by John Kessel
Edouard’s time in this cold, silent place was the closest he had ever come to religion. Since he was a boy he’d been fascinated by Corentine Macysdaughter, its designer. He read of Macysdaughter’s training in engineering, her career on Earth before joining the Society in the early days of its resettlement. He had seen her, once, a year before her death, when she spoke to his vocational class—a tall, thin, very old woman with a deep voice who spoke with great precision and a Cameroon lilt. Edouard’s greatest wish had been to be an architect, but he did not have the gift. It was enough to be an inspector, to touch every day the physical instantiation of Macysdaughter’s mind.
Save for being partnerless, today was like any other. The curve of the surface he walked created a horizon that receded before him as he advanced. The voices of the rally in his ears drowned the echo of his steps. Somebody was talking about gender essentialism. He moved on, not hurrying, not dawdling, alert and patient in this place where he had spent most of his adult life.
The speaker made reference to Carey Evasson and his petition for legal custody of his son. Ellen and Edouard had spoken about Evasson that very morning. The revelation that he was a duplicate of the boy who had gone missing twenty years ago made him, by any measure, the most famous person ever born in the Society. The patriarchal media blasted images of him all over the moon. The rally speaker called this only the most egregious example of how the bodies of Cousins boys were the possession of the social system.
Edouard was distracted from this cant by some motion he caught out of the corner of his eye. A wavering in the air like a heat mirage. When he looked he saw nothing but the forest of struts receding into the distance. Still, he turned off the audio and listened for any stray sound. He pointed his lamp and circled through the area. Nothing.
Annoyed again at his absent co-workers, he resumed his rounds.
An hour into his shift, Edouard arrived at this sector’s dome integrity emergency system. The tanks of sealant, painted bright red, filled the space between inner and outer domes. In the event of a serious breach, within thirty seconds the system would release up to one thousand cubic meters of nanocontrolled exotic material. Liquid at first, the intelligent carbon would flow to the breach and, solidifying from the edges inward, form a skin over any hole to prevent the escape of air. In the history of the Society the system had only been activated once—when a meteor had punched a ten-meter hole through the dome in 2096—and it had performed flawlessly.
Although the tank was under continuous sensor monitoring, Edouard spent the next half hour checking the integrity of its stress points and the primary and backup distribution systems. Satisfied that everything was in order, he moved on. He felt secure enough to turn the audio feed of the rally back on.
Coming up, they said, was an appearance by Erno Pamelasson. Edouard had been a young man, only thirty, when the business with Thomas Marysson had happened. Pamelasson and Marysson had managed to break into the dome not far from here, open one of the access portals and attach a smartpaint bomb to the dome interior. That was the original BYD incident. Edouard did not care for the fact that Pamelasson was back, now working for the OLS. Yet many hailed him as some sort of hero. They waved around that bigoted, politically insane collection of archaic stories. What did that accomplish?
Pamelasson had just begun speaking when Edouard spotted something lying at the foot of one of the struts. At first he thought it might be a slab of concrete fallen from the ceiling, but when he shone his light up at the roof, instead of some hole from spalling, he saw a second object affixed there.
He got down on his knees to examine the one on the floor. It was roughly rectangular, maybe fifty by forty centimeters, fifteen thick. A matte gray surface. It did not belong here. Edouard’s throat constricted.
He touched the surface of the thing. It was cool but not cold. He slipped his fingers beneath the edge and tried to lift it, but it was glued to the floor and would not budge. He pulled his microscope goggles down over his eyes to examine its surface.
In his ear, Erno Pamelasson warned about intervention by the OLS. “. . . change is necessary. Most of you think that, too; that’s why you are here today. But the changes they hope to bring in the aftermath of their report . . .”
• • • • •
Hypatia Camillesdaughter leapt at Erno’s offer to speak at the rally. He didn’t have a lot he wanted to say, except to repeat in more rational terms what he had told Sid and his friends in the Men’s House. That would be something, at least, to salve his conscience, and then he could go.
