The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

Some protest this practice, but they are relatively few. Most men take it as an opportunity to retreat to the informal Men’s Houses that, though they have no statutory sanction, sprang up in the first generation of settlers.

In the Men’s House, men and boys talk about what it is to be a man, a lover of other men and women, a father in a world where fatherhood is no more than a biological concept. They complain about their lot. They tell vile jokes and sing songs. They wrestle. They gossip. Heteros and queers and everyone in between compare speculations on what they think women really want, and whether it matters. They try to figure out what a true man is.

As a boy Erno would go to the Men’s House with his mother’s current partner or one of the other men involved in the household. Some of the men taught him things. He learned about masturbation, and cross checks, and Micro Language Theory.

But no matter how welcoming the men were supposed to be to each other-and they talked about brotherhood all the time-there was always that little edge when you met another boy there, or that necessary wariness when you talked to an adult. Men came to the Men’s House to spend time together and remind themselves of certain congruencies, but only a crazy person would want to live solely in the company of men.

TWO

The founders of the Society of Cousins had a vision of women as independent agents, free thinkers forming alliances with other women to create a social bond so strong that men could not overwhelm them. Solidarity, sisterhood, motherhood. But Erno’s mother was not like those women. Those women existed only in history vids, sitting in meeting circles, laughing, making plans, sure of themselves and complete.

Erno’s mother was a cop. She had a cop’s squinty eyes and a cop’s suspicion of anyone who stepped outside of the norm. She had a cop’s lack of imagination, except as she could imagine what people would do wrong.

Erno and his mother and his sister Celeste and his Aunt Sophie and his cousins Lena and Aphra, and various men some of whom may have been fathers, some of them Good Partners, and others just men, lived in an apartment in Sanger, on the third level of the northeast quadrant, a small place looking down on the farms that filled the floor of the crater they called Fowler, though the real Fowler was a much larger crater five kilometers distant.

Erno had his own room. He thought nothing of the fact that the girls had to share a room, and would be forced to move out when they turned fourteen. Keep your son close, let your daughter go, went the aphorism Tyler had mocked. Erno’s mother was not about to challenge any aphorisms. Erno remembered her expression as she had stepped forward to arrest the drunk: sad that this man had forced her to this, and determined to do it. She was comfortable in the world; she saw no need for alternatives. Her cronies came by the apartment and shared coffee and gossip, and they were just like all the other mothers and sisters and aunts. None of them were extraordinary.

Not that any of the men Erno knew were extraordinary, either. Except Tyler Durden. And now Erno knew Durden, and they had spent a night breaking rules and getting away with it.

Celeste and Aphra were dishing up oatmeal when Erno returned to the apartment that morning. “Where were you?” his mother asked. She looked up from the table, more curious than upset, and Erno noticed a bruise on her temple.

“What happened to your forehead?” Erno asked.

His mother touched a hand to her forehead, as if she had forgotten it. She waved the hand in dismissal.

“There was trouble at a club in the enterprise district,” Aunt Sophie said. “The constables had to step in, and your mother was assaulted.”

“It was a riot!” Lena said eagerly. “There’s going to be a big meeting about it in the park today.” Lena was a month from turning fourteen, and looking forward to voting.

Erno sat down at the table. As he did so he felt the book, which he had tucked into his belt at the small of his back beneath his now rumpled suit jacket. He leaned forward, pulled a bowl of oatmeal toward him and took up a spoon. Looking down into the bowl to avoid anyone’s eyes, he idly asked, “What’s the meeting for?”

“One of the rioters was knocked into a coma,” Lena said. “The social order committee wants this comedian Tyler Durden to be made invisible.”

Erno concentrated on his spoon. “Why?”

“You know about him?” his mother asked.

Before he had to think of an answer, Nick Farahsson, his mother’s partner, shambled into the kitchen. “Lord, Pam, don’t you pay attention? Erno’s one of his biggest fans.”

His mother turned on Erno. “Is that so?”

Erno looked up from his bowl and met her eyes. She looked hurt. “I’ve heard of him.”

“Heard of him?” Nick said. “Erno, I bet you were there last night.”

“I bet you weren’t there,” Erno said.

Nick stretched. “I don’t need to hear him. I have no complaints.” He came up behind Erno’s mother, nuzzled the nape of her neck and cupped her breast in his hand.