Oceanic

by Greg Egan

  “An area of ocean the same size would have a population of ten.”

  Lena frowned. “That’s a bit too deep for me, I’m afraid.” She rose to her feet. “But maybe you’ll think of a way of putting it that even a Firmlander can understand.” She raised a hand goodbye and started walking away.

  I said, “Maybe I will.”

  #

  The wedding took place in Ferez’s Deep Church, a spaceship built of stone, glass, and wood. It looked almost like a parody of the churches I was used to, though it probably bore a closer resemblance to the Angels’ real ship than anything made of living hulls.

  Daniel and Agnes stood before the priest, beneath the apex of the building. Their closest relatives stood behind them in two angled lines on either side. My father – Daniel’s mother – was first in our line, followed by my own mother, then me. That put me level with Rachel, who kept shooting disdainful glances my way. After my misadventure, Daniel and I had eventually been allowed to travel to the Prayer Group meetings again, but less than a year later I’d lost interest, and soon after I’d also stopped going to church. Beatrice was with me, constantly, and no gatherings or ceremonies could bring me any closer to Her. I knew Daniel disapproved of this attitude, but he didn’t lecture me about it, and my parents had accepted my decision without any fuss. If Rachel thought I was some kind of apostate, that was her problem.

  The priest said, “Which of you brings a bridge to this marriage?”

  Daniel said, “I do.” In the Transitional ceremony they no longer asked this; it was really no one else’s business – and in a way the question was almost sacrilegious. Still, Deep Church theologians had explained away greater doctrinal inconsistencies than this, so who was I to argue?

  “Do you, Daniel and Agnes, solemnly declare that this bridge will be the bond of your union until death, to be shared with no other person?”

  They replied together, “We solemnly declare.”

  “Do you solemnly declare that as you share this bridge, so shall you share every joy and every burden of marriage – equally?”

  “We solemnly declare.”

  My mind wandered; I thought of Lena’s parents. Maybe one of the family’s children was adopted. Lena and I had managed to sneak away to the boat three times so far, early in the evenings while my parents were still out. We’d done things I’d never done with anyone else, but I still hadn’t had the courage to ask her anything so personal.

  Suddenly the priest was saying, “In the eyes of God, you are one now.” My father started weeping softly. As Daniel and Agnes kissed, I felt a surge of contradictory emotions. I’d miss Daniel, but I was glad that I’d finally have a chance to live apart from him. And I wanted him to be happy – I was jealous of his happiness already – but at the same time, the thought of marrying someone like Agnes filled me with claustrophobia. She was kind, devout, and generous. She and Daniel would treat each other, and their children, well. But neither of them would present the slightest challenge to the other’s most cherished beliefs.

  This recipe for harmony terrified me. Not least because I was afraid that Beatrice approved, and wanted me to follow it myself.

  #

  Lena put her hand over mine and pushed my fingers deeper into her, gasping. We were sitting on my bunk, face to face, my legs stretched out flat, hers arching over them.

  She slid the palm of her other hand over my penis. I bent forward and kissed her, moving my thumb over the place she’d shown me, and her shudder ran through both of us.

  “Martin?”

  “What?”

  She stroked me with one fingertip; somehow it was far better than having her whole hand wrapped around me.

  “Do you want to come inside me?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?”

  She kept moving her finger, tracing the same line; I could barely think. Why not? “You might get pregnant.”

  She laughed. “Don’t be stupid. I can control that. You’ll learn, too. It’s just a matter of experience.”

  I said, “I’ll use my tongue. You liked that.”

  “I did. But I want something more now. And you do, too. I can tell.” She smiled imploringly. “It’ll be nice for both of us, I promise. Nicer than anything you’ve done in your life.”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  Lena made a sound of disbelief, and ran her thumb around the base of my penis. “I can tell you haven’t put this inside anyone before. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Who said I was ashamed?”

  She nodded gravely. “All right. Frightened.”

