Chapter Text
It snowed all night on the second day of the spring recess. Soft, pillowy snow, floating through the purple twilight as Gersha and Ceill hurried from the transport to their villa in the Southern Range.
Ceill ran ahead of Gersha, ignoring pleas to slow down, laughing and catching flakes on his tongue. “I know the way!” he called, his voice trailing across the complex of vacation homes where most people were already settling down to supper.
The transport had brought them from Thurskein, where Ceill had just spent two months with his mother, who was working on a new efficiency plan for the polymer factories and greenhouses. He was eight now, and every time Gersha saw him after one of these painful absences, his growth was visible.
He hurried around the corner of a block of houses to find Ceill perched on the crest of a snowbank and craning up to grab a tree branch. “Ceillsha, no! You’ll break your neck!”
“It’s easy, I’ve done it a million times!” Cool as could be, the boy hoisted himself into the fork of the tree and sat swinging his legs. “You come up, too, Dad! It’s strong enough for both of us.”
“Another time.” Gersha kept his voice calm, though his heart was thudding. Tall and strong for his age, Ceill was a bit of a daredevil, and Gersha was forever pleading with him to have mercy on his poor old father’s nerves.
Father. They still hadn’t told him. This was the one thing Tilrey and Vera consistently agreed on, outnumbering Gersha, who felt uneasier about it every year.
Reminding himself that Tilrey had grown up gallivanting around outdoors and been perfectly fine, he floundered up the snowbank and held out his arms. “But do come down now, please.”
“I’ve climbed bigger trees than this,” Ceill observed as if he thought the information might be reassuring. Then he leapt—leapt!—from the bough into the soft snowbank and popped up with a yell of delight. Shaking himself off, he said, “This is called ‘feather snow.’ Did you know that?”
“I didn’t know that, no.” Gersha seized the boy’s hand, eager to prevent further feats of daring, and assured himself that no limbs were broken. “Is that what they call it in Thurskein?”
“Yeah.” They set off again, Ceill pulling Gersha at a trot. Globes of warm light on poles lined the path, illuminating the whisking, tumbling flakes. “There’s porridge snow—that’s heavy and wet, with bits of ice mixed in,” Ceill continued as if reciting a lesson. “Devil snow—the kind that blinds you. Spit snow—just a few dry flakes like you’d see in the summer. Powder snow—like feather snow, but higher up in the mountains. That’s my favorite. Are we still going skiing tomorrow?”
“Tilrey will take you skiing, yes.” Gersha squeezed the small hand. “He’s taking a late flight tonight.”
He wished Tilrey were already here with them; wished he could have accompanied them to Thurskein, where Gersha had spent a pleasant night visiting with Ceill’s grandmother. But Tilrey always had too many loose ends to tie up in the Sector (as he put it) to get away for long. Gersha knew his husband’s work was vital, both the above-board and the below-board parts, but he wished it weren’t so consuming.
If Tilrey’s absence bothered Ceill, he didn’t let on. With a piercing yell of “Yay!”, he tore himself free of Gersha’s hand and dashed up the steps of their villa. “I missed this house,” he announced, reaching up to press the back of his hand to the sensor.
The door slid open, and Gersha followed Ceill inside. It felt like just weeks ago that he’d lift the boy up in his arms so Ceill could have the small thrill of making the door open. Now Ceill was big enough to reach it by himself.
“I’ve missed it, too,” Gersha said, and his voice throbbed as all those other winters and springs flashed in his head. Was it eight years already since they’d brought Ceill up these steps for the first time, cradled in Vera’s protective arms?
They emerged from the coldroom into a haze of good smells—greens and roast roots and cumin and saffron. “Uncle Gunsha!” Ceill cried, and made a beeline across the room into Valgund Linnett’s arms.
“Valgund, you’ve outdone yourself.” Gersha surveyed the covered dishes on the low table. “Is that a fish stew? And . . . you aren’t seriously growing a beard?” he added, taken aback by the auburn whiskers sprouting from his brother-in-law’s chin.
Valgund looked sheepish. “It’s not a statement or anything. Sometimes, when I’m really into my cataloging, I forget to shave for a few days. I’ll do it tomorrow if you like.”
