The John Varley Reader Read Free

I’m nothing and you’re anything you want to be.”
    â€œWe’ll have no more of that,” she said, sharply. “We’ve exhausted this subject, and I will not change my mind. You’re too young for a Change.”
    â€œBlowout,” I said. “I’ll be an adult soon; it’s only a year away. Do you really think I’ll be all that different in a year?”
    â€œI don’t care to predict that. I hope you’ll mature. But if, as you say, it’s only a year, why are you in such a hurry?”
    â€œAnd I wish you wouldn’t use language like that,” Chord said.
    Carnival gave him a sour look. She has a hard line about outside interference when she’s trying to cope with me. She doesn’t want anyone butting in. But she wouldn’t say anything in front of me and Adagio.
    â€œI think you should let Fox get his Change,” Adagio said, and grinned at me. Adagio is a good kid, as younger foster-siblings go. I could always count on her to back me up, and I returned the favor when I could.
    â€œYou keep out of this,” Chord advised her, then to Carnival, “Maybe we should leave the table until you and Fox get this settled.”
    â€œYou’d have to stay away for a year,” Carnival said. “Stick around. The discussion is over. If Fox thinks different, he can go to his room.”
    That was my cue, and I got up and ran from the table. I felt silly doing it, but the tears were real. It’s just that there’s a part of me that stays cool enough to try and get the best of any situation.
    Carnival came to see me a little later, but I did my best to make her feel unwelcome. I can be good at that, at least with her. She left when it became obvious she couldn’t make anything any better. She was hurt, and when the door closed, I felt really miserable, mad at her and at myself, too. I was finding it hard to love her as much as I had a few years before, and feeling ashamed because I couldn’t.
    I worried over that for a while and decided I should apologize. I left my room and was ready to go cry in her arms, but it didn’t happen that way. Maybe if it had, things would have been different and Halo and I would never have gone to Nearside.
    Carnival and Chord were getting ready to go out. They said they’d be gone most of the lune. They were dressing up for it, and what bothered me and made me change my plans was that they were dressing in the family room instead of in their own private rooms where I thought they should.
    She had taken off her feet and replaced them with peds, which struck me as foolish, since peds only make sense in free-fall. But Carnival wears them every chance she gets, prancing around like a high-stepping horse because they are so unsuited to walking. I think people look silly with hands on the ends of their legs. And naturally she had left her feet lying on the floor.
    Carnival glanced at her watch and said something about how they would be late for the shuttle. As they left, she glanced over her shoulder.
    â€œFox, would you do me a favor and put those feet away, please? Thanks.” Then she was gone.
    An hour later, in the depths of my depression, the door rang. It was a woman I had never seen before. She was nude.
    You know how sometimes you can look at someone you know who’s just had a Change and recognize them instantly, even though they might be twenty centimeters shorter or taller and mass fifty kilos more or less and look nothing at all like the person you knew? Maybe you don’t, because not everyone has this talent, but I have it very strong. Carnival says it’s an evolutionary change in the race, a response to the need to recognize other individuals who can change their appearance at will. That may be true; she can’t do it at all.
    I think it’s something to do with the way a person wears a body: any body, of either sex. Little mannerisms like blinking, mouth