Part 2 (1/2)

Ca.s.s looks thoughtful. aSo if weare supposed to mimic a family, we probably ought to start by pairing off and going to whatever dwelling theyave a.s.signed us. After a diurn or so of ploughing through these notes and getting to know each other, weall be better able to work out what weare supposed to be doing. Also, I guess, we can see if the partnering arrangement is workable.a Jen wanders off toward the knot of males at the other side of the room, gla.s.s in hand. Angel fidgets with her tablet, turning it over and over in her hands and looking uncertain. Alice eats another lump of cheese. I feel quite ill watching hera”the stuff tastes vile. aIam not used to the idea of living together with someone,a I say slowly.

aItas not so bad.a Ca.s.s nods to herself. aBut this is a very abrupt and arbitrary way of starting it.a Alice rests a hand on her arm, rea.s.suring. aThe s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p is only implicit,a she says. aIf you pick a husband and donat get on, Iam sure you can choose another at the Church meeting.a aPerhaps.a Ca.s.s pulls away and glances nervously at the group of males and one female, who is laughing loudly as two of the males attempt to refill her gla.s.s for her. aAnd perhaps not.a Alice looks dissatisfied. aIam going to see what the partyas about.a She turns and stalks over toward the other group. That leaves me with Ca.s.s and Angel. Angel is busily scrolling through text on her tablet, looking distracted, and Ca.s.s just looks worried.

aCheer up, it canat be that bad,a I say automatically.

She s.h.i.+vers and hugs herself. aCanat it?a she asks.

aI donat think so.a I pick my words carefully. aThis is a controlled experiment. If you read the waivers, youall see that we havenat relinquished our basic rights. They have to intervene if things go badly wrong.a aWell, thatas a relief,a she says. I look at her sharply.

aLook, we need to pick a ahusbanda each,a Angel points out. aWhoeveras last wonat get much of a choice, and as it is weall be stuck with whomever the others have rejected. For whatever reason.a She looks between us, her expression guarded. aSee you.a I stare at Ca.s.s. aWhat you said earlier, about the ice ghoulsa”a aForget it.a She cuts me off with a chopping gesture. aMaybe Jen was right.a She sounds downbeat.

aDid you know anyone else who was going into the experiment?a I ask suddenly, then wish I could swallow my own tongue.

Ca.s.s frowns at me. aObviously not, or they wouldnat have admitted me to the study.a Then she looks away, slowly and pointedly. I follow the direction of her gaze. Thereas an un.o.btrusive black hemisphere hanging from the ceiling in one corner. She sets her shoulders. aWead better socialize.a aIf youare worried about the implications of pair-bonding, I donat see why we couldnat share an apartment for a couple of diurns,a I offer, heart pounding and palms sticky. Are you really Kay, Ca.s.s? Iam almost certain she is, but she wonat talk where we might be being monitored. And if I ask and she isnat, I risk giving away my own ident.i.ty to whoeveras hunting me, if any of them have followed me in here.

aI donat think that would be allowed,a she says guardedly. She makes a minute nod in my direction, then jerks her chin toward the others, who by now are making quite a buzz of conversation. aShall we go and see who theyave fixed us up with?a On the other side of the room it turns out that Jen has broken the ice by insisting that all the males compete to demonstrate their merit, by pouring her a drink and presenting it to her elegantly. Needless to say sheas stinking drunk but giggly. She seems to have settled on Chris-from-the-back-row as her targeta”he seems to be a little embarra.s.sed by her antics, I think, but he canat get away because Alice and Angel have zeroed in on three of the others and are leaving him to Jenas clutches. Big Guy, Sam, is standing stiffly with his back to the wall, looking almost as uneasy as Ca.s.s. I glance at Ca.s.s, whoas hanging back, then mentally shrug and approach Sam, bypa.s.sing Jenas raucous gaggle.

aLife of the party,a I say, tipping my head at Jen.

aEr, yes.a Heas holding an empty gla.s.s and swaying a little. Maybe his feet are sore. Itas hard to read his expressiona”the black mane of fur around his mouth obscures the muscles therea”but he doesnat look happy. In fact, if the floor opens up beneath his feet and swallows him, heall probably smile with relief.

