by Maggie Allen
A man. Just imagine that. Someone who hadn’t altered his DNA when he turned eighteen. A man, pure and simple. Just about the most exotic thing you could do to your body is not changing it when you get the chance.
All the Mamas were modified, of course. You had to have the Mama mod to stay in this village. All the Mamas were able to make babies without the help of a male personage. That’s what the propolis did, in a modified form it initiated pregnancy in the Mamas. That’s why it was my job to process it; the Mamas could get accidentally pregnant just by touching the stuff.
I chanced a glance at the man. He was the whitest person I’d ever seen in my life. Even though he was youngish, he couldn’t have been much more than eighteen, his hair shone grey in the sunlight.
The Mamas wouldn’t let him come into the village. The Mamas had told us not to approach him. I wanted to talk to him. But, oh no, once the council made its decision, everybody had to stick by it.
I didn’t like being watched. I didn’t like a man making notes about me.
Without a second glance at him, I left the hives and walked to the worm pit. The worms wriggled and looked hungry. All the wax had turned red, telling me that it had been purified through their guts. I scraped up the wax and bottled it, adding the fresh propolis to the pit. “Enjoy!” I said.
Then I made my way to Mama Bathsheba. She was council leader this year. Her first commandment was to implement an annoying new rule. Before any junior could do recreation time, we had to go and get our task lists ticked off. Even if we were Age of Freedom. Honestly, she totally didn’t trust us.
There she sat, her ocelli mods, her hundreds of little eyes spots, flickering. Whatever had possessed her to get such an ugly modification, I couldn’t think.
“I’ve done all my tasks, Mama. Am I free now?”
She didn’t look up from the papers she was grading. “Are you sure you’re done, Freya?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Because last week you told me you were done, and you’d forgotten to do your social studies module.”
I blushed. That was an honest mistake. Anybody can make a mistake. “I have entirely done my tasks for the day.”
“Run along then, Freya.”
“Oh my god,” said Sonya, her hands on her hips and exasperation written all over her face. “You won’t believe what Sara has done.”
Sara was six and a total brat. “Nothing that girl does surprises me.”
“She mooned the stranger.”
That did surprise me. I burst out laughing. “Oh my god. She didn’t.”
“She totally did. She walked to the boundary and bent over and showed him her little bare bottom. Mama Bathsheba is furious. She’s given Sara a ton of extra chores.”
“Serves her right. God, she’s wild. I wonder if the man drew a picture of it. Then her bottom would be recorded for posterity.”
Sonya laughed, her cheeks growing pink. “What a little savage.”
“I can’t bare the thought of a picture of her bum being added to the Library United records.”
“Stop it!” said Sonya, nearly rolling off her bed.
It took quite some time for our giggles to die down.
Eventually, Sonya reached for her holi-emitter and began to play the latest Selkie Sisters’ album. They’re like our favourite band at the moment. Totally cool. They’re based in LondonT, of course. We loved LondonT. As soon as we turned sixteen, we were going to go to a LondonT processing centre, that’s for sure.
I listened for a bit, letting the music wash over me. It was like the ocean. Which, by the way, is something I’ve never seen. I bet the man standing at the gates had seen the ocean. Maybe he’d even been overseas. I sighed. “Mama Bathsheba was on my case today, again, Sonya. I’m fed up of her. She thinks she rules us.”
“She does rule us,” said Sonya, rolling her eyes. Sonya’s my bestie, and I love her. But she’s not like me. She never seemed to get angry. That made me jealous of her and, yes, a little bit angry sometimes. I was nothing but anger nowadays.
I turned my holi-emitter to my favourite channel, browsing through potential mods. I spent a long time looking at mods, as I suppose everyone my age does. I browsed through the mods I’d favourited: high fash, postmod beetle women; images of Wecall who’d turned her body into an instrument; selkies; harpies; mermaids and super-bright girlie girls, Most of them were female. And that was my choice. I could favourite any mod I wanted. But funny how I had chosen women and neuters, wasn’t it? When it came time for me to change my body, to accept the DNA which would reshape my body and set my future, I’d probably be a Mama.
