The Godwhale (S.F. Masterworks) (3 page)

‘Uncomfortable?’ asked the mannequin. ‘I think I have something for that.’ Soothing synthetic molecules were added to the fluids of the Blood Scrubber. Larry felt better almost immediately.

‘Thanks.’

The mannequin got to its feet slowly, gently. ‘Time to put us to bed, don’t you think?’ The sturdy legs carried him past the window. A tray of clear fluids tempted him with a variety of herbaceous distillates – floral, seedy, and fruity aromas. He sipped enough to wet his mouth, and napped.

Adapting to a mannequin was easy, physically. Larry felt clean, dry, and comfortable as the artificial kidneys worked on a blood shunt attached to his internal arteries and veins.

Psychologically, it was difficult. The tireless legs took him wherever he wished – walks, climbs, even the Long Tour. This hundred-mile foot-race toured a park strip around one of the Lesser Lakes. Contestants usually covered the course in three consecutive days of running, but Larry found it easy to do in one day. His powerful legs averaged five miles per hour, completing the tour in twenty hours. His frame was taller and bulkier now, earning respect from strangers’ eyes. Cloying females and furtive males of parasitic occupations studied him carefully now. This façade of masculine power was to make his ego even more vulnerable when the illusion had to be broken.

Rusty Stafford rubbed citrus on her skin and slept on thin bales of fresh alfalfa. Her wide-mesh body stocking accentuated her body paint as she strutted through the park strip, hunting. She saw a familiar set of cheekbones.

‘Larry! Larry Dever, you old scabbard hound.’

He broke his pace and smiled sheepishly. She ran up to him, tossing her hair from side to side. ‘I heard about your accident,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to see you on your feet again. You look great!’ Her scented hand was on his arm, guiding him towards a cluster of Dispenser benches. ‘Do you have time for a snack? Why, you’re hardly sweating at all. How many miles today?’

He shrugged off her question and offered her a seat, dialling effervescent drinks. They munched and sipped talking of their days of study at the stacks. She leaned on him, her hand on his thigh.

‘Remember what you used to call me?’ she teased.

‘I was drunk.’

‘A succulent concubine,’ she giggled.

‘You were Earl’s succulent – er – how is Earl?’

‘Gone.’ She pouted. ‘He opted for the Near Space Engineers. We untied our knot and he went out with the October convoy.’ She glanced up. ‘I guess he’s nicely settled with one of those satellite girls by now.’

Larry followed her gaze upward. ‘OLGA’s monitors . . . They do make nice wives.’

‘Mothers!’ she spat. ‘They’re so busy playing nursemaid to the entire human race that they don’t know the difference between a son and a lover. Those satellite girls are just big – big-breasted Nordics who try to mother everyone and everything. They don’t know how to treat a man after they wash him, feed him, and care for his clothes.’

Larry cleared his throat noisily and toyed with this food. She relaxed her flare and lowered her eyes.

‘Now I know how to treat a man . . .’ she said slowly. Reflections sparkled off the paint below her clavicles as she breathed.

Dry crumbs stuck to his tongue and soft palate.

‘How have you been, Larry? Chasing any of the girls through the Park these days? I’ll bet you can’t catch me.’ She pushed on his android thigh. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be so hasty,’ she giggled. ‘These legs feel pretty good in spite of the accident. Working out a lot?’

The long silence of Larry’s embarrassment alerted her. Her eyes were too white – screaming sclera. ‘What?!’

‘These aren’t my legs,’ he said sadly.

She withdrew her hand. The powerful muscle bulges that had warmed her fingertips now filled her with revulsion. ‘A mannequin!’ she exclaimed.

Her expression made him ill. The emptiness of his sexual promise had been exposed, making him more than a cripple. By encouraging her with this android machine he had become some sort of deviant!

‘You didn’t make it after all,’ she gasped.

‘Part did. Part didn’t.’ His voice had that matter-of-fact tone characteristic of a Mediteck. It was hard for her to believe he was talking about his own lower torso. ‘They tried real hard at the Clinic, but the nerves couldn’t come through for me. I’m fine now. My mannequin has a great personality.’

‘That’s wonderful – I’m sure.’ Her voice was cold, the words empty. ‘You two will have treat times together.’ Her eyes darted around. She searched for an empty excuse to leave, but Larry wasn’t listening. As far as he was concerned she had left when her manner cooled. Her huntress mood slipped into a sympathy mask behind which he detected her annoyance.

