truth, he’ll be in a cold sweat after all that lecturing. If he wasn’t … well, I haven’t really told him anything. Boy, a sweet mess I got myself into this time.”
Unable to relax, he paced the cabin. The intercom buzzed once; it was Calder up in the control room. They agreed on the course corrections and acceleration for the night. After the call, Pirx sat and stared into space; he was mulling something over, with eyebrows knitted, when someone knocked.
Now what?
“Come in!”
It was Burns, the neurologist, medic, and cyberneticist all in one.
“May I?”
“Please sit down.”
Burns smiled.
“I’m here to inform you that I’m not human.”
Pirx abruptly swiveled around on his chair.
“You’re not
“Not human. I’m on your side in this experiment.”
Pirx breathed a deep sigh.
“That’s confidential, of course.”
“I leave that to your judgment; I don’t mind, either way.”
“Pardon me?”
The visitor smiled again.
“It’s quite simple. I’m selfish. If you write a glowing commendation of the nonlinears, it’s bound to unleash a chain reaction of mass production, mass marketing… And not only on spaceships. Humans will have to bear the brunt of it—of a new kind of discrimination, hatred… I see it coming but, I repeat, I’m motivated more by self- interest. As long as I’m the only one, or one of a handful, it wouldn’t matter socially; we’d simply melt into the crowd, unnoticed and unnoticeable. My—our—future would be like that of any human, allowing for a significant difference in intelligence and versatility. Barring mass production, there’s no limit to what we might achieve.”
“Yes, I see your point,” said Pirx, slightly bewildered. “But why the lack of discretion? Aren’t you afraid your company—”
“Not in the least afraid,” said Burns in the subdued voice of a lecturer. “Of anything. You see, I’m awfully expensive. This thing here”—he touched his chest—“cost billions. You don’t believe some irate manufacturer will have me dismantled—figuratively, of course—screw by screw, do you? Sure, they’d be upset, but nothing would change; I’d still be on their payroll. I actually prefer my present company—its medical and disability plans are first- rate. But I doubt they would try to put me away. What for? Silencing me by force would only backfire. You know the power of the press.”
The word “blackmail” flashed through Pirx’s mind. For a second he thought he was dreaming, but he went on listening with undivided attention.
“Now you see why I want the report to be negative.”
“Yes, I suppose I do. Can you tell me which of the others…?”
“I would only be guessing, and my conjectures might do more harm than good. Better zero than a minus information, so to speak.”
“Hm… Anyway, regardless of your motives, I’m grateful to you. Yes, grateful. Would you mind telling me a few things about yourself? About certain structural aspects that might help me…”
“I read you, Commander. I know nothing of my constituent elements, as little as you know anything of your own anatomy or physiology—except what you may have read in some textbook. But the structural aspect probably interests you less than the psychological. Than our frailties.”
“Those, too. But, look, everyone knows something, maybe not scientifically, but from experience, from self- observation…”
“Observations based on the fact that one uses—lives in, so to speak—one’s body?” Burns smiled as before, exposing his moderately even teeth.
“So you won’t object to a few questions?”
“Go right ahead.”
Pirx strained to collect his thoughts.
“Even some indiscreet, personal questions?”
“I have nothing to hide.”
“Have you ever been surprised, alarmed, or even revolted by the fact that you’re not human?”
“Only once, during an operation at which I assisted. The other assistant was a woman. By then I knew what that was.”
“Sorry, I don’t…”
“What a woman was,” said Burns. “Sex was a complete unknown to me until then.”
“Oh, I see!” Pirx blurted out, much to his chagrin, “So a woman was there. What about it?”
“The surgeon nicked my finger with the scalpel and the rubber glove split open, but no blood.”
“Hold it! McGuirr told me that you bleed…”
“I see. And the woman noticed? How about the surgeon?”
“Oh, the surgeon knew who I was. But his assistant didn’t catch on until the very end, until the surgeon’s embarrassed look gave me away.”
Burns grinned.
“She grabbed hold of my hand, examined it up close, but when she saw what was under there … she dropped it and ran. But she forgot which way the operating-room door opened, kept pulling instead of pushing, and finally went into hysterics.”
“I see,” said Pirx. He gulped. “How did that make you feel?”
“I’m not in the habit of feeling, but … it wasn’t very flattering,” he said, his voice turning more deliberate, until he was smiling again. “I’ve never discussed this with anyone”—he resumed after a moment’s pause—“but I suspect that men, even newcomers, find us easier to take. Men accept the facts. Women don’t, at least not some facts. They’ll go on saying no even when yes is the only possible answer.”
Pirx kept his gaze trained on him—especially when the other wasn’t looking—searching for some confirming alien quality, for a sign testifying to the imperfect incarnation of machines into men. Earlier, when he had been suspicious of all of them, the game had been different; now, even as he found himself gradually accepting the truth of Burns’s words, he was all the while searching for the telltale lie in the man’s pallor, which had struck him at their first encounter, or in his masterfully controlled gestures, or the calm limpidity of his gaze. And yet Pirx had to acknowledge that a pallid complexion and a composed manner were not uncommon among humans; and with that recognition came new doubts, a renewed probing, answered always by that smile, a smile reflecting not what was being said, but knowledge of what Pirx was actually feeling; a smile that disturbed, confuted, and impeded an interrogation made all the more difficult by the man’s unabashed candor.
“Aren’t you generalizing a little?” muttered Pirx.
“Oh, that was not my only encounter with women. Some of my instructors were women. They were told in advance and tried to hide their emotions, but my teasing didn’t make things any easier for them!”
The smile with which he looked Pirx in the eye bordered on the lascivious.
“You see, they had to find some inadequacies, imperfections, and just because they were so determined, it amused me to oblige them at times.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Oh, sure, you do. I played puppet—you know, stiff-jointed, submissive… But the moment they began to gloat, I’d drop the act. They must have taken me for a fiend.”
“Aren’t you being presumptuous? If they were instructors, they must have had the relevant training.”
“Man is a perfectly astigmatic creature,” said Bums coolly. “It was inevitable, given your type of evolution. Consciousness is a product of the brain, sufficiently isolated to constitute a subjective entity, but an entity that is an illusion of introspection, borne along like an iceberg on the ocean. It is never grasped directly, but sometimes it is so noticeably present that it is probed by the conscious faculty. From that very probing the devil was born—as a
