He, She and It

by Marge Piercy

  The next few days were golden and ripe as perfect pears. Nili had disappeared on one of her quests. Yod patrolled the Base each day for twelve hours, but then he simply came home to Shira. With the revelation of his nature, Yod felt freed from Avram. He did not slip out but went straight from the lab to her. Ari shrieked when he saw Yod. Shira’s son did not view Yod as a figure of authority but as a superior and all-capable playfellow. Yod’s ability to tell stories was improving. Malkah coached him on the right way to hold Ari’s attention; Malkah had always been a fine storyteller. But Yod still sometimes missed the point of a human story. For Yod, knowledge and affection were goods he could understand coveting, but objects were of little value. The love of jewels and gold he found vaguely humorous. The sex roles of old stories confused him. In the world he knew, a princess was as apt to rescue a prince as vice versa. Since Ari loved to be told stories of any sort, he did not notice when Yod missed the point. Ari almost always missed the adult point of stories himself. It was the attention he craved and appreciated from Yod.

  They would lie in the grass of the courtyard and watch ants together. They played with the kittens round and round with string and tissue or rag butterflies. Yod was endlessly engrossed. As he told Shira, “I never was a child, so Ari’s mysterious to me. With every observation, I am learning about you, understanding Malkah and every one of you. Because so were you all. Once you were smaller than you are…” He took her wrist between two fingers. “It’s as if you used to be somebody else. A dozen other people, of different sizes.”

  “I’ll grow old too, Yod. Have you thought about that?”

  He winced. “Being old doesn’t matter. But I had never thought about your dying…When you die, I’ll die. I choose that.”

  “Lovers always talk that way at first, but they don’t really mean it. You’re partly biological. Maybe you’ll wear out in two centuries or ten. You too can die. We have to accept that we have this time and no other.”

  “Like the yellow rose.” He turned and looked at the place on the wall where the climbing rose had grown. “It overwhelms me. How can we just go on as if everything were permanent, when at any moment you may cease to be?”

  She laughed and kissed him glancingly. “Yod, you’ve reached adolescence without ever passing through childhood.”

  The house interrupted to announce Gadi, who swept in. “Uni-Par wants Nili. I knew they would. I think my exile might be coming to a timely end, dear people.”

  Malkah appeared carrying an apple, which she finished peeling in a single long banner of red. Then she cored the apple, cut it into segments, and slid the first slice into her mouth. It always amazed Shira how Malkah could make simple acts appear so dramatic that everyone would focus upon her, waiting. Finally Malkah asked, “Is Nili interested in this offer?”

  “Nili doesn’t understand, but she will, she will. I knew their eyes would pop like champagne corks when they saw her.”

  Shira asked, “Finally she let you tape her?”

  “The top dogs are howling for her. She projects reactions and feelings to Mars, even if she is a barbarian. Who can object?”

  “Probably Nili will,” Malkah said, savoring another slice of apple.

  Gadi paced, twirling so that his cloak flared silver from the lining. He was dressed in tight boots, a sort of gladiator tunic and a cape, high fashion in Veecee Beecee, she presumed. “I want to bring her back with me. She’s addictive. She needs toilet training, but the studio will teach her manners. They’re used to breaking in wild creatures. They’ll take her in hand and put a high gloss on her. But she’s absolutely one of a kind.”

  “When you tell her,” Malkah said, “I think I’ll hide under my bed.”

  “Malkah, you’re an old-fashioned old lady,” Gadi said, shaking his finger at her. “I’m ashamed of you. And I always thought you were so attuned to the latest quivers of the nouvelle thrill. I’m going to make her famous. What more could any slot lust for? She’ll be rich, and she can do for her people back in the cave any damned thing she pleases.”

  Shira had been listening but only slowly understanding. “Does Nili know you recorded her?”

  “She wouldn’t let me. I’m telling you, she’s like a savage with a fear of sensi-cams.”

  Shira was astonished at the protective rage she felt. “You had no right to record Nili without her permission! You’re endangering her.” She realized she had come to like Nili more than she had admitted to herself.

