He, She and It

by Marge Piercy

  Shira had just been reading the results of the endless tests and interviews she had undergone during the months between the initial custody decision and Josh’s transfer to Pacifica. Strong familial attachments. Pronounced sense of guilt surrounding son. Can be rehired at any point if offered partial custody. Why? What game were they playing with her? She had thought all that testing bore on her fitness to be a mother, but that wasn’t what they were searching for. Transfer. Transfer. To where?

  “I see it now! It’s all in the personnel records. They did put a spy in place here: me. They forced me out by taking my son away. That was the whole point of giving custody of Ari to Josh and then transferring him. They pushed me until I jumped. They knew I’d remain bound to them through Ari. Essentially they considered they were transferring me here to remain long enough to learn about Avram’s research. Then I was to be recalled and emptied of useful information.”

  “Why the attack on me?” Malkah asked. “Why use Zee in that way?”

  “They considered my attachment to you excessive. Maybe they were afraid that if I was forced to choose between you and Ari, I might choose you and not come back on schedule to be picked clean.”

  “I haven’t gone to conferences for years,” Avram said in a voice of intense excitement. “I’ve worked almost alone, and I’ve published nothing about my own research. They could only get to me by a frontal assault, and if I’m killed or my lab destroyed, my work is lost to them. When I offered you a job, they must have leapt for joy.”

  “They were already monitoring every communication between us, even studying Rosh Hashanah cards for clues. They had somebody in to translate the Hebrew on the cards to make sure it wasn’t a secret message. When I sent you that little interlocking wire puzzle I found, they held it up while their labs went over it for a week.”

  Avram smiled at the memory. “Nice example of the type. I didn’t have that one.”

  The last time Shira had seen his flat, hundreds of running feet of shelves were occupied with his puzzle and game collection. It was a museum of distraction. When Avram was working through some knotty design, he spent hours playing with his antique games. He loved crude automata, from wind-up toys through early clanking robots with their tinny voices and inability to do more than take halting steps and slam into obstacles.

  Y-S had also wasted much analysis on her past and probable future relationship with Gadi. Would it be good or bad for their scheme should he be brought back into the picture? She wondered if Gadi, too, had been caught in their wide barbed net. Had he been entrapped? Had his downfall and exile been engineered? Nothing short of a foray into the Uni-Par Base would prove that bit of paranoia, but it was not important enough to pursue farther.

  She felt a pure intense anger, like a violin tremolo almost too high to hear. She was a tool they had tried to break. They had surrounded her with their plotting and their structures, but what had happened had been entirely unexpected to them and to her. They had underestimated Malkah, ignored Riva, and Yod had not figured except as the passive quarry. Yod was at once the aim of their plotting and their most important opponent. He was their unknown enemy. He was the great glitch.

  Since the four knew what pattern they were seeking, it was easier to work on the files. Malkah asked finally, long before they had slogged through the remaining infoglut, “Now that we know what they want, what do we want? How do we get it?”

  “What do we want?” Avram repeated. “We want to remain ourselves. We want our independence. Our freedom.”

  “I want my son back,” Shira said. “Until I have him, I’m vulnerable, and you should all know that.” She felt a sense of shame, that she had been a tool of Y-S—yet so far she had denied them any use of her.

  “I, too, want my great-grandson,” Malkah said. “I want him here with me.”

  “I want to end the threat to this town. I want to be free then, free to live as I want and choose,” Yod said, standing rigidly.

  Avram snorted. “That’s romantic nonsense. I created you to accomplish a task, so how can you be quote free unquote to live? And the pursuit of your son, while urgent to you, Shira, is not what this task force is about. I was not asking for an outpouring of unbridled ego from each of you.”

  “It’s all related.” Shira said vehemently. “My son is a hostage. They’ve used him, and they’ll use him again.”

  “Yod may be an artificially constructed person,” Malkah said, “but he possesses his own motivations, his own goals. He’s not a cleaning robot, who works because you turn him on.”

  “I didn’t create him to pursue his own ends.”

