Body of Glass (29 page)

The other group are Thaddeus’s street soldiers, and it is this group that Joseph has found up on the hill near the castle wall. Friday there will be a riot. The Jews are afraid of us anyhow. They don’t know how to fight. They’ll wail and weep and fall down on their knees to be cut up like sheep. Baaaa!”

“We’ll have fun, Joseph,” another of the toughs says, slapping his back. “Whatever we want, we can take.”

He reports to the Maharal, who sits at his desk lacing his fingers in his long white beard, frowning, swaying. The Maharal looks exhausted. Joseph thinks what a very old man he is. “So they come again. With swords and torches, they come to kill us. I smelled it on the wind. I knew it.”

He wishes the Maharal would touch his shoulder and tell him he has done a good job. He wishes the Maharal would for once acknowledge that he has carried out his task well. “Rabbi, I can fight them. I can fight like ten, like twenty. But there will be a whole crowd with them.”

“When we fight, it’s for survival. We’re always a few in a sea of the many.”

“They’re bullies. They’re men who rise by walking over the weak. They believe we won’t fight.”

The Maharal rests his head on his crooked arms, bowing over his desk. An old scroll lies there, along with many sheets of foolscap, some in the Maharal’s crabbed Hebrew script, some in Chava’s bold hand. Finally he raises his head. “Wait in the next room.”

Crouched against the wall, Joseph hears the Maharal chanting, praying. Half an hour passes, an hour. Then the Maharal summons him, frowning in preoccupation. He is coiled on himself, charged with intensity. So he must have looked the evening he went to create Joseph. “Rabbi, I was thinking,” Joseph begins. “I could start training the young men today.”

“An army in three days? Armed with sharpened matzoh? We have no weapons.” The Maharal puts on his heavy cloak. “I’m going to see Mordecai Maisl. You go get David.”

“Father, how will David Gans help? He is no soldier.”

“There’s more than one way to fight, Joseph. Get David.”

“A rich man and a scientist. Will they buy the moon for us so we can hide there till this is over?”

“We’re short on time. Go!”

twenty-five

Shira

Avram had started out making a few announcements from room centre, but as the argument progressed, he had backed himself towards the far wall. “Yod is not ready to leave the lab for such extended periods.”

“I leave it every day, to perform my duties. I’ve assumed a security role, regular guard duty, to familiarize myself with the systems. Tomorrow I go to Cybernaut with Shira.”

“You leave, but you also return. I can check out your functions.”

“How often have you done so in the last ten days? Once.”

Shira interjected, “People are always asking Yod where he lives. It sounds weird to say he sleeps in the lab. Everybody in town has quarters. We aren’t short on space.”

“After all, everybody leaves home eventually. Even Shira left for a while.” Gadi sprawled on a worktable in a graceful Z, cheek propped on braced hand. “Though we all come yo-yoing back.”

“If I’m to be accepted as human, I must fit into the life of the town,” Yod said. He was standing very still in the centre of the room, at complete rest except when his head swung to look at whoever spoke.

Shira was astonished at how he had taken over his own defence. Malkah and she had been prepared to carry the argument while Yod hoped, but his desperation made him bold and articulate.

She sensed that Avram was going to give in, because they were united against him, because they were right; but his reluctance surprised her. He was afraid of losing control of Yod, she realized. Keeping him in the lab was the best way to monitor Yod’s activities, perhaps not quite as thoroughly as Avram imagined, but invasively enough. Yod was Avram’s finest creation; Avram could not view lightly any weakening of possession or control. Shira felt a chill of alarm. In her most recent onslaught on Avram’s log, she had discovered that every cyborg since Dalet had had an abort mechanism built in: they could be deactivated by one code; destroyed by another; a further capacity, to cause a much larger explosion, was built in. Avram indeed retained the power of life and death over Yod. The codes were not given in the notes. ‘Gog and Magog’ would not be Yod’s code.

“All right. We’ll put Yod in Gadi’s old room,” Avram said with a sigh.

“No,” Yod said. “I don’t think that’s right.”

The struggle between Avram and Yod tickled Gadi’s sardonic humour. “Quite correct. You can’t give my room away. Considering what’s happening to my career, I may need it.”

“Yod can have the guest room in our house,” Malkah said. As soon as my sister leaves.”

“No,” Shira and Avram said almost in chorus.

“Yod isn’t your creation. Don’t try to take him over,” Avram said.

Shira considered Malkah’s suggestion unfair. That was not something she would agree to without thinking it over a long, long time. Living with Yod seemed ridiculous.

Gadi said, “There’s acres of space upstairs. Yod can help himself to any one of a number of little rooms I haven’t touched and don’t intend to.”

Yod said, “I am supposed to be an adult. I have to live like one. I must appear to be on my own. In the basement, near where I exercise with Gimel, there’s a small apartment no one is using. Gradually I’ve been cleaning it out and improving it. I could move in at once.”

