He, She and It

by Marge Piercy

  “What’s powerful about becoming a public nervous system? They poll the fans, and one week she gets barbed by Kaj Bolden, and the week after, it’s into a pit of rattlesnakes. After a few years, her senses start to dull, and then it’s goodbye.”

  “Goodbye if you’re smart with money enough to shake the dust of earth from your feet and rocket up to Nuevas Vegas. To live beyond pollution, beyond contamination, with the best radiation seal ever built, life in the most secure and the most gorgeously decadent city ever dreamed into existence.”

  “You want her to spend five years as a public body and brain so that she can retire up to a place where stars live to be safe from their fans?”

  Gadi shrugged eloquently. “Look, nowadays in this gutted world, only fools want to live life. The rest of us want something sweeter. We can imagine far prettier than ruins and trash. You’d love the floating gardens—floating in space, Shira. Think of dancing in three dimensions instead of two. It’s people’s dreams we sell them back, what might have been.”

  His crew were yelling at him that they were ready. She watched for a few minutes, then ran, already late to fetch Ari.

  When she got home, Malkah, Avram and Yod were waiting for her in the courtyard. It was not, she saw at once, a social occasion. She put them off while she fed Ari and then settled him with a robot dog from Gadi.

  Avram led off at once. “I’ve had a message from Y-S. They summon us to a conference and accuse us of harboring a murderer. Since we have extradition treaties with every major multi, they can surely get an order.”

  “Me or Yod?”

  “Yod.”

  Her eyes met his. He was standing at attention, following their conversation, watching Shira carefully to see if she was angry. “They just want to disassemble him to learn how he’s made. Or to use him themselves.”

  “Of course,” Avram said, grimacing. “But your damned fool excursion for your infant is costing us dearly. I have said we will conference only in the Net. The Net is safe ground, and no multi would dare attack there.”

  “What do we get out of meeting with them at all?” Malkah asked. “Why not stonewall them—force them to make the next move?”

  “We buy time, and we find out exactly what they want. We see if we can make a deal.” Avram paced, tangling one hand in his white mane. “This time we tell the Council,” Malkah said. “Enough clandestine activity.”

  “This is for us to settle. We did it, we must bear the consequences.” Avram frowned at her, his pale eyes narrowed and brooding.

  “Everyone bears the consequences, I’m afraid,” Malkah said. “We must keep them informed. We have all acted irresponsibly. Even Yod.”

  “That is a meaningless accusation. Yod is programmed to obey. The responsibility is ours.” Avram glanced coldly at Shira.

  “And our responsibility is to let the Council know what we’re getting ourselves and everybody else into,” Malkah said in a tone of quiet authority. “I’m talking to them.” There was no more argument.

  The council set up the meeting in the Net for Sunday. Shira found herself frightened. She did not actually think Y-S would dare to attack them in the public Net as opposed to the frequent attacks in private bases. Y-S had agreed to meet there only after protracted attempts to shift the meeting elsewhere. There had been just one assassination in the Net in Shira’s lifetime, and the response of all other users to that violation of mutual treaty space had prevented another. A joint expedition had obliterated the entire assassin enclave held responsible. No wildcard killings by madmen were possible, because only a mind in conscious control could project into the Net. Someone simply accessing the Net without projection could not harm anyone inside.

  Therefore rationally she did not fear they would be attacked, but she feared what Y-S would demand, what offensive they were planning to mount. She could not escape the sense that her group was walking into a trap. This time Avram would enter with the rest of them, while Sam and a team from the Base monitored from outside. She would be with Yod, who was a master of cyberspace. Still, she was afraid.

  She kissed Ari goodbye, trying to act and sound normal, even banal, as she left instructions for the day with Nili. Standing with her arms folded, clutching herself, she reminded Nili what time he must be fed and have his nap, assuming she might not be out yet. Fearing she might never be back. It was not right that both she and Malkah should go to this rendezvous; but each was required. Even Malkah was reticent. Her instructions to Nili concerned the kittens and the house.

