Nanotech

by Gardner Dozois

  "Don't be concerned," said Dr. Armbruster. "Fingers and toes grow back in days. Just don't break off the head," she laughed.

  "Sam, look," Eleanor exclaimed. "Look at this tiny little penis. Isn't it the cutest thing?"

  As I looked, something funny happened to me. I had a vivid impression or image, as I do when at work in my studio, in which I saw the chassis, not as a brittle lump of fixed flesh, but as a living, warm, squirming, naked butter-ball of a baby. And I looked between its chubby legs and saw it was a he, a little guy. He looked up at me, chortled, and waved his tiny fists. Right then I felt a massive piece of my heart shift in my chest. The whole situation finally dawned on me. I was about to become a parent, a father. I looked at the chassis and saw my son. Why a son, I couldn't say, but I knew I must have a son.

  Eleanor touched my arm. "Are you okay?"

  "Yes, it's nothing. By the way, that's one piece I hope doesn't chip off."

  She laughed, but when she saw that I was serious she said, "We'll have to see about that." She drilled me with her terribly old eyes and said, "About that we'll just have to see."

  Back at the Williams Towers in Bloomington, we lay on the balcony in the late afternoon sun and skimmed the queue of messages. Our friends had grown tired of our good fortune: the congratulations were fewer and briefer and seemed, by-and-large, insincere, even tinged with underlying resentment.

  And who could blame them? Of all the hundreds of people we knew, none of them had a real child. Many people, it was true, had had children in the old days, before the Population Treaties when babies were considered an ecological nuisance, but that was almost sixty years ago, and sixty years was a long time to live outside the company of children. Probably no one begrudged us our child, although it was obvious to everyone—especially to us—that major strings had been pulled for us at the Department of Health and Human Services. String pulling, itself, did not bother El, but anonymous string-pulling did. She had sent her security chief into the nets, but he was unable to identify our benefactor. El insisted that whoever was responsible was surely not a benefactor, for a baby could hardly be considered a reward. Most likely an enemy, perhaps an off-planet rival she had aced out of the Indianapolis post, which meant the baby was bait in some as yet unsprung plot. Or perhaps the baby was simply a leash her superiors at the Tri-D council had decided to fit her with. In any case, Eleanor was convincing herself she was about to make the worst mistake of her life.

  She deleted the remaining queue of messages and turned to me. "Sam, please talk me out of this baby thing." We lay on our balcony halfway up the giant residential tower that ended, in dizzying perspective, near the lower reaches of the canopy. The canopy, invisible during the day, appeared viscous in the evening light, like a transparent gel that a stiff breeze caused to ripple and fold upon itself. In contrast, our tower had a matte surface encrusted with thousands of tiny black bumps. These were the building's resident militia slugs, absorbing the last light of the setting sun to top off their energy for a busy night patrolling living rooms and bedrooms.

  "You're just nervous," I said to Eleanor.

  "I have impeccable instincts."

  "Did you ever have children before?"

  "Not that it's relevant, but yes, two, a boy and a girl, in my old life. Tom died as a child in an accident. Angie grew up, moved away, married, had a successful career as a journalist, and died at age fifty-four of breast cancer. A long time ago." Eleanor turned over, bare rump to the sky, chin resting on sun-browned arms. "I grieved for each of them forever, and then one day I stopped. All that's left are memories, which are immaterial to this discussion."

  "Would you like to have another?"

  "Yes, desperately."

  "Why 'desperately'?"

  She was silent for a while. I watched a slug creep along the underside of the balcony of the apartment above us. "I don't know," she said. "It's funny. I've already been through it all: pregnancy, varicose veins, funerals. I've been through menopause and—worse—back through remenses. I was so tangled up in motherhood, I never knew if I was coming or going. I loved or hated every moment of it, wouldn't have traded it for the world. But when it was all over I felt an unbearable burden lifted from me. Thank god, I said, I won't have to do that again. Yet since the moment we learned of the permit, my arms have been aching to hold a baby. I don't know why. I think it's this schoolgirl body of mine. It's a baby machine, and it intends to force its will on me. I have often observed that you men regard your bodies as large pets, and I've never understood that, till now. I've never felt so removed from myself, from my body.

