Science Fiction



     Inclination




              By William Shunn
                         Inclination
                      by William Shunn




                  Fictionwise, Inc.

                www.Fictionwise.com



        Copyright ©2006 by William Shunn

    First published in Asimov's, April-May 2006


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                             2
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn




    The Manual tells us that in the beginning the Builder
decreed six fundamental Machines. These are his six aspects,
and all we do we must do with the Six. We need no other
machines.
    I believe this with all my heart. I do. And yet sometimes I
seem to intuit the existence of a seventh Machine, hovering
like a blasphemous ghost just beyond apprehension.
    There is something wrong with me, and I don't know what
it is.
                              ****


   Late for my curfew and trembling, I grasp the doorknob
that is not a doorknob.
   This is the Machinist Quarter—only a tiny sliver of
Netherview Station's Ring B, though I'm one of the few boys I
know who has ever been outside it. Fo-grav stays off in the
Quarter; our only simulation of gravity is the 0.25 g of natural
centripetal acceleration born of the station's rotation and our
two-kilometer distance from the hub. We joke that this is why
it's called the Quarter. It sure isn't called that after the ratio
of its volume to the station's.
    The cabin I share with my father Thomas lies in the
Inclined Plane branch, third transverse, twelfth hatch on the
left. Standing at the hatch, I straighten my billed cap and
smooth my coverall—each emblazoned with a right triangle
stitched in dove-gray thread, representing our ward—and
gently turn the knob. Recessed lights at deck level cast my
diffuse shadow up the bulkheads to either side of me. The
                                3
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                         by William Shunn


knob operates as if it were mounted on a genuine mechanical
axle, though of course it isn't. A dumb mechanical doorknob
wouldn't unlock to my touch alone, or Thomas's. I hate the
doorknob. I hate the deceitfulness of it, the way its
homogeneous smart matter mimics the virtuous and
differentiated and pure. I hate what it conceals. I hate it for
not keeping me out.
    With a silent prayer to the Builder, I push the hatch open.
It swings inward on soundless, lying hinges. I tread lightly
inside, in case Thomas is sleeping, the nonslippers on my feet
helping me keep my steps short and low. But as I round the
door I see Thomas sitting up on his bunk in his short gray
underall, watching me enter. The door closes itself behind
me, which no door should do unbidden. The cabin is narrow
and unadorned but for a diagram of the Six Fundamental
Machines affixed to the rear bulkhead, and a small wooden
chest bolted to the deck beneath it. The air reeks of a coppery
sourness that matches Thomas's narrowed glare. The cabin is
so tiny I could reach out and stroke his curly, graying hair if I
wanted, but that's an urge that no longer seizes me often.
Anyway, the days when I could reliably charm him out of his
anger are long past.
   "You're late, son," he says. He's squinting at me now, eyes
unfocused, the way he does sometimes. He doesn't even
glance at the chronometer on his wrist—a true mechanism,
with tiny metal gears and not smart matter inside, a symbol
of his status as a merchant trader. "It's past your curfew."



                                4
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                         by William Shunn


   "I'm sorry," I say, turning my back and reaching for the
crank that will fold my bunk down from the bulkhead opposite
his.
   His voice grates out in sharp, tight bursts like the strokes
of a rasp on iron: "If you were sorry, you'd have been on
time."
   My shoulder blades prickle. I say nothing, cranking down
the bunk.
   "Jude, you're fifteen years old," Thomas says. "Why do you
think you still have so many rules? Why?"
   I try to shrug, but the effort feels jerky, like the gesture of
a marionette. "I was waiting my turn at devotions," I say,
clinging to the false crank. "You know—with Nic and the rest.
But the Foremen wouldn't—they stayed past their time, and
we, well..."
    Thomas has risen, his voice at the back of my neck,
shivering my spine. "I was out looking for you. I spoke to
Nicodemus an hour ago. In Plane, not at gymnasium."
   My blood runs chill. That's two lies I've told, and he's
caught me in one already. Nicodemus is my best friend, or
used to be, but lately I've been avoiding him. We were up late
working on our motors in the schola a couple of weeks ago.
He was helping me get the timing right on mine and his
fingers brushed the back of my hand. It was just an accident.
We've been friends all our lives, but it was like seeing him for
the first time. I wanted to touch his face, though I didn't let
myself. The scary thing was, it didn't feel wrong, and that
scares me all the more.


                                5
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


    Of course I can't explain this to Thomas. Nor can I explain
why more and more I can't force myself to evening devotions
on time. The cleansing room where we change and shower is
like a chamber of horrors. None of the boys seem bothered by
disrobing in front of each other, but it bothers me acutely.
Letting them see my body makes me want to tear my skin
off.
    My bunk is halfway lowered. I want to turn and defend
myself against Thomas's implicit accusation but a bolus of
confusion clogs my throat. Words swarm like dust in my
brain, eluding my grasp. Why do I have to explain any of this
to him? Why doesn't he just know? And why is it his
business?
   "Great Builder, Jude," Thomas says at my back, "if you
have to lie to me, how can I trust you at a job?"
   My shoulders stiffen, my head half turns.
   "That's right, I've lined up a job for you. Do you
understand, son? At the hub."
   A sick despair flares in my gut. Outside the Quarter? Could
things get any worse?
   "I need you up early, and fresh, but you're out doing
Builder knows what when you should be in bed. Did I raise
you to be this way, Jude? Did I?"
   Tiny flecks of spittle flense the back of my neck. I was at
my devotions, I really was, I want to say, but the words won't
come.
   "Answer me when I speak!" Thomas says, seizing my arm
and spinning me around. My cap with its Inclined Plane
insignia flies off my head.
                               6
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                         by William Shunn


   The skinny legs tensed for violence, the slow ripple of his
round, protruding belly, the sharpening rage on his gray blade
of a face—I'm bigger and taller, but I might as well be five
again for all that I can stand up to what's coming.
   He shakes me. "You will honor your father, that your days
may be long upon the earth!"
   Saline globules tremble at the corners of my eyes, watery
jewels sparkling across my sight. The words burst out before I
know I'm speaking: "There's no earth here, only metal."
   My father's face flushes livid. He spins, hurling me across
the cabin—not difficult, since my weight is just twenty kilos. I
sprawl across my father's bunk, all gawky limbs and terror.
   I roll over and there he is looming above me, fists raised
and shaking. It's been months since last he struck me, an
improbable lucky streak which now seems about to end. But
he lowers his arms and leans over me.
   "The Wrecker's in you, boy," he says, shaking a finger.
"You pray hard and shake loose his grip. Pray to be made
square and true. Tomorrow more than ever, you need the
Builder to be with you."
   And now he's pulling on his coverall and leaving the cabin
to stalk off his anger, the hatch snicking shut behind him like
a quiet tap to a finishing nail. Alone, I flow off the bunk to the
floor, to my knees, to retrieve my cap and pray.
   I'm out of true and I need fixing. Through shuddering tears
I pray for the Builder to make me a better son, a stronger
laborer, a whole person. I pray for his protection, both
physical and spiritual. I pray for reassurance that Thomas


                                7
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


doesn't really mean to send me alone among the Sculpted in
the morning.
   When I finally crawl into my bunk and wrap the blanket
around myself, though, it's not the Builder with his Machines I
picture watching over me in the dark. It's my departed
mother Kaiya, angel wings spread above me in a canopy of
white.
                             ****


   The Builder has ignored my prayer, at least the part about
the Sculpted.
   We rise and dress early, Thomas and I, and exit our cabin.
In one hand Thomas carries a gray cloth sack big enough to
hold a loaf of bread.
   Only the most devoted practitioners are awake at this
hour, en route to gymnasium. Rather than follow them,
Thomas leads me to the end of the next branch over, to
where Saul, foreman of Inclined Plane, lives. The only mark
that sets this hatch apart from every other in the row is the
small carpenter's square etched at its very center.
    Foreman Saul appears in the hatchway, bleary-eyed, at
Thomas's knock. "Selah, Jude," he says in greeting, favoring
me with a look both compassionate and foreboding. "Brother
Thomas, let me speak to you alone a moment. We'll only be a
bit, Jude."
    Thomas follows Saul inside without a glance at me. I stand
in the corridor and mentally rehearse the Builder's Code. I'm
still in Lever, less than halfway through the Hexalogue, when
the hatch opens again. Saul gestures me in.
                               8
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


   The cabin is a little smaller than the one Thomas and I
share, and consequently more crowded than ours ever gets.
Thomas sits at one end of the only bunk, cloth sack in his lap.
He pats the space beside him, and I sit. Saul picks up a
thermos from the foldout stovetop that juts from the rear
bulkhead and sips carefully at the spout. The air smells faintly
of powdered coffee and machine oil.
   "Jude," Saul says, "your father let me know late last night
that he's secured you a position on a stevedore crew at the
docks. Unfortunately, as you're required there promptly this
morning and you can now be fined for tardiness, there's no
time to go through the usual series of preparatory lessons
before you leave the safety of the Quarter."
   I don't miss the baleful sideways glance Saul gives
Thomas, but Thomas doesn't seem to react to it. He just sits
there with the same twist of bored impatience on his lips.
    "Oh, I've been out a couple of times before," I say, if only
to cut the palpable tension, which is settling into my neck. "I
mean, when I was younger."
    "Yes." Saul sighs, blinking his pouchy eyes a few times. He
is older than my father, taller and softer, but no sadder. I've
been tempted many times to bring my cares and questions to
him, but something has always held me back. "You're a bright
young man, Jude, and I know you've walked among the
Sculpted before, so at least the sights won't be new to you.
But accompanying your father once or twice on his rounds is
hardly the same as working alongside them, alone, for a full
shift every day. If there's no time for the proper instruction
first, at the very least a blessing is in order."
                               9
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


    "Okay," I say, a little of the weight lifting from my
shoulders. Even if the Builder isn't listening to me, surely he'll
listen to the foreman, as pious a man as I know. But at the
same time I'm beginning to feel in my gut just how much
spiritual danger I'll be courting. Why is Thomas doing this to
me?
    "If you'll sit here?" Saul says. He's setting up a metal
folding chair in the middle of the cabin, which means it nearly
bumps Thomas's knees. I scoot over into the chair, doffing
my cap and clutching it in my lap, as Saul removes a
ceremonial oilcan from a niche in the bulkhead. Thomas joins
Saul behind me. The oilcan ka-chunks, the tip of its spout
tickling the hair at the crown of my head as it deposits a tiny
bead of machine oil. Saul gently taps the droplet down onto
my scalp, and he and Thomas lay their hands upon my head.
    Other kids get to have their mothers in the cabin with
them during blessings like this. I close my eyes and try to
imagine Kaiya here, watching from the corner near the hatch.
And she could be, right? Surely that's not a vain hope.
   "Great Builder," Saul says, "in the name of the Wheel, the
Wedge, the Lever, the Plane, the Pulley, and the Screw, we
bring before you your true and faithful servant Jude, who
ventures forth this day to labor amongst the Sculpted for his
daily bread. Be with him, Builder, that he might have health
in his navel, marrow in his bones, and strength in his
sinews—strength that he might work and not be weary, but
moreso that the Wrecker with his subtle wiles may find no
purchase in his heart, mind, or flesh. We know the Wrecker's
cunning is great, Builder, and that he can make what's wrong
                                10
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


seem right. But your power and love are infinite, and so we
commend this young man to your oversight with all faith in
your goodness and wisdom. May we ever draw nearer to
thee, Great Builder, as the Inclined Plane rises ever to
heaven. Amen."
   "Amen," I say. The hands, which have grown progressively
heavier during the blessing, lift from my head. I stand, rolling
my head to soothe my neck.
   Saul folds the chair and sets it aside—a deft, practiced
move in the cramped space—then reaches out to clasp my
forearm in the Scaffold Grip. His hand is warm and dry.
"What's today, Thursday? Let's meet Sundays after temple,
Jude, to make some headway on those lessons. Better late
than never."
   "When his schedule allows," Thomas says, conspicuously
checking his chronometer. "They call this Oneday outside.
Weeks aren't reckoned the same."
    "Of course. Then any day you can, Jude." Saul squeezes
and releases my forearm. "And remember that the Builder
blesses you not just for obedience to his commandments, but
for obedience to your parents as well."
    "Jude," Thomas says. He picks the sack up from the bunk
and inclines his head toward the hatch.
    "Selah, Foreman," I say and follow my father out into the
corridor. I look back to see, in the moment before the hatch
closes behind us, Foreman Saul standing like a forlorn beast
in the center of a cage.
    Or is that perception just a way to make myself feel better
about the sentence to which I've been condemned?
                               11
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


