Adventures of the Artificial Woman

by Thomas Berger

  “Phyllis,” Pierce said one day, “I do nothing but work, and while it is gratifying to have such success and I’m not complaining, this isn’t the field I had originally chosen for myself, and my responsibilities have taken their toll.”

  “Ellery,” said she, “as I have told you every time you make that point, why don’t you delegate to others some of the tasks that are less rewarding?”

  “Because I don’t trust anyone else.”

  “I could fend for myself if you want some time off. Perhaps go to Hawaii, lie on the beach, enjoying tropical drinks.”

  “You can’t swim, and you shouldn’t even get near any sand,” Pierce pointed out. “Some of it might work its way into your systems, however careful you are.”

  “I don’t need rest or recreation. Take along a girl who likes to swim and sunbathe, and have sex with her. See if there’s anything I could do better. But I would advise not taking any of the young women who work for us, lest she subsequently become overbearing.”

  Such suggestions made Pierce despondent, welcome as they might have been if voiced by his human wives or even a girlfriend of more than six months’ duration. Fabricating his own woman had certainly paid off for him, in more ways than one, but that there was a tax on his emotions could not be denied. By so blithely urging him to be unfaithful to her, Phyllis only reminded him of her own moral neutrality. It was but an absence of sexual desire that kept her out of other men’s beds. He had to accept that state of affairs, because it was he who had made her that way. Her extramarital chastity was due to him, not Phyllis.

  In the lowest of moments he was capable of seeing her as essentially the realization of a masturbatory fantasy. But then she would do something so delightfully surprising as to distract him from soul-searching. After viewing a DVD of Rain Man, she reproduced the idiot-savant feats of Dustin Hoffman’s character, counting the individual matches in a boxful while they fell en masse to the floor; reproducing from memory the names, addresses, and numbers in a telephone directory after one quick perusal thereof; identifying each playing card in a deck that was scattered before her at high speed—all without a concomitant show of autistic disabilities.

  “Perhaps you could make a valuable contribution to psychiatric research, Phyl.”

  “I’ll get started on that immediately, Ellery.”

  She was heading for the nearest computer when he called her back. “But not quite yet. It would mean revealing what you are. It’s still not time for that.”

  He had nobody with whom to discuss the matter but her. “You might well wonder what I’m waiting for—I know you don’t, but indulge me in this. From the moment you are revealed to be a product of technology and not of nature, it will be a different ballgame—uh, situation.”

  “I understand the term in this context,” Phyllis said. “‘Ball—game’ is the mot juste. You can’t know what will happen when the shit hits the fan.”

  After Pierce fell asleep at night, she watched contemporary movies, with their obscene dialogue, on cable. There was no purpose in feigning a sleep she did not require, so long as she was beside him when he awakened next morning.

  “I—we have to be prepared,” said he. “But just how I haven’t yet been able to decide. Will the public be outraged or amused or favorably impressed? Maybe all three, though as it stands I think the third is least likely. There are people who will feel betrayed, made fools of, especially those who have relied on your advice since the TV show went on the air. The previous movies don’t concern me: nonhuman heroes seem natural to action films. Look at video games—and by the way, yours are still near the top in sales after several years.”

  “Maybe I should start right away to solve the problem of autism,” Phyllis said.

  “I don’t know.” Pierce put his fingers to his temples. “My head is spinning, Phyl.”

  “You need a vacation, Ellery. That’s obvious. Before you have a nervous breakdown, whatever that is.”

  Instructing Phyllis always momentarily relieved the strain on him for which she was generally responsible. “It’s an old-fashioned term, Phyl. Today the word is ‘stress.’”

  “The beaches of the French Riviera are covered with pebbles rather than sand,” Phyllis told him. “I could sit on a chair and read while you swim.”

  “Why are you intent on getting me into the water, Phyl?”

  “Because water is the element most fundamental to the human condition, and bathing in it is universally considered therapeutic and regenerative for many complaints of body and mind.”

  “My mother taught me to swim.” Pierce smiled in nostalgia. “In a hotel pool. She was a Vegas showgirl.”

