About Sisterland by Martina Devlin Read Free Book Online Page A

to admit that what really troubled her about trying for babyfusion was the aftermath – how she might react. Imagine if she responded like Silence. What if she, too, felt compelled to climb up a Buzz viaduct and fling herself off?
    “Good luck, my dear,” said Goodwill.
    She hugged Constance and, for once, Constance didn’t pull away.

Chapter 5

    On the Buzz home, Constance decided to buy an ovu-pen. Silence had used one, so Constance was familiar with the device. She hoped she might not be ovulating yet – maybe she had wriggle-room to wait a night or two. It didn’t seem too extravagant a wish. There was a medshop near her stop – she’d go there.
    The medshop had a queue but Constance didn’t mind waiting. Through the window, she watched a sister in Harmony Parks’ livery polish the stones marking out the contours of a flowerbed.
    After a few moments, a girl came to stand behind her.
    “Excuse me, sister, is this where I can get an ovu-pen?”
    “I hope so. That’s what I’m waiting for.”
    “I’ve never used one. This is my first time at matingplace.”
    “Me too,” said Constance.
    The girl stepped closer. “If only we didn’t have to do it this way. I wish we could go back to artificial insemination.”
    “It wasn’t working. Babyfusion figures were falling too fast.”
    “So my other keeps reminding me. We have to think about the greater good. She says a woman and a meet actually doing it in real time doubles the success rates.” She swallowed. “And if that’s not bad enough, I heard they’d prefer us to have boy-babies rather than girls. Something to do with their stupid stats. Still, Mustn’t Grumble .” She quoted from Beloved’s Pearls .
    “Can I help you, sister?” asked the medshop server.
    Constance smiled at the girl, and turned away. “An ovu-pen, please.”
    “Scan in your sig.”
    Constance held up the back of her wrist to the console, and the pinkified φ symbol began to tremble. “A three-month permit has been uploaded to your account. You’ll need to apply for a full licence if you continue to seek babyfusion after the period elapses. User instructions are inside the ovu-pen.” She dropped one into a bag. “A temporary permit is extremely rare. You’re fortunate.”
    Constance didn’t feel fortunate. “How many els, please?”
    “No charge. You’re doing this for Sisterland.”

    Back in her twoser, the ovu-pen confirmed that Constance was ovulating. Just as the Shaper Mother had said. No help for it but to present herself at matingplace. She could always treat it as a trial run, and bail out if she couldn’t go through with it tonight. Some women balked at the first attempt, according to the Himtime handout. It was forgivable, if a little weak-willed.
    She remembered the girl in the medshop. She’d been right – boy-babies were preferable currently. Silence had told her so. Male numbers were dropping year on year, with the ratio 80:20 in women’s favour. To turn the tide, studies into interventions to stimulate male births were being carried out. But their results had not been made public.
    The extent of the population imbalance would not have been known generally, except for a comtel malfunction which transmitted it to everyone in the second city, Righteous, Sisterland's most southerly metropolis, in Grey Disjoint. In turn, they told their Harmony sisters, in the middle of Sisterland, in Green Hyperreal. Who told their sisters in the northern city of Steadfast, in Brown Convolution. And so on. For damage limitation, the Nine sent out s hapers, whose silkenspeak patter focused on roosters and broods of hens. “Look at the animal kingdom. The most economically efficient communities have a large number of females and a few males,” they said. “This is an evolutionary stable strategy.” In the meantime, sperm was frozen. Yet despite the man shortage, and despite being told it was a selfless act to give birth to a boy-man, Sisterlanders continued to