Starlings

by Jo Walton

  Then she insisted on coming with me, she wasn’t going to be left in Nazareth with my mother, she wouldn’t stay with Elizabeth either that time, she wanted to come.

  You’re supposed to humour pregnant women, and I was double humouring her, because of the circumstances. I thought it was rape, and a long road to recovery, after the baby was born. She seemed to believe what she told me, and she’d always been very sensible before.

  So she got onto the donkey and we set off, barely speaking, and I walked alongside, quietly, trying to smooth everything, trying to put a patch on it, trying to be calm and rational for both of us and hold on to what we could. We could have other children later, children of mine, and I’d do what I could for this child of hers, which I truly believed wasn’t of her seeking. Whatever had happened to her we could build something together, not what we would have had, but something. That’s what I kept thinking, walking along in the dust and the heat, making conversation about the scenery all that weary way.

  You know the rest, the inn, the manger, the shepherds, the kings, the animals talking, the angels singing.

  Though if it’s true he’s born to be our saviour he’ll have a hard block to carve, and sorrow at the end of it.

  Still, what I thought when the angels were singing and the star was shining was about the way sometimes when you’re carving and you hit a knot in the grain and you realize you were going to make something quite ordinary, but now there’s all this extra potential, all this incredible possibility revealed. You know then you have to go carefully, because it could suddenly all fall to splinters, but there’s this moment when it’s all before you and you could make something, you could make anything.

  So she picked him up out of the manger and everyone was crowding around in the starlight and there was the wonderful singing. I didn’t say anything, I don’t talk all that much actually, but she looked over the baby’s head at me and that’s how I felt, at that moment, that familiar sudden shock of joy.

  THE NEED TO

  STAY THE SAME

  “THE NEED to Stay the Same,” by Si. A review by Dorui. “The Need to Stay the Same” is the latest of Si’s “humans” sequence, and at eight offerings so far the world and themes are starting to feel familiar.

  This is the story of a human called Bruce who comes to the city of Quingale on the cusp of autumn. Bruce, like all Si’s heroines, is an outsider with a problem. Bruce's particular and specific problem is different from those in the earlier stories—what it is and how it works out is a lot of why this is in the end worth your time, and I don’t want to spoil it for you. But beyond the particulars of who Bruce is and what kind of transformation it is that has brought her to Quingale, this is something we’ve seen before.

  In a world where humans now have a kaleidoscopic variety of options as far as gender, sexuality, and bodies go, they are still bound to the physical, they still have to live in bodies. That’s the joy and horror of the series, of course, the very physicality of the characters—they eat, they make love, they move from place to place all in the physical world. Si is as good as ever at describing the sensations of humanity—the changes in temperature, the tastes, the scents, even touch, the hardest to imagine of all. There’s a stunning sequence here where Bruce longs to scratch her nose but is prevented by social convention, which really made me believe what it would be like to have a nose and an itch.

  But while this use of physicality was revolutionary and astonishing in the justly celebrated “Birth and Death,” and still exciting and fascinating in subsequent volumes, I’m getting a little tired of it. Yes, Bruce’s body makes an involuntary twitch as she shivers in a cold wind—I remember the same thing happening to Lu Song in “Living Without You.” Sure, the leaves that have helped trees convert sunlight to nutrients all summer are slowly drifting to the ground, and yes, it’s an amazing piece of chemical and biological imagination, but it was described in “The Flowers in the Wheelbarrow.” It’s interesting that now the fixed genders of earlier books have ceased to be a problem, but I never really cared about that anyway. And clever as it all is, you have to admit it’s a long way removed from real life.

