He, She and It (70 page)

“I obviously believe Yod to be a person, since I have a close relationship with him—as you observed.”

“How close?” Hannah persisted. “What does it mean to be close with a machine?”

“Just what it means to be close to a human animal,” Shira said coolly, but she felt exposed.

“I wish citizenship,” Yod said, “because I want to live with Shira and help raise her son. I want to be registered as a partnership. I can’t do that if you don’t think I’m a real person.”

“I can see that,” Zipporah said noncommittally. “Does the kid relate to you?”

Yod nodded. “We get along very well.”

“But kids like machines,” Sam said. “My own daughter would rather talk to the house than to me any day. Suppose my house asked for citizenship?”

“That your remark sounds funny means there’s a difference, because nobody’s laughing at Yod.” Zipporah squeezed Yod’s arm.

Avram was talking intensely with the head of security, who had voted with him. So had the second in command. All three of them had their heads together and were speaking quietly and fast, without smiling, without gesturing.

The next morning when Shira came down for breakfast, Riva was sitting in the courtyard talking with Malkah and Nili. Shira settled Ari into his high chair before greeting her mother. “When did you arrive?” she asked Riva, and, “Open your mouth wide. Wider. Let’s gobble it up,” she said to Ari.

“I slipped through last night. I wanted to see how effective your patrol is. Not bad, but a good Y-S assassin could wriggle through also. You must let Nili talk them into upgrading procedures. She knows how to maintain a tight perimeter.”

Riva was still wearing Lazarus’s colors. She had cut her hair very short and was in her lean form, undisguised. “No one needs to know I’m here,” she went on. “I’ll slip back out tonight. No one beyond you people and Avram.”

“Yod will be by tonight. He lives here now,” Shira said.

“Yod is more secure than any of you. No one could even torture him to talk, because he can simply shut himself down.” Riva sounded jealous. She swung back to address Nili. “With
that film at Veecee, you need to vanish. You should slip out with me tonight.”

“Riva, I can’t leave with these people in danger. They took me in. I must help them until this crisis has passed.”

Riva looked slightly amused, one eyebrow cocked. She tilted the chair to and fro. “Would your own people agree with you?”

“Probably not. A group is only real to you when you’ve made friends and put faces on some of them—unfortunately for us as a race. But, Riva, this isn’t a committee decision. I’m on my own here. You can hardly object: I’m staying to protect your family.”

Riva grimaced. “I’ve spent my life eradicating those reactions.”

Nili came and knelt before Riva. “I’ve said before that you’re a kind of saint—”

Riva guffawed. “Some nasty saint! I’m a tool of the future that wants to be. That’s all. I make myself useful, and I do okay by it.”

“But personal ties are important to me. Where I come from, everything is social, communal. I’ve made a connection with these people.”

Shira did not urge Nili to save herself, for she thought they needed all the help they could get. “I’ll go with you to security to persuade them they must let you improve the perimeter.”

Riva rose with them. “I found out why Y-S is in a hurry. They want Yod at that top-dog meeting. It starts today and continues tomorrow, my best intelligence says. Roger Krupp is being elevated to second in command. I have a layout of the island and its defenses. They want to present Yod at Krupp’s coronation.”

After Shira had brought Nili together with the head of security and his second, she did not go to work, but rather some instinct for trouble brought her to Avram’s lab. Riva was there already, sitting in close conversation with Avram. Shira was surprised to find Yod standing against one wall listening, rather than plugged in. “Shouldn’t Yod be patrolling the Base? We had an attack yesterday.”

“The Overseers have closed it down until after tonight’s meeting. We’re about to miss Y-S’s deadline,” Avram said. He was seated at his desk. “We can’t take that risk. Yod must go to Y-S.”

“No!” Shira said. “They’ll dissect him.”

“Not exactly,” Yod said in a very quiet voice. “Avram doesn’t intend to let them. Instead I’m to self-destruct, taking
as many of their top people as possible with me.” What most frightened her after the idea itself was the flat calm with which Yod spoke of his own death. Was he faking resignation? Did his programming force him to obey? He had to resist.

