The Sex Machine

by Troy Conway

  “Okay, let’s go back and get it done”

  I walked ahead of the little cortege to the house I cast a glance back over my shoulder and saw one of the sailor boys dousing the robot figure of Yi Lou with gasoline. Then he touched a match to it. The robot body flared with flames.

  My head was reeling from what had taken place. I was quite happy to be left alone to finish off my legs with the golden slaves. I needed time to think. Yi Lou had much the same body as Kai Lai-and also as Ip Chung, for that matter. Could those two Chinese dolls have ban robots too? With a common model for their figures? It was not beyond belief.

  But Ip Chung and Kai Lai had seemed so real!

  Well, so had Yi Lou.

  I never even suspected she was a robot until her arm had broken off against the tree branch. There must have been a ceramic plate at the back of her neck covering some vital part of her wired-up apparatus. A master electrode, maybe, or a diode that controlled her entire works

  In science-fiction parlance, a robot made to resemble and imitate a human Wig is an android. Those dolls were androids. Somehow the Red Chinese had stumbled onto the processes for making such things. The sweat stood out on my forehead. They were so damned human! They could weep and laugh, they held intelligent conversations, they made love like—

  I sat up straight. Well, now! No wonder the old mentula-master had become exhausted. I’ll bet Ip Chung and Kai Lai had been programmed to go on screwing for days, maybe even weeks on end. My ego stirred and got oil its can where those bimbos bad knocked it. I had stayed with them as no other man had been able to do. No wonder Ip Chung had been so profuse in her praise of me to Kai Lei. I’ll bet in her wind-up little mind, I was quite some phallic pumpkins.

  I grinned and finished my legs. I reached for a towel and wiped my fingers dry. I felt ready to take on at1 of China as I opened the door and saw Ling Tow sitting on a bench beside the patch-eyed Shu Shang.

  “What do I wear?” I called out.

  Ling Tow clapped his hands.

  A girl in a quilted jacket and red linen pants came running with the coolie suit I was to don, and a wig of coarse black hair. I drew back unwittingly as she advanced, and Ling Tow tittered.

  “Is not need to worry,’’ Shu Shang chortled. “Is real woman”

  I took the clothes from her and put them on Standing in front of a mirror, I fitted on the wig. The result was not too bad. I looked like a Chinese muscleman. My craggy face, handsome enough by western standards, made me seem something out of a Fu Manchu movie.

  Ling Tow was delighted by my appearance.

  “You make a h e Chinaman, big and husky lib the men from Sin-kiang, the desert horsemen. They will be pleased with you at Tin Song”

  He rose to his feet, nodding happily. Shu Shang waved a hand, motioning me ahead of them. I walked out into the sunlight and toward the big black touring car.

  I sat in front with the driver. Ling Tow and Sha Shang sat in the rear. The driver was a small man, but he could handle that old Daimler as if he were a part of it. We whipped out of the fishing village and along one of the dusty roads at better than eighty miles an hour.

  There were bare brown hills all around m on the border of Hunan province, but they gave way to tilled farm fields where we could see men and women working side by side. Under Mao and his collectivism, which included the barracks society in which the sexes have been segregated in separate compounds, the tillable land of China has been in revolt. The famines that beset the people are a result of the chaos afflicting the agricultural administration. Maybe the peasants themselves too, but whatever the reason, the Chinaman has been abusing his soil for more than a decade.

  The failure of food crops caused the famines. No wonder the Maoists were turning to robots.

  Everything started clicking into place in my mind. If the Chinese could succeed in making robots till the fields as well as fight for them, they would have a force of manpower at their disposal that would be better than slaves. Slaw have to eat, robots do not.

  So I watched the workers in the cabbage fields, studying their movements. I had the feeling that the poorer robots would be put to a hoeing and harvesting, the better one would get to be soldiers.

  The car raced on.

  I was struck with an idea. “You how, I haven’t seen any dogs around. Or other pets, for that matter. No chickens, no birds of any sort. And crows and sparrows used to abound.”

