“For what, … now?”
Fiera stiffened the least bit. Some warmth dropped from her tone. “We’ll find out, won’t we? Don’t tell me you’re shocked. Or was I wrong? I thought you were by far the most open-minded of the Survivors.”
Aliyat swallowed. “It isn’t that. I’m not inhibited. It’s only— No, it isn’t ‘only.’ You’ve changed everything. Nothing could be what it was.”
“Certainly not. That’s the whole idea.” Fiera laughed. “Suppose you turn male. We should find that interesting. Not unique, but special. Piquant.”
“No!”
Fiera sat a minute silent. When she spoke, she had gone earnest. “You’re like the rest of your kind after all. Or perhaps worse. I gather most of them make some effort to cope. You, though, you … accept. Suddenly I realize that’s what fooled me. You never railed against the world. You agreed it was bound to evolve onward. But under that surface, you’ve stayed what you were, a primitive, a leftover from the age of mortality.”
Aliyat’s defiance guttered out. She slumped. The sen-suousness of the seat reshaping itself as she did was lost on her. “No doubt you’re right.”
Fiera smiled anew, this time sweetly. “You aren’t condemned to that, you know. The whole organism is pliable, including the brain. You can have your psyche altered.”
“Long-drawn. Expensive. Actually, I couldn’t afford a simple sex change.” Simple! flickered through Aliyat. I remember when they faked it with surgery and hormone shots. Today they cause organs, glands, muscles, bones, everything to grow into something else. If I became a genuine man, what would I think like?
“Haven’t you understood modem economics yet? All goods and most services—all services a machine can give— are as abundant as the air we breathe. Or could be, if there were any reason. Share is simply the easiest means of, oh, keeping track, coordinating what people do. And, yes, allocating resources that are limited; land, for instance. If you genuinely need liberation from your misery, arrangements can be made. I’ll, help you make them.” Again the image extended its arms. “Dearest, let me.”
Aliyat straightened. The tears that she swallowed burned in her throat. “’Dearest,’ you say. What do you mean by that?”
Taken aback, Fiera hesitated before replying slowly, “I’m fond of you. I want your company available to me, I want your welfare.”
Aliyat nodded. “What love amounts to these days. Affection because of enjoyment.”
Flora bit her lip. “There you are, mired in the past. When the family was the unit for breeding, production, defense, and its members must needs find ways not to feel trapped. You can’t imagine the modern range of emotions; you refuse to try.” She shrugged. “Odd, considering the life you led then. But I suppose you nursed an unconscious longjng for security—what passed for security in those nightmare societies.”
Aliyat recalled explaining to Raphael what a nightmare was.
“How selfish were your feelings about me?” Fiera demanded.
Anger cracked a whip. “Don’t flatter yourself,” Aliyat said. “I’ll admit I was infatuated, but I knew that’d end. I did hope it would turn into something that would last, not exclusive, no, but something real. All right, I’ve learned better.”
“I had that hope too!” Fiera cried.
She sank back into her own seat. Once more she fell silent, thoughtful. Aliyat’s gaze went off in search of refuge. She occupied a single room on the fourth sublevel of the Fountains; technology would never synthesize space. It sel—dom felt cramped, when the walls formed facilities on command and otherwise provided any scenes she wanted. Earlier today, rather than a contemporary view, she had raised medieval Constantinople. Maybe that was due a nostalgia she knew was unjustified, maybe it was an attempt at getting back sett-esteem; she’d been a principal consultant to the developers of the simulacrum. Hagia Sophia soared above swarming, jostling humanity. Odors o{ smoke, sweat, dung, roasting food, tar, sea livened the air; it moved, a salt breeze off the Horn. When Fiera’s visicall came, Aliyat had stopped the sound but kept the vision. She could virtually hear wheels, hoofs, feet, raucous voices, snatches of plangent music. Those ghosts were as alive as the ghost that confronted her.
Finally Fiera said, “I believe I “know what drew you to me— what held you, after the first casual attraction. I was interested in you. I didn’t take you for granted. You eight were a sensation once you came into the open, but by now most people were born later than that. You’re simply here, getting along on share or on what occasional special jobs somebody happens to want done. Fewer and fewer of those, aren’t there? But I—to me you were a bit intriguing. I’m not sure why.”