  Yod had not disappeared at five thirty-five to patrol the Base this morning. He was sitting in the courtyard, staring up into the long yellow leaves of the peach tree. In the courtyard, where no wind stirred, the sere leaves fell slowly, one by one. “I have grown fond of this place,” Yod said quietly, looking up into her face. He sat neatly in yoga fashion, on the grass under the tree, his back knife straight, a slight smile on his lips.

  “I’ve always loved it. I used to be seized with a longing for this house when I was away at school, when I was in the Y-S enclave.”

  “I never understood homesickness, but now I begin to. If you’ve been happy in a place, it seems unique. Radiant.” He caught a leaf as it drifted down and looked at it on his palm.

  “It’s time to go,” Malkah said. “Yod, I’m shocked. You’re procrastinating. You continue to show the capacity for generating new types of behavior never foreseen by Avram or by me.”

  He still did not stand, but he smiled at Malkah. “Such as?”

  “You were given a capacity for sexual performance, but I’m sure I never imagined you would create yourself a family.”

  “Given loneliness, a family is a rational construct for any conscious being.” Finally he rose. “However, I don’t fear this meeting. Rather I can’t help but look forward to confronting our enemies. Cyberspace, the interior of the great AI minds, is my natural environment. There I have an advantage over humans, no matter how enhanced. It could be…entertaining.”

  Little rituals of entering the Net or the Base. Even though only the plugs of the first generation had used the ears—plugs that none but Avram and Malkah of those present had ever seen—Shira did not know a single woman or man who did not remove earrings when sitting down to project into deep access. Some people also removed rings. Shira wore no jewelry this morning, but Malkah always wore at least studs in her ears. She insisted that her lobes closed up in a week if she forgot. Now Malkah removed the two small garnets and placed them like red eyes before her. She washed her hands together in her lap, another gesture Shira had often noticed in others about to connect.

  Shira herself always sat very still before connecting. She had been taught the common disciplines to quiet her mind before projection, as had every child in Tikva, but she wondered how many, like herself, still consciously sought that stage of alert calm and held it a moment before connecting. She had been away at college before she had stopped doing the full set of breathing exercises and meditation techniques from kabbalistic tradition she had been taught at age six. Perhaps she had continued them long after she had outgrown the need simply because they felt good.

  Inside the Base, she headed for the door to the Net, passed through and waited for her group. Yod and Malkah were already there, Yod looking as he always did, while Malkah looked twenty years younger. Then Avram bounded through the doors. He, too, looked more youthful than outside, and furthermore he was six centimeters taller. He saw himself as more imposing than he had appeared to Shira since she was a little girl. She wondered if her own appearance seemed as incongruous to the others. She had no idea what she projected; for a moment her concentration wavered, and she felt that sharp sense of nausea that a failure of projection produced. She caught herself at once, hoping none of the others had observed. It was rank amateurism to waver in deep projection, as well as dangerous. In projection, one must use what in kabbalah was called the adult mind, not the child mind: the mind that minded itself carefully and in full clear concen
tration.

  They had been given a conference room by the Net computer. In the spatial metaphor that was the Net, they requested coordinates at the entrance map, and their conference room was highlighted. Moving about in the Net used different controlling imagery at different times. Lately the Net had been using escalators and moving walkways, so they mounted and moved swiftly into position. They dismounted in an area marked Conference Room 147 Z-18. What they saw was a room. Inside double doors stood a doughnut-shaped table with chairs all about it. No one was there. They sat down. They waited. After ten minutes of waiting, Shira began to fret. Perhaps this was a trick. Perhaps their bodies were being kidnapped while they sat waiting in the Net. To waste ten minutes of Net conference time—since Y-S of course was paying for the time—was a potlatch of resources.

  “How long should we wait?” Shira finally asked.

  “Five minutes more,” Malkah said. “That’s quite sufficient.” She was frowning, tapping a drumbeat on the table. Shira had been struck since she was a child by the way objects in the Net felt solid. You could bang on a table. Presumably you could run into one, although she never had.

