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doomed biomes, established with odd parameters and then sealed off like test tubes

The Little Prince
, an outie terrarium, tent-bubbled with its atmosphere bluing its edges

The Whorl
, whose inhabitants keep watch for an outsider

Miranda, the smashed-together moon of Uranus, now a Trojan freely orbiting the sun, completely tent-bubbled, its deep canyons and stupendous ridges filigreed with snow drifting down in the low g, all Swiss architecture, a dream of the Alps

Icarus
, a fliers’ world, lit by a sunline in its floor to keep the air clear

Source of the Peach Blossom Stream
, a Tang dynasty recreation that looks like a Chinese landscape painting come to life

Miocene terraria, Cretaceous terraria, Jurassic terraria, Precambrian terraria

Water Drop
, an aquarium filled entirely with water and ocean creatures

Sequoia Kings Canyon
, an infolded Sierra Nevada of California

—and so on. Estimated nineteen thousand occupied asteroids and moons

B
ack at the spaceport between Schubert and Bramante Craters, Swan sat in a corner, filled with a regret for something she couldn’t name. Surely it was impossible that it should be regret for the utilidor; already she was forgetting that. Let Pauline remember that. Never look back, why should she? Although there had been something there—as if she had been on the border of something important. What had he said? That the tunnel was no different from anywhere else? She would never concede that, never.

When she was about to leave with Genette and the Interplan team, Mqaret came to see her again. “You’re so tough,” he told her, patting her head as if she were a child. But he took her seriously, she knew. So she shook her head.

“No,” she said flatly. “I fell apart. I couldn’t handle it.”

He defended her fondly. “It’s not really what you’re good at, of course. Enforced confinement. Don’t ever get put in prison, or shoot off in a spacesuit on a tangent somewhere. It wouldn’t suit you. Yet here you did very well, I think.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Well, this solar flare that struck you before you got to shelter; your suit dosimeters show that somehow you got hit much harder than the others down there with you. In fact, I don’t mean to scare you, because you’re going to be fine—I’ve already got your renovation well in hand, and you are responding superbly—but really, that was quite a hit.”

“Ten sieverts,” she said dismissively. “That’s not so bad.”

“Quite bad, actually. Did you look at the sun longer than the others? Did you stand in front of your friend?”

“Yes, I did, but I’m only half as wide as him. I’m sure I didn’t protect him much.”

“He only got three sieverts. So you’re only a bit thinner than he is, really. You saved him from the full shot.”

“And then he saved me. He had to carry me for a few days.”

“Fair’s fair. But look, this ten sieverts—that’s enough to kill, and you should have been debilitated. But you will be fine, as I said. So I’m interested to see if we can find out why you did so well. I’ve been wondering if your Enceladan symbiote had anything to do with it. It tolerates radiation well, and as a detrivore it may have bloomed in you to eat all the new food provided for it by all your killed cells. It may have joined your own T cells in clearing your body.”

Swan was startled by this. “You hated me doing that,” she said. “You told me I was a stupid fool.”

Mqaret nodded. “I was right, too. Look, Swan; if you love life, as you profess to do, as your excuse for all your wildness, then you should protect your life the best you can. Some actions are simply unknown risks, and that was one of them. Indeed it still is. But it was a risk only, not a certain thing. Presumably that’s why you did it. You’re not suicidal, right?”

“Right,” she said uncertainly.

“So you’re a fool, then, when you do things that you can’t be sure won’t kill you in ten or even a hundred years.”

“Then we’re all fools.”

“True. True enough. But there’s no need to be a stupid fool.”

“There’s a difference?”

“There is. You think about that and see if you can figure out the difference. Hopefully before you do something like this again. If anything like this is even possible.”

He had been poking a pad and looking at her numbers as they
spoke, and now he shrugged. “With your permission, I’ll take some of your samples back to the lab for study. Maybe it will lead to something.”

“Of course,” she said. “It would be nice if something good came from my stupid foolishness.”