People began gathering at the university three hours before the rally. Excited students and citizens, eighty percent of them men, crowded the ballroom that functioned as the green room. Speakers played loud music. The Student Men’s Association had a booth where they handed out red T-shirts with the phrase One, or the Other? printed on the breast. The committee preparing the petition to the Board distributed signs for people to carry down to the park where the events would take place.
A man in a red pullover, a centenarian with wild graying hair and a nasal voice, gave instructions on how to behave. “We’ll be going out live to all the patriarchal colonies. Citizens of every OLS member state will be watching. Cameras everywhere. You can never be sure what you say or do won’t be seen by millions of people. Be respectful to the constables. We need to convince these people, Cousins and non-Cousins, that we are worthy of their respect.”
Erno found Hypatia and the protest organizers in a seminar room crammed with signs and posters and boxes of the red shirts. On the wall was a big flowchart of rally logistics. Here the mix was an equal number of women and men.
Erno spotted Hypatia speaking with Carey Evasson while Mira stood by. Hypatia wore a tightly fitted black military-style jacket with white gold buttons and a high collar; her hair was short and showed her cheekbones to good advantage. Though the three stood equally close to one another, Erno had the impression Carey and Mira were together and Hypatia was the odd one out. Apparently the melodrama between Mira and Carey at the hearing had not ended their relationship. He supposed it was none of his business. Who could understand all the currents in this pond?
Hypatia’s eyes flicked over Erno and back to Carey. Mira watched as Erno approached.
“They aren’t part of the movement,” Hypatia was telling Carey. “You shouldn’t worry about them; they’re a minor distraction.”
“And Val?” Carey asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea where he might be. I was under the impression his mother had him on a short leash.” Hypatia’s expression was wary. “You’re sure you won’t speak?”
“No, thank you,” Carey said. Mira touched Carey’s shoulder and he turned. He saw Erno, but said nothing. They left.
Hypatia greeted Erno with the brusqueness of someone who had just dealt with some unpleasant business and was eager to move on. “Thanks for agreeing to participate,” she said. “Your voice is one that people want to hear. Just a word or two will mean a lot to all the men and boys looking to you for leadership.”
She introduced him to the other organizers. A few he had met already through SCOCOM. It was likely that some of them didn’t think Erno’s participation was a good idea, but nobody said anything.
Erno assured Hypatia that he would not relitigate his exile; he only wanted to give the perspective of a Cousin who had found his place outside Fowler yet had concern for the Society’s welfare. He was given ten minutes between the coach of the hockey team and Daquani Jeffersdaughter from the Board.
By the time they decamped for Sobieski Park, the crowd in the plaza was in the hundreds. As the van descended from the rim road, Erno saw the thousands of people gathered in the amphitheater. People crowded the lawn around it so densely that he could not see the turf. On the theater stage a live band was playing, below a video banner that at present carried the slogan “No person’s freedom demands the sacrifice of another’s.” Flyers in bright wings circled overhead.
/> The van drew up behind the stage. Erno descended with the others to the sound of amplified traditional jazz. “Race music.” Erno loved that archaic music and had studied its history. Cousins men had been trying to appropriate the rhetoric of racial discrimination for their own purposes, with mixed results. Erno had used that language himself as a young man, before he’d seen real racial discrimination during his exile.
As soon as they got out, Hypatia was beset by a dozen people with questions. A young woman behind the backstage barrier stood on her toes, her arm raised, calling, “Hypatia! Hypatia!” Hypatia exchanged a few words with each of the speakers, posed for photographs, held her hand over her ear and spoke with her Aide. Camera midges swarmed above; she seemed to glow in their attention.
Erno climbed to the edge of the stage and looked out at the crowd.
