by Tanith Lee
The ideas were rather monotonous, though, all dancing and twining and having love, full of flowers and floating hair. Gorgeous, but banal. A challenge.
“This is it,” I said.
“What?” the Q-R asked.
“The work I want to do,” I said. “I mean, they are actually doing it, aren’t they?”
He looked the tiniest bit troubled, but said he would try to arrange a free room for me to try it, if I liked. I liked. He went off down the corridor while I buzzed around outside the neat little offices, peering in and probably frightening people with my paint-smeared hair and green nose, which I’d temporarily forgotten.
A spiral suddenly whirled down beside me and asked me to get on, and up I went, past moving limbs and flowery torsos, into another corridor, where a gaily striped messenger showed me into my own little playground, with my own little control bank and my own little big screen.
I did actually have to ask the reference machine how everything worked, but it was very simple really. And they wanted symbolism, did they, and emotions? All right. I must admit, though, I based it a bit on Sense Distortion, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.
I started with this golden haired girl walking through a sun-splashed forest of moving plants, and after a while the plants sort of became males. Only very slightly at first, but soon you could see for sure. They’re beautiful, long-limbed and really groshing, but still sort of imprisoned in the trunks of the plants they were, and you come to understand that you’re seeing them through the girl’s eyes, and she’s just imagining them to be males. Then it gets really weird. You see that while she’s looking at these plants as men, they’re looking at her as another plant, a sort of fantastic, pale-stemmed flower, her arms like long leaves, her hair a sunburst of huge golden petals, not walking anymore, just gently swaying there in the middle of them. Then they start fighting for her, first one at a time, then all at once, thrashing tendrils that become arms, and muscular leg movements that change back into writhing roots. I suppose it was a bit of a liberty, thinking this forest was so sex-starved it would go completely zaradann over one fragile-looking little flower, but there you are. Anyhow, this fight comes to an end and there’s the victor, a dark plant or a dark male with long black hair. And he moves after the girl-flower, and they go into a sort of running-away from coming-toward each other dance, and finally have love, tangled up in petals and leaves and limbs, which was strange and beautiful more than erotic, but anyway, I was pleased.
I pressed the signal button and a cage came down and took away the recorded track. I sat and waited.
I didn’t have to wait long, though.
An intercom signal screeched at me, and the three-dimensional image of some Q-R controller or other appeared a couple of feet away.
“Ah yes,” said the controller, “a very reasonable attempt, I must say. We rather enjoyed it.”
“Hurrah,” I said. I already knew.
“The trouble is, my dear,” murmured the controller quite sadly, “that there is too much story and too little eroticism. You must understand,” he went on, forestalling any possible outburst on my part, which I felt too tired to make anyway, “that picture-vision is almost entirely watched by the older groups of Four BEE. In addition, most people who watch it simply like to switch on and off when they wish, and if all our entertainments had plots, what confusion there would be, wouldn’t there?” Pause for chortle in which I did not join. “However,” he finished up, “your color sense and originality are promising. Perhaps we might have another talk about it when you’ve completed your period as Jang. Your ideas will be mellower then, more conventional, more acceptable, I’m sure. So do come back later on, if you still feel like helping our little company.”
I felt like throwing the reference machine at him, but I desisted.
My Q-R met me in the corridor.
“Don’t despair,” he said. “Have a little rest. See your friends. You were doing so well this morning.”
“Toasted angel-food,” I said, “makes me sick.” And I marched out and left him there, and went home.
PART THREE
1
In the night Hergal woke me up crashing on the Zeefahr.
One of my makers signaled me in the morning—I’m not sure which one because he’d changed, still male but another body—and asked me if I was all right.
“Oh yes, thanks. I’m fine.”
It was the last I heard of them, actually, but it was a nice thought.
Hatta had got some machine or other to write me a Jang love-poem, and the pet tore up all the silk flowers by the pool and brought them to me proudly, one by one, with a separate sneer in each orange eye.
I signaled the Picture-Vision Devisory Center and asked to have my track as a souvenir, in a bitter sort of voice that they ignored. I got the track, though, and the pet and I watched it run through over and over again, all afternoon, on the wall screen.
Night bloomed over Four BEE, and I went out walking along ancient, non-moving paths, the pet dogging my heels, playing with its shadow and mine, blackly cast from us by the big stars and the jeweled signs sizzling between buildings.
We went fire-riding at the Onyx Playgrounds, at least I did. The pet crouched under the cushions and snarled whenever a particularly bright sweep of flame whooshed by. Other fire-boats, gaudy and gold, leaped past in a spatter of sparks. I noticed two Older People, a male and a female, dressed to match in acid green, sitting in one holding hands and giggling like a couple of Jang. They got me down, somehow, and then they intrigued me, they looked so pleased with themselves. When they pressed their control for down, I followed them. We landed, and I tucked the pet, struggling and obstreperous, under one arm and tracked the couple between the fun booths and the fountains. Jang are always following people around, according to the Committee essays on Jang behavior. I’d never made much of a habit of it, but at least, if they turned around and saw me now, they wouldn’t throw a fit or anything.
