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On a winter day Genly brought me to his workplace in the United Nations headquarters. Upon my arrival to Terra I got excited to learn that it had an organization called United Nations; since then my enthusiasm was knocked down several notches when I realized that no, this was not a united government of the planet, which could have made the negotiations regarding Terra joining the Ekumen vastly easier. What's worse, this organization did not have an outsize influence on the governments of Terra's various countries. But this was what I had to work with, and Genly Ai was one of the few Terrans who believed in my cause.
He swiped his badge at the front door to let me in. We crossed the lobby where the fluorescent overhead light was overtaking the fading natural daylight. Genly had said that 4:30 pm was the only time for which he was able to book a conference room, but I suspected that it was more that did not necessarily want me to be seen by his colleagues and brought me in when many of them had already left for the day. Not that I had to fear being gawked at. As I gave my name to the reception clerk, she wrote it on a visitor's badge without batting an eye at my name or appearance; in this multinational city I blended in perfectly.
The floor numbers in the elevator smoothly ticked up every few seconds. My heart pounded stronger the closer we got to "9", Genly's office floor. Meanwhile my Terran friend kept shooting me inquisitive, smirky glances; he knew, however, that I won't speak about the matter until we were behind closed doors. A conference room at his work was the only place where he and I could have some privacy without arousing any suspicion. It would not have been appropriate for him to invite me to his home even if he wanted to, or for me to invite him to my hotel room (which I definitely would have wanted to), as it would suggest to those who observed us - and I was certain that there were invisible eyes of intelligence services watching us the whole time - that there was a closer, more personal relationship between us than there really was.
"I reserved this conference room for an hour. Hopefully that's enough for the mysterious activity you have planned?" he said, a trace of teasing in his grin. I knew he was a bit irked that I had not told him what the purpose of the meeting was.
"That's plenty," I said. "And are you sure that there is no surveillance equipment in these walls?"
"As sure as our IT staff can be sure. They sweep the walls for bugs every day. And they are pretty good at rooting things out."
Genly sat down at the conference table and motioned to me to do the same. I picked a chair two seats down from him, remembering the unspoken code of "manliness" that I was rapidly learning. It's been only a month that I've been on Terra, but three things quickly became obvious to me, even though no one said it openly. One, that the Terrans perceived me as a permanent "man" - as one permanently in kemmer; in other words, a pervert. It took me weeks of conscious, deliberate self-talk until the sting of it dulled a little and until I was able to keep a completely neutral face every time someone referred to me as "he". Second, and worse - that being perceived as a man, as much as I loathed it, was a more certain way to be taken seriously on Terra than if I was categorized as a woman. Third - that my status as a "man" had to be constantly enforced by man-like mannerisms. If I didn't carry them out, I would not be seen as agender: most Terrans did not have a third, neutral slot in their gender category shelves. Instead, I would be perceived as an unmanly man, and that would be much worse.
I catalogued the outer expressions of manliness that Terrans performed. I learned a lot of them from Genly. One of them was that you don't take a seat next to a male friend: you leave a seat in between you. That's what I did right now.
Then I looked at him squarely and said:
"I would like to teach you a way of communication that the people of Ekumen find quite useful. You might remember me mentioning it. The mindspeak."
Genly's eyes widened.
"Yes, you did mention it. But... Do you actually think I can learn it?"
"I don't see why not."
"I'm flattered by your confidence in me," said Genly. "But be prepared to find that I'm an impenetrable blockhead."
Humorous self-deprecation. I put it on one of my mental shelves as something I needed to do more of.
"I'm sure you are not," I said.
"You know, the notion of mindspeak is so wild to me that..." Genly halted. "If it was possible to us, Terrans, one of us would have discovered it already, don't you think? There are people on Earth who claim to be capable of that sort of thing, but they are quacks. No one has demonstrated a true ability to communicate telepathically. Perhaps we, Terrans, really don't have it. I'm sorry, Therem, but prepare to be disappointed."
"You would not discover it on your own. You have to be taught. It's like a virus: you won't develop it spontaneously in your body, you can only be infected. And remember, Terrans are the results of the same Hainish genetic experiments as Gethenians. The Hainish planted the mindspeak capacity in all of us."
"Well, if you get disappointed in me, it's on you," said Genly with a sarcastic smile.
"Don't worry, I won't blame you," I said, smiling back at him with reassurance. "There is nothing for you to lose, and a lot to gain. You and I might need to rely on mind-to-mind communication as we start talks with Earth governments about joining the Ekumen. In every negotiation room we are in, you and I will have to exchange conversations unheard and unnoticed by any other parties. We will have to adjust our strategies and tactics on the fly. All of it will require silent communication."
