The Y Chromosome

by Leona Gom

  His father looked at him for several moments before the smile began to twitch at his mouth. Relieved, Daniel laughed.

  “Don’t laugh,” Daniel’s father said, starting to laugh, too. “She threatened to do worse things than that to me when we were children. Of course, I usually deserved them.”

  “Did you ever challenge First Law?”

  His father hesitated. “Yes. Someone had said something cruel to me.”

  “But now, you think it was wrong.”

  “Yes. Wrong. And dangerous. Pre-Change times were ugly and violent. They’re not something to romanticize, even for a moment.”

  “It wasn’t all brutality and exploitation and wars,” Daniel protested.

  “Daniel —” His father rattled his desk again, a warning. “You can’t think that way. If you do, then we’ve failed you, I’ve failed you. You’ve learned nothing. You cannot challenge First Law.”

  You’ve learned nothing. Highlands’s words. Daniel shifted in his seat, resisted the urge to pick again at the splinter.

  “I wish I could leave,” he said bitterly.

  His father hesitated. Then he said, gently, “You could, I suppose, ask the Leaders for a move to one of the other farms.”

  “I mean really leave. Go Outside. The way the others are able to. To Leth.”

  He heard his father’s intake of breath, saw him pull himself upright in his seat. “To Leth,” he said.

  “University,” Daniel said. His old dream. The word sounded so beautiful he said it again. “University.”

  “You know that’s impossible, Daniel.”

  “Why should it be? Kit went to Leth for a week.”

  “It’s not the same. You know that.”

  “First Law doesn’t forbid it. It says I must be hidden — but I can be hidden in Leth as well as here. As well as you are when you go into Fairview.” He leaned forward, his hands clamping the sides of the desk. “And Huallen says I’m the brightest student she’s had. So does Highlands. The best students have the right to go on. I’ll learn things the farm needs. Highlands is always complaining that we need more education. And I’d still be here for planting and harvest. We wouldn’t have to ask East Farm for a redistribution.”

  His father stood up, began pacing the room. The floorboards trembled under his heavy steps. “It’s just too dangerous, Daniel. You’d have to be constantly on guard. You’d be able to make only the most superficial friends. If you got sick there’d be no doctor you could trust. Even Kit said he wouldn’t want to go again, that he was too afraid.”

  “I’d prepare myself well. I could do it.”

  “And if you were found out —”

  “I wouldn’t be found out.”

  “The farm won’t allow it, Daniel. It’s pointless for us even to dis-cuss it.”

  “I’m going to bring it up at next Meeting anyway. I’m going to try to convince them. If I could get Highlands to support me —”

  His father smiled. “Highlands. I can just imagine her face.”

  “Would you support me?”

  His father stopped his pacing. The room seemed suddenly very still. Then his father sat down, slowly, in the desk closest to him. “You’re still upset about Bluesky,” he said softly. “You have to want to go for more serious reasons than to run away from Bluesky.”

  “I’m upset about her, of course I am. But this is not just because of Bluesky. It’s something I’ve always wanted. You know that.” He shifted in his seat to face his father.

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’d be careful.”

  His father got up, walked to the door, stood looking out at the rain.

  “Would you support me?”

  “Yes,” his father said. He stepped out the door, walked quickly down the steps.

  Daniel sat staring at the grey rectangle through which his father had disappeared. He was astonished at his father’s answer. Until he had said that, a simple yes, Daniel had felt their argument was not quite serious, that he was just pressing against a wall he knew would never yield. But his father had said he would support him. A shiver ran over him. Suddenly his going seemed possible, actually possible.

  Still, what would his father’s support mean? Would he convince the others? Would he convince Highlands? Would he even want to?

  And suppose the farm actually did let him go — he would be a male in an alien world, at constant risk of exposure, one mistake and his life would be over — if they didn’t kill him, they would surely imprison him, quarantine him, use him for experiments, display him as a true and monstrous freak. And they would come to the farms and find the other males.

  But still — University: it was fixing itself into his mind, like a stitch mending a tear, and he couldn’t undo it. Through the open door he saw the city, room after room of books, the magic of vidspools, teachers whose knowledge went so fabulously beyond what they could teach each other on the farms —

  He closed his eyes, leaned his head back until it touched the wall.

  He could hear the sounds of the cowbells, their clangs furry and muted in the rain, and he remembered suddenly that he was on milking shift this week. He made himself get up and go to the longhouse door and step outside. He nearly walked into his father, who was standing just beside the steps, under the eaves, watching the rain.

  “I’m on milking shift with you for the rest of the week,” his father said.

  Daniel nodded. He had been scheduled with Bluesky. His father must have asked to change with her.

  Little slaps of rain licked at them as they made their way across the yard toward North’s house. Daniel kept thinking of things he should say to his father, but he sensed in his quickened pace a desire to be silent, so they walked along together not speaking, a tension between them of two people who had just met, or just quarrelled, or just professed love. Perhaps, Daniel thought, all of those things had happened.

