She wanted to be beautiful, obviously—but not in just any way. She wanted to be the way I wanted her to be. Her dream was to be the realization of my dream.
This was a game I could play, except for one thing. There were only two faces I really desired. One was Megan's, which I would not tolerate on any other woman; the other was Helse's.
Well, Helse had assumed the bodies of other women on occasion, to please me, as she could no longer do so with her own body. She could certainly assume this body.
Would it be right to do this? This was no purely personal vision of mine when my reality changed; this was an interactive vision, shared with an anonymous admirer. Well, if I were willing, and Helse were willing, and the woman wanted it, why not? It was, after all, limited to the helmet. It was only a kind of game.
Or was it?
I nudged that caution aside, intrigued by the possibilities. To have a living woman playing my lost love in the privacy of the helmet. What might come of that?
I gazed at the blank face and let my longing manifest. The face blurred and changed, and there was Helse's face. Helse, as she was at sixteen, when I had known her in life and loved her. As I still loved her.
Then I moved to kiss those precious lips. But I stopped just before the contact, for I wanted her to do it, to kiss me actively. Kissing a construct of imagination is like masturbation; it is better if there is truly another person, even if her appearance has been changed.
Roulette, for a change, was in an outfit that showed no cleavage. She wore a light green sweater and plaid skirt, like a college girl, and even had a green ribbon in her red hair. I discovered to my chagrin that she was every bit as sexy that way as she had been with the cleavage.
"The place to start," she said briskly, "is to legalize everything possible. There's no point in wasting effort suppressing victimless crimes."
"Like what?" I asked, trying not to look as she crossed her legs so that the skirt slid across her thighs.
"Gambling, drugs, sex, pornography."
Indeed, such concepts came readily to my mind as I fought to bring my errant gaze under control. Those thighs! "Porno is Thorley's problem; he's in charge of censorship."
She laughed. That sweater! "He's a rock-ribbed conservative! He hates porno almost as bad as he hates censorship. I'd like to watch him reviewing sex."
"He'll simply ignore it," I said. Would that I could do the same! "But about the others—I know you have no case against gambling, but what of the casinos run by organized crime, which fleeces the clients and pays off the authorities?"
"Organized crime I mean to abolish. When it takes over gambling, then there's trouble, but the evil is in the crime, not the gambling. Keep it honest, it'll be all right."
"But the compulsive gamblers who can't stop, who run themselves into monstrous debts—"
"Strictly cash," she said. "No credit, no IOUs. That keeps them to what they can afford. The truly sick ones can put up segments of their lives for rehabilitative treatment; they lose, they go in. Truly compulsive gambling is a disease; it can be treated, but the client has to be willing."
She seemed to have her answers! But, of course, she was the daughter of a professional (and honest) gambler; this was her home turf. "Drugs, then," I said. "Some of them devastate the human system. If we legalize them—"
"Make the drugs legal, the abuse illegal," she said firmly. "Most drugs are good and necessary for human health. A lot of the harm in drugs is because they are illegal. Drug addiction is the single greatest cause of chronic crime against property: addicts have to steal to get money for their habit. With government clinics like those you had in Sunshine when you were governor, the money motive is gone and the crime stops. The rest is education: teach the people the truth about drugs, all drugs, what they do and what their abuse costs in health and independence. Most people will stay clear or at least stick to the relatively harmless ones. But any dangerous or addictive drug has to be given at the clinic; nobody doses himself or anyone else. There'll be some new addictions, sure, but there'll also be some who learn better at the clinic and never get addicted, when they would have otherwise. Because they'll see the true addicts, coming in for theirs, and that will open eyes."
"I don't know," I said. "Everyone knows the perils of alcohol addiction, but it progresses, anyway."
"Because they have unlimited access. They get soused, drive their bubble-cars, crack up, kill people—" Her face hardened. "We're going to get those drunk drivers out of the channels! Man kills another man, I don't care if he's drunk or crazy, I want him gone. Get all killers out of circulation, same as the hardened criminals."
"We'd have to spend billions on new prisons!" I protested.
She frowned. "Somehow I just knew you weren't going to want to put 'em out the space lock suitless," she said. "All right, you don't have to. Just guarantee that no killer will ever be free in the society again and I'll be satisfied; I don't care how you do it."
"But—"
"Ask Gerald; he can work anything out. Just so long as we eliminate the repeat criminals of any type."
I sighed, partly for the situation and partly for those supremely fleshed legs. "I expected you to solve my problems, not complicate them!"
"After more than twenty years you retain that delusion?" she inquired sweetly, spreading her legs. Damn her! She knew what she was doing to me!
"Which reminds me," I said doggedly. "Sex. It may be natural, but not when it's forced. You don't propose to legalize rape, do you?"
She laughed enthusiastically, causing her sweater to ripple. "He remembers that day! And I thought he'd forgotten! Who says romance is dead?"
I had walked into that one. I had for the moment lost awareness of the fact that I had raped her according to the pirate ritual. I found myself blushing.
