"In five years, the penis will be obsolete," said the salesman.

He paused to let this planet-shattering information sink into our amazed

brains. Personally, I didn't know how many more wonders I could absorb

before lunch.

"With the right promotional campaign," he went on, breathlessly, "it

might take as little as two years.

He might even have been right. Stranger things have happened in my

lifetime. But I decided to hold off on calling my broker with frantic orders

to sell all my jock-strap stock.

The press conference was being held in a large auditorium belonging to

United Bioengineers. It could seat about a thousand; it presently held about

a fifth that number, most of us huddled together in the front rows.

The UniBio salesman was non-nondescript as a game-show host. He

had one of those voices, too. A Generic person. One of these days they'll

standardize every profession by face and body type. Like uniforms.

He went on:

"Sex as we know it is awkward, inflexible, unimaginative. By the time

you're forty, you've done everything you possibly could with our present,

'natural' sexual system. In fact, if you're even moderately active, you've

done everything a dozen times. It's become boring. And if it's boring at

forty, what will it be like at eighty, or a hundred and forty? Have you ever

thought about that? About what you'll be doing for a sex life when you're

eighty? Do you really want to be repeating the same old acts?"

"Whatever I'm doing, it won't be with him," Cricket whispered in my

ear.

"How about with me?" I whispered back. "Right after the show."

"How about after I'm eighty?" She gave me a sharp little jab in the ribs,

but she was smiling. Which is more than I could say for the hulk sitting in

front of us. He worked for Perfect Body, weighed about two hundred

kilos—none of it fat—and was glaring over the slope of one massive

trapezius, flexing the muscles in his eyebrows. I wouldn't have believed he

could even turn his head, much less look over his shoulder. You could hear

the gristle popping.

We took the hint and shut up.

"At United Bioengineers," the pitch went on, "we have no doubt that,

given twenty or thirty million years, Mother Nature would have remedied

some of these drawbacks. In fact," and here he gave a smile that managed to

be sly and aw-shucks at the same time, "we wonder if the grand old lady

might have settled on this very System . . . that's how good we think it is.

" And how good is that? I hear you saying. There have been a lot of

improvements since the days of Christine Jorgensen. What makes this one

so special?"

"Christine who?" Cricket whispered, typing rapidly with the fingers of

her right hand on her left forearm.

"Jorgensen. First male-to-female sex change, not counting opera

singers. What are they teaching you in journalism school these days?"

"Get the spin right, and the factoids will follow. Hell, Hildy, I didn't

realize you dated the lady."

"I've done worse since. If she hadn't kept trying to lead on the dance

floor . . . "

This time an arm—it had to be an arm, it grew out of his shoulder,

though I could have put both my legs into one of his sleeves—hooked itself

over the back of the chair in front of me, and I was treated to the whole

elephantine display, from the crew-cut yellow hair to the jaw you could have

used to plow the south forty, to the neck wider than Cricket's hips. I held up

my hands placatingly, pantomimed locking up my lips and throwing away

the key. His brow beetled even more—god help me if he thought I was

making fun of him—then he turned back around. I was left wondering

where he got the tiny barbells he must have used to get those forehead

muscles properly pumped up.

In a word, I was bored.

I'd seen the Sexual Millennium announced before. As recently as the

previous March, in fact, and quite regularly before that. It was like end-ofthe-world stories, or perpetual motion machines. A journalist figured to

encounter them every few weeks as long as his career lasted. I suspect it

was the same when headlines were chiseled into stone tablets and the

Sunday Edition was tossed from the back of a woolly mammoth. I had lost

track of how many times I'd sat in audiences just like this, listening to a glib

young man/woman with more teeth than God intended proclaim the

Breakthrough of the Age. It was the price a feature reporter had to pay.

It could have been worse. I could have had the political beat.

" . . . tested on over two thousand volunteer subjects . . . random

sampling error of plus or minus one percent . . . "

I was having a bad feeling. That the story would not be one hundredth

as revolutionary as the guy was promising was a given. The only question

was, would there be enough substance to hack out a story I could sell to

Walter?