  "But it doesn't have to have its way, does it? I can rise above it. Let's tell them to keep their chassis."

  The slug bypassed our balcony, but another slug was making its way slowly down the wall.

  I said, "What about this leash theory of yours?"

  "I'm sure I'm correct in my assessment. They could get to me by threatening you, of course, but they know if it came down to it, I would—no offense—cut you loose."

  "No offense taken."

  She placed her hand on my cheek. "You know how much I love you. Or maybe you don't know yet. But I'm expendable, Sam, and so are you."

  "But not a baby."

  "No," she said, "not a baby, not my baby. I would do anything to keep my baby safe, and they know it. Let's refuse the permit, Sam. Okay?"

  The militia slug had sensed us. It was coming in for a taste. "What about me?" I said. "I might enjoy being a dad. And can you imagine our baby, El? A little critter crawling around our ankles, half you and half me, a little Elsam or Sameanor?"

  She closed her eyes and smiled. "That would be a pitiable creature."

  "And speaking of ankles," I said, "we're about to be tasted."

  The slug, a tiny thing, touched her ankle, attached itself to her for a moment, then dropped off. With the toes of her other foot, Eleanor scratched the tasting site. Slugs only tickled her. With me it was different. There was some nerve tying my ankle directly to my penis, and I found that warm, prickly kiss unavoidably arousing. So, as the slug attached itself to my ankle, El watched mischievously. At that moment, in the glow of the setting sun, in the delicious ache of perfect health, I didn't need the kiss of a slug to arouse me. I needed only a glance from my wife, from her ancient eyes set like opals in her girlish body. This must be how the Greek gods lived on Olympus. This must be the way it was meant to be, to grow ancient and yet to have the strength and appetites of youth. El gasped melodramatically as she watched my penis swell. She turned herself toward me, coyly covering her breasts and pubis with her hands. The slug dropped off me and headed for the balcony wall.

  We lay side by side, not yet touching. I was stupid with desire and lost control of my tongue. I spoke without thinking. I said, "Mama."

  The word, the single word, "mama," struck her like a physical thing. Her whole body shuddered, and her eyes went wide with surprise. I repeated it, "Mama," and she shut her eyes and turned away from me. I sidled over to her, wrapped my arms around her, and took possession of her ear. I tugged its lobe with my lips. I breathed into it. I pushed her sweat-damp hair clear of it and whispered into it, "I am the papa, and you are the mama." I watched her face, saw a ghost of a smile, and repeated, "Mama."

  "Again."

  "Maamma, maamma, maamma."

  "Crazy papa."

  "You are the mama, and mama will give papa a son."

  Her eyes flew open at that, fierce, challenging, and amused. "How will papa arrange that, I wonder."

  "Like this," I said as I rolled her onto her back and kissed and stroked her. But she was indifferent to me, willfully unresponsive. Nevertheless, I let my tongue play up and down her body. I visited all the sweet spots I had discovered since first we made love, for I knew her body to be my ally. Her body and I wanted the same thing. Soon, with or without El's blessing, her body opened herself to me, and when she was ready, and I was ready, and all my tiny sons inside me were ready, I began to tease her
, going in, coming out, going slow, going fast, not going at all, eventually going all in a rush.

  Somewhere in the middle of this, a bird, a crow, came crashing to the deck next to us. What I could make out, through the thick envelope that surrounded it, was a mass of shiny black feathers, a broken beak clattering against the deck and a smudge of blood that quickly boiled away. The whole bird, in fact, was being disassembled. Steam rose from the envelope, which emitted a piercing wail of warning. Henry spoke loudly into my ear, Attention, Sam! In the name of safety, the militia isolation device orders you to move away from it at once.

  We were too excited to pay much mind. The envelope seemed to be doing its job. Nevertheless, we dutifully moved away; we rolled away belly to belly in a teamwork maneuver that was a delight in itself. A partition, ordered by Eleanor's cabinet no doubt, formed to separate us from the unfortunate bird. We were busy making a son and we weren't about to stop until we were through.

