About Sisterland (2 page)

“I was fortunate to be singled out,” said Constance.

“What’s it like to travel outside Harmony? I don’t suppose I’ll ever earn a permit. I’m glued to the entscreen when there’s a travel programme shown.”

“I haven’t been sent on a posting yet.”

Constance couldn’t admit that she wasn’t working as a shaper, despite her qualification – she was among the first intake on a new training course. And she was forbidden from talking about it. Recruits to the programme hadn’t even been allocated a replacement symbol for their wrist stamp. “Time enough when you take up your new roles,” they were told. “The fewer questions, the better.”

She changed the subject. “Do you have a favourite moe? You must be a connoisseur.”

“I find a Co helps me to relax. Much more efficient than old-fashioned aids like alcohol, with all those harmful side-effects.”

What a pearl, thought Constance, who liked the odd glass of sunset wine. Silence had been fond of it, too. Don’t think about Silence, cautioned a voice in her head. With an effort, she concentrated on what the flicker was saying.

“That blast of contentment is a treat worth waiting all week for. Forty els, please.”

“Forty? Last time it was thirty-five.”

“They’re becoming trickier to manufacture. When you’re ready, sister.” The flicker turned the pay console towards Constance.

Constance held up her wrist, sig side out, and her image appeared on the screen. A twang of authorisation, the purchase was debited from Constance’s elements’ account, and marked on her moe chart.

A light, inexpressive voice spoke. “This uses up your moe quotient for the next seven days. You have eighty-five elements remaining. Kindly practise economy.”

Constance pulled a face. She intercepted an admiring glance at her skin from the flicker – although high-sheen, like all skins, it was a flexible model, and had been expensive. “I’m on a spending spree at the moment,” she admitted. “As a distraction. I had some bad news recently.”

Dutiful, the flicker said, “We must guard against mindless consumption.”

That’s enough of
Beloved’s Pearls
for one day, thought Constance.

She slipped the purchase into her leggings, and stepped out onto the street. The U had to be inhaled someplace quiet, where its buoyant properties could be absorbed fully. There was nothing worse than losing part of a moe before it was ingested properly. She looked left, towards the twoser she had shared with Silence. Not there. It had a lingering sense of emptiness. Was emptiness a moe? Not exactly. But it penetrated like one.

She looked right, towards Eternity Square, where Shaperhaus stood. It was some distance off, but easy to spot. Above the building soared a pair of giant wings, studded with pieces of glass which trapped and reflected the light. These wings, added for aesthetic reasons, lent it dramatic impact. They also meant space had to be left around it: the architectural equivalent of a pair of elbows sticking out. Constance had graduated from there as a shaper almost a year earlier, but instead of being sent out into Sisterland to promote approved thoughts, she had been chosen for additional training. A new role, and patriotic. But confidential. Just thirteen newly licensed shapers had been selected to participate. Now, they were nearing the end of the theory stage, and a practical apprenticeship was due to follow soon. Today was thei
r weekly rest day.

Constance had been flattered when the Shaper Mother had told her she was to be groomed for new duties. But the reality of what Sisterland proposed disturbed her, a shadow-moe increasing in intensity as the course progressed. It wasn’t that she had reservations about the job itself. She understood why alternative arrangements were necessary. But what she was learning to do seemed manipulative and – she hardly dared to let herself think it – dishonest. Constance was becoming infected by misgivings which she could not express openly.

Doubts about Sisterland itself.

Chapter 2

Constance decided to go to Beloved Park to ingest the U. It was choreographed round a pearlised statue of Beloved – all images of the founder were pearlised, because she had expressed a preference for it in life, and over time her wishes had acquired the status of commands. Her vision and charisma had guided Sisterland in its formative years. Sisterlanders left flowers at Beloved’s feet, so that there was always a festival of colour surrounding the statue’s base, sometimes blocking the lettering:
Not me but US
.

Already, Constance was fired up from the moe throbbing in her pocket. After she took it, she might dance through the streets. No, of course she couldn’t – it would be frowned on as unruly. The peers would tick her off. Perhaps she could buy a hoop of little bells and shake them – their sound pleased her. Silence had worn an ankle chain with a bell which tinkled when she moved, like the bell that used to hang from a cat’s collar.

