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I tried to tune out the gossip. I focused hard on the ship, but there was truly nothing left to see. It was black like the night on the edge of a terraforming bubble. It was hard. It had a dingdong sticking out of it. No matter how hard I squinted and studied it, none of that changed. Nothing moved.
Someone touched my arm and squeezed. I looked up and saw Chef Hypatia tilting her head at me.
I followed her away from the window, and she sat down at one of the tables. She smiled at me and gestured for me to sit. I reluctantly sat down across from her. Nothing was going on with the ship, but if anything changed, I wanted to be at the window when it did.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Was this woman ever just cooking in the galley like she was supposed to be?
“Oh, nothing’s wrong with me. I just wanted to help you with something.”
I cocked my head at her. “What’s that?”
There were rumors about Chef Hypatia. I’d dismissed them when she seemed so set on having the Khetar like her, but from the way she was looking at me, I got nervous again. The rumors said that she liked women. Liking women was not forbidden on Eden, you just never could talk about it. A lot of women viewed it as some kind of gift from Goddess herself, or maybe like an evolved form of womanhood where you could finally be fully happy in all the ways that we’d used to rely on men to do for us.
So High Command couldn’t celebrate it, since most women—like me—had no interest in other women. It’s not like when we cut men out, we suddenly just got desperate enough to want tolikeeach other like that. Centuries after the founding, only a small fraction of women liked each other like that. That proportion had never changed. If it was never going to help most of the women on Eden, then High Command didn’t want you talking about it. If you liked other women, you could be with them, but you couldn’t broadcast your happiness to others who could never feel that kind of happiness. It was simply unkind.
I was never jealous of women who liked women though. I knew, deep down, that on a planet like Earth, I’d have been into dingdongs. I didn’t know what one looked like, but I simplyknewthat dingdongs were what I was into. How could I be jealous of someone into kittens? I couldn’t fathom being into a kitten, so I’d be an entirely different person if I were into them. Some women didn’t see it like that. Some women just wished Goddess had made them differently.
“I can see you’re scared,” Chef said. “I just wanted you to be able to talk about it with someone.”
“I’m not scared,” I said. I was scared of the pirates, but that was compartmentalized from her, so it wasn’t a true lie for me to withhold that truth.
“You’re scared of being tainted,” she said, then smiled to soften the blow.
“As we all should be,” I hissed.
“But it’s always been a vague fear. Now, the dingdong of that male ship is poking intoRib. You’re telling me you’re not more afraid of being tainted than all women normally should be?”
I glared at her, but my expression softened as I realized she was right. What had always been a background fear, like a dull background noise, had just gotten slowly and slowly louder. It had gotten louder so slowly that I hadn’t even heard it. I’d convinced myself that the fear I’d felt was toward the more distant threat of the pirates, but no, I was afraid of this the most. Of seeing an alien man. I was utterly terrified of feeling whatever it meant to be tainted completely, and to have it change my life in ways I’d never even considered as a possibility.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m afraid. Of whatever might happen.”
“When I said maybe they want us to like them,” she said, “I was saying that for you.”
“What?”
“I meant it would be good for the rest of you. I wasn’t trying to cheer myself up, I was trying to cheer all of you up.”
I stared at her, not understanding.
“Because I like women,” she said.
I nodded. “Oh, right.”
“I’m afraid, Weapons,” she said. “Even if the aliens want us to like them, when they find out that I’m not going to like them back, what are they going to do to me?”
“They’re going to leave,” I said. “Don’t worry about any of that.”
Even though she liked women and I didn’t, I think it was clear that we both knew that, so I reached out across the table and held her hand. She’d helped me feel less afraid, and I wanted to do the same for her.
Then a message from Emissary Eve flashed across my brain, right through my neural implants. It was coded as top urgency, and I couldn’t mute or silence the message even if I’d wanted to.
The alien men—The Khetar—are too dangerous to the founding purpose of Eden. As you may have gossiped, women of High Command are rigorously trained to be resistant to the male form. I was chosen for this mission precisely because of my extreme resilience in this area. And yet, despite all my training and fortitude, I glanced at this man for a heartbeat or two, and it tainted me. I’ve thus stepped down from High Command. Chief Athena, I urge you to seal the airlock behind us. Airlock Eve is tainted too. Send a message to High Command. Recommend they do whatever it takes to send the Khetarpermanentlyaway and out of our system.
Airlock and I will be going with the Khetar.
I looked up, but Chef was still looking down. Even with a neural message, some women still “read” slower than others. Her eyes flicked up and met mine with a second or two. She squeezed my hand tighter over the table.
“They’ll leave,” I said, but something in the message was bothering me. I got up and stepped out into the corridor, which was free of gossip and hysteria, and replayed the message through my implants.
