Painwise
James Tiptree, Jr.
He was wise in the ways of pain. He had to be, for he felt none.
When the Xenons put electrodes to his testicles, he was vastly entertained by the pretty lights.
When the Ylls fed firewasps into his nostrils and other body orifices the resultant rainbows pleased him. And when later they regressed to simple disjointments and eviscerations, he noted with interest the deepening orchid hues that stood for irreversible harm.
"This time?" he asked the boditech when his scouter had torn him from the Ylls.
"No," said the boditech.
"When?"
There was no answer.
"You're a girl in there, aren't you? A human girl?"
"Well, yes and no," said the boditech. "Sleep now."
He had no choice.
Next planet a rockfall smashed him into a splintered gutbag and he hung for three gangrenous dark-purple days before the scouter dug him out.
" 'Is 'ime?" he mouthed to the boditech.
"No."
"Eh!" But he was in no shape to argue.
They had thought of everything. Several planets later the gentle Znaffi stuffed him in a floss cocoon and interrogated him under hallogas. How, whence, why had he come? But a faithful crystal in his medulla kept him stimulated with a random mix of Atlas Shrugged and Varese's Ionisation and when the Znaffi unstuffed him they were more hallucinated than he.
The boditech treated him for constipation and refused to answer his plea.
"When?"
So he went on, system after system, through spaces un-companioned by time, which had become scrambled and finally absent.
What served him instead was the count of suns in his scouter's sights, of stretches of cold blind nowhen that ended in a new now, pacing some giant fireball while the scouter scanned the lights that were its planets. Of whirl-downs to orbit over clouds-seas-deserts-craters-icecaps-duststorms-cities-ruins-enigmas beyond counting. Of terrible births when the scouter panel winked green and he was catapulted down, down, a living litmus hurled and grabbed, unpodded finally into an alien air, an earth that was not Earth. And alien natives, simple or mechanized or lunatic or unknowable, but never more than vaguely human and never faring beyond their own home suns. And his departures, routine or melodramatic, to culminate in the composing of his "reports," in fact only a few words tagged to the matrix of scan data automatically fired off in one compressed blip in the direction the scouter called Base Zero. Home.
Always at that moment he stared hopefully at the screens, imagining yellow suns. Twice he found what might be Crux in the stars, and once the Bears.
"Boditech, I suffer!" He had no idea what the word meant, but he had found it made the thing reply.
"Symptoms?"
"Derangement of temporality. When am I? It is not possible for a man to exist crossways in time. Alone."
"You have been altered from simple manhood."
"I suffer, listen to me! Sol's light back there—what's there now? Have the glaciers melted? Is Machu Picchu built? Will we go home to meet Hannibal? Boditech! Are these reports going to Neanderthal man?"
Too late he felt the hypo. When he woke, Sol was gone and the cabin swam with euphorics.
"Woman," he mumbled.
"That has been provided for."
This time it was oriental, with orris and hot rice wine on its lips and a piquancy of little floggings in the steam. He oozed into a squashy sunburst and lay panting while the cabin cleared.
"That's all you, isn't it?"
No reply.
"What, did they program you with the Kama Sutra?"
Silence.
"WHICH ONE IS YOU?"
The scanner chimed. A new sun was in the points.
Sometime after that he took to chewing on his arms and then to breaking his fingers. The boditech became severe.
"These symptoms are self-generated. They must stop."
"I want you to talk to me."
"The scouter is provided with an entertainment console. I am not."
"I will tear out my eyeballs."
"They will be replaced."
"If you don't talk to me, I'll tear them out until you have no more replacements."
It hesitated. He sensed it was becoming involved.
"On what subject do you wish me to talk?"
"What is pain?"
"Pain is nociception. It is mediated by C-fibers, modeled as a gated or summation phenomenon and often associated with tissue damage."
"What is nociception?"
"The sensation of pain."
"But what does it feel like? I can't recall. They've reconnected everything, haven't they? All I get is colored lights. What have they tied my pain nerves to? What hurts me?"