They were tireless and absolutely boring in what they wanted to do. They kept stopping to catch fire, or crawl down the purple throats of great big furry snakes from Four BAA, and buying the most nauseous playground food you could think of and gobbling away at it.
Eventually they sat down in the middle of some non-wet, rainbow-colored and flower-scented fountains, and started twittering to each other. I’d stationed myself quietly a little way off, but the pet took this opportunity to blow its mind and went crashing over to them, kicking water around with its great big, fluffy, silly feet. I dashed after to catch it before it bit into their sugar thistledown-on-gold wands, or satisfied its bodily functions on their nice green boots or something. But everybody had made a hit somehow.
“What a charming animal,” they told me. Oh well, I could see they were prepared to go along with everything tonight.
The pet turned around and tried to bite me, just to show it knew who its friends really were.
“What a lovely body, my dear,” they congratulated me as I cavorted around, trying to avoid the pet’s teeth. “Let’s hope our girl,” the female added, “will have such good taste when she becomes one of the Jang,” and they both giggled.
Oh, I got it.
“You’re makers?” I asked pityingly, because they were sitting there quite breathless with wanting me to ask.
“Oh yes. Just,” they explained.
“This afternoon,” the female said, “Rul gave his half of the child. We watched the two halves being mated. Oh!” She patted Rul’s matching arm.
“Which of you is going to be the guardian?” I inquired. Only one maker has to accept legal custody of the child through its growing years and the time at hypno-school. After that it becomes Jang and a free agent anyway. These two disconcerted me, though, by saying:
“We thought we’d both stay together, at least until it becomes Jang.”
“My makers did that,” I said. I suddenly felt a sort of cold hollowness somewhere. “They split up a couple of units ag
o.” And their faces fell. I was rather ashamed of myself. “They were both predominantly male though,” I said to cheer them, “that’s why.” And cheered they were. Well, she was obviously predominantly female, at any rate. Too predominately female I should think, to be frank.
I said I must dash off and have ecstasy now, and everybody looked approving, except the thalldrap pet, who beseeched them with its eyes, seeming to say: “Once we’re alone together, she’ll beat me unmercifully.” I got its scruff, dragged it off them, and stalked away across the park.
“You let me down,” I accused it. It laughed. Truly, I’m certain it did. My bee fell on my head in front of a great big crowd water-skating.
“I wish you could answer me,” I snapped at the pet. “Then we could have a real dalika, and make it up afterward and feel better.”
And that was how I first thought of the child. Something to have a row with. It’s a dreadful admission I suppose, but there you are.
The pet went bounding away to play star-ball with some pale-haired Jang in the middle distance; I sat on an ornamental stone thing with rubies frozen in it, and the thoughts came creeping up on me.
A child. I, too, would make a child. The male involved was unimportant; he need have nothing further to do with the enterprise beyond providing the other half to mine. I would be the guardian. I would watch the flower grow in its crystallize twilight, take it home and tend it, send it out each period to hypno-school and receive it home again each mid-period, glorying in its accomplishments. I could discuss its problems with it. I would stimulate its interests and desires. I would help to make a person, a baby, a Jang, an adult. I throbbed with obscure but passionate love for my yet unmade, unrealized second self.
2
“I know exactly what you’re going to say,” I told my poor old Q-R with the water carpet.
“Indeed.”
“Oh yes. You’re going to say: ‘We have come up against the original problem. You are Jang, and you are too young, and you must go on being Jang and too young for another quarter rorl.’ However, I’ve looked it up in the flash records at the History Museum, and it’s happened before.”
“Perhaps you would tell me what happened before,” my Q-R suggested.
“Jang becoming makers.”
“I see,” said the Q-R. “You want to become a maker.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And who is the other maker?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“My dear young lady,” said the Q-R, “it may not have told you in the flash records, but when members of the Jang have been granted permission to become makers, it has always been when a young male and female have formed a particularly strong attachment and wish to cement their closeness with a child.”
I was all mental agility this morning, though.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll admit there’s a special male I have in mind, but he’s in Sense Distortion at the moment. He’s had it booked for ages and couldn’t break the appointment, or he’d be here with me now. We’ve thought about making a child for a long while,” I went on, dreamy-eyed. “A part of ourselves …”
“Really?” asked the Q-R. He wasn’t sure, I could tell. He flicked through circuits and relays, and said, “Apparently the ruling is not so strict now, anyway. If you are willing to undergo the relevant examinations, we will consider your application.”
I nearly had a seizure.
“You will?” I honked.
“Yes,” said the Q-R. It suddenly struck me that he really was kind, or really had been programmed to be kind. “I know,” he said, “how difficult you are finding things at the moment and, in my judgment, I feel a relationship with a growing being might well help you. Providing, of course, you recognize that a certain amount of Committee inspection will take place during the child’s early years.”
I burbled happily. The Committee could inspect what they liked. I’d trot the child out, singing, “I love Four BEE and hypno-school, and I will be Jang beyond Jang,” if they wanted. Oh, derisann Q-R!
