by M. A. Foster
Even so, she thought further, eruptions are few and far between. Give them that credit. The forerunners accepted the regimented, managed life forced upon them by overpopulation and had even managed to reduce their increase-rate to a niggling, infinitesimal amount. But they were all conscious descendants of an age, not so very far away in the historic sense of time, which was still vividly recalled by Earth’s billions as The Black Hand of Malthus. The Days of the Hand. They had reduced its visibility, but never its presence: the Black Hand still awaited the unwary, offstage in the wings.
Facing to the right as she sat in the window, she had to look back over her left shoulder to see what little was visible of her own country, the sole home on Earth, or in the whole universe, for that matter, of the New Humans, Metahomo Novalis. There was a fence around the reservation, an ordinary chain-link barrier about eight feet high. It served no purpose save to mark a boundary, for few there were on either side of it who wished to cross to the other side. Near the fence, the land inside seemed to be empty, abandoned, allowed to be feral, half-wild, scrubby; but farther back, the forest started, here tall dark pines that concealed the inner lands. It looked ancient, a remnant of the great forests which had once covered most of the continent; but in reality most of the forest growth in the reservation was recent in terms of nature. Second-growth. The eastern sections of the reservation, in particular, where newer growth gradually extended out of the older sections farther west. It had been a forest preserve that few knew about until they had asked for it. Fellirian sighed deeply. She felt a sudden longing to be back inside, back within her own identity, in her natural surround. This room in this overbuilt Institute building was too hot, too dry, and it smelled of plastic, an odor she never found especially unpleasant, but nonetheless one she had never got used to. . . .
Chronologically, Fellirian was forty-five. Parent phase. In appearance, however, she struck most of the human visitors who met with her to be somewhere in a vague adulthood, late twenties, perhaps early thirties. A smallish, but not petite, slightly built woman with the traditional subtle figure of the ler. Somewhere along the way, she had collected an almost invisible network of fine lines along the planes of her face, lines that helped and accented the subtle beauty of the plain, almost elfin face. Fellirian was not a beauty, neither by her standards nor those of the humans, but her appearance reassured. Being relaxed and at peace with herself, she projected a reassurance that included others as well.
In her own view, her appearance fit her age, more or less; she did not ponder on the matter overly. She was not vain. She knew how others reacted to her, always had. She was satisfied; she had lived a reasonably full life, in many ways better and more fortunate than some.
Forty-five. Almost through the second span. Then another of the many transitions they used to mark the stages of their lives in time. Sexually, she was now, and had been for some five years, effectively neuter, although she retained her personal sense of gender unchanged. No, not unchanged. If anything, it had increased. She had been one of the minority of ler females to have a third fertile period after the second. She had been pleased with their Zerh, the boy Stheflannai. Third fertilities and fraternal twins were the only way the ler ever got ahead of the merciless algorithms of population increase. And before that, she mused, it had been Kevlendos, one of our insiblings, who will weave in his season with the child of our others who is called Pentandrun-Toorh. And of course our firstborn Pethmirvin, a slender, fragile girl who resembles none of us. Ages five, ten, fifteen. Twenty years hence, Kevlendos and Pentandrun would weave to become the then-Derens. And for her, Fellirian? They would then be the Derenklan; the name, the work, the family holdings—all would be theirs. She would be just herself, free. Fellirian Srith. Lady Fellirian. A new life. She could live by herself, solitary, a lonely mnathman9, or remain with her former Braidmates, although they would have to find another place to live. They could not stay in the old Braid holding—that went to the children. Or perhaps she could join one of the lodges, communes into which most elders eventually moved. The ler analog of marriage was like the human model in that it had a beginning; it was utterly unlike it in that it had a predetermined end as well. It was also unlike the human model in that it was neither desirable nor optional, but mandatory. . . .
