The Moon and the Other

by John Kessel

  The bank of theater seats was occupied by Val’s grandmother, Eva Maggiesdaughter, his mother, Roz Baldwin, several aunts and political friends of Eva, and Carey Evasson. Mira sat quietly in the back row.

  Val’s instructor, Olivia Rosesdaughter, a tiny woman whose muscular brown arms were marked by little burn scars, worked as his assistant.

  Val’s master’s test was to create a goblet. A long pipe rested with one end in the furnace. Inside, molten glass glowed bright yellow. Val, his long red hair tied back, settled his goggles over his eyes, took up the pipe, rotated it, and drew it out with a glowing gather of glass on its end.

  Swiftly, turning the pipe in his hands, he carried it to the steel table and rolled the glass on its surface until he had formed it into a truncated cone. He pulled the pipe back, shifted the end to his mouth, and blew steadily into it, still turning it as he blew. Rosesdaughter set a metal cylinder on the floor. When Val had a bubble started he lowered it into the cylinder and blew until the glass expanded to take the shape of the mold. Rosesdaughter split the cylinder and Val removed the bubble, the surface now marked with a pattern.

  His face flushed, Val sat down on the bench and rested the pipe across the horizontal rails at either end. He rolled the pipe to keep the incipient goblet from sagging and took up one of the jacks from the table. The lower gravity of the moon was a boon to glassblowers, who did not have to worry so much about the glass deforming as they shaped it. Lunar blown glass pieces could be made to a size not possible on Earth.

  Rosesdaughter lit a handtorch and adjusted its blue flame to a few centimeters, then set it beside the bench where Val could reach it. She used another rod, the punty, to pull a second gather, which Val fused to his original bubble and pulled to form a braided stem. Val’s gaze remained intent on the work, lips pursed, sober. He fused another gather to the stem and, using pliers, pulled it into a circular base.

  With the handtorch he reheated the glass. His face took on a sheen of sweat. Rolling the pipe with the palm of his hand, he flattened the base of the evolving goblet with a wooden paddle, which began to smoke when touched to the near-molten glass. One of the great expenses of glassblowing was replacing these paddles after some period of use. Designers had created paddles from any number of synthetic materials, but the master glassblowers all insisted on cherrywood, no matter the expense.

  Mira leaned forward. Val was deft, intense, steady. Heartbreakingly beautiful. His fabrication of the goblet was a dance. Extraordinarily sexy.

  She glanced over at Carey. Since their conversation about fatherhood, Carey had been taking more interest in Val. Often, after they had made love, Carey would talk to Mira about how he had felt about Val after he was born, before he and Roz broke up. He told stories about Val, how he had this thing about animals, how he seemed happy all the time. Carey’s voice held an affection that she did not recall hearing when he talked about anything else.

  Rosesdaughter pulled another small gather of glass. She held the punty with this new glass level while Val, using the diamond shears, fused it to the base of the goblet that was still attached to his blow pipe. He used large mashers, which he wet in the bucket of water, to cool the end of the bubble attached to his pipe, then, delicately, snapped it off. He traded Rosesdaughter the pipe for the punty with the attached goblet, and now, using jacks and the handtorch, got to work cutting and shaping the lip of the bell at its top.

  Forty minutes into the test, as Val was performing the delicate final step of detaching the goblet from the punty, someone approached from behind Mira and sat next to her. Hypatia Camillesdaughter.

  “Good afternoon, Mira.”

  Mira could not have been more surprised. She had not ever spoken with Hypatia outside of the Discussion Group. “Hello.”

  Hypatia might be there to see Carey, but she had come to sit with Mira, not Carey. Maybe Hypatia wanted to scope out Mira as a rival for his attention. Or maybe it had something to do with Eva and the upcoming election. But still, she had come to sit with Mira.

  There was a smattering of applause. Mira turned back to see Val, wearing heat-resistant gloves, raising the goblet. Rosesdaughter, smiling, carried it off to the annealing oven.