  The driver said, “Dead. All dead.”

  From the back, Ling Tow added, “Many people have been starved, Professor. As you may or may not know, sparrows and crows are eaten by the peasants. So scars has food been in my country that the bird population has all but been destroyed by hungry people.”

  “Dogs as well,” I muttered.

  “Dogs are no exception.”

  I sat silent for another twenty miles, then said, “You had a big thing going about steel production, back a few years. Backyard furnaces were to smelt it.”

  “The steel was worthless. It had cracks and bubble holes. The same with our cement.” Ling Tow chuckled. “I tell you all this because it won’t make any difference whether you learn these facts a not.

  “We are not a technological society, and unfortunately this is a technological world in which we live. Our alarm clocks are off the proper time by as much as three hours. Our thermos bottles blow up when hot liquids are poured into them Locks will neither lock nor open. Our hydroelectric works operate at less than seventy percent efficiency, when they operate at all.”

  “But you’ve learned to make robots.”

  “Ahh, yes. It is our one great success. Only with robots can we hope to match the capitalistic powers and that great country, Russia, which is veering more to the west and away from the doctrines of Marx and Lenin every day.”

  “Maybe they’re smarter than your.”

  “It is the goal of all true communists to spread their doctrine across the entire world. This includes Europe and America. With the robots, we hope to be able to do this.”

  “Since you’re in such a good mood,” I said cheerfully,. “maybe you’ll tell me the real reason why I’m here.”

  “In good time, Professor. In good time.”

  We whirled through the main street of a tiny town that consisted of a cluster of shacks with some old people sitting before them, staring with wide eyes at the car as we sped past in clouds of dust. Soon the bamboo and thatch homes were behind us, and the suffering eyes of the old people-whose ribs damn near protruded through their skins—were gone.

  “How do they stand such a life?” I asked.

  “There’s always the foot vote,” growled the driver.

  “Foot vote?” I asked.

  “He means running away, Professor. To Hong Kong or to some other place where the word of Mao Tse-tung is not law. He should not speak so. It is high treason.”

  “I say it because is true picture,” the driver protested.

  “And because I am a very lenient supervisor,” chuckled Ling Tow. “Many supervisors are unsure of themselves, Professor, and so they bear down heavily on the people assigned to them. Me, I feel I get more by honey than I do by vinegar. However, my administrative duties do not extend into Tin Song. There, and please accept this as a note of friendly warning, you will not be allowed to’ gossip with the personnel”

  I filed the note away in my memory.

  At dusk we turned off the main highway and slid between rows of dwarfed trees and green fields toward a big cliff that was part of the Chuan Hills. It formed a great escarpment, and its face was dotted with the dark holes of many caves On top of these cliff faces, green grass was growing, inter mingled with trees.

  The caves reminded me of the Buddhist cave temples between Tihwa and Kashgar, which have been the subject of study by archeologists. When I said as much, Ling Tow chuckled complacently.

  “You continue to surprise and delight me, Professor. Not many westerners know about the cave temples. Well, the caves at which you are staring
arc also temples of a sort. Modem temples, Professor, where the gods of technology are properly worshipped.”

  The car raced on. The cave mouths grew larger. I could make out just inside them objects on which the dying sunlight glinted Below many of the cave entrances, and stretched across the face of the cliff, were a number of wooden galleries from which the paint and lacquer had long since faded.

  Noting my interest, Ling Tow said, “Those galleries are very rare today. They were built by Buddhist monks long ago, actually during the fourth century after your Christ. For more than fifteen hundred years they lay undiscovered, like the Mai Chi Shan grottos at Lung Men.

  “And as at Lung Men, we have been uncovering caves rich in art treasures, and in the sculptured forms of the many Buddhas in the grottos.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why bring me to a lot of Buddihist Caves?”

