Moonstar

by David Gerrold

  And therein lay the tension between the chosen and the un. Those who were chosen could only finalize their Choice by living it. To be male, one must be a male to someone else’s female. To be female, one must be a female to someone else’s male. Blush occurs at thirteen years—it can start as late as fifteen; it can last for several summers, or it can end within a season; it is the nature of the person’s experience that shapes her days of blush.

  That younglings should know the ways of sex was not consistent with traditions handed down from before the time of the Savior who brought Choice—but with the Savior had come many changes, and traditions are like creatures of the sea upon a barren plain: they must adapt or die. Some disappeared as if made out of fire-paper; others fought like demons to endure—especially those that had to do with adolescence and maturity.

  Those who were of Choice had to learn of sex to make their Choice. That was the way. Those who were not of Choice looked at their peers and, again, they felt envious and insecure at being different—and again they copied in their envy; they copulated with and like the Chosen ones. And this was frightening to their elders—they did not want to know that their children had become sexual beings; persons who could be attracted sexually and attractive sensually as well. This threatened their own senses of self—especially when the children’s avenues of exploration and expression bore no relation to the parents’.

  A parent hopes to grow a miniature of herself, but one who can stand taller and untroubled; such was very much the case with many parents of the old traditions. Such must have been the case with Rurik’s father. She could not stand the things that she was seeing—Rurik was supposed to be her son, but she was turning more effeminate as she reached toward her blush and Rurik’s father must have seen that as rejection of herself. She could not let that happen; her life demanded affirmation.

  In versions of the story performed by mimes or dancers, there are traditional ways of presenting this moment. Whether there are only two singers or two vast choruses, the “soliloquy of pain” is almost always sung. Concerning Rurik’s father, the first chorus sings:

  Guile is a slower force, a sadder shade of pain.

  The pressure turns and you are caught between the water and the rocks.

  Mother-ocean sifts and boils the sands upon the shore.

  Father-glacier slides and grinds across the crumbling mountain.

  The second chorus responds with:

  But the willful seed is stronger.

  I am washed to new horizons by the waves that batter at me.

  Nestled in a tiny crack, a hidden mote of promise—

  Someday I’ll reach beyond this time.

  Someday I’ll burst the boulder.

  I am nourished, never threatened, by the waters of the world.

  I will be what I must be.

  The first chorus returns with:

  Resist the breeze and risk a storm.

  Flow with me, my child.

  The second chorus resists:

  I flow with different currents. I feel a different breeze.

  Release my sails and let me flow across the golden seas.

  Both choruses then harmonize:

  And so the flows of east and west will meet and swirl about, turning back and back again, a maelstrom of doubt.

  Nothing flows and nothing grows, and nothing comes about.*

  It was known in those days that children who were chosen tended to be more sensitive than those who were not of Choice; perhaps it was their differentness they felt, perhaps it was reflection of their training in both genders while possessing neither as a right, only as an option. Lono and Rurik must have been so sensitive—many tellers emphasize that they were the only two chosen of their age on their island, and if this is so, the sense of separation would have been intense in them. They could not have helped but been especially sensitive to each other. While such feelings among chosen are not uncommon, in those days when there was so little knowledge of the patterns of the life, even among the chosen themselves, it must have been considered “queer” by those who lived around them that Lono and Rurik seemed to be an island to themselves. As they grew closer to each other, they grew apart from others. And those others, including their parents, must have been concerned.

  But this separation was a prelude. For a youngling to determine her own life, she must step apart from larger events so that she might know which elements of her environment are part of her and which are not. The growing closeness of two chosen younglings is necessary so that their first stirrings of sensuality might have receptive ways to be expressed. The stirrings, these experiments, are the fumbling first movements toward the time of Choice itself; whether the moment last a season or a year, each step must be taken in its turn before the next can be achieved, before the threshold can be reached. For Lono and Rurik to learn of Choice, they had to learn about themselves—and as it was for the, it is for all of us. For them to learn about themselves, they had to be apart from others.

