"Here we make our replacement units," the Bee explained. "After a time we wear out, and there are accidents, and some get lost, so a constant supply of new Bees is necessary. The workers bring the tools and raw materials and put them together, each doing his or her specific part."
"Assembly line!" Vila said brightly, having started school and learned the concept.
"Similar," the Bee agreed.
"It must be a job to bring all the supplies here," Gale said.
"Accuracy. But we are in touch with other hives across the planet. This is one service the flowers do for us. They communicate with the flowers near the other hives, and enable us to deliver what is needed in the correct amounts. The hives specialize to a degree; some mine for metals, while others refine more esoteric ingredients. Some process the special circuits we require, for consciousness and empathy."
"Empathy," Gale said. "You actually make circuits for it, and install them in Bees?"
"Affirmation. It is vital to do it right, so each Bee can function properly and serve the flowers well."
"Curiosity: if you craft new Bees from raw materials, what is the need for gender or sex?"
"Perhaps a parallel to living reproduction is in order. You are made of animated proteins. Can you make new life in a laboratory?"
"Negation. Even the synthetic people termed the fifths actually start with fertilized eggs generated by living folk. Only life can beget life. All else is feeding and environment."
"Agreement. We are not alive, but there is an essence that we are unable to make: the basis for sentience. The raw materials can make the semblance of a Bee, and it might even operate on a crude level, but it would never have sentience, let alone sapience. Only running machines already possessed of this quality can beget running machines with the capacity for it. Thus we, like you, require gender and sex, to integrate the running essence on a small scale that can be encapsulated in an egg unit and developed with care into a new Bee. So it has been from the dawn of our evolution. The secret of our origin as independent sentient machines remains obscure. We don't know how it first occurred."
"Neither do we, for life," Gale said. "It occurs throughout the galaxy, but we don't know whether it came to be separately on each origin planet, or whether it spread from some common source. We can't make life out of protein. We have tried."
"So have we, to make an original sentience, with no success." Gale considered. "The distinction between 'running' and 'living' becomes indistinct."
"Agreement. But there is a difference. Our functioning bodies are not at all similar."
"Yet we seem to be turned on by the same sexual pheromones. You and I both were put into ecstasy by the flowers."
"Coincidence. The plants are alive, and draw on elements common to life. We associate closely with them, so evolved to relate to their processes. We are unable to breed except in flowers. Had there been a female Bee there—"
"Or a male human," Gale agreed.
"As it was, we were incomplete, so suffered rapture without actually breeding. This is why we do not go among flowers in pairs, until we have breeding in mind."
This brought a notion to Gale. "The enemy machines: do they have genders and sex too, for similar reason?"
"We have not encountered them directly, for if we had we would now be defunct. But we understand from reports that they do not, though they may be able to emulate gender and sex when dealing with living species."
"They can," she agreed with a wry smile. "They made a humanoid robot—that is, a machine with the semblance of a human woman, and she is quite apt in performance. My husband has taken her as a mistress."
"An enemy machine!"
"She's nice," Vila said.
"You surely know your business, but this is dangerous. Why would you allow the agent of a culture that means to destroy you and all else in the galaxy to exist among you? She could kill your man at any time."
"Doubtful," Gale said. "He's a Glamor. But also, she is programmed to love him. We have viewed the future paths associated with her, and she never attempts to harm him or any other human being."
"Like that plant carnivore who protected me," Vila said. "She knew I was good enough to eat, but she had a deal with Queen Fiolora to keep the tourists safe."
"An apt analogy," the Bee agreed. "We lack that future paths seeing you mention. So I can appreciate that you have a basis for such tolerance, though the concept makes me nervous. At any rate, we believe that the enemy machines do not reproduce sexually. They have found the secret of generating running from inanimate materials. That makes them more dangerous."
"Doubt," Gale said. "It makes them less like living things. They can emulate feeling, but it is not inherent."
"It makes them able to be destructive in ways we could never be. That is one reason we could not stand against them."
"It is one reason you align with life," Gale said. "You have conscience and empathy."
"Agreement."
"I am satisfied. I will recommend that you be admitted to the Living Cultures Coalition. Perhaps as one aspect of a symbiosis with the flowers. Others will decide, but this much I can do."
"Appreciation. We believe your recommendation will be decisive."
"There is another matter. I wonder whether we can arrange a trade."
"Question?"
"The female machine—the robot—lacks empathy, and is in need of it. She is not ill-willed, merely unable to feel what living folk feel. Would you be able to modify her to include an empathy circuit?"
"Doubtful. A simple machine, yes. But the enemy machines are level 2.5, while we are level 2.0. They are beyond our sophistication."
"But could you do it, theoretically?"
"Theoretically, provided there were three conditions. She would have to be willing, which is unlikely because she has been crafted by those who desire only destruction for all others. Even were she willing, we would be able to implant only the data for the circuit; she would have to invoke it by her choice, and she would see no need. And she would have to be in orgasm while we operated."
"Question!"
"We learned of the access mode the enemy machines use, for their routine servicing of units that malfunction or require upgrading. They did not want it obvious or easy, so that others could not interfere. So they hid it in a state of experience: sexual orgasm. She would have to be in sustained sexual ecstasy. This, too, seems unlikely."
"We'll see," Gale said. "Now I wonder whether we could provide you with future paths seeing, in trade."
"Your living circuits are incompatible with ours. There can be no transfer of that nature."
"But the robot—you could use one of her circuits, if you got it."
"Perhaps," the Bee agreed dubiously.
"You might copy it when you had access to her data bank. It would be limited to far-future seeing—a month to eternity—but might still be useful to you."
"Agreement!"
"Can you talk Shee into it?" Vila asked. "She's already jealous of you and Monochrome."
"Negation. She knows her place, and accepts it. She is programmed to be never more than Havoc's second mistress."
"But now she's to become a Glamor!"
Gale smiled. "I am already a Glamor. So is Monochrome. Havoc is lucky."
"And now he's got those five bath girls too." Vila giggled. "You and Mono should take a bath with him and them, all at once."
"Vila! Do you think we would tease your father like that?"
The girl wasn't fooled. "And Opaline. He likes her too. And Symbol. That would make an even ten."
"Symbol's tied up with her family. It will be a few more years before she's ready to resume mistressing."