Flashing your colors like an ancient Spartan bird proud, erect, never to be softened by the silent embrace of woman
No females aloud.
Not bad. It had some of the raw honesty of the beats. He would read it at the next meeting of the Poets’ Club. He saved it with the four hundred other poems he had written in the last year: Erno prided himself on being the most prolific poet in his class. He had already won four Laurel Awards, one for best Lyric, one for best Sonnet, and two for best Villanelle-plus a Snappie for best limerick of 2097. He was sure to make Bard at an earlier age than anyone since Patrick Maurasson.
Erno switched off the screen, lay on his bed, and remembered the book. He dug it out from under his discarded clothes. It had a blue cover, faded to purple near the binding, made of some sort of fabric. Embossed on the front was a torch encircled by a laurel wreath. He opened the book to its title page: Stories for Men, “An Anthology by Charles Grayson.” Published in August 1936, in the United States of America.
As a fan of Earth culture, Erno knew that most Earth societies used the patronymic, so that Gray, Grayson’s naming parent, would be a man, not a woman.
Stories for men. The authors on the contents page were all men-except perhaps for odd names like “Dashiell.” Despite Erno’s interest in twentieth-century popular art, only a couple were familiar. William Faulkner he knew was considered a major Earth writer, and he had seen the name Hemingway before, though he had associated it only with a style of furniture. But even assuming the stories were all written by men, the title said the book was stories for men, not stories by men.
How did a story for a man differ from a story for a woman? Erno had never considered the idea before. He had heard storytellers in the park, and read books in school-Murasaki, Chopin, Gather, Ellison, Morrison, Ferenc, Sabinsdaughter. As a child, he had loved the Alice books, and Flatland, and Maria Hidalgo’s kids’ stories, and Seuss. None seemed particularly male or female.
He supposed the cousins did have their own stories for men. Nick loved interactive serials, tortured romantic tales of interpersonal angst set in the patriarchal world, where men struggled against injustice until they found the right women and were taken care of. Erno stuck to poetry. His favorite novel was Tawanda Tamikasdaughter’s The Dark Blood- the story of a misunderstood young Cousin’s struggles against his overbearing mother, climaxed when his father miraculously reveals himself and brings the mother to heel. At the Men’s House, he had also seen his share of porn-thrillers set on Earth where men forced women to do whatever the men wanted, and like it.
But this book did not look like porn. A note at the beginning promised the book contained material to “interest, or alarm, or amuse, or instruct, or-and possibly most important of all-entertain you.” Erno wondered that Tyler had found this particular 160-year-old book in the lava tube. It seemed too unlikely to be coincidence.
What sort of things would entertain an Earthman of 1936? Erno turned to the first story, “The Ambassador of Poker” by “Achmed Abdullah.”
But the archaic text was frustratingly passive-nothing more than black type physically impressed on the pages, without links or explanations. After a paragraph or so rife with obscure cultural references-“cordovan brogues,” “knickerbockers,” “County Sligo,” “a four-in-hand”-Erno’s night without sleep caught up with him, and he dozed off.
Heroes
Why does a man remain in the Society of Cousins, when he would have much more authority outside of it, in one of the other lunar colonies, or on Earth?
For one thing, the sex is great.
Men are valued for their sexuality, praised for their potency, competed for by women. From before puberty, a boy is schooled by both men and women on how to give pleasure. A man who can give such pleasure has high status. He is recognized and respected throughout the colony. He is welcome in any bed. He is admired and envied by other men.
Erno woke suddenly, sweaty and disoriented, trailing the wisps of a dream that faded before he could call it back. He looked at his clock: 1530. He was going to miss the meeting.
He washed his face, applied personal hygiene bacteria, threw on his embroidered jumpsuit, and rushed out of the apartment.
The amphitheater in Sobieski Park was filling as Erno arrived. Five or six hundred people were already there; other cousins would be watching on the link. The dome presented a clear blue sky, and the ring of heliotropes around its zenith flooded the air with sunlight. A slight breeze rustled the old oaks, hovering over the semicircular ranks of seats like aged grandmothers. People came in twos and threes, adults and children, along the paths that led down from the colony perimeter road through the farmlands to the park. Others emerged from the doors at the base of the central spire that supported the dome. Erno found a seat in the top row, far from the stage, off to one side where the seats gave way to grass.
Chairing the meeting was Debra Debrasdaughter. Debrasdaughter was a tiny sixty-year-old woman who, though she had held public office infrequently and never for long, was one of the most respected cousins. She had been Erno’s teacher when he was six, and he remembered how she’d sat with him and worked through his feud with Bill Grettasson. She taught him how to play forward on the soccer team. On the soccer field she had been fast and sudden as a bug. She had a warm laugh and sharp brown eyes.
Down on the stage, Debrasdaughter was hugging the secretary. Then the sound person hugged Debrasdaughter. They both hugged the secretary again. A troubled-looking old man sat down in the front row, and all three of them got down off the platform and hugged him. He brushed his hand along Debrasdaughter’s thigh, but it was plain that his heart wasn’t in it. She kissed his cheek and went back up on the stage.
A flyer wearing red wings swooped over the amphitheater and soared back up again, slowly beating the air. Another pair of flyers were racing around the perimeter of the crater, silhouetted against the clusters of apartments built into the crater walls. A thousand meters above his head Erno could spy a couple of others on the edge of the launch platform at the top of the spire. As he watched, squinting against the sunlight, one of the tiny figures spread its wings and pushed off, diving down, at first ever so slowly, gaining speed, then, with a flip of wings, soaring out level. Erno could feel it in his own shoulders, the stress that maneuver put on your arms. He didn’t like flying. Even in lunar gravity, the chances of a fall were too big.
The amplified voice of Debrasdaughter drew him back to the amphitheater. “Thank you, Cousins, for coming,” she said. “Please come to order.”
Erno saw that Tyler Durden had taken a seat off to one side of the stage. He wore flaming red coveralls, like a shout.
“A motion has been made to impose a decree of invisibility against Thomas Marysson, otherwise known as Tyler Durden, for a period of one year. We are met here for the first of two discussions over this matter, prior to holding a colony-wide vote.”
Short of banishment, invisibility was the colony’s maximum social sanction. Should the motion carry, Tyler would be formally ostracized. Tagged by an AI, continuously monitored, he would not be acknowledged by other cousins. Should he attempt to harm anyone, the AI would trigger receptors in his brain stem to put him to sleep.
“This motion was prompted by the disturbances that have ensued as a result of public performances of Thomas Marysson. The floor is now open for discussion.”
A very tall woman who had been waiting anxiously stood, and as if by pre-arrangement, Debrasdaughter recognized her. The hovering mikes picked up her high voice. “I am Yokio Kumiosdaughter. My son is in the hospital as a result of this shameful episode. He is a good boy. He is the kind of boy we all want, and I don’t understand how he came to be in that place. I pray that he recovers and lives to become the good man I know he can be.
“We must not let this happen to anyone else’s son. At the very least, Invisibility will give Thomas Marysson the opportunity to reflect on his actions before he provokes another such tragedy.”
Another woman rose. Erno saw it was Rosamund Demisdaughter.
“With due respect to Cousin Kumiosdaughter, I don’t believe the riot in my club was Tyler’s fault. Her son brought this on himself. Tyler is not responsible for the actions of the patrons. Since when do we punish people for
