Tower of Glass

22

Thor Watchman knelt beside Lilith Meson in the Valhallavдgen chapel. It was the day of the Ceremony of the Opening of the Vat; nine alphas were present, with Mazda Constructor, who belonged to the Transcender caste, officiating. A couple of betas had been persuaded to attend, since Yielders were needed. This was not a ceremony that required the participation of a Preserver, and so Watchman played no part in it; he merely repeated to himself the invocations of the celebrants.

The hologram of Krug above the altar glistened and throbbed. The triplets of the genetic code around the walls seemed to melt and swirl as the ritual neared its climax. The scent of hydrogen was in the air. Mazda Construction’s gestures, always noble and impressive, grew more broad, more all-encompassing.

“AUU GAU GGU GCU,” he called.

“Harmony!” sang the first Yielder.

“Unity” sang the second.

“Perception,” Lilith said.

“CAC CGU CCC CUC,” chanted Mazda Constructor.

“Harmony!”

“Unity!”

“Passion,” said Lilith.

“UAA UGA UCA UUA,” the Transcender cried.

“Harmony!”

“Unity!”

“Purpose,” Lilith said, and the ceremony was over. Mazda Constructor stepped down, flushed and weary. Lilith lightly touched his hand. The betas, looking grateful to be excused, slipped out the rear way. Watchman rose. He saw Andromeda Quark in the far corner, the dimmest corner, whispering some private devotion of the Projector caste. She seemed to see no one else.

“Shall we go?” Watchman said to Lilith. “I’ll see you home.”

“Kind of you,” she said. Her part in the ceremony appeared to have left her aglow; her eyes were unnaturally bright, her breasts were heaving beneath her thin wrap, her nostrils flared. He escorted her to the street.

As they walked toward the nearby transmat he said, “Did the personnel requisition reach your office?”

“Yesterday. With a memo from Spaulding telling me to send out a hiring call at once. Where am I going to find that many skilled betas, Thor? What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that Krug is pushing us hard. He’s obsessed with finishing the tower.”

“That’s nothing new,” Lilith said.

“It’s getting worse. Day by day the impatience grows, deepens, becomes more intense, like a sickness inside him. Maybe if I were human I’d understand a drive like that. He comes to the tower two, three times a day, now. Counts the levels. Counts the newly raised blocks. Hounds the tachyon people, telling them to get their machines hooked up faster. He’s starting to look like something wild: sweating, excited, stumbling over his own words. Now he’s padding the work crews — tossing millions of dollars more into the job. For what? For what? And then this starship thing. I talked to Denver yesterday. Do you know, Lilith, he ignored that plant all last year, and now he’s there once a day? The starship has to be ready for an interstellar voyage within three months. Android crew. He’s sending androids.”

“Where?”

“Three hundred light-years away.”

“He won’t ask you to go, will he? Me?”

“Four alphas, four betas,” Watchman said. “I haven’t been told who’s being considered. If he lets Spaulding decide, I’m finished. Krug preserve us from having to go.” The irony of his prayer struck him belatedly, and he laughed, a thin, dark chuckle. “Yes. Krug preserve us!”

They reached the transmat. Watchman began to set coordinates.

“Will you come up for awhile?” Lilith asked.

“Glad to.”

They stepped into the green glow together.

Her flat was smaller than his, just a bedroom, a combination sitting-room/dining-room/kitchen, and a sort of large foyer-cum-closet. It was possible to see where a much larger apartment had been divided to form several smaller ones, suitable for androids. The building was similar to the one where he lived: old, well-worn, somehow warm of soul. Nineteenth-century, he guessed, although Lilith’s furnishings, reflecting the force of her personality, were distinctly contemporary, leaning heavily to floor-mounted projections and tiny, delicate, free-floating art objects. Watchman had never been at her place before, though they were close neighbors in Stockholm. Androids, even alphas, did not socialize much in one another’s homes; the chapels served as meeting-places for most occasions. Those who were outside the communion gathered in AEP offices, or clung to their solitude.

He dropped into a springy, comfortable chair. “Care to corrode your mind?” Lilith asked. “I can offer all kinds of friendly substances. Weeds? Floaters? Scramblers? Even alcohol-liqueurs, brandies, whiskeys.”

