^{Chapter Four}

The last year I spent at the creche was very different from the previous twelve. My age mates and I moved to the top floor and began the intensive training that would lead to our matriculation, and finally to humanity.

Our curriculum changed. Social responsibility classes took up more time. We learned about the hormonal changes that would soon be transforming our bodies. But most of all we learned things to prepare us for life as spiritual beings.

One day an invigilator came from the matriculatory, dressed in the teal tabard of her order. She talked to us about the terrible burden of guilt humans bear for their past, when they caused a holocaust among other lifeforms on the planet. Because they thought that life and procreation were their rights, the ancients overburdened the world with their numbers and their greedy use of resources. In their blind rapaciousness, they nearly brought about the end of all life. Only because mutations arose to limit their numbers did they and the planet survive.

“Humankind is the worst disaster ever to befall this planet,” the invigilator told us. “With everything we do, we continue to destroy it, a little bit every day. In order to justify our presence here, and our use of space and resources, we must continually earn the favor of existence.”

Life, we learned, was a privilege, not a right. After matriculation, we would inherit the duty of justification. Every year we would be obliged to search our hearts to see if we had made a contribution to nature, culture, or humanity. If so, we could grant ourselves another year. If not—if we had truly become a burden on the world—it was our responsibility to end our unproductive lives. It was the only honorable course open to us.

We were terribly frightened by this, but the invigilator assured us that there were many ways of making a contribution. Merely doing well at our jobs, learning something useful, or planting a garden were sufficient to justify life. Even so, that night in the roundroom we looked at each other grimly, wondering if any of us had ever done anything to justify our existence. It made us look back on our blameless, irresponsible life as protos with new eyes. None of us had dreamed that being a human would be so hard.

Perhaps I took the invigilator’s strictures too seriously. The others in my roundroom certainly thought so; that winter they teased me for having grown too grave and quiet. My mind was already dwelling on the future, when life would be nothing but choices and responsibilities. I would have to be the actor, not the acted-upon. More than ever, I wanted time to freeze in its tracks.

But of course, it didn’t. Like it or not, the spring of our matriculation grew nearer. The snowdrifts melted, and the chapel dome became beaded with water instead of frost. The smell of mud and leaves rose from the ground, and the chatter of geese filled the valley again. Soon the day was upon us.

The night before we left the creche forever, all the gestagogues gathered to eat butterberry buns and say good-bye to us. It was supposed to be a joyous time, but over all of us hung the thought of never seeing those loving, devoted people again. Other children would take our places in their lives. When I went to shake Proctor Givern’s hand like the adult I was going to become, he gave me a bear hug, and before I knew it I was crying on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Tedla,” he said. “The world is full of good people and exciting places. You’ll never want to come back.”

“Yes, I will,” I said. And I was right.

We were supposed to spend our last night in the roundroom seriously, thinking about the past and future, but instead we were wild and rowdy, trying to enjoy our last moment of childhood before the great change. We all joined in a bouncing dance and shouted out the dirtiest songs we knew, afraid to sleep. There was panic in our gaiety.

The next morning we were not wakened by our own familiar proctors, but by an invigilator, his face masklike as he passed out the blue uniforms we would wear for the next two days. Each uniform had a number stencilled on it; we were supposed to memorize our numbers and answer to them. Once out of our own creche, we would no longer have names.

We filed out into the predawn chill. The river bluffs and grass were covered with a coating of frost, and the air seemed hushed and expectant. A huge gray aircar was waiting on the playing field. Zelly, Litch, and I gravitated together. We clambered into the aircar and crowded onto the same bench seat. Bigger was right behind us, but had to sit somewhere else. We didn’t want Bigger near us; for several months it had begun to have an abnormally male look, as if it were differentiating early. There was even a suspicious bulge at its crotch. We were repulsed by it; no one had wanted to sleep next to it in the roundroom, so it had become a kind of pariah.

As the aircar took off, I pressed my forehead to the cold window to see the last of the creche. It looked very small and vulnerable, surrounded by the hugeness of the world. I looked off over the river valley, and as we rose I saw the landscape spread out in muted, misty colors, fields and roads and forest, a larger view than I’d ever seen before. Then we entered the clouds, and I saw no more.

It seemed like a long flight. The sun had risen and the clouds cleared away by the time we began to descend, and as the aircar circled we could see the matriculatory below us. It was an immense, aboveground edifice shaped like a six-armed star. Litch, Zelly, and I crowded at the window to catch a glimpse of the birthpool, where our matriculation would culminate in two days. It lay at the center of the building, blue and open to the sky. Soon, we knew, we would enter that pool as protos and emerge as human beings.

The aircar set down on a pad at the tip of one of the building’s arms, and we disembarked into a scene of noisy mayhem. Mobs of protos were disgorging from the vehicles of a hundred different gestatories, milling around in colored uniforms. The invigilators were trying to control the crowd and move it forward into the building in an orderly flow. My friends and I were determined to stick together, but when the tide of protos pushed us to the front of the line, the invigilator brought his staff down between us and directed us to different entrances. I found myself in a crowd of protos I had never seen before.

The first day was taken up by tests to determine our suitability for humanity. We moved like a noisy river from the tip of the star-arm toward the center. First we were free to flow forward, then we would be dammed into a pool, then allowed to spill over in little rivulets or a great cascade. At each stage we passed a new hurdle.

First they took our numbers, prints, and pictures, then passed us along swiftly to the curators who took our blood and urine samples, looked in our eyes, ears, and mouths, listened to our hearts and lungs, then gave us each an injection and stamped our hands with a clean bill of health. A few of the protos were weeded out and sent off for more elaborate tests. I had had a touch of asthma and worried that they would discover it, but they noticed nothing.

After our bodies, they turned attention to our minds. We entered a part of the building that was divided up like a maze, into chains of small testing rooms; as we completed each test they directed us to different rooms depending on the results. No one told us how we were doing. They tested dozens of different types of aptitude: memory, logic, music, creativity, speed reasoning. Some of the tests were like games; others were terribly hard. As we passed through, we accumulated codes that indicated our aptitudes, though what they meant we didn’t know. I was an E6-Yellow.

Once they had exhausted our minds, they still kept testing: physical aptitudes, this time. We performed tasks to quantify coordination, strength, endurance, dexterity. My excitement of that morning had drained off, and I was so tired I could barely pay attention any more.

At the end of the day we all gathered to eat in a huge refectory halfway down the star-arm. I wandered down lines of tables, looking for someone I knew, and finally spotted Bigger sitting by itself. I didn’t want it to see me, so I turned away.

“Tedla!” I heard. It was Axel, waving at me. Grateful to see a familiar face, I went over to sit with it.

“Have you seen anyone else from the creche?” I asked.

“Bigger’s over there.”

“I know. What about Zelly or Litch?”

Axel shook its head. “Some of the protes say they’re weeding the group. This can’t be everyone that came in this morning.”

I looked around the room; it still seemed like a huge crowd to me. “They can’t be weeding, or Bigger wouldn’t be here,” I said. “There must be another refectory.”

That night we all slept in a huge roundroom. It wasn’t the great sleep, the one that would end our childhood, but it still seemed significant. Too tired and keyed up to settle down, we gathered in groups to talk. I found Zelly in one group; we greeted each other as if we’d been parted for years.

Some of the other protos seemed to know more about what was going on than I did. Three of them were talking about the ruby drink we would be offered the next night to help us sleep. “I won’t take it,” one said. “I want to know what’s going on.”

“You can’t feel it,” another said. “You don’t turn human overnight, you know. It takes months.”

“Then how do they gender-type you?”

“Blood tests. They can tell if it’s estrogens or androgens in your bloodstream.”

“You know what Gimmy said?” one proto whispered. “It said those shots they gave us this morning were the hormones that stimulate the pineal to start secretions. It takes two days. We’re already turning.”

This news made me horribly uneasy. Something alien was inside me, transforming me, like a secret parasite. I couldn’t trust my body any more.

I slept fitfully that night. Once, I was wakened by a grotesque dream: I got up to go to the birthpool and found I had huge dangling breasts and a penis that dragged on the ground so that I could barely walk, and had to carry it in front of me. I lay awake, sweaty and tense, wishing nature could have found a less disfiguring way to make us into adults.

The next day we entered a new phase of matriculation. The architecture of the building changed. The first day, we had seen only the familiar, modern curves of blown lignis. Now, after hygiene and breakfast, we filed into a hall made from stone, on a monumental scale. The place had obviously been erected at a time when hundreds of thousands of protos had made their journeys to humanity at once; our group, which had seemed so populous the day before, was dwarfed by the spaces we passed through. Our voices and footsteps echoed harshly off the hard, square walls, and the ceiling loomed high above us. It was as if the ancients were there, watching. All their other monuments were mere rubble by now; only the matriculatory survived, unspeakably old.

This day, all the testers and curators were gone, along with the busy hubbub of activity. We were under the sway of the mysterious Order of Matriculators now. It was more than our bodies and minds under scrutiny this day: it was our souls.