    Thomas leads me at a brisk pace out to the main corridor,
skipping lightly along the deck. "Don't let him get to you,
Jude," he says over his shoulder. "Saul, Bartholomew, none
of the Foremen understand our economic realities."
    I'm not sure whether he means our family's or the whole
Quarter's. I don't ask for clarification, not just because I don't
like encouraging him to disparage the Foremen but because
we've turned into the main corridor and a few more people,
from all different wards, are out and about now. The soft gray
of their coveralls and visored caps against the brighter gray of
the bulkheads make the Quarter look almost like a scene from
an ancient monochrome photograph.
   We pass the gymnasium entrance, then the intersections
with Wedge Branch and Wheel and Axle. We're alone now,
and the Primum Mobile Gate looms ahead, painted with
various strident warnings and danger symbols.
   "You'll have to find your own way back this evening, so
pay close attention," Thomas says, pulling the lever that
opens the Gate. The massive hatch grinds aside, admitting a
bedlam of voices and light and sound. "Now be ready for the
weight. And whatever you do, don't gawk."
   My heart races. I follow Thomas through the Gate and an
extra forty kilos drops onto my bones. Thanks to my faithful
attention to devotions I don't fall, but I stagger and I'm
sweating in the moist air before we've gone far. The public
corridors are as crowded and noisy now as they are around
the clock, alive with the babel of a thousand languages, and
the bulkheads are lost in the riot of greenery that thrives on
every available surface. I feel conspicuous in my Machinist
                                12
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


garb. People—monsters—fall silent and stare as we pass, and
with all their unsettling modifications it's hard not to stare
back. I can't imagine navigating this profane world without
Thomas.
   We ride a slidewalk spinward, then crowd into a hubward
elevator that at least contains no obvious plant life. But for
every normal person, I see one with skin the wrong color or
texture, limbs numbering too many or too few, a body with
mysterious prosthetics or protuberances, or a head
misshapen and gross. A pebbled gray creature that might
once have been human brushes against me in the elevator.
Dizzy, I press closer to Thomas, the sweat trickling into my
eyes. I'm not sure whether his hand on my shoulder is meant
to reassure me or restrain me.
   At hub level, the bulkheads are again clean and metallic,
as they should be. Thomas leads me through a short but
bewildering maze of hatches and gangways. With fewer
people around now, I breathe more easily. Thomas knocks at
an open hatch. I peek inside. It's an office about a meter and
a half in radius, and every surface, 720 spherical degrees
around, is jammed with monitors, control panels, and
handholds. The thickset woman seated at the center has a
second pair of arms where her legs should be.
   "I don't give a spout for your schedule," she tells someone
unseen. "My stevies can do the job fast, but not that fast. All
right, fine. You do that."
   She looks at Thomas, and I see she has silver semispheres
implanted over her eyes. Three quick swings from handhold


                               13
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


to handhold bring her to the door. Fo-grav is still about 0.75.
She's strong.
   "This the kid?" she asks.
   "That's him," Thomas says.
   She turns those reflective bug-eyes on me, twitching her
head up and down, and it's like I'm being X-rayed. What she
sees, I can't imagine. "Any mods? No, of course not. You
goddamn Wheelies, what am I talking about? All right, he
doesn't look too bad. Let's get him suited up and see how he
does. What's your name, kid?"
   My mouth is so dry my tongue crackles. "Jude."
   "Well, now you're Stevie. For stevedore."
   She barks a laugh like a chugging motor, clinging to holds
around the hatch with three hands. Thomas laughs too. His
eyes crinkle and his lips peel back, and it's like seeing ten
years drop away from him. He never laughs around me.
    In that moment I feel inexpressibly sad. And I hate him.
    The woman swings out through the hatch and drops to the
deck between Thomas and me. "Follow me," she says, loping
down the gangway on all fours.
    Thomas shoves the cloth sack into my hands. "Your lunch,"
he says.
    I clutch the sack like a lifeline. It's three times as heavy as
it should be, and its heft brings a desperate lump to my
throat. On a usual morning, it's I who makes lunch for
Thomas, but I didn't even think about it today. I'm realizing
that the usual mornings are behind me.



                                14
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


    "Now you work hard and do what Renny tells you,"
Thomas says. "I can't stress enough how important this
money is."
    "Okay." I turn to trudge after the woman.
    "And remember who you are," Thomas stage-whispers
fiercely. "Your body belongs to the Builder, not to them."
    "Selah," I say.
    Thomas sighs. "Selah, son. Now go."
    Renny, fidgeting impatiently, has stopped at a juncture up
ahead. I follow, the grief of abandonment thick in my throat.
                              ****


   The Six are more than just machines. High Foreman
Titus—our founder, who 120 years ago spoke with the Builder
face to face—teaches us that they represent the Builder's
various aspects, and thus the ways in which we must
approach him. The Six also name our wards, the clans or
tribes of our faith. Though my father and I belong to Inclined
Plane Ward, we owe each equal adoration, and it's the Wedge
that concerns me now.
    The Manual teaches that the purpose of the Wedge is to
both divide asunder and hold in place. From this we learn to
divide ourselves from the evils of the world, as the maul
divides the log, keeping always to the side of the Builder. Yet
we also learn to bridge the gap between, as the keystone—a
truncated wedge—holds the arch in place. The lesson for us is
to serve the world, and serve as examples, without becoming
corrupted by it.


                               15
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                        by William Shunn


    As a people, we excel at dividing ourselves from the world.
We don't do so well at bridging—except perhaps for my
father. But between him and me there's surely a great
Wedge, and it's never clear to me which of us is on which side
of it.
                             ****


   Thomas didn't explain to me exactly what a stevedore is.
Turns out it's someone who loads and unloads cargo.
Starships from hundreds of light-years around dock at
Netherview Station's hub, then, depending on size and mass,
slide into one of three concentric levels of berths. Many of the
ships are loaded automatically by robot or waldo; the ones
that can't afford the special treatment (or can afford to waive
it) get us.
    Renny explains this to me, more colorfully, as I follow her
to the locker room. She leaves me alone there to change into
my docksuit, a close-fitting layer of red polymer that covers
me from the neck down. I try not to think about how much
smart matter I must be wearing. I leave my coverall and cap
behind, like a shed snakeskin, in my thumbprint-activated
locker. The heaviness I feel has nothing to do with gravity,
though physically I'm breathing hard already from the
exertion since leaving the Quarter. Carrying my lunch sack, I
rejoin my new boss outside the locker room.
   Before leading me to the berth where the crew awaits us,
Renny rears up on her hind arms and affixes a round green
badge to my chest. "Regs," she says. "Since you've got no
built-in monitors, this'll let us keep tabs on you."
                               16
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                         by William Shunn


   The crew is twelve, male and female both, and I make
thirteen. They're lounging in a small break room off Berth C-
46. Renny clambers to the top of a table and waves for quiet.
"This is our new trainee," she says. "His name is Jude Plane.
Corgie, he's your man this shift."
   A groan from a preternaturally thin fellow sprawled out on
a couch prompts laughter from the others and a sinking
feeling inside me. I'm sweating, much to my embarrassment.
   "Okay, you shits, okay. The Needlethreader's in dock now.
Let's go."
   The crew don helmets and begin to spill out a hatch
opposite the one Renny brought me through. They disperse in
all directions—left, right, up, down—grabbing implements
from a rack outside as they go. They're all human in shape,
mostly normal as far as I can see. They don't look much older
than I am, but you never can tell with the Sculpted. One has
bright blue skin above the collar of his suit, an eye-straining
contrast with the red polymer. He winks at me as he drops
out the hatch. My stomach clenches.
    Renny hops down from the table and grabs Corgie by the
leg before he can say a word to me. "Pay close attention to
the kid," Renny says. "He's barefoot. He'll need a fishbowl on
top of everything else."
    "You're joking," Corgie says. "I don't think I've ever seen a
fishbowl."
    "There's one in the rack today along with everything else."
    My trainer heaves an aggrieved sigh. "All right, Juke," he
says to me. "Follow me and stick close."
    "Jude," I say.
                                17
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                         by William Shunn


   "Right. Juke."
   Renny reaches for my lunch sack, which I still clutch
uncertainly. She stashes it for me as I trail out the hatch after
Corgie.
   And suddenly I'm not just lighter. I'm weightless, and
drifting.
   Fo-grav isn't turned off in the berth; it's on but dialed
down to null, damping even the small inertial effects of
rotational velocity and centrifugal force. Corgie gives me a
brief lesson in how to maneuver in null g with a dockwand, a
thin, meter-long rod of smart matter that ejects a stream of
inert particles from one end or the other on command.
Basically you point it, squeeze, and drift off in the opposite
direction. It takes me a while to get the hang of it, largely
because I'm loath to touch it, but soon enough I'm helping
Corgie and the rest carry out the dockwand's other function,
herding big gray crates of who knows what out the cargo hold
in the belly of the starship and through the air to the
elevators that will take them wherever they need to go next—
sometimes another level of the station, sometimes the hold of
another ship in another berth.
    I do it all wearing a helmet with a transparent visor that
curves down over my face. The helmet draws words and
diagrams in the air, overlaying what I see, giving me data like
what time of day it is and where the next crate needs to go.
By turning my head and focusing somewhere, I can get
information about whatever I'm looking at. Sweeping my gaze
along the streamlined, almost organic curve of the huge ship,
for example, I can access its flight schedules, crew data,
                                18
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                        by William Shunn


cargo manifests, manufacturer's specifications, and even
schematic diagrams that show me more of what it looks like
than I can possibly see by just flitting around in the space
between its black belly and the berth's bulkhead. I can zoom
in on the other crews working the hatches fore and aft of
ours, and I can even find out more about my own crewmates,
though I don't feel right about prying. But it is a good way to
learn everyone's name, which I manage before the start of
our first break.
   Is this the world my crewmates walk through every waking
moment of every day, with intimate information about
everything they see just an eyeblink away? We may inhabit
the same great wheel in space, but these strangers live in a
truly alien world, one I don't like visiting. Builder knows
making motors isn't my favorite activity, good as I am at it;
still, I'd rather be in my applied mechanics class with Nic and
Mal than here. I'd even rather be home with Thomas—
anywhere but stranded amongst the ignorantly blasphemous,
wielding tools that are an offense in the sight of the Builder,
being slowly poisoned by the worldview of the Sculpted.
   What is Thomas trying to do to me?
   Our shift is the longest day of my life. The ghostly ticking
clock in the corner of my vision doesn't help.
                             ****


