The Core of the Sun (17 page)

VANNA/VERA

April 2017

April has barely begun but the ground has already thawed enough for tilling. The Gaians brought their own seed potatoes and helped us plant and tend them in the “public” greenhouse near the main house. It's safe now to transplant them outdoors, but we're putting garden cloth over them at night in case of frost. This way we should have new potatoes to sell by midsummer. They'll sell wonderfully at that time of year, since most of the other farms don't have time for fussing with them. They plant their seed potatoes straight in the ground, so most of their harvest doesn't come to market until July.

Jare has tilled the soil with the rototiller. Terhi and I just have to dig holes about half a meter apart, set the seedlings in, and tamp the soil around them. The Gaians' potatoes are heavy producers, so it's best to plant them widely spaced. Terhi is working purposefully on the row next to mine. I glance at her now and then, her bold strides and precise movements, completely devoid of an eloi's flirtatious way of moving or posing her body. She doesn't smile unless she's amused or happy. Elois have an ingratiating smile that rarely disappears from the time they're little. They wear a smile even when there are no mascos around. It never struck me as strange, but it does now. It's as if I have muscles in my face over which I have no conscious control.

Terhi is efficient in her work, quicker and better than I am. Her fingernails are short and unmanicured; you can see heavy physical labor in her hands. She gets to the end of the row before I do, straightens up and stretches, turns her face toward the sun, which is already warm, and closes her eyes. She can let the sunlight strike her face. I always wear a broad-brimmed hat to protect my light, soft eloi skin. I finish my row and stand up.

“What's it like to live as a morlock?” I ask.

Terhi has a very masco-like way of talking. She gets right to the point, doesn't pad her talk with pleasantries or manipulation. It's strangely exhilarating to do the same, like committing a tiny transgression.

Terhi laughs, without a hint of merriment.

“I was so unmistakably a morlock when I was born that I was categorized by the time I was six months old. Did you know even some elois are born with dark hair, but it falls out after the first couple of weeks and grows back blond. That's why they don't make the final gender assignment at birth. They wait until the child is a couple of years old.”

I didn't know.

“That's not what happened with me.”

She crouches over the potato bed, takes a seedling in its peat pot out of the flat, and pushes her planting trowel into the dirt in one forceful thrust, as if she were trying to stab mother earth right through the heart. I can't see her face, and I sense the sawdust smell of shame and the meadowsweet aroma of confusion, tinged with a touch of the gasoline of bitterness.

“My parents gave me away as soon as it was clear that I was a morlock. I don't even know what their names were. Or whether they ever got the child they wanted. I grew up in a morlock home.”

She pushes a potato seedling into its hole and presses the soil around it with her fingers. “There was nothing wrong with the place. People fit to work but not to procreate have to grow up somewhere. Besides, I should consider myself lucky. For some reason a lot of morlocks die in accidents as children.”

I don't want to ask, but I ask anyway.

“What about procreation . . . ?”

There's a dark humor in Terhi now. She stands up and brushes the dirt from her face. “Ah. You want to know whether us morlocks have all the bells and whistles? Whether if I were to find some minus man who wasn't too picky we might be able to produce monster children together?”

I don't answer because the subject is unspeakably embarrassing. Has she noticed me stealing glances at her when she cools herself on the porch of the sauna? She takes her saunas with Valtteri, so I haven't seen her naked from up close. My cheeks are burning.

“Yes. Contrary to popular belief, we have all the right cooches and wombs and everything. But they sterilize us while we're still in morlock school—tie up our tubes.
Fwip
. Wouldn't want any more morlocks dirtying up the gene pool. Besides, where would we put the kids while we were working?”

“Valtteri said you met in a hospital.”

“You leave the morlock home to go to work when you're still a teenager, if you're a quick learner. I changed sheets at first, but later, when they noticed that I did careful work and had a good memory and could read well, I got to work as the dispensary assistant and then as ‘personal assistant' to a doctor. He was an older masco who apparently had an equally elderly wife at home. I think after having six children she'd gotten a little loose in the cooch and the gentleman doctor got in the habit of poking at a morlock now and then on the examination table. I guess there was something like affection in it, since he let me read the books he had in his office on my breaks.”

“Sounds strangely familiar.”

“We do what we have to for a bite of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Valtteri was there for a while as a patient—he'd been poisoned by some pesticide at the market garden. We just got to know each other somehow, and we got along. Of course, when he got out of the hospital I was sure we'd never see each other again. But not even two weeks later I was leaving work and there was Valtteri standing on the steps in front of the hospital. We chatted for a minute and he told me he had quit his job at the market garden and found a new purpose in life. That he'd become a believer.”

“And he converted you, too?”

“I've never really been a religious person, although it's something they try to offer in morlock school. Any religion is a boon to a eusistocracy. Religion offers easy answers to your problems, ready-chewed moral guidelines, and it has the bonus of getting people to monitor their own behavior.”

“That's why they turn a blind eye even to the Gaians.”

“Valtteri told me about the Gaians' migrant lives, about how they were using bioaura methods to grow vegetables to sell and training people to do it all over Finland. He said that if I joined them I would have a chance to use my head and hands for something other than emptying bedpans. At that point it didn't matter whether I believed one jot in the Gaians' concept of the world. Later on, though, I came to the conclusion that they're on the right track about some things.”

“Which one of you fell in love? Valtteri?”

Terhi flashes a sharp little smile.

“What kind of eloi question is that? I'd had all I could take of staring at gray-haired morlocks who'd been worked to death, pushing their mops around the halls of the hospital. That would have been my future if it weren't for Valtteri. And you. When I look around me I see trees and grass and I smell sap and wind and dirt. Neulapää is the only real home I've ever had.”

My eyes grow wet. I squeeze her arm and can't think of anything to say. Terhi squats back down over the row of potatoes.