  “Now, is my little Ugi jealous? You’re a sensational woman, Shira, but what a sensi-cam loves is different from what a man standing in front of a woman wants. Nili records as power. She’ll project till the electrodes hum like money in two billion heads. She could be big.”

  “I’m sorry you recorded her,” Malkah said, looking up with her brow furrowed. “Sorry for both of you. Because you traffic in imaginary danger, you lose the sense to track and avoid real danger.”

  “Now look whose wires are cut!” Gadi gave her a big amused grin. “Your life’s work is building chimeras. Talk about out-of-body experiences—that’s where you spend your time. Don’t rattle me about imaginary. You’re the original flying witch.”

  Three days later Nili came back. “Careful,” she said to Malkah and Shira as they greeted her. “No hugging. My ribs are taped.”

  “Is Riva all right?” Malkah asked. “What happened?”

  Nili grinned. “Something blew up, and I got hit by flying debris. Riva’s fine. She says Y-S is about to move against you—she doesn’t know how, but she wants you to stay alert. She also sends word that the top dogs of Y-S are meeting in ten days on an island—Bellwether Island—off the coast of Maine. Max security in place. But a great chance for assassination. I’m to give the same message to Avram. Lazarus already knows.”

  “Riva plays no favorites,” Shira said bitterly.

  “She has a mission,” Nili said. “I wish I was as single-minded and as single-hearted as she is. Saints are hard to endure, no?”

  “Why do you call Riva a saint?”

  “A brave woman. A wise woman. One who pursues just aims regardless of the danger to herself. She sees what must be done, and she forces herself to do it. How can we not admire her?” Nili cocked her head, beaming.

  Nili made Shira feel guilty for her petulance. Perhaps she wanted to forgive Riva for being such a strange mother because this week, in spite of the shadow of the coming Council meeting and the greater shadow cast by the coming revenge of Y-S, she was happy. Every day was a gift. Every day was complete in itself, like a good and satisfying meal. She could not take anything for granted: not the way Ari laughed as he boxed with black Zayit; not the way Yod touched her, his hands at once wondering and precise, as if his fingers had eyes; all the different ways that Malkah laughed in the course of a day; the way the sunlight gentled by the wrap touched the long graceful yellowing leaves of the peach tree. She envied Yod’s not having to sleep, because she hated to lose any of the hours, precious and brief, that flowed over her. She never had enough time for any of them—not for Ari, not for Malkah, not for Yod, not even for Nili. She wondered why she had been impatient for Nili to leave. Yod had moved in, and still the house was big enough for all of them. “I wish I could meet your daughter,” she said to Nili.

  Nili looked bleak for a moment, her face sagging. Then she said cheerfully, “Someday of course you will, if the One pleases.”

  Ari had fallen in love with Nili and demanded she swing him. She spoke Hebrew to him, and he laughed and laughed, as if she were telling him jokes. “Hatul! Hatul!” he yelled at the cats. How could a child tell which words belonged to which language? Why didn’t multilingual children grow up talking an unintelligible mishmash? Why didn’t they say, “I mange et ha-tapuz ahora”? This child of hers was growing daily. She watched him for signs of trauma. Anything to do with daddies caused a shadow to pause on his face, but briefly. He had begun to go off eagerly to his day care. Even though she worked mostly at home, it was customa
ry in Tikva to send children to day care to learn to be with other children. The strong social character of the local upbringing began early. Children must be taught cooperation. They must learn to work and solve problems together.

  Yod asked if they should not tell Nili what Gadi had done, but Malkah shook her head vehemently. “Let lovers tell the truth to each other on their own time. It behooves us to hang back safely out of the way.”

  Shira thought to herself that if she had done to a lover what Gadi had done to Nili, she would have picked her moment of revelation with care. However, Gadi had no sense of having trespassed. He was proud of himself. He could not wait to impart his news. As soon as the com-con informed him Nili was back, he rushed over and was scarcely in the courtyard when he crowed, “Nili, you don’t appreciate my position in the industry. I’ve got an offer for you that’s going to curl your hair.”

  “What are you talking about? Slow down, calm down. What industry?”

