by Greg Chase
Sam shook his head, pretty sure he’d misheard what Doc had said. “A shaman? You mean like a religious leader? Are you sure Lev wasn’t trying to make a joke?” As if coming to terms with a woman flirting with him weren’t enough, nothing about this morning’s conversation was doing anything good for his digestion.
Doc laughed. The infectious sound momentarily eased Sam’s anxiety. Based on how often people laughed at his comments, maybe he could serve as comic relief.
“You haven’t heard any of her knock-knock jokes?” Doc asked.
“Knock-knock jokes?” Sam shook his head.
“Yeah,” Doc said. “She had to spend half an hour explaining the concept to me. At one time, if you wanted to announce yourself, you punched your fist against the door. They called it knocking. A genre of jokes developed about it, mostly involving some type of linguistic coincidence. They’re truly horrible even if do you get the concept. Lev decided being eccentric necessitated pursuing a form of outdated humor and has devoted herself to finding and preserving every knock-knock joke she can find. Problem is, because she thinks I know what she’s talking about, she bombards me at any opportunity.”
Sam shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, so me as a shaman is just another of her knock-knock jokes.”
“No, you see… oh, never mind. I’m pretty positive she wasn’t joking.”
Sam did his best to not focus on Mira’s hand as her fingers caressed small circles along his inner thigh. The thin garment did little to cushion her touch. The conversation, Yoshi’s look of acceptance, and Doc’s unconcerned demeanor all spoke of the flirtation as nothing out of the ordinary. He began to see the appeal of a female-positive society. The natural openness of his companions soothed his sexual anxiety. Exactly the opposite of what he’d learned from the awkward schoolyard conquests he and his friends had attempted so many years ago.
But coming to grips with a woman expressing her interest didn’t ease the fear of what they expected of him. “Doc, I don’t know anything about religion. I don’t even know what you people believe. Maybe I could work cleanup duty or something.”
Doc shook his head. “Nope, it’s shaman for you. Don’t look so panicked. We aren’t asking for a go-between with God. What we need is someone to help us get grounded, if you’ll pardon the pun. For twenty years, we’ve been living, working, and floating out here in this agro pod. Soon we’ll be adjusting to existence on an actual planet, one with people we won’t be able to ignore. We’re science nerds, social outcasts, hermits, and young idealists. Teach us how to relate to normal people without losing the goals we’ve set out for our society.”
“Won’t your community still be isolated on Chariklo?” Sam rested his hand on Mira’s, hoping to slow her teasing. Instead, her pinky finger wrapped around his as the others continued their exploration. It’d been a long time since he’d been with a woman. She’d have to know that. Her little game was creating an erection that made it hard to think. But the soft look in her eyes spoke less of sexual conquest than welcoming a new member to this open society.
Doc took a long drink of his coffee, seemingly unaware, or just unconcerned, of the play under the table. “There are other people on the outpost. They are their own community, but we’ll be interacting with them. Then there are the miners and pirates, who can be pretty rough. Think old-time Wild West, and we’re the little town trying to bring in civilization. Best estimate is our little minor planet will support around seven thousand people, give or take. Can you imagine Jessie having to interact with thousands of people?”
Sam wasn’t sure what to say to that. He’d just met her the night before, and while she had an innocent air about her, she didn’t exactly seem naïve.
Doc continued, clearly not looking for an answer. “She’s my biggest worry, but she isn’t my only one. In twenty years, we’ve birthed our fair share of babies, now young adults who’ve never known a larger community. Those of us who do remember life before this pod came here for a reason, and it wasn’t typically to embrace humanity.”
“At least half of us were borderline hermits,” Yoshi said. “I doubt the people we’ll deal with once we set up on Chariklo will be a whole lot better. It takes a certain antisocial personality to survive on the outskirts of the solar system. We need someone to help us reacclimate to humanity.” The sparkling eyes of the gardener glanced down at his wife’s fingers. Looking back to Sam, Yoshi gave a quick wink of acceptance.
Doc continued. “We have books, and Lev has agreed to help find any useful information you might need.”
Did being in a coma for six months really fulfill the job requirements? Not that he saw any real alternative to becoming the community shaman.
Yoshi smiled as he unhooked the vine that held him to the table. “It’s time I headed out to the plants. You can join me, or Mira can show you around if you’d prefer.”
The woman’s fingers curled into his tender flesh unnervingly high up his leg.
“I think I’d like to get a look at what you do with the plants.” Sam turned to Mira. “If that’s okay with you.”
Mira’s smile held only a hint of disappointment. “There’s plenty of time. Make sure Yoshi shows you the cannabis garden.”
Eager to show every plant, new seedling, and type of fruit, Yoshi pulled Sam deep into the man-made jungle. “I’d say you have to forgive Mira, but it wouldn’t do any good. She was considered a nymphomaniac on Earth. You could say she made a study of it with her bonobos.”
Sam could still feel the remnants of her touch on his leg. “It doesn’t bother you?”
