Otherness

by David Brin

  One of Io's classes had recently covered status bluffing, so she wasn't drawn in by Joey's bait. Obviously he had no more idea what Technique Zaire had planted in her womb than she did. "You probably let them hire me to make a traffic cop," she sallied, reaching for her book and jacket.

  "Smart-ass. Just be on time for your next checkup. And stay out of trouble. If your left tit makes you think any more weird thoughts, just remind yourself that toasters don't suckle; neither do traffic cops. And human milk fetches less than threepence a gram."

  "Five," she said as she turned the antique doorknob. "You'll see, Joey. Five cents a gram, or I go back to knitting."

  "Hah. That'll be the day."

  But Io knew the price had to go up. It was just one reason for leaving her left mammary gland alone, no matter what unlikely illusions its archaic secretions sent churning through her head.

  3.

  Some of her courses were clearly relevant to her chosen future profession. In other cases the applicability seemed less clear. Io had to fight ennui as her Industrial Reproduction lecturer droned on, covering stuff Io had learned way back during her apprenticeship in the egg trade.

  ". . . Until the 1980's," the elderly woman academic propounded at the front of the hall, "some still imagined that cloning human beings would be as simple as cloning, say, frogs. In theory all you had to do was replace the twenty-three chromosomes in the nucleus of a woman's ovum with a complete set of forty-six from, say, one of her skin cells. Implant this 'autofertilized egg' and nine months later you get a baby genetically identical to the donor. Voil'a.

  "Then we found out just how different mammals really are from frogs. For it seems that, during conception, human sperm does more than just deliver twenty-three chromosomes to match the mother's contribution. It actually preconditions certain of those genes to leap into action during the critical moments after fertilization. These genes are activated only if delivered in a sperm. Similarly, other genes express working enzymes only if they originated in an egg. . . ."

  A sudden throbbing from Io's bracelet told her of a message coming in. Normally, she would store it for later. But with the lecturer going on about ancient history, she felt safe to take a look. Carefully tuning down the brightness of her old communicator, she pressed the Read button and aimed the tiny holographic image onto her lap.

  HAMPSTEAD TRAVEL AGENCY SPESHALIZES IN TOURS SPESHALLY SET UP FOR PIECEWORKERS.

  The glowing letters were not an advertisement. Obviously, they were part of a message from Perseph. And Io knew it amounted to something of an ultimatum.

  Io pressed the button again; another row of letters replaced the first.

  TRIP ALL SET UP FOR YOUR TERM BREAK, SO SCHOOLS NO EXCUSE. NOR YOUR 'JOB.' YOU CANT CASH MORE VOUCHERS, SO COME ON!

  Perseph was right. Io's own piecework delivery wasn't due for another six weeks or so. Also, the law limited how many travel vouchers one could exchange for cash, so her most recent one would go to waste if she didn't use it. Of course, Io's abdominal distension was already greater than most placental freelancers like Perseph ever reached, so walking long distances was out of the question. But Perseph had covered that excuse, too.

  I really could do with a trip, Io told herself.

  Yet the idea left her uneasy. Her friendship with Perseph had begun in the back alleys of Liverpool when they were only girls, taking turns guarding each other's ration books, teaming up killing rats for bounty money. Still, their drift apart may have been foreordained from the beginning.

  Once, she had hoped to draw her best friend into sharing her own enthusiasms—her ambitions for higher things. But each wistful attempt only served to anger Perseph. She inevitably misunderstood, assuming Io was putting on airs.

  For her part, Perseph seemed as anxious in her own way to salvage something between them. That meant getting Io involved in the activities of her guildmates and her born social class.

  Well, Io thought. If she can't or won't join me, I can still join her. At least this time.

  Suddenly the lights in the lecture hall dimmed as the lecturer began showing slides. Io hurriedly tuned down the brightness of her wrist projector.

  ". . . as you can see," the speaker enunciated as a holographic image took shape at the front of the auditorium. "If we try to clone a mouse without any sperm-preconditioned genes, what we get is a queerly warped embryo, one that dies quite soon in the womb because the placenta never gets started.

  "Alternatively, when an egg is prepared using only genes taken from sperm nuclei, something radically different happens." The image in the tank shifted again. This time there was no embryo at all, only a tangled, exaggerated mass of folded fibers easily recognizable to anyone familiar with the modern filter trade.

  ". . . so while both the mother's and father's genes are equal in the final makeup of any infant mammal, at the beginning it is genes from the mother's egg that control how the embryo starts development, while genes from the sperm take charge of setting up the placenta, that organ lacking in fish or reptiles, whose complex organic filtration chemistry nourishes the mammalian fetus to term. . . ."

  The same old stuff . . . Io pressed again to read the rest of Perseph's message.

  COME, IO. JUST FOR THE FIRST WEEK. THAT'S ALL. YOU NEED THIS. PERS KNOWS WHAT YOU NEED.

  The letters seemed to blur for a moment, and Io knew no flaw in her aged watchcom was at fault. She wiped her eyes while the lecturer's voice reverberated.

