The Cage of Zeus Read online

  “By a human from the special district, you mean…”

  Preda noticed Arino’s appalled look and let out a chuckle that sounded like a purr. “Forgive me, I should explain. The doctor is a Round born in the special district—a bigender. Do you understand what that means?”

  “The doctor is male and female at the same time,” Shirosaki said. “Yes, I read the report.”

  “Unlike what our society calls intersex, Rounds are absolute hermaphrodites possessing functioning genitalia of both sexes. They are a new type of human born on Jupiter-I. Dr. Tei acts as an intermediary of sorts between the special district and the rest of the station, which is why we requested the doctor’s presence here today. Since the Rounds don’t ever leave the special district, they communicate with those on the outside through an intermediary as necessary.”

  Suddenly looking indignant, Arino glared at Preda for withholding this information as if he’d been testing them. Shirosaki, wanting to avoid an altercation from the outset, used his implant communicator to send a message directly to Arino’s inner ear. “Take it easy, Arino.”

  “We’re here risking our necks on this mission,” Arino answered through his communicator, “and they’re mocking us.”

  “We’re only familiar with their society from what we’ve read. And they only know us through the data they have on us. They’re just trying to feel us out. Don’t let him get to you.”

  “I had no idea hermaphrodites looked so feminine. Do you think everyone in the special district looks like that?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough. Just get back to the meeting.”

  “Ms. Kline,” Preda continued, “perhaps we ought to explain to Commander Shirosaki about the culture inside the special district. About why the Rounds were created and how they came to be absolute hermaphrodites.”

  “Let’s not start with a lecture,” Harding interrupted. “What we should be discussing now is how we stop the terrorists. We don’t have time for cultural lessons.”

  “Gruff as usual, I see.” Preda flashed a sardonic smile. “The relief team is seeing a Round for the first time. We should be able to afford a little time to explain.”

  “If I thought it would help us to come up with a strategy, I’d be all for it, but I don’t.”

  Harding looked at Shirosaki. “Well, what do you have to say? Do you want to sit around and listen to a cultural lecture? Or would you rather get to work and talk about how we deal with the terrorists?”

  Shirosaki answered, “I’d like us to discuss strategy. Maybe we can talk about the special district another time.”

  Preda shrugged, but Harding remained expressionless, not acknowledging Preda with so much as a smile or frown.

  “Why don’t we all sit down?” Kline said, frowning. “We won’t come to any decision while we’re standing.”

  “Indeed.” Preda nodded. “We may be here a while,” he said, pulling up a chair.

  After everyone took their seats, Kline began the discussion. “According to the data sent to us from Captain Hasukawa, it’s likely the terrorists will be coming in on a research vessel from one of the Jovian satellites or a cargo vessel from Asteroid City. The research vessel has a particular route; it picks up specimens and materials from the experiments conducted on each of the satellites. The vessel from Asteroid City transports mineral resources and the water necessary to keep Jupiter-I operating. In order to enter this space station, the terrorists will likely have to come in on one of the spacecraft. They may have commandeered an unmanned ship, and we can’t rule out the possibility that the terrorists have taken hostages.”

  “When will the next ship arrive?” asked Shirosaki.

  “In two weeks.”

  “Then we ramp up security at the docking bays. We check all of the cargo there in the presence of guards. If a fight were to break out, it’d probably happen in the cargo bay. Of course, the terrorists have probably thought of that.” Shirosaki asked Kline, “Where are the research facilities and special district located? Those are the two terrorist targets. They’re sure to head there first.”

  Kline nodded. She punched a button on the control panel on the table and a three-dimensional schematic display of the station appeared. “Jupiter-I rotates with one cylindrical end facing the surface of Jupiter. The station has defensive walls that, when activated, can seal off each section of the station in an emergency.”

  The schematic showed partitions being lowered. Each of the sections were now highlighted in different colors. “The areas highlighted in blue are the research facilities, the orange area is the residential district for the staff, the green areas are the administrative facilities, and the red area is the residential district for the Rounds—the special district. There is a zero-gravity laboratory and a factory in the central axis area, along with a relaxation room.”

  Next, a glowing grid was superimposed over the entire station.

  “And this?” Shirosaki asked.

  “The network of maintenance shafts used to maintain the outer shell of Jupiter-I. The defense shield to resist the radiation and magnetic field around the Jovian system is installed on the inside of the outer shell. A thick composite layer made of materials such as high-density tungsten, water, and ferromagnetic metals with a high relative magnetic permeability covers the entire space station. The maintenance system constantly monitors the shield and sends a signal to the control center when it’s in need of repairs or periodic maintenance.”

  “What are the dimensions of the shaft?”

  “About as high and wide for five to six adults to walk through holding hands.”

  “The security inside the maintenance shafts?”

  “It’s possible to load a security system onto a repair robot. But you can’t enter and exit the shaft just anywhere,” Kline said. “Access is restricted. The access points are only located in the control center and residential district for the staff. The special district can’t be accessed through the maintenance shafts.”

  “But once someone is in the shaft, can’t they cut their way out through the ceiling?”