“You’re well stocked with pollutions.”

“Manuel comes here often. I must play hostess for him. What will you have?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m not really fond of corrosion.”

She laughed and moved toward the doppler. Quickly it consumed her wrap. Under it she wore nothing but a thermal spray, light green and lovely against her pale scarlet skin; it covered her from breasts to thighs, protecting her against Stockholm’s December winds. A different setting of the doppler and that was gone too. She kept her sandals on.

Sinking down easily to the floor, she sat cross-legged before him and toyed with the dials of her wall-projections; textures ebbed and flowed as she made random adjustments. There was an oddly tense moment of silence. Watchman felt awkward; he had known Lilith five years, nearly her whole life, and she was as close a friend to him as one android customarily was to another. Yet he had never been alone with her before in quite this way. It was not her nudity that disturbed him; nudity meant nothing at all to him. It was, he decided, simply the privacy of it. As though we were lovers. As though there was something … sexual … between us. He smiled and decided to tell her about these incongruous feelings. But before he could speak, she did:

“I’ve just had a thought. About Krug. About his impatience to finish the tower. Thor, what if he’s dying?”

“Dying?” Blankly; an unfamiliar idea.

“Some terrible disease, something they can’t fix tectogenetically. I don’t know what: some new kind of cancer, maybe. Anyway, suppose he’s just found out that he has maybe a year or two to live, you see, and he’s desperate to get his space signals sent out before then.”

“He looks healthy,” Watchman said.

“Rotting from the inside out. The first symptoms are erratic behavior — jumping obsessively from place to place, accelerating work schedules, bothering people to respond faster—”

“Krug preserve us, no!”

“PreserveKrug .”

“I don’t believe this, Lilith. Where did you get this notion? Has Manuel said anything?”

“Strictly intuition. I’m trying to help you account for Krug’s odd behavior, that’s all. If he really is dying, that’s one possible explanation for—”

“Krug can’t die.”

“Can’t?”

“You know what I mean. Mustn’t. He’s still young. He’s got a century ahead of him, at least. And there’s so much that he still must do in that time.”

“For us, you mean?”

“Of course,” Watchman said.

“The tower’s burning him up, though. Consuming him. Thor, suppose hedoes die? Without having said the words — without having spoken out for us—”

“We’ll have wasted a lot of energy in prayer, then. And the AEP will laugh in our faces.”

“Shouldn’t we do something?”

He pressed his thumbs lightly against his eyelids. “We can’t build our plans atop a fantasy, Lilith. So far as we know, Krug isn’t dying, and isn’t likely to die for a long time.”

“And if he does?”

“What are you getting at?”

She said, “We could start to make our move now.”

“What?”

“The thing we discussed when you first pushed me into sleeping with Manuel. Using Manuel to enlist Krug’s support for the cause.”

“It was just a passing thought,” Watchman said. “I doubt that it’s philosophically proper to try to manipulate Krug like that. If we’re sincere in our faith, we should await His grace and mercy, without scheming to—”

“Stop it, Thor. I go to chapel, and you go to chapel, and we all go to chapel, but we also live in the real world, and in the real world you have to take real factors into account. Such as the possibility of Krug’s premature death.”

“Well…” He shivered with tension. She was speaking pragmatically; she sounded almost like an AEP organizer. He saw the logic of her position. All of his faith was pinned to the hope of the manifestation of a miracle; but what if there were no miracle? If they had an opportunity to encourage the miracle, should they not take it? And yet — and yet—

She said, “Manuel’s primed. He’s ready to take up our cause openly. You know how pliable he is; I could turn him into a crusader in two or three weeks. I’d take him to Gamma Town, first—”

“In disguise, I hope.”

“Of course. We’d spend a night there. I’d rub his face in it. And then — you remember, Thor, we talked about letting him see a chapel—”

“Yes. Yes.” Watchman trembled.

“I’d do that. I’d explain the whole communion. And finally I’d come right out and ask him to go to his father for us. He would, Thor, he would! And Krug would listen. Krug would yield and say the words. As a favor to Manuel.”