He kissed her on the head. “Something more than what you already give, you mean.”

A
fter Mqaret was gone, Swan was left to think about her stupid foolishness. Her body, emaciated on the bed, swimming under her gaze like someone else, a thing she manipulated like a waldo—it was resilient. It still held her. Was hungry. She buzzed the nurse to ask for food.

“Pauline, please transmit my medical history to this tabletop.”

“Would you like the long version or the summary?”

“The summary,” Swan said, knowing that the long version ran to hundreds of pages.

She looked at the print glowing in the table, but could not force herself to read it. Phrases jumped out from all over it:
Born 2177
, a difficult birth, she had been told, with moments of low oxygen.
Seizures age 2. Fungal and bacterial infections in farm school. Wetland syndrome. ADHD, age 4–10

That had been countered with a drug treatment later discredited. Her later schooling had been conducted in the farm, and she had done much better out there. Except there were more words glowing in the table:
Dyscalculia. prefrontal cortex electrostimulation. First sabbatical inoculation for Xinjiang, China, age 15, full array including helminths

—meaning parasitic worms, in this case
Trichuris suis
, a pig whipworm, ingested in a therapy that seesawed in and out of favor.

ODD, age 15–24

Oppositional defiant disorder, related to anxiety disorder, both hippocampal, but anxiety avoided while ODD attacked.

One-g syndrome, second sabbatical in Montpellier, France, age 25. Venusian flu. Genital modification, age 25. Hormone drip implanted, age 35, hormone therapies to present. Oxytocin addiction, age 37–86. Lark and warbler song cluster implant, age 26. Feline purr vocal cords, age 27. Implant of subdural quantum computer in 2222, age 45. Cognitive therapy, age 9–99.

Fathered one female at age 28. Daughter deceased, 2296. Mothered one female at age 63. Natural birth.

There was a line entered in her records by Mqaret:
Ingestion of the Enceladan life-form—foolish girl, age 79.

Longevity treatments, age 40–present.

Factitious disorder, never treated—
this must have been inserted by either Mqaret or Pauline, making fun of her.

“What about
Designed a hundred terraria
?” Swan complained. “What about
three years spent in the Oort cloud putting mass drivers on ice balls
? Or
five years on Venus
?”

“Those were not medical events,” Pauline said.

“They were, believe me.”

“If you want your curriculum vitae, just ask for it.”

“Be quiet. Go away. You are too good at simulating an irritating person.”

“Did you say ‘simulating’ or ‘stimulating’?”

The longevity increase associated with bisexual therapies has led to very sophisticated surgical and hormonal treatments for interventions in utero, in puberty, and during adulthood. The XX/XY dichotomy still exists, but in the context of a wide variety of habit, usage, and terminology

feeling of gender identity is formed in the hippocampus and hypothalamus in the second month; the original orientation is persistent. If the desire is to create a feeling of undifferentiation or ambivalence, alterations need to begin in utero

in the first eight weeks of gestation keep both the Müllerian and Wolffian ducts active, in what is still the bi-potential gonad. Anti-Müllerian hormones activated by genes in the Y chromosome can be allowed to attach only to one of the fetal Müllerian ducts. The effect is normally ipsilateral, each testis suppressing Müllerian development only on its own side, so

XY embryos then need a moderate level of androgen insensitivity introduced by the fourth week, in order to avoid masculinization of the hypothalamus, where sexual differences in the brain will be concentrated. XX embryos need the application of androgens to one Müllerian duct in order to stimulate the growth of a Wolffian duct. As that Wolffian duct develops, the Müllerian duct on that side will experience apoptosis

underlying genetic makeup is the difference between androgyny and gynandromorphy, often not discernable by body features. XX humans with conserved Wolffian ducts are gynandromorphs; XY humans with conserved Müllerian ducts are androgyns. In both, androgens and estrogens are supplied with hormone pumps such that the child is born with potential for both kinds of genital development in the body, awaiting the choices

