“And how does that have anything to do with the Cirque?” Father Frill broke in, cutting Father Smistria short. Ve slapped the side of the doorway—ve hadn’t even made it to the table yet—with vir open hand. “How can you compare—”
“It has everything to do with it!” Father Smistria said, leaning back in vir seating harness, which squeaked. “The Cirques are a remnant of the Vail-supremacist, militarist leagues of—”
“Oh, come on,” Father Nupolo said.
“Please, Smi, this is embarrassing! Crankish conspiracy propaganda!” Frill said. “I would think that you—”
“It’s history, is what it is!” Smistria roared.
“Oh, you and your history!”
“I just hope,” Father Squell said, rubbing vir thumbs together nervously, “that if it is the Cirque, that, you know, that they’ll be all right, because it would be such a shame if we didn’t . . . have them. I mean, everyone loves the Cirque. But if they did take down the feed, of course . . . I imagine there will be . . . consequences . . .”
“Why would the Cirque take down the feed?” Frill cried. “Don’t you think they want their performance discussed?”
“‘Performance,’” Smistria sneered. “Ha! Who else would take it down . . . ?”
“Opportunists! That’s who!” Frill smacked the doorjamb again.
“Oh, I see,” Smistria said, vir voice dripping with sarcasm, “certainly people who evaded consensus to tamper with the world’s sources of light are the last people we should suspect . . .”
“Lag is still increasing,” Father Grobbard said. Zir face was unlined, and zir arms, holding Fift, were relaxed. But Fift could feel the tension under zir perfect, staidish reserve. “Transportation and logistics are in chaos throughout Fullbelly . . . perhaps throughout the world. And Fift . . . I’m no longer getting any visual image of you.”
“I’m fine,” Fift said from zir other body across the room—ze’d slipped out of Nupolo and Squell’s grasp and gone to watch the rolling mini-kitchen concoct sweet frozen soup. Ze had the queasy sense ze sometimes had when ze stood doublebodied in one room, as if ze was still a baby who couldn’t get zir two views of the same scene to mesh. The old nightmarish fear, that ze would suddenly see two irreconcilable pictures, lurked at the edge of zir mind. “We’re fine.” Ze pulled zirself from Father Grobbard’s arms as well.
“You and that vailchild,” Squell began. “How you had the idea in the first place to run off in search of—”
“Pip’s idea,” Father Nupolo said.
Someone in the milling crowd was screaming—a Vail in a feathered tunic, standing on a rollertube. They crossed into a courticle, where a pack of six canids—they might have been real vat-born animals, or someone’s very exotic bodies; who could know without lookup?—went tearing by, knocking over a set of shelves, spilling multicolored balls everywhere. Shria stepped protectively in front of Fift, but the canids raced around them, hullabalooing.
“Oh, diggery! I can’t see anything at all! This is not all right,” Squell said. “This is dangerous. With everyone invisible like this, people are going to start doing . . . well, anything!”
The balls bounced and caromed and sprung over the floor’s edge, falling towards the habitations below until they were caught by the sticky invisible strands of the interspace. They hung there in midair, like tiny bright planets.
“Come on,” Shria said, pulling zir onto the next byway.
Fift’s attention agents could reach the world-of-ideas only in fits and starts. Instead of the clear explanations, the wealth of opinions, the quickly forming consensus that ought to have been there, there was only a jumble of disorganized information. Agitated, Fift’s agents pestered zir with things ze hadn’t requested: The number of publicly locatable canids in Fullbelly. A history of canids and their spit. A route to the Fullbelly Spitting Championship Preparation Village, with a special offer of a tour from one Bilz Takapo of name registry Green Sugarbubble Distinct 8. Fift muted them.
The byway ahead of them was crowded with bodies. Most of them were naked, sleek and featureless with blue or black or red skin and fingers and toes webbed together. Some had only shallow indentations for eyes, mouth, ears, and genitals. A few were umbilical-corded together.
