There was silence then for nearly half an hour. Now I know what one of those laboratories looks like, I can imagine the sexiatrist taking him round, telling him to peer into a microscope and see tiny microbes swiveling about in plasma, showing him charts of the amino acids, the blood-types, the cell-types, the skin-types, etcetera, pulling out samples for quick-fire experiments, and showing him a few easily digested examples of living tissues artificially made for various purposes. Then the door opened and in they came.
“Well, what did you think of it?”
“Very interesting, sir.”
“Impressive, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now what do you say? It’s up to you. You have some idea how it works now, and you’re not afraid any longer, I hope.”
“No, sir.”
“You’ll consider it.”
“I am considering it, sir.”
“Oh, good. Do you think you’ll be able to decide now?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Good. I’ll call the nurse then, shall I?”
No answer. He rang the desk bell.
“You won’t refuse us after all that, now, will you?”
“Well. . . Please, sir . . .”
“I’m going to ring your parents.”
The nurse came in, dropped my clothes on the bed, and shut the door. I heard the phone click as I slid out of bed, then click again.
“I’ll give you one more chance,” said the sexiatrist. “In case you’re ashamed or anything. Nurse, tell me, do you wear a consex?”
“Yes, doctor, I do.”
“A male consex?”
“Yes.”
“And you like it? It’s comfortable, not unhealthy? You can do what you like? You don’t feel guilty about it?”
“I love it,” she said. “I’ve never had difficulty with it. It always responds to my lead and never disobeys.”
“Thank you. Now, boy, are you satisfied?”
“What happened the first time?” the boy asked the nurse with a mixture of sheepishness and daring.
The nurse said nothing. I wondered if she blushed. The boy said: “My father called it an artificial prostitute.”
“Nonsense, lad. You don’t know what you’re talking about. They say worse things about holy matrimony, so-called.”
“I have religious objections,” said the boy. “I can control myself without all this.”
“All what? Without all what?” the doctor asked sharply.
“This . . . appliance.”
“It’s only living flesh,” he said. “Look, here’s one. See? I touch it. If God hadn’t meant this stuff to exist, it wouldn’t exist, would it? Now you touch it. Don’t your parents wear one?”
“No, sir, they don’t.”
“Ah! Well, you’re quite free to do as you please. Don’t be afraid to go against them. As I told you, the authorities have called you up for the purpose of giving you one, and you are protected by the law. We shall support you to the hilt. Your parents don’t object to fluoridation, do they? Or antismog in the air?”
“Yes, sir, they do.”
“Hmmm.”
I heard a muttered “Nut cases” outside my door, and the nurse opened it for the sexiatrist. He strode through, booming.
“Andrews, ah, Andrews, you’re a sensible lad. Now you’ve just become a man and learned all about it. How d’you like it?”
“All right, sir.”
“Feels okay, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “very nice,” though sneakingly I sympathized with the boy out there. I knew the voice of all the temporal powers was speaking through the sexiatrist, and all the pressures were being brought to bear, but I admired him for resisting.
The sexiatrist knelt and held me.
“Now, sir,” he said, “now, Mr. Andrews, would you mind very much if we showed our friend here how nicely the little consex fits? We have to show you how it feeds, too, because it’s going to grow and mature right along with you. That’s why it’s important this lad Topolski has his fitted now.”
I detected the tiny note of disdain at the boy’s foreign name, and half inclined to retort at the sexiatrist for the one he had used all along.
“He doesn’t have to, does he?”
“Now don’t you start,” said the doctor, and he drew me forward, levering off my pants at the same time.
“What’s wrong with that?” asked the sexiatrist, showing the consex fitting like a fig leaf and looking as innocuous as a fold of skin. “I’ve even thought,” he went on, half to himself, half to the young nurse, “that they’re far more aesthetic than the bare uni-sex, and this return to clothing oneself at all times and in all places is quite unnecessary. The time will come when things will turn full circle, and we shan’t be afraid to go completely nude again.”
I saw the point. I began almost to like my consex, even though the sensation it could give was disturbingly overwhelming. But the boy turned away after a cursory examination. He said nothing.
“Well?” asked the big man, and I realized all of a sudden the mental pressure, the semi-mesmeric force of it that I had allowed to ride me, and that this small dark twelve-year-old was bucking. “You don’t want a black mark on your book, do you?”
I wondered, What book? I did not know, then, that the State’s records kept its finger on this one more aspect of a man’s “suitability.”
“I do a lot of sport,” he said weakly, almost visibly wilting, and looking for somewhere to hide. He must have felt awful, foolish and mixed-up.
“Ah, so that’s what it is! Well now. Dearson, the world champion marathon runner, actually wears his running! And all the other athletes have them. They simply take them off and wrap them in a little blanket—like this one— while they’re participating. No trouble at all. Now come on, be a good chap. We’ll just take your measurements—most of them are compulsory—and leave it to you to come back later and collect your consex. How about that?”
“All right,” he said. I saw him stiffening his resistance again to the paternal air, and felt fairly sure the internalized authority would not be strong enough in him to bring him to accepting the consex. But he would have to submit to the tests as required. The sexiatrist would ring his parents later, then he would have to return and sign the many forms, by one of which he would delegate to the Minister of Health responsibility for his sexual welfare—a condition mentally as unacceptable to him and his parents as the consex was physically unacceptable.
I was dressed and dismissed, yet I lingered at the specialist’s door waiting vaguely for something. Then the boy gave his address. It was just round the corner from mine.
The fact that we were neighbors does not seem important, perhaps. But it’s going to be. I am going round when I have a chance, to ask Topolski the real reason why he refused to put on the “appliance.”
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