The Unraveling

by Benjamin Rosenbaum

  Fift flushed. “Are you serious? You wanted me to just . . . stumble on vem, unprepared? I can’t believe this.”

  Dobroc rubbed zir face thoughtfully. “Hmm. All right. Perhaps it was a bad idea.”

  “What did you think? That we’d just . . . fall into each other’s arms?”

  Dobroc shrugged, and now ze did look down at zir soup. “Perhaps.”

  Fift rocked from one foot to the next, zir blood thudding through zir arteries. “Don’t play these kinds of games with me, Dobroc. For me, this is not entertaining.”

  “I’m truly sorry, Fift,” Dobroc said, not looking up.

  “And what if I’d met vem outside the Gate? I know we’re not the event we were thirty years ago, but there are still Unraveling-history buffs out there who would swarm if they saw us in the same place.” Ze reached out and grabbed zir other body’s green-and-yellow woven sleeve, holding onto it for support. “And ve’s coming here to train for the Long Conversation? That’s why ve’s deigning to actually come inside a Sheltering?”

  “That’s not fair, Fift,” Dobroc said. “You’re being unfair to vem. Ve’s given us plenty of support. Ve’s been to Shelterings.”

  Fift felt a sharp ache in zir abdomen. Ze didn’t have a name for it. Loss, anger, longing?

  Dobroc raised zir eyes. “And yes,” ze said, “we are going to hold a Conversation. Ve’s ready.”

  Fift snorted. The image came unbidden: Shria, fifteen years old, lanky and fiery and beautiful and dangerous, snuggled up like an egg in a nest. I know you do something. I’m not talking about the Long Conversation, either. You have bodies. Show me. Zir cheek pressed up against vir breasts. Vir hand smoothing across zir stubbled scalp. Vir smell, like a wild surface forest only Fift had ever visited. The vines of the supper garden overhead, in green light. Vir mischievous grin.

  “Do your partners at the region-level Episode today know you’re starting to train Vails?” Fift asked.

  “They suspect, certainly,” Dobroc said. “They’re always accusing us of hiding something, and if you forced them to articulate what they fear we’re hiding, I imagine training Vails in the Long Conversation would be near the top of the list. Why, Fift? Do you disapprove?”

  “Of course I don’t disapprove. I’m proud of vem.” Ze looked at zir hands. Pale lavender at the palms, shading to darker purple at the knuckles. A stupid choice; it didn’t suit zir at all. “I’m going out. To the Crimson Gate. In both bodies.”

  “All right,” said Dobroc, sadly.

  2

  The Crimson Gate was in a concourse that thrust out from the main body of Windswept Sheltering into the air above Undersnort. Three bodylengths high, the passage ran through a massive opening in the puff-weave wall. It was paved with grownbone tiles. The path twisted, so you couldn’t see the world beyond Windswept until you’d walked a bit. Within the Gate, on either side of the passage, there were nooks in the walls where you could reach the world’s feed; they were crowded with bodies. People murmuring, laughing, scowling: Windswepters, hard at work, or getting the news of the world beyond.

  Fift’s hearts were pounding; ze exhaled all the air in zir lungs slowly, hissing it out between zir teeth until a yawn came, that welcome spasm forcing zir to open zir jaws wide and gulp down air. Zir hearts slowed a little. Ze didn’t look at zirself, but ze reached out and took zir own arm. As a young child, ze’d never liked to be with zirself; but these days, ze had begun to like the double feeling: in the muscles of zir arm, in the other body’s fingers clasped around them.

  Until ze reached the edge of the Sheltering, ze wouldn’t know what zir wealth and reputation were in the world outside, or how the people ze knew out there were doing, or who expected what of zir. Though ze’d lived in the Sheltering for twelve years, and it had been fully feed-opaque for seven, that was still strange. Perhaps it would always be strange.

  Ze wondered what it would be like for a child born in a Sheltering; whether, for such a child, it would seem natural and obvious to live in a small world. There would be children born in Shelterings, someday. Maybe—if a way around the Midwives’ boycott could be found, may Kumru wish it with us—sometime soon.

  Every nook was occupied, and Fift didn’t want to squeeze zir way in among the bodies. Ze walked on. Soon ze could see the passage’s exit. The carpeted green platform, the docked robot bats, and the vast vault of Fullbelly beyond, its hundred thousand habitations a glittering riot of color and form. A moment of vertigo, and, mixed in with it, nostalgia, which made zir almost laugh aloud. Ze missed Fullbelly! To be able to miss Fullbelly even while technically living deep inside it . . . now, if that wasn’t a sign that the Shelterings were working—!