  “There are Buddhist caves,—Professor and Buddhist caves. Now these are being used for something else. As to why the great Mao chose Tin Song and its cliff caves, permit me to say that they are most secret. No one can get in here to spy on what we are doing. Those caves are safe even from your country’s satellites that whirl around the Earth taking pictures of everything that goes on.”

  “We aren’t all that nosy,” I argued. “We just want to make sure you and Russia aren’t going to bury us, as Nick Kruschev threatened.”

  “Such nonsense” he exclaimed, but with a hint of triumph in his voice Red China was going to bury our western civilization, his tone of voice said, but we would not realize what was happening until it was an accomplished fact

  The car pulled up before a wooden staircase that went up along the side of the cliff to the first of the several galleries tiered across the face of the cliff. The step were new, but the painted galleries were very old. Ling Tow, Shu Shang and I got out. The driver moved the car forward until it was hidden inside a sort of big carport that was camouflaged by its sodded roof to look, from the air, like a stretch of grassland.

  I went up the stain first, followed by Shu Shang, who was along to act as a kind of bodyguard, I gathered, for the smaller Ling Tow. I was not going to try anything stupid. I wanted in on the robot factory that these caves hid from spying eyes and satellite cameras. They did not know this; they were merely taking no chances on my trying to run away.

  At the first gallery I was met by a Chinese soldier in quilted jacket, cap, and an AK-47 automatic rifle. He saluted Ling Tow, then chattered at him in a dialect I did not understand.

  Ling Tow said, “They are waiting. Come!”

  I walked along behind Ling Tow, with Shu Shang and the soldier bringing up the rear. The gallery doors opened onto a series of caves lighted by electric lights, very up-to-date. The grotto walls were painted to represent the life of the Gautama. Judging from the scaffoldings here and there, the finest Chinese artists were restoring those paintings with fresh pigments.

  Ling Tow waked past these ancient treasures with a calloused air. He had seen them before, and there was no streak of artistry in his makeup. They were not functional. They could do nothing to increase the lot of China in the modern world; therefore, they were useless to him.

  He came to a stop in an office made from a small cave It was air-conditioned, and there were two desks set across from each other. Ling Tow went to one of the desks and rang a bell.

  We waited about five minutes. Then two white men came into the room, staring hard at me. They were Russians One was blonde and beefy, the other blonde and wiry. They were in their middle forties, I should judge.

  One of the Russians said in crude Chinese. “Have him strip. We want to examine him.”

  “What about Kang Chow? As director of the Chinese Peoples Republic and as coordinator of this entire system shouldn’t he be here?”

  The beefy Russian smiled, “He will, he will.”

  “Now look,” I said.

  The AK-47 jabbed me in the spine. I shrugged and put my hands to my coolie jacket and yanked it off over my head. The two white men studied my deep chest, the musculature of my arms and shoulders. They nodded, glancing at each other.

  “He is a splendid specimen,” the smaller man said.

  I pushed my trousers down and stood naked. The white men gawked at the size of my phallus, hanging almost limp and casual between my thighs.

  The smaller Russian said, “We ought to get a girl here.

  I’ve heard stories about this one’s potency, but I don’t believe them.”

  “All in goad time,” chuckled Ling Tow.

  A lean, tall Chinaman in a lab smock came the office. His black eyes raked me from toes to black wig. Then he advanced on me, hand outstretched.

  “Professor Damon, this is a pleasure I am Kang Chow, director of—”

  “I know, I know,” I told him, gripping his hand.

  He beamed. “You have been awaited eagerly at the Robot Development Center.”

  “Robot Development Center?”

  He explained. “This is where we manufacture such creatures as Ip Chung and.Kai Lai.” His eyes twinkled. “I do hop you found them everything a girl should be?”

  He spoke with a Harvard accent. Later I learned that he had been educated at Harvard and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had been born in San Francisco thirty-seven years ago. At first enthusiastic about his role as a scientist in American society, he had gone back to China upon the offer of a million dollars and a post in the scientific accomplishments of Mao Tse-tung.

