by John Kessel
“I don’t recall being consulted about that,” Carey said.
“No one asked you because you never cared,” said Zöe. She didn’t add, but he could hear her thinking, You were probably too busy fucking Hypatia. They never thought of him in relation to Val, and never would, because the degree to which Carey did or did not interact with him had no legal consequences.
“Ruăn tā takes a lot of Carey’s time,” Ngomo said.
“Apparently not anymore,” said Stefan, with a short laugh.
How lovely it would be to get fifteen seconds alone with Stefan in the ring. “No, not so much anymore,” Carey said.
“You’re going to be a voter,” said Patricia. “So what was it you were talking to Hypatia and that young woman about?”
Carey flipped his napkin onto the table. “We were planning our overthrow of the Society of Cousins.” He got up and left the terrace.
“Carey?” his mother called after him.
“Let him go,” he heard Patricia say.
“Too much wine,” said Sylvia.
Carey retreated to his room, mad at them, mad at himself. He stood at the open window looking out over the woods, then began stuffing clothes into his backpack. Other than his mother, he was the only person in the apartment with a private room. Imprisonment by privilege, the Spartans called it. Well, soon he would have to get by on the resources that he could earn for himself.
He lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting for the guests to leave. From outside, Hector, Eva’s cat, leapt onto the windowsill, then launched himself across the room to the bed. A large black-and-white tom, Hector terrorized the birds in the woods, but despite his lunar-gravity leaping ability never seemed to catch any. He butted his head up against Carey’s chin until Carey scratched him behind the ears. His purr was very loud.
At one time the conversation at the dinner table would have floated past Carey without incident. Now there were trapdoors in every exchange. All his life people had praised him for his sunny disposition, how deftly he dealt with conflict and wryly sidestepped problems that tied others into knots. They loved the insouciance of Lune et l’autre. He was getting to the point where he considered that younger self some sort of dunce. It was as if his skin were raw from being flayed, and the slightest touch made him flinch. But who had flayed him? He had to admit that, with a lone exception, his life had been without difficulty. He had suffered hardly a single thwarted desire.
Hector settled down at the end of the bed and went to sleep. Carey listened as the guests finally left, and then he went out to help clean up. He didn’t speak to anyone as he busied himself clearing the table. After the rest of the family had turned in, Eva came out to him on the terrace.
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
He avoided her eyes. “Nothing worth talking about now.”
“Well, when you’re ready,” she said.
She retired to her room. When the apartment was silent he got his backpack and slipped out.
Most of the Greens lived in this same neighborhood, but a year after Val had been born Roz had moved away. Carey understood that he, and his series of girlfriends, were the reason. His aunt was right—it was only lately that Carey had renewed his interest in Val. He should have been more engaged. He could tell Val things about being a man that Val would never get from Roz or Eva or the congress of women who surrounded them. As an uncle Carey might attempt that role with nephews. But with his son? Not so easy.
Roz’s apartment was underground, in a semicircular residential concourse with a café on the corner and a playground in the center of the loop. Some Ag workers bound for the late shift idled in the café. A robot street polisher moved slowly over the pavement, whirring steadily.
Beyond the café, the roof of the neighborhood rose to twenty meters over the playground, the lights currently turned low over a play structure, swings, a pit full of colored building blocks, and a climbing wall with auto-belaying ropes. Two teens, too old for this place, sat on the benches near a circular trampoline where a third bounced, doing slow somersaults. It was Val.
Carey sat on a bench away from the boys. He watched Val twirl and twist in low-G while still maintaining their conversation. The boys were talking about mountain climbing; they planned, when they were older, to do Mons Huygens in the Lunar Apennines, the tallest mountain on the moon.
“Forget Mons Huygens,” Val said. “We should climb Mons Veneris.”
“Been there,” one of the others said. “Overrated.”
The talk devolved into a series of sex jokes. Carey had heard them all; Jesse had told one of the same ones at the last Salon.