The morning was taken up by tests of psychostability, social adaptation, and moral development. At every step, the tests were interwoven with instruction on the duties and privileges of humanity. As the day went on, the spiritual began to overshadow the intellectual. Our groups grew smaller and smaller, till at the end of the day I was ushered alone into a room with a robed invigilator who told me to sit down and tell her anything about my childhood I wanted to leave behind me, so that I could enter my new life unburdened. I thought of telling her about Joby, but guilt stopped me. Instead, I mentioned some less damning things. For each confession she gave me a flower, and told me to drop it in the chapel pool, and the memory of my guilt with it.

When I entered the chapel I found it was night outside, and the dome above was dark; but all the pathways were lit by candles. It was a huge chapel, with a whole landscape of trails and streams and pools in it, so that we could wander quite privately, praying and thinking of our futures. I dropped my flowers into a mossy stream just above a waterfall, and watched them drift over the edge, then down the channel till they reached the quiet of the central pool.

Out of the stillness a sweet bell rang, summoning us to the center. There, invigilators holding torches stood on either side of a cave mouth gated with an ornate wrought-iron grill. It was the entrance to the matrix hall. We stood silently as a matriculator spoke in a soft but penetrating voice.

“Birth is a natural process,” she said. “Learn to accept it. Cling neither to the past nor to some imagined future. Your childhood is now behind you; let it stay there, and not hinder your passage. Hoarding the past is the most self-destructive form of covetousness. Do not burden yourself with any memories or ambitions as you enter life. Strive to be born as clean as rainwater or falling snow.”

Another bell rang, and the gates to the matrix hall opened. As we filed in—no longer protos, but applicants for humanity now—the invigilators gave us our cups of ruby drink. No one turned it down.

The matrix hall was round, and far larger than our group. We passed through rows of pillars and saw the concentric circles of beds ranged at the very center, where we were to spend the great sleep. We took our places silently, subdued. The invigilators passed around the circle, taking a vial of blood from each of us. I was quiet as I watched my blood run into the clear tube, wondering which hormones they would find in it. My invigilator patted me on the shoulder when she was done. That little kindness in the midst of all the strangeness of the day made tears start to my eyes. I laid back against the pillow and fell almost at once into a deep sleep.

***

I was wakened by someone shaking my shoulder. At first, sleep tugged at my brain, trying to pull me back down. Then it came to me: It was the most important morning of my life, the morning of my birth. I sat up, struggling to make myself alert. This of all mornings I wanted to experience to the full.

The sun was coming through a skylight at the center of the hall. There were empty beds all around me, where protos had already been led out to the birthpool; in other beds, protos still slumbered. Silent invigilators with electronic slates were passing along the rows, matching our numbers to their records. I waited till one came by. Seeing I was awake, he punched my number in, then gestured for me to follow him. He didn’t smile or speak.

He led me through a raw-wood door and down a stone hallway to a small room where a clerk was working at a desk. The clerk asked for my number, then called up my records. He scanned my thumbprint, then opened a drawer and took out a metal tag on a chain. “Put that around your neck and keep it there,” he said. Puzzled, I obeyed. To the invigilator who had brought me in, he said, “I thought the rate was supposed to be going down.”

“Not today it isn’t,” the invigilator said.

The clerk jerked his thumb at a door. “Through there,” he said to me.

Their casual attitude clashed with my mood of anticipation. Didn’t they know how magical this day was for me? Had the miracle of birth grown so stale for them they couldn’t even pretend a joyous attitude?

I went through the door. As I had expected, a dressing room lay beyond. I had heard that they gave you a white robe to leave at the edge of the birthpool; once you emerged they dressed you in red and gave you your real name. There were no other candidates in the room, just a fat older woman at a desk, looking annoyed at her assignment. She told me to clean up and throw my uniform in a laundry chute. I followed her instructions, then came back, shivering a little with excitement as well as cold. She was working on her slate, and didn’t look up at first, so I said, “Do I get a robe to go to the birthpool?”

She looked up at me, then gave a short laugh. “You’re not going to the birthpool,” she said. She reached into a bin beside her and shoved a folded garment across the desk toward me. I was reaching out to pick it up when I realized it was the gray uniform of a bland.

I pulled my hand back. “What’s that?” I said, revolted.

“Put it on,” she said. “It’s yours.”

It was as if she had reached inside me and twisted my stomach around. “No!” I cried out. “That’s some filthy neuter’s clothes. I’m not putting it on. What do you think I am?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” the woman said. There was a note of disgust in her voice.

Now I really felt fear. “You made a mistake!” I said. “I’m not a bland. I’m human.”

She rolled her eyes as if she’d heard it a hundred times. “Just be good and put it on.”

“No!” I shrieked. I had to escape, and find someone who would set this all straight. I bolted for the door I’d come in through, but it was locked. There was another door on the other end of the room. I ran to it, and pulled it open. Beyond it was a poured-stone corridor with exposed lights. Grayspace. Terrified, I slammed the door and backed away from it. It was the only way out. I was trapped.

The woman at the desk was placing a call, asking someone else to come to the room. “Bring a tranquilizer,” she said.

I looked around, desperate for some alternative. The locked door back into the world opened, and an invigilator came through. I ran to her. “This is wrong,” I pleaded. “They’ve made a mistake. Ask Proctor Givern. I’m not a bland.”

Her voice was calm and authoritative. “There isn’t any mistake, child. No one is forcing this on you. Your own body made the decision. It’s your nature; you can’t be any other way.”

The air was pressing in around me; I could barely breathe. The full horror of my situation was coming clear. Everything was constricting: the world, my life, the future. I began to cry. “It’s someone else who’s the bland,” I said. “It’s not me. I’m a person.”

She said gently, “You’ll be happier this way. We’ll find a place where they’ll take care of you. You’ll be with others of your own kind.”

“I don’t want to be with neuters!” I shrieked.

She took out a hypodermic needle and said to the other woman, “Come help me.”

“No! I’ll be good,” I said. But the other woman had already come up behind me. She took me in a lock-hold from behind, pinning my arms at my sides while the invigilator gave me the injection. They both walked away then, indifferent. The invigilator left. The other woman tossed the uniform across the room at me. “Put it on,” she said. It fell at my feet.

I stood there naked, with no alternative. It came to me then: My life was over. I was shut off from the world forever, behind a locked door of gender. I sank to the floor and began to cry bitterly.

But gradually, as the drug took effect, my thoughts stopped whirling, and my panic dulled. I looked down at the uniform and thought there was no help for it, I might as well put it on. I didn’t feel sleepy or dizzy, just indifferent. I could still think, but somehow the thoughts seemed sluggish and calm. This is how blands feel all the time, I thought. I am thinking like a bland.

I pulled the uniform on and went to the door. As I stepped into grayspace I knew that somewhere, back in my real mind, I was screaming in protest—but it was like a faraway voice I could barely hear. It simply didn’t matter.

The corridor turned a corner, then led into a large waiting room with stained, peeling walls and a scuffed tile floor. It was crowded with protos in gray uniforms, all sitting on the floor or leaning against the walls. Some of them were crying; others looked frightened, or simply stunned and indifferent, like me. The room smelled of fear. I chose a spot as far away from any others as I could get. They were blands. I wanted nothing to do with them.

We all waited there for several hours as more neuters joined us. The room became so crowded we couldn’t help but touch one another. Across the room there was some scuffling where one neuter refused to let any others get near it; it had cleared a space around it with its fists, and was threatening anyone who got too close. “Filthy pubers,” it kept saying. “Touch me and you’ll regret it.” I finally stood to stretch my legs, and was shocked to see that the pugnacious bland was Bigger. I couldn’t imagine Bigger as a neuter—it had been so obviously male. As I watched, Bigger seized the hand of someone who had gotten too near it, and bent back the fingers till the victim screamed in pain. Everyone else surged away like a frightened flock of animals, and I was crushed back against the wall by bodies.

A door opened and two adults appeared. Bigger began to yell obscenities at them. With quick, practiced movements they seized its arms and shoved its face against the wall, then checked its number. “Let’s take it straight to surgery,” one of them said. As Bigger struggled and swore at them, they dragged it out and closed the door.

There was a silence after they left. I felt chilled even through the drug-haze. There was only one conclusion I could draw: Some neuters might be natural, but others were created. Someone had spotted Bigger’s abnormality, and had decided it could not be allowed to reproduce.

Presently the door opened again, and two men in the uniform of bland supervisors began calling out numbers. “Come to the door when you hear your number,” they said loudly. The blands around me listened eagerly, hoping to hear their numbers called. I was indifferent. All that could possibly lie ahead was a life of mindless labor. Waiting in this room was not so much worse than that.

However, my number was one of the early ones called. I pushed forward through the press of unsexed bodies, feeling dirtied by them but unable to be revolted. When I got to the door, the supervisor directed a group of six of us down a hallway to where another supervisor met us and checked us off one by one on a list. This time he asked for our names, and entered them beside our numbers. I realized then that I would never have a real name. I would always be just Tedla.

“You’re lucky blands,” the supervisor said. “You’ll be going to Brice’s.”

A plain freight aircar waited to ferry us to our new home. It had no seats or windows, since we were just cargo now. I didn’t mind. A window might have given me a view of the birthpool, where my crechemates would be celebrating their new humanity. I hoped they wouldn’t be looking for me, or even remember my name. I wanted no one to guess what had happened to me.

