by Sayuri Ueda
Veritas’s eyes grew wider. “You met him?”
“Yes.”
“He’s not here, is he?”
“Don’t worry, he’s gone. We spoke for a while. He seemed like a good man.”
“How could you, Calendula?” The anger in Veritas’s voice rose. “Have you forgotten how irrational they can be?”
“That’s exactly what Fortia said, which is all the more reason why I want to have a normal conversation with the Monaurals. And besides, if we sever contact with them over this, aren’t you going to be the saddest out of all of us?”
Veritas slammed eir tea pack down on the table. “You have no idea what I’m feeling! Why should we try to develop a friendship with the Monaurals? We’ll only be courting more danger.”
“Do you have any desire to meet with Arino at all? Maybe talking to him will help you see that there are some good people among them. He really seemed like a kindhearted man.”
“No.”
“Are you afraid?” Calendula asked.
“As difficult as this may be to understand, I’m terrified to put myself in that situation again. Monaural men are intensely drawn to Rounds of my type. The way they look at you with that strange glint in their eyes, like beasts. The way they mentally undress you. You know as well as I do what that’s like.”
“Yes, I’m aware we share the same characteristics.”
“I don’t have any desire to subject myself to that nastiness just to talk to him. If you want to see him, be my guest. But leave me out of it,” Veritas said.
“But telling them how they make us feel is important too. If they hear what we have to say, the Monaurals will have to rethink their behavior.”
“Go right on ahead, but don’t involve me.”
“All right, Veritas. I won’t force you. I’m sorry I even brought it up.”
Calendula got up from the sofa.
Veritas remained sitting as ey looked up at Calendula. “Why are you so interested in the Monaurals? They come and go every year. Once they leave, you’ll never see them again.”
“That’s just it—because we can only get to know them while they’re here. I’m curious to know the Monaurals in the same way I’m curious to unlock the secrets of deep space.”
7
AFTER LEAVING SHIOHARA in the mess, Arino headed for the infirmary to look in on Miles.
But neither Miles nor Harding was anywhere to be found.
“They just left,” said Tei, who was on call. “He had a bloody nose. He seemed fine, so I sent him back to his quarters.”
“Were they fighting?”
“What? Hardly. Harding seemed terribly down about something, and Miles was trying to console him despite being the one that was hurt.” Tei looked Arino in the eye. “Were you the one who hit him?”
“Well, no.”
“By the way, I have a message from Calendula.”
“For me?” Arino asked.
“As a matter of fact, I was just planning to pay you a visit. Calendula wanted me to ask you to come and see em in the relaxation room tomorrow at 20:00.”
“Where do I find the relaxation room?”
“Inside the central axis. There’s an elevator that will take you directly there from the residential district. But first, you’ll need to check out a directional control device for when you go into the zero-G area. You’ll find it difficult to get around without it.”
Arino checked a map of the station on one of the terminals. Just as Tei had said, the relaxation room was inside the station’s central axis and zero-G area.
The high-velocity elevator transported him there in a matter of seconds. He stepped off the elevator to find himself in a zero-gravity environment. He bounced down the hall encircling the central axis and upon finding the entrance, slid open the door and peered in.
A colorful pattern of tiles like stained glass came into view.
The room was dark, but the soft light filtering in from the colored tiles filled the area with a sobering solemnity.
Arino felt as though he’d entered a cathedral.
The world on the other side of the door had a wall but no floor. The diameter of the area inside the central axis measured ten meters. The wall was covered with multicolored tiles, and a thin pole traversed up and down the center of the room.
Although the tiles did not represent any particular design, their abstract arrangement seemed to conjure a variety of images.
Arino kicked away from the edge of the door and leapt toward the center of the room.
The door automatically closed behind him, shutting out the light from the hall.
It was quiet.
Apparently, neither music nor heated discussions were allowed inside the relaxation room.
Grabbing hold of the pole, Arino circled around it several times and stopped, the friction killing the kinetic energy. At this speed, he was able to stop without using the propulsion device strapped to his waist.
As he clung to the pole, he looked up and down the cylindrical room.
The height of the cylinder might have been about thirty meters. The ceiling and floor were painted black and decorated with tiny lights to simulate stars. Or perhaps the view from outside the station was being projected onto screens.
Several people floated above and below him. The center of the room was curiously empty. The people stuck close to the walls, perhaps feeling more at ease there.
One appeared to be napping in a fetal position. Another was meditating. Another seemed to be listening to music on a sound system only he could hear.
Arino searched high and low for Calendula.
Calendula entered from a door above him. Spotting Arino right away, ey floated toward him and nimbly came to a stop around the pole with one twirl.
“I tried, but I couldn’t convince Veritas to come,” Calendula said. “Ey’s too afraid of you.”
“Gee, was I that rude?”
“You looked em up and down.”
“What?”
“That’s what Monaurals do. You leer at us from top to bottom as if undressing us with your eyes.”
