There is some dispute about how many genders there are on Adjumir. Most textbooks written for off-planet education concur that there are eight, with another four genders that are either regionally specific, such as the “ye” of the blue forest (“one who has grown roots of earth and soul of sky”), or deliberately open, such as “le” (“one who is in a place of change, seeking”). Very few Adjumiris remain one gender for their entire lives, passing through different states of being as they change, grow, age. Off-worlders are taught the basic “they”, which is the pronoun given to children who have not yet passed through the gate, and the polite “ae” used for the non-gender, the gender-that-is-without-significance, defaultedto by off-worlders who haven’t yet learned the nuances of Adjumiri categorisations.
Some off-worlders complain, say that it’s too complicated, there’s too much here for them to ever understand.
How odd, the Adjumiris reply.
You can remember the difference between innumerable different types of sausage or sporting teams, but you cannot hold in your mind a mere half-dozen or so categories of people? That must make navigating the nuances of human experience extraordinarily taxing for you.
There are four genders on Xihana, all fairly loosely defined. To the Xi, gender is merely a hasty marker to allow strangers to make some very rough time-saving assumptions about who you are. Given that any sort of assumption is in and of itself generally incorrect once examined over time, they are uninterested in investing too much effort in constructing rigid ideas of identity, and tend to use gender markers when the level of engagement is expected to be no more than polite chit-chat with acquaintances, or business talk. Once intimacy is established, it is expected that conversation will switch to the fifth gender, the free-speak where all categories are torn down and all that remains is the truth of a soul, the heart of an individual, vulnerable, loved and seen.
The Shine, somewhat controversially, have only two genders – “he” and “she” – which are firmly defined, strictly separated and legally enforced.
In reality, there are four, for superior to these firm delineations are the far more exclusive, far more desirable “hé” and “shé”. These categories are preserved for those who have reached the absolute pinnacle of their gender presentation – themostmanly and themostfeminine, the ultimate expressions of what everyone else should aspire to be. Hé must not merely be strong, brave, wealthy and wise, but also embody in both hís physicality and beauty qualities of such exceptional intellect and prowess that to merely glance hís way is to at once know hís superiority. And shé is notmerely graceful, fertile, generous and kind, but has about hér an almost supernaturalotherness, an untouchable dignity, that can be captured by neither art nor lyricism. Hé is the provider of physical and material goods; shé is grateful for hís protection, and in return offers emotional support and sexual gratification upon hér body, occasionally in filmed demonstrations for commnet distribution so that people can see exactly how happy a woman at the peak of hér perfection is to give pleasure to a man.
“So… the important thing is your genitals?” Gebre blurted, when I explained this. “As in… even if you can’t see someone’s genitals, they are the first thing that is on your mind when you meet someone? It is their defining characteristic, above ethics, work, aptitudes, hobbies, hopes, loves, et cetera?”
“That is one way of looking at it, yes.”
Despite this, observers have noted that, for all the Shine’s insistence on conformity in its gender presentations, hé and shé are in fact changeable, representing not some fixed sacrosanct, but an ideal that is most embodied by whatever tiny minority has the greatest power, the greatest influence and the greatest wealth at this precise moment in time.
Mawukana na-Vdnaze – the Maw who almost certainly died on the MSVMyrmida, screaming in a Pilot’s chair – was told he was a man, and did not know to quibble it. I am not sure what I am, but on Xihana at least, no one seemed to think it mattered.
Chapter 11
Gebre Nethyu Chatithimska Bajwahra did eventually get ter goods onto theEmni. The instant they were loaded, te seemed to deflate, started muttering: “Well yes, yes, I suppose mushrooms are important too…”
I had followed ter around in fascinated silence, and now the weight of Adjumiri gravity was really starting to drag, and I sat breathless on the edge of my ship while te looked at me askance and said: “You come from somewhere a little less massy, I take it?”
Sometimes, when I am tired, my leg aches. It is the leg that was broken, back in the fires of Hasha-to. When the quarantine team found me on theMyrmida, my leg was healed as if it had never snapped, but not quite right. Maybe it’s just memories, a ghost of pain that has no other way of being processed. Maybe it’s not that at all.
Then Gebre blurted: “Thank you, by the way.” And, because te was struggling to say these words, struggling to know how to thank a stranger for showing the bare minimum of kindness, the absolute basic nothing of decency, added: “For coming to Adjumir. You’d be astonished how many people just look at us and go, ‘Well, the problem is too big, no point trying.’ Some diplomat should be saying all this to you, of course. Nice flowery speak – little presents, I imagine. Harmless trash that won’t cause anaphylaxis.Anyway. You risk your life Piloting a ship here, and I suppose someone should say… thank you.”
I opened my mouth to blurt actually, no, you don’t understand – I am Mawukana-from-the-Dark, I was made in deepest black, I am a meagre copy of the dead, there is no…
… but te had spotted someone else te needed to shout out, to rebuke for their failings, and was already marching away.
After that, I became a regular in Adjumir’s airspace.
I shuttled in diplomats and scientists, politicians and eager aid workers who felt sure that they were going to have some brilliant idea, some dazzling insight that might, in its way, be more potent than the shock wave of a binary star supernova sweeping across the heavens.
I ferried out crabs and molluscs in cryopods (“The carrion of the sea!”), fungal scrapings from the deepest, blackest caves (“Vital for ecological consistency”), seeds upon seeds upon seeds, all carefully labelled and sealed for their eventual replanting in Adjapar’s soil, once it had soil to carry life. I shepherded entomologists (“Insects must precede flowers and fruits! It is baffling to me how many so-called planetary engineers miss this blisteringly obvious evolutionary fact!”) and anxious historians (“It took so long for us to learn from our mistakes. Imagine the mistakes we will make again, if we forget”). I practised Adjumiri, and whenever I returned to Xihana for theEmnito rest and shed some of his weight, the Major would visit and confer with Hadja in a corner.
“Is he safe? He is occupied… but is he safe?”
And Hadja would reply: “He appears to have a kind of purpose. I have not yet determined why.”
Then the usual line of psychologists and doctors would come to visit, and the questions they asked were almost identical to those the doctor asked on Hasha-to.
“When I sleep, I dream of flying – yes or no?”
“It is winter, and the lake has frozen over. What do you do?”
“A friend visits. They have made a delicious meal, but you know already that you do not like the taste of it. Do you eat the food, or make an excuse?”
“What is the taste of music?”
“I think that sleep is like a kind of dying – yes or no?”
I answered their questions politely and thoughtfully, as I always did, while Hadja hovered by my side. Only one of my visitors asked this:
