Body of Glass (38 page)

“Now we must access and find what we need,” Yod said. “In real time we have caused some disturbances. Soon more formidable defence mechanisms than we have dealt with will be converging.” He condensed into a ball of light and disappeared into the system.

Shira said, “I don’t much like standing around here without him.”

“We could try to go in after him, but I’m dubious.”

“We might be safer inside. At least we could accomplish something.” The tension of waiting was too great. Whenever Shira paused for a moment and realized where she was, she was terrified. It was better to keep moving. She condensed herself as tightly as she could and projected forward. She could tell that Malkah was behind her. Together they flicked past file names. All around them the system was reacting to commands. She accessed a file being modified. One of the components in the plug embedded in her real body was a decoder that made her able to access machine language, translate it instantly into numbers and words. Without it she could not have accessed any Base or the Net directly. This file was about plans to redesign the delivery system for the space stations. She dropped it.

She began tasting files as she went, moving fast, pushing. Malkah emulated her, forging ahead. They were streaking through. New products, development plans, research, new stations, investment, infiltration, industrial espionage, security decisions, marketing.

“I have it,” Yod said nearby. “I’ve stored the information. We can access it when we’re out.”

“Then follow me,” Shira could not give way to relief, for she still had one more all-important task. “I believe we can use inner pathways to personnel records. I need to access mine, Josh’s, Ari’s.” Without waiting for their response, she rocketed off. She was an impulse rippling along a pathway of ice. She burned without heat, speeding on. She could feel them behind her. She could feel something behind them. Malkah was following her still, Yod was not. A great wave of energy burst along the pathway, almost knocking her loose. Then Yod was behind her again, following with alacrity.

Shira had always been a conscientious worker who preferred understanding the larger picture into which her work fitted, so she had learned far more about the Y-S system than she had strictly needed. She knew the way now, felt the moment they reached personnel records. Accessing here was easy, for she remembered the file names. It was all by employee number, and she had memorized those numbers — those for her ex-husband, her son and herself — since she had had to use them for routine functions and every request.

Yod ate the files quickly. “Now we must find our way back. At once.”

“Follow me. I’ll take us through the system back to archives.” She went faster than before. She had the knack of it now, the transformations Yod had invented or rediscovered. She had no idea how long ago they had plugged in, sitting in a row in Avram’s lab, but she had the strong feeling it had been enough time to begin to be dangerous. Not for Yod. He could remain plugged in for days without any ill effects she could observe, but she had heard of Net travellers killed because they had got caught in some inner loop and could not escape. While they were trapped in netspace, their bodies died. Presumably their projected minds also died, but it was even worse to contemplate consciousness trapped like catatonics within repeating strings in forgotten closed-off sectors of some base.

“We must stop,” Malkah said. “Here I need to introduce a worm.”

“Work quickly,” Yod said. “We have little time. We’re being pursued.”

“You can both help me.”

They worked together, rebuilding the programming. Then they were on their way again. Three times Malkah stopped them. Each time she could feel Yod’s level of apprehension rising. It was not that he grew nervous in a human sense but that he was more alert, more on guard. The fourth time he refused to permit them to loiter.

At archives, Malkah dropped a simple virus, and they fled the system. Now they saw again the representation of the barracks. There was the glare of the concrete field they must cross. “Rockets,” Yod said. “Fastest way to cross. Malkah, do you have the exit in view?”

“Right. I’ll lead.”

They roared across the concrete. Halfway, Yod cried, “Down!” as the blade of energy flashed across their paths. Another. Another. They were stuck plastered on the concrete. Yod began oozing forward without raising himself, and they followed him. It was slow going under the scorching blasts of the energy field. Finally they were climbing the tunnel, soaring up through the darkness illuminated by Yod’s acetylene glare, three rising projectiles. They went up in a third of the time they had taken to descend, and then they were once again in the dump, and then on the dark plain where the city glistened and sparked.

“Fast,” Yod said. “Very fast.” He kept his projectile form and rushed in the direction of the com-con entrance.

“What’s that?” Malkah directed their attention to the right. A wall of fire was moving towards them, much higher than they were flying. “There’s no getting under that. Look, the earth itself is burning.”

Yod stared at it. “What isn’t hurt by fire?”

“Asbestos? Rock?”

“We cannot be sure that fire isn’t hot enough to melt rock. No, we must be fire too. Quickly.”