  Val turned off the handtorch, took off his goggles, wiped his brow, and came forward. Everyone got up to congratulate him. Roz embraced him, as did Eva. Warm voices and laughter. Carey hung back. Val looked over, broke away, and went to him. Carey bear-hugged him. He whispered something into Val’s ear, then sent him back to his mother.

  “A talented boy,” Hypatia said.

  Mira turned to her. “What are you doing here?”

  “Always so blunt.”

  One of the women, one of Eva’s Matron friends, looked over at them. She frowned.

  “Some people complain about it,” said Mira. “Professor Camillesdaughter.”

  “Call me Hypatia, please.”

  Today Hypatia wore what amounted to a costume: a pale orange short-sleeved dress printed with a pattern of large roses, gathered tightly to show off her waist. A double string of faux pearls around her slender neck. Her blond hair was swept back from her forehead, and she wore the archaic makeup of a European woman of two hundred years ago: powdered cheeks, eyeliner, orange lipstick that matched her dress. The effect of this parody of patriarchal era femininity, on her athletic frame, was pure aggression. That she assumed such flamboyant contradictions annoyed her opponents and attracted her acolytes. She would piss in anybody’s water bulb.

  Mira didn’t think of herself as one of Hypatia’s acolytes. She would have given anything for her approval, yet the professor’s sudden appearance intimidated her. “You’re here to see Carey?”

  “I’m here to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, for one thing, I am impressed with what you have achieved as Looker.”

  Mira tried to maintain her poise. She glanced down at the others on the work floor. The furnace door was closed. While Val and Rosesdaughter put the workspace back in order, Roz and Carey were talking. He held her left hand as they spoke.

  Roz, Mira, Hypatia, all Carey’s lovers at one time or another, in one room. It must happen pretty often to Carey, but of course everyone acted, in the good Cousins way, as if any awkwardness would be the height of bad taste. Eva glanced up at Mira and Hypatia, then turned back to her family.

  Hypatia calling Mira “Looker” in the presence of Matrons who despised Looker was intended to make her nervous. All right, then. No retreat.

  “It’s about time somebody figured that out,” Mira said. “I’m surprised you didn’t get it before now—Hypatia.”

  Hypatia smiled. “Nicely played.”

  “Can we avoid the status games and just talk?”

  “You know that we can never avoid the status games.”

  “Right. But it might be easier if we didn’t play them here.”

  “You may not realize it, Mira, but I’ve had my eye on you for a while,” Hypatia said. “Let’s leave Looker aside for now. I want to speak to you about something else—the trial of Marysson and Pamelasson. I’ve wondered since you first came to the Discussion Group what your attitude was about testifying against them.”

  Mira bit her lip. “They made me testify.”

  “You could have refused.”

  “I would have paid for it. I don’t have many friends.”

  “Neither do I. Most people don’t have more than one or two real ones.” Hypatia leaned toward Mira, touching a finely manicured finger to her leg. “You remind me of myself at your age. I’m being sincere here, Mira.”

  “Thanks for the alert.”

  Hypatia smiled.

  Val, Roz, Eva, and the others were leaving. Carey came up to their row. “I hope I’m not interrupting,” he said. He leaned over and kissed Hypatia. Mira watched his hand slip inside her arm to touch her waist.

  He kissed Mira’s cheek as well. She felt the warmth of his face.

  “I’m surprised to see you here,” he said to
Hypatia.

  “It does you credit to come support your son,” Hypatia said. “Not enough men do such things.”

  “You know about Val?”

  “You mentioned him once. But I’m really here to see Mira.”

  “Oh,” Carey said. He shifted from one foot to the other. “Actually, I need to speak with you sometime. Something you might be able to help me with.”

  “You know I’m always happy to see you.”

  Carey seemed unusually subdued. “Listen, Mira,” he said, “I won’t be able to get together with you tonight. Can we talk later?”

  “All right,” said Mira. She watched the two of them.

  “Well, I’ll say good-bye, then.” Carey nodded to them both and left.

  Mira could not follow the currents going on between Hypatia, Carey, Roz, Val, and herself. Was this a political interaction or some interpersonal spider’s web? She prided herself on spying political motives, but she wasn’t so good at the interpersonal stuff. It was the topic for an hour-long conversation with some intimate girlfriend. Mira didn’t have one.

