Ripeness is All

On and on along the shore of the ocean they pleasantly careened. At length they turned into a rich garden bower, and stopped in front of a great mansion overlooking the waves. He alighted; the Car departed. Profusely bloomed scarlet and golden and azure flowers, everywhere; succulent and bright was the lavish green. The doors opened, and a Woman received him. She was past child-bearing, motherly, and smiling.

He smiled back, and said, "You got one, huh?"

"Of course," she answered.

He sat down to wait.

And while he waited, he almost thought. Meg was good, all right, but why wasn't she enough, sometimes? He tapped his thumb-nail against his teeth in a few moments of near perplexity, and then desisted. Soon a bevy of charming Girls entered the room and paraded for him, laughing and smiling. He settled upon a petite brunette with cherry lips. She stripped him of his clothes, and they went walking in a private garden.

In an inner bower they sat down to a rustic table, and were served by robot with a heady aphrodisiac wine. On the grasses and the petals of flowers, overlooking the sea, they entwined their limbs and their bodies, and he nearly enjoyed her. He thought that once he had enjoyed this activity indeed, and wondered whether it were so.

He sat looking over the waters, trying to muse. The androids were physically perfect, flesh meeting flesh, clinging to it, thrilling with it. They were warm, they whispered, they strained and cried. They were freely available, for every man and woman. None need be unsatisfied.

But he did not know all of this, history and psychology were lost to him and he could never keep a connected train of thought; his being unsatisfied could not penetrate to his consciousness. He did not quite know that flesh cried out for something more than flesh, and had always done so. He did know, more or less, that there was the matter of population, and that real men and real women had, at mysterious intervals, to copulate. That was the way it was. He had once spent some time in a House himself, meeting the requirements of an endless variety of Girls. He supposed that some of them had borne the issue of his seed, though he did not suppose it in these terms. But it was better not to know these things for certain, and not to have anything to do with the rearing of children, after the early mother-feeling was over. The Schools could take care of that better than people could.

She snuggled against him.

"What say, Man?" she said: "What's eatin yuh?"

He did not know how to answer. He tried to talk, tried to break through, to clarify.

"What's it, huh?" he nearly pleaded. "All this, I mean. Like what's it for?"

She stretched out on the grass and looked at him a moment.

"Search me," she ventured. "I guess maybe what you need's a Bed."

He guessed she was right.

They went back to the mansion through the twilight, and established themselves in one of the rooms. The soft curtains were drawn, the Bed was large, the sheets were silky and creamy. She reclined on her back, and the mattress moulded itself perfectly to her form.

He lay down beside her, and caressed her. She clasped him tight to her breast. And he was clasped also by an invisible but very palpable field of energy, that directed his movements and charged him with an inexhaustible and ceaseless power. He held her tight, and the force entwined them. They were one throbbing ecstasy, and only at the very last endurable moment were they given release.

Then the Bed slowly soothed them, massaged them, and invigorated them once again. Throughout the night it continued, activity and repose, until toward the dawn he fell into a dead sleep, which lasted until the following morning.

He did not know that he dreamed. He did not consciously remember any of it. He only knew, as he ate his ample breakfast, that he was not so thoroughly at peace as he should have been. And he knew that it was useless to ask the Woman, or one of the Girls.

But the Woman's androids did well by her, it seemed. Maybe he had better go home to Meg.

"What the square, anyhow?" he said to himself. A little more rest in his familiar surroundings, and he would be all right. A Bed always took a lot out of a man. He arose to go.

"Goodbye, dear," the Woman said, as he came to the head of the main path. She was serene and smiling.

He adjusted his tunic, and smiled in reply. Yes sir, the old world was in good shape, just like always. He signaled for a Car. The bright ocean again passed by him, and the broad sands, and he dozed.

The dreams were more importunate, this time. When he awoke, with a blank start, the Car was cruising aimlessly. He looked around, and broke into a sweat. There was a button he had to push, somewhere, there was a handle he had to take hold of. He stammered out "Stop--now!" and stepped onto the curb. The car sped away, to another summons. He was before an Emporium, but he did not enter. Instead, he did an unprecedented thing: he went for a walk, through the streets of the City. This was not done, and none of the occupants of the passing cars observed him.

He was really wondering, now. Could something be wrong? This possibility, with all its full horror, had never entered his mind before; indeed, he did not even have the conceptions of rightness and wrongness, and yet there was the inescapable word, "wrong". His agitation increased. He found himself with the hardly formulated idea that a school was a place where one learned something, and he did not know what this could mean.

He thought of the School that he had attended. All the young people of the District of Fransco attended it: they had been told that there were other Schools, in other districts, and that they were all the same. He had believed it, and forgotten about it. What did it matter? One district was as good as another. He had never travelled. He knew a Man who had gone to the District of Shasta, but he had not been interested in hearing about it. He remembered that the Man had said it was all the same thing, not worth the bother. One had everything he needed, in his own place. But now it seemed that he needed something more, something nobody had ever heard of. He walked on, thinking about the School.

Everybody was born in a House, and kept there till he was weaned, and could walk. Then he was taken to the School. There he grew up in an atmosphere of Group Living, and was gradually showed everything that he needed--everything that there was. The hes and shes played together; they were instructed in the Ways of Life.

As they grew older, they were taken around the City. They were showed the places that the Cars could take them; they were showed how to push the buttons. Of course the robots did a perfect job of instruction. There were Kitchens, in which one could eat. There were parks and gardens, in which one could stroll and lounge. There were Emporiums, in which one could get clothes and things. It was all--as it was.

When one reached puberty, he was taken from the School, and given a Pad. There he lived, listening to the soft music that came from the walls, eating and sleeping. And doing. He selected his android from an Emporium, and did her as he pleased. She was his company, the Warmth of his Pad. She shopped in the Emporium for him, she fixed him cozy little meals, and brought him his pipe or his cigar. She spread the depilatory cream upon his face in the morning, and wiped, with so soft a touch, his beard away; and she bathed him, in the scented waters.

He remembered that after a year or two, he had felt almost restless. From his touch, Meg had understood. She had whispered "House" to him, and he had gone out and instructed a Car. That had been his first experience of a Girl. He supposed that it had been the same with the others. He had never inquired. In the garden bower the idea of children had come to him, and his mind had been at rest. He had not tried a Bed until the fifth or sixth time. He had, he supposed, taken for granted that the Girls lived in the same way that he did. They had their own androids, their own Pads. They never associated with the Men, except in a House. Men got together sometimes, and ate and drank, and had android orgies; no doubt the Girls did likewise.