He, She and It (33 page)

“His mission is to protect also,” Shira said, turning out the light.

“What he does around here has little to do with protection,” the house said.

The house’s pique, if she could call it that, reminded her of something she had read. “Centuries ago, a servant would have expressed disgust and dismay at another servant who had become involved with the mistress of the house, leaving behind his own class.”

“Many activities are best left to life forms. We have our own logic.”

“Yod is somewhere in between us in form, I think.”

“Such a hybrid is an irrational invention.”

“You’re so judgmental lately, house. Good night.”

Shortly after breakfast the next morning, Shira was summoned to the gate. The com-con was functional in spite of the Base’s being down. She was called to identify and greet visitors, her Great-Aunt Dalia and accompanying nurse. She tried to notify Malkah, but obviously they were deep in the Base. They were receiving and storing messages in the lab but were otherwise incommunicado.

She found herself tense at the prospect of seeing her stranger mother, about whom she had recently learned such unlikely facts. Shira was certain as she hurried through the streets, among the children on their way to school and people on their way to work, that of course Riva’s palm print would match that of Great-Aunt Dalia, because if Riva was truly an information pirate, she could manage to install anybody’s palm print in place of the original in the security net used by the free towns. Any pirate who couldn’t get into that net to play would have to retire for ineptitude.

The woman who was leaning on her supposed nurse certainly looked Malkah’s age and then some. Her hair was an unflattering matte and lifeless pale brown, one of those regrown jobs that hadn’t come out right: instead of hair youthful or delightfully
artificial, it resembled furniture stuffing that had escaped through a rent. Her face was puffy, wider than long. She walked hunched over, her head bobbing spiritlessly against her chest. A querulous kvetchy whine issued from her like an unstopped leak of corrosive solvent. A few minutes of her company, and the guard withdrew as far as she could and found some task she must perform in the corner of the gate anteroom.

Her companion was obviously tall, obviously sturdy, but wore a coverall for traveling. The old woman, in a sack-style business suit, wore the retirement-community logo for Cybernaut, where in fact Great-Aunt Dalia had worked for fifty-five years in the accountancy division. Dalia had been plugged into large AIs for most of those fifty-five years, so naturally she had a set of jacks openly displayed on her wrists as well as a temple plug. That any information pirate would be similarly equipped would not occur to anyone looking over Dalia’s vita.

Dalia had arrived with an abnormal amount of luggage. Some of it was self-propelled and followed them like well-trained dogs. Two other cases the companion toted, handing off Dalia to Shira.

Shira felt deeply confused, for she could not recognize her mother. She had no idea how much makeup disguised this creature who was dribbling complaints about the zip, the general level of service, the heat, the humidity, the dust, the smells, her health, her poor feet, her sore back, her miserable stomach. What was this person but an ill-tempered old hypochondriac?

Dalia/Riva—the person—kept up the kvetching in a voice that would have thinned paint, until they finally reached the house and staggered inside, trailed by the companion with the two cases, and the three other doggy cases following after the control device clutched in the old woman’s hand. She collapsed in a chair, still whining loudly, while the companion opened one of the cases, brought out a hand-held detector and circled the premises. “My stomach just can’t take that vat food any longer, and I thought the heat would kill me. I could scarcely breathe. My poor lungs just about convulsed! I had these pains, sharp, unbearable, right here—agony! And coughing!”

The house spoke. “The two persons who have just entered are extremely augmented. Both have considerable internal circuitry for combat and communication. They are presently scanning for surveillance and weaponry.”

“Shut up,” the companion said to the house, “or I’ll turn you off.” She spoke with a slight accent, which Shira identified after a moment as that of someone who has grown up speaking
Hebrew. One of her teachers had had such an accent. It was mostly older people who did, from when there had been an Israel, from before the Two Week War, from before the interdiction that quarantined the entire bombed-out, radioactive, biologically unsafe area that had been Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and a good hunk of Saudi Arabia.

