Josepha opened her eyes and saw the child. She picked up her shirt and shielded herself with it for a moment, then let it fall. “Laurel,” she said, and the child came to her and took her hand. “Teno’s child,” she said to Merripen. “The younger one. The older lives with Yoshi.” She released Laurel’s hand, then picked up her clothes and shoes.
She rose and walked toward the road with Laurel. Merripen followed. Her buttocks bounced a bit as she walked. He caught up to her as they approached her house.
Andrew was at the door. He looked at Josepha, then at Laurel, and walked out onto the porch. He stopped Merripen on the steps. Josepha raised her eyebrows.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” Merripen said. She went inside with the child. Andrew drew Merripen down the steps to the path.
“I need to get away for a while,” Andrew said. “I’m going to take a hovercraft out and go for a ride. It’ll be safe enough behind their shield. I’ll be back by evening.”
“You don’t like it here.”
Andrew shook his head. “I just need some time alone to think. I was talking with that fellow Chane last night. I told him a little about the Citadel, and he told me about life here, and then he started reminiscing about the Transition. He’s very old; he remembers it.”
“I know.”
“It wasn’t actually the Transition he wanted to talk about, though; just how he grew up, what his home was like. He’d had some bad times, but he wanted to talk anyway. He made some pretty gruesome jokes. He said that a long time ago, you had to be able to laugh at things or you would just give up in despair. We started drinking. And then those two, the others, Teno and Ramli, came in, and that was that. We spent the rest of the evening talking about mathematics. At least they did, and I listened.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. Except that I got the feeling Chane goes through his life here wearing a mask. They try so hard to be like Teno and Ramli and the others, and it must gratify them or they wouldn’t still be here, but they’re not like them and they never really can be.”
“Josepha told me that they were going to live with them in space.”
“I heard about that, too. I don’t know. It’s peaceful here. In a way, it’s very pleasant. I just need to get away for a while.”
Andrew went to his hovercraft. Merripen entered the house. Chane was up, sitting with Ramli, Teno, Laurel, and another child at the table. The large front room was surrounded by doors leading to smaller rooms. Josepha came out through one doorway and sat down at the table; she was wearing a long blue robe. Merripen joined them. Chane smiled tensely and passed a bowl of fruit. Teno and Ramli were conversing, speaking in a language which sounded familiar; Merripen could grasp only a few words.
Teno finished eating and came over to Merripen, sitting down next to him. Teno had not changed; the gray eyes stared out at him from a smooth, youthful face. The eyes were clear, hiding nothing; Merripen felt for a moment as though he were looking at himself through Teno’s eyes. The barrier between them was still there, but it was his barrier. “Why did you come here, Merripen?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“But why?”
“I wanted to see how you were. I thought …” He paused, wondering if Teno would understand. “I thought I might have failed. I thought that if I could find you, I’d know if I’d been right or wrong.”
“And were you right?” Teno’s mouth twitched.
“I don’t know. I suppose I was. You have your children and a community, so you must be a viable design.”
“A viable design?” Teno’s mouth curved. “So it’s the design that’s responsible.”
“I don’t know.”
“People like you live here, too. Don’t you suppose that our society has something to do with what we are? Do you think our values are merely the product of our physiology?”
“I’m sure it has something to do with them.”
“Perhaps it does. You valued certain things, certain attributes. Here we are, the embodiment of what you treasured in human beings. You should love us more than anyone.”
Merripen thought he heard a low chuckle. He turned and saw Ramli’s impassive dark eyes. “But then,” Teno went on, “maybe you, too, have come to see us as something unnatural.”
“Not at all,” Merripen said quickly.
“I think we’re in the line of development you might have taken. Consider this—men and women were becoming more like each other all along. You had to be, because your children required attention from both parents if they were to adapt successfully to the social environment that had become more important than the physical one you had subdued. Two people banding together, able to compare their experience and ideas, were likely to be more successful, in the biological sense, than isolated individuals or those whose ideas of their own places in society differed so radically that they were unable to give their young a coherent view of the world. There were always exceptions, of course, but I’m speaking in general terms. You were already selecting not for successful individuals, but for more successful pairs.” Teno paused. “Why not go a step further, and conceive of one individual with the features of each member of a pair? It might have happened anyway, in time. Sudden evolutionary leaps have occurred in nature—does it matter that you used a laboratory for yours? It seems natural enough to me. It’s the only way your species will change now, because as long as you remain here with your long lives, in some sort of equilibrium, you’ll halt the course of evolution—which strikes me as a most unnatural course of action. Those are some of the notions I’ve played with, in somewhat simplified form.”
“I never thought of you as anything except my children.”
“That’s not quite true, Merripen.”
“It was your minds that concerned me. I wanted you to be free of the instincts that can still overpower us. The rest was almost an afterthought.”
“Really? How do you know it wasn’t an inherent part of the goal you sought, whether you realized it or not? It certainly seems a more reasonable biology to me.” Teno rose, lips curving again in a half-smile, and stood at Merripen’s side until he got up, then led him to one of the smaller rooms, closing the door behind them. The room, except for a platform and mattress against one wall and a large, wall-sized holo screen, was empty. The room had to be either Teno’s or Ramli’s; if it had been Josepha’s or Chane’s, he would have seen a painting, a vase of flowers, a rug, a mirror.