On one of his bounces, Val’s eyes locked with Carey’s, and he grinned but did not stop his twisting aerial ballet. After a few more minutes he flexed his legs when he hit the trampoline and came to rest. “Gotta go,” he told the others. “See you tomorrow.”
Val picked up his pack and came over to Carey.
“Sorry I’m late,” Carey said. It would help if they got settled before Roz realized Val was not coming home. “When does your mother expect you?”
“Not until twenty-three hundred.”
Twenty minutes from now. “Let’s go, then.”
They descended a level to the tramway and rode it to the second major corridor south. Carey felt a wave of affection for Val. Trouble would come of this, but he would deal with Roz, he would deal with Eva. He had his son with him, and they were going to live together, no woman in their home, just the two of them.
On the tram, Carey watched their reflections in the glass of the opposite window. Val was more slender, more gangly, but he could see himself in his son’s face. Val looked pensive.
“Do you know your father?” Val asked.
“I never met him,” Carey said. “I asked your grandmother about him. She said she was with him for only a few months, when he did some materials engineering. He never took an interest in me. Later I learned he left the Society, moved to Mars.”
“Do you ever wish he’d been around?”
“I didn’t think of him. I lived in the middle of the Green family. Eva was in the lab a lot, and then she was in politics. But at the end of every day she would always sit down with me and ask me how my day was. She listened to whatever I had to say. Then she’d tell me some terrible joke.”
“They are terrible. I like them.”
“When I was six I told her, ‘Stop trying to be funny. You can’t make a joke.’ ‘I made you,’ she said.”
They got off the tram and climbed a level to the apartment of Donald and Devlin Irisson. Carey expected the place to be dark, but the lights were on and the beat of music sounded through the walls. When he hit the door chime it was a full minute before Donald answered, face sweaty, a sloppy grin on his face. “Carey!” He hugged Carey and kissed his cheek. “Come in, Cousin!”
Carey held back. “You were going to be gone by now. I’ve got Val with me.”
“Bring him in! Jada is here, and Llana, and a couple of the Solon sisters.”
Val peered past Carey. “Looks like fun.”
“We’re not here to party, Donald. This is serious.”
Donald’s grin became cynical. “It’s a serious party.”
“You promised us the use of the place.”
“Use it all you want. We’ll be out tomorrow. Couple of days at the latest.”
Carey drew a deep breath. “You know what this is about. I’m not playing games.”
“I guess there’s a first time for everything.” Donald closed the door in their faces.
Carey sighed. He’d had to think hard to come up with two men living on their own not under the close observation of their mothers and sisters. Donald and Devlin were as close to useless layabouts as the Society produced. He felt humiliated to have them treat him like this.
“What now?” Val asked.
To take Val back to Roz would be even more humiliating. He should have involved Mira, but he’d
wanted to do all this alone. He’d told himself that keeping Mira out of it would save her trouble when it came out, since she worked with Roz, and for Eva, but it was more pride than strategy. Too much pride was foolish: Men got themselves into trouble when they mixed up making the smart decision with impressing people by the size of their dicks.
“Come on,” he said. They rode to the concourse where Mira lived. The little park with dwarf maples opposite her apartment was quiet. Carey hit Mira’s door chime.
Mira answered, wearing shorts and a loose shirt. She looked at Carey, at Val, then back at Carey. “Is this what I think it is?”
The surprise in her voice was not encouraging. “May we come in?”
Mira opened the door wider and stepped aside. Her apartment was larger than she ought to have commanded—three full rooms and a private bath. By rights when her brother died she should have been made to move out, but she had managed, by finding a woman to move in and then chasing her out a few months later, to slip past the housing authority.
She folded down two chairs and a small table from the wall, then pulled the tabs on three bulbs of tea. While they heated she drew over her workstation chair and sat.
Her silence made Carey nervous. “Can Val stay here for a couple of nights?”
