by Ian Whates
“Of course being middleborn has its advantages,” Umlish said, “but really, who wants a Younger Sibling cluttering up the place? Not Shria, I imagine.”
One of the Bails – Perjes or Tomlest – snickered, and Shria turned sharply, in both bodies, baring his teeth. But he must not have been watching them over the feed, so he couldn’t be sure which one had snickered. He stood there, glaring, clearly willing them to say something out loud. He could fight them, and he would – he was always getting in unauthorized fights with the other Bailkids.
What could he do against Umlish and her Staid crew?
Fift wasn’t there. She was a little way down the trail in one body, and farther off in the forest with the other. But she was watching over the feed. The whole class must be watching. How could you not? Everyone had been wondering about it, about what had happened to the new kid and his family, and no one had been talking about it... until now.
Shria: lavender skin and fiery red hair, orange eyebrows that curled like flames. Bony bare knees and elbows poked between the red and blue strips of cloth of his suit. His clothes were a bit too big – a little too skimpy for the surface – as if whoever had cooked them up had been distracted. It was already misting, up here – tiny droplets of water sparkling in the air, the strange wild atmosphere hesitating between fog and rain. Shria crouched down, doublebodied, one body’s arms already loaded up with sticks. He turned away sharply from the Bails in the clearing, and pulled a silver-barked stick from a tangle of them. It was furry with greenish lichen.
His eyes were red from crying already.
“That’s not going to burn,” Puson said. She was doing her best to look Staidish, emotionless, austere, but she sounded a little too excited. “Lichen means it’s too wet. Especially in this weather.”
Umlish smiled primly. “You do have an environmental context agent, don’t you?”
Fift’s own arms were full of sticks, some of which had lichen on them, or small fungi.
She shouldn’t have split up after arriving in the forest. She was here in one body gathering sticks; in another body, she was over past the ridge, dragging a large log back to the campsite. Dumb. She would have to drop all the sticks if she was going to sort through them. She didn’t like being together in the same place. Her somatic integration was poor. Her parents sent her to experts about it.
Umlish had found out about the experts, at one point. Umlish had written a poem about it.
Umlish could be merciless.
Fift shouldn’t have damped all her automated agents; they would have told her about the lichen. But the agents distracted her. From the tall trunks of trees – some of them thick around as elevator shafts, others thin as a child’s wrist. From the crunch and crackle of moss and leaves underfoot. From the roiling pale-green clouds in the roofless empty above her.
“Your parents should make sure you have the appropriate agents, for a trip to the surface,” Umlish said. “They do seem very distracted, don’t they?”
{Why did the Midwives take Shria’s younger sibling away?} Fift asked her agents.
Shria dropped the stick and stood up, in both bodies, one of them clutching the pile of kindling. He was quivering, his faces pale. He looked around.
{Before a family can have a child, there needs to be consensus, among neighbors and reactants}, Fift’s social context agent explained. {If there isn’t enough approval, and the family goes ahead and has the child anyway, the Midwives require the birthing cohort to yield custody. Otherwise they won’t gender the child.}
{But they didn’t take his sibling away the first day}, Fift sent. {It was like three weeks.}
{You are correct}, the social context agent said. {There was a period of negotiation regarding the child’s status.}
At home, in her third body, Fift rolled over. She hadn’t really been sleeping anyway, just wallowing under the blankets, her eyes closed, her attention on the surface. The house feed showed Fathers Frill and Grobbard and Smistria in the breakfast room. She rolled out of bed, scratched her feet, and went downstairs.
Her Fathers looked up as she came into the breakfast room.
“Hello, dear,” Frill said. He raised his head, causing a swarm of small bright cosmetic midges to launch themselves from his gilded eyebrows and dance in the air. “How is it going with your – ah yes,” his eyes shone. “Out in the wilds! Looks damp.” He grinned, goldenly.
“I never go to the surface,” Smistria said, leaning back – his other body leaned forward, messily chewing a crusty broibel, which flaked into his braided beard – “if I can avoid it. We had this nonsense when I was your age too. It’s perverse up there. The sky can just dump water on you or electrify you any time it takes the notion. Horrible place.”
