About Sisterland (13 page)

He turned away.

There now, she’d offended him. He hadn’t realised she was being ironic. Quasi-ironic, anyway. She couldn’t rise to total irony. She kept forgetting how readily moe flared up in him. “Harper, I didn’t invent the system.” Her tone was conciliatory. “I’m a prisoner of it as much as you.”

“No, you have more choices.”

“Only while I cooperate. Deviate, and there are
consequences.
You were right about punishment.” Benevolence sprang to mind,
and she shivered.

At once, Harper turned back. “You’re cold. Here, let me warm you.”

He put an arm around her and she leaned against him, sharing his body heat – which shot a current through her. But he betrayed no response. Constance supposed the attraction must be one-sided. How potent this mating urge was! She could use it now to attempt babyfusion. Yet she didn’t feel able to ask Harper to perform. He was proud and independent – he’d be belittled by taking orders from her. And she’d be degraded by giving them.

They began trading experiences, and Constance was surprised to discover that men had memory-keepers, too. It wasn’t a formal arrangement – they didn’t go by the same name, and could not travel about sharing their memories. But there were a few elderly men with a dim memory of PS days, or who remembered what others had remembered. They whispered about it to their younger comrades. To talk openly about a time when men were equal to women would be unwise.

“I met a fisherman who told us about a time when women, men and children lived together,” said Harper. “They were a family. They shared a home. With a garden – space was set aside for gardens, then. And a woman and a man decided how to raise their children, not Sisterland. The fisherman said life was different then – noisier, with many people travelling through the air.”

“Speed is reckless,” she said. “We’ve slowed everything right down.”

“The Nine travels by air,” he observed.

“It’s done for Sisterland. This is a vast land, you know. Didn’t you say it took seven days to carry you here by road?”

He nodded. “I came with a group from my belt. All the young men were taken. There was nobody left to help the older men with the work. They’ll struggle. Some will discontinue.”

Constance brushed that aside. She couldn’t afford to let him keep making her feel guilty. Each time, the shadow-moe would magnify. “The Nine’s time is precious. These sisters can’t spend weeks on the road. They fly only when they must, for the sake of universal sisterhood.”

“The fisherman told us something else, too. He said PS women shared power with men. We were fellow citizens.”

Constance realised Harper was unaware that men had been the dominant sex once, and women had seized power from them. Such information could be inflammatory. If men knew they had been in the ascendant previously, they might try for supremacy again.

“But now you use us like tools,” he went on. “We might be made of wood, or metal, for all you care.”

“We’ve freed ourselves from any reliance on men, apart from mating.” She parroted
Beloved’s Pearl
s.

“You look to us to do your grunt work.”

“Everyone must work, male and female.”

“Our work is always physical. We mustn’t use our brains. We’re not allowed to choose what we do.”

“Nor are we. Our roles are selected for us, based on ability and where Sisterland needs us.”

“You claim to be free. But that doesn’t sound like freedom to me.”

Constance was stung. What right had a blindfolded Harper to tell her she wasn’t free? “Who raised you?” she asked.

“The women who ran boyplace.”

“I was raised by the women who ran girlplace. Not so different, you see?”

“You weren’t sent to girlplace the same day you were born.”

“No, when I was a year old.”

“You still saw your source there, I think?”

“Yes, after the first month passed – the settling-in period – my source was allowed to visit often. But she couldn’t make any decisions about me. What I studied, who I played with, what I ate or when I went to bed. Girlplace took care of all that.”

“At least you could learn at girlplace. At boyplace, we were trained for work.”

“I was prepared for work, too.”

“Not at once. First, you were educated, and taught to think, even if you don’t know how to think for yourself.”

“I think! How dare you say I don’t!”

“If you really thought – independently – you wouldn’t be satisfied with the way half the people in Sisterland are treated. You’d be furious.”

“Anger’s a deselected moe,” said Constance.

“How about a sense of right and wrong? Is that deselected, too?”

“I know you explained how working on the land helps you stay in touch with your feelings. But it’s different for women. Moes held us back for centuries. So the Nine compiled a list of moes for certification, and purged the unhealthy ones. Some moes are simply too disturbing. We have to learn from history.”

“Even disturbing moes are better than none.”

Troubled, Constance scrambled to her feet to escape from this uncomfortable claim.

“It’s not just working on the land that gives me moes,” he added. “It’s because I drink water from streams there, too. Tap water’s different. Our old men tell us your Nine puts moe suppressant in the water supply. We think your skins bank down your moe capacity, too.”

Benevolence had said the same! Constance searched his face, beneath the blindfold. Did this man have any idea how much disturbance he was causing her? “How well you argue,” she marvelled.

“Ah, that’s what the Nine didn’t bank on. Men continue to think, even if we can’t read or write, or count beyond ten fingers and ten toes. Perhaps they thought treating us like beasts would turn us into beasts. But we still dream.”

“Do you dream, Harper?”

“I dream. But I wonder if you do. If you know how to any more.”

Constance bowed her head, conscious of something lacking in her. Conscious, too, of a gap between them which she wanted to bridge.

“Why don’t we try to take off your blindfold? Perhaps it’s not knotted as tightly tonight. Come and stand by the nightlight.”

He followed her, seeming reluctant.

She plucked at the blindfold, and her fingers snagged on something attached to the material. “Kneel down, Harper, there’s something here.”

It was a seal on the blindfold’s loop. If she opened it, the wax would break and the Mating Mother would know he’d seen her. She could plead accident, but he’d suffer for it.

