“I don’t need you to tell me what I’ve accomplished. Go ahead, Erno. Back to your cave.”
0312. 0313. Erno could feel the radiation. It was shattering proteins and DNA throughout his body, rupturing cell walls, turning the miraculously ordered organic molecules of his brain into sludge. He thought about Alicia, the curve of her breast, the light in her eyes. Had she told her friends that he had hit her? And his mother. He saw the shock and surprise in her face when the book hit her. How angry he had been. He wanted to explain to her why he had thrown it. It shouldn’t be that hard to explain.
He saw his shadow reaching out beside him, sharp and steady, two arms, two legs and a head, an ape somehow transported to the moon. No, not an ape-a man. What a miracle that a man could keep himself alive in this harsh place-not just keep alive, but make a home of it. All the intellect and planning and work that had gone to put him here, standing out under the brutal sun, letting it exterminate him.
He looked at Tyler, fixed as stone.
“This is insane,” Erno said-then ran for the tunnel.
A second after he sheltered inside, Tyler was there beside him.
They found the radiation shelter midway through the tunnel, closed themselves inside, stripped off their suits, drank some water, breathed the cool air. They crowded in the tiny stone room together, smelling each other’s sweat. Erno started to get sick: he had chills, he felt nausea. Tyler made him sip water, put his arm around Erno’s shoulders.
Tyler said it was radiation poisoning, but Erno said it was not. He sat wordless in the corner the nine hours it took until the all-clear came. Then, ignoring Tyler, he suited up and headed back to the colony.
So that is the story of how Erno discovered that he was not a man. That, indeed, Tyler was right, and there was no place for men in the Society of Cousins. And that he, Erno, despite his grievances and rage, was a cousin.
The cost of this discovery was Erno’s own banishment, and one thing more.
When Erno turned himself in at the constabulary headquarters, eager to tell them about GROSS and ready to help them find Tyler, he was surprised at their subdued reaction. They asked him no questions. They looked at him funny, eyes full of rage and something besides rage. Horror? Loathing? Pity? They put him in the same white room where he had sat before, and left him there alone. After a while the blond interrogator, Mona, came in and told him that three people had been injured when Tyler and Erno had blown the vacuum seal while escaping. One, who had insisted on crawling after them through the escape tunnel, had been caught in there and died: Erno’s mother.
Erno and Tyler were given separate trials, and the colony voted: they were to be expelled. Tyler’s banishment was permanent; Erno was free to apply for readmission in ten years.
The night before he left, Erno, accompanied by a constable, was allowed to visit his home. Knowing how completely inadequate it was, he apologized to his sister, his aunt and cousins. Aunt Sophie and Nick treated him with stiff rectitude. Celeste, who somehow did not feel the rage against him that he deserved, cried and embraced him. They let him pack a duffel with a number of items from his room.
After leaving, he asked the constable if he could stop a moment on the terrace outside the apartment before going back to jail. He took a last look at the vista of the domed crater from the place where he had lived every day of his life. He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. His mother seemed everywhere around him. All he could see was her crawling, on hands and knees in the dark, desperately trying to save him from himself. How angry she must have been, and how afraid. What must she have thought, as the air flew away and she felt her coming death? Did she regret giving birth to him?
He opened his eyes. There on the terrace stood the recycler he had thrown pebbles at for years. He reached into his pack, pulled out Stories for Men, and stepped toward the bin.
Alicia came around a corner. “Hello, Erno,” she said.
A step from the trash bin, Erno held the book awkwardly in his hand, trying to think of something to say. The constable watched them.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he told Alicia.
“I know you didn’t mean this to happen,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter what I meant. It happened.”
On impulse, he handed her the copy of Stories for Men. “I don’t know what to do with this,” he said. “Will you keep it for me?”
The next morning they put him on the cable car for Tsander. His exile had begun.
To Become a Warrior - CHRIS BECKETT
British writer Chris Beckett is a frequent contributor to Interzone and has just made a sale to Asimov’s Science Fiction. A former social worker, he’s now a university lecturer living in Cambridge, England. He has had stories in our Ninth and Nineteenth Annual Collections.
Sometimes it’s not enough just to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk, too. And that can be a lot more difficult than you think it’s going to be…
Where I live it’s the Thurston Fields estate only we just call it the Fields. Which it’s what they call a Special Category Estate which is crap for a start because everyone knows it’s a dreg estate and we’re the dreggies. Which is we’re the ones they haven’t got any use for, yeah? I mean fair enough, I can’t hardly read and write as such. Which I’ve never had a job or nothing only once I had a job in this tyre and exhaust place. Like a job creation scheme? Only I was late the second day-right?-and the manager, he only told me to do something about my attitude, so I fucking smacked him one, didn’t I?
And I’ll tell you what mate, not being funny or nothing, but if you never lived on a dreg estate you’ve got no idea what it’s like. You might think you have but you haven’t. I’ll tell you one thing about it, the Department runs your life. The DeSCA, yeah? The deskies we call them. Which you get different kinds, like housing deskies which if you’re some girl who gets pregnant, they’re the ones who get you a flat. (Mind you, if you’re a bloke and you want a flat you’ve got to find some slag and say you love her and that, know what I mean?) And you get teacher deskies, and benefits deskies. You even get deskie police. But I tell you what, mate, the ones we really hate are the fucking social worker deskies. Like they try to be so nice and understanding and that, all concerned about you-know what I mean?-but next thing they’re taking your fucking kid away.
Like my girlfriend Kylie, well my ex-girlfriend because I dumped her, didn’t I? Which she had her kid Sam taken off her and she went fucking mental, know what I mean? I mean, fair play, he is a whinging little git and at first I thought, great, all day in bed and no distractions. But it did her head in and she was crying and that, and she was down the Child Welfare every day and she didn’t want fucking sex no more or nothing so I thought to myself, I can’t hack this, I’ll go fucking mental, know what I mean?
(Which then she tried to top herself which her mum said was down to me but it never. It was the fucking deskies.)
Anyway, one day I was down the Locomotive with my mates when this geezer comes in-yeah?-and he only had a skull tattooed all over his face! I mean like so his face looked like a skull, yeah? Which my mate Shane goes, “Shit, look at that!” This bloke he looked well hard, but-yeah?-we must have had twelve pints each minimum, so I thought to myself, fuck it. And I go up to this skull geezer-right?-and go like, “Who the fuck are you?” (Shane was pissing himself, the prat. He thought it was hysterical. He thought old skull face there was going to beat the shit out of
