He, She and It (62 page)

Time to pick up Ari. Tova was coming toward her with her toddler, Ethan, hanging on one arm, as she tugged her five-year-old, Liz, all three engaged at top decibels in an argument about supper and cookies.

Shira deserved to be punished because of Josh. She had known the danger. Yod had simply carried out his programming. Once she had been as truly gentle as Gadi still was; but no more. She felt more comfortable when she thought of him than she ever had. She had to admit as she entered the courtyard of the children’s center that Malkah and Yod had more offended her sense of propriety and aesthetics than her moral scruples. She did not seriously doubt their loyalty to her, and she had not begun paying for the death of Josh. Nonetheless she would be glad to see Malkah and Yod around the table with Ari, in his place at last, her weird but fulfilling family.

FORTY-ONE

True Confessions and Public Turmoil

Shira heard Malkah laughing in the courtyard, a full-throated, full-bodied amusement that made Shira come to the balcony and look down. She had to find out who was with Malkah. That laugh: she expected to see a man. She would not have been surprised, given her recent discovery, to see Yod. That laugh was almost flirtation, for it had an aroma of sensuality and it came from deep in the body to expand in the chest and in the eyes too.

Instead Nili was slumped in a chair with her long legs sprawled, wearing dirty fatigues, her red hair plastered down with sweat. She was drinking glass after glass of water while telling Malkah a story. When Shira leaned forward to listen, Nili saw her and waved. “Come join us.”

“Did you just get back?” Shira called as she descended. She had put Ari to bed and was looking forward to seeing Yod once he got off duty. He was patrolling the Base twelve hours a day and then guarding the perimeter of Tikva one eight-hour shift.
That left him only four hours in between. Shortly after her return with Ari, Avram had announced that her work with Yod was finished. Yod was now able to carry out his tasks and needed no more coaching. Immediately the Base collective requested she join them.

It was startling how much more boldly she proceeded now. Discovering that her work was actually highly original and that only Y-S corporate politics had kept her pinned in position, she found herself taking her own ideas far more seriously. She had a brisk confidence that expressed itself in a new level of mastery. She was after all the granddaughter of one of the pioneers of the chimeras that now were used to obfuscate all vital bases, the daughter of one of the most successful data pirates of the era. The chimeras for Cybernaut were demanding, but she enjoyed the work as she had not since her early days at Y-S. Still, she was lonely for Yod.

Missing him was no different from missing any other person. She had grown used to spending most of her waking hours with him. Avram was sure that Y-S was about to attack. He demanded that Yod be almost everywhere at once to protect the town. Yod himself wanted to be with her more now, not less, while her own hours were far less flexible since she was working on the Base and taking care of Ari. Their time together was snatched, brief, compacted.

Nili was describing a journey with Leesha, the right-hand woman of Lazarus, from turf to turf. Out of the welter of drug and slash gangs, a network was springing up of those who wanted to organize the Glop into more than meat territories. They could parley because the argot was common and most people growing up there spoke at least English, Spanish and something else—Vietnamese, Russian, Chinese, whatever. Nobody could function with just one lingo. Even kids who couldn’t read or write could bargain with you in six languages for their sexual services.

“One advantage that machine of yours has over me, and one of the only ones, is that he can plug in a language and be speaking it the next day. I have to learn it like everybody else.” Nili was sipping her water as if it were a fine wine. In the Glop she had been drinking reprocessed water, the same stuff that had been through the population thirty times already. Here they still had a bit of an aquifer as well as rain-catchers. “But plugging in, I learn quicker. I grew up quadrilingual, so I pick up fast.”

“Hebrew, Arabic, English and what? Yiddish?” Malkah asked.

“Russian. We had some Russian-born scientists who’d emigrated just before the Two Week War. You hear the weirdest hybrid languages in the Glop, not just Spanglish, but Chino-English, Mung-Japanese, Turko-Spanish. I don’t know what’ll happen to language in the end, but it sure is cooking in there.”

Nili saw the Glop differently than Shira always had. Shira realized she had been trained automatically by her culture, especially by corporate culture, to treat the Glop as an unimportant place where nothing consequential happened. Nothing that mattered to the real, the significant, people could originate there. But Nili turned to the New Gangs for answers. In people living off the garbage of the preceding century, Nili found much to study and admire. Shira would have to mull it over. Gadi, too, looked to the Glop, for styles, for music, for what he called heat.

“You saw Riva?” Malkah asked her. “She’s really all right?”

“I didn’t see her this trip, but I hear she’s fine. You guys are the heroes of the moment, by the way, for the way you’re taking on Y-S.”

“Great,” Shira said. “They can all dance at our funeral.” Sooner or later in talking with Nili, Shira began speculating about what went on between Nili and Gadi. Nili was overwhelmingly physical, reeking, streaked with dirt, a fresh burn on her arm just showing under the pushed-up sleeves, covered with a translucent web of healer to regrow skin. How could Shira be anywhere near her loud physical presence without wondering? Shira imagined that Nili must pick up Gadi like a macho man in the old romances and carry him off. She could see Nili accidentally breaking Gadi’s arm simply by squeezing too hard. Yet Nili did not look like a man. She was a busty woman, with broad hips and a tight waist.

“Nili,” she said suddenly. “Can you bear children?”

Nili blinked in surprise. “Sure. We don’t usually do it quite that way—that is, we go in for implants after genetic altering and all that funny lab stuff first. But if I want to get pregnant, I can.”

“How do you know? It’s a problem for women most everyplace.”

“I’ve borne a daughter already,” Nili said.

So Gadi was right. She had not believed him. “Is she like you?”

“She’s only six.” Nili grinned. “She has red hair like me, but
brown eyes. And my dark skin. And my temper. And my strength.”

