“You cannot select a partner before your Choosing,” her mother had told her. “However long you have to wait for it. It may not be ... appropriate, afterwards.”
“Trum is male so does not get a Choosing,” Ninah retorted, her voice trembling with emotion. “Why cannot he select me?”
Ninah’s father sighed heavily, and glanced at his wife. “No female can select or be selected until after their Choosings,” he said patiently. “It is the law. You know how things are here. You are not a little child any more.”
“Then why does everyone treat me like one!” screamed Ninah, wiping tears of frustration from her eyes and running to her room. She threw herself onto her bunk and sobbed until sleep overcame her. Even the faint hum of the dome’s filters coming on did not wake her. They started to pump out a slight aroma to indicate that they were operating properly, and, in the next room, Ninah’s parents slid under the warm sheets of their own bunk. Slowly the residence-dome became imbued with the reassuringly sweet scent of violets.
The following morning, Ninah had eaten her breakfast in sulky silence, then returned to her room and switched on her Tutor. “Today’s lessons will begin with history...” crackled the artificial voice of the computer, shaped like a smiling head with a view screen representing its shoulders. Ninah sat there and worked, without stopping to eat and ignoring her parent’s occasional calls from the communal area, until late afternoon. Then she suddenly stabbed at the over-ride button. “Individual research,” she muttered loud enough for the machine’s sensors to pick up her command.
“Subject?” queried the Tutor.
“The Choosing,” Ninah replied, after a moment’s hesitation. There were severe punishments for failing to keep up with the tuition programme, and she had already fallen several days behind. She knew she could catch up on two or three day’s work without too much trouble, but the present backlog was starting to worry her, which was why she had dedicated so much of the day to her studies. But now she was bored, and wanted to investigate what really mattered to her.
There was a pause before the Tutor responded. “Note that this is the recommended lesson for persons of your standard. If you require a higher level response, please ask an adult to join you and enter his or her code.” Biting her nails impatiently, Ninah sat and waited. Satisfied that nothing else was going to happen, the Tutor continued. “Graal has never produced enough males for its needs. Consequently, young females on Graal are given the opportunity to choose which gender they wish to be for the rest of their lives. There are generous awards given to those who elect to become males. That is all.” The Tutor emitted a low tone to signal that the response was complete.
Ninah punched a button to switch it off. It was the same curt message she had heard for the past five years. When would she be old enough to hear a more detailed account? She wanted to find a loophole that would enable her to partner Trum straight away. She could not bear the thought of having to wait until the Central Administrator’s office contacted her parents to say it was time for her Choosing. Though it seemed to be long overdue already, nevertheless it could still be days or months or maybe even years away. She could not endure for so long. Pulling a green tunic over her brown one-piece, and automatically snatching up her night-hood in case she decided to stay out late, she crept out of her room and was through the main door of the dome before her parents had time to look up from their workstations. She knew they would not pursue her. It was too important that they meet their work unit quota each day, and they scarcely had time for meals and sleep as it was. As long as she was not in obvious danger and was not breaking any important rules, they would let her alone.
The dry heat hit her as soon as she was outside, but the air was fresh and clean and she gulped at it hungrily as she ran past the hydroponic farm and the Supply Depot out onto the warm, shifting sand which surrounded Gamma Town like an ocean around an island. Very few of the settlers came out onto the sand unless they had to, regarding it as one more unpleasant feature of a generally inhospitable planet, but Ninah loved it. She loved its warmth and its mutability, and the way in which its soft lilac tones lightened and darkened according to the time of day and the positions of the suns. She had scooped out a hollow and seated herself facing away from the Town, and from the Copses where the towering Ghuign trees shared space with a mixture of smaller but equally sturdy plants and shrubs and maintained the breathability of the daylight air.
She sat there, feeling the heat seep through her linen clothes and embrace her slight body, and desperately tried to think of a way in which she and Trum could be together without having to wait until the Administrators saw fit to summon her to her Choosing. “Widow Sarich,” she suddenly said aloud. “She is the oldest person in the world. She will know all there is to know about the Choosing. She will know if I have to wait for it before I can be partnered.”
Scrabbling her way upright, and frightening several inquisitive Nards, mauve-skinned sand lizards whose camouflage made them very difficult to hunt, it took Ninah only moments to reach Widow Sarich’s tiny one-person dome on the outskirts of Gamma Town. She placed her hand on the sensor by the door and waited for the old woman to identify her. After a few minutes’ silence, Ninah grew impatient and banged on the white plastic wall, shouting her name. The door slid open and the girl entered.
A faint humming and the distinct scent of lavender alerted her to the fact that Widow Sarich had somehow gained permission to leave her filter on all day. The old woman never left her dome and seemed to distrust even the daylight air, though Ninah could not understand why she did not simply accept that everyone else could breathe it perfectly well so there could not be anything wrong with it. Widow Sarich’s husband had died many years earlier, long before Ninah was born, when his night-hood had broken down during an exploratory expedition which had got lost and been forced to stay out all night. The old woman had grown increasingly reclusive over recent years and some of the younger children mocked her for her eccentricities. But Ninah had a fondness for her which she could not explain.
