Behind Sargon, hissing erupted out of sight down the corridor.
Sargon’s voice was level, in a chanting pitch that combined a benediction with machine translation. “Ah. The light. On Beacon Hill. How amusing. It does not beckon our return. It beckons Swenson’s.”
“Swenson’s?”
“Swenson befriended our lines. Swenson was an ally against the vermin.” At this, Sargon descended the steps with two strides, jerked Laurel close with the gripping hand, pulled her head forward, and stared directly into her startlingly aquamarine eyes. “And you, vermin, claim to be of Swenson?”
Asach froze, startled by Sargon’s sudden fury; afraid to move; afraid not to, expecting Laurel to dissolve into depression. Surprisingly, she did not. “Yes,” she said firmly, “I am. The Defenders kept the mountain and this valley free of settlement. He said ‘keep this covenant, and you will be fed manna at the hands of angels.’ So we did. And you’ve come back, and today you fed me manna. As Seer, it is my duty to proclaim your return, and beg sustenance for the faithful.”
Sargon released her. She did not move. Now it was Laurel who stared into Sargon’s inscrutable eyes. Sargon’s third eyelid closed; opened. “You lie. Even now, your vermin destroy my ar.”
“Ar?” queried Asach, hoping to break the tension.
The cloak answered. Ar. Noun, all-gender. Productivity, fertility, capacity, capability, duty, responsibility, land, land-value, allotment, profit, rate of production, production value, production unit, amount of produce, unit of land measurement approximately equivalent to—
“Stop!”
Sargon swiveled to ponder this odd Master that stood conversing with itself. Asach spluttered for words, but once again Laurel was the faster.
“No!” she shouted, shaking her head emphatically. “Not us! You mean the sand miners, right? The poachers? The sand miners operating out of Watson Station?”
Sargon snapped back before she’d even finished, in the same disgusted tone used to say vermin. “Miners! No! No Miner would behave so! They waste labor! They use huge constructions to gouge out pits bigger than a hundred Houses! They fill the air with vile smoke and flood the valley with poisoned water! They are vermin! They destroy the ar. It costs me a bloody fortune to restore it! At least three additional Miners and a dedicated Farmer.”
Rather than showing any upset at this reply, Laurel was nodding agreement. “That’s them. They came in after the First Jackson delegation—” she looked daggers at Asach— “and drove us out. I had to reroute the Gathering to work around them. That’s when I ran into your—Farmer?”
Well, thought Asach. There’s my job simplified. Let’s just let all the locals go sort this out among themselves, shall we? Asach interrupted before Sargon could reply. “Perhaps, Your Excellency, I should explain about the Jackson commission?”
“By all means,” responded Sargon dryly.
“Before I began, milord, might I ask you a question?. You mentioned a beacon? To recall Swenson?”
“Yes,” said Sargon. “Swenson’s line.”
“And where is it that—Swenson’s line—are to return from?”
Sargon spread all three arms wide, in a stance that even the humans could read as incredulous. “Well, like you, of course. From the stars.”
“Ah,” said Asach, head pounding. Clearly, the first commission should have gotten out more. “Then perhaps I should explain about the Empire of Man.”
“Yes,” said Sargon, with growing impatience. “John David Swenson, of the Empire of Man. He pledged that, one day, his allies would follow.”
Ah, thought Asach, and, against all probability, here we are. Well, now I’m violating nothing by telling them we exist. Always a treat when colonials make promises on behalf of Empire. “Jackson is the name of the Governor of Swenson’s home world now. The Jackson Commission will arrive soon to offer New Utah membership in the Empire. If New Utah decides to join, the Commission will decide its status. My duty is to make preparations for the Commission’s arrival.”
Sargon grasped immediately many possible implications of that statement. “Offer? Offer to whom?”
“The planetary government.”
“Explain government.”
“Legitimate authority.”
“Legitimate how? Authority for what?”
And there’s the rub, thought Asach, because legally I can’t tell them what the classification standards are, lest they change to meet them. Asach found a neutral reply. “To make agreements. To decide. To keep the peace.”
“The Meeting decides. The Masters police their Houses.”
Asach did not respond.
“The Protector, the Masters of the six cities, with their Accountants and advisors. Keepers and Defenders of ar.”
Still, Asach made no reply. Sargon resumed the offensive.
“What status. What preparations?”
“Regarding status, that is not for me to say. I serve only as advisor. Regarding preparations, I arrange—things—for the Commissioners.”
They were interrupted, as Laurel balled a fist, pounding her own thigh in fury as angry tears welled I her eyes. “It won’t matter. It doesn’t matter. They won’t come out here. They won’t listen to us. Not any of us. The True Church controls the TCM, and the TCM controls the tithe. It will be like last time. The Commission’ll go to Saint George and do whatever the True Church says.”
Sargon was exasperated. Why did this anathema even dare to speak? It—she—claimed to be of Swenson’s line. If so, that line was clearly at an end. Sargon pointed to Asach. “You evade.” Then to Laurel. “You lie. You are anathema. You are incomplete. You carry no lines.” Then back to Asach. “Things. Preparations. Your words mean nothing. Why are you here? Tell me now: why! You are a Master. You are entire. Do you bring Swenson’s lines?” Sargon’s voice was not actually louder, but Asach’s intestines began to writhe. It felt like being microwaved: from the inside out.
Groggily, Asach remembered details from Swenson’s report on reproductive physiology. It dawned that, quite probably, Sargon meant something very specific, and important, by lines, and entire. That perhaps the Accountant had reported rather a lot of detail from their initial disrobing at the customs house. This might prove tricky. But just possible…
“Laurel?”
She looked up with haunted, angry, eyes.
“What do Himmists know about Angels?
For an instant, she was shaken from anger to exasperation by this non sequitor. “What I’ve told you. They raise manna. They—”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean, what are they like? How are they made?”
“Made?”
“Are they made in His image?”
She snorted. “Well, obviously, no.”
“How not?”
She rolled her eyes. But she did not speak of superficial things like one ear and three arms. “Surely, even you know that. Humans are made in His image.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning ‘male and female He made them.’ Angels aren’t. They’re—different. They’re neither man nor woman.”
“You mean neuter. Sexless.”
“Oh, for His sake! Can you really be this thick? That’s the point. Angels are perfect in His gaze. They’re complete. They’re—” and suddenly Laurel’s eyes went wide. She looked at Asach with growing horror—“entire.” She backed away, then sat abruptly as her exit was cut off by the sleeping couch. “What are you?”
But Asach deflected the question, instead answering directly to Sargon.
“I think, Laurel, that it might be useful if you explained to Archangel Sargon something about your lines. Beginning with your parents. Your mother and your father. I think that might help The Excellency to understand why you claim to be allies. And I advise, Your Excellency, that among humans, she is very far indeed from being counted as anathema.”
But Sargon was finished, and with an exasperated wave, departed. “Enough. Explain this rubbish to Enheduanna.�
� Then, in a rumble that rolled down the corridor, “Summon the Doctors. I would know my enemy.”
I am not, thought Asach, going to enjoy this physical exam.
Enheduanna waited, interested but passive.
“Laurel, unless you want to disrobe for what passes as the medical establishment here, I’d start talking. Now.”
They talked for hours. Enheduanna, by now aware of the humans oddly insatiable need for daily sustenance, ordered more green goo and water. As Laurel worked her way through generations of begats, Enheduanna asked the same questions over and over. “And…he was? And…she was?” At first the pronouns were hopelessly confused, but as forenames repeated and the pattern became clear, Enheduanna’s pronouns became unerringly accurate.
“So, your—people—always have two parents?”
Laurel gave the are-you-too-stupid-to-breathe- look, but simply nodded. “Yes.”
“And without two parents, all get are—impossible?”
She nodded again.
“And one parent is always—male, while the other is always—female?”
