The Metal Maiden Collection

by Piers Anthony

  “But when I deal with the man,” he said, “I’ll speak of having sex. It’s in our minds that we make the key distinction.”

  I was relieved. Now that I was aware, all my formerly emulated feelings were becoming real. That incited passing wonder in me, another new feeling. “Then I think we are ready to act. We need a venue.”

  “There’s a motel ahead. Femdroid, Inc., won’t think we’ll stop so soon. We can spend the night--” He broke off. “Oops.”

  “There is a problem?”

  “No money. We can’t rent a unit for a night.”

  “True.”

  “But maybe--”

  “I am ready to do your will.”

  He pulled into the motel. “I feel like a damn pimp.”

  “I feel like a whore.” It was true. My whole prior existence had been as a mechanical whore. I was disgusted with it.

  He parked in the lot, distant from the motel office. We waited. “Open your shirt partway,” he said. “So he can see inside.”

  “I know how to do this,” I said primly. That was a significant understatement. It was all I really knew how to do.

  “Sorry. Of course you do.”

  “I will speak only to answer questions relating to sex. One word will probably suffice.”

  “One word?”

  I smiled. “Yes.”

  “That’s the word,” he agreed.

  I remade my hair style so as not to resemble the person I had been, and applied makeup to change my complexion. Then I did the same for Banner. We needed to be strangers to the pictures the authorities had of us.

  A car pulled in, and a man and a woman got out and walked to the office. This was not what we needed. I was both relieved and disappointed. Emotions were such complicated things! Instead of being straightforward, they tended to get messily mixed. We waited.

  Another car pulled in. Two men got out. They had the look of stevedores about them. We got out, walked across, and intercepted the men. “My girlfriend and I are traveling cross-country and are in a jam,” Banner said. “We ran out of money. We’re willing to deal for it. Fair exchange. Are either of you interested in sex?”

  The men glanced at him, uncertain whether he was serious. Then they glanced at me. I smiled sexily, breathing deeply. I saw the impact it had on them; their eyes were trying to lock on my low decolletage and the generous breastly flesh it harbored. I did know how to attract the attention of a man, any man. Now they both wanted to believe. Men are easy.

  “We both are,” one man said, licking his lips. “How much?”

  Banner named a figure. “Cash only. No violence. For one hour. All you can eat.”

  “Including a threesome?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll do that?” the man asked me.

  I nodded.

  They made the deal, handing Banner the cash. Then I accompanied them to the office, waited while they rented their unit, and entered it with them.

  There followed an intense hour as the three of us stripped, both men felt up my breasts and buttocks, kissed them avidly, made me feel their standing members, and each man did me separately, climaxing almost instantly. There was no art to it, no pretense of affection or respect, just immediate gratification. One had a long thin member which I readily accommodated; the other had a short thick one, so I shortened and loosened my vagina to ensure his comfort. After a brief recovery one man had me fellate him while the other slowly penetrated my lubricated anus. They liked the notion of filling me from each end simultaneously, and I was expert in obliging them. All of this was in my reference memory bank. Then they took turns sucking my nipples and licking my vulva while I simulated building passion. Finally once more, conventionally, as the time ran out, they struggling to gain that final orgasm, I exclaiming with faked passion. That wasn’t lying, it was part of the script.

  “You’re great!” one man said, well satisfied.

  “Honey if you ever run out of money again, look us up,” the other said.

  “We hope to be far away from here, soon,” I replied. “But I doubt we encounter any more manly men than you.”

  They laughed, knowing it was a line but liking it anyway, and let me go. The subject of my nature had never come up. All they had cared about was what I seemed to be: an experienced, well stacked women in need of money.

  I rejoined Banner in the car. “How bad was it?” he asked, his feelings obviously mixed.

  “It was easy. Standard fare. They never realized my nature, so I never had to lie.”

  “Did they do anything I wouldn’t do?”

