Friday (7 page)

It says right here in the brochure that an SB never lifts until it receives clearance from the port of reentry. Sure, sure, and I believe in the Tooth Fairy just like Boss’s parents. How about the dumb-john in the private APV who picks the wrong strip and parks? How about the time in Singapore when I sat in the Top Deck bar and watched three SBs land in nine minutes?—not, I concede, on the same strip, but on
crossing strips!
Russian roulette.

I’ll go on riding them; I like them and my profession often calls for me to use them. But I hold my breath from touchdown to full stop.

This trip was fun as usual and a semiballistic ride is never long enough to be tiring. I hung back when we landed and, sure enough, my polite wolf was just coming out of the cockpit as I reached the exit. The flight attendant handed me my bag and Captain Tormey took it over my insincere protests.

He took me to the shuttle gate, took charge of confirming my reservation and selecting my seat, then brushed past the Passengers Only sign and settled down beside me. “Too bad you’re leaving so quickly—too bad for me, that is. Under the rules I have to take three days turnaround…and I happen to be at loose ends this trip. My sister and her husband used to live here—but they’ve moved to Sydney and I no longer have anyone to visit with.”

(I can just see you spending all your off time with your sister and your brother-in-law.) “Oh, what a shame! I know how you must feel. My family is in Christchurch and I’m always lonesome when I have to be away from them. A big, noisy, friendly family—I married into an S-group.” (Always tell them at once.)

“Oh, how jolly! How many husbands do you have?”

“Captain, that is always the first thing men ask. It comes from misunderstanding the nature of an S-group. From thinking that S stands for ‘sex.’”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Goodness, no! It stands for ‘security’ arid ‘siblings’ and ‘sociability’ and ‘sanctuary’ and ‘succor’ and ‘safety’ and lots of other things, all of them warm and sweet and comforting. Oh, it can stand for ‘sex,’ too. But sex is readily available everywhere. No need to form anything as complex as an S-group just for sex.” (S stands for “synthetic family” because that is how it was designated in the legislation of the first territorial nation, the California Confederacy, to legalize it. But it is ten-to-one that Captain Tormey knew this. We were simply running through standard variations of the Grand Salute.)

“I don’t find sex that readily available—”

(I refused to answer his ploy. Captain, with your height and broad shoulders and pink, well-scrubbed look, and almost all of your time free for The Hunt…in Winnipeg and Auckland, fer Gossake, two places where the crop never fails… Please, sir! Try again.)

“—but I agree with you that it is not reason enough to marry. I’m not likely to marry, ever…because I go where the wild goose goes. But an S-group sounds like a fine deal to come back to.”

“It is.”

“How big is it?”

“Still interested in my husbands? I have three husbands, sir, and three group sisters to match…and I think you would like all three—especially Lispeth, our youngest and prettiest. Liz is a redheaded Scottish lassie and a bit of a flirt. Children? Of course. We try to count them every night, but they move pretty fast. And kittens and ducks and puppy dogs and a big rambling garden with roses all year round, almost. It’s a busy happy place and always watch where you put your feet.”

“Sounds grand. Does the group need an associate husband who can’t be home much but carries loads of life insurance? How much does it cost to buy in?”

“I’ll speak to Anita about it. But you don’t sound serious.”

The chitchat continued, neither of us meaning a word of it, other than on a symbolic level. Shortly we declared it a draw while providing for a possible rematch by exchanging comm codes, that of my family in Christchurch in answer to his offer to me of the casual use of his flat in Auckland. He had taken over the lease, he said, when his sister had moved…but he needed it only six days out of the month, usually. “So if you find yourself in town and need a place for a wash-up and a nap, or overnight, just call.”

“But suppose one of your friends is using it, Ian”—he had asked me to drop calling him Captain—“or yourself.”

“Unlikely but, if so, the computer will know and tell you. If I’m in town or about to be in town, it will tell you that, too—and I certainly would not want to miss you.”

