Inheritance

Amber said, “I’m really glad you’re talking to Eres Tilhar. She taught me when I was little.”

The change of subject left Reese momentarily disoriented. One word hung in the air between them. “She? Is Eres Tilhar a woman?”

Puzzlement flashed across Amber’s face, then cleared. “I forgot, Eres must look different to you. Eres is ummi, a teacher. Teachers are not male or female. They’re… ummi.”

Reese thought back to her conversations with Bri last year when she had been on her gender theory kick. “You mean she’s—he’s—Eres is a third gender?”

Amber seemed to struggle for a moment to find the right words. “I guess you could say that ummi is kind of a third gender, but it’s more like gender doesn’t matter to ummi; it’s no longer relevant to them.”

“But you called Eres ‘she.’ Should I do that too?”

“I doubt Eres cares what English pronouns you use. I used ‘she’ because you have to use pronouns in English and it’s easier to say ‘she’ than ‘it,’ which sounds awful. Sometimes I call Eres ‘he,’ though.” Amber’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “I guess it depends on what Eres is wearing. She’s not always in her ummi uniform.”

“Isn’t that totally offensive?” Reese asked. Bri had drummed into her that she should never assume which pronoun someone preferred. “Shouldn’t you ask Eres which pronoun she or he wants to use?”

Amber seemed a little amused. “You can ask if you want. But it’s not like that. I mean, ummi are basically beyond that stuff. They spend their time teaching susum’urda, which means they’re in other people’s consciousness a lot. It’s kind of like they’ve experienced so many other lives that they’ve become all different genders.”

Reese tried to wrap her mind around what Amber had said, but she was still fixated on how to refer to Eres Tilhar. “So in Imrian, what pronoun do you use with Eres?”

Amber paused as if realizing something. “Actually, in Imrian there is no him or her. The pronouns in Imrian are gender-neutral. Ene means him or her.”

“How do you know if you’re talking about a man or a woman?”

“Usually you know who you’re talking about. You use their names.”

“But if you don’t know their names when you’re talking about them, how do you know if they’re male or female?”

Amber gave her a funny look, as if Reese wasn’t getting it. “It doesn’t matter.”

Reese’s forehead furrowed. “All of you, except for Eres Tilhar, are so obviously male or female. If it doesn’t matter, why don’t you all look like Eres?”

Now Amber seemed perplexed. “Eres is ummi; all ummi look sort of like her. They wear the same kind of clothes, the same—they’re sort of like monks, I guess. Except they’re not celibate. The rest of us wouldn’t look like ummi; that would be like you dressing up like a priest.”

“Okay.” That part made sense to Reese. “So the rest of the Imria—the ones who aren’t ummi—does gender matter to them? If there’s no him or her in Imrian… I guess I don’t understand how that would work.”

Amber considered Reese for a long moment, as if trying to make up her mind about something. Finally she said, “Well, language is only one part of this. There are other languages that also use gender-neutral pronouns— like Chinese. In spoken Chinese, there’s no audible distinction between him and her. You can work around it. Does that make sense?”

“I guess.”

“Okay. So then…” Amber flashed her a tentative smile. “You know that sex and gender are different things, right?”

Reese raised her eyebrows. “You mean biological sex, like male or female, versus gender?”

“Exactly. Biologically, sex is about whether you create eggs or sperm—that’s all. Gender is about everything else. The way you dress, the way you move, the way you act. Among humans, gender is usually correlated with sex, so women are supposed to look a certain way, like wear dresses and heels or whatever.”

“But there are also transgender people,” Reese said. “And other people who don’t follow those norms. It’s not that simple.”

Amber nodded. “Yes, absolutely. I’m talking about generally. Generally, humans understand gender as an expression of sex, even though that is changing in some places. But Imrians don’t have a similar concept of gender.”

Reese thought about what Amber had said. One element still puzzled her. “Is there biological sex among the Imria?”

“Oh, yes. Imrians are still male or female, in the most basic biological sense.”

“So why don’t you have gender?”

Amber looked thoughtful. “I think… you know, I’ve never explained this to anyone before. I think it’s because of susum’urda. Male and female Imrians still have different physical bodies, and you can never escape that, but susum’urda allows you to see that the physical differences are really superficial when it comes to who you are as a person.”

Reese remembered what it had felt like when Eres Tilhar touched her: a kind of boundlessness. Whether or not the teacher had male or female body parts had been the farthest thing from Reese’s mind. “All right, I think I can see that,” Reese said. “But if susum’urda sort of erases the importance of gender, why do you all look like men or women? Maybe you don’t look like Eres Tilhar because you’re not ummi, but you totally look gendered.” She gestured at Amber’s outfit.

Amber shifted and the hem of her dress inched up. “We’re trying to make ourselves intelligible to humans.” She gave Reese a nervous smile. “Can you imagine how weirded out all of humanity would be if you couldn’t tell whether we were men or women? So we dress like human men or women. It’s easier to fit in that way. Like… if you were going to visit a foreign country and you didn’t want to stick out like an American tourist, you’d avoid wearing shorts and white sneakers.”

“What about when you’re not here on Earth?”

“Well, there are definitely… styles of presentation. There’s an Imrian word for it: ga’emen. I guess that’s the closest we come to gender. Someone’s ga’emen is their external identity, but it’s not connected to their biological sex. It’s just an external expression of their self. Like in all those movies about high schools, where people are nerds or jocks or stoners or whatever.” Amber spread her hands. “Except ga’emen is a lot more complicated than that, but it’s a start.”

Reese glanced at Amber; her gray eyes reflected the color of the bay. “What would you look like if you weren’t on Earth?”

Amber seemed taken aback. “I’d look like me.”

Reese wanted to ask, And who is that? During their date at the Indian restaurant, they had talked about coming out and being queer. Amber had seemed very certain of who she was, but something she had just said about susum’urda raised a question for Reese. “If sharing consciousness lets you see that physical differences are so minor, how come you said you don’t like guys?”

Amber’s cheeks turned a little pink. “You can’t escape your body. I mean, you live in it every day. And I like female bodies.” She shrugged. “Maybe it would be different on Kurra. But I’m here, not there.” She bent down and brushed the clump of dirt off the heel of her right shoe. Amber’s fingernails were painted silver, and they flashed in the sun. “Does that make sense?” Amber asked, straightening up. “All of it?”

There was something vulnerable in Amber’s gaze, and Reese remembered the reason Amber had wanted to talk with her alone, before they had been sidetracked by Reese’s questions about Eres Tilhar. Amber had tried to explain why she had lied. Reese looked away. The water of the bay sparkled beneath the cloud-scudded sky, and in the distance a ferry was chugging away from Tiburon. “Yeah, I guess,” Reese said reluctantly. “It’s complicated.”

They sat together in silence for a long moment, and Reese felt herself tensing up, muscle by muscle, every