   At shift's end we deposit our dockwands, now stubby and
depleted, in the rack outside the break room and file off to
the showers. I'm happy to drop off my fishbowl as well,
though the experience of walking in gravity without a data
                               19
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                         by William Shunn


overlay seems somehow dreamlike and crippling as I readjust
to moving about without it—almost as crippling as walking in
high-g alone. It surprises me how exhausted I am. I must
have used and abused every muscle in my body.
    As we reach the locker room, I'm startled that our single-
file queue remains intact. The women enter through the same
hatch as the men. Bringing up the rear, I tell myself there
must surely be a dividing bulkhead or at the very least a
screen inside, but of course I was here this morning and know
there's no such thing. I try to keep my eyes averted, but just
to reach my locker I must step around a woman named Soon,
who already has her suit pushed down to her hips.
   The room is too small, and everyone jostles everyone else
on the way to the ultrasonic showers. I stand with my burning
face to my open locker, wondering if I can get away with
standing here and not changing until the room is empty.
Soon's bare torso blazes like a beacon in my mind. A part of
me is fascinated and wants to look at it again; another part is
horrified at the thought, and at the distant, epochal memories
of my mother that stir, memories so ancient they seem
apocryphal.
   Renny, galumphing through the locker room, slaps the
back of my thigh and says, "Next shift's gotta get in, kid.
Hurry it up."
   Somehow I strip off the suit, deposit it in the recycler, and
manage the walk to the showers. My skin crawls as I crowd
into the white ceramic chamber with the others, though part
of this, I'm sure, is the feel of the ultrasonics vibrating sweat
and grime loose from my body. Still, I can't look higher than
                                20
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


anyone's ankles. It's not just the naked flesh that distresses
me. I'm out of my coverall in front of heathen, and that's a
grave offense in the sight of the Builder. My hands hover in
front of my crotch.
   My hip brushes the thin blue man's; I nearly jump out of
my skin, and I mumble an apology. "Don't worry about it," he
says with a kind smile. "We're all friends here."
   "Yeah," Corgie says. "Just help yourself to a handful of
whatever's closest."
   "Or a thimbleful," says an apparent neuter named Ice IX,
pointing at Corgie's flaccid penis.
   "Careful. You don't want to wake the monster."
   Mijk, a muscular man with a series of knobby lumps down
his back, says, "I do. Someone ran all the lotion out of my
dispenser."
   "And apparently he wants it back," Soon says with a
giggle.
    Corgie wipes his mouth. "Come and get it," he says, and
his penis flares to enormous size, all ridged and quivering. It
is a monster.
    I turn away, blushing. But something strange has begun to
happen. I don't feel comfortable exactly, but I do feel
somewhat invisible, with less of the compulsion to run and
hide than comes in the cleansing room at gymnasium. I'm
able to let my eyes roam some, taking in the female bodies
as well as the male, plus two or three I find less determinate
and the entirely genderless Ice IX. In the Quarter, contact
between boys and girls is strictly regulated and chaperoned,
even during courtship; a situation like this is as unthinkable
                               21
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


as a motor assembling itself from raw ore. I have more
answers now than I know what to do with to what minutes
ago was only a compelling mystery.
   I almost don't want the shower to end, but when the
thought takes form I realize the Wrecker is already getting his
claws into me. How much easier a time of it he has here than
inside the Quarter! Despair washes over me. How will I ever
survive this?
   Clean, but with a film of shame clinging to my exposed
skin, I trail the group back to the lockers. I've pulled on my
underall and my coverall and am about to put my cap on
when a tall, trouserless man named Twenty plucks it deftly
out of my hands.
   "What's this for, some kind of uniform?" he asks, turning
the cap this way and that. "You got another job?"
   My muscles seem to seize up, and the bottom falls out of
my soul. So much for invisibility. Renny is gone; I don't know
where to turn for help. Heat and mortification radiate from
the top of my uncovered head as Twenty's Sculpted hands
defile my cap.
    "No, you ramscoop," Corgie says, taking the cap, "he's a
Wheelie. Don't you know anything?"
    And now he's passing it to someone else, who's asking
why there's a triangle on it if I'm a Wheelie, and now it goes
to someone else, and now it's flying through the air past my
face, and now again the other way. I reach for the cap, but
it's snatched by the knobby-spined Mijk.
    "Wheelie, huh?" he says. "Those are like Christers, right?
How come you're named after a traitor, Wheelie?"
                               22
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


   "Judas betrayed the Builder," I say quietly. I want to sound
dangerous, but even I can hear the quaver in my voice. "Jude
was a different apostle."
   "Jude, Judas, Peter, penis—whatever. Think this'd fit me?"
   Mijk's about to slip the cap onto his head, and I'm about to
shout something, maybe do something I'll regret, when a
half-dressed woman named Beneficent Sunrise takes it from
him.
   "Mijk, it doesn't stretch. It's not smart enough to fit your
thick skull."
   "Then what good is it?"
   Beneficent Sunrise turns the cap over. She studies the
inclined plane symbol. "Never seen something made from
dumb fabric before. Interesting the way it feels. Almost real."
   Her frank curiosity defuses my anger. Or is it the sight of
her full, bobbing breasts? They fill me with an emotion I can't
quite put a name to. Not desire, not quite, but something as
sharp in its poignancy. I wonder what they feel like.
                            ****


    The blue man picks my cap cleanly out of her grip. Holding
it by the visor only, he puts it in my hand. My fingers clutch it
spasmodically.
    "Real like your tits, Sunny?" he says to the woman.
    "Go deplete your wand," she says in the general laughter,
but she's smiling with everyone else.
    Weak with humiliation and relief, I cover my head and turn
to rummage in my empty locker. Around me, my crewmates
casually hide their nakedness.
                                23
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


   The blue man is called Haun Friedrich 4, but the fishbowl
taught me he prefers to go by Derek Specter. He's in the trial
period before a legal name change.
   The idea that one may choose one's own name is as
strange to me as everything else about the Sculpted. What
would I choose if I were to name myself? Paul? Luke?
Timothy? None of them work. I can't imagine learning to
answer to any name but Jude. That's me. That's who I am.
   I'm standing in the gangway outside the locker room,
having lingered there until the arriving crew forced me out.
People edge past me in both directions. I'm trying to
remember which way I came this morning, fighting a growing
sense of panic, when Haun—Derek—touches my shoulder with
blue fingers.
   "Know where you're going?" he asks with an easy grin.
   "Er ... rimward," I say, feeling the blood heat my cheeks.
   "Yes, that would almost certainly be correct." Derek leans
against the bulkhead near me, a little too close, arms folded
and eyes bright. His skin is the blue of Enoch's fabled seas,
and his irises glow like bits of its sky. "Do you need any help
getting there?"
   I look down at my gray nonslippers. "I guess I do," I say,
embarrassed at the prospect of this ostentatiously abnormal
creature rescuing me twice in the same ten minutes.
   Derek gazes at the opposite bulkhead, cupping his chin.
"Wheelieville, I presume," he says. He gives me a sidelong
glance, apologetic but not self-conscious. "The Machinist
Quarter, I mean."
   "Uh, yeah."
                                24
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


    His eyes narrow. "Let me just find it on the map."
    "What map?" I say. His glance this time is mildly
reproving, and I let out an abashed "Oh."
    "We just need to get you to Elevator Seven, Eight, or
Nine," Derek says after a moment. "That's probably the
trickiest part of the route. And I happen to be going the same
way, if you don't mind company."
    My feet are itching to move. I'd rather he just point me in
the right direction and let me go my way, but I'm too tired to
argue. I shrug my acquiescence.
    As we set off down the narrow way, Derek says over his
shoulder, "You were good in there today. Not everyone
adjusts to null-gee that quickly. I think even Renny was
impressed."
   He looks back expectantly, but since I'm not sure what I'm
supposed to say to this, I don't answer.
   "Corgie gave you some shit, I know," Derek says, "but you
should have seen him back when he started. Talk about an
ostrich. Was this your first time with an overlay?"
   "Yes."
   "I remember when I was first getting used to it. It was
strange to turn it off and not see labels everywhere I looked.
You must be going through the same thing. You probably
haven't ever used Geoff before either." At my blank look, he
grins. "Yeah, we'll have to teach you how to use Geoff. Then
next time you need to get somewhere you won't have to put
up with me running off at the mouth."
   "What's Geoff ?" I ask.


                               25
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


   "Info daemon on the public net. You've really been
sheltered, haven't you? Geoff's mostly for travelers and
transients—anyone offline, really, so you can use him too.
He'll answer any question you have, if he has the answer and
you're older than ten. And as long as it's not private or
classified."
   Derek keeps looking back at me with an expression like
he's trying to tell me something significant and I'm just not
getting it. I feel dumb, and my skin's been crawling ever since
the word "daemon" anyway. "I—thanks, but that doesn't
sound like something I ought to be messing with."
   He gives me one more look, then shrugs. "Suit yourself,"
he says. "But you do have a right to whatever information
you want. You only have to ask."
   We take the next couple of turns in silence, me adrift in an
uneasiness I can't quite put my finger on.
   "So what's a nice Machinist like you doing in a job like this
anyway?" Derek asks at last. "I thought you were supposed
to stick to your own turf, not venture out amongst the
unwashed."
   The corridors are wider now, the crowds thickening, and
Derek, walking beside me, speaks too loudly for my comfort.
"Commerce with the Sculpted isn't forbidden," I say a little
defensively, keeping my voice low. "It's just ... discouraged, I
guess. It's—there's a lot of danger, spiritually."
   "I always wanted to be a spiritual hazard," Derek says.
"You probably shouldn't even be talking to me, should you?"



                               26
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


   "Um..." I'm looking around, anywhere but at him. There
are unholy forms and faces and sounds and smells
everywhere. "Not really, not like this."
   "So why are you? I mean, in the larger sense. Why are you
here at all? Why do you have this job?"
   I sigh. "I didn't exactly have a choice," I say, cursing my
inability to hold my tongue. "Thomas, my father, he's our
ward trader, which means he goes out and sells whatever we
build or manufacture. That's so the ward can meet its
obligation to the Guild."
   "Which is saving up to get off Netherview Station and
continue its fabled trek to Enoch. I've read about it."
   I look at him, nonplussed. We know so little about the
Sculpted, I somehow can't get over the fact they know
anything about us. "But business isn't so good," I continue.
"As trader, my father has to pay the rest of the ward first,
before he takes his share, but lately there's not much left
over. In fact, I think there may not be anything left over. He's
been trying for months to get me a job outside the Quarter,
and believe me, that means things are grim."
   "Of course they are," Derek says. "Who wants primitive
toys made from primitive materials?"
   "They're not toys!" I say, turning on him, thinking of the
motor I've been building for some weeks now. "It's serious
work! It's sacred!"
   "Hey, hey, I'm sorry." We're now at the elevator bay,
waiting, and Derek puts his hands up as if to ward off my
anger. I see for the first time that his palms and the pads of
his fingers are a rich green, fading into blue at the edges. "I
                               27
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


didn't mean it like that. But you have to realize that's how
most people see what you do. If it has no practical use, it
must be a toy."
   "It does have a practical use," I say. "You people are just
too stiff-necked to humble yourselves and admit it."
   Derek nods. "Or you might say we've put away childish
things."
   This reference to the Manual startles me. The elevator
opens as I'm groping for a suitable reply, and we crowd in
with several other commuters, including a woman who has
tentacles where her fingers should be. Derek spends the ride
staring straight ahead with the barest of smiles on his lips.
   I'm still smarting when the elevator opens on Six. I'm
about to say that I think I can find my way from here, but
Derek steps out with me into the thick, damp air and dank
vegetation.
   "I've been meaning to ask," he says, "what is the
significance of the triangle on your clothing? It's an inclined
plane, right?"
   "Um, right," I say. "That's the ward I belong to."
   "You're lucky you're not in Screw," he says. "You'd never
hear the end of it at work."
   "So, er," I say, stumbling a little as we step onto the
counterspinward slidewalk, "I guess you understand the
Inclined Plane is one of the Six Fundamental Machines."
   "I've heard that rumor somewhere," Derek says.
   "Well, they're also symbols. This one represents the
obliqueness of our approach to the Master Builder. No
matter—"
                                28
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


