The Unraveling

by Benjamin Rosenbaum

  Cut ourselves free? A month ago, that might have sounded good to Fift. A Ticket that would transport zir away from Mother Pip and banker-historian apprenticeships and shameful longings and the alternate codification of the twelfth emergent mode of the Long Conversation, from fussing Fathers and grinding boredom. A jailbreak from the prison of zir life. But now it sounded exactly backwards. Ze was unanchored, lost, in the midst of a tornado. Ze wanted back in to zir life. Ze wanted to go home.

  Tickets . . . Wait. Ze checked the flickering feed for Ticket Holders, and yes: the Cirque was so popular that even with the feed collapsing like this, lists of Ticket Holder locations were mirrored everywhere. There was zir own location, and there was (what was vir name registry? Digger something . . . Digger Chameleon . . . ? There . . . ) Shria! So ve would be two bodylengths or so to zir (which way was polewards?) . . . left . . . Sort of. Ze pulled zir feet under zir.

  “Grobby, ze’s not saying anything,” Father Squell said. “Grobby . . . I don’t know where ze is.” Ve turned to Grobbard, and collapsed against zir, pressing vir forehead against Grobbard’s chest.

  “Hmm. Yes,” Father Grobbard said, stroking Squell’s scalp. “Well, let’s give zir another moment to respond.” Ze kissed Squell’s head beside vir silver spikes, then took a sip of zir soup. “‘Unraveling: A Revolution’ indeed. Perhaps we’re like a carefully stitched fabric that Thavé has been fussing over for twenty thousand years. And perhaps ze just couldn’t resist pulling at a loose thread.”

  “Oh, Kumru!” Squell sat up shock-straight, vir eyes unfocused. Ve’d found the view of the byway. “Fift, are you in that?!”

  8

  The party at Darnadi’s house was packed. Lookup was working: the local caches here had been spared the chaos infecting the rest of the world. In the house of Darnadi Imsmuth Shelirian-Jerum of name registry Imperturbable Admonition 26, you could look up the people you saw; you could listen in on conversations in another room by feed pickup, smooth as milk. If you made sure not to look beyond Darnadi’s apartments, you could indulge in the fantasy that things were as they had been yesterday.

  Fift stood in a corner saying no to a hundred different drinks (they flew up to importune zir, bobbling on pockets of air), and savoring the illusion.

  Father Frill and Father Smistria were working the crowd. Fift had stopped listening in, but just by occasionally glancing over, ze could tell that it wasn’t going well. Frill was trying to ingratiate vemself with the glittering deep-reactants and aestheticians who were chatterdancing beneath the grasping green fronds of hanging plants and the deep purple bric-a-brac privacy-cones hanging above the dance floor. Ve must have once again failed to follow the complicated language-pattern of the chatterdance (it was in the sixth phase, so number of syllables per word, meter, body-rhythm, topic, theme, and tone were all in play). Ve stood by the side, chewing vir lip and waiting for the next round, to the obvious relief of the other dancers.

  Father Smistria had taken a direct approach; ve had gone straight to the senior logistics coordinators, who stood on a small dais betting on the dancing, and explained their situation. At first, they had been happy to see vem; Smistria was a well-regarded adjudication reactant, and vir attention was worth something. When it became clear, though, that ve insisted on intruding with business of a most unpleasant and distressing sort (namely, the near-total collapse of some of the very services the logistics coordinators were pledged to nurture) into a social gathering now repurposed (albeit not originally designed) precisely to distract from that collapse, the mood turned grim. Smistria, realizing vir mistake, tried to win them back, complimenting the party, reminiscing about old times. Flattery wasn’t vir strong suit, though: you could see how vir jaw was rigid with the effort.

  Moving zir head to see past the more insistent beverages that clustered around zir, Fift ran lookups on the crowd. Partly because it was educational to see who was at such a gathering; but mostly, it was just a relief to be somewhere lookup was working flawlessly. More of a relief than ze would have predicted: the crisp unhurried display of the responses, flickering up, one after another, as ze glanced through the crowd, made zir eyes sting with shameful joy. (There they were again, the tears, not unlearned after all, just lurking deep.)

  Maybe ze should be doing something about the fact that ze was trapped on a byway with a thousand out-of-control Vails who were beating Shria up. But it was seductively peaceful just to stand here and watch lookup work.

  Tigan Melitox Farina of name registry Blue Piggyback Dentition 5, 3-bodied Vail, 221 years old, speaker of Parrot Company.

