The Moon and the Other

by John Kessel

  Roz’s lips pressed together. “It wasn’t just me you left,” she said, voice rising. “You left Val, too. Then after years of ignoring us you seduced him away, and in a few months you’ve filled his head full of this Spartan crap. You’re a ‘father’ now. So manly, so special. You’re an idiot.”

  Carey laughed. “You spent twenty years protecting your father and his weird sexual possessiveness. He was the man who owned you.”

  “You want to own Val! That’s all you talked about in the hearing. You’ve never put his interests ahead of your own.”

  “Maybe I understand Val more than you do.”

  “He used to be the kindest boy. Now he blames me—and Mira, and just about every other woman—for taking him from you. He’s the victim, and you’re the hero.”

  The door to the apartment opened. Eva came into the room to find them standing opposite each other, rigid as statues.

  “Well, this doesn’t look good,” she said. She looked at Roz. “You told him?”

  “Yes,” said Roz.

  Carey said, “I’m going now.”

  “Not yet,” Eva said. She tried to embrace him; he wouldn’t let her. There were dark circles under her eyes. “Whatever is going on between you two right now,” Eva said, “I need your help—both of you.”

  • • • • •

  The banquet room of the Hotel Manuchehr glittered with the assembled guests.

  “Amestris! You look lovely! I’m so glad to see you,” said Maryam Mokri, an assistant to the Finance Minister.

  “We so seldom see you since your marriage.” This was Parissa Firdaus, who did genetic surgery in New Tabriz.

  “How are you?” asked Donya Rasdani, married to the Prime Minister’s press secretary. “They are wise to keep your husband out of the public eye after that terrorism accusation. Have you heard from him?”

  Amestris said, “Erno keeps me informed.”

  “It must be hard to maintain your business with him unable to do his part.”

  “Do you think,” Parissa said, letting the words roll from her tongue as if she did not care about the answer, “his sympathies lie with the Cousins, or is he capable of being an objective observer?”

  “There’s such a thing as an objective observer?” Amestris said.

  The annual fundraising banquet for OLSESCO was well attended by the politically connected and the wealthy. OLSESCO ran a number of charities aiding people with issues of gender: gynandromorphs, hermaphrodites, ambisexuals, bisexuals, intersexuals, perisexuals, neuters, androgyns, gender queers, gays, lesbians, and the varieties of transsexuals. In Persepolis this work received considerable public criticism, but the committee had its share of strong supporters.

  Amestris attended every year, as did most of her women business friends and government officials. This year’s guest list counted almost two hundred women, transgendered, noögendered, cyborged. In addition to the OLS Associate Secretary General were leaders from sixteen colonies. Amestris had known some of these people for twenty years. But she had not replied to the invitation until late and was thus unable to share a table with Sima Mozaffari, which might have made the evening tolerable.

  “We don’t let those with personality disorders or mystical delusions onto SCOCOM,” Barbara Sydney, OLS representative from Rupes Cauchy, told Amestris. “We know what the investigators believe and have charted their cortexes. The report they produce will be as true as anything ever is.”

  “Since Amestris won’t say anything,” Donya said, “maybe you can tell us, Dr. Sydney, what is going on in the Society of Cousins?”

  “The committee expects the preliminary report in the next day or so,” Sydney said. “A draft is already circulating, but it’s under embargo.”

  “They’re waiting until after this protest being held there,” Maryam said. “The Reform Party is calling for a Public Determination by the Board of Matrons.”

  “What’s that?”

  Maryam was very interested in Cousins politics. She never hesitated to pass on her insights, if a person who got all of her information third hand could be said to have insights. “Despite the failure of the men’s voting initiative, the Matrons have the power, by unanimous vote, to extend the franchise to all men in the colony. The reformers claim that such an action is the only way the Society will survive OLS scrutiny.”

  “Does the OLS really care about the condition of men?” asked Parissa. “This is all about fear of biological weapons—right, Dr. Sydney?”

  Sydney lowered her voice. “It hasn’t made the news yet. Eva Maggiesdaughter, former Chair of the Board of Matrons, has called a press conference for tomorrow. They’re holding the conference in one of the laboratories. The media will feast on this. It will be everywhere tomorrow.”

  “Her son, Carey Evasson!” Maryam said. “What a compelling person! He would be so much better off if he left the Society.”

  The conversation skated off into speculations about hidden Cousins weapons programs. They glanced at Amestris as they avoided discussing Erno’s involvement in bioweapons.

  She excused herself and went to the ladies room, but was accosted there by other friends. This time it was all about her family: “So Dariush is resuming his career? Is that a mistake? He retired at the top of his form. What will happen if he finishes fifth, or twentieth?”

  “He has a son now,” Amestris said. “He wishes to prove himself again.”

  She could not escape the webs in which she was tangled: her father, her mother, her sister, her family, Erno, the politics of SCOCOM, the rumors of difficulties at EED. If only she had a different name. Every present moment was colored by the years that had come before.

  Sima entered the women’s lounge. She embraced Amestris and whispered in her ear, “Saman is here tonight. Have you spoken with him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “We should talk. Call me tomorrow. Don’t forget.”