aListen.a I touch his arm. As expected, he tenses. aJust come over here with me for a moment, please?a He permits me to lead him away from the swarm of orthos trying to vector through the social asteroid belt.

aWhat do you make of this setup?a I ask quietly.

aIt makes me nervous.a His eyes glance between my face and the doors. Figures.

aWell, it makes me nervous, too. And Ca.s.s.a I nod at the bunch across the room. aAnd, I think, even Jen.a aIave read part of the backgrounder.a He shakes his head. aItas not what I expected. Neither was thisa”a aWell.a My lips have gone dry. I take a sip from my gla.s.s and look at Sam, calculating. Heas bigger than I am. Iam physically weak (and wait until I get my hands on the joker who set that parameter up), but unless Iam misreading him badly heas well socialized. aWe might as well make the best of things. Weare expected to go set up a joint apartment with someone who is a different gender. Then we get settled in, read the briefings, do whatever they tell us to do, and go to the Church on Sunday to see how everyone else is doing. Do you think you can do that if you treat it as a vocational task?a Sam puts his empty gla.s.s down on the table with fastidious precision and pulls out his tablet. aI could, but it says here that the anuclear familya wasnat just an economic arrangement, thereas s.e.x involved, too.a He pauses for a moment. aIam not good at intimacy. Especially with strangers.a Is that why youare so tense? aThatas not necessarily a problem.a I take another sip of wine. aListenaa”I end up glancing at the camera dome (thank you, Ca.s.s)a”aIam sure none of these arrangements are going to end up permanent. Weall get a chance to sort out any mistakes at the meeting on Firsta”uh, Sunday? Meanwhileaa”I look up at hima”aI donat mind your preference. We donat have to have s.e.x unless we both want to. Is that okay by you?a He looks down at me for a while. aThat might work,a he says quietly.

I realize Iave just picked a husband. I just hope he isnat one of the hunters . . .

What happens next is anticlimactic. Someoneas probably been watching the group dynamics through that surveillance lens, because after another few centisecs our tablets tinkle for attention. Weare instructed to go through the doorway at the back of the lecture theatre in pairs, at least two seconds apart. Weare already in YFH-Polity, in the administration subnet, beyond the longjump T-gate leading back to the Invisible Republic. Thereas some kind of framework with a bundle of shortjump gates behind the next door, ready to take us to our homes. So I take Samas handa”itas enormous, but he holds mine limply, and his skin is a bit clammya”and I lead him over to the door. aReady?a I ask.

He nods, looking unhappy. aLetas get this over with.a Step. aOver with? Itas going to takeaa”stepa”aat least three years before itas over with!a And weare standing in a really small room facing another door, surrounded by the most unimaginable clutter, and he lets go of my hand and turns around, and I say, aIs this it?a Ending on a squeak.

4.

Shopping.

REEVE and Sam Browna”not their, our, real namesa”are a middle-cla.s.s couple circa 1990a”2010, from the middle of the dark ages. They are said to be amarried,a which means they live together and notionally observe a mono relations.h.i.+p with formal approval from their polityas government and the ideological/religious authorities. It is a publicly respectable role.

For purposes of the research project, the Browns are currently both unemployed but have sufficient savings to live comfortably for a amontha or thereabouts while they put their feet down and seek work. They have just moved into a suburban split-level house with its own gardena”apparently a vestigial agricultural installation maintained for aesthetic or traditional reasonsa”on a road with full-grown trees to either side separating them from other similar-looking houses. A aroada is an open-walled access pa.s.sage designed to facilitate ground transport by automobile and truck. (I think I have seen automobiles somewhere, once, but whatas a atrucka?) At this point the simulation breaks down, because although this environment is meant to mimic the appearance of a planetary surface, the askya is actually a display surface about ten meters above our heads, and the aroada vanishes into tunnels which conceal T-gate entrances, two hundred meters in either direction. There are cultivated barriers of vegetation to stop us walking into the walls. Itas a pretty good simulation, considering that according to the tablet itas actually contained in a bunch of habitat cylinders (which orbit in the debris belts of three or four brown dwarf stars separated by a hundred trillion kilometers of vacuum), but itas not the real thing.

