To Be a Woman (7 page)

Moncho glanced at Elasa, nodding slightly.

“Then he forgot, and repeated the words as the orgasm finished. Because he remained in me, this triggered my orgasm again. But I knew this was not his intention. I needed to reconcile the urge of the macro with my knowledge of his meaning, and could not manage it. This need pushed me to the brink of making an unprogrammed decision. I was briefly nonfunctional from the stress. In retrospect I recognize this as the spark that almost ignited my consciousness.”

“An internal conflict,” Moncho said. “Forcing you to make a decision your programming was unable to handle.”

“Yes. Then, as we drove back to the shop to turn me in, he repeated that he loved me. He was not physically in me at that time, but my memory of the prior stress affected me, and instead of triggering my orgasm it triggered my return love for him, along with my relevant feeling and my sudden awareness. My consciousness circuitry had been activated. At least this is the way I understand it.”

“That was the spark,” Moncho said.

“Yes. Love was the spark.”

“And you stopped being a machine. You became a woman.”

“Yes. A woman in love.”

“A woman in love,” he repeated. “And now you wish to marry him.”

“Yes. I long to be completely his.”

“Thank you, Elasa. You have been most helpful.” He faced the other table. “Your witness.”

Toal came forward. “That was most interesting, Elasa,” he said. “Highly persuasive.”

“Thank you.”

“I am not complimenting you for your feeling but for your performance. You have told a most fetching little story.”

“I do not understand.”

“Forbidden love is bound to tug at the heartstrings of any human audience. Everybody loves a lover. But narrating a well rehearsed story does not make you a woman.”

Banner glanced at Maxine. “He's calling her a liar. It really happened. She can't lie. Only when it's part of a game with set rules.”

“This is a larger game,” Maxine said. “With luck he'll hang himself.”

“I don't get it.”

“Keep silent and watch,” Moncho said. “This will not be pleasant, but you must not interfere.”

“But I love her!”

“Trust him,” Maxine murmured tightly.

Mona, beside him, put her hand on his.

Banner shut up and watched, ill at ease.

Elasa looked at Toal, perplexed. “What is your question?”

“You want to maintain your independence, now that you are conscious,” Toal said. “You can best do that by appealing to your man. This is understandable and not difficult for you. You are crafted to appeal to any man.”

“I do and I am,” she agreed.

“Rather than give up the technical secret for machine consciousness that Femdroids Inc has labored so hard to achieve.”

“They will kill me!”

“They will dismantle you to study and ascertain the precise mechanism to evoke consciousness. Then they will put you back together, as good as before.”

“The spark will be gone,” she protested. “I know it. They will gain nothing, but I will lose my life. My fire will be extinguished. I know it.”

“How do you know it?”

“I don't know how I know it. I just do.”

“Woman's intuition?”

“Maybe.” She was obviously unsettled. “I am still learning how to be a woman.”

“To be a woman,” he echoed derisively. “Acknowledge this truth, femdroid. You will never be a woman. Never more than a clever imitation. You're a machine!”

She seemed to quail. “I am a woman in the body of a machine, yes.”

Banner was disturbed. “Why is he doing this? It's cruel!”

Moncho answered. “He is trying to force her to react like a machine, to go haywire before the world, nullifying her case.”

“She
is
a machine!” Banner protested. “That's why she needs legal personhood.”

“She is a woman.”

Toal loomed over Elasa. “You will never age in the manner of a living person. You will never bear your lover a baby. Face it, fembot, you're nothing but a bucket of bolts and nuts formulated to resemble a woman. Whatever gave you the idea that you could ever be anything more than a sex machine?”

Elasa broke. “It's true,” she said, her head falling into her hands. Her face was wet with tears. Worse, it was melting, becoming shapeless as her despair interfered with the signals that made her pseudo-flesh react to emulate life. “I can't ever be more.”

Banner rose to his feet, ready to run to her, but Maxine and Mona grabbed him and held him back.

“Gotcha,” Moncho murmured.

Gotcha? Banner's beloved was being destroyed, all too literally, before the whole world.

“Look at the jury,” Maxine whispered in Banner's ear.

Banner looked. The jury members looked shell shocked. The women were reaching out toward Elasa, horrified. The men looked angry but helpless.

The audience was rumbling with outrage. It looked as if a riot was about to break out.

“Recess!” the judge said as chaos exploded in the courtroom.