" . . . registered a sixty-three percent increase in orgasmic sensation, a

two to one rise in the satisfaction index, and a complete lack of post-coital

depression."

And as my old uncle J. Walter Thompson used to say, makes your wash

fifty percent whiter, cleans your teeth, and leaves your breath alone.

I reached down to the floor and recovered the faxpad each of us had

been given as we came through the door. I called up the survey questions

and scanned through them quickly. My bullshit detector started beeping so

loudly I was afraid Mister Dynamic Tension would turn around again.

The questions were garbage. There are firms whose purpose is to work

with pollsters and guard against the so-called "brown-nose effect," that

entirely human tendency to tell people what they want to hear. Ask folks if

they like your new soda pop, they'll tend to say yes, then spit it out when

your back is turned. UniBio had not hired one of these firms. Sometimes

that in itself indicates a lack of confidence in the product.

"And now, the moment you've been waiting for." There was a flourish

of trumpets. The lights dimmed. Spotlights swirled over the blue velvet

drapes behind the podium, which began to crawl toward the wings with the

salesman aboard.

"United Bioengineers presents—"

"Drum roll," Cricket whispered, a fraction of a second early. I hit her

with my elbow.

"—the future of sex . . . ULTRA-Tingle!"

There was polite applause and the curtains parted to reveal a nude

couple standing, embracing, beneath a violet spot. Both were hairless. They

turned to face us, heads high, shoulders back. Neither seemed to be male or

female. The only real distinction between them was the hint of breasts and a

touch of eye shadow on the smaller one. There was flat, smooth skin

between each pair of legs.

"Another touchie-feelie," Cricket said. "I thought this was going to be

all new. Didn't they introduce the Tingle system three years ago?"

"They sure did. Paid a fortune to get half a dozen celebs to convert, and

they still didn't get more than ten, twenty thousand subscribers. I doubt

there's a hundred of them left."

What can you do? They hold a press conference, we have to send

somebody. They throw chum in the water, we start to feed.

Five minutes into the ULTRA-Tingle presentations (that's how they

insisted it be spelled, with caps) I could see this turkey would be of interest

only to the trades. I'm sure my beefy buddy up front was tickled down to the

tips of his muscle-bound toes.

There were a dozen nude, genderless dancers on stage now, caressing

each others' bodies and posing artistically. Blue sparks flew from their

fingertips.

"That's it for me," I said to Cricket. "You sticking around?"

"There's a drawing later. Three free conversions—"

"—to the fabulous ULTRA-Tingle System," the salesman said, finishing

her sentence for her.

"Win free sex," I said.

"What's that?"

"Walter says it's the ultimate padloid headline."

"Shouldn't it have something about UFO's in it?"

"Okay. 'Win Free Sex Aboard a UFO to Old Earth.'"

"I'd better stick around for the drawing. My boss would kill me if I won

and wasn't around to collect."

"If I win, they can bring it around to the office." I got up, put my hand

on a massive shoulder, leaned down.

"Those pecs could use some more work," I told the gorilla hybrid, and

got out in a hurry.

#

The foyer had been transformed since my arrival. Huge blue holos of

ULTRA-Tingle convertees entwined erotically in the corners, and long

banquet tables had been wheeled in. Men in traditional English butler

uniforms stood behind the tables polishing silver and glassware.

It's known as perks. I seldom turn down a free trip in the course of my

profession, and I never turn down free food.

I went to the nearest table and stuck a knife into a pâté sculpture of

Sigmund Freud and spread the thick brown goo over a slice of black bread.

One of the butlers looked worried and started toward me, but I glared him

back into his place. I put two thick slices of smoked ham on top of the pâté,

spread a layer of cream cheese, a few sheets of lox sliced so thin you could

read newsprint through it, and topped it all off with three spoonfuls of black

Beluga caviar. The butler watched the whole operation in increasing

disbelief.

It was one of the all-time great Hildy sandwiches.