Our house . . .

I step out of the closet Sam and I materialized in and look around. The closet is in some kind of shed, with a rough ceramic-tiled floor and thin transparent wall panels (called awindows,a according to Sam) held in a grid of white plastic strips that curve overhead. Thereas stuff everywhere. Baskets with small colorful plants hanging from the wall, a doora”made of strips of wood, cunningly interlocking around a transparent panela”and so on. Thereas some kind of rough carpetlike mat in front of the door, the purpose of which is unclear. I push the door open, and what I see is even more confusing.

aI thought this was meant to be an apartment?a I say.

aThey werenat good at privacy.a Sam is looking around as if trying to identify artifacts that mean something to him. aThey had no anonymity in public. No T-gates either. So they used to keep all their private s.p.a.ce at home, in one structure. Itas called a ahousea or a abuilding,a and it has lots of rooms. This is just the vestibule.a aIf you say so.a I feel like an idiot. Inside the house itself I find myself in a pa.s.sageway. There are doors on three sides. I wander from room to room, gawping in disbelief.

The ancients had carpet. Itas thick enough to deaden the annoying clack-clack of my shoes. The walls are covered in some sort of fabric print, totally static but not unpleasant to look at. Windows in the front room look out across a hump of land planted with colorful flowers, and at the back across an expanse of close-cropped gra.s.s. The rooms are all full of furniture, chunky, heavy stuff, made of carved-up lumps of wood and metal, and a bit of what I a.s.sume must be structural diamond. They were big on rectilinear geometry, relegating curves to small objects and the odd obscure piece of dead-looking machinery. Thereas one room at the back with a lot of metal surfaces and what looks like an open-topped water tank in it, and there are odd machines dotted over the cabinet tops. Thereas another small room under the staircase with a recognizable but primitive-looking high-gee toilet in it.

I prowl around the upstairs corridor, opening doors and trying to puzzle out the purpose of the rooms to either side. They separate rooms by function, but most of them seem to have multiple uses. One of them might be a bathroom, but itas too large and appears to be jammeda”all the hygiene modules are extended and frozen simultaneously, as if itas crashed. A couple of the rooms have sleeping platforms in them, and other stuff, big wooden cabinets. I look in one, but thereas nothing but a pole extending from one side to the other with some kind of hooked carrier slung over it.

Itas all very puzzling. I sit down on the bed and pull out my tablet just as it dings for attention. What now? I ask myself.

The tabletas sprouted a b.u.t.ton and an arrow and it says, POINT AT OBJECT TO IDENTIFY.

Okay, so this must be the help system, I think. Relieved, I point it at the boxy cabinet and press the b.u.t.ton.

WARDROBE. Storage cabinet for clothes awaiting use. Note: used clothing can be cleaned in the UTILITY ROOM in the bas.e.m.e.nt by means of the WAs.h.i.+NG MACHINE. As new arrivals, you have only one set of clothes. Suggested task for tomorrowa”go downtown and buy new clothes.

My feet itch. I kick my shoes off impulsively, glad to be rid of those annoying heels. Then I shrug out of the black pocketless jacket and stash it in the wardrobe, using the hook-and-arm affair dangling from the bar. It looks lonely there, and I suddenly feel very odd. Everything here is overwhelmingly strange. Howas Sam taking it? I wonder, feeling concerned; he wasnat doing so well in the reception session, and if this is as weird for him as it is for me . . .

I wait for my head to stop spinning before I go back downstairs. (A thought strikes me on the way. Am I supposed to wear the same outfit inside my ahousea as I do in public? These people have a marked public/private split personalitya”they probably have different costumes for formal and informal events.) In the end, I leave the jacket but, a trifle regretfully, put the shoes back on.

