“What are we doing here?” Fift said.
Ze gave up any pretense of finishing the Ranhulo, whose hostility was so hard to take. How could someone like that, a youthful visionary who had heralded the Compromise of the Spoons with hope and joy, end up talking about Vails like they were a dangerous contagion a century later? Wildfire raging through the silent deeps . . . a storm encircling our stillness . . .
Was that what adulthood meant? You got tired; you gave up?
Ze climbed in bed with zirself, snuggled those two bodies together, and closed zir eyes. But it wasn’t like holding another person. It was just two backs, four arms, four legs, two bellies, and still being alone.
Pip turned primly and walked down the fourteen steps until ze stood next to Fift. Ze lightly scratched the thick, smooth swell of zir neck, then slowly lowered zir hand onto Fift’s shoulder. “And how am I to answer this disingenuous rhetorical question, Fift?”
Fift flushed, and gritted zir teeth. “I don’t want to do this.”
Pip nodded. “Indeed you do not. Now, Fift: start walking.”
Vvonda had been right and Fift had been wrong: ze should have just left Shria in the riot, gotten out, not added to vir shame. Ze certainly shouldn’t have said that stuff on the byway afterwards . . . what had ze said, exactly? Was it that bad? Zir agents’ memories of the scene were scrambled, and the feed had still been in shreds . . . but maybe ze could find that moment recorded from some nearby pickup, and watch it . . . see if it was really that . . .
It’s not safe for me with you.
Was Shria just talking about the riot? Maybe this was about what had happened at Stiffwaddle Somatic Fashions.
What Fift did there.
“Fift,” Pip said. “This was the consensus of a family meeting; the first you were invited to, I might add. I understand your being nervous. But you stand at a sluice-bifurcation here. If you behave like a Staid, a Staid of this family, you will vanquish the cowardly marginals who struck you and shamed you, and who hurt your friend. And you will know forever after that you are not a victim. But if you behave like a child . . .” Pip’s eyes narrowed, watching Fift’s face. “Ah. Yes, who hurt your friend, Fift. And this is how you can avenge vem. Not by jumping around in the middle of a combat like a child sneaking zir Vail-sibling’s armor out of the drawer to play dress-up. Not by letting your Fathers fight vir battles on the mats.”
Fift swallowed. But Shria didn’t want to be defended; Shria didn’t want to be avenged. Ze couldn’t make it up to vem like this. Could ze? Ze wanted to object, but ze didn’t trust Mother Pip. Mother Pip absorbed and exploited information with methodical ruthlessness. Fift suspected ze would regret it if ze told Pip anything.
“It is time,” Pip said, “to be what you are, Fift.”
Fift felt a sudden thrill of fear, zir heart contracting, or the world contracting around zir heart, squeezing like a fistful of jelly around zir. Ze willed zir face still as a stone. To be what you are. Mother Pip couldn’t know about what had happened. But could ze have guessed at Fift’s unstaidish feelings?
“This is your job in the world, Fift. Not to make noise and color and conflict, not to demand and smash, not to place your fears and angers and urges before those of others.” Pip smiled, unexpectedly, a tiny, rakish grin. “Well . . . there will be ways to indulge your own wishes. If you are patient, that time will come! But not by demanding them and shouting them out. No, Fift. Your job is to think, to plan, and to order. Your job is to be the still center, the basis, the core.” Ze frowned. “Some Staids, of course, believe that ‘being the still center’ means you can never act decisively, or with speed. But you can, you know . . . you can act like lightning, at the proper time. You know me, Fift. You know I am not afraid of being accused of acting rashly.”
Pip released Fift’s shoulder, took zir own lower lip between zir thumb and forefingers, and inspected Fift carefully.
{Dear Shria,} Fift composed. {I don’t understand what I did wrong. Can’t . . .}
But ve’d already said it wasn’t zir fault. Or said ve wasn’t saying it was.
Fift started over. {Dear Shria, I really do want to see you . . .}
But again, ze was acting like a child. Like with Vvonda at the party: acting needy and emotional. Even if ze could, ze didn’t want to vanquish Shria with cold dispassionate logic; ze didn’t want to be Mother Pip or Father Grobbard with vem. But ze didn’t want to disgust vem, either. Ze was happy to be vanquished, to be vir Older Sibling, if ze could only be siblings with vem.
