"Now you know why we're called capriforms; we not only look like goats, we jump like goats," laughed Pepper, landing beside Yuri's lounger. She bounded straight into the air, did a complete flip, landing in her tracks, and instantly lifted off, almost floating, in a back flip. Keeping perfect time, Sugar noticed approvingly, with Ginger's twinkling hooves, purely out of habit. He had trained them well.
"At least we don't smell like goats," she smiled at Yuri. "Now what do you think all those lovely people who oppose biosynthesis will think of us?"
"Can you do more conventional dances?" Yuri asked her.
"Sure," said Pepper, landing on her feet and instantly trotting forward, spinning on one hoof, dancing lightly aside, spinning again, trotting forward springily—a perfect Enzer, switching her tail deliciously with every step. "But it's too slow," she said. "If the dance is not at least as fast as the Osage Drum Dance, it's no fun." She peeled off her shoes—a quick squeeze on the piezoelectric crystal to reverse the stasis field; they came off more easily than nail masks—and tucked them into her belt, then joined Ginger on the stage.
They went into the two-hand section of the Drum Dance, legs a black-and-red blur, whirling around dizzingly. "It's the double-heart system that gives us the stamina," Sugar told him. It ended abruptly and Ginger did two flips that placed her just in front of his lounger. Her hooves almost went out from under her on the slippery floor aad she bad to clutch his knees to keep her balance. Pepper followed more slowly.
"How about it?" asked Ginger.
"Think you can get in an audition of some kind?" asked Sugar.
They watched him breathlessly as he tamed to Him, who had remaned fondly silent.
"Do you intend to let them dance? I mean, to get a job as entertainers?"
"Of course," He said. "They cannot spend the rest of their lives in laboratories. They have been trained as dancers and can sing. The whole point of creating such charming and appealing androids is to break down the public's resistance to the idea; to do so, they must go where they will be seen. And you needn't worry about them having to entertain in low cabarets; they'll soon be audio-visual stars. Not that they can act convincingly; they're too young."
A look of sudden enlightenment broke over Yuri's face, making ev-ery girl giggle. "Just how old are you all?" he asked, looking at them with new eyes.
"Six months," they chorused, laughing.
"They were synthesized three years ago," He said. "But they only came out of the incubators six months ago, already physically adolescent. Of course, mentally they were as blank as any baby; they had to go through the crawling and toddling stages, but having fully-developed brains and bodies, they went through them very rapidly.''
"It took me three days to learn how to sit down in a chair," said Sugar reminiscently. "I would just climb up into it on my knees and then turn around."
Yuri thought for a moment. Pan Solar News, of course, also made documentary audio-visuals for sale to the magazines, and occasionally sold them direct to the public TV. Granted sufficient publicity in the newspapers, plenty of people would pay to see these entrancing girls in an hour-long show. Androids alone were one of the great news events of the century. After even one such show, the A/V record companies would get in touch with them. Every telefax and TV in the System should soon be carrying the girls.
"All that's necessary," Yuri said, nodding, "is to have them dance on a documentary. They'll be calling you then."
"My idea exactly," beamed Dr. Birrel as the delighted girls dug into their pouches.
"Show these to your boss if you have trouble convincing him," Pepper said, producing a fistful of records.
Pan Solar kept the news of the androids as close as it could until it had tucked the amused Dr. Birrel astromobile home in an exclusive park in Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains, convenient to its summer studios on the Snake; interviewed them to exhaustion; and recorded the first documentary. Yuri was unofficially appointed PSN's liaison man to them since he was known to them and was the corporation's expert on the androids. He suspected that part of his job was to persuade the girls to hold still for the storm. That was unnecessary; they took everything with the delight of kittens.
For the interview and dance part of the documentaries they called in PSN's own personality, Jeff Jackson. Jackson drafted Yuri to help with the shows, though he did not appear in the records. The girls refused to memorize any kind of script, and all they could do was find out, in general, what their answers to a given question was likely to be. Yuri was very helpful here; he had interviewed the girls several times himself, and had sat through dozens of others during which the sob sisters pitied the poor dears for never having had a mother. They had no objection to blouses, except that they were hot while dancing, but Yuri told Jackson not to bother trying to get them to wear bras. That obviously bothered him, as it was supposed to be a family show and the girls' dancing was on the vigorous side. Fortunately they had the dancer's classic figure, slender and small-breasted.
"But are you really human beings?" Jackson asked them.
Pepper said, "Depends on what you mean by human. He, calls us Homo Capriformus, meaning we're the same genus but a different species, like lions and tigers."
"That's right," said. Sugar. "I guess we have human rights. That's kind of too bad, isn't it? We'd make such wonderful pets."
"That's what people have babies for, Sugar," Ginger told her. "You needn't feel sorry for them."
"Uh," said Jackson, recovering, "I gather that you're not able to have babies yourselves. Do you ever wish you could?"
"Why?" asked Pepper pleasantly. "Then we'd have to wait until He or someone synthesized capriform husbands for us. Now we can marry anybody we like, since we can't have children anyway."
"Or we could have 'em synthesized; that way we could have children without having to put up with babies," said Ginger.
"Besides, fertile women have blue periods and have to take pills, and so on. What baby is worth all that trouble?" Pepper asked, wide-eyed.
"Unless it was a boy baby," Sugar suggested, propping chin on fist, elbow on knee, and glancing at him sideways.
"Are you married?" Ginger asked interestedly.
Jackson took it very well, passing it off with a laugh. "I understand that Dr. Birrel did not want to create another race of human beings, at least not without the permission of the rest of us, so he left you sterile. It is possible, isn't it, to make capriform androids that are fertile? Why not have two races? My daughters would be delighted to meet your brothers, if you had any."
"It's because we're not good for anything," Pepper told him. He couldn't help blinking, to Yuri's secret satisfaction, remembering his own first interview with them. "We're just good for dancing and looking at. Now if we were mermaids, or if we could live in space without vac armor, He'd have no objection."
"Or if we could live on Jupiter, or Venus," added Sugar.
"Actually, we capriforms are just here to sell the public on androids. Not many of us are needed for that," said Ginger. "But He miscalculated, for once," shaking her head. "It won't work." She gave the icon a sultry look. "It loses too much in transmission."
After that, their dance came as a relief to Jackson.
By the time the first documentary was broadcast, the news of the androids was all over the System. The public's reaction was mixed; in general they were hostile to the idea of androids, but those who saw and heard the girls were captivated. They were not in favor of peopling the System with monsters, but could not resist the girls' appeal.