  “You’ve never mentioned that before.”

  “What would it have mattered to you, Phyl?”

  Phyllis frowned. “To be sure, I don’t have a bloodtie to your mother, but we do share a tradition.”

  “In her heyday my mother was blonde and five feet ten. She was primarily a dancer, but she could sing well, too. You are not a mother-substitute, Phyllis.”

  “You seem overly sensitive on that subject, Ellery. I do believe you are suffering from stress and should take a vacation. Of course I’ll come along if you wish. There’s always plenty for me to do so long as I have access to TV and the internet.”

  “All that remains is the choice of destination. How about Europe? The Houses of Parliament, the Eiffel Tower, Vatican City, the Kremlin. Or Asia: the Ginza, the Great Wall, the Raffles Hotel, the Taj Mahal?”

  “Kuala Lumpur, site of the tallest buildings in the world.”

  “Think of the information you’ll acquire on the spot,” Pierce said, “expanding even further your range of reference.” He suddenly smacked himself on the forehead. “Damn! I forgot all about the checkers at the airline gates. You’ve got too much metal in you to clear the machine. And you’d get special attention as a celebrity. Any search would be ruinous.”

  “You don’t mean literally, I believe, but rather with reference to your intention to keep my identity under wraps. I’m sorry, Ellery.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “‘What would you have me be, an I be not a woman?’ Pericles, by William Shakespeare, Act Four, Scene Two, line eighty-four.”

  Pierce spoke tenderly. “The problem here is not that you’re a woman, Phyl, but because you’re artificial.”

  “I gather it hasn’t occurred to you that we are prosperous enough to charter a plane or, even more conveniently, purchase one for our exclusive use.”

  He chuckled. “Right you are, Phyl, as always. I still haven’t gotten used to living on this level.” They now owned a mansion even larger and more luxurious than that which Phyllis had occupied as an action-film star, with a staff of appropriate size and a number of automobiles, all chauffeur-driven, for Pierce was too busy to drive and though Phyllis could have learned to operate a motor vehicle in a matter of minutes, she did not do so because that would have been unseemly for a celebrity of her magnitude.

  So Pierce put his people on to the matter of a private airplane, and soon Phyllis, Inc. had its own Learjet, the cost of which of course could be written off as a business expense. But before it could be used for Pierce’s badly needed vacation, Phyllis was invited to dinner at the White House by the President of the United States.

  17

  Tell you the truth, Phyllis—may I call you Phyllis?—the official reason for inviting you here is your generous support of children’s charities, which as you know is the issue the First Lady cares most about—well, that is, after the general well-being of the country.” President Joe Sloan lifted his square jaw, shook his head of carefully tousled, copper-red hair, and winked a heavy-lidded eye. “You wanna know my real reason?”

  Phyllis had been coached at length by Pierce for this encounter. “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “You cain’t guess?”

  “No, Mr. President.”

  “I was the Numero Uno fan of your movies.” He leered at her. “Darn
if I wasn’t. It just tickled me to see a little gal whip some great big fella. I don’t know why, maybe because I worshipped my mama, who was just a little bitty peanut of a person but had a giant-sized personality, and had to have one to handle my daddy and four brothers—count ’em, five of us—in a mobile home with an old Chevy up on blocks in the side yard, dirt poor, but there wasn’t any shortage of love. Now, are you a mama yourself, Phyllis?”

  “No, Mr. President.”