  She watched Carey go. She decided to run right at it. She looked Hypatia in the eye. “What is it you want from me?”

  “I want you to meet Daquani Jeffersdaughter and Juliette Mariesdaughter.”

  “Why? What do you need me for?”

  “Because you are not like all the other earnest young Reform Party supporters. You’re not dazzled by my reputation or afraid of anyone’s intellect. What you’ve accomplished as Looker shows a daring that I don’t see in one out of fifty.”

  It was a heavy load of flattery, the kind Mira had never received from any woman in a position of influence. The fact that she loved hearing it so much made her doubt herself.

  “If it comes out that Looker is in the Reform Party,” Mira said, “that’s not going to help your cause.”

  “People already think we are Looker. In fact, I want Looker to do more, leading up to the vote.”

  The room had emptied. The light from beyond the big windows was fading. Only Rosesdaughter was still there. She called up to them, “I’m going to close this classroom now. You’ll need to leave.”

  Mira stood. “Thanks.”

  She turned back to Hypatia. “All right,” she said, “I’m in.”

  It was only later, thinking of the look Eva had given them, that Mira realized Hypatia had chosen the glassblowing as the place to put this proposition so that Eva could see her with Mira. And with Carey. And that the most likely way for her to have found out that Mira was Looker was if Carey had told her.

  • • • • •

  On the wall of Eva’s apartment hung an oil painting by that greatest of the Impressionists, Mary Cassatt, Jules Being Dried by his Mother. Fresh from his bath, the long-haired androgynous boy, perhaps six or seven, stands, arms hanging limply by his sides, while his mother embraces him. His right hand touches his mother’s left where it holds the towel that strategically covers his groin. The mother’s cheeks are round, her Cupid’s bow lips bright red. Hair done up, exposing her matronly neck, she is wearing an elaborate gown of white and yellow with a plunging neckline.

  This painting had been an unconsidered presence in his life for as long as Carey could remember. In recent years he had very gradually come to hate it. He studied it from where he sat at the table on the terrace. It was a tribute to how respected his mother was that they had such a terrace, overlooking the juniper woods planted by Roz’s father twenty years before. Above them the dome reproduced a brilliant night sky. Down the arc of the crater’s rim gleamed the lights of the train station. Breezes brushed Carey’s face as he leaned back in the comfortable chair.

  The family’s weekly dinner was a brilliant business. Eva knew everybody, and even those who did not love her respected her, so there was seldom a meal that did not include at least one or two friends, old lovers, artists, political allies and rivals, brilliant scientists, and hangers-on.

  These were not formal affairs. Eva accommodated the moods of her guests and steered the conversation their way. His mother might be a genius but she never forced herself into the limelight. She was a remarkable person, and Carey loved her more than he could say. But living in the heart of the Green family was driving him crazy.

  Tonight’s guests were another former chair of the Board of Matrons, Debra Debrasdaughter, the musician Shari Klarasdaughter, and a professor from the university, Lemmy Odillesson. Shari was so famous that her music was played even in the patriarchies. Debrasdaughter was a sprightly ninety-eight; she’d been born in the first years of the Society on Earth, had served three times as chair, and was respected by all factions in the colony. Calm and funny and a little scatterbrained, she had been Carey’s football teacher when he was a boy. Carey had never heard of Odillesson, an awkward genobotanist whose specialty was environmental design.

  Then there were the Greens, Eva’s sister Patricia and her wife Sylvia, Carey’s cousin Zöe, and Zöe’s current husband Ngamo. Their seven-year-old twins, Chimalum and Obafemi, whom everyone fussed over, and Zöe’s new walk-in boyfriend whose name Carey didn’t remember but who wanted to talk about the disappointing showing of the martial arts team in the last Lunar Olympics.

  After the salmon soufflé and a dessert of fresh strawberries, the children had been put to bed. Eva opened several bottles of colony wine and served them in a set of glasses that Val had blown himself. Carey finished one glass while the others talked, then had another. He twirled the stem of the glass shaped by his son’s breath. Val was expecting Carey that night and still the dinner dragged on. Eva told one of her terrible jokes, something about a young physicist and the indeterminacy principle, and everyone laughed.