A beard was a violation of dress code, a throwback to the Feudal past and an occasion for stern reprimands from relatives and supervisors. But out here, with Valgund doing all his work remotely, who would notice or care?
Anyway, come to think, Gersha had seen a few young men with scraggly beards hanging around the transport docks in Thurskein. Perhaps standards were starting to relax on the outer edges of Oslov—and there was nothing wrong with that, he reminded himself. It was better for Ceill to grow up seeing something besides the rigid conformity of Redda.
“Don’t shave on my account!” he said, kneeling beside the table to start serving. “I don’t think Ceill minds, either—do you, Ceill?”
“Mind what?” The boy was already shoveling dumplings into his mouth.
***
After dinner and the washing up, Valgund retreated upstairs to his room, explaining that he was “very into classifying some unusual reindoor lichen.” By now, Gersha knew his housemate’s habits well. Valgund preferred to socialize in brief, lively bursts before returning to his solitude, and this suited them all just fine.
Gersha made the tea—black for him, decaffeinated green with a touch of honey for Ceill—and brought it out to the living room where Ceill lay stretched on the hearthrug before the flickering gas stove, reading. He was already devouring sizable books, mainly folk tales and fanciful Feudal adventures.
Gersha observed the boy’s intense concentration with pride; biology be damned, he liked to think of bookishness as a trait that Ceill had managed to inherit from him and Tilrey both. He sipped his own tea patiently until Ceill closed the book of his own accord and came to the table.
The boy gulped from his cup and reached for the plate of seed cookies that Gersha had set out. “There aren’t any chocolate ones?”
“Maybe in the next shipment. Chocolate has to be imported all the way from the continent south of Harbour.” He resisted the urge to tell Ceill they were lucky to eat cane sugar at all. “But these are good, too.”
Ceill shrugged. “What’s a Strutter?” he asked.
The out-of-nowhere question rendered Gersha briefly speechless. “It’s a word for an Upstart—a rude word,” he managed. And then, trying to sound casual, “Where did you happen to hear it?”
Ceill spoke through a mouthful. “In rec time, when we were on the periphery. Vlen and me were climbing a tree, trying to get to the top, and then Kars and Britta came and stood under the tree, and Kars said to Vlen, ‘C’mon, we’re having a snowball fight. Why are you always with that Strutter instead of your own kind?’”
Gersha’s breath caught. Ever since Ceill was old enough to talk, he’d been dreading the moment when the life they’d worked to build for their beautiful child would come up against certain hard realities.
The boy led a highly unorthodox life, spending roughly half the year in Redda and the other in Thurskein, where his mother’s work kept her for months at a time. Most Upstart parents in her situation would have left their children in school in Redda; the dorms offered round-the-clock supervision. But Vera insisted on keeping Ceill with her and enrolling him in Thurskein.
Ceill himself seemed to find this arrangement totally natural, but sooner or later someone was bound to take sharp and hostile notice of his straddling of two worlds. Gersha had had tense discussions about this with Vera, even as he whole-heartedly supported keeping Ceill close to his Skeinsha grandmother. But he had expected the cruelty to come from Upstarts, not from Laborers.
“Vlen is a good friend of yours, isn’t he?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm. He’s the only one that could beat me in the second-year slalom race.”
Gersha chose his words with care. “Then I wonder if, perhaps, this Kars might be jealous of your friendship with Vlen. Maybe that’s why he was rude to you.”
“Kars is mean to everybody because he thinks he’s the most important person in Year Three,” Ceill said dismissively. “Vlen and I don’t care about him. He chews with his mouth open.”
Gersha nodded. There were too many layers to this. “Well, he doesn’t sound like a very nice person, then. But do you understand what Kars meant when he said ‘your own kind’?”
Ceill reached for a second cookie. “He means I’m from Redda. I’m an Upstart. They’re not.”
“Your parents are Upstarts,” Gersha corrected gently. He’d had trouble grasping this point when he was Ceill’s age, too, but it mattered. “You won’t be an Upstart until you’re eighteen and Notified, and things could go either way. In theory, you could become a Laborer.”