She shook her head. "You're hopeless, Hope. God, I'd like to reenact that occasion!" She made as if to remove the sweater, and suddenly I knew that she wore no undergarment. No wonder it rippled! "But I do know what you mean. Your typical humdrum civilized Jupiter woman doesn't care to get raped. For her I'd say voluntary sex is fine, but involuntary is a violation of her civil rights, and those who violate the civil rights of others should be taken promptly out of circulation."
"More prisons!" I moaned. "But you sound as though you think any voluntary sex is all right. What about children?"
She considered. "Yes, there had better be an age of consent. But you know, some children like it. They—"
"No!" I snapped.
She sighed. "You conservatives! Well, let's establish a realistic age of consent, say twelve or thirteen, that can be modified by a magistrate when warranted. When a girl grows woman's equipment, she's at the age of consent; that's easy enough to verify. Below that, there has to be legal approval."
"And I thought I was a liberal," I muttered.
"You're a bleeding heart," she said. "There's a difference."
"Live and learn."
"But you miss the point on rape," she continued. "You debate whether it is a crime of sex or a crime of violence, when, in fact, it is a crime of opportunity. If you jailed every man who would rape if he had a safe opportunity, and every woman who would do the same if she had opportunity and ability, seventy percent of the men and thirty percent of the women would wind up behind bars. The only way to eliminate it is to restrict opportunity."
"But we can't segregate all the men from all the women!" I protested.
"You assume that rape is strictly heterosexual. No, you can't eliminate it entirely, but you can liberalize society's attitude. After all, what is rape but a difference of opinion? The same act, consenting, is victimless; nonconsenting, it is rape. If we make more women consenting, we'll have less rape."
"That's preposterous!"
"That's practical," she corrected me. "Do you really want to solve the problems of Jupiter society or merely impose your moralism on it?" She drew up her sweater, showing her bare right breast. What a wonder! She was correct
: if I were not constrained by social awareness, I would fling myself at her and rape her, as I had more than two decades before, knowing that she would welcome it. She was deliberately taunting me with her body, and it would be her victory if I succumbed.
I shook my head, bemused, my gaze locked exactly where she wanted it. "Work out your program, but consult with me before you implement it."
She rose, inhaling. "Anytime, Tyrant."
There was another swell of outrage as the crime reforms were announced. Newsfaxes editorialized, condemning me roundly for encouraging promiscuity, child abuse, and drug addiction. One planetarily syndicated cartoon showed me naked, with erection and a hypodermic, pursuing a child. That stung, but I had to smile; the Tyrancy had legalized pornography, so such pictures were now quite legal.
The last laugh, though, was mine, for the statistics on crime showed a sharp drop. Part of this was, as my critics claimed, because many acts had been decriminalized, so no longer counted as crimes. But more of it was because we were systematically getting the habitual criminals out of society, and the drug addicts had no further incentive to commit crimes. We were, indeed, making the halls safe for the common folk.
It was only two weeks before the chip came back, and this time I remembered it immediately. Shelia held it up with a wry expression; naturally she had played it through, as it was her job to do, insuring that nothing directly harmful to me was in it. It was, of course, quite clear to her where the progression was leading, but she was understanding and tolerant, knowing that she herself had gone farther with me than this anonymous woman was ever likely to.
This time the initial scene had been modified slightly. The me-figure glow had been diminished, in accordance with my prior tailoring of it, and my appearance was closer to the reality. The veiled woman was also more sharply drawn, as if she had more confidence now that she had a face. When she parted the veil, Helse's face was clear and animated.
My face came down, and our lips touched. But hers were not properly responsive. They were there but quite inexperienced. It was as though she had never kissed before.
No, it was something else. Her lips were there only as my expectation; they had no substance apart from that. Well, substance, but not reaction. It was like kissing a woman who had no knowledge I was there, as if I were a ghost.
I broke the kiss and considered. Well, I had expected expertise and was mistaken. This woman had a passion for me but not experience in seducing men. She was not Helse, regardless of the image.
Again I considered. Feelie helmets were sophisticated devices with properties that unsophisticated users could readily overlook. Obviously this woman did not realize that there were potential multiple tracks and had confined herself to one. That meant that she could craft a scene as perceived by a camera or as viewed by one participant or the other, but could not merge the two. For true interaction such merging was essential. So her kiss was what she thought I should feel but inadequate because she didn't know what I should feel.
I could correct that. All that was required was some simple instruction—in the use of the helmet.
I drew back. "Woman," I said in English, "I must show you something." Then I pictured myself with a feelie helmet on. "This setting is for one viewpoint," I explained, touching the appropriate place on the helmet. "Normally it should be for the third-party impressions. This is the one you have been using. This setting is for a second viewpoint," I touched the next. "Normally you should use it for your own impressions—the way you personally see and feel. You have not been using this. Set it this way"—I had the third-party camera pan in close, so the detail was clear—"and it will continuously record your impressions without your conscious effort. And this setting"—I showed the third—"this is for a third viewpoint. You should leave this one alone. I will use it for my impressions."