It was a very long flight. When at last we landed and the metal door rumbled back on its tracks, a chill, humid air gusted in along with the dull, gray light of late day. Outside, our new supervisor was waiting: a massive man with an egg-shaped head, broad on the bottom and narrow on the top, with a brush of black hair and eyebrows that made a straight horizontal line across his face. He directed us down a path toward a stand of tall pine trees, their tops hidden in mist. We walked, saying nothing to each other, till we came to a ramp that led down into the ground. When we passed through the door at the bottom we found ourselves in a large, poured-stone room stacked with crates and boxes of supplies. In the center was a cleared space where a group of about twenty neuters our age already waited.

The supervisor came in after us, walking in a brisk, authoritative way that contrasted with our own uncertain amble. Immediately the room focused on him. He climbed onto a wooden pallet with a slate, and began to call our names, scrutinizing us one by one as if to memorize our faces. When he looked at me, I felt completely naked, as if there were no secrets he couldn’t uncover.

When he had accounted for everyone, he began to talk in a voice that wasn’t raised, but still carried through the room. “All right, you blands. I know what’s in every one of your minds, so let’s get it out of the way right now. You all think there’s been some mistake, that you’re not really a neuter. Maybe some of you think the matriculators are going to find out their mistake and come get you. Every neuter that’s ever come here has thought the same. Well, let me tell you, they don’t make mistakes. I’ve seen thousands of you come and go, every one of you thinking you were really human, and not once has it been true.” He turned to someone in the front row. “You. Tell me what you really are.”

The bland didn’t know what he wanted, so it just stared at him. He said, “Come on, say it.”

“I’m a neuter?” the child stammered.

“Shout it,” the supervisor ordered.

“I’m a neuter!”

“You.” He turned to the next one.

“I’m a neuter!”

He went through the group, one by one, and we all shouted the hated words. I’m lying, I thought inside, even as I said it.

“All right,” he said. “Now, you’re all really lucky to have been sent here. We’re going to train you to do jobs most blands never get a chance to do. People all over the world have heard of Brice’s Blands, and they compete to get ’em. Some day it’ll be a real feather in your cap, to be able to say to the other blands, ‘I’m from Brice’s.’ We’ll treat you well here. You’ll get plenty to eat, and the work isn’t dangerous. But let me tell you something. If you goof off, we’ll ship you out of here so fast you won’t know what happened till you wake up working in a trap mine somewhere. What do I mean by goofing off?” He began to raise thick fingers. “Laziness. Disrespect for your supervisors. Disobedience. Uncooperativeness. You stay away from those things, and you’ll do just fine here. Okay?” He scanned all our faces again. “My name’s Motivator Jockety. If your supervisors have any trouble with you, I’m the one you’ll get sent to. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”

“No, sir,” several blands mumbled.

“All right. Now you go eat and sleep, and you’ll start your training in the morning.”

He exited the room through a raw-wood door. When he opened it, I glimpsed through it the soft curves of a lignis hallway decorated with woven hangings. Human space. There was a clunk, and a bland opened a gray metal door for us, leading into a cinderblock hallway. We crowded through it and soon came to a refectory like the one in the creche, except that there was not a color in it and the tables were all bare metal. It seemed big enough to seat only about sixty at once. Either there weren’t many blands here, or they ate in shifts.

I watched the others in my group a little suspiciously as I ate. They seemed like perfectly normal protos. There was none of the blankness in their eyes I associated with blands, nor the sluggish indifference. I wondered when it would start to show. Some of them were talking with each other, telling which gestatories they came from, speculating on what we would be asked to do. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything.

The drug must have been wearing off, because when we were herded into the shower room and I could throw my gray uniform into the laundry I felt a surge of hatred for it, and beat it against the wall a few times first. Showering, I fantasized that I could wash away all the neuterness. When we all filed into the roundroom, it came to me that I would never sleep in a bed as long as I lived. I would never eat in a cafe. I would never enter human space again, except as an intruder. My world—my place—would be one of dingy gray service corridors. Worst of all, I would soon cease to care. Soon, my brain would start to dull from the natural acuity of childhood into the vacancy of the adult bland. I looked down at my body, till today so normal and so right. Now I knew the truth: I was a mistake of nature.

Feeling the sharp bite of despair, I sat down with my back to the wall and drew my legs up with my arms around them. I laid my head down on my knees, to block out all sight of what was around me. I tried to remember the multiplication tables, thinking that if I kept my mind going, maybe it wouldn’t get neuterish, even with all these neuters around me.

Someone touched my shoulder, and I looked up. A new group had come into the roundroom. They were only a little older than us, but unlike us, you could tell they were blands. I had never seen an adult bland naked before, and I stared. They looked just like old children.

One of them was kneeling in front of me. It said, “Come sleep with us. You’ll feel better.”

“No,” I said.

It didn’t press the point, merely shrugged and went off to the center of the room where they were all settling down in a tangled blandball on the cushiony floor. I turned my face to the wall and laid down with my back to them all. I slept that way all night.

***

The next morning, I began to learn how to be a bland.

We woke early when the automatic lights came on in the roundroom. The routine after that was much like being at the creche: we went through hygiene, crowded around to get new uniforms from the bin, then went into the refectory for breakfast. After that, the “newbies,” as they called us, gathered in a room where a human supervisor came to talk to us.

“Here at Brice’s, you won’t get to say, ‘I’m just a bland, I can’t do that,’” she told us. “We’ve got a lot to teach you, and we’ve got to do it in the next nine months, before you start going dumb on us. So you’re going to have to pay close attention every day, no excuses. There’s nothing we teach that’s so hard a bland can’t do it. We know, because we’ve trained thousands of you. If any of you start lagging behind, we figure you’ve decided not to cooperate, and you’ll be shipped out. Got it?” She looked around, but no one said they hadn’t got it.

She divided us up into small groups then, and gave us our assignments. I was with four others assigned to the kitchen. When we came in, there were already five older blands working there with a supervisor. The supervisor told us our jobs. Mine was to help wash up the dishes from breakfast. When I saw the mountain they formed on the counters, I thought there was no chance I could get it done before lunch. An older bland was already at work on them, moving sluggishly. As soon as the supervisor went off, it winked at me and said, “I’m Hyper.”

“You are?” I stared, thinking it had to move faster than that to convince me.

“That’s my name, stupid,” it said.

“Oh. I’m Tedla.”

“You ever done this before?” it said. I shook my head. “Well, never mind, I’ll teach you.”

“What’s to learn?” I said disdainfully.

It drew itself up, doing a perfect imitation of the pompous tone of the supervisors. “Maybe some places there’s no technique to washing dishes. Here at Brice’s we’ve got standards.”

I glanced nervously over my shoulder at the supervisor. But Hyper had judged her distance perfectly; she couldn’t hear.

“Here, you scrape and rinse,” Hyper said, giving me a long-handled brush. “I’ll bring the dishes to you.”

With the supervisor out of sight, Hyper earned its name. It kept up a steady stream of advice to me—what leftover food to put in the garbage can, what could be washed down the drain; how to set a pot aside to soak; how to load the dishes in the machine; what soaps to use for what purpose. Its tone was alternately teasing and bossy. “Don’t be so conscientious,” it said, after having nagged me a thousand ways to do it right. “You’ve got to let the machine do some work. The essence of this job is knowing the capacities of your machine.”

“Did they send you to dishwashing school or something?” I grumbled.

“This is it, kid,” Hyper said. “You’re learning from the expert.”

The supervisor happened by then, and Hyper’s attitude suddenly changed. It became silent, sullen, and slow. She watched us work for a few seconds, then said, “You learning your lesson, Hyper?”

It mumbled, “Yes, ma’am.”

When she went off I glanced at my companion, wondering what that had been about. Hyper whispered, “I don’t normally work down here. I’m here as punishment for sassing.”

“You sassed a supervisor?” I asked, surprised.

“Are you crazy? If I’d sassed a human, I’d be digging ditches in the Lower Beyond. I sassed another bland.”

“That I believe,” I said ruefully.

“Are you being impertinent?” it said officiously.

“What are you going to do, make me wash dishes for it?”

The supervisor called out, “Cut the chatter, you two, and do your job.”

We worked in silence for a while. I could overhear the supervisor teaching the blands who were cooking lunch for the humans. They were discussing how to make a sauce of the exact right consistency—smooth, translucent, neither runny nor sticky. It sounded very complicated. I wondered if they would ever expect me to learn that. Our own lunch was already cooking in big boiling pots—a root vegetable we call groundnut, if I could judge by the smell.

The humans had separate dishes that we had to load in a special machine. I had never seen fine china before, and I admired it as I was rinsing. The plates were light blue, painted with delicate designs of cherry blossoms. They were so pretty, they looked out of place down in this rough, industrial kitchen. I felt sorry for them.

“Never use the harsh soaps on the good china,” Hyper instructed as we loaded the human dishes. “And make sure not to use any soap with sulphur compounds on the silver, or you’ll be up reshining it all night.”

“How do I know if the soap’s got sulphur?” I said.

“Read the label. You can read, can’t you?”

“Of course I can.” It had just never occurred to me that blands would have to.

There had been over sixty of the plain stoneware bland-plates; there were only a dozen of the china. “Is that how many humans are here?” I said.

