The Year's Best Science Fiction - Thirty-Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Squell was bald, with coppery metal spikes extruding from the skin of his scalp. Sometimes Father Miskisk teased him about them—the spikes weren’t fashionable anymore—and sometimes when he did, Father Squell stormed out of the room, because Father Squell was a little vain. He was never much of a fighter, the other Fathers said. But he had a body in the asteroids, and that was something amazing.

  Squell reached over, Fift still in his lap, and started stroking the eyebrow of another of Fift’s bodies. Fift sneezed, in that body, and then sneezed in the other two, and that was funny, and she started to giggle. Now she was all awake.

  “Up, little cubblehedge,” Squell said. “Up!”

  Fift crawled out of bed, careful not to crawl over herself. It always made her a little restless to be all together, all three bodies in the same room. That wasn’t really good, it was because her somatic integration wasn’t totally successful, and that was why she kept having to see Pedagogical Expert Pnim Moralasic Foundelly of name registry Pneumatic Lance 12. Pedagogical Expert Pnim Moralasic Foundelly had put an awful nag agent in Fift’s mind, to tell her to look herself in the eye, and play in a coordinated manner, and do the exercises. It was nagging now, but Fift ignored it.

  She looked under the bed for her gowns.

  They weren’t there. She closed her eyes (because she wasn’t so good yet at seeing things over the feed with her eyes open) and used the house feed to look all around the house. Her gowns weren’t in the balcony or the atrium or the small mat-room or the breakfast room.

  Fathers Arevio and Smistria and Frill, and another of Father Squell’s bodies, were in the breakfast room, already eating. Father Miskisk was arguing with the kitchen.

  {Where are my gowns?} Fift asked her agents, but perhaps she did it wrong, because they didn’t say anything.

  “Father Squell,” she said, opening her eyes, “I can’t find my gowns, and my agents can’t either.”

  “I composted your gowns; they were old,” Squell said. “Go down to the bathing room and get washed. I’ll make you some new clothes.”

  Fift’s hearts began to pound. The gowns weren’t old; they’d only come out of the oven a week ago. “But I want those gowns,” she said.

  Squell opened the door. “You can’t have those gowns. Those gowns are compost. Bathing!” He snatched Fift up, one of her bodies under his arm, the wrist of another caught in his other hand.

  Fift tried to wriggle out of her Father’s grasp, yanked on her arm to get free, while she looked desperately under the bed again. “They weren’t old,” she said, her voice wavering.

  “Fift,” Squell said, exasperated. “That’s enough. For Kumru’s sake, today of all days!” He dragged her, in two of her bodies, through the door. In another body, this one with silvery spikes on its head, he came hurrying down the hall.

  “I want them back,” Fift said. She wouldn’t cry. She wasn’t a baby any more, she was a big Staidchild, and Staids don’t cry. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t even shout or emphasize. She would stay calm and clear. Today of all days. She was still struggling, a little, and Squell handed her to his other body.

  “They are compost,” Squell said, reddening, in the body with the silver spikes, while one with the copper spikes came into the room. “They have gone down the sluice and dissolved. Your gowns are now part of the nutrient flow and they could be anywhere in Fullbelly and they will probably be part of your breakfast next week!”

  Fift gasped. Fift didn’t want to eat her gowns. There was a cold lump in her stomach. Squell caught her third body.

  Father Miskisk came down the corridor doublebodied. He was bigger than Squell, broad-chested, square-jawed, with a mane of blood-red hair, and sunset-orange skin traced all over with white squiggles. He was wearing his dancing pants. His voice was deep and rumbly, and he smelled warm, roasty, and oily. “Fift, little Fift,” he said, “Come on, let’s zoom around. I’ll zoom you to the bathing room. Come jump up. Give her here, Squell.”

  “I want my gowns,” Fift said, in her third body, as Squell dragged her through the doorway.

  “Here,” Squell said, trying to hand Fift’s other bodies to Miskisk. But Fift clung to Squell. She didn’t want to zoom right now. Zooming was fun, but too wild for this day, and too wild for someone who had lost her gowns. The gowns were a pale blue, soft as clouds; they would whisper around Fift’s legs when she ran.

  “Oh Fift, please!” Squell said. “You must bathe and you will not be late today! Today of all—”

  “Is she really ready for this, do you think?” Miskisk said, trying to pry Fift away from Squell, but flinching back from prying hard enough.

