Filter House (11 page)

“Dirt?”

“That’s what I’m thinkin, Kayley, but I hate to have to make it from scratch. Sludges from the bottom,” she said, as if I had suggested it. “That’s a possibility, but…” She continued the conversation without me, silently. I left the sword shards on her workbench and walked out.

Tata’s curtain was now in place. Its reddish tresses still stirred, settling themselves in their optimal array, fluffing up over their insulating air pockets. Not long since she’d shut herself in, then.

Dad was gone from the kitchen. I figured he was probably in his room, behind his curtain, too. I had learned on the ship coming out here to join him that in cramped off-Earth accommodations the right to privacy deserved and got the utmost respect. In other words, I could have gone to him. He would have interrupted whatever he was doing. But then he’d want to know what was wrong. It would turn out to be a very big deal. I didn’t like very big deals.

I punched myself a pbj on white and went off to my room to do some school. I was way ahead for the semester. Only another worlday’s worth of program left. Maybe Tata could do something about that.

After I finished a section on Latter Day Lacanians, ortho and heretic, I switched to a book I’d pirated from Penny. It was about strong-limbed athletes, a man and a woman. The woman wanted to squeeze the man. The man wanted to be squeezed, but he didn’t like the
way
he wanted it. He spent a lot of time trying to determine if the problem was with him, or the woman, or if it was the result of well-meaning interference from his coach. In between his bouts of reflection there was some pretty hot sex. I stayed up reading and masturbating till midnight.

Usually, Tata got me up. But not this Morning. I woke up because I was hungry. The swimming clock-faces on my desk’s default read nine-thirty-three. I had to hurry if I wanted breakfast.

The kitchen program was pretty strict. The idea was to keep the scattered reef-builders on the same planet-wide circadians, disregarding New Bahama’s five-Day rotation. Less mental isolation. More likelihood of a healthy global culture developing later on. So meals were on a schedule. Snacks I could always have, but I really didn’t feel like another pbj. And I hated gorp, which was the only other thing there would be till lunch if I didn’t make it in time.

I showered quickly, with only the most cursory of examinations. Still no pubic hair, breast development, enlarged or parted labia. Any year now, they’d be showing up.

I made it to the kitchen before ten and was rewarded with a choice of grits and kippers or yogurt and granola (gorp without even the saving grace of chocolate). “Who programmed this thing?” I muttered, punching for the gruel and fish-bacon as the lesser of two evils. I made the grits into a sort of white, starchy pudding by entering Dad’s sugar codes along with my own. He wouldn’t mind; he never used up his share anyway. I forced down the kippers by closing my eyes and visualizing the charts from med class: in North American historical studies, early onset of puberty correlated directly with increased protein consumption. I chewed as quickly as I could and swallowed, determined not to hold back my sexual maturity by one unnecessary moment.

I dumped my dishes in the tub for Tata to deal with. It was empty, nothing from Penny or Dad, so she had to be up. I wondered where. I wondered if she was still mad at me. Why else hadn’t she got me up?

She was in her room, curtain back. She smiled as I came in. No, she wasn’t mad. But she wasn’t happy, either. She sat half-foetal on her bed, black, hairless curves rich with captive light. Delicate indentations, the wells for her skin’s funiculi, formed swirling, tattoo-like patterns, subtly shining with deeply embedded drops of protective fluids. Her smooth head rested sideways on one knee.

On their Habs and in Quarters, maggies supposedly went naked, or maybe they wore jewelry or a hat. The extra layer of fat made them uncomfortable in clothes. Their nudity made us equally uncomfortable. In our place, Tata wore a sort of super-loin-cloth, which came up over the front of her long breasts and was held in place by a knotted strip of elastic. This one was red.

I signed. Signs are better than words for expressing all sorts of concepts, and I’d gotten pretty good by this time. I told her something like, “Tata’s sadness equals/creates the sadness of Kayley. Is Tata’s sadness also equivalent to/the result of Kayley’s imbalanced behavior? This would lead to even further loss of Kayley’s balance and cool, but knowledge is the first step towards the retrieval of alignment.” Only it didn’t take that long or sound that pompous and detached.