  “Not likely. The shaft isn’t made of anything so vulnerable. Even if someone were able to cut their way out, the noise alone would alert the Rounds in the special district. Not to mention the intruders would be picked up by the heat and vibration sensors.”

  The special district was located on the Jupiter end of the station, farthest away from the docking bays. It had been built there deliberately to keep intruders at bay.

  “What about the possibility of their breaking in from the Jupiter side?”

  “Jupiter-I is equipped with a surveillance system. We’re capable of destroying any spacecraft that tries to approach us.”

  “Looks like the special district also has an air lock.” Shirosaki pointed to the schematic. “What are these capsules along the walls here?”

  “Emergency shuttles. There are also four shuttles dedicated to the special district.”

  “Its capacity?”

  “Eighty. The shuttles are fully equipped to fly to Asteroid City.”

  “How many people are on this station now, including the Rounds in the special district?”

  “Exactly one hundred staff members, forty task force members, and one hundred fifty-eight Rounds, which makes two hundred ninety-eight.”

  “Then all we need to do is guard the docking bays,” Shirosaki said.

  “In theory, yes.”

  The task force was forty strong—more than the number necessary to monitor the ships coming in to dock.

  “The Vessel of Life has two goals: to stop the bioscientific experiments going on at the station and to destroy the facilities and existing data. The fact that they’re coming out here rather than inciting demonstrations on Earth and on Mars seems to indicate that they think they have a fighting chance. We can’t take this threat lightly.”

  “Is there any chance the terrorists will simply give up? That they’ll turn around and head back after realizing the secu
rity precautions we’ve taken?” Kline asked.

  “That’s certainly possible if they realize we’re onto them,” Shirosaki said. “But I’m willing to bet it wasn’t cheap to put a team together and send them out here. Now that the plan’s been set in motion, they won’t give up so easily. There’ll probably only be a few of them, just the necessary manpower to destroy the station’s facilities.”

  “Then what we need to do is clear.” Harding looked at the faces around him. “We intercept them at the docking bays and end them there. But we keep the walls between each section lowered in case they’re able to penetrate our defenses. Station some officers at the walls separating the special district from the rest of Jupiter-I for good measure.”

  “To think that a group standing up for bioethical principles would resort to bloodshed.” Preda let slip a cynical smile. “Just who is being inhumane here? Those of us conducting medical experiments or the fringe group unashamed to commit acts of terrorism?”

  After parting ways with the station staff outside the meeting room, Shirosaki and Arino headed for the quarters assigned to the security team with Harding and Miles.

  As they walked down the corridor, Harding said to Shirosaki, “They’re a bunch of fruitloops, right?”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “All of them. Preda is a stuck-up government toad, and Kline is infatuated with Round culture. She’s convinced the Rounds are an ideal incarnation of humanity. And the doctor? The doctor isn’t even human.”

  “Is something the matter, Commander?”

  “You’re not disgusted? You don’t feel anything looking at someone so—ambiguous?”

  “I barely know anything about, uh, them to feel anything, much less disgust,” Shirosaki said.

  “Them is fine. Just don’t get caught calling them him or her. They’ll call you out for using that language.”

  Of course gendered pronouns are discriminatory in the bigender world, Shirosaki thought. So there are tricky issues of discrimination here just as there are in the planetary cities. “We’ve been briefed about the special district. We also have some knowledge about the Rounds. But our orders are to protect the special district and the Rounds. As long as those orders stand, our job is to guard them whether they’re human or lab animals.”

  Harding stared at Shirosaki with a look of contempt. “Have you ever seen sea hares mating?”

  “No.”

  “They’re simultaneous hermaphrodites whose male sex organs are exterior, while the posterior holds the female. When the sea hares mate, they form this long link. One puts its male organ in the female organ of the sea hare in front of it, while its own female organ is entered by the male organ of the sea hare from behind. Scientists call that a ‘mating chain.’ Snails mate in a similar way, only they have to face each other to insert the male organ in the other’s female organ. Same goes for the Rounds. With a single act of intercourse, they can love as a man and be loved as a woman at the same time. I’m telling you, that’s not right. A group that doesn’t have any scruples about doing shit like that don’t deserve to call themselves human.”

  “You paint a pretty vivid picture,” Shirosaki said. “You didn’t ask to watch, now did you?”

  Harding glared. “You stay cooped up here long enough, you start to hear things.”

  Shirosaki fell silent.

  “They’re not like the intersex people in our society. They’re the same as sea hares and snails, with the ability to inseminate and be inseminated at the same time. And do you want to know what they call us? Monaurals.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “We’re called Monaurals because each of us can only be one sex. From a bigender perspective, we’re monosexual—Monoaurals. Something’s become fundamentally different about them.”

  “But they’re also living beings. In that sense, they’re no different than we are,” Shirosaki said.

  “You’re a broad-minded one. I don’t have it in me to be so tolerant.”

  “Hey, give it a rest,” Miles said lazily. “Criticizing the Rounds’ existence doesn’t make our job any easier. We should just think of them as our protectees, like Shirosaki said. As strange as this may sound, the Rounds’ existence is why we’re getting paid.”

