Millennium

by John Varley

  "Yeah. Let's get out to the hangar."

  The bar had tinted-glass windows, so I didn't know what a glorious day it was until we got out on the field and looked around. It was one of those days that make my fingers itch to hold onto the stick of my Stearman and head up into the old wild blue yonder. The air was crisp and clear with hardly any wind at all. There were sailboats out in the Bay even this early in the morning. Even the big, ugly old Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge looked good against the blue sky, and beyond it was the prettiest city in America. In the other direction I could see the Berkeley and Oakland hills.

  We used Tom's car and headed out across the field. The hangar wasn't hard to find. Just follow the stream of trucks with piles of Hefty bags in the back.

  The rest of the team was there before us, except Eli Seibel who had gone to examine the DC-10's left engine, which had come down about five miles from the main wreckage. When we got inside I was amazed at the amount of wreckage they'd already hauled away from the Livermore site.

  "United's in a big hurry to get it cleaned up," Jerry told me. "It was all we could do to keep them from carting away the biggest pieces before we had a chance to document their positions: He showed me a rough sketch map he'd made, meticulously noting the location of everything bigger than a suitcase.

  I understood how the folks at United must feel. The Livermore site was damn public. No airline likes to have hordes of rubberneckers hanging around looking at their failures. They'd got a crew of hundreds of scavengers together and by now the site was just about picked clean.

  The inside of the hangar was a mess. All the big pieces were stacked at one side, and then there were tons and tons of plastic trash bags full of the smaller stuff, most of it coated with mud. Now parts of the 747 were starting to arrive as well, and room had to be made for them.

  It all had to be sorted.

  It wasn't my job, but it gave me a headache anyway, just looking at it. I began to feel that two double scotches at seven in the morning wasn't the brightest idea I ever had. There were some headache pills in the pocket of my coat. I looked around for a water fountain, then saw a girl carrying a tray full of cups of coffee. She looked a little lost, walking slowly by the mounds of trash bags. She kept looking at her watch, like she had to be somewhere soon.

  "I could use some of that coffee," I said.

  She turned around and smiled. Or at least, she started to smile. She got about halfway there and the expression froze on her face.

  It was a weird moment. It couldn't have lasted more than half a second, yet it felt like an hour. So many emotions played over her face in that little bit of time that at first I thought I must be imagining it. Later, I wasn't so sure.

  She was a beautiful woman. She'd looked younger from behind. When she turned and I saw her eyes, for a moment I thought she was a hundred years old. But that was ridiculous.

  Thirty, maybe; no more than that. She had the kind of striking, hurting beauty that makes it hard to breathe if you've fifteen or sixteen and never been kissed. I was a hell of a lot older than that, but I felt it just the game.

  Then she turned and started to walk away.

  "Hey," I yelled after her. "What about that coffee?"

  She just walked faster. By the time she reached the hangar doors she was running.

  "You always have that effect on women?"

  I turned, and saw it was Tom.

  "Did you see that?"

  "Yeah. What's your secret? Oil of polecat? h your fly open?"

  He was laughing, so I did, too, but I didn't feel anything was funny.

  It went beyond any feelings of rejection; I honestly wasn't bothered by that. Her reaction was so overdrawn, so ludicrous. l mean, l ain't Robert Redford but I don't have a face to frighten little girls, and I don't smell any worse than anybody else who'd been tramping through the mud all night.

  What bothered me was the feeling that, far from being lost, she was looking for something lost.

  And she'd found it.

  4 The Time Machine

  Testimony of Louise Baltimore

  I had been putting off going to the Post Office to take a look at my time capsule, but I knew if I waited much longer the BC was going to remind me. So I finished the pack of Luckier and took the tube to the "Federal Building."

  The Fed is the oldest building in the city. It's a relic of the forty-fifth century, and has stood up to more nuclear explosions than the Honduras Canal. Civilizations rise and fall, wars swirl around its ugly perimeters and choke the air above it, and the Fed just sits there, massive and dour. It's shaped like a pyramid, pretty much like the one Cheops built, but you could have used the Pharaoh's tomb as one brick if you were building the Fed.

  Not that anybody could, these days. It's made out of something nobody know how to fabricate anymore. We're not even sure it's a human artifact.

  We use the Fed to house the vault somebody nicknamed the. "Post Office" many years ago, no doubt because the vault is clogged with packages that are not delivered for years or centuries.

  The Post Office is one of those weird side-effects of time travel. It proves once more that paradoxes ale possible, though only strictly limited ones. A woman had died today because it was necessary to avert most types of paradoxes, but the ones the universe permits are literally handed to us.

  On the day I was born, my mother knew there were three messages waiting for me in the Post Office. It must have been a comfort to her: she knew I'd live to open them. At least I hope it helped. She died bringing me into the world.

  I know it was a comfort to me. The date on the first one was better than a life-insurance policy I would live long enough to open that one, and the second one as well. They were all found about three hundred years ago, quite close together.

  A time capsule is a block of very rough metal about the size of a brick. If you shake it, it rattles. That's because there's another piece of metal in a hollow inside the brick. The second piece is thin and flat. On the outside of the brick is a name and a date: "For -. Do not open until -."

