Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

by Alfred Bester

  There was no need to look. It was undeniable that the beautiful, enchanting Siren was feathered from the knees down and had delicate pheasant feet.

  “So?” Manwright demanded impatiently.

  “She was also scratching my ankles.”

  “Damn you!” Manwright burst out. “You asked for a Siren. You paid for a Siren. You received a Siren.”

  “With bird feet?”

  “Of course with bird feet. Sirens are part bird. Haven’t you read your Bulfinch? Aristotle? Sir Thomas Browne? Matter of fact, you’re lucky Sandy didn’t turn out bird from the waist down. Ha!”

  “Very funny,” Jessamy muttered.

  “But it wasn’t luck,” Manwright went on. “No, it was genius. My biodroid genius for creative genesis, and my deep understanding of the sexual appetites.”

  “Don’t be impudent, girl. I have sexual appetites, too, but when I guarantee a virgin, I— No matter. Take her home, Jessamy. Don’t argue, or I’ll kill you, if I can find that damned brass thing I thought I had. Take Sandra home. I’ll refund Professor Corque in full. Got to support his brilliant research. Sandy, trim your talons, for God’s sake! Sense and sensibility, girl! Corque, go pack up and move in with me. Here’s my card with the address. What the devil are you doing with that silly-looking fire extinguisher?”

  “And that’s the full shmeer, Charles. I’m sorry I haven’t any work in progress to show you, but you can see I’m no tailor or seamstress, cutting up mature animals, human or otherwise, and piecing parts together like you see with those show-biz monsters in your circus. No, I macrogenerate ’em, pure and whole, out of the basic DNA broth. Mine are all test-tube babies. Florence-flask babies, as a matter of fact, which is where I start ’em. Biodroids need womb space like any other animal.”

  “Fascinating, my dear Reg, and quite overwhelming. But what I can’t fathom is your RNA process.”

  “Ah! The RNA messenger service, eh?”

  “Exactly. Now we all know that DNA is the life reservoir—”

  “All? We all know? Ha! Not bloody likely. Some time I’ll show you the abuse I get from the Scripture freaks.”

  “And we know that RNA is the messenger service delivering commands to the developing tissues.”

  “Right on, Charles. That’s where the control lies.”

  “But how do you control the controls? How do you direct the RNA to deliver specific commands from DNA to embryo? And how do you select the commands?”

  “Penthouse.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “Come up to the penthouse. I’ll show you.”

  Manwright led Corque out of the enormous crimson-lit cellar laboratory which was softly glowing with ruby-colored glassware and liquids (“My babies must be insulated from light and noise”) and up to the main floor of the house. It was decorated in the Dominie’s demented style: a hodgepodge of Regency, classic Greek, African, and Renaissance. There was even a marble pool inhabited by iridescent manic fish, which gazed up at the two men eagerly.

  “Hoping we’ll fall in,” Manwright laughed. “A cross between piranha and golden carp. One of my follies.”

  Thence to the second floor, twenty-five by a hundred, Man-wright’s library and study: four walls shelved and crammed with tapes, publications, and software; a rolling ladder leaning against each wall; a gigantic carpenter’s workbench center, used as a desk and piled with clutter.

  Third floor divided between dining room (front), kitchen and pantry (center), and servants’ quarters (rear, overlooking garden).

  Fourth floor, enjoying maximum sky and air, bedrooms. There were four, each with its own dressing room and bath, all rather severe and monastic. Manwright regarded sleep as a damned necessity which had to be endured but which should never be turned into a luxury.

  “We all get enough sleep during our nine months in the womb,” he had growled to Corque, “and we’ll get more than we’ll ever need after we die. But I’m working regenerative immortality, off and on. Trouble is, tissues just don’t want to play ball.” He led the professor up a narrow stair to the penthouse.

  It was a clear plastic dome, firmly anchored against wind and weather. In the center stood a glimmering Rube Goldberg, Heath-Robinson, Da Vinci mechanical construct. If it resembled anything it would be a giant collapsing robot waiting for a handyman to put it together again. Corque stared at the gallimaufry and then at Manwright.

