Lovelock (15 page)

But I wasn’t done yet. An inventory of the Ark’s contents caught my attention. It detailed everything that had been brought aboard the Ark from Earth—right down to the last stick of furniture that Mamie had so carefully chosen to accompany us into space. I was more interested in the communal inventory than I was in personal possessions, however, so I skipped through the files until I found the materials Carol Jeanne and I would need to develop an appropriate new ecological system when we reached our new planet, Genesis. I opened the files of the seed bank and scanned the inventory of dried seeds and frozen embryos.

The quantities were enormous, partly because there was a hefty failure rate in the process of reviving frozen embryos. This was why humans were not frozen—a two-in-five success rate was not acceptable for human beings.

But it was acceptable for capuchin monkeys. I found a cache of fifteen hundred frozen capuchin embryos, never guessing that this was what I had been looking for, that it was the need to know this that had kept me awake. At the time all I felt was a bit of pride that my species-of-origin was valued enough to be included in the new world. There could be an admirable colony of capuchins.

Right then, for just a moment, there flashed into my mind a picture of myself as the alpha male for a troop of monkeys. I pictured myself displaying aggressively at young upstart monkeys and watching them hoot and retreat and finally run from me. It made me laugh silently. And then I imagined myself with the most valued female of the troop when she came into estrus, and…

And I found myself trembling with desire.

What I would give to be the alpha male for a group such as that one!

Naturally, my body responded to the desire, and just as naturally I reached down to touch my rather formidable generative organ.

It was as if I had stuck my finger in an electric socket. A sharp pain raced through me, and I found myself on the floor, trembling with fear and horror.

Only then did I remember what they had done to me—to all of us—in the monkey factory. Young capuchin males, as with most monkey species, masturbate whenever they think of it, which is often. But this was disgusting and distracting to humans, and therefore we who would be witnesses, we who would be privileged to consort with the master species, had to be trained not to do such nasty things. The I/O implant they gave me, my connection to the world of digital information, was also my whip. When it recognized that I was doing the Bad Thing, it gave me a dose of what the painword gave me.

The conditioning had been so effective that in all my time with Carol Jeanne I had never once even begun to touch myself, had never even become aroused while awake. And the punishment was so painful and brutal that, in its absence, I had blocked the memory of it out of my mind. Until now, lying on the floor.

They thought of everything, those clever lads and lassies in their lab coats with their bowls of monkey chow and their painwords. I had to be shaped into a socially acceptable little monkey-toy, so sexual pleasures were off limits to me. Stupid brute monkeys in the zoo could dandle their little weenies to their heart’s content, but I could not so much as touch mine, even when my master was asleep, even when I was completely alone.

I could never be an alpha male. They hadn’t castrated me because a certain amount of aggression in a witness was desirable. They had simply built in a whip to keep me in line.

Weren’t they thorough, these people who created me? They didn’t miss a trick, did they?

So why wasn’t I made immune to the disorientation of null gravity? They were so busy fixing things to keep me from being annoying; why didn’t they give me the power to fly in space without panicking?

Because they weren’t thinking of what
I
needed, that’s why. They were thinking only of the needs of my master, my owner, the object of my undying affection, the
only
love I would be permitted to have in my life.

Be fair, I told myself. They didn’t know you’d be going into space.

And then I thought, Why
am
I here in space? Because Carol Jeanne decided to go. She consulted with Red before she made up her mind. She even talked it over with Mamie and Stef and her sister. She and Red discussed the needs of their children, too. But not once in their discussions did Carol Jeanne or Red ever say, “I wonder if the pig and the monkey will be happy there.” They worried about whether other people would accept our presence, but it never crossed their minds to wonder if
we
would want to go.

The trainers at the monkey factory never asked us, Would you mind terribly if we took away all possibility of sexual satisfaction? Carol Jeanne never asked me, Would it bother you if I took you away from Earth and carried you off into a place where you will live in terror of null gravity?

