The Unraveling

by Benjamin Rosenbaum

  “Oh,” Fift said. “Oh, well, I—”

  Arevio, Frill, Squell, Pip, Grobbard, Smistria, Nupolo, Thurm, Miskisk. They were gone; they were lost to zir. Sisterless orphan Fift.

  “Kumru’s beard, Fift,” Smistria growled. “You can’t keep defying the Midwives! You don’t . . .” Ve squeezed vir eyes shut, holding the bridge of vir nose. “You don’t know how far they will go.”

  “I don’t know how much you know about our team-tag,” said Bojum Holkitz of name registry Buttercup Void 5, “Fift Brulio Irax . . . uh, that is, Fift Brulio.” Ve flushed, then cleared vir throat. “But we are really serious. We are the real deal. Unlike, um, [Avengers of Fift and Shria] or [Harbingers of Fift and Shria’s Devotion], we don’t just relate to you and Shria as some kind of arbitrary symbol! We proceed by close textual analysis of the record—”

  “Not just the clip-ops,” Emim said.

  “Not just since the riot, either,” Morinti said.

  {What are they talking about?} Fift asked zir agents.

  {Some individuals}, the context advisory agent sent, {have been using the team-tagging mechanism, developed for impromptu sports events, to form . . . alternative groupings.}

  {It is a perversion of regulated and approved consensus-formation mechanisms.} the social nuance agent sent. {Experts are advising that any temporary emotional gains from such ersatz solidarity will ultimately be paid for in unease and anomie.}

  {Um, since you’re talking to me again}, Fift sent, {can I at least read my incoming queue?}

  {Consensus formation among your agent constellation is currently problematized.} the context advisory agent sent. {Regrets are expressed.}

  “We believe the same things you do!” Morinti blurted out. “Just like you said, ‘it’s not enough to hum along like a component snug in its casing’ . . .”

  “‘Maybe it’s better to be miserable for a century,’” Emim whispered, “‘if at the end you win joy built on honest foundations.’”

  “Uh,” Fift said.

  Auntie Ellix came in the apartment’s front door. Ze was in zir Peaceable’s uniform—a white robe with rough weave and a loose hood—with a large satchel strapped to one shoulder. Ze had new bruises at zir left temple, yellow and blue.

  “Thank Kumru,” Nupolo said, meeting zir in the hallway.

  “I came as soon as I could,” Ellix said.

  Squell stumbled from the meeting room and Ellix caught vem in zir strong arms. “Oh, Ellix,” Squell sobbed.

  “Listen,” Fift said, on the stairs. “I can’t send—my agents won’t let me—and my cohort’s been dissolved—”

  “Oh, we know that!” Bojum said. Emim nodded.

  Arevio let go of Fift (vir embrace slackening, then gone; vir silk-stranded hair tickling zir neck, then gone) and followed the other Fathers. Bodies from the meeting room, bodies from the breakfast room: they gathered around Ellix in the anteroom like spice-gnats sucking at the last vine of the season. Fift trailed after them, doublebodied.

  “‘Who wants to have agents chattering at you up here?’” Morinti quoted. “‘It’s sort of missing the point, isn’t it?’”

  Fift swallowed. “What I’m trying to say is, I’m in trouble. They . . . they were going to take us all to the Pole, and then I tried to declare my majority, but they wouldn’t accept it, and now it’s even worse . . .”

  “All right, everyone,” Ellix said, raising zir hand. “Thank you. All right, thank you. I’m very sorry things had to go this way, you know I am. But there are some immediate practical details I need your attention for.”

  “Are you taking Fift . . . ?” Grobbard asked.

  “Yes, but let me come back to that—”

  “Ellix,” Smistria said. “Fift’s outside, at the docks . . .”

  “I’m fully aware of that,” Ellix said drily. “That part’s out of my hands. At the moment, you all need to focus on your own situation.”

  “I mean, I would have gone,” Fift told the group on the stairs. “I would have gone to the Pole. But they wanted me to say it was all Shria’s fault. And I couldn’t do that.” Fift felt a tightness in zir chest, as if something invisible was constricting zir lungs.

  “Of course not,” Morinti said fiercely, as if ze understood. Fift felt the invisible grip loosen.

  “It’s terrible!” Emim said. Ze tugged nervously at zir robes. “It’s so unfair!”

