"I don't know that!" I protested. But inside, I did.
There was a longer interval before the next chip returned. I wondered whether my anonymous woman had had second thoughts, being too shy to present her own body to me, even if enhanced. Well, it had been a nice diversion. Certainly I did not need to expend time on foolishness of this nature.
When it showed up, I knew by my own reaction that my interest was greater than I had let myself believe. There was something about this woman, perhaps her quality of naïveté, that intrigued me. Also, I realized that I did, after all, need this type of diversion. My tenure as Tyrant was becoming increasingly restrictive, both physically and intellectually; I could neither go freely out in public, lest I get assassinated, nor readily solve the problems of the society. Everywhere I turned, the barriers were formidable and complex, not admitting any simplistic answers. So I needed simplistic relief and distraction, much as a child needs candy or fairy tales as a counterpoint to grim reality. This exploration of love and sex with the anonymous woman, an enjoyable challenge that had no substance, risk-free—this was helping me to cope with the rest of my situation. Pleasure without responsibility—what a treasure that can be!
I played the scene. It went through the kiss. Then she removed her cloak and stood before me, much less fully endowed but also far more natural. When I touched her undergarments, they dissolved, as before, but now her breasts had human nipples and human heft, and her cleft had down.
I paused. This was only a feelie, not real, yet on a certain level it was real enough. Did I really want to do this? Did she? I had possessed many women in my day, but she had evidently possessed no men.
I asked her. "You have offered your body to me. Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Yes," she said. I realized that this simple answer could have been keyed to any number of potential suggestions. Still, it did seem to be what she wanted: to make love to the Tyrant. After that act was completed on the chip, I might never hear from her again; if so, that was the way it had to be.
"Then I will show you my body," I said. I disrobed, carefully, so that she could protest if she wished to. She merely stood there and watched.
When I was naked, my member expanded and became erect, ready for the act. Then, yet again, I paused. There had not been sufficient reaction on her part; this could be beyond what she had programmed for. "Do you know what this is?" I asked.
"I have not seen..." she said hesitantly.
Never seen a man naked? An erect organ? This was too risky. I decided to postpone the act. "Consider and prepare," I told her. "If you still wish to do it, we shall do it next time."
Then I prepared some alternatives for her to explore at her leisure: the feel of a firm member pushing into her orifice, of a male body pressing her down, of a mouth at her breast. Increasingly I suspected that she had not engaged in any kind of sexual act before, not even hugging or kissing, and I did not want to overwhelm her. I did make an attempt to complete the act with her and found that while she lay down on her back at my command, she did not otherwise cooperate; she really didn't know what came next. So I erased that sequence; it was indeed too soon for it.
The population control measure stirred up literal riots. The Navy had to move in to restore order in a dozen cities, and quite a number of people were shipped out to space. When we announced that anyone caught committing vandalism against property in the name of reproduction would be permanently barred from restoration of such rights, the violence abated, but it was evident that much bad feeling remained. It seemed that the people wanted me to solve the problems of society but did not want to be personally touched by the necessary measures. My sympathy for the common man was diminishing in the face of this hypocrisy. Had they really expected to breed without limit, while the government covered all costs of child care and good employment for all the offspring?
Actually they could enjoy children via the helmet too. There were chips available that covered all the details of child rearing, so the population could be controlled without depriving families of the experience of having children—just the reality. But, of course, that wasn't enough.
The next tape showed how correctly I had judged her. She knew almost nothing of actual sexual expression, not even what was available on the more graphic holos. She had led a sheltered life. She was willing and eager but ignorant. I would have to take her through it step by step.
First I did what I should have done earlier: I explained it to her verbally. I described how a man and a woman came together, how she spread her legs and he set his organ carefully in her. Then I set out to demonstrate.
I had her lie on the bed that appeared in the scene, naked, while I approached with my erect member and ran my hands over her body. She had improved that body greatly; now the flesh felt as it should. But when I mounted her from above, she did not respond properly; her legs remained closed. I realized that she still did not realize the extent to which her cooperation was necessary. I ran my hands along her thighs and tried to separate them, but there was no response.
Again I paused to consider. I had grown accustomed to experienced women and took certain things for granted. This woman had no sexual experience. Perhaps that was why she had come to me, via the helmet: She wanted to learn at the hands of a public figure she respected, one who was reputed to be very good with women. Then she could apply that knowledge to real life and suffer few, if any, of the false starts and errors that inexperience brought. It did make sense.
I remembered Juana, my first roommate in the Navy, some thirty-five years before. A lovely girl who was terrified of sex because she had been raped, yet who had to get through it because of inflexible Navy policy. How had I handled that?
"Let me show you a different way," I told my helmet woman. "One that requires less of you. I will describe it to you now, and next time we can do it."
