I screamed at him. “I hate it here! I hate the principle of what we do to those animals, what we make them into! I hate this farm, I hate the filthy cities, and I hate every one of the thalldraps in them, and that includes you, you precious nothing!”
“I’d better return you to Four BAA,” he said, angry and sullen.
It was nightmarish. He took me to the sand-ship base like I asked, and all the way there I kept nearly strangling on my desire to forgive him and beg him to forgive me. But I couldn’t. I knew that whichever one of us was right, I could never kid myself we were compatible again. So, no more blind idyll. When we arrived, I said stiffly:
“Thank you for a wonderful time. The marriage will be over in half a unit, anyway, so don’t bother about an annulment. Actually, I wanted to ask you to help me make a child, but I see now what a mistake that would have been.” I don’t know why I bothered to tack that on. It was unfair and unnecessary, and it nearly killed me to say it.
And that was our goodbye. The plane doors shut, and the pet and I were alone again.
11
There was a ship that unit, which was lucky. Well, what’s the good of being lucky about unimportant things like that?
I couldn’t bear the thought of Four BEE, where my half child waited, so I went back to Four BOO.
I was the only passenger.
I suppose I always am, in a way.
12
When I got to Four BOO I found having the pet around was upsetting me, so I summarily sent it back by robot ship to Four BEE and home.
I hung about alone for ages, in parks and palaces, ignoring any Jang males who spoke to me, or else being violently rude. I was horribly scared that if I took up with one of them the same terrible thing would happen again. It’s called disillusionment, I believe.
Then I noticed I was really enjoying chatting to Jang females and registering all their good points.
A body change seemed to be in order, and a sex change as well. I suppose I’d temporarily sated my female side with Lorun and was also rather repelled for the moment by being a female. I didn’t see why it should stop my maker-hunting if I changed. I’d probably be better able to size up the floops if I were one of them. Of course, my sixty units weren’t up in Four BEE yet but, in another city, you have a clean record. Various people who don’t like suiciding have trundled off to BOO or BAA to get a body change when they wanted one in a hurry and had been put on ration. Hatta did it once an
d came back covered in warts, looking utterly drumdik beyond belief.
Anyway, I went to Four BOO’s Limbo and explained the situation, and how I felt I needed to be male for a while. They said they’d do it willingly—for a price, never forget the price, and there was a dearth of eruptions that unit, so it was damn expensive too—but did I understand that it wouldn’t go on the records of Four BEE for five units, as I’d had it done at BOO? This would mean no one would know who I was in BEE for five units, unless I told them, and I wouldn’t be able to flash my identity from a call-post until the flash computer registered me.
It all sounded highly unworrying, so I agreed, paid, ordered a soothing dream, and woke up a while later an utterly insumatt male. I was thoroughly pleased until I noticed how like Lorun I’d made myself. That did get me down a little, particularly as I now wanted to go punch him on the nose, I went and had a meal injection instead, and ignored all the Jang girls angling to get at me.
My male mind still craved to make a child, even though my way of looking at it was now somewhat different; I also found, as a man, I would have preferred to make a male child. I rationalized that once I changed back I would revert to the original preference, and I was, after all, predominantly female. Nevertheless, I still hadn’t solved my maker problem.
I was certainly no better judge. As a male I had even less patience with them, and eventually found a curving and graceful Jang female and married her for the afternoon. It was brief, uncomplicated, and groshing. The way it ought to be.
And it was as I was lying back in the twilight feather grass of the park, returning her final wave as she slid deliciously away, that I had the crazy idea. I nearly went hysterical, even though you don’t go hysterical the same way when you’re a male. Different hormones or something. But I sat bolt upright, called my boo, and stared at my masculine self in the long molecule mirror.
I was going to be the other maker.
13
I tried to look as if I hadn’t spoken to the Q-R with the water carpet before, as I explained I was the chosen male. They wouldn’t have a record of me in Four BEE, I said, as I’d only just arrived. But, said the Q-R, the young lady had said the chosen male was in Sense Distortion. So he had been, said I, and she’d got fed up waiting and returned to me, one of her past loves from Four BOO. Now she was in Sense Distortion.
It was a bit thick, really, but I suppose Q-Rs are programmed to think of Jang as irrational twits, flitting from sensation to sensation and being tosky and zaradann in between.
Anyhow, after a brief wait, they accepted me.
I had another dream. This time I was with a blonde child who clung to me, all admiring, and I felt protective and strong, ready to guard her against any nonexistent dangers Four BEE might have to offer. It wasn’t a field of roses, either, but a fire-ride.
They said would I stay and watch the mating of the two halves, but I felt too emotional and my male impulse was to repress that, so I fled into the night. I was also a bit scared now that they might realize what was going on and refuse to go ahead.
* * *
—
I signaled Thinta.
“Attlevey…Hergal?” she asked vaguely. Hergal must have crashed on the Zeefahr again.
She looked very attractive, minus her fur now, with clouds of long green hair and a delicate, chiseled-looking pale body, so unlike her rather hysterically stolid personality.
“It’s me,” I said, and told her who I was.
“Oh! Aren’t you groshing!” she cried, evidently pleased. She always warms to me more readily when I’m male, I’ve noticed.