Watchman rose. He paced the room. “It seems almost blasphemous, though. We’re supposed to wait for Krug’s grace to descend on us, in Krug’s own time. To make use of Manuel this way, to attempt to shape and force the will of Krug—”

“What if Krug’s dying?” Lilith asked. “What if he’s got only months left? What if a time comeswhen there is no Krug ? And we’re still slaves.”

Her words rebounded from the walls, shattering him:

when there is no Krug

when there is no Krug

when there is no Krug

when there is no Krug

“We have to distinguish,” he said shakily, “between the physical man who is Krug, for whom we work, and the eternal presence of Krug the Maker and Krug the Liberator, who—”

“Not now, Thor. Just tell me what should I do. Take Manuel to Gamma Town?”

“Yes. Yes. But move one step at a time. Don’t reveal things too quickly. Check with me if you have any doubts. Can you really control Manuel?”

“He worships me,” Lilith said quietly.

“Because of your body?”

“It’s a good body, Thor. But it’s more than that. Hewants to be dominated by an android. He’s full of second-generation guilts. I captured him with sex, but I hold him by the power of the Vat.”

“Sex,” Watchman said. “Captured him with sex. How? He has a wife. An attractive wife, I’ve heard, though of course I’m in no position to judge. If he has an attractive wife, why does he need—”

Lilith laughed.

“Did I say a joke?”

“You don’t understand a thing about humans, do you, Thor? The famous Alpha Watchman, totally baffled!” Her eyes sparkled. She jumped to her feet. “Thor, do you know anything about sex? At first hand, I mean.”

“Have I done sex? Is that what you’re asking?”

“That’s what I’m asking,” Lilith told him.

The change in the conversation’s direction puzzled him. What did his private life have to do with the planning of revolutionary tactics?

“No,” he said. “Never. Why should I? What could I get from it beside trouble?”

“Pleasure,” she suggested. “Krug created us with functional nervous systems. Sex is amusement. Sex excites me; it ought to excite you. Why haven’t you ever tried it?”

“I don’t know an alpha male who has. Or who even thinks much about it.”

“Alpha women do.”

“That’s different. You have more opportunities. You’ve got all those human males running after you. Human females don’t run after androids much, except for some disturbed women, I guess. And you can do sex with a human without any risks. But I’m not going to chance entangling myself with some human female, not when any man who thinks I’m infringing on his rights can destroy me on the spot.”

“How about sex between android and android?”

“What for? So we can make babies?”

“Sex and reproduction are separate things, Thor. People have sex without babies and babies without sex all the time. Sex is a social force. A sport, a game. A kind of magnetism, body to body. It’s what gives me power over Manuel Krug.” Abruptly the tone of her voice shifted, losing its didactic quality, becoming softer. “Do you want me to show you what it is? Take your clothes off.”

He laughed edgily. “Are you serious? You want to do sex with me?”

“Why not? Are you afraid?”

“Don’t be absurd. I just didn’t expect — I mean — it seems so incongruous, two androids going to bed together, Lilith—”

“Because we’re things made of plastic?” she said coldly.

“That isn’t what I meant. Obviously we’re flesh and blood!”

“But there are certain things that we don’t have to do, because we come from the Vat. Certain bodily functions that are reserved for the Children of the Womb. Eh?”

“You’re distorting my position.”

“I know I am. I want to educate you, Thor. Here you are trying to manipulate the destinies of an entire society, and you’re ignorant of one of the most basic human motivations. Come: strip. Haven’t you ever felt desire for a woman?”

“I don’t know what desire is, Lilith.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

She shook her head. “And you think we should have equality with humans? You want to vote, you want to put alphas in Congress, to have civil rights? But you’re living like a robot. Like a machine. You’re a walking argument for keeping androids in their place. You’ve closed off one of the most vital sectors of human life and tell yourself that that sort of stuff is only for humans; androids don’t have to bother with it. Dangerous thinking, Thor! Weare human. We have bodies. Why did Krug give us genitals if He didn’t mean us to use them?”

“I agree with every word you’ve said. But—”

“But what?”

