by Rebecca Ore
“Hi, Lisanmarl,” I said. “Marianne and I are here to talk to your parents. Marianne wants to talk me into getting a breeding permit.”
Lisanmarl dropped her nose and hissed as if I’d smacked her. “I didn’t ask to be a sterile." Marianne’s lips jerked; she looked as abashed as I felt. Lisanmarl whistled softly and rubbed her hands down a leg of each of us, fast, and skittered away down the chain of green lights.
Chalk and Agate sat on the veranda in Jerek leathers, the front and back flaps longer than Lisanmarl’s, down to the ground. I shivered to see them, but they seemed very comfortable drinking iced drinks with fog condensing on the tips of their, fur.
Marianne said, “Your fur must insulate you very well.”
“The design catches water when the temperature is around freezing,” Agate said. “Did Lisanmarl pester you?”
“No,” I said.
Lisanmarl hissed slightly as she went inside.
“You must admit,” Reeann said, “that most human fathers would just have their daughters spayed if that would cure them of a permanent estrus that could be lethal.”
Yeah, the Jereks allowed their steriles a lot of civil liberties. Lisanmarl could even sell herself as a sexual entertainer. Chalk and Agate were unhappy but Lisanmarl hadn’t had her malfunctioning ovaries stripped out.
While Marianne unpacked, I went to the bathroom and the kitchen to see what they brought in for us to eat: milk, greens, beans, white square curds—either cheese or bean—and what looked like two fryers—frozen birds the size of chicken fryers, at least. When I came back to our room, Marianne said, “Chalk said we should come down to the tunnel in whatever clothes it takes us to be comfortable.”
I said, “It’s chilly down there.” We put on pants and tunic-length sweaters and carried our parkas. Down the elevator to their space.
The tunnel was as I’d remembered: dimly lit, cold water running between stones on the floor, water filling a tube and tipping it over, the plink, plink of dripping stones over pools. And the smell—wet fur, wet stone, mildew. Marianne blew out her breath—it barely fogged, the air was so humid. She said, not quite questioning, “You were led down here by pheromones and Brahms?”
We heard weird chimes then behind the first door on the right. Come in,” Chalk said, then the chimes began again, slightly discordant to a human ear. Marianne went in first and gasped. Chalk and Agate sat in front of rows of stones threaded on monofilament—jadeite, jasper, triple rows of stone chimes ran the width of the room against the left-hand wall. Candles on gold stands—six feet, seven feet high—flickered in the air currents we’d stirred as we entered the room. There was another odd light in the room—then I saw chunks of luminescent wood—fox fire—strapped to the ceiling. When the bioluminescence died, they could take out the old wood and put in new.
“This wasn’t here when I came down before?”
“No, we change our tunnels often,” Agate said. “We will suggest something, and we want you to sit and listen to our chimes before you reply.”
Chalk said, “You should work with Yangchenla, Sam, and the other humans. Improve your cultural level here.”
Agate added, “Just because Yangchenla and Sam had a good idea first is no reason for you to be stupid.”
“And don’t talk until we’ve finished playing,” Chalk added just before he struck a chime stone. They turned their backs to us and moved up and down the rows of chimes.
The music sounded almost like Yangchenla’s music. I shuddered, wanting to grasp these notes, change them and make the music be what I’d expected. Instead, the, slight discordances made me uneasy. I looked at Marianne. She exaggerated a wince.
The sounds weren’t quite like nails on slate. I thought about being human with the Tibetans, with Warren. Shit, Warren and Sam adjusted better to the Tibetans than I did—were they more primitive than me? I felt a bit racist to think that—of course, Sam wasn’t as primitive as I’d been when I first came to Karst.
I remembered one time when Yangchenla, naked, accused me of hating other humans, of wanting to be a Gwyng, an Ahram. Her kin were as capable as I, she told me; we were all hopelessly human. She then pulled on the Coke-bottle green American girl dress Tesseract had given her years earlier to wear for me when I first slept with her. After she’d jerked the dress on, she screamed—the air seemed crumpled by it—and ripped the dress down the bodice, stepped out of the ruins, and put on Tibetan clothes.