  "At first this news, while astonishing, was of little interest outside the halls of science. Certain fanatical feminists were disappointed to learn that men weren't quite as nonessential as they'd hoped, but to most of the rest of humanity it seemed just another interesting fact of nature.

  "Scarcely anyone guessed the long-range importance of this discovery, or its potential industrial applications. . . ."

  Io touched the face of her watch. In rapid pulses she silently tapped out Perseph's private access code.

  I'LL COME. AT LEAST PARTWAY. THANKS, PERS. YOU'RE A TRUE FRIEND.—IO.

  4.

  True to its reputation, the travel agency set them up on a tour requiring no walking at all. It was a party train bound over the arctic, from Oslo via upper Norway and across the great fairy bridges spanning from the Faeroes to Iceland to Greenland to Labrador. It was a December journey into the heart of winter, a trek across a desert as romantic and empty as anything to be found anymore on the surface of overcrowded Earth.

  Twin superconducting rails, hanging parallel two hundred meters above the frozen waves of tundra, looked like beaded strings of drawn dew that began in nothingness behind them and speared ahead to parallax union in the pure blackness ahead. Only the rhythmically reappearing pylons—lonely, slender stalks planted kilometers apart—reminded the passengers that there was any link at all with the death-gray ground.

  Io, to be frank, preferred sunshine. But when Perseph showed her the tickets, Io had forced a smile and outward show of enthusiasm. After all, she could debark at Iceland or Greenland and still have enough vouchers left for a week in the Canaries.

  Anyway, someone had once told her that aesthetic appreciation, while not exactly required for the certificate she sought, couldn't really hurt an applicant. So it was that Io found herself spending hours in the train's observation dome, watching and slowly learning to admire the daunting desolation.

  Overhead auroras shaped ever-changing draperies of shimmering blue and yellow gauze, or—if one preferred—rippling currents of diffuse oxygen atoms, ionized by the sun's electric wind, sheeting along lines of magnetic force. Now and again those gaudy curtains would part unpredictably and reveal a slowly wheeling tableau of bitter-bright constellations, familiar, yet filled with eerie portent in this chilly, alien setting.

  The caribou herds had long ago departed south for the season, along with a more mundane breed of tourist. During wintertime completely different tribes of itinerants moved in to share these rails with the freight-hea
vy transports. For instance those relying—like Perseph and Io—on state travel allotments to exercise their citizen's privilege to see the world—on off-peak hours.

  Then there were others, folk whose manners told in ways more subtle than clothing or fashion that they were employed, that they had real jobs, that they had chosen this strange journey not for budgetary reasons but out of a taste for moody expanses, or perhaps a cherishing of night.

  By unstated courtesy the partyers kept the raucous stuff to the other cars, though the observation dome was a favorite trysting spot for lovers. At times the closeness of such intertwined pairs made Io feel wistful and poignantly alone.

  Unfortunately, such feelings weren't alleviated by Perseph's incessant attempt to match her up. Finally, one evening in the bistro car, Io's companion snapped at her irritably.

  "Sometimes you just confuse the bloody hell out of me, Io! What does it take to turn you on, eh? We showed each other our charts. Yours was straight hetero, and I kept that in mind. I've introduced you to your type of guy."

  My type? Io bit back her initial response. Perseph's facial expression was friable. Exasperated. Irises and flesh tones showed clear signs of a hashtite high well past its peak and entering depressive phase. Perseph's once straight antenna-braids were drooping now as hairspray slowly gave way under assault from perspiration and a party running at desultory medium-broil.

  "But you saw my profile also includes things like high selectivity an' strong bonding, Pers. I can't help bein' made that way. I sometimes envy you your chart, the freedom your personality gives you to come an' go as you like. Tease, squeeze, thank you please. But I've got no choice, Pers. I've got to hold out till the time's right for me."

  "Hold out for Mr. Watch Fob Job, you mean," Perseph said bitingly.

  "For when I've got a job of my own, Pers. An' for the sort of man who'll respect that in me. A codder would never understand what it is I'm after. You know that."

  A tic manifested at the corner of Perseph's left eye. "And what's wrong with codders?" she asked. "Some of my best friends are codders!"

  Io looked around nervously. The party crowd at nearby tables were watching an act onstage at the front of the oar, performing an amiably vulgar dance to the tempo of the gently thrumming rails. Once Io would have found the show, the tight, acrid atmosphere, the frenetic party odors, attractively distracting. But no more. Artificial highs had begun to pall on her years ago.

  Smoke and garish lights made black sinkholes of the window behind Io's shoulder, yet she envied the quiet beyond those perspex panes.

  "Hey." Io forced a grin, trying to cut through the bad mood. "Don't get me wrong, Pers. Codders are fine. It's just I can't ever get to know one for ten minutes before he offers to strip down and show me his specialty."

  For an instant Perseph's eyes were as deep and untelling as the nightview outside. Then she seemed to come to a decision. Her laughter would have made a good dissertation topic in one of Io's classes.