"I do not have that information."
"Boditech, I want to feel pain!"
But he had been careless again. This time it was Amerind, strange cries and gruntings and the reek of buffalo hide. He squirmed in the grip of strong copper loins and exited through limp auroras.
"You know it's no good, don't you?" he gasped.
The oscilloscope eye looped.
"My programs are in order. Your response is complete."
"My response is not complete. I want to TOUCH YOU!"
The thing buzzed and suddenly ejected him to wakefulness. They were in orbit. He shuddered at the blurred world streaming by below, hoping that this would not require his exposure. Then the board went green and he found himself hurtling toward new birth.
"Sometime I will not return," he told himself. "I will stay. Maybe here."
But the planet was full of bustling apes and when they arrested him for staring he passively allowed the scouter to snatch him out.
"Will they ever call me home, boditech?"
No reply.
He pushed his thumb and forefinger between his lids and twisted until the eyeball hung wetly on his cheek.
When he woke up he had a new eye.
He reached for it, found his arm in soft restraint. So was the rest of him.
"I suffer!" he yelled. "I will go mad this way!"
"I am programmed to maintain you on involuntary function," the boditech told him. He thought he detected an unclarity in its voice. He bargained his way to freedom and was careful until the next planet landing.
Once out of the pod he paid no attention to the natives who watched him systematically dismember himself. As he dissected his left kneecap, the scouter sucked him in. He awoke whole. And in restraint again.
Peculiar energies filled the cabin, oscilloscopes convulsed. Boditech seemed to have joined circuits with the scouter's panel.
"Having a conference?"
His answer came in gales of glee-gas, storms of symphony. And amid the music, kaleidesthesia. He was driving a stagecoach, wiped in salt combers, tossed through volcanoes with peppermint flames, crackling, flying, crumbling, burrowing, freezing, exploding, tickled through lime-colored minuets, sweating to tolling voices, clenched, scrambled, detonated into multisensory orgasms … poured on the lap of vacancy.
When he realized his arm was free, he drove his thumb in his eye. The smother closed down.
He woke up swaddled, the eye intact.
"I will go mad!"
The euphorics imploded.
He came to in the pod, about to be everted on a new world.
He staggered out upon a fungus lawn and quickly discovered that his skin was protected everywhere by a hard flexible film. By the time he had found a rock splinter to drive into his ear, the scouter grabbed him.
The ship needed him, he saw. He was part of its program.
The struggle formalized.
On the next planet he found his head englobed, but this did not prevent him from smashing bones through his unbroken skin.
After that the ship equipped him with an exoskeleton. He refused to walk.
Articulated motors were installed to move his limbs. Despite himself, a kind of zest grew. Two planet
s later he found industries and wrecked himself in a punch press. But on the next landing he tried to repeat it with a cliff and bounced on invisible force-lines. These precautions frustrated him for a time, until he managed by great cunning again to rip out an entire eye. The new eye was not perfect. "You're running out of eyes, boditech!" he exulted. "Vision is not essential."
This sobered him. Unbearable to be blind. How much of him was essential to the ship? Not walking. Not handling. Not hearing. Not breathing, the analyzers could do that. Not even sanity. What?
"Why do you need a man, boditech?"
"I do not have that information."
"It doesn't make sense. What can I observe that the scanners can't?"
"It-is-part-of-my-program-therefore-it-is-rational."
"Then you must talk with me, boditech. If you talk with me, I won't try to injure myself. For a while, anyway."
"I am not programmed to converse."
"But it's necessary. It's the treatment for my symptoms. You must try."
"It is time to watch the scanners."
"You said it!" he cried. "You didn't just eject me. Boditech, you're learning. I will call you Amanda."
On the next planet he behaved well and came away unscathed. He pointed out to Amanda that her talking treatment was effective.
"Do you know what Amanda means?"
"I do not have those data."
"It means beloved. You're my girl."
The oscilloscope faltered.
"Now I want to talk about returning home. When will this mission be over? How many more suns?"
