“It isn’t a physiological need. But I think my need for the coupling is more intense than yours because it means intimacy to me. Who can I possible be close to? Avram, Malkah and you. With anyone else I must conceal my true nature. I am acting, I am on guard.”
“It’s usually thought to be women who want sex for the intimacy, among humans.” She stroked his hair. It was of the medium length favoured by most young men in Tikva, but sleeker and more uniform in colour.
“I want to know everything about you. Everything in you, of you. Why can’t we link as I can link to the Base?”
“You want telepathy. It’s a prominent human fantasy, usually a fantasy of women, who wish they could understand what men want and tell men what they want.” Mine, she thought as she stroked the fine modelling of his collarbone. She was amused and offended by her sense of possession. Because he’s a machine, do I think I can own him? If anyone owns him, it’s Avram, but that, too, is unjust.
“But telepathy doesn’t exist.”
“Or if it does, it’s elusive, a epiphenomenon that can be neither summoned nor prevented, certainly not available as a regular built-in feature of relationships.” It was easy to talk to him in bed, surprisingly easy.
“If we ever had enough time to talk, we could tell each other everything we have thought and felt and known.”
She was just as glad he could not read all her thoughts, especially all those about him. “Soon we’ll have more time to spend together again.”
“Before you, the strongest feeling I knew was fear. Fear that Avram would destroy me too. But this desire to be with you is stronger than fear. Sometimes I think of you, and my body reacts as if you were with me.”
The kittens had crept down. One was bolder and leapt on the bed long before the other climbed the hill of fallen covers. They hid on the far side of Shira, standing on tiptoe to peer over her hip.
“How close are the three of you to reprogramming the defences?”
“It’s hard to estimate. I know at what rate I work, but Malkah and Avram are more erratic. I can’t yet extrapolate an accurate time line for their invention.”
“I’m worried about Malkah. It’s not long since she was flat on her back in bed. That attack left her weak, but she’s been working sixteen hours.”
“Work gives her energy even as it takes it. But you’re right, they are both dangerously exhausted. I must go back. I don’t want to leave you.…”
“That’s all right. Even though you don’t need sleep, I do. I think I’ll show up tomorrow and see if I can be of any assistance. Maybe at least I can run errands and make sure they eat.”
“Gadi has been doing that. He calls himself the Sublime Catering Service, and he brings food in at irregular intervals. Whether I eat or refrain, he pretends to be equally surprised. I never fail to amuse him.”
“Never mind. Your existence both disturbs and excites him. His should not do that to you.”
“I expect to feel comfortably superior now,” Yod said with a little twist of the lips. “You have given me a reservoir of patience.”
The bolder kitten stepped carefully forward, turning slightly sideways to magnify her size, fur bristling, and sniffed at Yod. When he lifted his hand to pet her, as he had seen Shira do, the kitten hissed and danced back.
“They fear me.”
“You’re large, and they don’t know you. They don’t recognize your smell’
“I’m not a mammal. You have a biological bond that I lack, a kinship with dogs and cats and horses and even with birds and snakes. You’re all cousins. I’m not in the family.”
“That bothers you.”
“It makes me feel my strangeness. You belong to the earth, and I don’t.”
“Nonsense. You’re as much a part of earth as I am. We are all made of the same molecules, the same set of compounds, the same elements. You’re using for a time some of earth’s elements and substances cooked from them. I’m using others. The same copper and iron and cobalt and hydrogen go round and round and round through many bodies and many objects.”
He was silent for a while, and then he smiled, touching her face. That’s remarkable. I’ll remember that.” His smile was perhaps the most human aspect of him, warm, complex, often with a hint of sadness.
“Come,” she said. “You have to go back, but before you do, you’ll feed the kittens. I promise you if you feed them several times, you, too, can join the ranks of appointed cat mothers.”
“They will no longer remember I’m a machine?”
“They’ll ignore the fact that you don’t smell as they think you should, because the reality of food is more important. The food giver is by definition almost as good as a cat.”
