Commitment Hour lop-2
Page 31
"To make changes like that, you'll need help." Cappie smiled. "You'll need help from the Patriarch's Man."
She turned to me. "How about it? Will you say yes to Hakoore? For the good of the cove?"
"Patriarch's Man?" When I said it, the title sounded so sadly pompous — a relic of some long-dead tyrant, one more thing that should have gone on that junk heap in Mayoralty House. The Patriarch's Man was a self-deceiving fool with a book of laws and a machine that looked like a severed hand. "I don't know if I believe in the position," I said. "After everything that's happened in Birds Home…"
"You mean you've lost your faith in the gods?" Rashid asked. "This is so typical. I've bent over backward not to utter a word against your faith, but you're going to say I raised doubts—"
"I still believe in the gods," I answered quietly. "But not the Patriarch's Law."
"Then change it," Cappie said. "The Patriarch has been an ugly sore, festering on the face of the cove for a hundred and fifty years. Get rid of him."
"By becoming Hakoore's 'disciple'?"
"Yes… if that's what it takes to make things right."
A fire burned in her eyes. It felt strange to have someone believe in me.
"Do you agree?" I asked my other self. "If Hakoore puts the squeeze on me with that damned Patriarch's Hand…"
"I'll support you," she said. "Make sure your head stays straight." She laid her fingers lightly on my arm and smiled. "Two weasels together can beat a snake."
I smiled back. "All right — I'll do it. Patriarch's Man."
My commitment.
"Of course, you remember," Female-Me added, "there's a special arrangement between priestess and Patriarch's Man."
I raised my eyebrows. She was looking at me with cool appraisal. I returned her gaze evenly.
"This could get interesting," Cappie murmured.
"What?" Rashid asked. "What's this special arrangement?"
"Tell you later," she answered.
"And in the meantime," I said to Rashid, "can you do something about this radio in my head? I refuse to match wits with someone who can hear everything I think."
"Yes," my sister agreed, "please stop him transmitting. It's so embarrassing to know the second he gets horny for me."
"Me? Horny for you?"
"Silence, peasants!" Rashid commanded with mock severity. "Whatever you're arguing about, I don't care — I've had my fill of cultural observation for one day. Let's find the damned lab so I can get back to the hard sciences. I'm longing for things that make sense."
The lab was gigantic — far larger than all three coffin chambers put together. The front part held five large glass windows, showing words and numbers and graphs painted in colored light. There was also a corridor slanting upward, no doubt leading to Master Crow's nest. But what caught my interest most was the rear part of the room: a single wide aisle down the middle with banks of arcane machinery on either side. Even the height of OldTech culture couldn't have created such equipment. Glistening steel vats with pipes sprouting out in all directions. A tall pillar from floor to ceiling, with an exterior of black matte plastic and an interior of who knew what. Gray metal boxes that breathed out warm air through grilles, and faceless things with inhuman arms, delicately jiggling test tubes of red fluid.
"Glory be!" Rashid cried with delight. "Home at last!"
"This looks like your home?" I asked dubiously.
He ignored me, moving to a nearby window-glass and punching at a row of buttons beneath it. Immediately, the picture in the window changed to a list of names — all the children of Tober Cove.
"Amazing," Rashid said. "How could they find out your names? Unless they can analyze the thought transmissions as they're coming through and extract specific information. But that would mean they understand the actual encryption of mental data in the brain…"
"Can you turn off the transmitter or not?" I asked.
"Hard to say," Rashid answered. "If I find a nice simple data screen with a button that says, CLICK HERE TO RUN OFF FULLIN'S TRANSMITTER, then we're fine. Otherwise, it may take months to figure out the trick. This setup is far more complicated than I expected, and I don't want to monkey with things I don't understand."
Footsteps sounded from the up-slanting corridor. A moment later, the bird-servants appeared: all five walking in lock step, their arms empty. They paid no attention to us as they proceeded on toward the Neut chamber.
My sister self gave me a look. "We'd better get up to Master Crow's nest before the children start waking."
I nodded, then turned to Cappie. "Are you going to be all right?"
"Helping a Spark Lord in the home of the gods? You can't get safer than that." She stepped forward quickly and gave me a hug. "Don't worry about me." She gave another squeeze and turned to my female half. "I'll be back for Pona, trust me."
"Sure." My sister self closed her eyes as Cappie embraced her. "I'll miss you," she whispered.
Cappie gave her a light kiss on the nose. "You'll have each other," she said with a laugh. "I'll come back to the cove just to see how that works out." She grabbed my sister and me by the arm and gave us a slight shove toward the door. "Now get out of here. You both have work to do."