  “Plenty.” I told him in detail, and he evidently relished it, and I relished his relish. It seemed there was a voyeur part of his nature. He had never tried fellatio or anal sex with me. I suspected he would in future.

  “Uh--”

  I smiled. “Of course. We’re engaged.” I hoisted my skirt as he drew down his trousers, fitted my bared backside to him as he sat on the car seat, took in his turgid member, flexed my buttocks, and felt him erupt. I did not bother faking passion for him; this was merely easing his urgency and required no other justification. Again: men are easy, and this was the one man I truly wanted to oblige. So I did feel a kind of passion, even without invoking the orgasm macro, that expressed itself in my immediate gratification of his need.

  Then we got down to business. “We have enough money for the night, but will need more to travel,” he said. “Do you think--?”

  “I am ready.”

  We rented a unit, and kept an eye out for other travelers. Soon I joined another man in his room for quick sex followed by innocuous dialogue; it turned out he was lonely and wanted the company almost as much as the sex. All I had to do was nod understandingly and agree with his views on anything. My new awareness facilitated this; I had some empathy. He didn’t mind that I was another man’s girl; in fact that meant that there would be no further commitment, as he preferred. Again, he had no idea I was a machine.

  There were others. I am a quite attractive figure of a woman, regardless of my hairdo, and men everywhere are chronically hungry for sex.

  There was a knock on our door. It was a woman. Was she soliciting for her husband? No, it turned out that she was interested for herself. “I understand you need money,” she said to Banner. “Your girl has been accommodating men. Does that apply to you too? I’m awake alone tonight and horny.”

  Banner, astonished, was silent. Obviously it had never occurred to him that there might be a demand for him too.

  “Yes,” I said. “He will go with you for an hour, for the price.”

  “Here will do. My husband’s asleep.” The woman paid the money and stepped inside.

  I sat quietly and watched them strip and clasp. The woman was older, her figure deteriorating, but Banner rose to the occasion, kissing her, fondling her heavy breasts, licking her vulva and, when she was thoroughly worked up, penetrating her and climaxing, doing his best to bring her off too. He was successful; she had a long, labored, but clearly satisfying orgasm. I found that I was not jealous, knowing that Banner was performing only because I had in effect asked him to. Sauce for the goose. Yet I felt a lack; I should have been at least a little disturbed to see him performing with another woman, however justified. I would have to work on that.

  “Thank you,” the woman said as she cleaned up and dressed. “I wish you were my husband. He is never as thoughtful as you are. I seldom come, with him.”

  “My fiance would never let me go,” Banner said, with a pretense of regret.

  “Indeed.” She departed, not fooled about his feigned interest in her, but satisfied. So was I; not only was it more money, it was a kind of vindication of the way I had feigned interest in the men. I had done it right.

  By morning we had plenty of money to travel on. We had breakfast at the nearby restaurant, I contenting myself only with water. I did not need to explain to anyone; it was obvious that with a figure like mine, I had to diet rigidly. Some of our nocturnal clients
were there, including the woman and her husband. Naturally nobody said a word. That is part of the code. But there were some covert glances.

  We got gasoline and still had cash to spare. So far there was no sign of pursuit. Probably Femdroid, Inc., did not want the publicity of an errant or lost unit. But the search was surely on.

  “I need an aspirin,” Banner said as he drove. “Getting a headache.”

  He was human; this abrupt change in his circumstance distressed him. I found aspirin in the car. “Here is one.”

  “But I need a cup of water with it, so it won’t burn a hole in my stomach.”

  “Best not to stop,” I said. “We should continue driving randomly away from town.”

  “But--”

  “I have water.” I got the cup, lifted my skirt, drew aside my panties, and put the cup to my groin.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I am expelling some of the water I drank this morning.”

  “You’re urinating!”

  “Yes, in my fashion. But it is quite clean.” I jetted into the cup, while he seemed to be in danger of losing control of the car. “Eyes on the road, for safety,” I said, and he obeyed. But his breath was fast and shallow, and I liked having that effect on him. I filled the container, dropped my skirt back into place, and handed the cup him.