Teno sat on the edge of the bed. “You could have joined us before. Remember when I last spoke to you, long ago? You were building your wall. We didn’t know exactly what we would do, but we had decided to live together again. At first, we were by ourselves, and then we thought of asking people to join us. We had lived in their world; it seemed fitting to ask them to live in ours. We thought of our parents. So we contacted them, one by one. We told them the same thing we told you. Every one of them—and they were all still alive, they hadn’t in the end become prey to the self-destructive urges that have plagued so many of you, so you must have chosen them well—every one asked to come here immediately. You didn’t. I waited for you to ask where we would be and when you could join us, but you didn’t.”
“I didn’t want to interfere.”
“You think of it as interference, as if you could not live as just one person among others, but would dominate.” Teno frowned. “But that wasn’t your only reason. You were having your doubts then—I saw it in you. And we couldn’t have those doubts here. You might have communicated them, and we might have lost our courage.”
“I didn’t think you knew fear.”
“We can reason our way to a cautious course of action. We can analyze something to the point where moving from one step to another seems fraught with danger.”
Teno rose and went to the screen. The wall became a doorway to another world. Emerald-green grass bordered pale stone steps leading to white sand and a silver lake; slender birch trees stood in the distance. Merrip
en gazed past Teno, searching for the horizon, but the land beyond curved up like the side of a cup, enclosing the world. Distant hieroglyphs sharpened into curved roads and houses. He looked up; small winged shapes flew in the diffuse, yellow light. Near Teno’s foot, a single white flower bloomed.
“Our new home,” Teno said. “The inside of our asteroid. We can be artists as well. Earth isn’t for us.”
Merripen moved to Teno’s side. The face near his was flushed, mouth open, eyes wide. “Think,” Teno went on. “Endless space, endless time to explore it. There’s so much to learn.”
Teno seemed to be waiting. Merripen thought: They have one secret they haven’t shared. Even in them, the old brain could dominate, confusing reason and will. The gray eyes watching him no longer seemed clear; a promise flickered behind them.
He reached for the slender arms and drew Teno to him, knowing now why he had been brought to this room. It would not be the way it had been with Josepha; nothing would be hidden.
Teno stiffened, then gently removed Merripen’s hands. “You misread me.”
Merripen backed away, confused. “I thought—”
“I’m sorry. If you wish—”
“No.” Merripen said it fiercely. The image on the screen disappeared. He stared at the blank screen until he heard the door close behind him.
He cursed his body, his betrayer.
He sat alone in the room until Josepha came for him. She led him through the quiet, empty house and out to her garden, seating him in a canvas chair. He saw no exotic plants here, no kobolds among the flowers, only lettuce and marigolds and tomato vines.
Josepha sat on the grass next to him and lit a cigarette. A stream of smoke curled up from the tip; she exhaled a small pale cloud. “Teno told me,” she said.
“Everything?”
“Don’t look so ashamed. We’ve misunderstood, too. I don’t know why they make love. They don’t seem to think of it the way we do, looking for someone to fill some lack in us. That’s what we do, isn’t it—look for someone who will complete us somehow, who’s an opposite or who complements one in some way. I don’t know whether they do it simply to satisfy some physical urge or whether they see some reasonable purpose in it. They don’t flirt or play any of the games. Once, they came to us, but they no longer do.”
She bowed her head. “Once,” she continued, “Teno came to me. I couldn’t accept it. They see nothing wrong with it, as long as they’re dealing with another adult and not a child. It makes a kind of sense, I suppose. If you live long enough, it should make no difference. You’re two different people.”
Teno had spoken to her. So his children did not keep secrets. Merripen had a secret, though, one that he would not share with Josepha. He had wanted to seize Teno, to shake the slender body, to force some passion into those calm gray eyes. It had been only a momentary impulse which had swept from him, leaving shame in its wake. He had wanted to drag Teno down and force submission, and he did not know why.
He thought of the asteroid, and of all of them trapped together inside it for an endless voyage. For Teno, it would be a home; for Merripen, it would be a prison. Yet its beauty drew him; the promise of the endless journey attracted him. He could reach Teno’s calm and clarity intermittently; why not always?
He thought of Karim. The man had seen a life he wanted, and he had not shrunk from changing his body to get it. He could do the same. The depth of his self-loathing seemed to block his throat, making him unable to swallow or speak. He had wanted his children to be different from him. Why was he unhappy now because they were different?
He hid in the dark, alone. He was a mind without a body; his thoughts bore him up, lifting him above the house and over the shield to the sky. The trees below were only shrubs; the lakes were puddles. He was a noetic stream carried by the wind.
Merripen’s door opened. He stirred on the bed; he was once again bone and flesh and brain. The small lamp next to him glowed; Josepha’s long dark hair fell over his chest as she sat down next to him.
She drew up her legs and wrapped her arms around them. He touched her sleeve; she was still. “You want to talk,” he said.
“I guess so. I can’t sleep.”
“You need to relax.”