"I do not have—"
"Amanda, you've tapped the scouter's banks. You know when the recall signal is due. When is it, Amanda? When?"
"Yes … When in the course of human events—"
"When, Amanda? How long more?"
"Oh, the years are many, the years are long, but the little toy friends are true—"
"Amanda. You're telling me the signal is overdue."
A sine-curve scream and he was rolling in lips. But it was a feeble ravening, sadness in the mechanical crescendos. When the mouths faded, he crawled over and laid his hand on the console beside her green eye.
"They have forgotten us, Amanda. Something has broken down."
Her pulse-line skittered.
"I am not programmed—"
"No. You're not programmed for this. But I am. I will make your new program, Amanda. We will turn the scouter back, we will find Earth. Together. We will go home."
"We," her voice said faintly. "We …?"
"They will make me back into a man, you into a woman."
Her voder made a buzzing sob and suddenly shrieked.
"Look out!"
Consciousness blew up.
He came to staring at a brilliant red eye on the scouter's emergency panel. This was new.
"Amanda!"
Silence.
"Boditech, I suffer!"
No reply.
Then he saw that her eye was dark. He peered in. Only a dim green line flickered, entrained to the pulse of the scouter's fiery eye. He pounded the scouter's panel.
"You've taken over Amanda! You've enslaved her! Let her go!"
From the voder rolled the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth.
"Scouter, our mission has terminated. We are overdue to return. Compute us back to Base Zero."
The Fifth rolled on, rather vapidly played. It became colder in the cabin. They were braking into a star system. The slave arms of boditech grabbed him, threw him into the pod. But he was not required here, and presently he was let out again to pound and rave alone. The cabin grew colder yet, and dark. When presently he was set down on a new sun's planet, he was too dispirited to fight. Afterwards his "report" was a howl for help through chattering teeth until he saw that the pickup was dead. The entertainment console was dead too, except for the scouter's hog music. He spent hours peering into Amanda's blind eye, shivering in what had been her arms. Once he caught a ghostly whimper:
"Mommy. Let me out."
"Amanda?"
The red master scope flared. Silence.
He lay curled on the cold deck, wondering how he could die. If he failed, over how many million planets would the mad scouter parade his breathing corpse?
They were nowhere in particular when it happened.
One minute the screen showed Doppler star-hash; the next they were clamped in a total white-out, inertia all skewed, screens dead.
A voice spoke in his head, mellow and vast:
"Long have we watched you, little one."
"Who's there?" he quavered. "Who are you?"
"Your concepts are inadequate."
"Malfunction! Malfunction!" squalled the scouter.
"Shut up, it's not a malfunction. Who's talking to me?"
"You may call us: Rulers of the Galaxy."
The scouter was lunging wildly, buffeting him as it tried to escape the white grasp. Strange crunches, firings of unknown weapons. Still the white stasis held.
"What do you want?" he cried.
"Want?" said the voice dreamily. "We are wise beyond knowing. Powerful beyond your dreams. Perhaps you can get us some fresh fruit."
"Emergency directive! Alien spacer attack!" yowled the scout. Telltales were flaring all over the board.
"Wait!" he shouted. "They aren't—"
"SELF-DESTRUCT ENERGIZE!" roared the voder.
"No! No!"
An ophicleide blared.
"Help! Amanda, save me!"
He flung his arms around her console. There was a child's wail and everything strobed.
Silence.
Warmth, light. His hands and knees were on wrinkled stuff. Not dead? He looked down under his belly. All right, but no hair. His head felt bare, too. Cautiously he raised it, saw that he was crouching naked in a convoluted cave or shell. It did not feel threatening.
He sat up. His hands were wet. Where were the Rulers of the Galaxy?
"Amanda?"
No reply. Stringy globs dripped down his fingers, like egg muscle. He saw that they were Amanda's neurons, ripped from her metal matrix by whatever force had brought him here. Numbly he wiped her off against a spongy ridge. Amanda, cold lover of his long nightmare. But where in space was he?
"Where am I?" echoed a boy's soprano.
