by Marge Piercy
“Never,” Joseph says. He squats with his back to her, watching the courtyard between the stable and the inn. He will be able to hear her if she tries to sneak up on him or to creep out.
Somewhat later he hears her coming up quietly behind him, and he swings about defensively, ready for an attack. Instead he sees her, quite naked, with her wet hair hanging down her back like a broad sleek ribbon, coming toward him with a little smile. She does not resemble the women he has accompanied Chava to, huge in the belly. She has only a slight swelling. If she had not told him, he would not know she is pregnant, but he supposes that Chava would know at once. Her body is rosy, small and high-waisted, broad-hipped, with pert breasts that seem to peer in different directions. She carries no weapon, and her smile only broadens as he looks at her.
“Joseph, have you never seen a naked woman before?”
“Never.”
“You’re fooling me. At your age?”
“I’m younger than I look,” the Golem says honestly. He rises to his feet, keeping an ear tuned to the courtyard.
“Big men like you often seem older than they are. I’m sixteen. What are you?” She puts her hands on his shoulders.
“I’m no older than you are.”
“I like that.” She begins to rub her hips against him. “I’m grateful to you. Now they’ll probably shove me in a convent. It doesn’t count if I do it with you, because I’m already in the family way.”
By now Joseph has figured out what she means. He stands very still, more frightened than desirous. “I don’t know how.”
“I didn’t either, but Stefan showed me. Unless Jews are made differently? I heard you are.” She tugs at his baggy pants, loosening them. “I figure you have to get children the same old way, right?”
Joseph finds himself with his pants down around his ankles and his penis standing up and out while her fingers run cleverly around it. “Well, it’s different. But it looks as if it works the same way. Want me to show you the game Stefan taught me?”
Joseph jerks back. “Shh! Someone’s coming.” He grabs her, scoops up her pile of clothes. They creep into an empty stall. The light of a lantern shines into the stable. A horse whinnies recognition. The hostler has come to lead it out. “Come on, Mudjumper, we got a long way to go today. They’ll be opening the bridge any moment.” He leads the horse to the trough, but the horse shies at the water.
“Looks dirty to me too,” the man says. “I’m going to say a nasty word to our landlord. They got such a good situation they think they can deal sloppy with us, hey, old girl?”
“Get dressed,” Joseph whispers as the man leads the horse into the courtyard. “We’ll go through behind him.”
Dawn is just streaking the sky, clouds like smoke drifting low over the buildings, mist skeining the river. As they walk about twenty yards behind, waiting for the gates to open, Joseph feels a great relief. He was curious but frightened in the stable. He imagines his great weight crushing life from the girl, her fragile bones splintering in his massive grasp.
Still, he is quietly pleased that she thought he was a man like other men. Now he has nothing he must conceal from the Maharal. He has done his duty and nothing else. Still he wonders what it would have felt like, he wonders whether he should not have tried with her. She has abandoned the idea as quickly as she happened on it. Now she ambles by his side, limping slightly on her sore ankle, clutching his arm, looking all around and occasionally giving the chain a swing so that it clanks. With her hair drying loose and her face clean, she looks like a pleasant child. Trustingly she clings to his arm, letting him draw her along. What will become of her? That is not his business. He has not made it his business. He belongs to the Maharal and not to Maria. He thinks she will probably make her way; at least he hopes so. He wants to tell her that he likes her and wishes her well, but even this he does not know how to say.
SEVENTEEN
The Son of Frankenstein
Shira felt nervous when she came to work the next day, but Yod was in his cold Avram mode. It was as if nothing had been said between them under the maple tree. They playacted social scenarios all morning, giving him practice shopping, selecting food, interacting with guards, meeting people on the street and in the Commons. Avram watched and critiqued. “Too wooden, much too wooden.” “No, he sounds like a recording.”
Then Avram began working with Yod in simulated attacks while interfaced in the Tikva Base. Shira was free to leave. Malkah was working at home more and more, since she was expecting Riva. Today she was cooperating with Avram in Yod’s exercises. When Shira walked in, Malkah was plugged in and did not notice her. People fully interfaced saw nothing except in their own mind. The computer-generated images assumed far greater reality than the stimulation of the optical nerves by actual sight. Shira considered plugging in to watch their war games, but she decided to putter around the courtyard, pruning, transplanting seedlings, deadheading flowers.
An hour later, Malkah withdrew. “Are they finished?” Shira asked.
“Not nearly, but I am. They can go on attacking, defending, but I have my new chimera to work on. It has wonderful little worms embedded throughout, infinite burnout loops. An intruder could destroy two thirds of their forces in penetration, never realizing it’s only a chimera. I surpass myself. Let’s have tea and muffins. Then I’ll go back to work on it.”
Both were coffee drinkers, so tea was a very occasional treat. They set up their table under the tree whose peaches were still swelling, its long languid leaves drooping over them. “Malkah, something disturbing happened last night. Yod expressed desire toward me.”
“Well, you’ve been spending huge amounts of time together, Shira. I suppose you were shocked.”
