The Unraveling

by Benjamin Rosenbaum

  “Welcome!” said Pom Politigus, speaking from one of the short blue bodies. “How kind of you, Pip! To travel out here to my little campsite.”

  “‘Out’ indeed!” roared Pip. “You know this bauble of yours is becoming the heart of Fullbelly! What haven’t I heard about you in the past months, Pom Politigus? You burrow to the heart of not only fashion but design—and somatic technology, too! Aren’t the likes of Frundle and Kwonk and that body renting fellow . . . why, aren’t they all falling over themselves to woo you as their showcase? You don’t need a banker-historian but an inflagrist-poet, to burn the rest of Fullbelly as an ode to your name!”

  “Oh, enough, enough, you scoundrel,” laughed Politigus.

  “And yet you don’t forget your old friends,” said Pip.

  “Oh come, come,” Politigus said, looking very pleased. Two bodies stumbled into an exuberant hug.

  “May I introduce my child and apprentice, Fift Brulio Iraxis of name registry Yellow Peninsula Sugarbubble 5,” Pip said, turning to Fift so sharply ze barely managed to suppress a yelp of surprise. “Ze is learning the trade.”

  Shria winked.

  “Very good, very good,” said Politigus. “This, by the way, is Shria Qualia Fnax, of name registry, ah”—Fift could tell ze was having to do the lookup zirself, which rather spoiled the effect—“Digger Chameleon 2—”

  “We know Young Expressive Fnax, as it happens,” Pip said. “Ve is another child of Foo . . .”

  “Indeed, indeed,” said Politigus. “Pip, I’m dying to tell you about the work we did for the local chapter of the Cirque. Shria here was the principal designer of the erotics and sensuals. At vir age! Oh, it was so well received. You’ll have to see what you make of it, of course, but I think, speaking frankly, that it was quite a coup. There’s some talk of other chapters adopting the design! I mean, the Cirque Fantabulous, Pip! Now, I would argue that the Cirque is at the aesthetic-thematic crux of Fullbelly, if not the world! Midwives and feedgardeners and adjudicators may hold things together, but to whom do we look to stir things up?”

  “To be sure, to be sure,” murmured Pip.

  “—and, oh, I don’t want to presume, it’s up to you of course, but when you see the recordings, I really think we came out as—pardon my vulgarity—the Younger Sibling! Don’t you think so, Shria? Be honest.”

  “We kicked military clown butt,” Shria said.

  “They were so impressed!” Politigus’s two curvaceous bodies said in chorus.

  “All right, all right,” said Pip, chuckling. “We shall see. Plenty of time for that. Let’s sit down, have a drink, and take a look.”

  “Certainly,” said Pom Politigus. “This way!”

  “Boss,” Shria said, “while they’re here, remember the other transactions you wanted them to take a look at?”

  “Oh, that can wait,” Politigus said, flicking three hands as if dismissing three buzzing flygrams.

  “But since there are two of them—”

  “Oh, I see.” One of the hands closed into a fist. “Pip, is your apprentice up to clearing out some of the more routine transactions while we get started on the Cirque business? Shria is always very anxious to get the practical details tidied up. Unusually diligent for a Vail!”

  “Gee, thanks, boss,” Shria said drily.

  Pip inclined zir head, willing, as always, to throw Fift into deeper waters. “Certainly,” ze said. “If anything is unclear, Fift, make a list of questions for me. But I expect your training should be more than adequate to run up an accounting of a few months of routine work. Routine for this bauble, that is—which is to say, unprecedented brilliance by anyone else’s standards . . .”

  “Oh, you!” said Politigus, zir six slightly weaving bodies herding Pip off to the salon as fast as ze could manage.

  Shria stood to either side of Fift, bouncing on the balls of vir feet. “Wow,” ve said from Fift’s left, and then from zir right. “Did you see Pom? Ze’s so excited ze’s practically giving birth.” Ve bounced toward Fift, almost as if ve were about to collide with zir, then swiveled away and put vir hands in vir sleeves. “Come on,” ve said, and started off in one body.

  The other body lingered next to Fift, still rocking slightly from foot to foot. Shria seemed to be full of nervous energy. Without thinking about it, Fift put out a hand to still vem, touching vem lightly on the elbow. Shria settled a little. Ve looped vir arm in Fift’s, and they followed vir other body down a long corridor.

