Womb beyond our world. What cause have we to remain upon this gas bag of a planet? It is little more than hot air.” She leaned in and lowered her voice, almost conspiratorially. “Much like many of these old senators.”
Thomas gave her a courtesy grin, but little more. “You and your initiatives. We would do better to coast the ærstreams and limit trade, if it’s only the surfs that bother you. We still require a trading economy. Why—“
“Coast?” she said. “Coast! There is no coasting. There is only adventure into the planets beyond or orbital decay.”
“Ah,” he said. “Planets beyond. There it is.”
“I choose adventure. What of it?” She lit her longpipe with real fire. The flame burned higher and brighter thanks to the oxygen-rich environ and, once lit, she extinguished the main flame only with great effort.
The surf hand-mopped the sticky floor around them, his grey beard occasionally mingling with streaks of real water. He managed to refrain from lapping it up. This time.
Other patrons mingled in the Great Hall, the variegated light from motley Venusian clouds pouring in the great bay windows that bounded the floor of the blimp’s prime environ. Many of them smoked their longpipes, all of them naked as the day they were born with neckties or necklaces painted or tattooed around their collarbones.
The surf wore white woolen robes that flayed out as he finished mopping up her ashes.
She smiled at Thomas. “I believe that the only way we and they --” She faintly nodded at the fully-clothed surf. “--will ever properly coexist will be if we leave one another alone. The uppest class needs Space, you know. The lowest class needs… well they need space in their own way I suppose. We don’t mingle well.”
“Yes, but perhaps The Womb of Space is not the best way to achieve this. We may well rupture a seal trying to go this high. Were our blimps originally made for interplanetary travel? Certainly not interstellar…”
“Of course they were. They were made for interstellar travel or else why create an ætmosphere recycling system like this?”
“And meteors? Space is hard,” he said.
“Mayhap, but up there we will be safe from the surfs.”
The surf clicked his tongue.
Her jaw muscles flexed. The surf was pushing it.
“Safe?” Sir Thomas asked. “What do we need saving from anyhow?” He laughed. “They certainly couldn’t pollute our bloodlines with that much fabric between them and us.”
The surf coughed.
Lady Prittany held up her finger to the surf, meaning she intended to say something he shouldn’t hear. The surf mimed plugging his ears per custom, but would still listen per habit — Thomas had asked him to do as much.
She leaned into Sir Thomas. “Rumors of a plot. A plot, Thomas.”
“Good stories, graphs, and gardens all have one.”
“Stop your games, this is the future of our community.”
“I’m well aware, my lady.” He spoke so the surf could hear. “But swapping one plot for another is bad math, and unless the future of our community is composed of morons—”
She scoffed at his volume and the secrets of the conversation he’d leaked through it. “Well we will be at least safe from them up in The Womb.”
“Perhaps.” Sir Thomas looked around at other surfs. “But will we remain so? I doubt we will stay up there for long, will we?”
“We shall see,” she said. “They’re signing the resolution in the green room.”
“What?”
“Signed my portion this morning after finishing the final draft.”
The surf stifled a cough. Almost a gag.
“Why would you do this without consulting me?”
“Why would you assume I require the consultation of a man to perform my legislative duties? Besides, I just told you.”
“After you signed your portion into law,” Sir Thomas said.
“Consult. Consign. What’s the difference?”
Sir Thomas went red in the cheeks. Both sets.
“Oh calm yourself, Sir Thomas,” she said. “Still needs another half dozen signatories. And fear not, we included provisions for men like yourself who insist upon visiting rights. Something about escape pods and the like, I don’t quite remember.” She glanced at his jawline. “You don’t quite have the masculine jawline that the others have. Perhaps you’d make a more consistent and reliable mate?”
“It’s about more than visiting rights, Lady Prittany. It’s about actually—would you please look at my eyes? I’m up here.”
She looked up.
“Thank you. You think we have an infinite supply of gauze for the hospital wing? You think we can just manufacture the glass from nothing inside the Hatchery?”
Her eyes glowed. “You plan to do more than visit clothed animals in The Grey now and then?”
