FSF, January-February 2010 Read online

  When I was an adolescent, Magnus Esner was my favorite writer. You had to wait a year, a whole 687 days, for a new novel to come out, and you had to join a queue to read it. In those days, a book by Esner could only handle a hundred readers at a time. I still remember when it came my turn to read Suicide Missions, the anticipation I felt while putting the gear on. I was in my reading chair, head back, hands draped on armrests, legs outstretched, and I was no longer living in my world, but instead I was living in another world, in Haynlayn. I was in my tiny bachelor's quarters with a bed that folded into one wall and clothing hampers that pulled out from the other. I was Rahul Valentine in my tiny room, watching my hands pick up items for cleaning teeth, washing skin, placing them in my kit while Esner's voice, the perfect storytelling voice that probably wasn't his voice at all, said, “He was getting ready to depart in his one-man fighter. He would fly sixty-five million kilometers until he reached the Minds. He knew he wasn't coming back. He knew he would never see Nina again, never again feel her warm kisses. He would never push off in the free-fall gym, never play wallball again, never again rage against his father's expectations or his mother's absence from his life.”

  Here I was, eight years old, a mere adolescent, a reader, and I was Rahul Valentine, who would have been alive hundreds of years ago, if he'd really existed, and I was preparing to die for the future of mankind. This was back when there were more than a thousand worlds, when Haynlayn waged its singular war against the Minds. The reader me, the real person in the reading chair, would be so tempted to cop out, to find a different way to attack the Minds. Maybe I'd think of a way to plant a bomb before getting caught and thus escape with my ship and my life intact. Or maybe I'd come up with a special impossible plan that would lead to harmony between the Thousand Worlds and the Minds, but Esner had me believing that Valentine wouldn't do any of those things. Rahul Valentine would fly sixty-five million kilometers and dive right into the heart of the enemy, perhaps destroying just a few million tons of memory before his ship was obliterated, and that would be a worthy statement that humans would not live benignly before the omnipresence of the Minds, circling the sun like a silver-yellow halo where once our Earth used to orbit. How I loved the way Esner wrote!

  The next chapter: I was no longer Rahul Valentine, a solitary fighter pilot. I was Nina, his lover. I stood by Rahul as he packed his kit, and I tried to talk him out of going. The reader me yearned to have such a lover, because girls didn't seem to take an interest in anything I did. But in this case, while Rahul made his final preparations, while his ship was being readied, while he was given his final briefing, Nina secretly investigated the purpose of the mission. In chapter four, she discovered the mission was a ruse, that Rahul has been set up to die. I knew immediately who had arranged this. It was Alexander Sober, and that's who she now confronted. I knew it was a mistake to confront Sober, but I could feel her passionate stubbornness carry us down the corridor to that office door.

  My friend Henry had also loved Suicide Missions. He couldn't believe that Nina would confront Sober like that. Why alert the bad guy before you had any proof to use against him? Henry was appalled. And in Henry's reading, Nina stopped right in her tracks, just outside Sober's door. She so badly wanted to pound her fist, so badly wanted to confront him, but this didn't convince Henry at all. And Nina realized that deep down it was the wrong move to make. She had four weeks until Rahul's ship reached the Minds, four weeks in which to warn him. She would keep an eye on everyone.

  This is what made Esner such a great writer. He knew the points where a reader might want to let things go differently, and he plotted for them. In some books, if you disagreed, the book just went blank. Other books were powerful enough that you could invent the rest, but often then the novel would have this odd, dreamlike feel, as if reading the ghost of a book that might one day exist.

  On the afternoon of a scheduled rain, Henry and I compared our readings. Henry thought the middle part was slow. Nina did too much observing and not enough acting. I said, Not a problem the way I read it. Henry was adamant: It was utterly stupid for Nina to confront Sober the way she had in my reading. But it's more exciting, I insisted, if she does. Later that year, when everyone was queuing up for the new Esner, Henry reread Suicide Missions. He allowed Nina to burst through that door and tell Sober exactly what she thought, putting her own life in immediate danger. You're right, he said. It's not quite convincing, but it sure is more intense.

