by Nisi Shawl
So what exactly did I expect to happen, now that I’d gotten this far?
Quarters were detachable modules, little self-contained living units sent out from the maggies’ huge Habs. Maybe the rule against us entering their protected areas was relaxed here. Or maybe they’d make an exception for a child.… But that hatch was obviously too small for the scooter. I knew there was an inflatable suit somewhere under the cushions. After I put it on, though, I’d have to flood the scooter to get outside, and I was probably in enough trouble already. The headsup’s clock warped and disappeared as I slid lower and lower, disappointed with the limits of my success.
I jerked up like an electrified water-flea. The phone! I let it ring a few more times before cutting it on with one wavering hand.
“Kayley?” It was Tata, voice only. Among themselves, especially, maggies mostly signed. But of course since the rebellion, they’d maintained a strict embargo on visual broadcasts from their Habs. And from Quarters, too, it seemed. “Your father knows that you’re here?” she asked.
“Well, not really.” He might, if he’d noticed that I was gone.
“Your presence equals a desire for what?”
I had no answer to that but an honest one. “I want—to—I want to way with you.”
Tata had adopted that bit of solar slang almost as soon as she heard it from me. Using one word to denote a deliberate interdependency of time and space and attention was apparently a very maggie concept. But a short silence followed my statement, as if she hadn’t understood me. “Here? This would not be in alignment with the highest good of all involved.”
In other words, no.
“Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say. I reached out to close down the connection. Maybe I could get home before Dad noticed the scooter missing.
“Wait.”
My hand hovered. My arm began aching.
“My task here is to be rapidly accomplished. Then I can return with you. Would this carry adequate compensation?”
I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant. Compensation for what? For being unable to enter a space forbidden to non-engineered humans for the last one hundred and fifty Years?
“Not complete compensation, of course, I understand. But in adequate amount?”
“Okay,” I repeated. “Yeah. All right.”
Waying with Tata through the Nassea was much more than all right. The background itself was boring, dead, a waste of water populated only by muddy motes. But Tata’s presence charmed the empty scene to life. And the facemask gave her a faintly silly sadness, instead of the menacing air I’d expected.
I wished I was able to hear her singing, the sonar she used to navigate. I couldn’t hear the music, but I watched her, and I saw the dance.
Switching between infrared and a cone of visible, I followed her homeward, entranced by the strength and delicacy of her movements. For a while I tried to get the scooter to imitate them, swooping and halting clumsily. But sliding back and forth on the cushions interfered with my view.
Even though I knew practically nothing of the language at that point, I understood some of what she signed: big, small, honor of your trust, straight to the heart. These things sound so abstract, but they seemed extremely solid when she showed them to me. Her long limbs stretched, swept, gathered softly together.
I wish now I’d saved a recording of at least part of her performance. Maggies have wonderfully expressive faces, but the fine muscles of the alveolocks are, we’re told, even more minutely controlled. Within their skins, maggies are able to communicate multiple messages simultaneously, with ironic, historical, and critical commentaries layered in over several levels. So the scholars say.
I couldn’t swear to the truth of that. There was only one other time Tata wore her skin while speaking to me.
Because of course my father knew I’d taken his scooter. No more trips out into the Nassea for Kayley. Not for at least a Year. I wasn’t even allowed to poke around in my lousy little inflatable.
I told my father this was an overly repressive reaction typical of reformed criminals. He smiled. “Good. I wouldn’t want to do anything abnormal. Think of the psychic scars you’d have to bear.”
Tata’s infrequent trips to Quarters continued after this, naturally. I begrudged them; I didn’t see why she couldn’t just stay and way with me. Didn’t she know how much I missed her, how the loneliness curdled up in my throat as she swam out of sight, out of the misty particulate light shining such a short way into the water?
I think she did.