The twinkle in Yoshi’s eyes made Sam only slightly less uncomfortable. “Not even a little bit. Love is love, and sex is sex. Mira and I are life partners, but it would be hypocritical of me to deny her sexual access to other people. No one owns anyone else out here either physically or emotionally. We choose to be together every day. In this experimental society, we don’t hide our responses to one another—we explore them.”
“What about jealousy?” Sam wondered if he could be as open-minded.
Yoshi slowed his progress through the vegetation to turn to Sam. “Jealousy is a bad word out here. It means we’ve failed somewhere. Usually it develops when a member of our tribe has been isolated from the community. That feeling of being cut off is almost always self-imposed.”
Sam swallowed hard. “So accepting Mira’s hand on my leg means I accept my role in society, but taking her hand away would have isolated me? Even though she’s your wife?”
“I think you would have found spending the morning with Mira liberating. But I do remember the social constrictions of life on Earth. So does Mira. Take things at your own pace. We do our best to reduce jealousy to a minimum, but we also struggle against feelings of rejection. We’re not shy with our overtures, but no one is ever meant to feel obligated to reciprocate those advances.”
How much of his anxiety was nothing more than old Earth conditioning? It wasn’t as though he’d ever been fond of modern mating rituals. Sam tried to see the ideals of this utopia as just another part of his new, unaccustomed reality. The plants slowly drifted by, welcoming him into a new world order.
Sam took hold of some leathery vegetation in a shade of green so deep that with a passing glance, one would call it black. The next plant proved dark purple on inspection. Flowers too had a gothic look: deep violet, crimson, and indigo.
“We got lucky with those.” Yoshi inspected the plants as if for the first time. “The aggressive evolution of plant life on Earth made the hybridization much easier. A little selective breeding, a little grafting, and the minimal amount of genetic modification, and we developed plants that could handle all forms of environments, low gravity, no gravity, low light, selective light.”
Trees, vines, and leaves a yard in diameter filled the pod. “All this was created in twenty years?” Sam asked.
“No, a lot of it was, but some aspects have been studied for hundreds of years. And the outer terraformed planets ga
ve us another step up.”
Yoshi told him about each plant, why they’d brought or developed it, every one like a child to him. “Take hold of this wisteria. We need to braid it into a net so people will have something to grab onto. It’s easy to lose your grasp on things out here.”
Sam’s hands ached as they twisted the vines to Yoshi’s satisfaction. It felt good, though, knowing he was helping. Yoshi told story after story, all in his pleasant, lilting voice. Not having to carry on his end of the conversation put Sam at ease. He was new, and he didn’t need to have any answers. And the answers he thought he’d learned, from an unwelcome life far away, no longer constrained him. He struggled to understand better the ties that united this small society.
Yoshi handed Sam another vine. “Mira and I never had children on Earth. And once we moved into the agro pod, we felt responsible for everyone.”
“Do you regret it?” Sam asked. “Not having any kids, I mean?”
Yoshi shook his head. “It was easier in a lot of ways. Look at Jess.” Sam smiled inwardly at the mention of her name. “She must’ve been no more than five when we moved onto the ship. Her mom had died in childbirth, and Doc doted on her. But we knew children would have to be raised very differently than they had been on Earth. The old prejudices would mean the end of our civilization in no more than a generation or two. The new model meant multiple partners, resulting in siblings with different fathers and loose family ties. Raising kids became the literal version of it takes a village. Everyone had to be more open when it came to love, and the community’s children learned a new way to navigate relationships.”
“So all kids grow up like Jess? That doesn’t result in wild children?”
Yoshi chewed on an unruly vine then worked it into position with the others. “Not all are like Jess. We started out with a lot of married couples. And those unions couldn’t help but instill some of the same old ideas in their progeny. I suspect if Doc had a wife, Jess might have developed much differently. He romanticized the old hippies and studied them intensely, much more than he’d let on. We’re trying to distill the free love by leaving the old prejudices behind then developing a generation where that idea might work. Our sexual liberation is less about promiscuity than trying to remove the impediment of sex from the path of love.”
Sam set the vine he was working on aside to look fully at Yoshi. “Were you and Mira involved in Jess’s upbringing? I mean, beyond the village-wide aspect?”
Yoshi looked up at a flower bigger than his head. “It wasn’t like we were surrogate parents. More like mentors. At age sixteen, Jess came to stay with us. It was her choice. All kids are allowed to mature at their own speed, and we do our best to be as open and honest with our youth as we can be. Anyone can stay with anyone if the parties are willing. Sometimes this is for a day, sometimes a lifetime. Jess stayed with us for three years. It wasn’t planned.”
Sam longed to know more. “But it wasn’t parental?”
Yoshi gathered some seedpods into a pack that floated at his side. “No, it was to educate her. She needed a woman to help her learn about her body.” Yoshi frowned then shook his head. “Some old ideas still cloud my thoughts. I suppose it’s because you’re from the outside. I have trouble talking about something that is natural here, accepted as part of our society. We teach our youth about sex. Why would that sound so strange?”
Sam thought back to his own experiences. Fumbling, awkward, embarrassing. He had to admit there should have been a better way.