Pip released zir lip. “You could collapse, of course.” The tone of scorn with which ze usually spoke of Staids unraveling was (carefully?) absent. “Possibly that would be a way out of your predicament. We would have to respect your ontological state, I suppose, and you could have a nice stay in some grove on the surface or in the Doubled Womb, and we’d have to find some other solution to the problem of the riot. All things considered, I think that would be preferable to simply going back to the house and hiding there in cowardice for a few years.”
Fift swallowed. Ze wanted to avoid Pip’s eyes, but ze didn’t seem to be able to. They were a cold, opaque blue today, in the velvety leaf-green folds of Pip’s face. They seemed to read Fift as if zir neural data were still unhidden.
{Most prized Shria, I read with interest . . .} No, that was unsluiced compost. A fake grown-up Staid impersonation. If ve didn’t laugh at zir, ve’d be hurt by zir coldness. Ze didn’t want to hurt vem. Ze just wanted to . . . Ze wanted to be back wandering around the below and beyond, hand in hand, with Tickets in their pockets, expecting anything. {If my actions have in any way . . .} No. {Shria, I respect your wish to spend time with . . .} {I would never wish to interfere with . . .} {I don’t mind if we . . .} {We don’t usually see each other all that often anyway. But I am just wondering, what . . .}
With zir bodies on the bed, ze watched zir own impassive face over the feed, on the stairscapes, staring into Pip’s blue eyes. Their audience was growing sluggishly—they had a few hundred intermittent active watchers, now, in addition to the tens of thousands of automated agents which had been passively tracking zir since the talk with Thavé.
Shria had two bodies listed at the same public location; the third was probably hard at work for Pom Politigus at Stiffwaddle. Ve was doublebodied in an abandonage in Temereen, strolling amid the mounds of rubble with that loose, muscular gait. Vvonda was there, singlebodied, and the aquamarine doublebodied Vail with the thorns running along vir jawlines must be—yes, that was Bluey. (“But there’s got to be some way,” Bluey was saying, insistently, “to get a challenge out of this—”) Vvonda grabbed Shria in a headlock, and Shria’s other body grinned, looking up and away towards Foo, shoulders easy.
“If you are trying to begin a collapse,” Pip growled, “freezing catatonic on a public stairscape in Wallacomp in full view of a quarter of Fullbelly is not the worst way to begin. You could use a little coaching, but it’s a start. I will begin looking for a new assistant, I suppose. Perhaps your time away from the constraints of ontological coherence will help you come up with some new ideas of what to do professionally.”
At the thought that ze might lose Pip’s patronage as banker-historian, Fift felt a small war of panic and relief begin within zir. Ze might end up working at a one-stop-shop banker-historian/bookie/clown/logician booth after all, but to be free of working with Pip . . . maybe long hours, poverty, and abuse from sneeringly superior clients would be worth it?
Then Pip leaned in to deliver the final blow. “Of course, it rather makes things worse for Shria, doesn’t it? It’s one thing for a Vail to be overpowered in a riot with a young Staid who can handle zirself, who retains zir composure, and who later does the correct thing and compels zir assaulters to apologize. Ze restores zir honor in zir way, ve restores virs in virs. That is something to laugh about later. Something that might bind friends together. But for a you
ng healthy Vail to fail to protect vir Staid friend, who is overwhelmed and then unravels as a consequence? For who knows how long? And loses opportunities for professional advancement thereby? That is nothing to laugh about. It would be quite a rebuke to vem . . . if that’s what you want.”
Their audience climbed slowly, to over three thousand.
Fift scrapped all the unfinished drafts of notes to Shria.
Ze started up the stairs.
Pip followed zir, two steps behind. Fift did not look back. Over the feed, ze could see Pip’s impassive face and the wrinkling of the corners of zir eyes that, in one of zir Vail Fathers, would have been a grin of amused triumph.
They did not exchange a word for nearly an hour, until the final elevator taking them up to the habitation of the Vail they were going to see. It was a densely jungled elevator, vines and enormous flowers brushing their faces, tiny work-fauna rustling in the leaves. Active audience had vanished, but hot bookmarks had continued to climb, thirty thousand people ready to switch to active viewing the moment anything interesting happened. Shria and vir friends had vanished into a ludatorium with practice mats.
