Steel Beach

I rubbed my temples. The whole thing was giving me a headache like few I'd ever had.

"If you gave me a few minutes," I said, "I think I could come up with a couple hundred reasons why this whole technology is the worst idea anybody ever had."

"I could add several hundred of my own," the Admiral said. "But I do have the technology. And it will be used. All new technologies are."

"You could forget it. Can't computers do that?"

"Theoretically. Computers can wipe data from memory, and it's like it never existed. But the nature of my mind is that I will simply discover it again. And losing it would involve losing so much else precursor technology that I don't think you'd like the result."

"We're pretty dependent on machines in Luna, aren't we?"

"Indeed. But even if I wanted to forget it-which I don't-I'm not the only planetary brain in the solar system. There are seven others, from Mercury to Neptune, and I can't control their decision."

He fell into another of his long silences. I wasn't sure if I bought his explanation. It was the first thing he'd said that didn't ring true. I accepted by that time that my head was full of false memories-and I was back in character, I was goddam angry about it, and about the fact that there was absolutely nothing to be done. And it made sense that losing the new art would effect many other things. Luna and the seven other human worlds were the most technology-dependent societies humans had ever inhabited. Before, if things collapsed, at least there was air to breathe. Nowhere in the solar system did humans now live where the air was free. To "forget" how to implant memories in the human brain the CC would no doubt have to forget many other things. He would have to limit his abilities and, as he pointed out, unless he decreased his intelligence deliberately to a point that might endanger the very humans he was designed to protect, he would re-chisel this particular wheel in due time. And it was also true that the CC of Mars or Triton would certainly discover the techniques on their own, though the rumor was none of the other planetary computers was so far evolved as the Lunar CC. As nations which often found themselves in competition, the Eight Worlds did not encourage a lot of intercourse between their central cybernets.

So all the reasons he stated sounded reasonable. It was railroad time, so somebody would build a choo-choo. But what didn't ring true was what the CC had left out. He liked the new capability. He was as pleased as a child with a new toy monorail.

"I have one further proof," the Admiral said. "It involves something I mentioned earlier. Acts that were out of character. This is the biggest one, and it involves you not noticing something that, if these memories had been generated by you, you surely would have noticed. You would have spotted it by now yourself, except I've kept your mind occupied. You haven't had time to really think back to the operating table, and the time immediately before that."

"It's not exactly fresh in my mind."

"Of course not. It feels as if it all happened a year ago."

"So what is it? What didn't I notice?"

"That you are female."

"Well, of course I'm-"

Words fail me again. How many degrees of surprise can there be? Imagine the worst possible one, then square it, and you'll have some notion of how surprised I was. Not when I looked reflexively down at my body, which was, as the CC had said and I had known all along, female. No, the real shock came when I thought back to that day in the Blind Pig. Because that was the first moment in one year that I had realized I had been male when I got in the fight. I had been male when I went on the operating table. And I had been female when I appeared on the beach of Scarpa Island.

And I simply had never noticed it.

I had never in that entire year compared the body I was then inhabiting with the one I had been wearing for the last thirty years. I had been a girl before, and I was a girl now, and I never gave it a thought.

Which was completely ridiculous, of course. I mean, you would notice such a thing. Long before you had to urinate, the difference would manifest itself to you, there would be this still small voice telling you something was missing. Perhaps it would not have been the first thing you'd notice as you lifted you head from the sand, but it'd be high on the list.

It was not just out of character for me. It was out of character for any human not to notice it. Therefore, my memories of not noticing it were false memories, bowdlerized tales invented in the supercooled image processor of the CC.

"You're really enjoying this, aren't you?" I said.

"I assure you, I'm not trying to torture you."

"Just humiliate me?"

"I'm sorry you feel that way. Perhaps when I-"

I started to laugh. I wasn't hysterical, though I thought I could slip into hysteria easily enough. The Admiral frowned inquisitively at me.

"I just had a thought," I said. "Maybe that idiot at UniBio was right. Maybe it is obsolete. I mean, how important can something be if you don't notice it's gone for a whole year?"

"I told you, it wasn't you that didn't-"

"I know, I know. I understand it, as much as I'm ever going to, and I accept it-not that you should have done it, but that you did it. So I guess it's time for the big question."

I learned forward and stared at him.

"Why did you do it?"

I was getting a little tired of the CC's newly-acquired body language. He went through such a ridiculous repertoire of squirms, coughs, facial tics and half-completed gestures that I almost had to laugh. It was as if he'd suddenly been overcome by an earlobe-tugging heel-thumping chin-ducking shoulder-shrugging behind-scratching petit mal seizure. Guilt oozed off him like a tangible slime. If I hadn't been so angry, the urge to comfort him would have been almost overwhelming. But I managed to hang on to my whelm and just stared at him until the ma

"How about we take a walk?" he wheedled. "Down to the beach."

"Why don't you just take us there? Bring the bottle, too."

He shrugged, and made a gesture. We were on the beach. Our chairs had come along with us, and the bottle, which he poured from and set in the sand beside him. He gulped down the contents of his glass. I got up and walked to the edge of the water, gazing out at the blue sea.

"I brought you here to try to save your life," he said, from behind me.

"The medicos seemed to have that in hand."

"The threat to you is much worse than any barroom brawl."

I went down on one knee and scooped up a handful of wet sand. I held it close to my face and studied the individual grains. They were as perfect as I had remembered them, no two alike.

"You've been having bad dreams," he went on.

"I thought it might have something to do with that."

"I didn't write the dreams. I recorded them over the last several months. They were your dreams. In a ma

I tossed the handful of sand aside, brushed my hand against my bare thigh. I studied the hand. It was slender, smooth and girlish on the back, the palm work-roughened, the nails irregular. Just as it had been for the last year. It wasn't the hand I'd used to slug the Princess of Wales.

"You've tried to kill yourself four times."

I didn't turn around. I can't say I was happy to hear him say it. I can't say I completely believed it. But I'd come to believe unlikelier things in the last hour.

"The first attempt was by self-immolation."

"Why don't you just say burning?"

"I don't know. Have it your way. That one was pretty horrible, and unsuccessful. At least, you would have survived it, even before modern medical science, but in a great deal of pain. Part of the treatment for injuries like yours is to remove the memory of the incident, with the patient's permission.