She raised her head and pointed at me with her chin (the only polite way to point at some
one,
as opposed to some
thing),
then twisted it to show that I should sit next to her, on the bed.

I only knew how to make words with my hands. Tata signed with her whole, huge, wonderful body. She spoke like water, flowing from one phrase to the next by the path of least resistance. She uncurled, and that meant her sadness was not so heavy she couldn’t leave it behind to be fully present with a friend. Her right hand swept aside the chopping, stabbing motion of her left—the sword. She barely bent to notice the imaginary sword fall to the floor, then casually rubbed it out with one eloquent toe. It was not worth the bother of classifying it as unworthy.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her, slowly. Sometimes I felt too awkward to use anything except maggie “phonemes,” laboriously spelling out English words. “What can I do to help?” She sat still and silent for so long I tried again. “Can Kayley aid Tata in any way to receive the gifts of her highest heavenly head?”

“Stay close,” signed Tata. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me alone with—anyone else.” She pulled me closer to her, and I nestled against the soft, warm folds of flesh exposed by her loin-cloth.

We were like that when my Dad came in. He spoke. He had never learned to sign. He said, “We have to talk.” He looked at me. “About my plan for the next worlday.”

“Yes,” said Tata.

“In my office.”

“Okay. Come on, Kayley.” She stood, still holding me close to her side.

“Kayley can stay here.”

“No. She needs to be with me.”

Silence. Even Dad must have heard the lie. “I see,” he said. “All right.” He turned and left the room. We followed.

Dad grew up on an old tube, in orbit around Saturn. He was always shouldering his way through imaginary crowds, eyes and ears open for the first signs of a fight or a panic. Even in middle age, even flight years from anyone else’s turf, he walked like a bangboy on patrol. He stopped in front of his door and automatically looked both ways down the dim corridor. The glow from the glamp showed his short, blond hair swinging around his head, his round, blue eyes narrowing to sweep the air for trouble spots. Then he pulled the curtain, which parted for him, and we went in.

Dad’s room wasn’t quite as big as Penny’s. It could have been twice the size and still it would have seemed too small, because of all the stuff. Three walls full of holoscreens, with crates of 2-D transparencies ready for the hull display, stacked alongside them. His glass kiln against the outer wall. And the rows and rows of shelves filled with bottles, bowls, balls, and figurines. In the midst of this maze of fragility was his desk. Somewhere, too, he had a bed, though I think he almost always slept with Penny.

He took Tata to one wall and showed her the latest maps, which looked nothing like the Nassea I saw outside the port. These were bright, abstract topos, with clouds of yellow, golden-orange, and crimson to show where different varieties of coral buds had been sown. Projected plantings for Dad’s station were turquoise, green, and aquamarine. All these colors dappled the highest peaks, warm ones at the center, cooling as they reached the upper edges of the display. Tata placed one black finger in a valley near the map’s bottom. “Quarters.”

Dad nodded.

“It will be far to the new sites. Too far for skins.”

My father shook his head impatiently. “That’s not what my figures say. You’re capable of two Days work and travel in a skin.”

“Oh, no. I don’t think so…or, perhaps. But capable means only that it can be done. Not that it should. We are capable of many things which nevertheless it is better to refrain from doing.”

“Fine. You look at the topos. Come up with a more efficient array and I’ll use it, Tata. Over here.” Dad led her off through the shelves to his desktop. She invited me along with her eyes, but I stayed near the wall, sure I would be bored by the rest of the discussion. Why would she need me to stay
that
close?

A familiar configuration caught the corner of my eye. It was a face—mine. I moved toward it. Not all the holos were maps, charts, graphs, and grids. There I was, in all my pre-adolescent splendor. And there were images of Mom, my real mom. She looked pretty, not crazy at all. The way she used to be. Next to her were pictures of other women. Probably more former wives. Nobody I knew.