Lew was captaining the White Team when Larry rushed into the Clinic asking for Suspension papers.

‘Suspension?’ asked Lew.

Larry turned to see the gentle-featured Captain. He was a Marfan forme fruste, loose-jointed and lanky in his white tunic. Larry wrinkled up the papers. His voice cracked: ‘The mannequin is just not . . . enough!’

Lanky Lew took him into the team office and plugged a pickup line into the mannequin’s umbilical socket. ‘Now let’s see what is bothering you.’

The optic playbacks explained a lot.

‘The nubile fem? I know it is hard for a male your age, but we’ve been all over that before. The loss of your pelvic autonomics makes it impossible to give you a semblance of a sex life.’

Larry was almost incoherent. Rusty’s blunt reaction had come as such a shock that it occupied most of his consciousness. Lew spoke slowly: ‘Sex will be impossible. You’ll find friends, companions who will be interested in your mind, wit, and intelligence . . .’

‘Not enough,’ Larry blurted.

‘What you ask is beyond our present level of transplant science. Until we can graft central nervous system tissue, cases such as yours will have to be satisfied with mannequins and—’

‘When will you be able to graft CNS tissue?’

Lew shrugged. ‘Probably not in our lifetime. The boys down in Bio put out a few papers on the subject every year. CNS fibres just can’t find their way into scar tissue. Peripheral nerves have nice, pipe-like sheaths to grow through when they’ve been damaged. They can’t get lost. But the brain and spinal cord are different – no sheaths in the CNS.

‘I must caution you that Suspension is not always the easy answer it appears to be. There are often serious complications of the Suspension process itself. You could be allowing your physical sexual awareness to cloud your reason – trading today’s life for a questionable future of brain damage or death.’

Larry nodded. ‘I understand. But I can’t hold on to my sanity if all the girls look at me like – you know—’

Lew’s face remained blank, detached. ‘Don’t let emotions sway you. This can be a purely logical decision. Time may not bring a cure at all, and even if it does, there is no guarantee that a future society will apply it in your case.’

‘A cure is possible?’

‘Probable. The need is there. However, you’ll be awakening in a different social culture with advances in science and language evolution to adjust to. You might well feel more out of place repaired than right now.’

Larry smiled. ‘I’m not concerned about that. I have my companion cyber, Mannequin, who can share and update to keep me oriented. I think I could adjust to anything if I had a complete body again. If there is any hope at all, I have to try it.’

Lew shrugged and accepted the completed forms.

The induction room was empty, clean, and white. Metal instruments clattered in trays with hollow echoes. Larry’s ears popped as the heavy double doors were closed and the oxygen squeeze begun. He had second thoughts.

‘Fear not,’ said his mannequin. ‘While you sleep my circuits will watch through the years. Ions will not stray outside their norms.

Hypertonics dehydrated his tissues and he slipped into a cryotherapy torpor.

Larry awoke in a spacious mausoleum – bright fittings, coiled tubules, pulsing heavy machinery. Through a thick-glassed port he saw a young, bright-eyed female. She smiled and greeted him over the speaker.

‘How do you feel?’

He nodded and choked on a ball of squamous epithelial cells. Rebirth suffers some of the same problems as birth.

‘My name is Jen-W5-Dever. Fifth-generation descendant of your first cousin. We’re rewarming you to give you a new body and an exciting work assignment.’

Larry vomited. His head ached in spite of a sedative level that numbed his fingertips. There were tender areas under his spine and elbows. He felt a chill melt away. He lay still while the mannequin tried to rehydrate him. He studied her face – Dever cheekbones.

The air lock cycled. She entered, squishing through nondescript amorphous mucoid debris, the by-products of his perfusion membranes. His cot frame rotated to the stand-up position. He groped weakly for support.

‘My transplant?’ he rasped, choking on a sticky laminated plug of tracheal cells. ‘I’m to be repaired? A new body? . . . Complete?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled, glancing at his Med-Ident-Plate. ‘You’ll benefit from the Todd-Sage breakthrough. Work has already begun in your case. Transplant date is only six months away.’

Larry was ecstatic. His gamble had paid off. Slapping his mannequin, he exclaimed: ‘Wonderful! Let’s get up and take a look around.’

Meck motors sputtered and whirred sluggishly. ‘Sorry, Larry,’ hummed the vocal membrane, ‘but carbon whiskers have grown in my ferrite cores. We must go out on the road and burn them out.’

