It was foolish to cry. It was foolish to cry when it was just part of growing up.
The apartment was going to be lonely until suppertime. She went over to Amy’s to do her homework, and told Amy about Nelly leaving, because she was finally able to talk about it.
“She was in the way anyway,” she said. “She was always sniping at Florian and Catlin.”
Then she felt mean for saying that.
“How are you feeling?” uncle Denys asked her again at dinner. “Are you all right with Nelly?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just wish Florian and Catlin would get back.”
“Do you want to call them home?”
Right at the end of one of their Exercises. It was very serious to them. So was she, but it was like taking something away from them. “No,” she said. “They really like the overnights. Not—like, because they come back all scraped up; but, like, you know—they enjoy telling me about it. I don’t need them that bad.”
“I’m proud of you,” uncle Denys said. “A good Super has to think that way.”
She felt a little better then. And went to do her homework ahead, because she could, and she had rather do it and have something to fill her time and have it over with when Florian and Catlin got home.
Except she had a message from the computer when she went in her room.
“Ari,” the Minder said. “Check Base One.”
“Go ahead,” she said, and looked at the screen.
Ari, this is Ari senior.
Sex is part of life, sweet. Not the most important part, but this is your coming-of-age lecture. I don’t know how old you are, remember, so I have to keep it simple. Library says you’ve checked out Human Sexuality. Have you had it?
“Yes. Yesterday.”
Good. You’re 10 years old. This program is triggered by your medical records.
You’re about to start your monthly cycles, sweet. Welcome to a damn unfunny fact of life. Housekeeping has been notified. You’re going to have the appropriate stuff in your cabinet. Hell of a thing to get caught without. You’ve also had a shot that means you’ll reject any pregnancy. So you don’t have to worry about that, at least…because without that, your body’s perfectly capable of it now.
I’m going to leave the what-to and what-with to the tape program, sweet. I figure you know. Probably it’s given you some ideas. I know. I had it too. They’re not bad ideas. I want you to listen to what I’m going to say next with everything you’ve got, like it was tape. This is private, it’s about sex, and it’s one of the most important things I’ll ever have to tell you. Are you alone?
“Yes.”
All right.
The ideas you have, sweet, are perfectly natural. Is your pulse a little elevated?
“Yes.”
You feel a little flushed?
“Yes.”
That’s because you’re thinking about sex. If I asked you to do complicated math you’d probably make a mistake right now. That’s the important lesson, sweet. Biology interferes with logic. There’s two ways to deal with it—do it and get it out of your head, because that feeling explodes like a soap bubble once you’ve done sex—or if it’s somebody you really like, or somebody you don’t like, who upsets you and makes you feel very, very strong reactions, you’d better think a whole lot about doing it, because that kind explodes all right, but it keeps coming back and bothering you. When you get into bed with somebody, you’re not going to be thinking with your brain, sweet, you’ll be thinking with the part of you that doesn’t have anything but feeling, and that’s damned dangerous.
When adults meet, sweet, and start getting to know each other, this is one of the main things that’s different than kids. Kids are quite logical in some ways adults aren’t. That’s why they seem to see character so clearly. But when adults deal with each other, this feeling you’ve begun to get, gets right in the middle of their judgment.
Now there are some people who just let it take over. And the thing about this feeling is that it’s playing totally off the emotional level, out of memories, out of what we’re set up to believe is handsome or sexy, a whole lot of things that haven’t got a damn thing to do with truth.
There are some people who learn early that they’re very good-looking and that they can make anybody have this feeling about them—and they use it to get what they want. This doesn’t mean they have any feeling inside at all. That’s one reason to watch out who you go to bed with and who you let affect you that way.
There are other times when you get that feeling about somebody who doesn’t have it for you, and that’s one of the hardest things in the world to deal with. But you have to stop it then and let your brain take over, because you don’t get everything you want in this world, and it’s not fair to the other person at all. If you think about it you’ll know how they’d feel, first if they didn’t care for you as a friend and then if they did, and you kept insisting on having your way.
You can see how messy that gets.
Sometimes it happens the other way around. And if you don’t see it happening or if you’re too soft-hearted to say no, you can hurt somebody worse than if you say: I’m sorry, this won’t work, right off.
Sometimes it works right on both sides, and watch out then too, sweet, because sex isn’t the only thing in life, and if you let it be, that’s all you’ll ever have.
I’ll tell you what the most important thing is, in case you haven’t figured it out: It’s being able to do what makes you the happiest the longest, and I don’t mean sex and I don’t mean chocolates, sweet, I mean being able. Able means just exactly having the time, the money, the ability, and a thing to do that makes your life worth living long enough to get it done.
You aren’t going to have a clear sight of that thing until you’ve had a look at the world as it is, and had a chance to figure out what the world could be if you worked at it.
