by Marge Piercy
She had never owned a bathing suit, and she wanted to swim. She wanted to feel the salt water stinging all the small cuts and abrasions of her body like benign sandpaper; she longed to feel salt-cured, wet on the surface and dry at the bone. She needed to lose herself in swimming. Why was she hesitating to strip before a machine?
“Do you know how to swim, Yod?”
“Yes, although that’s a skill I’ve never before accessed. I’m programmed to enjoy exercising all my functions. Do we swim in this moving water?”
“This is Massachusetts Bay, and yes, we swim in it.” She was still squatting there in her briefs and shirt. Finally she pulled off her tank top, left on her brassiere and briefs, sliding the resin knife into the seam, rubbed herself all over with protective grease and waded into the water. Even more quickly, Yod undressed. He stood on the edge of the crumbling wall, looking doubtful. He was drawing in air in long sharp breaths as his midsection inflated strangely. Of course; he was heavier than a human of the same size. He had to create added mass to avoid sinking. “Come on in,” she called.
“This water is radioactive and highly polluted with toxic chemicals, including petrocarbons, acetic acid, chloroform—”
“This is the only ocean we have in our backyard. It will have to do.”
She glanced at him, poised uncertainly on the water’s edge. His body was exactly the same color all over, a rich olive. He had pubic hair, although almost no chest hair. He had been given a navel, absurdly, and also a penis, which she quickly looked away from. He looked bloated, puffed with air. “If you aren’t coming, wait for me here.”
“Shira, this is dangerous. Wait.” She heard a large splash and then a loud churning of the waters.
She treaded water, waiting. He had not quite got the knack of his programming yet. He was splashing in all directions, sputtering, thrashing and kicking. She swam back toward him. She felt efficient, sleek in the water. As long as it had been since she had swum, she was at once at home in the water. It was strange she should want to swim today, for it was something she had always done with Gadi or, when she was much younger, with Malkah, who had not been at all reluctant to slip out to the bay, in an era when it had not been as dangerous as it was now. The higher the water rose, the more hidden traps lay underneath, and organ pirates had multiplied. The sea had always been the great escape from school, from home, from tension.
“I’m programmed to watch for sharks. I have an image I can call up on my retina of a shark, but I see none.”
“This isn’t their preferred hunting grounds, but keep an eye out anyhow. There can be a first time.”
“Often people speak in tautologies, Shira, even yourself.” He straightened out in the water and began to cleave it with his strong arms, heading toward her. His perfect coordination had taken over. She realized he could probably swim across the ocean to Europa, steadily churning through storm and calm alike; except that he did require nourishment every day or two. Perhaps he could convert sea water to energy, like the fusion plant whose stacks she could see sticking up on the next inlet. He slowed to her pace. “This is most interesting and novel to me, but I don’t understand how swimming relates to the great sense of distress you demonstrated in the lab.”
“I don’t know if I can explain.”
“Why don’t you wish Gadi to come?”
“I’m afraid.”
“Of him? In what way? I can defend against any threat to you.”
“How am I going to explain this? What do I fear? Remembering. Gadi and I loved each other when we were children, but not what they call puppy love.”
“The love for domesticated animals is common—”
“I mean we loved as intensely as adults love, perhaps more so.” She had stopped swimming, and she found herself sinking as she spoke. She let herself go down and then arced toward the surface again. Yod seized her by the shoulder and hauled her up.
“I don’t need rescuing, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said blandly, swimming circles around her. “I don’t understand what you fear.”
“He ended it. I still remember the pain. I’m afraid it’s inside me, waiting to break out.”
“Doesn’t human memory have a tendency to fade, to lose intensity?”
“Yours doesn’t?”
“I can play back events, fast, slow, stopping at will.”
“I’d lie down and die if I had that ability.”
“I study every interaction between us. I learn about human behavior from this replay, and above all, I understand you better.”
“Every interaction?”
He nodded.
“Would you mind editing out my getting undressed?”
“Why?”
“Never mind.”
“That’s an expression I don’t understand. To return to Gadi, you fear the pain of remembering, but you remember anyhow.”
“I fear wanting him back when there is no back. No way to return to the place where we both knew love. Neither of us can love anyone, Yod. I know to you that must seem no more than as if I said I can’t fly, but it matters to me.”
“I understand, theoretically speaking, the value of love in human intercourse. But you love Malkah. Obviously you love your son.”
“Love is an ambiguous word. We speak of loving roast turkey or swimming. I don’t mean that I can’t feel affection. But my capacity for bonding in passionate love with a man seems to have been burned out at age seventeen.”
“You see in Gadi this same problem. In the fifteen-year-old he is seeking you at fifteen, since this is not the first event of this nature.”
How did he know that? That was Malkah speaking, she knew it, that was Malkah’s analysis. She let herself sink for a moment, then bobbed up, angry. “Have you been discussing me with Malkah?”
“I haven’t seen Malkah since that day in your house.”