When her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light inside the old woman’s dome, Ninah realised with a shock that Widow Sarich was wearing nothing but a flimsy underdress, stained brown and yellow and concealing little of her sagging plump body. She was sitting by one of the filter’s outlet grilles, staring sightlessly towards the open door. She had been born on Graal in the early days of its settlement, before many of the birth defects which were common then had been eradicated, and she had come into the world with moist white eyes which had no pupils. As she came closer, Ninah saw that the wide eyes now contained a number of dark blood spots, which floated idly across them like tiny red boats on a lake of milk.
“How are you, Widow Sarich,” Ninah said politely, touching the old woman’s wrinkled hand with her own. “I have come to visit you.”
“You are the only one who ever does, Ninah Tressard,” Widow Sarich said, with affection in her voice, though she snatched her hand away as if she had been stung. “But I suppose there are no other little girls left to do so, are there?”
Ninah did not reply for a moment, because she had to bite back her anger at being called a little girl. But she knew how irrational the old woman could be sometimes and did not want to upset her. “Well,” she said at last. “There are the two toddlers that belong to family Eflond and the five girls who share my tutor group, but they’re all quite a bit younger than me. They are what could be called little girls, I suppose,” she concluded pointedly.
“And you sometimes wonder what became of those who were older than you?” asked Widow Sarich, rocking her head so that the shaft of sunlight from the open door seemed to slap her face back and forth. “You weren’t always the eldest girl in Gamma, were you?”
Ninah found a stool and sat down on it, staring intently at the blind woman, wondering if she had some magical way of discerning what it was she had come about. “The big girls all took
the award for choosing to become male,” she answered. “Their parents were all poor, I think, farmers and builders and suchlike, so I suppose they needed the money. Mine work with their brains so I don’t have to worry about it.”
“Indeed brainwork is always better rewarded than muscle work,” Widow Sarich said, as though the thought had never struck her before. “The Tressards administrate the farm, don’t they?”
“Something like that,” Ninah agreed. “They have to plan when crops go in and come out and that sort of thing. I don’t really take much notice.”
“No, I don’t think you do. And neither does anyone else. No-one on Graal ever takes much notice of what goes on except an old blind woman who knows better than to go out and remind people she’s still here. Did any of the older girls tell you before they went that they were going to choose to let the Alpha Town Nanotechs and Bio-engineers make them into males?”
Ninah shrugged her thin shoulders, then remembered that this gesture would be lost on her companion. “We never talked about it much. It’s a bit ... embarrassing, when you’re young. I think Greya was considering it because her father had gone missing and her mother couldn’t manage very well on just the one wage. But some of the others were planning to take partners. Phaedra was desperately in love with one of the farmers, I recall, though he was much too old for her. Even so, I remember thinking it strange that she didn’t come back after her Choosing.”
“So they still alter the changelings’ memories and send them to different towns afterwards?” Widow Sarich asked softly.
“Yes. They say it’s easier to start a new life somewhere that you’re not known and when you can’t remember who you used to be. Besides, it’s at the mining towns that the males are needed because the digging machines don’t work very well on Graal and they need men’s muscles to get the minerals out. You don’t need many males in a farming town, so there wouldn’t be much point in them coming back here if they’d chosen to change.”
“No point at all,” the old woman agreed. “No point at all. I am glad you learn your lessons so well. You don’t want to be thinking wicked thoughts such as men are cheaper than machines, do you. Or that they are more resistant to underground vapours than even physically augmented females. But I am tired now, Child Ninah, so just run along home would you. Shouldn’t you be doing your schoolwork?”
“I wanted to ask you about the Choosing,” Ninah protested. “If there is a way I can ...” She stopped, suddenly shy. “If anyone can select a partner before their Choosing.”
The deafening noise of a descending Transport Ship rocked the dome. The old woman covered her ears and flung herself back and forth as if in a fit. “Get out and shut my door -- don’t let them come for me!” she screeched in terror.
Ninah ran outside and closed the door behind her. The sleek saucer-shaped ship had settled on the landing bay beside the Supply Depot, and most of the townspeople had come out to look at it. An unscheduled visit was of considerable note in the small place.
“Ninah Tressard,” crackled a loudspeaker from somewhere on the surface of the gleaming vehicle. “It is time for your Choosing. Collect your belongings and enter.”
Ninah stared in astonishment, her heart racing, her mind in tumult. Part of her was frightened, worried because she had not received the usual week’s notice allowing her parents time to organise the traditional party. But a more jubilant part of her realised that her loneliness and suffering was at last close to ending. In a few days, she and Trum would be able to be partnered for life.
She scampered over the cobblestone grounding of the town to her dome, where her parents, efficient as ever, were already packing a travelbag for her. “It’s a bit sudden, isn’t it?” her mother snapped at her as she entered. “What have you been up to?”