She could already feel the shock wave advancing before it, the plain itself catching fire, an updraught of intense scorching heat drying her through. She burst into flames as Yod did, rising as far as he could. Then she was in the fire, of the fire. The fire was dancing through her, bright, exciting, and she fed on it and grew longer and larger. For a moment all she felt was a great intense energy of burning, a burst of power like an exploding drug that consumed her. Then they were once again projectiles, pursuing the wall of fire over the scorched plain of the com-con link. That could not be closed down, even under attack, for business depended on communication. They flung themselves on to the conveyor belt. Shira collapsed into the semi-shutdown mode necessary, imagining herself an inert box. Forward she was carried, careful to permit herself no more thought than was absolutely essential, concentrating on the box shape and nothing else.

Going through the energy field from the Base to the Net was always a tangible sensation. Now they were safe, and they rolled off and stared at each other, once again in their original forms. “Keep moving,” Yod said. “We must return with all the information I’m carrying, so I can load it into our Base.”

When she unplugged, she found herself exhausted. She had a headache all across her temples and neck, an iron cage of pain superimposed on the inside of her skull. Avram was standing there, and his mouth moved, and she heard questions she could not relate to. Yod would deal with him, Yod would explain. Malkah was swaying with fatigue. Shira stumbled towards the cot that stood against the far end of the lab, flung herself in it and fell asleep.

thirty-two

Shira

“How can a machine make a minyon? Malkah can tell you that in sixteenth-century Poland, it was ruled that a golem cannot be counted in a minyon.” Avram snorted. You’re overdoing the socialization, Shira.”

Shira leaned on the doorpost, eager to get going. “For centuries,
I
wouldn’t have been included. The Orthodox still don’t count half the Jews as Jews. You made him a Jew as my foremothers made me. But he chooses to practise it as I do. Don’t you think Yod is sincere?”

“Machines are what they are as a chair is a chair. Choice is not in it.”

“Father, I do make choices,” Yod said reasonably. “My choice is now to leave quickly with Shira. The old people go early, and they’re reliable. We’re already a little late to catch them.”

They walked through the morning streets, even now throbbing with the heat of the day to come. All the years Shira had spent in a climate-controlled enclave slipped away as her body adjusted to the summers of her childhood. “Yod, what do you think about during prayers? Do you feel estranged?”

“Sometimes I feel a sense of belonging, that I am doing something that has been done over and over again for three thousand years. Sometimes I feel estranged ― talk of a Creator makes me think of Avram, whom I cannot worship. I find the notion of a Creator for humanity childish. But in so far as Judaism insists on deed rather than on being, I can carry out mitzvot as well as a born person. Then I feel at home. But sometimes I think my programming runs counter to those all-important ethics. We pray for peace ― Shalom, Shalom ― and I’m a weapon.”

“Only for defence.” Her answer was weak tea in her mouth.

Avram spent the day running programs that would sort the material and feed it into terminals where each of them could take responsibility for a relevant piece. That evening was Rosh Hodesh, the first day of the lunar month. Malkah, Yod and Shira were sitting out on the dune in the soft twilight, waiting for the first sliver of new moon to appear out of the bay. Half the town was out tonight, eating picnic suppers, even the little children kept up for once. With the earth badly damaged, the rituals and festivals that marked the natural world had gained renewed importance.

Shira was glad to sit in silence. She had been bombarded all day by memories of Ari. Hearing his voice had jarred it all loose. She kept imagining that he was calling her. His insistent squeaky voice was as real as Malkah’s. His voice was driving her crazy, like a bug that had crawled into her ear making a racket only she could hear, right against her brain. Gadi and Nili had climbed the hill, too, and sat just below them; beyond them Sam and Zipporah were picnicking with their married son and his family and their own teenaged daughter. The baby was tossing up sand just the way Ari used to when she took him to the midlevel-tech park and put him in the sandbox. It made a slow relentless pain drip through her.

“Our recent action makes me happy and you unsettled,” Malkah observed.

“I keep worrying what we’ll find out.” She fell silent again facing a lightly serrated sky, rows of fine high clouds straight up, but clear over the sea, where the moon would rise.

From just downhill, they could hear Gadi and Nili talking. He was saying, “But why won’t you let me tape you? It doesn’t hurt. You have such a gorgeous body.”

“Gadi, you have the reality. Why do you need a second opinion from a camera? For me, it’s dangerous. I don’t want to discuss it. It threatens my safety and the safety of my people.”

Yod said softly, “I’d imagine it would be painful to have a record of someone who left you. Humans don’t understand what a blessing it is that you can forget. I have perfect recall of every moment of my existence.”

“When you get to my age, some of the sting goes out of even the bad memories. You want them all. But the distant once sometimes shine most vividly.” Malkah, too, spoke very softly.