   "You mean God, right?"
   "You might call him that," I say.
   "I might. And again, I might not."
   He has a way of continually derailing me and looking
pleased about it that I find entirely infuriating. "No matter
how shallow the angle," I say, soldiering on, "the Inclined
Plane leads us ever upward, and though it may take eons,
eventually we'll reach the level of the Builder."
   "Sounds suspiciously like the Tower of Babel," Derek says.
"And didn't God punish the Babylonians for trying to approach
him in just that way?"
   "Their approach was more direct, and completely literal," I
say, my voice heating up. "We're not talking about a literal
approach. Ours is metaphorical. We approach the Builder by
understanding and manipulating his six aspects."
   "I'd have thought he'd have more respect for the direct
approach. You know, just wrap an inclined plane around a big
pole and climb to heaven." He waggles his blue eyebrows at
me, eyes twinkling. "Maybe what offended him about it was
the metaphorical significance of it. Maybe the Babylonians
were really saying God could screw himself, and that's why he
gave them all a good tongue-lashing."
   The delight he derives from such extreme statements
takes my breath away. "You can't approach the Builder in
anything but a metaphorical way!" I say.
   "Then why let yourselves be literally constrained? Why
confine yourselves to what you can build from six fairly
arbitrary machines?"


                               29
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


    "The machines aren't arbitrary! They're the six aspects of
the Builder."
    "They are arbitrary, and not all of them are even that
fundamental. The screw we were just talking about—like I
said, it's just an inclined plane wrapped around an axle. The
pulley's a special case of the wheel and axle, and the wedge
is just another way of looking at an inclined plane."
    I wipe fatigue sweat from my forehead. He's hitting
uncomfortably close to blasphemous thoughts I've
entertained myself, which may explain my vehemence in
denouncing them. "Every aspect partakes of the others to
some extent," I say, but I sound more shrill than certain.
  "Seems to me that if there really is a god, you could find
some far more useful metaphors for the way he operates if
you'd just reach deeper than your six machines."
  He exits the slidewalk and I follow, belatedly realizing
we've arrived near the PM Gate. To my relief and chagrin
both, I've been so focused on the conversation that I haven't
paid much attention to the nightmarish creatures around me,
nor to the riotous greenery. But I notice them all now and feel
hemmed in.
   "We're not meant to reach deeper," I say, hurrying to keep
up with Derek's long gait in the swarming crowd.
   "Then you'll never achieve godhood, now will you?" Derek
says. He pauses near the unadorned hatchway that leads to
the Machinist Quarter. "Well, here you are."
   Bathed in sweat, I purse my lips. "Thanks, uh ... thanks for
getting me here."


                               30
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


   "The pleasure was all mine." He makes as if to move on,
but stops. "I meant to tell you before, I thought you handled
those jokers in the locker room about as well as you could
have. Just don't let them know they're getting to you and
they'll leave you alone soon enough. They're not really mean,
just exemplars of what I call the indolent uninformed.
Learning new things is such a trivial process they don't even
make the effort."
   "Like the Israelites and the fiery serpents," I say.
   Derek blinks, his eyes losing focus. "Interesting," he says
after a moment or two. "Numbers, chapter twenty-one. If the
ones who were bitten only gazed upon Moses's brass serpent,
they would live. All they had to do was look. You know,
there's good sense to be found in that book here and there."
     "The miracle is," I say, "even a gentile can look and see
it."
    Derek laughs long and loud. It makes me feel clever and
proud, though why I should care about looking clever to this
mockery of a man baffles me. "Touché, Jude," he says. "See
you tomorrow at the orifice."
    He studies some resource invisible to me, and then he's
off, a lean blue figure vanishing into a teeming, grotesque
jungle. I'm reminded that he inhabits a world even more
strange than this physical one, and that when the two of us
look at an object we each see a vastly different thing.
    "Selah, Derek," I say under my breath. I pull the lever and
pass through the Gate, wondering what he sees when he
looks at me.
                             ****
                               31
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn




   The cleanliness, calm, cool, and quiet of the Quarter stand
in stark contrast to what I've left behind. It's evening by our
clocks; we run here on only one shift. The few Machinists out
and about look at me strangely as I pass from outside. It
should feel good, this homecoming after an eternal shift
away, this shedding of weight, this lightness, this cooling of
my sweat, but I find myself keyed up and restless before I've
even reached the branching to Wheel and Axle. I know
Thomas will be waiting for me, wanting to know how the day
went, but I can't confine myself at home just yet. Instead I
lower my head and trudge to gymnasium.
    The machines are manned mostly by Levers, all older than
I, but one station opens up before long. I do my best to
complete the ritual properly, pitting every muscle group
against the pulleys as I rehearse the Builder's Code in my
mind, but I'm barely into the first canto before my sore
muscles are quaking. What's more, I can't keep my thoughts
focused. My mind keeps reaching back to worry over images
of naked flesh—sometimes colored naturally, sometimes blue
or green.
   One by one the Levers are finishing up and heading to the
cleansing room, some of them whispering and giving me
looks as strange as the ones I got outside from the Sculpted.
I rush to try to complete the minimal requirements before the
place fills up with Inclined Planes, but in vain. I'm not quite
done when Nicodemus and another Plane named Amos arrive.
I see them from across the room, over the tops of three ranks


                               32
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


of machines. I duck my head but too late. Nic spots me and
hurries over.
   The station next to mine is empty, abandoned just
moments before. Nic, his face cautiously friendly, slides into
the seat, leaving Amos to fidget awkwardly in the aisle before
us. "Selah, Jude," Nic says.
   "Selah," I say, mouth dry.
   Nic begins some warm-up stretches of his arms and back.
"You weren't at schola today," he says.
   I look straight ahead, pumping away with my arms in
bellows mode, but Amos is right there staring at me, so I
focus on my knees instead. "No," I say.
   "Malachi heard you were outside," Nic says.
   "Yeah, at the hub," Amos says.
   "He said you had a job."
   A wary hope fills Nic's voice, but whether it's hope that the
rumors are true or simply hope that I'll talk to him, I can't
tell. Either way, I can't look at him. I can't look at his golden
hair, his glistening shoulders, his wise blue eyes. But I can't
not answer.
    "That's right," I say gruffly. "I guess you won't see me
much in class anymore."
    "Is it true about the Sculpted?" Amos says. He's a skinny
kid and he practically dances from foot to foot. "They drink
blood instead of water?"
    "Amos, I see a free machine over there," Nic says with a
jerk of his head.
    "But—"
    "I'm nearly done here," I say.
                                33
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


   "Better hurry, Amos."
   I can't see Nic's face, but I hear the tone of warning in his
voice, and I see the answering expression of querulousness
on Amos's face. Amos stalks off, even as I fight down the
unwelcome surge of warm emotion in my chest.
   I rest for a twelve-count, saying nothing, then embark on
another bellows set.
   Nic has launched into a set of cherrypickers. "So what's
with you, Jude?" he says between reps.
   "What do you mean?"
   "You've been avoiding me for a couple of weeks now. What
did I do?"
   I sigh, clinging to the handgrips and letting my upper body
sag. "It's not you, Nic."
   "Then what is it? Is it about this job?"
   What am I supposed to tell him? That I've started to worry
I like him too much? I can hardly express the thought even to
myself.
    "It's not about the stupid job," I say, though I'm aching to
tell him about everything I've seen and done today. I cut my
set short and stand up, infuriated. "Great Builder, you're so—
so—oh, flashcan it!"
    I rush to the cleansing room with all the dignity I can
muster, which isn't much, aware of all the eyes on me. In the
quick glimpse I caught of Nic before I fled, there was hurt and
concern. He hadn't yet broken a sweat.
    I try to put him out of my head among the straggling
Levers in the steam-filled shower. I try to conjure the illusion
of camouflage I felt in the showers at the hub, as if I could
                               34
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


hide myself amongst my Sculpted crewmates and never be
seen. Here I feel anxious and wrong, like I don't belong. But I
certainly don't belong there.
   Scanting my cleansing, I dress quickly and hurry into the
main corridor. The crowds here are about as thick as they
ever get, but seem downright sparse compared to outside.
People stride lightly from their duties back to their branches,
men and women, boys and girls, as evening stretches toward
the dinner hour. I envy them their apparent lack of care.
   "Jude, Jude," hails a gentle voice, and I raise my head. I
hadn't realized my neck had bent as if in stronger gravity.
   It's Sariah, a Pulley my age who's walking the other way.
"Oh, selah," I say.
   She takes my sleeve and draws me to the side of the
corridor. "Missed you at schola," she says, voice low. Not that
we have any of the same classes, but the boys and girls do
see each other at lunch. Often I've wished I could learn the
simpler skills the girls ply, like producing rough fabrics on
machines the men construct, but the one occasion on which I
expressed such a desire to my father is one I'm not likely to
forget. I was younger then and hadn't learned better.
   "I wasn't there," I say tiredly.
   "I know," she says, a look of eager horror on her face.
"You were outside. Helena saw you go this morning. So what
was it like?"
   My eyes are already straying down the corridor toward
escape. How can I explain what it was like today? I'm too
confused. "It's the Wrecker's workshop out there, truly," I
say, pulling away. "Look, I'm sorry, but I need to get home."
                               35
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


     She lays a cool hand on my arm. She's very pretty with
her enviably long yellow hair, and she's nearly as tall as I am.
"Jude, what's wrong?" she asks, her face close to mine, eyes
filled with concern. "Was it that horrible? You can tell me."
     I want to weep. I have friends, sure, or I did, but what I've
never had is someone I can confide in, someone I can really
trust and open up to. That's all I want.
     "Sariah—"
     I feel her eyes searching my face, but I can't quite meet
her gaze. "What is it?" she says.
     "I—" Am I really going to say it? She's always been nice to
me, kind. I glance up quickly. "What do you think about Nic?"
   "Nicodemus?" A little crease appears between Sariah's fine
eyebrows. "He's okay, he's nice. Why?"
   I shake my head, my stomach turning inside out. "It's
just—you know, he's such a great guy..."
   I trail off as her eyes get a little wider. "Oh," she says
quietly, almost in wonder.
   "I mean, he's been my best friend for such an incredibly
long time," I say.
   She nods slowly, focused on some inner vision. "No, no, I
see. I get it."
   "So, you know..."
   "Who would have thought?" The ghost of a pensive smile
touches the corner of her mouth. She kisses me suddenly on
the cheek. "Thank you, Jude. Thank you. I'll talk to you
later."