Under that dangerous sky, Umlish took a step closer to Shria. “I wonder if they might still be a bit overburdened? Your parents.”
Across the clearing, Perjes turned to Tomlest. You could tell they were sending messages. Tomlest’s eyes screwed up in amusement, and he laughed.
Shria’s bodies both twitched, his empty pair of hands came up, almost to a guard position. But Tomlest didn’t look over.
“Oh you,” Frill said, swatting Smistria. “You have no sense of romance! The wild sky, our ancient origins!”
“Our ancient origins, for that matter, were under an entirely different –”
“Oh, don’t be such a pedant! I know as well as you –”
“Um,” Fift interrupted. “Um, I have a question.”
Perjes and Tomlest ran off into the woods. Shria exhaled a shaky breath. He turned abruptly, and started to walk away. Not to run; he moved slowly, like an animal preserving its energy. He kept his eyes focussed on his feet. Umlish, Puson, and Kimi trailed after him.
“Yes, little stalwart?” Frill said. “What is it?”
“There’s this Bail in my class, Shria –” in the forest, still watching Shria, she checked lookup – “Um, Shria Qualia Fnax, of name-registry Digger Chameleon 2?”
Smistria looked at Frill, and bared his teeth. “Oh yes. That one.”
“What, what happened? They took away his sibling, but why – why did they take so long? And why did his parents have the baby, if they didn’t –”
“Because they’re idiots,” Smistria said.
Fift frowned.
Grobbard spread her hands. Grobbard was Fift’s only Staid Father. Her face was smooth and calm. “It was a kind of gamble, Fift. Fnax cohort thought that once the baby was here, opinions would change.”
Shria trudged through the underbrush. The trail was a ragged strip of bare dirt, traced by surface animals. He was heading down the trail, heading towards Fift.
“An idiotic gamble,” Smistria said. “If people didn’t trust you to raise another child in the first place, why would they trust you after that behavior? Provoking a standoff with the Midwives? Letting your child just – hang about for three weeks –”
“Ungendered,” Frill added, shaking his head. “Not entered into lookup, not entered into a name registry, like – like a surface animal, or –”
“Like someone who doesn’t exist at all!” Smistria cried.
Grobbard sighed. “Yes. As if lingering still unborn, outside its Mother’s body.”
“But why would they do that?” Fift asked.
“Because,” Smistria snapped, “they thought they could coerce the rest of Slow-as-Molasses – and the family reactants of all of Fullbelly!” He drew himself up in his seating harness, still chewing vigorously with his other mouth. “They were so arrogant, they didn’t even invite adjudication!” Smistria was, himself, a well-rated adjudication reactant.
“They would have lost adjudication,” Frill said.
“Exactly!” Smistria said – forgetting himself, through a mouthful of broibel.
Umlish, Kimi, and Puson trailed behind Shria, like a parade. Their eyes darted back and forth – you could tell they were amused by the messages they were sending to each other. They had small
prim grins. Kimi giggled – Kimi was only eight – until Umlish frowned, then she composed her face more sedately.
“And think of the poor older siblings,” Frill said. “Especially your classmate. From latterborn to middleborn to latterborn again, in three weeks –!”
“Well,” said Grobbard quietly, “at least he was briefly middleborn.” Grobbard was an Only Child, just like Fift. It wasn’t something she talked about, but you could see it right there in lookup: Grobbard Erevulios Spin-Pupolo-Panaxis of name registry Amenable Perambulation 2, four-bodied Staid, 230 years old, Only Child.
Being an Only Child wasn’t a great thing. It kind of meant you were less of a person. Maybe Grobbard had always dreamed about being middleborn, too.
“Yes, but come on, Grobby,” Frill (who was latterborn) said. “Not like that.”