Hyper glanced over its shoulder to locate the supervisor. “Right.”

“What do they do?”

“They train us.”

“Is that it?”

“Well, they have to eat a lot and get massages and pedicures so we’ll know how to do it.”

“Is that the only reason this place exists? To train blands?”

“That’s right,” Hyper said.

I managed to learn more as we unloaded the clean dishes and stacked them ready to use again. Brice’s was set up like one of the elite private houses in a convergence. Until that moment I hadn’t known there was such a thing—I had thought everyone lived in the community and order houses. “Only the most powerful mattergraves and electors have private houses,” Hyper explained, “and they’re not really private, of course—they belong to the community. But they’re where the community heads live, and do their entertaining and business.”

“Is that the kind of place we’re going to?” I said, impressed.

Hyper nodded. “The ones who graduate are.”

No wonder they were training us specially. The mattergraves and electors needed better blands than the run-of-the-mill person. I began to think it wasn’t just a cruel hypocrisy, the way everyone kept telling us how lucky we were.

The blands were beginning to come into the refectory for lunch, and we were pressed into service carrying huge pots of food out to serve them. It wasn’t till the last one left that we got to sit down ourselves and eat. When we came back into the kitchen afterwards, I saw all the dishes stacked dirty on the counter again, and groaned.

“What did you think, that they were going to stay clean all day?” Hyper said.

It went faster this time, since I knew the techniques, though I still didn’t do them to Hyper’s satisfaction. The dishes from the humans’ table upstairs were much more complicated this time—we had not only china, but silver, wood, crystal, and basketry to clean. Each material had to be handled in a special way. By the end of the day, I had learned more about dish care from Hyper than I had thought it was possible to know.

I stayed on the dishwashing detail for five days, until I could do it in my sleep. On the last day, Hyper’s punishment was up, and I was left alone. By doubling my pace, I was able to accomplish the same amount of work it had taken two of us to do before. At the end I was exhausted, but the supervisor was impressed.

“You’re a good worker, Tedla,” she said.

I felt quite pleased with myself until the supervisor left and one of the older kitchen blands pulled me aside.

“Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again,” it said.

Astonished, I said, “Why not?”

“They’ll start to think it’s a one-bland job, and expect the rest of us to do it all the time.”

I realized the sense in that. I had been so intent on pleasing the humans, I had forgotten who my real common interests lay with. The humans had all the power over me, but none of them would ever be my friends. At first, it was a bitter thought.

When my five days of dishwashing were up, I was rotated to cook’s assistant, and I learned all about washing, peeling, and chopping vegetables, trimming meat, stirring and mixing, and all the other tedious jobs the cooks didn’t like to do. But what I was really learning was how to be a bland. I learned to slow my pace and cast down my eyes when humans were watching. I learned not to answer when humans spoke, unless it was a direct question, and then to answer in as few syllables as I could. But I also learned that the blands were an interlocked team, and if one of us sloughed off, all of us would suffer. We worked hard even when the humans weren’t there—in fact, especially when they weren’t there. We weren’t doing it for them, we were doing it for each other.

There were some in my class of newbies who had a hard time adjusting. One, named Tick, was petulant and rebellious, and kept arguing with the supervisors. “Why should I do what they say?” it would tell us in the roundroom, when all we wanted was to sleep. “Why should we have to haul the garbage while they laze around all day?” After a week, when it became clear that Tick was not growing reconciled, they began to take it away for medical treatments. The next time I saw Tick, I recognized in its face the docile indifference of the tranquilizer drug they had given me. But unlike me, they didn’t stop medicating Tick after the first injection. They kept it drugged for weeks on end, and after a while it grew listless and stupid as well as content. Soon we all noticed that Tick was too easily confused to keep up with the training. Shortly after, it disappeared from our roundroom.

“We decided that Tick would be happier somewhere else,” one of the supervisors explained.

We never talked about it in the roundroom, but we all got the message. Strangely, though, I never imagined that the change in Tick was anything more than the speeding up of a natural process. I firmly believed that the same thing would be happening to the rest of us before long, as the neuter neurochemicals faded our initiative and leached away our ability to learn. Tick’s vacant stare had only been a harbinger of things to come. Of course the thought frightened me. I kept a close watch on myself and my age mates, trying to catch the first signs of the dumbing.

I can see what you want to ask; Capellans think so individualistically. The answer is no, it never occurred to me to attempt escape. What would I have done if I had gotten away? In a few months, I knew I would be incapable of living on my own; I would need humans to take care of me. They were my only security. I had to learn to please them.

In my mind, I was going through a process I can only describe as withdrawing from humanity. It was a relief, in a way. A bland’s life was so much more predictable than a human’s. I could count on being housed, fed, and clothed, and all I would have to give in return would be work and obedience. I would never again have to exert myself to do something beyond my abilities. I would never have to be worried or frightened. I would never have to justify my existence. I could simply turn my back on all the demands and rigors of humanity.

For the first month and more they rotated us newbies through the more menial jobs, so we would learn good work habits and grow accustomed to the routine. After the kitchen, they transferred me to Maintenance. There I worked on building repair—painting, revarnishing, caulking—and learned about the mechanical systems like plumbing, electricity, ventilation, recycling. Brice’s naturally had a chapel on the top floor, and I spent one blissful five-day period as gardener’s assistant—watering, repotting, and trimming growing things. I loved being in the chapel, and this was my only chance. As neuters, you see, we didn’t go to chapel because there was no point. We had no gods inside us. That is, we were like animals and plants—part of the overall sacredness of life, but incapable of becoming aware of it. Humans who didn’t search for their gods were often said to become like neuters—unaware, unconscious.

Too soon, I was transferred to Cleaning. It was then I got to know the human spaces in a way even the humans never knew them—down to every cranny where a dustball could hide. On night shift, we shined brass reliefs on the doors with tiny brushes and polished marble floors till we could see our reflections. By day, we changed the humans’ linen and scrubbed their bathrooms. The hardest part of cleaning was staying out of the humans’ sight. Human space was interwoven with a hidden web of service corridors for us, called bland-runs. In some places, we had peepholes to see whether a human was about; elsewhere, the rooms had infrared detectors. Every suite of human quarters had graydoors to give us access—and escape. To be caught in a human’s space was horribly shaming for us. The whole skill lay in never letting them guess we were there.

By the end of my introduction to Brice’s, I understood why it took sixty blands to keep a dozen humans comfortable.

The month of rotations had sorted us out in the supervisors’ minds. They had identified our attitudes and abilities. Our numbers had decreased by five, including Tick. We were now ready for our permanent assignments.

On the day before the assignments were handed out, I was working in Laundry. One of the newbies in Cleaning came down with a rolling bin of towels and sheets, and whispered to me, “Quee says they’re all meeting in the big vocatory, arguing about who gets which of us.”

We blands had the means to know virtually everything that went on in human space. We rarely paid any attention, because so little that went on concerned us. This was different.

“Do you know where I’ll be assigned?” I asked. I was desperately hoping to be trained for gardening.

My friend shook its head. “We’ll try to find out.”

By refectory, the whole list of assignments was circulating in whispers around the tables. Quee told me, “You’re going to be a Personal.”

“What’s a Personal?” I asked.

“Canto and Laki are Personals,” an older bland told me. I didn’t know either of them well. No one did. They spent more time with the humans than any of us, and seemed to hold themselves a little aloof, with a proud, aristocratic air. I was disappointed, but stoical. Doubtless the humans knew what was best for me.

The next morning the supervisor read us the list of assignments, and we all pretended to be surprised. There were four of us to be trained as Personals. Only one lucky bland had gotten gardening. I went over to the corner of the room where the other Personals had gathered near Canto and Laki. They were looking us over critically.

“What’s a Personal do?” one of the others, a redheaded bland named Mallow, said.

Laki answered. “When you leave Brice’s you’ll get assigned to a guardian—one of the important humans, like a mattergrave or elector. Your job will be to make that human’s life comfortable.”

“How?” I said, unable to imagine what a human might need a bland for.

“You’ll see,” Laki said.

When the supervisor dismissed us to go to our places, Canto and Laki led the rest of us upstairs to a wide place in the bland-run where some lockers stood. As we stood there, they stripped out of their gray jumpsuits and began to put on layer after intricate layer of clothing from the lockers—underwear, stockings, shirts, pants, coats, cravats, and gloves. We watched, dumbfounded. When they were done, the two of them looked transformed. They were in tailored black uniforms with gold buttons, wide cuffs, and white fabric gloves. The rest of us exchanged glances, unable to imagine how they would perform any work in those costumes. They combed their hair carefully, then led us straight through a graydoor into human space.

The room we entered was a lounge: beautifully veined lignis walls polished to a sheen by the industrious cleaners, a deep red carpet, two fireplaces with shining fenders and andirons, and upholstered furniture arranged informally for conversation. The room had a snug and woody atmosphere, with opulent glints of metal and glass, and a lingering smell of firesmoke. We newbies, feeling uncomfortably like intruders where we were not meant to be, fidgeted. But Canto and Laki stood by one wall with their hands clasped at their backs, their posture very erect in their elegant uniforms, their faces completely blank. Mallow mimicked them, but looked silly, and we broke out in a nervous giggle. Just then the door opened on silent hinges, and a human entered the room. We crowded together, afraid we would be scolded for getting caught in human space.

