Venus on the Half-Shell Part 6

The baby males floated up as high as the nose-apex locks and took their gruel there. The baby females cropped the gra.s.s alongside their mothers.

"You see, even at birth, we females are discrimi-nated against." Anastasia said.

"We have to stick to the ground and take food that isn't nearly as easy to digest as the stuff the males get from the apex-organs. The males have the best of it, as usual."

"Function follows form," Simon said.

"What?" Anastasia whistled.

Simon strolled off, wis.h.i.+ng that he could keep his mouth shut. He walked along the seash.o.r.e and thought about leaving that very day. He had been able to have one philosophical discussion with the males, but it turned out to be on the level of what he'd heard in the locker room in high school. He didn't expect to find much deeper stuff. He had, however, promised Anastasia that he'd be the G.o.dfather of her daughter. He supposed he should wait until the ceremony, which would take place in three days. One of Simon's weaknesses was that he couldn't bear to hurt anyone's feelings.

He walked around the curve of the beach, and he saw a beautiful woman just rising from the foam of a wave.

CHAPTER 9.

Chworktap.

Simon couldn't have been more shocked than if he had been Crusoe when he saw Friday's footprint. It was, in fact, Friday on the Earth calendar in the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, another coincidence found only in bad novels. What was even more unforgivable-in a novel, not in Nature, who could care less about coin-cidences-was that the scene looked almost like Bot-ticelli's famous painting Birth of Venus. She wasn't standing on a giant clamsh.e.l.l and there wasn't any maiden ready to throw a blanket over her. Nor was there any spirit of wind carrying a woman. But the sh.o.r.eline and the trees and the flowers floating in the air behind her did resemble those in the painting.

The woman herself, as she waded out of the sea to stand nude before him, also had hair the same length and color as Botticelli's Venus. She was, however, much better looking and had a better body-from Si-mon's viewpoint, anyway. She did not have one hand covering her breast and the ends of her hair hiding her p.u.b.es.

Her hands were over her mouth.

Simon approached her slowly, smiling, and her hands came down. They didn't understand each other's language, of course, but she pointed inland and then led him into the woods. Here, under the branches of some big trees, was a small s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. They went into its open port where she sat Simon down in a small cabin and gave him a drink, alcohol mixed with some alien fruit juice. When she returned from the next room, she was dressed. She had on a long low-cut gown covered with silver sequins. It looked like the dresses hostesses wear in honky-tonks.

It took several weeks before she was able to con-verse semi-fluently in English.

In the meantime, Si-mon had taken her to his s.h.i.+p. Anubis and Athena seemed to like her, but the owl made her nervous. Si-mon found out why later.

Chworktap was not only beautiful, she was fun to be with. She talked very amusingly. In fact, Simon had never met anyone who had so many stories, all howlingly funny, to tell. What's more, she never re-peated herself. What's also more, she seemed to sense when Simon did not want to talk. This was a big im-provement over Ramona. And she liked his banjo-playing.

One day, Simon, coming back from a walk, heard his banjo. Whoever was playing it was playing it well since it was in his exact style. If he hadn't known bet-ter, he would have thought it a recording. He hurried in and found Chworktap strumming away as if to the banjo born.

"Do you have banjos on Zelpst?" he said.

"No."

"Then how did you learn to play it?"

"I watched you play it."

"And I spent twenty years learning what you've learned in a few hours," he said.

He wasn't bitter, just amazed.

"Naturally."

"Why naturally?"

"It's one of my talents."

"Is everybody on Zelpst as talented as you?"

"Not everybody."

"I'd sure like to go there."

"I wouldn't," she said.

Simon took the banjo from her, but before he could ask her more, she said, "I'll have supper in a minute."

Simon smelled the food when she opened the radar oven, and he became ecstatic.

He was getting fed up with chop suey and egg foo young and sour-sweet pork, and he was too soft-hearted to kill anything for a change of diet unless he'd been starving. And here came Chworktap with a big tray of hamburgers, french fries, milk shakes, ketchup, mustard, and dill pickles!

When he had stuffed his stomach and had lit up a big cigar, he asked her how she had performed this miracle.

"You told me what food you liked best. Don't you remember my asking you how it was made?"

"I do."

"I went out and shot one of those wild cows," she said. "After I'd butchered it and put the extra in the freezer, I scouted around until I found some plants like potatoes. And I found others to make ketchup and mustard from. I found a plant like a cuc.u.mber and fixed it up. I have an extensive knowledge of chemistry, you know."

"I didn't know," he said, shaking his head.

"I found chocolate in the pantry and instant milk. I mixed some chemicals with these to make ice cream and chocolate sauce."

"Fabulous!" Simon said. "Is there anything else you can do?"

"Oh yes."

She stood up and unzipped her gown, let it fall to the floor, and sat down on Simon's lap. Her kiss was soft and hot with a tang of milk shake and ketchup.

Simon didn't have to ask her what it was she also did so well.

Later, when Simon had taken a shower and a doubleheader of rice wine, he said, "I hope you're not pregnant, Chworktap. I don't have any contraceptives, and I didn't think to ask you if you had any."

"I can't get pregnant."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "Do you want children? You can always adopt one, you know."

"I don't have any mother love."

Simon was puzzled. He said, "How do you know that?"

"I wasn't programmed for mother love. I'm a ro-bot."

CHAPTER 10.

Trouble on Giffard.

Simon was shocked. He had detected nothing more than the usual amount of lubrication at such mo-ments. There had been nothing of plastic or foam rub-ber or metal on or in her.

"You look pale, lover?"

"Why so pale?" he said. "I mean, you're not mak-ing 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 sar-castic? 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 pro-tein. 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, mult.i.tudes of others, had full-blown pa.s.sions 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 dif-ference 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 pa.s.sed on to you. My genes were carefully se-lected 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 b.i.t.c.h, didn't want to bother carrying rne 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 Con-trol 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 furnis.h.i.+ng all humans with all the comforts of its splendid technology. Even more important, every human was spared the pains and frustrations which Earthmen a.s.sumed were inevitable. The only things denied the human child were those which might endanger him. When a human reached p.u.b.erty, he/she was given a castle in which he/she lived the rest of his/her life. The Zelpstian was sur-rounded by every material comfort and by a hundred robots.

These looked and acted just like humans ex-cept 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 a.s.sociate with.

"My master, Zappo, liked brilliant witty conversa-tion," 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 f.u.c.king 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 head-ache."

"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 G.o.d!" 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 mas-ter would just order another one.

Sometimes, he got tired of a particular robot and would kill it. Zappo was a s.a.d.i.s.tic b.a.s.t.a.r.d, 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 environ-ment. But it's the genes that determine how they're going to react to the environment."

"I know," Simon said. "Some people are born ag-gressive, and others are pa.s.sive 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 di-etary 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 en-joyed 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 b.u.g.g.e.red, we had in-tense o.r.g.a.s.ms. 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 h.e.l.l 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."

The world we see, said Socrates, Is only shadow, a crock, a tease.

Young Leibniz said we all are monads.

He lacked connection with his gonads.

Old Kant did run his life by clock.

Tick Tock! He lacked, alas, a c.o.c.k.

Nor knew that his Imperative Was horse's laughter up a sleeve.

If Cleo's nose had been too short?

If Papa Pharaoh'd named her Mort?