We plant the seedlings. The sun beats down and we work like machines, and I find myself thinking,
This is what it would be like if I had a real sister.

Excerpt from “A Few Words About Sterilization and the Sterilization Law”

Hearth and Home
,
issue 7, April 11, 1935

Since 1926, when the Council of State first established a committee to thoroughly investigate the feasibility of passing a nationwide statute making it possible to sterilize, for social and humanitarian reasons, those individuals who would weaken society, the question has remained a subject of consideration both publicly and privately. With parliament's recent passage of the sterilization law by an overwhelming majority on March 5, it is likely that the question will sink into obscurity, as conundrums usually do once they have been solved.

A brief explanation of the question before such silence ensues is thus in order, especially in light of the fact that the adopted law is conceived in many quarters as a measure against certain social classes, and because it has been widely acknowledged that both the concept and the necessity of sterilization are extremely poorly understood. This can be seen particularly clearly in some of the speeches made in parliament before the vote. Many who took their turn on the podium propounded the aforementioned question of “class” and even made the claim that the law was uncivilized and contrary to the laws of nature. What the speakers failed to take into account, however, was that our entire modern life, with its long-developed methods of maintaining civilization, has already left the idea of natural laws and “natural selection” far behind when it comes to humanity. Society no longer rids itself of weak individuals by means of a natural instinct for self-preservation, demanding that the weak make way for the strong. The preservation of our species thus must be ensured by other means, the nearest at hand being the prevention of the birth of weak individuals.

Sterilization in the broader sense refers to any medical procedure by which a person's ability to procreate is removed. Since such procedures can be more or less thorough, we distinguish castration, by which we mean the removal or destruction of the gonads causing an inability to procreate, from sterilization in the narrower sense, by which we mean any procedure that impedes the gamete on its natural course without destroying the sex drive.

In approaching a discussion of the reasons for subjecting a person to sterilization, it must first be pointed out that in our own country, as elsewhere, various animal husbandry organizations active for decades and conscious of the fact that not every individual animal is fit to pass on its weaker or poorer traits have examined said traits and carefully chosen suitable individuals for breeding. The results of their work can be clearly seen in Finland.

It was only with the dramatic deterioration of bloodlines that there arose a cry demanding some kind of control over procreation when it came to people as well. The question never would have come into currency, however, if the rise of civilization, with its higher levels of services and all their accompanying costs, hadn't struck a chord and raised concerns.

In studies of birthrates, attention was given to the psychological and physical condition of parents, and it was observed that those segments of the population who passed on the weakest intellectual inheritance to their offspring often had noticeably higher fertility levels. As the weak component in society increased, the burden on responsible members of society increased proportionally. This is the source of the thinking that led to the drafting of the sterilization law.

There are also indeed reasons of so-called racial hygiene that, when presented most cogently, support the regularization of sterilization in law. There are also social arguments, in particular the fact that owing to parental indigence, children are born and left uncared for. So-called neuterwomen aren't fit for marriage, but because pregnancy outside of marriage still continuously occurs among this group of individuals, their children are left with no legal provider, and are thus the doubly unwanted representatives of the weakest social element, reliant upon the charity of the rest of society.

One could argue that the improvement of the race that is the aim of the sterilization law could be achieved in other, more positive ways, such as encouraging genetically eligible individuals to reproduce by raising awareness and passing supportive legislation, but because the results of such methods are spotty and uncertain, they must be supplemented with negative measures, namely the prevention of the birth of substandard individuals.

VANNA/VERA

May 2017

It's late evening and I've gone to use the outhouse. It's at the back of the yard, out of sight behind the other buildings. When I pass the shed I hear Terhi's and Valtteri's voices. Small squeaks and low, breathless talk, and a rhythmic thumping like a piece of furniture hitting the wall. At first I think I should go and ask if anything's wrong, then I realize.

They're having intercourse.

I hear a loud moan and recognize Terhi's voice. In sexual adaptability class they repeatedly remind you of the importance of panting and whimpering. It has something to do with a masco's self-esteem. I can't understand why Terhi's obeying eloi rules, but I suppose it's her business. I stop for a moment, because the sounds are interesting.

The slight excitement I feel isn't just intellectual. There must be something special about what they're doing, or else why would Terhi bother? She's a strong, independent morlock. And I can't believe Valtteri would pressure her to do anything she didn't want to do.

I mean, I know how orgasms occur. It's not exactly quantum physics. But what all is involved when you try to have one with another person? My eloi studies didn't enlighten me on that—you're supposed to complete your instruction once you're married.

I realize that I am curious like an eloi.

Like a little monkey.

A little monkey with ants in her pants.

JARE SPEAKS

May 2017

I open my eyes.

At first I don't understand why V is standing next to my bed. I sit up and try to focus. “Has something happened?”

She puckers up her mouth and turns away, avoiding my gaze, and for a moment there's something painfully eloi-like about her. Something's bothering her and, rare as this is, she can't express it in words.

Then she pulls her nightgown off over her head.

V doesn't wear a nightgown or pajamas to bed, I know that. She doesn't understand why a person covered in blankets needs to wear anything and rub up against rough seams and twisted hems. But she's wearing a nightgown now. She probably got it out of Manna's dresser drawer. It's a typical eloi nightgown, bright red, see-through synthetic fabric with black lace trim.

She throws it on the floor. She put it on just to take it off again, which is such a clear signal that my heart would ache if it wasn't beating a mile a minute.

Of course, I did have some idea of what she would look like without any clothes on, but I have to admit I wasn't prepared for anything like this.

She takes hold of the edge of the blanket, peeks under it. I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed, but I would have to be made of stone not to react to the sight of her.

My whole lower body feels hot and hard as wood.

“Want to have a wedding night?”