"Can't we just text each other under the table?" Genly said. As I opened my mouth to explain why that would be too conspicuous and impractical, he laughed and clapped me on the back, reaching across the empty seat to do so. "I'm kidding, Therem, I'm kidding."
"Haha, you got me there. Also - what if one of us is imprisoned by one of the Earth's hostile governments, and the other has to break him out? You can't expect to have your phone in prison, can you, huh?" I responded to him with good-natured teasing of the same kind. But, judging how uneasy his laughter was, he didn't think this to be outside the realm of possibility.
Neither could I. Our work in convincing the Terran governments to agree on joining the Ekumen was going to be near-impossibly difficult. On Terra, with its hundreds of countries, the governments exploited every chance to hold another country hostage to any wish or agenda it had; so for every country that was enthusiastic about joining the Ekumen, there will be five others that will make their agreement conditional to their opponent's accession to their demands. It will also be dangerous because some authoritarian governments will perceive Ekumen as an existential threat to them, and everyone who advocates joining will be considered a mortal enemy.
So now that we have unspokenly acknowledged the perils of our work, and, as was customary for Terran men, made light of them, I was ready to proceed with teaching mindspeak. Telepathic communication with fellow diplomats from Ekumen was easy; I would slip in and out of it effortlessly, without any special preparations. But teaching someone to do it for the first time - that required laying down some groundwork.
"On to our first lesson," I said. "Remember, I showed you the pictures of the Handdaran Foretelling cave?"
"Oh yes," said Genly. "That was one spooky place."
"Good. In that case, imagine yourself in that cave. Imagine listening to a message about the future, but with all of your senses. But don't tense up. Just open all your senses to a signal."
I said that and immediately was struck by how little our surroundings resembled a Handdaran Foretelling cave. Grey-paneled walls, grey carpet underfoot; a massive, oval table, comfortable, webbed-back swivel chairs; we were not going to be sitting on a cold stone floor, let alone pound it with our hands. The lighting was fluorescent, even and shadowless. There would not be a ray coming in through a crack between the rocks and symbolizing a harbinger from the future. There was no way for a message to get in.
"I'm as open as I can be," said Genly with a chuckle. "Especially since I have no idea how one opens one's senses any further than they already are. It's not like I could close them, fully or partway. They don't come with a dimmer switch."
I gave him a frustrated glance. He sobered up.
"Sorry, Therem, I'll try not to be flippant about your teachings. I'm a bit nervous, as I'm sure you can tell."
I smiled with some effort, realizing that the flippancy was part of his trying to get control of a situation where he was completely lost. At least he admitted it.
As the first mindspeak message I was going to send him a memory where I asked the Handdaran priests if Terra will ever join the Ekumen. The scene also included their response. Then I was going to ask Genly to tell me what their response was.
Myself, I knew I would never forget the answer, the ecstatic "Yes, yes, yes!"
And then, without me having any control over it, this memory of Faxe screaming out the answer in the prophecy morphed into something else. It was Genly that was screaming out those words, and he was writhing under my mouth. I flinched. This was most inappropriate under the circumstances.
It was, however, not unfamiliar. This was, of course, the good old friend kemmer knocking on the door. Timewise it was about due. This brief, momentary, intrusive fantasy portended its arrival as surely as a tickle in the back of the throat portended a cold. The very first stage. At this point I could still override the kemmer impulse and conduct business as usual, but as soon as this evening I might be in full throes of longing and fantasies - ones that will have to remain unfulfilled as long as I'm on this planet. I will have to develop a Terran-like ability to live a normal life while in kemmer. Terrans somehow managed to compartmentalize their sexual fantasies, which they experienced throughout the day, as I was told; they walled them off and did not let them affect their work too much. I would have to learn this enviable, superhuman ability from them. At this point I could hardly imagine how that was possible. I was just very lucky that I didn't send that mental image to Genly by accident.
Increasingly embarrassed, I grasped around for a way to mask it. "By the way, you make a good point. This fluorescent light does not create a good ambiance to receive your first signal. How about I turn out all the lights so your senses won't distract you?"
This was partly an excuse: I also wanted him to avoid noticing that my appearance might have become more aligned with one gender or the other as my first kemmer on Terra progressed. Normally I wouldn't know if I was to become male or female. It would depend on who would trigger it. Well, that mystery was answered: I must have gotten triggered by Genly. So I will become a woman, then. If Genly had been female, I would become a man. As it were, Genly might notice that my jaw was softening, the slight swell of my breasts protruding more. Turning out the light will prove doubly handy, because it will hide those changes from my friend.