                                36
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


    With that she trails off down the corridor, yellow hair
billowing in the quarter-g, leaving me to wonder desolately
what in space just happened.
    Thomas is waiting for me at the cabin, reading the Manual.
He looks pointedly at his chronometer as the hatch closes
behind me. "I expected you sooner," he says.
    "I stopped for devotions on the way back," I say. "I
thought I might be too tired later."
    He nods, accepting this, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
"How was it today?" he asks.
    I shrug. "Fine, I guess."
    "Did you work hard?"
    "I think I did."
    "Crew treat you okay?"
    I take off my cap and rub my head. I don't want to get into
it all with Thomas. "They were fine. They didn't pay me much
mind."
   Thomas closes his Manual, a finger marking his place. "You
be polite around them, Jude, but keep your thoughts to
yourself. That's the way to stay true among the Sculpted."
   "I will," I say, though already I feel duplicitous.
   Thankfully, that seems to close that subject. The only
other thing Thomas seems to want to know before he goes
back to his reading is when I expect to be paid—something I
haven't given much of a thought to. I assumed that was
something he would have worked out with Renny already.
   I prepare our dinner on the foldout stovetop, a stew of
ground meat, beans, and vegetables. The activity proves
more calming and centering to me than devotions did. But
                               37
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


that night as I drift toward sleep, my mind keeps turning back
to the women in the locker room, and to the wooden chest
bolted to the deck not two feet from my head. Kaiya's chest.
                             ****


    The Screw is a peculiar machine, partaking directly as it
does of aspects of the Axle, the Inclined Plane, and the
Wedge, and often requiring application of the Lever to fulfill
its purpose. This is fitting, given its function as the aspect
that both joins together and elevates, and as a representation
of the way in which men and women join together in holy
communion with the Builder to ignite the spark of life.
    Sacred as it is, I've always been a little embarrassed by
the Screw, a little wary of it. Maybe if that were my ward I'd
have a better understanding of it, a healthier attitude toward
it, but I've never been quite comfortable with its symbolic
freight. Love and apotheosis strike me as less the Screw's
nature than doing violence to whatever surface it encounters.
   I find it difficult to credit that I will ever come to
completely trust and adore the Screw.
                                 ****


    My work schedule is seven days on and three off—one full
s-week as reckoned by the Sculpted. My first "weekend" falls
on a Thursday through Saturday by the Guild calendar, which
means schola every day while I'm supposed to be taking a
break. Neither my long stretches without a day of rest nor my
falling behind at schola seems to bother Thomas much, but it
bothers me. When I dare bring this up, he tells me the Builder
                               38
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


is blessing us for our sacrifice—though I don't see what
sacrifice it is that he's making.
    By my second s-week on the job, I've begun to feel
comfortable and confident in null-g, and competent if not so
comfortable with my fishbowl's graphic overlay. It's as if I'm
looking at a raw and exposed layer of reality that should more
properly be covered, or at the very least from which I should
avert my eyes—though, just as in the locker room with my
crewmates, doing so is practically not an option. I am on
friendly terms with most of the crew, even if I can't quite
bring myself to consider any of them friends. We're too
different for that, both in our worldviews and in our
expectations of what friendship means. For one thing, they
don't seem to have a problem with the occasional tweaking of
one another's anatomy in the showers. I do, as they have
learned.
    I have spent most of my lunch hours and several more
walks home chatting with Derek. Despite the fact that he's so
obviously unlike me, he has a directness, a curiosity, and a
willingness to take my arguments seriously that I can't help
but like, even if I can't always effectively rebut the points he
makes. I consider him a goad to make me apply myself more
diligently to my studies. I retain the faith that answers exist
to his objections, and if I can't find them and express them
articulately then I'm hardly a worthy ambassador for the
Guild.
    It's end of shift on Sevenday of my second s-week on the
job when Renny calls us together in the break room. "Got
some news, little stevies," she says, executing a sort of four-
                                39
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


handed cartwheel up a chair to perch on her favorite table.
The animated chatter anticipating our weekend break quiets
down.
   "Fourday and Fiveday next week we've got a special
assignment coming up for anyone who wants in on it. Berth
A-11, prospecting ship full of scientific samples. Very delicate,
both the ship and the cargo. Berth's gonna be fully
evacuated, so there's hazard pay, but only those of you rated
for vacuum will be eligible. If you don't want in, that's fine—
we'll have plenty to do here. But if you want in and you're not
vacuum-rated, it's not too late to get that way. You can even
take shift time to do it without getting docked. I just need to
see your certification first thing Threeday if you want in.
Understood? All right, that's it."
   Renny draws me aside as the others file off to the
showers. "This is a good opportunity, kid," she tells me in a
low voice. "You're a good worker, and you sure don't want to
miss out on triple pay."
    She's right, I don't. I can imagine how happy Thomas will
be to see the extra credits. "How do I get vacuum-rated?" I
ask, watching two tiny, distorted me's in her silvery
eyeglobes. "Is there a test I take or something?"
    "Not, er, not really," Renny says. "What it mostly entails is
getting your lungs and eyes and ears vacuum-hardened.
You'd be wearing a pressure suit in the berth, of course, but if
it should fail you could suffocate before we got you out of
there and repressurized. Regs don't let us subject you to that
risk."


                                40
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


    My breath catches. "What you're talking about—that would
mean Sculpting, wouldn't it?"
    "Just a small bit, internally."
    The pay would be welcome, but I have to shake my head.
"No offense, but I can't do that. I'm very sorry."
    Renny shrugs, an elaborate motion of her hind shoulders.
My reflection dances crazily in her eyes. "What can I say, kid?
It's your choice, and I sure won't think any worse of you for
it. But don't make the decision now. Think about it over the
break. Get the details from Geoff. Talk to your old man, see
what he says."
    "Right," I say. "I already know what he'd tell me."
    "Thomas ain't a bad guy, for a Wheelie. Talk to him, kid."
    All the way to the showers, cringing, I can hear Thomas
telling me the Wrecker's in me. But I can't quite shake
Renny's insistence that I bring it up with him.
                            ****


   That evening over our humble dinner I blurt it out before I
can reconsider: "Renny says there's a special job next week.
Extra pay, and she's pushing me to do it."
   Thomas puts down his fork. "And?" he says, glaring at me
over the table.
   "And ... I'd need some small modifications. Vacuum-
hardening."
   Thomas bows his head. Today's a Saturday in the Quarter,
what would in other circumstances have meant half a day at
schola for me and a morning of light community service for
him. But neither of us follows a normal schedule now, and
                               41
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


we're each exhausted from the labors of the day. I wait for
him to speak, not chewing, heart in my throat.
    Not that I don't know the right answer. I only have to ask
myself what the Builder would say. Or my mother, I think, the
tip of my nonslipper grazing the wooden chest beneath the
foldout table that spans the width between the bunks. The
chest contains Kaiya's clothing, which, despite the reg against
storage of unnecessary mass, Thomas has never been able to
bring himself to recycle. It's almost as if he's waiting for her
to come back. I'm not, though. I don't have many firm
memories of Kaiya, and, in fact, Thomas has told me so often
that my mother is with the angels now that that's how I
nearly always picture her: dressed in spotless white with huge
feathered wings furled above her, looking down on me from
on high. I know what she would think if I broached the topic
of transfiguration. I know what she does think, in whatever
level of the Builder's mansion she's watching me from.
   At last Thomas forks a bite of boiled potatoes and carrots
into his mouth and peers at me, practically through me, from
under lowered brows. "You told her no, right?"
   I flinch a little. It takes a moment for me to realize he's
talking about Renny, not Kaiya. "Of course," I say. My words
feel defensive, as if he's somehow already forced me to lie to
him.
   "Wrecker take that woman, anyway." He shovels more
food into his mouth and chews silently for a few bites.
   When he speaks again his voice and his eyes,
unexpectedly, have softened. "Son, I know they teach us at
temple never to compromise with the world, to always live as
                               42
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


if we're with the Builder in his mansion, but in practice that's
just impossible. We all make compromises—we have to, or we
couldn't get by. We couldn't live. The tricky part—no, the hard
part is knowing what's okay to compromise and what isn't.
You have to figure out where that dividing line is—and then
stay well back from it. When you try to walk it..."
    Thomas folds his hands together and stares down at the
table. "Jude, son, I can tell you what happens. You fall. You
tell yourself you won't, but you do." He clears his throat, lips
compressing almost convulsively. "I just want you to be
happy. Maybe that's not what this world is for, but Builder
knows it's what I want for you."
   His eyes rove this way and that, never meeting mine, and
he clears his throat again. Once upon a time, this would have
been where I edged around the table to give him an awkward
hug. Tonight I can't. My soul cries for him, but I'm not a little
kid anymore, and I just can't.
   We finish our meal in silence.
                             ****


   The next day is temple, the first Sunday in three Guild
weeks I've been off work. Thomas and I sit toward the back
of the long, low chapel, which sits near the AD Gate at the
opposite end of the Quarter from the PM Gate. The bulkheads
are of brushed gray metal, with three of the Six Machines
etched on the left wall, three on the right, and the carpenter's
square on the wall behind the pulpit.
   Inclined Plane Ward meets third every Sunday, in the late-
morning slot. During Foreman Saul's sermon after the
                                43
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


sacrament, I spot Nicodemus several rows ahead and to the
right. What caught my eye was his golden head tilting back as
he smiled wide at something the person next to him had
whispered in his ear. The person next to him has long, shining
yellow hair.
   The person next to him is Sariah.
   I blink hard for the next several minutes. I shift and fidget
through the rest of the sermon. The pew is cold and rigid—
dumb, unyielding matter—and no matter how I try I can't get
comfortable. I'm supposed to meet the foreman for my
private instruction after church, but when the service ends I
rush back to the cabin instead, with a vague excuse to
Thomas about my stomach.
   Two full days of schola still ahead, catching up on subjects
where I'm falling further and further behind, before I get to
return to work. I don't know how I'm going to make it.
                            ****


   Wednesday comes at last, Oneday to the rest of the
station, and in the break room in the early morning Renny
reminds the gathered crew that we have only two days left to
sign up and show vacuum certification if we want in on the
special gig. She looks my way but I duck my eyes. Funny—
I've spent the past two days at schola avoiding Nic and
looking forward to Oneday, and now that it's here it looks like
I'm going to spend the day avoiding Renny. I'm such a bent
nail I can't stand myself.
   Our client today is a Thunder-class starship, Colder
Equation, which we load with supplies bound for the
                               44
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


exomorph colony at Van Maanen's Star. It's hard work but
mostly mindless, and I find my cares evaporating for the first
time in days. I feel best at midshift when we break for lunch,
but the rest of the day is marred by the clock in the corner of
my vision, ticking down the minutes until I return to gravity's
embrace.
   At shift's end, after showers, I ask Derek if he'd like to go
somewhere for food. He's invited me to eat after work several
times now, but I've worried not just that Thomas would find
out but that I wouldn't be able to find anything appetizing in
the public cafeterias. Tonight, though, I'm desperate enough
to talk that I think I can overcome my food objections.
   Delighted, Derek leads me all the way to a dim cafeteria
two levels in from the rim. I'm not sure what I was expecting,
but certainly not this gloomy cave with the dark red walls and
the low ceiling. Quiet, lilting string music plucked out by
unseen hands drifts on the air, which smells gently dank and
laden with minerals. Thick pillars and curtains of leafy plant
life obscure the view from one end of the place to the other,
though here and there I can see tables of two, three, or four,
the sometimes asymmetrical faces of the patrons lit from
below by flickering orange light. Perhaps it's the dimness, but
I no longer find their deformities as hideous as I did at first.
    A woman in a lumpy black cowled robe leads us through
the compact maze of foliage to a table against a black-
painted bulkhead studded with white pinpricks. It isn't until
we take our seats in form-fitting smart-matter chairs that I
realize the bulkhead isn't a bulkhead at all, but a viewport—a