  “These doors aren’t going to hold long,” Ellix said. “None of you currently have enough clout to delay the dissolution process. In an hour, these rooms will be shoulder to shoulder with the worst kind of intrusive thrill-seekers and claim-grabbers. Given how things are going, there may be physical battles until the new squatgrant gets sorted out.”

  “Physical—!” Arevio said.

  “It’s happening all over. We’re just spread too thin right now. We need to get you all dispersed, as far from here as possible, in as secure and private spaces as possible, in . . . well, it looks like we have between twenty-four and thirty-three minutes.”

  “I just need to tell Shria what’s going on,” Fift said, on the stairs, “and find out if ve’s okay.”

  Morinti and Bojum exchanged a glance. “Well,” Bojum said, “I mean, you just did tell vem. Ve is, you know, watching.”

  Fift swallowed. Of course ve was—along with four hundred million others . . .

  “Spin-Nupolo cohort,” Ellix said, “is going to take in three of you. We would of course take more—we’re family, after all”—Ellix’s chin bobbed slightly upward, a tiny gesture of defiance—“but three’s our best guess of what we can absorb without busting our own squatright apart like a ripe bean. So you each need to be asking trustworthy local contacts—ideally second- or third-level contacts, or even fourth; nobody too closely correlated with Iraxis—to take you in for the next thirty-some hours.”

  “Oh,” Emim said, gathering zir robes into a bunch at zir chest, zir eyes wide as bounceballs. “Oh, I just got a message! A message! From . . . from . . .”—ze gasped for breath—“from Shria!”

  “What does it say?” Morinti said. “What does it say?”

  Emim grabbed Fift’s shoulder. “‘Head for the docks!’” ze said. “Come on!”

  They ran.

  “If you can ride out the next two or three days,” Ellix said, “and nobody is caught and mobbed in public and there’s no other incidents, we think the buzz will have peaked and—”

  Emim held on to Fift and Bojum and Morinti each took a side to guard. Together, they clattered down the stairs.

  {Running around can only lead to increased audience and further disgrace.} Fift’s social nuance agent sent.

  {Oh, so now you’re available?} Fift sent back.

  {There are ten Peaceables coming over the bridge from Temereen to escort you.} the context advisory agent sent. {And twelve more docking now at the lower spires.}

  “Squell . . . needs an Idyll,” Frill said.

  “I know,” Ellix said. “But they’re full. There’s a beyond-the-sky returnee absorption center; Squell qualifies for placement as an asteroid worker. I know it’s not the same thing, but it’s the best we can do right now.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, people were crowding forward.

  “Fift Brulio!” someone shouted. “If you think consensus will support your irresponsible acts—”

  “Where are you going?” someone else shouted. “You stay right here! You stay right here!”

  “Leave zir alone!” A wide-eyed Staid tried to push past Emim. “Fift, take my hand, I only want to be near you—” Bojum and Emim closed ranks, hustling Fift past.

  “Thurm is secure,” Grobbard said. “Is that correct, Ellix? Ve said ve could find a place for me—”

  “That’ll do,” Ellix said, nodding, “that’s solid. Ve could even take another.”

  “Ah . . .” Grobbard cleared zir throat. “Miskisk is already there.”

  “Admit it!” an old Vail with bright purple skin and hair. “Admit you’re
working with Andibol Marm! Admit that this is a hoaxgame launch! My viewers deserve to know!”

  “You unsluiced toadclown! Chasing after that rioter and smashing your squishy hot bodies together for the world to see. . . !”

  “How did you bring down the feed? How?”

  Bojum linked arms with a Vail who darted out of the crowd—lookup showed vem as Honti Pikipo of name registry Nameless Desert 3, and yes, when you looked for it, there was the team-tag, [Embracing Fift and Shria]. And there was another Staid with the same tag, coming in on Morinti’s side.

  “‘Make room,’” Morinti shouted, jubilant. “As Shria said: ‘We’re coming through!’”

  Once you were looking for them, team-tags were everywhere: [Swallowers of Light], [Never At Rest], [Revanchists of the Tumbling Lover], [Mothers Against the Unraveling], [Panaximandra’s Million] . . .

  Everyone had found something new to belong to while Fift was trapped in zir apartment.

  While ze was losing everything ze belonged to.

  “Nupolo,” Ellix said, “you’ll come to our cohort as well, of course, with . . . ?”