  We find these capsules from time to time. Usually they are dredged up from the ocean depths. Dating techniques establish just how long they've been there -- usually around a hundred thousand years. When we find them, we store them away in the vault at the Fed, under safeguards as stringent as the BC can devise. Under no circumstances has one ever been opened before its time. I don't know precisely what would happen if we did, and I don't want to find out. Time travel is so dangerous it makes H-bombs seem like perfectly safe gifts for children and imbeciles. I mean, what's the worst that can happen with a nuclear weapon? A few million people die: trivial. With time travel we can destroy the whole universe, or so the theory goes. No one has been anxious to test it.

  When the time capsule is opened a message is discovered. It is often a very queer message. My first capsule bore today's date, to the hour, minute, and second. The second one was dated not too long after the first. The third ...

  Having three messages waiting for me had made me something of a celebrity. Nobody had ever received three before. However, I wouldn't recommend it if you're the nervous type.

  My third time capsule had been alarming people for three centuries. It alarmed me, too. It was the only one ever discovered without a specific date.

  On the outside it said: FOR LOUISE BALTIMORE, DO NOT OPEN UNTIL THE LAST DAY.

  What the hell is the Last Day? It was both pretty definite and achingly cryptic.

  I had to assume I'd know it when I saw it.

  "Listen up, motherfucker."

  "Yeah, I hear you. Right on time. I'll give it to you on the click, of course."

  "Of course," I said. "What time would that be, precisely?"

  "Two or three minutes."

  I'm sure the BC gave me that "precise" answer just to annoy me. So with all the annoyances in my life, l need a machine thumbing its nose at me? Apparently so. I tried having it kowtow and hated it even worse.

  I'm just
not a big fan of machinery.

  The brick was sitting there across the room, on a transparent table. It looked like I could just walk over and grab it, but I knew better. I'd have been immobilized three times before I got within twenty meters, and killed if I got within five. When the BC says on the click it means precisely that.

  There were a few other people in the Post Office with me. Some of them were people I knew. Keeping me company, I guess. And there was Hildy Johnstown, the "newsman," with his felt hat and his worn press pass sticking out of the hat brim. He puts out a paper with a circulation of around a thousand -- actually pastes it up and prints it with ink on paper. The last gasp of a once-proud profession. Today, who gives a shit? News is, by definition, bad news.

  I wondered if he'd get a story. Sometimes the message say it's okay to tell others.

  Sometimes it says keep this under your hat. Sometimes it doesn't say anything, and you have to decide for yourself. Time would tell.

  On the click, the BC caused the brick to be opened. It made some noise. I confess to a slight case of nerves as I crossed the room and pulled up a chair. I picked up the tablet and looked at the message.

  It was in my handwriting. I had expected that; they almost always are.

  It said: There are good restaurants in Jack London Square. Go north on the freeway and follow the signs.

  The Council will give in if you do not push them too hard.

  Tell them the mission is vital. I don't know if it is, lest tell them anyway.

  Don't fuck him unless you want to.

  Tell him about the kid. She's only a wimp.

  It was written in 20th Amerenglish. l read it through four times to be sure I had it all, and my jaw got tighter with each second I had to look at it. Finally, I stood up and backed away.

  "Blow it to hell," I said.

  "You got it," said the BC. The metal glowed white, whiter, whitest, and began to evaporate. I turned before the process was complete and strode from the room. I felt eyetracks all over me, but nobody said anything, not even Hildy.

  I held on all the way back across town and right up until my apartment door slammed behind me. Then I fell down on the floor. I don't know what happened then. Whatever it was, it got my face wet and left me exhausted. Sherman carried me m bed and stroked me gently for a while, then left me alone. That fucking machine is the best friend I ever had.

  I was not telling anybody about the kid. If the universe had to be destroyed because of that, so be it.

  Sherman coaxed me out of it.

  He's the only machine I've ever had any use for. At one time I scorned robots like Sherman. I thought they were only good for jaded femmedrones looking for a thrill. I used the pronoun "it" when referring to them, called them walking vibrators or humanoid dildos.

  I stopped doing that after I got Sherman. He is definitely a male robot. One glance between his legs could leave no possible doubt of that.

  He let me ... weep. That's the word I was looking for. I have cried before, but it usually comes from fury and I remain rigidly in control as the tears drip down my cheeks. I had never been helpless like this. Not even on the day she died.

  If Sherman was surprised, he never let on. He stroked me, let me curl up in his arms. He could never make up for the mothering I missed and we both knew that, but goddam it, he was the next best thing. I could no longer handle the idea of a real human man., I hadn't been with one for years.

  Sherman's attentions grew more meaningful. I didn't think I wanted to fuck, but he would know that better than I. His fingertips are lie detectors. He can read my feelings as though they were punched on my skin in Braille. Presently he pushed me onto my back and entered me.

  I fell into a dream state. He fucked me for three hours, from late morning to early afternoon. (Made love? Don't make me laugh. I know when the merely ludicrous turns into the psychotic. I am well aware that, technically, what I did that afternoon was masturbate with the world's smartest solid-state life-size inflatable rubber novelty.) I had very little to do with it. That's my custom with Sherman, the Lord of Latex; I just lie there and he ravishes me.