Yoshi’s story took on the feel of a village elder educating the tribe. “Sex is not something we hide. We can’t afford to. We have to procreate for the community to survive. And mankind has a long history of what’s worked and what hasn’t. We didn’t want some old-style religion where men had multiple wives, though Doc did choose more women than men for obvious reasons. We wanted empowered women. Self-confident women who could choose who they wanted to partner with. Women who wouldn’t grow possessive. And we wanted boys to grow up seeing their female friends as equals, not pursuing girls hoping to have sex then telling all their buddies about the conquests. Though that might result in increasing our population, it wasn’t the dynamic anyone wanted.”
The gardener’s nimble fingers continued to weave their latest creation. “So we took sex out of the closet. Opened the door as soon as they noticed differences in their bodies. But waited until they individually told us they were ready for the education.”
Sam took a break from the vines as he listened. “No fumbling around in the dark trying to discover how our bodies work? No embarrassment at looking for answers to why we feel these urges? I can see the appeal, but it also sounds like there’d be some pitfalls along the way.”
“The biggest fear was continuing the misconception of sex equaling love,” Yoshi said. “Kids know so much about everything by the time they hit puberty. A young person learning about sex from another young person can be fumbling, awkward, even dangerous, and they end up thinking they’ve shared this huge adventure and that they’re in love. An older person can lay it out clearer. This is love. This is sex. This is family.”
Sam’s head was swimming from the conversation, from floating weightless among the vines, from muscles that had been made for walking attempting to fly. “Where does that leave Jess?”
Yoshi’s smile lit up his face. “She’s her own person. Not afraid to show compassion. No fear of people, even ones I don’t fully trust. Open, honest, strong. If she has sex with someone, it’s because she wants to. If she loves someone, it’s for who they are, not what they can do to or for her.”
Sam tried to envision a society based on how Jess had been raised. Women would be free to express their desires without the stigma of being considered promiscuous. Men would no longer compensate for their unfulfilled lusts by trying to conquer the world. The result would be a population of people understanding what others had to endure and helping each other with those challenges. “Is this the norm for her generation?”
Yoshi shrugged his shoulders. “Yes and no. Everyone’s different. Human nature, greed, jealousy, power—they all slip in when we’re not vigilant. We never thought our society’s evolution would happen in one generation. But people like Jess—and they are close to the majority—give us a lot of hope.”
Sam looked at the tangled vines of wisteria. “It all sounds so daunting. Based on your theory, so many of mankind’s problems are formed by fundamental biology. I wouldn’t even know where to start. But then, I guess that’s why you focus so much on the next generation.”
“All’s not lost for those of us burdened with a traditional upbringing. We just have to see how that past influences our actions. Decide who we want to be. And evolve beyond those limitations.”
“And what would happen if Jess did fall in love? I mean, in a one-and-only kind of way?” Sam prayed he hadn’t sounded too hopeful, but he couldn’t help the catch in his voice as he asked the question. He’d only just met Jess.
Yoshi ran his hand along the braided net they’d been working on. “You take these plants. You give them what they need to grow. You train them to be useful, even pruning back what’s not correct. But in the end, you have to let them be what they will be. I can’t answer what will happen when Jess finds a relationship she just can’t bear to let go of, one she might not want to share in spite of all our conditioning. This project was never taken on with the idea that we’d know the outcome.”
Sam shook his head. The village was toying with the lives of the next generation. Even for scientists, some barriers you just didn’t cross. And messing with the lives of a tribe’s children was one of them. “Experiments are meant to end in results, conclusions that can be used for the next steps. People are not experiments. You can’t treat your kids like you’re trying to develop the next greatest tomato.”
Instead of being offended, Yoshi beamed at Sam. “And that, my friend, is why you’ll make an excellent shaman.”
Back in the living pod, Sam f
rowned at Jess. “Stop laughing. It isn’t funny.” He’d just finished his description of his breakfast with Doc, Yoshi, and most notably, Mira.
Jess put her hand to her mouth, covering her grin. “It is kind of funny. For Mira, that’s considerable restraint. Usually, she puts her hand down someone’s pants during a conversation. She was just trying to make you feel welcome.”
“How is that supposed to make me feel comfortable?” Sam could feel the blood race to his face.
She wrapped her hands around his waist. “Mira wasn’t trying to make you comfortable. Physical contact, sexual contact, is important to us. And the more uncomfortable the situation, the greater the need for that bonding. You should try to argue with her sometime. It’s impossible, physically impossible. I know—I’ve tried. Just when I thought I was making my point, when I was my most passionate about my argument, she brought me to orgasm. You just can’t convincingly argue with someone who has their hands on your genitals.”
In spite of Sam’s discomfort at the conversation, he had to laugh. “I don’t think I could even… hey, what are you doing?”
Jess’s fingers had worked around to the front of his pants and were playing with the ties. “You’re worked up. She made you excited without giving you what you needed. You’ve been cooped up in that builder’s pod for six months. I can’t even imagine six months without the feel of another person. You need my touch, Sam. Just relax.”
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