  After I turned ten, having reached legal maturity, I went on my worlds tour. The first few worlds are a blur to me because all I wanted to do was get to Santa Fe, where I had arranged to attend one of Magnus Esner's workshops. I had submitted a sample chapter, and I had been accepted. Clearly I had some talent and the possibility of a future.

  From a distance, when light from the sun hits its solar panels, Santa Fe gleams like a sword spinning through space, but up close, it's clearly shaped like a crucifix formed by the joining of two cylinders. My father would have expected me to know the exact challenges involved in keeping such a configuration rotating; fortunately, my elder sister lived next door to him and she was the one to know if such a marvel were an engineering feat or not.

  I have distinct memories from later in my worlds tour of stepping out into a new place and taking in all its differences. I don't remember if I ever took in how Santa Fe was an organic world, how the wood was genetically programmed to form benches and kiosks and one-story buildings. I may have only noticed the saints that lined the paths and hung in store windows. I do remember being careful how I walked. It was three-quarters the gravity I was used to, and the adult Santa-Feans all seemed a touch taller, the women looking down on me. Most of the time I spent in my head. Even though I'd never seen an image of him, I was picturing Magnus Esner opening the door to his home, shaking my hand in greeting, and saying how much he'd loved the chapter I had sent.

  The person who let me into his home was his wife, Hortensia, but she told me to call her Tensi. I had thought Esner's wife would look much like Nina in Suicide Missions or Gabriela in My Brother Worlds, but Tensi was a portly woman who smiled at the end of each social transaction and hardly any other time. I was disappointed that Tensi wasn't beautiful; it cast doubt on all my future expectations as a writer.

  I was the last one to arrive. The other workshoppers were waiting idly, so Tensi with a few waves of the hand showed me the accommodations. I grew up in Varle where a family had two tiny bedrooms, and a living area which included a kitchen. Brother and sister—and almost all couples arranged to have a boy and a girl—slept in bunk beds. The living room couch was for the younger sibling when the elder brought home a lover. Tensi pointed at a kitchen the size of two of our living areas, then waved her hand at a separate dining room, with a table big enough to seat twelve. She counted off the master bedroom along with five guest rooms, each with a bunk bed, each with two tiny desks.

  Tensi started to make room assignments—I was to room with this young-looking guy from Angkor—but Tensi realized that one of us was named Amar, not Omar, that there were five males and five females, which made it impossible to pair members of the same sex in each room. A young woman, maybe eleven or twelve, about my sister's age, said, “Look, it doesn't matter to me. I can bunk with anyone.”

  “But you're from Haynlayn, dear,” Tensi said. The young woman had just thumbed her personals onto the registration pad. “You're more flexible about these things than other people are.” Tensi was clearly flustered, and I couldn't tell if she was trying to honor her own culture, Santa Fean culture, or the mosaic culture I was just beginning to learn to negotiate as I traveled from world to world. “Maybe, dear, it would work best if you slept in my room and Magnus could bunk with...” She signaled an older man, the only one who didn't yet have a room assignment.

  He shook his head. “No, no. I'm sorry. I don't sleep with men.” I wondered where he was from. Most worlds had a service year where boys bunked with boys and girls bunked with girls, but
there were a few worlds where boys would live with their parents until they lived with their wives. On such worlds, men bunking together could only have one connotation, and I guess on his world it wasn't a positive one. “I would be happy to share a room with the young lady from Haynlayn.”

  The young lady turned to me and asked where I was from. When I told her, she turned back to Esner's wife and said, “He grew up sharing a room with his sister. This will work.”

  Tensi hesitated for a long time, looking at the woman from Haynlayn, the old man, and at me. She settled her gaze on the old man, “I'm sorry. I respect all cultural differences, but one or two. You'll have to bunk with this gentleman—” she pointed to the young man from Angkor “—or you'll have to make arrangements at a guesthouse.”