“Our entire economy for a thousand years has depended upon our control of the flow of oxygen, making sure it trickles down there from up here and not the other way. If they knew the true power of the resources they possess—“
“They would give us all the reason in all the worlds to ascend away from this gasbag of a planet. Better now, when we have the initiative and momentum. Pre-emptive flight.”
Thomas bristled and marched through the Great Hall, the lady heeling behind him. He saw them with fresh eyes, then, passing the courting couples in their nakedness, some of the women ripe and some of the men fully erect in the piebald daylight, a great courting ritual meant to preserve the integrity of the Higher Realm and prevent them from mingling with the Lower Realm in The Grey. Some æristocrats had retired into the erotitoriums along the sides, the rooms from whence the moaning came. All in the name of preserving the bloodlines. As if that were their only motivation. Beside them stood the Gestatory, and beyond it, on the balcony that hung beyond the airlock out over open Venusian air, the Flirtifface.
She nodded toward them both and looked at him, a hint in her widened eyelids, a waning temple, an eyebrow taking the arc of her back, the raising of her nearest hip.
He could sleep with her — it might be the only thing that would stop the legislation of the ascent. “Terms?”
“I’ll remove the bill from the floor in exchange for five years, exclusive.”
It was clear to him then. She had her shelter, her food, her offspring in mind, and she wanted a man with fluctuating asymmetry, slightly less masculine facial features, a higher vocal pitch, a behavioral strategist — all indicators of a long-term mate. She had not been haggling when she had said as much earlier. She had been showing her cards. But what was the catch?
“And you?” he asked.
“I breed with as many studs as I please,” she said.
The hypocrisy of it — demanding faithfulness and loyalty while practicing adultery and betrayal. He considered it, though. There was more than trade at stake. And she was pretty — the hips were wide enough to bear him five children in that time. Seven if they worked hard and she was willing to risk her health, which many did for the sake of eugenics. He’d secure his bloodline, and his ambition to infiltrate the upper echelon would be fulfilled.
And yet… he didn’t want that. Didn’t even believe in that, however gorgeous she was. Besides, could she deliver? “You women led by Madame Matchmaker legislate, but interpretation of law and agreement upon it comes from the men.”
“And?”
“And that means you can’t deliver shit.”
Slack went into her every flirtatious pose at the vulgarity.
And he scoffed at her shock. The only thing vulgar here was their nudity, was it not? The commonness — as opposed to sacredness — of their sex?
Rushing down the hall, surf in tow, he passed old sketches — art, really — of the earliest blimps in the colored clouds. He slowed and stopped to notice, as if waking from a dream about fog, the tiny people on The Grey below, mingling on the ground. And he noticed the trees -- or tree-like
things that had learned to grow on the soil of Venus, nightshades beneath the tinted overcast. Why had he never seen them before? No strawberries. Venusian humans at this point in their history had never tasted strawberries.
His surf looked at him and shook his head and old grey beard. Sadness there. He nodded back.
As he and Sir Thomas moved onward towards the green room, they heard her coming up behind them. Not coming up behind them, mind you — they were well past the erotitoriums. Sir Thomas looked back and saw her Venuses bouncing as she ran, grinning, her nipples firm as if dedicated to the task ahead: warrior mother, spears at the ready, prepared to seduce or poison him with the milk of her breast, whichever came first.
She raised her head. “You are proud of me, I see it.”
“Pride comes before the fall,” he said.
“Falling high jumpers and skydivers and hang gliders call their falling flying.”
Sir Thomas searched the halls and found his reprieve: the door to a men-only lounge, one of the last of its kind since the resolution had passed to make way for the mixer rooms. He was all for bringing different people together, but now and again he longed for a conversation with like-minded men, a conversation that didn’t take so much damn work. He figured the only way to truly arrive at unity in diversity was to delve deeper first into his own tradition and person. And whatever else he was, he was a man.
He ducked in the room, the surf behind him, and watched her hover between coming in and staying out — law still protected rooms like these for both of them. As he closed the door, he saw her