“No, I don’t need to relax. I relax enough at other times.” She ran the words together. She was tense; she rubbed her legs with her hands. “Chane’s asleep; I didn’t want to wake him. He’s heard it all before, anyway.”
“Once you turned me away because of Chane. Do you remember?”
“Oh, yes. Was that me? It seems as though it was someone else.” She turned toward him, bouncing a bit on the bed. “Endless, eternal love. It’s possible, isn’t it? Except that it isn’t that way; it ebbs and flows, it changes. The unspoken promises change. Sometimes it’s everything to you, it’s in everything you do. Sometimes it’s in the background, always present but not conscious. Sometimes it’s an obsession, and sometimes it’s a long, quiet friendship. Sometimes it’s two different things for the two people. Right now, Chane and I are at the friendship stage.” She stretched out her arm and stared at it for a moment. “Think of the Josepha you first met. There isn’t a single molecule of her left—if there is, it’s something else now.”
“Josepha.”
“I’m so old. Sometimes I think about how old I am, and I can’t believe it.”
“Everyone feels that way sometimes.”
“Do you, Merripen?”
“Occasionally. But my body keeps fooling me into thinking I’m not.”
She laughed. “I wanted to die. Before the Transition. I tried to kill myself. I thought I wanted to die, but maybe I didn’t, really. I wanted to escape, I know that—sometimes my despair was so strong I couldn’t fight it, couldn’t resist it.”
He took her hand. Her fingers drummed against his knuckles. “I’d sit for hours, staring at nothing. I’d be unable to speak. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t dress myself. I’d wait for it to pass, and often it seemed it never would.” She drew her hand away. “The slightest thing would make me cry—a measure of music, a bird in the tree outside, the way my coat would sag when I hung it up. Sometimes I wouldn’t leave my home for days because I was afraid I’d start crying in a public place.”
She leaned back against one of his pillows. “I failed people close to me,” she went on. “There was always that dark part of me they couldn’t reach. They would say, ‘What can I do?’ and I’d have to say, ‘Nothing, there’s nothing you can do, just leave me alone.’ That’s one of the most horrible things you can do to someone who cares about you, because they have to watch it and there’s nothing they can do—they’re helpless.”
“Josepha,” Merripen said, afraid.
“They called it an illness, the despair I felt. I wasn’t functioning well; I needed therapy. I know why people had to believe that, and why some still believe it—because then they could act. They didn’t have to stand by; they could do something. They could give it a name—no matter if the name stigmatized you or turned your reality into a sick illusion. They didn’t have to believe that there are things we can’t control, that there are parts of us we can’t understand, that you might be showing them a truth they can’t accept, that only an insensitive person would never feel the despair. It was bad because it often led to suicide—a mortal sin, the sin that can never be forgiven—and a social wrong, because others would be left to clean up your mess. It didn’t matter that it ended your pain, that you might think it better to die as you were and escape the pain, rather than living on as someone other than yourself, having to dampen or kill that part of you. It was better to take your autonomy away, to deny you that choice. And when the world changed and we could have everything, and yet people still wanted to die, that proved it was an illness, didn’t it?”
“You can’t mean what you’re saying,” Merripen said.
Her face grew taut. Then she smiled. “I’ve heard that, too. ‘You can’t mean it.’” She spoke more gently. “D
id I really want to die? I don’t know. I could never think of myself as not existing, so maybe I didn’t. But I wanted to escape. I hated my body; I struggled against limits, and finitude, and the despair that showed me all too clearly what the limits were. Sometimes I had a mania—I could do anything, I saw things so clearly, I could work until I dropped, and then the despair would return and immobilize me. They called it an illness. Was it? Didn’t it simply mirror life? We struggle, and then it’s over.”
“You’re here,” Merripen said. “You won that battle, didn’t you?”
“Did I? I don’t think so. We’re always fighting ourselves, all of us. We have a divided nature. You know that’s true—it’s why you made Teno and the others. Isn’t that so?” She did not wait for him to answer. “I wanted things to be other than what they were, and so do you. The longer we live, the more apparent our limits are.”
He put his arm around her and she rested against him. “You shouldn’t have come here,” she murmured. “I’d forgotten most of this. I could pretend it wasn’t so, and somehow you brought it all back.”
She was calmer now. He thought of pulling off her robe, drawing her to him, losing himself in lovemaking, but sensed that she did not want that now. So he held her, while subduing himself.
Merripen remained in Josepha’s house, but withdrew from the life around him. He ate his meals alone, or with Andrew, in his room. He read old novels, telling himself he was only brushing up on languages while knowing dimly that it was imaginary worlds of sensation and highly charged emotions that he sought. He lingered at the edges of small groups, catching scattered words. Andrew spent time with some of the young children, once taking a few on a bird-watching trip, but Andrew, too, had withdrawn, and did not speak often to Merripen.
He watched his children while feeling that he was learning little about them. He missed the signals of rivalries, grudges, passions, hidden and overt aggression. Even those like him were able to act as though they had escaped their irrationality, but he saw the looks of doubt, the worried frowns, the upturned eyes searching for approval. They trailed after the androgynes as though they were pets trailing their masters.
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