“You're distorting my position.”
“I know I am. I want to educate you, Thor. Here you are trying to manipulate the destinies of an entire society, and you're ignorant of one of the most basic human motivations. Come: strip. Haven't you ever felt desire for a woman?”
“I don't know what desire is, Lilith.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She shook her head. “And you think we should have equality with humans? You want to vote, you want to put alphas in Congress, to have civil rights? But you're living like a robot. Like a machine. You're a walking argument for keeping androids in their place. You've closed off one of the most vital sectors of human life and tell yourself that that sort of stuff is only for humans; androids don't have to bother with it. Dangerous thinking, Thor! We are human. We have bodies. Why did Krug give us genitals if He didn't mean us to use them?”
“I agree with every word you've said. But—”
“But what?”
“But sex seems irrelevant to me. And I know that's a damning argument against our cause. I'm not the only alpha who feels this way, Lilith. We don't talk about it much, but—” He looked away from her. “Maybe the humans are right. Maybe we are a lesser kind, artificial through and through, just a clever kind of robot made out of flesh and—”
“Wrong. Stand up, Thor. Come here.”
He walked toward her. She took his hands and put them on her bare breasts.
“Squeeze them,” she said. “Gently. Play with the nipples. You see how they get hard, how they stand up? That's a sign that I'm responding to your touch. It's a way that a woman shows desire. What do you feel when you touch my breasts, Thor?”
“The smoothness. The cool skin.”
“What do you feel inside?”
“I don't know.”
“Pulse rate changing? Tensions? A knot in your belly? Here. Touch my hip. My buttock. Slide your hand up and down. Anything, Thor?”
“I'm not sure. I'm so new at this, Lilith.”
“Strip,” she said.
“It seems so mechanical this way. Cold. Isn't sex supposed to be preceded by courtship, soft lights, whispering, music, poetry?”
“Then you do know a little about it.”
“A little. I've read their books. I know the rituals. The peripherals.”
“We can try the peripherals. Here: I've turned down the lights. Take a floater, Thor. No, not a scrambler—not the first time. A floater. Fine. Here's a little music, now. Undress.”
“You won't tell anybody about this?”
“How silly you are! Who would I tell?” Manuel? Darling, I'll tell him, darling, I've been unfaithful to you with Thor Watchman!” She laughed giddily. “It'll be our secret. Call it a humanizing lesson. Humans have sex, and you want to be more human, don't you? I'll discover sex to you.” She smiled archly. She tugged at his clothes.
Curiosity seized him. He felt the floater going to work in his brain, lifting him toward euphoria. Lilith was right: the sexlessness of alphas was a paradox among people who claimed so intensely to be fully human. Or was sexlessness as general among alphas as he thought? Perhaps, busy with the tasks set for him by Krug, he had simply neglected to let his emotions develop? He thought of Siegfried Fileclerk, weeping in the snow beside Cassandra Nucleus, and wondered.
His clothes dropped away. Lilith drew him into her arms.
She rubbed her body slowly against his. He felt her thighs on his thighs, the cool taut drum of her belly touching his, the hard nodes of her nipples brushing his chest. He searched himself for some trace of response. He was uncertain about what he found, although he could not deny that he enjoyed the tactile sensations of their contact. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were parted. They sought his. Her tongue slid a short distance between his teeth. He ran the palms of his hands down her back, and on a sudden impulse dug the tips of his fingers into the globes of her buttocks. Lilith stiffened and pushed herself more intensely against him, grinding now instead of rubbing. They remained that way for some minutes. Then she relaxed and eased away from him.
“Well?” she asked. “Anything?”
“I liked it,” he said tentatively.
“Did it excite you, though?”
“I think so.”
“It doesn't look that way.”
“How can you tell?”
“It would show,” she said, grinning at him.
