by John Kessel
“Tell us what you can do about the CO2,” Richard said.
Amestris approached the conference area. But rather than enter the envelope, she stood just outside and blew him a kiss.
Erno tried to focus on the conference. Lewis’s eyes flicked in Amestris’s direction, but he could not see her. “You have made widespread use of a concrete in construction whose exposed surfaces sublimate carbon dioxide,” Erno said.
“We’ve corrected that.”
“I don’t think you have. You failed to mention this, but ten years ago someone there had the idea of importing the European ant Temnothorax crassispinus to aid in seed dispersal. You have been fighting infestations ever since, using methods so crude that you are lucky you haven’t totally crashed the ecology.”
“What does that have to do with the atmosphere issue?” Richard said.
“Several of your methods for interdicting this pest have led to a further imbalance in the CO2 cycle.”
At his desk, Amestris switched the conference imager to synthesize. She could now enter the envelope while the software kept her invisible to the viewers. Erno switched his own image over to synth so he could continue to speak through his avatar, presenting as him, while he dealt with Amestris. Why was she doing this? It was extremely distracting. Given the fact that he was trying to sell the Aristarchans on a radical change, one that they had not signed up for, he needed his wits about him.
“That can’t be the source of the problem,” said Lewis. “We’ve investigated all loops relating to the Temnothorax.”
“It isn’t the source of the problem per se. The problem is that your biosphere is small. Biodiversity is too limited. The ecology is not adapted to the many variables that arise in a population of your size—”
Amestris stepped within the envelope. She ran her fingers through Erno’s hair, then kissed him on the top of his head.
Erno struggled to keep his voice under control. His avatar could handle the visuals, but he had to run the audio. “What I propose is a colonywide redesign and reboot. I suggest, given your resource profile, the creation of a high chaparral ecology. I can build into this system a number of bioregenerative safeguards that should stand you in good stead over the next forty years, established with the intention of producing sustainable add-ons as your population expands.”
Amestris bent over him, stuck her tongue into his ear, and slid her hand inside his shirt.
“We didn’t come to you for an ecological overhaul,” said Richard. “We just need to fix this problem.”
“I can”—Erno grabbed Amestris’s wrist and pulled her hand away. She struggled, and it was all he could do not to burst out laughing—“I can give you a fix for your CO2 problem alone. But that would be penny wise and pound foolish.”
“Let me speak with my colleagues,” Richard said. He called up the image of several engineers who must have been listening in on the conversation. He kept the audio on, so that Erno got to hear as one of them heatedly reminded Richard that the Society of Cousins was not a party to the OLS Standard Atmosphere Convention. Erno tried to listen, but Amestris was kissing him on the lips.
“The OLS specifies a range of atmospheric pressures from 1.01 kpa to 0.65 kpa,” somebody was saying.
Erno had half an erection and Amestris was about to slide into his lap. He pushed her away. She bit his ear.
He glanced across the room. Lewis looked unhappy. “What is this going to cost?” he asked.
Amestris stood, still very close to Erno’s chair. Erno pulled himself together. “Allow me and my associates a month to work through the parameters, and I will be glad to present you with the details. But I would say we are talking about a figure in the neighborhood of four hundred million Persepolis rials. Our commission would, of course, be a small fraction of this amount—one percent.”
“That’s not something we can agree to out of hand,” said Lewis.
“Of course. This is merely a consultation. You aren’t obligated to accept my analysis or take my advice.”
Amestris whispered into his ear, “I am going to fuck your brains out. You are not obliged to accept my analysis or take my advice.”
“If we might wrap this up,” Erno said, “I have another meeting. I’ll have my staff forward to you the complete report, with supporting analysis and recommendations. Think it over.”
He was tugging Amestris’s blouse out of her pants even before the wall went opaque. He threw her down on the ornate carpet, tore open her shirt, and kissed her lips, her neck, her breasts, her navel. She was breathing hard, her belly trembling.