“How can you leave her for months on end?”

“The little ones are raised by several mothers. I was chosen for this quest. I’m the best equipped. But I miss her. Every day three or four times I sit and meditate on her image, but I know it’s out of date.” Nili shrugged. “We all have to pay for our choices and our situation. Don’t you?”

She was fascinated by the idea of Nili as a mother. It must be as painful for Nili to be away from her daughter as separation from Ari had been for Shira. Where was Yod? She called up time on her cornea. Damn it. It was eight. At ten he had to report for guard duty. What was holding him up? The house had informed her that Yod would not be there for supper, but no message had come through since. Because the house disapproved of him so strongly she wondered sometimes if an occasional message did not get lost. “House, any communications from Yod?”

“That machine has not been in contact with me since eighteen hundred four point fifteen hours.”

“Give me any message at once, please.”

“Tomorrow I’ll get back to training your people again.” Nili cracked her knuckles sensually. “I’m enjoying it, in a sadistic way. Yet I don’t think you’ll be invaded. It would break the rules you all operate under. Assassins seem likelier.”

“Taking us out individually as warning?” Malkah shrugged. “Everybody in town is speculating when and how the next attack will come. I noticed even the kids playing war with Y-S. We’re not panicked, but we’re all on edge.”

“Nili, can I see the holo of your daughter?”

Without a word, Nili went to fetch it. She came back with it sitting on her palm, her gaze fixed on it. She passed it carefully to Shira. “They call her Varuda.”

“She is like a rose. I’d love to have a daughter too,” Shira said. She remembered that when she had learned the baby she was carrying was male, she had felt a pang of betrayal, because she had expected to birth a daughter, as Riva and Malkah had. But Ari had vanquished that wish at once. Nili’s daughter did look something like her already, but she had a quirky crooked smile that charmed Shira, one incisor missing.

Perhaps five minutes later, the house announced, “That machine is approaching along the street. Should I admit it?”

“House, I’ve told you twenty times, let Yod in whenever he
comes,” Malkah said in a voice of silky reproof. “Is your memory malfunctioning?”

“I obey,” the house said as if glumly.

“I wanted an intelligent house,” Malkah said to Nili, “but sometimes I think I overdid it. Are you listening, house? I think house doesn’t have enough to occupy all that intelligence. If it doesn’t mind its manners, I’ll set it to generating Fermat numbers for the next century.”

The house made a rude noise. A moment later Yod came in, greeted everyone with his customary politeness, then added, “Something abnormal happened just now. Instead of waiting for me to identify myself, as it should, the house opened the door and kept it swinging back and forth all the while I was walking along the block.”

“Come upstairs,” Shira said. “We have to talk.”

“There’s something I must tell everyone first.… Avram is going before the Council to explain to them what I am.” The Council was composed of five adults drawn by lot, plus the three Base Overseers—Malkah, Avram and Sam Rossi—and the head of security.

“After all this secrecy? Why?” Shira was immediately frightened. Also she could not help imagining the gossip and even ridicule that would focus on her when everyone learned that her lover was a machine.

“I wish he had been willing to be open from the beginning.” Malkah rose. She paced, tossing her head with that gesture she used when she was annoyed, as if her hair were in her eyes. It made Shira remember when Malkah had worn her hair long and loose, floating like a satin cape—when Shira was little. “Here we are sitting on the Council, and we’re going to confess we’ve been lying for two years. It’s going to cause a storm.”

Yod stood still as a stone beside the peach tree. His head hung forward, only his dark hair visible. He looked frankly miserable. Shira had been thinking about ridicule and scandal, Malkah was worrying about losing credibility with her confreres, but Yod would be on trial. “What will this mean for you?”

“I don’t know,” he said frankly, “but I worry about how people will respond to me now.”

Nili rose. “I’m going to shower. But it does seem strange to me that after going to such lengths to conceal your nature, he’s going to announce it to the entire town.”

Yod turned his palms up, giving them all a sad little smile. “Gadi went to the Council, telling them I’m not being paid.
Since I’m to be discussed, Avram feels the time has come to explain what I am. He believes it his duty to explain the danger. Since we now know Y-S’s interest is related to Avram’s work and hence to myself, he believes my nature can no longer be concealed.…”

Malkah said, “We have a complaint about an exploited worker on the agenda next Monday. Is that you?”

He nodded. “Me.”

Malkah sank into her chair. “Ah … I must think. I must work out a plan of attack for myself.”

“Use me as a sounding board,” Nili said as she strode upstairs two steps at a time. “I have immense experience in arguing about experiments with collectives. I think I’ve spent half my life in meetings. At home we’re born into a meeting and our funerals are meetings.”

“Furthermore”—Yod resumed his exposition—“several people noticed that I patrol the Base during the day and the perimeter at night. They put in a complaint of overwork on my behalf.”

“So you’re already the subject of gossip and astonishment,” Malkah said.

Shira felt overwhelmed, under attack. She moved to stand before Yod, taking his hand. He reacted at once by starting to move toward the stairway. “I must leave soon for my night patrol.”

Malkah waved them on. “Go on upstairs. I have to think.”

When Shira closed the door of her room, she burst out, “I wish I could shut out the whole world just like that! Now I’m the one who sounds like a spoiled adolescent. But I’m emotionally exhausted. I just wish we could have a little quiet time together.”

He came at once to her and held her against him tightly. “I was beginning to understand a little what humans mean by happiness. I had never been happy. I had been only fully engaged or bored. I had been puzzled. I had been frightened. I had been angry.” He was grasping her so tightly she could not draw a deep breath, but she wanted to be as close as possible. Only that felt safe. “But I had never been happy until we came back here with Ari and you told him I was his stepfather. Then I knew you truly accept me into your life.”