{Shria, talk to me.} ze sent again.
Maybe ze should have embraced Dobroc, at least. It might be the last, the only time.
Ze hadn’t even said goodbye. Ze could send, but it would be in zir logs; in Dobroc’s logs, too. Zir parents would see it. Eighty parents! And ze was the latterborn, their prodigy, their project; they might have two or three of them reading zir logs full-time.
The roar of the muscle-engines and the breeze from the wall-lungs flapped Fift’s robes as ze ran, feet splashing in the tepid puddles of condensation.
No answer from Shria.
In the skywhale, a seven-hundred-year-old middleborn Vail, dressed in feathers as if coming from a party, began to sob. Pip glanced over at vem, irritated, and closed zir eyes. It felt like the air around the passengers was clotting: Vails burying their faces in one another’s necks or twitching like trapped animals; Staids stiffening, staring fixedly from the portholes.
Vvonda’s and Bluey’s heads were up out of the goop. Vvonda looked haggard, distant, like a cracked eggshell. Bluey was sobbing. Still no Shria.
Striated planes of gray hanging in midair, limned by the greenish light of mold-graffiti (“Spin Like Foo Babies,” “No One Was Here,” “Imagine Resistance” . . . ).
Fift got out of bed and walked into the hall. It was empty; zir Fathers were downstairs in the breakfast room. Ze avoided watching them over the house feed; who knew what they were saying? Ze didn’t want to hear. But ze felt very alone.
Beyond the surging, humming tubes of liquid that lined the walls of the tunnel, its mouth beckoned, amber with the light of first evening.
Standing in the apartment hallway, there was a temptation to push zir other bodies away, damp the connections, the way ze used to when ze was little—to be safe in at least one place, here in the silence. Or to melt into the feed, ignore all zir bodies, and dissolve zirself into the world kaleidoscope.
In a bespoke fabricorium in Ozinth, a mammoth custombodied Vail (ve would have dwarfed Predoria) was running amok, naked and bloody, smashing glass crucibles with vir horns; in Tilgun, the finals of the Scuttlebank Invitational were being held; in the Manysmall, Perm and Trink were staging footage for Shria’s favorite show, Goopfield Pratfalls, Perm balanced on a rickety assemblage of packing cases above a bubbling sinkhole while Trink peppered vem with rubago fruits; Thavé was on a talk show, explaining something; crowds were clashing with Peaceables in Izist as some kind of Cirque-show devolved into a riot; the archives of Middleborn at Three Hundred Why Mother Why?! held millions of heartbeats of footage Fift hadn’t seen yet . . .
Under the best magnification the field pickups in Tentative Scoop could manage, the orange stoppergoo was a mass of slick globules locked against one another, expanding and contracting to funnel air to those trapped inside, as if the whole mass was breathing. Shria was under there, invisible, hidden.
Fift started down the stairs to the breakfast room and found Smistria, at the bottom, glowering up at zir.
“What, exactly,” Smistria spluttered, “do you think you’re doing?”
“What do you mean?” Fift asked.
The breeze from the tunnel, the exhalation of the muscle-engines, fluttered zir robes as ze stepped out onto the platform.
The two Peaceables ze’d passed before, holding tubes of stoppergoo, turned to look at zir.
“What do I mean? What do I mean? I mean that your Father Squell just spent a thousand heartbeats gently and thoroughly explaining to you why—when the entire world is spinning itself to pieces, and our cohort is at risk because of your inappropriate behavior—you need to stay home and stop sending to Shria Flowblocking Fnax of name registry Are You Void-Spurned Kidding Me . . . and you ignored vem on both counts!”
On the platform, the light was purpling as first evening came to an end. Audience flooded in: ten thousand, fifteen thousand.
“It’s getting late,” the Peaceable on Fift’s left said. Ze had the velvety smooth skin of the very old and eyes that glinted like mica flecks in granite. Ze spoke each word as if it was an entire sentence. “You should go home.”
Fift moved past the Peaceable, eyes down, stepping onto the stairs. How was ze going to get to Stiffwaddle Somatic Fashions? Would a public skywhale let zir on? Ze ascended the stairs towards home, and towards the local docks of Slow-as-Molasses.
“Ve’s in trouble,” Fift said to Smistria. “I never said I wouldn’t send to vem. Ve needs me.”
