Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [283]
And the woman was pleased. They all applied themselves intensely in the moment of effort, then stood around relaxing, or trying to relax— stretching muscles, joking with each other. There were no officials, no scoreboard, only some helpers like Sax. People took turns running events other than their own. Races started with a loud bang. Times were clocked by hand, and called out and logged onto a screen. Shot puts still looked heavy, their throwing awkward. Javelins flew forever. High jumpers were only able to clear four meters, to Maya and Michel’s surprise. Long jumpers, twenty meters; which was a most amazing sight, the jumpers flailing their limbs through a leap that lasted four or five seconds, and crossed a big part of the field.
In the late afternoon they held the sprints. As with the rest of the events, men and women competed together, all wearing singlets. “I wonder if sexual dimorphism itself is lessened in these people,” Michel said as he watched a group warm up. “Everything is so much less genderized for them— they do the same work, the women only get pregnant once in their lives, or never— they do the same sports, they build up the same muscles. . . .”
Maya fully believed in the reality of the new species, but at this notion she scoffed: “Why do you always watch the women then?”
Michel grinned. “Oh I can tell the difference, but I come from the old species. I just wonder if they can.”
Maya laughed out loud. “Come on. I mean look there, and there,” pointing. “Proportions, faces. . . .”
“Yeah yeah. But still, it’s not like, you know, Bardot and Atlas, if you know what I mean.”
“I do. These people are prettier.”
Michel nodded. It was as he had said from the start, Maya thought; on Mars it would finally become clear that they were all little gods and goddesses, and should live life in a sacred joyfulness. . . . Gender, however, remained clear at first glance. Although she too came from the old species; maybe it was just her. But that runner over there . . . ah. A woman, but with short powerful legs, narrow hips, flat chest. And that one next to her? Again female— no, male! A high jumper, as graceful as a dancer, though all the high jumpers were having trouble: Sax muttered something about plants. Well, still; even if some of them were a bit androgynous, for most it was the usual matter of instant recognition.
“You see what I mean,” Michel said, observing her silence.
“Sort of. I wonder if these youngsters really think about it differently, though. If they have ended patriarchy, then there must necessarily be a new social balance of the sexes. . . .”
“That’s certainly what the Dorsa Brevians would claim.”
“Then I wonder if that’s not the problem with Terran immigration. Not the numbers themselves, but the fact that so many people arriving from Earth are coming from older cultures. It’s like they’re arriving out of a time machine from the Middle Ages, and suddenly here are all these huge Minoans, women and men much the same—”
“And a new collective unconscious.”
“Yes, I suppose. And so the newcomers can’t cope. They cluster in immigrant ghettos, or new towns entire, and keep their traditions and their ties to home, and hate everything here, and all the xenophobia and misogyny in those old cultures breaks out again, against both their own women and the native girls.” She had heard of problems in the cities, in fact, in Sheffield and all over east Tharsis. Sometimes young native women beat the shit out of surprised immigrant assailants; sometimes the opposite occurred. “And the young natives don’t like it. They feel like they’re letting monsters into their midst.”
Michel grimaced. “Terran cultures were all neurotic at their core, and when the neurotic is confronted with the sane, it usually gets more neurotic than ever. And the sane don’t know what to do.”
“So they press to stop immigration. And put us at risk of another war.”
But Michel was distracted