AUDIO
Our two stories from last week deal, obviously, with a future so far ahead of us that technologies have changed enormously. Men and women seem at first glance to have changed as well.
“On the Orion Line” by Stephen Baxter
Set thousands of years in the future, by a British author known for hard SF, this story is part of his “Destiny’s Children” cycle. It has the trappings of space opera – a war in space against aliens fought bravely by heroic “sailors.”
Unlike space operas of old, the story reflects increasing anxiety about the future of humankind as well as what we now know about the universe itself.Changes in society are embodied in the presence of (shaven-headed) women combatants, who swear, fight, and die alongside men. A “tough guy” ethic dominates men and women sailors alike
·I caught Halle's eye. She grinned at me. She pointed at the Captain, closed her fist and made a pumping movement.
[. . . .]
·She [Jeru] winked at me. 'Maybe we can do a little damage to the Ghosts before we die, tar. What do you think?' I grinned. 'Yes, sir.'
Women in this future are almost indistinguishable from men except for their sexual function: shortly after the destruction of the Brightly, the narrator sees
a pair of legs - just that. The rest of the body must have been chopped away, gone drifting off with the rest of the debris from Brightly. But I recognised those legs, from a garish pink stripe on the sole of the right boot. That had been Halle. She was the only girl I had ever screwed, I thought - and more than likely, given the situation, the only girl I ever would get to screw.
Case, the young tar (“sailor”), is only fifteen, and though he did not choose to join the war effort -- he tells Jeru he was drafted, he feels he is doing something “useful” by being in the war. He is modest and self-effacing. When his ship is destroyed and the part he is in seals itself off into a life boat of sorts he reflects:
I had survived through sheer blind chance, through being in the right place when the walls came down: if the Captain had been close, her duty would have been to pull me out of the way and take my place. It isn't a question of human values but of economics: a lot more is invested in the training and experience of a Captain Teid – or a Pael – than in me.
In other words, he sees himself as expendable. He has been thoroughly indoctrinated – as the academician Pael says, “You people are monsters…. Even such a child as this. You embrace death.”
As in space opera, there are evil aliens to be destroyed – but as we look more closely, we realize they are far from evil and perhaps we question the role of humanity in the cosmos as we presently question the role of the western powers in our own time and place.
Young Case is a believable and useful narrator. His youth and lack of education give Pael the chance to educate not only Case but the reader in this, the “hardest”—most scientifically technical—of the SF we have read to date. Pael describes their enemy the Ghosts as a non-competitive species who
“seem to be motivated – not by expansion and the acquisition of territory for its own sake, as we are – but by a desire to understand the fine-tuning of the universe. Why are we here? You see, young tar, there is only a narrow range of the constants of physics within which life of any sort is possible. We think the Ghosts are studying this question by pushing at the boundaries – by tinkering with the laws which sustain and contain us all.”
This makes the situation complex: in spite of their peacefulness and admirable desire for knowledge, the Ghosts might become a danger to life in the universe.
Indeed the Ghosts seem to embody human inquisitiveness, our desire to open every possible Pandora’s box and eat every piece of forbidden fruit. Contemporary physics has reached a state where some scientists fear that human “tinkering” could in fact end the universe: “Already, particle accelerators can, inside a very small area, generate heat and pressure conditions approaching those of the original Big Bang […which] could have a number of unintended consequences. ….[E]xtreme conditions inside a giant particle accelerator might locally warp the fabric of space itself, creating a bubble of altered reality that would expand outward in all directions at the speed of light and destroy our planet, our solar system, and eventually everything in the universe.”
In the future history revealed in this story, we learn that the Ghosts were not always the enemy and the reason why they are is not related to their inquisitiveness. The two species had lived without conflict for millennia. The real cause of the war according to Jeru, the representative from the Commission for Historical Truth, is the necessity for human expansion into more and more of the galaxy, expansion that went on unimpeded until a thousand years before the start of the story. Humanity is determined not only to survive but to conquer as suggested in the name of the ship Case ends up on at the end of the story: The Dominance of Primates. Jeru personifies the expansionist ethic when she kills a ghost, saying: "It was in our way. That is sufficient reason for destroying it.” Though the Ghosts do not want to fight, they are “in the way” of human expansion. Jeru also reveals that the stalling of expansion is in itself dangerous for humanity: "We are already choking. There have already been wars, young Case: humans fighting humans, as the inner systems starve. All the Ghosts have to do is wait for us to destroy ourselves.” Overpopulation, seen today as a danger for the world at large, is now extrapolated from our present world and introduced into the galaxy.
When Case and Jeru attack the Ghost nursery, the hand-to-hand combat between Ghost and human and the destruction of the Ghost babies is described in grisly detail, though Case says that because of his training, he feels no empathy: “I felt an unreasonable loathing rise up in me. Maybe you could think of them as a family banding together to protect their young. I didn't care; a lifetime's carefully designed hatred isn't thrown off so easily. I went at my work with a will.” Still, humane impulses rise up and disturb him: “I tried not to think about whatever emotions churned within those silvered carapaces, what despairing debates might chatter on invisible wavelengths. I was, after all, trying to complete a mission.” Though he still possesses some humanity, he has been well-trained.
Ironically, having destroyed the young in the Ghost nursery, both Jeru and Pael give their lives in order to save the young boy Case. Their brief lives also burn brightly: “we should preserve the young,” the academician says, in spite of all his negative criticism of humanity, opting as the Ghosts did to try to save a child of his own species -- as he pushes Case’s solar-sailed craft away from the Ghost ship and goes to his death in the explosion of the Ghost’s fortress star. Case’s humble evaluation of his own worth proves inaccurate.
He is undeterred by his brush with death and signs up for more battle, back in the old macho world of combat, running
the gauntlet of the crew - 'You're supposed to be dead, I impounded your back pay and slept with your mother already' – and was greeted by what seems to be the universal gesture of recognition of one tar to another, the clenched fist pumping up and down around an imaginary penis.
A hero who has brought back firsthand intelligence about the Ghosts, he is offered reprieve from the fighting but cannot imagine anything else. He chooses to lead a short heroic life, which he is willing to give for humanity:
I remembered how Jeru and Pael had argued. It had been unwelcome perspective, for me. I was in a war that had nothing to do with me, trapped by what Jeru had called the logic of history. But then, I bet that's been true of most of humanity through our long and bloody history. All you can do is live your life, and grasp your moment in the light – and stand by your comrades.
In some ways, he is a young victim of a social system that gave him no choice. In order for primates to dominate many brief lives must burn brightly.
The story reflects our present and past society – its materialistic expansionism and its wars, its sacrifice of young people, as well as our fears of present and future manipulation of minds, hearts, and the universe itself.
“Little Faces” by Vonda N. McIntyre
Although both stories for last week were set in an unimaginably far future among space-faring human beings, "Little Faces" is profoundly different from the world of "On the Orion Line." There are no trained macho warriors here. Aliens live in symbiotic relationship with humans, both species obeying their desire for increase of knowledge. Not everything in this story is peaceful, however.
In this sensual, equally violent story, we are confronted from the beginning by a series of differences in the human body itself and human reproductive methods. We realize quickly that the two women in bed together each have “companions” growing out of their bellies, the “little faces” of the title. But these are ferocious little faces, and Seyyan’s primary companion has just killed Yalnis’s companion, Zorargul. As the story unfolds the “backgrounded” information becomes clearer. Companions are fierce and sometimes bloodthirsty – “glaring at each other and gnashing their teeth in a great show” -- and anxious to give sexual pleasure to the women who contain them. Male primates in this future have been reduced to the essential qualities that differentiate them from female. Robbed of their dangerous mobility, they cannot leave. The extent of their consciousness is unknown, but it seems rather rudimentary: “They felt no sympathy for her loss, no grief for Zorargul, only the consciousness of opportunity. She felt a moment of contempt for the quartet, each member jostling for primacy.” There is, for once, no question about who is in charge.