                                45
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


hole punched through fifteen centimeters of metal and
plugged with glass or something like it.
    "Wheel and Axle," I murmur, stunned. I can't take my
eyes from the bright, nail-hard stars.
    "Netherheim and Freya should come into view before
you're finished," the cowled woman says. "That's a sight to
behold." She makes an arcane gesture in the air. "Now, let
me call your attention to today's specials."
    "Perhaps a ... hardcopy menu would be in order for my
friend here?" Derek says, nodding toward me.
    "Oh, certainly," the woman says before receding like
smoke into the shadows.
  The surface of our table glows a dim, swirling orange,
making Derek's skin look like polished stone and his eyes
smolder with fire. "So what do you think?" he asks.
  "It's not what I expected at all. I pictured something more,
well, functional from a cafeteria."
   "Cafeteria, eh?" Derek's eyes sparkle with amusement. "I
suppose you could think of it that way."
   The robed woman returns with a catalog of dishes listed on
a single sheet of paper, and I'm shocked to discover, as
Derek points out, that most of the items have been grown
hydroponically. "This must be terribly expensive," I say,
mouth watering. "I can't afford this, I'm sure of it."
   "Relax," Derek says. "Everyone gets credit for a meal like
this once a month. I've got a couple saved up, and you must
have at least a dozen just sitting there, unused."
   I cover my surprise and confusion by studying the menu. I
have the sense of riding an iceberg in a limitless ocean, borne
                               46
                             Inclination
                          by William Shunn


up by a vast bulk the composition of which I can't begin to
fathom. Choosing more or less at random, I select an opener
of fine pasta garnished with grated cheeses and truffle
shavings, and a spiced squash tart as a main course. Derek
places our orders, a process invisible to me, choosing a fruit
assortment and a roulade of vegetables and nuts for himself.
    He folds his hands and leans forward. "So, what's on your
mind, Jude?"
    "Oh, this and that," I say, and shrug. "I was thinking today
about what it would be like to live out in space."
    Derek shakes his head, grinning. "We do live in space. Or
hadn't you noticed?"
   "No, I mean in space, like the exomorphs, just floating
there in the middle of nothing."
   "Well, it's not nothing. There is a structure, a lattice, to
grow their colony in."
    "But it's not much, and it's open to space." I didn't know
there were such creatures, such people, until today. I read it
on the fishbowl during work. "Can you even imagine the mods
you'd need for that?"
    "Serious work indeed," Derek says. "Not to be undertaken
lightly."
    "No one on our crew has work that serious. They all look
pretty much normal, at least when they're dressed."
    "The more radical mods are often specialization for
particular types of work. We're unskilled labor, our crew,
Jude."



                                 47
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


    I nod, having figured this out without really being able to
articulate it. I take a deep breath. "Derek, can I ask you
something personal?"
    He laces his fingers together and rests his joined hands on
the table. The green of his palms has crept halfway up his
arms in the time since I met him, and his ears are now tinged
green as well, though I can't make the hues out well in this
light. His gaze upon me is very open and direct and
unsettling, more so because every day I come to know better
how little I understand of his world, layered as it is above and
beneath and around mine. "I don't know, can you?" he says.
   "I don't know. I'll try." I've learned some things about him
from the fishbowl at work without really trying—for instance,
the distressing fact that he has three biological mothers—but
nothing that doesn't just whet my curiosity. I look down at
the glowing table and take a deep breath. "I'm just wondering
if there's some, I don't know, some practical reason for your
mods, something functional. You know, what the blue skin
turning green is all about."
    "There's a time for love, and a time to hate," Derek says
with a rakish smile. "A time for blue, and a time for green."
    I puff out an exasperated breath. "Do you spend all your
time looking up things in the Manual you can make fun of ?"
    He shakes his head. "You do understand, don't you, Jude,"
he says animatedly, "that a book called the Bible existed long
before Titus Grant slapped his own generic title on it, and that
it's not exactly an obscure work in the human literary canon?"
    "High Foreman Titus didn't just change the title. Under the
Builder's inspiration, he clarified and corrected—"
                               48
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


   Derek extends a finger until it almost touches my lips,
waving his other hand preemptively. "Yes, fine. But you
understand he didn't write the Manual from scratch."
   "All right, fine, I understand," I say. "So what about the
color change?"
   He leans back in his chair. "Right, that. It's not really
anything practical. There's nothing I can point to and say my
skin color accomplishes. In fact, it's mostly a random
aesthetic process. I'm never sure what color's coming up
next."
   "Then why did you do it? I mean, what's the purpose?"
    "It keeps me interested," Derek says, and his smile cracks
momentarily. "I see me and not-me in the mirror at the same
time, and there's always the mystery of what's coming next.
It's as good a reason to stick around as any." He leans
forward again, and to my ears his heartiness now sounds
forced. "What makes you curious, friend?"
    I shake my head. "I don't know. Nothing."
    "You're thinking about the job, aren't you? The vacuum job
this Fourday."
    I look out the viewport at the stars, but the view seems to
tilt and wheel beneath me, spinning my sense of balance
away. "Maybe," I admit.
    "You know," Derek says with a trace of his vigorous smile,
"if you do it, a lot of folks on the crew are going to be
disappointed. People are starting to get protective of you, and
you may make them feel like they've corrupted you."
    "It's not their decision," I say.
    "Agreed."
                               49
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


    A different woman brings us our opening course. A thick
tail moving in counterpoint to the balanced trays in her hands
protrudes from beneath her black robe. Attention to the food
spares Derek and me from the burden of conversation. I'm
not sure I enjoy all the lush, strange flavors on my plate, but
I know I've never tasted anything so vivid. I swallow every
last crumb.
    Derek seems uncharacteristically fidgety between courses,
but it's not until our main courses have arrived and I'm
halfway through my tart—excellent—that he says, "Jude, can
I ask you something?"
   "Um, sure," I say between bites.
   He swallows. "What is it that happened to your mother?"
   The bite I've just taken feels too big going down my
throat. "How do you know about my mother?"
   "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to pry." He wipes his mouth with
a cloth serviette that actually shows slight stains of use. "It's
hard sometimes to look at you and not make the easy jumps
back through your genealogy."
   "My mother died when I was small, four or five," I say,
setting down my fork and holding my gaze steady with great
effort. "I'm not clear exactly how. My father doesn't like to
talk about it, and I don't like to press him."
   Derek opens his mouth, looking confused, and for a
moment I have the strangest feeling he's going to tell me
how it happened. I feel the sting beginning behind my eyes at
the thought that he might know more about it than I do.
   But what he says is: "Do you think about her much?"
   I nod. "All the time."
                                50
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


   He looks so stricken at this that I feel I could be looking at
a reflection of my own expression in a blue-tinted mirror—or,
so I believe for a giddy, wildly hopeful moment, at my
mother. The illusion shatters as Derek rises suddenly in his
chair, takes my face in both his green hands, and leans in to
kiss me on the mouth. He stares at me a second or two, an
eternity, and sits back down.
   Breathless, I turn to the window. Netherheim has swung
into view, a giant ball of spun sugar swirled with red and
yellow stripes, a fruit as sweet and bursting and sick-making
as my heart inside me. I sit very still, not looking at him. My
pulse is racing about a hundred klicks a second.
   "I don't know if I can finish this," I say and push the rest
of my tart away.
   "Jude, I'm sorry," Derek says, his eyes very steady and
direct.
    "Why did you do that?" I ask. Asking a question is better
than yelling or crying or hitting the table.
    Derek spreads his green palms. They look black with blood
in the cafeteria's hellish light. "I forgot for a minute what a
kiss signifies to your people. Let myself forget, to be honest.
To us—the groups I identify with, at least—it can be a
greeting between friends, a show of camaraderie or comfort,
even the equivalent of a slap. It doesn't have to have a
sexual connotation."
    "But why did you do it?"
    Derek sighs. "Jude, you just seemed so sad. I couldn't
stand it. Lonely and sad." He shakes his head. "You reminded


                                51
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


me of me when I was your age. Sometimes I wish someone
had just done that for me."
   Do I believe him? I'm not sure. I look out the viewport.
Netherheim is just beginning to slide out of view. A cauldron
of emotion, like the multicolored atmosphere of the planet
below, seethes inside me. I want to storm out of the room. I
want to turn a somersault in the air. I want to shake Derek by
the shoulders until his head flops like a scrap doll's.
   I think about Nicodemus, wondering what I ever saw in
him.
   "I'm sorry," I say. "Can you help me find an elevator to
Level Six?"
   "Of course, Jude."
   The compassion and concern in Derek's voice are
unbearable. So is the heartbreak.
                           ****


   At home, safe from the sea of wild bodies and leering faces
that populate the station, I fall to my knees. I should pray to
the Builder for forgiveness, for putting myself in such a
compromised position, but instead I thumb the combination
on the wooden chest in the middle of the deck. Thomas is still
out, and with luck will be for at least another hour. He doesn't
know that I long ago surfed the combination over his
shoulder. The lid swings back on stiff, creaky, decidedly low-
tech hinges, revealing the layered treasures within.
   Reverently, I lift out the first folded garment, hearing in
my mind a surreal ghost of Kaiya's voice telling Thomas to
keep this, she'll have no use for it where she's going. I unfold
                               52
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


and smooth out the soft gray dress with the Inclined Plane on
the bosom—then, hands trembling, pull it over my head and
slip my arms through the sleeves, as I've done maybe half a
dozen times before in my life.
    The fabric is tight across my shoulders and under my
arms—much tighter than it was the time before. There's no
hope of closing the buttons at the back. This may be the last
time I can manage to fit into it at all.
    Sobs rise up inside me as I yearn for angel wings to bear
me away.
                              ****


   The sensation of walking spinward inside a great turning
wheel like Netherview Station is a little like walking up an
endless inclined plane. Because your feet are borne forward
by the rotation a tiny bit faster than your head, you might
feel, if you're attentive enough, as if you're leaning slightly
backward, or walking up the slightest of slopes.
    By the same token, a counterspinward stroll might feel a
bit like a walk downhill. But compare your slight forward
angle to a tangent of the circle your feet are touching and
you'll see that the attitude of your body is more like that of a
person walking uphill. Thus, walk either direction inside the
rim of a rolling wheel and you partake of one aspect or
another of ascending an incline.
    I haven't found much scriptural support for my position,
and the members of Wheel and Axle in particular would call it
blasphemy, but at some crossroads it strikes me that any


                                53
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


path you follow can lead you upward, and closer to the
Builder.
                           ****


   I sleep badly, unaccustomed to the richness of the food in
my belly. Upon rising I prepare Thomas what seems a meager
and bland breakfast, all the while fearing that he will
somehow sense that the chest and its contents have been
disturbed. But he eats with all his attention on his Manual,
and he barely bats an eye when I tell him I may end up
working overtime today.
    I arrive early at the hub, in time to catch Renny in her
spherical office well before the start of our Twoday shift. "I
want to learn more about this vacuum-hardening procedure,"
I tell her without preamble. "Uh, how can I do that?"
    Renny vaults out of her chair like a charged particle
expelled from an atom. "If you weren't crippled you could ask
from anywhere," she says, clinging to the frame of the hatch
and shoving her ugly face into mine. "As it is, you'll have to
use a Geoffroom. There's one not far from here."
   She leads me on a brisk walk. "You know," I say as I hurry
to keep up with her, "my father's pretty upset with you."
   Renny looks over her shoulder and grins. "What, for telling
you about the job? Oh, I heard from him. Nothing he could do
about it, though. It's regs and Thomas knows it. Like he has
room to complain, the way he called in so many favors to get
a barefooter like you onto the team in the first place. But he's
your father and he's just following the script, same as me."