The man who crossed the room to take a look at us was named Supervisor Mondragone. Up to now, we had seen little of him. He was an older man with a strict and critical expression, who always dressed as precisely as a diagram. One by one, he asked our names, studying us as we stared at the floor and fidgeted. At last he sighed. “Dear me,” he said. “What material. We have a long way to go.”

He raised his voice to the tone humans used when giving us instructions. “You blands are going to have to learn some new rules. As Personals, you are going to be spending a good part of your lives among humans, and you will have to learn the rules of human space. Unlike other blands, you will need to know how to talk to us, and listen to us, and move among us without attracting attention by your neuterish behavior. By the time I’m through with you, I will expect you all to be completely invisible and completely indispensable to your guardians.”

He turned to Canto and Laki. “Find them some uniforms before bringing them back tomorrow. You know where they’re kept. Teach them how to dress. I’ll need to see some progress in their manners soon.”

“Yes, sir,” Canto said expressionlessly.

“You may go to your duties now.”

The two older blands bowed and left through the human door, as if it belonged to them. We all stared after them.

“Now,” Supervisor Mondragone said, “let’s start with your carriage.”

He spent the morning teaching us how to move. “Imagine there is a string attached to the top of your skull, and it’s pulling you toward the ceiling,” he said. We learned to stand without slumping, and walk without shuffling. He made us practice graceful movement, and gave us exercises to do in our own time. We even learned to hold our heads up while humans were near, and cast down only our eyes.

Shortly before lunch, he took us to the dining room, where Canto and Laki were at work setting the table, and he left. The two blands then took over our instruction, explaining the purposes and placement of all the dishes I had once learned to wash. There were strict rules about where every piece of silver went, and which dishes were used for which course, and how the linen napkins were folded. Each of us practiced by setting a place; then Canto and Laki shooed us away into grayspace, but instructed us to watch the meal carefully through the peephole.

I had never seen humans eat like this before. Unlike us, they seemed almost as interested in how they ate as what they ate: They held their bodies stiff, handled the eating tools in a particular order, and seemed to be saying ritualized things to each other. Canto and Laki served them from the sideboard, moving silently around the table with the serving dishes and pitchers of drink, always removing used plates or silver, brushing the crumbs from the tablecloth, proferring silver basins to wash in. The point seemed to be to remove all evidence that food had been eaten, and leave only evidence that food remained to eat.

After the humans left, we came back in, and Canto and Laki discussed what had happened like critics after a performance, dissecting what had gone wrong and right. Things I had not even seen loomed large as mistakes in their eyes: carrying the linen towel on the wrong arm, forgetting to place the candied violets on the jelly mold. I had never dreamed that anyone worried about such things, least of all blands.

But the most astonishing thing was how they spoke of the humans’ behavior.

“Supervisor Calder didn’t eat much of the ragout,” Canto said. “Is she still dieting?”

“I don’t think she likes the fruit-meat combination,” Laki answered. “She didn’t go for the orange duck last week, either.”

“Do they mind you watching them like that?” I asked nervously.

“It’s our job to watch them,” Laki said. “How else would we know what they want? If they have to ask for anything, we’ve already failed. That’s the first rule of being a Personal.”

We were to hear that instruction over and over in the next few months: know what they want before they even want it.

We ate what was left over in the serving dishes, sitting right there at the humans’ table, though it made us newbies nervous. “We don’t have time to go downstairs,” Laki said. “There’s too much to do.”

When we finished, I expected to have to clear off the table, but Laki said, “That’s the scullions’ job.” We left the table as it was.

I had already figured out that Laki was the stricter one, with higher standards. Laki was an attractive bland with curly black hair, pale skin, and dark eyes with long lashes; but it always had a tense and anxious look that kept us from really relaxing. When they decided to split us up, Mallow and I ended up assigned to Laki. I knew we would get a workout.

Laki led us through the bland-runs to the humans’ private quarters. Now the focus turned from food to clothing. Laki took us into one man’s closet, lined with dozens of different outfits, and explained to us what sort of clothing was appropriate for different occasions. Humans, it seemed, wore different colors and styles depending on the time of day, season of year, purpose of the occasion, and relative status of the others at a gathering. Some outfits were elaborate with sashes, ties, cuffs, collars, and medals; others had a studied simplicity. There were a dozen different types of shoe, hat, belt, and undergarment, all with a different purpose.

“Why are there so many rules?” I asked, overwhelmed.

“Because knowledge of the rules shows the quality of the person,” Laki said. “There are plenty of people who don’t pay any attention to what they wear. That just shows they’re not the best class of human, and the others look down on them. Your job is to make sure no one ever looks down on your guardian.”

Laki demonstrated by choosing a dinner outfit to hang out on a wooden clothes-form in the bedroom. The bland carefully inspected every piece of clothing, and taught us how each material needed a different kind of cleaning, and you couldn’t trust the laundry to get it right without specific instructions. Shoes and metal ornaments needed to be polished before each use. The laundry had delivered a load of freshly cleaned clothes, and Laki taught us how to wrap them in scented tissue and fold them for storage in the drawers.

After we had taken care of one man’s clothing needs, we moved on to a woman’s quarters. The outer clothes were much the same, but the undergarments and “informals,” as Laki called them, were different. When we had arranged her clothes, Laki announced we were done.

“What about the rest of the humans?” I asked.

“There’s only four of them with high enough status for a Personal,” Laki said.

It was the first inkling I had had that even our humans, who seemed so monolithic from downstairs, were divided into ranks.

We met the other Personals in the bland-run by the lockers, and Canto and Laki argued about how to get all their work done before dinner. In the end they decided Laki would do grooming, and Canto would get uniforms for us and teach us how to wear them. Laki didn’t seem pleased. “You owe me now,” it said to Canto.

As we headed down the bland-run, Canto told us, “When you’re really a Personal, you’ll have to do grooming three times a day, when your guardian has the time: first thing in the morning, just before dinner, and before bed. They all have different tastes about grooming. Some of them want baths, others want showers. Some use cosmetics. Some want to be shaved twice a day. You have to learn what each human wants.”

We came to an equipment room where a dozen uniforms were stored, in all their many pieces. We rummaged around till we each found a complete set. Most of them had missing buttons, stains, and ripped seams from hard use. “You’ll have to fix those tonight,” Canto said. “You can’t show up looking like ragamuffins.”

Canto drilled us in putting on the uniforms, and we practiced walking in them. It felt strange and tight; yet somehow, in the uniforms it was easier to move with the haughty, human air Supervisor Mondragone had taught us that morning.

“Let me give you some advice,” Canto said to us. “Keep the manners they teach you for human space in human space, and don’t bring them into grayspace. Take them off with the uniform. Otherwise the rest of the blands will think you’re holding yourselves above them, and trying to be human.”

We exchanged silent looks, since Canto and Laki had that reputation in the roundroom anyway.

By that time we were very tired, but we had to go back to the dining room to prepare for dinner. This meal was even more formal and elaborate than lunch. Again we watched through the peepholes. Laki seemed jittery and made several mistakes even we noticed, but it covered for them skillfully. Afterwards, when we were all gathered in the bland-run, it broke down in tears. “I’m rotten at this,” it said. “I’m never going to learn.”

Since Laki seemed like a complete perfectionist to us, we couldn’t believe a word it said. Canto said sympathetically, “I’m sorry,” as if it were the one at fault, and tried to put an arm around Laki’s shoulders. Laki twisted away from the touch. With a fierce effort at control, Laki wiped the tears from its face and turned to Mallow and me. “Come on,” it said, “I’ll show you how to prepare the bedrooms.”

So it was back to the humans’ quarters to lay out the nightclothes, replenish the contraceptives and sexual aids, turn down the covers, and sprinkle scented water on the sheets.

We got down to refectory late, but the kitchen staff still had some leftover bean soup for us to eat. We sat at a table together in the empty room. I missed the noisy camaraderie of the other blands. I had not yet realized that a Personal is caught in the crack between the two worlds—spending its life with humans but never being one of them, isolated from the other blands but never able to escape them.

By the time I had repaired my uniform and gotten to the roundroom, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep at once. And yet, I had scarcely closed my eyes (as it seemed) when Laki was shaking me awake, whispering, “We’ve got to get up for grooming.”

And so my new routine started—up before the humans so we would be ready with their drawn baths, scented oils, and heated towels. Then on to serve the meals, care for the clothes, and run whatever errands they sent us on. Our days didn’t end till the humans were asleep. In the moments between our duties, Supervisor Mondragone drilled us in poise and bearing, and taught us how to talk politely and address humans with their myriad of titles. We learned the intricacies of ordering the courses of a meal, and presenting the dishes with artistry and taste. As we grew more advanced, we were permitted to help the humans dress, shave them, and arrange their hair and cosmetics. We learned manicure, pedicure, and massage. We learned how to pack clothes for travel. We even learned how to care for our guardians when they were sick—remedies for diarrhea, gas, colds, headaches, and heartburn. “Your guardians will be indispensable people to their communities,” the supervisors told us. “They are too busy to take care of themselves, so you must do it for them.”

