He, She and It

by Marge Piercy

  “Oh, I never pass up an opportunity to frustrate my father. Besides, I can’t help but identify with your desire to get away from him. He’s a control maniac. You’re an ideal son for him—one he can program. And did.”

  “Malkah is also responsible for my programming. But like you yourself—I imagine—I’m self-correcting. My programming isn’t an absolute any more than your education was.”

  Gadi laughed. “As Shira can tell you, my education didn’t take.”

  Shira realized she was enjoying herself keenly. She could scarcely think of a time when men had fought over her. Male entities anyhow. Always some men had been drawn to her, but she had never approximated the corporate culture ideal at Y-S. Men who were attracted to her tended to feel that they ought to be congratulated on such a maverick choice. While she was with Gadi, she had never paid five minutes’ attention to another boy; in her marriage, she had been dully faithful. If she had increasingly doubted the marriage, it had not been because another man had beckoned. Perhaps her sexuality had been so impacted that nothing had tempted her. Now she was frighteningly awake, aware. At times the brush of her hair against her cheek felt like a caress, the pressure of cloth against her back or belly distracted her. On the nights when Yod could not appear, she had erotic dreams, centered sometimes on him, sometimes on Gadi—not as Gadi was now, but as he had been ten years before.

  As Avram approached, conversation ceased. His bleak gaze swept over them all. He planted himself in front of Yod. “We will try the experiment of allowing you to spend nights below. However, I expect you in the lab by seven every morning, and all night when conditions require it. I am not convinced this is a good or necessary step, but I will allow it as an experiment.”

  “Thank you, Father,” Yod said tonelessly.

  Avram winced, glancing at Gadi. “We’re a full two weeks behind on the Olivacon webnet order. We’ve wasted enough time. I want you to take over and program Malkah’s worms, while she finishes the gross design.”

  “Immediately.” Yod went to plug in.

  “‘Father.’” Gadi managed to attach audible quotes to the word. “How sweet that sounds, doesn’t it? Yod seems to be a valuable worker. Never gets sick, never slacks off, works around the clock. I had an assistant like that once. Turned out to be a spy for Amerivision. Uni burned her. Too bad. Never had as good a second since…So how much is Yod being paid?”

  Shira giggled, managing to turn her reaction into a cough. “Is Yod being paid at all?” she asked innocently.

  “Of course he isn’t,” Avram said. “Who pays a machine?”

  “But Gadi has a good point,” Shira said quickly. “If town records indicate Yod is unpaid, people could begin asking uncomfortable questions.”

  “Slave labor,” Gadi said. “Could get you in a gigablob of trouble.”

  “He’s a mobile computer. A cyborg. The notion of pay is ridiculous.”

  “That’s what you said about my taking him out of the lab. That’s what you’re saying about letting him have quarters like a real person.” Shira shook her hair back. “If you want him to pass as human, you must establish his economic identity, and soon.”

  “You have no idea what creating a cyborg cost. I’ve spent a small fortune on this project.”

  “That’s not Yod’s fault. That’s like blaming a child because you had to go to heroic measures to conceive,” Shira said. “You can’t expect the child to foot those bills.”

  She did not know why the idea of Yod getting paid tickled her, but she loved the idea. Gadi was just being his adversarial self. What would Yod do with money? She was amused by the possibilities; Gadi was also. They were united in a confederacy of mischief and imagination. In a way, Gadi was as fascinated by Yod as she was. Yod was the near brother Gadi could not help teasing, prodding; now assisting him, now fighting for him; now attacking, now jealous and resentful. She thought that Yod’s feelings for Gadi were less mixed, perhaps less friendly. She was more important to Yod than to Gadi; perhaps more central to Yod than she had ever been for anyone except Ari. Who must be forgetting her. Did he have a nanny? She had heard the air in the space platforms was always dingy; every time he got a sinus infection, an ear infection followed. If Josh did not monitor, Ari’s hearing could be weakened.

  Avram smiled slightly. “As for your plans for tomorrow, you can’t possibly take Yod into Cybernaut. As soon as he goes through the gate, their sensors will identify him as a machine.”