  Now ze could feel the whisper of the world’s feed at the edge of zir perception. Ze awakened zir attention agents from their slumber; ze’d need them now. Another yawn worked its way through zir, first in one body, then the other. Ze let go of zir arm and stepped forward, singlebodied, into the range of the feed. In zir other body, ze cracked zir knuckles, pressed a fist into the smooth, soft puff-weave wall, and breathed.

  It was an old reflex to check audience. 25,687 people had zir hot-bookmarked: history buffs, political-minutiae bookies, distant contacts from the old days, fans or opponents of the Sheltering movement; and, perhaps, enemies of Dobroc’s Long Conversation flexiblism . . .

  But right now, no one was watching zir.

  Fift Brulio of name registry Yellow Peninsula Sugarbubble 5, 3-bodied Staid, 46 years old (premature majority), industrial reactant, elderborn, no cohort. One public location.

  That’s what the world’s lookup showed. It refused to list Windswept Sheltering as zir address, and was apparently too prudish to regard Dobroc and Cemerid and Fift as even a provisional triad. Even Cemerid, at eighty, had not yet properly reached zir Courting Century; and Dobroc and Fift were scandalously young.

  Gingerly, ze let zir agents sift through zir queue; ze didn’t even want to think about how many messages they must be examining. Ze wasn’t in the mood for politics or gossip or news, or the tentative friendship solicitations of colleagues and comrades of years past. The unavoidable message—the one the yellow light had dragged zir out here for—was from Father Grobbard.

  {Affectionate greetings to my estimable eldest child Fift Brulio Spin-Nupolo-Iraxis. It is with pleasurable anticipation of your reading these lines, as well as an acute and poignant sense of your absence, that I now write you.

  {Although you have not (to my knowledge) made this explicit, your current mode of habitation suggests a wish to keep our communications within moderate bounds. I admit that this is difficult for me, Fift, but I comply. Nonetheless, I do not doubt that you wish to continue to be informed of matters of importance regarding our family.

  {When you last visited us, five months ago, little Lumlu was still one-bodied. I am sure that the issue of vir somatic integration has burrowed into your concern, even if your mode of habitation makes it difficult for you to follow vir progress. I am gratified to be able to report success. Ve awakened last week and is adapting to three-bodied life with what appears to be great natural facility. Vir state is still somewhat fragile, but the pedagogical experts say that ve is in a condition where visits by family would not subject vem to any distress. In addition, ve has been asking for you.

  {I have no doubt that Lumlu Mageria Spin-Nupolo-Iraxis of name registry Blue Fenugreek 12 will be grateful for your presence and that you see it as a pleasurable duty to attend vem. I have therefore taken the liberty of instructing this message to alert me upon your perusal of it, and have instructed it also to then arrange for immediate transportation, via robot bat, under the auspices of Spin-Nupolo-Iraxis cohort.

  {With great regard, and with serene satisfaction at the prospect of your visit, I remain, your affectionate Father, Grobbard Erevulios Spin-Nupolo-Iraxis of name registry Amenable Perambulation 2.}

  Fift exhaled. Grobbard hadn’t even grudgingly saluted—or mentioned—Dobroc or Cemerid, and all th
at “mode of habitation” stuff . . . wow. And to have simply ordered Fift a robot bat immediately upon receipt of the message! As if you had to snatch Fift when you could and shepherd zir around attentively, or ze would escape through the nearest exhaust shaft.

  The Sheltering’s feed showed Dobroc at home, finishing zir soup, making ready for Shria by shooing the dishes into the kitchen, tidying the study-pit. Shria must be through the Amber Gate by now.

  Fift had to go to zir parents’ apartments in one of zir bodies, that was clear. Another body would be asleep in the nest room for hours. And the third . . . ?

  Ze could linger here at the Gate watching the world’s feed. Or head back to the reactancy to put in a few more hours in the sweet juicy heart of the stream. Or find a public sleep nook and try to rest. Or go watch Cemerid play rumcaddy down in the arena.

  Wherever ze went in the Sheltering, though, ze’d be able to see zir own home. Ze’d be able, if ze wanted, to see Shria and Dobroc engaging in the Long Conversation.