There were a lot of “nevers” to learn. Never talk about your guardian’s habits or gossip to the other blands. Never take a message. Never listen to conversations that don’t concern you—but do listen in case anyone expresses a need or desire. Never tell another human what your guardian wants, but do tell the other blands—often.

They taught us to watch our guardian (and our guardian’s guests) carefully, to interpret their gestures, tone, and body language, always thinking: Is he cold? Is she thirsty? Do they want anything? Can I be helpful?

I had been at Brice’s three months when we hosted a dinner for clients. From the excitement of the older blands I knew how important an event this was. “This is our opportunity to impress people,” Laki explained. “The better we perform, the better guardian we’ll get.”

Supervisor Mondragone was also keyed up. “We’re going to have a guest list of forty this year,” he said, watching us severely. “You are all going to be on duty that night. Besides Canto and Laki, two of you are going to have to serve.”

“Tedla and Mallow can do it, sir,” Laki volunteered. My heart gave a frightened leap, but I kept my eyes cast down and my face blank, as I had been taught.

Supervisor Mondragone stopped in front of me and said, “Tedla?” That was my cue to look up. “Are you ready for this?”

“I don’t know, sir,” I said.

“Well, we’ll test you. Tonight, you two will serve dinner.”

It was a complete disaster. At the outset Mallow got rattled and poured the wine into the water glasses. Coming after with the molded ice and water, I had no choice but to put it in the wine glasses. Supervisor Mondragone glared at us, but we pretended as if nothing were amiss. Then I dropped the roll basket and half of them ended up under the table, so that the humans were kicking them to and fro, and I had to scramble around on the floor picking up the rest. By then we were so flustered we served the salad on the fruit plates and completely forgot to brew the coffee; the humans had to sit drumming their fingers waiting for it.

When I got into the bland-run afterwards, the other newbies were whooping in laughter at our mistakes. I was angry and frustrated. Canto said to me, “Look on the bright side. At least no one ended up with food in their lap.”

Laki was not so philosophical. “Now I’ll catch it. I was supposed to have taught you two. You were supposed to know how to do this.”

I thought my chances of being allowed to serve at the great dinner were over; but the next morning Supervisor Mondragone said to us, “Well, you can only improve. At least you kept your composure; that was the important thing.” Our only punishment was to be assigned to serve every other dinner from then on, to get the practice.

The preparations for the great day were elaborate. All the public areas were hung with garlands and strings of lights like fireflies, and every pane of glass and crystal bauble was polished. Aircars brought in huge crates of exotic foods, ice sculptures, and songbirds in cages. The kitchen was in a total panic, baking pastries, constructing fruit sculptures in aspic, and organizing their forces as if for a military campaign. We Personals got brand-new uniforms that fit so well I felt perfectly elegant. On the day of the dinner, an aircar imported a chamber orchestra of musicians. They were the only human servitors brought in; the whole point was to demonstrate the capabilities of Brice’s blands.

Supervisor Mondragone gave us a serious lecture that afternoon. “You are the only blands the guests will actually see; remember you are representing everyone else. If the guests get a bad impression of you, they will have a bad impression of everyone, no matter how hard all the others have worked.”

We also got a nervous lecture from Canto and Laki. “Do well for us,” Canto said. “This is our big chance to impress a guardian and get a good home. Don’t drop any rolls.” It had become a joke among us.

It was a cold and misty evening outside, but inside, Brice’s was dazzling bright. The aircars landed and took off in a steady stream, whirring like huge bugs. Whisper and Trice were posted by the entrance, taking wraps. As the crowd collected in the reception room, Canto and Laki circulated with trays of hors d’oeuvres and drinks; Mallow and I kept their trays stocked, and as the crowd grew we also circulated with bottles, replenishing glasses. The humans were brightly dressed; some wore community garb, but others were decked out in feathers and gold chains. They were so intent on each other, it was easy to feel invisible. I was careful not to look any of them in the face, or touch them. Once, a woman began to ask me for something, then gave a start. “Oh my god!” she exclaimed to her companion. “I thought it was human.” She gave a high-pitched laugh. I waited to see if she had a request, but now she was too embarrassed, so I melted away into the crowd to spare her feelings.

When the music changed, announcing dinner, we hurried to open the doors for the crowd. The great dining hall looked opulent, the table so loaded with flower arrangements, crystal, silver, and porcelain that it was a wonder where the food would go. Under Supervisor Mondragone’s instructions we had divided the table into quarters, with Canto and Laki getting the most important people. Whisper and Trice carried in the trays of food that came up from the kitchen on carts, so the humans wouldn’t have to glimpse a kitchen bland.

It all had to go like clockwork, and our biggest fear was that the kitchen would hold us up, and make it necessary to stall. But the humans were so engrossed in their conversations they ate slower than we had planned, and we had to pass whispered instructions back to the kitchen to slow down. “This is a good sign,” Canto whispered. “It means they’re enjoying themselves.”

I had one human who was getting slightly tipsy and talking too loud. “Hold back on his wine,” Laki whispered to me, “or the others won’t enjoy themselves. Give him his entree first.” I marveled that Laki had the presence of mind to notice my humans, when it had ten of its own to worry about.

The most dangerous part of the meal, for us, lay at the dessert, when we had to dim the lights to show off a dramatic flaming brandy sauce by way of a climax. My hands felt slippery with nerves as we lined up along the sideboard, watching each other for perfect timing. Laki hit the lights; then, as the conversation stilled, we all simultaneously lit our dishes and lifted them above our heads, the blue flames lighting our way to the table amid a smattering of applause. Whisper brought the lights up again, we served, and I knew the worst was over. Afterwards, the humans adjourned to the lounge for liqueurs, and our supervisors got busy striking bargains and soliciting business.

It was past midnight when we got back downstairs, but all the blands were still working on cleanup, and the mood was excited. They gathered round us at the refectory tables to hear our account of what the guests looked like, what they wore, what had happened. We celebrated by eating leftovers.

That night as I fell asleep with half a dozen other blands pressed close to me, I felt a brimming warmth for them all. We were a good team. We had accomplished a performance even a human might take pride in. I knew I could trust every one of the others around me. I was no longer sorry to be a bland.

***

Three days later, the senior class started to leave. Laki actually looked happy for the first time since I had seen it; it had snagged a place in the household of the Polygrave, one of the most powerful humans in the world. It would be living at Magnus Convergence, the very center of all power. I was happy for it, but sorry to see Laki and Canto go. “We’ll miss you,” I said.

Laki hugged me. “You’ll be a good Personal, Tedla,” it said. “Don’t let things discourage you here.” I smiled at Laki’s pessimism. We saw them off with a big roundroom celebration.

***

Val interrupted. “Were they sold?”

“No, of course not,” Tedla said, looking slightly shocked. “That would be slavery.”

Val was taken aback. “Well, isn’t that what you’re describing?”

Tedla looked very troubled. “We weren’t slaves. Neuters are never traded for money. Brice’s was compensated for having trained us, of course—otherwise it couldn’t have stayed in business. But it was the training being purchased, not us.”

“Seems like a pretty fine distinction to me. Are neuters ever paid for their work?”

“No,” Tedla said slowly. “But neither are humans. They’re compensated in housing, food, clothing, and community, just like we are. Oh, humans may get a little pocket money from time to time. But a clever bland who wants money can steal more than the average human can earn. There are a lot of thieving blands. Not at Brice’s, of course.”

“Of course not,” Val said.

***

There was more work for us after Canto and Laki were gone, since we had to take over their duties. The four of us were now assigned each to take care of a particular human. We would rotate monthly, they said, to give us wider experience. When I was assigned to Supervisor Mondragone, I knew I was going to have to be letter-perfect every day.

He was very particular about dressing for dinner, and always required my help. I was nervous at first, knowing he would be watching my performance. But I grew used to his habits, and found I could usually anticipate what he would want. One day, as I was fastening his collar with a golden stickpin, he put his hands on my shoulders, looked at me seriously, and said, “You are doing well, Tedla. I’m very pleased with you.”

It had been a long time—since I was at the creche, really—since a human being had praised me, or even spoken to me as if I were an individual. I felt a rush of pleasure and gratitude quite out of proportion to what he had said, and I think I must have blushed. He patted my shoulder. “Think of me as your friend, all right?”

Of all the humans, Supervisor Mondragone was the last one I would have expected to show any friendship toward a bland. I realized that humans were more complex than I had imagined. I went to serve dinner that night with a warm feeling inside me.

When others were around, Mondragone’s manner remained strict and aloof; but when we were alone, he paid a lot of attention to me. He told me things about himself, and asked me questions. One day he ran his fingers through my hair and told me not to let the others cut it, because it was so beautiful. I always left his quarters feeling a cut above the other blands. Of course, I didn’t say anything to them because I thought they would be jealous.

***

Tedla paused, looking indecisive. “There is something about me I have to mention, because it explains a lot of what happened.”

“What?” Val said.

It looked down uncomfortably. “When I was young, I was quite attractive. You scarcely have a non-gendered word to say that. I’m not trying to boast; it was just a fact.”

“Stop apologizing, Tedla,” Val said. “I think I would have figured it out anyway. Most people would be happy to have your looks.”