“Ve needs you? Ve needs you? Oh, I see. For your skills in unarmed combat off the mats? Is that why ve needs you? To help vem start riots all over Fullbelly? No, that can’t be it; I see you’re insulted by the idea. Certainly not; ve must need you for your restraint and calmness and firm command of logic . . . which you’re demonstrating”—Smistria threw vir hands in the air, flushing dark purple, vir braided beards flying in all directions—“by blocking your parents’ messages, pestering rioters in Peaceable custody over the send, and sneaking off to the fulcrum of Foo—”
A hundred thousand viewers on the stairs, and another eighty thousand in the skywhale.
“Father Smistria, can you calm down? I—”
“Can I calm down? No, I can’t calm down, we’ve had far too much calm around here. In fact, we’ve completely failed in our duties, Fift, by calmly allowing you to—”
Frill came up behind Smistria, crossing vir arms across vir bandoliers.
“What?” Smistria barked.
“No, I agree with you completely, actually, Smi,” Frill said, looking at Fift. “Please carry on.”
The staircase branched: one flight up toward home, the other down toward the local docks. Fift slowed down.
Pip, in the skywhale, turned slowly to look at zir.
“Ah . . .” Smistria tugged on vir beard. “Where was I . . . completely failed in our duty, that’s it!”
“Fift,” Pip said. “I want you to return to the apartment. In all your bodies. Now.”
{I just . . .} Fift sent. {I just want to see if ve’s okay.} Ze took a deep breath and headed for the docks.
Pip’s eyes widened a minute fraction of a fingerspan, charged as a surface thunderclap. {Fift. You will comport yourself like a staidchild of a solid and reliable cohort. Are you listening to me? You will not jeopardize your family’s future for some kind of . . . emotional gesture.}
“We’ve allowed you to develop inappropriate attachments,” Smistria spluttered, “and this kind of self-centered . . . ignorance of the effect on those around you—”
Squell came into the corridor. “It isn’t zir fault,” ve said. “Ze doesn’t—”
“I didn’t say it was zir fault!” Smistria said. “I said we’d failed. But it doesn’t do any good to pretend that it’s not also zir fault. In any event, it’s zir responsibility—”
“But listen to what you’re saying.” Squell’s lower lip quivered. “Lack of empathy. Of connection with those around zir . . . well, how was ze to learn those things, when we never”—vir eyes filled with tears—“never managed to—”
“Squell,” Frill said, sharply. “Let’s not do this here.”
“Can we at least go into the breakfast room,” Fift said, “instead of standing here on the stairs . . . ?”
{Mother Pip, please.} Fift sent. {You know my Fathers aren’t going to let me out for weeks once I go home. What if ve’s not well enough to send? I just want vem to know . . .}
“Without a sibling,” Squell wailed, “how was ze to develop those capacities? It was our duty, our duty, and we failed—”
{Shria,} ze sent, {just answer me, please, Shria . . .}
Pip did not answer. Ze turned zir whole body to Fift, and zir gaze was like a furnace. There was no room in Pip’s implacable glare for compromise. Only to submit, to be supplanted once more, to be squeezed again into the place Pip had made for zir in Pip’s ordering of the world.
Ze tried to move toward the breakfast room to sit down, to drink something, but zir Fathers blocked the way. Squel
l was wailing, and Arevio bustled in, glaring at Frill, to embrace Squell; and Frill drew vemself up in anger, shrugging away from Smistria; and it was too much, too many of them, crowding the hallway, full of their demands and noises and heat—too much, too many, no room for Fift—
“No,” ze said.
Ze’d said it aloud, on the skywhale. Into the furnace of Pip’s glare.
“No, I’m not going right home,” ze said aloud. “I’m going . . . I’m going to see vem first. To make sure ve’s okay. And then I’ll come home. That’s perfectly reasonable.” Zir voice quavered a little, and ze hated it. “Ve’s my friend.”
Squell’s wail intensified; ze shuddered and twitched in Arevio’s arms.
“Fift,” Pip said, also aloud. “Have the events of the past days unraveled your mind sufficiently that you now find Hrotrun and Predoria to be compelling role models? You are sixteen years old and thoroughly undistinguished. Ignore for the moment what will happen to your parents; what do you think will happen to you, if you break with us?”
