They stared at each other in silence across the bed. Then: “I’m sorry,” Shereen said.
“No, I’m–”
Outside a mosque was calling the faithful to prayer; green cockatoos sang to each other across the tall spindly trees; a group of children ran down the corridor chasing a ball; inside the room it was dark; and nothing, for the moment, was resolved.
It was, essentially, a trade dispute.
Though what is trade if not religion, and what is religion if not commerce? It was, perhaps, first and foremost about prestige.
Old tensions rose to the lunar surface…
The Houses were never so crass as to engage in open warfare. A century earlier the so-called Format Wars erupted in Polyport. Who is to say a Three-times-Three is the perfect format, for instance, for a human network? It is linked on a grid. A single unit◦– a One-times-One◦– can operate independently when need be, at normal human capacity, but it can also link with two of its sisters, forming a One-times-Three linear triple processor. Those Trips can then link vertically and horizontally to form a grid, a perfect◦– so they say◦– unit, a true Sisterhood.
Haifa al-Sahara, or rather the Three-times-Three Sisterhood that had once contained the human once known by that name, argued for the perfection of the form. But others had ambition, and no such faith in the purity of her numbers.
The first Eight-times-Eight had founded the House of Domicile, and others soon followed. The Sisters of the House of Mirth argued the form was too cumbersome, processing ponderous, optimal operations sluggish at best.
And yet the Eight-times-Eights flourished, and the House of Domicile soon encompassed five Sisterhoods, of which it was said that they sometimes joined, in a grid of Five-times-Eight-times-Eight, a massive processing mind occupying some four stories of real estate, only one of which was above ground.
Obviously, the House of Domicile proclaimed its own superiority, and that◦– naturally◦– rankled with the House of Mirth, as the oldest and◦– up to that time◦– strongest of the newly-risen Houses and Sisterhoods. Then came the Sisterhoods of Odd, the Five-times-Sixes of the House of Forgetting, asymmetrical and strange, and they allied themselves with the House of Domicile’s Eight-times-Eights.
Two factions, then: the three houses of the Three-times-Threes, versus the other two houses and their multiplicity of Sisterhoods.
A century back, the rise of the Houses led to conflicts both within and without; over a period of some twenty years the Houses consolidated, accumulated followers and adherents, and finally rested in an uneasy peace.
That peace was now in danger of breaking, and thus unsettling Titanic society as a whole.
The Houses, therefore, sought a compromise…
It was late at night, in Shereen’s apartment. That special silence that comes with deep night, when even the birds sleep. When I-loops all across and down the city processed slowly, neural networks embedded in a grey mass within a bone skull, billions of neurons firing together into the illusion of an “I”, a “me”, all sinking, momentarily, into a dream or dreamless state, the one akin to hallucination, the other to death.
They had made love; the bedsheets clung to their skin with the sweat. A single candle burned on Shereen’s windowsill. Aliyah said, “The old cell, the One-times-One: her health is better.”
“I see.”
“You are happy?”
Shereen pulled herself up, the light from the candle threw shadows on the wall. “I don’t want you to become one of them,” she said. The words cost her everything. Getting them out at last felt like a revelation. Aliyah laughed, softly. “Do you think I don’t know?”
“Then why do you do it? Do you not love me?”
“You know I do.”
“Then why?”
“Because I want to. I need to. Because there is more to life than you or me. I want to be a part of something bigger than either of us.”
“But why?” all the pain inside her came out in that voice.
“I don’t know why,” Aliyah said, but gently. That night she was very gentle, even her love-making was filled with care; it contrasted with Shereen’s urgency. “I just know.”
“But they will not take you. Not the Three-times-Threes. Not when they have all their parts–”
“Yes–”
“What?” Shereen said◦– demanded. Suspicion, hurt, in her eyes.
“I have been going to the House of Domicile,” Aliyah said quietly.
“When?” Shereen’s voice, too, was low. “I did not see you there.”
“I know. I went when you were not working. I did not want to upset you.”
“And now?”
“You’re upset. We can talk about it in the morning.”
“We can talk about it now.”
Aliyah sighed.
“Why have you been going to the House of Domicile?” That suspicion, again. “You want to join another Sisterhood?”
“Not… exactly.”
“Then what? I don’t–”
“Don’t you?”
It was so quiet in the room. The candle fluttered in invisible wind from outside. “They won’t,” Shereen said. “They can’t.”
Aliyah moved to her; Shereen moved away. “Don’t,” she said.
“They can. We can. Shereen–”
“Don’t!”
“It is better that I do this. It is better than conflict. Better than war. We cannot afford it, not again, not so soon. Not the city, not the world. The Houses have too much power, now.”
“It should never have come to that.”
“What would you have instead? Others?”
“People,” Shereen said.
“Oh, grow up, Shereen.” She made as if to push back a lock of hair, then found that, of course, it wasn’t there. There was something innocent, human, about that gesture. At that moment Shereen couldn’t help but love her very much. “And we are people, too.”
“Since when is it we?” Shereen said; but she sounded defeated. “When?” she said.
“Soon.”
“And they agree? Both of them?”
“They agree to try.”
“We would not see each other.”
“No.”
“Would you even know who I was?”
“Of course I would. We would. You would always live on, Shereen. In my◦– in our◦– memory. Even when my body and yours are back in the ground, fertilisers of new life in the gardens.”
“Trust you to bring the conversation back to death, and fertiliser?” Shereen tried to laugh; it came out choked. “Were you always so obsessed with death?”
“Not with death but with not dying,” Aliyah said; her body shook, and it took Shereen a moment to realise she was crying.
“Come here,” she said, awkwardly. Aliyah came to her and nestled in Shereen’s arms. Shereen could feel her heart beating, inside the fragile, human frame of her. “Is it really so bad?” she said, but even as she spoke, she knew it was futile; that Aliyah had already decided, decided long ago, perhaps; and that this was simply her choosing of a time to finally say goodbye.
The Initiation and the end of Aliyah’s Novitiate came some two weeks later, at a private ceremony in the House of Forgetting, which was historically the least affiliated◦– and the weakest◦– of the Houses. A Three-times-Three from the House of Mirth was there, and an Eight-times-Eight from the House of Domicile. And there, in between them, was Aliyah◦– dressed in a plain white shift, her head unscarfed and bare, the fine blue veins of filaments running underneath her translucent skin.
Shereen, too, was there◦– not as a guest, but unobtrusive, cleaning. She saw the Sisterhoods meet, half-heard as they conversed, aware of the high-bandwidth transfer of data around her, and the half-understood words, and subtle signals of physical signs. She daren’t watch too much, there was something in her eyes, it must have been the chemicals in the new cleaning fluid, its smell made it hard for her to breathe.