Works/Contact

A pleasant thing about Liz is that she didn't hug.

Hugs are for lovers, intimates, and even then not worth much. A fondle, a squeeze, a kiss anywhere on the face and neck except the mouth, even a touch on the shoulder - to me these are the little familiarities that say "We are comfortable enough with each other and our bodies to permit this luxury."

A hug is a meaningless gesture, a bump of contact - the proof of its meaninglessness is that it's been coopted as something even non-intimates can safely do in public. And to indicate what? To demonstrate that one is more familiar with someone else than one actually is or should be? We can't be lovers to all our friends. Sometimes we can't even be friends to all our friends.

Liz didn't hug. Liz didn't clasp my hand. But she did smile, in the hard-eyed Liz fashion.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Hanger-on," I said.

"Voyeur."

"Media," I corrected, taking my pass from my shirt pocket. I hate wearing things around my neck.

She squinted at it. "Well, if we have lunch, it's off-limits."

I nodded. That was the way things worked with Liz. The smile under the glare, the lunch invitation under the warning. She separated from me, to sit in the reserved rows, which was just as well. Neither of us was casually social.

I hadn't actually ever seen her spouse - actually I wasn't even sure they were married, but "spouse" will do - so I panned across the cards on the long table trying to match a face to a name. Along the way the wrong card caught me, and at the same time my "why does that sound familiar" process churned out an answer, Zia slipped quietly into the reserved seats and sat down less than five feet from Liz.

I still feel like I should have expected it, which is completely unreasonable.

- - -

[From transcripts of the proceedings of the initial session of the International Conference on Extraplanetary Eugenics and Colonization:]

Torrance: [Dr. Rosenthal,] while you have said a great deal about practicality, you haven't said anything at all about desirability.

Rosenthal: Are you implying there's a difference?

Torrance: In this situation, certainly. You've given plenty of reasons why, in terms of the demands of colonization, this is a good solution, but you haven't considered how this same solution stands up in terms of human issues.

Rosenthal: What do you mean, human issues?

- - -

Liz was blunt enough that she wouldn't have minded my bringing it up point-blank, but I didn't know her well enough to know whether she had noticed or cared. If she hadn't, then my mentioning it would make it look like I noticed or cared more than I actually did. But I did care enough to want to know what Liz had thought - if she had even noticed.

"I suppose you saw Zia."

"I did," I replied. For a moment I'd been relieved she brought it up herself, but now, I realized, this just meant greater peril.

"Tell me."

"She's with Rosenthal."

Liz groaned - or maybe growled - and squeezed the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. "You're sure?"

"I got an invitation to their wedding."

She looked up and studied me. "I hope you didn't not go because of me."

"How do you know I didn't go?"

"You didn't."

- - -

Torrance: We don't assume colonies will exist in a vacuum. They will have to have contact with others. I think we all agree that isolation is not a viable policy -

Rosenthal: What's your point?

Torrance: In the situation you're recommending, there will be social and emotional difficulties - possibly insurmountable ones - when that contact takes place. It's inevitable.

- - -

In the afternoon there were individual presentations, scientists showing off their shiny objects and preaching their positions. I went to a private presentation of my own in the hotel bar. I don't normally drink that early in the day, but I had a premonition that was eating a tension hole in my stomach.

Zia knew where to look. There were a few stares as she walked in but she strode straight to me, not looking around, and sat down across from me without an invitation, reaching down to adjust her tail before she settled in.

"I miss you," she said.

"Well, I agree we should send messages more often -"

"You know that's not what I mean."

"Then what do you mean?"

"Are you going to sit there and tell me that I'm imagining things?" she said.

"Is this because I didn't go to the wedding?"

"No, you ass," she hissed, "I didn't expect you to go to the wedding, you were a continent away and I gave short notice. That's not what I mean."

"I've just been busy, is all," I said. "You've been pretty busy too, what with getting modified and running all over the world and -"

"You are angry. I knew it."

"Not angry. Upset."

"Upset? You're not - well -"

I had been staring at the table. I looked up at her yellow eyes, and then I laughed, sharply. "No, I'm not jealous."

"Then what?"

As ridiculous as her modification was, a back corner of my mind had to admit it suited her. Zia had always been somewhat feline, her movements, her facial expressions; it was more of an accentuation than a radical change - the same, but more so. Just then she was fixing me with the stare of a cat who knows you know how to open the cabinet where the food is: I know there is more here, and I'm not going to stop looking at you until I get it.

When cats do that to me, my impulse is to not feed them even their normal meals: Because you do that I will deliberately not give you what you want. I can't not feed my cats. But I could stand up and walk out of the bar, and I did.

- - -

Torrance: Do I have to spell this out?

Yamamoto: Apparently.

[Laughter.]