“I gather they’ve become lovers in the meantime,” Shira said. “And before anyone asks me, no, I’m not jealous or upset or anything interesting. Nili was polite enough to ask me first if I’d mind.” Ari had curls like Gadi. His hair was the darkest brown hair could be before it was black. Would it darken until it was black like hers? “I hope she can handle him.”

“She asked me to describe the heterosexual process to her,” Yod said.

“I’d have expected her to ask me.” Shira felt slighted. She liked Nili coming to her for advice.

“She felt I’d be objective.”

“That must have been a fascinating conversation,” Malkah said. “I’d love to have been a fly on that wall.”

“A fly?” There was a short pause while Yod accessed the meaning. “To have multiple images?”

“To hear your explanation.”

“I fear I was not apt at description, because she kept grimacing and making rude noises. At the end she said she didn’t want to experience any act I’d described ― but perhaps she changed her mind.”

“I felt the same way about sex when I was ten,” Shira said. “Maybe Nili is the equivalent of that as far as being a woman goes.” She remembered Ari in the tub playing with his penis, calling it a fish in his baby talk, which only she could decipher.

Malkah snorted. “Nili is sufficiently experienced. I doubt she lacked partners at home, and Riva seemed to find her fascinating. She’s probably more experienced than you are, if we knew the whole story.”

The voices beneath them dropped. Yod leaned forward on his elbow. “Now they’re arguing about the Glop.”

Shira was about to tell him to stop eavesdropping, when Malkah spoke first. “What do you mean, arguing about it? Whether it exists?”

“Nili wants to go there. She considers such a visit important. Gadi first tried to dissuade her. Now he’s insisting that he accompany her.”

“Why does she want to go to the Glop?” Shira asked, forgetting her objections to spying. “What does she seek there? Just to see it?”

“I can’t say, but Gadi is arguing that she can’t possibly go without him. He says they speak a special jargon. That she needs credit there. He has lots of credit, he says, and he’s a hero in the Glop. She will never manage there alone. She’ll be killed at once. He’s trying to frighten her, but she doesn’t sound impressed. He’s explaining credit and hand prints.”

“Damn it, who’s being summoned?” The com-con connection embedded in Shira’s plug was giving that little vibration. “Only me? Avram’s calling.”

“All three of us,” Yod said. “He wants us back to work.”

“So much for Rosh Hodesh,” Malkah said glumly. “I was hoping he wouldn’t get done tonight. I don’t know if I truly want to discover what they have in mind to do to us.”

“Then why risk your life finding out?” Yod asked curiously.

“We’re always killing ourselves to find out what we would be better off not knowing,” Malkah said. “Isn’t that the definition of a scientist?”

“Is that a joke?” Yod said. “How can one prepare intelligently for danger if one does not learn all that one can?”

“It’s not serious complaining, Yod. Just what we call kvetching.” The turtle who complained too much. That was a story Ari liked to have read to him. “Then Tuck the Turtle said, ‘What, it’s raining again! It rains every day! I wish it would never rain again.’ And it didn’t.” But there had never been a single moment when she wished not to have Ari.

They strolled along, obeying the summons but not prepared to hurry. It was a pleasant evening inside too. A softball game was occurring on the grassy Commons where Gadi had held his party. Kids were playing puddle-jump, a game with multiple small trampolines.

“Humans not only enjoy arguing sometimes, as Avram and Malkah do, but they sometimes enjoy complaining?”

“You complain too, Yod. You feel sorry for yourself. You tell me and you tell Malkah how hard it is to be a cyborg. You obviously enjoy the attention we pay you then and the consolation we offer.”

“I’m picking up bad habits from you. Avram says so every day.”

“Does he know we’re lovers, Yod?”

“He chooses not to let us know he knows. We should leave it at that.”

“Life is much simpler for Gimel.” She gave his hand a sharp squeeze and then dropped it as they climbed the steps to the lab. If she got Ari back, what would he think of Yod? Would he back away as the kittens did? Would he think of Yod as a person? As a child, she had considered the house alive. She had made no distinction between the house and Gila, for instance. They were both older women. But the house was hers as Malkah was hers. Would Ari feel that way about Yod?

In the lab, Avram did not greet them but launched into assigning tasks. “Personnel records on station one for Shira. Why did you carry out your own records? Never mind. Just deal with them, and we can delete them.”

Shira sat down. “I believe I’m critical somehow to the whole attack.”

“Your presence here is pure coincidence,” Avram said. “I attempted to have the data sorted by subject. Much of it’s useless. However, some of the strategic files seem relevant at first glance. I have divided the material one tenth to station two for Malkah and nine tenths to station three for Yod. I have a headache, and I’m going out for a late supper.”