  “Arevio,” Nupolo said.

  “If I might,” Arevio said.

  “Your ex-parents should be dispersed around the world,” a ragged old blue Vail tagged with [Orderly Birth of Order] shouted, “and banned from all occupations! They should have their feed access removed! How anyone can support such irresponsible—”

  “Fift,” a portly, diminutive, bone-white Staid shouted—ze was tagged with both [Take the Babies] and [Prologue to the Honest Foundations of Fift’s Joy]—“try my soup! This barbiton soup might help you feel better; it’s artisanal and very restorative! Hey, quit shoving, Vidix!”

  Fift’s lungs were burning, zir feet were sore, zir shoulders still ached from the climb through the ventilation shaft. At least they couldn’t sprint anymore; the press of bodies was too thick. They pushed and staggered their way through it.

  Most people let them pass. Some in the crowd were shoving, and in a couple of places people looked on the verge of fighting. If a riot broke out, or if the crowd seriously decided to stop them, they would be stuck.

  “Where are we going?” Fift asked Morinti, who pointed.

  A robot bat was just alighting at the upper spires.

  {Passenger transport}, the context advisory agent sent, {privately reserved by Stiffwaddle Somatic Fashions.}

  “I’m glad you’re done childing, Fift!” a raspy, vailish voice shouted from the crowd. “I wish I’d had the courage! Maybe you and I and Shria could form a triad! I know it sounds shocking—”

  More Staids and Vails were joining them, clustering around Fift, pushing zir through the crowd—seven, now, tagged with [Embracing Fift and Shria], and another two tagged [Prologue to the Honest Foundations of Fift’s Joy]. Farther off, Fift could see tags flicker and shift across lookup, the bodies in the crowd marked by their competing alliances.

  Audience: half a billion.

  Doublebodied at home, Fift sank to the anteroom floor, sank to the anteroom floor, sitting shoulder against shoulder. Ze buried zir faces in zir shift. Zir parents left zir alone.

  Ellix was sorting out the departures: Pip would go to Spin-Nupolo cohort with Nupolo and Arevio; Frill and Smistria had a friend from the mats.

  “Fift,” someone in the crowd shouted, “have you thought about the New Launch movement? You yourself had a parent employed in the asteroids! If you could endorse—”

  The Peaceables who’d crossed from Temereen fanned out in a half-circle, bopperstaves out, blocking the way to the upper spires and slowly advancing. The crowd was parting for them, people scurrying away. The group around Fift was growing larger.

  Fift’s parents were in their rooms gathering their things, except for Father Squell, who clung to Auntie Ellix.

  Not Auntie Ellix anymore. “I guess . . . I guess you think I broke everything,” Fift said.

  Ellix shrugged. Zir expression was grim, but it wasn’t harsh. “Not my place to say.”

  The other group of Peaceables, the ones who’d docked at the lower spars, came up from behind [Embracing Fift and Shria].

  The rest of the crowd, caught between the two lines of Peaceables, was scattering, pushing one way and another like surface birds frightened by a raptor.

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Fift told Ellix. “I don’t . . .” Ze looked away.

  Body to body on the anteroom floor, it was hard for Fift to hear zir own voice coming out of one throat with zir other ears. Zir breathing was not quite in sync. Ze’d never liked having zir bodies this close together. “I don’t know where it went wrong.”

  There were more freshly tagged recruits joining [Embracing Fift and Shria]; now they numbered twenty-five. They weren’t moving anymore; there was nowhere to go. Bojum grabbed, pointed, and shoved until there was a ring of fifteen Vails facing out towards the Peaceables, holding hands to form a circle of protection around ten Staids in the middle.

  “How about,” Ellix said, “when you were sixteen years old, and swept up in a fame-storm, and you told the Midwives and your parents, right to their faces, that you were tossing their advice in the compost-sluice?”

  Fift flinched, but when ze looked back at Ellix, ze didn’t find the contempt ze thought ze would. Ellix’s eyes were clear, curious. It was like ze really was asking, and waiting for an answer.

  Emim took Fift’s hand.

  “There are no stoppergoo fabs under the docks,” Morinti said. “So they’ll come for us with bopperstaves.”

  “Don’t fight the Peaceables!” Bojum said to the other Vails. “Those of you who are new—we’re not chaotists! ‘Fighting is stupid,’ said Fift. And Shria agreed!”

