Fift kept zir eyes on the tables in front of zir, but over the house feed, ze searched the Midwives’ faces. Were they here to take zir away?
Ze wasn’t supposed to be following the odds that bookies were placing on the cohort’s survival; zir parents had blanked out zir feed access to the reports. But they couldn’t object to zir watching Miskisk, and Miskisk, in a pavilion in Ebberen, was loudly telling vir friends that the odds were against them now, and how it was all Pip’s fault.
“We are here,” Miolasia said, “to ask for your assistance.”
“You can be certain,” Pip said, “Revered Eminences, of any assistance we can render you.”
In the breakfast room, Frill slid vir ceremonial dagger out of, into, out of its sheath. “Where is this going?”
“Certain irresponsible elements,” Umlum said, “are making use of your child as a symbol.”
“Oh, irresponsible elements,” Frill said in the breakfast room. “I see. Because weaponizing the polysomatic network was terribly responsible.”
“Frill,” Smistria growled, “this is the last moment I want to hear your chaotist nonsense.”
Squell was hunched over, in the breakfast room and the meeting room: precisely the same posture, hands clutching the tables.
“The disturbances in Wallacomp are spreading,” Umlum said. “Not only riots, but other demonstrations, designed to mock and . . . denigrate the ordering elements of society.”
“Laxity, and disrespect,” said Miolasia.
“Disrespect . . .” muttered Frill.
Smistria’s fist slammed down on the breakfast room table. “Enough! Enough of your willful ignorance, Frill Evementis Iraxis of name registry Irrevocable Spin 8! You of all people should recognize the . . . the historical moment we are in! Riots in the byways! If the Midwives fail, if the Great Arrangement is dissolved, we return to the Age of War!”
Nupolo looked helplessly across the breakfast room table to Grobbard, who sat still, aware, as if watching unpurposed birds alight on some forest branch.
If they don’t dissolve us, Fift thought—if they don’t take me—the best I can hope for is house arrest, for months. Years, maybe.
Squell clasped vir hands over vir ears, shuddering.
(Trapped here with these Fathers—their rages, their worries, their sniping criticism, their constant watching. Zir bodies caroming around the apartment like the three gas molecules caught in Micrum’s Cube—around and around like leaves in an eddy of a surface river—up and down four sets of stairs, through five hallways, the breakfast room and the supper garden, the sleeping alcoves, the study-pit, the atrium, the meeting rooms, the wombtombatum, the small mat room, the bathing pool . . .)
Ze sat up in bed.
In the meeting room, Father Arevio cleared vir throat. “We are aware—”
“Oh, but are you?” Miolasia said, eyebrows arched.
Arevio paused, cowed, looking to Pip, to Smistria.
“You hear that?” Frill said, in the breakfast room. “They’re practically admitting it.”
“What in Kumru’s name,” Smistria said, “are you on about now? Admitting what?”
“That they’re editing the feed!” Frill said. “There are more casualties than we know about—”
“Oh, now who’s spouting crankish conspiracy propaganda? Grobby, could you please tell this overexcitable figment-chaser that no one can edit the feed?”
“I am afraid,” Grobbard said, “that Frill may not be entirely wrong. There are signs of a Far Technological war taking place among agents and feedgardeners. At the very least, it is certainly the case that they know who has seen what, and that many attention agents are suborned to the tasks of distraction and reframing.”
Fift’s throats tightened as if ze was breathing clotted air.
Smistria threw up vir hands in disgust.
Miolasia leaned forward, fishing a glittering mirror out of vir fur and tucking it behind vir ear. “It is a priority of ours to contain panic, and to soothe the world’s more excitable elements. And your child has unfortunately become, as I said . . . a kind of symbol.”
The house feed said that the bedroom was warm, but Fift felt cold. Ze heaved zirself off the bed, to zir feet, gathering zir robes.
“People are confused and unsettled,” Umlum said. “They project themselves into these children’s story. Fift’s innocent, childish questions inspire them. And some of these so-called ‘clip-operas’ are very cunningly crafted. They subtly offer the titillating suggestion of an inappropriate relationship, but with such simplicity that it seems somehow pure and hopeful.”
