“If I may,” Pip said, in a voice like ice.
“I cannot do this anymore,” Miskisk roared. “I cannot—”
“We have a pledge,” Nupolo said, in horror.
And then Frill and Squell and Fift were out of the apartment, through the front door, and up onto the surface of Foo. The inside of the house was swallowed into its privacy area, and Fift couldn’t see it anymore. Frill put Fift down, but Squell, doublebodied, held onto zir.
Above them was the glistening underside of Sisterine habitation: docking-spires and garden globes and flow-sluices arcing away. In front of them was the edge of Foo. Their neighborhood, Slow-as-Molasses, was at the end of one spoke of Foo’s great, slowly rotating wheel, and beyond it, this time of year, was a great empty vault of air . . . and then fluffy Ozinth and the below and beyond strewn with glittering bauble-habitations . . . and beyond that, habitation after habitation, bright and dim, smooth and spiky, shifting and still, all stretching away toward the curve of Fullbelly’s ceiling.
Father Grobbard was waiting for them on the path ahead where it meandered past a flowgarden.
{What’s a pledge?} Fift asked zir agents.
{A pledge is a promise that people make.} began the context advisory agent.
{But what do they mean?} Fift sent. {What pledge did my parents make?}
There was a lag, and when the context advisory agent replied, it sounded almost reluctant. {Your parents pledged to stay together for all twenty-two years of your First Childhood. To all sleep in the same apartment, once a month at the least; to attend family meetings; various such requirements. They had to. The neighborhood approval ratings for your birth weren’t high enough otherwise.}
{But this is not at all unusual.} the social nuance agent sent. {You shouldn’t worry.}
“Let’s get started walking, shall we?” Grobbard said. “You have a big day ahead; we might as well be early. The others will catch up.”
“But what about Father Miskisk?” Fift said. “Father Miskisk is sad—”
Grobbard laid a gentle hand on Fift’s shoulder, and Fift remembered that outside their apartment, they weren’t on the house feed. They were on the world’s feed, and anyone in the world could see and hear them.
“They’ll catch up, Fift,” Father Grobbard said again. “Clear your mind, please, and get ready.” They started walking, following the path among the gardens and gazebos of Slow-as-Molasses: Frill striding ahead, Grobbard looking off into the vault of Fullbelly, and Squell, doublebodied, holding hands with all three of Fift’s bodies.
{Father Miskisk!} Fift sent. {I’ll do my best, Father Miskisk!}
All it was was sitting still and waiting to be passed a spoon, and saying “the spoon is in my hand,” and passing it on at the right moment. Saying the names of the twelve cycles, the twenty modes, and the eight corpuses of the Long Conversation. Sitting still in white shifts on a wood floor, zir heads shaved and oiled. Zir Vail parents waiting in the gallery outside. Ze’d do it well, and everyone would be proud, and there would be umbcake and sweetlace afterwards. And Father Miskisk would smile.
2
“So you’re latterborn again,” Umlish said. Ze smirked. “I guess we should congratulate you.”
Umlish was talking to Shria, a skinny nine-year-old Vail who had joined their class a year ago.
Fift was a little way down the trail from them in the woods, beyond the clearing where they stood. Ze could hear them with zir ears, and see them through the branches and bracken, though the view was clearer over the feed. Fift was nine, too. At ten, Umlish was one of the older kids on this excursion to the surface.
Shria’s hand paused a fingerlength from a tangle of silver-barked sticks, some of them furry with greenish lichen. Ve didn’t look up. Vir eyes were red from crying already.
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 vir suit. Vir clothes were a bit too big and too skimpy for the surface, as if whoever had cooked them up had been distracted. It was 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, the other gathering.
Umlish didn’t look cold. And ze wasn’t carrying any wood. Ze stood, singlebodied, half a bodylength from Shria, zir hands lost in the folds of zir white robes. Hair, eyes, skin the same sheer gray—zir parents had probably decided to match them like that. It was show-offy, in a staidish way. Kimi and Puson, two other Staids, stood behind Umlish, both doublebodied. Puson was also nine. Kimi, who was only eight, was carrying all the sticks. They were watching Umlish, doing their best to look calm and expressionless, but they couldn’t help looking excited by what Umlish was talking about.