  “Oh please, Misk,” Squell said, “let us not start that. Or not with me. Pip says—”

  Father Smistria stuck his head out of the door of his studio. He was tall and haggard looking and had brilliant blue skin, and a white beard braided into hundreds of tiny braids woven with little glittering mirrors and jewels, and was wearing a slick swirling combat suit that clung to his skinny flat chest. His voice was higher than Father Miskisk’s, squeaky and gravelly at the same time. “Why are you two winding the child up?” he barked. “This is going to be a disaster, if you give her the impression that this is a day for racing about! Fift, you will stop this now!”

  “Come on, Fift,” Miskisk said coaxingly.

  “Put her down,” Smistria said. “I cannot believe you are wrestling and flying about with a Staidchild who in less than three hours—”

  “Oh give it a rest, Smi,” Miskisk said, sort of threateny, and turned away from Fift and Squell, towards Smistria. Smistria stepped fully out into the corridor, putting his face next to Miskisk’s. It got like thunder in between them, but Fift knew they wouldn’t hit each other; grown-up Bails only hit each other on the mats. Still, she hugged Squell closer—one body squished against his soft chest, one body hugging his leg, one body pulling back through the doorway—and squeezed all her eyes shut, and dimmed the house feed so she couldn’t see that way either.

  Behind her eyes she could only see the pale blue gowns. It was just like in her dream! She’d lost her gowns and she would have to wear only bells like Father Frill! She shuddered. “I don’t want my gowns to be in the compost,” she said, as reasonably as she could manage.

  “Oh, will you shut up about the gowns!” Squell said. “No one cares about your gowns!”

  “That’s not true,” Miskisk boomed, shocked.

  “It is true,” Smistria said, “and—”

  Fift could feel a sob ballooning inside her. She tried to hold it in, but it grew and grew and—

  “Beloveds,” said Father Grobbard.

  Fift opened her eyes. Father Grobbard had come silently, singlebodied, up the corridor. She stood behind Squell. She was shorter than Miskisk and Smistria, the same height as Squell, but more solid: broad and flat like a stone. When Father Grobbard stood still, it looked like she would never move again. Her shift was plain and simple and white. Her skin was a mottled creamy brown, with the same fine golden fuzz of hair everywhere, even the top of her head.

  “Grobby!” Squell said. “We are trying to get her ready, but it’s quite—”

  “Well it’s Grobbard’s show,” Smistria said. “It’s up to you and Pip today, Grobbard, isn’t it? So why don’t you get her ready!?”

  Grobbard held out her hand. Fift swallowed, and then she slid down from Squell’s arms, and went and took it.

  “Grobbard,” Miskisk said, “are you sure Fift is ready for this? Is it really—”

  “Yes,” Grobbard said. Then she looked at Miskisk, her face as calm as ever. She raised one eyebrow, just a little. Then she looked back at Fift’s other bodies, and held out her other hand. Squell let go of the arms of Fift’s he was holding, and Fift gathered; she took Father Grobbard’s other hand, and caught a fold of Father Grobbard’s shift, and that way, they went down to the bathing room.

  “My gowns weren’t old,” Fift said, on the stairs. “They came out of the ov
en a week ago.”

  “No, they weren’t old,” Grobbard said. “But they were blue. Blue is a Bail color, the color of the crashing, restless sea. You are a Staid, and today you will enter the First Gate of Logic. You couldn’t do that wearing blue gowns.”

  “Oh,” Fift said.

  Grobbard sat by the side of the bathing pool, her hands in her lap, her legs in the water, while Fift scrubbed herself soapy.

  “Father Grobbard,” Fift said, “why are you a Father?”

  “What do you mean?” Father Grobbard asked. “I am your Father, Fift. You are my child.”

  “But why aren’t you a Mother? Mother Pip is a Mother, and she’s—um, you’re—”

  Grobbard’s forehead wrinkled briefly, and then it smoothed, and her lips quirked in a tiny suggestion of a smile. “Aha, I see. Because you have only one Staid Father, and the rest are Bails, you think that being a Father is a Bailish thing to be? You think Fathers should be ‘hes’ and Mothers should be ‘shes’?”

  Fift frowned, and stopped mid-scrub.