Fift flushed. An inappropriate relationship? Had they just said that? Zir skin crawled. It was one thing to be censured for zir stubborn loyalty to a peacebreaker, a criminal, a Vail who fought in off-mats riots. But it would be far worse if they thought that . . . if they knew that ze was a deviant, gendering wrong, lost and wild, swollen with fervid, unstaidish desires . . .
There’s no way they can know what happened at the lab, Fift told zirself. A brief memory flashed across Fift’s mind—a hand nestled among writhing blue cilia—but ze suppressed it brutally. It hurt to remember. They don’t know anything.
But even with no other evidence, the clip-op was bad enough: Fift’s forehead pressing into the crook of Shria’s neck as ve sobbed on the byway. Fift coming forward, through all the tumult and confusion of this unraveling world, to take Shria’s hand. Dobroc had shaped the images so that every viewer yearned for those hands to touch.
Ze wanted to bury zirself in some maintenance tunnel with no feed access.
Pip frowned. “But . . . most Revered Eminences . . . Fift is an innocent child . . .”
“Exactly,” Miolasia said. “An innocent. A Staid, in First Childhood, from a respectable, if vulnerable, cohort . . .”
They’d be taking Fift away, that much was clear. They were taking zir, and there was nothing zir parents could do about it.
It would be cold at the Pole. Cold and silent. Fift would be alone, forgotten, vanished. And zir parents would be here, in this apartment, empty of Fift. If they were lucky.
“I . . . I don’t understand, Revered Expressive,” Nupolo said.
The bedroom, with its soft bed, its scarred wall, its silence, was unbearable. Fift went out into the hall.
“An innocent staidchild,” Umlum said, “is precisely what these rogue Clownist elements need.”
“It’s easy to expose the fanaticism of off-mats rioters,” Miolasia said. “People recognize the ideology of someone like Panaximandra for what it is: a perverted fantasy of license, violence, individualism, and boundless unending intimacy that can only lead the world to destruction.”
In the breakfast room, Squell moaned.
“And we have an understanding with the mainstream of the Clownist movement,” Miolasia said, “that they will not cross certain lines.”
Fift passed the breakfast room. Ze heard zir feet scuffing along the floor outside.
“But these rogue elements, these loose emergent groupings,” Umlum said, shaking zir head sorrowfully. “They speak a new language. Their talk of liberation and equity and solidarity is very attractive, very intoxicating. It is easy to misunderstand, to imagine that these are not just the same old fanatic warrior dreams in clownface.”
Down two flights of stairs, through the hallway with the sleeping alcoves, past a sleeping body of Arevio’s.
“And so, for a young Staid to become a figurehead for these people,” Miolasia said, “to willingly ally zirself with the chaos, to appear to see in it not subjugation and destruction, but liberation . . .”
“Father Grobbard,” Fift said, in the breakfast room, “Father Frill, Father Smistria, Father Nupolo . . . I don’t know what they’re talking about. I didn’t willingly ally myself with anything!”
“Of course you didn’t,” Father Frill said. “It’s nonsense. They’re trying to scare us, that’s all . . .” Ve swallowed.
“I assure you,” Father Nupolo
said, “Fift has no intention—we have no desire at all to—”
“Anything we can do to cooperate,” Father Frill said, bells tinkling. “We’re more than willing—”
“I want Miskisk,” Squell whispered hoarsely in the breakfast room. “I want Misky back! Why did ve go away?”
Cold. It would be cold at the Pole. Fift shivered, and pushed into the bathing room through a curtain of stiff grass.
After the rough, warm grass of the hallway, the tiles of the bathing room were a cold emptiness under Fift’s bare feet. Ze ordered steam.
“Of course you are,” Miolasia said. “We expected no less. So it’s really quite simple. For your own safety, and that of the world, we need you to come to the Pole.”
Even Mother Pip looked flummoxed. “To the—to the Pole?”
“All of us?” Arevio said.
Fift sat at the pool’s edge. Gray and blue tiles and slick white pillow-surfaces, large enough to encompass twenty or twenty-five splashing bodies. The last time Fift saw it crowded, ze’d been six.
“We have no desire to break up your cohort,” Umlum said. “That’s the last thing we intend.”
The Pole, but not alone. Fift inhaled, filling zir lungs with steam. Ze’d have zir parents with zir. It was still terrifying, but . . .