  “No doubt you felt that way about Gadi also,” Shira said bitterly.

  “Although humans have needs I’ll never experience, such as sleep, in living with humans I have evolved certain needs similar to yours,” Yod said in prim defiance.

  “You’ll simply have to devolve these needs,” Avram said with mock patience. “You were manufactured for a purpose still unfulfilled.”

  “And when it is fulfilled?”

  “When is the purpose of a bridge or a building fulfilled?”

  Yod said, still standing at attention, “You should have stayed with Gimel, Father. He’s a true golem. He has a soul of clay and never asks awkward questions. He never challenges you. He obeys thoughtlessly and perfectly.”

  Malkah stepped between them. “The two of you must cease bickering. Avram, you’ll have to offer Yod his freedom at some point. He deserves it.”

  “We are none of us likely to survive to confront our just deserts unless we start planning intelligently in the face of the Y-S threat,” Avram said.

  “If you permit me to go after Shira’s child for her and for Malkah, I won’t trouble you about my status for at least a year,” Yod offered.

  “Are you bargaining with me? I can dismantle you. And where did this notion of going after Shira’s son come from? I wouldn’t consider it.”

  “Do you want to dismantle me?” Yod gave a bleak smile. “Your other choice, of course, is to sell me to a multi.”

  “And give up our only hope of security?”

  “What you created to improve security seems to have attracted more danger,” Yod said quietly.

  “We’re quarreling because we’re all exhausted,” Malkah said, “that is, those of us who get tired. It’s four-fifteen. Let us leave Yod to finish extracting the last tidbits and go to bed. I’m seeing double, and I’m no longer thinking with any clarity—and I daresay the same goes for you, Avram.”

  Avram sat down heavily in his desk chair. In fact his face was gray with exhaustion. “All right. We’ll meet at noon back here.”

  When they reassembled at noon, Nili and Gadi were waiting for them in the anteroom. Nili began at once to Avram: “I’m on my way to the Glop for a couple of days…” She followed them into the lab.

  Yod, seated at a terminal, turned to greet them. “I have located two more attempts to place spies here. One was Aviva Emet. She defected quietly to Tikva and simply ignored Y-S after the first two months in place here. I believe that’s why she was assassinated.”

  “Aviva…” Malkah said. “Of course she defected. She kept telling me how happy she was here, how at home she felt, how cared for.”

  “What is it, Nili?” Avram swung on his heel. “Gadi, what do you want? We’re busy.”

  Nili grimaced. “I’m trying to tell all of you that I’m intending to go at once to the Glop…”

  “Why?” Malkah said. “It’s dangerous there, especially if you don’t know the jargon and the ways.”

  “I’m as dangerous as anybody I’m likely to meet. Gadi’s going with me, but, Avram, you must get security to release him.”

  Gadi beamed at them. “I do know my way around the Glop. Nili needs a semi-native guide.”

  “You confuse images of the Glop produced by your fantasy machine with the reality the vast majority of people live in,” Avram said. “What is the point of this trip? Curiosity? A prurient int
erest in hardship?”

  Nili was barely restraining herself from pacing, coiled tight. “Riva considered it essential I make contact with resistance forces there. She gave me some names and directions.”

  “What sort of forces? The Glop is chaos,” Malkah said.

  “Riva said not. She said sectors have managed to organize secretly in spite of drugs and the mandated ignorance. She did a lot of business in the Glop, buying and selling information. She said these groups have penetrated the multis.” Nili spoke quickly, in a hurry. “But I need a floater to travel there, and I have no credit under my false name. My true name doesn’t exist.”

  “That’s where I come in,” Gadi said. “If you ask, dear Father, the local security will permit me to violate my exile without undue fuss. I have the credit, and I know my way around. I promise as solemnly as you like to be back in four days.”

  “If you want to go, go,” Avram said through gritted teeth. “But you’re responsible for the safety of our guest. Can you comprehend what it means to be responsible for anyone?”

  “Avi, I’m accustomed to being responsible for people whose hide is insured for millions and whose every sensation is experienced by billions of eager fans. I have fans all over the Glop. I’m welcome there, a hero.”