  Si’s genius is in making these “humans,” so different from us, so like us in some essential ways. I’m not a huge fan of the explanations of Si’s weirder inventions like “photosynthesis” and “orgasm,” but I do appreciate the level at which emotion is universal. There were ways in which I could identify with Bruce, in her ever-changing quest for stability. Interpersonal relationships are one of Si’s true strengths, and I really do feel after reading this that it doesn’t matter if it’s bodies under a sheet with heat and touch and secretions, or minds longing for merger—we reach out to each other in the same ways. Bruce’s impediment is not the same kind of impediment as those we suffer, but it still has emotional resonance, and I cared. I wanted Bruce to find fulfillment, even the strange kind of fulfillment that’s what’s available for humanity.

  Still, in the end, eight of anything is surely enough? We’ve been paying attention to these “humans” for a long time, it must be hours now. This is a good addition to the series, it’s powerful, and Si does manage to pull some surprises here and there. But I think it’s time for a new series, for Si’s wild invention to bring us something else, something with characters just this great, and ideas just as alien as the concept of physical flesh, but new.

  A BURDEN SHARED

  PENNY WOKE on Tuesday morning and cautiously assessed the level of pain. If she didn’t move at all, there was nothing but the familiar bone-deep ache in all her joints. That wasn’t so bad, nothing stabbing, nothing grinding. Penny smiled. Ann must be having a good day. Maybe even heading for another minor remission. This was much better than it had been on Saturday, when Ann’s pain had woken her with a shock she had flinched against and made worse. This was nothing more than the pain she had endured Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for the thirty years since her daughter’s birth. Still smiling, Penny eased herself to sitting and reached for the cane she kept hanging on the rail that ran along the wall. Once she had it she stood, breathing deliberately, as the smile became a grimace, then walked slowly to the bathroom, where she used the rail to lower herself carefully to the toilet seat.

  That evening, as Penny was lying on the daybed grading papers for her next day’s classes, there was a knock at the door. She levered herself up slowly and walked towards it. Her ex-husband Noah was on the doorstep, his gleaming Viasolo parallel parked on the street. If he’d done that, and not pulled into her driveway, he must want a favour. Too bad the pain was too much for her to consider standing on the doorstep while she found out what it was. “Hi,” she said, warily. “Come in.”

  “How are you?” he asked as he followed her into the living room. They had been divorced for more than twenty years, after a marriage of less than ten, but seeing Noah always provoked the same mixture of exasperation and weary affection. She could recall the times when catching sight of Noah had sent thrills running through her, and also the times when just hearing two words in his careful patronizing tone had made her want to kill him. Now what she felt was gratitude that he had always been there for Ann. Well, nearly always.

  “I’m fine,” Penny said warily, easing herself back onto the daybed. She was stiff and exhausted from the day’s pain, but he knew all about that.

  “Good. Good . . .” He moved books from the grey chair onto the beige one and sat on the grey one. When he had lived here, the house had been tidier. “I hate to drop this on you, Pen, but can you possibly do tomorrow?”

  “Oh no,” she said.

  “Penny . . .” His entitlement pressed hard on the exact places where her affection had worn thin.

  “No. I can’t. No way.” She cut him off. “You know I’m prepared to make reasonable accommodations, but not at the last minute like this. I’ve arranged my classes specifically, my whole schedule is set, and tomorrow I have three senior seminars, a lecture, and an important dinner meeting. And I
haven’t had a day free this week. Janice is in the middle of a Chrons flare, so I took that Sunday so she could preach, and yesterday—”

  “I have to fly to Port Moresby,” Noah interrupted. “I’m on my way to the airport now. Old Ishi has had a stroke, and Klemperer isn’t coping. I have to go. Our whole Papuan capacity is collapsing. I have to be there. It could be my career, Pen.” Noah leaned forward, his hands clasped together.

  “Your career is not more important than my career,” Penny said, firmly, though the thought of going through the eleven-hour flight from Cleveland to Port Moresby with Ann’s pain was legitimately horrifying.

  “I know, but this is beyond my control. Ishi might be dying.” Noah’s big brown eyes, so like Ann’s, were fixed on Penny’s.