“I can’t wait to go to LondonT,” I said. All things were possible in LondonT. “Three more years and we can get out of this place.”
“Yeah,” murmured Sonya B, not meeting my eyes.
Which doesn’t sound too bad, but I know her. “What do you mean ‘yeah’? Are you having second thoughts?”
She turned off the music. The silence closed around us. “LondonT, or any of the other big towns.”
“What? What? You’ve thinking about somewhere else? I thought we’d agreed we were going to a LondonT processing centre.”
“I was thinking about one of the smaller transformation centres. LondonT seems a bit wild.”
Cold, white anger flared through my mind. “You cannot be serious. We’ve agreed on LondonT.”
“I’ve been talking about it with Mama Bathsheba. It might be the right choice for you, but maybe not for me.”
Why wasn’t I surprised? Mama Bathsheba was always trying to ruin things for me. Sonya, might be quiet, but she could be stubborn. I had to be smart to persuade her that my point of view was the right one. “Think about it, Sonya. Having the man here, it’s a bit like having a bit of LondonT at our gates. That’s why we should talk to him.” Maybe talking to the man would persuade Sonya how cool LondonT would be.
“Well, the council said we shouldn’t and so…”
“So what? I’m going to see Mama Bathsheba.”
“It won’t get you anywhere.”
“Fine.”
“This is supposed to be a democracy.” It wasn’t the argument I’d planned. But Mama Bathsheba always wound me up. She always looked at me as if she knew everything I was about to say.
“We are a democracy, Freya.”
“No.” I fought to keep my voice respectful. “Only adults get a vote.”
“That is correct. Only full members of Comb7 vote on the council.”
“And you discount whatever we think. Even if we’re Age of Freedom. I mean, what’s the point of being Age of Freedom if you don’t even listen to us.”
“And what do you think, Freya?”
“I think we ought to invite the librarian into the village.”
Mama wasn’t even paying attention to me. Her freaky little eye spots kept flicking to her computer. “The council has already discussed the matter and decided to refuse the librarian’s request.”
“But, Mama, you always say that a new situation is an opportunity for learning. And what’s more new than a man? We think that inviting them into the compound would be a learning opportunity.”
“We?”
I nodded. Admittedly, it was mostly me who thought that. But I’d spoken to some of the other juniors, and they hadn’t been totally against the idea.
“As you feel so strongly about it, I’ll raise it in this afternoon’s council meeting. We’ll consider it,” said Mama Bathsheba.
I knew what that meant. Adults always say they’ll think about something when they wanted you to go away and shut up.
I never expected them to change their minds. So it was quite a surprise when they called us into a circle meeting the next morning and there was the man, standing there, smiling. A man!
“Youngsters,” said Mama Bathsheba. “This is Alex Shvartsman, I’m sure all of you have seen him and in some cases, he’s seen more of you than is suitable.”
All eyes turned to Sara,
who grinned. She was a horrible, horrible little girl. Mama Bathsheba often said that Sara reminded her of me at that age, but I’m sure I was never that bad.
The man was grinning too widely. He looked so eager to be liked. He gave a peculiar and utterly foreign bow. “Thank you, Mama Bathsheba and everyone for allowing me into your community. As you know, I’m a librarian. All I want to do is gather as much information about the different cultures in the Kingdom United as possible.”
That seemed harmless. I’d expected something different, somehow. Some of the little girls started to giggle until Mama Bathsheba gave them the stink eye.
A man. I never thought I’d see a man up close. At least until I went to LondonT. A man! Or maybe I shouldn’t call him a man. He didn’t look that old. Not much older than me, really. He was taller than me. His voice was low, but not as low as Mama Claudette’s. He didn’t look too different, except he did.
