And while youth would take care of itself, there was nothing she particularly wanted to do about being female- changers were even more heavily discriminated against. And her gifts, the very things that could make her the most valuable to government service, made her an object of envy, resentment, even fear.
It was her third week there, and it had finally come to a head today. Her job took, at best, a third of her time- when she slacked. So she began to try (on the assumption that she needed to prove her competence) to find out more about the system, to grasp the overall function of everything, the way all the data systems linked together.
Who programs the computers? she innocently asked Warvel, the head of Pensions.
Warvel looked annoyed-he did not like interruptions. We all do, he said, turning immediately back to his desk, where figures danced across the whole surface, showing him exactly what was going on at every desk in his office.
But who, persisted Kya-Kya, set up the way it works? The first programming?
Warvel looked more than annoyed. He stared at her intently, then said savagely, When I want a research project on the subject, you'll be the person I appoint. But right now your job is taking inflation tables and applying them to classes of pensions for the budget year starting in only six months, and when you're here at my desk, Kyaren, it means that neither you nor I is doing his job!
Kya-Kya waited for a few moments, watching the slightly balding top of his head as he played with the numbers on his desk, querying the computer on questioning procedures. She could not understand the violence of his outburst, as defensive as if she had asked him whether it was true he had been castrated in a playground accident when he was five. When he noticed she was still standing there, he reached over and pointed to a spot on his desk where no figures appeared at all.
See that blank spot? Warvel asked.
Yes.
That's you. That's the work you're doing right now.
And Kya-Kya returned to her desk and her terminal and began punching in the numbers with her slender fingers on the end of slender arms, feeling weaker and slighter than she had ever felt before.
It was not just Warvel, not just the work. From the moment she arrived, it seemed that none of her co-workers was interested in making her acquaintance. Conversations never included her; in-jokes left her completely in the dark; people fell silent when she came near a table in the lunchroom or a fountain in the halls. At first-and still- she tried to- believe that it was because she was young, she was frail, she did not make friends easily. But actually, right from the start, she knew it was because she was an ambitious woman with remarkable scores from the best school on the planet; because she was curious and wanted to learn and wanted to be excellent, which would threaten all of them, make them all look bad.
Petty bureaucrats with infinitesimal minds, she told herself, jabbing at the keys on the computer. Small minds running a small planet, terrified of someone who smacks of potential greatness-or even potential averageness.
They had all watched her. return to her desk from her interview with Warvel. Even the women had looked her up and down in the contemptuous way they had on Earth, as if the act of surveying her body expressed their opinion of her mind and her heart. There wasn't one sympathetic look on anyone's face.
She stopped punching keys and got hold of herself. Think that way, Kyaren, she told herself, and you'll never get anywhere. Must do my best, must try to be good at it, and hope for a change, hope for some opportunity to shine.
Her terminal glowed at her, unwinking, as steady as her ambition, as blinding as her fear, and she could not concentrate on it anymore. And so she punched in her lunch-time, was given clearance-there were enough tables open in the lunchroom-and left her desk to go eat. The eyes followed her again, and after she left, she could hear the buzz of conversation begin. The office was unbearably silent when she was there; when she was gone, everyone was friendly.
It was in the lunchroom that day that she met Josif.
The setting was the good thing about Tegucigalpa. The Information Center was almost invisible from the air-all the roofs were planted with the same jungle growth that was lush on the hills. But in the complex itself, everything was a miracle of green and glass, huge transparent walls on hundreds of buildings rising twenty or forty or eighty meters into the air. The lunchroom was at the edge, on a slope, where it could overlook much of the rest of the complex-even had a view of the village that was all that was left of the ancient city. As Kya-Kya-or Kyaren, as she had taken to calling herself when she first discovered she was going to work on Earth, in an effort to sound more native-took her food from the dispensers and carried it to an empty table, she watched a dazzlingly bright bird float down from the roof of the Income Department and land on a small island in the Chultick River. During its descent, a wild thing living in a perfectly wild habitat, the bird had passed in front of the glass windows where dozens of people worked sucking information out of computers, twisting it around, and spewing it back in. A jungle, with electricity manipulated amid the trees to hold all the knowledge of a world.
It was because she was watching the bird and thinking of the contrasts that Josif was able to set down his tray unnoticed. Of course, Josif was quiet, too-as silent as a statistic, Kyaren would later tell him. But as she watched the bird walking around in a seemingly purposeless dance on the island, she became aware of someone watching her.
She turned, and there was Josif. Deep but open-seeming eyes, delicate features, and a mouth that perpetually smiled as if he knew the joke and would never tell anyone, because it wasn't really funny.
I hear Warvel ate you alive today.
Gossip travels quickly, Kya-Kya thought-but couldn't help being flattered that this total stranger would even care; couldn't help being pleased that someone was actually speaking to her about something besides business.
I've been chewed, Kya-Kya said, but I haven't been swallowed yet.
I've noticed you, Josif said, smiling at her.
I've never noticed you, Kyaren answered, though it was not really true. She had seen him around-he worked in Statistics, Department of Vitals, Office of Death, which was on the floor below hers. She just hadn't cared much. Kya-Kya had been raised in the Songhouse, and the close association of the sexes had somewhat numbed her to the attractions of males. She briefly wondered, Is he good-looking? Is he beautiful? She wasn't sure. Interesting, anyway. The eyes that looked so innocent, the mouth that looked so world-wise.
Yes you have, Josif answered, still smiling. You're an outcast.
So it was that obvious; she resented hearing it in words.
Am I? she asked.
It's something we have in common. We're both outcasts.
It was a line, then, and Kyaren sighed. She had become expert at deflecting lines-bored students had tried many times to spark up a dull evening with attempts at seducing Kya-Kya. Once or twice she had gone along with it. It was never worth the effort.
With that little in common, I doubt we have much of a friendship ahead of us. She turned back to her food.
Friends? We should be enemies, Josif said. We can help each other, as long as we hate each other.
She couldn't help it. She looked up from her lunch. She told herself that it was because she was tired of the lunchroom's attempts at local color-Honduran food was wretched. She pushed the food away from her and leaned back in her chair, waiting for him to go on.
You see, Josif went on, assured of an audience, while you're busy rejecting me, you can have the satisfaction of knowing that you're part of the majority around here. I mean, you may not be in, but you sure as hell know who's out.