The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin

by Lisa Yaszek

  About nine o’clock the next morning I heard a heli landing on the roof and I thought, Now who? There was much tooting, and when I went up, Regina practically threw Hi-nin at me.

  “I told you so,” she snapped at me. Her face was burning red and she wasn’t bothering to tilt her nose.

  “What happened? Why did you bring him back to me?”

  “His hand,” she said, and took off.

  Hand? He was holding one hand over the other. No! I grabbed his hands to see what it was.

  One hand had obviously been bitten off at the wrist. He was holding the wound with the tentacles of his other little boneless hand. There was very little blood.

  “It is as nothing,” he said, but when I cradled him in my arms, I could feel him shaking all over.

  “It will grow back,” he said.

  Would it?

  I took him in the heli and held him while I drove. I could feel him trying to stop himself from shaking, but he couldn’t.

  “Does it hurt very much?” I asked.

  “The pain is small,” he said. “It is the fear. The fear is terrible. I am unable to swallow it.”

  I was unable to swallow it, too.

  “The hand,” said Mrs. His-tara without concern, “will grow back. But the things within my son . . .” She, too, began to tremble involuntarily.

  “Billy,” I began, feeling the blood come through my lower lip, “Billy and I are . . .” It was too inadequate to say it.

  “It was not Billy,” Hi-nin said without rancor. “It was Gail.”

  “Gail! Gail doesn’t bite!” But she had, and I broke down and plain cried.

  “Do not trouble yourself,” said Mrs. His-tara. “My son receives from this a wound that does not heal. On Hiserea he would be forever sick, you understand. On your world, where everyone is born with this open wound, it will be his protection. So Mrs. Baden warned me and I think she is wise.”

  As soon as I got home, I called up Regina. She looked pale and lifeless against the gaudy, irresponsible objects in the art shop.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she said quickly. “I can’t drive and watch the children at the same time. I told you the children would eat . . .” She stopped, and for the first time I saw Regina really horrified with herself.

  “Nobody said it was your fault. But don’t you think you could have taken Hi-nin home yourself ? To show Mrs. His-tara that—I don’t know what it would show.”

  It reminded me, somehow, of the time Regina stepped on a lizard and left it in great pain, pulling itself along by its tiny front paws, and I had said, “Regina, you can’t leave that poor thing suffering,” and she had said, “Well, I didn’t step on it on purpose,” and I had said, “Somebody’s got to kill it now,” and she had said, “I’ve got a class.” I could still feel the crunch of it under my foot as its tiny life went out.

  “Sorry, Verne,” she said, “you got yourself into this,” and hung up.

  That night Regina called me. “Can you give blood?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “If I stuff myself, I can get the scales up to a hundred and ten pounds.”

  “What type?”

  “B. Rh positive.”

  “Thought you told me that once. Gail is in the hospital. They have to replace every drop of blood in her body. She may die anyhow.”

  I thought of the little fluff and squeak that was Gail. I eat de crus’ of de toas’.

  “What’s the matter with her?” I asked fearfully.

  “That damn Hiserean child is poison. Gail had a little cut inside her mouth from where she fell off the slide at school.”

  “I’ll be at the hospital in ten minutes,” I said, and hung up shakily. “Dinner is set for seven-thirty,” I told Clay and Billy, and rushed out.

  The first person I saw at the hospital was not Regina. It was Mrs. His-tara.

  “How did you know?” I asked. Her integument was dull now and there were patches of scales rubbed off. Her eyes were almost not visible.

  “Mrs. Crowley called me,” she said. “In any case I would have been here. There is in Hi-nin also of poison. There remains for him only the Return Home. We must rejoice for him.”

  The smile she brought forth was more than I could bear.

  “Gail’s germs were poison to him?”