Anonybodies. People rented them sometimes, to be present somewhere without having to travel, but Fift had never seen more than two or three of them in one place. Now, a few hundred were filling the byway, crowded around a Vail standing on a puff-pillar in some kind of historical recreationist military regalia—a plumed and glittery upholstered exoskeleton crowded with bangles, curlicues, jewels, and mirrors. The Vail’s head poked out from the carapace, and vir face had the haggard, hard, too-smooth look of the very old.
Fift and Shria slowed gradually to a halt. Shria’s hand squeezed Fift’s.
Lookup came through, grudgingly: Panaximandra Shebol of name registry Central Glory 2, 1-bodied Vail, 935 years old.
Fift swallowed. The exoskeleton was not a recreation. It was real armor, from the Age of War.
“Certainly, there is an escalating risk of behavioral disinhibition,” Father Grobbard said, “the longer this goes on.” Ze settled back into zir seating harness.
Panaximandra lifted one hand—the movement was a blur, the powered exoskeleton supplying military-grade somatic fluidity—and pointed at Shria and Fift. “And there they are,” ve said. The crowd turned to look.
“What’s wrong, Fift?” said Father Frill. “What’s going on? You look like Kumru when ve discovered vir destiny!”
Fift couldn’t move—not in any of zir bodies. Ze watched the ancient warrior smile.
“Children,” Panaximandra said. “Children! Take a good look. Do a lookup, if you can. Fift Brulio Iraxis of name registry Yellow Peninsula Sugarbubble 5. Shria Qualia Fnax, of name registry Digger Chameleon 2. They are sixteen years old. Only sixteen years ago, Midwives visited the homes of their parental cohorts to perform the sacred rites. Sixteen years ago, these new individuals, these brand-new people were born—born in blood and amniotic fluid. With groaning and sweating they were pushed through dilated cervixes into the world. Sixteen years ago they opened their eyes for the first time, and beheld their parents.”
Anonybodies turned to look at them with blank, unfinished faces.
“What in the squandering . . . ?” Shria said.
“And who were those parents?” Panaximandra asked. “Those lucky people, who were given the right to create life? Note that I say given. They did not take the right, as their due, as their inheritance, as their destiny as human beings. No, they were given it, and they accepted it humbly. They were honored. So honored.”
“Fift!” Father Frill said. Ve took a step into the room.
Fift held up a hand to shush vem.
Panaximandra turned to look over the crowd with a slight sneer. “And where were you sixteen years ago? How have those years been for you? What have you taken as yours? Really taken. You who come to me hiding your true faces. Or are these your true faces? Maybe those other faces you wear are the costumes.”
There was a murmur from the crowd. Amid the blank, shadowed faces in red, blue, and black, a few natural bodies stared at Fift and Shria. They looked hungry, or sad.
“What the fuck is this?” Shria whispered.
“I don’t think it’s the Cirque.” Fift said. “Do you?”
Shria frowned. “How do I know? But doesn’t it seem more—I don’t know, serious? Than the Cirque? Or, like, in bad taste, or something?”
“I’m fine,” Fift told zir Fathers, reflexively.
“They’ve been all right, haven’t they, those past sixteen years?” Panaximandra said. “Smooth like a sluice. Zipping by like a swing. Nothing to complain about.” Another blur, and a boom so loud the crowd staggered, and Fift’s ears rang. Panaximandra’s hands were palm to palm in front of vir chest: ve’d clapped. “Hardly noticeable. You insects rearranged the furniture of the hive you live in, and rearranged
it again. And now those sixteen years are gone, and you’ve lived . . . how much of that time? Maybe a few heartbeats? Probably doing something you weren’t supposed to be doing, or surprising yourself by winning some petty transaction, or making a lucky shot at a lapine with a spear on some surface vacation. For a few heartbeats, you were actually alive; for a few heartbeats, you felt like you were not merely waiting out your interminable lives, but living. As if anything was possible, and you could take what you wanted! As if life was a beast you could master, not an obligatory sex partner it was your duty to pleasure until ze started snoring.”
Uneasy chuckles from the crowd. Everyone was watching Panaximandra now. Two natural bodies—passersby who’d gotten caught up in the crowd?—shoved their way out of the crush and headed off down the byway, shaking their heads. Panaximandra ignored them.