“To the Pole in, well, in . . . all of our bodies?” Arevio asked.
Miolasia nodded, smiling. “Of course.”
“It’s quite an honor,” Umlum said. “You would of course have to take a hiatus from your current professions . . .”
“Exile,” Frill said, in the breakfast room.
Smistria glared. “This is our chance, Frill! A chance to save our cohort from destruction.”
“We’re being disappeared, Smi.” Frill paced the breakfast room. “They won’t let us out again until it suits them. They won’t let us communicate except as it suits them.”
Fift lifted zir eyes to the aperture in the ceiling above the center of the pool, where reflected glowtube light, falling twenty bodylengths from the outside, carved a faint bright column in the misty air.
A foam structure butted gently up against the side of the pool, riding the tiny waves.
“Don’t see much alternative, Frill,” Nupolo said. “It’s that or be dissolved.” Vir face was ashen; ve looked down at vir trembling fingers. “Wonder if we’re going to get a chance to say goodbye to little Chalia Rigorosa and vir cohort . . .”
The steam was still coming: small globes of water broke the surface of the pool, struggled upward, and boiled in midair. Ze could turn it off now, but ze didn’t want to. Let the steam thicken until it obliterated zir; let zir disappear.
Frill ran vir hand through vir stiff coppery hair. “Oh, we’ll go, of course. But let’s not fool ourselves: Fift’s escapades have cost us our lives in the world outside the Midwives’ cage!”
The cool of the tiles under Fift’s buttocks. The womb-warm water around zir knees. The thickness of the steam in zir lungs. Over the house feed, zir body disappeared, a gray shadow absorbed by swirling gray.
“Esteemed Expressive. Esteemed Stalwart,” Nupolo said, in the meeting room. “Naturally . . . we’re honored and overjoyed.”
“Indeed we are,” Pip said. Zir face was unreadable. “If I might ask: is there anything specific that we . . . ought to do . . . to merit this honor?”
Squell heaved vemself up from the breakfast room table and tottered over to Frill. Vir voice, usually so soft, was brittle as twigs, as halting as animals caught in traps. “It’s . . . not . . . zir . . .”
Frill swiveled, vir bells sounding brief waves of high, clear music. “Oh, of course it’s zir fault, Squell! I love zir, but there’s no use pretending otherwise—”
“Stop it,” Squell hissed.
“Father Squell,” Fift said, “it’s . . . it’s all right. Don’t . . . Look, it is partly my . . . it is my fault.”
“Do? Oh, hardly anything,” Miolasia said. “Certainly nothing you wouldn’t be eager to do anyway, given your loyal resolution to aid in the healing of our world.”
Fift splashed into the water. Its heavy warmth swallowed zir limbs, and zir white shift ballooned beneath zir. The foam structure loomed dimly ahead in the fog. Fift waded towards it. Pockets of boiling water scurried out of zir way.
“You will simply have to explain to the public,” Miolasia said, “your regrets, which you have already expressed here, and Fift will have to express zir regrets . . .”
“Fift doesn’t have to go,” Squell whispered, “if ze doesn’t want to.”
“Oh, blistering voids, Squell,” Frill barked. “Of course ze does!”
“Fift will have to explain a little about what happened,” Miolasia said, “to cast the correct light on things.”
Fift told the foam structure to flatten and rolled awkwardly onto it. The steam was so thick ze could barely breathe. Ze lay on zir back and told the foam to inflate. Ze rose toward a blur of light, the central exhaust column.
Over the house feed, the bathing room was an opaque wall of white.
“Or do you have some other plan? Do tell us, Squell,” Frill said.
“Dissolution. And an Idyll,” Squell whispered.
“Oh, yes,” Frill said. “Since there’s plenty of room just now, and we’re such desirable associates, we’ll just arrange for spacious accommodations for Fift at an Idyll—”
To the Pole, forever. Ze’d never see Shria or Dobroc again. Or at least not for years and years . . . maybe a century. Who would Fift even be, after a century of cold?
Above zir, the blur of light grew closer.
“Fift will disown the impropriety of those clip-ops, for instance,” Miolasia said.
“The important thing there,” Umlum said, “will be to push those tantalizingly shadowy intimations into the light of day and disavow them as the disgustingly false rumors that they are.”