Fellirian rarely delivered her lectures, or occasional harangues, alone. Much of the time the Director of the Institute was in and out, visiting with the strangers, hobnobbing with the tourists who had come to be amazed and astounded, and have their suspicions allayed. But for all that he did with the visitors, Walter Vance admitted candidly that his primary purpose in attending the meetings was to spend a rare moment with Fellirian, who had been his friend, associate, and confidante for the more than twenty years he had been associated with the Institute. Their relationship had, like all close relationships, probably raised more questions than it answered, but at the least it satisfied a basic orientation shared by both of them in equal measure: they preferred to deal with real, though flawed in various degrees, creatures of flesh and blood and the moment, rather than a set of lifeless abstractions borrowed from a carelessly written programmed text.
With trust and a genuine fondness for each other, they could explore aspects of otherness with little fear of giving or taking offense; this was not a little thing, for the cultural gap between ler and human was an order of magnitude greater than the genetic differences, and it was growing yearly. When Vance had persuaded Fellirian to spend a little time with the Institute they had not one single ler assigned to expound on their values; all was done by humans, mostly well-intentioned but who had little direct knowledge of their subject material. They spoke skillfully, they adhered to rigorous scholarship, but they missed the feel of their subjects. Conversely, ler labored under much the same system in their view of humans. Painfully aware of their vulnerability of slow population growth, they withdrew into their reservation and further into their own identities. Vance and Fellirian could not arrest or greatly change the course of the drift of several centuries, but what little they had done they regarded as being of a value considerably above zero.
Vance now sat in a chair to one side, bored with the endless tailspin semantic arguments of the visitors among themselves, a process of which he had to endure entirely too much within his own organization. Above and below. While he waited for them to return to reality and finish the day, he watched Fellirian as she sat on the windowsill and looked into the depths of November, overcast and rain-spattered.
His perception of her was subjective, colored by memory, subtly distorted by many emotions, some of which had sources that remained concealed from him, no matter how hard he tried to dig at them. Paradoxically, he had found Fellirian to have more objective perceptions than he had, even where accustomed and familiar matters were considered. He had imagined that having total recall would muddy the image of the present even more, but, to the contrary, he had found that for them it made the present clearer. The images were distinct.
In the light of the room, and the soft overcast daylight coming in through the windows, he saw a graceful ler woman of indeterminate age sitting in the windowsill, wearing the typical general-purpose garment of males and females alike, in its winter variation, the zimpleth. This was, in essence, something resembling a loose, informally cut shirt with a very long tail that reached to the ankles. It flowed loosely around the contours of her body, terminating along her arms in wide sleeves which did not quite reach to her wrists. There was nothing under the zimpleth save Fellirian, but somehow it managed completely to conceal the shape within its lines. She was barefoot, but for the moment little showed, as she had folded her legs beneath her. He saw in her profile that she yet had the visage he knew of old, a tomboy, impudent, mischievous face, with a strong nose just slightly too large for the face, and a wide, generous soft mouth inclined to secret laughters. Her skin was light in color, even so slightly shadowed by a darker tone. Her hair was a neutral dark brown, very fine and straight, tied at
her neck into a single braid which fell to the middle of her back.
Vance had met Fellirian when he had come to the Institute; they were approximately the same age in years. During the time he had known her, he had seen many aspects of her; as an adolescent, in his eyes then promiscuous and oversexed. But also as a rodhosi, one of parent phase, serious and practical, and as head-of-clan completely absorbed in the management and continuity of its affairs. Now, on the edge of true elderness. Ler lifespans reached to one hundred and twenty and beyond; half their lives spent in the first three phases, and the rest in the last phase. They held that one did not become oneself until elderhood, when, as they put it, the distractions fell away, and essences were revealed. In Fellirian, some creature within herself, more individual and unique than he cared to imagine, was beginning to emerge.