Tata always made it a point, on her return, to give me some treasure found on her excursions. Something interesting, something different, with a story behind it. This must have been hard for her. Far off, over invisible horizons, maggies spread corals around other stations as ours did here. Aside from this the Nassea was empty of life, void of history. There were the sludges, various excretory masses of bacteria that accumulated in the presence of certain chemicals. There were fossilized sludges and other mineral formations. That was it.
I let the third sulphur sword she gave me fall to the floor. It shattered on the napless carpet, dull yellow shards of petulant guilt. It had been a pretty good sword, maybe half a meter long. But I had two almost as good in my room; the first from a hundred and fifty-five Days ago.
I tried to lie. “I’m sorry,” I told Tata. “It slipped.” I looked up, ready to elaborate, and saw it wouldn’t work. It never did, with her.
“That’s all right, Kayley,” she said aloud. “I don’t have to bring you presents. You don’t have to like them.” Her soft, round face looked embarrassed for us both.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, using my hands the way Tata had taught me. And this time I meant it. She nodded, then walked down the tunnel to her room.
I didn’t know what to do with the sword’s pieces. I picked them up and took them to my dad. He was in the kitchen lab, putting a coral bud in the micro-slicer. “Tata’s back?” he asked. “Poor specimen you’ve got there.”
“It’s broke,” I explained. “I don’t want it.”
“Maybe your mom will be able to use it somehow.” Penny was planning the cities that were going to be built on the land masses the coral was going to produce. Mostly she used cad, but sometimes she liked to work directly on models, making physical changes before she molded them into the program. Touching stuff with her real hands gave her different ideas for how to use things, she said.
I walked past Tata’s room on the way to Penny’s. Tata was singing. Her curtain was on one side of the doorway; that’s how I could hear her. Through the arched rock I caught a glimpse of her skin, half-stretched upon its frame. I decided I would help her on my way back.
Penny was Dad’s latest wife. She wasn’t really my mom, though sometimes I called her that to make her feel good. She had the biggest room, a natural cave. The ceiling and some parts of the walls had been left exposed: raw basalt, rough and black. White, blue, and green spots hung suspended from the roof.
On the floor a display rose: a pink nest of concentric rings, like the crests of ripples spreading out, higher and higher. The highest came to my waist.
I walked to the center where Penny crouched down like she was the stone that had made the splash-of-pink city. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi. Gardens in here,” she said without looking up. “Protected from storms and high seas.”
“Clean. So then these low rings are where people live?”
“That’s right. And the next out are trade and culture, then storage, processing….” She looked up, pulling down her smock’s sleeves and putting her hands on her hips. “Trouble is this coral foundation we’re building on is so sickin fragile. Can’t let it get exposed, but what else are people going to walk on?”
“Dirt?”
“That’s what I’m thinkin, Kayley, but I hate to have to make it from scratch. Sludges from the bottom,” she said, as if I had suggested it. “That’s a possibility, but…” She continued the conversat
ion without me, silently. I left the sword shards on her workbench and walked out.
Tata’s curtain was now in place. Its reddish tresses still stirred, settling themselves in their optimal array, fluffing up over their insulating air pockets. Not long since she’d shut herself in, then.
Dad was gone from the kitchen. I figured he was probably in his room, behind his curtain, too. I had learned on the ship coming out here to join him that in cramped off-Earth accommodations the right to privacy deserved and got the utmost respect. In other words, I could have gone to him. He would have interrupted whatever he was doing. But then he’d want to know what was wrong. It would turn out to be a very big deal. I didn’t like very big deals.
I punched myself a pbj on white and went off to my room to do some school. I was way ahead for the semester. Only another worlday’s worth of program left. Maybe Tata could do something about that.
After I finished a section on Latter Day Lacanians, ortho and heretic, I switched to a book I’d pirated from Penny. It was about strong-limbed athletes, a man and a woman. The woman wanted to squeeze the man. The man wanted to be squeezed, but he didn’t like the way he wanted it. He spent a lot of time trying to determine if the problem was with him, or the woman, or if it was the result of well-meaning interference from his coach. In between his bouts of reflection there was some pretty hot sex. I stayed up reading and masturbating till midnight.