No-one had seen a cat in years. Like dogs, they were extinct. Which meant a vermin-extermination patrol had to be set up to deal with the rat problem. Constance was relieved she hadn’t been reassigned to those duties. She always admired images of cats in books, when she came across them – attracted to their elegance and air of detachment. Silence called Constance ‘Kipling’s cat’ because she liked to walk alone. Silence was fond of poetry. Everyone in Sisterland was meant to be in favour of it, because it was not just beguiling but functional – verses promoting public spirit and cohesion had a purpose. But few people bothered with it. Silence had said poetry would be banned, too, if the Nine who ruled Sisterland realised how moe-rich it was. But hardly anyone read any more. Books were decorative objects rather than wellsprings of information. There were no buildings given over exclusively to books, as there had been in PS days.

“No more about Silence,” whispered Constance.

She looked up as a sleek, metallic Buzz train hummed overhead on its elevated tracks. Passing a flower-basket attached to a lamppost on the corner of Virtue Boulevard, the scent of jasmine enveloped her, and she picked up her pace to escape it. The gardening teams which injected the perfume daily sometimes laid it on with a heavy hand. She avoided the congested area near Beloved’s statue, instead choosing a bench beside the fountain. It spouted peach-coloured water, and a sign invited sisters to vote on the following day’s dye. She decided against voting. A dereliction of her civic duty, but so be it.

A man was sucking scum and algae from the fountain with a disposal unit, which vacuumed up objects and compressed them into molecules. Constance was resigned to his company. No woman in Sisterland enjoyed proximity to a man, but it was less unpleasant in the open air because his physical presence was diluted. Not that he was threatening – from birth, men were injected with drugs to reduce testosterone production, making them docile. It was for their own good, otherwise they were inclined to be disruptive.

She watched him working, while he studiously avoided looking at her. He was more blur than flesh, taught to be inconspicuous. His smoke-grey, hooded, one-piece garment left only a few inches of face visible. The stiff collar reached up to the base of his nose, and the hood ended at his eyebrows. The patch of flesh exposed to the air had a scraped texture – no wonder, when men didn’t wear skins. Only women slotted on the feather-light, transparent masks which covered faces from hairline to throat, protecting them from environmental damage. It meant even elderly women had scarcely a wrinkle.

When he moved away, Constance took out the bag containing her moe, lowered her head, and tapped the seal. It flew open, the U wafted upwards, and she inhaled. At once, a sense of possibilities suffused her. Optimism swelled, the way sunshine strokes chilled flesh, until a peak was reached. And retained. She raised her arms high above her head, face upturned to the sky.

How wonderful it was to live in such an enlightened community! One where all women were equal members of the universal sisterhood.
Not me but US
. She was lucky to belong to such an advanced society. And to be entrusted with a special job. She must forget her silly qualms, no more than the wheeling of a tired mind still struggling with what Silence had done. Silence’s act of disloyalty shouldn’t be interpreted as evidence of misgivings about Sisterland. After all, Sisterland was a perfect state, a state of perfection.

“
I am a wave sweeping in with the tide,
” Constance sang out. “
I make a difference as part of the whole.
” She laughed aloud, quoting Beloved, and the water splashed in the fountain, laughing along with her.

The following day, shadow-moes nipped at Constance. Experience had taught her that taking a moe released all sorts of shadow-moes, which might resurface intermittently for days. It was like seeing something you recognised, but through a misty windowpane. They ambushed her now as she descended the steps from the Eternity Square Buzz station, and approached Shaperhaus – its frontage mirrored, like the iconic wings above it, to present a constantly moving surface. Many of Harmony’s buildings were mirrored on the outer façade, to lend an illusion of space – and because Beloved had deemed it beautiful.