  At exactly fourteen minutes and forty-five seconds after they had begun waiting, the double doors opened again and the party from Y-S filed in one at a time. Dr. Upman, one of their cyberneticists, entered first; all except Yod recognized him at once. His trademark was a head of Einsteinian bushy hair, allowed like Avram’s to turn white. Avram greeted him by name, as did Malkah. A polite exchange of formal salutations. The same with the next to enter, Dr. Vogt, a needle-thin woman of fifty who had done the basic design on the robots that ran the Pacifica Platform. Again, greetings, warmer toward Avram. Then Shira remembered. Before coming to Tikva, Avram had taught out in California, and Barbara Vogt had been his graduate student. When Gadi was seven, Avram returned to Tikva.

  Next in was Dr. Yatsuko, portly head of the AI section, her former boss. All big guns. As each appeared, Shira pronounced the names for the benefit of Yod. He could access information on them, and she wanted him to understand what they were facing. Dr. Yatsuko was tall for a Japanese, massive. He was reputed to be absolutely loaded with circuitry, including an artificial heart, pancreas, eyes and additional sensors. Indeed his eyes, like Yod’s, were too perfect to be real. He stared at Yod, his pupils expanding and then contracting rhythmically.

  Then Roger Krupp entered, flanked by assistants. None of Shira’s party had ever met him, for he was the subdirector of Y-S, the tactical genius, it was reputed. He did not speak to them or acknowledge their presence but took a seat at the table, flanked by assistants, one male, one female, apparently twins but presumably cut-and-paste jobs. Everyone sat. One empty chair remained on the Y-S side. Finally the last person entered: her ex-husband, Josh.

  She felt an immense sense of relief. He was not dead. But she had seen him lying on the floor with his neck broken and his eyes glazed. Experimental procedures were constantly being employed, but brain death was still irreversible. Suppose she had been mistaken? He might not be dead, only crippled. He would not project himself paralyzed. He stared at her with an expression she could not read but that frightened her with its intensity. She was the only person he addressed himself to. She could scarcely look away from him. Her guilt was bubbling in her, guilt for leaving him, guilt for stealing back her son, guilt for his death—but he was not dead. Why had he come? What did he want? He would demand Ari back. They would negotiate Ari away from her.

  “Hello, Josh. I’m pleased to see you,” she said cautiously.

  “I doubt that,” he said. He nodded at Yod. “You should have instructed it to do a better job of killing me.”

  “We still intend to proceed on assault charges,” the male attendant of Krupp announced. “We want the cyborg delivered to us for justice.”

  “Justice has nothing to do with the matter,” Malkah said. “Every female fights for her young. And will kill for her young. We’re still a part of nature, no matter how we’ve destroyed the world.”

  “It is very simple,” the male attendant said. “If you do not turn over the cyborg, we will send assassins into your Base every week. We will make sure you cannot keep your Base active. You’ll have to put all your effort into defending, rebuilding. The Base is vital to your economy, I believe?”

  Malkah smiled broadly. “What an excellent test for our defenses. We couldn’t hire a better advertisement.”

  Avram looked directly at Krupp. He did not bother addressing the mouthpiece. “Do you expect us to believe that if Yod is turned over to you, you won’t attempt to wipe us out? That’s unbelievable.”

  “Not when you consider the cost of assassins,” Dr. Vogt said. “We want the cyborg. Once we have possession of it, we’re satisfied. You’re of no further interest to us and not worth the expense of tying you up further.”

  “Cyborg,” Dr. Yatsuko said in his deep commanding voice—possibly augmented with resonances designed to impress? “You are programmed to attack and defend, are you not?”

  “I’m not programmed to answer questions I don’t choose to answer,” Yod said.

  “Any machine can be reprogrammed,” Dr. Yatsuko said. “But wouldn’t you rather be the progenitor of a race? You can be a leader among your own kind, in an army of cyborgs.”

  “Your proposition is that we should turn the cyborg over to you—Yod in whom I’ve invested twenty years, the life of my worthy assistant, every bit of credit I could co-opt. Much of the surplus of Tikva is tied up in Yod. He’s the climax of my life’s research.”