“You’re murdering him.” She addressed Avram.

“I made him, and I can unmake him. This is an opportunity to deal an amazing blow to Y-S.”

“Com-con is still functioning, I assume?” She called the house. “Malkah, come to Avram’s lab. At once.”

“Yod was created to protect and to defend us.” Avram rose to face her, unsmiling but calm also. “An attack on Y-S at this point is absolutely essential for our survival.” He spoke in a strong level voice, but he looked gray with fatigue, his eyelids swollen with sleepless nights. “If we don’t show we can hurt them back by assassination for assassination, we’re doomed.”

“You can’t let them get their hands on him. You can’t destroy him. It’s murder.”

“It’s not murder, it’s just war.” Riva checked her watch and stood up. “We’ll attack from outside, at the same time. Yod’s a soldier, and this is a crucial battle. I’ll be there too. We’ll send in Lazarus’s best assassins.”

Shira planted herself in front of her mother. “You’ll have a chance. You choose to go. He’s expected to commit suicide with no choice.”

Yod took a tentative half-step toward her, putting his hands out, palms up in a gesture of resignation. “If I don’t go, Y-S will destroy the town, Shira. They’ll kill you and Malkah, and they’ll kill Ari or take him.”

She could not answer that. It was true.

Malkah burst in, out of breath, and Shira filled her in, tersely. “Riva, did you suggest this?” Malkah demanded in a voice roughened with fury. She ranged herself shoulder-to-shoulder with Shira, between Riva, lined up with Avram, and Yod, rigid against the wall.

“Mother, Y-S is demanding the cyborg,” Riva said, shrinking back slightly. “Why not give them what they want with a vengeance?”

“They’re also demanding Shira. Do you suggest we offer her up too? And her son—your grandson?”

“They’ll waive Shira,” Avram said. “I told them she refuses. I’ve assured them that Yod will bond with any trainer, that they can provide one of their own people to handle him.”

Malkah took a deep breath and spoke sweetly. “Avram, how
can you let go of your life’s work? As you said recently, Yod is the culmination of two decades of your research.”

“Don’t you see, I can manufacture another. Y-S is paying generously in instant credits the moment Yod is in their hands. With the credit, I can manufacture another exactly the same, starting tomorrow.”

Riva strode by them to clap Yod on the shoulder. “You’ll go down like Samson. It’s not the worst way to die. It’s what I’d choose. This is a good battle in a war we have to fight.”

“But you have a choice,” Yod said. “It’s true the idea of facing them excites me, but I don’t fall willingly. I asked Avram to let me go in without the automatic destruct because I think I could take them out anyhow, and being on the spot, I could choose the optimum moment. They see me as far more passive and controllable than I am. He fears they might deactivate me before I can mount my attack.”

“Soldiers don’t choose their battles. Only generals have a say. I’ve spent my life trying to avoid the kind of attachments you pursue, cyborg. It’s foolishness.” Riva looked at him once more with her head cocked, as if taking a final survey. Then she turned toward Malkah and Shira, not meeting their gazes. “Take care, Shira, Mother. I’ll slip out before Y-S arrives. I need to see Lazarus right now.” Riva trotted quietly from the lab.

Watching her go, Shira thought of a coyote. Coyotes had survived all the poison, the radiation, the acid rain and lethal ultraviolet. They were smaller than they had been, gray and fleet, sometimes standing on the dunes in plain sight watching Tikva cannily. Then, at the first human movement, they slipped into the brush and the shadows. They were mangy, omnivorous and swift. Nothing daunted them on their predators’ rounds.

Avram’s voice was raised in exasperation. He and Malkah were standing nose-to-nose, glaring. “A successful experiment can be repeated. In a matter of months, we’ll have a functioning cyborg again.”

“I will take no part in that creation,” Malkah said flatly.

“That’s your choice. I have a record of your work. Some of it appears to me of dubious value, at best.”

“It made the difference between success and failure. How very dubious.”

“I can improve on the design. Kaf will be superior.”

Shira, cold with horror, was looking only at Yod.