The pass direct, but in the politest terms. So I answered it by telling him, through giving him our Christchurch number, that he was welcome to try to get my pants off…
if
he had the guts to face my husbands, my co-wives, and a passel of noisy kids. I thought it most unlikely that he would call. Tall, handsome bachelors in glamorous, high-paying jobs don’t have to carry the anvil that far.

About then the loudspeaker that mumbles the arrivals and departures interrupted itself with: “It is with deep sorrow that we pause to announce the total destruction of Acapulco. This flash comes to you courtesy of Interworld Transport, Proprietary, the Triple-S Lines: Speed—Safety—Service.”

I gasped. Captain Ian said, “Oh, those idiots!”

“Which idiots?”

“The whole Mexican Revolutionary Kingdom. When are the territorial states going to learn that they cannot possibly win against corporate states? That’s why I said they were idiots. And they
are!
”

“Why do you say that, Captain?—Ian?”

“Obvious. Any territorial state, even if it’s Ell-Four or an asteroid, is a sitting duck. But fighting a multinational is like trying to slice a fog. Where’s your target? You want to fight IBM?
Where is
IBM? Its registered home office is a P.O. box number in Delaware Free State. That’s no target. IBM’s offices and people and plants are scattered through four hundred-odd territorial states groundside and more in space; you can’t hit any part of IBM without hurting somebody else as much or more. But can IBM defeat, say, Great Russia?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “The Prussians weren’t able to.”

“It would just depend on whether or not IBM could see a profit in it. So far as I know, IBM doesn’t own any guerrillas; she may not even have agents saboteurs. She might have to buy the bombs and missiles. But she could shop around and take her own sweet time getting set because Russia isn’t going anywhere. It will still be there, a big fat target, a week from now or a year. But Interworld Transport just showed what the outcome would be. This war is all over. Mexico bet that Interworld wouldn’t risk public condemnation by destroying a Mexican city. But those old-style politicians forgot that corporate nations aren’t nearly as interested in public opinion as territorial nations have to be. The war’s over.”

“Oh, I hope so! Acapulco is—was—a beautiful place.”

“Yes, and it would still be a beautiful place if the Montezuma’s Revolutionary Council wasn’t rooted somewhere back in the twentieth century. But now there will be face-saving. Interworld will apologize and pay an indemnity, then, with no fanfare, the Montezuma will cede the land and the extraterritoriality for the new spaceport to a new corporation with a Mexicano name and a DF home office…and the public won’t be told that the new corporation is owned sixty percent by Interworld and forty percent by the very politicians who stalled just a little too long and let Acapulco be destroyed.” Captain Tormey looked sour and I suddenly saw that he was older than I had first guessed.

I said, “Ian, isn’t ANZAC a subsidiary of Interworld?”

“Perhaps that’s why I sound so cynical.” He stood up. “Your shuttle is locking into the gate. Let me have your bag.”

Christchurch is the loveliest city on this globe.

Make that “anywhere,” as there is not yet a truly lovely city off Earth. Luna City is underground, Ell-Five looks like a junkyard from outside and has only one arc that looks good from inside. Martian cities are mere hives and most Earthside cities suffer from a misguided attempt to look like Los Angeles.

Christchurch does not have the magnificence of Paris or the setting of San Francisco or the harbor of Rio. Instead it has things that make a city lovable rather than stunning: The gentle Avon winding through our downtown streets. The mellow beauty of Cathedral Square. The Ferrier fountain in front of Town Hall. The lush beauty of our world-famous botanic gardens smack in the middle of downtown.

“The Greeks praise Athens.” But I am not a native of Christchurch (if “native” could mean anything for my sort). I am not even an Ennzedd. I met Douglas in Ecuador (this was before the Quito Skyhook catastrophe), was delighted by a frantic love affair compounded of equal parts of pisco sours and sweaty sheets, then was frightened by his proposal, calmed down when he made me understand that he was not then proposing vows in front of some official but a trial visit to his S-group—find out if they liked me, find out if I liked them.