Twenty years. They had worked well together, learned from each other. They had become close friends and grown to enjoy one another’s company as few such pairs had in the history of the Institute. Nothing had passed between them deeper than friendship, nor more intimate than a handshake, which always felt odd and unreal to Vance. One could convince oneself that ler were just other humans of small stature and almost childish appearance until one saw and felt the hand. The inner thumb was smaller and more delicate than the human thumb, and the outer opposable thumb, derived from the little finger, was stronger than its original. This change made the ler hand seem too long and narrow, and it felt wrong. Moreover, they seemed to lack the concept of “handedness” entirely. Ler wrote with either hand equally well, holding the writing instrument with either thumb. Still, after twenty years, it disturbed Vance’s perceptions to watch Fellirian writing some office memorandum, holding the pen with an outer thumb and pulling it along the direction of writing.
If the hand had become a symbol for the alien quality, the one thing which stood out above the many ambiguities, then the reality had been more directly evoked when he had met her insibling and (then) co-parent to be. This bothered Vance, too, in some unconscious manner he could not quite fathom; the insiblings did not have common biological parents, yet they were raised together. They were always close in age, separations of more than a year being so rare as to be not worth mentioning. In some ways, closer than brother and sister in the human analog. Indeed closer, since the ler had no incest-taboo. This circumstance took the ancient argument of nature versus nurture, genetics against culture, and brought it head-on into direct opposition. The insiblings were alike, and different, all at the same time.
So Morlenden: rather alike, and totally dissimilar. In some subtle way beyond Vance’s perceptions, he was most like Fellirian, in expressions, turns of speech, gestures. But he did not look like her at all. Against Fellirian’s soft features, Morlenden had crisp, almost chiseled features. There was the tiniest possible suggestion of an epicanthic fold in the corners of his eyes, and his glance was direct and disturbingly contemplative. But he was neither dour of disposition nor abrupt of manner, but rather easy and sometimes inclined to elaborate pranks. His skin was darker than Fellirian’s, of a tone that suggested American Indian rather than Asian. Seeing them apart was to see reflections of the other in the one at hand. Vance had come to understand that it was similar with all insiblings. Vance could not conceive of sleeping with the same person for forty-five years, growing up together, occasionally taking one another after the casual manner of ler adolescents, and then making the transition into dual heads-of-family. Humans for the most part lived in dormitories and kept the sexes separate. Nothing else had worked.
Like all poignant experiences, meeting Morlenden had caused Vance to reassess his perceptions, both of Fellirian and of the female; in both secondary sex characteristics and culture, there was almost no sex differentiation among them. Dressed, the differences almost vanished to the human eye. He thought this quality was what disturbed humans most; an internal drive. We do not lust for the opposite sex, but for youth and innocence. The thought formed before he had time to cut it off at the source. He refused to follow it, even to prove it false; it led into a whole world, a universe, of heresies and forbidden speculations . . . forbidden, at any rate, to a member of a culture which had been forced to become puritan, not out of religious mania but of necessity. Of all methods of contraception, only abstinence had the combination of one-hundred-percent effectiveness and zero-rate side effects. Zero? Not quite zero. There were obvious consequences, even if they were in the mind and not especially located in the body. Vance shut that one down, too. His mind was wandering in disturbing tangents today; perhaps the moody autumnal tanh weather. . . .
The omnipresent low buzz of conversation among the visitors had become faded and quiet in the last few moments. Vance now noticed it; Fellirian, for all her apparent inattention, had also noted it and climbed down off the windowsill, using a flowing, graceful motion Vance had always noticed in her. She went over to the chair she sometimes used, but now she did not sit in it, but stood, quietly, and nodded to the group to indicate that she was again ready to proceed.
A member of the visitors’ group, a nervously aggressive woman of indeterminate middle age, wearing the heavy pleated and folded clothing of the day with indifference, and still retaining rubber covers over her heavy shoes, stood up, clearing her throat.
The woman began, “I am somewhat awkward here. I do not know how I should address you, directly.” She had seen the same data as the others during her tour, and she could visualize the ler family structure as well as any of them present; yet she felt ill at ease in the presence of an active member of such a family organization. The family was now a rarity in human society. The voice which had made the tentative overture was heavy with the linguistic woodsmoke of the Balkans.