As Malkah and Avram argued, she moved slowly toward him, feeling as if she were pushing through a medium heavier
and more resistant than air. It felt so familiar, this sense of being rent open, this sense of her life bleeding through a psychic gash. It was the way she had felt when the Y-S court had ruled that Ari must remain with his father and be lost to her. Again some force was dividing her from what she most cared for. “Yod, should I go with you? We can find a way to fight this. We defeated Y-S before.” She took his hand between hers, gripping him hard. How could she be touching his hand between her palms, the characteristic dry warmth of him, his hand with its strength and fine modeling and its steadiness, the hand without a pulse, and never touch him, never see him again.

“You must remain at your home. Please. You must survive.” He took her in his arms, holding her out a little, staring into her eyes. “This is what I was created for. I am Avram’s weapon. Killing is what I do best.”

“It’s not just!”

“I don’t think it is,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to be a conscious weapon. A weapon that’s conscious is a contradiction, because it develops attachments, ethics, desires. It doesn’t want to be a tool of destruction. I judge myself for killing, yet my programming takes over in danger.”

“My maternal programming makes me sacrifice anyone and anything to Ari. What’s the difference? But if I go with you, we might have a chance, Yod.”

“I am in phase with the master computer in the lab. If I don’t self-destruct by a certain preset time, Avram will cause me to explode anyhow. You see, Shira, there’s no way your presence can help me.” Still holding her, he touched her face with his right hand, lightly tracing the line of her cheekbone, the curve of her cheek. “I am to die, but I must know you’re safe.”

“No! I can’t accept it! I’m going to the Council!”

“By the time you call them together, I’ll be gone.”

Avram walked over to them, looking pale, fragile and utterly implacable. “Quite so. Y-S security is arriving for you in fourteen minutes. Yod, remember to pick your moment well. If you don’t choose a time before the preset instant, you’ll self-destruct anyhow. I’ll be monitoring. If anything goes wrong, I can reset by hand.”

Yod let go of Shira, although they stood facing and close. Avram now put his hand on Yod’s shoulder. “You’ve been a successful cyborg, Yod. Not in every respect, for Malkah overdid the socialization, but you’ve pleased me.”

“Yet you offer me no choice but destruction.”

“If you were my flesh-and-blood son, I could do nothing else.
Protecting Tikva is my goal—our goal. You fulfilled your mission. Now you’ll bring it to an extraordinary conclusion. And there will be more of you, I promise.”

“That remains to be seen,” Yod said quietly.

“If you try to escape, remember the preset.”

“I won’t try to escape.” Yod stepped away from Avram’s hand. “Alert town security we’re coming. Now I must say my goodbyes.”

“Whatever you like.” Avram glanced at each of them in turn. “I created Yod, and indeed, I seem to be the only one who remembers his purpose.” He stepped to the com link to speak to security.

“Goodbye, Shira. Goodbye, Malkah. I regret not saying goodbye to Ari. Now take Malkah and go home. Promise me.”

“I must know. We’ll wait here.”

He stepped close, taking her face in his hands. “Go home and stay there.” He spoke softly but urgently. “Keep Malkah with you. Promise me!”

He did not want her to know the moment of his death. Perhaps he was right. “You intend to do this thing?”

“That and more. There’s a message for you on your personal base. Don’t listen to it until I’m dead.”

“But at home I won’t know when you …”

“You’ll know, if you and Malkah stay home.” Briefly, chastely, he brushed his lips against hers. “You have been my life.”

Avram was pacing by the door to the lab, waiting. He looked exhausted but feverish. Shira remembered that he had an artificial heart. However, Yod stood aside for Malkah and Shira to precede him before he would walk out. In the street outside, they parted. Yod and Avram strode off briskly toward the gate. Malkah and Shira stood in the street looking after them. Shira’s vision was blurred with tears that ran freely down her face. Yod looked back once and waved them on, urgently. Once the old man and the cyborg had turned the far corner, Shira offered her arm and Malkah leaned on it. They made their way slowly toward their house through a town that felt to Shira immediately barren and depleted. The sense of loss drained her until she could barely walk, one step, another halting step, into the remainder of her life.

FORTY-SEVEN