He had a lot of hair, I could see it peeping out of his tunic, at his throat and sleeves and on his face. No boobs, of course, and extra in the trouser department, not that that was any of my business. And hair on his face. And his body looked differently muscled, a bit lanky. Funny to think that for millennia, this had been the form of half of humanity. He was a natural, and utterly, utterly strange.
“Alex will be our guest for three days. He’s already met all the Mamas. And as Freya is the reason our guest is here, the council has decided that she will be Alex’s escort,” said Mama Bathsheba. “Freya, you will take Alex to the guest quarters, and then show him whatever he wants to see.”
What?
“Thank you,” said Alex, turning to me, and placing his hand over his chest and bending. He seemed to have quite a number of those odd librarian bows. And I was going to show him around! I wasn’t expecting that. I’d thought that one of the Mamas would escort him and keep an eye on him. I never imagined they would trust me to do it. This was excellent.
With a few more boring words, about respecting people who weren’t part of the village, Mama Bathsheba left us. All the little kids rushed upon the man like he was ice-cream. Me and Sonya and the other three Age of Freedom juniors hung back a bit.
“What do you think?” whispered Junita to me, her golden earring glittering. I loved those earrings: two bees touching, mouth to mouth, stinger to stinger, an Age of Freedom gift from Mama Wilkins.
“He looks normal, well normalish.”
He was trying to answer all of kiddiewinks’ questions at once. Until I took pity on him and shooed them away.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Freya. I guess I’m your guide.”
“Cool,” he said.
Cool indeed. “Come on, I’ll take you to your room, and you can get settled.”
“What exactly do you want to see?” I asked after Alex had dumped his pack and cleaned up and we’d grabbed a plate of what I call Mama Donna’s lentil slop.
“I just want to get to know you and learn about the village.”
“There’s not much to show you,” I said.
“But there is. There are hundreds of isolationist tribes in the South East. Each doing their own thing, each in a slightly different way. All the things they learn are going to be lost unless someone records it. That’s what the United Library wants to do, to record everything for the future.”
“We are not isolationists. We talk to others in the Collective. We’ve let you in.” I felt uneasy about Alex criticizing the village. Even though I criticized it all the time, it was different when an outsider did it.
“I apologise. Sorry, Freya. Honestly, I’m not trying to judge you. I only want to make a record of what you want to share. I’m going to get a lot of things wrong, and I’m relying on you to set me straight. Deal?”
“Deal,” I said.
I took him to Melissa’s Temple. I reckon that’s the most impressive thing in Comb7. The temple was in the centre of the Hive. In the centre of the temple was the marble Melissa. Light filtered through the atrium window in the ceiling, bathing the temple space in honey coloured light, the air was fragranced with burning beeswax candles and the fumes from the stone jars of fermenting honey. The walls were decorated with all types of artwork. Perhaps the temple was the only place where youngsters have equal value in Comb7. Everyone was free to decorate the temple, no matter how young or how bad at art they were.
“Wow,” said Alex. “Just wow. Thank you for letting me see this, Freya. It’s a great honour.”
I felt quietly pleased that he was impressed. Perhaps we weren’t such yokels after all.
“So you worship the Bee Mother. This looks Minoan.”
“That’s right,” I said. Melissa was represented as a woman decorated with adult bees and eggs. “The goddess is our interpretation of the eternal. We’re all female here. The Mamas can only give birth to females. Genetically, it takes a father to make a son.”
“Like parthenogenetic reproduction, but obviously with mitotic variation.”
“Yes, sure,” I said. “We’re not clones of our mother, but we come from her. All the Mamas have the mod that allows them to fuse two eggs into one baby. No sperm needed.”
“Who is your mother?”
“It’s not important.” Sometimes I wondered about that. Sonya said that it must be Mother Bathsheba because we were too alike, always rubbing each other the wrong way. But it wasn’t a question that really mattered. In Comb7, all the Mamas were my mother.
Alex took out his notepad and began to scribble away. “It’s so interesting that after the DNA revolution, so many religions were rediscovered, or invented, don’t you think?”