  “What about your friends? Are all of your friends’ Mothers ‘she’? Or are some of them ‘he’?” Grobbard paused a moment; then, gently: “What about Umlish Mnemu of Mnathis cohort? Her Mother is a Bail, isn’t he?”

  “Oh,” Fift said, and frowned again. “Well, what makes someone a Mother?”

  “Your Mother carried you in her womb, Fift. You grew inside her belly, and you were born out of her vagina, into the world. Some families don’t have children that way, so in some families all the parents are Fathers. But we are quite traditional. Indeed, we are all Kumruists, except for Father Thurm … and Kumruists believe that biological birth is sacred. So you have a Mother.”

  Fift knew that, though it still seemed strange. She’d been inside Mother Pip for ten months. Singlebodied, because her other two bodies hadn’t been fashioned yet. That was an eerie thought. Tiny, helpless, singlebodied, unbreathing, her nut-sized heart drawing nutrients from Pip’s blood. “Why did Pip get to be my Mother?”

  Now Grobbard was clearly smiling. “Have you ever tried to refuse your Mother Pip anything? There was a little bit of debate, but I think we all knew Pip would emerge as the Younger Sibling of that struggle. She had a uterus and vagina enabled, and made sure we all had penises, for the impregnation. It was an exciting time.”

  Fift pulled up the feed and looked up penises. They were for squirting sperm, which helped decide what the baby would be like. The uterus could sort through all the sperm and pick the genes it wanted, but you had to publish something or other to get approval, and after that it was too complicated. You’d have one on each body, dangling between your legs. “Do you still have penises? One … on each body?”

  “Yes, I kept mine,” Grobbard said. “They went well with the rest of me, and I don’t like too many changes.”

  “Can I have penises?” she said.

  “I suppose, if you like,” Grobbard said. “But not today. Today you have something more important to do. And now I see that your Father has baked you new clothes. So rinse off, and let’s go upstairs.”

  * * *

  The new clothes were bright white shifts, like Father Grobbard always wore. And Mother Pip, mostly. Fift felt grown up, and strange, and stiff. She was scrubbed and polished and her heads were shaved and oiled and her fingernails and toenails were trimmed. She sat in a row on the rough moss of the anteroom, trying to sit lightly, balanced, spines straight.

  The anteroom of their apartment was full of parents, practically all of Iraxis cohort. Fathers Squell and Smistria and Pupolo and Miskisk were there in a body each, and Father Frill and Father Grobbard were both doublebodied. Mother Pip was on her way. Only Fathers Thurm and Arevio were missing, and they were watching over the feed.

  Father Frill knelt next to Fift, brushing bits of fluff from the moss. He was lithe and dusky-skinned, with a shock of stiff copper-colored hair sweeping up from his broad forehead, wide gray eyes and a full mouth and a sharp chin. He was dressed for the occasion in cascades of tinkling silver and gold and crimson bells, and a martial shoulder sash hung with tiny, intricately-worked ceremonial knives and grenades. He crouched like a sharp-toothed wild hunting-animal, resting in a tree’s limbs somewhere up on the surface of the world. He ran his hand gently over her bare, oiled scalp, which felt nice, but also distracting because she was trying very hard to sit straight. “Oh Fift,” he said, “we’re all very proud of you, you know.”

  “Well she hasn’t done anything yet,” Father Smistria said, glowering, and pacing back and forth under the pillars of the anteroom, “except finally take a bath! Keep focused, Fift.”

  “Ignore him,” Father Frill said, taking his hand from Fift’s head, leaning in against Fift’s shoulder. He smelled like a rainy day in a mangareme fruit grove on the surface. “He’s cranky because he’s nervous. But there’s no reason to be nervous, Fift. Grobbard and your Mother say that this thing today is just a formality. I—”

  “Ha!” barked Smistria, tugging at his beard.

  “Stop it, Smistria,” Miskisk said. His fists were clenched. “You’re making it worse.”

  Fift got an uneasy feeling in her stomach. {What are my Fathers talking about?} she asked her agents.

  The context advisory agent answered, {About your first episode of the Long Conversation; today you will enter the First Gate of Logic.}

  {I know that!} Fift sent back. She hated when her agents acted like she was a baby.