  “The industry. Stimmies. They’re interested in you. My bosses.” He rattled off a list of names and titles.

  “Why would they be interested in me? I’m not interested in them,” Nili said reasonably. She was hefting Ari, who clung to her neck with his chubby arms. He was pounding on her, trying to usurp the attention she was paying to Gadi. Ari was rarely without some adult to amuse him, but Shira was trying to persuade him he must allow them to pay heed to one another as well.

  Malkah seemed absorbed in deadheading chrysanthemums. Shira had a book on her lap she pretended to be reading. Only Yod stared openly. He had risen to watch.

  “I taped you the other day—” Gadi began.

  “You what?” But Nili had heard. Gently she handed Ari over to Shira. He scowled in protest and tried a few cries, but clearly no one was looking at him. He fell silent in Shira’s lap. Nili stood very straight. “Where is this tape? It must be destroyed at once.”

  “It’s not a serious tape, Nili. Don’t get into worrying about how you look. It was just designed to show my bosses a little about you. And they bit. Hard. They want you. They sent a contract through the Net—”

  Nili took a step toward him, stopped. “Exactly what was on the tape?”

  “Your morning exercise routine.”

  Yod moved quietly closer to them, throwing a glance of query toward Shira. He could not decide if he should defend Gadi if Nili attacked him. He was quivering in his alert state. Shira motioned for him to come to her. She took his hand to keep him from interfering. “The house will protect if necessary,” she murmured.

  Nili picked up a brick. In her grip it crumbled. She let out her breath loudly. Drew in a deep breath, held it, let it out noisily. “You’ve committed a serious breach of security. I may have to return early.”

  “Nili, what are you afraid of? Anybody seeing it would just think you’re surgically enhanced like a lot of apes and assassins,” Gadi said, coming close to her and speaking in his silkiest, most seductive tones. “You’re beautiful, Nili, and millions will want to share who you are.”

  “Stop!” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’m a guest here.”

  Gadi stepped still closer. He put one hand on Nili’s shoulder. “You don’t understand. I’m talking an initial offer of forty-two K for a trial part in Nova Guards, third-string villain. They kill you off, but in such a way you can survive if fan reaction is hot. I’m acting as your agent, but if you’re not comfortable with that, I have someone good lined up who’ll take over the negotiations. I’m talking about a career that could net you a million by the end of two years if you’ve the potential I sense—”

  “I don’t want to be a toy. I have my own goals and the aims of my people. I am well loved. I don’t need the love of strangers.” She looked at his hand, took it gingerly between two fingers and dropped it away from her body. With the flat of her palm she gave him a short hard push from her.

  Shira wondered if that was why the life of a stimmie actress had little appeal for her too. Is it because Malkah gave me enough love? Gadi was starved for affection. Yet he no sooner captures a woman than he must be free of her. Perhaps that’s why he loves stimmies so passionately. You watch or buy or rent a stimmie and you enter that actor or actress. You feel what they feel. They’re yours. But you don’t belong to them. You are freed from the demands of reciprocity.

  Everyone began to relax. They realized that Nili had made a conscious decision not to loose her anger. Perhaps she feared she would kill Gadi. Perhaps she simply felt she was a guest in an alien culture and should respond carefully. Malkah looked at Nili in open admiration, suggesting, “When Gadi informs his superiors you’re not available, perhaps the tape can be returned.”

  “After being copied,” Nili said. “I should like them told that I was seized by organ bandits while swimming.”

  Malkah sat up straight. “Is that where the explosion occurred?”

  “We took out their facility,” Nili said briskly. “They’ve been raiding the Glop. Lazarus and his raiders, the Ram Blasters and theirs.” She stalked away from Gadi, her eyes still narrowed in anger. “I don’t sell or rent my body, by the organ or by the moment.”

  He grimaced. For a moment he looked all of fourteen and furious at the adults who had thwarted him. Then his face masked over, as he had learned to do during the intervening years. Shira doubted he accepted Nili’s decision, but she did not doubt that Nili would make him do so. If she bothered.