  The young woman, my future roommate, sat next to me at dinner. When the young guy from Angkor and the old guy got up for seconds, she gestured in their direction. There was something very similar and halting about the way they both walked. “He just got rejuvenated,” she whispered to me, nodding toward the young one. “Angkor is one of the few places you can do that. But only if one of your children has died. Isn't that sad?”

  “The math seems awkward. He can have another son to replace the son he lost. But does that mean he can have two children?”

  She looked at me. “I'm tired of math. Aren't you? You and I get married.” Her voice turned singsong. “You have a son by me. I have a daughter by you. Sta-bil-i-ty for E-ter-ni-ty.” She touched my arm, and lowered her voice. “Doesn't all this stability drive you a little bit crazy? Shouldn't society be a little more improvisational?”

  I loved the feel of her hand on my arm, right on my forearm, and I liked the way she was looking at me, as if asking to join a special club. How could I reveal myself to be another member of the stability-for-eternity club?

  Amar, a slender redhead, with her hair cut in furrows to represent her commitment to an agricultural life on a world where hairstyle was a sign of occupation, was in earshot. She said what I didn't dare, “But there are only a million humans left.”

  “A cliche,” my roommate said. “The first set of genetic humans could have been as little as five hundred people. A million seems to be just plenty of humans enough.”

  I felt comfortable talking with this young woman, whose name was Gale Brisa. When we said our good nights and went to our shared room, when we were sure Tensi wasn't around, we talked about how odd it was that Esner had not shown. We talked about what we thought he'd be like. Gale was certain he would not match our expectations. I pictured us spending the week as a couple, and over the course of the evening, I had developed my own expectations. I had heard about women from Haynlayn. During that time after dinner, I thought about our time alone in the room. I expected her to say something like, “Look, if you're horny, tell me, and if I'm in the mood we can have fun. I'll expect the same privilege, though.” I know etiquette changes world to world, sometimes home to home. In our shared room, before my sister married and moved out, we changed with our backs to each other, out of respect, and there were many times when we'd find a reason to leave the room while the other undressed. This woman, Gale, she undressed casually, as if we were husband and wife. I looked away, out of courtesy. We were talking intensely about Esner's most recent novel. We both had reached different endings, but neither of them had been pleasing. I wondered what would happen if I didn't turn away when I pulled off my slacks and climbed naked into the top bunk. I usually wear a slipon, and I remember my anxiety as I tested the parameters of our relationship. She didn't avert her eyes, and I remember thinking that maybe she was checking me out. But if she looked at all, it must have been like gazing at a familiar piece of furniture because she climbed under her covers, wished me good night, and put out the lights. It took me forever to fall asleep.

  Esner wasn't there for breakfast. His wife spoke with each of us, asking more questions about where we were from, what we liked to read, what we liked to write, all the questions I expected her husband to ask. In fact, I'd pictured her husband and me alone, drinking coffee or wine, engaged in an elaborate exchange about writing, though, truth be told, I had never imagined what topics we'd actually discuss.

  After Gale and I helped Esner's wife fold up the dining room table and set it into the back of the room, Magnus Esner casually walked in and said, “Hello, everyone.”

  I'd pictured Esner to look like someone just a few years older, an elder brother. I had not pictured this man, who looked a little like my uncle, scrawny, with well-trimmed hair and mustache, his hair growing gray. He spoke slowly, as if we might misunderstand, and he never looked any of us in the eye.

  He described his routine, how he'd have breakfast, how he'd monitor his protein intake, what kind of people he'd talk to in advance, what kind of databases he'd sign up for, how he'd plot for different contingencies. “You never know in theory,” he said, “what the reader will want to have happen. But if you can make them feel like a character will do only one thing, you can take most of your readers along with you.” He went on at length, growing more and more pedantic, talking less and less as if we were actually there. If I hadn't shaken his hand, I would have sworn this was a recording standing and speaking in front of us.