  Ze noticed zir hands were trembling in both bodies. Absurd! Shria coming to the apartment should not be an epic opera-game.

  Nevertheless, ze went out onto the rough green carpet of the dock with both bodies, towards the robot bat zir agents showed zir. It will be good to have two brains out here to deal with the world’s feed, ze told zirself, though the excuse sounded flimsy, even to zir.

  As the bat rose from the dock into the air of Fullbelly, crowded with stickywalls and polypenetrations and bounceroos, Fift watched Dobroc in the apartment, laying out spoons. Dobroc studied one intensely, then polished it with the corner of zir sleeve; as ze did so, the bat moved out of range of the Sheltering’s feed. The image of Dobroc grew fuzzy and gray, stretched and warped, and then dissolved like morning mist . . . and Fift, among Fullbelly’s teeming billions, felt very alone.

  3

  The robot bat left Fift at the docking-spires. Ze took a route that avoided zir old childhood home (now occupied by a former neighbor who’d always bet against them and vir smug, unbearable cohort) and went through the grove, up the spoke, to the somewhat less confident end of Slow-as-Molasses.

  Zir parents had lived there for thirty years, but ze still thought of it as “the new apartment.” Really, ze still thought of it as “Chalia’s house.”

  Ze’d been in Izist when ze heard—no one had even told zir; ze’d stumbled onto it on a general news stream—that homeless Iraxis cohort had merged with Spin-Nupolo; that zir baby cousin Chalia Rigorosa was now zir sibling and ze was elderborn; that zir parents had a home again. Ze remembered the stab of relief and gratitude—Auntie Ellix had come through again—and how ze’d stumbled against Shria and begun to cry. A crying Staid in the riotous carnival of Izist: nothing special, in those days.

  Chalia met zir in the vestibule. “Fift!” ve cried, delighted. Ve came running out of the inner apartment, doublebodied. Ve flung vir arms around zir, and vir arms around zir. Then, a little embarrassed, ve pulled zir away from the semipublic vestibule and into the house’s privacy. Not that ze had much audience, anyway—a few hundred, trailing along on a nostalgic whim, perhaps, once their agents had figured out that ze was heading to Foo.

  “Hello, Little Sibling,” Fift said.

  “But not Littlest!” Chalia said it brightly, but there was still some unease under that smooth surface. The transition from latterborn to middleborn couldn’t be easy, though Fift didn’t have much frame of reference. Zir own transition from sisterless to elderborn that day in Izist had been atypical to say the least. Chalia was living the classical version, the original Supplanting on which all transactions are based. And now, Lumlu would have three bodies to demand attention with.

  “What,” Chalia said, “are you wearing?”

  “The latest trend,” Fift said, smirking. Ze hadn’t even realized what a figure ze must present out here in this dark green and bright yellow. Not the white shift of a proper Staid, nor even the wheat or tan or black that the moderately daring had begun to wear.

  Chalia burst out laughing. It was a good joke, too, Fift thought happily. It was absurd on many levels—imagining Chalia’s strange Staid sibling as a sartorial pioneer was funny, and the idea of little Windswept Sheltering having its own miniature trends and fashions was ridiculous, too—yet it had a grain of truth: since the habitation had built those trellises and planted vines on them, ze’d begun to see their colors worn around the plaza and the waysweep.

  “You look completely weird,” Chalia said. “I love it.”

  “How are the ’rents dealing?” Ze asked. Where were they, anyway? Probably they were watching over the house feed; maybe not. Ze didn’t care.

  Chalia bit vir lip, then puffed out vir chest, tossed vir hair. At thirty, in the flush of Second Childhood, ve was beginning to lose a certain shyness that had hindered vem up until now. Ve was short, Fift’s height, but lithe and strong, even though ve spent as little time as ve could get away with on wrestling and fencing and acrobatics (ve preferred fiddling with agents; one day, perhaps, ve’d be a feedgardener). Vir skin and hair were a burnished brown. The fashion lately, for young Vails with any degree of confidence, was to avoid somatic design entirely: letting the body simply grow and express whatever phenotype had, willy-nilly, been stochastically mashed together out of the parents’ gametes. Which was a different thing, Fift thought, from leaving your body alone for lack of the courage to change anything. Chalia wore it well. “I don’t know,” ve said. “They’re pretty excited. Relieved. Apparently—well, uh . . .”