  Nili said flatly, “I’m very tired. My ribs are taped, and I’m covered with bruises. I need sleep. I’ll see you all tomorrow.” She turned and went upstairs. When Gadi started to follow her, she swung and stopped him. “No.”

  However, fifteen minutes after he left, she came back downstairs to sit with Malkah. By that time Shira was putting Ari to bed, and she and Yod were looking forward to chewing over the day together. Much, much later, when Shira was ready to go to sleep and looked in on Ari—a compulsion to see him sleeping, in spite of knowing that the house watched him constantly and would alert her to any problem—she heard their voices still wafting up. Malkah and Nili were talking in the courtyard. Only the Japanese lanterns illuminated the table where they sat drinking wine and eating melon, a vase of white spider chrysanthemums ghostly between them. Shira leaned forward to hear what they were talking about. Nanotechnology applied to health problems, particularly vision repair.

  Talking so intently that for once she was not aware of Shira, Nili was describing some operation her group had pioneered, a reknitting of the optic nerve. Malkah was asking details. They were completely absorbed. The moment of tension had passed.

  She wondered if Nili would forgive Gadi as she realized she herself finally had. Going softly back from her sleeping son to her inhuman, her better, dearer than human lover, she felt as if that painful radiant time had finally dimmed into ordinary memory. She was free of Gadi as he seemed at last free of her. They had become merely friends; not the best, not the worst. Gadi was losing a lover he wished to hold; she meant to keep hers. Yod was a part of her now, her real mate.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Lover Come Back

  Shira was on her way from the Base center, where her new work group had just been holding its Friday afternoon meeting. Every Monday morning all twenty of them met together face-to-face to plot out the week’s work. Friday at fourteen they exchanged news on their progress. In between, Shira might come into the old frame house that served as an office perhaps once and might run into a couple of the others. More often she would pass images of her fellow workers in the Base. But at the beginning and end of every work week they all sat around a conference table to discuss their work.

  Shira was still learning about these people. In late October, when it was her group’s turn to go by halves to plant trees, she would come to know whichever nine went with her very well indeed. Everybody in town put in an annual week planting trees in a deforested area. It was one of the only hopes in the world that the warming could be slowed down and eventually subside. Shira had
not been camping since she was in college, and the coming trip aroused both curiosity and apprehension. She did not like the idea of having to leave Ari for a week so soon after she had got him back, but reforestation was a duty that could not be put off. She was walking along on automatic pilot like a floater and almost bumped into Gadi before she noticed him.

  “She walks through me as if I were air, she who used to say I was the sun and the moon.” He blocked her path playfully. “Come on, you’re drafted for a walk-on. Everybody has a part.”

  She looked around the Commons and realized it had become a large stage setting. Almost a hundred people were gathered, many in costumes meant to suggest forty years before. “What’s going on?”

  “The Council has me making ‘The Founding of Tikva’ to educate the kiddies. I had Tomas Raffia zip me in a whole trash heap of stock footage on the Troubles. You know, Jew-hunting mobs, burning houses, montages of news shows, all that nasty stuff that followed the Two Week War. Or why we needed Tikva, in two easy lessons. In danger, we all like a bit of patriotic propaganda, right?” He was entirely changed, she realized, dressed in green and bronze. His tight-fitting sleeveless tunic flitted with leaf shapes, shimmering as if just under the surface. His tights were metallic bronze. His high-heeled shoes were emerald and made little sparks as he hustled her toward a pile of old clothes and a changing cubicle. “Put this on. You’re going to run for your life, so start getting into a terrified frame of mind.”

  “Gadi, I have to pick up Ari. Can’t I take part another time? I won’t come across scared, I’ll come across irritated.”

  “Nili won’t play either.” He swung around and shouted over his shoulder. “All right, Hannah, you’re the quarry. Okay, mob, get ready. Hannah, I want terror. Mob: fury, blood lust. You have your tapes. Plug in, grab that emotion, and we’ll start in five minutes.”

  Shira started to slip past when he leaned close, demanding she look him in the eyes. “Is Nili crazy? I thought she’d get excited when she saw this happening, that she’d get caught up in it like everybody else. All I want is to make her rich and powerful, and she slams the door.”