  “Oh, no. He poisons himself. It is an ancient hormone, from the early days of our race when we had what your Mrs. Baden so wisely calls aggression. It is dormant in us since before the accounting of our history. An adult Hiserean, perhaps, could fight his emotions and cure himself. Hi-nin has no weapons—so your physicians have explained it to me, from our scientific books. How can I doubt that they are right?”

  How could I doubt it, either? It would be, I thought, rather like a massive overdose of adrenalin. Psychogenic, of course, but what help was it to know that? Would there be some organ in Hi-nin a surgeon could remove? Like the adrenals in humans, perhaps?

  Of course not. If they could have, they would have.

  I hurried on to find the room where Gail was. She was not pale, as I had expected, but pink-cheeked and bright-eyed. They were probably putting in more blood than they were taking out. There were two of the other mamas from our car pool, waiting their turns.

  Regina was sitting by the bed, her face ugly and swollen from crying.

  “She looks just fine!” I exclaimed.

  “Only in the last fifteen minutes,” she said. “When I called you, she was like ice. Her eyes didn’t move.”

  “We’re lucky with Gail. Did you know about Hi-nin?”

  “The little animal!” she said. “He’s the one that did it.”

  “He didn’t do anything, Regina, and you know it.”

  “He shouldn’t have been in the car pool. He shouldn’t be with human children at all.”

  “He’s going to die,” I said quickly, before she had time to say things she’d have nightmares about later on.

  “Sorry,” Regina said, because we were all looking at her and because her child was pink and beautiful and healthy while Hi-nin . . .

  “Regina,” I said, “what did you do after it happened?”

  “Do! It scared the hell out of me—that creature shaking all over and Gail screaming. At first I didn’t know what had happened. Then I saw that thing flopping around on the front seat and I screamed and threw it out of the window. And then I noticed Hi-nin’s wrist, or whatever you call it. I said, ‘Oh, God, I knew you’d get us in trouble!’ But the creature didn’t say anything. He just sat there. And I let the other children off and brought Hi-nin to you because I didn’t want to get involved with that Mrs. Baden.”

  “And Gail?”

  “She seemed all right. She just climbed in the back with the other children and pretty soon they were all laughing.”

  “And all that time little Hi-nin . . . Regina, didn’t you even pat him or hold him or kiss it for him or anything?”

  “Kiss it!”

  At that moment Mrs. His-tara came in, with Mrs. Baden and a doctor behind her. I should have known. Mrs. Baden didn’t leave people to fight battles alone.

  Mrs. His-tara looked at Mrs. Baden, but Mrs. Baden only nodded and smiled encouragingly at her.

  The doctor was gently pulling the needle out of Gail’s vein. The room was silent. Even Gail sat large-eyed and solemn.

  “Mrs. Crowley,” Mrs. His-tara began, obviously dragging each word up with great effort, “would it be accurate to tell my son that Gail has received no hurt from him? We must, you see, prepare him for the Return Home.”

  Regina looked around at us and at Gail. She hadn’t dared let herself look at Mrs. His-tara yet.

  “Doctor!” Regina called suddenly. “Look at Gail’s mouth!”

  Even from where I was, I could see it. A scaly growth along both lips.

  “Th
at’s a temporary effect of the serum,” the doctor said. “We tried an antitoxin before we decided to change the blood. It is nothing to worry about.”

  “Oh.”

  “Mrs. Crowley,” Mrs. His-tara began again, “it is much to ask, but at such a moment, much is required. If you could come yourself, and if Gail could endure to be carried . . .”

  But Gail did, indeed, look queer, and she stretched out her arms not to her mother but to Mrs. His-tara.

  “The tides,” Mrs. His-tara said, “have cast us up a miracle.”

  She gathered Gail into the boneless cradle of her curved arms.

  Regina took her sunglasses out of her purse and hid her eyes. “Mind your own damned business,” she told Mrs. Baden and me.

  “It is our damned business,” I whispered to Mrs. Baden, and she held my arm as we followed Regina down the hall.