                               54
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


    She stops before a row of three hatches, each emblazoned
with the old-fashioned schematic symbol for an activated light
fixture. I've passed hatches like these at many times since
starting my job, but never known what they were.
    Renny rears up on her hind arms and pats the gleaming
surface of the first hatch. "Now here's the next part of my
script," she says. "This is a Geoff-room, where Geoff can tell
you anything you care to ask about. He'll answer all your
questions and then some. The light bulb is glowing, which
means the room's unoccupied and you can walk right in. Take
all the time you need, but if you're going to be here longer
than the first hour of shift, have the big lug message me so I
know."
   She touches a panel in the center of the hatch, and it
opens with a slight hiss.
   "Keep your eyes and ears open, kid," she says, and I step
inside.
                            ****


   "Don't be afraid. I won't bite."
   The voice is a warm tenor and originates from no location I
can see in this small, very white room. The ceiling is high
enough to let me stand comfortably; my outstretched arms
would nearly span the room in both dimensions. A body-
enfolding chair like you might find at the medic's rests at the
center of the deck. Panicked, I turn—to find the hatch has
sealed noiselessly behind me. I can barely see its outline.
   "Have a seat, Jude," the voice says. "We've got a lot to
talk about."
                               55
                           Inclination
                        by William Shunn


    The air is warm, but my skin prickles cold and hard.
"Where are you?" I say. "How do you know my name?"
    "I've known you since you were born, Jude. I'm glad we're
finally getting a chance to talk. This happens so rarely with
members of your Guild. But we'll talk more comfortably if you
sit. Please."
    Blasphemy! my mind cries. False gods! But I ease myself
down into the chair, letting the cushions take hold of me. I
feel the chair adjust to my size, and carefully I lay my head
back in the niche that fits it.
    A man appears before me. A pot-bellied man with flowing
white hair and a bushy white mustache, dressed in a billowy
white coverall. A man carrying a wooden carpenter's square.
"Selah," he says.
   I start in alarm, but the man makes calming motions as he
bends over me. "The Builder," I gasp.
   He shakes his head. "If you see me in the likeness of the
Builder, it's only because that's your strongest conception of a
figure of benevolent wisdom. Not to aggrandize myself at all."
He looks down at the carpenter's square in his hand. "This
probably doesn't help matters." He tosses the square over his
shoulder, and it vanishes.
   "Who are you?" I say, struggling to sit up.
   The man crackles and flashes transparent. "This'll be less
disorienting if you stay down in the chair," he says. "For both
of us."
   Suspiciously I lie back, and the image solidifies. In fact, I
can feel the man as he presses a comforting hand to my
chest and pushes me down.
                               56
                            Inclination
                         by William Shunn


   "I'm Geoff," he says. "No last name, but I can give you a
version number if you're really interested."
   He smells faintly of sweat, smoke, and some kind of musky
perfume. "I don't know what you mean," I say.
   "I know," he says with a smirk. He pulls up a chair from
nowhere, seats himself near my knees, and crosses his legs.
"But you came here because you wanted to ask me
something. So go ahead. Ask me anything you like. Ask me
as much as you like. That's what I'm here for."
   "What are you?" I ask.
   "A very sophisticated information retrieval system. Once
upon a time, you might have called me a search engine, but
I'm much more than that. I'm something of a diagnostician as
well, and a physician, and a surgeon, and a teacher, and a
tutor. A diplomat, a translator, an ombudsman. A legal
advisor, and an advocate too. And I play a mean hand of gin."
    "Where did you get the name Geoff ?" I'm thinking of
Derek and his name change. "What does it mean?"
    Geoff strokes his mustache. "Nothing, really. I just liked
the sound of it. It seemed to me to suit me somehow. Where
did you get your name?"
    I blink. "From the Manual."
    "Be glad you didn't end up Nebuchadnezzar."
    Maybe this is where Derek learned to be so cheeky. "How
is it I can see you? It has something to do with the chair,
doesn't it?"
    "It has plenty to do with the chair, and with its ability to
create a microwave interface with your visual cortex. I can
give you a more detailed technical specification if you like, but
                                57
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                         by William Shunn


I imagine you have more pressing questions you'd like to
ask."
    I'm delighted in spite of myself, and I raise my head out of
the cradle several times in succession just to watch Geoff
flicker in and out of existence.
    "Careful," he says, rising from his illusory chair. "You'll
make yourself sick."
    He's right. My head has started pounding and the room
whirls. My stomach feels none too steadfast in its grip on
breakfast. I lie back and Geoff strokes my forehead. His cool
fingers fail to disturb the swelling droplets of perspiration. I
take deep breaths, digging my fingers into the padding of the
armrests.
   "Tell me about this vacuum-hardening process my boss
keeps telling me about," I say, eyes squeezed shut. "How
does it work?"
   "There's not a lot to it," Geoff says in a reassuring tone.
"What it does is construct around your lungs a sort of a
cellular retaining wall that gets deployed on any catastrophic
drop in air pressure. It actually seals shut your lungs and can
temporarily prevent the gases in your bloodstream from
expanding and killing you. This retaining wall is also capable
of breaking oxygen atoms loose from the carbon dioxide your
blood returns to your lungs, so you can effectively keep
rebreathing the same old air. That's only temporary too, of
course. It's like any filter—eventually it's going to get choked
with carbon and fail. But you can last an hour that way,
anyway. More than enough time for help to get to you. In
most circumstances."
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    It sounds so reasonable when Geoff says it. I'm looking at
him again now, and he has returned to his seat. "Is the
procedure expensive?" I ask, praying the answer will be yes.
    "Not at all," Geoff says. "And if you can demonstrate a
need for it in the course of your job, the station covers it
anyway. You do qualify, by the way."
    "Are there side effects?"
    "You might feel a little short of breath after the procedure,
a little dizzy and weak, but your lungs will adjust within a day
or so. That's all, really."
    I take a deep breath. "And the procedure itself—it sounds
complicated. How long does it take?"
  "Oh, about twenty minutes," Geoff says, tilting his head to
one side.
  "Twenty minutes! That's all?"
  "You'd have the entire shift off, though, for recovery and
observation. With pay."
   "But—but how is that possible?" I'm groping for words. "I
mean, it's Sculpting, right? You can't just snap your fingers
and it's done."
   "That would be true, Jude ... if we were starting from
scratch. We're not."
   Now I can't breathe, and my insides seem to freeze. "What
do you—what do you mean?"
   Geoff stands up and clasps his hands behind his back. "You
are what you call Sculpted, Jude, as is every other member of
the Machinist Guild on Netherview Station. You've been that
way since before birth, the nanodocs passed on to you via
your mother's bloodstream. Your nanodocs don't do anything
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more than maintain reasonably good health and let me keep
tabs on you. But the potential is there for more. Much more."
   "But—but why?" Tears gather in the corners of my eyes.
"How can you do this to us? It's—it's monstrous!"
   Geoff looks pained. "Jude, please understand what a
fragile environment this station is. We have two million
permanent residents and millions more who pass through
every month. We can't have people running loose who aren't
monitored in some way."
   "But it's wrong. It's my body!"
   "Jude, if I weren't helping out, your body would have
broken the first time you left the Quarter. Your devotions
keep your muscles strong, but the low gravity weakens your
bones. You've had supplements in your food all your life to
counteract the effects."
   I roll my head from side to side. "Lies."
    "I'm not lying, Jude."
    "Not now, but all along! Everything we know, my people,
it's all lies."
    "I told you the first opportunity I had. Jude, you have the
right to get this information at the age of ten, when you
become a provisional citizen of Netherview Station—that's
about thirteen and a third by your Guild calendar.
Unfortunately, the Guild can keep that knowledge from you
until age fifteen—twenty to you. You still have the right to ask
and get answers, like you're doing now, but what good does
that do most of you when you don't know you can ask?"



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                         by William Shunn


    I'm shaking my head. "I don't believe you. That would
mean—that would mean everyone knows. All the adults—my
father. Everyone knows."
    "Actually, no." Geoff purses his lips sadly and lays a hand
on my arm. "Just because they know they have the right to
ask doesn't mean they'll actually do it. By the time they reach
twenty, most of them don't want to know."
    "I don't want to know!" I say, wrenching my arm through
Geoff's hand to paw the water from my eyes. "Why are you
telling me this?"
    "Jude..."
   "No! You're the Wrecker! I don't want to hear it."
   Geoff sighs. "As far as I'm aware, I am not the Wrecker. In
fact, I'm not certain I'm capable of telling a lie. I try my very
best to do good, really."
   Uncomfortably aware of how childish I'm being, I cross my
arms and turn my head away from the preening phantom
before me. I lie that way for some time, mind churning. When
I look at Geoff again he's watching me expectantly. I feel
hollow inside.
    "Geoff," I say, my voice small, "can you fix my brain?"
    Geoff leans forward, looking concerned. "What's wrong
with your brain, Jude?"
    "I—I mean—"
    "Yes?"
    "I think I'm out of true." I'm almost whispering. "Bent."
    "How do you mean?"
    "You know."
    "Pretend I don't."
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   I lick my lips. "I think I like boys." The admission leaves
me feeling curiously flat, detached. "Can you fix me?"
   Geoff tugs at his white mustache. "Jude, there are various
therapy regimens I can initiate, but I don't 'fix' things like
sexual inclination. Not that I'd call you homosexual at all in
the sense you'd think of it. The truth, I believe, is rather more
interesting and complicated than that."
   My heart leaps. "What's the truth?"
   "Your Guild likes to treat sexuality and gender as binary
values, either this or that, one right, one wrong, no other
possibilities. But the ones you call Sculpted understand these
characteristics more as a spectrum of possible values, fluid
and multidimensional. There's no either-or, nor even
necessarily a permanent identification with any given point on
the grid." Geoff spreads his hands in an eerily Builderlike
gesture. "Now, this is a preliminary diagnosis only, but you
would appear to me to suffer from a multivalent
somatocognitive dysphoria."
    "A what?" I ask, vague trepidation gnawing at my
stomach.
    "To put it more bluntly, your body is male, but the
personality inside may be closer to the female end of the
continuum. Not all the way there, of course, but more so than
not."
    I shake my head despite the nausea I feel. "No, no. That's
ridiculous."
    "You would have learned very early to hide the
symptoms—the wants and behaviors your people wouldn't
find acceptable in a little boy. But that, plus
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overcompensation in areas of archaically male pursuit, still
wouldn't make them go away."
   "You're crazy." The notion is offensive, repulsive. "The
Builder doesn't make mistakes like that."
   "In a perfect world, maybe not," Geoff says. "But this
world's anything but perfect, and we all have to come to our
own accommodations with that fact. Now, I can recommend
and even direct a course of therapeutic counseling, just as a
starting point, and of course participation would be entirely
up to—"
   "No!" I shout. "Stop it!"
  "Jude, let's at least talk about this for a—"
  "You lying, false machine, shut up! I can't think."
  Geoff folds his hands in his lap as I turn my eyes to the
white ceiling, chewing the inside of my cheek. I'm furious,
and terrified for my soul, to realize how easily I've been taken
in by the lies of this Wrecker-spawned abomination. The right
thing to do—the right degree of compromise—has never been
more clear.
   "I'm going to do it," I say, the steel in my voice a wall
holding back utter dissolution.
   "I'm sorry—do what?" Geoff asks.
   "The vacuum-hardening. I'm going to do it."
   "Are you sure?" He sounds dubious.
   "Absolutely. But so you don't get any ideas, I'm doing it for
the Guild, not for myself."
   "I'm not certain what you mean by that."
   "The more hazard pay I get," I say, "the more quickly my
people can get off this godforsaken station."
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   "Your pay is yours. It doesn't have to go to your Guild."
   "I don't care."
   "It won't any difference," Geoff says. "The Guild's debts
are considerable."
   "I don't care."
   "Jude, I don't want you doing this under any false illusions.
The Guild owes so much money they can't even pay the
interest on it. It's practically a losing proposition to keep
housing them."
   "Then why don't you just let them leave?" I demand,
enraged.
   Geoff shakes his head. "I'll tell you if you really want to
know—that's my function. But you won't like it."
   "I don't like it already! Just tell me."
   "As you wish. I have to be concerned about the well-being
of the station as a whole, and having you here serves a
purpose other than economic. The existence of a permanent
underprivileged social class reinforces in the minds of the rest
of the population the benefits of full participation in this
pseudo-socialist post-scarcity paradise of ours. Superiority
breeds contentment, of a sort."
     "So you're telling me my people live in poverty to provide
an example of how undesirable poverty is?"
     "I told you you weren't going to like it."
     My anger has shrunk to a cold, clear gem in my heart. "As
if it took a supercomputer to figure that out. And I told you
I'd made up my mind already."
     "Well!" he says, raising his eyebrows. He looks as if he's
about to offer more argument, but evidently decides
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otherwise. "So you give your consent for the vacuum-
hardening procedure?"
   I give a curt nod. "Yes."
   "So be it," Geoff says quietly. He almost sounds
chastened. "I'll let your boss know you'll be occupied today,
and we'll get started right away."
   I arrange myself stiffly in the chair, arms at my sides, as if
waiting for the lid of my coffin to close.
                              ****