She made good headway with the personnel records. The files were fairly straightforward, as Y-S did not anticipate an employee ever seeing one; moreover, from working with interface, she knew all the Y-S codes and categories, since one of her specialties had been figuring out how to solve personality-machine conflicts as well as problems caused by too much time in the Base and consequent identity loss.

Both Josh and she had been labelled culturally-retentive (J).
Shipman has difficulty assimilating beyond superficial level.
Importance was attached to the name they had given their son.
Hebrew name.
Ari was flagged in her file as a point of interest.
Conceived by subject and husband only. Insisted on full-term delivery. Arc.
That stood for ‘archaism,’ the term used in personnel for people who were considered not quite civilized or prepped, not fully up on corporate culture.

Riva’s name was flagged. Riva Shipman’s files, much longer than those Malkah had accessed in the local security net, were appended. Riva had been a busy woman if she had carried out half the raids they credited her with. She was labelled a dangerous radical. There were various images available as flat pictures or projected holograms of Riva, but none resembled the woman Shira had met. Further, it was clear to Shira by the chronology of comments (all additions to files were time coded) that when she had first been interviewed at Edinburgh, the Y-S rep had been interested in her only because of her own record; but by the time she was hired, Riva’s and Malkah’s files were appended to hers.

The summary of Malkah’s file was even lengthier, including all her honours, full text or precis of every important paper she had delivered or authored, and a list of purported sexual liaisons. It listed seventy, not fifty names. Shira wondered who was right, Malkah or Y-S. Some counsellor had written a long analysis of what he described as Shira’s over-attachment to her grandmother. N.R. That creep who’d addressed himself to her breasts throughout the interview. Then there was a cryptic comment:
Possible complication in transfer: might form renewed attachment.
Transfer where? To Pacifica? Another counsellor had written:
Childish emotional dependency on grandmother. Counterweight: over anxious maternal link.

That Shira had exchanged Rosh Hashanah cards had first been noted as one more sign of her cultural-retentive problems, then the exchanges with Malkah and with Avram had been tagged. The summary of Avram’s file was lengthy too. They had been following Avram’s career with special interest since before she was born. Every time Avram’s file received an addendum, the new information went at once to her boss, Dr Yatsuko, and to B. Vogt. Barbara Vogt? She had designed the robotics for Pacifica Platform. Every contact between Avram and Shira was noted, annotated. A brief profile of Gadi was appended also. His predilection for spikes, nervebright and adolescent girls was flagged.

Her file was seven times the length of Josh’s and she was rated above him in capacity, efficiency, inventiveness, teamwork. Why, then, had she remained below him in rank? Several recommendations for promotion had been refused, marked
Hold, Wait.
After a couple of years at Y-S, she had begun to doubt her own talent. She had decided she was lacking in ambition and drive. Yet her innovations had been quietly picked up and used throughout Y-S without her knowledge, without her receiving any benefits ― even psychological. How much it would have meant to her even a year ago to know that she was not stagnant in her work, that her ideas were not universally viewed as second-rate. Her fellow workers picked up their attitudes de haut en bas, and if she was officially unappreciated, they took care not to appreciate her, increasing her isolation.

When she withdrew and stretched, it was after midnight. Gadi had passed by and left them coffee and smoked-telapia sandwiches from the Commons. Malkah had napped for a while on the cot, then risen and returned to her work. Yod was impervious, the only one who scanned in full immersion. Avram had returned at some point and was using a fourth terminal. She ate, tanked up on coffee, washed her face in cold water and went back to work. Clearly they were going to be at this all night.

When Avram had approached her, first rather casually, about coming to work for him, shivers had gone through security.
Transfer to Pacifica? Refused. Encourage connection, Encourage transfer.
What transfer? She rose and paced the lab, stymied. It was three a.m. She was surer than ever that she was somehow central to Y-S’s plotting, but felt no closer to figuring out the scheme in which she was an unwilling pawn.

The divorce proceedings had a far more prominent place in her file than they did in Josh’s. There the divorce was merely noted early in the process, long before she had sat waiting in the courtroom that dreary January day:
Give sole custody to father. Wait two months. Offer promotion if Rogovin will go to secure base. Pacifica or Antarctica only.

Yod unplugged and stood. He announced, “Avram, you and I are the real targets of Y-S. They have suspected for some time the nature of your research and that you had experienced a breakthrough. They have made repeated unsuccessful attempts to penetrate Tikva Base, only to discover this year that there is nothing in the Base concerning your private research.”