I had to hope for luck to delay the full-blown kemmer until this evening, and then spend it in seclusion, so that Genly never saw me in that state.
I got up and flipped the most obvious light switch in the room. Only two of the overhead lights went out. I looked for others. The Terran interior designers must have thought that light switches detracted from the minimalist austerity of the walls, because they kept them well-hidden. I found another one in a niche where the television was, but even flipping that one only resulted in turning out two more lights. Baffled, I looked around.
"There's one over there," Genly pointed towards the floor behind me, then got up and went to the wall where there was an extension cord and a bunch of coiled cables that went to non-descript boxes, some of which were somehow mysteriously connected to the large screen. He bent down and pressed something. The room turned dark.
I instantly regretted that I was not seated at the conference table, because I could not tell where it was. I turned in the approximate direction where I thought it to be and took a couple of uncertain steps with my hands out.
Suddenly my hand touched fabric that could only have been Genly's clothing. "Sorry," I said.
"That's all right," said Genly. "It's dark in here. Do you need help getting to a seat? Here, let me guide you."
His hand closed around my forearm and tugged gently in the opposite direction of where I was going initially. "Sit down," he said. I did so, trusting that there would be a chair underneath me, and there was.
I felt a sudden pang of fear that he was treating me in the same solicitous manner that many Terran men treat women (at least superficially, in public). Perhaps on an unconscious level he sensed my kemmer was beginning. I resolved to make at least one serious attempt to teach him mindspeak, and then go back to my hotel room before kemmer makes me too incapable of anything except longing, yearning, and torment - and before all my attempts at manliness were erased by a transformation into a woman.
I heard him pull a chair out and sit down. I said: "I will send you a question and an answer. You tell me what they are."
"Go ahead," he said.
Minutes passed. With the blinds closed, and the room was pitch-black. A car passed by the building, and its headlight beams crawled across the ceiling, tearing Genly's face out of the darkness for a second. He reminded me of Faxe the Weaver when faint beams of light swept across the room where Faxe was the focal point, where he wove all the threads of the prophecy together. But Genly was very different because he sat staring down at the table with his brow furrowed in consternation, whereas Faxe, even at the height of his focus, remained serene.
"Let me know when, or if, you hear my message," I said.
"I'm sorry, Therem, but I really haven't heard anything unusual in my mind so far," said Genly. "How would I differentiate your message from my own thoughts?"
"You would hear it as a distinct voice," I said.
"What kind of voice?"
"Most likely the voice of someone you really care about," I said. "A dear family member, for example. Or a dear friend." I could have added "a lover", but did not. I did not want to stray into that territory, because that would just bring out the mindflash of him screaming "yes, yes, yes!" and that could bring my kemmer on full-force.
"Oh!" he said in an upbeat tone. So he had such a person in mind, a distinct person who he imagined. I wondered who that could be, and felt a pang of jealousy. I pushed it aside. Remember, Terrans manage to stay professional even while in permanent kemmer. I had to make a decision whether to try mindspeak again, or to leave it for another time. Pondering it for a second, I decided to postpone. If I asked Genly to try again, he would feel obligated to try harder, except what would that even mean? He had been at his maximum alertness already. Trying to exceed that, he would become tense, and tension would not be conducive to receiving a mind-message.
I should take a different approach. I should send a signal spontaneously some other time, when Genly appears to be in a relaxed and receptive state of mind. I should not have set up a purposeful lesson in the first place. By watching his mind for outsider messages, he had put up an unconscious barrier to receiving them.
"How about we try again another time?" I said. "Just because there were no obvious results this time, doesn't mean that there was no progress. With mindspeak, it can be..." I almost said, a little bit like dripping water wearing a hole in the stone - the first drops will not make any noticeable difference, but that doesn't mean they are not doing their part, but changed it to a more manly comparison: "... like building muscles. You might not notice much result the first time you lift weights, but over time you will."
That was actually something I made up, simply not to leave him discouraged.
"Fair enough," he said.
I pushed off of the table in my chair. He heard the sound and said: "No, don't get up. I'm afraid you'll trip for real this time. I'll turn on the light."
A warm pang he cared about me! He didn't blame me for his failure! We were still friends! - was followed by a paranoid thought: no, he is treating me as less capable, like a woman. I had to not let him. Being perceived as a man required me to project confidence, appear independent, and take initiative. The kemmer might already be turning me into a woman, but I could not give up so quickly.
"Thank you, Genly," I said, "but I think I'm better oriented in the room now. I can find the light switch."
