Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

And then her second period came, during a working day. The stab of pain warned her in time for her to rush to the bathroom again. The cubicles had no doors, of course — though before her menarche it had never occurred to Lucia to notice the lack — but she was lucky to find the room empty, and was able again to conceal what had happened, even though she vomited, and this time the pain lasted for days.

But now she had compounded her secret.

She hated the situation. More than anything she cared what the people around her thought of her. The other girls were her whole world. She was immersed in them night and day, surrounded by their scent and touch and kisses, their conversation and their glances, their judgments and opinions; she was shaped by them, as they, she knew, were shaped in turn by her. But ever since she had started growing taller than the average, at the age of ten or so, barriers between her and her old friends had subtly grown up. That got worse at age twelve or thirteen, when her hips and breasts started to develop, and she had started to look like a young woman among children. And now this .

She didn’t want any of it. She wanted to be the same as everybody else; she didn’t want to be different . She wanted to be immersed in the games, and the gossip of what Anna said to Wanda, and how Rita and Rosetta had fallen out, and Angela would have to choose between them … She didn’t want to be talking about blood between her legs, pain in her belly.

She had to tell somebody. So she told Pina.

It was during a coffee break at work.

This was November, and Lucia’s regular schooling was in recess. For the second year she had come to work in the big office called the scrinium . This was an ancient Latin word meaning “archive.” Despite the antique name, it was a modern, bright, open-plan area with cubicles and partitions, PCs and laptops, adorned with potted plants and calendars, and with light wells admitting daylight from the world above. This bright, anonymous place might have been an office in any bank or government ministry. Even the ubiquitous symbol of the Order, two schematic face-to-face kissing fish, was rendered on the wall in bronze and chrome, like a corporate logo. Quite often you would even see a contadino or two in here — literally “countryman” or “peasant,” this word meant “outsider; not of the Order.”

But beyond the office was a computer center, a big climate-controlled room where high-capacity mainframes hummed and whirred in bluish light. And beyond that were libraries, great echoing corridors, softly lit and laced with fire-preventive equipment. Lucia didn’t know — nobody in her circle knew — how far such corridors extended, off into the darkness, tunneled out of the soft tufa rock; it didn’t even occur to her to ask the question. But it was said that if you walked far enough, the books gave way to scrolls of animal skin and papyrus, and tablets with Latin or Greek letters scratched in clay surfaces, and even a few pieces of carved stone.

In these vaulted, interconnected rooms the Order had stored its records ever since its first founding, sixteen centuries before. Nowadays the archive was more valuable than it had ever been, for it had become a key source of income for the Order. Information was sold, much of it nowadays via the Internet, to historians, to academic institutions and governments, and to amateur genealogists trying to trace family roots.

Lucia worked here as a lowly clerk — or, in the sometimes archaic language of the Order, as one of the scrinarii , under a supervising bibliotecharius . She spent some of her time doing computer work, transcribing and cross-correlating records from different sources. But mainly she worked on transcription. She would copy records, by hand, from computer screens and printouts onto rag paper sheets.

The Order made its own rag paper, once manufactured by breaking up cloth in great pounding animal-

driven pestles, but now directly from cotton in a room humming with high-speed electrical equipment. It was medieval technology. But the rag paper, acid-free, marked by special noncorrosive inks, would last far longer than any wood-pulp paper. The Order had little faith in digital archives; already there were difficulties accessing records from older, obsolescent generations of computers and storage media. If you were serious about challenging time, rag paper was the way to do it.

Hence Lucia’s paradoxically old-fashioned assignment. But she rather liked the work, although it was routine. The paper always felt soft and oddly warm to her touch, compared to the coarse stuff you got from wood pulp.

Her tasks had taught her the importance of accuracy; the archive’s main selling point, aside from its historical depth, was its unrivaled reliability. And Lucia’s calligraphy was careful, neat — and accurate, as proven by the triple layers of checks all her work was put through. It seemed likely, said the supervisors, that the scrinium would be her career path in the future, when she finished her schooling.

But that, of course, was thrown into uncertainty, like everything else in her life, by the unwelcome arrival of womanhood.

Pina sat on Lucia’s desk, her hands clasped together over her knees as if in prayer. They had no privacy, here as anywhere else, of course; there must have been fifty people in the office that morning, working or chatting, and the waist-high partitions hid nothing. Lucia spoke so softly that Pina had to lean closely to hear.

Pina was ten years older than Lucia. She had a small, pretty face, Lucia thought, lacking cheekbones but with a pleasing smoothness. Her eyes were a little darker than most, a kind of graphite gray, and her hair was tied neatly back. Her mouth was small and not very expressive when she talked, which gave her an aura of seriousness compared to other girls — that, and her ten years’ age difference, of course. Still, though, her features were quite similar to those of everybody else, including Lucia’s, the typical oval face, the gray eyes well within the range of variation.

And, though she was twenty-five, she was small, smaller than Lucia, with a slim figure, her breasts only the slightest swellings under the white blouse she wore.

She had been friendly to Lucia since her first day here in the scrinium , showing her the basics of her work and such essentials as how to work the coffee machine. Now Pina looked uncomfortable, Lucia thought, but she was listening.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Anyhow, now you’ve drawn me into your secret.”

“I’m sorry. If it’s one it’s a secret, if it’s two—”

“It’s a conspiracy,” Pina said, completing the crиche singalong phrase. “Well, I’ll forgive you. Especially as it can’t remain a secret for long.”

Lucia pulled a face. “I don’t want any of this. I never wanted to be taller — I don’t want this bleeding.”

“It isn’t unnatural.”

“Yes, but why me? I feel—”

“Betrayed? Betrayed by your own body?” Pina touched her arm, a gesture of support. “If it’s any consolation I don’t think you’re the only one … I suppose my memory is that bit deeper than yours. Things have been different the last few years. People have been—” She waved her hands vaguely. “ — agitated. Every summer the new cadres come up from the downbelow schools, all fresh faces and bright smiles, like fields of flowers. Always charming. There are always one or two who stand out from the crowd.”

“Like me.”

“But in the last few years there have been more.” Pina shrugged. “There are some who say there is trouble with the matres . Perhaps that’s somehow disturbing us all.”