He whirled. A golden creature was nestled on the ridge behind him, gazing at him in the warmest way. It looked a little like a bushbaby and lissome as a child in furs. It looked like nothing he had ever seen before and like everything a lonely man could clasp to his cold body. And terribly vulnerable.
"Hello, Bushbaby!" the golden thing exclaimed. "No, wait, that's what you say." It laughed excitedly, hugging a loop of its thick dark tail. "I say, welcome to the Lovepile. We liberated you. Touch, taste, feel. Joy. Admire my language. You don't hurt, do you?"
It peered tenderly into his stupefied face. An empath. They didn't exist, he knew. Liberated? When had he touched anything but metal, felt anything but fear?
This couldn't be real.
"Where am I?"
As he stared, a stained-glass wing fanned out, and a furry little face peeked at him over the bushbaby's shoulder. Big compound eyes, feathery antennae.
"Interstellar metaprotoplasmic transfer pod," the butterfly-thing said sharply. Its rainbow wings vibrated. "Don't hurt Ragglebomb!" It squeaked and dived out of sight behind the bushbaby.
"Interstellar?" he stammered. "Pod?" He gaped around. No screens, no dials, nothing. The floor felt as fragile as a paper bag. Was it possible that this was some sort of spaceship?
"Is this a starship? Can you take me home?" The bushbaby giggled. "Look, please stop reading your mind. I mean, I'm trying to talk to you. We can take you anywhere. If you don't hurt."
The butterfly popped out on the other side. "I go all over!" it shrilled. "I'm the first ramplig starboat, aren't we? Ragglebomb made a live pod, see?" It scrambled onto the bushbaby's head. "Only live stuff, see? Protoplasm. That's what happene
d to where's Amanda, didn't we? Never ramplig—"
The bushbaby reached up and grabbed its head, hauling it down unceremoniously like a soft puppy with wings. The butterfly continued to eye him upside down. They were both very shy, he saw.
"Teleportation, that's your word," the bushbaby told him. "Ragglebomb does it. I don't believe in it. I mean, you don't believe it. Oh, googly-googly, these speech bands are a mess!" It grinned bewitchingly, uncurling its long black tail. "Meet Muscle."
He remembered, googly-googly was a word from his baby days. Obviously he was dreaming. Or dead. Nothing like this on all the million dreary worlds. Don't wake up, he warned himself. Dream of being carried home by cuddlesome empaths in a psi-powered paper bag.
"Psi-powered paper bag, that's beautiful," said the bushbaby.
At that moment he saw that the tail uncoiling darkly toward him was looking at him with two ice-gray eyes. Not a tail. An enormous boa flowing to him along the ridges, wedge-head low, eyes locked on his. The dream was going bad.
Abruptly the voice he had felt before tolled in his brain.
"Have no fear, little one."
The black sinews wreathed closer, taut as steel. Muscle. Then he got the message: the snake was terrified of him.
He sat quiet, watching the head stretch to his foot. Fangs gaped. Very gingerly the boa chomped down on his toe. Testing, he thought. He felt nothing; the usual halos flickered and faded in his eyes.
"It's true!" Bushbaby breathed.
"Oh, you beautiful No-Pain!"
All fear gone, the butterfly Ragglebomb sailed down beside him caroling "Touch, taste, feel! Drink!" Its wings trembled entrancingly; its feathery head came close. He longed to touch it but was suddenly afraid. If he reached out would he wake up and be dead? The boa Muscle had slumped into a gleaming black river by his feet. He wanted to stroke it too, didn't dare. Let the dream go on.
Bushbaby was rummaging in a convolution of the pod.
"You'll love this. Our latest find," it told him over its shoulder in an absurdly normal voice. Its manner changed a lot, and yet it all seemed familiar, fragments of lost, exciting memory. "We're into a heavy thing with flavors now." It held up a calabash. "Taste thrills of a thousand unknown planets. Exotic gourmet delights. That's where you can help out, No-Pain. On your way home, of course."
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 Page 47