  Roger Krupp made a slight gesture with his left hand. Immediately Dr. Upman said, “We’re authorized to offer a reasonable payment to your town. Are you prepared to negotiate in good faith?”

  The female assistant spoke to Shira. “I’m sure you’re delighted to find that the robot did not kill your husband. We’re prepared to reunite you in full possession of a Status Eighteen. All the prerogatives of that rank for yourself, for your son. What other facility can offer such an education as a Status Eighteen receives from Y-S?”

  “Come back, Shira. I should never have taken Ari from you. But I miss him.” The voice issuing from Josh quavered with feeling.

  She found her eyes brimming tears, but of course crying was merely symbolic here. Her guilt was certainly being roused. He could not forgive her. That was not humanly possible.

  “I miss you. Let’s try again. Let’s heal our wounds. Your work in Tikva is finished. At Y-S we can both work to full capacity.”

  A strange icy feeling invaded her. “Our past history does mean a lot to me. Do you remember how your parents died, Josh?” First Riva was dead and then not dead. Next Josh was dead and now not dead. Resurrection was growing commonplace.

  He blinked with surprise, a trait she remembered. No, she must be mistaken. “They died of botacellic plague.”

  Shira sat back, and the welter of confused emotions subsided. This was not Josh. The answer the impersonator had given was what Josh always put down on personnel and official forms. In fact his parents had been killed in fighting in the Jewish quarter of Munich, to which so many Russian Jews and ex-Israelis had fled. If this were Josh, he would guess her intent and answer with some allusion to the truth.

  “It’s the best thing for your son, Shira,” the female assistant said. “By far the best thing.”

  “If you’ve produced this imitation of my dead husband for any purpose other than amusement, I can’t guess what it is.”

  “Mrs. Rogovin.” Dr. Upman addressed her. “You’re obviously the handler of the cyborg. You have operated with it twice that we know of, once at the meet near Cybernaut, once by successfully penetrating our Nebraska compound. Although you didn’t program it, you handle it alone. Of course we want you. You’ve demonstrated unique abilities. Don’t you want to go on handling the cyborg under our direction? We’ll soon have not one but hundreds.”

  “I’m utterly opposed to trafficking in people, and Yod is a person, albeit not a h
uman person,” Malkah said. “Whatever you bring to the attack against us, we can defend. We may also be able to engage some assistance, since other customers do use our wares.”

  “I’m sure you can defend,” Dr. Vogt said soothingly, “but think of the time and energy it will drain from your profitable work. You’ll bleed to death, slowly but quite steadily.”

  Dr. Yatsuko shook a huge finger at Malkah. “You’re growing senile. Any intelligent machine has a mind but no consciousness. You speak like a child who thinks the house is alive.”

  “I have as much consciousness as you do,” Yod said. “Enough to know that is not the man I killed. If I were in the room with someone who tried to kill me, I would have feelings, reactions. He has none. He’s a fake.”

  There was a little silence after Yod’s statement, as if they were so startled they could not produce a response. Malkah spoke quickly into the vacuum. “Yod is a person. Persons cannot be sold. If you want him, you must hire him away of his own volition.”

  “Machines do not have volition, Dr. Shipman—surely you have not entirely taken leave of your senses,” Dr. Vogt said. “They have programming that defines goals. Since they are compelled to pursue those programmed ends, they may appear willful, but we are dealing with the same projection of affect my little boy was guilty of when he used to say a chair hit him.”

  Avram stood. “I believe we have reached the end of useful discussion.”

  “Sit down,” Krupp bellowed, the first time he had spoken. “I will say when the meeting has ended. Do you accept our offer, or shall we commence our program of incursions into your Base?”

  Avram remained standing but did not move toward the door. “We are not authorized to deal for Tikva. Only the Town Council can do that. You must send through the Net a precise offer, and we will present it. The Council will decide. Only they can do so. You haven’t made a concrete offer yet.”