He, She and It

by Marge Piercy

  “You never had anything to do with Avram, tell me you didn’t.”

  “I can tell you I didn’t. But I did. For all of one summer we used to meet in the vineyard and spread a blanket hidden between the vines. After he met Sara, he fell violently in love with her. I don’t think he ever looked at another woman.”

  He has looked at me, Shira thought with some distaste. He is always looking at my body.

  “When things withered between them because of her illness, I think sex died within him. Some people go on wanting it as long as they live, but other people, they let it go as if it were a garment that had worn out. I think they’re fools.” Malkah nodded vigorously for emphasis. “I’m full of joy that you’re home with me, Shira. It’s making me babble nonsense.”

  “It’s going to be different between us now, isn’t it?”

  “Why should everything remain the same?” Malkah dragged her chair closer and leaned toward Shira, her brows raised. “So what did you think of Yod?”

  “Avram is making outlandish claims for its intelligence and capacities.”

  “Yod is surprising. But naive. Oy, really naive. Your job is to teach him how to function with people. With his strength and intellect, he could do a great deal of damage without meaning to if he’s not properly educated. I’m responsible for his interpersonal programming, but he’s had no opportunity to try out those capacities.”

  “Educating a machine is not a concept that makes a great deal of sense to me. His— Now you’ve got me doing it. Call it ‘he.’”

  “He is a person, Shira. Not a human person, but a person.”

  “After a lifetime of working with artificial intelligence, how can you anthropomorphize a cyborg? You might as well believe the house is really a woman, the way little kids do. Or name your cleaning robot and talk to it. It’s appropriate for a little boy like Ari to think his koala robot is a live pet and form an emotional attachment to it, but we’re supposed to be adults.”

  “The great whales—we had just about killed off the last of them before we began to translate their epic and lyric poetry. Were they people? Were the apes who learned to communicate in sign language intelligent beings? Was Hermes a real presence?”

  “He had a personality, certainly. A strong one. I felt so bad when you wrote me about him dying.”

  “He was an old cat, Shira. He lived to be twenty. In the end he had a brain tumor and he was too weak to operate on again.”

  “Malkah, you’ve worked with computers all your life. A good heuristical program can enable an artificial intelligence to make valid plans and plot strategy and tactics, but to modify goals or behavior, you must change the programming.”

  “With the Net and Base AIs, the type of programming and the extent of independence permitted are strictly limited. Avram has gone beyond that, and so, my dear one, have I. I consider Yod a person. I enjoy his company.” Malkah gave her such a wicked grin that Shira was sure that her grandmother was putting her on. “Now that I am no longer a responsible adult raising a child, I can be reckless and wanton. There are some wild cards in his programming. Some even Avram has no idea are there.”

  “Malkah, you’re trying to trick me into doing this job. Why? Why don’t you socialize it yourself?” Shira’s forehead crinkled with suspicion.

  “I’ve given Yod what I have to give him. Moreover, I’ve given you everything I had to give, Shira.” Malkah sighed, resting her hands on her knees. She looked almost grim. “Now that you are grown and have suffered a few blows, it may be your mother has something to give you.”

  “My mother? Riva?” Shira was startled and a little resentful. “I haven’t seen her since I went to college. We don’t even talk on the Net.”

  “She may be coming here. Unclear as yet but possible.”

  “Isn’t she with Alharadek? Why would they send her here?”

  “She’s not with them.” Malkah spoke with an irritating air of evasion.

  “Is she coming because she expects to get Ari? Or to blame me for him?”

  “No, no! I suspect you might find her an interesting woman, Shira. But let’s see what happens. Don’t talk about it to anyone.”

  “Why not? What’s the mystery? Afraid another multi will kidnap her?”

  “Oh, she’s wanted all right. But not for hiring.”

  “You sound as if there’s a price on her head.”

  Malkah nodded. “Riva is an information pirate, Shira. She finds hidden knowledge and liberates it.”