  “Neutrinoscope,” the Dominie explained. “My extrapolation of the electron microscope.”

  “What? Neutrinos? The beta-decay process?”

  Manwright nodded. “Combined with a cyclotron. I get particular particle selection that way and acceleration up to ten Mev. Selection’s the crux, Charles. Each genetic molecule in the RNA coil has a specific response to a specific particle bombardment. That way I’ve been able to identify and isolate somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand messenger commands.”

  “But-but—My dear Reg, this is positively fantastic!”

  Manwright nodded again. “Uh-huh. Took me ten years.”

  “But I had no idea that— Why haven’t you published?”

  “What?” Manwright snorted in disgust. “Publish? And have every damned quack and campus cretin clowning around with the most sacred and miraculous phenomenon ever generated on our universe? Pah! No way!”

  “You’re into it, Reg.”

  Manwright drew himself up with hauteur. “I, sir, do not clown.”

  “But Reg—”

  “But me no buts, professor. By heaven, if Christ, in whom I’ve never believed, ever returned to Terra and this house, I’d keep it a secret. You know damn well the hell that would break loose if I published. It’d be Golgotha all over again.”

  While Corque was wondering whether Manwright meant his biodroid techniques, Christ’s epiphany, or both, there was a sound of a large object slowly falling upstairs. Manwright’s scowl was transformed into a grin. “My housekeeper,” he chuckled. “You didn’t get the chance to see him when you moved in last night. A treasure.”

  An imbecile face, attached to a pinhead, poked through the penthouse door. It was followed by a skewed hunchback body with gigantic hands and feet. The mouth, which seemed to wander at will around the face, opened and spoke in a hoarse voice.

  “Mahth-ter …”

  “Yes, Igor?”

  “Should I thteal you a brain today, mahth-ter?”

  “Thank you, Igor. Not today.”

  “Then breakfahtht ith therved, mahth-ter.”

  “Thank you, Igor. This is our distinguished guest, the celebrated Professor Charles Corque. You will make him comfortable and obey him in everything.”

  “Yeth, mahth-ter. At your thervithe, thelebrated Profethor Charlth Corque. Should I thteal you a brain today?”

  “Not today, thank you.”

  Igor bobbed his head, turned, disappeared, and there was a sound of a large object rapidly falling downstairs. Corque’s face was convulsed with suppressed laughter. “What in the world—?”

  “A reject,” Manwright grinned. “Only one in my career. No, the first of two, if we count Sandy, but I do think Jessamy will keep his Siren. Anyway,” he continued, leading Corque downstairs, “this client was absolutely hypnotized by the Frankenstein legend. Came to me and contracted for a faithful servitor, like the Baron’s accomplice. Returned five months later, paid like a gent, but said he’d changed his mind. He was now on a Robinson Crusoe kick and wanted a Friday. I made him his Friday, but I was stuck with Igor.”

  “Couldn’t you have dissolved him back into the DNA broth?”

  “Good God, Charles! No way. Never. I generate life; I don’t destroy it. Anyway, Igor’s an ideal housekeeper. He does have this brain-stealing hang-up—that was part of the original model—and I have to lock him in a closet when there’s thunder and lightning, but he cooks like an absolute genius.”

  “I hadn’t known that Baron Frankenstein’s henchman was a chef.”

  “To be quite honest, Charles, he wasn
’t. That was an error in programming—I do glitch now and then—with a happy ending. When Igor’s cooking, he thinks he’s making monsters.”

  The card came in on the same tray with the Tomato-Onion Tart (ripe tomatoes, sliced onions, parsley, basil, Gruyère, bake in pastry shell forty minutes at 375°F), and Manwright snatched the embossed foil off the salver.

  “What’s this, Igor? ‘Anthony Valera, Chairman, Vortex Syndicate, 69 Old Slip, CB: 0210-0012-036-216291’?”

  “In the waiting room, mathth-ter.”

  “By God, Charles, a potential client. Now you may have your chance to watch my genesis from start to finish. Come on!”

  “Oh, have a heart, Reg. Let the chairman wait. Igor’s monster looks delicious.”

  “Thank you, thelebrated Profethor Charlth Corque.”