  Foon Pelix Nathandine of name registry Yellow Optimum Sugarbubble 6, 3-bodied Staid, 315 years old, noted textilist.

  Pam Thyrup Shevrian of name registry Uncanny Parameter Platypus 7, 2-bodied Vail, 389 years old, adjudicant and meta-aesthetic reactant.

  “This is our time!” Panaximandra roared again, and the crowd roared too; the crowd was alive, moving. Were they fighting? Dancing? Did they even know themselves? Grabbing and grappling and turning and churning and bucking and striking. This wasn’t just vailish exuberance. Something had been bottled up, compressed and hidden and starved for air, and now, in the absence of the feed and lookup, among these anonymized rent-a-bodies, it was breaking free.

  “FREEDOM!”

  Father Squell was pacing the breakfast room, circling the table, vir silver spikes quivering in vir pale scalp. “I just don’t understand,” ve said. “I don’t understand how you could be in the riot. You said you were leaving. You said you were walking away from the riot.” Tears were running down vir cheeks.

  “What is happening,” Grobbard said, “at the party?”

  “Well, they’re talking to people,” Fift said, and rubbed zir eyes. Under the table, zir legs were quivering with exhaustion, propagated from the body on the byway.

  Pom Filigrous Tyrox of name registry Blue Piggyback Dentition 18, 4-bodied Staid, 580 years old, bespoke polyp farmer.

  Mmondi Tenak Peridity-Chandrus of name registry Yellow Peninsula Sugarbubble 8, 2-bodied Vail, 177 years old, liberal Kumruist officiant and Mother.

  Vvonda Tenak Peridity-Chandrus of name registry Peridot Improbable Gumstuck 12, 3-bodied Vail, 16 years old, student.

  Vvonda!

  Fift blinked. It was Vvonda, all right. They’d never met, but ze was sure ze’d seen that towering figure when ze’d spied on Shria over the feed (never too often, never too long). And how many sixteen-year-old Vails named Vvonda could there be in Foo, anyway? If Shria’s other bodies were still hanging out with Bluey and Vvonda . . .

  Vvonda was standing by a food rack, chewing on a stalk of cellroot and laughing loudly at something Foon Pelix Nathandine was saying. Vvonda was big: broad shoulders and a smooth, round belly. Two heads taller than Fift, a head taller than Shria, and on top of that ve had a mane of bright blue hair teased into a complicated pattern, an inferno spiraling into the sky. Ve was wearing an open jacket and closed pants in some slick, impenetrable, shiny yellow material that looked made for fighting; vir large, plump breasts with dewy green nipples were bare under the jacket, and crossed by a bandolier full of daggers, pens, and undersized gardening tools. Vir skin was shaded in a gradient, purple at vir scalp to orange at vir hands and belly. In short, ve looked brash, commanding, and bone-slicingly fashionable, broadcasting vir readiness to fight or fondle you, holding vir own at a party among adults. Sixteen or not, Vvonda had none of the “I’m just practicing, I’ll get this right in a few decades” air that clung to Fift. If ve wasn’t latterborn, Fift was a six-bodied Midwife.

  Could ze just send vem a note? Ze sighed, remembering Smistria (who was trying to tell a joke, gesticulating as the logistics coordinators turned away) taunting Frill (who seemed to be enjoying vemself now that the chatterdance was back to its first or second phase) on the way over. Who was ze to get this Vail to take zir call? Ze would have to do this in person.

  Making zir way through two crowds at once, ze began to have flashes
of vertigo and body-flicker. A red anonybody that had been heaved through the air by its fellows and a flying tray of steaming turnabouts came at zir head in the same moment, and ze almost collapsed and rolled in the wrong body. Maybe that would have been for the best—cutting straight past the anxiety to the abject humiliation.

  Back at home, ze gripped the edge of the table to steady zirself. Squell saw, stopped vir pacing, took a deep breath, and put a hand on zir shoulder. “All right, Fift,” ve said. “I, I won’t blame you. It’s not your fault. Even if you didn’t—you should have listened to us, you should have, but I know you didn’t imagine—I’m just, so, so sorry for you. I’m sorry you have to . . . endure . . . such a thing . . .” Vir hand, on Fift’s shoulder, trembled.

  Grobbard’s eyes were still closed. Nupolo went to the door. Ve looked back, once, frowned, and left the room.

  Fift wanted to curl up on the floor, to sleep in at least one body. To close at least one of zir three windows on the world. Worse, ze wanted to loosen the connection between zir bodies—the old urge to shelter zirself in one place from what was happening to zir in another.