So when you get that feeling, you think real clearly whether you can afford to give in to it and whether you’re able to handle it without getting your whole life slanted in some direction that isn’t smart. The time to give in to that feeling is when you can afford to, just the same as you don’t spend money you haven’t got, promise things you don’t have time to do, or get involved in projects you can’t finish. If it’s a minor thing and nobody can get hurt, fine, do it. If it’s got complications, don’t do it until you know damn well you can handle it, and know how far the complications can possibly extend. At 10, you can’t see everything. I was there. Believe me, I know. I got involved with somebody once, and I really liked him; unfortunately, he wasn’t as smart as I am, and he wanted to tell me what to do and how to run my life, because he sensed I really was hooked on him, and he really liked ordering people around. So do I, of course. So when I got that figured out, which took longer than usual, because neurons work logic problems a hell of a lot faster than glands—I’m being facetious—anyway, I told him off, I reversed what was going on, and he hated it like hell. Hated me after that, too. So not only did the feeling go away, I lost a friend who would have stayed a friend if I hadn’t let him do a power-move on me. I’m telling you about it now because you can learn about fire two ways: put your hand in it and understand it with the neurons below your neck or listen to me tell you about it and understand it with the ones up in your head. Your brain is the operations center that has to keep your hand out of the fire in the first place, so if you can believe me, and use the sense you were born with, you can save yourself all the pain and embarrassment of a real lesson.
Brains and sex fight each other to control your life, and thank God brains get a head start before sex comes along. Sex is when you’re the most vulnerable you’ll ever be. Brains is when you’re least. Brains have to win out, that’s all, so they can make a safe time for sex to happen. Remember that.
Now, don’t mistake: it’s not bad to be vulnerable sometimes, but it’s stupid to walk around that way: there are too many people just waiting for that chance. It’s
stupid to miss sex altogether for fear someone will take advantage of you—use the brain, sweet, and find somebody and some place and some time safe. Brains are nature’s way of making sure you live long enough to spawn—if you were a frog. But you’re better than a frog. So plan to live longer.
And for God’s sake, don’t ever use sex to get your own way where brains won’t work. That’s the dumbest thing in the world to do, because then you’re operating without brains at all, aren’t you? That’s as plain as I can make it.
I want you to come back to this more than once, till you’ve understood what I’m saying.
If I could have learned this one thing early enough, I’d have been happier.
Good luck, Ari. I hope to hell you learn this part.
She thought about that a long time into the night, into a very lonely night, because Nelly was gone and Florian and Catlin were away; and she felt awful the next morning.
Then she found out why she felt awful and why her gut hurt, and mostly she just wanted to kill something. But she found the stuff in the bathroom, all right, read the instructions and got it all figured out: Dr. Wojkowski had given her a booklet with the package, which was very plain and echoed a lot of things the tape had said.
It was more biology than she wanted in one week, dammit. And she was embarrassed and mad when the Minder said uncle Denys was waiting breakfast.
“I’ll get there when I can,” she yelled at it.
And took her pill and got herself in order and went out to breakfast.
“Are you all right?” Denys asked.
She glared at him, figuring he damn well knew, everybody else did. “I’m just fine,” she said, and ate without another word while he read his morning reports.
Florian and Catlin came home late, sore and tired and with bandages on Catlin’s hand; and full of stories, what the Exercise had been, how Catlin had gotten her hand cut getting a piece of metal fixed for a trap, but it had worked, and they had survived all the way through the course. Which youngers didn’t do.
She wished she had something better than losing Nelly to tell them. And she wasn’t about to tell them why she was sulking in her bedroom and feeling rotten.
Certainly not Florian, anyhow. But she got Catlin apart from Florian and told Catlin what the trouble was. Catlin listened and made a face and said well, it happened: if you were on an Operation you could take stuff so it came early or later.
Never take azi-pills, maman had said, but it sure sounded attractive.
It was worth asking Dr. Wojkowski about. Damned if she was going to ask Dr. Ivanov.
It was also a damned nasty come-down from all the interesting stuff about sex. Not fair, she thought. Not fair.
Just when her friends were getting home.
And one of them was a boy, and azi, and she was his Super, which meant she had to be responsible.
Dammit.
Maman had had Ollie. She thought about Ollie a lot, when she thought about boys. Ollie was administrator of RESEUNESPACE, doing maman’s job. But Ollie never wrote. And she figured he would if he wanted to. Or maman had never gotten the letters. Or never wanted them.
That hurt too much to think about. She knew what she thought: maman had never gotten them. Giraud had stopped them. And Giraud would stop any letters from getting to Ollie.
So she tried not to think about that part. Just Ollie, how nice he had been, how he had always been so patient and understood maman; and how maman could be down, and Ollie would come up and put his hand on her shoulder, and maman felt better, that was all.
There was Sam. Sam was going to be big and strong as Ollie. But Sam was one of those people Ari senior was talking about that liked you without you liking them that way.
She felt good about having figured that out before she ever heard it from Ari senior, like it proved her predecessor was giving her good advice.
She felt about the same about Tommy: Tommy was all right to work with, but he was stubborn, he was all right being Amy’s cousin, and number two behind Amy; and that meant doing anything with Tommy was going to mess up things with Amy. That part of the first Ari’s advice made that make sense, too: complications.