Torrance: Fine. Individuals who have had deliberate mutations will never be able to interact normally with -

[Interjections etc from other panelists, audience.]

Torrance: [Over noise.] They will NEVER be able to interact normally with unmutated humans, no matter how - let me finish! - no matter how desirable the mutation may be! There will always be severe social difficulties.

Rosenthal: I disagree.

Torrance: I'm aware that you do.

- - -

"You're going to get a good story when the fight breaks out." Liz said.

"I don't understand smart people making dumb choices."

"They may not think it's dumb at the time. They just don't see far enough ahead."

"But what if they've already been burned before? If they've already been around someone who's been horrible to them, abusive - or someone who is worthless, or a bad idea in some other way - if they've already been in one trainwreck then why would they go out and find others, over and over? Why don't they learn?"

I stopped for breath and realized Liz was giving me a slow, strange look. "I don't think we're talking about the same thing," she said.

I looked down at her arms, involuntarily, and she knew I was looking at them. "You couldn't have known when you did it."

"Doesn't feel that way, though. Do you consider us one of her dumb choices?" Apparently we had swapped topics.

Liz and Zia had been together once, and by implication, Dr. Torrance. I never ask the arrangements. But I know Liz's marriage to Torrance (whose first name I still never felt familiar enough to use) happened long before Zia entered the picture.

"No - I think you were the good choice. I think that's one of the reasons why I -"

"I don't think," she said carefully, "you have nearly enough information to be making a judgement."

"Are we talking about my topic or yours?" I asked.

"Both," she said.

I was spared a decision whether to be pissed off at her. We had been sitting outside a conference room waiting for Torrance to finish speaking within. As Liz said, "I've heard it too many times already."

As Liz said the word "both," the door to the room opened - except "opened" is not really the word - and a man came out, or was pushed out, or fell out of the commotion inside and shouted to no one in particular, "Call for help!"

"Oh god," Liz said, and tried to push into the room, through the masses of people, some fighting, some trying to get out. She screamed; I knew why, but no one else did and the scream, and her subsequent collapse, seemed to make everyone worse - like first blood had been claimed. Then chairs were swinging; I was trying to get into the room to drag Liz out, figuring that my pulling her couldn't be any worse than what she'd already had .... Something, fist or chair, hit me hard somewhere off to my left side. Felt far away. Then felt like a train.

I woke up quietly. My head hurt. I counted backwards from twenty. I could remember my name. I was somewhere in the hotel, another conference room or perhaps the same one, laid out among a row of other casualties. Okay. Preliminary checks seemed fine. I stood up.

Liz was four spots down. She was the one who had two puzzled people in medical whites standing over her. "Is she all right?"

"Do you know her?"

"She's a friend of mine."

"I don't suppose you know what -"

"She has ... a condition," I said. "It hurts when people touch her. When she ran into the room she wasn't thinking. Is she okay?"

"Well, she doesn't have any other injuries, so if this skin irritation is normal for her ... I guess we just monitor until she wakes up," he added to his fellow paramedic, or doctor, or whatever they were.

"She's Dr. Torrance's spouse," I said. "Is he okay?"

They exchanged a look. It's never good when people like that exchange that kind of look.

- - -

Rosenthal: I don't understand this bias -

Torrance: I know you don't, and that's why you don't understand the problem.

Rosenthal: What you're saying is that you believe that humans should not be allowed to adapt themselves to specific needs or conditions -

Torrance: Or desires?

Rosenthal: What's that supposed to mean?

Torrance: Only that deliberate mutation is not something to be undergone lightly.

Rosenthal: Are you accusing me of advocating mutation for frivolous reasons?

Torrance: Not necessarily you personally. But if -

Rosenthal: I resent your tone, Dr. Torrance.

- - -

Fortunately it was only about a grade-two look they had exchanged; Torrance had been hurt just badly enough to earn him a hospital bed instead of a conference room floor.

Liz insisted I come. I don't know why. When we got to the room, Zia was sitting beside the bed, watching Torrance sleep. That was all I had a chance to see as I backed out of the room and shut the door.

But there couldn't have been time for more than five or six strong words before Zia came out as well, and likewise shut the door behind her.

"Now I understand," she said.

"I doubt you do," I said.

"I suppose you think that I'm a slut, or some kind of thrill-seeker ... or maybe just - what did he say this morning - frivolous. That I made a frivolous decision."

"He didn't say 'frivolous.' Your spouse did. You know, the one who talked you into turning yourself into a real life sex kitten to be a travelling showpiece for his -"

"He tried to talk me out of it!"

I stopped.

"So stop thinking you know everything. He thought it was a really stupid idea. He thought it would cheapen his message, not help it. We nearly ... we nearly didn't .... God. You could have just asked me instead of deciding to hate me," she said, turning away and leaning against the wall.

