Symbiosis

by Nicky Drayden

  But even though there were challenges and hardships, it was cathartic for those who lived through it. At least they got to process it all, to see the walls of bone torn down. To see that same material being grafted back into a hurting being. To see our world healing, and a new society growing from it. They were able to come to terms with their size in this universe.

  Now, each release of citizens from stasis has proven to be more difficult than the last. So much has changed in these three years, and what they wake to is foreign and difficult to comprehend. Plus, there are now whispers from the ERI that hint at negative physiological and emotional effects from spending such an extended amount of time in the sleep pods, regardless of what world the people are waking up to. They won’t say anything about it outright, however. We all know how delicate this balance we have created with our Zenzee is and releasing too many people too quickly would be disastrous. Still, I feel great discomfort imagining the 2,361 souls still sleeping their lives away.

  I push past the feeling and read through the rest of the recommendations.

  They forecast that we will be self-sufficient within the next five years, and I’ll admit, that makes me feel smug. For so long we have been like parasites—taking, always taking—but now, we have a chance to give back to our Zenzee. To live in peace with her, in a state of mutualism. Imagine never having to leave this place. Never having to even think about culling another Zenzee or continue hunting for a habitable planet. Our descendants could live here for many generations to come.

  But then I get to the last recommendation, and my mouth goes dry and tacky. I shake my head and read it again.

  viii. It is the consensus of the Environmental Research Initiative that after reviewing the studies on the effects of the One Child Policy on the population, barring any unforeseen circumstances, we recommend rescinding the policy in a phased rollout within the next decade.

  My mouth stretches into a smile, but really, I don’t know if I should be feeling happy or excited or scared. We are still weeks away from announcing Charrelle’s pregnancy, but the thought that my unborn child could have a sibling someday intrigues me.

  How would this change family dynamics? Cultural stigmas? What if there’s backlash? So much of our lives have been built around this rigid family structure that our culture had become quite rigid as well. Two heart-wives and a husband, two will-wives and a husband, three heart-wives, and a child to share between them. Yes, it’s efficient, but it’s also stifling. Seske is still sore about my mothers forcing a will-husband upon her. I know what she gave up to remain in this family with me, and I feel as though I failed her. Saddling her with the future possibility of having to bear a child would be rubbing salt into that wound.

  I will omit that last recommendation in my presentation to the Senate. For now.

  Instead, I will focus on the claim of self-sufficiency. Yes. Yes.

  Yes.

  “You okay over there?” Baradonna asks from her corner, where she’s got her nose in a book, pretending she isn’t watching my every move. “You look like you’re about to hyperventilate.”

  “Just got a bit of good news. I think.” I slow my breath down, concentrating on the sound of it entering and exiting my lungs. “Still trying to digest, I guess.”

  “Well, better digest quickly. Lover boy is on his way down.”

  My ears perk, listening for the footsteps that I know only her ears are keen enough to pick up. I sniff the air, though only her nose is sensitive enough to smell the traces of decontamination antiseptics on his skin under his flowery cologne. I wonder if she can feel the air he’s displacing, too. If she can taste him.

  I get a little jealous, thinking she can.

  Half a minute later Kallum enters the room. I keep my back to the door and my eyes glued to my research because I know he delights in surprising me. His warm lips press against my cheek, and I pretend to startle.

  “Guess who’s back,” Kallum says in a sing-song voice, still out of sight as he sets a cup of kettleworm tea on the desk next to me.

  “Hmm . . . ,” I say, putting my finger to my lips. “Is it Ol’ Baxi Batzi, here to steal my soul?” I glance over at him, a cunning smile on my face.

  “I’m here to steal something,” he says, lips pursed, eyes devious. I want to roll my eyes at the over-the-top innuendo, but I also flush a little at his attention. He looks so good, orange patina giving his warm brown skin an enticing glow, with hints of glitter dusted around the eyes. The neckline of his purple shift hangs precariously low, exposing the tops of his well-defined pecs. He pulls a chair as close to me as feasible, then sits in it the exact wrong way. It’s hard to believe someone who is trained to be so diplomatic and poised in front of foreign dignitaries loses that polish the instant he gets home.