  What the hell else should I do? He can't feel a thing. He's an extremely complex series of programmed responses. He feeds off my responses and always does the right thing at the right time. He's a machine. I might as well worry about satisfying a pop-up toaster.

  Sherman has no face.

  He's a competent therapist, and he told me directly what that means in psychological terms. It is a very common female fantasy to be roundly and thoroughly fucked by a faceless stranger. At first glance, it looks like a rape fantasy. It most emphatically is not. Rape is not sex for a woman, and it has very little to do with sex for a man.

  Sherman does not ask me what I want. He doesn't ask me when I want to screw; he knows. He simply takes me.

  And I am so totally in control of the experience that I don't even have to tell him what to do. Each step he takes is perfectly in tune with what my body is telling him I want.

  He is a reasonable facsimile of the perfect lover.

  When I first got him he had a face. I couldn't stand it. I choose when and where to tell myself lies, and the lie his face told -- I am a real man, with real emotions -- was not one I wanted to hear. So I had him rebuilt with a head round and smooth as an egg. Like all the rest of his skin, it feels just like the real thing. As does my own "skin."

  Sometimes he pastes pictures of faces over the front of his head and we pretend he's performing as some famous figure from the past would have. I've fucked my way through several history books.

  Bizarre? All right. But it depends on what neighborhood you live in. I won't say it was as good as making love with a real man. I won't say it was worse, either. There was no emotional component. Sometimes I missed that; then I would think of Lawrence, and take Sherman to bed and practically wear him out. Sherman was a lot safer.

  My reasons for this preference were complex and incompletely understood. Part of it was simple. There were plenty of opportunities to get hurt without going out searching for love.

  Another part of it was deep down, and Sherman-the-therapist had to dig it out in many sessions. I was terrified of a real penis. It could make me pregnant and if I was pregnant I'd have another kid and be hurt again.

  Part of it was lies. The ones I told myself, and the ones others told me.

  It is impossible in my neck of the woods to tell if the fellow you're bedding down with has real equipment or a clever imitation. Harsh, but true. The chances were excellent that his cock was no more real than Sherman's. Then again, he might still have the genitals he was born with.

  The whole idea of skinsuits is that you can't tell. And you certainly can't ask.

  And I had to know.

  Don't misunderstand. I didn't want the real thing. I wanted a prosthesis. Safer. So if I'm looking for a man who actually remains male only on the genetic level why not settle for Sherman?

  Cold, cold.

  I know it's cold. But I never promised this would be pretty. Nobody ever told me my life would be anything but nasty, brutish, and very short, and I never expected anything else.

  You take what you get, and you run with it.

  Like this: When Sherman had brought me to the place he calculated it was best for me to be that afternoon, he stopped fucking me. He prepared a light lunch and brought it to me in bed. I got out of my skinsuit and he massaged me while I ate.

  We talked of this and that. As he massaged, he was examining me for new medical developments. About every second week he finds one. That day he didn't.

  Maybe I've given the impression that the real me looks like something dredged out of a sewage canal after a three-month swim.

  It's not that bad. Really. I don't have any unpleasant smells. My skin is deathly white but it's intact. My genitals are my own. I suppose the kindest adjective for my face would be emaciated, but I couldn't use it to crack mirrors. The false leg is not the result of disease; it was an accide
nt. I don't miss it. The prosthetic works better, and feels the same.

  The hands are my worst feature. Those, and my remaining foot. It's called para-leprosy.

  It's not contagious. It's passed down mother-to-child, locked in the genes. One day soon those hands will have to go.

  I had lost all my hair when I was nine. I hardly remembered it.

  The critical problems were all inside. Various organs were in advanced states of disrepair.

  Many were gone, replaced by artificial ones. It was a toss-up which would be the next to go.

  Some we can replace with self-contained, lice-sized imitations. Some require a roomful of machinery if they go rotten.

  And what's it to you, bug-fucker? For a twenty-seven-year-old woman in my place and time, I was the picture of robust health.

  You don't think we were running these snatches because we liked the exercise, do you? You must have grasped by now that they were the desperate solution to a terminal problem. If you saw me without my skinsuit, you'd understand the problem instantly.

  But no one but Sherman ever will.

  When he was through massaging me I redressed my grievances. I should insert a grateful little plug here for those wonderful folks who brought us the skinsuit. Cut it: it bleeds. Stroke it: it responds just like the skin you used to have or takes the place of the skin it's covering.

  You're never aware you're wearing it. You can't feel it; you feel with it. It's semi-alive itself, and it works on some kind of symbiotic relationship with whatever's left of one's body.

  A handy thing about it is that it's a great deal more malleable than real skin. It can be reset to new features if the need arises. In the snatch teams, it often does.

  I put some clothes over the skinsuit and stepped out of the apartment.

  I live on about the eightieth or ninetieth floor of a residence complex. I never actually counted; the lift tubes worry about where to take me. The building is about half full.

  I paused at the balcony and looked down at the masses of drones milling about on the atrium floor.