Distress

Kuwale said despondently, 'Maybe Mosala is right to despise us, if this is where our ideas have led.'

I wasn't going to argue. 'Does she know? That there are ACs who want to kill her?'

'She does and she doesn't.'

'Meaning what?'

'We've tried to warn her. But she loathes even the mainstream so passionately that she won't take the threat seriously. I think she thinks… bad ideas can't touch her. If Anthrocosmology is nothing but superstition, it has no power to harm her.'

'Tell that to Giordano Bruno.' My eyes were adapting to the darkness; I could see a faint strip of light on the floor of the hold in the distance.

I said, 'Have I missed something—or have we been talking all this time about the people you call moderates?' Kuwale didn't reply, but I felt ver move—slumping forward, as if in a final surrender to shame. 'What do the extremists believe? Break it to me gently, but break it to me now. I don't want any more surprises.'

Kuwale confessed miserably, 'You might say they… hybridized with the Ignorance Cults. They're still ACs, in the broadest sense: they believe that the universe is explained into being. But they believe it's possible—and desirable—to have a universe without any TOE at all: without a final equation, a unifying pattern. No deepest level, no definitive laws, no unbreakable proscriptions. No end to the possibility of transcendence.

'But the only way to guarantee that… is to slaughter everyone who might become the Keystone.'

My clothes seemed to reach an equilibrium with the hold's moist air at the most uncomfortable level of dampness possible. I needed to urinate, but I held off for the sake of dignity—hoping that I'd be able to judge correctly when the problem became life-threatening. I thought of the astronomer Tycho Brahe, who'd died after rupturing his bladder during a banquet, because he was too embarrassed to ask to be excused.

The strip of light on the floor didn't move, but it grew slowly brighter, and then dim again, as the hours wore on. The sounds reaching the hold meant little to me; random creaking and clanking, muffled voices and footsteps. There were distant hums and throbbing noises, some constant, some intermittent; no doubt the most casual boating enthusiast could have discerned the signature of an MHD engine, propelling a jet of sea-water backward with superconducting magnets—but I couldn't have picked the difference between maximum thrust and a crew member taking a shower.

I said, 'How does anyone ever become an Anthrocosmologist, when no one knows you exist?'

Kuwale didn't answer; I nudged ver with my shoulder.

'I'm awake.' Ve sounded more dispirited than I was.

'Then talk to me, I'm going out of my mind. How do you find new members?'

'There are net discussion groups, dealing with related ideas: fringe cosmology, information metaphysics. We take part—without revealing too much—but we approach people individually if they seem sympathetic and trustworthy. Someone, somewhere, re-invents Anthrocosmology two or three times a year. We don't try to persuade anyone that it's true—but if they reach the same conclusions for themselves, we let them know that there are others.'

'And the non-mainstream do the same? Pluck people off the nets?'

'No. They're all defectors. They all used to be with the rest of us.'

'Ah.' No wonder the mainstream felt such a strong obligation to protect Mosala. Mainstream Anthrocosmologists had literally recruited her would-be murderers.

Kuwale said quietly, 'It's sad. Some of them really do see themselves as the ultimate technoliberateurs: taking science into their own hands, refusing to be steam-rollered by someone else's theory—refusing to have no say in the matter.'

'Yeah, very democratic. Have they ever thought of holding an election for the Keystone, instead of killing off all the rival candidates to their own pretender?'

'And give up all that power, themselves? I don't think so. Muteba Kazadi had a 'democratic' version of Anthrocosmology which didn't involve murdering anyone. No one could understand it, though. And I don't think he ever got the mathematics to work.'

I laughed, astonished. 'Muteba Kazadi was AC?'

'Of course.'

'I don't think Violet Mosala knows that.'

'I don't think Violet Mosala knows anything she doesn't want to.'

'Hey, show some respect for your deity.'

The boat lurch slightly. 'Are we moving? Or did we just stop?' Kuwale shrugged. Adaptive ballast smoothed the ride so thoroughly that it was almost impossible to judge what was going on; I'd felt no wave motion in all the time we'd been on board, let alone the subtle accelerations of the journey.

I said, 'Do you know any of these people, personally?'

'No. They all left the mainstream before I joined.'

'So you can't really be sure how moderate they are.'

'I'm sure of the faction they belong to. And if they were going to kill us, we'd be dead.'

'There must be good and bad places for disposing of corpses. Points where illegal discharge is least likely to wash ashore—computable by any half-decent piece of marine navigation software.'

The boat lurched again, then something struck the hull; it resonated all around us, setting my teeth on edge. I waited, tensed. The sound died down, and nothing followed.

I struggled to fill the silence. 'Where are you from? I still can't place the accent.'

Kuwale laughed wearily. 'You'd be wrong if you could. I was born in Malawi, but I left when I was eighteen months old. My parents are diplomats—trade officials; we traveled all over Africa, South America, the Caribbean.'

'Do they know you're on Stateless?'

'No. We parted company. Five years ago. When I migrated.'

To asex. 'Five years ago? How old were you?'

'Sixteen.'

'Isn't that too young for surgery?' I was, still, only guessing, but it would take more than superficial androgyny to split up most families.

'Not in Brazil.'

'And they took it badly?'

Ve said bitterly, 'They didn't understand. Technoliberation, asex—everything that mattered to me—none of it made sense to them. Once I had a mind of my own, they started treating me like some kind of… alien foundling. They were highly educated, highly paid, sophisticated, cosmopolitan… traditionalists. They were still tied to Malawi—and to one social stratum, and all its values and prejudices—wherever they went. I had no homeland. I was free.' Ve laughed. 'Travel shows up the invariants: the same hypocrisies repeating themselves, over and over. By the time I was fourteen, I'd lived in thirty different cultures—and I'd figured out that sex was for dumb conformists.'

That almost shut me up. I asked tentatively, 'You mean gender or intercourse?'

'Both.'

I said, 'Some people need both. Not just biologically—I know, you can switch that off. But… for identity. For self-esteem.'

Kuwale snorted, highly amused. 'Self-esteem is a commodity invented by twentieth-century personal growth cults. If you want self-esteem—or an emotional center—go to Los Angeles and buy it.' Ve added, more sympathetically, 'What is it with you Westerners? Sometimes it sounds to me like all the pre-scientific psychology of Freud and Jung—and all its market-driven US regurgitations—has hijacked your language and culture so completely that you can't even think about yourselves anymore, except in cult-speak. And it's so ingrained now, you don't even know when you're doing it.'

'Maybe you're right.' I was beginning to feel unspeakably old and traditionalist myself. If Kuwale was the future, the generation after ver was going to be entirely beyond my comprehension. Which was probably no bad thing, but it was still a painful realization. 'But what do you put in place of Western psychobabble? Asex and