He felt impossibly absurd and awkward; he felt cut off from his own identity, unable to return to or even to see the Thor Watchman he knew and understood. From the first, almost from the time of leaving the Vat, he had regarded himself as older, wiser, more competent, more confident, than his fellow alphas: a man who comprehended the world and his place in it. But now? Lilith had reduced him in half an hour to something clumsy, naive, foolish ... and impotent.
She put her hand to his loins. “Since your organ hasn't become rigid,” she said, “obviously it wasn't very exciting for you when I—” She paused. “Oh. Yes. Now do you see?”
“It happened when you touched me.”
“That isn't awfully surprising. So you like it, then? Yes. Yes.” Her fingers moved cunningly. Watchman had to admit that he found the sensation interesting, and that sudden startling awakening of his maleness in her hands was a remarkable effect. But yet he remained outside himself, a detached and remote observer, no more involved than if he were attending a lecture on the mating habits of Centaurine proteoids.
She was close against him, again. Her body moved, sliding from side to side, writhing a little, quivering with a barely suppressed tension. He clasped her in his arms. He ran his hands over her skin once more.
She drew him to the floor.
He lay atop her, bracing himself with knees and elbows so that his full weight would not descend on her. Her legs surrounded him; her thighs clamped tight against his hips; her hand slipped between their bodies, seized him, guided him into her. She began to thrust her pelvis up and down. He caught the rhythm of it shortly, and matched her thrusts with thrusts of his own.
So this is sex, he thought.
He wondered how a woman felt about having something long and hard pushed into her body like that. Evidently they enjoyed it; Lilith was gasping and trembling in what seemed like delight. But it struck him as an odd thing to covet. And was pushing yourself into a woman all that thrilling? Was this what the poetry was about, was this what men had fought duels over and renounced kingdoms for?
After awhile he said, “How will we know when it's over?”
Her eyes opened. He was unable to tell whether there was fury or laughter in them. “You'll know,” she said. “Just keep moving!”
He kept moving.
The motions of her hips grew more violent. Her face became twisted, distorted, almost ugly; some sort of interior storm had broken and was raging within her. Muscles throbbed randomly throughout her body. At the place where he was joined to her, he could feel her grasping him with playful inner spasms.
Abruptly he felt a spasm of his own, and ceased to catalog the effects their union had produced in her. He closed his eyes. He fought for breath. His heart raced frantically; his skin blazed. He tightened his grip on her and pressed his face into the hollow between her cheek and her shoulder. A series of jolting impacts rocked him.
She was right: it was easy to tell when it was over.
How fast the ecstasy drained away! He could barely remember now the powerful sensations of sixty seconds ago. He felt cheated, as though he had been promised a feast and had been given only dream-food to eat. Was that all? Like the surf trickling away after a brief surge of tide? And ashes on the beach. And ashes on the beach. It is nothing at all, Thor Watchman thought. It is a fraud.
He rolled free of her.
She lay with her head lolling back, her eyes closed, her mouth slack; she was sweat-dappled and wan-looking. It seemed to him that he had never seen this woman before. A moment after he had left her, her eyes opened. She propped herself u
p on one elbow and smiled at him, almost shyly, perhaps.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello.” He looked away.
“How do you feel?”
Watchman shrugged. He searched for the right words and could not find them. Defeated, he said, “Tired, mostly. Hollow. Is that right? I feel—hollow.”
“Normal. After coitus every animal is sad. Old Latin proverb. You're an animal, Thor. Don't forget it.”
“A weary animal.” Ashes on the cold beach. The tide very low. “Did you enjoy it, Lilith?”
“Couldn't you see? No, I suppose you didn't. I enjoyed. Very much.”
He put his hand lightly on her thigh. “I'm glad. But I'm still baffled.”
“By what?”
“The whole thing. The pattern, the constellation of events. Pushing. Pulling. Sweating. Groaning. The tickle in the groin, and then it's over. I—”
“No,” she said. “Don't intellectualize. Don't analyze. You must have been expecting more than is really there. It's only fun, Thor. It's what people do to be happy together. That's all. That's all. It's not a cosmic experience.”
