Venus on the Half-Shell

10 TROUBLE ON GIFFARD

Simon was shocked. He had detected nothing more than the usual amount of lubrication at such moments. There had been nothing of plastic or foam rubber or metal on or in her.

“You look pale, lover?”

“Why so pale?” he said. “I mean, you’re not making a statement of fact but a question. And you look rather pale yourself.”

“It just didn’t occur to me until a moment ago that you might not know,” she said. “As soon as I thought of that, then I had to tell you. I’m programmed to tell the truth. Just as real humans are programmed to tell lies,” she added after a second’s pause.

Would, or could, a robot be malicious or even sarcastic? Yes, if it was programmed to be so. But who would do this? Or why? Someone who wanted to make others uncomfortable or even furious and so had set up certain circuits in his/her robot for just this effect?

But a robot that was emotionally affected? So much so that she—he couldn’t think of Chworktap as an it—would turn pale or blush? Nonsense! But then, what did he know of robots like this? Earth science had not progressed to the point where it could build such a reasonable facsimile. It could, and had, clothed a metal-plastic-electromechanical with artificial protein. But the robot was so jerky in its movements, so transparently a construction, that it wouldn’t have fooled a child. Her planet, Zelpst, must be far advanced indeed.

Could he fall in love with a thing?

He sighed and thought, why not? He loved his banjo. Others, multitudes of others, had full-blown passions for cars, model airplanes, hi-fi’s, rare books, and bicycle seats.

But Chworktap was definitely a human being, and surely there was a difference between love for a woman and love for antique furniture.

“I’m basically a protein robot,” Chworktap said. “I’ve got some tiny circuit boards here and there along with some atomic energy units and capacitors. But mostly I’m flesh and blood, just like you. The difference is that you were made by accident and I was designed by a board of scientists. Like it or not, you had to take whatever genes—good or rotten—your parents passed on to you. My genes were carefully selected from a hundred models, and then they were put together in the laboratory. The artificial ovum and sperm were placed in a tube, the sperm then united with the ovum, and I spent my nine months in the tube.”

“Then we have at least that in common,” Simon said. “My mother, the selfish old bitch, didn’t want to bother carrying me around.”

“The human Zelpstians spend their first nine months in tubes, too,” she said. “The ova and sperms are mailed in by the adults, and the Population Control Bureau, which is run by robots, uses them to start a baby whenever an adult dies. At the same time, a hundred robot babies are started. These are raised as companions and servants for the human baby. They’re also socially programmed to admire and love their human master. And the only adults the human child sees are robots which act as surrogate parents.”

Zelpst was dedicated to furnishing all humans with all the comforts of its splendid technology. Even more important, every human was spared the pains and frustrations which Earthmen assumed were inevitable. The only things denied the human child were those which might endanger him. When a human reached puberty, he/she was given a castle in which he/she lived the rest of his/her life. The Zelpstian was surrounded by every material comfort and by a hundred robots. These looked and acted just like humans except they were unable to hurt the owner’s feelings. And they behaved exactly as the owner wanted them to behave. They were programmed to be the people the lord/lady of the castle wanted to associate with.

“My master, Zappo, liked brilliant witty conversation,” she said. “So we were all brilliant and witty. But he didn’t like us to top his wit. So every time we thought of a one-upman remark, it was routed to a deadend circuit board in us. The male robots were all impotent because Zappo didn’t want anybody except himself fucking the female robots. Every time they thought about getting a hard-on, the impulse would be rerouted through a circuit board and converted into an overwhelming sense of shame and guilt. And every time we thought about punching Zappo, and believe me, we thought about it a lot, the impulse was also converted into shame and guilt. And a splitting headache.”

“Then you all had self-consciousness and free will?” Simon said. “Why didn’t the programmers just eliminate that in the robots?”

“Anything that has a brain complex enough to use language in a witty or creative manner has to have self-consciousness and free will,” Chworktap said. “There’s no getting away from it. Anything, even a machine composed solely of silicon and metal parts and electrical wires, anything that uses language like a human is human.”

“Good God!” Simon said. “You robots must’ve suffered terribly from frustration! Didn’t any of you ever break down?”