  Fift felt a brief pinch of resentment, or jealousy. Ze masked it with a smile. “I had a hard time with somatic integration. I was a mess for years.”

  “Yeah,” Chalia said. “That.” Ve grinned. “Tell me about the Sheltering!”

  “Why don’t you come see for yourself?” Fift said.

  Chalia’s eyes widened. “Oh, wow,” ve said. “You know I’d love to. But . . .”

  “I know. You’d have to deal with them panicking about it.”

  “Well, they’d never let me.”

  Fift felt a bitter little burn in zir chest. “Yeah.” Ze took vir hand. “I might have disregarded that, but then, I am not exactly the best model for appropriate childing.”

  “Oh, Fift, come on,” Chalia said, looking down. Ve leaned against zir, unselfconsciously laying vir head on zir shoulder. The burn dissipated, cooled by vir sweetness. “That was different. That was, like, a calling! It was, you know, the beginning of an Age! They don’t get it, but I do.”

  “An Age, huh?” Fift said. Ze was going to ask what Age had begun, what they should call it, but Father Squell—perhaps not liking the direction the tête-à-tête was going?—came rushing in. Ve was singlebodied, hairless as always, still sporting those old-fashioned metallic spikes poking out of vir pale pink skin—though they’d grown in number, and ve’d added some kind of distracting zebra-striping on the back of vir neck and arms. Ve stopped, pressed vir hands to vir face, and then flung vir arms around Fift.

  Squell’s cheek was slick with tears, pressed against one of Fift’s necks. Though zir bodies stood shoulder to shoulder, ze felt a spasm of emotional bodylag; in the body in Squell’s arms, ze felt like a tiny child again, yearning for protection, yearning to be consoled, and cuddled, and coaxed into a romp. But zir other body’s stomach clenched as ze saw Squell enveloping zir, vir gangly zebra-striped arms closing around Fift like a spider wrapping up a fly. The discontinuity made zir dizzy.

  Ze chided zirself immediately; that was unfair. Squell meant no harm. Ve loved zir, and ze wished ze could hug vem back with the same abandon. As zir emotions synchronized, though, the unease won out, and ze stiffened.

  Squell noticed and stepped away. “Chalia, dear,” ve said, not looking at zir, “whatever are you doing, keeping Fift all to yourself in the vestibule like this? Everyone is waiting!”

  4

  “So,” Father Thrimon said, smoothing zir hands on zir legs, “lookup says you’re an industrial reacta
nt, Fift? That’s nothing to be ashamed of, of course; you know, I spent some time in reactancies myself as a youth. It can be very . . . soothing, if that’s the right word. While you figure out, you know, what else you want to do . . .”

  Fift’s stomach rumbled. Ze was hungry, but Fathers Arevio and Cartassia and Burin had become Near Cuisine enthusiasts, and were manually preparing some kind of complicated feast. (For thousands of years, Fift thought, people have been perfectly content to let their kitchens’ agents interface with their guests’ gastronomic agents to predict and then prepare the perfect meal . . . and now this trend comes along and people start stubbornly trying to figure out for themselves what to slice and grate and slather and heat with what! But wasn’t this whole Near Cuisine business, voluntarily depriving yourself of feed information and agent support, based on the same impulse towards independence and self-reliance as the Shelterings? Not that Fift’s parents would ever admit it . . . )

  In another room, Mother Mulis (Chalia’s Mother) and Mother Egathelie (Lumlu’s Mother) stood with Fift at the edge of the playpit. In it, Lumlu was fighting spiders.

  “And of course,” Father Thrimon said, lifting zir hands, “where would we be without them? Reactancies. Imagine if all the things we use were shaped by agents alone, without any living person’s eye, ear, or tongue? Far Technology is the basis of our society, but without the human touch . . . well, if you don’t mind my citing the fifth analytical discursus of the twelfth addendum to the alternate codification of—”

  “I mind,” said Father Frill, coming into the room doublebodied. “Kind Kumru, Thrimon! Everyone can hear you!” Ve was wearing a tight rainbow unitard, sleeved on one body, sleeveless on the other. Vir powerful bare arms glistened with sweat, and ve was holding practice swords. Ve handed them from one body to the other, left the room to take them away, and sat down on a bench at the wall, looking at Fift. Ve crossed vir arms. “So, Fift. Can you tell us, this time, what you’re making in this reactancy of yours?”