If physical contact was his trademark, he would take care to reinforce that for her. Erno held her by her throat—gently, but leaving no doubt that she was under his control. She put up a struggle, clawing at his wrist with one hand, the other reaching for his face. With his free hand he seized her arm and pinned it to the floor. He turned her face to him, staring into her eyes, then kissed her. Her fingernails went from his wrist to his back, she threw her leg around his hip, and the pretense that he was taking her against her will evaporated.
Much later they lay on the rug in their scattered clothes, he on his side, she on her back. He brushed the index finger of his left hand, as lightly as possible, along her collar bone. Amestris’s eyes were closed, and her chest rose and fell calmly. Her hand rested on the inside of his thigh. How good it was to feel her next to him.
In Persepolis, where male dominance was a reality, did sexual dominance games mean the same things they meant in the Society? Sex with Amestris felt a little like sex with a man back home—but that was not right; it was totally different.
Erno would watch her sometimes in their office, acutely aware of her separate, unique self. When she spoke with Jamshid or any other person of lower status her voice was calm and authoritative. Not that she ever talked down to them—in this she reminded him of his old teacher Debrasdaughter. With their clients, some of whom were people of great power and wealth, she spoke with equal assurance but a difficult-to-identify difference in tone. And occasionally, with disarming humor. Though sex was not on the table, the fact of her femininity was there, unspoken. There were moments when, to his surprise, Erno felt jealous of the attentions she paid their clients. Sexual possessiveness had never been one of his weaknesses.
Whenever things went wrong, or promised to do so, Amestris took it all in stride. She was much more optimistic than he. She seemed to know, at some cellular level, that she could make things come out right, or if not, deal with the result.
Even when it wasn’t true. She had a terrible sense of direction. In the New Tabriz bazaar, beneath the beautiful, intricately figured ceiling, a place where she had been a hundred times, she’d gotten them lost. Erno was a better judge of the best way to get anywhere in the city. His teasing her about it did not faze her for a second.
Amestris took his hand, spread his fingers, turned it over, and examined his fingernails.
“Do you know the hand is an important symbol among the Shi’a? The fingers”—she counted them out as she spoke—“are Muhammad, Fatimah, Ali, and Fatimah and Ali’s sons, Husayn and Hassain.”
She kissed his thumb, bit the tip lightly. “I know you don’t want to be dependent on me, but you should have consulted me about this hand. You don’t want to make a mistake with your own body. Who did the cloning? I hope he was reputable.”
“You should be pleased,” Erno said. He looked past her to the window, a view of the sun rising over the central peaks on Copernicus, a study in dramatic gray, black, and white.
“I am pleased,” Amestris said. She held his hand to her breast. Looking into her dark eyes, measuring the warmth of her skin, Erno knew she was telling the truth. He ran the hand down to her waist.
She pulled away and sat up, “I wish we could do this all day, but we have a dinner tonight.”
“A dinner?”
She began to dress. “A possible client. Saman Kazedi, the founder and CEO of Kazedi Pianos. Do y
ou know about him?”
“The pianos we had in the Society were Kazedis.”
“He is a very creative man.”
Erno pulled on his shirt. “I don’t understand. What can we do for a piano manufacturer?”
“We’ll let him explain that at dinner, but I am sure that he wants to talk to you about wood.”
“Wood.”
“Yes. And another thing, my beloved. We will be joined by my father and mother.”
Though Cyrus Eskander had done nothing overt to sabotage them, he did not approve of Amestris striking out on her own, of her using the family name for her enterprise, and especially of her marrying a non-Muslim immigrant. On their only meeting, Cyrus had treated Erno like a servant.
“You promised me you’d never subject me to him again. What is this about?”
“My father has had a change of heart. He wants to know you better. He may be a jealous man, but he is also a businessman. I doubt that he’d admit it, but I think he is impressed by what we’ve accomplished in so short a time. Where there is money to be made, he is able to set aside his prejudices.”
Erno brushed back his hair. “Where is this dinner?”