I went by sledge to a pale yellow, soothing sort of room, where two or three Q-Rs in gold encouraged me to tell them why I wanted to make a child. When I reeled off all this stuff about presenting Four BEE with another happy citizen, they looked quite surprised, but I knew I was saying the right things. I’d read up on it all, you see. I also said I felt associating with a child’s naivety and innocence would give me a sort of mental tonic bath, and they went wild at that. I actually sort of felt it anyway, so I suppose it rang sincere. Apparently difficult, tosky, nuisance Jang like me had been reformed before by prolonged sexual relationships and the making of children.
Then we got on to another subject: “You realize your chosen male must be another Jang, and where is he?” So I trotted out the Sense Distortion thing again. When you attend Sense Distortion, it can go on for ages, and you can be anonymous while you’re at it. It’s a sort of safety valve. I suppose, a manner of getting out of it all. So my chosen male, whose name I didn’t give, was shut away for the moment and I wasn’t quite sure when he’d emerge.
They accepted it blithely; obviously the rules were a bit slacker now or they’d have been routing everyone out of Sense Distortion till they found him.
Then I had to go wait in a room full of bowls of ecstasy pills and love machines, and after a million and one vreks a messenger came to take me back, and they said it was going to be all right.
They gave me a little chat next on the responsibilities of makerhood, how I could apply for help and where from, how the Committee would send Q-Rs to inspect my efforts—apparently gaily informal little visits, gurgles at baby and furry toys and so on, but I’m not that selt—and warnings about forms I would have to fill out later for hypno-school and the rest. Making children is fairly involved.
I felt terribly overexcited and glowing, with hot cheeks and banging heart. When they sent me on to the medical this enthusiasm registered on the machines, and the Q-Rs looked moist-eyed. I honestly nearly went out of my mind trying not to laugh at them. I had this feeling if I started I might not stop, and they’d mark me as One-A First-Class Hysteric and say no children ever! So I hung on while they took blood groups, brain electricity readings, and chalk measures of bones. Then someone leaned over me and said did I want to make a male or a female.
“Female,” I responded, rather aggressively I suspect.
They asked if my chosen mate was in agreement
Oh yes, of course.
Well, of course he would be, wouldn’t he, whoever he was? And it suddenly seemed it had to be someone a bit special, after all.
I suppose they’d corrupted me into feeling that.
3
And the ghastly thing was, the first person I thought of was Hergal.
I tried to reason myself out of it.
Hergal is such a bore, I kept telling myself, and decidedly off-Jang and zaradann to boot, and oh, all sorts of things.
But it wasn’t any good. I suppose I’ll always have a soft spot for the mannerless, vague nonchalance of him, the essence of his life spark, so alien to and yet, in some weird way, so parallel to mine.
He’d still be in Limbo probably, after the last crash—the forty-first, wasn’t it?—but that wasn’t a problem. As to having him cut out of my circle, I’d since cut myself out as well, so we were sort of outcasts together, so to speak.
Actually he came into the dream. The dream is what they give you while they take the necessary half from you to make the child. The main idea is to get you to dream of being with the child, and it’s wildly idyllic, so you’re practically weeping with joy in your sleep. I was running with her, my child, across rose fields full of scent and pink sunlight, and both our hair was scarlet, clashing with everything, only we didn’t care. There wasn’t much to it, just this bursting, sobbing happiness that shakes the heart out of you. And then the child looked up and pointed at something glittering in the sky.
“Maker, what’s that?”
And it was silly old Hergal, looking utterly groshing, entirely gold and catching the sun, flying around and around in circles on these huge angel’s wings that really worked.
So I woke up, and they’d popped my half into crystallize cold-storage; they said to send my male along as soon as he was ready, and they’d get cracking on it. And I thought of Hergal.
I was so happy riding to Limbo on the floating bridge. I kept going off into these crazy euphorics about how wonderful the life spark was, that little, indefinable something which has to be made initially by a male and a female, no matter how many bodies it hops in and out of once it’s grown up. It still puzzles everyone, that. The Q-R scientists can’t come to terms with it, even now. They sort of go “Er, humph!” whenever anyone mentions it.
“The essential difference between the Quasi-Robot (android) and the living man,” the books have it, “lies in the fact that the Quasi-Robot is living flesh motivated by electrodes, metallic plasma, and a steel brain, built into the cells as they grow. Man is pure flesh without electronic or metallic interference, created from female and male cells, containing that ancient element once termed the Soul.”
But I was crazy with joy on the bridge, thinking of my half, lying waiting, the tiny spark from my spark, little pale ooma, my child, my self. I felt as if I were in ecstasy, but I hadn’t touched a pill for ages.
Near Limbo, I realized I hadn’t got anything to take Hergal, so I went and stole a robotic serpent with pearl plating, really insumatt, then felt mean and went all the way back to pay for it; it wouldn’t really be a present, after all, if I’d stolen it, would it?
When I got to Limbo, I had the usual trouble with everyone trying to find Hergal. I hadn’t seen the flash about his new body, and wondered what he’d be like this time. I soon found out.