I removed the helmet in the scene, and it disappeared. "Now what do we have?" I inquired rhetorically. "We have channel three, recorded by me, for me. We have channel two, recorded by you, for you. And we have channel one, recorded and modified by both of us, so it is a composite camera-eye picture."
I paused, then spoke again. She had never spoken in the scene, which probably meant that she hadn't realized that it was possible. If a person recorded the mental pattern consistent with the effort of formulating certain words, that recording would reproduce as the formulated words. "Now, those three channels are not the whole scene," I continued. "They do not provide proper interaction. For that we need a special modification. When I kiss you, I need to feel not what I expect to feel but what you arrange for me to feel physically. Otherwise I am kissing a ghost. I must feel your reaction to my action or it becomes nothing."
I caused the helmet to reappear. "It works like this. After you have recorded your impressions on your channel, you do some recording on my channel, using this special setting that augments mine without erasing it. You place there the impressions you want me to experience. So when I kiss you, your lips must kiss back. That's there on my channel, so that when I do kiss you, I feel what you have prepared for me to feel. Similarly I will set it up for you on your channel. With the two together"—I spread my hands—"a great deal can be experienced, when a scene is properly crafted. But it requires careful attention and work by both parties."
I caused the helmet to fade out again. It had been a long time since I had really played with one of these devices, and I enjoyed showing off my expertise. "Now, obviously there is a problem here," I said, in a kind of lecture. "How can I provide my reaction to something you haven't yet put in the scene? Well, there are two ways. First, I can react to what you have already put in the scene, and you can replay that section and get a more accurate notion of the total effect. But that can be tedious. Second, I can anticipate what you might do and prepare for that. Of course, that can lead to peculiar effects. Let's say I anticipate that if I kiss you, you will kiss back. But, in fact, you slap my face. Then, when I kiss you, I will instead feel the slap. That would be a funny kiss! Or you might slap me, and I would feel your lips kissing. The viewpoints have to integrate. So here we go into a slightly computerized function built into the helmets. This insures that a given action meets with an appropriate response. So if I kiss you, you either kiss back or slap me but not both—or if both, at least one at a time. If I do something you have not anticipated, so that you have prepared no response, then it becomes dead stick—like your present kiss. That means you have to go back and prepare an appropriate set of responses, so we can go on from there. It is, in its fashion, like a chess game, wherein each player must consider the various possible responses to the move he makes and prepare for them. Of course, he can't go too far; normally he sets up only a single, negative response to an action by the other party that he doesn't want and a number of more positive responses to actions he does want. When two people have a similar course in mind, the scene can go quite far before being returned for more input."
I paused again. I didn't worry that this was too much information for a helmet novice; she could play the scene over and over until she understood. "Now I will prepare several alternatives, which the helmet will automatically key in according to their types; this is a function of this special interactive mode. You may explore them and then prepare your own sets of responses. I suspect that our next exchange of chips will be more interesting."
Then I set up my scenelets. In one, I kissed her, her lips were closed, and it was a long, quiet contact. I planted in her channel the pressure of my hands at her back and my arms encircling her. In another, her lips parted, and I planted the feel of my tongue passing through my own lips to touch hers. In another, she turned a bit, and my left hand slid down to cup her right buttock through the material of her voluminous cloak. In yet another, she resisted, drawing back her head as I approached, and I paused, then let her go and turned away without kissing her. Nothing was forced here; she had to select the alternative in order to experience it, and she could cut if off at any time simply by turning
off the helmet. In each of the cases I also prepared the appropriate camera-view sequence. The kissing ones were similar and really didn't need modification, but the turning-away one did.
Satisfied, I returned the chip to Shelia for shipment. I discovered that I had expended two hours; the time had flown!
Chapter 8 — HELMET SEX
"Yes, I have answers," Phist said. Evidently his wife had already advised him of my misgivings about the elimination of criminals. "Where feasible, there must be restitution; where not, elimination."
"How can there be restitution for murder?" I demanded.
"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life; it can be done literally. We can continue to execute murderers."
"How can killing ever be justified?" I asked, troubled. "To execute a murderer—that doesn't bring the victim back, it just makes two people dead. That's no good!"
"There was a time when you seemed to feel otherwise," he reminded me gently.
"I killed," I said. "I never liked it."
"A decade or two with a gentle woman has nevertheless had its effect on you."
"And has two decades with a violent woman affected you?" I returned.
He smiled. "Perhaps. But to address the present problem: there is use, within industry, even for murderers. Inclement assignments. I suspect we can absorb all the murderers you can provide, and a number of lesser criminals."
I knew he wasn't bluffing. "Tell me how."
"In deep space there are posts that few accept voluntarily. Guard duty on remote planetoids of the Belt, the Charon tour, close Solar duty, that sort of thing. Men don't like being sterilized by the radiation of their working environment, or being exposed to a fifty-percent risk of death, or being left alone for months at a time. A criminal would not like it, either, but would not be in a position to protest this as punishment. He either performs appropriately or he spends the rest of his life in deep space, isolated from all other human contact."
Anthony, Piers - Tyrant 4 - Executive Page 17