  I pulled my hand free, and banged my head on the bunk above us. Daniel’s old bunk.

  Lena reached up and put her hand on my cheek.

  I said, “I can’t. We’re not married.”

  She frowned. “I heard you’d given up on all that.”

  “All what?”

  “Religion.”

  “Then you were misinformed.”

  Lena said, “This is what the Angels made our bodies to do. How can there be anything sinful in that?” She ran her hand down my neck, over my chest.

  “But the bridge is meant to…” What? All the Scriptures said was that it was meant to unite men and women, equally. And the Scriptures said God couldn’t tell women and men apart, but in the Deep Church, in the sight of God, the priest had just made Daniel claim priority. So why should I care what any priest thought?

  I said, “All right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” I took her face in my hands and started kissing her. After a while, she reached down and guided me in. The shock of pleasure almost made me come, but I stopped myself somehow. When the risk of that had lessened, we wrapped our arms around each other and rocked slowly back and forth.

  It wasn’t better than my Drowning, but it was so much like it that it had to be blessed by Beatrice. And as we moved in each other’s arms, I grew determined to ask Lena to marry me. She was intelligent and strong. She questioned everything. It didn’t matter that she was a Firmlander; we could meet halfway, we could live in Ferez.

  I felt myself ejaculate. “I’m sorry.”

  Lena whispered, “That’s all right, that’s all right. Just keep moving.”

  I was still hard; that had never happened before. I could feel her muscles clenching and releasing rhythmically, in time with our motion, and her slow exhalations. Then she cried out, and dug her fingers into my back. I tried to slide partly out of her again, but it was impossible, she was holding me too tightly. This was it. There was no going back.

  Now I was afraid. “I’ve never—” Tears were welling up in my eyes; I tried to shake them away.

  “I know. And I know it’s frightening.” She embraced me more tightly. “Just feel it, though. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  I was hardly aware of my motionless penis anymore, but there was liquid fire flowing through my groin, waves of pleasure spreading deeper. I said, “Yes. Is it like that for you?”

  “It’s different. But it’s just as good. You’ll find out for yourself, soon enough.”

  “I hadn’t been thinking that far ahead,” I confessed.

  Lena giggled. “You’ve got a whole new life in front of you, Martin. You don’t know what you’ve been missing.”

  She kissed me, then started pulling away. I cried out in pain, and she stopped. “I’m sorry. I’ll take it slowly.” I reached down to touch the place where we were joined; there was a trickle of blood escaping from the base of my penis.

  Lena said, “You’re not going to faint on me, are you?”

  “Don’t be stupid.” I did feel queasy, though. “What if I’m not ready? What if I can’t do it?”

  “Then I’ll lose my hold in a few hundred tau. The Angels weren’t completely stupid.”

  I ignored this blasphemy, though it wasn’t just any Angel who’d designed our bodies – it was Beatrice Herself. I said, “Just promise you won’t use a knife.”

&nb
sp; “That’s not funny. That really happens to people.”

  “I know.” I kissed her shoulder. “I think—”

  Lena straightened her legs slightly, and I felt the core break free inside me. Blood flowed warmly from my groin, but the pain had changed from a threat of damage to mere tenderness; my nervous system no longer spanned the lesion. I asked Lena, “Do you feel it? Is it part of you?”

  “Not yet. It takes a while for the connections to form.” She ran her fingers over my lips. “Can I stay inside you, until they have?”

  I nodded happily. I hardly cared about the sensations anymore; it was just contemplating the miracle of being able to give a part of my body to Lena that was wonderful. I’d studied the physiological details long ago, everything from the exchange of nutrients to the organ’s independent immune system – and I knew that Beatrice had used many of the same techniques for the bridge as She’d used with gestating embryos – but to witness Her ingenuity so dramatically at work in my own flesh was both shocking and intensely moving. Only giving birth could bring me closer to Her than this.