Pip chuckled. Then ze shook zir head and laughed, a silent jiggling laugh that traveled all over zir body in waves and made zir close zir eyes. {Oh, my dear child.} ze sent privately. {I fear your tastes are too much like my own. Take it from me, it is a hard road, being a Staid lover of Vails!}
Fift said nothing, tried not to betray a reaction. What did Pip suspect?
First zir stomach in the elevator, then zir stomachs where ze sat on the bed, knotted in cold fists of fear.
13
The Vail they had come to Wallacomp to see was descending the slipthread, singlebodied: Hrotrun Videx Spilteritrine of name registry Slithery Brown Rhinoceros 6, 4-bodied Vail, 135 years old, Far Historical index-design technician, firstborn of six. Ve had weak votes of accord from a variety of loose and forgettable historical-index societies, and strong votes of censure from four large reputation-amalgamation engines, one alleging fraud, another cowardice. Ve was part of a childless residential cohort of fifteen. Bookies’ public odds on Hrotrun undergoing a disgraceful collapse within the next three months had climbed over the last two thousand heartbeats from two to one against, to two to one for.
Hrotrun had waved to them from the station above, but right now ve was fully occupied in slowing vir velocity, gingerly stretching the slipthread with vir feet as ve glided to the platform ahead of them. To either side of the path, bright pink goopfields bubbled all the way to the rim of the bowl of Tentative Scoop. It was quieter here, the busy hubbub of sounds from nearby Perilax dulled by the goop’s soft belching and sputtering.
Fift and Pip’s audience was beginning to convert from passive to active: they were back up to a thousand or so active viewers.
Hrotrun sprang from the thread a bodylength above the platform, landed with a slight stumble, bowed jerkily, and hurried toward them, head hunched slightly downward. Pip had come to a stop, and Fift stopped with zir.
“Most esteemed . . . visitors,” Hrotrun began, panting a little from vir exertions. “A pleasure. Let me just say, there’s some good anti-surveillance just over on the next platform, I don’t suppose . . .”
Pip sent Fift zir first line over a private channel: {We’re not interested in anti-surveillance, as I’m sure you can imagine.}
“We’re not really interested in anti-surveillance,” Fift said, “As I’m sure you can . . . imagine.” It came out sympathetic, and perhaps slightly confused-sounding. Not like Pip would have said it, stern, wry, and immovable.
“No,” Hrotrun said, swallowing. Ve was lean and smooth, with perfectly symmetrical features, small firm breasts, and bright red and blue hair like stiff feathers on vir head and cheeks. Every part had a standard attractiveness, but the total effect was generic, as if ve had assembled vemself from packages, which ve probably had . . . timidly, and alone. “No, I suppose not. Well . . .”
From Pip: {You struck me in the face with the elbow of an anonybody two days ago.}
“You, ah,” Fift said, “you were the one who,”—the rudeness bothered zir, to go straight to accusations with no greeting, no attempt to soften the blow—“uh, who struck me in the face, during the riot, two days ago?”
“Oh,” said Hrotrun. “Oh. Yes. I suppose I must have been. I mean I know I was, I looked at the footage. I’m so sorry. It’s quite remarkable that you discovered that it was me! But then”—ve gave a little uncertain titter of a laugh—“your family seems to be fairly remarkable. So. I’m terribly sorry. I can assure you it was an accident. I will be more careful in the future.”
Pip stiffened at the word “accident” and glanced, narrow-eyed, at Fift. {I’m afraid it was no accident.} ze sent.
“An . . . accident,” Fift said.
Hrotrun began to knead vir hands together, bending vir knuckles first one way, then the other. “Yes, yes, certainly an accident,” ve said miserably. “I mean you don’t think I would hit . . . hit! . . . a . . . a staidchild . . . on purpose? Come now.”
Pip cleared zir throat, a hollow rumble. {Why don’t we examine the footage together?} ze sent.
“Let’s,” Fift said. Zir body that stood before Hrotrun felt heavy, and numb, as if it wasn’t part of zir—as if ze was just one of the thousand feed-viewers watching zir pound this poor, frail falling-apart Vail into the ground. “Let’s examine the footage . . . shall we?”
Hrotrun sagged another few fingerwidths and squeezed vir eyes shut. “No, I know what it looks like, I . . . I’m not saying it was that kind of accident, like, like bumping into someone you don’t see on a byway. I mean I didn’t, you know . . .” Vir voice shrank yet further, to a scratchy whisper. “. . . aim.”
