darkness of space between the stars seemed to obliterate petty quarrels. Only this was no petty quarrel to them. Women like Shelly placed the sanctity of a male life somewhere below their concern for the caterpillar that crawled across their path.
The irony was that there was nothing about Dori Tsing’s glacial hardness that he found even momentarily interesting. Shelly apparently didn’t share that evaluation.
Her visit only served to underline the urgency of his letter. He picked up the stylus again.
Five hundred years ago, two things had happened. A new generation of high-speed supercomputers were developed, as much like what went before as Homo sapiens resembled Australopithecus. And a small Swiss drug company had developed a reliable spermicide that was XY specific.
Pioneering women began to refuse to bear male children. The computers supported this aim because it was logical; males weren’t needed in the same numbers as females. The male birthrate declined. The social custom of marriage broke down—it had been waning in any case, at the end of the twentieth century. Computerized technology meant more women could work at home and keep an eye on their daughters at the same time; crèches helped those who didn’t. Women, with the aid of the computers, took control.
Not that males had given up their power without a struggle. A number of bloody male/female battles scarred the record, and even a couple of limited nuclear attacks that had the effect of seriously weakening the influence of the superpowers and isolating population groups in some parts of Africa and the American Southwest. But on the whole, the transition had been peaceful. Perhaps, as one of his teachers suggested, men had tired of the roles of provider and protector after so many centuries. There were certainly advantages to being a sought-after minority.
He smiled, thinking of other, more immediate advantages he’d personally exploited. I should’ve been born in an earlier century. Maybe the nineteenth, both the last bastion of male supremacy in Europe, and a time when he could have enjoyed playing the “romantic artist” role. Now that would have been living.
Luckily he’d been born in this one. He knew himself only too well. How would he ever have settled down to work if he’d been free to follow the siren song of the hormones in his youth? Just as well the women had gained power.
The biggest difference this made, so the history cubes instructed, was that female-dominated governments rejected absolute answers and became more deeply committed to compromise than ever before. Male input was considered interesting, but too simplistic and polarized to be very useful.
Then CenCom came into being, a vastly superior biocomputer that soon absorbed the network of lesser computers into itself. CenCom became the teacher, protector, trusted advisor and friend of humans. Only very slowly had anyone begun to notice the danger that the computer might become their ruler too. Cloning was not an interesting experiment, as some thought. It was the beginning of a computer-dominated evolution.
He stopped writing again, for there was no use in pawing at old wounds. This “letter” wasn’t going to reach anyone, let alone his own cell. Now there’d be an endless repetition of the traits a machine found acceptable, and the elimination of those it disliked. But he wasn’t on Earth any more. If and when he ever reached home again, the issue would have been resolved one way or another decades before.
He was an artist, better at communicating with his hands than his words. He was used to responding to the nonverbal messages of art. Beside the small pad on the bedside table lay a ring of polished beads from Ithaca 3-15d. He set the stylus down and picked them up, caressing the minute indentations thoughtfully with his thumb and forefinger. They warmed immediately under his touch. He was aware of a small, pleasant tingling sensation, as if something in their composition caused a reaction when it came in contact with human skin.
The planet was intriguing. Under other circumstances, he could have worked here. But it hadn’t been his choice to come, and work remained back on Earth.
He’d get the shelter built as fast as possible and stay down on the planet’s surface. Whether he liked the idea or not, at least he’d be away from Shelly’s jealous eyes. As for Dori, he’d be glad to have as little to do with her as practical. No one on board really lit fires in his blood, but it was comfortable being with Lil, and that helped on a long voyage.
Inaction stifled him. He had to be doing, and there was something he could do. He could persuade Carli to take him and his equipment down tomorrow while the others were working with HANA. He could get started on the shelter.
He sat on the bed, feeling tiredness rising up through his bones. His eyelids drooped.
“Civilian Marit,” HANA said. “I think I should tell you something about Yeo Matiz.”
“Yes, HANA?”
“The reason she was in Nairobi on furlough when she heard you address the crowd on the subject of male equality was that she’d been to the Wild Game Preserve. Yeo Matiz is an accomplished hunter, and in addition to her skills as a shuttle pilot, she’s an excellent markswoman.”
The computer paused. “I hope this information is useful to you. Now, you really must get some sleep.”
“Thanks,” he said grimly, and lay wide awake in the darkness.
CHAPTER FOUR
The planet crowded Mosquito’s viewport. Gia shielded her eyes, shivering as she adjusted to the two sequences of drugs she’d taken over the last twelve hours. Each time, the first sign they were taking effect was this same chill as if she were about to come down with some viral infection. She squinted at brightness; the planet lurched—she experienced a brief moment of nausea—then detail flooded in, sharp-edged.
Checking, she glanced around the shuttle. The variegated blues of her crewmates’ uniforms heightened as she focused, areas of ultramarine flowing into azure. Behind the other women, tones of metal and fabric in the shuttle’s interior splintered, spraying rainbows. Her eyes ached from the prismatic assault. But she was used to the discomfort caused by the side effects of the alpha sequence of drugs that showed up first; it was a minor and temporary irritation. Apart from rechecking her body chemistry each time she began a new course of neurotransmitters, HANA prescribed them routinely.
Maybe they’d be lucky and hit it first time. But there was always some fine-tuning to do.
“Now,” Madel Karek said. “Remember—we don’t want any more incidents like Lil’s.”
“Lil’s just slow and clumsy,” Dori said.
“Be careful, anyway.”
The sick feeling in Gia’s stomach receded, and she turned back to the viewport. The planet hung like an exotic jewel displayed on black velvet, its almost unbroken cloud cover sparking silver streaked with pink in the aging star’s light. Narrowing the field of vision, she saw as if through a microscope the clouds’ intricate dark-blue veining, minute gray curls, the marbling effect of air currents that normally would have lain beneath her visual threshold. Peripherally, below the viewport, she saw the crisp field of the control board, the sweep of needle, the rush of luminous digits. She could have recited it all without looking if this had been the Academy and the instructors were still checking.
Now she was going to put all those hours of theory and practice to a real test. Nervous excitement shimmered along her neural pathways like summer lightning.
The second set of drugs she’d taken today for the first time induced expanded states of consciousness. Once, mystics