That was different. I zipped back to the Imperium and reported, and told Boss that I was taking some accumulated leave—or would he rather have my resignation? He growled something about go ahead and get my gonads cooled off, then report in when I was fit to work. So I rushed back to Quito and Douglas was still in bed.

At that time there really wasn’t any way to get from Ecuador to New Zealand…so we tubed to Lima and took an SB right over the South Pole to West Australia Port at Perth (with the oddest shaped track because of Coriolis)—tube to Sydney, bounce to Auckland, float to Christchurch, taking nearly twenty-four hours and the wildest of tracks just to cross the Pacific. Winnipeg and Quito are almost the same distance from Auckland—don’t be fooled by a flat map; ask your computer—Winnipeg is only one-eighth farther.

Forty minutes versus twenty-four hours. But I had not minded the longer trip; I was with Douglas and dizzy in love.

In another twenty-four hours I was dizzy in love with his family.

I hadn’t expected that. I had looked forward to a lovely vacation with Douglas and he had promised me some skiing as well as sex—not that I insisted on skiing. I knew that I had an implied obligation to go to bed with his group brothers if asked. But that didn’t worry me because an artificial person simply can’t take copulation as seriously as most humans seem to take it. Most of the females of my crèche class had been trained as doxies from menarche on and then were signed up as company women with one or another of the construction multinationals. I myself had received basic doxy training before Boss showed up, bought my contract, and changed my track. (And I jumped the contract and was missing for several months—but that’s another story.)

But I wouldn’t have been jumpy about friendly sex even if I had received no doxy training at all; such nonsense isn’t tolerated in APs; we never learn it.

But we never learn
anything
about being in a family. The very first day I was there I made us all late for tea by rolling on the floor with seven youngsters ranging from eleven down to a nappy-wetter plus two or three dogs and a young tomcat who had earned the name Mister Underfoot through his unusual talent for occupying all of a large floor.

I had never experienced anything like that in all my life. I didn’t want to stop.

Brian, not Douglas, took me skiing. The ski lodges at Mount Hutt are lovely but the bedrooms aren’t heated after twenty-two and you have to snuggle up close to keep warm. Then Vickie took me out to see the family’s sheep and I met socially an enhanced dog who could talk, a big collie called Lord Nelson. Lord had a low opinion of the good sense of sheep, in which he was, I think, fully justified.

Bertie took me to Milford Sound via shuttle to Dunedin (the “Edinburgh of the South”) and overnight there—Dunedin is swell but it’s not Christchurch. We took a flubsy little steamer there around to the fjord country, one with tiny little cabins big enough for two only because it’s cold down at the south end of the island and again I snuggled up close.

There isn’t any other fjord anywhere that can compare with Milford Sound. Yes, I’ve been on the Lofoten Islands trip. Very nice. But my mind’s made up.

If you think I am as blindly pigheaded about South Island as a mother is about her firstborn, that is simply because it’s true; I am. North Island is a fine place, with its thermal displays and the world wonder of the Glowworm Caves. And the Bay of Islands looks like Fairyland. But North Island does not have the Southern Alps and it doesn’t have Christchurch.

Douglas took me to see their creamery and I saw huge tubs of beautiful butter being packed. Anita introduced me to the Altar Guild. I began to realize that, maybe, just possibly, I might be invited to make it permanent. And found that I had shifted from Oh-God-what’ll-I-do-if-they-ask-me to Oh-God-what’ll-I-do-if-they-
don’t
-ask-me and then simply to Oh-God-what’ll-I-do?

You see, I had never told Douglas that I am not human.

I’ve heard humans boast that they can spot an artificial person every time. Nonsense. Of course anyone can pick out a living artifact that does not conform to human appearance—say a man creature with four arms or a kobold dwarf. But if the genetic designers have intentionally restricted themselves to human appearance (this being the technical definition of “artificial person” rather than “living artifact”), no human can tell the difference—no, not even another genetic engineer.