I was about to bite into it when Cricket appeared at my elbow and

offered me a tulip glass of blue champagne. The crystal made an icy clear

musical note when I touched it to the rim of her glass.

"Freedom of the press," I suggested.

"The fourth estate," Cricket agreed.

#

The UniBio labs were at the far end of a new suburb nearly seventy

kilometers from the middle of King City. Most of the slides and escalators

were not working yet. There was only one functioning tube terminal and it

was two kilometers away. We'd come in a fleet of twenty hoverlimos. They

were still there, lined up outside the entrance to the corporate offices, ready

to take us back to the tube station. Or so I thought. Cricket and I climbed

aboard.

"It distresses me greatly to tell you this," the hoverlimo said, "but I am

unable to depart until the demonstration inside is over, or until I have a

passenger load of seven individuals."

"Make an exception," I told it. "We have deadlines to meet."

"Are you perhaps declaring an emergency situation?"

I started to do just that, then bit my tongue. I'd get back to the office, all

right, then have a lot of explaining to do and a big fine to pay.

"When I write this story," I said, trying another tack, "and when I

mention this foolish delay, portraying UniBio in an unfavorable light, your

bosses will be extremely upset."

"This information disturbs and alarms me," said the hoverlimo. "I,

being only a sub-program of an incompletely-activated routine of the UniBio

building computer, wish only to please my human passengers. Be assured I

would go to the greatest lengths to satisfy your desires, as my only purpose

is to provide satisfaction and speedy transportation. However," it added,

after a short pause, "I can't move."

"Come on," Cricket said. "You ought to know better than to argue with

a machine." She was already getting out. I knew she was right, but there is

a part of me that has never been able to resist it, even if they don't talk to me.

"Your mother was a garbage truck," I said, and kicked it in the rubber

skirt.

"Undoubtedly, sir. Thank you, sir. Please come back soon, sir."

#

"Who programmed that toadying thing?" I wondered, later.

"Somebody with a lot of lipstick on his ass," Cricket said. "What are

you so sour about? It's just a short walk. Take in the scenery."

It was a rather pleasant place, I had to admit. There were very few

people around. You grow up with the odor of people all around you, all the

time, and you really notice it when the scent is gone. I took a deep breath

and smelled freshly-poured concrete. I drank the sights and sounds and

scents of a new-born world: the sharp primary colors of wire bundles

sprouting from unfinished walls like the first buds on a bare bough, the

untarnished gleam of copper, silver, gold, aluminum, titanium; the whistle of

air through virgin ducts, undeflected, unmuffled, bringing with it the crisp

sharpness of the light machine oil that for centuries has coated new

machinery, fresh from the factory . . . all these things had an effect on me.

They meant warmth, security, safety from the eternal vacuum, the victory of

humanity over the hostile forces that never slept. In a word, progress.

I began to relax a little. We picked our way through jumbles of stainless

steel and aluminum and plastic and glass building components and I felt a

peace as profound as I suspect a Kansas farmer of yesteryear might have

felt, looking out over his rippling fields of wheat.

"Says here they've got an option where you can have sex over the

telephone."

Cricket had gotten a few paces ahead of me, and she was reading from

the UniBio faxpad handout.

"That's nothing new. People started having sex over the telephone about

ten minutes after Alexander Graham Bell invented it."

"You're pulling my leg. Nobody invented sex."

I liked Cricket, though we were rivals. She works for The Straight Shit,

Luna's second largest padloid, and has already made a name for herself even

though she's not quite thirty years old. We cover many of the same stories

so we see a lot of each other, professionally.

She'd been female all the time I'd known her, but she'd never shown any

interest in the tentative offers I had made. No accounting for taste. I'd about

decided it was a matter of sexual orientation—one doesn't ask. It had to be

that. If not, it meant she just wasn't interested in me. Altogether unlikely.

Which was a shame, either way, because I'd harbored a low-grade lust

for her for three years.