Constance was reluctant to enter her workplace, uncertainties about the test programme fluttering. She knew she was out of step with her sisters: none of her fellow trainees ever betrayed reservations, by so much as a sidelong glance or an intake of breath. At least Constance had the sense to keep her questions to herself. Even to Silence, she had never said a word, and Silence had noticed nothing. But there had been an absence about her, in those final weeks, which Constance had attributed to babyfusion.

She passed through the main entrance, the comtel on her thumb, which covered it from nail to base-joint, chirruping to authorise entry and register her arrival. Once inside, she cut through the foyer to a staircase at the back.

SMILE ALL THE WHILE

was painted on the wall.

Her lips thinned.

As she began climbing, Constance wished she could be out in the field, shaping. Why did she have to be chosen for the new programme? Sometimes, she wondered at the waste of drilling her in the art of silkenspeak as a shaper – skilled at minimising the downside and maximising the upside of Nine policy – if the training was not going to be put to use. Her new role would mean working with children rather than adults, a drawback as far as Constance was concerned – she knew no children, and consequently was wary of them. But she had to do her best. After all, the initiative would safeguard Sisterland’s future, according to her teachers.

Constance was plucked from her shaper graduation class after a mindmap reading carried out by the Shaper Mother. But that was last year. She knew she would not pass mindmapping today.

She climbed past floors given over to administration and recruitment, floors devoted to operations, where shapers in the field were handled, floors housing lecture rooms. “A thought-shaper is permanently on message,” she heard spill out from the trainee shaper floor. Finally, she arrived on the ninth floor, reserved for special projects, and again used her comtel for admission. The device had gouged a groove in the fleshy place on her hand, between thumb and index finger, but she no longer noticed its weight.

Without stopping to chat, she nodded at a couple of colleagues drinking ocean tea at their workpoints – everyone consumed rivers of Sisterland’s national brew. She counted none of her workmates as friends. Constance was a loner. It was only with Silence that she had enjoyed true Togethertime. But Silence was gone. And she had to stop thinking about her.

Constance slid into her workpoint, where she took off her skin and set it in the container kept in a drawer. From habit, she ran a finger along her hairline where the skin rested, reclaiming her face. Next, she took a spray from another drawer and misted the plant on her desk. Everybody was allowed one personal item. Most chose images, but Constance admired her fern’s delicacy. Now to check her lecture schedule.

Just then, Patience 9603 approached. Like Constance, her progress-monitor was wearing the Shaperhaus uniform of hip-length turquoise tunic with lime-green leggings. “Good morning, sister. May I have a word with you?” She could have messaged through to Constance’s comtel screen, but the emphasis on courtesy in Sisterland made her put the request in person.
It’s Nice To Be Nice
, as
Beloved’s Pearls
put it.

Constance followed Patience to her elevated workpoint with its clear view of the room, and a solitary personal item on the desk – a porcelain goosegirl which looked as if it would shatter should someone breathe heavily on it. She often wondered about that ornament. Patience didn’t look the type. Even her rounded number didn’t seem to belong to her wiry frame.

“The Shaper Mother wishes to see you at once.”

A pit opened in Constance’s stomach. “Have I done something wrong, sister?”

“I’ve uploaded temporary entry authorisation onto your comtel. Don’t keep the mother waiting. It’s impolite.”

Patience was young to be a progress-monitor, and masked it with a stern manner. Constance knew better than to argue. Instead, she consoled heself by looking at her sig: Patience 9603. With 9602 Patiences who were still alive registered ahead of her, she wasn’t well-connected.

Constance returned to the staircase to access the tenth floor: top of the building. Taller structures, inherited from PS generations, had been lowered – a ceremony made of the event. Cloud-scrapers had been a hubristic, male affectation. Just as lifts had been conceits, devised by men because they could, when everyone knew stairs were healthier. Sisterland declined to worship gimmicks. That didn’t mean it was
opposed to gadgets: everything in moderation. But
unnecessary technology had a dehumanising effect. Sisterlanders valued the personal touch, as urged by Beloved. Between her
Pearls
and her entscreen chats, which continued to be repeated in a weekly show called
Make Time for Togethertime
, Sisterlanders were in no danger of running short on Beloved’s advice.