The Metal Maiden Collection by Piers Anthony

who would not be here otherwise.
    We relaxed during the day, then had at it again in the evening. And again the third day and night. Then Mona had to return to her studies, leaving us to our own devices. “But it was fun,” she said as she departed. “If it doesn’t take, I won’t mind doing it again.”
    “Neither will I,” Banner said.
    I invoked my jealousy circuit. “But with luck it won’t be necessary.”
    We did not have sex for two days after Mona left. I was of course capable, but Banner had been sexed out by doing it a dozen times in three days.
    In a week we had the verdict: it had taken. In the interim I had the placenta unit installed so that my body could support and feed the baby. That sort of thing could be done without messing with my head, so it was safe. The technology was intricate, but less so than the rest of me. The fertilized egg was transplanted to my body, where it was given full support, equivalent to what it could have had in a laboratory. Now I had to eat and drink, not regular food but the nutritive base to be relayed to the baby. The process was sealed off from my vagina so that I could continue having sex with Banner, but his interest declined, as he feared disturbing the baby. I did not argue the case; this was natural.
    Gestation was the normal nine months, and progress was closely monitored. My belly expanded to house the growing baby; I looked pregnant, as indeed I was. I reveled in the awkwardness of it. The townsfolk noticed, of course, and congratulated me. They knew it was hardly as simple as conceiving by my husband, but evidently preferred to think of it that way, and of course it was his baby.
    When the time came I went to the local hospital for the birthing. This too was normal; I was able to slowly expel the baby in the conventional manner.
    It was a boy. Banner wanted him named after me, and I wanted him named after him, so we compromised: his initial, my letters. Bela. Bela Tompkins. Twenty two inches long, six and three quarter pounds heavy, crying lustily. I took him to my breast, now piped with formula milk, and nursed him. Actually the first day was a preparatory formula, needed to start his digestive process, but that hardly mattered to us.
    Sheer happiness was not a programmed emotion for me, but I surely experienced it as I nursed my son. I had virtually completed the process of becoming a woman in fact as well as in law.
    In due course I went home with Bela, and we functioned as thoroughly normal first-time parents. We had to fit sex in almost covertly between feedings and diaper changes, and I lost a good deal of memory-processing time. I loved it.
    It was another joy to go shopping with Bela. The women I met ooohed and aaahed encouragingly, and Bela clearly liked the attention.
    Aunt Mona visited, and held the baby, and he liked her. That was good, because she was his genetic mother. If anything happened to me. . .
    And that of course was part of it. I wanted Banner to have somewhere to go, and Bela to have a loving home, regardless of my existence. I hoped to raise Bela to adulthood, completing my womanly role, but I knew how tenuous my existence as a conscious person was.
    In fact I had something in mind that would put it all in peril.
    “No, Elasa!” Banner exclaimed in pain when I told him. “You sued and won your personhood to avoid this.”
    “So I could be a complete woman,” I agreed. “And I am, almost. But I realized that there is one more thing I need to do.”
    “To give it up?”
    “To give the secret of machine consciousness to the world,” I clarified. “I owe it to myself and to the world. I can’t be truly complete until I share.”
    “But the chances are at least even that you’ll lose it, and nobody will gain.”
    “But if it works, not only will I remain conscious, they will be able to make other women, and maybe men too, and other machines that are aware. It would be the breakthrough of the century, maybe the millennium. The