‘Not so fast.’ Jen smiled, pushing him back with a soft hand. ‘There’s someone waiting to see you.’

The lettering on the door read: IRA-M17-DEVER, CLAN LEADER, PROJECT IMPLANT, SYSTEM PROCYON. Inside, Larry was introduced to a greying executive surrounded by wall star-maps, mock-ups of space-ships and a cluster of terminals. Printouts were slowly exuding from silent meck lips.

‘So this is our Larry,’ greeted Ira, reaching for a handshake. ‘You’re our oldest specimen. OLGA is mighty proud of you.’

Larry blinked around the room, puzzled.

‘He’s only been warm a few minutes,’ explained Jen. ‘I haven’t taken him to the stacks for updating yet.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Ira. ‘Let him relax, and encourage reminiscing. Where we’re going he may be able to use his memories of a primitive Earth.’

‘Primitive?’ mumbled Larry. ‘But, I . . .’

Ira waved him to silence.

‘OLGA wants you whole again, before we Implant Out. You have some very old genes. We’ve all been moulded by a protective society – survival of the unfit, sort of. We’ll ship out to a planet in the Procyon System soon, carrying a good cross-section of Earth biota, rainbow human genes, and nuclear material from our zoo ecosystems: desert, aquatic, forest, marine, mountain, and jungle – Dever’s Ark!!!’

Larry’s confusion increased. Clothing, furniture, and language hadn’t changed much. These people seemed pleasant, normal.

‘Why are we leaving Earth? I like it here.’

‘OLGA has selected us for the Procyon Implant. It is an honour to be selected for your genes. We’re going to try and settle on a very hostile planet.’

‘Settle?’

‘Earth Society has been sending out Starship Implants for as long as I can remember – seeding mankind among the stars before someone or something else does.’

‘Why me?’ coughed Larry.

‘You’re an important set of genes, the oldest OLGA could find. We need primitive types to tame primitive planets. Your priority number is higher than mine.’

Ira’s gold insignia hinted of rank. Larry was beginning to enjoy this new age into which he had awakened. He had self-respect and the promise of a new body.

Larry trotted his mannequin to the alternate spaceport, looking for running room to burn out his carbon whiskers. Ferrite cores warmed up as he ran up and down the roof ramp of one of the hangers. The dish antenna was cold. He ran three hundred feet up to the rim – a convex track tilted at fifteen degrees. He circled a quarter mile and descended the ramp. Warming ferrite increased efficiency. Larry felt exhilaration. He clocked a 7:45 mile around the periphery of the landing pad. Legs ran smoothly. Arms tired.

‘This is great! It feels like I am really running. It’s that lactate you’re putting in my Blood Scrubber. Now if you can just give me back my sex life . . .’

Mannequin shared and updated with distant Library: ‘That too can be arranged; midbrain electrodes for you. Meck sex can be pleasant with a wired reticular system.’

Larry grinned, assuming that he was the object of a very funny robot joke. ‘Not for me! I have no erotic interest in a rusty scabbard. My imprinting was plain and primitive. I can wait for my pelvic transplant.’ He circled the pad again, noticing the wall around him – high, dull, featureless. The sky was a slate grey. No clouds. No skyline of buildings. He glanced around the port for signs of a city. No lights or smoke. The port itself had glass and plastic buildings. An occasional orange-suited worker wandered by. No other signs of life. ‘Is there a park? Trees? Grass?’

‘Not for running. Cities are underground. Gardens are everywhere. They are off limits.’

‘Off limits? But why?’

‘Crops. The Gardens need all available sunlight – growing calories for Earth Society is no simple task now – fifty billion mouths to feed. A pedestrian park would be an extravagant waste.’

‘Perhaps the time is right for me to Implant Out,’ mused Larry. He paused at a bubbler and sipped noisily while the mannequin’s umbilical probe sparked in an energy socket. ‘A drink for me and a cup of electrons for you.’ His power cell bulged. ‘I can hardly believe that I’m about to be whole again – a complete body! What exactly was this Todd-Sage thing?’

‘Breakthrough,’ explained the mannequin, sharing with the City’s memory banks. ‘Todd Island was the scene of a bloody uprising. Afterwards, the rebel leader, called The Sage by his followers, was sentenced to the guillotine. Continued unrest delayed the execution. The rebels wanted to salvage their leader’s brain by perfusion. The Todd officials agreed, reasoning that the publicity surrounding the project would remind the population that justice was swift and sure. However, about three years later The Sage was back – intact – and using political tools this time.’