  “When did you get back?” I ask him as I help myself to the tea. I shouldn’t be drinking it down here among all these priceless, irreplaceable books, but I take it into my hands anyway and allow the heat of the cup to warm me before taking a long, much-needed sip. It does nothing to calm my nerves, but seeing Kallum here is nice.

  “A couple hours ago. We debriefed the Senate on the Klang ship. The situation over there is deteriorating rapidly.”

  I nod. I had guessed as much. Kallum had been working closely with the Klang for months, and each time he came back home, the reports grew grimmer. Inconsistent oxygen levels, food shortages, disease, and death. We’ve donated what we can, but our own supplies are precarious, and about to be even more so if we release eight hundred more from stasis. I let out a long sigh and gather my thoughts. “We can loan them a few more environmental researchers. Maybe fresh eyes could help to determine the cause of all their problems?”

  Kallum bites his lip. “I’ve already pleaded with them to consider it. Tirtha Yee thinks it might have been an option months ago, even weeks ago, but I’ve lost her confidence as well.”

  My gut sinks. Tirtha Yee was the lead environmental researcher for the Klang. She and Kallum work well together, and almost always see things eye-to-eye. That she was going against his recommendations now meant she’d given up hope. I shake my head, willing Kallum not to say it, but he does so anyway.

  “They want to break the embargo and commandeer another Zenzee.”

  “They can’t break the agreement!” I say, desperation cracking my voice. “There must be some resource allocation plan they haven’t tried. Rescinding feverpitch? Doldrum sails? Lessening gravity?”

  “They’ve tried all that. Their Zenzee is still failing.” Kallum manages to scoot his chair even closer. His hand brushes down my arm. “Tesaryn Wen says the Senate will be meeting on it in a few hours, so you’ve got time to prepare a response.”

  I push the work in front of me out of the way and bring up a blank screen on my tablet. Frustration runs through me, wishing I had the Matriarch’s full power at my fingertips. The Senate had feared Seske’s mother during her reign, and no one would dare cross her, but my influence over the Senators pales in comparison, especially when it comes to diplomatic endeavors. I try to brainstorm some ideas that could delay the Klang acting upon their decision long enough for us to generate other options, but it’s nearly impossible to think with Kallum so close.

  “How’s everything been here, since I’ve been away?” he asks quietly.

  I glance over at Baradonna, who’s deep into the second volume of The Histories of Gallantry now. “Can you give us a little privacy?” I ask her.

  “Oh, I don’t mind if you suck face with your husband in front of me. Just ignore that I’m here.” She licks her finger and flips a page. “Suck away . . .”

  “We’re not sucking face, Baradonna,” I say, but Kallum gives me a little pout in response. Okay, so we might, but that’s not why we want privacy. “We just need a moment. Maybe you can go confirm when the Senate will be meeting exactly. And ask Tesaryn Wen yourself. You know how she gets when you’re around.”

  Baradonna perks at that. I’m not sure of the exact words
that were said, or the intensity of the threats that were made, but Tesaryn Wen had once pissed herself when Baradonna had stepped in to disparage her for cutting me off in the middle of one of my speeches. It hadn’t been enough to dampen her robes, but Baradonna’s heightened senses had detected it immediately. Baradonna has about as much discretion as a chamber full of drunken heart-wives on All Fellows’ Night, so I don’t know why she hadn’t told everyone in the Senate Chambers just then. Instead, she kept it a tightly guarded secret. Tesaryn Wen fears Baradonna almost as much as she hates me. Excited with the potential for another confrontation with Tesaryn Wen, Baradonna takes her leave.

  I wait for the sound of her heavy footsteps to dissipate, then give Kallum a tight hug and a tepid peck on the cheek.

  Kallum frowns. “You know I went through a whole hour of decontamination. No foreign parasites anywhere on this body.”

  “I know. It’s just . . . I’ve got a lot on my mind right now,” I mutter.