“I'm sorry. I'm just a dumb android who doesn't—”
“Don't. You're a person, Thor.”
He realized he was hurting her by his refusal to have been overwhelmed by their coupling. He was hurting himself. Slowly he got to his feet. His mood was wintry; he felt like an empty vessel lying in the snow. He had known a flash of joy, he thought, right at the moment of discharge; but was that instant of lightning worth anything if this dreary gloom always came afterward?
She had meant well. She had wanted to make him more human.
He lifted her, pulled her against him for a moment, kissed her glancingly on the cheek, cupped one of her breasts in his hand. He said, “We'll do this again some time, all right?”
“Whenever you say.”
“It was very strange for me, the first time. It'll get better. I know it will.”
“It will, Thor. The first time is always strange.”
“I think I'd better go now.”
“If you have to.”
“I'd better. But I'll see you again soon.”
“Yes.” She touched his arm. “And in the meantime—I'll start moving along the lines we discussed. I'll take Manuel to Gamma Town.”
“Good.”
“Krug be with you, Thor.”
“Krug be with you.”
He began to dress.
23
And Krug said, There shall be this one difference forever upon you.
That the Children of the Womb shall come always from the Womb, and the Children of the Vat come always from the Vat. And it shall not be given to you to bring forth your young from your bodies, as is done among the Children of the Womb.
And this shall be so in order that your lives may flow only from Krug, that to him alone the glory of your creation be reserved, world without end.
24
December 20, 2218
At 800 meters the tower dominates and overpowers. There is no resisting its immensity: one steps from the transmat by day or night, and one is struck dumb by that vaulting shaft of gleaming glass. The solitude of its surroundings lends awesomeness to its height.
It has passed the halfway mark now.
Lately there have been many accidents, born of haste. A pair of workers fell from the summit; an electrician, spraying connectors improperly along a partition, sent a lethal shock through five gammas hoisting cable; two ascending scooprods collided, at a cost of six lives; Alpha Euclid Planner narrowly avoided serious injury when a powerpool backup sent a monstrous surge of maximum-entropy data through the main computer while he was jacked in; three betas were dumped 400 meters down an interior service-access core when a scaffold collapsed. The construction work thus far has caused the destruction of nearly thirty androids. But there are thousands employed at the tower and the work is hazardous and unusual; no one considers the accident rate extraordinarily high.
The first thirty meters of the tachyon-beam broadcast apparatus is virtually finished. Technicians daily test its structural integrity. It will not be possible, of course, to generate tachyons until the entire enormous accelerator track has been completed, but putting together the individual components of the mighty system has an interest of its own, and Krug spends most of his time at the tower watching the tests. Colored lights flash; indicator panels hum and whistle; dials glow; needles quiver. Krug applauds each positive result enthusiastically. He brings hordes of guests. In the last three weeks he has come to the tower with Niccolò Vargas, with his daughter-in-law Clissa, with twenty-nine different members of Congress, with eleven leaders of industry, with sixteen world-famed representatives of the arts. There is unanimous praise for the tower. Even those who perhaps inwardly may think of it as a titanic folly cannot withhold their admiration for its elegance, its beauty, its magnitude. A folly, too, can be wonderful, and no one who has seen Krug's tower denies its wonder. Nor are there so many who think it is folly to notify the stars that man exists.
Manuel Krug has not been seen at the tower since early in November. Krug explains that his son is busy supervising the complexities of the Krug corporate domain. He is assuming greater responsibilities every month. He is, after all, the heir apparent.’
25
Last time I went to Lilith she said, Next time you come let's do something a little different, all right?
Both of us naked after loving. My cheek on her breasts.
Different how?
To get out of the flat a little. To go around as a tourist and see Stockholm. The android quarter. To see how the people live, the androids. The gammas. Wouldn't you want to do that?
And I said, a little wary, Why should I? Wouldn't you rather spend the time with me?
She played with the hair on my chest. Such a beast, I am, so primitive.