After he had left she went back to bed, yawning. “Turn on protection again in my room,” she said to the house. “Are you having trouble adjusting to the kittens as you monitor?”
“I understand kittens,” the house said. “I remember kittens. I do not understand a computer who pretends to be a biological life form.”
“His mission is to protect also,” Shira said, turning out the light.
“What he does around here has little to do with protection,” the house said.
The house’s pique, if she could call it that, reminded her of something she had read. “Centuries ago, a servant would have expressed disgust and dismay at another servant who had become involved with the mistress of the house, leaving behind his own class.”
“Many activities are best left to life forms. We have our own logic.”
“Yod is somewhere in between us in form, I think.”
“Such a hybrid is an irrational invention.”
“You’re so judgemental lately, house. Good night.”
Shortly after breakfast the next morning, Shira was summoned to the gate. The com-con was functional in spite of the Base’s being down. She was called to identify and greet visitors, her Great-Aunt Dalia and accompanying nurse. She tried to notify Malkah, but obviously they were deep in the Base. They were receiving and storing messages in the lab but were otherwise incommunicado.
She found herself tense at the prospect of seeing her stranger mother, about whom she had recently learned such unlikely facts. Shira was certain as she hurried through the streets, among the children on their way to school and people on their way to work, that of course Riva’s palm print would match that of Great-Aunt Dalia, because if Riva was truly an information pirate, she could manage to install anybody’s palm print in place of the original in the security net used by the free towns. Any pirate who couldn’t get into that net to play would have to retire for ineptitude.
The woman who was leaning on her supposed nurse certainly looked Malkah’s age and then some. Her hair was an unflattering matte and lifeless pale brown, one of those regrown jobs that hadn’t come out right: instead of hair youthful or delightfully artificial, it resembled furniture stuffing that had escaped through a rent. Her face was puffy, wider than long. She walked hunched over, her head bobbing spiritlessly against her chest. A querulous kvetchy whine issued from her like an unstopped leak of corrosive solvent. A few minutes of her company, and the guard withdrew as far as she could and found some task she must perform in the corner of the gate anteroom.
Her companion was obviously tall, obviously sturdy, but wore a coverall for travelling. The old woman, in a sack-style business suit, wore the retirement-community logo for Cybernaut, where in fact Great-Aunt Dalia had worked for fifty-five years in the accountancy division. Dalia had been plugged into large AIs for most of those fifty-five years, so naturally she had a set of jacks openly displayed on her wrists as well as a temple plug. That any information pirate would be similarly equipped would not occur to anyone looking over Dalia’s vita.
Dalia had arrived with an abnormal amount of luggage. Some of it was self-propelled and followed them like well-trained dogs. Two other cases the companion toted, handing off Dalia to Shira.
Shira felt deeply confused, for she could not recognize her mother. She had no idea how much makeup disguised this creature who was dribbling complaints about the zip, the general level of service, the heat, the humidity, the dust, the smells, her health, her poor feet, her sore back, her miserable stomach. What was this person but an ill-tempered old hypochondriac?
Dalia,“Riva ― the person ― kept up the kvetching in a voice that would have thinned paint, until they finally reached the house and staggered inside, trailed by the companion with the two cases, and the three other doggy cases following after the control device clutched in the old woman’s hand. She collapsed in a chair, still whining loudly, while the companion opened one of the cases, brought out a hand-held detector and circled the premises. “My stomach just can’t take that vat food any longer, and I thought the heat would kill me. I could scarcely breathe. My poor lungs just about convulsed! I had these pains, sharp, unbearable, right here ― agony! And coughing!”
The house spoke. “The two persons who have just entered are extremely augmented. Both have considerable internal circuitry for combat and communication. They are presently scanning for surveillance and weaponry.”
“Shut up,” the companion said to the house, “or I’ll turn you off.” She spoke with a slight accent, which Shira identified after a moment as that of someone who has grown up speaking Hebrew. One of her teachers had had such an accent. It was mostly older people who did, from when there had been an Israel, from before the Two Week War, from before the interdiction that quarantined the entire bombed-out, radioactive, biologically unsafe area that had been Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and a good hunk of Saudi Arabia.