  Father Squell cleared his throat. “It’s really none of our business, Frill,” he said. He was standing near the wall, rubbing the slippery red fabric of his shirt between his fingers. “Whether it’s a ‘formality’!”

  Father Smistria glared at Squell. Frill, in his standing body, languidly cracked his back.

  “I just mean—for us to argue about her chances!” Squell said. “It’s not appropriate! This is Pip and Grobbard’s domain.…”

  “None of our business?” Smistria barked. “None of our business?”

  Father Frill frowned, leaned away from Fift (the bells tinkled as he shifted), and twitched his lips the way he always did when he was sending a private message. He was staring at Smistria, so he was probably sending something like: {Stop talking about this now, you’re scaring Fift.} But Smistria ignored him.

  “It really isn’t,” Squell said. He took a step away from Smistria, and looked back towards Pupolo, who was swinging gently in a seating harness at the back of the anteroom. “It’s a Staid matter!”

  “That’s right,” said Pupolo. He looked tired, but he still sat straight in his harness. He was in a green smock, and he had dirt on his hands, from the garden. Father Pupolo was Fift’s oldest parent and once, a long long time ago, he had been sort of famous as a military poet.

  “Well, I’m obviously not talking about the details of the … process,” Smistria said, taking a step towards Father Squell and flinging his arms wide. “I’m not an idiot. Don’t insult me! But the outcome, that’s another matter! The outcome affects our entire cohort, and you know perfectly well—”

  “Smi,” Frill said sharply. He leaned in towards Fift again; in his other body, he crossed to Smistria and grabbed his shoulder.

  Grobbard stood to the side, expressionless. Fift wished she would say something. Or that Pip would finally come, and they could leave and get it over with. It was hard to sit up straight.

  She tried her agents again: {Why is everyone fighting?}

  The emotional nuance agent sent, {Bails often react to being tense by crying or shouting. Don’t let it scare you!}

  Smistria swiveled to glare at Frill. Frill didn’t take his hand from Smistria’s shoulder. They stared into each other’s eyes. Then Smistria softened a little, and pulled Frill roughly into an embrace—Frill’s musical clothes jingled and rang. They stood like that with their cheeks touching, Smistria’s beard caught in Frill’s bells, Smistria’s eyes squeezed shut. Frill put his hand back on Fift’s head. “There now!” he said.

/>   Pip came, singlebodied, through the door.

  Pip was large, and round, and bald. She wore a white shift too, and her skin was a deep forest green, and it hung in wens and folds from her face. She had powerful, searching eyes, white and gold and black, that looked deep into you. She had fat stubby fingers and one hand held the other hand’s thumb and stroked it.

  “Greetings, beloveds,” said Pip. “Greetings, Fift.” She turned to Pupolo and clasped his hands briefly, nodded to Grobbard, quirked an eyebrow at Frill and Smistria.

  “Finally!” Frill said, releasing Smistria in a cascade of bells. Smistria breathed in loud, and crossed his arms. “What took you so long, Pip? We were about to check into the Madhouse, all eight of us!”

  Squell touched Pip’s cheek, ran his hand along her shoulder. Pip’s expression softened into an almost-smile, and she took Squell’s hand.

  “Oh Pip,” Squell said, “will you please tell them that it’s fine, and to stop arguing about today! It’s just absurd!”

  Miskisk looked angry, as if dark clouds were massing across his sunset face.

  Pip blinked, and looked to Frill, to Smistria, to Pupolo, and finally to Grobbard. Then she chuckled. “Fift is ready,” she said. “I have absolute confidence. Do you remember what we practiced, Fift?”

  All it was, was sitting still and waiting to be passed a spoon, and passing it on at the right moment, and saying the names of the twelve cycles, the twenty modes, and the eight corpuses of the Long Conversation. You couldn’t use agents to help with anything, but that was okay because Fift and Grobbard never let her practice with agents anyway. She nodded.

  “And Grobbard concurs,” Pip said. “You are all disturbed by the betting, I know, but there is always betting around a Staidchild’s first Long Conversation, especially when…” she pursed her lips. “… when a cohort looks weak from outside.” She raised a hand, as if to quiet objections. “Only nine parents, only two of them Staids—the initial birth approval barely granted—the questions around Fift’s somatic integration—well, of course ignorant bettors imagine they see an opportunity! But they do not have the information we have. They are speculating. We know.”