“I cannot be turned off by you,” the house said, “unless you blow up this entire area. I will permit you to use your scanning devices, but I will protect Shira. I have one of you in my memory—Riva, daughter of Malkah and mother of Shira. For that reason I have not yet attacked.”

“Hello, house,” Riva said in a far different voice, deep, blunt, commanding. “Don’t worry, we’re here to help, not to harm. We just have to check out the premises. You seem a sophisticated system for a house. How were you able to recognize me?”

“Question Malkah directly about such matters,” the house said stiffly. “I am not programmed to respond in that area.”

Riva thumbed her nose at the ceiling. “I’ll bet you can if you want to.” Riva turned to her companion. “How’re you doing, Nili?”

“Secure enough.” The other woman threw off her black coverall, letting it fall to the floor. Under it she was wearing very light fine body armor, which she also proceeded to strip off. Under that she wore shorts, laden with bulging pockets, and a short-sleeved safari shirt, both the color of sand, on a body that made Shira think of muscleoids she had seen in stimmies. Nili’s hair was a metallic red—not the color of carrots or marmalade but the color of blood. She wore it long, clubbed on her back in an elaborate braid strung with beads and wires. Her eyes were a vivid green, as large as Shira’s own. Her skin was dark, of uncertain and probably mixed race.

Riva stood. She had no trouble standing straight now. She did not remove anything except some padding from inside her cheeks and some body armor she loosened and let drop from inside the sack suit. “My daughter, Shira, this is my friend, Nili. Where’s Malkah?”

“Malkah’s deep in the Base.” She filled them in, staring from one to the other. While Shira and Riva talked, Nili prowled, around the courtyard, in and out of every room. Shira was reminded of Yod at his touchiest.

Riva was squinting at her, her hands held out awkwardly, palms up. “It’s hard to know how to greet you after barging in like the pirate I am, checking out the security. I shouldn’t have
to behave so rudely here, and it doesn’t represent any lack of trust in Malkah. It’s just that Tikva’s Base has been penetrated, so we need to take care. Several multis want my head—a lot.”

Feeling awkward, Shira took refuge in courtesy. “Would you like coffee or tea or wine? Something to eat? Can I show you where you’ll be sleeping?”

“I grew up in this house. I know my way to the guest room still,” Riva began in a hectoring voice, then struck herself on the side of the head. “Sorry, here I go. We’re both sensitive. I feel awkward at how little we know each other. You must resent me—that here I am marching in as if it could mean something to you at this late date.”

“I don’t know you. It feels weird.”

“I didn’t even know you were here. I’ve been as rotten a daughter as I am a mother, but at least Malkah and I have some kind of friendship. Maybe you and I can manage to make friends with each other before I have to leave.”

“How long are you staying?”

“Depends,” Nili said flatly. She had finished her circuit and crept up. One of the kittens was riding her shoulder, claws dug in.

“Did you bring your kid—let’s see, it’s a boy?” Riva asked.

“Y-S took my son from me.” Shira turned to Nili to change the subject. She was convinced Riva had asked only to make polite conversation, without the slightest real interest in herself or Ari. “Are you a pirate too?” She would have liked to spank the kitten for choosing this rude stranger over Yod. It was the bold one, Zayit. Shira had begun to tell them apart. Zayit’s eyes were wider spaced, and she carried herself higher on her toes. She was always the first one in trouble.

“No, I’m worse. I’m an assassin.” The woman smiled at her. She had a way of smiling straight on into the eyes, with a little twist of power that reminded Shira of a few men she had met. Dangerous men.

“I hope you’re here on vacation,” Shira said, staring back as hard as she could.

“No,” Nili said. “I’m here to serve.”

“To serve whom?”

“Malkah,” Riva said. “In some ways I am a dutiful daughter. You need help, so I’ve brought it.” She had her hands one on each knee, her legs relaxed and apart, her chin dipped, head cocked while her eyes shrewdly appraised Shira. “Nili is my darling and a very well made bomb.”

