Friday

"Friday!"

"Yes, sir?"

"You will not go to bed with me to entertain me."

I felt sudden tears in my eyes-a very seldom thing. "Sir, I'm sorry," I said miserably. "I didn't mean to offend you. I did not intend to presume."

"God damn it, STOP IT!"

"Sir?"

"Stop calling me 'sir.' Stop behaving like a slave! Call me Georges. If you feel like adding 'dear' or 'darling' as you have sometimes in the past, please do so. Or slang me. Just treat me as your friend. This 'human' and 'not-human' dichotomy is something thought up by ignorant laymen; everybody in the profession knows that it is nonsense. Your genes are human genes; they have been most carefully selected. Perhaps that makes you superhuman; it can't make you nonhuman. Are you fertile?"

"Uh, sterile reversible."

"In ten minutes with a local anesthetic I could change that. Then I could impregnate you. Would our baby be human? Or nonhuman? Or half human?"

"Uh... human."

"You can bet your life it would be! It takes a human mother to bear a human baby. Don't ever forget that."

"Uh, I won't forget." I felt a curious tingle, way down inside me. Sex, but not like anything I had ever felt before even though I'm rutty as a cat. "Georges? Do you want to do that? Impregnate me?"

He looked very startled. Then he moved to where I was standing, tilted my face up, put his arms around me, and kissed me. On the ten scale I would have to rate it at eight and a half, maybe nine-no way to do better vertically and with clothes on. Then he picked me up, moved to a chair, sat down with me in his lap, and started undressing me, casually and gently. Janet had insisted on dressing me in her clothes; I had more interesting things to take off than a jump suit. My Superskin job, freshly laundered by Janet, was in my jumpbag.

Georges said, as he unzipped and unbuttoned and undid, "That ten minutes would have to be in my lab and it would take another month, about, until your first breeding date, and that combination of circumstances saves you from a bulging belly... because that kind of remark acts on the human male like cantharides on a bull. So you are saved from your folly. Instead I'm going to take you to bed and try to entertain you... although I don't have my certificate, either. But we'll think of something, dear Friday." He lifted me up and pushed the last of my clothing to the floor. "You look

good. You feel good. You smell good. Do you want first chance at the bathroom? I need a shower."

"Uh, I'd rather go second as I want to take quite a long time."

I did take quite a long time as I had not been fooling when I told him I was bloated. I'm an experienced traveler, careful never to invite either of the twin curses of travel. But no dinner, followed by an enormous "breakfast" at midnight had changed my timing a bit. If I was going to have weight on my chest-and my belly-it was time to get rid of the bloat.

It was after two before I came out of the bath-bathed, bloat taken care of, mouth fresh and breath sweet, and feeling as fit and cheerful as I have ever felt in my life. No perfume-not only do I not carry it but men prefer fragrans feminae to any other aphrodisiac even when they don't know it-they just don't like it stale.

Georges was in bed with a coverlet over him, sound asleep. The tent was not up, I noticed. So with extreme caution I crawled in and managed not to wake him. Truly, I was not disappointed as I am not that self-centered a slitch. I felt happily confident that he would wake me refreshed and it would thus be better for each of us-it had been a strenuous day for me, too.

XV

I was correct.

I don't want to take Georges away from Janet... but I look forward to happy visits and, if he ever does elect to reverse my sterility, doing it like a cat might be all right to make a baby for Georges-I cannot see why Janet has not done so.

I was awakened the third or fourth time by a lovely odor; Georges was unloading the dumb waiter. "You have twenty-one seconds to get in and out of the bath," he said, "as soup is on. You had a proper breakfast in the middle of the night, so you are going to have a most improper brunch."

I suppose it is improper to have fresh Dungeness crab for breakfast but I'm in favor of it. It was preceded by sliced banana with cream on cornflakes, which strikes me as breakfasty, and was accompanied by toasted rusks and a tossed green salad. I then tapered off with chicory coffee laced with a pony of Korbel champagne brandy. Georges is a loving lecher and a hearty gourmand and a gourmet chef and a gentle healer who can make an artificial person believe that she is human, or, if not, that it doesn't matter.

Query: Why are all three of that family so slender? I am certain that they do not diet and do not take masochistic exercise. A therapist once told me that all the exercise any person needs could be had in bed. Could that be it?

The above is the good news. The bad news-

The International Corridor was closed. It was possible to reach Deseret by changing at Portland, but there was no guarantee that the SLC-Omaha-Gary tube would be open. The only major international route running capsules regularly seemed to be San Diego-Dallas-Vicksburg-Atlanta. San Diego was no problem as the San Jose tube was open from Bellingham to La Jolla. But Vicksburg is not Chicago Imperium; it is simply a river port from which a person with cash and persistence might reach the Imperium.

I tried to call Boss. After forty minutes I felt about synthetic voices the way humans feel about my sort of people. Who thought up this idea of programming "politeness" into computers? To hear a machine voice say "Thank you for waiting" may be soothing the first time, but three times in a row reminds you that it is phony, and forty minutes of such stalls without even once hearing a living voice can try the patience of a guru.

I never did get that terminal to admit that it was not possible to phone into the Imperium. That confounded digital disaster was not programmed to say no; it was programmed to be polite. It would have been a relief if, after a certain number of futile tries, it had been programmed to say, "Buzz off, sister; you've had it."

I then tried to call the Bellingham post office to inquire about mail service into the Imperium-honest-to-goodness words on paper, paid for as a parcel, not a facsimile or mailgram or anything electronic.

I got a cheerful lecture on doing your Christmas mailing early. With Christmas half a year away this seemed less than urgent.

I tried again. I got scolded about zip codes.

I tried a third time and got Macy's customer service department and a voice: "All our friendly helpers are busy at the moment thankyouforwaiting."

I didn't wait.

I didn't want to phone or to send a letter anyhow; I wanted to report to Boss in person. For that I needed cash. That offensively polite terminal admitted that the local office of MasterCard was in the Bellingham main office of TransAmerica Corporation. So I punched the signal and got a sweet voice-recorded, not synthesized-saying: "Thank you for calling MasterCard. In the interests of efficiency and maximum savings to our millions of satisfied customers all of our California Confederacy district offices have been consolidated with the home office at San Jose. For speedy service please use the toll-free signal on the back of your MasterCard card." The sweet voice gave way to the opening bars of "Trees." I shut it off quickly.

My MasterCard card, issued in Saint Louis, did not have on it that San Jose toll-free signal, but only the signal of the Imperial Bank of Saint Louis. So I tried that number, not very hopefully.

I got Punch-a-Prayer.

While I was being taught humility by a computer, Georges was reading the Olympic edition of the Los Angeles Times and waiting for me to quit fiddling. I gave up and asked, "Georges, what's in the morning paper on the emergency?"