“You didn’t arrange an apartment before taking Val,” Mira said flatly.
“He didn’t take me,” Val said. “I came on my own.”
“I had a promise of an apartment,” Carey said. “But Donald and Devlin Irisson are still in it. They’ll be out in a couple of days.”
“And you couldn’t wait.”
“Val didn’t want to wait, and I didn’t want to make him wait.”
Mira sipped tea from her bulb. “Yes, you can stay,” she said to Val.
“Thanks. Where?”
She pointed to the only closed door, and when Val hesitated, got up and went into the room with him. Carey listened to them talking through the open door. “My horse!” Val said. “Wow, you’ve got a whole herd.”
“My brother used to play with them when he was little. This one’s named Comet.”
Carey sipped his tea, a bad Earl Grey. That was Mira: nothing psychoactive.
“Has Carey told your mother?” he heard Mira say.
“Not yet,” Val said.
“Put your things in this drawer,” Mira said, and came out, closing the door behind her.
She said, “Call Roz.”
Carey put down the bulb. “Please don’t treat me like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like a child.”
“Look, I don’t know how you got him, but unless she is okay with it, Roz will be looking for him already. If this comes across as abduction, you’ll be a criminal. So you need to call Roz and tell her Val is here. Let her talk to him.”
He struggled to keep calm. “You’ve been pushing me to take this step for months. Now you act like I’ve done something outrageous.”
“Because you’ve done it stupidly. Why didn’t you at least tell me?”
“You should respect my choices, even if you disagree with them.”
“Roz will have the constables on you if you don’t call.”
“I know Roz, you don’t.”
“What do you think is going to happen when she can’t locate him?”
He ran a hand through his hair. Mira, gearing up. Why had he ever spent any time with this woman? He had the beginnings of a headache. “Give me some credit, Mira. I’m not a fool.”
“No, you’re not,” she conceded. “But Carey, you need to tell her as soon as possible. Not only that”—her voice got lower—“you need to go public. Talk to Hypatia. We need to get the Reform Party in on this.”
“This isn’t political.”
“What could be more political than a man claiming parental rights?”
“Fathers have rights.”
“Not if there’s a mother in the picture.”
The door to the bedroom opened and Val stood there. “I’m not going back.”
Carey and Mira looked at him. Carey said, “You’re not going back. No matter what anyone says.”
“Right,” said Val. “So maybe you two ought to kiss and make up.”
Carey said, “I’m going to call your mother. I want you to log into school tomorrow as if nothing has changed. It’s vital.”
Mira came up behind Carey and surreptitiously knuckled him in the ribs. “All right, Val,” she said. “Let’s fold down your bed.”
Val kissed Carey. “Good night.”
“Good night, Spike.” Carey had to swallow. Mira took Val’s arm and led him back into Marco’s room, closed the door most of the way, but left a gap.
Carey opened a small window on Mira’s pixwall and called Roz. Her face appeared instantly. “Carey. Do you know where Val is?”
“He’s with me. We’re at Mira’s.”
She crossed her arms. “He can’t keep disappearing without telling me. He disabled his chip again.”
“I blocked it.”
“Why would you do that?” She sounded genuinely surprised.
“I didn’t want you to interfere. In a day or so we’ll be living in our own apartment. I’m telling you so you won’t worry—” The look on Roz’s face reminded him of the uncertain girl she’d been when she’d first immigrated to the Society.
“Why are you doing this? When have I ever kept him from you?”
“I love Val as much as your father loved you. Your father took care of you.”
“Until he killed himself,” she said. Her shadowed face moved close to the camera. A faint glint in her eyes. “I’m not disputing your love for Val.”
“Please. Sleep on this, Roz, and we can talk tomorrow.”
“You bet we’ll talk.”
“Good night, then.”
“Nothing better happen to him, Carey.”
Yet another woman who didn’t trust him. “Good night,” he said. He closed the window.