  She had always liked Ishi, Noah’s senior partner. “Do give her my best when you speak to her. And Suellen too.” She deliberately looked down at the icon on the app that recorded how many papers she still had to grade, to harden her heart. “But I can’t take tomorrow. Ask Lionel.”

  “I already did. I called him. He’s rehearsing all day. Copellia. They open on Monday.” Noah shrugged.

  Penny winced. She loved her son-in-law, but she wished sometimes that Ann had found a partner whose career made it possible for him to share a little more of the burden.

  “If you can’t do it, there’s nothing else for it, Ann will just have to shoulder her own pain tomorrow,” Noah said.

  The words “selfish bastard” flashed through Penny’s mind, but she didn’t utter them. She didn’t need to. Noah knew how hard Ann’s pain was to bear, and he knew how much easier it was to bear someone else’s pain than one’s own. So he knew that he was forcing Penny to accept another day of Ann’s pain, however inconvenient it was, because he knew she wouldn’t put their daughter through that. One of the things that had led to the divorce was when Noah had wished aloud that pain transference had never been invented. Penny never felt like that. Bad as enduring Ann’s pain could be, it was so much better to suffer it herself than to watch her daughter suffer. After all, Penny only took the pain. That was all people could do for each other. Ann still had to bear the underlying organic condition, and the eventual degeneration it would cause.

  “I’ll take Thursday,” Noah said, into her silence. “I really can’t manage tomorrow, I have to get some sleep on the flight so I can cope when I arrive. But Friday I’ll be there, I’ll have found my feet, it will be all right.”

  Penny sighed. Mentally she had already filed this with the many other arguments she had lost to Noah over the years. “Can you at least take the pain until you get on the plane?”

  “I’ll do that,” he said. “I’ll take it right now. And thanks Pen, you’re the best.” He tapped at the app, and the sensation as pain left her was so delightful that she almost bounced up off the bed. His face, in contrast, seemed to age a decade as the pain hit. She reached back for the cane she no longer needed, and handed it to him with a stretch that would have been impossible moments before. “Thank you,” he said, pulling himself carefully up. “I have one in the car. I always keep one there.”

  She walked out with him. “Do you think it’s a bit better today?” she asked.

  He grinned through the pain. “Better than sometimes, definitely. But you know that long term it just gets worse.”

  Penny nodded. Wincing as he reached for it, Noah pulled his cane from his trunk, one of the high-tech lightweight models with a folding seat and a retractable snow spike. It looked as novel next to her more traditional wooden cane as his zippy Viasolo did next to her sedate Solari.

  When Penny went back in, she headed for the kitchen, almost dancing down the corridor. She was hungry, as she had not been all day. Moving without care felt like a luxury. She enjoyed standing to chop vegetables, relished taking a step to the fridge for a slice of lobster with no warning stab preventing her from moving. She sang as she stir-fried, and ate sitting at the kitchen table. If she hadn’t had this break from pain she’d have ordered banh-mi, and this was so much nicer. She always liked to exercise on pain-free days. There wasn’t time to go to the dojo or the pool, but she did a few squats after dinner then sat at her desk to do the grading. By the time Noah was on the plane and the pain hit her once more, she was ready for bed.

  She woke Wednesday morning in absolute agony, pain ripping through her stomach like the worst imaginable period cramps, combining to set all Ann’s arthritic joint pain jangling. Penny blinked, and gasped aloud. When she tried to move, she could not suppress a cry. She called her daughter right away.

  Ann sounded sleepy. “Mom?”

  “This is really bad, sweetie. It might be some kind of warning sign. I think you should go to the doctor.”

  “I’m so sorry!” Penny hadn’t been living with Ann’s guilt for as long as Ann’s pain, so she wasn’t as used to it. Her daughter had been born with the joint condition, but the guilt developed as she grew, blossoming fully only in the last decade. Penny wondered sometimes what kind of mother-daughter relationship they would have without the existence of Ann’s disease. They loved each other. But Ann’s pain, and the question of who felt it, had always been between them, both binding them together and keeping them apart.