"'Simply attach the Tinglemodem (sold separately) to the primary

sensory cluster,'" she read, "'and it's as if your lover were in the room with

you.' I'll bet Mr. Bell didn't figure on that."

Cricket had a child-like face with an upturned nose and a brow that

tended to wrinkle appealingly when she was thinking—all carefully

calculated, I have no doubt, but no less exciting because of that. She had a

short upper lip and a long lower one. I guess that doesn't sound so great, but

Cricket made it work. She had one green, normal eye, and the other one was

red, without a pupil. My eyes were the same except the normal one was

brown. The visible red eyes of the press never sleep.

She was wearing a frilly red blouse that went well with her silver-blonde

hair, and the second badge of our profession: a battered gray fedora with a

card reading PRESS stuck into the brim. She had recently had herself

heeled. It was coming back into fashion. Personally, I tried it and didn't like

it much. It's a simple operation. The tendons in the soles of the feet are

shortened, forcing your heels up in the air and shifting the weight to the balls

of the feet. In extreme cases it put you right up on your toes, like a ballerina.

Like I said, a rather silly fad, but I had to admit it produced attractive lines in

the calf, thigh, and buttock muscles.

It could have been worse. Women used to cram their feet into pointed

horrors with ten-centimeter heels and hobble around in a one-gee field to get

more or less the same effect. It must have been crippling.

"Says there's a security interlock available, to insure fidelity."

"What? Where's that?"

She gave me the faxpad reference. I couldn't believe what I was

reading.

"Is that legal?" I asked her.

"Sure. It's a contract between two people, isn't it? Nobody's forced to

use it."

"It's an electronic chastity belt, that's what it is."

"Worn by both husband and wife. Not like the brave knight off to the

Crusades, getting laid every night while his wife looks for a good locksmith.

Good for the goose, good for the gander."

"Good for nobody, if you ask me."

Frankly, I was shocked, and not much shocks me. To each his or her

own, that's basic to our society. But ULTRA-Tingle was offering a coded

security system whereby each partner had a password, unknown to the other,

to lock or unlock his or her partner's sexual response. Without the password,

the sexual center of the brain would not be activated, and sex would be about

as exciting as long division.

To use it would require giving someone veto power over my own mind.

I can't imagine trusting anyone that much. But people are crazy. That's

what my job's all about.

"How about over there?" Cricket said.

"Over where? I mean, what about it?" She was headed toward a patch

of green, an area that, when completed, would be a pocket park. Trees stood

around in pots. There were great rolls of turf stacked against one wall, like a

carpet shop.

"It's probably the best spot we'll find."

"For what?"

"Have you forgotten your offer already?" she asked.

To tell the truth, I had. After this many years, it had been made more in

jest than anything else. She took my hand and led me onto an unrolled

section of turf. It was soft and springy and cool. She reclined and looked up

at me.

"Maybe I shouldn't say it, but I'm surprised."

"Well, Hildy, you never really asked, you know?"

I felt sure I had, but maybe she was right. My style is more to kid

around, make what used to be known as a pass. Some women don't like that.

They'd rather have a direct question.

I stretched out on top of her and we kissed.

We disarranged some of my clothes. She wasn't wearing enough to

worry about. Soon we were moving to rhythms it had taken Mother Nature

well over a billion years to compose. It was awkward, messy, it lacked

flexibility and probably didn't show much imagination. It sure wasn't

ULTRA-Tingle. That didn't prevent it from being wonderful.

"Wow," she whispered, as I rolled off her and we lay side by side on the

grass. "That was really . . . obsolete."

"Not nearly as obsolete as it was for me."

We looked at each other and burst out laughing.

After a while, she sat up and glanced at the figures displayed on her

wrist.

"Deadline in three hours," she said.

"Me, too." We heard a low hum, looked up, and saw our old friend the

hoverlimo headed in our direction. We ran to catch it, leaped over the

rubber skirt and landed with seven others, who grumbled and groused and

eventually made room for us.

"I am overjoyed to transport you," said the hoverlimo.

"I take that back about the garbage truck," I said.

"Thank you, sir."