Something jolted inside her chest cavity. It was followed by a surge, too strong to be a shadow-moe. She had feelings for him! The intensity of the moe bewildered her. After all, Harper was a man.

“Am I allowed to stand up again, or do you require me to continue kneeling?”

Harper’s quesion acted as a rebuke – as a reminder, too, of the impossibility of tenderness between them. She reined herself in. Moes could be stifled. She owed it to herself to curb this one.

“Why must you insist on treating me like an oppressor? Of course you can get up. Please yourself.”

“I can’t.”

“That’s hardly my fault – why blame me?”

“Sisterland treats me like an animal. You allow it to happen by accepting it. I must kneel when I’m told, stand up when I’m told, go to a mating cube when I’m told, mate when I’m told. Whether you admit it or not, you’re one of my jailers.”

Fury was not possible. But something lower down the scale rumbled within Constance. Resentment, with an undertow of defensiveness. She almost blurted out that he should get used to prison because he’d be stuck in matingplace for the next twenty years. But she managed to hold back.

Instead, she reached into her pocket for the alarm ball, and squeezed it to indicate she was ready to leave. Footwear on, she waited for the key to turn in the door.

Chapter 11

Throughout the fourth day, Constance fluctuated about whether or not to go to the mating cube. She meandered through the Tower, sometimes tripping over her skirts, and in the readying room she watched staff arrange catkins on elongated stalks in urns. Passing a display, she stroked one of the furry pellets. It disintegrated.

“Best not to touch,” warned a page.

“Are catkins being manufactured now, too?” asked Constance.

The page nodded.

As the hours ticked by, she wrestled with whether or not to see Harper again. Honesty overcame indignation. Harper was right: he had no freedom. Hers was limited, but at least she had some. She could, for example, choose never to see him again. But he had to wait in a mating cube whether he wanted to be there or not. She could opt for a different meet. But he had to take whoever was sent to him. He wasn’t even trusted to look at the woman while they mated.

She considered why she was drawn to Harper. Was it because of losing Silence? Because he smacked of forbidden fruit? Because of the mating urge?

Encountering Unity as she prowled about, Constance asked, “Do meets ever refuse to perform?”

“I’ve never known it to happen. It wouldn’t be logical. Men would mate every day, if they could.”

“Would they do it even if they didn’t like a woman?”

“Liking has nothing to do with it. They’re genetically conditioned to mate as often as possible, with as many women as possible. That’s just how it is.”

Constance ruminated on this. Harper wasn’t leaping on her. He preferred to talk – or to scold her for keeping him in subjugation. Was it possible some of the stories she’d been told about men were just that – stories?

And Harper was a word-weaver. His storytelling formed pictures in her mind. How did that tally with her lessons about all men being warmongers? Women and men weren’t a different species – they’d simply developed along different paths. No boy-man ever made war. Yet he was viewed as a potential risk from birth.  

Constance’s head ached from all the questions ricocheting inside it. She wondered if she ought to cut her losses and go to the Mating Mother, telling her she’d like to postpone any further babyfusion attempts until next month. The Mating Mother would think she had mated with Harper on three occasions: it was advisable, but not obligatory, to stay for five couplings. All that day, she tossed round the pros and cons of bailing out. There were many sound reasons for leaving the Tower. And only one argument for staying: to be with Harper. Even when he unsettled her. Twice more – then she wouldn’t be allowed to see him for another month. And if she achieved babyfusion, she’d never see him again. Not that there was any chance of babyfusion yet. But sooner or later they’d do what matingplace was designed for. And in their beginning would lie their ending. 

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” said Harper, as soon as the door was locked behind them on the fourth night. “I’m sorry, Constance.” He reached out and laced his fingers through hers.

She looked down at their interlocked hands, admiring the herringbone pattern. Having her hand held made her feel safe. Not that a man could keep her safe from anything. It must be a reverberation from PS days.

“What are you sorry for?”

“For taking out my frustration on you. You’re the first woman who’s treated me like a person.”

“I know so little about your life. I suppose I never gave it much thought. We don’t pay you for any of the work you do, and that doesn’t seem right. But you get everything you need, right? Food and shelter?”

“Food and shelter’s supplied. But you don’t really believe that’s all someone needs, do you?”

“Harper, you have to be patient with me. I’m trying to look at things from your perspective.”

“I know you are. You’re not what I expected. I never thought
I’d say this about a woman, but you’re really quite open.”

Open. As compliments went, it wasn’t the most flattering she’d ever received. However, he seemed to mean it as praise. “I do my best. I can appreciate why you’d feel cooped up here, after your forest.”

“I love the forest – I’m happy there. Is happiness something you can feel? Or is that deselected, too?”

“It’s restricted. But we feel contentment at will.” He laughed. Defensive, she said, “Rationing makes it all the more meaningful when a happiness quota is distributed. Last Sisterday, a H was piped into the atmosphere. It’s the most magical sensation to be filled with happiness at the same time as everyone around you.”

He said nothing, and Constance had an uneasy feeling she hadn’t made the case for happiness regulation. Then again, why should she want to? He was right to be dubious. She was becoming increasingly sceptical herself.

“I feel complete in my forest,” he said. “I don’t need to go to Moe Express to feel glad when I see the sun rise, or sympathy for an injured animal. We passed some branches of Moe Express on our way to matingplace. It was the saddest sight. Women paying to have feelings, when all they need to do is walk about in the countryside, and moes will rise up inside them. How can anyone crunch over autumn leaves and not feel happy?”