Ninah shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe they’ve just remembered me,” she said. “Phaedra Collan was months younger than me when it was her time, and she was the oldest ever. I was starting to think they’d forgotten me and I’d end up alone like Widow Sarich.”
Ninah’s father nodded his balding head slowly. “The administrators have certainly been busy lately,” he muttered, his deep voice contrasting with his wiry frame. “They have a hard job keeping the mineworkers nourished on such an arid planet as this. Our predecessors were stupid to destroy so many plants before they realised that they drew water up to the surface. Graal could have had thirty or forty more hydroponic farms if they hadn’t wiped out so many Copses.”
Mother Tressard cleared her throat uncomfortably. “It doesn’t do to speak ill of the administrators,” she murmured. “People can only survive here by sticking strictly to the rules. You wouldn’t want to be shipped out ... or worse.”
Father Tressard looked uneasy. “I wasn’t speaking ill of them,” he said, his voice unnaturally loud. “Just commenting on what the first settlers did. It wasn’t anyone’s fault ...”
“Well, here’s your bag, Ninah,” said her mother, clearly changing the subject. “I’m sorry you haven’t had a party. Maybe we’ll have a late one for you, if you get back.”
“When I get back, you mean,” said Ninah truculently. “I have no intention of being turned into some hairy giant of a man, whatever award they offer me. I don’t expect it’ll be more than a couple of days before I’m home again. And then you’ll have something really important to celebrate!”
She took the bag from her mother’s shaking hand and glanced around the dome. Sparsely furnished, and with much of its communal space given over to her parents’ workstations, it was hardly cosy. But it was the only home she had ever known, and her eyes tingled as she looked around it.
Her father suddenly strode across the room and shook her roughly by the hand. “I hope it goes well, Ninah,” he said unsteadily. “You’ll have to excuse me. I am getting behind with my work.” He walked back to his vidscreen and pressed a few buttons on the fascia beneath it. Then he just sat back and stared at his reflection.
Mother Tressard put her soft hands on Ninah’s shoulders, as though she were about to give her a hug. But she just nodded and cleared her throat. “Whatever happens will be for the best,” she said, enunciating each word slowly and distinctly. “Have a safe journey.”
Ninah smiled. “I’ll see you in no time,” she said cheerily. “No need to get all silly about it.”
She ran out of the dome and towards the landing bay, without seeing her mother’s eyes fill with tears and her mother’s lips mouth the words “Goodbye, my child.”
The ship’s door slid open as Ninah approached. She paused and turned to take another look at Gamma Town. Many of her friends and neighbours stood by the doors of their domes, waving and smiling encouragingly. Mother Eflond held both her small daughters, one in each arm, while her plump little husband stood beside her staring expressionlessly at the ship. Father and Mother
Collan had walked over from the farm, but stood too far away for Ninah to hear what they were saying to each other. Several other farmers stood beside the Collans, waving cheerily, and the doorways of the supply depot were crammed with workers jostling to get a good view. Ninah knew that Trum would be among them, but would be too gentle to force his way to the front.
It was a great rarity for so many people to be outside at the same time, and for a moment there was an air of festivity. But it was only a moment. “Enter at once, Ninah Tressard,” crackled the loudspeaker impatiently, and Ninah did as she was told.
The door slid shut behind her before she could look to see if Widow Sarich had come out to see her off, so she took a couple of steps forward and sat on the hard green plastic bench which ran in a semi-circle along half the diameter of the ship. The pilot’s area was closed off and the rest of the cabin was featureless, so Ninah pursed her lips and made herself as comfortable as she could.
She was scarcely aware of the craft rising into the air, but felt distinctly queasy when it shot of
f towards Alpha Town. She looked in her bag for some sweets to suck, but her parents had never been in favour of anything so unhealthy and all she found was a small packet of travel-sickness pills. Not for the first time, Ninah thought of the effective way her mother and father always took care of her, even if they seemed to do so without much tenderness. She took a couple of the travel pills with a can of processed rhubarb juice, and devoted her time to imagining what she would wear to her partnering with Trum. Somehow, it never occurred to her to wonder what he would wear. When she pictured him in her mind, it was always in the sand-stained blue jerkin and breeches he had worn when he first scooted into Gamma.
Eschewing the narrow bench for the comparative comfort of the floor, Ninah eventually lay down and dozed, the barely perceptible throbbing of the craft’s engines making her feel strangely at ease. It was quite a shock when she awoke to the sound of the door sliding open and an irritable voice calling her name.
She got up and, remembering just in time to pick up her bag, walked out of the ship to find herself in a covered landing bay. A dozen slender blue pillars supported its slightly domed roof, and the floor was grimy and pitted with holes and scratches. The place smelled like the noisy machines that trundled around her parents’ farm.
A tall man with white hair and a long beard, dressed from head to toe in a dark grey robe, was standing outside, tapping on the metallic ground with a stick made of glistening black wood. “Follow me,” he barked, when Ninah appeared.
Perfect Flaw Page 21