We nodded. My sister had already turned toward the door when I stopped. "One last thing." I reached behind my back and pulled out the gun; sometime after Steck's death, I had shoved it into my belt again without thinking. "This stays here," I said, checking the safety before I laid the pistol on the floor. "And Rashid… next time you bring presents to Tober Cove, try a fruit basket. Something harmless."
"Next time I come to Tober Cove," Rashid answered, "I'll bring Cappie. Is she harmless?"
My sister laughed… then slipped her arm into mine, as if she were taking possession of me. I didn't push her away.
As we began the climb up the slope to the hangar, Rashid cried, "Aha! Just what we were looking for. We look under Fullin's name, cross-match his personal transmission frequency, type in the numbers under DEACTIVATE, and…"
Everything suddenly went black.
"Fullin… Fullin…"
Someone was patting my face. I turned my head away.
"Come on, Fullin, wake up. Come on."
I opened my eyes. Cappie, the Neut Cappie, stared down at me.
"What?"
"Wake up, sleepyhead."
Groggily, I rolled up onto one elbow. I felt the weight of breasts on my chest as they shifted position. Was I the Female-Me? But I could feel… down at my crotch…
"Oh gods," I groaned, looking at myself. "I'm the Neut."
I let myself slump backward. I was lying inside a glass coffin.
Cappie stroked my cheek soothingly. "It's a shock, isn't it?"
"All this time I thought I was the male version… no, he was transmitting and I was just receiving." Suddenly I sat up. "Steck said the Neut Fullin was dead. Burned black as toast."
"And you believed her?" Cappie said. "Steck had better control of the armor than that. When your male self started shooting and your female self ran to Steck for protection, the force field didn't flick on until your woman half was safe in Steck's arms. Steck could keep the force field turned off when she wanted… so I knew she wasn't telling the truth."
"But why did she lie?" I asked.
"We'll never know. Maybe she didn't trust the male and female Fullins — she might have thought they'd hate a Neut version of themselves. This might have been a way to keep you safe from them. Or perhaps Steck just wanted to stash you out of sight until everyone else left Birds Home. It would give her time alone with her child: the one version who might truly understand her. Whatever the reason, she wheeled your coffin into the back part of the lab and hid you among the machines."
I looked around; I was indeed surrounded by machines. Off to my right, a gadget with a large metal drum whirled faster than a spinning wheel; something liquid gurgled inside. "So you were just exploring and stumbled on me here?"
"No, idiot. I sta
rted looking for you as soon as your other two selves left. Why do you think I wanted to stay in Birds Home?"
"You stayed for me?"
"Yes." She leaned over the edge of the coffin and kissed me. Hard.
"But I've been such a bastard…" I started.
"No, not you," Cappie interrupted. "That was the other two Fullins… with the other two Cappies. When I think of all the bad things that happened between us — those are like dreams from a previous life. I remember, but I'm not scarred by them. Isn't it the same for you?"
I thought back… and I could remember all the times I took advantage of her, the times I cheated or told lies; I could even remember the rationalizations I used to justify myself. But it was all secondhand, half-lost in haze; stories someone else had told me, dreams that meant as little as dreams always do. Only a few memories felt real and vivid: giving birth to Waggett (with Cappie holding my hand); my first kiss (with Cappie); my first time making love (with Cappie)…
Carefully, I climbed out of the coffin and wrapped my arms around her. Two newborn Neuts, warm against each other. The gods had never given me an opportunity to choose my gender, but they had still left me the chance to decide my future.
The choice was easy. "Happy Commitment," I whispered in Cappie's ear.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Why Feliss City?
A number of the people who read Commitment Hour have had fun figuring out where the book takes place: near the tip of the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, on the east shore of Lake Huron. Anyone familiar with the area can identify most of the places referred to in the story…but they ask me what I meant by Feliss City.
So here's the answer.
Back in 1978, I wrote a number of radio comedies/dramas for CKMS, the campus radio station at the University of Waterloo. These included the series Sarah Goes to College and Percy Pulsar, Space Accountant. Those series were centered around the University of Waterloo, under the thinly disguised name of Felicity University. (Good old FU — a weak joke that got used more than it should have.)
Since that time, I've written a number of things that used the name "Felicity" for the city of Waterloo: comedy sketches, role-playing stuff, and even an unpublished fantasy novel. I saw no reason to change when I wrote Commitment Hour.
Therefore, Feliss City in Commitment Hour is good old Felicity, my perennial pseudonym for Waterloo. I realize this isn't a boffo explanation, but that's what my thinking was.
Come visit my home page.
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v1.1 (2010-02-16: Verdi1) — a few errors fixed.
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