prenatally selected bisexuality has the strongest positive correlation with longevity. Hormonal treatments begun at puberty or during adulthood also have positive effects on longevity, but the psychological set will be

hormonal treatments support the surgical addition of a functioning uterus in the abdominal wall above the penis

alteration of the clitoris into a small functioning penis, with testicles grown using either conserved Wolffian ducts or stem cells from the subject. Gynandromorphs can ordinarily father only daughters, as the construction of a Y chromosome from an X chromosome involves problematic

females adding functional reproductive masculinity are helped by a process imitating a natural 5-alpha-reductase deficiency

principal categories of self-image for gender include feminine, masculine, androgynous, gynandromorphous, hermaphroditic, ambisexual, bisexual, intersex, neuter, eunuch, nonsexual, undifferentiated, gay, lesbian, queer, invert, homosexual, polymorphous, poly, labile, berdache, hijra, two-spirit,

cultures deemphasizing gender are sometimes referred to as ursuline cultures, origin of term unknown, perhaps referring to the difficulty there can be in determining the gender of bears

T
he moment Kiran was alone with Shukra, Shukra said to him, “We’re going to have to put you through some tests, my boy.”

“What kind of tests?”

“All kinds.”

Three big men showed up to escort them across a few boulevards of Colette, and Kiran saw there was no question of him doing anything but what he was told. As they entered a building with bay windows overlooking a street corner, he tried to see the street signs and remember where they were. Eighth and Oak. Although the tree across the intersection was a willow.

“Tell me again why Swan brought you here?” Shukra asked as they went into the building.

“I helped her avoid being kidnapped, when she was out in my neighborhood. She wanted to return the favor.”

Shukra said, “You asked to come here?”

“Sort of.”

Shukra shook his head a few times. “So now you are a spy.”

“What do you mean?”

Shukra glanced at him. “You’re a spy for her, at this point, whether you know it or not. We’ll find out with our tests. After that you’ll be a spy for me.”

“Why should she need a spy here?”

“She was very close to the Lion of Mercury, and since the Lion’s death, she has started traveling in the way that the Lion would
have. And the Lion always kept a big cadre of spies here. So let’s see what the tests say.”

Kiran found his heart was beating hard, but the three big men closed around him, and there was no choice but to be escorted into another room. This one had the look of a medical clinic. The tests in the end resembled medical exams more than anything else, which was a great relief to discover. Although when medical exams are the good option, it is not a good situation.

At the end of that day he was escorted back into Shukra’s presence. Shukra examined the console that presumably contained Kiran’s results. When he spoke, it was to Kiran’s escorts. “He looks clean, but somehow I doubt it. For now, let’s use him for bait.”

After that Kiran was assigned to a Chinese work unit, which lived together in a building near the city’s crater rim, and left the city together almost daily to do work outside. The unit’s members had no control over their lives; they went where they were told, did what they were told, ate what they were given. It was almost like being at home.

A stupid little translation belt Swan had given to him was now the only company Kiran had. He got a lot of puzzled second glances when he used the thing to facilitate communication, but he also had a few ten-minute conversations through it that were much better than nothing. Mostly, however, he was on his own in a throng, doing whatever came up for his team that day. He never saw Shukra again after the battery of tests, which made him feel like he had failed—although one day it occurred to him that maybe he had passed.

In any case there was endless work to be done, almost all of it outside Colette, in the perpetual blizzard that the Big Rain had turned into. Thick drifts of snow were landing on the new dry ice seas before the latter had been completely covered with foamed rock, and this was creating a problem. Every day big teams had to go out and operate gargantuan bulldozers and snowplows to clear the snow off the dry ice, so that foamed rock brigades could then cover the ice
before more snow fell on it. It was said that the foam job would take ten more years to finish, but Kiran had also heard one year, and someone else said a hundred years. No one knew for sure, and with his belt it was hard to follow the discussions at the dining table after meals, when sometimes workmates would try to do the calculations themselves on their wristpads. Ten years kept coming up. Talk about dead-end jobs! He needed to improve his Chinese.