  “What is it you seek?” Yod asked Nili.

  “Riva was pirating information for groups there. She believed in them enough to risk her life, the same way she believed in us—my people. I must judge for myself who and what these groups are. That’s part of my mission.”

  “This could conceivably be useful to us also,” Yod said with his characteristic simple gravity. “We perhaps have common enemies. Shouldn’t I accompany you?” He walked toward Nili. As he passed Shira, he threw her a private glance.

  She understood at once. He meant to accompany Nili and Gadi and then continue on to liberate Ari. But Ari would never go with him, could not understand who or what Yod was. She must go too. “I agree. If there are counterforces to Y-S in the Glop, we must know about it. We have to make contact and see if we have goals in common. This may be what we need to fight Y-S.”

  Malkah nodded. “Riva spoke about the people she knew there. They all started as gangs: the Lava Rats, the Lords of Chaos, the Blood Angels. We could use allies. Speak to security at once, Avram, and so will I. But you’re Gadi’s father, you’re responsible for him, so you have to ask.”

  “This is fantasy,” Avram said. “We have no allies. The Glop is a mess. The people there can’t save themselves.”

  “How do we know?” Yod asked in his quiet reasonable voice. “Surely we should confirm or deny on evidence and not conjecture these statements of Riva’s. She’s dead, and we can’t ask her for confirmation. We must find out on our own. It shouldn’t take long to assess the potential of these people as possible allies and to determine whether they do have independent sources of information we might find useful.”

  “While Nili is making the contacts for her own purposes, we can check them out for ours,” Shira said. “I’m willing to try. We have the opportunity with Nili that may never come again. We don’t know them and they don’t know us, and it will stay that way forever unless we seize this chance.”

  “Come, Avram.” Malkah stood. “This may be a valuable opening for us. Now that we know why we’re a target, we can better seek for allies. We must go and see the head of security at once.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Voices and Visions at Dawn

  I am in my state of desperate sleeplessness. Success is achieved these nights if I manage to render myself unconscious for two hours with the help of relaxation techniques, cat therapy, white noise, hypnotic tapes, those sleep needles inserted in a vein—the full panoply of mid-twenty-first-century inducers. I worry about Shira and you in the Glop, and yes, about Nili too. I find her oddly attractive. She is arrogant in refreshing ways, so convinced that if anyone can do anything physical, so can she. I never had that kind of confidence—few women of my generation did, unless they were professional athletes. Even then, they assumed that the best man could always beat the best woman, whether at running or swimming. Nili has none of those hesitations. She thinks Gadi is cute but basically not much use.

  I mourn my lost daughter. I have lived for the last two decades with the knowledge that she might die in Africa or Europa and I would hear about it only by accident or by some clandestine messenger months later. We are all constantly in danger; still I cannot relinquish mourning. You don’t know what I mean, Yod, because you have not yet lost anyone dear to you. You have the capacity to survive who knows how many human lifetimes; thus you may well come to know mourning intimately.

  Today I visited her grave. It was overcast, and I went out without a sec skin, in order to feel the rain on my skin, on my face. At my age I can take a few chances. I wanted to stand under the rain again as I put down a bunch of chrysanthemums, bronze and golden, the flower of warriors, on her grave. I don’t know where Shira is, and today I said kaddish: in which we pray for the dead without ever mentioning death. We pray for life.

  Gale-force winds, small-craft warnings tonight. Over the Net, news of a seaweed harvesting ship gone down. I can hear the surf slamming on the artificial rocks of drowned buildings and walls. I remember rain in Prague, in the spring and the fall almost daily rain; rain tapping the red-tiled roof of the bedroom where I lay with Meier, whose eyes were the darkest brown short of black, whose hair was black and tightly curled as fleece, whose body was slender as a boy’s still at thirty-seven, which seemed to me then middle age. His apartment was in Kostechna Street, near a school where we could hear the children at recess, or church bells at night as we made love, feverishly, for the nights were pale with our desire and always too short. I ran from class to him and off to meetings, crisscrossing what had been the old ghetto before it was torn down, past the Altneushul, past Maisl’s family synagogue, past the artificial hills of the cemetery. Love played me like a flute. Sleep seemed an unnecessary vice. I slept as little as you and Joseph, my dear.