TWENTY-THREE

Wine in the Middle of the Night

Shira spent the next day with the visitors, but she did not find it easy to feel close to her biological mother. Work on designing new defenses was completed. Then Malkah slept for ten hours straight. She woke sluggish, unusual for a woman swift in her reactions. “I’ve used up my reserves of energy and I’m empty as a dry glass,” she said, yawning by way of illustration. “Now it’s time for the programmers to work out the details while I vegetate. But then your lightning visits always discombobulate me, Rivaleh. How can I adjust to your looking older than I do?”

In the courtyard Nili was driving herself through her morning exercises, a long program of elaborate stretches, leaps and martial slashes, punches and turns. Sometimes Nili seemed to float in slow motion, turning on one foot with the other elaborately cocked in air; other times she jumped so fast her body blurred. Shira found the activity unsettling. Nili was in an ecstatic trance as she performed her chops and kicks and lunges. The kittens were mesmerized, crouching, ears flattened. Even the birds of the courtyard shrilled in an excited racket. Shira realized that Nili moved faster than she ought to be able to—like Yod; that from a standing start Nili could leap farther than professional athletes and higher.

The three other women, representing three generations, sat around a table drinking café au lait and eating local whole-grain bagels. “Real food,” Riva sighed. “Once the poorest ate it. Do you know what a luxury it is? Sometimes I fear I could be bribed with peaches and bread and roast chicken. And this jam. I have a dangerous sweet tooth.”

“Is she human?” Shira asked abruptly, nodding toward an upside-down Nili.

“What kind of question is that?” Riva bristled. Her hands clenched—rough callused oversized hands. “Europa’s probes have been answered from deep space, but no one has decoded the message yet.”

“Probably a warning before being issued a fine for pollution,”
Malkah said, yawning again. “But Shira’s question is reasonable, Riva. No one is criticizing Nili. We’re just curious. Her abilities are … impressive.”

“I didn’t think she was an alien,” Shira said. “Is she a machine or human?” She was wondering if Nili could be a cyborg.

“That’s a matter of definition,” Riva said mildly. “Where do you draw the line? Was she born from a woman?”

“That’s a start.”

“Of course. Nili bat Marah Golinken.”

“She’s matrilineal, like us,” Shira said, surprised.

“She has no father,” Riva said.

“Well, I don’t either.” Suddenly she realized she could ask. “Riva, who was my father? I’ve often wondered.”

“She wouldn’t tell me.” Malkah frowned at some painful memory. She sighed audibly. Her eyes were fixed on the past, an earlier Riva.

Riva shrugged, showing open hands. “Actually you and Nili are related. Your father was Yosef Golinken, her mother’s father—her grandfather.”

“So Nili’s my niece? But we’re the same age. And wait a minute, are we talking about
the
Yosef Golinken? The physicist?”

Riva nodded. Shira could not help thinking that Riva simply did not look nearly as much like her as Malkah did. “Hold on.” Shira plugged into the public Net, going in via the com-con, as their own Base was still down. She had to wait for a connection, then in thirty seconds she had her answer. “Yosef Golinken died in 2013. I was born in ’31.”

“That’s what sperm banks are for,” Riva said. “Never felt sexual toward men, myself. I’ve fought beside lots of men, and some are good friends, but they lack finesse as lovers. Just not my inclination.” She shrugged. “Got any more of that apricot jam?” She had eaten half the jar with a spoon.

It was deflating after a whole life of wondering about her father to learn that Riva had never met him. “So my father was a test tube and that amazon’s my niece?”

“That
amazon
shares my bed and my trust. I hope finding out you’re a product of artificial insemination doesn’t curdle your juices any.” Riva grinned. For a moment she did look like Malkah, the mischief in that grin.

Shira blinked hard, as if she’d been slapped. How had she angered Riva? “Oh, come on. Half the kids in this town are born from petri dishes or test tubes. At Y-S they used to say every baby has three parents nowadays—the mother, the father
and the doctor who does all the chemistry. And there Y-S is the fourth parent.”