“Yes, but our bad thoughts were all rerouted back into our selves. This was done so that we wouldn’t harm our master. Every once in a while, a robot would commit suicide. When that happened, the master would just order another one. Sometimes, he got tired of a particular robot and would kill it. Zappo was a sadistic bastard, anyway.”

“I would have thought that anybody raised with nothing but love and kindness and admiration would grow up to be a kind and loving person.”

“It doesn’t always work out that way,” she said. “Humans are programmed by their genes. They’re also programmed to some extent by their environment. But it’s the genes that determine how they’re going to react to the environment.”

“I know,” Simon said. “Some people are born aggressive, and others are passive all their lives. A kid can be raised in a Catholic family, and his brothers and sisters will remain devout Catholics all their life. But he becomes a raving atheist or joins a Baptist church. Or a Jew forsakes the religion of his fathers but still gets sick at the thought of eating ham. Or a Moslem believes in the Koran one hundred percent, but he has to fight a secret craving for pork. The dietary genes control this.”

“Something like that,” Chworktap said. “Though it isn’t that simple. Anyway, no matter how carefully the Zelpst society was designed to prevent unhappiness and frustration for the humans, it wasn’t one hundred percent efficient. There’s always a flaw, you know. Zappo got unhappy because his robots didn’t love him for himself. He was always asking us, ‘Do you love me?’, and we’d always reply, ‘You’re the only one I love, revered master.’ And then he’d get red in the face and say, ‘You brainless machine, you can’t say anything else but! What I want to know is, if I took the reroute circuits out, would you still say you love me?’ And we’d say, ‘Sure thing, master.’ And he’d get even more angry, and he’d scream, ‘But do you really love me?’ And sometimes he’d beat us. And we’d take it, we weren’t programmed to resist, and he’d scream, ‘Why don’t you fight back!’

“Sometimes I felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t even tell him that. To feel sorry for him was to demean him, and any demeaning thought was routed to the devoicing circuit.

“Zappo knew that when he made love to me I enjoyed it. He did not want a masturbating machine, so he’d specified that all his robots, male or female, would respond fully. Whether we were being screwed by him, blowing him, or being buggered, we had intense orgasms. He knew that our cries of ecstasy weren’t faked. But there was no way for even the scientists to ensure that we would love him. And even if they could have made us automatically fall in love with him, Zappo wouldn’t have been satisfied. He wanted us to love him by our own free choice, to love him just because he was lovable. But he didn’t dare to have the inhibiting circuits removed, because then, if we’d said we didn’t love him, he wouldn’t have been able to stand it.

“So he was in a hell of a situation.”

“You all were,” Simon said.

“Yes. Zappo often said that everybody in the castle, including himself, was a robot. We’d been purposely made robots, but chance had made him one. His parents’ ovum and spermatozoon had determined his virtues and his vices. He did not have any more free will than we did.”

Simon picked up his banjo, tuned it, and then said, “Bruga put the whole philosophical question in a single poem. He called it Aphrodite and the Philosophers. I’ll sing it for you.”

“That’s just a list of question-beggers,” she said. “Bruga was like you, a man driven by his peculiar complex of genes to look for answers that didn’t exist.”

“Maybe,” Simon said. “So how do you explain how you, a nonfree-will robot, got away from your master?”

“It was an accident. Zappo struck me on the head with a vase during a fit of rage. The blow knocked me out, but when I woke up, I found that I was able to disobey him. The blow had knocked the master circuit out of commission. Of course, I didn’t let him know that. When I got the chance, I stole a spaceship. The Zelpstians quit space travel a long time ago, but there were still some ships gathering dust in museums nobody visited anymore. I wandered around for a while and then I came across this planet. There weren’t any human beings here, or so I thought. I was going to stay here forever. But I did get lonely. I’m glad you came along.”

“And so am I,” Simon said. “So you got your freedom because of a malfunctioning circuit?”

“I suppose so. And that worries me. What if another accident makes the circuit function again?”

“It’s not likely.”

“Of course,” she said, “I’m by no means entirely unprogrammed. But then who, robot or human, is? I have certain tastes in food and drink, I loathe birds…”

“Why do you hate birds?”