Because Umlish was talking about what happened to Shria’s sibling.
Shria’s hand moved again, picking up the next stick.
“That’s not going to burn,” Puson said. “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.
Ze shouldn’t have split up after arriving in the forest. Ze was here in one body gathering sticks; in another, ze was over past the ridge, dragging a large log back to the campsite. Ze would have to drop all the sticks if ze wanted to sort through them.
Ze didn’t like being together in the same place. Zir parents were still sending zir to somatic integration experts.
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 muted all zir automated agents, which would have warned zir about the lichen. But the agents distracted zir: from the tall trunks of trees, some of them as 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 emptiness above zir.
“Your parents should have made sure you had 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 zir agents.
Shria dropped the stick ve’d just picked up, and stood up in both bodies. Ve clutched vir pile of kindling. Ve was quivering, vir faces pale. Ve looked around.
{In cases where there is insufficient consensus among neighbors and the parent-monitoring reactants of Fullbelly in favor of an additional child}, Fift’s social context agent explained, {sometimes the Midwives refuse to gender the child unless the birthing cohort yields custody. Either another cohort is found, or the Midwives adopt the child into their order.}
There were a couple of other Vails—Perjes and Tomlest—across the clearing. They looked amused, and unsympathetic. Shria glared at them.
Fift could tell Shria was yearning for the other Vails to get involved, to say something, even to laugh out loud at what Umlish was saying. Them, ve could fight.
{But they didn’t take vir sibling away the first day.} Fift sent zir agents. {Wasn’t it . . . three weeks?}
{You are correct.} the social context agent said. {There was a period of negotiation regarding the child’s status.}
Shria would get in trouble for another unauthorized fight—there had already been two scuffles on this trip, and ve had been warned.
At home, in zir third body, Fift rolled over. Ze hadn’t really been sleeping anyway, just wallowing under the blankets, zir eyes closed, zir attention on the surface. The house feed showed Fathers Frill and Grobbard and Smistria in the breakfast room. Fift rolled out of bed, scratched zir feet, and went downstairs.
Zir Fathers looked up as ze came in.
“Hello, smoothling,” Frill said. Ve raised vir head, and a swarm of brig
ht cosmetic midges launched themselves from vir gilded eyebrows to dance in the air. “How is it going with your—ah, yes,” vir eyes shone. “Out in the wilds! Looks damp.” Ve grinned, goldenly.
“I never go to the surface,” Smistria said, leaning back—vir other body leaned forward, messily chewing a crusty broibel, which flaked into vir 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 ve laughed.
Shria’s bodies both twitched. Vir 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. Ve turned abruptly and started to walk away. Not run; ve moved slowly, like an animal preserving its energy. Ve kept vir eyes focused on vir feet. Umlish, Puson, and Kimi trailed after vem.
“Yes, little stalwart?” Frill said. “What is it?”
“There’s this Vail in my class, Shria”—in the forest, still watching Shria, ze checked lookup—“um, Shria Qualia Fnax, of name registry Digger Chameleon 2?”
Smistria looked at Frill and bared vir teeth. “Oh yes. That one.”
“What, what happened? They took away vir sibling, but why—why did they wait so long? And why did vir parents have the baby if they didn’t—”
“Because they’re slackwits,” Smistria said.
Fift frowned.
Grobbard spread zir hands. “It was a gamble, Fift. Fnax cohort thought that once the baby was here, opinions would change.”
Shria trudged through the underbrush, crushing dawnflowers and gemmon underfoot. Ve reached the trail, a ragged strip of bare dirt traced by surface animals, and headed toward Fift.
“A slackwitted 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 vir head, “not entered into lookup, not enrolled in a name registry, like—like a surface animal, or—”
“Or 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 every parent-monitoring reactant in Fullbelly!” Ve drew vemself up in vir seating harness, still chewing vigorously with vir other mouth. “They were so arrogant, they didn’t even invite adjudication!” Smistria was a well-rated adjudication reactant.
“They would have lost adjudication,” Frill said.
“Exactly!” Smistria said through a mouthful of broibel, forgetting vemself.