“Yes, of course,” she nodded. “That’s true for everybody. Humans are all made male and female.”
Enheduanna swiveled to face Asach, who remained impassive. “I would like this to be recorded by the Doctors.”
Laurel writhed with discomfort. “I don’t want—”
“Of course,” said Asach. “Me first.” Staring intently into Enheduanna’s eyes. “Then Laurel. You’ll find her to be a perfectly normal female.”
Enheduanna gestured and made purring sounds. Laurel shrank back, but the Doctors—long fingered, hare-lipped, lips pulled back slightly to expose olfactory pores on the roofs of their mouths—first walked directly to the corner, to examine the contents of the chamber pots. They sniffed deeply; rotated them; peered into their depths; exchanged them. Involuntarily, Laurel made an I-can’t-believe-how-disgusting-they-are curl of her nose and one eye.
Satisfied with the pots, the Doctors next approached Asach, and sniffed carefully, head to toe. They paused and sniffed as Asach inhaled and exhaled. One steadied Asach’s back lightly with the gripping hand, placed its twelve spidery fingers carefully over Asach’s abdomen and torso, and made a continuous, barely audible humming noise. The other bent at the waist and circled Asach, its ear held close. The humming stopped abruptly; the Doctors chattered a moment in a high-pitched burring; the first one rearranged its fingers, and then began again. They repeated this exercise a dozen times, until the finger placement had covered one hundred forty-four points. None of it was particularly uncomfortable. Asach was too tense to be ticklish, but twitched involuntarily as the probing fingers crept down the abdomen, eventually landing to ring the lower edge of the pelvic girdle.
Then they traded places. This time, the examination appeared to be muscular, skeletal, and circulatory. While one hummed, the other felt for, and found, multiple pulse-points: throat, armpits, elbows, wrists, ankles, knees, inner thighs, groin. On the way, it probed major muscle attachments, manipulated all of Asach’s joints, carefully examined the structures of the hand, and curled and uncurled Asach’s spine with as much evident interest as the Miners had shown.
Other than removal of boots for a foot examination, to everyone’s relief at no point did they require Asach to disrobe. Then they turned to Laurel. She blushed. The Doctors noted this immediately, with some excitement. Enheduanna translated, indicating Laurel’s face. “Is this normal? This change in skin color?”
Asach smiled. “Yes. It is an involuntary response. It is triggered by many things: fear, anxiety, anger, excitement.”
The Doctors sniffed especially carefully at Laurel’s breath; immediately felt for pulse points; chattered between themselves, then continued the systematic examination as they had done for Asach. When they got to the lower abdomen, they stopped, puzzled. They traded places, and repeated the exercise. They purred at Enheduanna, who translated.
“The Doctors have questions.”
“Yes?”
“You both have—”
Asach interrupted before Enheduanna could finish the sentence. “I am assuming that your Doctors can see—can form mental pictures, based on the sounds they make—inside our bodies?”
Enheduanna chattered something to a Doctor, who replied. “Yes, after a fashion.”
“And smell very precisely? Smell the—chemical compounds—that make up our bodies, and that we excrete?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell them that Laurel is a complete and typical human female, with usual levels of female sex-determining and reproductive hormones.” I hope that’s true Asach thought, gesturing in the direction of Laurel’s chamber-pot. “Including a normal womb,” Asach placed both hands over the lower abdomen, roughly wherein the uterus would lie, “where female eggs are fertilized by male sperm, and the zygote grows until it passes out of the female body via the birth canal.”
Enheduanna conveyed this information, and received more emphatic purring in reply.
“Yes, that is their question. It seems that—”
Asach interrupted again. “A typical, complete male does not have these organs. The male usually has only two testes that produce sperm, which are ejected from the organ that houses the urine tract. A typical male has very low levels of the same hormones, but very high levels of male hormones.”
Enheduanna conveyed this to the Doctors, who answered only briefly this time.
