10: The Ballad of Billie the Second Son

When I got up in the morning, the whole thing seemed a bit silly.

It didn’t really make sense for the treegrave to not be real. It would be a really silly lie to tell, just to kill off people who weren’t useful to the ship. And a silly way to do that, too; you had to apply to become a part of the treegrave. There were lots of old or sick people who never applied, or even just people who weren’t old or sick but just didn’t do a job on the ship. If the Administration was going to be horrible and kill off people, why would they use a way where the people had to sign up?

Anyway, the treegrave was as old as the Courageous, as old as our mission. That was a really, really long time for somebody to figure out such a lie, especially a lie about something so big and important. And if our treegrave was fake then so were all the others, because why would we not have one if everyone else did? Every fleet ship had a treegrave. Someone would have noticed.

I’d just gotten really worried about my grandma, that was all. I should talk to the treegrave, or the doctors, and find out if five months was long enough to be worried about. Actually I could just ask how my grandma was. There would be people looking after her, so somebody would be able to find out and tell me.

My next jaunt pass was with Janitorial, and it was easy to think about other things while being shown how cleaning and fixing the public areas of the ship was done. I spent the whole first day thinking hard about whether I should ask after Grandma. I knew I should, it was silly to think that I shouldn’t, but something held me back.

If something was wrong, if there was some big secret, I didn’t want anyone to know that I knew. That would make it harder to find out what was true. If I asked, they would lie to me, and then know to be extra careful to hide stuff from me. So even if I did ask, it wouldn’t help anything, because how could I believe anything that anyone said? I couldn’t, after the sheep.

I thought I knew about animals, and then I met the sheep. And it had been so different and changed everything, but all the grown ups already knew about the sheep, and everyone else who had ever been on their jaunt knew about the sheep, and none of them had told me about it. And I had learned about sheep in the projector room and also earned about all sorts of other mammals and learned that what I thought about animals was just wrong, there were so many more and they made everything different. And I didn’t have any way of knowing, before the jaunt, and nobody had told me.

How many more things were there, like the sheep? Maybe the treegrave was a lie and it made sense for it to be a lie because of things that I wouldn’t learn about until later in my jaunt. And then asking after Grandma would be a bad idea. And if she was fine then asking was a good idea, except that people telling me she was fine might be lying and I’d want to find out myself anyway, and that would be harder if I had asked and people knew I was looking, so…

So it was best not to ask anyone and to try to find out for myself in secret.

I couldn’t just wait for everyone to tell me everything about the ship, and figure things out after I was sure I understood everything as well as the sheep. Then I wouldn’t know if Grandma was okay for years. People stayed on the jaunt until they were at least twelve, and usually until they were sixteen or even eighteen, depending on how many second passes they wanted to do. People wanting dangerous or scary jobs had to be twenty. Looking after the treegrave was one of those jobs. I couldn’t wait until I was twenty to find out about the treegrave.

So I would stick to the plan. If I didn’t hear from Grandma by the end of the month, I would go looking for her.

Janitorial wasn’t very interesting, but it wasn’t boring either. We had done more Education now so our guide gave us more math to do, figuring out how many towels and things we would need to carry and how long it would take for the cleaner robots to clean things. Janitorial was sort of related to Rubbish & Recycling in the opposite way that Farming was. Things that people had finished with were sometimes Janitorial’s problem before they got to Rubbish & Recycling, and Janitorial had to know how to clean up different things and where to take them.

It was all a web. Farming fed into Textiles and Kitchens, which went to people and fed into Rubbish & Recycling and Janitorial, and Janitorial also fed into Rubbish & Recycling, and Rubbish & Recycling fed back into Textiles and Farming. There would be other things in the web, too, like Manufacturing, but we didn’t get to do Manufacturing until we were older because it was a bit dangerous.

One day when I came home from the jaunt, Auntie Moli and Auntie Lia were in the common area. Lia was fixing some sort of small machine, again, even though it wasn’t her working hours – Auntie Lia almost never stops working. Moli wasn’t working, she was having a cup of tea and talking to Lia and watching Rose and Ivy run around and play.

Rose and Ivy were Moli’s only children, and they were sort of like twins but not really. They were also the only kids in the house who weren’t my mum’s these days, because Plia (who was Shorin’s) didn’t live with us any more and Lia had never had any kids. Six years ago when I was a little baby, Moli had decided to be a mum, so Ivy had been grown in one of the biotanks. But a little bit after Ivy had started growing, she had gotten pregnant by surprise, and decided to keep both babies. Ivy was four days older than Rose but they played like they were twins and everyone acted like they were twins.

They were still too young to go on the jaunt, so they didn’t have many things that they had to do except for chores and Education. When I came home they were running around and playing with each other while Auntie Moli’s favourite song, the Ballad of Billie the Second Son, played. I wrinkled my nose. I didn’t like the Ballad of Billie the Second Son. It didn’t make any sense.

I had barely gotten home when Laisor came in, looking all pleased with kemself. I thought it might be because ke was going to a new ship tomorrow for kes jaunt (only for a month though, then ke’d be back), but then I noticed kes hair.