Umlish, Kimi, and Puson trailed behind Shria like a parade. Their eyes darted back and forth—you could tell from their small, prim grins that they were amused by the messages they were sending one another. Puson started chuckling, but Umlish frowned at zir and ze composed zir 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 ve was briefly middleborn.” Grobbard was, it occurred to Fift, also an Only Child. It wasn’t something ze talked about, but you could see it right there in lookup: Grobbard Erevulios Iraxis of name registry Amenable Perambulation 2, 4-bodied Staid, 230 years old, education topology mediator, Only Child.
It wasn’t a great thing to be an Only Child. It kind of meant you were less of a person. Maybe Grobbard had always dreamed about being middleborn, too.
“Briefly middleborn! But come on, Grobby,” said Frill (who was latterborn). “Not like that.”
Umlish looked up the trail and saw Fift standing there, as if frozen. Umlish’s eyes narrowed. {Oh, hello Fift.} ze sent. {Are you finding what you need? Don’t you think you have enough sticks?} Zir eyes flicked to the left, feed-searching. {Oh my. Look at you dragging that thing.} Ze had found Fift’s other body, hauling the log. Zir eyes shifted back to Fift’s. {That’s so . . . robust of you. “Mighty was Threnis in zir time,” eh?}
Fift flushed. Umlish was farther along in the Long Conversation than ze was—already learning the sixth mode. Was Threnis mentioned in the third corpus? Ze couldn’t remember, and Pip and Grobbard never let zir use search agents for the Conversation. (“It’s a corrupting habit, Fift,” Grobbard had said, with starker disapproval than Fift had ever seen on zir solemn face. “Once you begin using them, you’ll never stop. You must know the Conversation yourself. Unaided.”)
Umlish’s eyes widened in triumph; ze could tell that Fift had no idea who Threnis was.
Shria looked up nervously, saw Fift, and frowned. The tips of vir ears were bluish with cold. Vir mouth was trembling, but vir jaw was clamped tight, almost as if ve was trying not to cry—like Fift when ze was six or seven, when ze’d begun doing zir horrible somatic integration exercises in front of the whole world. It had taken all zir strength not to humiliate zirself by bursting into tears.
But of course no one would mind if Shria cried. If anything, it was strange—even slightly ridiculous—for a Vail to be so rigid with the effort not to.
Fift cleared zir throat. It was thick somehow, and the morning dew was clammy on the back of zir neck. “Shria,” ze said, “can you, um, help me?” Ze hefted zir 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. Ve hunched vir shoulders in a little further. Ve thought ze was making fun of vem, too, and so did Kimi and Puson, whose grins escaped their prim confinement. Umlish wasn’t so sure; ze raised an eyebrow.
“I guess I should have checked with my agents,” Fift said, zir 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?”
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 had said, could do anything it decided to. Ze didn’t like it, but ze wanted to experience it. But ze 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.” Ze waved a hand at the forest.
A small grin crept across one of Shria’s faces.
Fift swallowed. Ze wasn’t sure what else to say.
Father Grobbard’s eyes had been closed. Ze often meditated at the breakfast table. Now ze opened them and glanced at Fift. {Threnis}, ze 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 zir parents could read zir private messages: they didn’t often bother to. At least, ze
didn’t think they did. Grobbard didn’t seem angry, though. Ze placed zir 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.” Ve stopped in front of Fift, wiped a streak of snot from vir nose with the back of vir wrist, and then reached in, holding the good sticks back with one hand, and pulling the mossy ones out with the other. Ve kept those eyes on the task, but the other two—in the body ve was holding vir pile of sticks with—searched Fift’s face, sizing zir up.
Fift swallowed. Ze kept zir face still, expressionless, but ze could feel the blood rising into zir ears.
“Will they take away 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 the ones on the surface. “Like Shria? Why?”
Frill shrugged and smoothed the bright blue-and-orange braids of vir hair with vir 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.”
“Ve’s not . . .” Fift began. Ze didn’t really have any Vail friends. It had gotten hard to tell who zir friends were.
Two years ago, ze would have said Umlish was zir 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 ze said. When Umlish wrote that poem about Fift’s somatic integration, ze’d tried to laugh along. But after today . . . Umlish would 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!”
The Unraveling Page 3