He stood, stretched, and rubbed his temples. He was going to have to share Mira’s bed. She had not come out of the room yet.
Carey went to the door and peeked in. In the faint light he saw Val was already asleep in Marco’s drop-down bed. Mira sat on the edge, face turned three-quarters away. Mira seldom spoke of Marco, but Carey had seen a video—a dark boy, strikingly like a younger Mira. You could not sleep with a woman as much as Carey had with Mira without learning something of the grief she contained.
As Carey watched, she reached out and brushed Val’s hair gently away from his cheek.
• • • • •
During her midday break at Materials, Mira sucked down a protein mix at her workstation while paging through the colony forums. Though he’d tried to keep their situation private, news of Carey taking his son has gotten out and debate over him and Val was getting heated. Lots of Discussion Group agitprop, well written but marred by cant, competed with gospel-spouting Matrons talking about the Terrible and Enlightening History of Women’s (and Men’s!) Struggles to Establish a New Society Free of Violence. Then there were those for whom the politics of child custody was a snooze, but who relished the spectacle of the Green family being discomfited in public.
Mira was about to go back to her work on the fullerene project when her Aide told her Carey was calling.
“I’ll take it,” she said. She threw the call onto her workstation screen but kept the audio private.
Carey looked grim. “I can’t believe you did this without asking me.”
“Did what?” The betrayal in his eyes made her feel sick.
“You know what. The new Looker video. Ten minutes ago it went live all over the colony.”
She hadn’t seen him much lately; they were both too busy. A few days after Carey and Val had shown up on her doorstep, they moved out again, not to the Irissons’ place, but to an apartment Hypatia had obtained. Carey took a job in the aquaculture plant. Val went to school. Mira visited them, but the dynamic between her and Carey was
completely different with Val there. The sex was different. It was all different.
Carey was not eager to have his cause taken up by the Reform Party. “The more public we make this,” he had told Mira, “the less Roz is going to like it.”
“Of course she won’t like it. But like Hypatia says, you need to get the public on your side.”
“It’s not Hypatia’s decision to make.”
As Mira had expected, Hypatia had leapt at the opportunity for propaganda that Carey and Val offered. Their story became the talk of the colony. Mandy Moirasdaughter wanted them on her talk show; to Hypatia’s disappointment, Carey refused. Recognizing Mira’s role in all this, Hypatia drew her into her circle of academics, politicians, activists, and artists. It was like nothing Mira had ever experienced. They thought she was funny. They sought her opinion. They openly wondered how she had wormed her way into Eva’s lab and assumed it must be part of some political move. Juliette Mariesdaughter, Hypatia’s friend and university colleague, quizzed Mira about Carey’s commitment to the cause.
When she didn’t simply wave such psychodramas aside, Hypatia relished them. It took a topologist to keep track of the ever-changing romantic geometry of her inner circle. As far as Mira knew, Carey’s off-and-on thing with Hypatia was not renewed, but it still bothered her. She wished it didn’t.
Hypatia asked Mira to create new Looker videos, and Mira went to work on Fathers and Sons, eight minutes on parenting as a subversive act. A week ago she had brought her rough cut over to Hypatia’s apartment to show to her privately. Hypatia brewed tea and they sat in the living room, side by side on the sofa like friends, like equals, while the video ran on the wall. Mira tried to gauge her reaction. Hypatia leaned back, relaxed, her chin slightly lifted. The line of her jaw was beautiful.
The video ended with an image of Val and Carey on the flying stage of the Diana Tower, strapped into their wings, the wind tossing their hair, looking like heroes of some Constructivist film of the 1920s.
“Well?” Mira asked.
Hypatia put down her teacup, turned to Mira, and kissed her on the lips.
Her breath warmed Mira’s cheek. “You like it?”
“How could I not like it?” Hypatia said. “It’s exactly what we need. The sooner we post this the better.”