“They’re not our patients,” I reminded him.
Our patients are a related case, however. I think I can make the suggestion without causing offense, Rilriltok said. Apparently, it checked in with its own team, because after a pause it commented, Dr. K’kk’jk’ooOOoo has inspected the ox-environment patients from Big Rock Candy Mountain’s crew, and the team is ready to initiate the rewarming process. This is your last chance to put a hold on it, Llyn, should you wish to. Once we start, we can’t stop without killing them.
“It’s Helen’s call,” I said. “And she’s made it. Asking her to revisit the decision would only be cruel.”
Shall we see if Dr. Zhiruo thinks she can be roused? She may wish to be present. I’m going to return to the Cryo unit in order to be available for any emergencies.
It buzzed up into the air.
We can ask Dr. K’kk’jk’ooOOoo what she thinks about the Darboof when we get there.
“I’ll join you,” I said. I checked senso. Dr. Zhiruo was not presently available, but I left a message for her about Helen. While I was there, I asked if any progress had been made in determining what was wrong with Afar.
I felt certain it wouldn’t take her long to get back to me.
The four of us walked, scuttled, and buzzed down the corridor two by two. Cheeirilaq and I were in the front. Rilriltok hovered a little behind me. And Tsosie went on its left.
Cheeirilaq seemed genuinely interested as it asked, Your preferred pronoun is she, is it not?
I allowed that this was the case.
Will I be invading your privacy if I ask more questions?
“I’m comfortable with questions,” I said.
In observing other humans, I have noticed that your sexes seem very much alike. This is very different from my own species. And in observing your species-mates, I have come to realize that despite this similarity, many humans see themselves as very strongly gendered. And many others do not. So… why does your species subscribe to a gender binary?
“Do you mean me? For myself?”
Was that a rude question? I am terribly sorry. The enormous mantoid paced along on feathery feet, moving noiselessly.
“No,” I said. “Not a rude question, exactly. I mean, some would find it so. But I don’t.”
Thank you for forgiving my ignorance.
I laughed. It was charming, for a creature entirely out of nightmare. Comparing it to the almost embarrassingly adorable Rilriltok, I could see what it meant about my species’s lack of dimorphism. “I don’t think of myself as very strongly gendered. And I could elect a genderless identity, or a mixed-gender identity, if I preferred.”
Wouldn’t that be less work?
“Oh, probably,” I admitted. “Sure. But I choose to inhabit this conceptual space. To stretch it to accommodate me, rather than allowing it to contract. Because once a conceptual space starts to shrink by squeezing people out of it, it has a tendency to accelerate, and shrink and shrink and shrink until it squeezes out more and more people.”
And your conceptual space is woman.
“For now. Identities can be fluid over lifetimes, after all.”
Cheeirilaq inspected, then groomed the serrated edge of one raptorial forearm. That is an interesting perspective. But surely, sex is only important when one is choosing to reproduce.
That’s easy for you to say, Rilriltok commented. Then it ducked behind my shoulder, carapace showing variegated blues as it attempted to match my scrubs, the carpet, and the corridor walls all at once.
“Oh,” I said. “That’s why you folks prefer a singular, genderless pronoun.”
Rilriltok made the chirruping noise I associated with laughter. It’s not my fault humans are scandalous. We use gendered pronouns for animals and reproductive partners. And females that are trying to eat us.
Which amounts to the same thing, Cheeirilaq said.
I looked at it in surprise.
It said, There is no ethical sentient justification for my sex’s reproductive strategy. But we try to do better these diar.
“That almost sounds personal.” I had meant to be conversational. I realized that perhaps I’d overstepped when Rilriltok buzzed low against my shoulder. “I mean, I’m not sure there’s any ethical sentient justification for any species’s reproductive strategy—”
I come from a well-known female line. Some of my brilliant ancestors—its abdomen expanded as it drew a heavy breath, patterns of red and yellow veining appearing between the pale green plates—crafted the society our people now enjoy. But I do not think Rilriltok will argue with me when I say that they… deserved gendered pronouns.
I am ashamed of their legacy. I try to make some restoration with my own right behavior.
My mouth twisted against itself. I didn’t want to dismiss the Goodlaw’s willingness to acknowledge historic crimes or to accept accountability. But I was also interested in the conversation. “My ancestors came very close to destroying our species and our homeworld, but also managed to save it—and us—in spite of themselves. Or by finally understanding that everybody is responsible for fixing broken things, maybe. We had to learn that there were more important things than being ‘right.’ Brilliant people are sometimes terrible at being people. It goes a long way toward making their legacies complicated. I remember being taught an old ethics conundrum about whether humanity should give up space travel because Einstein was kind of a dick to his first spouse.”
“Wife,” Tsosie said, with uncharacteristic irrelevance.
“What?”
“They called them wives.”
“Some of us still call them wives,” I said. “Or at least that’s what I called mine, and vice versa. But I believe even archaically, it’s acceptable to use spouse interchangeably with gender-specific terms.”
“Huh.” Tsosie looked at me oddly. I frowned back until he shook his head. “Sorry, nothing. Just—we’ve served together for nearly ten ans, and I never knew that you were married.”
I smiled. “Possibly I was also kind of a dick to my spouse,” I admitted. “Or maybe she was kind of a dick to me. I honestly couldn’t tell you one way or the other, at this point. Subjectivity