“You eel! You and Malkah chatter on the com-con nightly.” That was the internal communication of Tikva, used by its inhabitants, computer to computer, house to house, from the time they could talk. Could he actually lie?
“I’ve made you angry?” He cocked his head, marveling. “And this time I didn’t break or ruin anything.”
“You have a strong will to survive.”
He nodded. “It’s a primary part of my programming. As of yours.”
“Then do not, do not, do not discuss me behind my back with my grandmother, ever again.”
“What are you threatening me with?”
“My displeasure, Yod, nothing more. I have no power, over you or over anyone in the whole entire world.”
“But you do have power over me, the strength of my desire to please you. Gadi’s important to you because he came early into your life, as you’ve arrived early in mine. You don’t like to hurt anyone, so I’m not afraid of you as I’m afraid of Avram. When I discuss you with Malkah, it’s to learn.”
“Yod, you’re supposed to be learning about the world and how to behave with others so you appear human, you’re not supposed to be studying me.”
“I can create my own goals. Shira, when you talk to me freely and openly about yourself as you just did, I don’t need Malkah to explain you to me.”
“I already communicate with you better than I did with my husband. Oh, shit!” She turned in the water and began swimming off furiously. It was horribly true. She enjoyed better rapport with a machine than she had with Josh. In fact she had always found computers easier to communicate with than Josh. He had all their literal-mindedness but was capable of displaying acidic resentment and of simply ignoring her, as no machine intelligence could.
When Josh finished at Pacifica, she would have to return to him, if she could get him to agree. She would have to truncate herself to fit into his notions of wife and mother, for that was the only way she would ever get Ari back. Tears blinded her till she stopped to tread water.
Yod was churning along at her shoulder. “Shira, is that a boat? I’m not familiar wit
h that mechanism.” He rose in the water to point, just as a net shot over them.
How could she have been so stupid? Organ scavengers. She was being drawn under by the weight of the net. She kicked at it, panicked. It was dragging them toward the boat, yanking them underwater with no way to rise and take a breath. She told herself to stay calm, to think. She remembered the knife. She groped for it, worked it out of the seam of her briefs and began sawing at the coarse mesh. Already she needed oxygen. Her lungs burned. The precious air trickled out of her mouth in bubbles and rose to the surface, silvery above them. The cords were tough. She had to breathe, she had to. She slashed at them, wanting to cry out, to scream. She hacked and hacked at the cords but could only dent them. Her sight was speckling out. She was going to breathe water soon and drown; she would lose control. She sawed hopelessly, frantically.
Yod observed her. He tried to speak, but water flowed in and he grimaced, sputtering. Then he seized the cords of the net in his hands. Slowly he pulled; gradually the cords stretched a little, stretched more and then finally ripped asunder. The net parted in his hands like a spiderweb. He seized her under the arms and bore her to the surface, where she gasped for breath, coughing out water. Yod was still grasping her as he turned in the water. He began swimming much faster bearing her than she could have done alone, back toward the broken wall where they had entered the water. They had come perhaps a hundred meters.
She heard cries, the whir of an engine, and twisted in Yod’s grasp to stare back. The organ hunters’ skimmer was bearing down on them, a fast hovercraft settled now in the water for capture. It was a small boat with a low cabin, mostly refrigerator hold. She had seen them before, but never almost on top of her. No one growing up on these shores could avoid seeing the hunting boats in the distance. People didn’t survive seeing them up close.
Two men, fully filtered and masked, were wielding dart guns. Paralyzer was volatile and wouldn’t affect the quality of the organs; scavengers never shot prey with projectiles or lasers. A third man was readying the scoop net to pick up their bodies at once. The masks were the color of ivory, rigid, beaky, giving the three men on deck the appearance of the tops of totem poles. Although they shouted each other on, the masks were expressionless. They would tear her apart with their knives. They would rip the heart out of her and her eyes and her womb and her liver and kidneys, all would be packed away into vats of gel. She would be paralyzed, but she would feel them cutting her to ribbons. She hoped they took her heart first. Yod turned to look at them. He let her go. She realized he had been hit. He plucked a dart from the skin of his shoulder to squint at it.
“Paralyzer,” she gasped. He should be reacting already. The poison was instantaneous.
“Dive. Take cover.” He went down like an anchor released. She swam furiously underwater until she had to rise just enough for a breath. She peered around quickly for shelter. Then she dodged past the wreck of a broken and abandoned dredge, keeping it between her and the skimmer. She treaded water in the lee of the dredge, peeking through a crack in the metal. She could not hope to escape by swimming. Yod must have sunk to the bottom. She felt a pang of loss for the cyborg. She had grown used to his company. He had become her job. If she could stay under the dredge, she did not think they could get her; but how long could she play hide-and-seek with them? It was all her fault, brooding instead of paying attention. At least Yod had died quickly. Her own chances were dim.