Shira smiled in relief. The basement was accessible from outside without going through the old hotel. Since they were twenty feet above the water table in this part of town, the basement did not flood. She met Yod’s gaze with a grateful smile. Then she noticed Gadi observing. He had caught something.

Indeed at lunchtime he reappeared. He had taken to catering for the lab at the same time that he fed his crew. They were just finishing upstairs, although it was also becoming clear that the upstairs would never be finished. Most helpers were drifting away, but those completely hooked would stay while Gadi used the limited local resources he bitched about to create new virons. “Everybody’s so happy about the Base going on line,” Gadi said. “Was this whole town into the old-fashioned work ethic when we were growing up?”

“People know that staying free depends on the integrity of the Base. No Base, no work, no credit, no town,” Shira said. She cast a glance over her shoulder to see if she could summon Malkah or Yod to dilute Gadi’s presence. She still preferred not to be one-on-one with him. Silver eyes, silver hair, silver nails, silver bracelets around his strong sinewy arms, bared to the shoulder. Under the dark skin, every muscle showed precisely as a diagram from an anatomy book: such was the current high style.

“I may give them a festival to celebrate. Why not? I’m bored, and I love to show off…. Everybody thinks you’re rubbing it with the Thing. I tell them it won’t scan, but that’s popular wisdom.”

She hated it when he used kid slang. She had no idea how kids talked now; but Gadi always knew. It was a professional curiosity, a professional necessity — to be a little but not too far ahead of current.

He was watching her, awaiting her answer with a vibrant impatience expressed in stillness as perfect as Yod’s. Lying felt tacky. Besides, she really did have news to give him, if only she could figure out some acceptable way to say it. She said rather colourlessly, “They’re right.”

“What? Silicon love rituals? Oh, this would be a perfect stimmie fantasy; but in real life, I’m told the new vibrators are studdy as hell. Much more convenient, and you can carry one in your pocket.”

“Gadi, how many operations have you had? How much augmentation?”

“Just the kind of cosmetic nonsense people have always endured for beauty and to get laid a lot. What’s the difference between getting the medicine man to drill a hole for a nose ring and getting my cheekbones sharpened or my shoulders built? But I’m flesh and blood. I know, being married to that cybernerd prepared you for a real robot, but you used to be one sweet and warm armful, Ugi.”

She wasn’t going to be able to confide in him. “I don’t view it as a permanent relationship, but Yod is a person, Gadi. I get tired of having to say that. He has strong feelings, and he forms attachments certainly more easily than you or I can.”

“But, Ugi, you’re going to have to deal with me. A robot won’t stand in the way.”

“But I am in the way.” Yod had come up in his quiet mode. He was not smiling. Shira realized that with his superior hearing, he had probably followed the entire conversation from across the room. He stationed himself immediately behind Shira. “Why did you support my desire for privacy if you think I’m a peripatetic terminal?”

“Oh, I never pass up an opportunity to frustrate my father. Besides, I can’t help but identify with your desire to get him away from him. He’s a control maniac. You’re an ideal son for him ― one he can program. And did.”

“Malkah is also responsible for my programming. But like you yourself — I imagine — I’m self-correcting. My programming isn’t an absolute any more than your education was.”

Gadi laughed. “As Shira can tell you, my education didn’t take.”

Shira realized she was enjoying herself keenly. She could scarcely think of a time when men had fought over her. Male entities anyhow. Always some men had been drawn to her, but she had never approximated the corporate culture ideal at Y-S. Men who were attracted to her tended to feel that they ought to be congratulated on such a maverick choice. While she was with Gadi, she had never paid five minutes’ attention to another boy; in her marriage, she had been dully faithful. If she had increasingly doubted the marriage, it had not been because another man had beckoned. Perhaps her sexuality had been so impacted that nothing had tempted her. Now she was frighteningly awake, aware. At times the brush of her hair against her cheek felt like a caress, the pressure of cloth against her back or belly distracted her. On the nights when Yod could not appear, she had erotic dreams, centred sometimes on him, sometimes on Gadi ― not as Gadi was now, but as he had been ten years before.

As Avram approached, conversation ceased. His bleak gaze swept over them all. He planted himself in front of Yod. “We will try the experiment of allowing you to spend nights below. However, I expect you in the lab by seven every morning, and all night when conditions require it. I am not convinced this is a good or necessary step, but I will allow it as an experiment.”

“Thank you, Father,” Yod said tonelessly.

Avram winced, glancing at Gadi. “We’re a full two weeks behind on the Olivacon webnet order. We’ve wasted enough time. I want you to take over and program Malkah’s worms, while she finishes the gross design.”

“Immediately.” Yod went to plug in.