But this change, evolutionary or engineered, does not solve all human problems. Yalnis is a young woman of many thousands of years with twenty-five of them awake, while many of the other women she knows number their years in the millions. During this time, she has received five companions from five lovers and is ready for her sixth from Seyyan, a woman of legendary repute. But a terrible misunderstanding seems to take place and her primary companion Zorargul is killed:
"'I thought you wanted me,' […] [Seyyan] said. "You welcomed me—invited me—took me to your bed—'
"Yalnis shook her head, though it was true. 'Not for this,' she whispered.
"'It didn't even fight,' Seyyan said, dismissing Zorargul's remains with a quick gesture. ’It wasn't worthy of its place with you.'
"'Who are you to decide that?'
"'I didn't,' Seyyan said. 'It's the way of companions.'”
The possibility is raised here that perhaps Yalnis is too young and inexperienced to understand. For Seyyan insinuates that the murder of one companion by another is not unprecedented and tries, as abusers often do, to put the blame on Yalnis:
"'What did you think would happen,' she said, anger replacing the confusion in her tone, 'when you announced the launch of a daughter? What do you think everyone is coming for? I was just lucky enough to be first. Or unfortunate enough.'”
We do not know yet what “launch of a daughter means.”
Another difference is the nature of the ship Yalnis lives in. We know there is a close connection between Yalnis and the ship as “[t]he ship, responding to Yalnis' wishes, began to re-absorb the nest into the floor" when Yalnis tells Seyyan to leave. But we may assume this is a technological connection, that the ship may be a form of artificial intelligence.
We learn that “[w]ith five companions, [...] [Yalnis] felt mature enough, wealthy enough, to launch a daughter with a decent, even lavish, settlement. After that, she could grant her ship's need—and her own desire—to set out on adventures and explorations.” This ship has needs! When Yalnis thanks the ship for a service and the ship replies, “True,“ we know that it is a conscious being. That the ship responds with a binary “true” or “false” instead of “yes” or “no” hints at their differences in thought processes. But in spite of differences “[i]ts decisions often pleased her and anticipated her wishes. Strange, for ships and people seldom conversed. When they tried, the interaction too easily deteriorated into misunderstanding. Their consciousnesses were of different types, different evolutionary lineages.” Thus the two species, ship and human, live together with the constant risk of misunderstanding, similar to that which can occur –and here already has occurred-- among human beings.
Another profound difference from our own times involves the transmission of memory. The companions contain their originators’ memories which they pass on to the women they are part of and which remain accessible as long as they live. Yalnis’ former lover Zorar, “much older than Yalnis, had given her the gift of her own long life of journeys and observations. They brought her the birth of stars and worlds, the energy storm of a boomerang loop around a black hole, skirting the engulfing doom of its event horizon.” But once Zorargul is dead, “[a]ll Yalnis had left were her memories of the memories, dissolving shadows of the gift. All the memories left in Zorargul had been wiped out by death.”
It is a frequent complaint about the young that they never listen to the advice of their elders. This hasn’t changed. Zorar says: "You young ones always have to find out everything for yourselves." We come to see Yalnis’s immaturity and are educated along with her. She had not yet accessed all Zorar’s memories, saving some for later, and now it is too late. Had she but accessed all the memories, Zorar tells her, she might never have undertaken a liaison with Seyyan, for Seyyan has a history of violence which Yalnis didn’t know. She had left Zorar’s primary companion “paralyzed. Impotent” and Zorar deeply scarred.
Older and wiser, Zorar makes it clear to Yalnis what she needed to know earlier: Zorargul’s murder was not her fault as Seyyan (“You know this was what you wanted. I'm what you wanted.”) tried to make her believe. Zorar also challenges Yalnis to make Seyyan’s deeds public: ”You confessed the death of Zorargul, as if it were your fault. Do you believe Seyyan, that you deceived her? Are you outraged enough to accuse her, instead of yourself?"