Fift’s hearts squeezed in zir chests. “What are you talking about? I’m—I’m not—leaving the family, I’m just saying, I won’t come home right now.” Ze swallowed. “I’m . . . busy.”
“Fift!” Frill said, pushing past Arevio. “Stop this nonsense now!”
“Essentially,” Pip said, “you are declaring your majority.” The heat of zir glare was dimming, drawing away from Fift. “If you will not submit to parental authority in a moment like this, then it seems your childhoods are finished. Our cohort will not survive it.”
“What in sweet Kumru’s—” Smistria spluttered.
Descending the stairway, Fift glanced down towards the docks; one of the Peaceables was turning to look up at zir.
The furnace was gone; Pip’s glare was ice now, the silent, massive glaciers of the Pole. “It’s not how I would have chosen to begin my adulthood. Sixteen years old, suffering a public disgrace, with the world turned against you. But we each journey alone.”
“Oh voids!” Squell wailed. “No, no . . .”
“What in Kumru’s name,” barked Smistria, “is Pip doing?”
“I can’t endure this,” Squell sobbed. “I can’t! I need to unravel, I need to go, I’m collapsing, I’m collapsing . . .”
Pip’s mouth set into a line. Ze closed zir eyes and rubbed the bridge of zir nose with one hand. Then ze opened zir eyes and faced forward, as if ze were another passenger on the skywhale. As if, Fift’s childhoods being over, they were perfect strangers.
Fift’s throat closed, constricted, dry.
“Squell, stop it,” Frill said. “You can’t collapse now, there’s no room in the Idylls . . .”
“You’re bluffing,” Fift said to Pip. “Ze’s bluffing,” ze said to zir Fathers. “You’d never let zir do that—kick me out of the family . . .”
On the stairs to the docks ze hesitated, looking up at the vault of the roof of Fullbelly, down at shadowed Boorwine.
Mother Pip, facing forward, glacier-cold. One of zir eyebrows twitched.
“Fift,” Frill said, “you just stay where you are on that stairway. Don’t go anywhere, I’m coming to get you!”
“Of course no one is kicking you out of the family, Fift,” Arevio said, “but you have to get yourself under control.”
“Either you are engaged in childing,” Pip said, aloud, in the skywhale, zir nostrils flaring slightly, “or you are not. That is the fact of the matter. That we have pledged to protect one who refuses to accept and acknowledge this protection, who flouts it to plunge zirself into . . . other pursuits . . . This is an untenable situation, Fift.”
“And you think my Fathers—”
“Your Fathers may express any number of emotions about it; they may beg and plead with you to come home and rejoice when you humor them with occasional compliance; they may get the Peaceables to drag you home physically; they may undertake various schemes to make it look as if we are a family and shore up our ratings. But the choice lies with you, Fift. Either you choose your home, your cohort, your responsibilities . . . or you cast them aside.”
“That’s—” Fift was aware of the whole skywhale watching, not to mention a wave of new viewers: three hundred thousand in the skywhale, two hundred thousand on the stairway at the edge of Foo. “You’re—you’re creating a series of false dichotomies!” Like the muddled adjudicator in the shell in Marim’s pocket, but ze couldn’t say that. “This is your idea of parenting? You . . . you either have total control, or . . . or you abandon me?”
Father Frill reached out as if ve was going to grab Fift, then paused, vir hand hovering, and placed it slowly, gently, on zir shoulder. Fift flinched anyway. “You have to stop this,” Frill said.
“But it’s not fair,” Fift told vem. Ze sounded like a four-year-old, like a Vail, like someone who’d never entered the First Gate of Logic, but ze couldn’t help it. Ze shouldn’t be doing this in front of the world. But Pip was wrong. How could zir Mother define zir like that, aloud, as someone undistinguished, someone useless, who could be cast out unless ze obeyed every single little—
“It is not I,” Pip said, “who is—”
“Listen to me!” Fift said in the skywhale. It was almost a shout. Ze got zir voice under control. “Listen. I accept your guidance; but not your absolute protection! I accept your—I choose you all. Okay? But not as . . . I’m not a process you can completely control. If you can’t”—ze leaned towards Pip, because ze was done flinching away—“if you can’t handle responsibility without control, then you . . . parenting was the wrong occupation to choose!”
Frill put vir face in vir hands. Squell began to wail again.