“Zappo was frightened by one when he was a child. And so he had all his robots programmed to hate birds. He didn’t want us to be superior to him in any respect.”

“You can’t really blame him for that,” Simon said. “Well, how about it, Chworktap? Would you like to come with me?”

“Where are you going?”

“Everywhere until I find the answer to my primal question.”

“What’s that?”

“Why are we born only to suffer and die?”

“What you’re saying is this,” she said. “Nothing else matters if we have immortality.”

“Without immortality, the universe is meaningless,” he said. “Ethics, morality, society as a whole are just means to get through life with the least pain. They can all be reduced to one term: economy.”

“An economy that is nowhere more than thirty percent efficient,” she said.

“You don’t know that. You haven’t been everywhere.”

“But you’re going everywhere?”

“If possible. I’ve already eliminated my galaxy, though. I know from what I’ve read that the answer is not there. But what about you, Chworktap? What about your genes? Most of them are artificial. So you shouldn’t have any gene pattern to predetermine your reactions to philosophical problems.”

“I’m a crazy quilt of chromosomes,” she said. “All my genes are based on those which once existed. Each is copied after a certain person’s, though each is an improved model. But I have the genes of many individuals. You might say I have a thousand parents, a hundred thousand grandparents.”

They were interrupted at this point by a loud crash outside the ship. They hurried out to see, a quarter of a mile away, a female and a male Giffardian lying in ruins. The male had burst into flame, and both were burning away under a strong wind.

This wasn’t the first crash of this type, nor was it likely to be the last. The females’ insistence that they be given rides was causing many accidents, usually fatal. The weight of the female at the nose-end made the male upend. To sustain altitude, he had to jet his drive-gas through his fore opening at full speed. The two would go straight up, and then the male would get exhausted. And down they would come.

“And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put them together again,” Simon murmured.

“Why don’t they just quit that?” Chworktap said.

“Their genes drive them to their actions,” Simon said maliciously.

“If they keep this up, they’ll become extinct,” she said. “Even if there weren’t any crashes, they’ll die out. The air-time keeps the females from browsing, and so the young aren’t getting enough food. Look how thin they’ve become!”

What the Giffardians did was none of Simon’s business, but that didn’t keep him from interfering. At dusk, when the males had come down, and males and young were locked into the females, he went into the meadow. And there he proposed that they should settle their conflict. Let them choose him as an objective judge and abide by his decision.

He was, of course, rejected. But a few days later, after three couples had fallen to their death, a female and a male approached him. The former he called Amelia and the latter Ferdinand. Graf and Gräfin, the leader and his wife, had been smashed to bits only the day before. Amelia and Ferdinand, as next in line in the pecking order, had become the chiefs. A funeral had been held, at which Simon had brought flowers. The preacher of the flock had given a eulogy. Graf was praised for his outstanding leadership, though everyone knew he had been a lazy bully who had delegated most of his administrative work to underlings. He was praised for his faithfulness as a mate, though everyone knew he was always luring females to the other side of the forest and half of the herd could call him father. The preacher spoke of what an exemplary family man he was, although everyone knew that he had not spoken to his children unless they were irritating him and then it was to blow them end over end with a mighty fart.

Gräfin was praised as a patient hard-working wife and mother. She had certainly been hard-working, but her loudmouthed bitchings about her husband and her backbiting gossip were well known.

Simon didn’t find anything strange in this. He had attended many such.

At the end of the funeral, Amelia and Ferdinand had asked to see Simon the next day. And so here they were.

What they wanted was simple but not easy. Simon was to decide whether or not the sky-rides should continue. The females still wanted to go up, and the males were still dead-set against it.

Simon said that he would accept the appointment, but it might be a few days before he could come to a decision.

After two days and nights, Simon retreated into the Hwang Ho. The females had sidled up to him on their hundred legs and offered all they had if he’d judge in their favor. Simon didn’t think their offers were very attractive even if he had been corruptible. If he had tried sexual intercourse with them, he would have fallen down their huge apex-hole into their stomachs. Nor did he like the idea of eating regurgitated food from their apex-organs.