Auntie Lia noticed too, and I saw her roll her eyes.

Laisor had been letting kes hair grow just a little bit. Not very much, but not shaving it totally bald. Now I could see why. Ke had bleached it white and had it shaved into patterns of flames all around kes head. And found a matching wrap to wear, that had flame patterns on it.

Ke saw me and grinned. “How’re you doing, little sis?”

“Just fine,” I said. “Are you looking forward to tomorrow?”

“Yeah. You’ll be all big and going to other ships yourself soon enough.”

“What ship are you going to?” I probably should have asked that a lot earlier. Taken some interest in my tyber’s life.

“Vanguard.”

I scowled. Laisor laughed.

“Arborea Celestia.”

Aww, now I was jealous. Arborea is the second oldest ship in the fleet, after the Courageous. I tried not to look jealous, because Laisor was already being smug, and I didn’t like it when Laisor was smug.

“So you got the new hair to celebrate?” I asked. “It looks nice.”

Laisor grinned wider. Looking, of course, more smug. “It does, doesn’t it? I thought it was time for a change.”

“Yeah!” I said. “I had no idea you liked plants so much, to shave leaves into your hair. Did Auntie Moli help you choose the leaves? What kind are they?”

The smugness drained right out of kem. “N-no, it… it’s not… I’ve got things to do,” ke mumbled, and left.

“That wasn’t very nice,” Auntie Lia told me, frowning.

I crossed my arms. “You don’t like the hair either. You rolled your eyes.”

She hesitated. “Hmm. You know what, you’re right; that was mean of me. Teen fashion doesn’t have to impress me, that’s not what it’s for. I should be kinder.”

I had wanted both of us to be right, not both of us to be wrong. I crossed my arms tighter.

“You’re so much alike,” she said, smiling.

“Who?”

“You and Laisor.”

“I’m nothing like Laisor!”

“Not yet, because you’re not fifteen. And maybe you’ll grow up to be very different; who knows. But when Laisor was seven, ke was almost exactly like you.”

I didn’t like this conversation. I went to sit with Auntie Moli instead, and she poured me a little cup of tea.

“It’s hot,” she warned me, but it wasn’t very hot. She’d been drinking from the teapot for a while and it was just warm. “Should we listen to your favourite song again?”

I frowned at her. She grinned.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” I told her, which was something I’d said lots of times before. She just grinned wider, like she always did.

The Ballad of Billie the Second Son was a song about a made up man called Billie. He had an older brother, who didn’t get a name in the song, but who was nicer and prettier and smarter and better at his job than Billie. Billie wanted a harem but he didn’t have any wives yet. In each verse of the song, he would meet and court a new woman, then bring her to meet his family and she would fall in love with his brother and marry him instead.

Near the end of the song, Billie goes to a new fleet ship and fakes his death to cut ties with his brother for good, and falls in love with a woman and starts courting her. But just when he’s ready to start asking her if she might think about marriage, she falls in love with someone else and leaves him, and that’s how Billie finds out that his brother was so sad to hear about Billie’s death that in his grief he went to Billie’s new ship with all his wives, and Billie’s girlfriend is joining his harem too.

“It doesn’t make sense for all the women to want to join his brother’s harem,” I pointed out, “because they’re not just marrying his brother, they have to marry the other women too. So the first one or two, okay, but the more women who join, the more likely that the next one won’t want to because there’s more people in the harem for them to not like. So even if Billie is less cool than his brother, he doesn’t have any wives yet, so he has better chances the more wives his brother gets. And anyway, different people like different things, so not all the women should like his brother more. I bet you didn’t marry Dad because he was cool.”

“You’d be surprised at how cool your father can be,” she said, and then raised her voice so that Auntie Lia could definitely hear her. “But clearly I joined for Lia.”

Without looking up from her electronics, Auntie Lia threw a cleaning cloth at her.

To me, Auntie Moli said, “People do like different things, but Billie has preferences too. Maybe he’s only courting women who likes what he likes, and that type of woman all like each other and his brother.”

“Then he should talk to his brother,” I said. “His brother is nice. He should tell him that he’s trying to court them and that he wants a harem instead of keeping it to himself. Or he could just not introduce the women to him until they’ve been dating for longer and they’re in love with him. He’s being stupid.”

“It’s sometimes hard to tell people what you want if you’re not sure you’re going to get it. Maybe he’s embarrassed to tell his brother that he likes the women because he doesn’t want to look like he failed when they leave him.”

“Well that’s stupid. If he told his brother, his brother wouldn’t try to court them, and they wouldn’t leave him.” I screwed up by face. “But maybe they would leave him anyway, because he’s so stupid. Why fake his own death to cut ties with his brother? He could’ve just moved ships and kept in touch. Being angry and jealous didn’t help, he should’ve gotten over it. Especially since his brother was nice and didn’t even mean to do anything wrong. Everything bad that happens to Billie in the song is his own fault.”

“Indeed it is, and that’s what makes these songs funny. It wouldn’t be very funny if it was a song about a smart and good person making all the right decisions and still losing, would it?”

“It would be more realistic.”

Auntie Moli laughed. “I suppose that’s true.”