Usually, Tata got me up. But not this Morning. I woke up because I was hungry. The swimming clock-faces on my desk’s default read nine-thirty-three. I had to hurry if I wanted breakfast.
The kitchen program was pretty strict. The idea was to keep the scattered reef-builders on the same planet-wide circadians, disregarding New Bahama’s five-Day rotation. Less mental isolation. More likelihood of a healthy global culture developing later on. So meals were on a schedule. Snacks I could always have, but I really didn’t feel like another pbj. And I hated gorp, which was the only other thing there would be till lunch if I didn’t make it in time.
I showered quickly, with only the most cursory of examinations. Still no pubic hair, breast development, enlarged or parted labia. Any year now, they’d be showing up.
I made it to the kitchen before ten and was rewarded with a choice of grits and kippers or yogurt and granola (gorp without even the saving grace of chocolate). “Who programmed this thing?” I muttered, punching for the gruel and fish-bacon as the lesser of two evils. I made the grits into a sort of white, starchy pudding by entering Dad’s sugar codes along with my own. He wouldn’t mind; he never used up his share anyway. I forced down the kippers by closing my eyes and visualizing the charts from med class: in North American historical studies, early onset of puberty correlated directly with increased protein consumption. I chewed as quickly as I could and swallowed, determined not to hold back my sexual maturity by one unnecessary moment.
I dumped my dishes in the tub for Tata to deal with. It was empty, nothing from Penny or Dad, so she had to be up. I wondered where. I wondered if she was still mad at me. Why else hadn’t she got me up?
She was in her room, curtain back. She smiled as I came in. No, she wasn’t mad. But she wasn’t happy, either. She sat half-foetal on her bed, black, hairless curves rich with captive light. Delicate indentations, the wells for her skin’s funiculi, formed swirling, tattoo-like patterns, subtly shining with deeply embedded drops of protective fluids. Her smooth head rested sideways on one knee.
On their Habs and in Quarters, maggies supposedly went naked, or maybe they wore jewelry or a hat. The extra layer of fat made them uncomfortable in clothes. Their nudity made us equally uncomfortable. In our place, Tata wore a sort of super-loin-cloth, which came up over the front of her long breasts and was held in place by a knotted strip of elastic. This one was red.
I signed. Signs are better than words for expressing all sorts of concepts, and I’d gotten pretty good by this time. I told her something like, “Tata’s sadness equals/creates the sadness of Kayley. Is Tata’s sadness also equivalent to/the result of Kayley’s imbalanced behavior? This would lead to even further loss of Kayley’s balance and cool, but knowledge is the first step towards the retrieval of alignment.” Only it didn’t take that long or sound that pompous and detached.
She raised her head and pointed at me with her chin (the only polite way to point at someone, as opposed to something), then twisted it to show that I should sit next to her, on the bed.
I only knew how to make words with my hands. Tata signed with her whole, huge, wonderful body. She spoke like water, flowing from one phrase to the next by the path of least resistance. She uncurled, and that meant her sadness was not so heavy she couldn’t leave it behind to be fully present with a friend. Her right hand swept aside the chopping, stabbing motion of her left—the sword. She barely bent to notice the imaginary sword fall to the floor, then casually rubbed it out with one eloquent toe. It was not worth the bother of classifying it as unworthy.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her, slowly. Sometimes I felt too awkward to use anything except maggie “phonemes,” laboriously spelling out English words. “What can I do to help?” She sat still and silent for so long I tried again. “Can Kayley aid Tata in any way to receive the gifts of her highest heavenly head?”
“Stay close,” signed Tata. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me alone with—anyone else.” She pulled me closer to her, and I nestled against the soft, warm folds of flesh exposed by her loin-cloth.