  “Riva?” Shira’s memories of her mother were few. When she was little, her mother had come often. Then when she was bought by Alhadarek, she was transferred to Cape Town and they saw her only once a year, on Shira’s or on Malkah’s birthday. Her mother had sent regrets to her wedding. Shira had not seen Riva in ten years. Riva was a few inches taller than they were, but basically Shira remembered her as a fussy, rather fuzzy woman who always came with many presents, never wrapped, secreted in her luggage. That such a woman could be an information pirate was not credible. A certain amount of industrial espionage was part of the system, multi vs. multi, but the pirates were total outsiders, renegades, the standard villains in stimmies. First the cyborg was a person, and now this! Malkah was either teasing her or growing senile and no longer able to distinguish fantasy from reality.

  Malkah grinned. “I’m not crazy, Shira. Look, I’ll show you.”

  Shira followed her grandmother to the main terminal. Everyone in town took turns at guard duty, and in time of trouble, everyone bore, illegally, what few arms they had. Security information was open to all. Anyone could access that Net file, and Malkah did. While Shira was still brooding over Malkah’s mental condition, a brief synopsis of the crimes of Riva Shipman appeared on the screen along with a warning about the dangers she posed to the established corporate order. She had infiltrated and pillaged the Bases of half the great multis. She was held responsible for the failure of the allevium market: allevium had proved effective against the newest form of the kisrami plague—the disease that had killed Malkah’s own mother. Riva apparently had stolen the drug formula and inserted it in the Net for anyone to use. Every little region had begun manufacturing its own remedy.

  “How long have you known about my mother?”

  “I’ve known her since she was born, you know,” Malkah said with the same wicked teasing grin. “I’ve been aware of what she was doing for years.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “How would it have helped you to know?”

  “How did it help me not to know?”

  “It made you feel safer. It gave you leave to choose your own way.”

  “Now I’ll always wonder if one of the reasons Y-S devalued me was because Riva is considered a dangerous criminal.”

  “Not unlikely. Although we never have open contact between us. I suspect we might not even recognize her when she comes—if she comes.”

  “Why do you think she might come now? Did she mean to come because she wanted Ari?”

  “No, love, she was never going to take Ari. Her life is too dangerous for any child to run with her. When you were a child, I made up that little myth about our family to explain to you why you were being raised by me instead of your mother. So you wouldn’t ask questions. Your mother is a political fugitive, and she lives by her wits and her connections.”

  Shira found herself staring with slack jaw. “Are you telling me you weren’t raised by your grandmother, back to the tenth generation?”

  “It was a good story, wasn’t it?” Malkah said proudly. “I thought you enjoyed it.”

  But Shira felt as if all the rooms of her childhood had suddenly changed place. She was annoyed, even angry with Malkah for having lied to her, for making her feel foolish. In storybooks, bubehs made cookies and knitted; her grandmother danced like a prima ballerina through the webs of artificial intelligence and counted herself to sleep with worry beads of old lovers.

  Shira lay in bed that night with fragments of
the day swirling in her head. Now she understood her anomalous position with Y-S. At least it had not been based on her ability, her work record. She felt justified, redeemed by the information, but at the same time, it set her entire notion of her stranger mother on its head. If Riva was really about to appear, it might well mean Shira would never recover Ari. Indeed how could she really hope to extract him from Y-S? He was already testing brilliant. While he was still on Pacifica Platform, Y-S would begin training him, educating him, shaping him. On Pacifica Platform, it would be much harder for Josh to maintain his marrano identity. He would lose hold of Ari. Y-S would gobble Ari and turn him into one of their bland clones.

  Why could she not have loved Josh? It was her old restlessness. It was the worm in her heart that ate every apple rotten. What Malkah rightfully called her dybbuk. She would live to be an old, old woman always dreaming of the life she had known at thirteen and always yearning back to a paradise she had grown out of as if it were a pretty childish patent-leather shoe half the size of her adult foot.

