John Varley. Steel beach
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Copyright (C) 1991 by John Varley.
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STEEL BEACH
by John Varley
CHAPTER ONE
"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