  “I’m not planning to enter. I’m planning to make them come outside. We can set up a portable wrap. Malkah and I have discussed strategy. We have a small wrap that has full sensor-blocking ability. It can blind them.”

  “Malkah is still not going?”

  “I won’t let her go. She knows she’s a target.”

  “We’re all targets now, Shira. I would prefer that you not go and that Yod not go. You’re pursuing a chimera as seductive as any we create in the Base. A son is hard to let go of, but you’re deluding yourself when you imagine you’ll ever get him back. He’s a permanent hostage. I told the Town Council that I consider attempts to negotiate with Y-S futile. If they wanted to negotiate, they wouldn’t have killed five people first.”

  “What is Ari a hostage for? How do we threaten them?”

  Avram was actually regarding her with pity. He patted her hand awkwardly. “They perceive whatever they don’t control as hostile.”

  The night before the meeting, Shira could not sleep. She heard Malkah moving about the house, going down to work at the main terminal. She heard voices below, probably Riva or Nili. Then silence again. Somewhat later Malkah padded up to bed, followed by the kittens. A full three months had passed since she had last seen Ari; six months since he had been taken from her and awarded to Josh. What were they telling him? She had tried to explain to him during their precious days together that she wanted him with her always. She could see him sulking at her table in his red rompers while she tried to convince him over the expensive eggs. He sat running a toy zip back and forth across the table, not meeting her gaze, so that she could not tell if he understood her. Now what did he believe? That she had abandoned him?

  She rose just after dawn—the sun cleared the bay about four-thirty a.m.—bathed, put on the face paint and gilt highlights appropriate to a morning meeting, dressed in the Y-S backless white business suit she had not had out of the closet since arriving. Into the hem she inserted the resin knife that would not show up on any sensor, with its edge of hyper-charged particles that would cut through a diamond when the knife was released from its sheath. She found her robot hairdresser on the upper shelf where she had shoved it in April. She inserted her wet hair, dialed a program for a do that had been fashionable in March and might still not be too far off, and sat impatiently while the many little hands worked. Y-S fashions were set by the upper levels of management. Every year or so the look would change, within rigid limits. Her hair was too short to meet Y-S propriety, but that was just tough.

  They might not see any of these preparations, but she had to assume they could end up in a civilized sit-down face-to-face meet over a table. She had to appear prepped—that was the favorite word. You look so prepped this morning. Meaning you appeared proper, image tight, surface impervious, alert to the smallest changes in corporate will.

  Yod was waiting when she came down. He was dressed no differently than usual, but security’s clothing never mattered. They were considered invisible. Malkah was in the kitchen, drinking a great mug of café au lait. Shira looked for Nili and Riva, did not see them. She hoped she could slip out before they woke. However, Malkah interpreted her glance correctly. “They’ve left already.”

  “I don’t want them at my meeting. I thought I’d made that clear.”

  “Unless you need them, you won’t see them,” Malkah said. “Riva’s good. She knows what she’s doing in this type of situation far better than we do.”

  “Perhaps the question is whether the ends of Riva and Shira are the sa
me,” Yod said gently.

  “I can’t answer that,” Malkah said. “I have to trust my daughter.”

  “I am armed,” Yod said just as softly. “Of course I myself am a weapon, but I have provided myself with help.”

  “Illegal,” Shira said. “They better not catch us arming ourselves.”

  “Is it legal to break into a base, kill five people and cripple two others?” Yod cocked his head, brows raised at her.

  “A point well taken.” Still, she wanted to believe this initiative had nothing to do with the attacks. A corporation was a large entity, with many intrigues, layers of plotting and counterplotting. The most powerful integrated plans went askew in the hinterland of minor officials and major egos.

  As they were leaving, Malkah hung a necklace on Shira. “If things turn ugly, twist the center. It holds a powerful anesthetic. It will knock you out along with everybody else, but not Yod. He can get you to safety then. Don’t play with it. It should be entirely effective inside the wrap.”