  Amestris was grateful for Sima’s nonjudgmental acceptance. “I won’t.”

  When she returned to the banquet room, she spotted Saman at a table with several prospective wives. If anyone might burden her with the past, it was Saman. She did not want to talk about dead trees or classical music—but he also knew her in a way that these other people did not. He understood her father and her mother and the matrix of obligations they represented. He had a kind heart. If only he did not love her.

  He saw her coming toward him and smiled. The woman to his right fussed with her purse. Saman stood and bowed slightly.

  She leaned toward him. “Saman, can we get out of here?”

  “Of course,” he said softly.

  He made his excuses to the others at the table and escorted Amestris to the hotel’s lounge. They sat at a tiny table and ordered coffee.

  “I’ll let you go back in a minute,” she said. “I need to ask your opinion.”

  “About what?”

  “Erno’s lies.”

  Saman raised an eyebrow. “You come to me for this?”

  “I expect you’ll be honest with me—no matter what you feel.”

  He frowned. “Erno can’t be the first man who’s lied to you.”

  “I fooled myself. I thought, as a Cousin, he might be different.”

  “So he claimed to be able to do something that he can’t do? That sounds like every man I ever knew, and most of the women. If I were in his position and wanted to keep you, I would lie.”

  Amestris smiled. “But I fooled him, too.”

  “What lie did you tell?”

  “I told him not to say he loved me, and I wouldn’t say it to him.”

  “I believe I have heard you tell someone that before.”

  She looked into his eyes, expecting to see the sadness that he burdened her with, but found only amusement.

  “Yes, I guess you have,” she said.

  “But in the case of Erno it turned out to be a lie?”

  “I fell in love.”

  “So you married him.”

  “Tha
t wasn’t how it started. We had a business to found, and he wasn’t a citizen. It was a marriage with a purpose.”

  “As are most marriages. Your parents’, for instance. Such marriages sometimes lead to the deepest kind of love.”

  “I don’t know what kind of marriage it is now. I don’t think he knows either. That hasn’t kept him from feeling he has some right to me.”

  “Doesn’t he have some right?”

  “No more than I am willing to give. I do give him things—at some times, in some places, when I want to.” Amestris studied the grounds in the bottom of her cup. “He thinks because I listen to him, I understand, and because I understand, I care. How can I love him and at the same time not care?”

  “You’re not the same person he is. It’s a banality, but it’s true.”

  She looked Sam in the eyes again. “Come with me.”

  Some people must have noticed them leaving together, but Amestris did not care. She took Saman to their apartment. She felt Saman’s hand lightly on her back as they entered the building. As soon as they closed the apartment door she pushed him up against the wall. She took his hands and pinned them at his sides, kissed him on the lips. They kissed for a long time, his mouth seeking hers, hers on his, sometimes rough, often delicate, the barest brush of lips, the tips of their tongues flirting with each other. She closed her eyes and pressed her body against him.

  They moved to the bedroom, and it was some question whether he was pushing her onto the bed or she was dragging him down onto it. They had not made love for more than twenty years. He was older now. Still an attentive lover, taking his cue from her, and when her cue was that she did not want control, he took that too and made her do what she wanted him to make her do.

  She laughed. She had not laughed for some time.

  After their lovemaking, she got them iced sharbat. They lay in bed and sipped. The lovely smell of sex. He could not stop looking at her, as if she were some miracle. She remembered that look.

  She tried not to think about Erno.

  “So, are you happy?” she asked him.

  “I am very happy.” He lay on his side, stretched out, and rested his hand on her thigh.

  “Don’t think that this means anything.”

  “It clearly means something. I won’t presume I know what.”

  “Erno is coming back, no matter what SCOCOM reports. I want him back, though I don’t know how it will be when he’s here. He may have what we need to grow your forest. The business may be even more successful. Keeping separate from my family is going to be difficult, if not impossible.”

  Amestris didn’t add that, after tonight, it was going to be hard for her to be around Sam, too.

  Sam raised himself on one elbow and looked down at her. “Leave Persepolis.”

  “That’s not what you want.”

  “Let’s set aside what I want. Mazra moved to New Mumbai, and she says that it’s wonderful there, under the tent, open to the sky. She says she will never live in an underground city again.”

  “Yes, and her children will be sterile from the cosmic rays.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You plan to have children?”

  Amestris had to smile again. “Of course not.”

  She kissed him and got out of bed. When she returned from the bathroom Saman was dressing. He said, “I’m not as convinced as you are that Erno will fail to create my forest. Desperate men accomplish remarkable things.”

  “I don’t think that will solve my problem.”

  Saman kissed her. “We’ll see.” He put on his jacket and left.

  Amestris lay in bed for an hour afterward. It was early in the morning, and she was very tired, but she could not sleep. She remembered the first time Erno and she had been together, the roughness of it, the heat. Strangers, their bodies raging for each other, a little fear adding a delicious edge.

  A desperate man, Saman had said. She’d seen that in Erno from the start. At some level had she known he was lying about his abilities all along? Accepted it because she could feel that he wanted something more than sex? She needed him, too, needed to believe what he told her with his body and his voice.