“Why,” I’d asked her.
“Because you want what isn’t here,” she had said.
Now I had Reeann and we both hung out with non-human Sapients in Karst City and in space. Maybe Molly was right, give the aliens a good genital embrace?
Warren—Warren fit right in with the Tibetans. The Federation sapients mangled one another—cultural contamination, rebuilt language centers and organs—and sometimes went further than that. The Barcons could destroy and rebuild whole personalities, and I’d bought Warren to that possibility.
The stones quivered to silence.
“Do you hear them as being in tune?” Marianne asked.
“No, these are bitter stones,” Chalk told her. “They unsettle.”
“Do we seem like Tibetans to you?” I asked.
“We won’t judge a whole species in a lump,” Chalk said, his nose dropping as if I’d annoyed him.
“Yangchenla ripped up a dress I liked.”
“You wanted to completely deny her family.” Agate sat down, kneeling, her short legs splayed out to either side. She fanned out the leather loincloth in front of her.
“My family’s dead,” Reeann said.
Agate looked at Chalk and answered, “Not your sister.
"And Tom has a brother. Your parents are dead and that’s sad. At least, it would be to us. But you could have children.”
“I want a child, but we’re not as pair-bonded as you,” Marianne said.
“We have no choice. We nurse a child together; we bond. There seems such pain in breaks when the species has a choice.”
Chalk added, “I hope you are both committed to taking care of the child. But Marianne can reproduce herself even if you don’t want a child, Tom.”
Since I saw by her face that Marianne wasn’t going to say anything, I said, “We heard something about bears.”
Why were we talking about children?
Chalk picked up the stick he’d used to strike the chimes and bit it. Agate made a noise between a hiss and a whistle.
“If bears are a bad idea, tell us,” Marianne said.
“They would take care of your child,” Chalk said. “But you distort their mating patterns by providing yourselves as child surrogates.” Agate interrupted in Jerek and they discussed us in a language we couldn’t follow.
“Oh, get a bear,” Agate said. “But human con-specifics would take better care of a human child than a bear would.”
“No human child could grow up normally here,” I said.
“It’s very awkward for Tom,” Marianne said.
“Having Tom try to be a non-human is also awkward. You’re a human. He’s a human. The others are human, too,” Chalk said. “If their wombs aren’t nourishing their embryos well enough to get good baby brains; or if they don’t know the right experiences to grow the brains properly, then the Federation should help them more. You and Tom are fully intelligent.”
“If their wombs aren’t nourishing their embryos…” Marianne repeated as if she’d just gotten a clue to the universe.
“Don’t you know that the female must be well grown and then fed and exercised properly while the fetus is developing to make good brain development? Then as the child grows, learning helps the brain become more complex."
“We kept arguing heredity and environment when we discussed that,” Marianne said.
Chalk said, “Absolutely everything is important. That’s why we have fetus-bearing classes and child growth classes when we know the species’ developmental biology.”
“Oh
,” Marianne said like perhaps we were dumb.
“We’re a bit harsh on this because of Lisanmarl. Barcons are researching that developmental problem.”
“Will Barcons deliver me?”
“You’re intelligent enough for a child-birth group."
You’ll learn to aid one another’s births. I’ll have another child to replace the breeding potential we lost with Lisanmarl,” Agate said. “We can do it together. And with Yangchenla.”
“I don’t want to have a child now;” I said. “When we’re ready, how, precisely, do we get a breeding permit?"
“This is for Ree’s child, as an Institute linguist.” Chalk reached into a cabinet and brought out a piece of fiber-surfaced material like plasticized paper, no, parchment.
He slipped a needle out of a case and came over to me. When he showed me the form, his face shifted up and down as though he wanted to watch my expression but didn’t want to give me a challenging stare. Printed on the form was “Officer/aspirant mated couple Red Clay/Ree Karst cycle 5,062, the nineteenth light period. A breeding permit for Ree with sera samples attached. Witnessed by Rector’s People Agate and Chalk.” A second circle was for the female’s pregnancy test.