“I don’t recall being as bad as that. If I was staring, it wasn’t out of malice. I was trying to be friendly.”
“It’s your insensitivity that offends us.”
When Arino started to object, Calendula raised a hand. “You musn’t make a scene here.”
Calendula kicked away from the pole and moved to where it was more private. Arino followed, then stepped on one of the shock absorbers embedded in the tiled wall and came to a stop.
Calendula said, “We were born and raised within the confines of this station, so we’re extremely sensitive to the eyes of others. In our society, staring at someone is considered very disrespectful. I know you have a habit of observing someone from afar on Earth and Mars where it’s more spacious. But you can’t do that here.”
“No offense intended.”
“Swear to me you’ll never do it again.”
“I swear. I won’t,” Arino said.
“And please tell the others. You’re all going to be here for at least another year.”
“I promise.”
“Veritas is terrified of Monaurals. Because you don’t understand our customs.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Only partners can gaze at each other like that in our society,” Calendula said. “So when someone other than a partner stares at us, we’re very uncomfortable. Do you understand?”
Arino nodded.
“Veritas was once in love with a Monaural man,” Calendula said.
Arino blinked. In love? A Round with a Monaural? An image flashed across his mind that nearly made him yelp. Could that Monaural be…?
“But things ended badly with that Monaural. And because of what happened to Veritas, the Rounds have become wary of all Monaurals.”
“Did the bastard do something to hurt em?”
“I can’t say for certain. Veritas doesn’t say much about the incident, a
nd details of the inquiry were never made public.”
Arino lowered his gaze. Given the incident, no wonder the Rounds were afraid of them.
“Why aren’t you afraid of me, Calendula? The way Veritas is?”
“I suppose I’m more curious than afraid. We’re all different, you know.”
“Curious about what?”
“Why Monaurals are only capable of seeing us as one sex,” Calendula said. “You have intersex people in your society. Then why do you think of having two sexes as abnormal? From our perspective, the Monaurals are a very inconvenient and peculiar people. You’re restricted by one sex and possess the reproductive organs of only one sex. How does that affect the way your mind operates? How do sexual distinctions change your way of thinking? How does your society manage to maintain equilibrium despite all the disparities that arise between the sexes? How can a society with sexual differences manage to nurture the same unshakable solidarity as ours, which has no such differences? These are the things I’m curious about. Like solving the mysteries of the universe. Tell me, Sub-commander Arino. How do I look in your eyes? Do you see me as a man? Or a woman?”
The light trickling in from the colored tiles shimmered behind Calendula like a heat haze. Calendula, who’d only looked like a woman to Arino at first, was beginning to seem more male with every passing moment.
In the end, it all boiled down to perception. Whether Arino saw em as a man or woman did not change the fact that physically, ey was bigender. Ey was capable of simultaneously inseminating eir partner and being inseminated. Calendula didn’t merely self-identify as bigender, nor had ey been born bigender via a chromosomal fluke. Ey was not an imaginary creation of some mystic or an angel that had conveniently transcended the sexes.
The Round standing before him was a proper biologically bigender being.
“Both,” Arino answered. “Finally, I see you as both.”
“Would you like this body? Would you like to be bigender yourself?”
A shiver running down his spine, Arino imagined his body with female reproductive organs.
A body with the ability to both impregnate and be impregnated at the same time.
What kind of person would he become if his body were to acquire both sexual functions? How would he think? What would his likes and dislikes be? And how would he act? The body creates the psyche, which in turn creates the body. Just what kind of being would he become as a result of both influences?
Arino was secretly shocked by the part of him that was considering the question. He’d been married to his wife for five years and had a three-year-old at home. His wife was a woman, biologically and psychologically, and also heterosexual. Not once had Arino questioned his sexuality until he’d come here.
Had he been deceiving himself all this time? Was one’s sexuality so easily changed? Or was he merely getting carried away by this new encounter?
“Is that even possible?” Arino asked.
“Unfortunately, no. There are people on Earth and Mars who want to be injected with double-I, but switching out the sex chromosomes alone won’t make you a Round.”
Arino let out a sigh of relief.
“Disappointed?”
“Maybe a little.”
Calendula smiled.
“If all the station staff were like you, none of us would have encountered as much difficulty as we have.” Then ey muttered, “If only everyone would become Rounds. Then there would be fewer prejudices in this world.”
8
OVER TWENTY YEARS had passed since Kline first came to Jupiter-I—about the time it took for Jupiter to make two revolutions around the sun.
When she’d first learned of the existence of the special district, she had been shocked and moved and felt an intense desire to protect it.
A subspecies both male and female. Not the fantasies of body modification fanatics or hermaphrodites with cosmetic genitalia made possible through artificial organ transplantation.
The Rounds were the kind of beings—having functioning genitalia of both genders—envisioned in Plato’s Symposium.
