He, She and It by Marge Piercy Page A

equipped with interface. They did not have the lavish stimmie spectacles other towns went in for, they did not have fast foils or wind cars, but every child born to the town was equipped to access the Net directly, heir to all the knowledge of the ages.
    The Net was a public utility to which communities, multis, towns, even individuals subscribed. It contained the mutual information of the world, living languages and many dead ones. It indexed available libraries and offered either the completetext or precis of books and articles. It was the standard way people communicated, accepting visuals, code or voice. It was also a playing field, a maze of games and nodes of special interest, a great clubhouse with thousands of rooms, a place where people met without ever seeing one another unless they chose to present a visible image—which might or might not be how they actually looked.
    Shira had her eyes closed, too. Hermes lay in her lap awkwardly, for he more than overlapped, while she pretended to be studying. Instead she was tuned in to a program in the Net of lights and shapes that formed on her closed eyes, vaguely watery, shimmering grays, greens, bronzes. She was not fully projected but detached, watching from without, letting her pain fill her lightly now as flowing water.
    Suddenly, at half past twenty, the house announced Gadi. Shira jerked to her feet, displacing the cat. The jack wrenched from the socket in her temple, leaving her nauseated at the sudden disconnection. The house had been programmed for years to recognize and admit Gadi, so it had simply opened to him and spoken to them. Stupid house!
    Shira resolved to stand there in a dignified silence and wait him out. But the moment he came ambling with his loose long gait into the courtyard, she burst out, “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you with her?”
    Malkah was present but not conscious, blind and deaf, fully projected into the Net. Gadi glanced at her, recognized her state, and they both proceeded as if she were a piece of furniture.
    “Come on, that didn’t mean anything,” Gadi began in a voice that suggested he was cosseting a child in a tantrum. “Here I am, with you as usual. If you hadn’t come barging in today, you wouldn’t be upset at all.”
    “Oh, you can do anything, and it’s my fault if I find out!”
    “Are we married? That’s how you act. We’ve been married since we were seven, and it’s a damned prison.”
    “If you think I’m keeping you in prison, escape! The door’s open. Use it.”
    “I intend to. I have a right to live, to know other people, to find out who I am and who they are.”
    “Oh, was it a transcendent experience, finding out about Hannah’s twat?”
    “Shira, we’re seventeen years old. Ask Malkah if we shouldn’t be open to knowing other people.”
    They both glanced at Malkah, oblivious, eyes shut. Shemight be researching something, she might be involved in a seminar with twenty other projected minds, she might be carrying on a flirtation or a debate.
    Shira vibrated with outrage. “Now all of a sudden common sense rules, adults are right, let’s forget we love each other and play at being cartoon teenagers.”
    “Why did you come charging over there anyhow? Because you got your auction results. Right?”
    “I wanted to talk about what we were going to do about college.”
    “We? Show me your auction results. Come on, show it to me.”
    “I don’t want to show you anything.”
    “They’re fighting over you, aren’t they? They think they can make money off you. Just keep bashing away for four more years, and they’ll get a good price when multis bid on you. Who wants an artist? Old Avram’s going to have to pay to get me into college, tough on him. You see, we don’t have the same options, do we?” He stepped close, his face twisted with anger.
    “Not if your option is to fuck Hannah in the same bed we shared.”
    “It’s my house and my room.”
    “You wanted me to walk in. You