“‘Father.’” Gadi managed to attach audible quotes to the word. “How sweet that sounds, doesn’t it? Yod seems to be a valuable worker. Never gets sick, never slacks off, works around the clock. I had an assistant like that once. Turned out to be a spy for Amerivision. Uni burned her. Too bad. Never had as good a second since…. So how much is Yod being paid?”

Shira giggled, managing to turn her reaction into a cough. “Is Yod being paid at all?” she asked innocently.

“Of course he isn’t,” Avram said. “Who pays a machine?”

“But Gadi has a good point,” Shira said quickly. “If town records indicate Yod is unpaid, people could begin asking uncomfortable questions.”

“Slave labour,” Gadi said. “Could get you in a gigablob of trouble.”

“He’s a mobile computer. A cyborg. The notion of pay is ridiculous.”

“That’s what you said about my taking him out of the lab. That’s what you’re saying about letting him have quarters like a real person.” Shira shook her hair back. “If you want him to pass as human, you must establish his economic identity, and soon.”

“You have no idea what creating a cyborg cost. I’ve spent a small fortune on this project.”

That’s not Yod’s fault. That’s like blaming a child because you had to go to heroic measures to conceive,” Shira said. “You can’t expect the child to foot those bills.”

She did not know why the idea of Yod getting paid tickled her, but she loved the idea. Gadi was just being his adversarial self. What would Yod do with money? She was amused by the possibilities; Gadi was also. They were united in a confederacy of mischief and imagination. In a way, Gadi was as fascinated by Yod as she was. Yod was the near brother Gadi could not help teasing, prodding; now assisting him, now fighting for him; not attacking, now jealous and resentful. She thought that Yod’s feelings for Gadi were less mixed, perhaps less friendly. She was more important to Yod than to Gadi; perhaps more central to Yod than she had ever been for anyone except Ari. Who must be forgetting her. Did he have a nanny? She had heard the air in the space platforms was always dingy; every time he got a sinus infection, an ear infection followed. If Josh did not monitor, Ari’s hearing could be weakened.

Avram smiled slightly. As for your plans for tomorrow, you can’t possibly take Yod into Cybernaut. As soon as he goes through the gate, their sensors will identify him as a machine.”

“I’m not planning to enter. I’m planning to make them come outside. We can set up a portable wrap. Malkah and I have discussed strategy. We have a small wrap that has full sensor-blocking ability. It can blind them.”

“Malkah is still not going?”

“I won’t let her go. She knows she’s a target.”

“We’re all targets now, Shira. I would prefer that you not go and that Yod not go. You’re pursuing a chimera as seductive as any we create in the Base. A son is hard to let go of, but you’re deluding yourself when you imagine you’ll ever get him back. He’s a permanent hostage. I told the Town Council that I consider attempts to negotiate with Y-S futile. If they wanted to negotiate, they wouldn’t have killed five people first.”

“What is Ari a hostage for? How do we threaten them?”

Avram was actually regarding her with pity. He patted her hand awkwardly. “They perceive whatever they don’t control as hostile.”

The night before the meeting, Shira could not sleep. She heard Malkah moving about the house, going down to work at the main terminal. She heard voices below, probably Riva or Nili. Then silence again. Somewhat later Malkah padded up to bed, followed by the kittens. A full three months had passed since she had last seen Ari; six months since he had been taken from her and awarded to Josh. What were they telling him? She had tried to explain to him during their precious days together that she wanted him with her always. She could see him sulking at her table in his red rompers while she tried to convince him over the expensive eggs. He sat running a toy zip back and forth across the table, not meeting her gaze, so that she could not tell if he understood her. Now what did he believe? That she had abandoned him?

She rose just after dawn ― the sun cleared the bay about four-thirty a.m. — bathed, put on the face paint and gilt highlights appropriate to a morning meeting, dressed in the Y-S backless white business suit she had not had out of the closet since arriving. Into the hem she inserted the resin knife that would not show up on any sensor, with its edge of hypercharged particles that would cut through a diamond when the knife was released from its sheath. She found her robot hairdresser on the upper shelf where she had shoved it in April. She inserted her wet hair, dialled a program for a do that had been fashionable in March and might still not be too far off, and sat impatiently while the many little hands worked. Y-S fashions were set by the upper levels of management. Every year or so the look would change, within rigid limits. Her hair was too short to meet Y-S propriety, but that was just tough.

They might not see any of these preparations, but she had to assume they could end up in a civilized sit-down face-to-face meet over a table. She had to appear prepped — that was the favourite word. You look so prepped this morning. Meaning you appeared proper, image tight, surface impervious, alert to the smallest changes in corporate will.

Yod was waiting when she came down. He was dressed no differently than usual, but security’s clothing never mattered. They were considered invisible. Malkah was in the kitchen, drinking a great mug of cafe au lait. Shira looked for Nili and Riva, did not see them. She hoped she could slip out before they woke. However, Malkah interpreted her glance correctly. “They’ve left already.”