  “Not me.” Harding shook his head. “Just looking at them makes my skin crawl.”

  “I can’t say that I don’t know what you’re feeling,” Arino said, sighing. “You can’t disown what you feel.”

  “Don’t worry about it so much,” Miles said. “When we finish the job here on Jupiter-I and are back home on Mars, we’ll forget all about the Rounds.”

  2

  TEI ALLOWED THE lukewarm water spraying from every direction of the tiny shower room to wash over eir entire body. White foam streamed down, tracing the contours of eir body, and swirled down the drain. The wastewater went to a recycling facility to be treated and reclaimed as nonpotable water. Such was the way Tei existed, within a perfectly cyclic system—vital to living near Jupiter.

  In order for humans to embark on a long-term journey outside of the solar system, better recycling facilities were needed. Traveling for decades and centuries in an environment without solar energy was no easy feat. Space was an endlessly unforgiving place.

  But every time Tei thought about it, ey felt something like intoxication welling up from within. What lay beyond the solar system? Just how far could we go? How many generations will it be before we’re able to see the countless galaxies and black holes firsthand, as we see Jupiter today? There were times Tei desperately wished for immortality. Rather than entrust the dream to someone else, Tei wanted to see everything with eir own eyes. Tei wanted to see and appreciate galaxies colliding, the birth of stars, hot Jupiters expelling bright gases near the stars from a distance close enough to touch. It was because of this desire that Tei could bear living here.

  Tei continued to shower, caressing eir body with both hands. The roundness of eir breasts, though not glamorous by Monaural standards. The smooth and supple skin. The subtle curve of eir waist. The visibly bony figure. The firmness of eir joints. The tautness of eir muscles. Tei’s fingers slid from the swell of eir breasts down past the torso to between eir legs where both genitalia were tucked away. Ey fondled the soft flesh.

  A moist slit and a copulatory organ protected by a thin sensitive skin. A Round possessed both sexual organs similar to those that female and male Monaurals had. Tei was no different. The twenty-third chromosome pair of Rounds like Tei, known as the sex chromosome, was neither XX nor XY, but a synthetic chromosome, double-I—a pair of I chromosomes resembling two sticks. The remaining twenty-two chromosome pairs contained the genetic sequencing making the Rounds perfect hermaphrodites and produced peptides that sent commands to the subcerebral lobe, an organ unique to Rounds located next to the pituitary gland.

  Back when Tei still spent the majority of eir time in the special district, ey had no doubts about the way eir body was formed. They had been told that all of the Rounds in the special district were built the same way, though different from the humans that lived outside the special district. Tei had entered adolescence suspecting nothing. When ey had tried to make love with another Round—more as a way of communicating than for the purpose of procreating—ey had realized that ey was built a bit differently from the others.

  It was a trivial distinction, posing no problem to engaging in the sex act itself. Rounds were capable of impregnating and being impregnated at the same time. Tei possessed the reproductive organs to do just that. There was, however, one difference. This distinction alone had saddled Tei with a deep feeling of alienation.

  The Rounds were a special existence to those living outside the special district. Tei was an even more special case among the Rounds. Naïve as Tei was in her adolescence, ey had been assailed with unbearable doubt and feelings of inferiority.

  Why am I different from the others?

  I am not a Monaural. But I’m also not a Round.

  T
hen what am I?

  Tei had rushed to the infirmary, where the station’s supervisor, Kline, gently informed em that such things happened all the time. Dr. Wagi, the chief of medicine, pulled up piles of data to logically explain to Tei how ey had come to be this way.

  Dr. Wagi’s explanation had been a persuasive one. He had ended by telling Tei that a simple operation would solve the problem.

  But Tei had refused. Tei didn’t want to think of eir own body as so peculiar that ey required surgery. Doing so would have denied how ey had lived up until now. Doing so would also mean condemning the children who would come into this world built like Tei. Deformed. That was unacceptable to Tei.

  Tei simply learned to accept that ey was different from the other Rounds and resolved to live an exemplary life that would blaze a trail for the next generation.

  That was when Kline had asked Tei to serve as an intermediary. “If you focus on a job with responsibilities, you’ll forget your problems,” she told Tei. “Fortia and Album are in charge of the special district now and their tenures won’t end for a while. If you want to do something comparable, the ambassadorship will be perfect for you.”

  Tei had accepted the offer immediately.

  Ey didn’t want to go on wallowing in self-isolation over something so trivial as a physical aberration.

  Tei also aspired to be on equal footing with the Monaurals. The feeling of inferiority that surfaced among the Rounds when they encountered people from outside the special district, despite being the newer generation of human, had always troubled Tei.

  Tei resolved to be equal. To live on equal terms with the Monaurals.

  Having been born on Jupiter-I, Tei had no concept of racial discrimination, and such antiquated feelings were similarly alien to the supervisors of the space station.

  Tei got along with the station staff immediately. Owing to eir burgeoning medical knowledge and skill, Tei earned the trust and honest respect of the staff with each achievement.

  As ey became more used to eir duties, Tei also grew to enjoy having sex with other Rounds as a means of social interaction.