  Esner wrote in the afternoon, and roommate pairs were assigned jobs to help pay for the bandwidth we'd use once we started writing. Gale and I were assigned to work the plots of land that Esner was responsible for. Tensi joined us. I pictured her as a woman who'd sit to the side and order us about, but it was weeding time in these particular plots, and she was kneeling alongside us. She told us she'd read our submissions. “I think both of you are very talented,” she said. “But I feel like the only thing you've read are Magnus's books.”

  Gale had told me this morning that she'd purposely written a pastiche of Esner's work, that she had thought that would be the best way to get in. On her tour she was going to visit four other writers, and for each workshop, she'd done a pastiche of that writer's work. She was going to Ovid where she would see Marie Michel Rocher, considered one of the finest writers. I had been too embarrassed to say that the work of this hermaphrodite writer bored me and that all I liked were writers who wrote like Esner, especially of those heroic days when humans fought back against the Minds. Now, in the garden, I expected Gale to say something in her defense, but she kept on working. I was about to rise to tell Tensi of Gale's accomplishments, most likely because I still dreamed of sleeping with her, but Gale looked at me and I held my tongue.

  “You know, you should both write poetry. Magnus used to write poetry. He would have been a fine poet. But he didn't like the idea of being a poet and working in these fields. I think it was his poet's understanding of language that made it so he's the writer he is today, so that you and I are pulling his weeds for him.”

  Gale nodded, but I was certain she was gritting her teeth as her fingers clawed around another set of tiny roots. Haynlayners took great pride that everyone carried their own share of the work in maintaining their world. I felt a little sour, which was odd, because just a few moments before I was happy with the idea that I'd be pulling weeds for this writer I loved.

  We had more than an hour of free time until dinner. I wanted to sit in the park and watch the people, but Gale said if we did that she'd be bored with me by tomorrow. So we visited the floating cathedral. It hung in the air, right in the center of the crucifix design of Sante Fe, right where there would be zero gravity, though chameleon-coated cables actually held the structure in place so it rotated with the rest of the world and therefore kept the same perspective to the stationary observer.

  As we entered, two deacons rose from a bench of conversing deacons, echo whisperers in the vast cathedral. They wore black tunics with white crosses as well as anonymity masks. Only their irises and lips suggested their individuality. The blue-eyed one took me gently, one hand cupping my elbow, the other hand cradling my forearm. “Where would you like to go?”

  “Up front,
” Gale said.

  The floor was far enough away from the center of axis that there was some gravity here, and the deacons’ careful grasp helped smooth our steps forward so we wouldn't rise too quickly into the air.

  The deacons left us in the third pew from the altar. Gale sat in the center, and I sat next to her, not close at all if the church had been crowded, but close in the sense that I could have sat at the end of the pew. Gale did not move away from me, nor did her body stiffen as if I'd come too close. I felt comfortable now, as if a certain level of intimacy had been accepted.

  Below us, out came the sliding bit so we could kneel during prayer. I knelt just to see what it was like, and the material was organic and molded to the shape of my knees. A curved inlay came out of the pew, and I realized I could rest my forehead against it.

  Gale said, “Don't do that.”

  “Why not? It might be cool to be connected with the universe.” Which is what I'd read. You got a feeling of the vastness of space, of all we knew about orbiting stars, and planets, and meteors, and novas, all the expanse of God coming to you as you prayed.

  “The only way they could feed you all that data is through the Minds. You put your head in that, it's, well, like placing it in an electronic maw. Who knows what the Minds will eat up?”

  I wanted to lean forward and place my head in that comfortable maw just because she'd told me not to. I don't know if I was flirting with the desire to experience the universe or if I was flirting with her, that way you refuse to bow to another's will so that later your bending toward it is equivalent to the gravity of your attraction. But now the curved skullcap looked vaguely obscene. I, too, had grown up on a world that refused all contact with the Minds. Why else love the work of Magnus Esner if it wasn't to recapture that dream of human sovereignty, of a time when the universe might once have belonged to us?

  Funny. It was my father, the one who I want so much to impress that I resent him, who keeps reminding me that the whole Mind-human relationship is very complex. It's my absentee mother who thinks like Gale; it was for her that I sat back and said, “No. You're right. It probably won't be the universe.”