“Oh, that’s just wonderful,” Father Smistria snarled. “Just the boost our parental competence ratings needed. Do go on, Fift.”
“And do you imagine,” Pip said, cocking an eyebrow, still not looking at Fift, “that I can support an apprentice who simply refuses to comply with—”
“Fine,” Fift said. “Fine! I resign from being your apprentice!”
“Kumru’s frozen balls,” Smistria said.
Fift took a step towards the docks. There was movement down there, some kind of stir . . .
“But I don’t resign from childing all of you! Because that’s not about control, Mother Pip!”
Pip’s face was stony and unmoving.
“I just want to collapse,” Squell said. “There must be a place for me. Why can’t I go to Aristi’s Grove, or . . .”
“Squell, for void’s sake, this isn’t the time!” Frill said.
{Apologies are in order}, sent Fift’s context advisory agent, {for the preceding lacuna in functioning. To verify that recalibration is complete, please answer the following question: Did you just publicly resign from your sole official occupation during a heated public argument with your Mother, in the middle of an audience-storm and ratings collapse?}
{Yes}, Fift sent, {I did. Any suggestions?}
In the skywhale, passengers were dropping even the pretense of not looking at them. A gaunt old Staid in the row in front of them turned around in zir seat.
“Your safety . . .” Pip began.
“My safety? I’m not five years old anymore,” Fift said, “and likely to . . . to eat strange mushrooms on the surface, or . . . lose a body from—” Fift felt zirself flushing a richer shade of brown. From doing what? From running to Shria, throwing zirself in vir arms, pressing zir face to vir smooth lavender neck—
{Perhaps}, the context advisory agent sent, {You might consider going home?}
“Fift Brulio,” Father Arevio said, “You must come home. Look at your poor Father Squell! Surely we can have this conversation at home!”
“I’m not”—Fift blundered on in the skywhale. “I’m not going to die of my mistakes. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ll be like Predoria, alone and working in a great hall full of strangers . . .” There was a hard lump in zir throat.
“Oh, for Kumru’s sake,” Smistria sa
id. “Frill, didn’t you say you were fetching zir? What is taking you so long?”
“And maybe I’ll be miserable. But maybe—maybe it’s not enough to hum along like a component snug in its casing, Mother Pip!”
“It’s not zir fault!” Squell cried. “Don’t blame zir. You mustn’t blame yourself, cubblehedge”—ve buried vir face in Arevio’s garment—“for what will happen—”
“I’m almost there,” Frill said. “Don’t take another step, Fift. I’m almost there.”
“No,” Fift said, shrugging away from Frill’s hand. “Don’t, Father Frill. I just—”
Pip squeezed zir eyes shut.
“Maybe it’s better to be miserable,” Fift said in the skywhale, zir voice quavering. “Maybe it’s better to be miserable for a century, if at the end you—you win joy built on honest foundations, Mother Pip, and not on—”
{I’m not going home.} Fift sent zir context advisory agent. {I’m going to . . .} Ze glanced, over the feed, at the local Slow-as-Molasses docks.
There was a crowd at the docks, and for a moment Fift thought it might be another riot. But there were Staids as well as Vails in the crowd, and the Peaceables flanking it were watching silently. They weren’t fighting, but nor were they boarding the bats and whales. They milled around, squatted, leaned against struts and pillars, jostled in groups. Orphans; the emotionally bankrupt; refugees of broken cohorts and closed reactancies; the abandoned and collapsing turned away from the gates of Idylls . . . anyone too low-rated to travel, fetched up against the docks like flotsam, exhausted from fruitlessly begging passage.
“Excuse me,” said the old Staid in the row in front of them (a four-hundred-year-old pedagogical agent arranger), “but I couldn’t help overhearing your fascinating discussion . . . and I said to myself, this sort of thing is so often the result of poor pedagogical agent arrangement! People blame the parents, when in fact the parents may be only indirectly at fault—”
Fift crossed a bridge, and now ze saw the milling crowd at the docks with zir own eyes. Some people there were turning to look up . . . at zir?
“Mine are mood-collared,” said a Vail in the row behind them with a dramatic nimbus of bright orange hair. “Solves the whole problem. I can’t imagine raising staidkids without it. It’s impossible, the things we expect of them! How are you going to get a child to do all this sitting and mumbling without—”
The Unraveling Page 23