  Joseph intercepts two men sneaking into the ghetto carrying the stiff pale body of a young boy, perhaps seven, who looks as if he might have been run over by a cart. His chest is crushed, but time is running out for a corpse to be planted that can then be discovered and blamed on the Jews. Blood for the matzoh, the poppycock tale for which people die every spring. As the dead boy lies crumpled on the pavement, dropped like a calf’s carcass, Joseph fights the men. This time he does not kill them but binds them unconscious in a rope with the dead boy and carries them to the gentile magistrates.

  He encounters two wandering drunks, a pimp beating a prostitute, and one unconscious man on the street who has apparently been robbed: dealing with them makes up his night’s work. At dawn, as Joseph is returning to the rabbi’s narrow house in the courtyard, he meets Chava, coming along the street with her birthing bag.

  “Why didn’t you send for me to escort you?”

  “Joseph, haven’t you enough to worry about right now? I had the father to take me there, and now it’s morning and the scavengers of the night go back into their holes to sleep.” She sighs, shoving a lock that has escaped back under her wig. “Tell me why two thirds of all babies are born at night?”

  “Are they? Birth is mysterious and violent.”

  “It’s my business. This was a hard one. I thought I was going to lose her. The baby came fast enough, which is usually good, but she bled and bled. I had to use all of my herbs to stop the hemorrhaging. I tried dragonwort and loosestrife, and still the blood came. Then woundwort. I was getting frantic. Finally shepherd’s-purse worked. Our red blood runs much thinner than your dark blood, my friend.”

  Joseph feels a deep embarrassment, a sort of nakedness before her. “I heal quickly,” he mumbles.

  “My friend, we both know you are not born of woman. Birth is mysterious to you because you have never undergone it. You were made, not born.”

  “What are you saying to me?” He experiences
himself as slow, dim-witted beside her. Did she worm the secret from her father?

  “I know the texts, Joseph. Don’t fear my tongue. I have said nothing to Father or Grandfather, and I won’t. I’ve spoken to no one.”

  “Except me. But I’m no one, you think.”

  She rests her hand on his arm. “You know I don’t think that, so don’t fuss with me. Let us just talk friend to friend. We are all in danger here. I’m a little light-headed from lack of sleep.” She lets his arm take some of her weight as they walk.

  Everyone is sleeping in the house of Rabbi Loew. In the kitchen, Chava builds a fire under the kettle always kept there. Out of the cupboard she takes matzoh and salt fish. “I’m hungry. Maybe some broth.” She puts herbs and a bit of jerky, cuts some carrots and onions, into a small pot she hangs on a hook over the fire. She dips water from the big kettle into the small. “I’m so tired, I almost started to look for the kasha or the gruel—me forgetting it’s Pesach week. Are you hungry too?”

  Joseph nods. “But as you know, I can eat a brick and get nourishment.”

  “Then you’d make an ideal husband for a poor woman.” Chava smiles.

  He draws a low stool up to the fire and extends his hands to warm them. “Who is your new suitor? I saw him coming and going all week.”

  “Isaac Horowitz. Yes, he’s decided I should marry him. Me, I have a different opinion.”

  “Who is he?” Joseph feels the cold weight of fear all through him.

  Chava perches on a bench, yawning. “He’s a great scholar and a brilliant thinker. We have two of his books upstairs.”

  “Then you will marry him.” Joseph tries to sound resigned.

  “Why, Joseph? I am a pretty good scholar myself. I was married, you know that. I bore the Bachrach family a son. I have put in my time as a wife.”

  “You didn’t like marriage?”

  Chava sighs, staring into the fire. Then she shakes her head. “To you I say this and sometimes to another woman. I say it to my mother. I say it to my bubeh, Perl. But I never say it to a man. They get upset.”