“For a few heartbeats, it felt as if life was new,” Panaximandra said. “The way it was when you were sixteen.”
“Should we go back?” Fift said. “Get out of here?”
“All the way back?” Shria said.
“Fift, we need to talk about your habit of withholding information,” Father Squell said. “It’s not appropriate. It was one thing when you were eight—”
“Fift,” Father Smistria growled, tugging at vir beard, “what’s going on down there?”
“No,” Shria said. “No way am I walking all the way back! We’re going through.”
“I don’t know,” Fift said. “Shria and I ran into some kind of . . . meeting, or something. An old veteran talking to an anonymized crowd . . .”
Fift’s Fathers leaned forward as one; it was like they were all bodies of the same person. “Fift,” Father Frill said. “Get out of there. Turn around and walk away!”
“My folks say we should get out of here,” Fift told Shria.
“Fuck that,” Shria said. “Hey, no-bodies! Make room—we’re coming through!” Ve started to move, pulling gently on Fift’s hand, but when ze didn’t step forward, ve let go. The anonybodies near them, blue, black, and red, turned to watch.
“But you are worth more than that,” Panaximandra said urgently. “You are human beings. You do not need to be predictable blobs of hollow contentment, well-regulated parts of a system which has only homeostasis, but no meaning . . . enduring your allotted centuries, dying as an afterthought, doing what you are told.”
Shria slowed to a stop an arm’s length from the crowd, and Fift felt a quiver of despair. Ve would be supplanted; ve had no chance of intimidating the mass of nobodies.
Shria turned and looked back at Fift. Ve looked uneasy. Without pausing to think, Fift came forward to vem and took vir hand.
“We can resist this living death,” Panaximandra said. “The first step is to unseat the Midwives from the center of everything. Every one of you is a human being. Every one of you can be a Hero. Every one of you can be a Mother!”
All around them, mouthless bodies drew a deep breath. Shria’s step faltered for a moment, and ve looked back at Fift. Unseat the Midwives?
“Are you with the Clowns?” someone called.
Panaximandra smiled. “It is hard to tell when the Cirque is joking. I found parts of their performance . . . inspiring. Other parts, disturbing. Those quips about mixing Vail and Staid—are they meant to be taken seriously? To encourage toadclownery? If so, they disgust me. Nor am I sure that the Clowns are entirely serious about revolution. But they have certainly proven”—ve looked up at the vast sweep of habitations above—“useful.”
“Fift? Fift? Are you getting out of there?” Frill said, vir voice quavering with unease. Ve drew and sheathed, drew and sheathed, one of the ceremonial golden knives strapped to vir sash.
“We’re trying to,” Fift said.
Shria’s hand was warm. Ve swallowed, then grinned at zir and slid between a blue body and a red body, murmuring, “Excuse me . . .”
The anonybodies glanced at them, shifted aside, turning back to Panaximandra.
Panaximandra began to pull soft little scraps of something from pockets hidden among the glittering festoonery of vir exoskeleton and toss them into the crowd, vir arms a blur. The nobodies reached and jostled to catch them. “Revolution against this deadness, this confinement, means feeling alive. It is all very well to officiously pretend that struggle and supplanting are open to all, that ‘take what you want’ is the basis of our society. This is the myth of freedom. In reality, you will succeed in taking nothing, if you try to do it alone.”
A scrap of what Panaximandra was throwing batted Fift in the face; it was soft, plush cloth, a luxurious texture. Ze held it for a moment before a green nobody, the hollows of vir face gaping, snatched it from zir.
“If you act alone, the world’s structures will defeat you. Ratings and banking-history, reactancy and arbitration, the feed which watches your every act—they will hold you in place. Consensus will immobilize you like a bug in amber. From the moment of your birth. From the moment you are gendered and inscribed into lookup . . . by the Midwives.”
“You want ungendered babies?” someone shouted. There was an angry murmur. Shria pushed forward into the crowd, but the blue rent-a-body in front of vem shrugged away and closed ranks, pushing its shoulder into the twin body—perhaps another host for the same person—standing beside it.