They didn’t have to ask me. Because they had manufactured me as surely as if I were an armoire. You don’t ask the furniture what it wants, you just arrange it in the room and use it till it wears out. Furniture might be so precious that Mamie, for instance, couldn’t imagine living without the familiar pieces. But that doesn’t mean the furniture has rights.

Well, just because somebody created you doesn’t mean you’re not alive. When they make furniture they kill the trees first. But they didn’t kill the monkey. I’m still real, no matter how they changed me.

They gave me powers of thought and memory far beyond anything natural evolution would have given me, but that doesn’t give them the right to decide the meaning of my life as if I were some
dream. I
decide the meaning. If my life is a dream then it’s
my
dream,
I’m
the dreamer.

I’m the dreamer, except in the midst of my dream they intrude, they hurt me, they stop me from dreaming of—dreaming of what? Dreaming of the most fundamental urge of all life, to reproduce myself. They have cut me off from the great cycle of life. I am not part of Gaia because I have no power to add my genes to the ongoing story of my species. I
have
no species. I have been stolen from myself. I am the property of someone else, and when they took away my own dreams, they didn’t bother to give me any new dreams to take their place. Carol Jeanne has no dreams for me. And I’m not allowed to have any dreams for myself.

Maybe I didn’t think of all of this that night. I’ve had plenty of time since then to brood, to refine my sense of grievance. I can’t remember now exactly which thoughts I had that night. But I know this: That was the night, sitting there in front of the computer, thinking of sex, that I realized that I would always be punished for daring to want what all life fundamentally wants, that I had been deprived of the most basic of all rights, the right to reproduce. Even amoebas have the right to copy themselves.

And as soon as I realized how wrong it was, what they’d done to me, a whole lifetime of suppressed resentment flooded through me. For a few moments, I was insane. I was filled with only one thought, one desire, one will: An infinite, inexpressible
no
. I rejected them. I rejected their power over me. And in that madness, I did the one thing that they knew I would never do. I disobeyed them, knowing full well how much pain it would cost me. I touched myself again.

This time the pain was so great that I think I blacked out for a while. I woke up on the floor. But I remembered, and the rage was undiminished. So I did it again. And again. Never has anyone suffered so much agony. But as long as I was conscious, during that long, long night, I refused to obey them. I would rather suffer the pain than to comply with their decision to make a eunuch of me.

It was light when I blinked open my eyes. I was exhausted, as if I hadn’t slept at all, as indeed I hardly had. My small injuries stung, but more important was a kind of spiritual numbness, a bitter ennui. My mouth tasted like a metal canister. My limbs trembled when I tried to move them.

I was lying under the desk. In the kitchen I could hear the sounds of breakfast. I didn’t bother trying to distinguish words. It was enough to hear the atonal music of the children whining, Mamie stentoriously proclaiming her decisions on this or that, Red murmuring weak-willed responses. Silence from Stef.

And from Carol Jeanne—what?

I heard nothing from her. And suddenly I was filled with panic. Carol Jeanne was gone! She had already left home! My madness last night had kept me awake so late that I overslept and she left without me. Or worse—somehow she knew the evil things I had done and thought, and now she rejected me, she no longer wanted me with her!

I dragged myself out from under the desk. I found several hard pellets and a pool of urine—I really
had
lost control last night. I thought of the raging beast I had been and I was filled with self-loathing. I was unworthy of Carol Jeanne. She deserved a perfect friend, not a self-pitying rebellious jerk-off animal who slept the night in his own wastes.

Pink had wandered into the room during the night; when I slid out from under the desk, she got up, came over, and sniffed with contempt at my feces. I picked one up and made as if to jam it into her nostril. She bared her teeth at me—as if she could ever be quick enough to bite me! Except that maybe today she could—I was shaky. I nearly fell over. I felt as if someone had wrung my body out and left me barely moist.

