Free Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) by James Tiptree Jr. Page B

We’ve hit the supernormal stimulus. Man is exogamous—all our history is one long drive to find and impregnate the stranger. Or get impregnated by him; it works for women too. Anything different-colored, different nose, ass, anything, man has to fuck it or die trying. That’s a drive, y’know, it’s built in. Because it works fine as long as the stranger is human. For millions of years that kept the genes circulating. But now we’ve met aliens we can’t screw, and we’re about to die trying. . . . Do you think I can touch my wife?”
    “But—”
    “Look. Y’know, if you give a bird a fake egg like its own but bigger and brighter-marked, it’ll roll its own egg out of the nest and sit on the fake? That’s what we’re doing.”
    “We’ve been talking about sex so far.” I was trying to conceal my impatience. “Which is great, but the kind of story I’d hoped—”
    “Sex? No, it’s deeper.” He rubbed his head, trying to clear the drug. “Sex is only part of it—there’s more. I’ve seen Earth missionaries, teachers, sexless people. Teachers—they end cycling waste or pushing floaters, but they’re hooked. They stay. I saw one fine-looking old woman, she was servant to a Cu’ushbar kid. A defective—his own people would have let him die. That wretch was swabbing up its vomit as if it was holy water. Man, it’s deep . . . some cargo-cult of the soul. We’re built to dream outwards. They laugh at us. They don’t have it.”
    There were sounds of movement in the next corridor. The dinner crowd was starting. I had to get rid of him and get there; maybe I could find the Procya.
    A side door opened and a figure started towards us. At first I thought it was an alien and then I saw it was a woman wearing an awkward body-shell. She seemed to be limping slightly. Behind her I could glimpse the dinner-bound throng passing the open door.
    The man got up as she turned into the bay. They didn’t greet each other.
    “The station employs only happily wedded couples,” he told me with that ugly laugh. “We give each other . . . comfort.”
    He took one of her hands. She flinched as he drew it over his arm and let him turn her passively, not looking at me. “Forgive me if I don’t introduce you. My wife appears fatigued.”
    I saw that one of her shoulders was grotesquely scarred.
    “Tell them,” he said, turning to go. “Go home and tell them.” Then his head snapped back toward me and he added quietly, “And stay away from the Syrtis desk or I’ll kill you.”
    They went away up the corridor.
    I changed tapes hurriedly with one eye on the figures passing that open door. Suddenly among the humans I caught a glimpse of two sleek scarlet shapes. My first real aliens! I snapped the recorder shut and ran to squeeze in behind them.

THE GIRL WHO WAS PLUGGED IN
    L ISTEN, ZOMBIE . B ELIEVE me. What I could tell you—you with your silly hands leaking sweat on your growth-stocks portfolio. One-ten lousy hacks of AT&T on twenty-point margin and you think you’re Evel Knievel. AT&T? You doubleknit dummy, how I’d love to show you something.
    Look, dead daddy, I’d say. See for instance that rotten girl?
    In the crowd over there, that one gaping at her gods. One rotten girl in the city of the future (That’s what I said.) Watch.
    She’s jammed among bodies, craning and peering with her soul yearning out of her eyeballs. Love! Oo-ooh, love them! Her gods are coming out of a store called Body East. Three youngbloods, larking along loverly. Dressed like simple street-people but . . . smashing. See their great eyes swivel above their nosefilters, their hands lift shyly, their inhumanly tender lips melt? The crowd moans. Love! This whole boiling megacity, this whole fun future world loves its gods.
    You don’t believe gods, dad? Wait. Whatever turns you on, there’s a god in the future for you, custom-made. Listen to this mob. “I touched his foot! Ow-oow, I TOUCHED Him!”
    Even the people in the GTX tower