They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
"It's entirely psychological. Not food that will make you sick, just food handled in ways we associate with sickness - like, by a person who works in the sewage, but who has washed their hands."
"I was surprised it was such a mess, honestly, I also would have guessed before the disaster that people would get over it if they really had to. But - no."
"Why did somebody want them to get over it - is it because of the feeding children problem -"
"There's this little independent community that doesn't have the disgust problem, they do it and live separately since no one will touch them. But it's hard on them, which is why that guy tried to change it."
"My best guess is that if you raise someone from birth around sewage and bodies and so on then you get desensitized enough but it might be they're also selected for not having the problem - how intensely it affects people does vary -"
"If the people who can do the work without being too disgusted make more money and have more children, and disgustedness is heritable..."
There's a sound of footsteps. The balcony door closes. Penumbra remains invisible.
"I'm curious about heritability, you seem to know a lot more about it than we do."
They can hear Penumbra moving around sometimes but she stays invisible and doesn't say anything.
When heritability has been explained to Maurabel's temporary satisfaction she reads the birthright citizenship book.
No country in the world takes immigrants anymore, unless you can find someone who wants to swap with you and live in your old country. If we did take immigrants, then we couldn't have as many children. This is a sad situation, if a necessary one, because immigration used to be the greatest check on abuses by governments. If they treated their people badly, their people would leave for somewhere better! If their city was destroyed in a war, they could flee somewhere that was at peace.
Even though immigration is not allowed anymore, some people do come to Anitam without permission. Sometimes they cross as a tourist and then never leave, living with friends or under a fake name; sometimes they hike in across the mountains; sometimes they buy false papers. When we find these people, we send them home. (If we did not do that, what would happen?)
Children born to people who came here illegally are in a hard position. Under the law until recently, they were not Anitami, but they can't return to their parents' country either. This happened rarely, but in a country as big as ours, even rare things can be a problem; if one person in every ten thousand is here illegally and has children, then there are sixty thousand non-citizen children born every year. (Usually their parents purchase a credit. If they do not purchase a credit, the children are adopted out and are Anitami citizens like their adoptive parents.)
People became worried that these children would form a permanent class of shadow people, not allowed to take most jobs or have children, poor because the rules on foreign workers are not designed for people in this situation or illegal because they are ignoring the rules on foreign workers. They proposed a rule: everyone born in Anitam is Anitami, regardless of whether their parents were here legally.
This was controversial. People worried that immigrants might illegally cross in order to have Anitami babies. But eventually, a form of the rule was agreed on that resolved everyone's worries. There are no shadow people in Anitam today.
He reads over shoulder to figure out what she means. Then he looks it up. "If children born here are eligible for citizenship elsewhere then they're citizens there - since the idea was helping people who've nowhere to go. And you can only buy a credit if you've been living here for a year unless you get a waiver, so the kids the rules apply to are all children of parents who have been living here for a year."
"Huh, okay."
The hem of her shirt (she accepted local clothes after learning it was customary here to change one's outfit on a routine basis) is disturbed like Penumbra's tugging on it. "I think I'm done for the day," Maurabel says.
"Their hair comes in red," says Penumbra.
"- they never mentioned -"
"The people with the red hair all live together and they - if we'd gone there first they would still look rich, they have electricity and things, but they aren't, not for here -"