  “Maybe I should speak to your hubby about that matter, whadduh yuh think? I contend a woman should have all she’s got comin’. I’m known for that position. I notice you made short work of that turtle soup. I approve of a lady with a good appetite. Down where I come from, that’s no detriment like it is up East with them snobs like my daddy used to call ’em. They cain’t deal with a real woman. You like those cheese straws?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “The First Lady had all our four children in a row, back when I was a backwoods lawyer, got that out of the way so to speak. They were pretty much grown up by my second term in the Senate. Two of them are married now and one turned Muslim, damn if she didn’t, God bless her. The fourth is taking her masters in hotel management at Cornell. Her substance-abuse problem is a thing of the past.” He touched Phyllis’s wrist just above the diamond-and-sapphire bracelet Pierce had put there. “I’m runnin’ on about myself. Let’s talk about that killer TV show of yours. Let me give you a suggestion. Invite the First Lady as an on-air guest. You choose the subject. She majored in astrophysics as an undergraduate at Cal Tech, then switched to sinology and went to Harvard grad school. She’s fluent in Mandarin, for pity sake, and talked the arm off the Chinese ambassador in his own lingo. Phew, too rich for my blood. I mean the truffle sauce on this filly, give me plain porterhouse with nothin’ but salt, side of sliced tomata and Bermuda onion. Down where I come from, they’ll take a dill pickle, dip it in batter, and deep-fry that sucker. Ever tasted one of them?”

  Pierce was seated at another table, next to Amber Sloan, the wife of the President of the United States.

  “It looks like my husband is having an absorbing conversation with Mrs. Pierce,” said she.

  “Yes, doesn’t it?” Pierce replied. “Phyllis is a great admirer of his policies.” He smiled blandly toward their dinner companions around the table, the U.S. ambassador to a minuscule country in Latin America, his glittering wife, campaign contributors from big business and big labor, and an affable Asian who spoke English with a British accent.

  “What are my chances of appearing on her show?” asked the First Lady, a plump woman of a certain age, with bronze-colored hair and a generous mouth, but mean little eyes even when enhanced heavily with liner and purple shadow.

  “I’ll put in a good word,” Pierce said, “insofar as I have any influence.”

  That was said in levity, but Amber Sloan frowned. “I understood you were executive producer.”

  “I am, of course,” he hastened to say. “When would you like to come on?”

  “Call my appointments secretary.” Having crisply said which, Mrs. Sloan turned to speak, in a more ingratiating manner, to the very pink-faced, white-sideburned man on her right, a mogul of high finance.

  Pierce got his chance to compare notes with Phyllis only at a moment during the dancing that followed dinner, President Sloan having monopolized her company all evening thus far.

  “Looks like you and the Chief Executive have been hitting it off, Phyl. Where’d he go?”

  “He told me he had to leave for a minute to start a war, Ellery,” said Phyllis, a vision in form-fitting silver lamé.

  “I imagine he was joking,” Pierce said. “As I told you, he is known for his sense of humor. It looked to me like your worries about not being able to dance well were groundless.”

  “It helps that the President is not a very good dancer himself. He just hugs me and shuffles around.”

  They were standing at the side of the chandeliered ballroom, near a snowy-naperied table holding a crystal punchbowl presided over by a solemn male functionary in White House livery.

  “I know it can’t mean anything to you, Phyl,” Pierce said, looking at the resplendent assemblage of gowns and tailcoats, “but speaking as an American who never in his wildest dreams could imagine being a guest in this place, I am thrilled to the bone. And I owe it all to you.”

  “Then it was worth your while to have created me. Is that what you are saying, Ellery?”

  “I certainly am, Phyl. You’ve made me wealthy and given me access to power. If you were human, I’d be a gigolo and I’d probably resent you for doing all this for me. My male pride couldn’t take it.”

  “Ellery, the President presses an erection against me when we dance.”

  “Shh, Phyllis.” Pierce drew her away from a man approaching the punchbowl. He spoke sotto voce. “Don’t acknowledge it in any way.”

  “He’s got a name for it.”

  “Keep your voice down!”

  She whispered, “He says he wants me to shake hands with Little Joe.”

  “He’s a great kidder, Phyl. He’s famous for his jokes.”

  “Am I supposed to fuck him, Ellery? He is commander-in-chief of the greatest array of military power the world has ever known, so he says.”

  “That’s true enough. But no, you don’t have to have sex with him. You’re my wife.”

  “He told me to tell you that in exchange you can fuck his wife.”

  “No thanks.”

  “What he wants is for me to rough him up, as I did to the villains in my movies. I can’t convince him it was only acting.”