“The Heart of Forugh. We must go home and dress,” Amestris said, leaning in to him.
He raised his new hand to her face, bracketing her cheeks with his thumb and fingers, tilting her head back. “You’ve been very bad,” Erno said. “You’ve kept things from me. If I weren’t such a kind man, I would be compelled to discipline you.”
• • • • •
Amestris had the bedroom pixwall on, volume low, while she applied her makeup. She could hear the hum of the mister in the bath as Erno got ready. How much pleasure he took in his accomplishments. How she loved to see her father’s discomfiture at her marriage to an exile on whom in less than a year she had built an enterprise that had billed 28.2 million rials in the last quarter.
From the beginning, their relationship had been a mixture of business and sex. The word “love” was not one Amestris was eager to hear. She supposed a marriage gave occasion for its use, but in her observation of the married the term was problematic.
Over the last twenty years Amestris had many times found herself in difficult situations with men. Her father, back when he still argued with her, told her that was why she should practice the modesty of Islam: Its seeming restrictions on women were for their protection.
Protection from whom, Amestris countered.
She wondered that she had not sought out a man from the Society of Cousins before. From the beginning, her time with Erno had been a mixture of awkwardness and passion. Surprise, sometimes delight, then moments of complete incomprehension. They had selfish reasons to be together—enough, when they were at odds, to undermine her faith in their marriage. And they both had enough sincere connection, wonder, pleasure, and laughter to make it seem, when things went well, that they were meant to be together.
He tried to be manly according to his understanding of what that meant, but was doomed to fail, for which she was thankful. His efforts to seem forceful, preemptory, and controlling regularly collapsed under him. In another man this would have been annoying or pathetic, but Erno’s sideways decency was a saving grace. Amestris had never had so much fun with a man.
If they could sign Saman as a client, they would cement their legitimacy: Instead of only dealing with other colonies, they could count one of the major firms in Persepolis among their clients. Her father would have a hard time ignoring them.
The pixwall had turned to Here’s the Point! On the screen were Sirius and Dasha Mohseni. The compactly built super-Doberman’s sleek black coat showed his athletic neck to good advantage. He wore a fitted vest and shorts and sat on his specially designed chair beside his human co-host. Amestris turned up the volume.
“You’re right, Dasha,” Sirius said, tapping the fingers of his handpaw on the arm of his chair. “Tonight we will give our watchers an inside view of the Society of Cousins. How best to deal with the challenge they pose? Are they a danger to the rest of the moon?”
The screen switched to the interior of a domed crater. In the distance the tower at its center supported the blue sky. Woodlands covered the slopes. The camera swooped over clusters of apartments and public buildings, across the farms of the crater’s floor, over a wedge of park where flyers in colorful wings soared above a pond to land between white lines on green turf.
Erno came out of the bath, closing a shirt seam. When he saw the image on the wall he stopped.
Sirius’s peculiar canine baritone continued under the video of a woman exhorting a crowd, holding up the arm of a good-looking adolescent boy. “Social unrest persists in the Society. Cousins assert that all they desire is to be left alone. Yet others maintain that their principles undermine the freedoms of every man and woman in the lunar world.”
Silent, Erno sat on the edge of their bed. He fumbled with the shirt cuff, his eyes on the wall.
Dasha, a handsome woman with dark red hair, said, “They scoff at our traditions. Masters of biotech, manipulators of environments, their agents move among us quietly, seemingly deferential, keeping their agenda to themselves. And back in their sealed colony, while the male half of their humanity is repressed, what plans are brewed?”
The image on the screen switched to a video of a regiment of women in Greek battle dress carrying round shields and swords.
“Some trace the origins of the Society of Cousins back to the Amazons of legend,” Dasha continued, “warrior women who cut off their right breasts in order to shoot arrows and wield swords. Herodotus called them ‘Androktones,’ which means ‘killers of men.’ ”
“Not literally, Dasha” Sirius said. “But the men of the Society of Cousins have endured this radical system for more than eighty years. What is life like for the oppressed minority? We have with us tonight a man born and raised among the Cousins, who will give us a first-hand account of the conditions he lived under until he was able to escape—Mr. Tyler Durden.”