“I won’t, though.” The kid spoke with easy confidence, mouth full again. “I’d have to do really, really bad on my tests, and I won’t. Except maybe Mechanics—I can’t always do the timed assemblies. And math,” he added after a moment. “I did get a 5.1 last quarter.”
Gersha knew that all too well. Vera had been upset about the test score and asked him to tutor Ceill—but without letting the boy know she was concerned. The last thing they wanted was to make him more anxious about his scores than most children of Upstart parents already were. Although Vera hadn’t said so, Gersha worried sometimes that she wished she had had his biological child instead of Tilrey’s, if only for the inherited numerical aptitude.
“Of course you’ll do well,” he said. “But do you know who did outstandingly well on his E-Squared tests? Almost as well as I did? Tilrey.”
Your father. Even though it yanked his heartstrings a little every time Ceill called him “Daddy,” Gersha would have relinquished the title to Tilrey without regret. Or perhaps they could have shared it somehow—but no. And so he was stuck referring to Tilrey as “Daddy’s life partner.”
Ceill seemed neither surprised nor impressed. “Tilrey’s smart, but he’s a Laborer,” he said matter-of-factly, driving a teaspoon around the tabletop as if it were a toy car.
“He’s smart and he’s a Laborer.” Gersha struggled to sort out the point he wanted to make. “Things aren’t always as simple as people tell you they are, Ceillsha. A person’s Level, a person’s station in life, isn’t all there is to that person. Sometimes it isn’t even an accurate assessment of them.”
“Your Level is your personal proven merit,” Ceill quoted directly from the Prime curriculum. He appeared to be focusing hard on his imaginary vehicle.
“Yes, that’s Whybergism, and it’s a fine theory. But the world doesn’t always work out that way.” Was he going to be openly seditious in front of his child? “And it’s because things don’t always work out so fairly that some people get angry. Jealous. People like this Kars. I suspect that he called you a Strutter because he wishes he could someday be an Upstart the way you almost certainly will be.”
“Kars doesn’t want to be an Upstart. You and Mom sit still all the time. He can’t even sit still long enough to read a book with pictures.” Ceill raised his face to Gersha’s at last, fixing him with those intense blue eyes that were disconcertingly like Tilrey’s. “I didn’t mind when he called me a Strutter, Daddy. I didn’t care. I just wanted to know what it meant.”
The gaze was so earnest, as if Ceill were worried about worrying him, that Gersha reached across the table to place his hand over his son’s. “You like going to school in ’Skein, don’t you?”
Ceill’s nod was dramatically exaggerated. “It’s way better than Redda. We go outside. And ski. But Redda’s good, too,” he added as if worried about upsetting Gersha again. “I like Mom’s apartment with the big windows, and the swimming pool, and seeing Grandma Bertine.”
“Good, good. I’m glad you like all those things.” If the boy wasn’t troubled by this incident, why couldn’t Gersha get past it? But he was afraid this was just the beginning. After all, “Strutter” was a comparatively harmless slur.
“Tell me,” he asked, “have you ever heard someone call someone else a, uh, a Drudge?”
“That means Laborer. People say it all the time—in Redda and Thurskein, too. It’s not nice.”
“I’m glad you know that’s not a nice thing to say.” Gersha tried to look the boy in the eyes, but Ceill was getting squirrely again. “This may not make sense to you right now, Ceillsha, but Kars calling you a Strutter wouldn’t be the same as you calling him a Drudge. Neither of you is old enough to have a Level, first of all. And second of all . . . well—”
“I didn’t call him a Drudge. I never called anybody that.”
“And that’s very good. I’m glad. But what I’m trying to say . . .” What was Gersha trying to say? “Kids in Thurskein, kids like Kars, feel destined to stay where they are. They don’t see any possibility of becoming Upstarts because it happens so rarely. And that’s wrong,” he added, his voice gaining strength. “Our system is supposed to have ‘rotation at the top,’ but in fact what we have is entrenched privilege. When Laborers call you a Strutter, they’re acknowledging the unfair and, frankly, arbitrary system we all live in. The only thing they can do about it is insult you. It’s an admission of powerlessness. But you don’t have to listen to them, Ceillsha. You don’t have to buy into it. I hope you’ll always remember that everyone around you, whether Upstart or Laborer, is first and foremost a person. Not a test score, not a Level. An individual.”