She said, We live so cloistered here. You come, we have sex, you leave. We never go anywhere together. I'd like you to come outside with me. Part of your education. I have this drive to educate people, did you know that, Manuel? To open their minds to things. Have you ever been in a Gamma Town?
No.
Do you know what it is?
A place where gammas live, I suppose.
That's right. But you don't really know. Not till you've been inside one.
Dangerous?
Not really. Nobody will bother alphas in Gamma Town. They bother each other a little, sometimes, but that's different. We're high-caste and they keep away from us.
I said, They won't bother an alpha, maybe, but what about me? They probably don't want human tourists.
Lilith said she would disguise me. As an alpha. That had a certain kind of spice in it. Temptation. Mystery. It might keep the romance glowing for Lilith and me, playing a game like that. I asked, Won't they recognize that I'm a fake? And she said, They don't look too closely at alphas. We have a concept called the social distances. Gammas keep the social distances, Manuel.
All right, then, we'll go to Gamma Town.
We planned it for a week from that day. I cleared everything with Clissa: going to Luna, I said, won't be back for a couple of days, yes? No problem. Clissa would spend the time with her friends in New Zealand. I wonder sometimes how much Clissa suspects. Or what she'd say if she knew. I have this temptation to tell her, Clissa, I've got an android mistress in Stockholm, she's way high spectrum in bed and a fantastic body, how do you like that? Clissa isn't bourgeois, but she's sensitive. She might feel unwanted. Or maybe Clissa with her great love of the downtrodden androids might say, How kind of you, Manuel, to be making one of them so happy. I don't mind sharing your love with an android. Bring her to tea some day, won't you? I wonder.
The day comes. I go to Lilith's. I go in and she's naked. Get your clothes off, she says, I grin. Unsubtle. Sure. Sure. I strip and reach for her. She does a little dance step and leaves me holding air.
Not now, silly. When we come back. We've got to disguise yo
u now!
She has a spraytube. First she turns it to neutral and covers up the mirror-plate in my forehead. Androids don't wear such things. The earlobe plugs, she says: out. I take them out and she fills the opening with gel. Then she starts spraying me red. Do I have to shave my body? I ask. No, she says, just don't take your clothes off in front of anybody. She turns me red all over, with a shiny texture to it. Instant android. Next she gives me a thermal spray from chest to thighs. Going to be cold out there, she says. Androids don't wear heavy clothes. Here. Here, get dressed.
She hands me a costume. Highneck shirt, skintight pants. Obviously android clothes, and obviously alpha style, too. Fits me like a skin graft. Don't get an erection, she tells me. You'll split the trousers. She laughs and rubs me in front.
Where'd you get the clothes?
I borrowed them from Thor Watchman.
You tell him what for?
No, she says, of course not. I just said I needed some. Let's see how you look, now. Lovely. Lovely! A perfect alpha. Walk across the room. Back. Good. Swagger a little more. Remember, you're the end-product of human evolution, the finest version of Homo Sapiens that ever came out of a vat, with all of a human's strong points and none of his flaws. You're Alpha—hmm. We need a name, in case anyone asks. Lilith thinks a moment. Alpha Leviticus Leaper, she says. What's your name?
Alpha Leviticus Leaper, I say.
No. If anyone asks you, you say Leviticus Leaper. They can tell you're an alpha. Other people call you Alpha Leaper. Clear?
Clear.
She gets dressed. A thermal spray, first, then a kind of gold mesh over her breasts and down to mid-thigh. Nothing else. Nipples showing through the openings in the mesh. Not much hidden below, either. Not my idea of winter clothing. Androids must enjoy winters more than we do.
Want to see yourself before we go out, Alpha Leaper?
Yes.
She dumps mirror-dust in the air. When the molecules are lined up I get a head-to-toe view. Impressive. A really cocky alpha buck, a red devil out on the town. Lilith is right: no gamma would dare to fool with me. Or even look me in the eye.
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