Erno’s lips compressed into a line.
“What is it?” Amestris said. “Do you know him?”
“He’s the reason I’m here.”
• • • • •
“Mr. Durden,” Sirius says, leaning forward, “you were raised by the matriarchs of the Society. Yet you organized resistance to their regime and were exiled. Can you tell us about your movement?”
“My brothers and I asked only for the simple freedoms that even the poorest man here has. They refused to listen. In every way that a hope can be crushed, our hopes were crushed. It was devastating, Sirius.”
“What is it like, being a man in among the Cousins?” The dog’s large, batlike ears delicately poised, give it an air of remarkable alertness.
“Well, one is indoctrinated from birth. One is never let out of the sight of some woman for a moment. One of their child rearing adages is: ‘Keep your son close, let your daughter go.’ ”
As he speaks, the image on the screen splits to a video of a colonywide meeting at the Society, taking place in an amphitheater. The image freezes and homes in, one by one, on the members of the Board of Matrons. Beneath each face stands her name: Debra Debrasdaughter, Krista Kayasdaughter, Eva Maggiesdaughter.
“Daughters are set free at age fourteen,” Tyler says, “which is, in its own way, as cruel as anything they do to boys, fostering a competitiveness among the women that leads to lifetime feuds. The degree of scheming you will find in a Cousins politician is light years beyond what goes on in the lunar colonies your viewers are familiar with.”
“Is that possible?” Sirius asks, cocking his head comically. The people in the studio burst out laughing.
Dasha leans in, a look of concern on her face. “But what about the boys, the young boys?”
“For boys it means complete emasculation.”
“Emasculation?” the dog exclaims. “This is not the image we have here of the Cousins male. We are told that men are used for sexual
favors, as if they were in the seraglio.”
“Tell me, Sirius, what is more emasculating than to be treated as if you have no value other than your body, your sexuality community property? Persepolis men are proud and independent. They stand tall, free to choose their friends and spouses. A man among the Cousins is perpetually a boy.”
“And yet,” Sirius says, “in the upcoming Society of Cousins election, the Reform Party has candidates for one-third of the Board. We have reports of increasing numbers of men and women at election rallies.”
“I would not hold out much hope for this election,” Durden says. “The leaders of the Reform Party are all women.”
“A referendum to expand the franchise to all men above age twenty-one is on the ballot,” Sirius says. “Isn’t that a major step forward?”
“The Society allows it only because of the outside pressure from the Federation of Lunar Democracies and the OLS. I guarantee you, the proposition will fail. The election is rigged. Even if by some miracle it should succeed, control of the Board of Matrons by the old families is more important than any theoretical rights that have yet to be exercised.”
“It sounds so hopeless,” Dasha says. “Why do women insist on such a sick society?”
“They are secular utopians,” Durden says. “The most terrible holocausts in human history have been perpetrated by secular utopians. The average woman in the Society is well aware that their social structure is riddled with weakness—which means ever more strict measures to maintain control. Of course, some women rebel, but they are considered a traitorous minority.”
Sirius raises a paw to touch his ear. He looks sad as only a dog can.
“You organized a liberation movement. You sent out appeals for aid from the free lunar governments, but in the end, when your movement was being crushed, none of them came to your aid. Do you harbor any resentment toward Persepolis for refusing to act in your time of need?”
“No, Sirius. We knew the people of Persepolis, if they understood the truth, would be with us. We also knew, however, that we could not count on Persepolis’s liberal regime to act. The myth of the fair sex still prevails here—as well it might, given the warm and giving nature of Persepolis women,” Durden says, looking toward Dasha. “Yet Persepolis fears the possibility of retaliation. All the free governments of the nearside are naturally afraid of retaliation.”