“I cannot be turned off by you,” the house said, “unless you blow up this entire area. I will permit you to use your scanning devices, but I will protect Shira. I have one of you in my memory ― Riva, daughter of Malkah and mother of Shira. For that reason I have not yet attacked.”
“Hello, house,” Riva said in a far different voice, deep, blunt, commanding. “Don’t worry, we’re here to help, not to harm. We just have to check out the premises. You seem a sophisticated system for a house. How were you able to recognize me?”
“Question Malkah directly about such matters,” the house said stiffly. “I am not programmed to respond in that area.”
Riva thumbed her nose at the ceiling. I’ll bet you can if you want to.” Riva turned to her companion. “How’re you doing, Nili?”
“Secure enough.” The other woman threw off her black coverall, letting it fall to the floor. Under it she was wearing very light fine body armour, which she also proceeded to strip off. Under that she wore shorts, laden with bulging pockets, and a short-sleeved safari shirt, both the colour of sand, on a body that made Shira think of muscleoids she had seen in stimmies. Nili’s hair was a metallic red - not the colour of carrots or marmalade but the colour of blood. She wore it long, clubbed on her back in an elaborate braid strung with beads and wires. Her eyes were a vivid green, as large as Shira’s own. Her skin was dark, of uncertain and probably mixed race.
Riva stood. She had no trouble standing straight now. She did not remove anything except some padding from inside her cheeks and some body armour she loosened and let drop from inside the sack suit. “My daughter, Shira, this is my friend, Nili. Where’s Malkah?”
“Malkah’s deep in the Base.” She filled them in, staring from one to the other. While Shira and Riva talked, Nili prowled, around the courtyard, in and out of every room. Shira was reminded of Yod at his touchiest.
Riva was squinting at her, her hands held out awkwardly, palms up. “It’s hard to know how to greet you after barging in like the pirate I am, checking out the security. I shouldn’t have to behave so rudely here, and it doesn’t represent any lack of trust in Malkah. It’s just that Tikva’s Base has been penetrated, so we need to take care. Several multis want my head — a lot.”
Feeling awkward, Shira took refuge in courtesy. “Would you like coffee or tea or wine? Something to eat? Can I show you where you’ll be sleeping?”
“I grew up in this house. I know my way to the guest room still,” Riva began in a hectoring voice, then struck herself on the side of the head. “Sorry, here I go. We’re both sensitive. I feel awkward at how little we know each other. You must resent me ― that here I am marching in as if it could mean something to you at this late date.”
“I don’t know you. It feels weird.”
“I didn’t even know you were here. I’ve been as rotten a daughter as I am a mother, but at least Malkah and I have some kind of friendship. Maybe you and I can manage to make friends with each other before I have to leave.”
“How long are you staying?”
“Depends,” Nili said flatly. She had finished her circuit and crept up. One of the kittens was riding on her shoulder, claws dug in.
“Did you bring your kid ― let’s see, it’s a boy?” Riva asked.
“Y-S took my son from me.” Shira turned to Nili to change the subject. She was convinced Riva had asked only to make polite conversation, without the slightest real interest in herself or Ari. Are you a pirate too?” She would have liked to spank the kitten for choosing this rude stranger over Yod. It was the bold one, Zayit. Shira had begun to tell them apart. Zayit’s eyes were wider spaced, and she carried herself higher on her toes. She was always the first one in trouble.
“No, I’m worse. I’m an assassin.” The woman smiled at her. She had a way of smiling straight on into the eyes, with a little twist of power that reminded Shira of a few men she had met. Dangerous men.
“I hope you’re here on vacation,” Shira said, staring back as hard as she could.
“No,” Nili said. I’m here to serve.”
“To serve whom?”
“Malkah,” Riva said. “In some ways I am a dutiful daughter. You need help, so I’ve brought it.” She had her hands one on each knee, her legs relaxed and apart, her chin dipped, head cocked while her eyes shrewdly appraised Shira. “Nili is my darling and a very well made bomb.”
twenty-three
Shira