Chalk went over to Reeann, took her index finger, and pricked it. I said, “Reeann’s baby Reeann’s baby? She’s my wife. I…”
Reeann looked up at me as her blood fell on the second circle. “Tom, better to nurse while I’m still in training. Being out on teams is risky, no?”
Agate said; “Would you want this to be semen sample baby? And, Tom, the Barcons want your help in subduing Warren.”
“Oh, damn you all.” I felt trapped by humans and aliens. The whole universe forced me to be a brother a father.
Chalk said, “They’re trying to bring him for brain mapping. He’s being uncooperative.”
“Do I deserve this?” Warren asked me. He was in a cage, hunkered up on the bunk with his arms around his knees, a cigarette in one hand. I was inside with him.
“I’m sorry, Warren. They say they can help.”
“They’ve been netting me every month to inject that damn Prolixin.” He dragged on the cigarette, pinching it between his fingers and squinting through the smoke. “Okay, they did ease down the doses.”
“Why didn’t you just come in when they wanted you to?”
He crushed out the lit tobacco and stuck the butt in his shirt pocket—an American-styled shirt in Karst fabric. His Tibetan girl must have made it for him, “It’s insulting. I was almost free when you guys dragged me off.”
A Barcon came into the hall between the holding cells and watched us. Warren scowled at him. I said, “Warren, I couldn’t have left you there, that way. You were…you’re, my brother.”
“And you’re a pouch-hole licker.”
“Warren, don’t be hostile.”
The Barcon finally spoke. “Brain mapping goes easier with a cooperative specimen.”
Barcon, specimen is the wrong word to use, I thought.
Warren bit down on his lips, lips completely curled inside his mouth.
The Barcon plucked at his shoulder fur while he said, “Warren, we’re leaving your personality intact because you are a sapient. Your Karst language shows full structure, even though you try to distort it toward the primitive dialect variation.”
“Nifty,” Warren said in English.
“Warren, please cooperate. They’re going to help you.”
“Whether I like it or not.”
“Your drug use shifted brain chemistry and some structure,” the Barcon said. “We will try to restore function."
“I did drugs because…”
The Barcon interrupted, “The environment changed for you and the other humans here. It can continue to change.”
“We’re not in Virginia anymore, Warren.”
“Get me out of this cage.”
“Promise no punching,” the Barcon said.
“Yes, unless you…shit, yes.” Warren still used English expletives. The Barcon came up to the cage door and keyed the combination on a number pad. Warren didn’t look at the Barcon as he slouched out. I followed Warren, seeing how his shoulders slumped, how grey and bald he was getting, his neck coarse-skinned behind. What was he going to do here if they could fix him up? We walked into the brain-mapping room where three more Barcons surrounded a chair with a needled helmet like the one I’d been tested with before I came to Karst.
“The needles are so little they don’t hurt,” I told Warren. He looked at me like you fuck and at the Barcons, as if speculating on their muscle insertions, the body leverage they had over him Finally, he sat in the chair, gripping the armrests hard enough to push the blood from his fingers. His left eyelid twitched.
The Barcon who’d walked down from the cages with us cranked the helmet down, pushed a button, cranked the helmet down farther, then said, “Mapping the brain is a bit more complex than minimally testing it.”
I held Warren’s shoulders as they injected him with something that gave him slow breathing, rigid flexibility. Whatever it was, it didn’t stop his sweating, “Can he hear me?” I asked the Barcons, my hand dropping on his wrist.
“Feel the pulse,” one of the three other Barcons said.
I did; it was racing. “Warren, it’s all right.”
The four Barcons began strapping Warren in the chair, immobilizing his head inside the helmet. “While a little needle motion isn’t too harmful,” the largest Barcon explained, “you want his brain map to be accurate, don’t you?”