There were older boys—Mika Carnath-Edwards, Will Morley, Stef Dietrich, who were worth thinking about. But Mika was a lot older, that was no good; Will was just dull; and Stef was Yvgenia Wojkowski’s, who was his age.
She sighed, and kept circling back to the same thought, and watching Florian when Florian wasn’t watching her.
Florian was smarter and more fun than any of them. Even Sam.
Florian was so damned nice-looking, not baby-faced like Tommy: not clumsy like Sam. She found herself just watching him move, just staring at the way his jaw was, or his arms or—
Whatever.
He had a figure the others didn’t, that was what, because he worked so hard. He could move the way they couldn’t, because he had muscle Tommy didn’t and he was Limber like Sam wasn’t. And he had long lashes and dark eyes and a nice mouth and a jawline with nothing of baby about it.
He was also Catlin’s partner. He was part of two, and they had been together forever, and they depended on each other in ways that had to do with things that could get you killed, if that partnership got messed up.
That was more serious than any hurt feelings. And they trusted her and depended on her in ways nobody else ever would, as long as she lived.
So she played Ari senior’s advice over and over when she was alone in her room, silent, because of the Security monitoring, and told herself there had to be somebody safe, somewhere, somebody she couldn’t hurt or who wouldn’t mess things up.
Sex wasn’t fun, she decided, it was a damned complicated mess, it gave you cramps and it tangled things up and made grown-ups not trust each other. And if you really fouled up you got pregnant or you got your best friends mad at each other.
No fair at all.
vii
Spring happened. The eleventh. And the filly was getting restless in her tank, a knot of legs and body, for a long time now too big for the lens to see all of.
Florian loved her, loved her the moment she began to look like a horse and sera had brought him to the lab and let him look into the tank. And when it came to birthing her, which sera said felt like she had been pregnant all these months, she had to work so hard for her, and do all that paperwork—Florian knew who was the best person down in AG to help out with that, and who was strong enough to handle the filly and keep her from hurting herself, and who knew what to do.
He told sera, and sera told the staff in the AG lab, taking his advice right off. So up came Andy, a very pleased Andy, who shyly shook sera’s hand and said in his quiet way, thank you, sera; because Andy loved Horse and all Horse’s kind, and sera loved them in spite of the fact Horse had broken sera’s arm…which was probably the worst moment of Andy’s whole life.
So it was a very, very happy Andy who came up to the AG lab, and knew it was true what Florian had come down to the barns to tell him, that sera wasn’t put out with Horse, sera loved him too, and sera wanted more of his kind, sera was working to birth another female, and was going to ride her, and show everybody what Horse and his kind could do.
“Sera,” Andy said, bowing low.
“Florian says you’re the best there is,” sera said, and Andy knew then, Florian was sure, that his m’sera was the finest, the best, the wisest m’sera in all Reseune. And maybe farther.
“I don’t know,” Andy said, “sera. But I’ll sure take care of her the best I can.”
So the labor started in the evening, and they just watched, watched while the foal slid down the chute into the bed of fiber; and watched while the AG techs got the cord; and Andy took sponges and towels and dried the filly all over and got her up on her wobbly legs.
Sera got to touch her then, for the first time. Sera patted her and helped dry her, and Florian helped, until Andy said that was enough and picked the filly up—Andy was very strong, and he said there was
no way any truck was going to take the filly down to the barn, he could carry her.
“I want to see her,” sera said.
“We can walk down,” Florian said, and looked at Catlin, who stood by all this, taking it in—he knew how Catlin thought—but a great deal bewildered by all the fuss, by babies, and by sera’s worry over the filly—
It was healthy, it was all right: he could read Catlin’s mind that well; so why was sera worried? Babies happened. They were supposed to be studying. They had an Exercise coming up.
“I’ll go,” he said to Catlin. “Sera and I will be back in about an hour.”
“All right,” Catlin said. Because Catlin had a lot of study to do. Because if he did that, Catlin was the one who was going to save them, he knew he was going to foul up, unless Catlin could brief him fast and accurately.
But for sera, for the filly, too, who was not at fault—no animal could choose its time to be born—he had not the least hesitation: training was training, and sera was—everything.
So Andy carried the filly down the hill to the horse barn, and Florian walked with sera, happy the way she was, because she was, and because now there were three horses in the world, instead of two.
Andy set the little filly down in a warm stall, and got the formula they had ready and warm, and let sera give it to the baby, which stood on shaky legs and butted with her nose as if that could get more milk faster. Sera laughed and backed up, and the filly wobbled after. “Stand still, sera,” Andy called out. “Just hold it.”
Sera laughed, and held on.
Down the way, in her stall, the Mare called out, leaning over the rail.
“I think she smells the baby,” sera said. “That could be trouble. Or she might take up with her. I don’t know.”
“I don’t either,” Andy said.
“There being just three,” sera said, “everything’s like that, isn’t it? The books don’t say about a horse who never saw but one other horse in the world.”
“And she’s pregnant,” Andy said in his quiet way, shy around a CIT, “and she’s got milk already. And animals are like CITs, sera, they have their own ways, it’s not all one psychset, and there isn’t any tape for them.”