The neuter glanced at her fearfully, then down. “I hate them. There are times when I’ve wished I were malformed.”

“Why?” Val said.

The neuter twined its hands indecisively. “Oh, humans can make use of looks to charm or manipulate each other, to get good mates or other things they want from the promise of sex. But what use are looks to me? It’s like a stupid joke, a promise I can never make good on. My looks can only infuriate and disappoint people, and bring harm to me.

“Harm?” Val said seriously.

***

Slowly, by almost imperceptible degrees, Supervisor Mondragone’s manner toward me changed. One day when he came out of his bath he asked me to dry him with the heated towel I had prepared. After several seconds he caught my hands in his and said, “Tedla, do you want me to like you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. And I really did.

“Then do something for me,” he said. “Touch me right here. It will give me great pleasure.”

He showed me what to do. I had seen him get an erection before, but I was so innocent I had only the haziest notion what it meant. This time he led me through it till he achieved satisfaction; then he took me in his arms and kissed me on the lips. “I love you, Tedla,” he said. “You must not tell anyone. Do you promise?”

To be perfectly honest, I was merely puzzled about it at first. It was just another thing I had learned to do for a human, not that different from backrubs or shaving or cosmetics. The only thing that made me uneasy was the way it changed my supervisor. He grew very affectionate, and went out of his way to touch me and kiss me whenever he could. It was not unpleasant, merely out of character. It was the first inkling I had of how sexual desire can change a human’s personality.

After that, it became a daily thing, always just before dinner. He taught me many techniques—the use of oils, massage, and various tools; ways to prolong his orgasm; how to recognize when he was ready, and what he was ready for. “Learn this well, and your guardian will always love you,” he said to me. “You’ll never be treated like other blands.”

At first, he taught me only hand techniques; but soon he started to ask me to do things with my mouth and tongue, and I had to hide my disgust a little. Then one day when he was lying on the marble slab in the bathroom that we used for massages and body shaves, he reached up to touch my cheek and said, “Can’t you take off that uniform? I would love to see your body.”

On Gammadis we don’t have the nudity taboos you have here on Capella—especially not neuters, who have nothing to hide from one another. Even so, I hesitated because it seemed so counter to all the ways we were being taught to behave in public, and I was confused. Nudity was for the closeness of the roundroom. Among humans, we were supposed to keep aloof, our identity hidden behind layers and layers of clothes.

But he sat up and began removing my clothes himself, slowly, as if it were a ritual. When I was completely naked, he ran his hands over my skin, then pulled me close to him, between his spread legs as he sat on the counter, so that I could feel his sex organs pressed against me. “Ah, Tedla, you can’t imagine how much this means to me,” he said.

It was true, I couldn’t imagine. I could tell from the beginning that he wanted me to feel some sort of reciprocal passion toward him, but it was impossible. We simply aren’t capable of sexual arousal. At first I had enjoyed his caresses, because I thought they meant affection for me. I still wanted to believe that. But I had begun to feel horrible doubts that this was about me at all.

***

Tedla paused for a long time. “Sex has no meaning to us, but we don’t live in a nonsexual world. We live among you, and by your rules. We have to think about your sexuality all the time.”

Trying to keep her voice neutral, Val said, “That doesn’t seem quite fair.”

Looking at its hands, Tedla said, “It’s inevitable. Some humans—maybe all—are actually attracted by asexuals. Even your standards of beauty tend to be androgynous. I don’t know why it is—the ambiguity of identity, perhaps, or the novelty of a transgender experience. Then there are people who are attracted to anything dangerous.”

“What is dangerous about it?” Val asked.

“On Gammadis, sexual encounters with neuters are absolutely forbidden,” Tedla said. “The idea is horrible, shameful, disgusting. Anyone found molesting a neuter would be ostracized, and penalized by the harshest laws we have.”

“But it’s done?”

“All the time,” Tedla said bitterly. “Everyone condemns it, then they do it anyway. It’s the central hypocrisy of my planet. They all learn not to see it. The only thing more forbidden than doing it, is talking about it. If we were on Gammadis, I would be risking everything to tell you.”

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely,” Tedla said. “They would say I was inventing evil stories, slanders from a sick mind. You can’t imagine the strength of their shame.”

“But it’s focused on you, not on themselves?”

“Yes. The more they love us, the more they loathe us.” Tedla fell silent, its jaw clenched down.

Val said cautiously, “Are all neuters used sexually?”

Tedla shook its head. “Only...”

“The attractive ones?”

Tedla nodded.

***

I exaggerated when I said they all do it. Actually, very few do it. It just seemed like everyone to me.

The types of sex he taught me next were the hardest for me to learn. On the day he first penetrated me anally I broke down in tears. He scolded me sternly, saying I had to show enjoyment, then kissed me and caressed me. “If your guardian is attracted to you, you have to act eager for him,” he said. “It’s the best way to be sure you’ll be treated well.”

I’m sure the other Personals must have noticed that something was going on with me. I grew tense and silent with them. Outside of Supervisor Mondragone’s quarters, I focused completely on my work, burying myself in learning things, perfecting everything I did. I began to count the days till I would be rotated away to someone else, but I felt guilty about it, since one of the others would then surely take my place. I wanted to warn them, but couldn’t bring myself to admit how far I had allowed him to go.

It was strange, how I blamed myself. He had complete power over me; I couldn’t have rejected him. And yet, because he had persuaded me instead of ordered me—because he had secured my complicity at every step—I felt that somehow I was the one responsible. He sometimes told me that I had made him fall in love with me, that he had no power over himself when I was around, and I believed him.

One morning as I was walking down the bland-run with a pair of shoes in my hand to fetch some polish, Motivator Jockety stuck his head out the graydoor into his office and gestured me to come in. I was quite startled. The motivator handled discipline among the blands; we rarely saw him except when we were to be punished, and I had never been punished for anything. I was very nervous stepping into his office, wondering what I had done wrong.

He closed the door behind me and looked me over. He was not one of the humans who rated a Personal, so I knew little about him. In that small room, he seemed massive and imposing. He said, “Supervisor Mondragone says you are doing very well at your duties.”

I looked at the floor and said nothing.

He stepped closer. His voice took on a false jocularity. “Oh, look,” he said. “I’ve got something in my pants. What do you suppose it is?”

I knew what it was. It was pressing stiffly against the fabric. My mouth was suddenly dry. I tried to swallow, but only felt like choking.

He said, “Go on, why don’t you see what it is?”

I didn’t know what else to do. I laid down the shoes I was carrying and reached out to unfasten his pants, then pulled down his underwear till he was exposed. His penis was huge and pink, and pointing straight up.

“Oh dear,” he said. “What are you going to do about this?” He put his hands against the wall on either side of me, so I was trapped between that huge penis and the wall.

There was only one thing I could do, if I wanted to escape. I would have to turn my mind off and simply get through it, like an awful job. I bent down and opened my mouth.

After he let me go, I was shaking so hard I had to stop in an equipment room to calm down. They all knew what a slut I was, I thought. Despite all of Supervisor Mondragone’s warnings, I had let on. Now, just the sight of me was enough to inflame them. It was as if I were giving off some sort of signal. I was nothing more than the Brice’s prostitute.

I had never felt so disgusted with myself.

My only hope was that my next supervisor would save me. On the day I heard I was going to be transferred to Supervisor Calder, I went through my duties in a haze of relief. She was a sallow, gloomy woman who was always full of ineffectual complaints, but anything was an improvement.

That afternoon, when I went to my old supervisor’s quarters for the last time, I walked in on Mondragone and Calder, both lying naked on the bed drinking liquor. I stammered an apology and began to back out, when Mondragone called out, “Come in, Tedla! We’ve been waiting for you.”

As I closed the door behind me, my heart was laboring hard with dread.

Mondragone’s speech was slightly slurred by drink. He came over and put his arms around me, whispering in my ear, “I thought you could use some tips on how to get along with a woman.”

Calder strolled over, her glass in her hand, and said, “It’s very pretty when it’s scared, isn’t it?” Then, to me, “Well, take off your clothes so I can see what I’m getting.”

That afternoon Mondragone taught me the basics of giving sexual pleasure to a woman. He taught me what parts of her body were most sensitive, and how to use the dildoes and vibrators and other tools. From the amused smile on his face as he watched me in bed with Calder, I knew with chilling certainty that he had never cared one bit for me; this was all just part of the curriculum.

Calder had very different tastes than Mondragone. She had a hard time achieving orgasm; when I failed to excite her she would slap me and curse. I quickly learned she needed to be almost in pain to become aroused. The things she wanted me to do to her should have disgusted me; but I had already learned to absent myself and become an automaton, merely obeying, not really there. Unlike Mondragone, she didn’t really mind when I didn’t act eager; in fact, she almost preferred to think I was doing it against my will.

I knew that six months had passed when a new class of newbies came in. Now we, who had been the new ones, were the seniors teaching a confused and tearful bunch of children how to become what they really were. On their third day there, we decided to hold a collation for them, to cheer them up. We naturally had no access to liquor or drugs, so instead we smuggled pans and noisemakers into the roundroom. While some of the blands sat around the edges drumming, the rest of us joined hands in the middle and danced.