  “In here,” ve said.

  The door before them was a stylized representation of a womb-passage. Shria pushed aside the labia and they squeezed through the antechamber and stepped through the dilated cervix to a large womb room full of the tools of Shria’s trade: vats, couches, tubs, racks of smooth shiny implements, blobs of haptic goop and meshgloves on shafts dangling from the ceiling. The passage squeezed shut behind them.

  Shria scooted up to sit on a table in one body. In the other, ve stood in the center of the lab, spreading vir arms. “Here it is!” ve said. “Welcome to my domain!”

  Everything looked mildly dangerous to Fift. Ze sat on a couch. “It’s terrific,” ze said. “Your boss is really impressed with you. And so is—mine, I guess. Impressed with you, I mean.”

  Shria grinned. “Of course, the agents do a lot of the hard stuff,” ve said. “I just do the fun part: the ideas . . .”

  Fift had no idea what that meant in the context of genital design. “So the whole Cirque has . . . or, that chapter, I mean . . . they have, um, identical . . .”

  “Ugh, no.” Shria’s faces had identical looks of horror. “Are you kidding? This isn’t Uncle Foolu’s One-Stop Body Shop, you know. Genitals are not hats! Our experience of the world is deeply rooted in our genitals! You have to do the matchup very carefully. The wrong set of genitals can make a person miserable.”

  “Oh,” Fift said.

  “But they do, you know, sort of work together,” ve added. “They’re not identical, but they are coordinated. That was . . . the fun part.” Ve grinned mischievously.

  Fift felt zir face flushing. The fun part?

  “Anyway,” Shria said, “we don’t need to talk about my work. You’re finally here!”

  “Finally?” It was an odd thought, Shria waiting for zir . . .

  “Yeah! I’ve known you were coming for a week! I shifted my schedule around so we . . . I planned this!” Ve grinned. In the center of the room, standing, ve put vir hands on vir hips.

  “Oh,” Fift said, a little perplexed. What was so special about meeting Shria at work? Ve could have just come over to the apartment . . .

  Shria cocked one of vir fiery red eyebrows, crossed both sets of vir arms. Ve was waiting for zir to notice something . . .

  {What’s going on here?} Fift asked zir agents. {What am I missing?}

  But zir agents were silent, plunged into a dreamless slumber by the total privacy regime of Stiffwaddle Somatic Fashions.

  Of course! The bauble’s elite patrons valued their privacy. Fift remembered the praise in the weave ze’d stumbled through for the extreme measures Pom Politigus took to preserve the secrets, protect the surprises, planned by those who had themselves altered here . . .

  “So no one outside the bauble can see us?” Fift said, frowning. “Even our agents are . . .”

  “Outside the bauble? No, Fift, outside the room! Pom and Pip can’t hear a word we’re saying. No agents can record or remember a thing—I mean, our parents could still read our send logs later; but if we speak aloud, no one will know a thing we . . . We can talk about anything we want!” Ve was practically dancing with excitement.

  In the supper garden, Fift stood shoulder to shoulder with Arevio, scoring the vines. Spice-gnats swarmed around the knife blades. Fift paused in zir slicing, glanced over at Arevio. Zir Father showed no horror at vir staidchild’s disappearance into an abyss of privacy. Arevio chewed vir lip, deciding whether to remove a low-hanging loop of vine.

  The house feed showed Smi
stria and Frill lounging in the bathing pool. Miskisk, singlebodied, was awkwardly saying goodbye to Squell in the anteroom, holding vir overnight bag. Thurm and Grobbard had no public locations listed; Nupolo and Pip and Frill had bodies walking through public spaces—but they, too, showed no reaction. But then, why would they react? Pip was busy with Pom Politigus; and to zir other parents, unless they explicitly queried zir agents, this wouldn’t look any different than if Fift was visiting any private home . . .

  Fift’s heart hammered there in Shria’s secret room—and zir other hearts sped up, too, fast enough to wake zir sleeping body.

  For a moment ze didn’t know if it was terror or excitement. But Shria hadn’t said We could do anything—of course not. Ve’d said, We could talk about anything.

  (Fift was now awake in zir bed. Arms and legs splayed among pillowcloths, zir skin hot. Ze shivered anyway, rolled over, kept zir eyes squeezed shut.)