I told her to lie on her right side and draw up her legs. "I will embrace you from behind and enter you in the normal manner. You will feel my legs against the backs of yours, and my left arm will circle your body so that my hand can caress your breasts. I will go into you slowly; there will be no discomfort. Do not be concerned about being a virgin; here in the helmet there need be no complications."
I continued to describe the expectations, so that she would have no surprises, and would be able to accommodate me in anything I might do that she chose to accept. This is easier to do when limited to a single position. I tried to describe what her feeling of me inside her should be, but, of course, this was difficult. I couldn't act it out, because I lacked the feminine anatomy. Finally I drew on my long-ago memory of one of the reverse-role feelie chips, in which a male could experience the sensations of the female during the act and projected that memory as clearly as I could.
I returned the chip to Shelia. What she would think of the content I could not say. But she did know me well enough to accept it.
My memory suggests that only a few days later the chip returned, but either it was longer or there were intermediate missives that my recollection has compressed into a single episode. Again it hardly matters; the essence is accurate. I was eager to don the helmet; my secret romance with this anonymous woman had quite taken my fancy. Perhaps it was the novelty of introducing her to sex, which is a special type of pleasure for a man. The nervous excitement of her learning process fed back to me, making the familiar become new.
I played through the routine opening sequence, then got her on the bed. She assumed the position I had described, and I got on the bed behind her and brought my member into play. Her flesh was ready, responsive, and wet where I positioned myself for entry. I advanced slowly, and she had keyed in the crossover tactiles so that the distinction between this and reality was not great. I moved into her all the way, and my hand took hold of her left breast and squeezed it gently. Oh, yes, this was good!
Then her vaginal muscles clenched. Surprised, I thrust, and suddenly we were in the culmination, moving almost together, thrust
and clench and squeeze. Very soon I jetted into her... and then the scene ended, and I realized I had soiled my trousers. This is a consequence of careless use of the helmet; I should have taken a precaution.
I removed the helmet, took a shower, and changed my clothing. Then I returned to the helmet and played through the alternatives. She had indeed learned well; we completed the act in several slight variances.
But though she had reacted well, she had not actually climaxed; careful study satisfied me on that. So I explained what I contemplated for the next occasion and told her how to accommodate it, so that she, too, could experience the thrill of culmination. I complimented her on what she had done so far and invited her to play through my personal channel to verify the joy she had brought to me. There are ways in which feelie sex is better than the reality, and this is one of them: The partners can actually feel each other's pleasure. I had recorded a formidable dose of it this time, and it only excited me further to realize that her first experience of orgasm might be mine. Later I would have the special pleasure of feeling hers.
Faith was now fifty-three, but her recent years of service to the community had revitalized her, and she was indeed a beautiful woman again.
"Full employment is easier said than done," she said earnestly. "Many who are called unemployed are actually migrant laborers—"
"We want to take proper care of them," I said firmly. "I spent a year as one myself; I know their lot."
"Fair wages and fair working conditions will do them the most good. Another group of the poor is the homeless; people who used to exist comfortably enough until rising rents forced them into the halls to become drifters, shopping-bag ladies, and such. Give them decent housing and they can become productive again."
"Housing for all," I agreed.
"And the women with children," she continued. "They can't work because they have to stay home with the children, but they want to work, and would work, if they had proper day care for those children."
"Day care, definitely," I agreed.
"And the ill—physically and mentally. If the handicapped are hired for suitable positions, they can be self-supporting, and the mental cases can be gotten out of the passages—"
I thought of Shelia. Certainly the handicapped could be effective workers! "Why aren't the mentally ill in institutions?" I asked.
"They were, but it was too expensive to maintain them, so as an act of generosity, they were returned to society. That means they wander the halls, panhandling, and they sleep in the crannies of storage chambers. Most are harmless, but shopkeepers don't like them because of the thefts—"
"But they can work productively?"
"If the right jobs are provided. Many are of low intelligence, but for them, routine jobs that would bore normal people to distraction could be fine. Some would need to work in confinement, but they could still operate computers. Some of them have minds that resemble computers, actually."
"Like Amber," I murmured.
"The child who translates for you? Yes. If we make a diligent effort, we can put many of these people to useful work, and they will be better off for it." She glanced at her notes. "We'll have to do something about racism."
"Racism causes poverty?"
"Indirectly. It tends to isolate minorities and reduce their employment opportunities. Blacks and Hispanics can become ghettoized, and their rates of unemployment—"
"Deal with racism," I agreed. "But I'm not quite sure how."
"Education," she said firmly.
"Hopie's department," I said. "I hope that doesn't overwhelm her."
"She's a bright girl; she'll think of something. Now another class of poverty is the prostitutes—"
"The what?"