  When we finally separated, though, I wasn’t entirely prepared for the sight of what emerged. “Oh, that is disgusting!”

  Lena shook her head, laughing. “New ones always look a bit … encrusted. Most of that stuff will wash away, and the rest will fall off in a few kilotau.”

  I bunched up the sheet to find a clean spot, then dabbed at my – her – penis. My newly formed vagina had stopped bleeding, but it was finally dawning on me just how much mess we’d made. “I’m going to have to wash this before my parents get back. I can put it out to dry in the morning, after they’re gone, but if I don’t wash it now they’ll smell it.”

  We cleaned ourselves enough to put on shorts, then Lena helped me carry the sheet up onto the deck and drape it in the water from the laundry hooks. The fibers in the sheet would use nutrients in the water to power the self-cleaning process.

  The docks appeared deserted; most of the boats nearby belonged to people who’d come for the wedding. I’d told my parents I was too tired to stay on at the celebrations; tonight they’d continue until dawn, though Daniel and Agnes would probably leave by midnight. To do what Lena and I had just done.

  “Martin? Are you shivering?”

  There was nothing to be gained by putting it off. Before whatever courage I had could desert me, I said, “Will you marry me?”

  “Very funny. Oh—” Lena took my hand. “I’m sorry, I never know when you’re joking.”

  I said, “We’ve exchanged the bridge. It doesn’t matter that we weren’t married first, but it would make things easier if we went along with convention.”

  “Martin—”

  “Or we could just live together, if that’s what you want. I don’t care. We’re already married in the eyes of Beatrice.”

  Lena bit her lip. “I don’t want to live with you.”

  “I could move to Mitar. I could get a job.”

  Lena shook her head, still holding my hand. She said firmly, “No. You knew, before we did anything, what it would and wouldn’t mean. You don’t want to marry me, and I don’t want to marry you. So snap out of it.”

  I pulled my hand free, and sat down on the deck. What had I done? I’d thought I’d had Beatrice’s blessing, I’d thought this was all in Her plan … but I’d just been fooling myself.

  Lena sat beside me. “What are you worried about? Your parents finding out?”

  “Yes.” That was the least of it, but it seemed pointless trying to explain the truth. I turned to her. “When could we—?”

  “Not for about ten days. And sometimes it’s longer after the first time.”

  I’d known as much, but I’d hoped her experience might contradict my theoretical knowledge. Ten days. We’d both be gone by then.

  Lena said, “What do you think, you can never get married now? How many marriages do you imagine involve the bridge one of the partners was born with?”

  “Nine out of ten. Unless they’re both women.”

  Lena gave me a look that hovered between tenderness and incredulity. “My estimate is about one in five.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t care. We’ve exchanged the bridge, we have to be together.” Lena’s expression hardened, then so did my resolve. “Or I have to get it back.”

  “Martin, that’s ridiculous. You’ll find another lover soon enough, and then you won’t even know what you were worried about. Or maybe you’ll fall in love with a nice Deep Church boy, and then you’ll both be glad you’ve been spared the trouble of getting rid of the extra bridge.”

  “Yeah? Or maybe he’ll just be disgusted that I couldn’t wait until I really was doing it for him!”

  Lena groaned, and stared up at the sky. “Did I say something before about the Angels getting things right? Ten thousand years without bodies, and they thought they were qualified—”

  I cut her off angrily. “Don’t be so fucking blasphemous! Beatrice knew exactly what She was doing. If we mess it up, that’s our fault!”

  Lena said, matter-of-factly, “In ten years’ time, there’ll be a pill you’ll be able to take to keep the bridge from being passed, and another pill to make it pass when it otherwise wouldn’t. We’ll win control of our bodies back from the Angels, and start doing exactly what we like with them.”

  “That’s sick. That really is sick.”

  I stared at the deck, suffocating in misery. This was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? A lover who was the very opposite of Daniel’s sweet, pious Agnes? Except that in my fantasies, we’d always had a lifetime to debate our philosophical differences. Not one night to be torn apart by them.