  Pierce glanced around. The man at the punchbowl wore a broad red ribbon across his shirtfront and a row of multicolored decorations on the left breast. Pierce’s own tailcoat was unadorned except for a white carnation. He could probably earn a Presidential honor by letting Joe Sloan have his way with Phyllis, but at least he was above that.

  “The simplest thing would be just to leave before he gets back.”

  “But you are enjoying yourself, Ellery. I could kick the President’s ass if that’s what he wants.”

  “If the media found out about that, and they always do with this guy, it wouldn’t be good for the business. We’ve got to keep your image clean.”

  Phyllis nodded her head toward the orchestra on the dais. “Ellery, have you noticed who has the second chair in the reed section?”

  “That’s quite a distance away, and I don’t have your vision, Phyl.”

  “Do you remember Tyler Hallstrom?”

  “You must be in error. He’s probably a lookalike.” Pierce squinted. He was not getting any younger. “What would Hallstrom be doing here?”

  “Obviously he’s been programmed to play the saxophone,” Phyllis said.

  “I wonder why that isn’t the Marine band.”

  “President Sloan told me he prefers civilian orchestras, to get away from the military connotation.”

  Pierce did not really remember Hallstrom that clearly. Some years had passed since he last saw that animatronic personage, at the time Cliff Pulsifer’s significant other. “Maybe the whole band is robotic, Phyl, like the one in those old horror movies of Vincent Price’s.”

  “The Dr. Phibes series,” she said promptly. “But they were caricatures. All the other musicians here are human.”

  “You can tell that without closer inspection?”

  “It takes one to know one,” said she. She looked past him.

  “Uh-oh, here comes the President, Ellery.”

  Sloan had a style of intruding on the personal space of people he spoke with while standing. His height was only average if that, but his intimidating geniality made him seem larger. “How you doin’, El? I been looking for an opportunity to get our heads together. A fella like yourself who has cobbled together an entertainment empire oughta be able to provide some good ideas for government. My people’ll be in touch. Meanwhile, the President of the United States is
gonna claim the company of your beautiful wife again, if you don’t mind.” He came even closer, virtually laying his red head on Pierce’s shoulder to whisper, breath smelling of saltines, “Use my private crapper if you want to take a dump or just drain the lizard, escorted by the Secret Service. Tell ’em I said so. Hope I didn’t use up the last of the ass-wipe with Ransome’s picture on it. You’ll get a kick outta that.”

  Sloan was running for reelection against a Midwestern governor named Jack Ransome, a man of gravity as opposed to the buffoonishness for which the former was celebrated by those whose primary need was entertainment, whereas Ransome bored even his own adherents with long humorless speeches that tended rather to obscure than elucidate the issues. The incumbent had a lead in the polls, but he had not reached the highest office in the land by neglecting any opportunity. Pierce had never been much of a partisan political man, but he was well aware that the success of Phyllis’s talk show made her support worth acquiring, and it was as typical of Sloan to cultivate it as for Ransome to neglect to do so.

  With mixed feelings Pierce watched as Sloan glued himself to Phyllis and shuffled away with her, the throng on the dance floor parting respectfully to give them clearance. Pierce felt like a pimp, but he was also swollen by a kind of afflatus. Being in the presence of a President, even one who had toilet paper imprinted with an image of his opponent, in the edifice that was the center of the known universe, was a unique and exalting experience.

  “The First Lady would like you to ask her for a dance,” said a feminine voice at his elbow.

  He turned to see an owlishly eyeglassed young woman in a modest, even dowdy evening gown of the sort worn by ladiesin waiting in a democratic court. She led him around the edge of the floor to where Amber Sloan sat surrounded by other retainers.

  “May I be so bold,” Pierce asked obsequiously, “as to ask you to dance with me?”

  Mrs. Sloan was slow to acquiesce, first looking away, smirking as if in disdain. Then she gave him a hostile stare before her lips parted in a wide, almost carnivorous smile. “Why,” said she, rising, “I thought you’d never ask.” At which her cohorts, a mixture of sexes, politely haha-ed in unison.