Distress

I asked sardonically, 'And where does that get you? Does hacking out your base animal instincts grant you some… great, rarefied insight? Don't tell me: you can tune in to the lost wisdom of the celibate medieval saints?'

Akili grimaced, amused. 'Hardly. But sex grants no insight, either— any more than shooting up heroin does—however much the cultists rant about Tantric mysteries and the communion of souls. Give an MR a magic mushroom or two, and they'll tell you, sincerely, that they've just fucked God. Because sex, drugs, and religion all hinge on the same kind of simple neurochemical events: addictive, euphoric, exhilarating—and all, equally, meaningless.'

It was a familiar truth—but at that moment it cut deep. Because I still wanted ver. And the drug I was hooked on did not exist.

Akili half raised vis hands, as if to offer a truce: ve'd had no wish to hurt me, only to defend vis own philosophy. 'If most people choose to remain addicted to orgasm, then that's their right. Not even the most radical asex would dream of forcing anyone to follow us. But I don't happen to want my own life to revolve around a few cheap biochemical tricks.'

'Not even to be made in the image of your beloved Keystone?'

'You still don't get it, do you?' Ve laughed wearily. 'The Keystone is not some… teleological endpoint, some cosmic ideal. In a thousand years' time, the Keystone's body will be the same obsolete joke as yours and mine.'

I'd run out of anger. I said simply, 'I don't care. Sex can still be much more than the release of endogenous opiates—'

'Of course it can. It can be a form of communication. But it can also be the very opposite—with all the same biology in play. And all I've given up is that which the best and the worst sex have in common. Don't you see that? All I've done is subtracted out the noise.'

These words made no sense to me. I looked away, defeated. And I knew that the pain I'd thought of as an ache of longing had never been more than the bruising I'd received from the crowd as they fled the robot, and the throbbing of the wound in my stomach, and the weight of failure.

I said, without hope, 'But don't you ever want some kind of… physical solace? Some kind of contact? Don't you ever, still, just want to be touched?'

Akili walked toward me and said gently, 'Yes. That's what I've been trying to tell you.'

I was speechless. Ve placed one hand on my shoulder, and cupped the other against my face, raising my eyes to meet vis. 'If it's what you want, too—if it won't just be frustrating for you. And if you understand: this can't turn into any kind of sex, I don't—'

I said, 'I understand.'

I undressed quickly, before I could change my mind, trembling like a nervous adolescent—willing my erection to vanish, without success. Akili turned up the heating panel, and we lay on our sides on the sleeping bag, eyes locked, not quite touching. I reached over and tentatively stroked vis shoulder, the side of vis neck, vis back.

'Do you like that?'

'Yes.'

I hesitated. 'Can I kiss you?'

'Not a good idea, I think. Just relax.' Ve brushed my cheek with vis cool fingers, then ran the back of vis hand down the center of my chest, toward my bandaged abdomen.

I was shivering. 'Does your leg still hurt?'

'Sometimes. Relax.' Ve kneaded my shoulders.

'Have you ever done this… with a non-asex before?'

'Yes.'

'Male or female?'

'Female.' Akili laughed softly. 'You should see your face. Look—if you come, it's not the end of the world. She did. So I'm not going to throw you out in disgust.' Ve slid a hand over my hip. 'It might be better if you did; you might loosen up.'

I shuddered at vis touch, but my erection was slowly subsiding. I stroked the smooth unmarked skin where a nipple might have been, searching for scar tissue with my fingertips, finding nothing. Akili stretched lazily. I began massaging the side of vis neck, again.

I said, 'I'm lost. I don't know what we're doing. I don't know where we're heading.'

'Nowhere. We can stop if you want to. We can always just talk. Or we can talk without stopping. It's called freedom—you'll get used to it, eventually.'

'This is very strange.' Our eyes remained locked together, and Akili seemed happy enough—but I still felt I should have been hunting for some way to make everything a thousand times more intense.

I said, 'I know why this feels wrong. Physical pleasure without sex—' I hesitated.

'Go on.'

'Physical pleasure, without sex, is generally classified as—'

'What?'

'You're not going to like this.'

Ve thumped me in the ribs. 'Spit it out.'

'Infantile.'

Akili sighed. 'Okay. Exorcism time. Repeat after me: Uncle Sigmund, I renounce you as a charlatan, a bully, and a fabricator of data. A corrupter of language, a destroyer of lives.'

I complied—then I wrapped my arms around ver tightly, and we lay there with our legs entwined, heads on each other's shoulders, gently stroking each other's backs. The whole futile sexual charge I'd felt since the fishing boat was finally lifting; all the pleasure came from the warmth of vis body, the unfamiliar contours of vis flesh, the texture of vis skin, the sense of vis presence.

And I still found ver as beautiful as ever. I still cared about ver as much as ever.

Was this what I'd always been looking for? Asexual love. It was a disquieting notion—but I thought it through calmly. Maybe all my life I'd unconsciously swallowed the Edenite lie: that everything in the perfect, harmonious modern emotional relationship somehow flowed magically out of beneficent nature. Monogamy, equality, honesty, respect, tenderness, selflessness—it was all pure instinct, pure sexual biology, taking its unfettered course—despite the fact that all those criteria of perfection had changed radically from century to century, from culture to culture. The Edenites proclaimed that anyone who fell short of the glowing ideal was either wilfully fighting Mother Gaia, or had been corrupted by a traumatic upbringing, media manipulation, or the deeply unnatural power structures of modern society.

In fact, the ancient reproductive drives had been hemmed in by civilizing forces, inhibited by cultural strictures and pressed into service to create social cohesion in countless different ways—but they hadn't actually changed in tens of thousands of years, and they contradicted current mores, or were silent, just as often as they supported them. Gina's unfaithfulness had hardly been a crime against biology… and whatever I'd done to drive her away had been a failure of purely conscious effort—a lack of attentiveness that any Stone Age ancestor would have found second nature. Virtually everything which modern humans valued in relationships—over and above the act of sex itself, and some degree of protectiveness toward their partners and offspring—arose by a separate force of will. There was a massive shell of moral and social constructs wrapped around the tiny core of instinctive behavior—and the pearl bore little resemblance to the grit.

I had no wish to abandon either, but if what I'd failed at so badly, again and again, had been reconciling the two…

If the choice came down to biology or civilization… I knew, now, which I valued the most. And asex could still be close. Asex could still touch. After a while, we climbed into the sleeping bag to keep warm. I was still numb with despair at the tragedy of Stateless, Mosala's senseless half-murder, the ruins of my career. But Akili kissed me on the forehead, and tried vis best to unknot my aching back and shoulders—and I did the same for ver, in the hope that it might make vis fear of the great information plague, which I still did not believe was coming, in some small way easier to bear.

* * *

I woke, confused, to the sound of Akili breathing beside me. The tent was bathed in gray and blue light,