“And other configurations are—”
“Are normal, but not usual. They are more common in some populations than others. Some are reproductively viable, some are not. Whether they are considered to be acceptable varies by culture. In many, they are seen as what you would call anathema.”
Enheduanna considered this. “How very odd.”
But Asach’s dodges were insufficient. Laurel had grasped the undertones of this medicalized conversation. This time, her response was more angry than frightened. “What are you?” she snapped, marching toward Asach. “Are you a man, or a woman? I thought you were—”
Now, Enheduanna interrupted, with a tone that had finally mastered the quizzical. “This one is like us. This one is complete. You do not find this acceptable?’
Laurel fumed, with an anger Asach knew all too well. The deceived one. The betrayed one. Although there had been betrayal of nothing, save the undiscussed presumptions of another. Asach answered with practiced, weary patience. “It’s probably best if you just stick with whatever you’ve presumed all along. That usually works out best. Stay in your own comfort zone. And when my actions—when I—don’t quite match up to your presumptions—which I won’t, always, because I can’t—just remember, it’s not intentional. It’s not a judgment. It’s just different.”
Enheduanna comprehended this with amazement. Moties could not shake their heads, but somehow the gesture was conveyed by voice. “We could not have survived in this way. We are too few. Too widely disbursed. Too hunted. Especially the Masters.”
Laurel plunked back down onto the couch. “Tell me.” she said woodenly. “Tell me how you do it.”
Across the gulf of species, language, age, and experience, Enheduanna could not and did not understand what ran through Laurel’s head. Surely the actual mechanics of reproduction could not possibly be so upsetting. In Enheduanna’s experience, only a threat to the ar could be this upsetting. Enheduanna understood what every Master did: Enheduanna understood the ar. Ar was at the center and heart and soul of anything. The ar of the land; the ar of the people; the ar of the lines. So Enheduanna sought to explain, at the highest possible level, the role of ar and reproductive mechanics in Sargon’s House.
“We Masters are fashioned from All. All are in us. That is how we can Speak with the Voice to All. We can mate, Master to Master, but when We do, we cannot know, for certain, what will result. We risk the false Master: a Keeper, who remains ever-sterile. He may nurture our storehouses, administer our cattle, but cannot Speak and so cannot defend the
ar. A Keeper will live long, but over time his ar will dwindle, and his name will be blown back to the dust whence it came. Masters always risk losing the Voice. We may bear one who speaks, but with a Voice for only the few. And we risk anathema: the four-armed ones. The incomplete ones. The ones like you humans: half-ones, one thing, or another, male, or female, but never whole. The ones with no ar.
“To guarantee continuity, a Master must make the Royal Marriage. Carry all in them. Bring forth children. But when they do this, it is their last. The Royal Marriage is a marriage with eternity. It can only be made once. A Master must always know when to make get, or try to make children. Too early, or too often, and they must divide their ar; splinter their ar, or sell their own as cattle—as Vermin must do. Too late, and the Marriage will fail.
“But only very, very rarely does even the Royal Marriage make a Great Master. They know that they have succeeded if there is only one. Only one child. If it is to be a Great Master, all the children they carry will be merged into one, and they will bear that one. But the bearing will exhaust them. The bearing of all, requires all. They will be as a Runner, at the end of a run. No Doctor can save them then, nor would try. But that child will be reared by all, and thus will Speak to All.
Asach pondered this. “So, this Royal Marriage, is made—where?”
“With All, before all.”
“In public.”
“Yes, it must be.”
“And with—all what? All who?”
“All castes. The best from all castes. Farmers. Warriors. Miners. And every Master line.”
“But how do they control this?”
“They control who receives the darts. Both partners inject darts before they exchange sperm. Both partners carry eggs. The darts determine which will carry the get to term. If one only receives them, that one will bear the get or children.”
“How does a Master control who receives the darts?”
“They prepare the day before. They prepare by ejecting all of their own. Any get will be raised to staff the new household. Those sent to make the Marriage must prepare as well. Eat properly. Build and retain their darts.”
Outies Page 23