  Ze should have paid more attention to zir exercises, kept doing polysomatic sports, finished becoming one thing, one whole, final, real person, instead of just learning to disguise the fact that ze was three ungainly pieces, a cracked vase. Tears sprung, astoundingly, to zir eyes: the wrong eyes, the eyes at the party. A crying sixteen-year-old Staid: disgusting, ridiculous. Wiping them on zir hands would be a clear giveaway. Ze faked a cough into the folds of zir robe.

  Father Squell moved closer to zir, looking at zir earnestly. If ze could cry in that body . . . maybe Squell wouldn’t even be shocked. Maybe ve’d comfort zir, pull zir into vir embrace. Like when ze was little and zir Fathers were a sea of laughing, crying, fighting, glittering beauties, strong as great beasts, a reliably endless ocean of hugs.

  Only an hour ago, when the lights had gone out and Foo had stopped, they had all clung together. Now, though, with Grobbard’s face passive and composed and frigid, and Squell’s insistent, prying gaze on zir, and Vvonda’s back to zir, leaning in to hear Foon Pelix Nathandine, and Fift’s arms and legs so tired, trying to flow . . . ze couldn’t do it, couldn’t act like a toadclownish baby. Certainly not in front of Father Grobbard. And not in front of Father Squell either—Father Squell who bragged about vir own body in the asteroids, who called Fift baby names and fretted aloud every time ze wandered beyond Foo.

  Arrogant stupid Fathers, stupid with the idea-fixity of adulthood! They’d escaped, by luck and time, from the wild swamp of childhood. They’d each found some little safe ledge or stump to crouch on and keep dry. From there, they could criticize, judge, exhort . . . or even sympathize, but Fift could take no comfort in that. Each was convinced their stump was the perfect stump, the stump all children should seek, though there was no more room on it.

  So Fift sat straight-backed and dry-eyed and silent, cool and staidish, imitating a grown-up—a closed surface with no aperture. Ze closed zir eyes, too, just like Father Grobbard.

  Foon Pelix, the textilist two centuries older than Fift and Vvonda, was saying: “So they come in, this Unfeeling adept with zir bodies chained together and a Kumruist priest in full regalia, and the priest has a parrotine on vir shoulder, and I can’t help saying, ‘Is this a joke?’ Because, you know, ‘an adept, a priest, and a parrotine walk into a textile envisioning space . . .’ I mean, really! But they were offended. They didn’t see the humor in the situation. So then I—”

  Fift was wondering how ze could work up the courage to interrupt. Reflexively, and stupidly, ze checked zir raw emotional balance. It was way down. Vvonda looked up and saw zir.

  “You,” ve hissed.

  “Wha—what?” Fift said.

  Vvonda glared.

  “Ah,” Foon Pelix said, “you’re Pip’s child, yes? Yellow Peninsula Sugarbubble, a fine name registry. I’m Yellow Optimum myself, you know . . . so we’re not quite name-cousins, but . . . it’s still lucky, I say! Ah . . . You two are acquainted, then?”

  “We have a mutual . . . friend,” Vvonda said, icily.

  “Um, um, about that,” Fift said. What had ze done? Why was ve angry? “Ve’s, Shria’s not, I can’t reach vem. I was wondering if you . . .”

  “You can’t reach vem?” Vvonda said. “What do you mean?”

  “Shria, eh?” Foon Pelix said. “Don’t think I know that one. Also a child of Foo, then?”

  “I mean on the byway, where we are,” Fift said, “I can’t get to vem, physically, and ve won’t return my . . . I mean, I tried to send, but . . .”

  The temperature of Vvonda’s stare had plunged from water ice to liquid nitrogen. “You shouldn’t be there, staidkid,” ve said. “You shouldn’t have followed vem in. You should get the airless all-sucking void out. It’s no place for you.”

  “I do take an interest in the children of Foo,” Foon Pelix said. “Such an important thing, children, and it’s everyone’s responsibility, I say, the whole community; the parental cohort first of all, of course, but . . .”

  “Ve . . .” Fift felt like ze was running out of air. “We were . . . together.”

  Vvonda sniffed, straightened the bandolier where it crossed between vir startlingly big green-nippled breasts (if Fift grew breasts, they’d be small, soft, cushiony staidish breasts, easily kept out of sight, not these flagrant monsters, but even such a small change felt too risky, too dramatic . . . ), turned back to Foon Pelix ( . . . it would seem as if Fift were asking for attention if ze grew breasts, gambling zir emotional balance on a showy display . .  . ) and said, drily, “So what did you say to them?”