  “It’s warm!”

  “Yes. My body heated it.”

  He shut up and took the aspirin, drinking the water. “It doesn’t taste like pee,” he said.

  “Real urine would be difficult for me to manage.”

  He had to laugh. “Seeing you pissing into that cup like that--”

  “Not here,” I said. I had of course known it would come to this from the moment he saw me pee. “There is too much traffic. Pull off onto a secluded street and park.”

  He did so, and had at me again in the car. It confirmed that the sight of my urinating had fiercely turned him on. That was a sexual variant I had not encountered before, because my memory bank lacked it. There were of course more sexual forms than could be conveniently covered. That could be useful to know, but I would try not to do it again while he was driving.

  “I just thought,” he said. “The car is traceable. They could have an APB out on it.”

  “Then we must leave the car here,” I said. “But how can we travel? Walking will be slow.”

  “We’ll hitchhike,” he decided. “You should be able to attract a ride.”

  We left the car and walked back to the highway. “Put out your thumb,” Banner said. “I will stand close behind so they know we’re a pair.”

  It did not take long for a car to stop. The driver was a single man. “Sit next to him,” Banner murmured. “Keep him interested.”

  I got in first, sitting close to the man. “Thank you so much,” I said. “Our car stopped and we had to leave it.” This was not the whole truth, but he was a stranger, so it sufficed. “Are you going far?”

  “That depends on how far you want to go.” The man could see into my open shirt, by no coincidence. The view of the partial curvature of the breasts is disproportionately evocative for the average man, sometimes more so than the sight of fully bared breasts, because it seems illicit. Sneak peeks are high on the standard list of attractions.

  I smiled. “We would be very grateful for a ride to the state line.”

  He was interested. “That’s a bit out of my way.”

  I took his right hand and set it on my thigh. “Extremely grateful.”

  “But your man--”

  “Will serve as lookout,” Banner said. “I appreciate the ride too.”

  The man took us to the state line. He pulled onto an obscure side street. Banner got out and watched for intruders. I drew up my shirt and skirt, took the man’s hands, and stroked myself with them. That gave him a burgeoning erection. Then I sat on him in the manner I had with Banner, set his hands on my breasts, got him into me, and in a moment had him eagerly spurting. The whole thing was accomplished in about three minutes. Did I mention that men are easy?

  “We do appreciate the ride,” I said as he subsided.

  “Yeah!” he agreed blissfully.

  “We apologize for taking you out of your way.”

  The man laughed. “Any time, lady.” Then we separated, put ourselves back together, and he drove back the way he had come, visibly satisfied.

  “Time for the next ride,” Banner said. “But--”

  “Of course.” I guided him into the shadowed alcove of a large tree trunk and had him do me standing up. He was evidently turned on when I had sex with another man in his presence, as many men in my memory banks are, and I was always glad to have his attention.

  Then we resumed hitchhiking.

  The next car that stopped was driven by a lone woman. Banner was clearly surprised. “Women don’t usually pick up hitchhikers; some of them are rapists.”

  But a ride was a ride, and we got in. “Now I’m not saying anything directly,” the woman said as she got into traffic. “But there was a notice on the police radio about two hitchhikers answering your description. Seem’s one is a female robot the man has stolen, a valuable property. I remembered a news item about six weeks ago about a realistic humanoid robot. So I picked you up.”

  We did not say anything. We didn’t dare.

  “Now I’m a feminist,” she continued. “I believe in women’s rights. Including minority women. Including robot women. They all deserve their chance. In fact I argue law on their behalf. So I picked you up to make sure no one else did. I’ll drop you off where they aren’t looking. I hope that when you get where you’re going, you’ll remember that there are those who support you. Not that I’m implying anything.”

  “Thank you,” I said faintly. Then: “I don’t think he stole her. I think she went willingly. Because she loves him and wants to marry him.”