“Come and marry me for a couple of units,” I suggested, and she was almost in my lap before I’d switched off.
We went to a floater, and really, to be frank, I did it as much to hide as anything else. It was pretty derisann, though. Her current body was awfully lithe at the most ideal moments.
Near dawn, when we were having a brief rest, there was this horrible droning noise outside.
“What is it?” Thinta cried worriedly, clutching me.
We soon found out. Committee messenger bees can barge in anywhere. This one charged right up through the middle of the cloud bed. Thinta shrieked. The messenger indicated me and snapped:
“Come at once to the Committee Hall in Second Sector.” Amazing how they could program it to sound so utterly nasty.
“What have you done?” trembled Thinta. “It’s nothing to do with me,” she hastily assured the messenger.
So they’d found out, had they? Well, it was too late now.
* * *
—
“I’m very disappointed in you,” said the Q-R, “and surprised you should resort to such a foolish ruse.”
“Well,” I said, “it worked.”
“Long ago,” the Q-R obstinately grumbled on, “this would have been a punishable crime. Since the notion of crime has been abolished, there is nothing we can do, I’m sorry to say.”
I felt hurt in an odd way; he’d been so nice and would-be understanding before.
“But it worked, didn’t it?” I persisted.
“Worked? Of course it didn’t work.”
“What,” I demanded. “You mean you found out before you mated the two halves?”
“Indeed, no. I wish we had. We found out when we mated them.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“My dear young man,” said the Q-R, “have you never heard of two negatives making a positive? In this case, unfortunately, the reverse is true. Two halves of the same person make a decided negative.”
“But one was male and one female,” I protested. “I don’t understand—”
“We were dealing,” said the Q-R, “with a true-life and not an android.” Did I detect bitterness? I thought of the farms at Four BAA and began to feel strange. “With a true-life,” said the Q-R, “the most important element is the life-spark, and the life-sparks offered both belonged to one being—yourself. The moment they touched they exploded and returned into vacuum. You have killed your child. You will not, of course, be allowed to make another until you are out of Jang, and even then, I’m afraid, you may find it difficult to get permission.”
I knew I was going to be sick, and luckily he did too, and turned on an emergency drift for me.
He was quite kind afterward, and stopped me from banging my brains out on the crystallize chairs.
But he needn’t have bothered.
I went and drowned in my bubble the first moment I could.
1
When I woke up in the Limbo tub, they started straight in at me. I’d gone and got myself a new body in BOO, and then gone and ruined it, and was still exceeding my ration, and I’d have to stop, and the next change—I must have screamed or had a fit or something. Apparently my emotional response wires got all tangled up and something overcharged itself and exploded. I yelled and yelled at them. They said I yelled that I didn’t want a new body, but wanted to stay there in the tub forever. They got worried about me and hundreds of Q-Rs fluttered around saying soothing things. They were promising me any body I wanted in the end and telling me that it didn’t matter how I kept exceeding my ration, and there, there, and I’d have to leave sometime because other people were waiting. They doubled the number of people waiting every time they mentioned it, and I suppose eventually I got altruistic and agreed to come out.
I chose this terribly ordinary sort of female body. It was thin and fragile, with insignificant breasts and lank straggly hair. I designed it with slow, meticulous, perverted care. I made it too long in the leg and waist, with dark, unvibrant eyes, behind which I could hide and be safe. I was being a weirdo, not as bad as Hatta the compulsive horror visitation, but strange and alien nevertheless, in a world where almost everyone is beautiful. Then I hung around Limbo for ages, and they let me, only hinting every so often that I ought to go home.
Hergal and Hatta came to visit me.
Hergal, a gorgeous male again, stared at my plain sad appearance and looked slightly uneasy. He liked exoticism, after all. Hatta just accepted me with every blink of his four pink eyes.
They were very careful and kind. So careful and kind it was positively tactless and spiteful. Hergal kept making bright remarks and telling me the wonderful things to be seen outside now. Hatta refrained strainingly from repeating his beastly marriage proposition. But I suppose they had some effect on me. I decided to go home after all.
They wouldn’t let me go in my bubble. They were ever so diplomatic about it, but firm. They flew me home in a robotically controlled, unmessable-around-with bird-plane in soothing yellow tones.
I went into the porch under the golden flower opening and shutting and wandered through the pristinely clean rooms, where a few machines were still at it, dusting and polishing. I went into the garden and suddenly saw the pet by the pool having a thorough and very involved sort of wash.
“Oh pet!” I cried. I remembered sending it away from me, home alone, so callously, just because it reminded me of my time with Lorun. I realized how long I’d left it alone and not thought of it, and was stricken with aching remorse. I rushed forward, arms open, and it gave a screaming, honking, hysterical sort of snarl and fled away across the gardens, hooting.
I felt awful about it, shocked and weak. It was a final blow. I sat there by the pool, hugging my refused arms, racked by pain and guilt, and suddenly woke up to what was the matter. I could have laughed it was so simple. It wasn’t bitterness the pet had just displayed, but genuine, bewildered fright. I’d changed. I was no longer the known Jang girl with long scarlet hair, willowy waist and exotic bosom, all beauty and physical grace. I was this lank, thin, paste-faced twig of life. It didn’t know me. Farathoom! I probably even had a different smell!