The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

She turned her face up and kissed him on the cheek. “I should hope not.”

Lena made a face. “Heteros. I can’t wait until I get out of here.” She had recently declared herself a lesbian and was quite judgmental about it.

“You’d better get to your practicum, Lena,” Aunt Sophie said. “Let your aunt take care of her own sex life.”

“This guy Durden is setting himself up for a major fall,” said Nick. “Smells like a case of abnormal development. Who’s his mother?”

Erno couldn’t keep quiet. “He doesn’t have a mother. He doesn’t need one.”

“Parthenogenesis,” Aunt Sophie said. “I didn’t think it had been perfected yet.

“If they ever do, what happens to me?” Nick said.

“You have your uses.” Erno’s mother nudged her shoulder against his hip.

“You two can go back to your room,” Aunt Sophie said. “We’ll take care of things for you.”

“No need.” Nick grabbed a bowl of oatmeal and sat down. “Thank you, sweetheart,” he said to Aphra. “I can’t see what this guy’s problem is.”

“Doesn’t it bother you that you can’t vote?” Erno said. “What’s fair about that?’

“I don’t want to vote,” Nick said.

“You’re a complete drone.”

His mother frowned at him. Erno pushed his bowl away and left for his room.

“You’re the one with special tutoring!” Lena called. “The nice clothes. What work do you do?”

“Shut up,” Erno said softly, but his ears burned.

He had nothing to do until his 1100 biotech tutorial, and he didn’t even have to go if he didn’t want to. Lena was right about that, anyway. He threw the book on his bed, undressed, and switched on his screen. On the front page was a report of solar activity approaching its eleven-year peak, with radiation warnings issued for all surface activity. Erno called up the calendar. There it was: a discussion on Tyler Durden was scheduled in the amphitheater at 1600. Linked was a vid of the riot and a forum for open citizen comment. A cousin named Tashi Yokiosson had been clubbed in the fight and was in a coma, undergoing nanorepair.

Erno didn’t know him, but that didn’t prevent his anger. He considered calling up Tyrus or Sid, finding out what had happened to them, and telling them about his adventure with Tyler. But that would spoil the secret, and it might get around to his mother. Yet he couldn’t let his night with Tyler go uncelebrated. He opened his journal, and wrote a poem:

Going outside the crater finding the lost tunnels of freedom and male strength.

Searching with your brother shoulder to shoulder like men.

Getting below the surface of a stifling society sounding your XY shout.

Flashing your colors like an ancient Spartan bird proud, erect, never to be softened by the silent embrace of woman

No females aloud.

Not bad. It had some of the raw honesty of the beats. He would read it at the next meeting of the Poets’ Club. He saved it with the four hundred other poems he had written in the last year: Erno prided himself on being the most prolific poet in his class. He had already won four Laurel Awards, one for best Lyric, one for best Sonnet, and two for best Villanelle-plus a Snappie for best limerick of 2097. He was sure to make Bard at an earlier age than anyone since Patrick Maurasson.

Erno switched off the screen, lay on his bed, and remembered the book. He dug it out from under his discarded clothes. It had a blue cover, faded to purple near the binding, made of some sort of fabric. Embossed on the front was a torch encircled by a laurel wreath. He opened the book to its title page: Stories for Men, “An Anthology by Charles Grayson.” Published in August 1936, in the United States of America.

As a fan of Earth culture, Erno knew that most Earth societies used the patronymic, so that Gray, Grayson’s naming parent, would be a man, not a woman.

Stories for men. The authors on the contents page were all men-except perhaps for odd names like “Dashiell.” Despite Erno’s interest in twentieth-century popular art, only a couple were familiar. William Faulkner he knew was considered a major Earth writer, and he had seen the name Hemingway before, though he had associated it only with a style of furniture. But even assuming the stories were all written by men, the title said the book was stories for men, not stories by men.

How did a story for a man differ from a story for a woman? Erno had never considered the idea before. He had heard storytellers in the park, and read books in school-Murasaki, Chopin, Gather, Ellison, Morrison, Ferenc, Sabinsdaughter. As a child, he had loved the Alice books, and Flatland, and Maria Hidalgo’s kids’ stories, and Seuss. None seemed particularly male or female.