Don’t Bite the Sun, Tanith Lee [warren buffett book recommendations .txt] 📗

(Suave Concession of Point) but their behavior in these cases indicated this and mine, apparently, did not. Anyway, I told him, I’m here now, so you might as well get on with testing me. I suppose I’ll have to pay whatever happens. He looked slightly embarrassed, but rode it well. Of course he could, he said, if it would set my mind at rest. (Bland Diplomacy in Dealing with Jang Female Barbarian.)

“Some simple little questions first,” he comforted me, and referred to a reading screen which he had turned on in the desk pillar in front of him. “Firstly, do you ever steal?”

Well, all right, I jumped. No good lying either. Anyway, for all I knew, it might be one of the first signs of true anti-Jang.

“Occasionally,” I said.

“And what do you steal?”

I had a sudden queasy feeling they were after me for Evasion, so I didn’t say a word.

“Let me assure you,” he said then, “that anything which is said during these tests will be kept strictly confidential. The only use to which we will put the information is in finding what is best for your future.”

Well, robots don’t lie, so I answered:

“Different things. It doesn’t really matter what, terribly. It’s when I’m low, usually, or getting droad.”

He nodded, and I thought he looked pleased, which had to be bad, but it was too late now.

“Now, about your sex-life—er, ‘having love.’ You’re predominantly female, but male once in a while, I see. You’ve devised a very sensible balance, I should think.”

Congratulations, me. He was knocking my poor little guard down already, was he?

“That’s right,” I said, “but I’ve been put on a sixty unit body restriction, for overdoing my changes.”

I meant to make him disapproving, but again there was that little smile. Oh onk!

“And about how often do you have love?”

“Oh, pretty often, really.”

“Could you be a little more precise?”

“It averages about once every six units. Less lately, though.”

I’d scored. Non-Jang not to have love practically all the time, and it was true I’d lost interest ….

“When was the last time you married?”

“Two units ago.”

“I see.” Again he was pleased.

“But it didn’t work out—” I hastily added, but he glossed over that.

“Do you have a favorite meal or drink?”

I said no. Food didn’t do that much for me. He asked if I ate now, what I’d like, so I said nut steak, which was the very first thing that came into my head. I couldn’t tell his reactions much after that. He was getting a bit more careful.

It was clothes next.

I’d deliberately come out in the least Jang thing I could get hold of, but it’s difficult somehow to get the really soolka stuff. This was transparent at the top, but pretty thickly jeweled and embroidered, and the sleeves and skirt were deep gold and almost opaque. No ornaments either, and my hair plain instead of coiled through with flowers and pearls and metal things, with gold bells, probably, on the end of each strand.

“I like deep colors,” I said truthfully, “not just glassy metal-silk with a lot of skin showing.”

“Yes, I understand. And what do you wear? I see the top of your dress reveals all it should, and most attractive it is too.”

Oh, v…n you!

“It’s not what I prefer—” I began.

“Then why are you wearing it, my dear?”

He just went on talking as I frantically tried to explain how Jade Tower and Silver Mountain, and all the other clothes and jewelery centers, drag you off to the Jang counters and stone you with Upper-Ear music, and you just can’t seem to get anything in the older range, no matter how you yell and threaten.

“Activities,” I heard him purr, when I eventually stopped trying to make him hear me. “Do you go to the Dimension Palace?”

“Yes,” I said.

“The Adventure Palace?”

“Yes.”

“The Dream Rooms?”

“Yes.” Anti-Jang? Apparently not.

“Hmm. Do you always program similiar dreams?”

Ah ha, thought I, now you’re in for it, ooma. My dreams are non-non-non what all the flashes tell us Jang dreams should be.

“More or less similiar,” I started, “and—”

“Good,” he said. Just: “Good.”

“Don’t you want to hear what I dream?”

“I don’t really think it’s relevant.”

“Well, I think it is.” I told him about my last dream, dwelling on the dragon and the lover and the blossoming desert. He just sat and listened. When I stopped, he smiled.

“It sounds very agreeable, if rather energetic,” he applauded me.

“But it’s weird, isn’t it? An abnormal dream?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Agreeably normal. For a start, you obviously have your male tendencies nicely coordinated with the female ones. You make yourself both the fighting hero and the swooning maiden. You have a subconscious and refreshing yearning to see the desert waste blossom. And very good color sense, I might add.”

“On the flashes,” I began heatedly, “the average Jang dream ecstasy is to be a mote of pulsing light, sucked to and fro between fiery suns—”

“The average, my dear, is not always as totally representative as it might be. You are what is termed an active dreamer. You like a story. In point of fact, most young people who attend the Adventure Palace in addition to the Dream Rooms invent sagas similiar to yours.”

I felt shattered. I think I went pale. No one ever talked about it, having that sort of dream. I suppose we honestly thought we were queer to have them, and made up tales of how we’d been light motes afterward, so no one else would laugh. And I suddenly thought of Hergal telling me he dreamed of flying.

“But I spend ages on the programming,” I tried weakly, “designing all the costumes and so on.”

“That simply means your mind is more productive in that region than those of your friends who rely on the robot’s judgment. And you are not unique.”

There were a few more questions after that which sort of passed in a daze. Then we went on to pictures.

“That’s red,” I said as the screen flashed red. “And that’s blue. Pink,” I added, “pink with blue