Umlish looked up the trail, and saw Fift standing there, as if frozen. Umlish’s eyes narrowed. {Oh, hello Fift}, she sent. {Are you finding what you need? Don’t you think you have enough sticks? Oh my –} her eyes flicked to the left, feed-searching; {– look at you dragging that thing.} She had found Fift’s other body, hauling the log. Her eyes shifted back to Fift’s. {That’s so... robust of you. “Mighty was Threnis in her time”, eh?}
Fift flushed. Umlish was farther with the Long Conversation than she was – already learning the sixth mode. Was Threnis mentioned in the third corpus? She couldn’t remember – and Pip and Grobbard never let her use search agents for the Conversation. (“It’s a corrupting habit, Fift,” Grobbard had said, with starker disapproval than Fift had ever seen on her solemn face. “Once you begin using them, you’ll never stop. You must know the Conversation yourself – unaided – with your own mind. The Conversation is the essence of our lives as Staids, Fift.”)
Umlish’s eyes widened in triumph; she could tell that Fift had no idea who Threnis was.
Shria looked up nervously, saw Fift, and frowned. The tips of his ears were bluish with cold. His mouth was trembling, but his jaw was clamped tight, almost as if he was trying not to cry – like Fift when she was six or seven, when she’d begun doing her horrible somatic integration exercises, and had to do them in front of the experts and her whole family. It had taken all her strength not to humiliate herself by bursting into tears.
But of course no one would mind if Shria cried. If anything, it was strange – even slightly ridiculous – for a Bail to be so rigid with the effort not to.
Fift cleared her throat. It was thick somehow, and the morning dew was clammy on the back of her neck.
“Shria,” she said, “can you, um, help me?” She hefted her pile of sticks. “Some of these aren’t going to burn, they’ve got lichen on them.”
Shria stopped, in both bodies, and glared at Fift. He hunched his shoulders a little further. He thought she was making fun of him, too, and so did Kimi and Puson, whose grins escaped their prim confinement. Umlish wasn’t so sure; she raised an eyebrow.
“I guess I should have checked with my agents,” Fift said, her voice a little unsteady, “but I turned them off. Who wants to have agents chattering at you up here? It’s sort of missing the point, isn’t it?”
Puson’s face froze; Kimi looked back and forth from Puson to Umlish. Shria blinked.
Umlish’s mouth soured. “You like it up here?” she snarled.
Fift didn’t, exactly; it was cold and strange and mostly pretty boring, though there was also something fascinating about being under this strange sky which, as Father Smistria said, could do anything it decided to. She didn’t like it, but she wanted to experience it. But she wasn’t about to explain that to Umlish.
“Oh, Umlish... Are you having trouble with this?” Fift said. “I guess it can be a little scary if you’ve never been on the surface before. But don’t worry –”
Umlish recoiled. “I’m not scared, you sluiceblocking toadclown. It’s just disgusting –” She waved a hand at the forest.
A small grin crept across one of Shria’s faces.
Fift swallowed. She wasn’t sure what else to say.
Father Grobbard’s eyes had been closed. She often meditated at the breakfast table. Now she opened them and glanced at Fift. {Threnis}, she sent Fift, {appears in the sixth and seventh odes of the first additional corpus. Would you like to study them this afternoon?}
Fift gulped. It was easy to forget that her parents could read the logs of her private messages: they didn’t often bother to. At least, she didn’t think they did. Grobbard didn’t seem angry, though. She placed her hands together, resting them on the table. Peaceful as a stone worn smooth by a river.
“Well, if you like it so much,” Umlish snarled, “why don’t you live up here? Maybe you could get permission to build a little hut out of sticks and the two of you could play cohort.”
“Okay,” Shria said, coming forward up the trail. “Yeah, I’ll help.” He stopped in front of Fift, wiped a streak of snot from his nose with the back of his wrist, and then reached in, holding the good sticks back with one hand, and pulling the mossy ones out with the other. He kept those eyes on the task, but the other two – in the body he was holding his pile of sticks with – searched her face, sizing her up.
Fift swallowed. She kept her face still, expressionless, but she could feel the blood rising into her ears.
“Will they take any of the other children, do you think?” Father Frill asked.
“What?” Fift asked. “What other children?”
“Of Fnax cohort,” Smistria said.
The cold dug into Fift’s chests, and not just on the surface. “Like Shria? Why?”