We were like that when my Dad came in. He spoke. He had never learned to sign. He said, “We have to talk.” He looked at me. “About my plan for the next worlday.”
“Yes,” said Tata.
“In my office.”
“Okay. Come on, Kayley.” She stood, still holding me close to her side.
“Kayley can stay here.”
“No. She needs to be with me.”
Silence. Even Dad must have heard the lie. “I see,” he said. “All right.” He turned and left the room. We followed.
Dad grew up on an old tube, in orbit around Saturn. He was always shouldering his way through imaginary crowds, eyes and ears open for the first signs of a fight or a panic. Even in middle age, even flight years from anyone else’s turf, he walked like a bangboy on patrol. He stopped in front of his door and automatically looked both ways down the dim corridor. The glow from the glamp showed his short, blond hair swinging around his head, his round, blue eyes narrowing to sweep the air for trouble spots. Then he pulled the curtain, which parted for him, and we went in.
Dad’s room wasn’t quite as big as Penny’s. It could have been twice the size and still it would have seemed too small, because of all the stuff. Three walls full of holoscreens, with crates of 2-D transparencies ready for the hull display, stacked alongside them. His glass kiln against the outer wall. And the rows and rows of shelves filled with bottles, bowls, balls, and figurines. In the midst of this maze of fragility was his desk. Somewhere, too, he had a bed, though I think he almost always slept with Penny.
He took Tata to one wall and showed her the latest maps, which looked nothing like the Nassea I saw outside the port. These were bright, abstract topos, with clouds of yellow, golden-orange, and crimson to show where different varieties of coral buds had been sown. Projected plantings for Dad’s station were turquoise, green, and aquamarine. All these colors dappled the highest peaks, warm ones at the center, cooling as they reached the upper edges of the display. Tata placed one black finger in a valley near the map’s bottom. “Quarters.”
Dad nodded.
“It will be far to the new sites. Too far for skins.”
My father shook his head impatiently. “That’s not what my figures say. You’re capable of two Days work and travel in a skin.”
“Oh, no. I don’t think so…or, perhaps. But capable means only that it can be done. Not that it should. We are capable of many things which nevertheless it is better to refrain from doing.”
“Fine. You look at the topo
s. Come up with a more efficient array and I’ll use it, Tata. Over here.” Dad led her off through the shelves to his desktop. She invited me along with her eyes, but I stayed near the wall, sure I would be bored by the rest of the discussion. Why would she need me to stay that close?
A familiar configuration caught the corner of my eye. It was a face—mine. I moved toward it. Not all the holos were maps, charts, graphs, and grids. There I was, in all my pre-adolescent splendor. And there were images of Mom, my real mom. She looked pretty, not crazy at all. The way she used to be. Next to her were pictures of other women. Probably more former wives. Nobody I knew.
Then something very interesting: interior shots of a maggie Hab. I was as familiar as anyone with their exteriors. The twisted, drooping silver loops were a design cliché. I had a pair of earrings shaped like that. But here were walkways, rising unevenly out of training pools, past racks of skins, golden, brown, auburn, and black. Here was a mat full of necklaces: light, titanium beads strung with bone fragments and flat, rough-textured air-vine seeds. Smooth black fingers were frozen in the act of lifting a strand for the viewer to examine. I wondered if I could pirate the book these stills came from. Or maybe I could even just ask for it.
There were several more. One, which showed a small maggie, a toddler of perhaps two or three Years, had a caption in alpha below the image. I struggled to decipher it. Something about the skin growing on his scalp and neck, still attached, and how carefully it needed to be groomed to prevent painful over-stimulation. No mention, as far as I could see, of anyone doing so on purpose.
That made me wonder how old the book was. It had to have been written pretty soon after the rebellion, before the maggies decided to exclude us from their Habs. Or maybe it pre-dated that. The whole thing might be in alpha. That’d be a challenge to read. Anyway, it’d keep me busy till I got some more school.