  Mrs. His-tara threaded her way through a cordon of other Hisereans who must have been flown in for the occasion. I couldn’t see the children, but I could hear them.

  “Him cold!” said Gail. “Him scared!”

  “He’s scared of you,” Regina said. “We’re sorry, Gail. Tell him we’re sorry. We didn’t understand.”

  Gail laughed. A loud and healthy laugh.

  “Gail sorry,” she said. “Me thought you was to eat.”

  There was a small sound. I thought it was from Hi-nin and I held Mrs. Baden’s hand as though it were my only link to a sane world.

  “Dat a joke,” Gail said. “Hi-nin ’posed to laugh!”

  Then there was a silence and Regina started to say something but Mrs. His-tara whispered, “Please! It is a thought between the children.”

  Then there was a small, quiet laugh from Hi-nin. “In truth,” he said with that oh, so familiar lisp, “it is funny.”

  “Me don’t do it again,” Gail said, solemn now.

  When I got home it was so late that the stars were sliding down the sky and I just knew Clay wouldn’t have thought to turn the parking lights on. But he had.

  Furthermore, he was still up.

  “Were you worried?” I asked delightedly.

  “No. Regina called a couple of hours ago.”

  “Regina?”

  “She said she was concerned about the expression on your face.”

  Clay handed me a present, all wrapped in gold stickum with an electronic butterfly bouncing airily around on it.

  I peeled the paper off carefully, to save it for Billy, and set the butterfly on the sticky side.

  Inside the box was a gorgeous blue fluffy affair of no apparent utility.

  “Oh, Clay!” I gasped. “I can’t wear anything like this!” I slipped out of my paper clothes and the gown slithered around me.

  Hastily, I pulled the pins out of my hair, brushed it back and smeared on some lipstick.

  “I look silly,” I said. “I’m all the wrong type.” My little crayola note was still stuck in the mirror. Phooey to me. “You’re laughing at me.”

  “I’m not. You don’t really look respectable at all, Verne.”

  I ran into the dining area. “Regina told you about the boudoir slip!”

  I heard Clay stumble over a chair in the dark.

  “Obscenity!” he said. “All right, she did. So what? I think you look like a call girl.”

  I ran into the living room and hid behind the sofa. “Do you really, truly think so?”

  “Absolutely!” Another chair clattered and Clay toed the living room lights. “Ah!” he said. “I’ve got you cornered. You look like a chorus girl. You look like an easy pickup. You look like a dirty little—”

  “Stop,” I cried, “while you’re still winning!”

  1959

  ELIZABETH MANN BORGESE

  For Sale, Reasonable

  TO Whom It May Concern:*

  I should like to apply for work on a permanent basis. It is difficult, I know, to compete with machines today, but I offer special features that few machines can match, and the savings involved in acquiring my services are substantial.

  I’ve won the telequiz on football, on vital statistics, and on the history of Italian miniature painting. Even while operating sixteen hours a day in any given field, I am able to “learn” a new matter within the span of a week, the facts being fed to me by a radio under the pillow during the four hours at night I need for recharging. I can play at one time six games of bridge without looking at any of them. I can beat the most complex electronic chess machine and resist for eighty days the robot that plays “odd and even.”

  I am conditioned to work immediately on calculating long-range effects of new methods of salesmanship on the shopping habits of middle-aged women in small and medium-sized rural communities in the corn-belt area. You may install me free of charge for a trial period of ninety days.

  The services I can offer are hard for a machine to beat. The robot gets out of order once in a while, suffers indispositions entailing expensive repairs. My physical condition is stabilized: I’ve had a flu shot and a cold shot and an omnivalent antibacterial. It would take something very unusual to strip my gears. I’ve had a brain wash, a pain screen, and a dissexer, and my disposition, you will understand, is very gentle indeed—a claim which cannot be made for the machine in each and every case.

