city.
I reached for one of the small, oblong loaves. I bit into it; it was delicious. As I chewed the hard bread, she removed a ball of chocolate from the blue bowl in front of her and popped it into her mouth.
"What if I succeed, Mother?" I asked. She stuffed three more balls of chocolate into her mouth, staring at me.
Her reply was barely comprehensible, a burble of words forced through a mouthful of sticky, melting chocolate: "Sometimes I think Soli's right. My son is a fool."
"You've always said you have faith in me."
"Faith I have; blind faith I have not."
"Why should it be impossible? The Entity is a nebula much like any other: hot gases, interstellar dust, a few million stars. Perhaps it's mere chance that the Tycho and the others were lost."
"Heresy!" she said as she picked apart a chocolate ball with her long fingernails. "Haven't I taught you better? I won't have you saying that word. It's not
chance
. That killed the Tycho. It's She."
"She?"
"The Entity. She's a web of a million meshing biocomputers the size of moons. She manipulates matter. And She plies energy. And She twists space to Her liking. The manifold inside Her is known to be strange, hideously complex."
"Why do you call her 'She'?"
My mother smiled and said, "Should I call the greatest intelligence, the holiest life in our universe 'he'?"
"What of the Silicon God, then?"
"Misnamed. By certain of the older eschatologists who divide essences into male and female. She should be called the 'Silicon Goddess.' The universe gives birth to life; the essence of the universe is female."
"And what of men?"
"They are repositories for sperm. Have you studied the dead languages of Old Earth as I've asked you to do? No? Well, there was a Romance expression:
instrumenta vocalia
. Men are tools with voices. Magnificent tools they are. And sometimes their voices are sublime. But without women, they're nothing."
"And women without men?"
"The Lechoix Matriarchy was founded five thousand years ago. There are no patriarchies."
I sometimes think my mother should have been an historian or a remembrancer. She always seemed to know too much of ancient peoples, languages and customs, or at least enough to turn arguments her way.
"I'm a man, Mother. Why did you choose to have a son?"
"You're a foolish boy."
I took a long sip of coffee, and I wondered aloud, "What would it be like for a man to talk with a goddess?"
"More foolishness," she said. And then, "I've made our decision. We'll go to Lechoix."
"No, Mother. I won't be the only man among eight million women who prize cunning above faith."
She banged her coffee cup down on the table. "Then go to your race. With Soli. And be thankful your mother's mother taught me cunning."
I stared as she stared at me. We stared at each other for a long time. As a master cetic might, I tried to read the truth from the flickers of light reflecting from her bright irises and from the set of her wide mouth. But the only truth that came to me was an old truth: I could no more read her face than I could descry the future.
I sucked the last drops of coffee from my cup and touched my mother's forehead. And then I went out to race Soli.
The race of the Thousand Pilots is not supposed to be a serious affair. (Neither do as many as a thousand pilots ever take part in the festivities.) It is, essentially, a somewhat farcical pitting of old pilots against the new, a symbolic rite of passage. The master pilots - usually there are about a hundred or so - gather in front of the Hall of the Ancient Pilots, and, as is their wont, they drink mugs of steaming kvass or other such beverages, all the while slapping shoulders and hands to give each other encouragement while they shout and jeer at the smaller group of new pilots. That afternoon there were mobs of brightly furred
I reached for one of the small, oblong loaves. I bit into it; it was delicious. As I chewed the hard bread, she removed a ball of chocolate from the blue bowl in front of her and popped it into her mouth.
"What if I succeed, Mother?" I asked. She stuffed three more balls of chocolate into her mouth, staring at me.
Her reply was barely comprehensible, a burble of words forced through a mouthful of sticky, melting chocolate: "Sometimes I think Soli's right. My son is a fool."
"You've always said you have faith in me."
"Faith I have; blind faith I have not."
"Why should it be impossible? The Entity is a nebula much like any other: hot gases, interstellar dust, a few million stars. Perhaps it's mere chance that the Tycho and the others were lost."
"Heresy!" she said as she picked apart a chocolate ball with her long fingernails. "Haven't I taught you better? I won't have you saying that word. It's not
chance
. That killed the Tycho. It's She."
"She?"
"The Entity. She's a web of a million meshing biocomputers the size of moons. She manipulates matter. And She plies energy. And She twists space to Her liking. The manifold inside Her is known to be strange, hideously complex."
"Why do you call her 'She'?"
My mother smiled and said, "Should I call the greatest intelligence, the holiest life in our universe 'he'?"
"What of the Silicon God, then?"
"Misnamed. By certain of the older eschatologists who divide essences into male and female. She should be called the 'Silicon Goddess.' The universe gives birth to life; the essence of the universe is female."
"And what of men?"
"They are repositories for sperm. Have you studied the dead languages of Old Earth as I've asked you to do? No? Well, there was a Romance expression:
instrumenta vocalia
. Men are tools with voices. Magnificent tools they are. And sometimes their voices are sublime. But without women, they're nothing."
"And women without men?"
"The Lechoix Matriarchy was founded five thousand years ago. There are no patriarchies."
I sometimes think my mother should have been an historian or a remembrancer. She always seemed to know too much of ancient peoples, languages and customs, or at least enough to turn arguments her way.
"I'm a man, Mother. Why did you choose to have a son?"
"You're a foolish boy."
I took a long sip of coffee, and I wondered aloud, "What would it be like for a man to talk with a goddess?"
"More foolishness," she said. And then, "I've made our decision. We'll go to Lechoix."
"No, Mother. I won't be the only man among eight million women who prize cunning above faith."
She banged her coffee cup down on the table. "Then go to your race. With Soli. And be thankful your mother's mother taught me cunning."
I stared as she stared at me. We stared at each other for a long time. As a master cetic might, I tried to read the truth from the flickers of light reflecting from her bright irises and from the set of her wide mouth. But the only truth that came to me was an old truth: I could no more read her face than I could descry the future.
I sucked the last drops of coffee from my cup and touched my mother's forehead. And then I went out to race Soli.
The race of the Thousand Pilots is not supposed to be a serious affair. (Neither do as many as a thousand pilots ever take part in the festivities.) It is, essentially, a somewhat farcical pitting of old pilots against the new, a symbolic rite of passage. The master pilots - usually there are about a hundred or so - gather in front of the Hall of the Ancient Pilots, and, as is their wont, they drink mugs of steaming kvass or other such beverages, all the while slapping shoulders and hands to give each other encouragement while they shout and jeer at the smaller group of new pilots. That afternoon there were mobs of brightly furred
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