  “No, no, Igor. The thanks go from me to you.”

  “Pigs, both of you,” Manwright snorted and dashed for the stairs. Corque rolled his eyes to heaven, grabbed a slice of tart, winked at Igor, and followed, chewing ecstatically.

  One would expect the chairman of a syndicate with a seventeen-figure CB telephone number to look like Attila the Hun. Anthony Valera looked and dressed like a suave Spanish grandee; he was black and silver, including ribboned peruke. He was very much au courant, for as Corque entered he smiled, bowed, and murmured, “What a happy surprise, Professor Corque. Delighted. I had the pleasure of hearing you speak at the Trivium Charontis convention.” And Mr. Valera considerately offered his left palm, Corque’s right hand being busy with the tart.

  “He wants an ideal executive secretary,” Manwright refused to waste time on courtesies. “And I told him that my biodroid talents are damned expensive.”

  “To which I was about to respond when you most happily entered, Professor Corque, that Vortex is criminally solvent.”

  “Then it’s to be a company contract?”

  “No, Dominie, personal.” Mr. Valera smiled. “I, also, am criminally solvent.”

  “Good. I hate doing business with committees. You must know the old saw about camels. Let’s discuss the specs and see whether we understand each other. Sex?”

  “Female, of course.”

  “Of course. Physical appearance?”

  “You don’t take notes?”

  “Total recall.”

  “You are lucky. Well, then. Fair. Medium tall. Endowed with soft grace. Soft voice. Blue eyes. Clear skin. Slender hands. Slender neck. Auburn hair.”

  “Mmm. Got any particular example of the type in mind?”

  “Yes. Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.”

  “Ha! Venus on the Half-shell. Lovely model. Character?”

  “What one would expect of a secretary: sterling, faithful, devoted … to my work, of course.”

  “To your work, of course.”

  “And clever.”

  “D’you mean clever or intelligent?”

  “Aren’t they the same?”

  “No. Cleverness requires humor. Intelligence does not.”

  “Then clever. I’ll provide the intelligence. She must be able to learn quickly and remember. She must be able to acquire any skill necessary for my work. She must be perceptive and understand the stresses and conflicts that make a chairman’s life one constant battle.”

  “So far you could hire such a girl,” Manwright objected. “Why come to me?”

  “I haven’t finished, Dominie. She must have no private life and be willing to drop everything and be instantly available at all times.”

  “Available for what?”

  “Business luncheons, dinners, last-minute parties, client entertainment, and so forth. She must be chic and fashionable and able to dazzle men. You would not believe how many tough tycoons have been charmed into dubious deals by a seductive secretary.”

  “You’ve left out an important point. On what salary will she be seducting?”

  “Oh, I’ll provide the money for the wardrobe, the maquillage, and so forth. She must provide the taste, the charm, the wit, the entertaining conversation.”

  “Then you want a talker?”

  “But only when I want her to talk. Otherwise, mum.”

  Corque whistled softly. “But you’re describing a paragon, my dear sir.”

  “I would say a miracle, Professor Corque, but Dominie Manwright is celebrated for his miraculous creations.”

  “You married?” Manwright shot.

  “Five times.”

  “Then you’re a chaser.”

  “Dominie!”

  “And easily landed.”

  “Really, you’re extraordinarily blunt. A chaser? Well … let’s say that I’m attracted occasionally.”

  “Would you want your executive secretary to be responsive—occasionally? Is that to be programmed?”

  “Only unilaterally. If I should happen to desire, I would want a beautiful response. But she is not to make demands. Nevertheless she will, of course, be faithful to me.”

  “These parameters are preposterous,” Corque exclaimed indignantly.

  “Not at all, Charles, not at all,” Manwright soothed. “Mr. Valera is merely describing what all men desire in a woman: an Aspasia, the beautiful femme galante who was the adoring mistress and advisor to Pericles of ancient Greece. It’s wishful fantasy, but my business is turning fantasy into reality, and I welcome the challenge. This girl may be my magnum opus.” Again he fired a shot at Valera. “And you’ll become very bored.”

  “What?”

  “Within six months this adoring, talented, dedicated slave will bore you to tears.”