Panaximandra flushed with rage and stopped throwing the soft cloths. “Of course not! Do you think I am a monster? I have only compassion for those horrible freaks, and disgust for their misguided parents. But do you think that is revolution? Do you think the Midwives mind when a few radicals refuse lookup and bear ungendered babies? Of course not! Because in almost all cases, the Midwives are able to break up those cohorts and adopt the children! As they adopt the refuse of so many failed cohorts! And think, if you will, of that! That is what we have for Midwives: late-gendered freaks and other orphans—only children, most of them! No wonder they are so desperate for order and stasis; no wonder they are so fixated on scarcity. No wonder they deny every true, luxurious, immoderate, transporting feeling! They may travel in pairs, Vail and Staid, and preach the Balance, but their Balance is a fraud, for there is no scrap of true vailish boldness and joy in them. Our whole world is built to compensate for that which they were deprived of: order and safety. I may have compassion for them, but I will not yield my world to soothe their wounds!” Ve held aloft one of the scraps ve had thrown from the dais. “Feel this! Feel this against your skin! This is the texture of revolution! Wherever you feel this, know that we are with you!”
“Block the feed! Kill the Midwives!” someone yelled.
“Shut up!” someone else yelled.
Kill the Midwives? Had someone really just said that? It was dangerous even to be listening to these people. Fift looked around desperately. Where were the Peaceables? But the feed was down. No one was coming. Shria was pulling on zir hand.
Shria tried to feel vir way around the press of bodies, but the crowd had become a roiling sea, jumping and snatching at the rags of revolution. Ve was pushed back, then knocked forward, and Fift almost lost zir grip on vem. Ze struggled forward and caught vir arm with both hands, pulling zirself toward vem.
It was a sea of Vails . . . and only Vails. You didn’t need lookup or faces or clothes or adornments to tell that in this restless, jumping, snatching, yelling crowd, there was nothing staidish, and no place for Fift.
There was something obscene about it. Fift shouldn’t be seeing it.
“Well?” Squell asked. Ze turned from the table, addressing Fift’s other body. “Have you left that area, Fift?”
“Grobbard,” Nupolo said. “This nonsense . . . how long will it last? Kumru’s tits, what happened?”
“From what I can piece together,” Grobbard said. “The Cirque Fantabulous is indeed to blame for the initial feed interruption—”
“Aha!” Smistria said. “You see? I knew it!”
Though ze held Shria’s hand in zirs, Fift couldn’t see vir face. Instead: rags, roar
ing, red-and-blue arms and shoulders.
“Block the feed!”
“But they claim it was only planned as a momentary interruption,” Grobbard said. “A punctuation to their piece, a pause for reflection, as it were.”
“Quite a pause!” Smistria began. “So now they’ve broken the feed, have they?”
“There seem to be other saboteurs who took advantage—”
“Hold on, Grobbard,” Frill said. “Fift, where are you? Are you away from that . . . group?”
“We’re trying,” Fift said.
Blue and red bodies surged around them. Shria pulled Fift through a gap and ze crashed into vem with a shudder. Fift felt the hard muscles of Shria’s arms, the softness of vir breasts mashed against zir.
“I can’t stand this anymore,” Smistria said, and shrugged out of vir harness.
“Where are you going?” Father Squell cried.
“I’m going to requisition a bat and fetch the children!”
“A bat?” Father Grobbard said. “It seems unlikely that you will obtain one. Those that are not grounded are—”
“I’ll come with you,” Father Frill said. Vir nostrils flared, and ve stood up straighter.
“Requisition a bat where?” Squell said, looking from Grobbard to Frill. “I’m not getting a response from the usual places at all . . .”
Around them, the sea of Vails roared. From vir puff-pillar, Panaximandra smiled vir cool smile.
Shria held Fift. Fift clung to vir surface-forest smell amid the burnt-plastic of the anonybodies.
“Well,” Smistria said, folding vir arms across vir chest, “I happen to know there’s a party at Darnadi’s house with several logistics administrators and a host of important reactants attending. We’ll simply explain the problem. Fift, you come with us, so you can tell us where you are; and also stay here”—ve rapped on the table—“so you can tell your other Fathers what’s going on if we can’t get messages through.”
The Unraveling Page 10