  “Wow,” Fift said. “Okay then, um, what . . . should we talk about?”

  In vir standing body, Shria put vir hands together, cracked vir knuckles. “Well, um, we could . . .” It seemed to Fift that ve was on the verge of saying something specific, but lost vir nerve. “Want to see my new genitals?” ve said brightly.

  Fift almost choked. “Your—new—”

  Shria slid off the table, lifting vir hands, and said, in that body, “Yeah! You were asking about the Cirque design? These are sort of . . . well, not exactly related, but ‘inspired by,’ let’s say? I just had them done. I’m really proud of them, and I haven’t gotten to show them off much! My parents don’t care, and it’s not like I can show them to other Vails, because, you know”—ve raised vir eyebrows—“that would be kind of forward? If I show them to another Vail, it means we’re going to, ah, employ them . . .” Ve grinned. “But no danger of that with you, so . . .”

  “Ah,” Fift said, “but what about those, um, transactions I was supposed to look at . . . ?”

  Shria stopped, shrugged. Vir hands fell back to vir sides. “Oh, well . . . okay, sure, of course—”

  “I mean,” Fift said, “just to get them out of the way. You know, because . . . they will ask; at least, Pip is going to—”

  “Sure,” Shria said, sending the transactions.

  Fift closed zir eyes and scrolled through the history; the transactions were well-organized, and most of the accounting was done already, with highlights clearly marking where zir professional attention was required to specify the exact outcome.

  “Here,” Shria said, poking zir with a thin, translucent folding screen. “Here’s a physical instantiation. So you can at least look at me while you do that.”

  Fift took the screen, spread it open. In one body, Shria sat down next to zir, watching; in the other, ve walked over to the tool rack and started pulling down tools, one by one, and rehanging them in a different order. “Hurry up, okay?” ve said.

  Fift poked at a couple of zir agents, the specialized ones for evaluating banking-history, and they sluggishly stumbled out of privacy-sleep. There was nothing particularly complicated here. A few cases with disgruntled customers needed zir resolution, though nothing came close to requiring formal adjudication. A staff member who’d been depressed had ultimately unraveled completely, requiring two months’ worth of revisions to the emotional valences of certain transactions (mostly in Politigus’s favor). In a couple of places, Fift could drop exotic algorithms in for standard ones, benefiting the shop. It was easy work: Mother Pip had heuristics, rules, and practices for all these cases, and had required Fift to unaugmentedly memorize them zirself. Fift had chafed at that, but it helped now, when zir agents kept drowsing off.

  It was good that the work was easy, because ze couldn’t help being aware of Shria next to zir on the couch, looking at zir, then away, vir long, muscled body loose and tense at the same time.

  “Done yet?” Shria said.

  Fift swallowed. “I’m done.” Ze put the screen aside and turned to Shria. Fift took a deep breath. “Look, you . . . went to a lot of trouble to arrange this, right? You wanted to tell me something. You . . . you’ve got a secret.”

  In the body next to Fift, vir hands entwined, vir legs swinging back and forth, Shria shrugged. In the standing body, a tool in each hand, ve said. “Well . . . yes. Sure. More than one! Don’t you have any secrets, Fift?”

  Fift flushed. “Of course.”

  “Everybody does!” Shria said. “A trillion people walking around on the feed, acting their parts for the whole world to watch . . . and every one of them is stuffed full of secrets! Did you ever think about that?”

  “No,” Fift said, “not really.”

  “Well, I do!” Ve hung up the pair of tools and started pacing across the floor.

  “So now,” Fift said, zir heart beating, “we get to tell those secrets?”

  In the drowsy warmth of the bed, Fift was safe, nestled in blankets, restless, alone, lonely. In the dappled green light of the garden, blades cut into the green flesh of the vines: slow and thorough work, almost dreamlike. Here, though, in the lab, everything was new and gleaming, and Fift was acutely awake.

  Shria cracked a grin. “If you want to! We’ll start small and work up. I mean, I won’t grill you about the Long Conversation right away . . .”

  Fift’s gut tightened. “You’d . . . you’d want to know about . . . I mean . . .”