This is a difficult step for Yalnis to take partly because the isolated nature of human culture now makes it even more difficult to coexist, even briefly, with other people. When Yalnis openly challenges Seyyan and reveals her wrongdoing to the others “[s]he had never been among so many people for so long, and she had never been in such a confrontation.“ Seyyan attempts to coerce the ships and people around her, threatening the safety of all. It takes the other women and their ships a dangerously long time to turn against her — perhaps their isolation from each other has made them less wary than they ought to be and perhaps Yalnis is not the only naïve one among them. But when Seyyan overplays her hand, violating the autonomous ship-human unit by attempting to bind other ships to her, “they tore themselves away from her, one by one, desperately damaging themselves […], but weakening Seyyan as well.”
With Seyyan and her ship imprisoned by layers of ship-silk, Yalnis has a sexual encounter with her newest companion, Bahadirgul. His qualities of shyness and modesty show us that not all companions are brutish after all — perhaps here we think briefly of Pyanfar’s mate Khym.They conceive a daughter and sleep until the daughter is ready to be born. She and Bahadirgul mate once more, thus producing “a copy of Yalnis' memories and the memories of her lover” to give to their daughter. When the daughter is born, “[d]elighted, she showed her to Bahadirgul, wondering, as she always did, how much the companion understood beyond pleasure, satiation, and occasional fear or fury.” The older wiser Zorar seemed to understand more about companions, asking Yalnis earlier:
"Didn't you ask Zorargul, when you took up with Seyyan?"
Yalnis stared at her, deeply shocked. "Ask Zorargul about Seyyan?"…. It had never occurred to Yalnis to tell the companions each others' names, or even to wonder if they would understand her if she did.
While the question of the companions’ sapience is never fully resolved, the possibility is raised here that they are more aware than they seem to be.
Yalnis, when her baby is born, like any new mother, lovingly nurses her newborn, but then, in a radical departure from our present parenting customs, gives “her daughter Karime to her ship's daughter, placing the chubby sleeping creature in the soft nest. She petted the ship-silk surface."
"'Take good care of her,' she said.
"'True,' the new ship whispered.
"In a thousand, perhaps only half a thousand, orbits, Karime would emerge to take her place as a girl of her people.”
That some remnant of the ancient maternal instincts endures is suggested in the ending of the story: Yalnis wants to stay close to her daughter: "'We could follow,' she tells the ship. ’Rest, recoup …'"
But the equation is different now: "'False,' her ship whispered, displaying its strength, and its desire, and its need. ’False, false.'"
We remember that Zorar and Yalnis parted not because of any lack of love but because “Zorar anticipated other adventures, and her ship yearned for deep space.” The symbiosis between human and ship has changed both love relationships and parenting. Human women too now yearn for adventure as their ships do and like questing knights and “western” heroes of old.
The ship has no need for attachment to its daughter, and Yalnis yields.
"'We could go on our adventure.'
"'True,' her ship replied, and turned outward toward the web of space, to travel forever, to feast on stardust."
In this world of the far future, human nature hasn’t changed so much. Why human life is so solitary has to do with the ship-human bond and the great distances of space, but also with the nature of humankind. Eliminating powerful independent males has not eliminated interpersonal power struggles, betrayals, murders, chronic abuse, and all the dangers humans have faced in the ordinary course of history. It’s just that, alone with a sapient ship to take care of one, with subdued companions for sex, the women can avoid other humans –and thus conflict --as often as possible. The women know that they don’t understand their companions or their ships. While the possibility for misunderstanding exists everywhere, the most serious mistakes they make are with each other.
In “Little Faces” Vonda McIntyre has told us the story of the coming of age of a young woman against the backdrop of a satisfying life, incredibly long, filled with every kind of pleasure, including the adventures, the “feasts” of “stardust” that women are often deprived of by their attempts to co-exist with men and by the necessity of child-rearing. There are no brief lives burning brightly here.