Then something very interesting: interior shots of a maggie Hab. I was as familiar as anyone with their exteriors. The twisted, drooping silver loops were a design cliché. I had a pair of earrings shaped like that. But here were walkways, rising unevenly out of training pools, past racks of skins, golden, brown, auburn, and black. Here was a mat full of necklaces: light, titanium beads strung with bone fragments and flat, rough-textured air-vine seeds. Smooth black fingers were frozen in the act of lifting a strand for the viewer to examine. I wondered if I could pirate the book these stills came from. Or maybe I could even just ask for it.

There were several more. One, which showed a small maggie, a toddler of perhaps two or three Years, had a caption in alpha below the image. I struggled to decipher it. Something about the skin growing on his scalp and neck, still attached, and how carefully it needed to be groomed to prevent painful over-stimulation. No mention, as far as I could see, of anyone doing so on purpose.

That made me wonder how old the book was. It had to have been written pretty soon after the rebellion, before the maggies decided to exclude us from their Habs. Or maybe it pre-dated that. The whole thing might be in alpha. That’d be a challenge to read. Anyway, it’d keep me busy till I got some more school.

I decided to find Dad and tell him it would be a truly enlarging experience for me to get a copy of this maggie book. I tried to home in on him by listening for voices, but there were none. The ventilators sighed. The glass glittered silently as I passed up and down the shining paths.

“I can’t.” That was my father, very quiet, very close. They must be just on the other side of this set of shelves, to my left. “I can’t,” he said again. I’d never heard him like this. He sounded small and helpless. “I can’t.”

“I know.” Tata’s voice. “I’ll go tomorrow, as soon as my skin is ready. And I’ll ask about this imbalance, about our paths, just to be sure, but—”

“I love you,” he said, interrupting her, and he sounded more familiar now: bitter, and tired. “And I can feel it, I can tell what’s going to happen next, and I mustn’t do that with you, I
mustn’t
hurt you the way I want to hurt you,
but I can’t—”

I realized that I was eavesdropping and jerked back, bumping two bowls together on a shelf. They chimed, a high, perfect hum that hung on the air after my father’s voice choked to a stop.

“Kayley?” Tata called softly under the ringing glass.

“Coming.” I turned a corner and there they were, facing each other and looking anywhere but in each other’s faces. “Dad, can I borrow—”

“Why the hell not?” he said. “Sure.” He brushed past me and I started to follow him.

“No,” said Tata. She didn’t sign. “This way. Where were you? I thought you were going to stay with me.” She headed in the opposite direction, which turned out to be a shortcut to the door.

She took me to her room and pulled the curtain closed. I sat on her bed, waiting for her to ask me what I’d heard. But instead she turned to her skin, not brushing it but checking the ties that held it in place, loosening them to accommodate its growing fullness.

In dormancy, the skin’s sluggish circulatory system accumulated an ever-swelling supply of hyper-oxygenated blood. Its nerve sheaths, worn by long contact, regenerated themselves. Tata held the back of one hand close to the skin’s underside. I was too far from her to see it happen, but she had shown me before how the thin white funiculi erected themselves, anticipating connection with her wells. Like the curtains, they responded to pheromonal cues.

I couldn’t tell from Tata’s reaction if the response was satisfactory. Her face was smooth, her black body blank. When she spoke to me, she kept using words. “Kayley, in the Morning I will need to return to Quarters. For the balance of my highest head.”

I tried not to sulk. She’d just gotten back, and she was going out again. “Why?”

“I must…consult.”

“Oh.” I felt stupid. Of course the work crews had to decide what to do about the new, more distant sites. That was what I’d overheard—wasn’t it? I asked Tata if it was really bad to be out in a skin for Days. She looked at me blankly for a moment, then averted her eyes and answered.

“The elders say that it becomes a strain. We get ‘tipsy’; our heads unbalance easily, going so long without enough oxygen, and we drop things. A tingling that grows painful, or numbness…. There is some compensation: danger pay, and the contract will be shortened if we take that path.” When the contract ended Tata would leave. Unless my Dad or Penny purchased a permanent agreement.