Isaac Asimov's Utopias by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Utopias, Anthologies (Multiple Authors), Science Fiction; American
ISBN: 9780441007844
Google: jj6XAQAACAAJ
Amazon: 0441007848
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1999-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

* * * *

I spent most of the afternoon accessing the library, to find out what I could about monosexes. There was a lot of stuff I’d never imagined, like needing separate pronouns for each gender—”he” and “him” and “his” for males,

“she” and “her” and “hers” for females. They seemed sort of redundant, but Amerish thrives on redundancy, and the female pronouns sounded exotic enough that I practiced using them whenever I thought of Aisha.

Monos were extremely rare away from Earth, except in some religious enclaves where no one had maf chromo-somes: otherwise, it required major surgery, which almost no one bothered with. The first human mafs were born a few years post-contact, but the chromosomes were dis-covered by humans, not Stigrosc: Stigs don’t believe in genetic engineering. Mafs remained a minority on Earth for more than a century, but many of them—us—traveled to habitable solstice worlds, where there was unrestricted birthright. Others became crew on the Stigrosc ships, or emigrated to the neutral worlds; Stigs can’t tell one human from another, and the Nerifar say we all taste the same, but Chuh’hom and Tatsu find it much easier and safer to communicate with mafs. Meanwhile, on Earth, as gene surgery became easier and cheaper and more countries adopted

“one couple—one child” laws, mafs were seen by many governments as a way of avoiding serious gender imbalances in the population, and various incentives were offered to prospective parents—cheap health insurance, exemptions from combat service, places in the schools or the civil service or diplomatic corps reserved for mafs, that sort of thing. According to the library (which was at least seven years out of date), mafs made up 68

percent of the population of Earth—and more than 99 percent of the permanent populations of Marlowe and Avalon, where the al-Goharans would also have to stop en route.

There was nothing in the library—at least, nothing I could access—about how monosexes made love. I was wondering about that when school closed, and I guess I still looked preoccupied when I went home: my mother, who is normally very careful not to invade our privacy, asked me what was on my mind.

“There was a new kid in class, today,” I replied. “Of the Arable. Her name’s Aisha.”

“Is that the one who’s pregnant?” asked Rene, without jacking out of er eternal Vaster than Empires game. Sometimes I think that unrestricted birthrights are over-rated; I get on okay with Kris, but I think Mum and Dad should have stopped when they’d had one kid each. “She’s not pregnant,” I snapped. “She’s ...”

“She?” asked Kris.

Okay, sometimes we get on okay. “It’s old English,” Mum explained.

“I didn’t think the al-Goharans brought their kids with them....”

“They never have before,” Dad agreed, without looking away from the holo. “How long is the trip? Two or three years each way? Hell of a time for a kid that age to be traveling—how old is e?”

That was Dad all over, making a judgment before e had any of the facts. “I don’t know; she’s tall, and her Amerish isn’t too good, and she dresses like.

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