“What kind of programming did you give him? Is he going to attack me?”
“He has total inhibition blocks against sexual violence. You’re safer with him than with any other male in Tikva. Or perhaps the world.”
“He isn’t a male. He’s a machine.”
“Avram made him male—entirely so. Avram thought that was the ideal: pure reason, pure logic, pure violence. The world has barely survived the males we have running around. I gave him a gentler side, starting with emphasizing his love for knowledge and extending it to emotional and personal knowledge, a need for connection…”
“What Avram’s notes lack is what differentiates Yod from the failures that preceded him. That’s your work, right?”
Malkah nodded. “Have you accessed Avram’s logs on Alef through Tet?”
“I’ve read his summaries, but the actual logs are sealed.”
“Not to me.” Malkah gave her a wide wicked grin. “I plundered them, realizing I needed more information than Avram was about to give me, when I got involved in programming Yod. I’ll shunt it through to your private base right now, and you can study it at your leisure.”
“Do that. I’ll look at that material once I’ve got through Avram’s notes. But, Malkah, I have Avram’s notes and his log. Where are your crystals of that work? I want to load that too.”
“Didn’t I give them to Avram? They must be around someplace.”
“Could you look for them?”
“Oh, sure. I’ll look. I haven’t used them in months.”
Malkah plugged in and went back to work. Shira set out to slog through more of Avram’s notes. She was convinced Malkah knew where her own crystals were, for it would be out of character for her to misplace anything. Malkah inhabited the house comfortably and totally, as if it were a favorite sweater. She knew exactly where she kept herb tea for a cold, the holos of Shira as a baby, crystals of work she had completed twenty years before. Malkah had some reason to hide her notes, instead of letting Shira see them.
They were sitting as so often, companionably, each plugged in, each in a favorite chair. Shira was only lightly connected, not projected into her personal base, just reading notes, stopping to make notes of her own. Malkah was into the Tikva Base, fully projected. Moving in an
d out of large AI data bases was something taught all children in Tikva but an ability possessed by only the more educated in the Glop. The ability to access the world’s information and resculpt it was the equivalent of the difference between the propertied and the landless in the past of lords and serfs. Keeping Tikva a free town was dependent on their Base and its maintained integrity. In the Base they built chimeras, systems, defenses to be sold to multis. Otherwise they’d be gobbled up by a multi and redone overnight. Only towns that sold something unique survived free, for the multis would just as soon end the trade. A town needed to be selling to several rival multis, as Tikva did, to maintain that fragile independence, so that one multi would not let another commandeer it.
The notes commanded her full attention. Yod’s tactile senses were far finer than human. He also had the ability to measure distance precisely, using a subsonic echo, much as bats navigated; no wonder he’d been able to pluck the bat out of the night air. She smiled. He was equipped with sensor readouts of temperature, the same way her own retinal clock gave her a time readout whenever she thought the question. He could heft something and weigh it accurately in the palm of his hand. His hearing extended into the range of a dog’s; his normal sight in dark rooms was equal to a house cat’s, but he also had infrared on call. “They didn’t do anything interesting, and they only did that once.” He was incorrigible. Stubborn as a human being. No matter what Avram said and Yod promised, he did not always obey. He obeyed sometimes, but at other times he did exactly what he pleased.
She heard a scream, saved and exited, rising to her feet. Malkah had fallen from her chair. The plug had slid free. Shira ran to her, clenched in fright. Had Malkah been attacked? Five dead, two others vegetables. “I activated an emergency call,” the house said. “Medics. Do we need security?”
“Medics, yes. Wait for security decision.” Shira knelt over Malkah, who lay crumpled. She felt for a pulse in the wrist; nothing discernible. In the temple. Ah, there. Erratic, weak. A heart attack? Malkah’s lids fluttered. Please, please, please, Shira thought, although she did not believe in personal prayer. It was irrational to suppose a holy force could be petitioned to do or not to do something. Please, I can’t lose her, I can’t. She chafed Malkah’s temples as if that could bring her back. I can’t lose Ari and her. “Malkah, please come back. Please. Open your eyes. Please.”
Embedded in a base, plugged in, a person was vulnerable to mental warfare. The very neural pathways that the impulses from the machine traveled into the brain could be burned out, the brain rendered passive as a sponge. The mind could be forced into a catatonic loop. A program could be launched that froze the ability to breathe. The brain could be simply shocked to death like an electrocuted rat. If information pirates, if raiders or assassins broke into a base, they could set traps, they could ambush and kill as well as steal the artifacts created there. There were multi raiders and free-lance pirates.
Malkah opened her eyes. They closed again immediately, and she went limp. Shira chafed her hands. She slapped Malkah’s cheeks. She listened to her heart, resting her cheek against Malkah’s chest and smelling sandalwood. Finally the medics arrived. Three of them squatted around Malkah and began working on her. Shira hovered, feeling in the way, frightened, wanting to pester them to know Malkah’s condition but aware that she must let them work. The house said, “Shira, you have an incoming message from Avram.”
“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.