  "Yeah, they're like that, aren't they? Even when I'm halfway in the middle of a surropreg, waddling around like a Blackpool publican, half th' codders I know are always tryin' to talk me into tryin' out their wares in advance. I keep tellin' the ones I introduce to you that you're in the egg trade, and not interested in their merchandise. But I guess habit's hard to break."

  "Hey, now." Io laughed. "Maybe they weren't comin' on to me just because they thought of me as a fallow belly t'plant. Ever occur to you they might've found me appealing?"

  "You? You skinny-arm charity case? With that out-o'-date yellow hair?"

  Io feigned an insulted look.

  Now Perseph's laughter was heartier. "Gotcha! First you're offended when they come on to you. Then you'd be hurt if they didn't, right?"

  "No, I just wish they'd . . ."

  "I'll tell you this, though, Io. I like codders. Some of 'em have gone far into debt to finance their conversions. Th' freelance trade would be impossible without them. We'd have to take as many risks as you and your egg—"

  "Pers, I never said—"

  "And something else, Io. They put a lot more enthusiasm into their work than Joey and his hoity-toity ovum designers do. Ever thought there could be pleasure involved in this business, Io? Nawi, I didn't think so. But I tell you it's a helluva lot more natural with codders than with Joey's lot and all their tubes and wires. . . ."

  Perseph had that gleam in her eye again, a seething sexual energy. She was talking herself into it. Io knew it would culminate quite soon in her friend grabbing the nearest tumescent codpiece, without even asking to see the owner's prospectus, let alone his tattoo.

  "Pers, are you remembering to take your pills? You don't want to get knocked at a party, for the love of—"

  "You mind your own damn business!" Perseph stood up and her chair fell over. "I don't give you advice on your blasted eggs. Don't you tell me where I oughta shop for seed!"

  All at once Io knew. This wasn't the first time for Perseph. That unsatisfactory load of commercial-grade solvent filters she'd delivered some months back—she hadn't taken the job through a city agent, or even negotiated the surropreg herself. She'd gone and let some random codder inseminate her—probably just somebody who pleased her sexually—as if that said anything at all about the quality of his wares!

  Mixing business and pleasure, letting your professional standards lapse, these were the beginning of the end for a craftswoman, especially a pieceworker. Io had an instant fey vision of Perseph in a few years—too far gone to win decent contracts, physically too shabby to draw a codder into making a deposit on spec. She'd wind up taking bulk-grade semen and producing goods no better than a fabricow's. Finally, she'd lose her guild standing, and it would be the dole for her, full-time.

  The dole would kill Perseph. Without the focus of work, some kind of work, the lure of drugs and soaps would soon take her out of the world.

  It was only a narrow precognitive instant, but at that moment Io's eyes locked with the other woman's. Io's cheeks felt aflame with how, in that moment, she involuntarily betrayed her friend, not only by seeing, but by showing on her face that she had seen. From Io, Perseph had not received the lies that were a comrade's duty to tell, but a severe mirror, laying bare a fate she already knew, deep inside.

  "I—I gotta go make a phone call." Perseph started to turn, unsteadily.

  "Pers, I'm sor—"

  "Oh, go abort a hydrocephalic traffic cop!" Perseph snarled. She whirled, knocking over their drinks, and made her way unevenly among the tables, leaving Io alone in the middle of a crowded room suddenly too filled with truth.

  5.

  . . . It can be hard for a modern citizen to realize just how inefficient our ancestors were, even in the bustling industrial centers of the fabulous twentieth. But what enabled the people of those times to build the first globe-spanning culture, to tame nature, to educate the masses and begin the conquest of space, was a system that depended essentially upon profligate waste.

  For instance, a single gram of gold—vital for modern electronics—could be acquired only by tearing out of the Earth, pulverizing, and washing several tons of ore. Beyond the now obvious environmental effects, this also required prodigious use of energy, which was already growing scarce even by the turn of the century.

  From high-tech consumer goods to simple breakfast cereals, far more resources had to be put into each item the consumer bought than ever came out as product. With billions of people to feed—and clothe and educate and entertain—there was only one option, to switch to renewable processes that used resources more efficiently. The alternative was to face a culling such as had not been seen since the Black Death.

  Biotechnology offered a way.

  Today gene-tailored microbes refine gold and other vital elements directly from seawater. Organic solvents, once unbelievably dumped into sensitive watersheds by shortsighted businessmen, are now recycled through filters grown specially for the purpose by pampered, well-fed fabricows. And these same
animals' modified milk glands produce lubricants to replace long-vanished petroleum oil in our vehicles. In this way we make use of efficient fabrication methods evolved over billions of years by Nature herself.

  As for products at the very cutting edge of technology, whose quality standards exceed what can be accomplished with animals, these are today put into production by a labor force dedicated to high craftsmanship. And yet these jobs are not restricted, as in the past, to the skilled or the privileged. Rather, they are attainable even on a part-time basis by men and women of good health from any social class.

  —from "Are You Interested in Biofab?" London, 2043

  6.

  She met him in the Reykjavík airport lounge.