“And yet they all reflect the face of the true god,” I said.
Alex nodded. “That’s profound.”
“Don’t blame me,” I said with a grin. “I’m not the profound type; it’s just something that Mama Donna has drilled into us. You know. She’s of the lentil slop fame.”
Alex laughed. “You’ve got a great sense of humour, Freya.”
I’m pretty sure I didn’t blush. “Cheers. It’s just something Mama Donna always said: we should be free to touch the divine in the way that speaks to our minds and bodies, and so should all people, a monoculture is never a liberating thing.”
“The culture was hardly a monoculture here in the KU. But it’s true that religion has flourished in communities like Comb7. I just wish everyone had a Mama Donna to keep them respectful of other beliefs.”
“And we farm, but that’s just like anyone else,” I said.
I took Alex around the fields and introduced him to everyone I found: Mamas, freedom juniors and kiddiewinks
Then I took him to the hives. I had to suit him up properly as Alex was a stranger to the bees. I guess that was the first time he looked really out of place, clunking about in the bulky suit.
“Our specialist trade is bee products,” I told him. “Honey and propolis. Propolis production is my special chore.”
“What is it?” he asked. “Sorry to keep asking you questions all the time. It’s just that I haven’t got access to the net because of your privacy bleepers.”
“Sure, no problem. That’s what I’m here for. It’s a wax mixture used by honeybees as an insulator and sealant.” I scraped up a bit to show him, although there wasn’t much as I’d harvested yesterday. “It’s very high in hormones and has antibiotic, anaesthetic, and anti-inflammatory properties.”
“I can see why people want to buy it,” said Alex.
“And that’s before it’s gone through the worms.”
I showed him the worms. “They’re our intellectual property,” I said. “Mama Kary developed their genetic modification. Once the worms eat the wax, it changes chemical composition and is able to stimulate pregnancy in women with a genetic variation like the Mamas. It brings in 50% of our trade. It’s very valuable.”
“This wax could get a Mama pregnant?”
“Sure,” I said. “Of course, they could take a chemical to do the same thing. But the Mamas are all hip
pies, and they prefer their pregnancies 100 percent organic.”
“That’s quite something,” said Alex.
“It’s nearly dinner time. Are you hungry yet?”
“Always,” said Alex.
“Let’s go and get something to eat in the canteen.”
“More lentil slop? Which, by the way, I thought was delicious.”
“Yep. A pot of Mama Donna’s lentil slop can lasts for weeks. She just keeps adding to it.”
I took Alex to the canteen and got us a couple of plates of food. “I guess you’ve seen everything now,” I said.
“Not at all. I want to talk to as many people as want to talk to me.”
I couldn’t see what was so interesting about everyone, but I guess he knew his business.
Alex yawned. “It’s been a long day. Thanks, Freya. How’s about we call it an early night? And I’ll catch up with my notes. I’d like to work on them while everything is fresh in my mind.”
“Sure.”
“I like him,” I told Sonya.
“I know you do,” said Sonya, with a yawn.
“Do you find him boring? Don’t you think he’s the most interesting thing that’s ever come to Comb7?”
She shrugged. “I know you like him, Freya. And I don’t want to fight with you again.”
“But?”
“I just don’t find him that relevant. Not everyone seeks out the new things like you do.”
“He’s an old thing: a man.”
“Whatever.”
I’m sorry to say that Sonya’s attitude was typical of what I’d put up with all day. Everyone had been polite to Alex, but only polite. I could feel everyone holding back. They didn’t want to engage with him at all. It made me embarrassed. It was like we were total yokels. We were better than that.
But whatever. If they didn’t want to know about the outside world, then I did. And while Alex was learning about us, I was learning about the great wide world outside of Comb7.
So bright and early the next day, (actually at about ten o’clock) I knocked on Alex’s door, eager to show him around, but even more eager to find out about the outside world.