  It begins with curiosity, first about oneself, and then about each other; whatever the truth of these two lovers, it must have been just one more faceted reflection of the larger truth that applies to all of us who love. Perhaps they were casual in their first steps, not unromantic, but neither overwhelmed by the memories of previous passion; without knowledge, there is the wonder of discovery. There would be trust. And innocence. And sharing. Perhaps they played with sex and sense without yet knowing what they were. They could not become expressions of romance until much later, after the lovers began to understand the why of what they did. And yet, even in the earliest gestures, it is love—it always is; a purer kind, all love is based on trust and innocence as sex is based upon sensation. To share sensation, one must trust—to learn sensation, one must be innocent of its touch. Lono might have said, “Let me show you something that feels nice.” And Rurik might have said, giggling, “That tickles—let me show you,” and touched her back in the same way.

  Their discoveries were joyful—the myth is told no other way, for this is the myth of all of our discoveries and we want it to be sublime. There was giggling and laughter. Some of the ways of sex are tender, some are fun, and some are just absurd—perhaps the silly ones are best of all, for when two lovers laugh together, they grow closer in their joy. To the ones who come new and fresh to such a sport, all of its absurdity exalted, and therein lies the wonder and delight.

  These two children turned to younglings in that summer, exploring changes of first blush with little shame between them—and this too they must have kept apart from the others on their island with instinctive knowledge that this was one more aspect of their difference that would not be understood by those prone to ignorance and hasty judgments.

  Imagine them now, walking hand in hand along paths still new on rocky cliffs, pausing to watch the seabirds flashing just above the waves; their brown arms brush against each other causing skin to tingle, and they glance into each other’s eyes and share a smile. Imagine them resting on the tufted moss rug of the slopes; Lono rests her head in Rurik’s lap, Rurik’s soft hands are stroking Lono’s hair—her finger traces the line of her friend’s cheek and when it crosses near the petals of her lips, suddenly they pucker to kiss the reassuring touch. They share a smile half hidden under shyly lowered lashes.

  Imagine them in wind and sea, sometimes naked in the surf and sometimes wrapped in veils of gauze, running deft among the rocks, then pausing, laughing, tumbling into each other’s arms to share a kiss or just a hug, sometimes friends and sometimes lovers. When Rurik’s breast begin to swell, the nipples tingle with the budding; Lono’s fingers explore them with curious caress and wonder when her own will flush with joy.

  “They tickle, Lono—they’re tender. Sometimes they hurt,” Rurik might have said and Lono might have kissed the nipples, brushing her lips across them lightly, to show her care—and Rurik, suddenly surprised with new delight, might insist on showing Lono why and might have kissed her back.

  Togeth
er they must have wondered why they were so different from the other children on the isle; together they must have explored themselves with clinical detachment, as if to find the answers in the empty clefts where so many others had young organs—albeit immature, but organs nonetheless.

  When Rurik’s penile bud appeared (or was Lono’s the first?) they must have watched its growth with speculation and a sense of uncertainty. Did they touch them? And wonder at the feeling? And discover the father of sensation there? “It hurts sometimes, but sometimes it tickles.”

  “And what if I rub it with oil like this?”

  “That’s better . . . that’s good.”

  “And what if I kiss you like this?”

  “That’s . . . nice . . . Let me kiss you there and show you . . .”

  Such was how they must have explored their growing maleness, their femaleness as well—

  “Look how my lips are turning rosy, Rurik—”

  “I can touch you there—”

  And shyly, “Put your fingers into me. (I have done it myself at night, but it feels better when you do it.)”

  And finally there must have been a moment when: “I am long enough. Let me go inside you.”

  “I want you to.”

  And later, perhaps another time—

  “I want to feel what you felt, you looked so happy. You come into me this time.”

  “Yes. I want to try that too.”

  And then, at last, this must have happened too:

  “You are so sweet. You are so special. Do you know I love you?”

  “Yes. I love you too.”

  “Shall we be lovers now?”

  “Now and forever.”

  “And shall we tell everyone?”

  “They probably already know.”