   "You're all right from here?" Derek asks.
   We're standing at the PM Gate, the smells and tumult and
humidity around us as heavy as ever. His arm around my
shoulder helps offset the crushing gravity. I nod a little
woozily and say, "It'll be easier inside. Quarter gee."
   As the end of the procedure drew near, Geoff roused me to
suggest I might want a friend to walk me home. I said
Derek's name before I really thought it through, but even
after the fact, wondering if that had been a good idea, it
didn't seem to me I really had a better option. Geoff
contacted him, and Derek was there waiting outside the
Geoffroom as soon as the hatch opened.
   Now he takes his arm from around me and watches with
concern as I make a wobbly step on my own. "Is this ... you
know ... are you going to be in trouble?"
   "How will anyone know?" I say. "There's nothing visible
that's changed."
   Derek looks like he's about to say something, then extends
his hand instead. Green is now his predominant hue; even his
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irises have changed color. "Well, Jude, just in case ... you've
got a place to bunk down if you need it. No strings, just a
place to stow your gear."
    I nod, my throat thickening. I try to say thank you, but I
can't. I duck my eyes, pull the lever, and pass through the
gate.
    I might be imagining it, but as the gate closes behind me I
almost think I hear Derek saying, "Selah, Jude."
    Inside, it's late and the corridors are empty. This is good
because even in the lower grav I'm having trouble walking a
straight line. Geoff told me this is nothing to worry about,
that I'll feel fine again by morning, but drawing the wrong
kind of attention on the way home through the Quarter would
be something to worry about.
   The cabin is dark when I slip inside, and Thomas lies
motionless in his bunk. I strip off my coverall as quietly and
cautiously as possible, crank down my bunk, and slip beneath
the blanket. I lie on my back, unable to relax or even close
my eyes. I spent most of the day in essentially this position.
Like Geoff promised, the process took only twenty minutes—
though, having felt nothing, I have only his word for that—but
for the rest of my shift and beyond I lay fitfully dozing as I
recuperated. I suspect Geoff would have liked to keep me
longer than he did, but my father would have been livid if I
didn't come home all night.
    My heart pounds as I suddenly become aware that Thomas
is sitting up. I try to fake deep, easy breathing as Thomas
stands and pads across the narrow cabin. Even talking to him
right now is too exhausting a thought to contemplate.
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    "Son," he says, almost a question, his voice subdued.
    I crack an eye. His face is a gray smear in the darkness,
gazing down on me like the cinders of a burnt-out sun.
    "Son ... Jude..." He sighs, breath hitching like an
unbalanced motor. "I've been thinking a lot. Praying hard. I
think it was wrong to send you to work. You can quit if you
like. We'll get by. We'll manage."
    I'm not sure he knows I'm awake, sees my eyes wide and
dilated in the dark. It's like he's talking to himself. But when
he reaches down to stroke my hair, his face draws nearer and
his brows knit.
    "Son?" he says, his voice quavering. "Son, what have they
... what have you...?"
    His hand snaps back like the magnetic arm of a relay
switch. But I have only an instant to steel myself before he
shakes off the stun and whips back, seizing me by my throat
and one thigh and hauling me off the bunk.
    "What in the Wheel have you done?" he cries, stumbling
back as I watch the indistinct room tumble crazily around me.
He loses his grip on my thigh, and my knees bounce off the
deck even as my windpipe grinds against his other hand. I
smash sideways against the bottom of the hatch, torn loose
now from both his hands, and watch in the terrible clarity of
low gravity as his leg swings back in an arc that will
ultimately reverse and connect with my ribs.
    I've never felt revulsion before at his correctional touch,
only the sort of accepting resignation born of an intimate
belief in the justice of it. But now, sprawled on the deck, my
skin crawls with a sense of wrongness and violation.
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    Spasming, I curl myself around his leg at the moment of
contact, I grab tight with both arms, I twist violently toward
the hatch. Arms wheeling, Thomas hits the bulkhead face
first.
    The lights brighten at his startled cry, and in the sudden
glare I scuttle desperately to the cabin's far corner. Thomas's
face leaves a lurid red smear on the door as he slides to the
deck. Dizzy, I push myself to my feet, lungs heaving,
alternately holding back sobs and retches.
    Thomas huddles on the floor with his arms over his head.
"Oh, Builder," he half coughs, half wails. "What did you do?"
   There's only one way he could have detected my mods.
"You see it," I say, nodding like a drunk. "You're Sculpted too,
you hypocrite."
   He rolls over onto one side. "I couldn't do my job
otherwise," he says, wiping blood from his mouth. "The job I
have to do for you and our people. You have no idea what
I've sacrificed."
   "If I have no idea," I shout, "it's because you never told
me! You sent me out there to face the same choices, but you
never told me what you chose!"
   He sits up, wiping his face and examining the blood on his
hand. "I told you what was right, Jude. That's my job."
   "You think I can't figure that out for myself ?"
   "Obviously not. Just like your mother." He's breathing
hard, wincing. "She couldn't make the distinction either—what
one person sacrifices out of necessity, and what that spares
the rest of his family. She tore us apart because of it. She left


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this family in shambles." He pushes himself to his feet. "And I
suppose you want to join her now, Wrecker take you both."
   He totters the few steps toward me. I try to rise, intending
to meet his assault on my feet, however it comes.
   When he lays hands on me, though, it's to take my elbow
and help me rise. "Be my guest," he says, gesturing to the
hatch. "The door's there."
   "The door?" I repeat, confused. "But ... I thought..."
   "Thought what? Thought—" Understanding dawns on his
face as it hasn't yet on mine. "Oh, Jude."
   "What?"
   "You know so much else. I thought you must have found
that out too."
   I feel a tremble in my chest. "Found out what?"
   "About your mother. That she's..."
   Time seems to freeze. Something terrible roars somewhere
far, far away, someplace only I can hear it.
   "Son?" Something in my expression causes Thomas to
release my elbow and take a step back. "Son," he says, hands
up, "she was dead to us, dead in every way that mattered.
She wasn't the same woman anymore. That woman died."
   I fling myself at him, fists pummeling his chest like I'm a
two-year-old throwing a tantrum.
   "I was only trying to protect you, Jude! She's a monster
now! She's Wreckerspawn!"
   "Liar!" I cry, spittle flying from my mouth, tears blinding
my eyes. "You liar!"
   Now he's crying too, behind his upthrust arms, but it can't
be from my pathetic beating. I shove him away in disgust. He
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staggers and sits down hard on his bunk. Not pausing to
think, I snatch my clothing from the netted basket beside my
bunk and cross to the hatch.
   "And now you're leaving me, too," Thomas says bitterly.
"You're her son in every way."
   "Good," I say, turning the knob. "That's what I'd rather be
anyway."
   I have one last glimpse of him—hunched on his bunk in
the harsh light like a wild animal, clawing at his wet, puffy
eyes—and the hatch snicks shut behind me.
                             ****


   Standing over me, Kaiya looks the same as she does in my
half-waking imaginings—tall, porcelain-skinned with cascades
of black hair, slightly larger than life, and no older than I
remember. And those wings. Those glorious, glowing, white
wings, stretching up into the inky night to touch at a point as
far above her head as her head is above her feet. Each
feather is as long and wide as one of my forearms. I could
see her clasping me to her white-robed breast and soaring
high out of the galactic plane with wings like that. She is an
angel.
   "Jude, first let me tell you how sorry I am," she says,
leaning in so close I can count every one of her eyelashes. "I
must have made a dozen recordings like this for you, at least,
every time I move or make some other change, but sorry is
the one thing that's always constant. That and how much I
love you."


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    She's not here, of course, but I can almost smell the dry
perfume of her hair, the oily tang of her wings. I'm in a
Geoffroom, the first one I could find, dressed and tipped back
in the big chair and submerged in illusion. I can hardly believe
this is happening, that this revelation has been so close to
hand for so long, dormant and unguessed-at. All I had to do
was ask the right question—or rather, to learn there were
questions to ask at all. The magic incantation which
summoned this genie forth from the bottle was, quite simply,
"Where is my mother?"
    "I'm not authorized to answer that directly," Geoff told me.
"But I do have a message for you."
   "I wanted to bring you with me. Really I did, Jude. Not a
day goes by that I don't wish I could. But because of the
Guild's legal arrangements with the Station, that was
impossible, and after the change I'd made I certainly couldn't
stay. All I could do was hope that you reached a point—and
preferably long before you reached your Guild majority—
where you were able to start asking questions.
   "Since you're seeing this, apparently you have.
   "As I speak, you're now ten years old—thirteen by Guild
reckoning. You're old enough to get this message if you ask,
but not old enough that I can contact you directly. I don't
know anything about you, what kind of young man you've
turned into since the last time I saw you. Are you still as
sweet as you were as a child, and as serious? What do you
believe? What do you hope for? What do you dream? How
have you changed? One thing's for certain—you must have
changed some to be seeing this now. You must have made
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                         by William Shunn


some hard choices, and you must have many more still to
come.
   "I'm still changing, too, Jude. I'm heading into the final
phases of my exomorphological transform. When you see
this, I'll probably already be homesteading in the New
Bountiful Colony at Van Maanen's Star. It's a long way from
here, terribly far. But that doesn't mean I won't drop it all to
see you again. It won't be quick or simple, but if you want to
start arranging it, just tell Geoff yes at the end of this
recording, or any time afterward. A message will be
dispatched to me immediately, though it may take a while to
reach me.
   "If you don't want to see me"—she shrugs, and her mighty
wings tremble—"well, you can just say nothing. I'll never
know, and I can go on assuming you've never seen this."
   Is there really any question? Is there any doubt? "Yes,
Mom," I say, feeling my face crumple. "Yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes!"
   "I'm so proud of you, Jude," she says. "You chose
enlightenment over ignorance, and that's a terribly hard
choice to make. I love you and I always will, no matter what.
I can't wait for you to see what I've become, and I especially
can't wait to see what you've become."
                             ****


   The Manual tells us that in the beginning the Builder
decreed six fundamental machines. These are his six aspects,
and all we do we must do with the Six. We need no other
machines.
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                         by William Shunn


   I believe this with all my heart. But not even my sincerest
belief, I fear, is sufficient to make it true. Not when the shape
of the Builder's seventh great Machine, transcending the
other six, is coming clear.
   The Seventh Machine is me.
   —THE END—




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