“Not if their mother’s alive!” a young man interjected. His friends broke into fits of mirth; apparently the idea remained so surreal to them that they couldn’t treat it as anything but a joke.
The next question was directed to Amanda, and again, the questioner was a woman. “Why are you defending the elimination of an entire sex?” she demanded angrily. “Is my co not a person to you? My father? My future son?”
Amanda said, “This work has barely begun. That we haven’t had a chance to demonstrate a male birth doesn’t mean such a thing is impossible.”
“But what need will there be for men? Why would anyone give birth to a son, when he’ll consume his share of the entitlement for nothing?”
“That’s your way of thinking, not mine,” Amanda replied stiffly. “I believe this research should continue until we learn exactly what kinds of reproduction are possible. That’s all. I’m not calling for any method—new or old—to be imposed on anyone.”
“And you can promise that will never happen, can you?” the woman asked sarcastically. “What if some future Council decides to turn half the farms over to another use? If we all had just one child—one girl—we could halve the size of the crop and still live comfortably.”
Amanda was bewildered. “We could spend a whole evening imagining the terrible things a future Council might do,” she said. “But do we really have to shy away from identifying our choices, out of fear that someone, someday might abuse that knowledge?”
Giusta took two more questions, but they were both phrased so abusively that she decided to call an end to the meeting. As Tamara and Livio made their way toward the exit, Tamara saw a scuffle break out near the front of the hall. Only a few people were actually grappling with each other, but they were surrounded by two much larger groups exchanging taunts.
“You want to vote for genocide?” a man shouted suddenly, brandishing a knife. A second man beside him seized his wrist and they struggled for a moment, then the knife floated away, out of reach of both of them. Tamara glanced anxiously at Livio; he was trying to move along the rope, but someone ahead of them had stopped to watch the brawling.
“Do you want to go around?” he asked her. Other people had already started leaving the rope, pushing off into the empty space above, apparently in the hope that some combination of the hall’s weak gravity and a wall-bounce or two would deliver them neatly to the exit.
“I don’t think so,” Tamara replied. Most people hadn’t practiced these kinds of maneuvers since childhood; she watched as two women collided in mid-air and began screaming abuse at each other. The hall could have done with a dozen more ropes to make the whole volume traversable—but there still would have been a crush at the doorway when the extra routes all converged again.
“They shouldn’t have packed the hall like this,” Livio complained. “It’s a miracle nobody’s passed out from hyperthermia.”
When they finally reached the exit they found people lingering outside, apparently just for the pleasure of shouting at each other. Further from the hall they were passed by two groups of youths engaged in running skirmishes, pummeling each other as they bounced off the walls of the corridor.
Tamara was shaken, but she tried to keep everything in perspective. Nobody could contemplate an upheaval like this with perfect equanimity; just raising the subject was always going to create some bitter divisions. But only a few people had turned violent. And the last thing she wanted to do was vote down the research for the sake of a quiet life.
“It’s a shock to hear it put so starkly,” she admitted. Even after days of rumors and third-hand accounts, it had taken Amanda’s testimony to make the results real to her. “But no one would be forced to use this method. Who can complain about being offered a new choice?”
“No one,” Livio replied. “Until a couple want two different things.”
His words gave Tamara pause, but she pressed ahead. “Have you decided how you’ll vote?” she asked.
“For the research to continue,” he said. “And you?”
“The same.” Tamara was relieved that he hadn’t been intimidated by the turmoil. “You’re not worried that it might cause conflict?”
“Of course it will cause conflict,” Livio said. “But if they shut down the research now, that would lead to just as much violence. And all the same experiments would be carried out in the end—in secret, probably less safely. There is no perfect solution to this mess.”
This mess? Tamara continued along the rope in silence for a while, but she couldn’t leave things there.
“What would you say if I wanted to have a child this way?” she asked him.
Livio didn’t need to consider his answer—but then, he must have known for days that he’d be facing this question eventually. “I’d say you’re entitled to do what you wish with your body.”
“So you’d have no problem with it?”
He turned to her. “You’re not my property, Tamara. But you’re not my flesh either. We made an agreement for our mutual benefit, but if one of us reneges on that agreement, it’s void. I’m not going to help you raise a child I played no part in creating—and I’m certainly not going to pass my entitlement on to any such child. What I want is a co-stead who will give me two children of my own. If you can’t accept that prospect any more, our obligations to each other are over.”
When Tamara arrived in the observatory’s office, Ada was looking through a sheaf of papers. “Have you seen these?” she asked, holding up one sheet.
“No.” Tamara took it.
“It’s just a copy,” Ada explained. “But Carla signed a digest of the whole thing—with a statement saying she found it in Carlo’s apartment.”
Tamara read the first sheet, then asked for the rest. It was an autopsy report on two arborines: a mother and her child, one of the births induced by the light players. The mother’s body had been found to contain a second blastula, hidden beneath the skin of her chest—grossly malformed, but apparently still growing at the time she’d been euthanised, five days after the birth. The child, the daughter, had abnormal structures in her brain and her gut, and adhesions throughout her malleable tissues.
“So much for the miracle of light,” Ada said glumly.
“Amanda didn’t mention any of this.” Tamara was confused. “I thought all the arborines were sent back to the forest.”
“Three mothers and their children did go back. But apparently Amanda hasn’t been telling us about the fourth one.”
Tamara re-read the report. “How do we know this isn’t a forgery?”
“I was suspicious too,” Ada admitted. “But I checked the digest.”
Tamara hummed impatiently. “I meant, what if someone planted a forgery in the apartment for Carla to find?”
“You’d think she’d know her own co’s writing,” Ada reasoned.
“Why? Tamaro never saw any of my work notes.”
“And look how that turned out,” Ada joked.
“I’m serious!” Tamara protested. “They lived apart most of the time; she might not be the best person to authenticate this.”
Ada spread her arms. “Who would you prefer? Amanda claims it’s not Carlo’s writing, but if she lied about the fourth arborine—”
“And I suppose Tosco says it looks authentic?”
“Yes. All right, he’s obviously biased,” Ada conceded. “Still, that’s two witnesses against one.”