  “Things didn’t go so well with Adalla and the suitors? I heard.”

  “All the way on the Klang ship?”

  “Gossip involving your mothers is impervious to the vacuum of space.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Was Seske mad?” he asks, genuinely concerned.

  I laugh at that. “What do you think? She ran off and hid again. For an entire day this time. So yeah. And she threw away the crystal beads my head-mother got her for EE day. And you won’t believe what she wore to dinner with my folks. A filament dress as bright a white as a star going nova! My mothers pretended like they didn’t notice, but oh man, were they offended. White? For EE dinner? I’ve talked to her about it, but every time I try to smooth things over, she just gets—” I realize I’m babbling. “Sorry. Let’s talk about you. And me. Us.”

  “It’s fine. I know Seske holds the foremost spot in your heart. I’m okay with coming in a close second.” He smiles and nudges me in the shoulder. “Whenever I’m feeling jealous, I take comfort that at least I’m not Charrelle.”

  “Kallum!” I say.

  “She annoys you a little. Admit it. With the way she chews her vowels when she says your name and always scrunches her nose when she’s talking, like she’s just let one rip? And how she’s always using the word ‘moist’?”

  “You’re talking about the mother of our child,” I whisper.

  “Dowkaaah . . . come have a bite of this gall cake, it’s so moist,” he says, doing a spot-on impression of Charrelle, down to the pinched nose. It’d be funny if it weren’t so painfully true. “Dowkaaah . . . bring me a towel. My armpits are so moi—”

  I press my lips over Kallum’s, and the words stop. My teacup falls from my hands and breaks against the floor. He throws me onto my desk, and for the better part of a minute, we’re kissing as if our lives depend on it. Like we’re both drowning, and trying to rescue the other, but we end up pulling each other down deeper. I tug him closer, and in my desperation, I knock over a tower of books. I ignore the centuries worth of our history tumbling to the floor, until I can finally take it no longer and come up for air. Kallum pulls back and wipes his sleeve across his mouth.

  “Can I help you pick those books up?” he asks, a twinkle in his eyes. He starts to bend over, but I grab his arm.

  “No, no. I’ve got them. Why don’t you go and rest up? It’s been a long couple weeks for you, I’m sure.” If I’m supposed to be meeting with the Senate in a few hours, I need my head clear and not groggy and distracted by the joys of young matrimony. Especially when I’m going up in front of the Senate with something this important. I need a majority on my side since I can’t do it by emergency decree. I’ll have to sway them with my words by tapping into my pain, my fury, my vision for the future. I cannot afford to let the Klang get away with breaking the treaty.

  “I’m back!” Baradonna says, hand on her chest, breathing heavily. Never have I seen her complete any task so rapidly. I start to wonder how much of her crude and plodding persona is a convenient front. She looks around, disappointed that she missed whatever she was hoping not to miss, but instead spots the mess my desk has become and the purple stain setting into the grout between the floor tiles. “What happened here?”

  “Zenzee tremor,” Kallum says with a smirk. “A small one. Very localized.”

  Baradonna raises a skeptical brow. “But there hasn’t been a tremor since—”

  “Just let it go, Baradonna,” I say. I give Kallum a dirty look. He smiles, then makes a hasty exit before I can scold him. I sigh, looking at the mess at my feet, then up at Baradonna. “Did you speak to Tesaryn Wen?”

  She nods. “Meeting is in an hour.”

  “An hour? That’s barely time to prepare!” I start reordering the bent pages on my desk and search the volumes that have fallen to the floor for the one containing the provisions of the Zenzee treaty.

  “You’ll manage. You found the time to slip lover boy the old tongue. Like I always say, you’re great at multitasking. Writing declarations while you’re eating. Practicing speeches while you shower. Reading over Senate minutes while you’re squatting on the—”

  “Thank you for your service, Baradonna,” I say. Interrupting Baradonna’s rants has become a part-time job for me. Though she’s not exactly wrong, either. Life as Matris is a balancing act, requiring more than there are hours in the day. But I manage, thanks to keeping good people around me. “You have gone above and beyond, like always, but Kallum and I were just catching up. Nothing else.”