And I got up and stumbled around with my arms extended, groping around in the darkness. No sooner did I take two steps than my head crashed into a hard and sharp edge, probably the TV screen on the wall. I fell forward, but instead of splattering face-down on the floor, or worse, hitting my nose or eyebrow ridge on a hard metal wheel of a chair, my face bumped into a fabric draped over something simultaneously soft and firm. No doubt that was a human torso. Strong hands gripped my upper arms.
"Therem, this is why I wish you let me help you," Genly's voice said reprovingly.
"Ah," I said with a forced bravado, reaching for a Terran man's typical coping method - a joke. "I thought it was time for me to grow night-vision organs like you, Terrans. When in Rome, act like Romans, and so on."
"I don't have night vision," said Genly. "It's just that I've spent several lifetimes in this conference room. I work here, remember? I could navigate it with my eyes closed. But that's me. Don't try to be me."
I could not really focus on what he said. At his touch, the whisper of the incipient kemmer became a roar. Genly's hands were squeezing my arms just above the elbow, and nothing could staunch the hormonal rush in me. My attempts at conventional masculinity would look especially ridiculous to him now that I was becoming a woman.
And then, to my greatest shock, I realized I wasn't. The shape my body was taking in its most secret places was that of a man. I think I whimpered in panic, because Genly said: "Are you alright, Therem? Are you hurt? Hold on, let me turn on the light."
He let go of me momentarily, and, had I been able to find the door in the dark, I would have hightailed it out of there. But I knew I'd splatter with my face on the floor if I tried. The light came on, and Genly returned to me, scrutinizing my face and looking me over. Of course, he could not see the transformation under my clothes, but my face must have become a little more angular, my eyebrows lower. I didn't know if he would notice.
He grasped my arms again, even if there was no apparent need for it. He stared into my eyes. I tried to avert my gaze. The most reasonable thing to do would have been to excuse myself quickly and go home. But Genly's grip on my arms strengthened.
"Yes! The answer is yes!" he half-whispered, half-shouted.
I glanced cautiously at his face, unable to contain my curiosity but restraining my wishful thinking. "The answer? To what question?"
"'Will Terra join the Ekumen?'"
"Oh!" I said. My embarrassment suddenly fell away into the background. "Who asked this question?"
"You. You posed it to Handdaran foretellers. And that's what they replied."
"And how do you know about this?"
"You told me just now."
"But I haven't said a word."
"With mindspeak, I mean."
"So you heard!" I said. I wanted to hug him, and the way he was looking at me was as if he could barely restrain himself from doing the same. Perhaps his joy at this spectacular achievement clouded his mind as to the changes happening in me.
"I heard it. In your voice," he said. My heart pounded faster at the implication.
He made a move to hug me. I tried to push him away. If he hugged me close, my hardness would press against his body, and all the delight would be replaced by the shock of the realization that I desired him. That was something I haven't had a chance to process myself. How could I desire a member of my own sex? I could not wiggle out of the hug, however. He was stronger than me, and pressed up to me. In horror, I anticipated this joyous moment turning extremely awkward.
His face changed, but he still looked at me with the same intensity.
"What did you do differently this time?" he whispered.
"I did not do anything consciously," I said. "It's just that..." I decided to come clear. "I'll admit, my kemmer has started. And it advanced rapidly in the last few minutes. So that might be the difference."
"Oh," he said. "Is it typical for it to advance so rapidly?"
"On Gethen, it's more gradual," I said. "The first phase takes about a day. Here, however... the local environment might be influencing my hormones. It's actually been delayed by a few days, so maybe it's in a hurry to catch up."
"Delayed?" said Genly. "What delayed your kemmer?"
"I don't know. But lack of available partners might have precluded the release of hormones at the usual time."
"And... has that changed?" said Genly.
The question was mortifying.
"Genly," I said. "I hope you can appreciate how difficult it is for me to answer this, because it demands that I put shifgrethor aside. But our collaboration requires prioritizing openness over face-saving. So I'm telling it to you in this spirit. What happened was that you touched me and that started my kemmer. Again, I'm saying this just for your more complete understanding of me, not because I have any expectations of you. Please ignore it."
"What if I can't?" he said.
I wasn't sure what he meant and was getting increasingly frantic. "I did not anticipate that I would go into kemmer as a man, you see? I don't know why it happened that way. I realize that you, as a man, might find it disrespectful or insulting, and I beg you not to. This is not a reflection of you. My body might be confused by the Terran environment, that's all. Or my hormones became dysregulated in travel, or..."
"Therem, stop with the apologies. It's really fortunate for me. There's something I haven't told you, because I didn't think it would ever be relevant, but..."
My last thought, as he leaned down towards my lips, was that maybe it was not all bad to be a man on Terra.