  Shria laughed. “Sweet Kumru,” ve said in the body sitting next to zir, “look at your face. I was kidding.” In both bodies, ve grinned wickedly, but then vir faces sobered. “Kumru’s tits, though, Fift . . . would I want to know? Seriously? Don’t you think every Vail in the world is curious? Especially the ones who act all disgusted if you even allude to it?”

  Even in total privacy, it felt wrong to talk about this. Every Vail in the world? The idea of Fift’s Vail Fathers wanting to know about . . . no, they would never. “But you wouldn’t—”

  “I wouldn’t, huh?” Shria’s eyes flashed, hovering somewhere between mischief and anger. “You know there’s supposed to have been a time in history when, when they even let Vails watch?”

  The Compromise of the Spoons, the Permissive Compact . . . how did Shria even know about that? It was part of the Long Conversation, so it wasn’t talked about in general history. “That was, it was a long time ago . . .” Fift said. “And there was a war . . .” Ze stopped, unsure of what ze should tell Shria. The privacy and silence around them, the deep hidden womb. We can talk about anything.

  “It’s okay, Fift.” In the body next to Fift’s on the couch, Shria looked away. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s just how things are set up. You’ve got this whole huge millennia-long tradition, this whole hidden intellectual world that helps shape everything about our world—every decision that Staids make about anything—and we’re not allowed to even glimpse it!”

  Fift swallowed. “But, I mean, you’ve got, well . . .”

  Shria snorted. “What have we got? Hitting each other and sex. There’s not much mystery there. You can go look up mammal behavior on any science flow on the feed and see all you need to know. And Staids get around to sex eventually, anyway.”

  Fift felt zirself flushing. Sometimes ze thought ze ought to get zir skin tone darkened. It was a muddy brown, too light to conceal blushing.

  “Hmm,” Shria said, looking at Fift quizzically. “I guess I can imagine you might get curious about sex . . .”

  Fift’s throat was dry. “I’m not—I can’t—I mean—”

  Shria shrugged. “I think it’s perfectly natural. I don’t really believe Vails and Staids are that different! There, that’s a pretty big secret for you! Because, get this: I’ve shaped the same genitals for Vails and Staids, and guess what: at the level of the body, it’s the same. Getting aroused is the same, feeling pleasure or pain is the same! Maybe the difference is willpower—okay, it’s got to be . . . but you can learn willpower! You can learn concentration! I mean, if I’d been trained since age five to . . . to do whatever
you do in the Long Conversation . . . I’d have plenty of willpower, too . . .”

  In the body sitting next to Fift, Shria looked heartbroken. Ve stared down at vir hands, folded in vir lap. In vir standing body, ve looked angry, vir eyes flashing beneath vir red eyebrows, and then ve turned away, controlling vemself.

  “Whatever,” ve said, in vir standing body. “Anyway, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “It’s”—Fift cleared zir throat—“not? What do you mean?”

  Shria shrugged. “I mean, it’s fun. Sex is fun, if you—if you’re not scared or upset or thinking about the wrong thing, if you can focus on what you’re doing. I mean, I wouldn’t be a genital designer if I didn’t . . . you know . . .” Ve paused, and frowned, and began again. “So, Vails my age, the sex is supposed to be, like, this sudden explosion, like more of the same energy and wildness as the fighting, right?”

  In vir standing body, ve darted a glance at Fift. Ze nodded.

  “You do it,” ve said, “and then either you laugh about it, or you get pissed off and fight about it, or you cry. Whatever. Release. But if you get too attached to one person—if you get, like, caught and carried along in their wake . . .” Ve looked away again, vir expression obscure, like the clouded sky they’d seen years ago, up on the surface of the world. “And you want vem, and not just it . . . then you get made fun of. Because that’s staidish, right? Mooning after someone, longing for their love . . . it’s ridiculous. Sometimes I wish I was a Staid.”

  “You do?”

  Shria shrugged. “Yes. No. I don’t know. Maybe that wouldn’t be any better. I just want . . . I just want it all, you know? Instead of feeling like half of life is cut off by this wall of what’s not allowed.” Ve shrugged. “It’s a stupid way to even think. It’s dangerous.”

  “It doesn’t sound . . .” Fift said. “It doesn’t sound stupid . . .”

  “It is. You can’t fight ratings,” Shria said. The jaw of vir sitting body clenched tight. In vir standing body, ve said, “My parents found that out the hard way.”