  Later, when I brought out dinner and two glasses of visola on a tray, El sat at the patio table in her white terry robe looking at the small pile of elemental dust on the deck—carbon, sodium, calcium and whatnot—that had once been a bird. It was not at all unusual for birds to fly through the canopy, or for a tiny percentage of them to become infected outside. What was unusual was that, upon reentering the canopy, being tasted, found bad, and enveloped by a swarm of smartactives, so much of the bird should survive the fall in so recognizable a form, as this one had.

  El smirked at me and said, "It might be Ms. Rickert, come back to haunt us."

  We both laughed uneasily.

  The next day I felt the urge to get some work done. It would be another two days before we could give the orphanage the go-ahead, and I was restless. Meanwhile, Eleanor had a task force meeting scheduled in the living room.

  I had claimed an empty bedroom in the back for my work area. It about matched my Chicago studio in size and aspect. I had asked the building super, a typically dour reginald, to send up a man to remove all the furniture except for an armchair and a nightstand. The chair needed a pillow to support the small of my back, but otherwise it was adequate for long sitting sessions. I pulled the chair around to face a blank inner wall that Henry had told me was the north wall, placed the nightstand next to it, and brought in a carafe of strong coffee and some sweets from the kitchen. I made myself comfortable.

  "Okay, Henry, take me to Chicago." The empty bedroom was instantly transformed into my studio, and I sat in front of my favorite window wall overlooking the Chicago skyline and lakefront from the 303rd floor of the Drexler Building. The sky was dark with storm clouds. Rain splattered against the window. There was nothing like a thunderstorm to stimulate my creativity.

  "Henry, match Chicago's ionic dynamics here." As I sipped my coffee and watched lightning strike neighboring towers, the air in my room took on a freshly scrubbed ozone quality. I felt at rest and invigorated.

  When I was ready, I turned the chair around to face my studio. It was just as I had left it month ago. There was the large, oak work table that dominated the east corner. (glass-topped and long-legged, it was a table you could work at without bending over. I used to stand at that table endlessly twenty and thirty years ago when I still lived in Chicago. Now it was piled high with prized junk: design trophies, hunks of polished gemstones from Mars and Jupiter, a scale model Japanese pagoda of cardboard and mica, a box full of my antique key collection, parcels wrapped in some of my most successful designs, and—the oldest objects in the room—a mason jar of paint brushes, like a bouquet of dried flowers.

  I rose from my chair and wandered about my little domain, taking pleasure in my life's souvenirs. The cabinets, shelves, counters, and floor were as heavily laden as the table: an antelope skin spirit drum; an antique pendulum mantel clock the houseputer servos kept wound; holocubes of some of my former lovers and wives; bits of colored glass, tumbleweed, and driftwood in whose patterns and edges I had once found inspiration; and a whale vertebra used as a footstool. This room was more a museum now than a functional studio, and I was more its curator than a practicing artist.

  I went to the south wall and looked into the corner. Henry's original container sat atop three more identical ones. "How's the paste?" I said.

  "Sufficient for the time being. I'll let you know when we need more."

  "More? This isn't enough? There's enough paste here now to run a major city."

  "Eleanor Starke's cabinet is more powerful than a major city."

  "Yes, well, let's get down to work." I returned to my armchair. The storm had passed the city and was retreating across the lake, turning the water midnight blue. "What have you got on the egg idea?"

  Henry projected a richly ornate egg in the air before me. Gold leaf and silver wire, inlaid with once-precious gems, it was modeled after the Faberge masterpieces favored by the last of the Romanoff Tsars. But instead of enclosing miniature clockwork automatons, these would be merely expensive wrapping for small gifts. You'd crack them open. You could keep the pieces, which would reassemble, or toss them into the soup bin for recycling credits.

  "It's just as I told you last week," said Henry. "The public will hate it. I tested it against Simulated Us, the Donohue Standard, the Person in the Street, and Focus Rental." Henry filled the air around the egg with dynamic charts and graphs. "Nowhere are positive ratings higher than 7 percent, or negative ratings lower than 68 percent. Typical comments call it 'old-fashioned,' and 'vulgar.' Matrix analysis finds that people do not like to be reminded of their latent fertility. People resent . . ."