  They must have grown into each other’s souls as surely as their bodies grew into each other. They fit together. There were no air spaces between them. The flat muscles of Rurik’s belly touched the softer muscles of Lono’s and they moved together. Their thighs touched. Their arms wrapped, their cheeks brushed; the gentle swelling bud of one pressed against the hardening of the other, and it didn’t matter of the moment which of them found a warm home in the other—when everything is new, everything is wonder. They brushed their bodies one against the other and swelled into the fullness of their blush.

  Where before there had been neither genital nor gender, now there came the development of both—blush is more than just a time of Choice, it is a time of learning. A moment ago, they had both been sexless and unformed; now suddenly they had each become a male and female both, each felt masculine and feminine, a wild unfettered joy that shone with the faces of gods, Mother Reethe and Father Dakka; final blush, still far away, neither face was yet confirmed on either. At this moment, they were butterflies grown visible within their chrysalides, on the threshold of emergence into color, wind and flight.

  Rurik and Lono—first one would be the male to the other’s female, and then, reversing roles, the first would be a female to the other’s male. And as genital explored itself, so did gender learn its shapes. One might take the lead in certain actions, yet follow in some others. If Lono liked to dance for Rurik, then Rurik liked to cook for Lono—and yet before the turning of the triad, Lono might be cooking and Rurik might be dancing, and again they shaped their lives as they grew into them. Each one learned what pleased her in every role, each one learned what pleased her lover too—each understood the dualities of love far better than would any who has not been given Choice. Each knew what it was to be who has not been given Choice. Each knew what it was to be like Dakka, the necessities of tenderness, the skills and dominances that the act requires. Each knew what it was to be like Reethe, to give support and strength and guidance for them both. Each knew both, not only as a lover, but as one who is loved for being what she is: not only with their genitals, not only with their genders, but with their purer souls—those parts that still remain untouched within each one of us and are seen only in the deepest sharing.

  In such a way Lono and Rurik must have learned that each of us is both of Dakka and Reethe, sometimes more one than another, but neither to the exclusion of the other, not in body, not in soul. Neither can be totally expressed alone, a soul cannot be whole without its other half. Whatever happened after that, it is the nature of this bonding of the two that makes their story echo in our hearts; for in their love we like to see reflections of our own. That’s why we make them myth. How sad that Rurik’s father was so blind she could not see her own lost blush rekindled in her child . . .

  Early on a dawning Sunday Jobe arrived at Option. There was a pinkish moondrop in the east, a yellow one in the west; the atmosphere did that sometimes. High above, an amorphous glow shimmered silver on its eastern edge. That bright crescent would shrink as the day turned on and the Godheart rose toward zenith. When the shield became invisible in the sky, eclipse was less than an hour off.

  Jobe was sitting in the bow of the barge. Ahead, a dark line of land grew on the horizon. Option was indistinguishable from a thousand other islands, a spill of vegetation, tumbling down the sides of jagged cliffs and rocks. It was crested with green and purple vegetation, moss and ivy and ferns, feather-trees rising stiff above, and everywhere were the meter-wide white blossoms of silkflowers and the smaller red spikes of bloodthorns. If you squinted, it was a splash of purple, red and white; the green disappeared altogether. Some said the light of Godheart wasn’t favorable to green anyway, turned it black to the eye. Many of the purple plants, and there were a great variety of them, were called Chtorr-plants; they didn’t use chlorophyll for their photosynthesis, but either of two other molecules instead, one less complex, the other a more sophisticated relative of the first. They were named for the legendary place of child-eating demons from which they were supposed to have come. But there were a lot of legends floating loose in the Wilderness Seas; everything had a myth wrapped around it—or perhaps everything was a myth already. Sola had once said, “A myth is the only way we can ever know the truth.”

  There were no other travelers bound for Option on the boat with Jobe; the boat she was supposed to meet had gone ahead without her. She had missed her boat at Cameron, and the shuttle from Tarralon as well—that was Orl’s fault, or Kirstegaarde’s; she blamed them both. She was already a triad and two days later than Suko had planned.