I don’t know what happened to me that night. The deafening noise of the drumming, the wild dancing, the rhythm—it all took me out of myself. I felt lifted into a trancelike world where I could spin and spin forever. I was no longer attached to my body. The hateful things I did in the day fell away—they were no longer part of me. I danced till I became transformed.

The next day, as I led one of the newbies through the rules of setting table, it occurred to me that I had become Laki: strict, tense, and unhappy. I no longer smiled or joked with the other blands. I held aloof from them not because I was better but because I felt soiled by human contact. I was sure they would discover me if I got too close.

The clients’ dinner was coming up again, and I looked forward to it eagerly, because it was my passport away from Brice’s. By that time I had been rotated twice more, and was serving Supervisor Gladden. She liked to talk. She preferred to get her sexual gratification in the morning, just after getting up. The act itself was usually blessedly short, but she would sit and analyze it afterwards, asking me constant questions as I tried to get my duties done. I answered as little as possible. I wished she would just do as she pleased with my body, and leave my mind alone.

One day, she was quizzing me, asking, “Didn’t you get any pleasure out of that? What did you like most? What’s my greatest asset?” I was impatient because we had a busy day ahead. I was dressed and laying out her clothes, hoping she would get the hint and start moving, so I wouldn’t be late at breakfast.

I have no idea why I finally broke. She said something like, “Tell the truth—what do you really feel?” and I simply exploded.

“I really feel that you’re all a bunch of perverts,” I said. “You disgust me. I hate your sex. I hate you. I wish you would just leave me alone.”

That was all I said. I was trembling too hard with rage to get any more out. But it was enough.

She sat very still for several seconds, staring at me while the color first left her face entirely, then rushed back. Then she got up, very cold and deliberate, and put on a robe. I went into the bathroom, pretending to do something, but really because fear had replaced my anger and I was sick and quaking inside. I heard her place a call. Soon she answered a knock at the door. When I came out of the bathroom, Motivator Jockety was there. I was so frightened I froze. I couldn’t move or speak.

Jockety took me by the skin at the back of my neck and shoved me toward the door. The pain made me cry out, and he growled, “Keep quiet, you.” He shoved me down the hallway then. We came to a room I had never been in. It looked very much like this room—tile floor, no windows. There was a bed, a table, some chairs, and an adjoining bathroom. Jockety released me, and I turned to face him. He was a good foot taller than I, and a hundred pounds heavier. He had not yet shaved, and his face was bristly with beard. I saw he was in a terrible rage.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it. Please.”

“Sorry’s not enough,” he said. “You think we allow insolence at Brice’s? You think blands get to talk back?”

“No, sir,” I said.

Two other humans came in the door—Gladden and another man. Jockety didn’t turn to look; he was completely focused on me. I expected him to strike me. Instead, he took my white shirt in his huge fists and gave it a wrench. The fabric ripped in two from collar to waist. He stripped it off my back. Then he took my pants and wrenched them violently open from waist to crotch, pulling them down around my ankles. I stood before him, quaking and naked, trying to shield myself with my hands. He and the other man took me, each on one side, and dragged me to the table. They bent me over it, crushing my face into the surface. Gladden took my wrists and stretched my arms out over my head. The other man spread my legs and tied my ankles to the table legs with my stockings. I could see Motivator Jockety unfastening his belt and trousers. Then he moved behind me and set to work.

They raped me over and over again. In that first four hours, every human in the building came into that room to abuse me in some way in sight of the others. They raped me anally and orally, sometimes both at once—they laughed and made jokes about that. It went on till blood trickled down my legs and every thrust was agony.

For the first hour I thought that they would stop if I only wept and said I was sorry and promised never to talk as I had done again. By the second hour I realized that nothing I could say or do would keep them away from me, though I still begged for release. By the third hour I was in hysterics—sobbing as a pure bodily reaction, like hiccups. I simply couldn’t stop.

In the fifth hour they turned more brutal and sadistic. By then my tormentors were down to three—Jockety, Calder, and a man named Pardee. They strapped me to the table and beat me with belts and switches—never quite enough to break a bone or leave a scar. Calder had a small needle and thread with which she took stitches in my skin. The thread was soaked in something that stung like fire, and left swollen, itching red welts behind. They all laughed as she stitched their names in my buttocks, thighs, and stomach. The letters stood out in burning red.

From time to time they rested, eating snacks to revive themselves, talking about what they ought to do to me next. They spoke of horrible things, crippling mutilations. At the time I didn’t know that anything was stopping them; all the tortures they described seemed utterly real.

They did other things I won’t make you hear. At the end of six hours they started pretending they were going to let me go. Once they actually gave me my clothes back, but before I could leave, Jockety came in the room with an apparatus for giving electrical shocks. They all laughed and stripped me naked again. Jockety taped wires to my body, then set out to see if he could induce a convulsion while he was sodomizing me.

It didn’t work. He tried again and again, and at least got whatever satisfaction can be got from raping a child in excruciating pain.

***

Val had been trying to show no reaction, but now she finally flinched. Tedla paused, as if becoming aware of her again. Its face was very white; the words were coming out one by one, hot drops on raw skin. It said, “I’m sorry to make you listen to this. I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear. But someone needs to know the truth.”

It drew a shaky breath. “I’ve often wondered why they chose me,” it said. “I was no ringleader. I hadn’t really rebelled, just broken under pressure. If they had wanted to ensure my obedience, the mere threat of rape would have served as well as the real thing. It simply wasn’t necessary.”

It was silent a few moments, then said, “I think perhaps it had nothing to do with me. I didn’t know it then, but what they were training me to do was terribly illegal. They could have been punished severely, if any of the humans had testified against the others. They needed some way of ensuring silence among themselves. That’s why they all took part—they had to implicate themselves in front of the others, so all of them were equally guilty.”

“But that doesn’t explain the torture,” Val said.

“No,” Tedla said. Slowly, as if forcing the words out, it said, “I think that happened because they simply enjoyed it. They were evil people.”

The last sentence was said almost in a whisper, but with such force that it could have been shouted.

***

I was completely shattered. In a single day they had reduced me to an object of utter revulsion. My legs were caked with blood, filth, and semen; my face and hands reeked of their bodies. My skin was covered with red, itching welts. Even my mouth had the taste of them, sticky inside. I couldn’t move without pain, and I couldn’t be still either.

When they finally gave me my ripped clothes back and told me to go, I wanted to find a place to hide. Not the roundroom; I couldn’t bear that the other blands should find out what had happened. The roundroom was our inviolate refuge; I couldn’t bring this new person back there, this disgusting thing they had made me into. I went to the shower, and stayed there as long as I could, washing. I washed out the inside of my mouth with soap to get rid of every trace of them. But it was still inside me.

I didn’t take off my coveralls that night. I went off to the edge of the roundroom, against the wall, and wouldn’t speak to anyone, or let them touch me. They all knew something horrible had happened; I could feel the fear spreading out all around me. It was doubtless what the humans intended. The blands all knew if it could happen to me, it could happen to them. The fact that they didn’t know exactly what had happened made it all the more frightful.

The next day I was still in terrible pain, but I tried to go about my duties for fear they would send me in the aircar to a clinic, and the curator would want to examine me. The thought of someone touching me again made me freeze up, as if my muscles were all locked. But I couldn’t do my work. I was too jumpy and fearful to concentrate on anything. I kept breaking down in tears for no reason. They finally sent me back down to the roundroom, and I spent the rest of the day in the shower. The cold water soothed the burning of my skin, and my shame.

That day, the supervisors all gave the other blands a little lecture about me. They said I had shown gross disobedience, and had been punished. Everyone else would be punished too, if there was more disobedience. After that, the blands started giving me silent, resentful looks for not having known my place, for not living up to the Brice’s rules, and getting them all in trouble. Not a single one sided with me; their loyalty was all to the humans. I learned a valuable lesson: There is no solidarity among blands. We tolerate no independence or rebellion that might jeopardize the group. We police each other as effectively as ever the humans do.

After a week there was not a mark anywhere on my body to show what had happened—a complete void of evidence. But my mental state had gotten no better, and I think the supervisors began to be worried they had gone too far. It was not their consciences bothering them; it was money. The clients paid them to create docile, obedient, unquestioning blands; instead they had created an edgy, hysterical one. They might lose all their investment in my training if the damage couldn’t be repaired in time.

They tried to make it up to me with kind words. But the only thing that helped was the cessation of their sexual demands. After that day, no human at Brice’s ever touched me again, or asked me to touch them.

The client dinner was coming up fast. We had to train and prepare. On the big day I felt as brittle as an egg, ready to shatter and crack. But the other Personals pulled me through, and the night went well. The next day Supervisor Mondragone called me into his office to congratulate me. I had been chosen to go to the Polygrave’s house in Magnus Convergence. I felt overjoyed at the thought of seeing Laki again. I would actually have a friend where I was going.

“You must do your best to represent Brice’s well,” Mondragone said.

“I will, sir,” I said.

We blands said our good-byes to each other that night. The roundroom, as we say in our proverbs, was spongy with tears. But I felt ecstatic to be leaving. The next morning, as we waited in our gray coveralls for the aircar to take us away, I felt like I had been reborn, as surely as if I’d been through the birthpool. Whatever I was bound for in life, I knew it had to be better.

I was just fourteen.