The skimmer was coming slowly to enable the hunters to aim their dart guns. Abruptly it stopped and began to rock in the water. It tipped violently to the left, again, again. A great crunch sounded, as if it had hit a rock or a building. Over it went, spilling the three hunters, the driver crying out from the wheelhouse. It happened so quickly she went on staring. Her body still screeched fight or flight. They must have struck an old wreck or a building that did not break the surface. The driver had forgotten to watch the underwater plotter. These waters were full of hazards, but all boats bigger than dinghies were equipped with sonar.
She had begun swimming again toward the shore when she heard splashing behind her. She still had the knife gripped in her hand. She turned in the water to face her pursuer. She was just in time to see the last of the swimming hunters disappear underwater. He never came up. What stuck its head out a moment later was Yod coming toward her in a powerful crawl.
“I thought you had drowned.” Then she wondered if he could.
“The paralyzer didn’t affect me.”
He let her swim on her own. Behind them when she glanced back, the bay was empty except for the capsized boat, slowly filling with water. While she watched, it went down. Four men dead. She could hardly mourn them. They made a living by stealing people and selling the organs to the multi labs that provided implants for execs, talent and security. Artificial replacements for every organ in the body were available, but they could be damaged by certain frequencies: therefore the highly placed, the wealthy wanted the safety of real organs to defy assassins who could attack from a distance. Regular corporate gruds and people in the free towns depended on artificial implants, of the kind Malkah and Shira had in their eyes.
When she and Yod hauled up on shore, Shira would have liked to rest, but the hunters might have a partner boat. She pulled on her sec skin, motioning for Yod to do the same. Then she led the way toward the wrap at a dogged weary trot. Yod was frowning. He was not tired and had no trouble talking while he jogged. “Shira, I must tell you something. This is the first time I have truly defended. It was highly pleasurable. Yet my philosophical and theological programming informs me I’ve committed a wrong. I liked killing them, do you understand? Is that how it should be? Is that right?”
She was startled and took several moments to formulate an answer. “Yod, your programming creates your reactions. You didn’t choose to enjoy it.”
“Killing them was as enjoyable as anything I’ve ever experienced. I think I must be programmed to find killing as intense as sexual pleasure or mastering a new skill. It was that strong.”
“What does it mean for you to feel pleasure?”
“How can I answer that? What does it mean to you? I know that it’s entirely mental with me, but mammals, too, have a pleasure center in their brains. You’re programmed to like sweet tastes and avoid bitter ones. I’m programmed to find some things pleasurable and others painful.”
She could think of nothing to say; she found his statements frightening. Probably when she felt less exhausted emotionally and physically, she would find his revelation even more disturbing. Yod had not been given knowledge of the organ trade, so she briefed him as they went. Under the sec skin her body was clammy, itchy. She would drop Yod at the lab and head home for a bath and a nap. “Are you impervious to poison of all kinds?”
“No. Most acids would burn me also. But a neural paralyzer designed for a mammalian system is ineffective against me.”
“A laser would injure you.” She was remembering the broken cyborg Alef, its head blasted open.
“Any explosive or laser device would injure or kill me, Shira, the same as yourself.”
“I was careless today. My past welled up and clouded my judgment.”
“I was careless too. I should have detected the boat, but I didn’t understand what it was. I need to learn more. I need to know far more to protect you adequately. I’m ashamed I didn’t stop them before they frightened you. Never should you be frightened.”
“Yod, I’m not your child any more than you’re mine. This is a frightening world, and it’s best not to forget that, the way we both did this afternoon.”
“Is this outing something I should mention to Avram?”
“Just say that we went out into the raw for a lesson.” Shira smiled and tapped his arm in the sec skin. “You’re learning certain human behaviors rather quickly. Such as discretion.”
“It was a provocative lesson today. Much to reflect on. Tonight, instead of practicing with Gimel, I’ll play this back many times.”
A kid standing guard released the gate to them. Tomorrow she would have guard duty for the first time, fitted back into the self-running of the town: every citizen owed the town eight hours of labor a week. Fortunately Yod did not seem to demand gratitude from her. She was too wrung out to force much response. She longed to be alone and quiet and numb. Then she thought, Why did he compare killing to sex? When did he ever experience sex? Would a cyborg masturbate? That was too bizarre. Could a cyborg enjoy a stimmie? She did not want to speculate about his remark, but it disquieted her. As the old hotel came into view, she realized she had not thought of Gadi in an entire hour. Great therapy. Perhaps she should find a little war to join and dangle her life for bait. The danger would serve to keep Gadi out of her mind.
THIRTEEN
A Double Midwiving
The Maharal is exhausted, but still he rises by midmorning, with Perl scolding him for his passion to make himself sick. He must conceal the origins of the Golem, quickly. From Samuel the tailor and dealer in secondhand clothes the Maharal buys the biggest pants and the biggest shirt and the biggest of everything in the shop. Nothing matches. The Golem looks at himself in the mirror with sullen curiosity. Why do I imagine he is thinking and feeling? the Maharal asks himself. Because it looks more or less like a man, I think of it as a man. But it is a tool. A clumsy and dangerous tool that must be carefully controlled.