"So why did you do it?"

"Because ... no. I don't have to explain to you."

"You don't have to. But, okay, I'm wrong. Tell me why I'm wrong."

She didn't turn around, and for a second I was going to say, "Fine," and go into the room - screw this - then she said:

"You told me once you don't like kissing people."

"I kiss people."

"I mean real kisses."

"I don't dislike them. It's just ... it's like eating really fresh peaches or fried chicken. I don't do it unless I'm wearing old clothes and no witnesses are present. It's messy, it's sloppy, and there are better things to do."

"Like what? Sex is messy. Do you go down on people? I bet you don't. When was the last time you had sex, anyway?"

"What the hell has this got to do with anything?"

"That's why I can't explain to you."

"Why?"

"Because you hate intimacy!" she said, finally turning around. "Because you wouldn't know lust if it slapped you in the face!"

I spent several seconds with my eyes closed. When I opened them, they burned. I knew I wouldn't want to see myself in a mirror just then. "I can think of better places right now for a slap in the face."

Her eyes opened wide, then narrowed, and she turned again and walked down the hall.

With flawless timing, the door to the hospital room opened. "You," Liz said, "are a moral coward."

"It wasn't my fight."

"It's never your fight. You always want to be Switzerland."

"I'm sorry. I figured that if I stayed in there it would only be worse."

"I'm always impressed by the way you assume you have no effect on the universe whatsoever," she said, but she moved into the room and didn't close the door on me, so I went in.

"I should leave you two alone," I said.

"Don't you dare. Besides, he's not much of a talker right now."

We sat. After a few minutes, she said, "You're not doing any better than he is."

"Sorry."

"Tell me."

"You have other problems right now."

"Tell me. It'll distract me."

"She says I'm scared of intimacy."

She cocked her head at me. "Truth hurts?"

"Oh, thanks."

"Well, hell, am I supposed to lie to you? You know, you're the only person who has never tried to touch me at all, not so much as a handshake? Never. I notice these things."

"I can be intimate. It's just - that's something I prefer to keep for only a few, I think it's not something you should give out lightly. Casual contact is overrated."

"I should throw you out for saying that," she said.

"Oh, damn, I'm sorry -"

"Not everybody gets to take it for granted."

"I know, I know -"

"No, you don't. I'm not just talking about me."

I sat silently.

"She left us for a reason," Liz said. "It took me a while, I admit it, I was pissed, but she wanted something she couldn't get with us. You can't interfere with people. They have to fuck up on their own."

- - -

Torrance: I've seen firsthand what happens when the idea goes wrong. There are consequences, unintended consequences we cannot anticipate -

Rosenthal: With all due respect, Dr. Torrance, just because you have, er, personal knowledge of an experiment that failed doesn't mean that others will, and it doesn't take into accounts the improvements which have been learned since then.

Torrance: And with similar respect, Dr. Rosenthal, I say that the basic problem you're not seeing is right there in your use of the word "experiment" with regard to human beings.

- - -

I found Zia. It wasn't hard. She was in the hotel bar.

"This one is on me," I said, sitting down. She glared at me.

"I'm not interested in talking to people who just want to slap me around," she said.

"I didn't come to slap you around."

"Did you come to apologize?"

"That depends," I said. "Is he a good person?"

"... What?"

"I want to know that he's not like all the other ones. I want to know that someone actually cares for you, about you, in one of your relationships. For once. I want to be reassured that I don't need to worry about you."

"You have a strange way of showing worry."

I shrugged.

"How can I - I mean, I think he's good, I think he's - I trust him, okay? And I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt it."

"In that case, I apologize."

"You could have asked. It would have been a lot easier than stewing all these months."

"What if I didn't trust your answers?"

"You have a hell of a lot of nerve. So it's only your judgement that's to be trusted, everone else's is suspect? Do you give all your friends this little credit?"

I sighed. "I make mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Really, really stupid life mistakes. I want my friends not to make stupid mistakes like I do, because I want them to be above that; I want them to succeed where I fail."

"God," she said, "I don't know whether to criticize you for asking too much of us or for thinking so little of yourself."

"I can apologize again if that will help any."

"I don't think it will," she said, but she didn't get up, and I didn't get up.

A while later she said, "I'm sorry this has gone the way it did."

"You mean the conference, right?"

"Yes."

"I think the pro-mutation crowd will probably win out. There are some of the frontier planets that just aren't going to get settled any other way."

"Sounds like you approve."

"I don't disapprove. There'll be some fights. We'll get used to it."

"So you're changing sides?"

"I hadn't ever picked a side. There are bigger problems in the universe to worry about."

"I'll drink to that," she said.

Copyright © September 2006. Do not distribute or reproduce.