The Godwhale (S.F. Masterworks) Read Online Free

filled her with revulsion. ‘A mannequin!’ she exclaimed.
    Her expression made him ill. The emptiness of his sexual promise had been exposed, making him more than a cripple. By encouraging her with this android machine he had become some sort of deviant!
    ‘You didn’t make it after all,’ she gasped.
    ‘Part did. Part didn’t.’ His voice had that matter-of-fact tone characteristic of a Mediteck. It was hard for her to believe he was talking about his own lower torso. ‘They tried real hard at the Clinic, but the nerves couldn’t come through for me. I’m fine now. My mannequin has a great personality.’
    ‘That’s wonderful – I’m sure.’ Her voice was cold, the words empty. ‘You two will have treat times together.’ Her eyes darted around. She searched for an empty excuse to leave, but Larry wasn’t listening. As far as he was concerned she had left when her manner cooled. Her huntress mood slipped into a sympathy mask behind which he detected her annoyance.
    Lew was captaining the White Team when Larry rushed into the Clinic asking for Suspension papers.
    ‘Suspension?’ asked Lew.
    Larry turned to see the gentle-featured Captain. He was a Marfan forme fruste, loose-jointed and lanky in his white tunic. Larry wrinkled up the papers. His voice cracked: ‘The mannequin is just not . . . enough!’
    Lanky Lew took him into the team office and plugged a pickup line into the mannequin’s umbilical socket. ‘Now let’s see what is bothering you.’
    The optic playbacks explained a lot.
    ‘The nubile fem? I know it is hard for a male your age, but we’ve been all over that before. The loss of your pelvic autonomics makes it impossible to give you a semblance of a sex life.’
    Larry was almost incoherent. Rusty’s blunt reaction had come as such a shock that it occupied most of his consciousness. Lew spoke slowly: ‘Sex will be impossible. You’ll find friends, companions who will be interested in your mind, wit, and intelligence . . .’
    ‘Not enough,’ Larry blurted.
    ‘What you ask is beyond our present level of transplant science. Until we can graft central nervous system tissue, cases such as yours will have to be satisfied with mannequins and—’
    ‘When will you be able to graft CNS tissue?’
    Lew shrugged. ‘Probably not in our lifetime. The boys down in Bio put out a few papers on the subject every year. CNS fibres just can’t find their way into scar tissue. Peripheral nerves have nice, pipe-like sheaths to grow through when they’ve been damaged. They can’t get lost. But the brain and spinal cord are different – no sheaths in the CNS.
    ‘I must caution you that Suspension is not always the easy answer it appears to be. There are often serious complications of the Suspension process itself. You could be allowing your physical sexual awareness to cloud your reason – trading today’s life for a questionable future of brain damage or death.’
    Larry nodded. ‘I understand. But I can’t hold on to my sanity if all the girls look at me like – you know—’
    Lew’s face remained blank, detached. ‘Don’t let emotions sway you. This can be a purely logical decision. Time may not bring a cure at all, and even if it does, there is no guarantee that a future society will apply it in your case.’
    ‘A cure is possible?’
    ‘Probable. The need is there. However, you’ll be awakening in a different social culture with advances in science and language evolution to adjust to. You might well feel more out of place repaired than right now.’
    Larry smiled. ‘I’m not concerned about that. I have my companion cyber, Mannequin, who can share and update to keep me oriented. I think I could adjust to anything if I had a complete body again. If there is any hope at all, I have to try it.’
    Lew shrugged and accepted the completed forms.
    The induction room was empty, clean, and white. Metal instruments clattered in trays with hollow echoes. Larry’s ears popped as the