The amphitheater had a capacity of three thousand, but there had to be four times that many here, a fifth of the population, and more arriving every minute. Two-thirds of them were somatically male, but females were well represented, and many had brought children. Large numbers wore their work clothes. Five men who should have been out on the surface maintaining solar collectors were there in dayglow pressure suits, helmets thrown back. A line of old men and women sat in the front row, red shawls over their shaven heads. Sanitation workers in yellow hazmat suits held up a banner, “Say Yes!” Agricultural workers in blue coveralls, red scarves around their necks. A woman with a boy on her shoulders, his hands encircling her forehead. Some aquaculture workers in hip waders. Scientists and technicians in lab coats. Athletes in shorts. A flock of girls and boys waving blue-and-white school flags. A few members of the hockey team, sans skates but wearing uniform sweaters. Posters held up high with pictures of Nora Sobieski, Adil Al-Hafez. Teachers, food workers, maintenance.
The band stopped playing; there was some applause, and they downed their instruments, waved, and left the stage. A murmur swept the crowd. After a long few minutes, Hypatia came forward from behind the banner. The crowd erupted in cheers—though Erno heard some booing.
Hypatia held up her arms until the crowd quieted. She smiled out at them. She leaned on the podium and appraised them, as if it was their job to live up to her expectations. “Hello,” she said.
Laughter, and a chorus of “Hello!” back at her.
“The fact that so many are here today,” she said, the mikes picking up her voice and sending out it over the massed people, “means that the number of those who want change is growing. It may not happen today, or tomorrow, or next week, but I want you to take away from this afternoon the certainty that, if you hold it in your hearts and express it in your actions every day, change will happen. That no person’s freedom demands the sacrifice of another’s.”
The crowd cheered.
And so it began. Erno listened to Hypatia and the speakers that followed with a mixture of hope and cynicism. Hypatia was not a selfless broker of the reformers’ dreams. The OLS was not a neutral organization of statesmen. Cyrus was not interested in seeing this unruly village continue as it had. Yet the faces of the people, the flyers above, the trees of the park, the expanse of the artificial sky so blue above them, brought back the idealism that had moved him when he was a boy. Instead of the sense of grievance that had poisoned his every judgment, he felt the possibility of change—even if no one could be free of self-interest, and so many beautiful bright dreams came eventually to grief.
An hour into it they told Erno he was next, and before he knew it he was on the stage. The aroma of bread wafted up from one of the food stands. He took a breath, and began.
“You know who I am. I used to live here. I committed crimes and I was given a fair hearing and I was exiled. I say those words without irony: I was treated fairly by the Society and its leaders.
“For more than ten years I’ve lived in places where the Society, when it is mentioned at all, is spoken of with distrust and incomprehension. You’ve seen plenty of that on the nets. Yet I want to tell you that there are people out there for whom the Society is not a threat, or a reproach, but a source of hope.
“Just as we got here today, I heard the band playing a very old song. I was surprised to hear it, frankly; it dates back to a couple of hundred years ago. This song, it has words that go, ‘What did I do, to be so black and blue?’
“I used to dwell on that question entirely too much in my youth.
“In gender class, you learned all the roles that men traditionally fall into: the Alpha, the Lieutenant, the Enforcer, the Clown, the Good Citizen, the Outsider, the Loser, the Hero. Well, this is the theme song of the Outsider, or the Loser. What did he do to be so black and blue? The answer is, all too often, nothing. Other men needed him to be black and blue, so they did not have to be.
“If you had to classify me back when I lived here, I was probably the Clown. The mocker, the would-be satirist. In the years of my exile, I tried hard to fit into any of the other roles that seemed available. Few of us are stuck in one of these roles forever; sometimes an Alpha can be a Loser and sometimes the Hero is the Outsider. But most of us tend to orbit around one or another.
“The goal of the Society, as far as men were concerned, was to make it unnecessary for any male human being to force himself into one and only one of these roles. To end up black and blue. The Founders said there was no need to organize a society around this and only this set of options. They wanted other possibilities for men and women—and transsexuals, and bisexuals, and nonsexuals, and all the other somatic and psychological flavors of human being. But they failed to accomplish this, and I wonder sometimes if it is possible. It’s not as if we Cousins are some different species, free of the flaws that come with being human.