No matter how progressive and extraordinary they were, the Rounds were seen as anomalies by Monaural society. In a society comprised entirely of absolute hermaphrodites, however, they would be the norm.
Indeed, the special district was an ideal community. If Kline could protect this haven, in time the Monaurals’ value system would gradually change.
Having anticipated the station would become a target of Monaural terrorists from the start, Kline had been instrumental in pushing through the exorbitant budgetary expenditure required for the installation of Jupiter-I’s omnidirectional warning system. She had also recognized the need to demonstrate that this was no defenseless paradise, but a fortress built to defend a new ideology.
Kline was prepared to crush any group knowingly threatening to breach the walls.
If it were possible, Kline would grab a gun and face the enemy herself. She had no scruples about killing if she could protect the Rounds.
Kline rested on a sofa in the observatory and sipped a glass of bourbon.
A million stars were displayed on the omnidirectional screen and the floor screen at her feet. Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, filled the screen directly in front of her.
Europa resembled an old marble marred by scratches. Or a glass orb striated with intricate cracks. Its color was clear blue from the thick layers of ice covering the surface and brown from the sulfide deposits seeping to the surface from within.
The dark cracks gashing the surface were the dull red of dried blood. The intricate fissures crisscrossing the entire surface reminded Kline of the chapped fingers of an overworked laborer.
Europa was approximately 3,138 kilometers in diameter, about the size of Earth’s moon.
Hidden beneath the thick ice crust covering the globe lay a vast ocean one hundred kilometers deep, rich in sulfuric acid and magnesium sulfate, unlike the oceans of Earth.
Europa was a frozen moon with a daytime surface temperature of minus 130 degrees Celsius.
Scientists drilled the ice crust in search of microorganisms trapped inside. They also continued to probe for whether oceanic life-forms like those on Earth existed on Europa.
Jupiter-I served, in part, to support those activities. In time, scientists discovered a hot geyser along with organisms that relied on the sulfuric oxides contained within the geyser water to exist. What they had unearthed was a biotic community that had developed in much the same way as the biotic community discovered in the depths of Earth’s oceans. Biologists also confirmed the existence of organisms living in a similar oceanic atmosphere on Ganymede. And now they were exploring Callisto’s ocean, hoping to discover a third ecosystem in the Jovian system there.
Reports of life on the Jovian moons served to remind not only scientists but the public just how immeasurably profound and mysterious the universe was. The news inspired awe in the fierce resilience of life.
These life-forms on Europa and Ganymede lived regardless of human expectation and died quietly once they’d expended the life given them. They neither resisted nor surrendered to the environment they found themselves in, but simply used it to survive.
Kline could not help but feel awestruck and envious of the single-minded tenacity of life.
She heard a knock, snapping her out of her musings. Dan Preda walked into the observatory.
“Well, this is a rare sighting,” said Kline as she set her glass down on the table.
“I like to have a drink or two under the stars from time to time.” Preda sat down diagonally across from Kline, holding a glass of his own. “I daresay we have a real situation on our hands. To think, an actual terrorist threat.”
“We don’t know anything for certain yet. Even if the threat is real, the two security teams should have little problem defeating the terrorists.”
“But with Harding commanding one of the teams…”
“Commander Shirosaki is a man we can trust.
I’m sure he’ll keep Commander Harding in check. Miles will be there too.”
“Yes, I suppose we can only hope for the best.” Preda sipped from his watered-down drink enriched with vitamin C.
The door opened again, and another visitor entered the observatory. “Oh, there you are.”
Microbiologist Von Chaillot approached holding a bottle of Martian beer in one hand.
Von kissed Preda and Kline on the cheek and joined them. “Is it true we have a terrorist threat?”
“Well, it seems the whole station is abuzz about it,” said Preda. “I hear some of the station staff have a little bet going.”
“A bet? About what?” Kline asked.
“The time the security staff will need to neutralize the terrorist threat. They’re trying to predict it down to the minute.”
“What was the shortest time?”
“One minute. I think the longest was fifteen.”
Smiling, Von held out a memory plate in Kline’s direction. “I promised you this. Care to see it now?”
“Thank you. I think I will.”
Kline inserted the plate in her wearable. After sending the commands remotely to the observatory’s control system from her wearable, the stars on the omnidirectional display disappeared and the images contained in the memory plate came up on screen.
A constellation of a different kind filled the black screen. Moving their tiny flagella, the luminescent bodies spun around busily like windmills.
“What do we have here?” Preda asked. “Your latest discovery?”
“Bioluminescent microorganisms found inhabiting the ocean beneath Europa’s ice shell. We haven’t determined why they emit light like they do. We think they might naturally give it off during metabolic activity, rather than for any particular purpose.”
“Something like ‘Europa sea fireflies.’”
“If that’s what you’d like to call them. They haven’t been given a scientific name yet.”
“How about naming one of your discoveries after me?” Preda said. “All told, you’ve found thousands of marine microorganisms on Europa and Ganymede, haven’t you?”