  Malkah obviously wanted her here and was trying to tempt her by pretending to believe Avram’s outlandish claims about his machine. Perhaps Malkah was lonelier than she seemed. Shira had noticed that Malkah had trouble seeing. The old woman tried to cover up her poor vision, but she moved far more quickly in good light and far more slowly in dim light. She did not always see objects that Shira had moved from their accustomed place. It was a matter to bring up soon, but tactfully. Avram and Malkah both kept alluding to danger, but Tikva did not seem a town under siege. She suspected them of being overly dramatic in order to engage her interest. Needless fuss; she had at the moment no place else to go.

  TEN

  Was This a Good Thing to Do?

  When Riva was still quite small, she had already a formidable will. Even as a baby she would swell with anger, she would scream herself sick or hold her breath till I was frantic with fear. At two, she would say No at top volume. I can see her yet standing in the middle of the courtyard saying that one word until the walls rang and then going stone mute and refusing to speak at all. How did we come to be locked so early in a contest of wills?

  She was like a cat in that she hated closed doors. A locked drawer, a sealed box, a protected program, a book hidden away turned her insatiable the way other children longed for candy or French fries. The hint that something was beyond her understanding would make her study any tome. She liked to creep up quietly when I was gossiping, just to overhear stories that could have meant nothing to her about people she scarcely knew. She was burrowing around in the Base by the time she was twelve, in and out of everybody’s files, my little star-nosed mole. I would shriek at her, “Privacy is sacred! You can’t just rummage through people’s lives and secrets.”

  “It’s what we don’t know that makes us stupid,” she would say in hunched defiance. She refused to be ashamed. We should all know everything.

  When I think of myself in my twenties, I see a fervent scattered creature snatching at sensations, grabbing for ideas, impatient as my own baby for answers and gratification. I was always trying to argue her into doing things my way, trying to talk her into obedience. My words washed over her, trying to erode her granite cliffs. I talked and talked; she stood mute, glaring.

  You, too, were reluctant to speak at first. Do you remember, Yod? Some say that Judah’s Golem—which means “matter, lump”—could not speak, but this is an error based on other golems of legend. He does not chatter but is taciturn, as befits a man of clay. But as he opens his gray eyes on this night of Rosh Hodesh of the month of Adar he asks the Maharal, “Father, was this a good thing to do?”

  “It was a necessary thing. And you should not call me Father.” The Maharal had endured a stormy enough relationship with his only son, Bezalel. Bezalel’s death still feels to the Maharal both bitter and unnatural. Therefore the Golem calling him Father is particularly galling. A son should bury his father, not the other way round. Bezalel died of a petty disease, a cold that moved into his lungs, just as Leah had. It was an absurd death, which still grieved the Maharal. Judah had attempted to get his son designated as his successor as High Rabbi of Prague, but he had been refused, and Bezalel had left in anger. This being he has summoned is not his son. “You should call me Rabbi. Your name will be Joseph.”

  The Maharal hands the Golem the cloak in which he wrapped the Torah, to cover his nakedness, for the three of them had formed him as a man. They had done so without thinking about it or discussing it. The Maharal would probably have said that he did not think he could improve on the design. They simply made a man of clay.

  “Joseph,” the Golem repeats obediently. He lumbers to his feet, sways and seems about to fall, while from each side the Maharal motions Itzak and Yakov forward to support him. They are obviously reluctant to touch him. “Can you walk, Joseph? Look, one foot and then the other. Just so.” The Maharal patiently demonstrates. “We must hurry back to the ghetto before dawn. Come, we must help him. I can smell dawn coming. We must hasten, or we’ll be caught by the watch.”

  But no one moves forward to touch the Golem. The Maharal himself experiences a reluctance to put his hand on that strange flesh. Would he be as cold as clay? Would he feel as if he were dead? The Maharal must set an example, and he puts his arm around the huge being.

  The Golem sways forward, his mouth slightly open, his face screwed into concentration with the effort. He bends like an oak in a strong wind, towering over the Maharal. He has short wild reddish hair and a muddy complexion. The Maharal had not made him with an eye to handsomeness, but neither is he deformed. He is thick-necked, broad-shouldered, built squarely and with massive, slightly flattened features, a hint of the Tartar.