  It would be easier if she didn’t love him. He was as much younger than she as she was younger than Saman.

  She considered Saman’s advice. Moving to New Mumbai, Aristarchus, any of the nearside colonies would be no escape. But Fowler—that was another matter. For one thing, if they moved EED there, they could draw directly on Cousins environmental experts. The question was whether the Society would allow such an outpost of foreign capitalism. They never had before. But perhaps, if the SCOCOM report forced an opening, it could be done.

  For another thing, Erno would be in a place he knew, not so dependent on her. If it ever came to divorce, Amestris told herself, he would be better off there than here.

  And in the Society she’d have, perhaps, the opportunity to learn a different way to be female.

  As if, from across the moon, Erno had heard her thoughts, her Aide announced a message from him. She opened it.

  Ghazal for Amestris

  Four thousand one hundred kilometers

  to Persepolis. Who would not make

  that hegira, for love of Amestris?

  To get there walk due south,

  follow Canopus, keel of the ship

  which sails the skies above Amestris.

  Over the dead landscape,

  the seven sisters blaze; not so bright,

  nor distant, as the love of Amestris.

  I pass through corridors unseen,

  conscience fraught, our salvation held

  within my tattered glove, Amestris.

  While Cousins men and women

  swim the erotic sea—the consummation

  we are deprived of, Amestris.

  This place is my home, some say,

  where I belong. No home

  exists without your love, Amestris.

  Does my rival lie beside you

  as I write these lines? Figures in my mind

  my torment prove, Amestris.

  Abashed, Erno vows to surrender

  his foolish doubts: abandon himself

  rather than lose your love, Amestris.

  And below this:

  I have the genomes.

  • • • • •

  Video Archive

  Press Conference, Materials Laboratory, Society of Cousins

  30 April 2149

  The conference is held in a laboratory of the Materials complex in the Fowler colony. Behind a window, two technicians work in a control booth. One end of the room is dominated by a large sphere that looks like nothing so much as a huge blue marble, five meters in diameter. The sphere is divided along its equator, its top half connected to hydraulics in the ceiling. Several banks of instruments arc around the sphere, including a transparent chamber about a meter square and two tall. In front of the device a podium has been set up, beside which is a metal table holding two gel pads and a small animal carrier.

  At the room’s other end, almost as large as the marble, is a nanoassembler of somewhat arcane design. Beside it medical equipment, including a gurney and a bank of physiological monitors.

  Through closed double doors comes the hum of the fusion reactor in the next lab.

  Along one wall, a bank of seats holds the dozens assembled for the press conference. Sirius is there with his crew and assistant, Gracie. The SCOCOM investigating team, Göttsch and Beason and Li, minus Erno Pamelasson.

  Board of Matrons Chair Krista Kayasdaughter is there, along with several other Board members, a couple of directors from the lab, and some scientists. At one end of the front row is Carey Evasson.

  Rosalind Baldwin speaks with the techs. At one point she crawls under the big blue sphere, then comes out again. Finally she sits down among the lab personnel, at the opposite end of the row from Evasson.

  Dr. Eva Maggiesdaughter, who has stepped out into the reactor room, returns and speaks with Carey.
He listens, then nods. She speaks with Baldwin, has a word with Kayasdaughter, then steps to the podium.

  Eva Maggiesdaughter: Thank you for coming today. Let me get right to it: I’m here to demonstrate our Integrated Quantum Scanner Array and associated technologies. Keeping this device a secret was the reason for the embargo on scientific information the Society of Cousins instituted last year.

  I believe that some of you are familiar—Dr. Göttsch, certainly—with my papers of thirty years ago that elaborate some implications of Redling Theory. They suggest it is possible to scan material objects at a degree of resolution below the Planck-Wheeler length, or, to put it in simple terms, to make an end run around the uncertainty principle. The IQSA has been engineered to take advantage of this possibility. We are able do this with any matter, living or inert. To demonstrate the IQSA’s scanning ability, I am going to give you today an extreme example.

  Maggiesdaughter signals the booth, and with a thunk the hydraulics start and lift the top half of the sphere toward the ceiling. The interior is lined with thousands of silver hexagonal cells. Suspended parallel to the floor, at the equator of the sphere, is a mesh platform. When the top hemisphere is clear, the platform rotates out of the lower half toward Maggiesdaughter.

  Maggiesdaughter moves to the animal carrier and takes out a large black-and-white cat. Either the cat is exceptionally trusting or he has been sedated. Maggiesdaughter flips him onto his back and rubs his belly. The camera floats in for a close-up. The cat’s purr is picked up by the mikes; his front paws curl up as he stares sleepily into the lens, bonelessly limp.

  Maggiesdaughter: This is Hector, my cat.

  Maggiesdaughter puts the cat into the transparent chamber beside the sphere and seals it. The cat curls up on the floor, tail in front of his nose, and closes his eyes.

  Maggiesdaughter: I’m going to spray a mist of nanolenses into this chamber. It will be necessary for Hector to inhale them, and for them to pass through his lungs into his blood.

  She presses a control that floods the chamber with gray mist. Hector’s fur twitches. He sneezes.