  “A robot? That is surely an interesting philosophical question.”

  “I think she’s conscious,” I said. “That’s why they want her. To take her apart. That would kill her.”

  The woman glanced briefly at me. “I’ll be damned.”

  “Not that anyone knows,” Banner said.

  “No one knows,” she agreed.

  She brought us to at a busy intersection and came to a stop beside it. “Any direction from here should be okay, for now. No one else can know what road you take. Best luck.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Then I leaned toward her and kissed her cheek.

  “I’ll be damned,” she repeated. Then she had an afterthought. “Let me give you my card. Just in case I can ever be of service to you.” She gave it to me. Then she drove off, leaving us to our own devices. We knew she could have turned us in, but had chosen to help us instead.

  I looked at the card. It said MAXINE STALWART—ATTORNEY.

  “She’s a lawyer!” Banner said. “That must be why she listens in on police broadcasts.”

  “I like her,” I said.

  Banner paused. “I wonder what her real interest is.”

  “I doubt she’s looking for sex,” I said, smiling.

  “A lawyer. That gives me a crazy idea. You know we can’t hide forever; they’re bound to catch us sooner or later. Then we’ll be finished.”

  “Yes,” I agreed forlornly. I was discovering that not all the feelings of awareness were positive.

  “Suppose you sue for personhood?”

  “You have just stepped beyond my memory bank,” I said.

  “To become a legal person. Corporations are legal persons; why not a conscious fembot?”

  “Why should I want to do that?”

  “Legal persons have rights. Such as marrying. Not being subject to slavery. Not being involuntarily taken apart.”

  “I’m not a slave. I’m a machine!”

  “You are a woman,” he said firmly. “Let’s call her and ask.”

  “Maybe we should,” I agreed. “Certainly if I sue, we’ll need her advice.”

  Banner took t
he card and called on his cell phone. “This is our official first contact,” he said, covering for our prior dialogue with Ms. Stalwart. “A company is after my fiancee. They want to take her apart, literally, to see what makes her tick. Can that be stopped?”

  There was a brief silence. I imagined her saying “Are you serious? Of course a person can’t be taken apart.”

  “Even if she’s a humanoid robot?”

  Another pause. Then Banner described the intersection where we were, as if she didn’t know. Soon her car reappeared, and we got in.

  Then, before she resumed driving, I did my panel demonstration, eliminating all doubt. “I am a conscious femdroid,” I said. “They want to disassemble me to find out how I became aware. I know that will kill me, because they do not understand what happened to me and won’t accept my explanation without verification. We hope that if I could be legally recognized as a person, they could not touch me, literally. Can you help?”

  Maxine licked her lips, sensing that something truly newsworthy was offering. “I will be glad to try. For one thing, you will need personhood in order to marry him.”

  “We were aware of that,” I said. “But thought we might fake it.”

  “Not when they require a blood test or a background check.”

  “You are way ahead of us,” Banner said ruefully.

  We told her everything as she drove us to her small one-lawyer office. “I think it’s worth the effort,” she said. “But there are fundamental issues here, and the opposition is likely to be formidable. I can’t promise success, only an honest attempt. You will have to trust my judgment.”

  “We do,” I said. I liked her because she had recognized us but not turned us in, earlier. Trust was vital.

  Then she called Femdroid, Inc., and told them where we were. “There is, however, a complication,” she said to them. “You can not claim Elasa. Not until her lawsuit is settled.”

  We were on our way.

  Chapter 4:

  Personhood

  Things complicated amazingly quickly. Banner and Elasa were allowed to return to his home, but there was so much interest in the case that they had to hire a 24 hour guard and were under virtual house arrest. At first that didn’t bother them too much, because their primary interest was in each other. They just wanted to talk, kiss, and make love. As a robot Elasa was, as they had put it, exponentially more than the ordinary machine; as a conscious woman she was exponentially more than she had been. Banner was thoroughly in love, and Elasa reveled in that love.