“Now you can go to her,” Maxine said. She and Mona let go of him.

Banner ran to Elasa and took her in his arms. “I'm so sorry!” he said as she cried into his shoulder. “I love you! Nothing else matters.”

“Thank you,” she said brokenly.

They returned to their table. Moncho had the monitor tuned to a national news channel. There was the picture of Toal looming over Elasa's hunched figure. “The consensus here is that there is more sheer humanity in that supposed machine than in the man attacking her, or the corporation he represents,” the announcer said grimly.

Then they flashed a political cartoon that must have been electronically crafted on the spot. On the left was a huge humanoid robot vaguely resembling Toal but with visible metal screws and knife-like teeth, labeled PERSON. On the right was a hunched weeping woman resembling Elasa, labeled MACHINE.

Slowly Banner came to understand. The public sided with Elasa. Whatever the legal decision here, Elasa had become a person in the popular mind, and the legality was sure to follow. By browbeating her, Toal had shot his case in the foot. That was what Moncho had been trying for. Cruel, yes, but effective.

He kissed her face, which was slowly resuming its proper shape, thinking of the way she had once kissed his crater of a nose. Love did not care about such details. “Let's go home,” Banner told her.

Chapter 5:

Baby

There were of course legalities and protocols, but it appeared that the case had been decided in that moment of seeming disaster. I was universally recognized as a woman. It was maybe ironic that I had not been playing a role; I had truly collapsed in the face of that brutal reminder that I could never be what I so longed to be. Moncho had set me up for it, but I had not seen it coming. I lacked the devious cunning of a living lawyer.

We resumed our ordinary life. When we went shopping, as I insisted on doing because it was the woman thing, the local women quietly caught my eye and smiled before moving on. It was as if I had won a battle for my gender as well as my person. Maybe I had. The men just nodded. They all wished me well.

Mona, to my regret, moved on. She had courses to take as she studied for her future legal career. I wished her well there, but was sad to lose her company. Banner liked her? So did I. My programming was not adept at dealing with any triangle situation, but consciously I would have preferred to share Banner with her if that meant she would remain with us.

I had several things on my agenda. First, I wanted to marry Banner. Then I wanted to have his baby. The first I could now legally do. The second promised to be more of a challenge.

Femdroids, Inc. approached me. They still wanted to take me apart, of course, but recognized that they could not legally do that. However, my emancipation had cost them a considerable amount of money, and they wanted to make that up, because they had investors. So they asked me to do a publicity tour that would enable them to sell more units. They would pay for it; that expense was relatively trifling. That seemed reasonable to me. I talked to Banner, and to Maxine, and they agreed.

We traveled the world, and I did my thing, satisfying audiences that I was a living person, then showing that I was not. “You can purchase a femdroid just like me,” I concluded. “Except that she will not actually be conscious. We are still working on that. Who knows, maybe the one you get will fall in love and become real, as I did.” That prospect, unrealistic as it might be, sold a lot of units.

Along the way, we got married. Again, there were special interests eager to pay all expenses if we did it on their turf, and we did. It was quite a splendid scene. But what mattered to me was not the display but the reality: now Banner and I were fully, legally, committed to each other. We made sexual love three and a half times on our wedding night, the half being when he tried, got inside me, but was unable to climax again. His ambition was larger than his ability. I pretended I didn't notice as he invoked my orgasm with his words of love. Pretense seems to be a natural concomitant of awareness. When the naked truth would hurt our friends, it must be blunted, rephrased, or suppressed. I learned this from experience soon after achieving my consciousness.

Then I focused on the next state of becoming a complete woman: bearing his baby. I knew it was not feasible—very well, eliminate the euphemism and say it outright: impossible—to contribute my genes, as I had none. But I could incubate and bear it, and that would suffice. We would have a living child together, the genes provided by a living woman.

But what woman? This was an extremely personal and private thing. There was only one I wanted: Mona Maverick. That was the other reason I had wanted Banner to get to know her well. So he would be amenable to conceiving a baby with her when the time came. It was not expedient to tell him that when I had not yet achieved my emancipation, but now it was.

“What?!” he demanded with the punctuation almost audible. “You're the only woman I want to do anything like that with.”

“But I can't provide a living egg to merge with your living sperm,” I reminded him reasonably. “We need a donor, and she would be a good one. Then I can nurture the fetus until it becomes the baby. That much I can do.”