  Six billion viewers.

  Across the scattering crowd, the giant banner flickered to life, and the group holding it—they were tagged [Fift’s Voyage, Shria’s Hand]—steered into the path of the Peaceables. The banner read, “If you can’t handle responsibility without control, parenting was the wrong occupation to choose.”

  Ellix was still waiting for an answer.

  “How could it be right to blame Shria?” Fift asked. If they’d been alone, if Squell hadn’t been there, ze would have added: Did Minth abandon Abador?

  The Peaceables set upon the group with the banner, bludgeoning them in clean, precise strokes. Those who were touched by the bopperstaves fell like limp sacks.

  The banner sagged, collapsed, poles hitting the pavement, cloth draped over silent bodies.

  Ellix shrugged. “There aren’t always right options,” ze said.

  Fathers were coming back into the anteroom: Frill, Smistria, Arevio, Nupolo, carrying small bundles and bags, all agitated, their faces wet with tears. They embraced Fift one by one.

  “Come on,” Ellix said. “I’m sorry to rush this, but you need to get out of here. Come on, let’s move . . .”

  They mumbled things, said things. Fift couldn’t hear them, ze couldn’t bear it, couldn’t be here. Grobbard’s embrace was the longest and gentlest.

  Pip went by without a word to anyone.

  The banner was down, a snowdrift of flickering green. The Peaceables advanced calmly. In the little group of Staids standing with Fift, someone—Meroc Ipithia of name registry Barking Undulation 12, according to lookup—was nervously fingering a ceremonial spoon, the kind some Staids carried for luck.

  “‘A storm encircling our stillness,’” Emim said ruefully, looking into Fift’s eyes, and for a moment Fift wondered if that was something else this strange little group of overexuberant instant-fame fans had heard zir or Shria say.

  But of course it was Ranhulo, from zir metacommentary on the eighth work of the tenth cycle.

  It was an allusion to the Long Conversation, made in public and on the world’s feed, with Vails present. Even after all that had happened, it was a shock. You couldn’t do that! You couldn’t quote the Long Conversation on the world’s feed!

  Staid things are Staid thi
ngs and Vail things are Vail things, Father Frill had said, years ago. You wouldn’t want to watch us fight on the mats, would you?

  Emim bit zir upper lip, defiant, eyes shining mischievously. I’ll be as rude as I like, zir eyes said. What else can they do to me now?

  A storm encircling our stillness. They were Ranhulo’s words, and they were full of bitter scorn for Vails: the vailish storm closing in, destroying staidish stillness. But why had Ranhulo changed so drastically? Why had ze swung from openness to condemnation? The young Ranhulo had spoken before Vails, had praised the Compromise of the Spoons, had welcomed the ill-fated Permissive Compact. That short-lived experiment in Vails witnessing the Long Conversation had ultimately failed . . . was that what broke Ranhulo’s heart?

  Ranhulo, the great Sage, had fought for a world of sharing and connection . . . and in the end ze had given up, and rejected it all. So what chance did Fift have?

  Fift’s interrupted homework was still open in zir queue: the puzzle of the metacommentary on the eighth work of the tenth cycle, the riddle of what transformed Ranhulo’s expansive optimism into bitterness. How had ze come to see Vails—sharing with Vails, opening up to Vails—as a danger? As wildfire raging through the silent deeps . . .

  Wait.

  Thavé.

  That’s the original, lost sense of ‘wildfire’ in your language, by the way: ‘fire that protects the wilds,’ that keeps the forest healthy.

  “We’ve been reading Ranhulo wrong,” Fift said, triplemouthed.

  “Is that so?” Ellix said drily. Ze indicated Squell with zir chin. “As interesting as this reflection sounds, maybe you should save this for when your Fa—when Squell’s not around.”

  “Ranhulo’s regret, zir disgust,” Fift told Ellix. “. . . it’s not for the Compromise of the Spoons, or the Permissive Compact. It’s for their abandonment! Ranhulo never gave up—ze never turned against that project—ze was just defeated! The storm . . . the storm encircles the stillness to protect it, not to—”

  The rest of the crowd had fled; the Peaceables were three bodylengths away and closing in from all sides. Bojum and the other Vails tensed, rock-rigid.

  “Fift, that’s enough,” Ellix said, “this isn’t the time.”