  "Okay, okay," I said. "I get the picture." It was a dumb concept. I knew as much when I proposed it. But I was so enamored by my own soon-to-be-realized fertility, I had lost my head. I thought people would be drawn to this archetypal symbol of renewal, but Henry had been right all along, and now he had the data to prove it.

  If the truth be told, I had not come up with a hit design in five years, and I was worried that maybe I never would again.

  "It's just a dry spell," said Henry, sensing my mood. "You've had them before, even longer."

  "I know, but this one is the worst."

  "You say that every time."

  To cheer me up, Henry began to play my wrapping paper portfolio, projecting my past masterpieces larger than life in the air.

  I held patents for package applications in many fields, from emergency blankets and temporary skin, to military camouflage and video paint. But my own favorites, and probably the public's as well, were my novelty gift wraps. My first was a video wrapping paper that displayed the faces of loved ones (or celebrities if you had no loved ones) singing "Happy Birthday" to the music of the New York Pops. That dated back to 2025 when I was a molecular engineering student.

  My first professional design was the old box-in-a-box routine, only my boxes didn't get smaller as you opened them, but larger, and in fact could fill the whole room until you chanced upon one of the secret commands, which were any variation of "stop" (whoa, enough, cut it out, etc.) or "help" (save me, I'm suffocating, get this thing off me, etc.).

  Next came wrapping paper that screamed when you tore or cut it. That led to paper that resembled human skin. It molded itself perfectly and seamlessly (except for a belly button) around the gift and had a shelf life of fourteen days. You had to cut it to open the gift, and of course it bled. We sold mountains of that stuff.

  The human skin led to my most enduring design, a perennial that was still common today, the orange peel. It too wrapped itself around any shape seamlessly (and had a navel). It was real, biological orange peel. When you cut or ripped it, it squirted citrus juice and smelled delightful.

  I let Henry project these designs for me. I must say I was drunk with my own achievements. I gloried in them. They filled me with the most selfish wonder.

  I was terribly good, and the whole world knew it.

  Yet even after this healthy dose of self-love, I wasn't able to buckle down to anything new. I told Henry to order
the kitchen to fix me some more coffee and some lunch.

  On my way to the kitchen I passed the living room and saw that Eleanor was having difficulties of her own. Even with souped-up holoservers, the living room was a mess. There were dozens of people in there and, as best I could tell, just as many rooms superimposed over each other. People, especially important people, liked to bring their offices with them when they went to meetings. The result was a jumble of merging desks, lamps, and chairs. Walls sliced through each other at drunken angles. Windows issued cityscape views of New York, London, Washington, and Moscow (and others I didn't recognize) in various shades of day and weather. People, some of whom I knew from the news-nets, either sat at their desks in a rough, overlapping circle, or wandered through walls and furniture to kibitz with each other and with Eleanor's cabinet.

  At least this is how it all appeared to me standing in the hallway, outside the room's holo anchors. To those inside, it might look like the Senate chambers. I watched for a while, safely out of holo range, until Eleanor noticed me. "Henry," I said, "ask her how many of these people are here in real body." Eleanor raised a finger, one, and pointed to herself.

  I smiled. She was the only one there who could see me. I continued to the kitchen and brought my lunch back to my studio. I still couldn't get started, so I asked Henry to report on my correspondence. He had answered over five hundred posts since our last session the previous week. Four-fifths of these concerned the baby. We were invited to appear—with the baby—on every major talk show and magazine. We were threatened with lawsuits by the Anti-Transubstantiation League. We were threatened with violence by several anonymous calls (who would surely be identified by El's security chief and prosecuted by her attorney general). A hundred seemingly ordinary people requested permission to visit us in realbody or holo during nap time, bath time, any time. Twice that number accused us of elitism. Three men and one woman named Sam Harger claimed that their fertility permit was mistakenly awarded to me. Dr. Armbruster's prediction was coming true and the baby hadn't even been converted yet.