I nodded, not quite sure. A Barcon mopped out Warren’s mouth with a wet swab, then fastened the helmet’s chin strap. They left Warren and began to stand around a holotank and multi-keyed computer muttering to each other in Barq, their backs to us.
Warren blinked slowly, with automated blinks. I kept saying, “Warren, I want you to be completely okay,” rubbing his fingers.
Then one Barcon came back to lower a shield over Warren’s eyes. Urine began seeping through Warren’s pants. The Barcon said, “‘Warren, we’re beginning repairs, like the language operations, setting up brain growth.”
When the Barcons finally lifted the eye shield, Warren’s blinks were as regularly timed as ever, but Warren’s pulse ran fast, then slow. Odd feeling him through the skin without him being able to tell me how he felt.
They injected a counter-drug to the one that had left him paralyzed. His eye-blinks became erratic. A Barcon unfastened the chin strap. Warren gasped, flexed his tongue, and said, “Bastards.”
“Everything must stay in place. We need you to talk.”
Warren’s face seemed to age, wrinkles deeper, eyes filmed, not quite frowning, not quite. I said to the Barcons, “You’re making it a confrontation.”
“We’re helping him,” the Barcon who’d brought us into the room said. “We’ve done brain reconstructions on our own people after parasite-removal.”
“I’m cold,” Warren said. One of them loosened the straps holding down his thighs, then wrapped him with a paper-felt blanket. Warren rolled his eyes at the Barcon and said, “What do you need me to say? Poor stupid human craves interstellar master?”
“Close your eyes,” the Barcon who’d put the blanket on him said. Warren squenched his eyelids tight. One of the other Barcons at the computer spoke in Barq.
The Barcon beside Warren said, “Tell us what you see.”
“It’s a small bird,” Warren said.
“Are the beats regular?”
“Wing flaps regular. And it’s going up to the right. Is that important?”
“Regularly, or in jerks.”
“Jerked down.”
“Here?”
“Bird flew backward and jerked.”
“Discontinuity mapped,” the Barcon at the computer said. “We’ll rebuild the axons and dendrites in that area.”
“Nifty,” Warren said, “but what am I missing?”
“Fine discrimination,” the Barcon said, “in threat evaluation. Th
at’s why you lost control of your bladder sphincter when we shielded your vision.”
Warren turned brick red. I wished I wasn’t here. They asked, “Are you ready to continue mapping?”
“Sure,” Warren said like he was going to kill them when they loosened the straps. They continued with grids that distorted across injured parts of Warren’s brain, washes of colors that shifted where neurotransmitters were inadequate or in excess.
Finally, they seemed to be playing with him, and I, wondering about my own paranoia, asked when they’d be finished with him.
They stopped and talked Barq, then said, “If he won’t hit us when we loosen the straps, we won’t play him out.”
“Warren?” Pale and, sweaty, his face looked as much younger from the sweat as it had looked older from tense muscles earlier. He nodded to me. I said, “Let him up.”
“I’ve got to take a shower,” he said.
I went out to a waiting room, then one of the Barcons brought me back to him. They’d put him in a regular Kart hospital bed, paper-felt sheets up to his chin. Beard stubs coarsened his skin. I’d refused to be depilated, but on his face, beard stubbles looked threatening.
“I can’t remake my life just because vr’ech re-build my brain,” Warren said, his head turned to the side, eyes blinking. His Karst was perfect now, as though the human accent earlier had been contrived. “I have a past.”
“We can change your memories of that,” one of the Barcons said, “and you have a slightly longer future now.”
Warren rolled over to completely face the wall, the sheet slipping off his hairy shoulder. For a second, I was as intimidated by him as I’d been as a child, wondering if a completely repaired Warren would be my superior. An ugly surge of jealousy—I should feel happy for Warren.
He mumbled to the wall, “If you change my memories, you kill me. See you bastards.”
The Barcon curled his nose to the side as if he knew what the English word “bastards” meant. I started out.
Warren rolled over and sat up in the bed, saying in English, almost joking, “Tom, am I gonna have to have breakfast alone?”