Ceill had stopped playing with the spoon. The big blue eyes stared at Gersha, more and more solemn. “Did I do something bad? I swear I didn’t call him a name back.”
“No, lad. No, you didn’t do anything bad.” Gersha came over and gave him a hug. “Forgive me. You did the exact right thing, telling me about it. Grown-ups can get intense about these things. Maybe you should go up and get ready for bed, so you can get an early start on that skiing tomorrow.”
As if Gersha had flicked on a light, the boy’s frown gave way to a beaming smile. “I can do moguls now. I’m going to try the Granite Trail!”
“If Tilrey lets you,” Gersha said, shaking his head in mock reproof. Whatever perils the Granite Trail offered, Tilrey might well let Ceill brave them—he always let Ceill take the risks that Gersha found too alarming. But with him there, guiding Ceill’s every move, everything always turned out fine.
***
The snow kept on coming while Gersha paced the living room, watching and worrying. The flight had been delayed and was due slightly after midnight. He messaged the device he’d given Tilrey so long ago, though he knew Tilrey couldn’t reply in the air.
Around midnight, the bright oblong cast by Valgund’s window on the snow disappeared. Gersha wondered, not for the first time, whether Valgund was lonely. He tried sometimes to ask gently about friends or lovers, but Valgund just grinned and said, “You know me, Gersha. I like your company and Tilrey’s and Ceill’s just fine, but if I see another human being once a month, that’s borderline excessive.”
“I used to be like that, too.” Before Tilrey. Gersha tried to speak lightly, but he couldn’t seem to. It was so hard sometimes, needing someone.
Now he threw himself on the couch and tried to read, but he couldn’t concentrate. The click and slide of the outer door woke him from a fitful half-doze. He was on his feet before he was fully awake, rushing through the foyer and slapping his hand to the sensor that opened the coldroom.
Tilrey stood there with his boots on and his coat half off, startled. Gersha hugged him hard. For a moment he couldn’t speak, only press himself to Tilrey’s chest and feel those strong arms wrap around him.
“Hey.” The breath was warm on the crown of his head, the voice a rumble. “It’s not that bad a storm, love. You didn’t have to wait up for me.”
“It is bad. Why didn’t you message me from the shuttle?” Gersha helped Tilrey out of his snow-caked coat, wanting desperately to keep touching him. “You knew I was worried.”
“I’m sorry. I figured I’d be here soon enough.” Tilrey reached for him again and kissed him on the forehead. “How’s Ceill?”
“Oh, he’s in his element. I may have to tie him down to keep him from waking you at first light for your trip up the mountain.”
Tilrey chuckled. “Let him. One sleepless night won’t kill me.”
As Gersha shook out the coat and hung it up, he resolved to wait to tell Tilrey about his conversation with Ceill. Maybe he wouldn’t at all—it was such a trifle, and Tilrey had the fates of trade agreements and budgets and reform bills to worry about.
Right now, that shivery need for contact was occupying his whole headspace. They’d last slept in the same bed only a few days ago, but those were work nights, when Tilrey was too exhausted to do much besides crash. “Sit down,” Gersha said, sinking to one knee. “I’m going to help you with your boots.”
“I’m quite capable of handling my own boots.” Tilrey sat on the bench in front of him. “Unless . . .” He caressed Gersha’s face, tracing his cheekbone, then tangled fingers in Gersha’s hair. “. . . you have something else in mind? In which case, maybe close the inner door first.”
Gersha hadn’t been thinking about that when he got on his knees, but suddenly it seemed like a very good idea. He needed Tilrey’s hands on him, needed to get him as close as possible.
He caught Tilrey’s wandering hand and moved it to his own mouth. Aching with their closeness, he pressed a humid kiss to the palm and teased two of the fingers with his tongue. “I’ve missed you,” he said, and sucked the fingers inside.
Tilrey’s low gasp was followed by a husky whisper as he buried his free hand in Gersha’s curls again. “You know how to make a wanderer in the storm feel welcome.”