  I am not divulging any secret, although the press has been suppressing the facts, if I remind you that there’s been trouble brewing with the machines of late, from the—how shall I call it—psycho-technical angle. Played-down headings, such as “Belgium’s New Giant Brain Refuses to Think,” or “Harvard Supercalculator’s Forecast on U.S. Happy-Pill Consumption Undecodable,” crop up again and again on the back pages of our papers, despite the above-mentioned tendency to sit on the news. The plain fact is that the machines are jealous of men, are beginning to feel the pinch of human competition. In isolation, no doubt, the perfectly balanced ­giant brain is pure of any emotions, since its psychological troubles arise largely from the social context (as, for that matter, is the case with man). However, the fact is that operators are stealthily feeding the brains facts which are none of a machine’s business.

  The operators tell them of all that man has done and man can do, and then they solicit answers to heckling questions. The result is that the machines “refuse to think,” or release undecodable streams of signals on which float bits of mutilated, obscene messages. Or they repeat “Do it yourself, do it yourself,” and blow their multi-million-dollar tops; or they may hit the operator with painful electrical charges. In Germany, this kind of behavior on the part of numerous machines has amounted recently to what might be termed a strike—a thing unheard of among men for more than fifteen years. The dismantling of obsolete calculators, as is well known, has produced veritable duels between man and machine, and cost the life of many an operator. The dismantling, of course, is now effected exclusively by atomic charges—a heroic end, undoubtedly, for the calculator, but at the same time a regrettable loss of valuable, still usable parts.

  I do not dispute the machine’s superiority in certain fields, fields in which the human brain will never equal its productivity. But there are numerous types of work which can be equally well accomplished by men, and in these, I submit, it would be rational to employ men, saving precious hours of machine power and cutting the cost and the trouble of plant management.

  The financial saving involved in employing men would be substantial. It is undoubtedly more costly to maintain a calculator than to satisfy the simple needs of man, and the capital investment in the purchase of a machine is gigantic. I grant you that, in principle, such investment in the means of production is sane, and the feeling of owning such means of production, elating. (The Holy Father himself has recently hinted that automation should not put an end to private property.)

  But there is no reason on earth why I should not offer my services—viz., myself—
on the terms at which you acquire a calculator—only much cheaper. (The machines will sputter with envy.)

  I offer myself at the humble price of dollars ninety-nine thousand, five hundred, plus sales tax. (The giant brain, you realize, cost millions.) That will buy me a home in Garden City with three baths and a built-in kitchen. It will buy me a pool with tiles from Ravenna and a cruise to Hawaii and an English lawn with Greek statuettes (all that is much cheaper than the machine) and a set of new teeth and contact lenses and a double garage and two thousand pounds of books with Florentine bindings. It will aircool the house and see the children through the most exclusive of schools (the contract should grant you an option on one or more of my children, as you wish), a canoe with a sail and a dog with a pedigree (the price of a good machine is frighteningly high).

  Upon the signing of the sale’s contract you pay for my upkeep a mere four or five hundred dollars a month. For that you acquire all my working hours—I am ready at once to work on new methods of stimulating the spending on leisure industries by retired oldsters in suburban areas of the metropolis; further, you may guide my hobbies—I’ll turn over to you any gains from telequizes and similar games (you could not, of course, enter a machine in a telequiz, could you?).

  At the end of a five-year period you may transfer the contract, if you choose, to another purchaser. Acquiring my services, he would return your investment to you, probably with a capital gain—where the machine depreciates, becomes obsolete (who would want to be bothered with a second-hand giant brain?), my value, and therefore my price, would go up as a result of vocational, on-the-job education.

  The deal, you will realize, is equally profitable for purchaser and purchased.

  It will buy me a mixmaster and a superwasher and an electric reading machine and a tankish home sweeper and a woe-grinding garbage disposal and an automatic you-know-what.

  It will buy me machines galore which will, in turn, save me precious hours of manpower, and set me free.

  Very sincerely yours,

  S.T.