  They took a town float car, one with capacity for carrying a load. The load was the small wrap tent and a sophisticated sensor-deadening device in a pole that would appear to be what held the wrap up. She wondered nervously where Nili and Riva had gone. Yod was excited by the float car. Although programmed to fly a car, he had never been up in the air. Float cars flew on automatic programming, but the programming could be aborted if you knew how. Under them the open land spread its rolling hills, covered with pitch pine, scrub oak, bramble, the occasional pale stripe of what had been a road. The ruins had long since been pilfered for any scrap of wood or recyclable metal or glass. On the horizon, the interdicted zone around the old nuclear plant blinked its warning.

  The float car was preprogrammed to land the equivalent of ten city blocks outside Cybernaut. Cybernaut control expected Shira to land inside. “No, we will wait out here for the delegation from Yakamura-Stichen. We have a portable wrap we’ll erect.”

  “This was not in the agreement,” said an affronted-sounding voice. “We didn’t negotiate an outside meeting.”

  “Agree or we’ll return at once,” Shira said. She was trying to sound strong and indifferent, but she suspected their sensors could detect her heart pounding on her breastbone. The roaring of her blood filled her ears. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth in panic. They would tell her to get lost. She was a tweenie ex-employee trying to push around a multi that owned perhaps a twentieth of the world. Time passed and passed. The float car slowed at her request, and they hovered over the spot where it was programmed to land, a large target hanging there.

  “We’ll take the outside meeting under your portable wrap,” the second voice said finally. “We’ll bring our security.”

  “How many?” Yod asked.

  “We count two of you. We will bring a party of eight.”

  “I am the only security here. You can have one security.”

  “One security is not acceptable. We have two negotiators. We will agree to bring in only four security, but that is final.”

  “Agreed,” Yod said.

  “They could be assassins,” Shira said, when the communication had terminated and the link was dead.

  Yod smiled at her. “You are my only rose. I will protect.”

  The floater landed. “I’m terrified.”

  “I don’t feel fear. I feel…useful. Engaged.”

  For an instant the image of Chet tossing David across the lab to smash into the wall came to her. Between them quickly they set up the wrap, turned on its monitoring system, slipped inside none too soon. A fast tank was moving toward them on its gel treads. The wrap was only the size of a large tent: barely seven feet tall, fourteen by twelve interior dimensions. Underfoot was the soil with its shaggy grass.

  However, like most products of Tikva, the wrap was less simple than it appeared. In the center pole Shira activated the sensor-killer. The wrap was of a pearly opalescence, not transparent like the town wrap, so that it could be used as a sleeping shelter. Through the open flap, they could see the fast tank disgorging eight people. The ninth, obviously the driver, remained sitting high on his tank, part in, part out. Fast getaway if required?

  “We said four security and two negotiators,” Yod called in a carrying voice.

  The leader, with the tall blond slightly hawk-faced golden-skinned look Y-S favored for its executives and in Y-S business gear, a backless fine blue suit of filmy, billowy texture, turned on a throat mike to call back, “We’re only bringing the agreed-on number into your wrap. Our other two guards will remain outside to secure our meeting from raids.”

  “What can we do?” she muttered to Yod.

  The four—two apes, two assassins, she would guess—lumbered along, with the two Y-S execs within the square they formed. However, when they reached the wrap flap, they had to enter single file. One of the whip-lean assassins entered first, glanced around with his bright blue eyes like shiny metal. Then the exec who’d spoken; then what she realized from the lack of cosmetic shaping was probably a high-level techie, crammed into a backless suit and oozing out. Then two apes, security men the size of bears. Then another assassin, a woman whose topknot brushed the ceiling, a being of extremely long limbs, entered fiddling frantically with a necklace probably as menacing as Shira’s. “The sensors aren’t functioning. We’re blind,” she announced. “I recommend withdrawal.”

  “Our sensors aren’t functioning either,” Shira said. “This is blackout for both sides. We’ll have to talk like normal people and make guesses. You called for this meet. What do you want?”