  When North came out with the milk pails they accompanied her to the barn. She shook off Daniel’s father’s guiding hand, even though she was almost completely blind, and stumbled along beside him, one arm out stiff in front of her, flailing from right to left like something mechanical. It was always dangerous to stand in front of North, because one never knew when her arm would leap out in preparation for movement, and everyone had been hit by her at some time or other. But she refused to use a cane, and, since she had never injured herself or anyone else too seriously with her method of navigation, no one urged her to change. Milking was one of the few chores she did better than anyone else, and she was fiercely protective of that distinction, but three cows had freshened lately and they were too much for her to handle, so she had reluctantly agreed to accept extra help this month.

  Daniel’s father took the cow one of the children had called Moo, and Daniel took the one beside her. When she let down her milk he leaned his head against her hot brown flank. The steady pulsing of the milk into the pail became a trancing rhythm. He didn’t let himself think about what had just happened with his father, about what had happened with Bluesky. He made his mind go empty, felt his eyelids droop.

  The cow waited until his pail was almost half full before she kicked, knocking the pail loose from between his legs in just the right arch to spill the milk forward. He leaped up, toppling his stool, but of course it was too late.

  “Damn,” he shouted, “damn!” He wanted to beat at the cow with the empty pail, and, sensing his rage, she danced about the stall, jerking her head up against the rope.

  “Start again,” he could hear North shout cheerfully from across the barn, her ears better than eyes in seeing what had happened.

  He took a deep breath, another, the air trembling into and out of his lungs. Then he stroked the cow’s flank, murmuring, “It’s all right, it’s all right,” speaking as much to himself as to the cow. It was his fault, he knew; he should
have been more careful with a cow that had just freshened. He sat down and started again. The two barn cats greedily lapped at the puddle of milk that paused at the bottom of the stall before soaking through the cracks in the wooden floor.

  When he finished, he milked one of the other cows as well, as a kind of penance, although North said crossly to leave the rest for her, and then he took two of the pails to the milkshed to begin separating. He poured the separator bowl full, set the empty pail under the skim-milk spout and the cream jug under the other, and began to turn the handle. His arm strained with the pressure until the veins in his forearm bulged like thick blue string.

  He was starting on the second pailful when his father came in with two more pails. He set them down abruptly when he saw him and exclaimed, “Daniel! Slow down. Look, there’s so little cream coming through it’s only dripping out.”

  He looked. His father was right. The cream pitcher was almost empty. Unnerved, he took his hand off the handle, let the machine slow down to a moderate drone. What was wrong with him?

  “Well, let me take what you’ve done out to the calves,” his father said, reaching for the skim-milk pail. “We won’t have to mix it.”

  North and one of the children came in then with four more pails, and he continued the separating, watching the cream spout carefully. When he was finished he stored the cream and some of the milk in the icebox, poured the rest into the slop pails for the pigs, and went to his house to wash for supper.

  His father came in at the same time, and they washed up together. Lightning flared at the window above the wash basins, and they were both still, counting the seconds to the thunder.

  “Moving away,” his father said, when it came, rattling the sky to the south.

  They finished washing, then walked together over to Highlands’s house, which also contained the farm kitchen. Another crack of lightning split the sky, but when the thunder came it was farther away than the last one. The rain had stopped, and seemed to be rising in a warm mist from the ground.

  “Did you mean it?” Daniel said abruptly, unable to stop himself. “Will you really support me?” He had said will this time, he realized, not would.

  “Next Meeting is still a week away.”

  “So you mean you might change your mind?”

  His father hesitated. “I mean you might change your mind. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

  Daniel nodded. A week, a week to think about it, to choose.

  “I think it might be nice,” Daniel’s father said as they entered Highlands’s house, “if you told your sister you were sorry for speaking to her as you did earlier.”

  “Yes, of course,” Daniel said. He was ashamed to admit that if his father hadn’t reminded him, he would have forgotten the incident.

  At supper he looked around for Mitchell, but she avoided him and sat beside their mother. He moved quickly across the room and claimed the seat next to her. She didn’t look up, only pulled closer to their mother as though she were afraid of him. Her face was brown from the sun, and her freckles, which stood out like pale pink blotches on her cheeks in winter, making her skin seem thin and unhealthy, were almost invisible now.

  “Mitchell,” he said, putting his hand on her arm, “I’m sorry I sounded rude to you in the longhouse. I didn’t mean to be.”

  She looked up at him with such relief and gratitude in her round child’s face that he squirmed in his seat with embarrassment and guilt. “I’m glad you’re not mad at me,” she whispered, as though she were confiding a secret. She moved closer to him and put her arm around his waist.

  How fragile we all are, Daniel thought, putting his arm around her, too, if words can break us or heal us.

  Bluesky and Shaw-Ellen came in then, from the kitchen; Bluesky chose a seat close to the door, but her sister came and sat beside Daniel.