  I had nothing to lose, now. I told Lena about my Drowning. She didn’t laugh; she listened in silence.

  I said, “Do you believe me?”

  “Of course.” She hesitated. “But have you ever wondered if there might be another explanation for the way you felt, in the water that night? You were starved of oxygen—”

  “People are starved of oxygen all the time. Freelander kids spend half their lives trying to stay underwater longer than the last time.”

  Lena nodded. “Sure. But that’s not quite the same, is it? You were pushed beyond the time you could have stayed under by sheer willpower. And … you were cued, you were told what to expect.”

  “That’s not true. Daniel never told me what it would be like. I was surprised when it happened.” I gazed back at her calmly, ready to counter any ingenious hypothesis she came up with. I felt chastened, but almost at peace now. This was what Beatrice had expected of me, before we’d exchanged the bridge: not a dead ceremony in a dead building, but the honesty to tell Lena exactly who she’d be making love with.

  We argued almost until sunrise; neither of us convinced the other of anything. Lena helped me drag the clean sheet out of the water and hide it below deck. Before she left, she wrote down the address of a friend’s house in Mitar, and a place and time we could meet.

  Keeping that appointment was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. I spent three solid days ingratiating myself with my Mitar-based cousins, to the point where they would have had to be openly hostile to get out of inviting me to stay with them after the wedding. Once I was there, I had to scheme and lie relentlessly to ensure that I was free of them on the predetermined day.

  In a stranger’s house, in the middle of the afternoon, Lena and I joylessly reversed everything that had happened between us. I’d been afraid that the act itself might rekindle all my stupid illusions, but when we parted on the street outside, I felt as if I hardly knew her.

  I ached even more than I had on the boat, and my groin was palpably swollen, but in a couple of days, I knew, nothing less than a lover’s touch or a medical examination would reveal what I’d done.

  In the train back to the coast, I replayed the entire sequence of events in my mind, again and again. How could I have been so wrong? People always talked about the power of sex to confuse and deceive you,
but I’d always believed that was just cheap cynicism. Besides, I hadn’t blindly surrendered to sex; I’d thought I’d been guided by Beatrice.

  If I could be wrong about that—

  I’d have to be more careful. Beatrice always spoke clearly, but I’d have to listen to Her with much more patience and humility.

  That was it. That was what She’d wanted me to learn. I finally relaxed and looked out the window, at the blur of forest passing by, another triumph of the ecopoiesis. If I needed proof that there was always another chance, it was all around me now. The Angels had traveled as far from God as anyone could travel, and yet God had turned around and given them Covenant.

  4

  I was nineteen when I returned to Mitar, to study at the city’s university. Originally, I’d planned to specialize in the ecopoiesis – and to study much closer to home – but in the end I’d had to accept the nearest thing on offer, geographically and intellectually: working with Barat, a Firmlander biologist whose real interest was native microfauna. “Angelic technology is a fascinating subject in its own right,” he told me. “But we can’t hope to work backward and decipher terrestrial evolution from anything the Angels created. The best we can do is try to understand what Covenant’s own biosphere was like, before we arrived and disrupted it.”

  I managed to persuade him to accept a compromise: my thesis would involve the impact of the ecopoiesis on the native microfauna. That would give me an excuse to study the Angels’ inventions, alongside the drab unicellular creatures that had inhabited Covenant for the last billion years.

  “The impact of the ecopoiesis” was far too broad a subject, of course; with Barat’s help, I narrowed it down to one particular unresolved question. There had long been geological evidence that the surface waters of the ocean had become both more alkaline, and less oxygenated, as new species shifted the balance of dissolved gases. Some native species must have retreated from the wave of change, and perhaps some had been wiped out completely, but there was a thriving population of zooytes in the upper layers at present. So had they been there all along, adapting in situ? Or had they migrated from somewhere else?