  “But how? Why?”

  “Because you’ve left out the crux of a kept woman’s hold over a man. Don’t protest, Valera. We know damn well you’re ordering a mistress, and I make no moral judgment, but you’ve forgotten the drop of acid.”

  “Dominie. I do protest. I—”

  “Just listen. You’re contracting for an enchanting mistress, and it’s my job to make sure that she remains enchanting, always. Now there are many sweet confections that require a drop of acid to bring out the full flavor and keep them enjoyable. Your Aspasia will need a drop of acid for the same reason. Otherwise, her perpetual perfection will cloy you in a matter of months.”

  “You know,” Valera said slowly, “that’s rather astute. Dominie. What would you advise? I’m all anticipation!”

  “The acid in any woman who can hold a man: the unexpected, the quality that makes it impossible to live with them or without them.”

  “And what would that be in my … my secretary?”

  “How the devil can I tell you?” Manwright shouted. “If you knew in advance, it wouldn’t be unexpected; and anyway I won’t know. I can’t guarantee surprise and adventure with a woman. All I can do is program a deliberate error into the genesis of your perfect Aspasia, and the discovery of that kink will be the charming drop of acid. Understood?”

  “You make it sound like a gamble.”

  “The irrational is always a gamble.”

  After a pause Valera said. “Then you’re challenging me, Dominie?”

  “We’re both being challenged. You want the ideal mistress created to your specs; I’ve got to meet them to your complete satisfaction.”

  “And your own, Reg?” Corque murmured.

  “Certainly my own. I’m a professional. The job is the boss. Well, Valera? Agreed?”

  After another thoughtful pause, Valera nodded. “Agreed, Dominie.”

  “Splendid. I’ll need your Persona Profile from the syndicate.”

  “Out of the question, Dominie! Persona Profiles are Inviolable Secret. How can I ask Vortex to make an exception?”

  “Damn it, can’t you understand?” Manwright was infuriated by this intransigence but controlled himself and tried to speak reasonably. “My dear chairman, I’m shaping and conditioning this Aspasia for your exclusive use. She will be the cynosure of all men, so I must make sure that she’ll be implanted with an attraction for your qualities and drawn to you alone.�
��

  “Surely not all, Dominie. I have no delusions of perfection.”

  “Then perhaps to your defects, and that will be your charming drop of acid. Come back in twenty-one weeks.”

  “Why twenty-one specifically?”

  “She’ll be of age. My biodroids average out at a week of genesis for every physical year of the creation’s maturity. One week for a dog; twenty-one weeks for an Aspasia. Good day, Mr. Valera.”

  After the chairman had left, Manwright cocked an eye at Corque and grinned. “This is going to be a magnificent experiment, Charles. I’ve never generated a truly contemporary biodroid before. You’ll pitch in and help, I hope?”

  “I’ll be honored, Reg.” Suddenly, Corque returned the grin. “But there’s one abstruse reference I can’t understand.”

  “Fear not, you’ll learn to decipher me as we go along. What don’t you understand?”

  “The old saw about the camel.”

  Manwright burst out laughing. “What? Never heard it? Penalty of spending too much time on the outer planets. Question: What is a camel? Answer: A camel is a horse made by a committee.” He sobered. “But by God, our gallant girl won’t be any camel. She’ll be devastating.”

  “Forgive the question, Reg. Too devastating for you to resist?”

  “What? That? No way! Never! I’ve guaranteed and delivered too many virgin myths, deities, naiads, dryads, und so weiter. I’m seasoned, Charles; tough and hard and impervious to all their lures. But the breasts are going to be a problem,” he added absently.

  “My dear Reg! Please decipher.”

  “Her breasts, Charles. Botticelli made ’em too small in his Venus. I think I should program ’em fuller, but what size and shape? Like pears? Pomegranates? Melons? It’s an aesthetic perplexity.”

  “Perhaps your deliberate error will solve it.”

  “Perhaps, but only the Good Lord, in whom I’ve never believed, can know what her mystery kink will turn out to be. Selah! Let’s get to work on our perfect mistress, Charles, or, to use an antique expression that’s just become a new vogue word, our perfect Popsy.”