  “Y-S misses you, Shira.”

  “Who are you two?” The assassins and apes would never be introduced, of course. Then she realized who the techie was. “I recognize Dr. Rhodes.” One of their top cybernetics men. Her tension screwed another turn higher around the peg of her spine. He did not meet her gaze. He was looking only at Yod.

  The blond man spoke. “I’m Tenori Bell of the personnel department. Delighted to see you, Shira. Y-S wants you back.”

  “Y-S took my son, gave him to my husband and shipped both of them to Pacifica Platform.”

  “We’re prepared to offer you immediate posting to Pacifica.”

  Her heart stumbled. For a moment she thought she would cry. Then her gaze came to rest on the two assassins, like traps about to spring shut, and on Dr. Rhodes, whose stare never wavered from Yod. “After debriefing, of course.”

  “Oh, purely formal.”

  A little bout of mnemosine, and they would unspool from her brain everything about Tikva defenses and Yod’s specs that they desired to know, leaving her only half there. “Same rating, same scale?”

  “We’re prepared to raise you one and a half ratings, with equivalent scale.”

  That translated into some travel privileges, access to the newest fertility techniques, a higher ed track for Ari, better housing—although on Pacifica that meant only a bigger cube. If she ever saw Pacifica. How could she trade Malkah, whom these people had tried to kill, and Yod and Tikva for a nail paring’s chance to share her son with Josh? Could she believe them? “I must consider this generous offer carefully. When do you need my answer?”

  “In the next five minutes,” Tenori Bell said pleasantly.

  “I can’t decide that quickly. This is important to me.”

  “In four minutes fifty seconds, the offer will be withdrawn. I urge you to act, while you can. Think of your son, lonely for his mother. The sooner you decide to return with us, Shira, the faster we can get the process underway to rush you to Pacifica.”

  It was what she had dreamed of, that she would be given a chance for her son, but she could not accept. Dr. Rhodes kept edging closer to Yod, who stood at parade rest behind her, quite conscious, she was sure, of the military message of his posture. He watched the apes and the assassins but also kept track of Dr. Rhodes and Tenori Bell. Yod was a diver poised on the board over a pool, awaiting the right moment to execute a perfect back flip in. He lon
ged for the fight with a single-minded yearning she could feel like a vibration. The talking bored him. He anticipated his time of action. Still, she trusted him, that he would do nothing to provoke what he wished to happen.

  “A small facility such as Tikva cannot begin to compete with what Y-S can offer you. If you don’t wish posting to Pacifica, I am authorized to transfer both your ex-husband and your son back to the Nebraska enclave effective August one. We can’t offer the bonus satellite work provides, but that rise in your status by one and one half grades stands.”

  “That’s very generous. But I need time. I have to talk to my family.”

  “You have a very interesting family, Shira. Unfortunately we must have your decision in two minutes thirty-five seconds.”

  The constant referral to her by her first name was calculated, just the way medical facilities behaved. Reduce her to childhood. False intimacy drains power. Her time readout wasn’t working in the damping cushion of the sensor-killer. She wondered how many of Yod’s functions were impaired.

  “I have recently learned the profession my mother followed and why this may have affected my treatment by your personnel office.”

  “‘Followed’? As far as we’re aware, no change has occurred. Do you know otherwise?”

  “I know little about Riva Shipman. I haven’t seen her in eight years. I assume she’s dead.”

  “Your time is up. What is your answer?”

  “I told you, I cannot accept without speaking to my grandmother.”

  “Either you will agree to come with us, or you will come with us anyhow. It’s very simple.” Tenori nodded to his security.

  Before Tenori made that quick gesture, Yod was already moving. The first ape lay on the floor with his head twisted backward. His neck had been broken before anyone else moved. Dr. Rhodes backed to the flap and unsealed it. He called to the guards outside. The woman assassin was advancing on Shira, while the remaining ape and the male assassin went for Yod. Dr. Rhodes was still calling. From outside came the whine of laser weapons firing. Shira cringed, expecting the tent to melt around her.