“Oh, laboratory insemination,” he said. “Maybe that makes sense.”

“No laboratory,” I said firmly. “I was crafted in the laboratory. I want to get far away from that. You must inseminate her naturally. Then we can transfer the fertilized egg to my womb and proceed from there. She won't have to interrupt her studies; she will not have a continuing pregnancy.”

“You want me to have sex with Mona?” he asked incredulously. “Elasa, that's begging for trouble. She's attractive to me; you know that. She did a fine job at the personhood hearing. But better that we never meet again.”

“Yes, you should like sex with her,” I said persuasively. “You can conceive our baby in love.”

“Suppose I have sex with you, and you save the ejaculate to use on her? That way I won't have to--”

“No, that's less natural than I want for this. You must make her conceive directly.”

“Elasa, you're being unreasonable!”

“I'm being a woman.”

It required several days of wheedling, buttressed by a great deal of sex, but I finally got him to agree. He made one stipulation: that it occur in my presence, so that it was clear that it was what I wished. That seemed reasonable, and I agreed.

Now I needed to broach the matter with Mona. She was at first no more amenable than Banner had been, and for similar reason: she liked him, she liked me, and she did not want to come between us. She was willing to provide the egg for laboratory fertilization, or to receive donated sperm, but not to have direct sex. But I finally prevailed on her to do it my way, for the sake of our friendship.

“Mona will come here tomorrow,” I told Banner as we retired for the night, nude.

“Tomorrow! I haven't gotten used to the idea yet. I need time to adjust to it.”

“You can adjust tonight.”

“To having sex with another woman in your presence?”

“I will absent myself from the event if you wish.”

“No! Elasa, this still seems preposterous. Why does it have to be so soon?”

“Her fertile period begins tomorrow. That is why it must be now. Otherwise your sex with her will be wasted.”

“Wasted,” he repeated, bemused. “Maybe we can do it clothed, so there's no lascivious contact except the minimum necessary. No kissing, no nothing else.”

“Fully naked, with embracing, kissing, and words of love,” I insisted. “This baby must be conceived in love.”

“But Elasa--” he started despairingly.

“It is the way it must be. You surely won't have to try very hard to play the role.”

“That's the problem! Suppose we fall in love for real?”

“Do you think that's likely?”

“No! But it could happen.”

“A calculated risk,” I said. “If it happens, I will let you divorce me so you can marry her. At least our baby will exist.”

“Damn your machine logic!”

“I am a machine,” I agreed. “I am trying hard to be a woman, but I can't claim to be other than I am.”

He looked at me with an indefinable expression. Then he spoke. “Persuade me.”

I went into persuasion mode. “Please, dear, do it for me.” I made my eyes water. “I love you so much I must have your baby. I beg you.” I put my arms around him and drew him close. I kissed him in the special way he liked. “It is so important to me.” I pressed my breasts against him. “Please, please.” I wrapped my legs about him.

“Oh, shit,” he murmured as he penetrated me. That was an endearment, because it signaled his emotional capitulation.

I went into my orgasm. He had not said the specific words, but the meaning was there. “Thank you, dear,” I said, evoking his maximum pleasure and mine.

Thereafter he slept, as he normally did. I lay beside him with my eyes closed and breathing even as I normally did. This was my downtime, when I sorted through the memories of that day, consciously evoking each in turn. Some I discarded, some I transferred to permanent storage, and some I applied to working files that would affect my future behavior. It was an intricate, efficient system my makers had devised with consciousness in mind, and it worked well enough. It had not been operative before I achieved consciousness, and there had been a considerable backlog to process at first, but I had accomplished it in the course of several concentrated days. It was the mirror of the living human system, enabling me to change with the times as new information constantly came in. A certain amount could be done automatically, but the important things, such as this most recent exchange, needed to be multiply cross-referenced and filed with their relevant emotions attached.

One of these was difficult: I know that a living person would feel jealousy when a spouse engaged in sexual relations with another person. I had not been equipped with a jealously circuit. I needed to emulate one if I could. How could I best do that? I sorted through the emotional circuitry I did have, and concluded that my best bet was a modification of my most fundamental drive: to be a perfect woman. Not perfect in the sense of without error, but in the sense of including those errors a real would would have. My inability to conceive directly barred me from being that perfection, so that I had to do it indirectly, and that was a frustration. I resented those who could readily do what I could not, making me less than I wished to be. So I would resent their ability to conceive together, and think of that as jealously. It was an approximation, but about as close as it was feasible to get.