I find Sam slumped in one corner of a huge sofa in the living room, facing a chunky black box with a curved lens that shows colorful but flat images. Itas making a lot of indistinct noise. aWhat is that?a I ask him, and he almost jumps out of his skin.

aItas called a television,a he says. aI am watching football.a aUh-huh.a I walk round the sofa and sit down halfway along it, close enough to reach out and take his hand, but far enough away to maintain separation if both of us want to. I peer at the pictures. Some kind of mechaa”no, theyare ortho males, right? In armora”are forming groups facing each other. Theyare color coded. aWhy are you watching this?a I ask. One of them throws something alarmingly like an a.s.sault mine at the other group of orthos, who try to jump on it. Then they begin running and squabbling for owners.h.i.+p of the mine. After a moment someone blows a whistle and thereas a roaring noise that I realize is coming from the crowd watching thea”ritual? Compet.i.tive-self-execution? Game?a”from rows of seats behind them.

aItas supposed to be a popular entertainment.a Sam shakes his head. aI thought if I watched it I might understand morea”a aWhatas the most important thing we can understand?a I ask, leaning toward him. aThe experiment, or how to live in it?a He sighs and picks up a black k.n.o.bby rectangle, points it at the box, and waits for the picture to fade to black. aThe tablet said I ought to try it,a he admits.

aMy tablet said we have to go and buy clothing tomorrow. Weave only got what weare wearing, and apparently it gets dirty and smelly really fast. We canat just throw it away and make more, we have to buy it downtown.a A thought strikes me. aWhat do we do when we get hungry?a aThereas a kitchen.a He nods at the doorway to the room with the appliances that puzzled me. aBut if you donat know how to use it, we can order a meal using the telephone. Itas a voice-only network terminal.a aWhat do you mean, if you donat know how?a I ask him, raising an eyebrow.

aIam just repeating what the tablet says.a Sam sounds a little defensive.

aHere, give that to me.a He pa.s.ses it and I rapidly read what heas looking at. Domestic duties: the people of the dark ages, when living together, apparently divided up work depending on gender. Males held paid vocations; females were expected to clean and maintain the household, buy and prepare food, buy clothing, clean the clothing, and operate domestic machinery while their male worked. aThis is c.r.a.p!a I say.

aYou think so?a He looks at me oddly.

aWell, yeah. Itas straight out of the most primitive nontech anthro cultures. No advanced society expects half its workforce to stay home and divides labor on arbitrary lines. I donat know what their source for this rubbish is, but itas not plausible. If I had to guess, Iad say theyave mistaken radical prescriptive doc.u.mentation for descriptive.a I tap my finger on his slate. aIad like to see some serious social conditions surveys before I took this as fact. And in any event, we donat have to live that way, even if itas how they direct the majority of the zombies in the polity. This is just a general guideline; every culture has lots of outliers.a Sam looks thoughtful. aSo you think theyave got it wrong?a aWell, Iam not going to say that for certain until Iave reviewed their primary sources and tried to isolate any bias, but thereas no way Iam doing all the housework.a I grin, to take some of the sting out of it. aWhat were you saying about being able to request food using the atelephonea?a DINNER is a circular, baked, bread-type thing called a pizza. Thereas cheese on it, but also tomato paste and other stuff that makes it more palatable. Itas hot and greasy and it comes to us via the shortjump gate in the closet in the conservatory, rather than on a atruck.a Iam a bit disappointed by this, but I guess the truck can wait until tomorrow.

Sam unwinds after dinner. I take off my shoes and hose and convince him heall feel better without his jacket and the thing called a necktiea”not that he needs much convincing. aI donat know why they wore these,a he complains.

aIall do some research later.a Weare still on the sofa, with open pizza boxes balanced on our laps, eating the greasy hot slices of food with our fingers. aSam, why did you volunteer for the experiment?a aWhy?a He looks panicky.

aYouare shy, youare not good in social situations. They told us up front wead have to live in a dark ages society for a tenth of a gigasec with no way out. Didnat it strike you as not being a sensible thing to do?a aThatas a very personal question.a He crosses his arms.

aYes, it is.a I stop talking and stare at him.

For a moment he looks so sad that I wish I could take the words back. aI had to get away,a he mumbles.

aFrom what?a I put my box down and pad across the carpet to a large wooden chest with drawers and compartments full of bottles of liquor. I take two gla.s.ses, open a bottle, sniff the contentsa”you can never be sure until you try ita”and pour. Then I carry them back over to the sofa and pa.s.s him one.