“And if the Idylls just happen to be full, Squelly?” Frill spread vir arms wide. “Or overrun by rioters and unlicensed—”
“Stop it!” Squell cried, vir eyes filling with tears.
“It’s okay, Father Squell, Father Frill . . . I’ll go . . .” Fift said, but no one in the breakfast room was listening.
“Miskisk’s not going to come,” Nupolo said, fingering the cold remains of a broibel.
“Miskisk is irrelevant,” Grobbard said, rounding the table, heading for the kitchen, “and Thurm will have to decide where ve stands.”
Ze would lose them. Dobroc, the weird brilliant staidkid with the voice like a warm, thundering ocean: ze’d just met zir, and now they’d never sit together again and talk about Mundarn and the willow wind, now ze’d never touch the labyrinth of Dobroc’s skin again. And Shria . . .
If ze ever did see Shria again, would Shria . . . would Shria . . .
Fift knew there were moments when ze’d been important to Shria. Maybe not now; maybe not even in the lab at Stiffwaddle . . . or, not in the way ze’d wanted. Shria hadn’t boiled with desire for Fift, had ve? Not the way ve did for Vvonda. That had been Fift’s desire.
But ve’d trusted Fift. Ve’d wanted to tell Fift vir secrets.
“It will be clear to everyone,” Miolasia said, “that Fift is not really at fault. It was Shria Qualia Fnax, after all, who drew zir into the riot.”
Ve’d trusted zir ever since that day in the forest.
On the byway, before the crowd of anonybodies . . . ve’d held out vir hand.
Steam billowed up through the exhaust shaft. The air in Fift’s lungs was scalding. Ze reached up from the top of the inflated foam, and took hold of the lumpy, braided roots that formed the shaft’s walls.
{Fift}, zir social nuance agent sent, {what are you doing?}
The first time ze’d climbed into the exhaust shaft, when ze was eight, ze’d expected to be caught and scolded. Ze’d been sure of zir parents’ omniscience.
Ze pulled zirself into the shaft, reached for higher holds. Zir feet found the spaces between the ro
ots.
{Fift?} sent the context advisory agent.
But ze hadn’t been caught. The exhaust shaft was an invisible space, missing from the house feed; missing, by some Far Technological quirk, from the house’s entire proprioception.
In the meeting room, a drop of sweat ran down Fift’s forehead, across zir cheek.
{Please explain your motivation}, the context advisory agent sent, {for your actions at this time.}
With Fift’s external send locked down, zir parents wouldn’t pay attention to chatter with zir agents. {I thought we could have a conversation}, Fift sent, {where the house can’t see us.}
“And then, let us not forget, Shria left zir alone,” Umlum added. “Enticing zir into a riot, and then stranding zir there. Surely you agree, Fift, that that was wrong of vem?”
Fift looked up from the meeting room table. “Oh. Well, um—”
“It was wrong of Shria,” Umlum said again, “to abandon you in the riot.”
Pip leaned forward, zir eyes drilling into Fift.
“You said so yourself,” Umlum said. “To Shria. ‘You should have stayed with me’—do you remember saying that?”
“So surely it can’t do any harm,” Miolasia said, “to repeat it now.”
In the breakfast room, Frill flung vir arms up. “Fift, answer the void-spurned question. Just tell these—these ordering parents of the Kumru-abandoned world what they want to hear . . .”
Fift pulled zirself up, hand over hand. {You said it was a matter of local infrastructure.} ze sent. {That you couldn’t let me send because of the house rules. Am I outside the house now?}
{Further defiance of your parental cohort carries significant risks in this situation.} the social nuance agent sent.
{They would detect an external message immediately.} the context advisory agent sent.
{They’re pretty busy.} Fift sent. {And it’s my last chance. They’re taking me to the Pole.}
“It was both of our faults,” Fift said. “And we’re . . . we’re both sorry. We know we shouldn’t have . . .”
Umlum’s face darkened.
“Oh, really?” Miolasia said. “We are sorry? Shria doesn’t seem particularly sorry, I must say.”
“But ve is,” Fift said, “and ve would tell you that. If you asked. I mean, you could take vem to the Pole too, and have vem express vir regrets. And disown the, the impropriety. Maybe that would . . . help . . .”
The Unraveling Page 25