Fellirian smiled and chuckled, trying to set the woman at some ease. “Well, not Mrs. Deren, whatever you do. I suppose the nearest I could come to that would be to call myself the female half of an entity that corresponds to a Mr. Deren. I am an insibling. I retain the Braid surname. But here and for now, ‘Fellirian’ will be fine. It is the way we would address one another.” Her voice was pleasant and clear, alto in intonation, projecting the Modanglic of the day without recognizable regional accent or mannerism. Still, there was some fleeting suggestion in the way she chose her words and enunciated them that Modanglic was a foreign language to her, however well she spoke it. It was.
The woman sighed and said, after an appreciable pause, “Very well then. So. That sounds easy enough, although I have never accustomed myself to addressing people by their first names. But I understand. The way you would use it in your own environment, I imagine it would be formal enough.”
Fellirian agreed, pleasantly. “Indeed. We have a great deal of formality among ourselves, little distinctions that sometimes reflect kinship groups, or relative social status. Never fear! We make mistakes, too.”
“These matters are the cause of much misunderstanding, I agree. So, then, to matters at hand. Fellirian, here you represent your people for us as people, so perhaps this is inappropriate to ask. But in my own Region 10 we have little contact with your people. Virtually none, as a matter of fact. And of course one hears tales. Our office has to deal with recurring questions relating to this.”
Fellirian felt uncomfortable. It was a long preamble. She nodded, saying, “Please continue.”
“I am very confused by what I have seen here. Out in the world, it is common belief that you are somehow superior to us, that you have an . . . ah . . . evolutionary edge on us. In short, you are greatly feared. Yet here I see a tribal, agricultural society, apparently disliking both aggressiveness and technology. Not to mention surrounded and outnumbered. In short, you do not appear to be competing with us. No competition, no threat. Can you shed any light on this . . . contradiction?”
Fellirian saw something that made her wary. At the start of her question, the woman had been tentative and embarrassed, projecting the image of a bureaucrat of some rural Region about the tatters of Europe. Yet as she h
ad come to phrase her question, her confidence had risen noticeably, and in fact she had almost answered it herself. Somewhere in the back of Fellirian’s mind, a relay clicked. She felt a sudden oppression. There was subtlety here: the woman was bait. Someone was waiting for her reaction. Her answer. She was not certain, of course. Intuition, only.
She began, tentatively, “If you wish me to take the Aristotelian path and say yes or no, I must, on the balance, say no.”
“No? Not superior?”
“I know from my history that such was the aim of those who manipulated human genetic material to bring us into being. True. They were after the Superman, sure enough. It is an old dream. We have not been immune to it. But they did not then have fine control. Not then and not now. They could not, for example, read the message of the genetic code and then change exact parts of it to order. They could shock or juggle or graft larger segments and then screen for viables. As you may know, mutation means only change. I cannot stress that too much. It is not a matter of one set being inferior or superior. Just different. In nature, a highly structured feedback system with the environment and with others, and in higher forms, with culture, tends to stabilize organic forms and fine-tune them. Out of their program of artifice, several forms actually appeared, all of which were equally viable, more or less. They took us because we looked the least alien. It’s that simple. I am afraid that when our firstborn grew into adults, they were more than a little disappointed in us. When they discovered that no offspring results from a human-ler mating, they were doubly disappointed.”
“None whatsoever? I had not known that.”
“We are different, that’s a fact. Conception occurs, but the female aborts within forty-eight hours. Either way you try it. We are, in a sense, a door into another possibility; but it is a door that is not open to you. Or to us. But in many ways we complement one another, so we endure. We are strong in the intuitive patterns of thought, but you outclass us in deduction. I might point out that you are physically stronger and able to endure a wider range of climatic conditions. Whereas we seem to take crowding a little better. Did you know that? Much of human aggression arises not from any genetic predisposition, but from simple overcrowding. Not recently, I mean to say. You reached that point early in your prehistory. Ten thousand years ago.”