  Originally, it had been planned that Sola would take Jobe with her when she sailed eastward, bringing her to Cameron, where she would catch the clipper north. Jobe had been excited at the prospect of sailing with Sola, who was a figure both of mystery and adventure (she’d never been out of the Lagin before either), but at the last moment, Kirstegaarde had objected. “It’s wrong to expose a child of Jobe’s sensitive age to the company of a deviate—Jobe is at her time of blush. I love Sola as much as anyone here, but for Jobe’s sake I think we must arrange an alternate form of transportation. I mean, consider it—she will be with Sola for two triads or more, depending on the winds they have to fight, and all the while Jobe will be pushing closer toward the edge of Choice. Is it right for Sola to be the one to make the most vivid impression on the child’s life at such a time? No offense intended, of course, but I just want Jobe to have her chance without the influences of a sexual anomaly so strong upon her—”

  And that was where the argument had begun. Jobe knew what was going on in those quiet angry discussions that always seemed to cease whenever she was near. She herself couldn’t see any harm in sailing with Sola; Sola was her favorite aunt. But Kirstegaarde had support from some of the younger and newer members of the circle—co-wives and co-husbands, recent marriages, who did not know Sola, were not related to her, did not care and had no great feeling for her either way—but were discomfited by the fact she was a deviate. Suko and Kuvig, Hojanna, and those who remembered some of the older days, were firm in their insistence. They said quietly that it would insult their sister to rebuff her in this way, to say that she was not fit to care for their
children—but the structure of the circle was changing, the strength was shifting from the older generation toward the newer. It happens in every family, it is inevitable. A parent feeds a child and she grows; the parent weakens with the effort, till the child feeds the parent. The Kossarlin authority was moving toward those who were reaching the ascendancy of their maturity, and like all young power before it, it was inconsiderate of the traditions and compassions of the past.

  Sola was her own person, however, and she did not like being in the middle. She was a person of quiet dignity and strength who had grown used to solving problems by sailing away from them—probably because she had never had any affection for anything or anyone strong enough to justify staying and fighting for her interest. In annoyance, finally, she kissed Jobe good-bye and wished her wisdom in her Choice; then she cast off in her catamaran with only her cat and bird for company. She did not bother to say farewell to any other member of the family. She was obviously hurt and Jobe wondered if she would ever see her aunt again. She did not expect here ever to return to Kossarlin. It was not the same circle it had been before.

  When Kuvig and Suko heard of Sola’s abrupt departure they—and certain other members of the family who still respected the ways of the past—were embarrassed and hurt. There were painful silences for many days afterward, and most of the adults in the circle seemed to be making a point of avoiding at least half of the others. It affected the children too and there were more than the usual run of sibling squabbles.

  Anyway, that forced the decision in Kirstegaarde’s favor. Cousin Orl, a beefy Dakkarik who Jobe hardly knew, and did not want to know, took her to Cameron on one of the uglier boats the circle maintained. Orl was gruff and little-spoken; when she did speak, she was rude and insensitive. She was one of the new ones who had recently married into the family, and Jobe wondered why—more puzzling was why the others had accepted her in the first place. Perhaps they had to; she was related to someone, though Jobe wasn’t sure who. But, on the other hand, some of the Rethrik parents, including Kirstegaarde, seemed to . . . favor Orl. Jobe wasn’t sure of the relationship, so much of it was based on things unsaid and somehow darkly mysterious, but she suspected some kind of infatuation on the part of some of the aunts. Kirstegaarde, for instance, had seemed changed since Orl arrived—more gay and painted, more easy with her laugh, not quite as harsh as she had been before; that should have been improvement enough to justify Orl’s arrival, but Kirstegaarde was still as sour as ever in her outlook, and covering it with laughter only made the laughter acid and unpleasant. As if Kirstegaarde were laughing at some kind of joke on all the rest. Jobe preferred it when her moodiness was less directed. No matter now, though. But Jobe—and some of the other older siblings who still had not married out—resented that the order of the past was changed, and they blamed Orl and some of the other new ones for the disruption. Anvar, whom they’d liked, had left when Orl came.