The simplest thing would be to go to Femdroids Inc. and have them install a jealously circuit. But to do that they would have to fool with my head, and I could not afford that risk. My awareness, once invoked, burned steadily in the manner of a fire once sparked, but I could not take even the slightest risk of having it extinguished. It might not spark again. So I would have to make do with a facsimile.

Banner woke, as sometimes he did at night. “Now?” I inquired gently, as sometimes it was not sex so much as reassurance of my continued presence that he desired.

“Dammit, Elasa, aren't you jealous?” he asked.

“Of course I am,” I answered warmly. “You're going to have sex and conceive a baby in a manner I am unable to do. It should be me doing that!”

He smiled and returned to sleep. It seemed that my emulation was close enough. That gratified me.

Mona arrived on schedule. She looked stunning, as she usually did, with her black mane and remarkable figure. She hugged and kissed me, then looked at Banner. “I'm not sure this is a good idea,” she said.

“Amen,” he agreed.

Then I suffered a flash of genius, another artifact of consciousness. The effort simply needed to be properly phrased. “We'll make it a trio!” I said, remembering how the two stevedores had enjoyed having at me simultaneously. “One man with two women. A normal sexual variation.”

They looked at me, slowly nodding. “This could be fun,” Mona said.

“Fun,” Banner agreed. I realized that they did want to do it, but had been restrained by guilt; I had given them a guilt-free rationale.

We caught up on things during the remaining day, reminiscing about the hearing where Mona and I had fooled the jury and the way Toal had browbeaten me until I collapsed in tears. I repeated for them that had not been pretense; he had truly rubbed my face in my inability to be a complete woman. But the seed of our victory had been in that seeming defeat. It was the point at which the popular imagination had come to my support, ensuring that the jury and the law would follow. Theoretically the law was inflexible, like a machine, but actually it was malleable, like a living creature, and could not go against such overwhelming popular sentiment. It was also the seed of my determination to bear Banner's baby: the thing I had been told I could never do.

Then in the evening we got to it. We stripped and lay together on the bed. Banner kissed me, then kissed Mona, being evenhanded. He fondled my breasts, then hers. He embraced me, then Mona. I held him close, but kept his stiff member outside. She held him close, and I reached around him to feed his member into her vagina.

He paused, lifting his head. Doubt was surfacing. “I'm not sure--”

I pushed his head down to hers, and she put her lips to his and kissed him savagely. I put my breasts to his buttocks and pushed him on into her. “I love you,” I said. That triggered his climax before he realized that he was not the one with the orgasm macro, and he thrust vigorously and ejaculated into her. It had been accomplished.

I grabbed his head and kissed him deeply as his orgasm ebbed. I really was part of this activity, and it was an act of love. Then we all relaxed. We lay on either side of him, placing his hands on our breasts, nudging him with our hips.

We knew that once was not enough to guarantee the conception. We stayed together on the bed, pausing only for spot cleaning up, though Mona remained supine, keeping the ejaculate inside her. We slept together. When Banner woke, I embraced him and put him into me, working him up again. But before he could ejaculate I withdrew and Mona took my place, taking him in, and he finished with her. When he was done, I clasped him again, putting his spent member into me while Mona lay quiet, as before.

We did that several times that night, with variations. He knew what we were doing, and cooperated. One time he entered me from behind, then I swapped with Mona, putting him into her and putting his hand on her breast while I pressed against him from behind. We were a sandwich, with him in the middle. He was never alone with her; it was always the threesome, and I was always very much part of it.

In the morning we showered together, and we teased him erect again, and did it standing, another sandwich. “Damn, I could get to like this,” he said.

Actually, so could I. It was a pleasant interaction with Mona, who would not be here otherwise.

We relaxed during the day, then had at it again in the evening. And again the third day and night. Then Mona had to return to her studies, leaving us to our own devices. “But it was fun,” she said as she departed. “If it doesn't take, I won't mind doing it again.”

“Neither will I,” Banner said.

I invoked my jealousy circuit. “But with luck it won't be necessary.”

We did not have sex for two days after Mona left. I was of course capable, but Banner had been sexed out by doing it a dozen times in three days.