  “It’s all fresh vegetables,” she said. “I love the meals this time of year.” She smiled at him, revealing the front teeth that overlapped each other, as though they were still pushing for space in her mouth. Daniel had always liked her, and when they were children she had been the most patient and tolerant among them, not caring if she ever won at their games, but today he found her company oppressive and insinuative. He kept thinking she must be laughing at him, enjoying his rejection by Bluesky, who sat across the room from them with her blonde hair curling damply on her forehead from the heat of the kitchen and her perfect mouth biting into a cube of tomato. He clenched his hands in his lap.

  Mitchell nudged him impatiently on his right, passing him the potatoes. He took the bowl and stared at the potatoes, nesting like white eggs in the bottom of the bowl.

  Across the room Bluesky made a funny face at one of the children who had accidentally dropped a piece of carrot into her water glass, and then they both giggled.

  You have to want to go for more serious reasons than to run away from Bluesky.

  He was aware he’d been holding the bowl of potatoes too long so he passed it to Shaw-Ellen.

  “Aren’t you taking any?” she asked, surprised.

  He looked at his plate. There were no potatoes on it, only the pale green pile of cucumbers, leaking their sauce slowly across his plate toward the wedges of tomato and carrot and kohlrabi, the pale slice of ling.

  “Sorry,” he said, reaching for the bowl and spooning out two potatoes. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  He realized he had made his decision.

  4

  BOWDEN

  “IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when Wayne, one of the patients from Blue Ward, sidled up to Bowden with her sly, eager smile. Bowden turned to face her, attaching a smile to her own face.

  “You know what Ellis-Tom said?” Wayne pulled at Bowden’s upper arm, forcing Bowden to bend down, as though Wayne wanted to whisper a secret, even though, because of her increasing deafness, she never spoke below a shout. “She said Government is putting extra potassium in our food, and it kills off our brain cells. Isn’t that something? Isn’t that ridiculous?”

  “It certainly is,” Bowden declared, mustering her indignation. “That’s quite foolish.”

  It was a game they played: Bowden knew Ellis-Tom probably had said nothing of the kind about potassium, that it was just Wayne’s way of trying out her own opinions; and Bowden, freed from her duty to be polite, could openly deride them.

  “I thought so,” said Wayne, nodding sagely. She wandered off in the direction of Blue Ward.

  Marsden, who had been working at the computer to update the hospital address files, looked up as Wayne shuffled past and then glanced at Bowden, rolling her eyes in a complicitous way. Everyone knew Wayne’s peculiarities, but then none of the patients, and probably none of the staff, were free of their own. Bowden returned her smile in what she hoped was a relatively neutral way and went over and exclaimed in surprise at how far Marsden had gotten in the files.

  “If these merdy hands would work properly I’d be on the pissing m’s by now instead of the pissing g’s,” she said, flexing her gnarled fingers.

  “Quit complaining,” said one of the four people working on the tapestry commissioned by a clothing store in Commercial. “If you had my legs you’d have something to complain about.”

  One of the twins helping to shell the peas for supper for the ward snorted. “You should be one of the paras, then you’d have reason to grumble.”

  The paras were the four paraplegics on the ward, whom Bowden had just finished bathing and who were down in physiocare now. Chastened, everyone went back to work. They were all aware that their own infirmities were less severe than those of others, and that they were in this ward precisely because they were still able to help with the care of others. It was one of the basic principles of Hospital, and not just for old people, that helping others contributed to health, and Hospital was organized so that people of varying degrees of illness and ability were ass
igned together.

  Bowden glanced at the clock. Her shift was almost over. She sat down with the twins and began to help shell the peas. She had barely started when someone touched her shoulder.

  “Delacour!” she exclaimed.

  Delacour didn’t like coming to Hospital. Yet here she stood behind Bowden’s chair, smiling down at her. Only her eyes darting nervously around the room betrayed her unease.

  “Hi,” she said. “I just had to go to Medical Archive so I thought I’d stop by. Look what I got today.” She waved an envelope at Bowden.

  Bowden stood up, reached for the envelope. “What’s in it?”

  “Our train tickets. I went down to the station to pick them up.”

  “We’re not leaving for a whole week!” Bowden handed the envelope back.

  “I’m impatient. I want to go now.”

  Bowden laughed. “You’re a child. An impatient child.”

  “Of course I am. I hate waiting for things.”

  “Well, I hope this will be worth the wait.” Actually, the closer the time came for them to leave the more Bowden’s misgivings grew. The long train trip to Peace River Station, renting the horses, camping — it sounded as though it could be more gruelling than fun. But she made herself smile cheerfully at Delacour, say, “It’ll be nice to get away together.”

  “If you can stand me for all that time.” Delacour tucked the envelope into her shirt pocket.

  “I’ll manage,” Bowden said, laughing a little uncomfortably, aware of the curious ears around them.

  “Aren’t you free yet?” Delacour said. “Come on, walk home with me.”

  Bowden checked the clock. It was after six. She took Delacour’s arm, pulled her over to one of the unused work tables. “I thought I’d stop by to see Jesse-Lee on the way out,” she said casually. “Why don’t you come along?”

  Delacour flinched as she heard the name. Her whole posture changed, drooped; her eyes fell from Bowden’s face and rested dully on the corner of the work table. She lifted her hand and ran a finger back and forth along the table edge.