"Most of them are only in for economic reasons; if they had any better way to earn a living, they'd take it." She smiled. "I happen to know the route. Roulette agrees. She means to decriminalize sex. Provide decent jobs for those women, so they don't have to look for money that way. The minority who really do like that sort of work can gets jobs at what she calls the civilian Tail. No more hallwalking."
"That should do it," I agreed. "But I don't know how we can stop some from hallwalking if they decide to pick up some extra income."
"No need. They can do what they want. But they won't be forced to for economic reasons, and the men will know that they can get it at a set price in the Tail, so there won't be much demand. No hundred-dollars-a-night stuff, unless the girl is something special. Now we come to the problem—"
"The problem," I repeated, dreading what it might be.
"The major problem of poverty is health. Either health care is so expensive that it impoverishes ordinary people, or the poor are dying because they can't afford it. Now, we could provide free health care for all..."
"The Senator has already braced me on that," I said. "Health care now costs ten percent of the gross planetary product, and it is rising toward fifteen percent."
"And it's not really helping," she agreed. "Free care is not making folks healthier; they continue with their unhealthy habits and let the state pick up the tab for the consequence. Stonebridge tells me that half of all the medical costs of the average person's life occur in the final year. Now, if we could just cut off that year—"
"How can we know when a person's final year is starting?"
"I hashed this out with Stonebridge," she said. "We agreed that some people are better risks than others. If we consider age, general health, and lifestyle, we can get a pretty good notion when expenses are going to mount. Or we could simply set a cap: When any person uses up the allowance for free care, that's it, and he's on his own. That seems fair."
"That seems callous," I said. "I expected you to argue the other side."
"I did argue the other side, but Stonebridge showed me that we could do a lot more good for many more poor people if we put a cap on calamitous medical expense and used the money to help those who could benefit most by small amounts. If we use Ebony's euthanasia pills for the terminal cases..." She shrugged. "I must confess, things do look different when you're trying to solve the whole problem instead of pushing one particular view. The greatest good for the greatest number—it does make sense."
"If we have a set limit," I pointed out, "some bright young man might have an accident and go over, and have to die, when just a little more money would have paid to make him fit for forty more years of productive service, while an idle old man who has been lucky might be saved."
"A limit to state care," she said. "If an employer wanted to pay for extra care for a good employee, that would be satisfactory."
"Could be," I agreed, not entirely satisfied. We were coming to difficult decisions.
The helmet affair continued thereafter with increasing sophistication. Every few days the chip would arrive, and it always meant a new position or a new variation, wonderfully detailed. My anonymous woman had become a very fine lover, always eager to please me and herself. She learned to use her hands to excellent advantage, and her mouth, and to accommodate my hands and mouth in phenomenal ways.
We mastered all the positions I could think of, and many variations. Sometimes we did it fast, sometimes slow; we filled up a second chip, and a third, saving all the versions. That's another thing about a feelie: Long after the initial episode, you can play it again and again. After a while the familiarity dulls it, but still, it is much better than nothing. I understand that some men—and women—have saved their early feelie recordings for decades and played them back in sequence when old and unable to perform similarly. Via the feelie, a luscious young wife can remain that way forever. Naturally all this was available on the porno market, but there is a special quality to the scene of your own loved one, and of one you have actually experienced.
I tried to talk with her on occasion. "You have never given me a name," I complained. She only smiled, preferring to retain anonymity. She would not talk politics or anything of substance; she merely expressed her love of, and joy in, me. She t
hought I was a wonderful person and a wonderful lover. I found this easy enough to take; I was now in my fifties and knew she was young, perhaps twenty, and her continuing interest was very flattering.
"But you must go to your real life," I cautioned her. "You have now mastered sex and are ready for marriage or whatever relationship you choose."
"I am satisfied with you," she responded. "I want only you." Actually this did not occur all in one sequence; it developed over the course of several episodes, just as our sexual events did. But it would be tedious to render it in fragmented form.
"You know I am married," I said. "I am separated, so I can and do indulge privately with other women, but I cannot marry any of them. Even if I were not the Tyrant, I could not take up another formal relationship."
"There is only one thing that would bring me greater joy than the helmet has with you," she said.
"And what is that?" I asked, for she seldom volunteered information; she had to be asked. By that token I knew she was not any of the women I knew. Even had Coral or Ebony or one of my old Navy mistresses chosen to communicate with me in this manner, they would not have had the diffident mannerisms of this anonymous woman. I rather liked this quality in her. She was not pushy; apart from her devotion to me, she made no demands.
"To be with you physically," she said.
I smiled. "That would ruin your anonymity," I pointed out. "I think that I would be interested in being with you physically, though I know you would not look the way you do here, for you have accommodated my tastes as well as any woman has. But it would be both awkward and dangerous for you, for I am a target for assassins. I would not care to expose you to that."
"I would gladly die for you," she said.
Anthony, Piers - Tyrant 4 - Executive Page 19