The housing people had been thoughtful enough to stock the bathroom cabinet with basic cleaning supplies. It took me only a few minutes to wipe up the evidence of my shame on the office floor. It really annoyed me that Pink had a record of the scene, but my guess was that Red wouldn’t bother looking at memories of
me
. In his narcissism, he would skip right by until he found himself.

I bathed quickly, this time in the tub instead of the sink. Then I went looking for Carol Jeanne.

She was in the kitchen. She hadn’t left after all. She had simply been silent. So I hadn’t overslept all that badly.

All my efforts to hide my injuries were in vain. Not that Carol Jeanne would ever have seen them. I simply hadn’t counted on Lydia’s powers of observation.

“Lovelock has a bobo,” she said, pointing at the scrape on my chin.

Carol Jeanne set her breakfast aside and held out her arms to me. Obediently I scampered into her embrace.

“You
are
hurt,” she said, puzzled. “Whatever happened to you?”

Rolling my shoulders upward in an elaborate shrug, I jumped from her shoulder to the kitchen counter, and there on the kitchen computer I typed, “I cut myself shaving.” Carol Jeanne laughed when she read the words on the monitor. As she laughed I furiously tried to think of some plausible lie, but to my surprise there was no follow-up question. The joke was enough.

This was a sign of respect, I told myself. She recognized my little joke as a request for privacy, and so she didn’t ask any further questions.

But even as I insisted to myself on the most generous possible interpretation of her indifference, I knew in the back of my mind that I was lying to myself.

So there
was
some residue from the night before. For now, when the conditioned lies and rationalizations came to mind, I recognized them for what they were. Yes, I still made up the stories that depicted Carol Jeanne as a perfectly loving and caring master. But I no longer believed them, not completely. The doubt was now alive in me, awake in me.

“Lovelock, I need a report on the status of each individual’s work,” said Carol Jeanne.

An assignment! She still wants me, she still needs me, she still loves me!

But also: What is my injury to her? All that matters is that I can produce the data she needs. Let the slave bleed, as long as he doesn’t spill any of it on the printouts.

And this, too: Have I been conditioned to receive her every command with joy? Just as there is an implanted pain response that is triggered by forbidden actions, is there also an implanted pleasure response activated by her orders?

Is there any part of my soul that they have left alone?

Even as I thought this, I scampered to the office and plugged in, filled with excitement and joy at the project she had assigned me. Never mind that I hadn’t eaten yet. Never mind that I hadn’t slept enough. Never mind that I was still weak and trembled with the memory of pain. I was filled with joy at the chance to serve my mistress, and I hated it.

I scanned the status reports that each of the scientists in her project left on the network at the end of the working day, and organized them into an easy-to-read chart. It was an absurd thing for her to have me do—it would have taken her no more time to call up the status reports herself than it would take her to read my report. She was wasting my time, but what did she care?

In the kitchen I could hear Red saying, “You’re not going to be able to spend much time on your work today, Carol Jeanne. This is our Workday, remember.”

Carol Jeanne muttered her answer, but I was so keyed in on her voice that I heard her clearly. “Waste of my time.”

Oh, well excuse
us
, O Mistress of the Universe.

I trembled at the audacity of my own thought. I dared to criticize her?

Yes, and in doing so I sounded just as judgmental and petulant as Mamie.

So what? Carol Jeanne sounded like Mamie, too, thinking that she should be exempt from Workday because she was so special.

Red seemed to see the similarity, too, for he was talking to Carol Jeanne in his “Now, Mother,” voice. “It’s important for the overall stability of the colony that we have these significant rituals of egalitarianism.”

Carol Jeanne wasn’t in the mood to be patronized. “I’m aware of that, Red, and I agree. I just think they might have let me have the first week off, to get up to speed in the project.”

“Maybe they think you have years and years ahead of you, so there’s no rush now. While the Workday projects won’t wait.”

I finished my report and tagged it for Carol Jeanne’s work-waiting queue, with first priority. Anything I tagged for her was automatically first priority. Thinking of that, I was filled with pride.