“But sex seems irrelevant to me. And I know that’s a damning argument against our cause. I’m not the only alpha who feels this way, Lilith. We don’t talk about it much, but—” He looked away from her. “Maybe the humans are right. Maybe weare a lesser kind, artificial through and through, just a clever kind of robot made out of flesh and—”

“Wrong. Stand up, Thor. Come here.”

He walked toward her. She took his hands and put them on her bare breasts.

“Squeeze them,” she said. “Gently. Play with the nipples. You see how they get hard, how they stand up? That’s a sign that I’m responding to your touch. It’s a way that a woman shows desire. What do you feel when you touch my breasts, Thor?”

“The smoothness. The cool skin.”

“What do you feelinside ?”

“I don’t know.”

“Pulse rate changing? Tensions? A knot in your belly? Here. Touch my hip. My buttock. Slide your hand up and down. Anything, Thor?”

“I’m not sure. I’m so new at this, Lilith.”

“Strip,” she said.

“It seems so mechanical this way. Cold. Isn’t sex supposed to be preceded by courtship, soft lights, whispering, music, poetry?”

“Then youdo know a little about it.”

“A little. I’ve read their books. I know the rituals. The peripherals.”

“We can try the peripherals. Here: I’ve turned down the lights. Take a floater, Thor. No, not a scrambler — not the first time. A floater. Fine. Here’s a little music, now. Undress.”

“You won’t tell anybody about this?”

“How silly you are! Who would I tell?” Manuel? Darling, I’ll tell him, darling, I’ve been unfaithful to you with Thor Watchman!” She laughed giddily. “It’ll be our secret. Call it a humanizing lesson. Humans have sex, and you want to be more human, don’t you? I’ll discover sex to you.” She smiled archly. She tugged at his clothes.

Curiosity seized him. He felt the floater going to work in his brain, lifting him toward euphoria. Lilith was right: the sexlessness of alphas was a paradox among people who claimed so intensely to be fully human. Or was sexlessness as general among alphas as he thought? Perhaps, busy with the tasks set for him by Krug, he had simply neglected to let his emotions develop? He thought of Siegfried Fileclerk, weeping in the snow beside Cassandra Nucleus, and wondered.

His clothes dropped away. Lilith drew him into her arms.

She rubbed her body slowly against his. He felt her thighs on his thighs, the cool taut drum of her belly touching his, the hard nodes of her nipples brushing his chest. He searched himself for some trace of response. He was uncertain about what he found, although he could not deny that he enjoyed the tactile sensations of their contact. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were parted. They sought his. Her tongue slid a short distance between his teeth. He ran the palms of his hands down her back, and on a sudden impulse dug the tips of his fingers into the globes of her buttocks. Lilith stiffened and pushed herself more intensely against him, grinding now instead of rubbing. They remained that way for some minutes. Then she relaxed and eased away from him.

“Well?” she asked. “Anything?”

“I liked it,” he said tentatively.

“Did it excite you, though?”

“I think so.”

“It doesn’t look that way.”

“How can you tell?”

“It would show,” she said, grinning at him.

He felt impossibly absurd and awkward; he felt cut off from his own identity, unable to return to or even to see the Thor Watchman he knew and understood. From the first, almost from the time of leaving the Vat, he had regarded himself as older, wiser, more competent, more confident, than his fellow alphas: a man who comprehended the world and his place in it. But now? Lilith had reduced him in half an hour to something clumsy, naive, foolish … and impotent.

She put her hand to his loins. “Since your organ hasn’t become rigid,” she said, “obviously it wasn’t very exciting for you when I—” She paused. “Oh. Yes. Now do you see?”

“It happened when you touched me.”

“That isn’t awfully surprising. So you like it, then? Yes. Yes.” Her fingers moved cunningly. Watchman had to admit that he found the sensation interesting, and that sudden startling awakening of his maleness in her hands was a remarkable effect. But yet he remained outside himself, a detached and remote observer, no more involved than if he were attending a lecture on the mating habits of Centaurine proteoids.

She was close against him, again. Her body moved, sliding from side to side, writhing a little, quivering with a barely suppressed tension. He clasped her in his arms. He ran his hands over her skin once more.