  Baradonna squints at me. “You’ve got a little orange patina here,” she says, rubbing my cheek. “You haven’t worn patina since you became Matris, or is that me misremembering?”

  “Help me pick up these books, will you?” I say, turning away from her so she won’t see my naxshi turning all manners of colors. Baradonna wrestles the books back into a neat stack, then stands akimbo, so proud of having caught me telling a tale.

  “Anything else I can help you with?” she asks.

  “Not unless you’re familiar with ways to counter stage four environmental degradation.” I sit back down with my ledgers and notes before me. “Kallum says that the Klang ship is planning to betray the Exodus Pact and harvest another Zenzee. Theirs has gotten too sick and can no longer support them.”

  “Have they tried a biomolecular analysis of the spleen to determine exactly which infections are plaguing the Zenzee?” Baradonna asks.

  I stare at her. Blink several times.

  “What? You think I can’t read books? I’m much more than a fine figure and a pretty face.”

  “I didn’t think either of—” I shake my head. “You know what, never mind. Come sit over here. We can work through this together. Maybe a new perspective is just what I need.”

  “Okay, but I have to warn you, I have very sensitive reflexes when I’m focused on something that requires deep thinking. If I get startled by sudden movement, I’m liable to flip you so hard, I’ll break half the bones in your body, so make sure you turn the pages slowly.”

  I give her a hesitant nod, not sure if she’s joking or not, wondering what I’ve gotten myself into. “Okay, so we’ve got the Klang ship. Population 3,300 people, skewing slightly older than us, with an abnormally high percentage of males, nearing almost half the population.”

  “Ugh!” Baradonna says, and I squint at her. “No offense. A population that small suggests there was a large-scale die-out. Maybe a plague that affected women more harshly?”

  “It’s a possibility, but the Klang have been less than forthcoming with their history. Their leader is an elected official in service for the past twelve years. They have been aboard this Zenzee for forty-seven years. There are a few prestigious family Lines with wealth, but for the most part, all semblance of economic development and trade seems to have collapsed under the strain of the failing Zenzee. People are now living in squalor. Civilization is coming undone.”

  “If there’s only 3,300 of them, why don’t we invite them to live with us?
” Baradonna says casually, as though she’s asking a few friends over for tea.

  “What?” I ask, certain I’d heard her wrong. Too many hours of staring at these pages, too many thoughts of Kallum’s body running through my mind.

  “Take them in. Welcome them here. Make room.”

  I shake my head, vehemently. “We can’t take in a whole new culture like that. It would disrupt everything! Where would they sleep? What would they eat? We don’t even have the resources to take all of our own people out of stasis and provide for them!” My chest heaves at the thought. I know what it was like to have a mother stuck in stasis, body so close, yet mind so far away. I know the stress it puts on the rest of the family. To imagine us opening our arms up to strangers so readily after upturning so many of our own lives is like a slap to the face.

  Baradonna holds her hands out in front of her. “Ahh, no need to yell. It was just an idea! I thought you wanted to entertain new perspectives.”

  “Good perspectives. Not ones that will collapse our society along with the Klang’s. Do you know what the Senate would do to me if I came to them with an idea like that? Tesaryn Wen already has her sights aimed on ousting me from power, and there’s no limit to how far she’ll stoop to do it. I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure she put a diuretic in the water pitcher that sat in front of me at last week’s assembly. Nearly pissed myself before I got a chance to speak.”

  Baradonna nods, then steps closer. “I remember that. I’d never seen you talk so quickly,” she says, her voice now smooth, deep, and quiet. “You want me to cut her? Because I will. I can make it look like an accident.”

  “What? No! No cutting anyone. I just need some room to think. There’s a rational solution out there, one that doesn’t risk everything we’ve worked so hard for. And we’re going to find it.”

  “Nothing irrational about a little cutting,” Baradonna grumbles.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  Seske