“The thing I have to say today is simple: If the Society of Cousins has failed to eliminate the need for those boxes, let me remind you that, outside of the Society, it’s worse. And if we Cousins have created some new boxes that have left some of us feeling frustrated or stunted, it’s nothing compared to the degree to which our efforts have mystified, outraged, and frightened people, both men and women, out there.”
Here there came a ragged cheer from the crowd, people holding their banners higher and shouting things Erno could not make out.
“The SCOCOM team I serve on has come here, ostensibly, to listen to us in the effort to understand. Beneath that listening, I think all of us know—which is why the Matrons resisted their coming—is the expectation that the Society would be asked, even forced, to change. I believe, despite my chastening experiences in that patriarchal world, that change is necessary. I guess most of you think that, too, or you wouldn’t be here today.
“But the changes they hope to bring in the aftermath of their report—”
From above the amphitheater there came a flash of light, followed seconds later by an explosion. Erno felt the shock of it in his eardrums, in his chest. He looked up.
• • • • •
Before she even strapped on a feather, Sarah spent twenty minutes inspecting her gear. Satisfied that everything was in order, she fastened the tail foils onto her calves. Jihan, today’s takeoff facilitator, helped her don her right wing, then her left, and tighten the chest harness. Sarah synced all of the inputs with her Aide, put on her helmet, and powered up. The readouts came up on her visual field and her wings fluttered as the servos activated. Testing the controls with each of her fingers in the gloves, she rotated the thousands of feathers in her right wing, then her left, getting a feel for the cyborg bird she had become. She felt alert, mentally prepared, completely present. She inhaled deeply and slowly exhaled, relaxing the muscles of her shoulders and back. She felt strong.
The wind whistled across the jump stage. A kilometer below, the floor of Fowler spread out green and brown, blue where the pond snaked through Sobieski Park. Two teenaged flyers, one in red and the other in striped yellow-and-black, zipped past the tower stage, dangerously close, and a flight patroller swooped in, sounding her whistle to get them
to move off.
Sarah had been flying since she was nine. She had logged more than five thousand hours in the air and was rated Expert. Her high-performance wings had a hair-trigger response, unsafe for novices. Iridescent blue and white, she imagined herself the largest blue jay ever to take wing.
Jihan nodded to indicate Sarah’s turn. Heart racing, Sarah jogged to the edge of the platform and launched herself off into space. Her leg foils, buoyed by the wind, lifted her parallel to the ground.
It was all so slow at first, weightless, before gravity began to draw her down. She let herself fall at a slight angle, picking up speed, wings half furled, then spread them wide and caught the air. The stress hit her arms and shoulders, but it was nothing but invigorating. Leveling off, she slowly climbed upward, feeling as good as she had ever felt in her life.
Sarah avoided other flyers. She liked to fly alone, to feel her body work, the wind buffeting her face, senses completely awake and taking it all in. She did her best thinking while aloft. She drew in the cool air, scented her own sweat, heard the faint whistle of the wind over the carbon-fiber feathers, the chuff of her wings when she lazily beat the air. She followed a radius out from the tower for a couple of kilometers, and when the slopes of the crater rose up she banked right, keeping a good margin above the buildings and trees, toward the park.
In the distance, flyers circled above the amphitheater. Thousands already covered the lawns and filled the black stone benches of the theater. Live music from one of the bands—she could hardly see them—drifted up from the stage. Beyond this, on the aerofield, a flyer in green wings—Sarah recognized the wing tattoo as her friend Alma’s—glided two meters above the turf, pulled into a stall and landed daintily on her feet, trotting forward without a wobble.
Sarah glided, circling the park. The crowd was the largest she had ever seen; they were saying it might be the largest in the history of the colony. Men and women in red shirts and workers’ coveralls, carrying signs and banners, singing songs and chanting. Some looked up at her and waved. She might have been down there herself. In Sarah’s opinion there had been enough trouble already: The Board ought to listen to the reformers and relent. Extend the franchise to men. It was a little like jumping off the flight platform, a risk, but life was risk and what was the Society but a big risk their ancestors had taken? Most men didn’t vote any differently from women anyway, if they took the trouble to vote at all.