Bookies were now giving five to two odds on Hrotrun’s disgraceful collapse in the next three months.
{Isn’t this enough?} Fift sent to Pip on the private channel. {I mean ve’s apologized, ve said ve aimed . . . isn’t it clear? Isn’t, you know, honor restored? I’m not afraid of vem anymore. If I ever was.}
{Ve has not apologized for intentional assault.} Pip sent. {Ask vem if ve has. Ask vem if ve apologizes for intentionally assaulting a minor Staid. Ve will say yes, and we can go. You are doing very well.}
{Ve’s going to collapse.} Fift sent.
{Good.} Pip sent. {I am sure some time in an Idyll will be salutary for vem.}
Hrotrun opened vir eyes, opened vir mouth to say something, some further excuse. Ve saw Pip and Fift glaring at each other, and vir words crept away from vem. Ve hunched vir shoulders as if awaiting a blow.
{What if ve doesn’t go down cleanly?} Fift sent. {What if it’s . . . messier than that?}
{Good.} Pip sent. {Then the world will know that it is inadvisable to physically abuse children behind the shield of apparent anonymity. And that Iraxis cohort takes its responsibilities seriously. Fift, do your duty.}
Fift squeezed zir jaw together, resenting Pip, and wishing Shria were here. Ze felt a stab of loneliness. Ze remembered the pavilion, the walk over to Thavé, vir arm threaded into zirs. The thrill of pride ze’d felt when Shria had called zir brave. Before the riot. Before Fift ruined everything.
Fift checked audience, and swallowed: Shria was watching. But none of vir bodies were visible: ze couldn’t see vir reaction to any of this.
What would Shria think of this? Would ve be on Pip’s side, wanting to devastate Hrotrun, to take revenge? Ze remembered Shria’s bloody face, contorted with rage, as ve lunged at the strange blue anonybody on the byway. Or would ve think like Father Squell, desperate to keep Fift safe, to protect the poor fragile vulnerable staidchild? Ze remembered Shria’s stammered apology in the secret womb-lab of Stiffwaddle Somatic Fashions. I’m the one who—I should have—
Should have protected Fift. Should have kept Fift away from messy vailish passion.
Tears glistened in Hrotrun’s eyes. Ve could lose vir cohort, vir meager clientele. Ve’d been part of that terrifying m
ass of faceless bodies. Now their positions were reversed, and Fift was the terrifying one. Being terrifying was a costume you could put on and take off like a clown in a show.
I didn’t protect you. You deserve to be protected, Fift, not . . . exposed.
Did you strike a defenseless child, Hrotrun? Because I’m a defenseless child; that’s what I am, you see, a delicate Staid who only yearns for tranquility. And now we’ll put you back into your place, and me into mine, and Shria and Pip and everyone can breathe easy, because there’s nothing wild and messy that I yearn for, nothing of Vvonda’s, no rough-and-tumble on the abandonage, no swaggering and preening, no hot breath on my neck, no soft blue fronds slithering around my fingers. There’s nothing of your world I need to understand.
Pip glowered at Fift, willing zir to do zir duty.
Fuck you, Fift thought.
“Why were you there?” Fift asked.
“Wh-what?” said Hrotrun Videx Spilteritrine.
Pip stiffened.
“Why were you there?” Fift asked again. “Where did you get the anonybody? How did you know there would be a riot? Why did you—why did you care what Panaximandra said?”
“Fift,” Pip said sternly.
“What?” Hrotrun said again, blinking away vir tears, a little anger showing up, finally, in vir sad brown eyes. “What are you—that’s none of your—what are you, playing citizen investigator?”
“Answer my questions.”
Pip frowned, hand half raised.
“I don’t have to answer your questions. Look, I’m willing to apologize, all right? I even . . . yes, I mean I know I was wrong to . . .” Ve was trying to flounder vir way back to the script, from confusion and annoyance back to tearful contrition or sullen defiance.
“I don’t give a defective trashrat’s jammed bellyspace about your apology,” Fift said, beginning to enjoy zirself. “And I’m not trying to get you in trouble. Listen, I’m actually asking—look, I got caught in that riot and it was no fun at all.” Ze felt a little choke in zir throat saying it: that elevated amygdalic response again, ze supposed. “I don’t care that you hit me. I don’t care if you feel bad about it. What I need is to understand: what in Kumru’s name was that about?”
The Unraveling Page 16