The males offered day-long rides. He could even smoke during them. They’d dangle him as far away as possible from the end of a mid-body tentacle. They couldn’t guarantee, of course, that they could keep a grip on him. As an additional incentive, they’d elect him leader of the herd. Ferdinand wouldn’t like that but he could just blow it out as far as the others were concerned.

Simon could keep the ship’s ports closed and so block out the entreaties of the females, who stood around the ship and whistled fumes at him. But he had to look through the viewscreens from time to time to cool his cabin fever. When he did so, he saw the huge black dot-and-dash clouds the males were laying out in the air above him. This was the first time he had seen obscene skywriting.

“Whichever way you decide, your life won’t be safe,” Chworktap said. “Why don’t we just leave?”

“I gave my word.”

“And what would happen if you didn’t keep it?”

“Nothing of cosmic importance. But to me it would mean that I am less than a man. I’d have no dignity, no personal integrity. People wouldn’t trust me because I couldn’t trust myself. Everybody, including myself, would be contemptuous of me.”

“You’d rather die?”

“I think so,” he said.

“But it doesn’t make sense.”

“Society would fall apart if people didn’t keep their words.”

“How many people on Earth kept theirs?”

Simon thought for a moment and then said, “Not many.”

“And Earth society fell apart?”

“Well, no,” he said. “But it didn’t operate very efficiently, either.”

“So what are you going to tell the Giffardians?” she said.

“Come with me, you’ll find out.”

Accompanied by her, the dog, and the owl, he walked through the forest to the meadow. At its edge he shot off a Very rocket, at sight of which the females wobbled toward him and the males sailed toward him. The young continued playing. When all the males had wrapped their tentacles around large rocks to anchor themselves, Simon proposed his new system.

“I hope this will make everybody happy,” he said. “It’s a compromise of sorts, but nothing workable is ever achieved in this world without compromise.”

“Don’t try to soften us males up,” Ferdinand whistled at him. “We know what’s right.”

“Don’t try to take away our hard-earned rights,” Amelia whistled.

“Please!” Simon said, holding up his hand. “I have a plan whereby all you females can get your air-time. And it’ll be absolutely safe. No more crashes. The only thing is, it means that you’ll have to change your system of marriage.”

He waited until the storm of whistles had ceased and the wind had blown the stenches clear.

“You’re monogamous,” he said. “One male married to one female for life. A good system it is, though, if you will pardon the observation of an objective alien, more honored in the breach than in the observance. But if you females want to enjoy flight, you’ll have to change the system.”

There was another storm which deafened him and made him choke and gasp. When it subsided, he said, “Why don’t you set up a polyandrous system?”

“What’s that?” they whistled, among other things.

“Well, you forbid any male to lock into the mouth-vulva of any female unless he’s married to her. But what if one female was married to two males?”

The females were silent. Their eight eyes rolled around and around, which was a Giffardian’s way of showing deep thought. The males were scandalized, and the ripping noises and sulphides drove Simon and Chworktap into the bushes for a moment.

When he came out, Simon said, “It’s a matter of logic. The only way a female can be safely carried is by two males. They can share the burden and easily levitate a female. There won’t be any more crashes.”

“And how can we possibly do that?” Ferdinand said.

“Why, two males can lock into one female, one in the oral opening of the apex-lock and one in the anal. Two males can easily carry one female. On one day, half of the females can fly; the next day the other half take their turns. It’s all so easy; I don’t know why you didn’t figure that out…”

Fortunately, the females were too wide to get through the forest and the males had to fly overhead against a strong wind. Simon and Chworktap fled hand in hand with Anubis howling after them and the owl flying overhead. Even so, the males were only a few feet behind them when Simon and the party broke out of the woods. They reached the spaceship three steps ahead of Ferdinand’s tentacles and threw themselves through the port. Simon closed it and gave orders to the computer to take off for stars unknown.

Chworktap, panting, said, “I hope this teaches you a lesson.”

“How was I to know they’d get so mad?” Simon said.

Years later, he was to run across a being from Shekshekel who had landed on Giffard about fifty years after the Earthman’s visit.

“They told me about you,” the Shekshekel said. “They still refer to you as Simon the Sodomite.”