  When I got to know him better, I was damn sure it was the offer of the million dollars that made him return to Peking. He was a money-pincher, to him, gold was god. As director here, he got a damn good salary. He banked most of it, since his room and board at the Robot Development Center was for free. I think he had it in the back of his head to amass a fortune and then to get the hell out of Red China before it destroyed him.

  I complimented him on the girls. Kang Chow smiled toothily. His hand gestured at the Russians. “They did all the brain work, really. Have you met—-? Oh, then let me introduce Fedor Novotny.”

  The beefy man stepped forward, offered a hand as big as a small ham. I felt his strength in his hand-grip, I told myself not to mix it with this one if I could avoid it.

  Kang Chow said, “And this is Dmitri Kolsikoff.”

  The smaller man merely nodded. In clipped tones he said, “Let’s get down to business, shall we? Here is your professor. We see him as a Chinaman. Are his bodily proportions satisfactory?”

  Kang Chow nodded. “Eminently so. Novotny?”

  The big Russian nodded. “Yes, he will do nicely.”

  “May I ask what I’ll do nicely for?” I asked.

  Kang Chow smiled. “You have been selected, professor Damon. Perhaps a demonstration will suit your purpose better than any words of mine.”

  I went with him, the two Russians at our heels, through the office and along a cave-tunnel into a magnificent chamber filled with all sorts and manner of computers. Big ones, small ones, all with their relay system lights flashing on and off. These machines, explained the director, did the intricate mathematical equations and figured out the proper chemical formulas needed to perfect their robots in their various accomplishments.

  accomplishments.

  “The science of robotics—or cybernetics, as some prefer to name it—has become most delicate and demanding. I don’t know how closely you followed robotics back home, but surely you must know that your University of Texas is making robots that will have distinct personalities. They will love, fear, and hate. At Leland Stanford, they are making robots which can see and hear, move around obstacles, plan ahead with as much intelligence as the human brain itself. Other institutions have developed man-like muscles for robots.

  “In England, robots are taught to read. An English inventor built a robot that was best man at his wedding. It even kissed the bride.

  “Here, thanks to the genius of our fellow comrades Novotny and Kolsikoff, we make robot
s that can do whatever a normal girl can do.” His lips twitched. ,”Some of them have been programmed to talk and think and to make love almost incessantly—as you no doubt know.”

  I grinned a little shamefacedly.

  “There is nothing miraculous about all this, it is merely an extension of the engineering that produced robots in your own country where they have been used as metal-stampers and die-casters. We go a tiny step farther than your own cybernetic engineers. We give our robots perfect human bodies.”

  He clapped his hands.

  Half a dozen girls ran out of a nearby cave-mouth door.

  They wore the linen jacket and trousers of the Chinese peasant woman.

  “Strip,” said Kang Chow.

  The girls undressed, in various shades of confusion. One or two were quite bold about it, three were shy. The sixth girl did a kind of Minsky striptease. I heard Kang Chow whisper, “They undress in the manner to which they have been programmed, each with her own distinct personality, you see.”

  I stared at six naked female bodies that were identical, as far as I could see. Each girl had the body of Ip Chung and Kai Lai There was no mistake about it. The heavy breasts, the slightly pouching belly, the handsome legs with the plump thighs, were as I had seen them. There was hair on four of the mounts at which I stared, as seemingly real as that on top of their heads. Two of the girls had shaven mottes.

  Their eyes flirted with me.

  “It is important to a strong male secret agent to be able to make good love quite often, eh? You yourself are the living proof of this. We need such a robot for our own use. Your name was suggested by Tao Yuan. You remember Tao Yuan from your recent exploits in India? She hates you, yet she loves you in her own way, because of your admirable gifts

  “We are going to make many of you, Professor. Each man will have an individual face. Each girl you are looking at has her own face, as a result of the artistry of Chan Dok, one of our fellow workers, as well as her own personality, despite their similarly constructed bodies. We could throw about ten thousand of these girls into the world, if we so wished. We prefer to wait until we have the male robots to accompany them.