  “I’m happy to bear it for you,” Penny said, even as a new ridge of pain ripped through her stomach. “Do you have your period?”

  “Not until next week, you know that,” Ann said. “Why?”

  “It’s just that this feels a bit like cramps,” Penny said, though she had never had any cramps one-tenth this bad.

  “I never have cramps,” Ann said. “Let me feel this.”

  “No, darling, you don’t want to,” Penny said.

  “Mom, I am not a little kid any more, and you have to let me make the decisions about my pain, just the same as anything else in my life. Let me feel it, and I’ll decide whether to go to the doctor.”

  “Just for a minute then.” Penny knew her daughter was right, but it was hard to let go all the same, to know that the agony would be inflicted on her. What kind of mother would she be if it didn’t hurt her as much emotionally as it relieved her physically to press the app to return her daughter’s pain? She pressed it decisively, and at once the arthritic ache was gone. Once the switch had been set up it really was that easy, though setting it up was a complicated process. For an instant Penny relaxed on the bed. Then another cramp hit her. “Mom?” Ann said. “This doesn’t feel any different from normal.” Penny hated to hear the pain, so familiar, coming through in her daughter’s voice.

  “No, I guess these cramps are something else. Maybe Janice—though it doesn’t feel like that. And she’s considerate. She always calls.”

  “Or something of your own,” Ann said.

  Penny laughed. The laughter hurt her stomach, so she stopped. “I didn’t even consider that possibility. I’m never ill. Maybe it’s some kind of menopause thing. I must be getting to that kind of age. Though I hadn’t heard it feels like this.”

  “Go to the doctor, Mom,” Ann said.

  “I can’t today, I’m teaching, and it’s my really full day. I’ll make an appointment for tomorrow.” Penny stood up and walked towards the bathroom, taking the cane with her, because she’d need it soon enough, but swinging it like a baton.

  “How come you had my pain if you’re teaching?” Ann asked. “Did Dad duck out of it again?”

  “Didn’t Lionel tell you?” Penny asked, stepping under the shower.

  “Dad asked Lionel?”

  “He told me he had. He said Lionel’s in rehearsal for Copellia.”

  “That’s true. I’m so proud of him, Mom. This could be his big break, getting out of the corps, soloing. But he should have told me Dad called. I can cope with my own pain.”

  “Sweetie—”

  “Mom.” Ann’s voice was firm.

  “But truly, it’s easier for me than it is for you.” The shower cycled to hot air. “There have been studies and everything.”

 
“Not when you have your own pain too,” Ann said. “Maybe you should give me that!” Ann sounded enthusiastic.

  “What, I take yours and you take mine?” Penny joked, making her way back to the bedroom.

  “No, seriously, Mom! I never get to do anything for you, because you never have any pain. But now I could! And you always say how much easier it is to bear somebody else’s pain. Everyone says that. Let me!”

  “I’ll need it to show the doctor,” Penny said, pausing in pulling on her underwear and doubling up in pain as another cramp rocked her. “It wasn’t too bad in the shower, but now it’s biting again.”

  “You said you were going to the doctor tomorrow, Mom. And if you have a full load teaching today, I should keep mine and yours!”

  “No. That’s not happening. I’ve taught with yours before. I’m used to it. But if you really want to try trading, we could do that.” Penny pulled on a freshly printed academic robe.

  “Fantastic!” Ann’s voice was bouncy. “Let’s switch, then.”

  Penny hadn’t traded her own pain since they had tested the app with a needle jab. Unlike accepting and returning other people’s pain, which she had set as shortcuts, she had to go through several layers of menu. “Accept, accept, accept,” she heard Ann say, and as the cramps left her, Ann’s familiar grinding joint pain came back. She sat down fast on the edge of the bed.

  “Oh, Mom,” Ann said, her voice full of concern. “Mom, I think you should go to the doctor now. Really. I don’t think this should wait until tomorrow.”