  Joseph first takes a step that throws him off balance, and once again he must be propped up. Now finally Itzak and Yakov assume positions on either side, letting him hold on to them. The weight almost knocks them off their feet. Then he takes a baby step. That works. He takes another baby step. At this rate it will take them all night to get out of the woods. There is no question of carrying him, for he is bigger than any of them and, from the weight of his hand on their shoulders, both the younger men can tell he is heavy indeed. “A little faster, friend,” Itzak gasps out, Joseph’s weight straining him.

  Finally Joseph steps free of them and, in an awkward, jerky manner, walks at last. A step at a time, he proceeds. Then he trips over a log. He topples forward, striking his chin on the ground with a great thud. As they try to haul him up and he strives to rise, he crashes backward.

  It takes all three of them to get him up again and moving. Itzak asks, “Rabbi, what will we tell people when they ask where this huge man came from?”

  “Say, from Galicia. People will believe anything of Galitzianers. His mother sent him away to keep him out of the army. I found him, a feebleminded beggar in the street. He will be the shamash at the synagogue.” Recently their shamash has found the job too difficult. He is an old man, he wants his rest. The Maharal turns to the Golem. He speaks more coldly to Joseph than to Itzak and Yakov. “You will cut wood, draw water, light the fires, take out the ashes, sweep the floors in the Altneushul, our beautiful synagogue. Do you understand?”

  “I will do what you say. How can clay understand?”

  The Maharal is not sure if the Golem is mocking him, but he chooses to ignore his doubt. He turns and heads for the city, followed hastily by Itzak and more slowly by Yakov, who strolls just a short distance ahead of the Golem, acting out his lack of fear. Yakov has recovered his dignity and is concerned not to lose it again. The Golem treads heavily in the rear, gaping at every tree, every bush. The flight of an owl through the darkness brings him to a standstill, mouth open. The Maharal feels his eighty-one years, his fatigue. This night has drained his last energies. His head whines with fever. It is hard to stride on as if possessed of inner strength when he wants to lie down on the earth. He cannot even imagine sleep, for he has been insomniac too long, fretting, fussing, pick
ing at his sore conscience. All he can hope is to rest and be warm and dry again.

  The Golem has mastered walking now. He moves well and powerfully. From time to time he stops to thrust out his arms or raise one above his head, to shake his head like a dog throwing off water, to nod or to blink, to move his jaw as if masticating something. The Maharal realizes that Joseph is trying out various physical functions, exercising his small and large muscles, experimenting. He wriggles his ears and his nose like a rabbit. The Maharal has an urge to rebuke Joseph for his grimaces as he would a boy in cheder, but he stops himself. The Golem is a mere baby in the world. He will learn discipline as soon as the Maharal can begin his instruction, but they must be quiet so near the city.

  When they arrive at the place in the wall where the creek sidles through, they see two men of the watch with their pikes, waiting to capture them. They may be hung; they may be tortured and then hung. Whatever is in store, it looks like grisly death in some form, unless the men can be bribed. The Maharal has a few coppers in his pocket, a fine belt with a gold buckle, but that’s it. He does not think that will buy them off. They get a cut of the possessions of men they arrest.

  “Joseph,” he says softly to the creature towering over him. “We’re in danger. Those two watchmen will not let us back into the ghetto. We will die unless you can disable them. They haven’t seen us, and they don’t know you yet. See if you can slip up and knock them on the head so they won’t see us pass through the wall to safety.”

  “I obey,” the Golem answers. Silently and swiftly he glides through the darkness. The watchmen turn to see him just before he sets upon them. They only have time to cry out once as he seizes both, one in each hand, and smashes their heads together. He lets them drop.

  The Maharal runs forward to bend over their bodies. The skulls are crushed. Blood seeps out. “Joseph, you’ve killed them!”

  “They broke so easily.” Joseph frowns in puzzlement. “Did I do something wrong? Are you angry at me, Father Teacher?”