She drew him to the floor.

He lay atop her, bracing himself with knees and elbows so that his full weight would not descend on her. Her legs surrounded him; her thighs clamped tight against his hips; her hand slipped between their bodies, seized him, guided him into her. She began to thrust her pelvis up and down. He caught the rhythm of it shortly, and matched her thrusts with thrusts of his own.

So this is sex, he thought.

He wondered how a woman felt about having something long and hard pushed into her body like that. Evidently they enjoyed it; Lilith was gasping and trembling in what seemed like delight. But it struck him as an odd thing to covet. And was pushing yourself into a woman all that thrilling? Was this what the poetry was about, was this what men had fought duels over and renounced kingdoms for?

After awhile he said, “How will we know when it’s over?”

Her eyes opened. He was unable to tell whether there was fury or laughter in them. “You’ll know,” she said. “Just keep moving!”

He kept moving.

The motions of her hips grew more violent. Her face became twisted, distorted, almost ugly; some sort of interior storm had broken and was raging within her. Muscles throbbed randomly throughout her body. At the place where he was joined to her, he could feel her grasping him with playful inner spasms.

Abruptly he felt a spasm of his own, and ceased to catalog the effects their union had produced in her. He closed his eyes. He fought for breath. His heart raced frantically; his skin blazed. He tightened his grip on her and pressed his face into the hollow between her cheek and her shoulder. A series of jolting impacts rocked him.

She was right: it was easy to tell when it was over.

How fast the ecstasy drained away! He could barely remember now the powerful sensations of sixty seconds ago. He felt cheated, as though he had been promised a feast and had been given only dream-food to eat. Was that all? Like the surf trickling away after a brief surge of tide? And ashes on the beach. And ashes on the beach. It is nothing at all, Thor Watchman thought. It is a fraud.

He rolled free of her.

She lay with her head lolling back, her eyes closed, her mouth slack; she was sweat-dappled and wan-looking. It seemed to him that he had never seen this woman before. A moment after he had left her, her eyes opened. She propped herself up on one elbow and smiled at him, almost shyly, perhaps.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello.” He looked away.

“How do you feel?”

Watchman shrugged. He searched for the right words and could not find them. Defeated, he said, “Tired, mostly. Hollow. Is that right? I feel — hollow.”

“Normal. After coitus every animal is sad. Old Latin proverb. You’re an animal, Thor. Don’t forget it.”

“A weary animal.” Ashes on the cold beach. The tide very low. “Did you enjoy it, Lilith?”

“Couldn’t you see? No, I suppose you didn’t. I enjoyed. Very much.”

He put his hand lightly on her thigh. “I’m glad. But I’m still baffled.”

“By what?”

“The whole thing. The pattern, the constellation of events. Pushing. Pulling. Sweating. Groaning. The tickle in the groin, and then it’s over. I—”

“No,” she said. “Don’t intellectualize. Don’t analyze. You must have been expecting more than is really there. It’s onlyfun , Thor. It’s what people do to be happy together. That’s all. That’s all. It’s not a cosmic experience.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just a dumb android who doesn’t—”

“Don’t. You’re a person, Thor.”

He realized he was hurting her by his refusal to have been overwhelmed by their coupling. He was hurting himself. Slowly he got to his feet. His mood was wintry; he felt like an empty vessel lying in the snow. He had known a flash of joy, he thought, right at the moment of discharge; but was that instant of lightning worth anything if this dreary gloom always came afterward?

She had meant well. She had wanted to make him more human.

He lifted her, pulled her against him for a moment, kissed her glancingly on the cheek, cupped one of her breasts in his hand. He said, “We’ll do this again some time, all right?”

“Whenever you say.”

“It was very strange for me, the first time. It’ll get better. I know it will.”

“It will, Thor. The first time is always strange.”

“I think I’d better go now.”

“If you have to.”

“I’d better. But I’ll see you again soon.”

“Yes.” She touched his arm. “And in the meantime — I’ll start moving along the lines we discussed. I’ll take Manuel to Gamma Town.”

“Good.”

“Krug be with you, Thor.”

“Krug be with you.”

He began to dress.