  “Carey,” Debrasdaughter said, “Eva tells me that you’re considering taking a job on the mita. Congratulations.”

  His cousins looked at Carey sideways. Zöe’s Ruăn tā fan boyfriend seemed surprised. “What? Does that mean you won’t be competing anymore? You’re going to work?”

  “I’ve worked hard all my life,” Carey said.

  No one responded to that.

  “There’s going to be some disappointed fans,” the man—Stefan, that was his name—said.

  “Some disappointed girlfriends, too” said Zöe.

  Sylvia said, “Oh, I expect our Carey will find time for them.”

  “Carey has been seeing Mira Hannasdaughter from the lab,” Eva said. “You remember her, Patricia? She’s a little shy.”

  “She’s not shy,” said Zöe. “She’s one of the most difficult women I’ve ever met. She criticizes everybody she meets. There’s not a woman in her graduate class she hasn’t alienated.”

  “Well,” Eva said, “there are reasons. As soon as she reached majority her mother dumped her brother onto her, left her to raise him without any help. She was fourteen, trying to take care of a ten-year-old, and she wasn’t any good at it.”

  “Then she should have gotten help. There’s more help available for child rearing than for anything else in the Society.”

  “She didn’t do anything wrong,” Carey said. “She just had bad luck.”

  “Did I hear about this?” asked Debrasdaughter. “It was seven or eight years ago. Her brother died in an accident?”

  “Yes,” said Carey. “She’s never really gotten over it.”

  For a while they discussed the irresponsibility of Mira’s mother. Some women were just not meant to have children. It was unfortunate that any so unsuited to it felt they had to, and embarrassing that the system sometimes failed to step in when such situations arose.

  “What I’d like to know is what Mira was doing at Val’s mastership exam last week,” Patricia said.

  “More to the point,” said Sylvia, “what was Hypatia Camillesdaughter doing there?”

  “Talking to Mira, apparently,” Eva said.

  “Two lovers at once, Carey,” Ngamo said. “Uncomfortable?”

  “I doubt she had anything to say to that young woman,” Patricia
said to Eva. “She’s testing you. This election.”

  “I’m not sure Hypatia isn’t right,” Eva said. “I understand why the Founders set up our electoral system, but it only leads to unrest among men—and the women who take their part.”

  “The average man in the Society has as much freedom as any man in human history. They don’t realize how bad it is out in the patriarchies.”

  “Next thing you know, male gangs,” said Stefan darkly. “These Spartans.”

  “Men have real grievances,” Klarasdaughter said. “And if we don’t solve them ourselves, we just give the patriarchs a pretext to condemn us.”

  “They don’t care about the condition of their own people,” Ngamo said. “Don’t you agree, Professor Odillesson?”

  Until now Odillesson had been content to listen in birdlike silence. Startled, he looked around the table, and finally said, “I don’t know anything about politics. I guess there are many unhappy young men? There’s so much that they could spend their time and energy on.”

  Odillesson was about as far from an alpha male as one could get and still carry the XY chromosomes. Yet Carey felt a surge of envy for the man. He had work that mattered to him, a purpose to his life. Carey said, “I think, if you don’t take Hypatia seriously, on election day you are going to be very surprised.”

  “Maybe you can tell me why anybody would trust her,” Zöe said. “She’s such a phony. On Monday she’s a transgressive radical, on Tuesday she valorizes the patriarchy. She feints to the left, she steps right. She’s a rarefied intellectual spouting jargon-laden theories; she’s a woman of the people chanting slogans only a halfwit would credit. The only constant is that she’s right and the rest of us are hypocrites and fools.”

  “She seems to have gotten you pretty excited,” Carey said.

  That brought the conversation to a halt.

  His aunt Patricia said, “Come to think of it, Carey, I was almost as surprised to see you at the exam as I was to see them. You’ve never taken much interest in Val’s education. You didn’t say a word when we talked about him serving this apprenticeship.”