Frill shrugged, and smoothed the bright blue-and-orange braids of his hair with his hands, releasing another swarm of midges into the air. “It can happen. If their ratings fall enough – if people think they’re doing an inadequate job. That your friend would be better off elsewhere.”
“He’s not...” Fift began. She didn’t really have any Bail friends. It had become hard to tell who her friends were.
Two years ago she would have said Umlish was her friend; they’d played together when they were little. But Umlish was the kind of person who was your friend as long as you did exactly what she said. Fift had tried to laugh along with the poem thing. But after today... She’d never forgive Fift now.
“They’re starting the campfire, Umlish,” Kimi said. “Should we go back?”
“Or are you playing siblings?” Umlish snapped, ignoring Kimi. “How exciting for you, Fift! A sibling of your own!”
Father Frill cocked his head to one side, and narrowed his eyes, searching the feed. “Hmm. He’s been fighting – your friend. He’s a little old for that. At your age Bails should be learning to keep their fights on the mats.” He shook his head. “That’s not good for ratings.”
The hairs on the backs of Fift’s necks stood up. “What would happen, if they take Shria away? Away to where?”
Frill shrugged. “He’s not too old to be trained as a Midwife. They live at the pole –” he gestured vaguely southwards. “It’s a great honor.”
Fift could see her own faces over the feed. She looked horrified: one day she’d come to class and Shria would be gone, taken from his cohort, forbidden to talk to his parents, off to the pole to become a Midwife forever. How many more fights would it take? Could Umlish cause this all by herself, with her words? Fift struggled to compose her expressions into mildness, like Grobbard’s.
The closed and skeptical look on Shria’s face softened, as he stared at Fift. He yanked the last of the mossy sticks from the pile (in her other body, Fift yanked the log free from a knot of underbrush; there, she could hear the sounds of the campsite through the trees. They were building the bonfire). He raised one of his thick, curling eyebrows.
“You’d better plan on being the Older Sibling, though,” Umlish said, “because Shria doesn’t want any Younger Siblings. He was glad to get rid of that little baby – weren’t you, Shria?”
Shria blinked. His nostrils flared, a long i
ndrawn breath, his eyes still locked on Fift’s – drawing strength? Then he turned to Umlish. “Don’t spit all your poison today, Umlish,” he said. “You might run out, and then what are you going to do tomorrow?”
Umlish drew herself up, scowling. “You sluiceblocking –”
“You used ‘sluiceblocking’ already,” Shria said. “See? You’re running out.”
“Let’s go back, Umlish,” Kimi said. “We don’t want to miss when they light the fire –”
Fift cleared her throat. Her hearts were pulsing, unstaidishly fast.
“Don’t tell me what –” Umlish snapped.
“You could try ‘flowblocking’,” Fift said.
Shria’s eyes lit. “That’s kind of the same thing, though,” he said, chewing his lip.
“Corpsemunching?” Fift said.
Shria giggled. “That’s good! What’s that from? Yes, call me a ‘corpsemunching sisterloser’, Umlish –”
“‘Sisterloser’!” Fift’s eyes widened. “Wow!”
Shria grinned, showing white teeth in his pale lavender face. “You like that one?”
Fift dragged her log into the clearing, and Perjes and Tomlest ran up to take it from her, and toss it onto the pile.
Umlish’s face was a mask of anger.
Puson cleared her throat.
“See there, Umlish?” Shria said, clapping her on the shoulder. “You don’t need to worry. If you run out, we’ll help you.”
“Get your hands away from me!” Umlish snapped. “You’re disgusting!” She turned and swept up the path, followed by Puson. Kimi, released from the agony of waiting, darted ahead towards the campsite, her bodies caroming off each other, running a few bodylengths before remembering to slow down to a more sedate and proper pace.
Fathers Frill and Smistria had finished breakfast and wandered off. Father Grobbard was waiting, still, watching Fift with her immovable serenity. It seemed as if she was waiting for something.
It was turning colder. When Umlish, Puson, and Kimi were gone, Shria exhaled, a brief exhausted sigh: it came out as a plume of white fog. His shoulders slumped.