  ( . . . it would be years, decades, Fift thought, before ze could afford a somatic indulgence like breasts . . . )

  “To . . . whom?” Foon Pelix asked.

  “The adept, the priest, and the parrotine.”

  ( . . . and that thought, trivial as it was, seemed to catch up against some hidden knot of anger in Fift’s Only-Child gut.)

  The house feed was flickering in and out, but over it, Fift could see Father Squell reach out towards zir shoulder, sigh . . . and then take vir hand away. Zir own expression, eyes closed, was impassive.

  Faintly—no louder than a whisper—from somewhere, Fift heard a rumbling, squeaking, rolling rhythm:

  Baaa-RUMP, ba-chiggity-chiggity-whuppity-chiggity-chiggity-BOOM!

  Baaa-RUMP, ba-chiggity-chiggity-whuppity-chiggity-chiggity-BOOM!

  For a moment (more somatic confusion), ze didn’t know what body ze heard it in.

  “Vvonda,” ze said, zir heartbeat beginning to accelerate, zir ears beginning to buzz. Ve turned back to zir with a look of incredulity, and Foon Pelix paused in zir story. Fift swallowed. Some part of zir was distantly intrigued to notice a bifurcation beginning in zir raw emotional balance: a few automated agents were now betting on collapse, but others were buying, on new evidence of courage. Ze felt the slight prick of professional banker-historian’s curiosity as it occurred to zir for the first time that this would all be a very interesting tale to reconcile, mixed with sudden hope. Ze smiled, and Vvonda’s glare flickered, maybe faltered, for an instant.

  “Vvonda,” ze said. “Listen. Can you explain what I did wrong?”

  “You honestly have no idea,” Vvonda said, more an incredulous observation than a question.

  “No,” Fift said. “I don’t.”

  Ze could hear the rhythm (chiggity-chiggity-BOOM!) on the byway, faint beyond the chanting and roaring of the riot.

  Vvonda exhaled, and for a moment vir grand and provocative and stylish posture slipped. Not that ve looked insecure, or troubled—not Vvonda. But ve wavered. Ve bit vir lip, staring intently at Fift as if ze were a puzzle ve was trying to figure out. Vir swagger evaporated so completely that Fift realized it was made up. Vvonda must have felt just as out of place as Fift among these middle-aged glitterati and bureaucrati, all of them pretending to be entertained and not terrified. V
e didn’t belong here, either. But if ve had to be here, the set of vir jaw said, then—by Kumru’s fertile womb—ve would contest the transaction as a Sibling, not be excused from it as a child.

  Vvonda sighed. “Please excuse us,” ve told Foon Pelix.

  “Oh, oh, all right,” Foon Pelix said, “although if there’s anything I can assist with, as I said—”

  “No, we got it,” Vvonda said. “Have a good party.”

  Over the chanting of freedom and valor and conquest and babies, beyond the press of bodies, came the whisper of a rhythm, faint and tinny:

  Baaa-RUMP, ba-chiggity-chiggity-whuppity-chiggity-chiggity-BOOM!

  Vvonda pulled Fift under one of the privacy cones. Its crenelated deep purple hollow plunged like a labyrinthine dagger into the ceiling overhead. Fift could smell the anti-surveil; there were even wisps of fine purple mist to blur them from lip-readers.

  Vvonda glowered at Fift. “You sisterless waste of volume . . . Shria really likes you!”

  Fift swallowed. “I . . . I mean, what? I mean, I like vem too!”

  “Then how could you do that to vem? How could you try to . . . to, what, protect vem? What do you think that’s like for a Vail? Ve’s out of vir mind, overwhelmed, and ve’s fighting! Off the mats, unlicensed, totally outnumbered! And you’re in vir way? It’s way more than ve can handle. Ve shouldn’t be there, and you really should not be there!”

  “But I’m trying to get vem to leave!” Fift cried.

  “You think ve can just turn and run? Fift, the feed may be mostly down, but do you think people wouldn’t know? And ve’d know, don’t you get that?”

  “But ve could get hurt in there! Ve could lose a body, even—”

  Vvonda’s face flushed a brighter purple, and vir hands jerked involuntarily. Fift briefly wondered whether, if ze’d been a Vail, Vvonda would have shoved zir. “Ve’s already hurt,” Vvonda hissed. “But ve isn’t at risk of losing a body in this kind of fight. Ve’s at risk of losing something else, but I don’t expect you to understand that!”