"Right." The thought sobered me. "Steck."
"I don't suppose you'd let a mere woman carry the pistol?"
I shook my head.
She said, "You know bullets won't go through the armor's force field."
"I know. But I want to try anyway."
She nodded, then gestured toward the door at the far end of the room. "Let's go."
Another corridor led further into Birds Home. We walked it together, my sister self and I. Part way along, she slipped her hand into mine. I didn't even know I'd been longing for that, for a little human contact in the face of so much death… but she knew.
I suppose she felt the same need. We were the same person, weren't we?
Ahead lay a third chamber, with more glass coffins. As before, we stopped to listen before entering… but this room was as silent as the first two. Wherever Steck was, she must have gone deeper into the stone reaches of Birds Home. My sister and I exchanged a look, then moved forward to the first coffin.
Urgho again — a Neut version. Hairless face and womanly breasts. Penis and testicles. And just behind the scrotal sac, delicate labial lips.
The coffin's glass was intact. The Neut Urgho was alive.
"I'll check Waggett," my female self cried. She ran, and I was right on her heels. We crossed the room and skidded to a stop beside a coffin containing a pink-skinned Neut infant. It wasn't exactly like Waggett, either the boy or girl version of him, but the Neut's face was similar, like a brother-sister.
The child's chest rose and fell with slow, healthy breathing.
"It's got your nose," I said to my female self. I didn't want to cry in front of a woman.
She didn't care. She put her hands against the coffin lid, as if she could touch our baby through the glass; and tears streamed down her face.
We agreed to leave Waggett where he was. ("He," not "it.") As far as we could tell, he was safe and well cared for inside the coffin; better to leave him there until we had settled the score with Steck.
There was yet another corridor leading forward… but before we moved on, we made a circuit of the room to check the other coffins.
Neut versions of everyone else, all alive.
Strangely, we found no Neut version of me — the coffin was missing. But there was a Neut Cappie, breathing, asleep. The Neut's body was slim like the female Cappie, but taller, beefier around the shoulders.
The face was not so bad. You could get used to a woman with that face.
"Not a bad face for a man either," my female half put in, though I hadn't said anything aloud. "Are we going to fight over him?"
"Her," I answered.
We both smiled.
"He deserves a shot at Steck too," Female-Me said. "Steck killed his male body."
"They all deserve a shot," I replied. "Urgho, Chum, Thorn… they'd all help us."
"Help us how? Throw themselves bare-handed at the armor's force field?" She shook her head. "Anyway, they don't know what's been going on. Cappie does."
I nodded, as if I agreed with her logic. Of course, Cappie couldn't help us against the force field any more than anyone else. But I wanted her here with me, to make sure she was all right, to have her support…
"To show her how manly you are when you kill Steck?" Female-Me suggested.
"Will you stop doing that?" I asked.
She pointed to Cappie's coffin. "Just break the glass."
Cappie woke groggily. When she saw what she was, she screamed.
We held her hands. After a while, the scream faded to a whimper.
"Fullin," she breathed, "I didn't choose this!" Tears streamed down her face. "I didn't make any choice! I didn't!"
"I know," my sister and I answered in unison.
"They said I'd hear a voice, 'Male, female, or both.' But I didn't get to make a decision!"
"Shh." Female Fullin and I stood on opposite sides of Cappie's coffin. We reached out together to caress Cappie's cheek.
"Why are there two of you?" Cappie asked. She looked back and forth between my sister and me. "How can you both be here at once?"
"It's hard to explain," I began… but I stopped, lifted my head, listened.
Music came playing from the entryway in front of us… soft violin music. The tune was "Don't Make Me Choose": the song Steck had played in Cypress Marsh.
Calmly she emerged from the unlit corridor — wearing Rashid's armor, but with the helmet off so she could tuck the violin under her chin. As soon as she saw us, she stopped and lowered the bow. "Well," she said, "so this is it. Commitment Hour at last. And here I can see all three choices: male, female, and both. Two Fullins and a Cappie?"
If I'd been holding the Beretta, I would have shot her without a moment's hesitation; but I was holding Cappie's hand, with the pistol once again stuck in my belt at the small of my back. Cappie's grip had tightened unconsciously when she heard the music… and rather than free myself from her, I decided to let her hold me, draw whatever strength she needed.
Now was not the time for shooting anyway. I'd never fired a gun before. Books said they were hard to aim, unless you were standing at point-blank range. Did I want to start the bullets flying with so many children in glass coffins between me and Steck?
And Steck didn't know I had the Beretta with me. If I shot now and missed, I'd lose the element of surprise. Better to wait until my target was closer.
Female-Me nodded silent agreement with my decision. She turned toward Steck. "So your hands are steady enough to play," she said, "after killing a hundred children in cold blood."
"I didn't do anything that wouldn't have happened anyway," Steck answered. "You've seen the other rooms: male, female, and Neut versions of every child in Tober Cove. Think about what happens when you Commit. You, Fullin," she pointed toward me with the violin bow, "let's say you Commit male. What happens to your female half?" Steck turned to my sister self. "What happens to you… my pretty baby girl?"
She waited for us to answer: anyone, Male-Me, Female-Me, Neut-Cappie. Finally, it was my sister who spoke. "If he chose male, I suppose I never would have left my coffin."
"Right," Steck said grimly. "Committing to one version of yourself means killing the other two. Killing. I've been to the lab next door — there are machines getting ready to render the rejected bodies down to basic nutrients. Feed for the other bodies.
"If I hadn't intervened," Steck went on, "one of you two Fullins would be dead by now. You're both healthy, you both could live long lives, but the machines would dispassionately stop one of your hearts. That's the dirty secret of Birds Home. That's how much the gods of Tober Cove really love you."
Cappie let go of my hand. Slowly, deliberately, she climbed out of the coffin and picked up a long glass splinter from the litter that had fallen to the floor. She held the splinter like a knife. "Steck, I'd rather believe in the gods than you."
"Careful with that," Steck pointed to the sliver. "If you attack me while I'm in this armor, you'll burn your hands again. And this time, you've run out of replacement selves."
"I never had any replacement selves," Cappie said. "I'm a single person, that's all."
"Like Fullin?" Steck asked, pointing the violin bow toward me. "Or the other Fullin?" Steck shook her head. "Cappie, I thought the same as you once. I thought the gods could work miracles. And every summer solstice, Master Crow waved his wings to reshape my body by magic — boy shimmering into girl, girl shimmering into boy. But then I was exiled. I went to the friendless South, where freaks get beaten, or raped, or shunned to the point of starvation. It was sheer luck that I stumbled into an enclave of scientists who were willing to feed me and teach me what they knew in exchange for studying my anatomy. Eventually, word about me spread from the enclave to the Science-Lord… and by the time Rashid came to see the astounding hermaphrodite for himself, I'd learned enough about science that I didn't believe in magic anymore. Or gods."